bice of 
 / Heart 
 
 MARGARET BLAKE
 
 / 2 p
 
 'YOU DISPARAGE IT BECAUSE YOU ARE JEALOUS OF HIM. 
 
 Frontispiece p. 211
 
 THE VOICE OF 
 THE HEART 
 
 A Romance 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET BLAKE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE GREATER JOY" 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 E. A. FURMAN 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY 
 O. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 The Voice of the Heart
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " You disparage it because you are jealous of him." Frontispiece. 211 
 
 "Only to kiss her! Only to kiss her!" he whispered tensely. . 103 
 
 "How badly you need those two hundred dollars" said Earlcote . 391 
 
 " Reason and the voice of the heart approve of the step." . . . 465 
 
 2229223
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 There was to be a wedding at Penascapet Mountain 
 House that year, and the entire house rejoiced at an 
 affair which brought so much pleasurable excitement with 
 it. The Reynolds, a family of five, had occupied the 
 right wing of the Penascapet Mountain House every 
 summer for the past twenty-five years. Emma Reynolds, 
 the eldest daughter, had been born there, and she was 
 determined to celebrate her nuptials in a good-sized sum- 
 mer house erected on the floor of an old barn, which 
 overlooked a small pond plentifully supplied with water- 
 lilies in summer, and which, in winter, grew so many suc- 
 cessive crops of ice on its miniature area that there was 
 enough frozen water to preserve the provisions and sup- 
 ply the icewater pitchers of the seventy odd guests of 
 the Penascapet House through the ensuing summers. 
 
 Day after day the younger element repaired to the 
 summer house to settle the weighty problem of decora- 
 tion, for Emma Reynolds wanted no florist's flowers. 
 
 "Daisies and water-lilies and devil's paint-brushes," 
 suggested Louise Reynolds, who was her sister's junior 
 by two years. She was a dainty blonde, with eyes of 
 sky-blue. 
 
 "Devil's paint-brushes ! Horrors !" Emma looked her, 
 scorn. "Devil's paint-brushes, indeed! I want white 
 flowers only." 
 
 5
 
 6 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "White flowers only," giggled Louise. "Betty Gar- 
 side, did you hear that?" 
 
 The girl addressed as Betty Garside raised her brows 
 without lifting her eyes. They were beautifully penciled 
 black brows, and stood out with startling vividness from 
 the white face. Betty Garside was barely eighteen. 
 There was about her a fragrance and a dewiness which 
 made her conspicuous, even among the group of attrac- 
 tive girls with whom she was sitting. Her eyes were 
 black; her blue-black hair lay back from the temples in 
 glossy waves ; to-day, because the sultry August morning 
 had given her a slight headache, she wore the shower of 
 black curls schoolgirl fashion down her back, securing 
 the heavy cluster of hair with a big white bow in the 
 nape of the neck. Her complexion, instead of being the 
 usual dusky complexion of the brunette, was dazzlingly, 
 snowily white. A faint sea-shell pink invaded the cheeks 
 in trailing ridges, on much the same plan as the petal of 
 a white peony is veined with pink. 
 
 "Well," said Betty, "and why shouldn't she have white 
 flowers? If I were to be married, I wouldn't want any 
 color but white." 
 
 "Oh, well for you white would be appropriate," said 
 one of the girls, and Louise added : 
 
 "Because you are so painfully good, Betty." 
 
 "I'm not painfully good, at all !" Betty repudiated the 
 arraignment of being good as indignantly as any normal 
 girl of her age would have done. "I hate goody-goodies." 
 
 "But, really, Betty/' Louise mocked, "you are pain- 
 fully, distressingly good." 
 
 "I would like to know in what way?" 
 
 "Help me think of an answer, girls," entreated Louise. 
 
 "We're not running a public thinkery, thank you," 
 someone said. 
 
 Another girl remarked, apparently without relevance :
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 7 
 
 "If Emma were being married down Louisiana way, 
 in the old days, she wouldn't be able to move out of the 
 house or see a soul except Mrs. Reynolds and Louise for 
 the last three days before the wedding. Barbarous cus- 
 tom, wasn't it? They did that to mother. How she ever 
 survived it, I'm sure I don't know." 
 
 "I think that a sweet custom," Betty said defensively. 
 "If I were about to be married, I would shut out the 
 world for the last three days that I might think only of 
 my intended and our joint future." 
 
 "Oh, slush!" said Louise; "slush, mush, and punk. 
 Who's the sentimental goody-goody now?" 
 
 But the girl who had told about the old custom con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "That wasn't the reason they kept the bride-to-be in- 
 doors for three days. It was considered immodest, you 
 know, for her to show herself in public." 
 
 "Immodest?" Betty asked innocently. 
 
 "Immodest. Goodness, don't you understand?" the 
 girl asked, a little impatiently, and the irrepressible Louise 
 added : 
 
 "Get an axe, someone. First aid to the slow-witted. 
 Oh, Betty ! How stoopid you are in some things. You 
 don't seriously suppose, do you, Betty Garside, that a 
 man marries a girl just to decorate his breakfast- table, 
 and for the fun of paying her dressmakers' bills? You 
 don't believe that, do you, now?" 
 
 "Well," said Betty, her chin high in the air, "I do 
 think that, if he is a nice-minded man, he thinks just of 
 the affection he feels for his betrothed, and of the com- 
 panionship, and of the feeling that she and he are every- 
 thing in the wide world to each other." 
 
 The girls laughed, all but Emma Reynolds, who said 
 very seriously : 
 
 "Betty is right." Then, with a sweet, protective ges-
 
 8 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ture, she threw her arm about the shoulders of the 
 younger girl, and, drawing Betty toward herself, kissed 
 her. "Marriage must be based on true affection, 
 companionship, respect," she said gravely, addressing 
 herself to Betty only, "if it is to be a real mar- 
 riage. The other feeling, dearie, as you will realize some 
 day, must be there, too. But it's subordinate to the 
 others." 
 
 "I wouldn't marry any man in whom the other feeling 
 existed," Betty said agitatedly. 
 
 "I hope you won't marry any man in whom it does not 
 exist," Emma responded, now vastly amused by Betty's 
 stubbornness. 
 
 "Well, at any rate, feelings or no feelings," Louise 
 sang out, "Betty is going to be the next bride. Did you 
 know it, girls?" Louise adored Betty, thought her quite 
 perfect, but she was never content to be near Betty with- 
 out harassing her with her teasing. 
 
 "How can you make such a statement, Louise ?" Betty 
 demanded indignantly. "Why, I'm not even in love." 
 
 "But someone is in love with you Mr. Pidgin." 
 
 Betty tossed her black curls angrily. Usually she par- 
 ried allusions to the gentleman Louise had named with 
 good-natured contempt, but to-day, because Louise's al- 
 lusions followed suggestive remarks, she became blindly 
 angry. 
 
 "There's Mr. Pidgin now, Betty," Louise continued 
 her tormenting. "He's coming up the hill. Coming here 
 to look for you." 
 
 Betty sprang up excitedly. 
 
 "I'm going," she cried. "I leave Mr. Pidgin to you 
 and your edifying conversation." The girls, amazed, 
 and a little frightened at gentle Betty's unwonted fury, 
 stopped laughing, and tried to remonstrate with her, but 
 Betty, gathering up several books, ran from the pavilion,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 9 
 
 and sped agilely along the road in a direction opposite to 
 the one in which Mr. Pidgin was ambling along. 
 
 Betty did not return to the hotel immediately. The im- 
 pure thoughts which some of the girls had voiced troubled 
 her strangely. She could not comprehend how girls, nice 
 girls, girls brought up like herself, could jest and speak 
 openly upon subjects of sex. The entire subject of sex 
 revolted Betty unspeakably. For a long time she had 
 imagined that it would be sweet to be in love ; her im- 
 agination had bodied forth in vain attempts to evoke a 
 vision of the sort of man she would love ; she had no pre- 
 dilection, no prejudice for or against men fair or dark, 
 men gaunt or plump; one prejudice only she possessed, 
 and that was strong as the Rock of Gibraltar. The man 
 she loved must differ in one particular from the average 
 man as she reluctantly realized the average man to be. 
 The man she loved must know no yearnings of sex. He 
 must love her as she loved him purely, truly, romanti- 
 cally. The voice of the heart must speak in him as in 
 her, and must bind one to the other. She refused to 
 admit the validity of the call of the flesh. 
 
 To banish the disagreeable thoughts which the foolish 
 remarks of the girls had induced in her, she went for a 
 long walk down a footpath that ended in an old Indian 
 trail running along the mossy bank of an extinct river, 
 where ferns and bracken, arbutus plants, and wintergreen 
 berries grew in sweet confusion. When, two hours later, 
 she emerged from the woods, homeward bound, she had 
 left behind her all disagreeable thoughts, and all the re- 
 sentment she had felt against Louise earlier in the day. 
 Instead, she was filled with a strange, subdued glow of 
 happiness. 
 
 She went to her room and dressed for supper. Im- 
 mediately after supper Louise and the other girls, instead 
 of waiting for Betty to join them, miraculously disap-
 
 10 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 peared. Betty, to spoil their attempt to discipline her for 
 her desertion in the afternoon, wandered into the tiny 
 room set apart as a reading-room, and began examining 
 the books stacked on the old-fashioned swing shelf. The 
 name of Swinburne caught her eye. She remembered 
 that at school Swinburne was one of the poets from whom 
 no excerpts had been offered to stimulate their youthful 
 palates for the classics a circumstance which had inter- 
 ested her, even then. She had always meant, in a vague 
 way, to explore Swinburne at some time for this reason, 
 but the curiosity aroused in her had never been suffi- 
 ciently great to overcome the inertia of Betty's lymphatic 
 temperament. And Swinburne had not been explored. 
 
 She took down the volume from the shelf, and opened 
 it at haphazard. The first sentence she read had the 
 blinding effect of a spray of cold water. The next mo- 
 ment liquid fire surged through Betty's brain. This was 
 literature, indeed! 
 
 She had chanced upon "The Garden of Proserpine" : 
 
 From too much joy of living, 
 From hope and fear made free 
 We thank, with brief thanksgiving, 
 Whatever gods may be, 
 That no man lives forever, 
 That dead men rise up never, 
 That e'en the weariest river, 
 Flows somewhere safe to sea. 
 
 Breathlessly, oblivious of time, she read on and on. 
 A step came down the corridor. It was her mother. 
 
 "What are you doing here, Betty?" 
 
 Betty started. 
 
 "I came up for a handkerchief and happened to stop 
 here for a moment," she answered glibly. It was the 
 first deliberate untruth she had ever told her mother, and
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 11 
 
 she could not have told why she told it. Her mother 
 would not have objected to her reading Swinburne, for 
 her mother was continually urging her to overcome her 
 innate laziness and read "good literature". Probably her 
 mother would have been delighted to hear that Betty 
 was taking a step in the right direction. But Betty, un- 
 accountably, meant to hoard to herself the sweet honey 
 she had discovered by herself. 
 
 "I am tired," said Betty's mother. "I am going to bed. 
 Are you coming?" 
 
 "Yes, Mother." 
 
 But, on the way to her room, Betty encountered Louise. 
 
 "Oh, Betty," exclaimed Louise, "what do you think? 
 Emma is still on the back porch with Herman." 
 
 The responsive smile, which Louise expected, was not 
 forthcoming. Betty's brain was on fire from her hour's 
 reading, and she was in sympathy with the lovers. They 
 had sat on the back porch as the sun went down, filling in 
 the colossal spaces between the mountains and tree-trunks 
 and the tiny spaces between the leaves and ripening fruit 
 of the orchard with amber, burnt orange, and gold. The 
 back porch was innocent of a lantern, and Betty pictured 
 the lovers sitting in the gathering darkness, in their nos- 
 trils the sweet scent of mellowing sickle pears, ripening 
 plums, and fallen and bruised apples, rendered oblivious, 
 because of the magic of clasped hands and soft pressure 
 of lips, to fluttering moths, wheeling millers, and flapping 
 bats. It was a sensation that was new to Betty this 
 feeling of sympathy for lovers. In it there was something 
 vaguely resembling envy. Yet why should she feel envy ? 
 Certainly Herman, a commonplace youth, with a gawky 
 \valk, dull face, and awkward manners, would have added 
 no enchantment to the night for her. She would have 
 hated the love-touch of his red, clammy hands. She 
 hated to shake hands with him even.
 
 12 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "And, what do you think, Betty?" Louise inquired, 
 with the inevitable giggle, "what do you think? Mr. 
 Pidgin asked for you three times this afternoon and four 
 times this evening. Oh, Betty!" Giggling with Louise 
 was not so much an action as a condition, and she was 
 in the throes now. 
 
 "Did he?" queried Betty, with fine scorn. "Mr. Pidgin 
 is a creature of habit. Because he sits at the same table 
 with mother and myself, he feels a sort of proprietary 
 interest in us." 
 
 "Does he, though?" asked Louise. "He sat at the 
 same table with us all last year, but he never asked for 
 me when I left the piazza. Believe me." 
 
 "Perhaps you never left it when he was around. Per- 
 haps his presence anchored you to the spot." 
 
 "Oh, Betty! Oh, Betty!" remonstrated Louise. 
 
 Mr. Pidgin was the staple of conversation at Penasca- 
 pet Mountain House. Without Mr. Pidgin conversation 
 would have degenerated into chatter upon subjects of 
 perennial interest, such as the servant-girl question, and 
 the cost of living, and the corruption of the United States 
 senate. But Mr. Pidgin furnished a timely interest and 
 promoted conversation Mr. Pidgin, whose name was a 
 cruel misnomer, because he tipped the scales at two 
 hundred and fifty, and had a complexion as florid as a 
 newborn infant's. Mr. Pidgin's masculinity was the only 
 trait that had thrust him upon this pinnacle of surpass- 
 ing interest, because, for six days out of seven, barring 
 the gardener, the stableman, the host, and the bellboy, 
 Mr. Pidgin was the only man at Penascapet House. The 
 rest of the men, Herman included, came on for the week- 
 end every Saturday, which, in that unsophisticated com- 
 munity, was termed "coming up over Sunday". 
 
 On Monday morning, long before the fair sex had 
 rallied from the phlegmatic delights of slumber, there
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 13 
 
 was a general exodus of the stronger sex. Mr. Pidgin 
 alone remained, although he was continually proclaiming 
 his intention "to go down to the city next week" to look 
 after some business interests. He had proclaimed this so 
 often that Mr. Pidgin's business interests, like Mr. Pidgin 
 himself, had become one of the standing jokes at Penas- 
 capet. 
 
 Certainly Mr. Pidgin looked as if he had not a care in 
 the world, and it was rumored that he had an income of 
 over twenty-five thousand a year. Why a man with 
 twenty-five thousand a year should elect to come year 
 after year to so slow a place as Penascapet, where there 
 was nothing to do but to walk and to eat and to talk, was 
 a mystery to the younger guests, who would have pre- 
 ferred the seashore for their summer's holiday, and who 
 one and all endured Penascapet only because their parents 
 brought them there willy-nilly. For dearth of more in- 
 teresting subject matter the girls fell to accusing each 
 other of being the magnet that attracted Mr. Pidgin to 
 the Penascapet oasis year after year. Betty, of late, had 
 become the storm center of these fusillades of wit. There 
 was, indeed, as Betty's mother saw with secret joy, ample 
 grounds for this teasing. 
 
 "And is Mr. Pidgin going to New York to-morrow?" 
 Betty asked, sitting down on the stairs, with the volume 
 of Swinburne between her and ' the carpet, making a 
 highly uncomfortable seat. She would have died rather 
 than let Louise see that treasured tome. The entire 
 house would be apprised before breakfast the next morn- 
 ing that Betty Garside had taken to reading poetry, and 
 they would have drawn, heaven only knows what infer- 
 ences, quite possibly the preposterous one that she was in 
 love with Mr. Pidgin. 
 
 The thought that Mr. Pidgin could induce in anyone 
 "too great a joy of living" tickled Betty's sense of humor.
 
 14 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 She grinned, Cheshire-cat fashion. At that moment Mr. 
 Pidgin, puffing like an asthmatic steam-engine, hove in 
 sight from below. When his head was on a level with 
 the banisters of the first landing, Louise called out : 
 
 "Miss Garside wants to know whether you are going 
 to the city to-morrow, Mr. Pidgin." 
 
 "In this heat? Indeed not," puffed Mr. Pidgin. "I 
 am going to ask every young lady under twenty to go on 
 a straw-ride to-morrow." 
 
 "How lovely," Betty said ironically. 
 
 "There'll be at least sixteen of us," giggled Louise. 
 "You'll have your hands full, Mr. Pidgin." 
 
 "To have my hands full of such charming buds as are 
 assembled at Penascapet is something to be envied for," 
 rejoined Mr. Pidgin. He addressed Louise, but looked 
 at Betty, as Betty, who sat with downcast eyes, knew 
 perfectly well. 
 
 "A straw-ride will be awfully comfortable for you, Mr. 
 Pidgin." This from Louise. 
 
 Betty thought: "Heavens, how inane it all is." She 
 was burning to get to her room with her newly discov- 
 ered Swinburne, and, besides, the book upon which she 
 was still sitting was beginning to give her a cramp. 
 
 "I shall sit next to the driver," said Mr. Pidgin. "I 
 will be quite comfortable there." 
 
 "There are two seats next to the driver," commented 
 Louise. 
 
 "Then, if you are a good little girl, I will let you sit 
 next to me." 
 
 Betty rose abruptly. As a rule these inanities of con- 
 versation mildly amused her because of their very inanity. 
 To-day they were insufferable. She wanted to shout out 
 aloud that it was waste of time to indulge in such verbal 
 froth when golden treasures of thought, couched in the 
 silver and amethyst of matchless language, were to be 
 found in the very house.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 15 
 
 Towering above the pudgy Mr. Pidgin and the silly 
 Louise, her pale young splendor, with its dark halo of 
 hair detaching itself from its surroundings, was like a 
 pillar of sculptured alabaster, which, by some untoward- 
 ness of fate, has been condemned to a place in a vege- 
 table garden. 
 
 "Good-night," she exclaimed. "Mother is waiting for 
 me." 
 
 Betty smuggled the volume of poetry into her room 
 unperceived by anyone. Usually she undressed in the 
 dark, with only the light shining through the transom 
 above the door to guide her, but to-day she groped for 
 the matches and struck a light. Scarcely half an inch of 
 candle remained in the candlestick, for at Penascapet 
 candles were the only mode of illumination employed in 
 the bedrooms. 
 
 Betty hailed a maid who was passing the door. 
 
 "Maggie," Betty cried, "can you get me a candle? Two 
 candles?" 
 
 "Two, Miss?" inquired the girl. She emphasized the 
 word unconsciously. "What may you be wantin' with 
 two candles, Miss?" 
 
 "I may want to sit up until after midnight." 
 
 "Fancy staying up that late," said Maggie. She opened 
 the door to an unused room. It cracked on its hinges, 
 and Betty wondered what law of physics caused things 
 which were noiseless in broad daylight to creak and 
 squeak in the dark. Maggie came forth with three can- 
 dles in her hand, and Betty thanked her volubly. 
 
 Betty's mother came into her room and kissed her 
 good-night. Mother and daughter occupied adjoining 
 rooms, and, finally, Betty was alone. 
 
 She undressed quickly, took her cold sponge bath, and 
 hurried into her night-dress. Then she took up the vol- 
 ume of Swinburne and turned it lovingly in her hands. 
 She thought of lying down in bed and reading, with a
 
 16 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 candle beside her on a chair, but ultimately she shud- 
 dered away from the soft, warm embrace of pillows and 
 bedding, and sat down at the open window, the candle on 
 the window ledge. 
 
 The night was distressingly sultry. Even the tiny 
 flame of the candle seemed to give out quantities of heat. 
 Millers, with wiry wings, and white moths, with wings 
 like swansdown, fluttered about, attracted by the flame 
 of the candle. With the protecting wire screen between 
 herself and these denizens of the air, of which Betty 
 had all the average young girl's horror, she felt no 
 alarm. A little gray moth had entered the room through 
 some crack, and blindly made again and again for the 
 light. Betty shooed it away. 
 
 "Foolish little thing," she said, "go away, go home; 
 someone is waiting for you." She had often lured one 
 of the flimsy things away from destruction with the same 
 words, varying them sometimes, according to the size 
 of the moth, with, "Go home, your mother is waiting for 
 you," or "Go home, your babies are waiting for you." 
 But to-night Betty added, as further admonishment to 
 the uncomprehending moth, "Go home, little lady, your 
 husband is waiting in your little cool nest in a tree- 
 twig." 
 
 Having prevented disaster, Betty opened the precious 
 volume at last and read. She read through the entire 
 length of three candles. She read all of Atalanta in 
 Calydon, and the chorus and semi-chorus she went over 
 three or four times, until she had them by heart, for 
 Betty had an extraordinary memory. She was intox- 
 icated, ravished by the profusion of metaphors, the 
 wealth of language, the almost Oriental display of dic- 
 tion. The rhythm, sophisticated and premeditated, com- 
 municated a rhythm to her pulses. She was in the 
 seventh heaven of delight.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 17 
 
 Again and again she closed the volume with the 
 intention of crawling to bed. Again and again she 
 opened it haphazard at some page, only to stumble upon 
 some new beguilement, some new allure. The last poem 
 she read was Rococo, and then she tumbled into bed. 
 
 Betty did not understand the hidden allusions, the 
 carefully distilled poison, the pulsing, maddening pas- 
 sion of the poetry she had read. The royal garments in 
 which the thoughts were clothed fascinated and mysti- 
 fied her, and as she fell asleep isolated lines of fragile 
 beauty kept darting through her mind: 
 
 "Take hands and part with laughter, 
 Touch lips and part with tears, 
 
 Till rose leaves of December 
 The frosts of June shall fret." 
 
 The simple truth of the matter is that Betty was in 
 love. When that term is employed, it is usual to assume 
 that there is some person who inspires the affections 
 which are at play. Not so. All young girls are in love 
 in the abstract before some concrete image of a man 
 crystallizes their affections and absorbs them. No one 
 had as yet focussed Betty's love. It was still a half- 
 wild, half-tame thing, more eager to be caught than to 
 escape. 
 
 Betty had reached and passed the psychological mo- 
 ment that night. It would need the juice of no magic 
 herb, dropped upon eye-lids, to imperil her freedom of 
 fancy. Nature, her dormant woman's soul, her latent 
 woman's need, a romantic imagination were the magic 
 which would compass the transformation for which 
 Oberon required the juice of the mystic herb.
 
 18 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "The next thing that she waking looks upon, 
 Be it on lion, bear or wolf, or bull, 
 On meddling monkey, or on busy ape, 
 She shall pursue it with the soul of love." 
 
 Betty slept at last, and dreamed of phantom kisses, 
 intangible hand clasps and a ghostly face indistin- 
 guishable from the mists in which it was swathed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Betty's window faced the East, and at half past four 
 in the morning her little room was filled brimful with 
 light. Her mother gently pushed open the door, noise- 
 lessly crossed the room and as noiselessly closed the 
 outer shutters, adjusting them so that they admitted the 
 air but screened away the light. 
 
 Mrs. Garside was a tall, dark woman of forty. Peo- 
 ple said of her, "What a handsome woman she must 
 have been once." But, as a matter of fact, the ruin was 
 far more beautiful than the edifice had been in its palmy 
 days. She had married a man far handsomer than her- 
 self, a step always more or less dangerous for any woman 
 to take, and she had eaten her heart out ever since. 
 Betty's father had been a gambler, a card-cheat, a pro- 
 fessional poker player. His offenses had not ended 
 there. When Betty was a year old he helped himself to 
 the till of the firm that employed him as Cashier and 
 disappeared. 
 
 The world commiserated the deserted wife, but Mrs. 
 Garside, whatever regrets decency bade her express, was 
 clandestinely jubilant to be rid of her husband. Those 
 offenses of his of which the world had cognizance were 
 mere bagatelles compared to the crowning misery he had 
 inflicted on his wife. He was a libertine of the most 
 unbridled and perverted tastes, and the young couple 
 had not lived together a month before the young wife 
 was utterly disillusioned as to the character of the man 
 she had married. 
 
 Mrs. Garside had married her husband in opposition 
 
 19
 
 to the wishes of her friends and family. She had broken 
 with them because of her marriage. On realizing that 
 they had been right and she wrong in the estimate 
 formed of him, pride had kept her from appealing to 
 them for advice and assistance. She refused to live 
 with her husband. She hated him bitterly after the 
 few short weeks she had lived with him. When finally 
 he absconded her pride had become so threadbare and 
 shabby from constant abrasion that it tore into a thou- 
 sand flimsy ribbons. 
 
 All she had to rely upon for maintenance of herself 
 and her child was an income of four hundred dollars in 
 bonds which she had inherited from her father. But 
 four hundred dollars is not sufficient to decently support 
 two persons, no matter how humble and frugal their 
 mode of living, and Mrs. Garside turned a naturally 
 versatile genius to many odd shifts in the business of 
 making a living. She gave piano lessons, she sewed 
 dresses, she embroidered for department stores, she 
 wrote paragraphs for the Sunday papers. In her leisure 
 moments she attended to her housekeeping and her little 
 daughter's clothes. Her energy was unremitting. Some 
 years she scraped along for months at a time on barely 
 nothing, but she did not touch her capital. To eat into 
 her small capital would have seemed to this extraordinary 
 woman not merely the height of imprudence but an act 
 of treachery toward her child. What had most im- 
 pressed her about the absconding of her husband was 
 not the man's baseness so much as her own stupidity in 
 having trusted a man of such calibre. She nourished 
 a very robust self contempt for her powers of observa- 
 tion in the past, and having made the pivotal mistake 
 in her woman's career, she meant to redeem herself in 
 her own eyes by redoubled prudence in the future. 
 i The injury she had sustained, as she blamed her own
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 21 
 
 lack of insight for it primarily, neither soured nor em- 
 bittered her. It made her shrewd. From a sentimental, 
 romantic, emotional girl she transformed herself in the 
 year following her marriage into cold, calculating, dis- 
 passionate woman. When Betty was four years old her 
 mother flattered herself that there was not a grain of 
 sentiment left in her, except her mother love. Yet, in 
 her new outlook upon life, maternity did not assume 
 its usual aspect with her. No coddling, crooning, pet- 
 ting of her baby, no straining to her heart of the ador- 
 able youngster. Sentiment, running wild, had wrecked 
 her life. She meant to bring up her child in ignorance 
 of the softer emotions. She meant to harden her 
 child spiritually by apparent diffidence and lack of en- 
 dearments, as physicians harden a weak throat by 
 exposing it to the chill blasts of winter. It never oc- 
 curred to Mrs. Garside that by starving her child's emo- 
 tional nature, she might be sowing the seeds of a 
 catastrophe far exceeding her own shipwreck. 
 
 The distorted lenses through which she now viewed 
 life seemed to her a corrective of her former vision, 
 and made her ruthlessly pluck up the charming flowers 
 of romance that grow along the path of the humblest. 
 She meant to play destiny to Betty, with mathematical 
 precision. She hardly ever kissed the child, lest she 
 awaken Betty's emotional nature. When she kissed her 
 child's rose petal lips, it seemed to her that she was 
 pilfering sweets and succumbing to temptation. At 
 night she sometimes sat beside the sleeping child, kissing 
 the black curls, the dimpled, chubby hands, and the 
 snowy brow. One night Betty had been awakened by 
 these secret ministrations, and half asleep, wound her 
 arms about her mother's neck. 
 
 "Why don't you kiss me oftener, Mother?" she asked, 
 and was off again for the Land of Nod.
 
 22 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Mrs. Garside's object, of course, in eliminating from 
 Betty's life the emotional side of life, was to prepare 
 her, to win her into acquiescence in advance, for a 
 match which Mrs. Garside would arrange for her in 
 due time. No princess of the blood was more carefully 
 chaperoned and taught, or more carefully groomed and 
 manicured than Betty. She had a talent for music, and 
 Mrs. Garside was determined that Betty should make 
 the most of this natural gift, which, she argued, would 
 add to her attractiveness. Nothing was omitted from 
 the curriculum that might add to Betty's market value. 
 More money was needed, after Betty was sixteen, and 
 Mrs. Garside converted her bonds into copper mine 
 stocks, paying a higher interest. But even with this 
 increment, the income was inadequate, and it became 
 necessary to touch the capital. Mrs. Garside spent nights 
 in figuring out her campaign. There was enough money 
 to last them until Betty would be twenty-two years old, 
 and the mother calculated that there was no doubt that a 
 husband would be found before then for a girl as ex- 
 quisite as Betty. 
 
 Of Betty's exquisiteness there could be no doubt, Mrs. 
 Garside reflected, as she sat at her daughter's bedside 
 that sultry August morning. Betty's charm was not 
 the charm of the wild flower, of which so much has 
 been said and written. Hers was the charm of the 
 highly cultivated white rose, and it was her exquisiteness, 
 her preciousness, even more than her beauty which 
 startled every chance acquaintance into looking at her a 
 second, or even a third time. 
 
 Mrs. Garside's campaign had not miscarried. She had 
 not aimed too high, being a shrewd woman, and she felt 
 more contentment than she had felt in years as she sat 
 looking at the sleeping girl. Betty's future was secure, 
 unless Betty proved recalcitrant, and why should Betty
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 23 
 
 not be amenable, Betty, who knew nothing of love and 
 sentiment and demonstrativeness ? Of the delectable an- 
 tidote to the maternal system which Betty had imbibed 
 the night before, Mrs. Garside knew nothing, for the 
 volume lay hidden from sight under Betty's pillow. She 
 sat beside sleeping Betty for two hours, and for each 
 moment of those two hours the woman thrilled and 
 glowed with the maternal fires within her, unquenched 
 and unextinguished by puerile fondling of her offspring. 
 
 Betty awoke at seven, a half hour before the rising 
 bell; awoke without seeing her mother from whom she 
 had turned in her sleep, awoke to the delicious languor 
 of stretching and purring in bed, like a kitten, to shake 
 the leaden mantle of sleep from her limbs. 
 
 "Betty," said Mrs. Garside. 
 
 "Mother, what are you doing here?" 
 
 "I want you to dress as quickly as possible, Betty. 
 I have something to say to you before breakfast." 
 
 "What's happened, Mother?" 
 
 "Something of prime importance." 
 
 "Oh, Mother, tell me what. It isn't the copper mine, 
 is it? Stocks haven't jumped to par, have they?" 
 
 "No, but my Betty has jumped to par." 
 
 "Now, what can you mean?" 
 
 "Last night, Mr. Pidgin asked me for an interview 
 at twelve to-day. That means that he is going to offer 
 himself." 
 
 "What have I got to do with that ? Oh, a stepfather, 
 and Fatty Pidgin ! Oh, Mother, how can you ?" 
 
 "Not a stepfather, but a husband for you, Betty." 
 
 Betty stared hard. 
 
 "Has he got a son?" she asked. 
 
 "Don't pretend to misunderstand me, Betty." 
 
 "You cannot mean " 
 
 "Precisely."
 
 M THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "You must." 
 
 "I won't." 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "Mother!" 
 
 Mrs. Garside looked at her daughter in perplexity. 
 She felt a sudden faintness overwhelm her. 
 
 "Are you in love with anyone?" she demanded. 
 
 "Goodness gracious, of course not. How very funny. 
 But I cannot marry Fatty Pidgin, Mother. Why, it's 
 a joke. The girls would all laugh at me." 
 
 "Laughter is frequently a mask to hide envy." 
 
 But, no matter how neatly turned and how appro- 
 priate, no epigram had power to move Betty from her 
 decision. Driven hard, making no headway against the 
 child's sudden waywardness, Mrs. Garside had horrid 
 visions of the carefully planned golden circle of Betty's 
 life being distorted into an impossible ellipse. 
 
 "Mr. Pidgin is a wealthy man. He has twenty-five 
 thousand a year." 
 
 "What has that got to do with it?" 
 
 "Everything, you are a poor girl." 
 
 "Well, if you wish me to marry money, there are 
 other rich men, nearer my own age. I won't, positively, 
 I won't marry Mr. Pidgin." 
 
 Betty looked unutterably disgusted. Louise's remark 
 flashed back to her, "You don't suppose a man marries 
 a girl just to decorate his breakfast table?" Her dis- 
 gust changed to open revolt. Her mother, determined to 
 quell her daughter's rebelliousness, threw caution to the 
 winds. It had been part of the system to chaperone 
 Betty so closely that she could afford to dispense with a 
 good deal of miscellaneous knowledge with which some 
 latter-day parents think it desirable to acquaint their 
 daughters. She had feared, by making Betty self-con-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 25 
 
 scious or shrewd, to rob her of some of the virginal 
 charm which is one of the chief enhancements of youth- 
 ful attractiveness. Now, in one gusty interview, she 
 would have to rob Betty of many, perhaps of all illusions. 
 
 "Listen to me, Betty. Mr. Pidgin has very much more 
 to offer you than I had dared hope for. He is a very 
 desirable parti." 
 
 Betty vaulted from the bed, and began unplaiting her 
 hair. 
 
 "Mr. Pidgin is forty, if he is a day," she commented. 
 
 "If he were younger, with his income, he would be 
 enjoying himself at some fashionable place, and he would 
 never have seen you." 
 
 "Mother, you speak of me as if I were a commodity." 
 
 "That is precisely what you are." 
 
 Betty flushed furiously. Her dark eyes sparkled, she 
 shook her head indignantly. The black curls fell into 
 more graceful lines about the wonderfully well-bred, 
 aristocratic face. 
 
 "It's unthinkable, Mother. I can't." 
 
 Betty did not raise her voice. Her aristocratic man- 
 ner was never more apparent than when she was angry. 
 And she was now more angry than she had ever been in 
 all her life. 
 
 "It is not unthinkable." 
 
 "I do not love him." 
 
 ''The statement is quite unnecessary, my child. I 
 credit you with far too much taste and good sense to 
 imagine that you do." 
 
 "You do not wish me to marry a man I hate ?" 
 
 "It does not follow that you hate Mr. Pidgin because 
 you do not happen to love him." 
 
 "If I marry him, I shall hate him." 
 
 "Betty, my dear, only the very rich and the very poor 
 woman can afford to indulge her own taste in marrying.
 
 26 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 I must speak frankly, Betty, and my frankness will seem 
 brutal to you. You may rave and rant as much as you 
 like. I brought you up to be married to the first eligible 
 man who wanted you, and marry him you will and 
 shall." 
 
 There was an ominous pause. Betty furiously brushed 
 and combed her hair, which, tightly curled from its 
 recent proximity to the warmth of Betty's head, snarled 
 about her fingers in serpentine twists. Suddenly she 
 threw the brush upon the bed, and demanded indig- 
 nantly : 
 
 "You brought me up for that? You brought me up 
 for the purpose of marrying me off? Why, it's legit- 
 imized prostitution." 
 
 Whence had this wisdom come so suddenly? Her 
 mother questioned Betty with her eyes, and Betty ques- 
 tioned her mother in return in the same mute way. Some 
 chance-spoken phrase by a chance acquaintance, over- 
 heard heaven-knows-where, had leapt into her brain and 
 exploded the cauldron of her anger. 
 
 "Legitimized prostitution," she repeated, with a lit- 
 tle gasp to cover her confusion and show that she was 
 not ashamed of having spoken the words. "I refuse to 
 marry him." 
 
 "I am glad that your knowledge of certain phases of 
 life enables me to speak with absolute candor," said Mrs. 
 Garside, icily. "Some imbecile invented the phrase which 
 you have just used. The phrase negatives itself. It 
 contradicts itself. The word 'prostitute' implies that 
 woman has given some man a husband's privileges with- 
 out being his wife in return for money. A woman who 
 does that is a fool, because there is no woman alive 
 who, if she plays her cards properly, cannot obtain both 
 the status of a wife and the money which a wife re- 
 ceives in return for said privileges. Do you follow me ?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 27 
 
 "Yes," said Betty thickly. She hid her blushes be- 
 hind the screen of hair that was falling about her face 
 like a mantle. 
 
 "That is why a prostitute is scorned so much more 
 by women than by men. It is commonly said that men 
 are kinder-hearted, because a man more easily than a 
 woman will forgive a woman who has gone wrong. That 
 is not true. They condone the fault more readily, be- 
 cause as a class, they are not injured by a fallen woman. 
 
 "Marriage is the one, unfailing profession for a 
 woman. It is the one profession in which woman, self- 
 evidently, need not fear the rivalry of man. But all vir- 
 tuous women, married or, unmarried, fear the rivalry 
 of the prostitute, because the prostitute sells for a very 
 trifling" return an asset which history, custom, religion, 
 civic spirit and man's chivalry have constituted, in the 
 hands of a clever woman, an incomparable and inval- 
 uable asset. It is not the offense against morality so 
 much as the offense against the class interest of woman 
 as woman, that so enfuriates the average respectable 
 woman when she sees a fallen sister. Do you under- 
 stand ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Betty. She had finished combing her hair, 
 and was piling it up in rippling tiers. This commercial 
 aspect of marriage made the burning words which she 
 had read the night before seem incredibly remote. She 
 had always known that her mother was a competent 
 woman, but she had never suspected her of being a 
 clever one, and her mother's sudden conversational 
 prowess amazed and impressed her exceedingly. 
 
 "Every woman sells herself as dearly as possible," 
 her mother continued, "for marriage is always a pur- 
 chase. Some women sell themselves for love, some for 
 money, some for position, some for power." 
 
 "I do not see how you can call a love marriage a sale,"
 
 28 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 said Betty. "Love for love, that is fair and square and 
 honest." 
 
 "Is it? It means that the woman gets what she most 
 desires in return for herself. If she desires love more 
 than anything else, she sells herself for love, a most 
 perishable return for a perishable asset." 
 
 "It is awful to hear you talking of love like that," said 
 Betty sombrely. Her voice was almost a whisper. 
 
 "I married for love, Betty." 
 
 "Not all love marriages turn out as unfortunately as 
 yours, Mother." 
 
 Mrs. Garside winced. 
 
 ''Not all, but a good many do. Betty, I have known 
 many married women in the course of my life. I am 
 not exaggerating when I say that out of every ten mar- 
 ried women nine would embrace freedom with prayers 
 of gratitude providing they could retain their children, 
 the status of a married woman and their share of the 
 income which their husbands hand over to them on 
 Saturday night." 
 
 "I don't believe it." 
 
 "You will, when you are a little older. At your age, 
 my child, we think that a smiling face hides a smiling 
 heart. But women smile for many reasons. They smile 
 because pride bids them hide their disappointment, or 
 from an unselfish desire to cloak their pain, or merely 
 from a sense of decency. But the average married 
 woman is not happy." 
 
 "Why then marry at all?" demanded Betty. 
 
 "Because the unmarried woman is still unhappier," 
 said Mrs. Garside. "The unmarried woman almost in- 
 variably longs for the status of marriage. Pride in the 
 status of being married, that is pride that some man has 
 been willing to shoulder the responsibility of her sup- 
 port, is one of the tricks to which the married woman
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 29 
 
 has resorted as an offset for her unhappiness. Her fail- 
 ure to attain that position seems to the unmarried a 
 shameful thing. The desire to be loved is nothing but 
 injured vanity, although it is the fashion to ascribe this 
 desire to sentimental reasons. Then, of course, the bur- 
 den of self-support rests on her shoulders. In these 
 two points the married sister is more fortunate than her 
 unmarried sister, and in addition she has her children. 
 And the joys of motherhood, Betty, compensate for and 
 reconcile a woman to much." 
 
 "I do not see how a woman can love her children if 
 she does not love her husband," Betty said bluntly. "Be- 
 sides, I do not like children." 
 
 Betty spoke the truth. Young children were offensive 
 to her. Dainty youngsters of over three or four, clad 
 in fine raiment and freshly washed, she thought ador- 
 able. They were ,so decorative. But infants revolted 
 her. The slobbery bibs, the squirming red hands, the 
 wrinkled red monkey faces nauseated her. It is a feel- 
 ing not unusual among girls of unemotional natures in 
 whom the sex instinct, and consequently the mother 
 impulse, which is merely an extension or modification of 
 the sex instinct, is either latent or atrophied. 
 
 "You would like your own," said Mrs. Garside. 
 
 "I don't want children." Betty's face was crimson. 
 "Mother, I am going to tell you the truth." She paused, 
 as if the truth with which she was threatening her 
 mother was a gigantic horror. "I wouldn't marry any 
 man who wants children. I wouldn't marry anyone un- 
 less I knew that he was the right sort of man, I mean 
 a man who wouldn't insist on having that sort of re- 
 lations with his wife." 
 
 "What?" Mrs. Garside fairly gasped. "There are no 
 men of that sort." She was appalled by her child's 
 abysmal innocence.
 
 30 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "I don't believe it," Betty retorted in the hard, brittle 
 tone of youth when youth's fondest dreams are ques- 
 tioned. "I am sure there are. I know there are." 
 
 "Know?" 
 
 "Mother, there are lots of young couples now-a-days 
 who have no children." Betty's tone was the tone in 
 which the young launch an unanswerable argument. 
 
 Mrs. Garside's amazement eclipsed the amazement she 
 had felt a moment before. She said very quietly, 
 
 "That probably just happened so, Betty." She wanted 
 to say more, but when she looked at Betty's pale, fine 
 face, her resolution flickered away. 
 
 "You mean ?" said Betty. 
 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
 Betty said no more. Her lips compressed themselves 
 into a straight, firm line. It was plain that she still 
 held to her preposterous belief in the sexlessness of man 
 in isolated instances. 
 
 Betty was entirely dressed now, except that she had 
 not yet slipped on her dress. She stood, in filmy white 
 petticoat and underdress, a vision of entrancing love- 
 liness, her merciless young eyes fixed with passionate 
 intensity upon her mother's face, on which showed alarm 
 and determination. The mother and daughter stood thus 
 confronting each other; each was sincere, each deter- 
 mined to have her own way. If the daughter had 
 found the mother more clever than she had suspected a 
 little earlier in the interview, the mother was now 
 aghast at the extraordinary mixture of thoughts inhabit- 
 ing her daughter's head; such unbelievable ignorance 
 existing side by side with a dangerous temerity of speech 
 was assuredly most unusual. 
 
 Mother and daughter had lived in close proximity to 
 each other. Now, to their surprise, they found that in 
 one of the great vital matters of life they were strangers.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 31 
 
 Neither could understand the other's viewpoint, neither 
 could sympathize with the other's outlook. To the 
 mother there was pathos inconceivable in the situation, 
 and the pang it occasioned her was a spiritual birthpang. 
 Her child, by her sudden assumption of independence 
 in thought and independent emotion had wrested herself 
 away from the mother organism. Pathos too, for the 
 mother, was in the pitiful clinging of the daughter to her 
 own fantastic belief in her ideal of manhood. 
 
 The mother felt that at all costs she must show her 
 child the irresponsibility of the emotions. The daughter 
 felt a sort of contemptuous pity for the mother who at 
 forty had so completely forgotten the feelings of 
 eighteen. 
 
 "At any rate," Betty said, "I won't marry a man I 
 do not love. Not if he were as rich as John D." 
 
 Mrs. Garside took heart. Perhaps Betty's imbecile 
 belief had sprung merely from the lips, not from con- 
 victions. Girls, to save their modesty, as Mrs. Garside 
 remembered, make unaccountable statements sometimes. 
 The child possibly was equipped with the normal in- 
 stincts of womanhood after all. 
 
 "Betty," she said gravely, "a woman simply must 
 learn to restrain her likes and dislikes. Let me remind 
 you of an episode of your childhood, which you have 
 probably forgotten. 
 
 "You detested carrots. They agreed with you per- 
 fectly, but you refused to eat them. The average mother 
 would have said to herself : There are lots of whole- 
 some vegetables which the child likes. I will not force 
 her to eat what she does not care for.' I realized, how- 
 ever, that life is made up largely of having to do and 
 endure unpleasant things, and I felt that the sooner I 
 taught you to restrain yourself and to control your likes 
 and dislikes, the better for you. So I promised you a
 
 32 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 gold watch if you would learn to eat a small dish of car- 
 rots twice a week with good grace. Because you wanted 
 the watch, you taught yourself to eat the carrots, and I 
 noticed that now, since you are a grown-up young 
 woman, you eat them when they are served as if you 
 relished them. 
 
 "Now, my Betty, I want you to regard the marriage 
 which appears so odious to you in much the same way 
 as a dish you dislike, but which, for the sake of ex- 
 pediency, you partake of twice or thrice a week. The 
 test of true breeding is not merely to enjoy what we like 
 in moderation, but to endure what we detest with good 
 grace. I would not ask you to marry a man who was a 
 profligate or no gentleman. But Mr. Pidgin is a gentle- 
 man, and he will not make things unduly hard for you." 
 
 Betty said in a still, frightened voice : 
 
 "Mother, I cannot. His hands are so horrible. You 
 know how I am about a person's hands, mother." 
 
 Betty might have forgiven Mr. Pidgin's avoirdupois, 
 and general ungainliness. But she could not condone his 
 red, rough, coarse hands. She had all the aristocrat's 
 horror of an unprepossessing hand. She read in the 
 hand an index of its owner's mentality, moral fibre and 
 everything else. 
 
 "And then " Betty continued, and stopped, shrink- 
 ing from giving expression to her thought. She was 
 thinking in monosyllables now. She could not find 
 seemly words to express the ineffable disgust aroused in 
 her by the odor of tobacco and spirituous liquors which 
 clung about this man. 
 
 "I cannot marry him, that's all " Betty resumed. 
 
 "The thought of having to let him kiss me the whole 
 business Oh, it's odious!" 
 
 "Betty, a nice girl does not anticipate the intimacies 
 of marriage in imagination."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 33 
 
 "Kisses, are they the intimacies of marriage?" Betty 
 demanded with fine sarcasm. "They are the intimacies 
 of courtship, too. Besides, you yourself spoke of the 
 joys of motherhood. What are they but intimacies of 
 marriage, I would like to know?" 
 
 Young Diane outraged in her modesty, Psyche 
 dragged to mundane planes by some would-be earthly 
 lover, could not have presented a more indignant ex- 
 terior. 
 
 "If I spoke of the joys of a mother," said Mrs. Gar- 
 side, "I did so because the maternal passion is the strong- 
 est passion on earth." 
 
 Betty looked sharply at her mother. Some quaver in 
 her voice, some trembling of her lip, moved the girl to 
 quick compassion. She did what she had never done 
 before in all her life. She dropped on her knees before 
 her mother. 
 
 "Mother," she cried, "isn't filial love as strong? I 
 love you very dearly." 
 
 "Filial love." Mrs. Garside spoke scornfully. "When 
 I was your age, Betty, I thought no love was stronger. 
 Then came love for my husband and the other receded 
 and became dim. And now, child, I know there is 
 only one passion on earth worthy of the name maternal 
 love." 
 
 "That's because the others are so long past," Betty 
 said tenderly. 
 
 Mrs. Garside said no more. She did not care to pur- 
 sue the subject with Betty. One of the tragedies of 
 parentage is the discovery of the axiom upon which 
 nature plans and builds her economies, the fundamental 
 fact that each generation, bound hand and foot by na- 
 ture, must love its own offspring more than it loves 
 its parents. 
 
 "Ah, Betty, Betty," pleaded Mrs. Garside. "I would
 
 34 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 give the very blood of my body to know that your future 
 is secure." 
 
 "And I, Mother, I would beg, starve or work for you. 
 But I will not barter myself in marriage." 
 
 "Beg, starve or work you do not know what you are 
 saying." 
 
 "I do, I do," Betty flung back impetuously. "I know 
 that not one of the three would come easy to me. But 
 anything, anything is better than losing one's self-respect 
 and the hope of happiness. Oh, Mother, Mother, I want 
 my happiness and I will have it." 
 
 She stood before her mother, her beautiful, strong 
 young arms crossed above the glorious young bosom, her 
 clenched hands forming a pillow for the finely sculptured 
 chin. 
 
 "I want my happiness," she repeated. "And I will 
 not be coerced into certain unhappiness. I have the right 
 to take my happiness where I can find it. And I will 
 find it. And I will, I will." 
 
 "Betty, Betty, there is no such thing as absolute un- 
 happiness," the mother entreated. "There is a law of 
 compensation for everything that we enjoy. For every- 
 one of the desirable things of life we have to pay by fore- 
 going some other advantage. If I could only make you 
 see it with my eyes. Betty, love lasts only a little while 
 it wears away, even in the happiest marriages. But 
 money remains. And money means so much. Instead of 
 the momentary intoxication of love, you secure a pleas- 
 ant and care-free future." 
 
 There was a pause. Betty slipped into her dress, but 
 without troubling to button it, sat limply upon the bed. 
 
 "You are cursed with a taste for the best things, 
 Betty," Mrs. Garside continued. "You love pictures, 
 books, good music. Oh, my Betty, I wish I had a 
 golden tongue to make you see all this as I see it. Don't
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 35 
 
 chase after a rainbow, Betty. There is a greater dif- 
 ference between the life which a woman of culture 
 lives who has means to indulge her tastes for the refined 
 and beautiful things of life and the life which a poor 
 man's wife lives, than there is between the life of that 
 poor man's wife and the life of an animal." 
 
 Betty jerked herself further into her dress, and began 
 buttoning it. Suddenly she sat down again, as if ex- 
 hausted by the effort. Her face wore an indescribable 
 expression, an expression in which were mingled disgust, 
 alarm and weakening of purpose. The effect of her 
 mother's words were beginning to tell on her. 
 
 Mrs. Garside continued : 
 
 "You assure me you are not in love. If I did not 
 know you to be truthful, I would not believe you, be- 
 cause of your obstinate opposition. Betty, child, there 
 are thousands of women to whom love, meaning pas- 
 sion, never comes. I wish, dear, you would have under- 
 stood this without being told by me. Most girls do. I 
 think, from what you said before, that you may be one 
 of the women who are temperamentally incapable of 
 feeling what is commonly designated as love." 
 
 Betty clenched her fists. Her mother ignored the dan- 
 ger signal. 
 
 "Then again, yours may be an emotional nature. It 
 seems curious, that I, your mother, should know so little 
 about my own child. I must grope in the dark in arguing 
 with you. 
 
 "And if you have temperament, Betty, has it occurred 
 to you that you may never meet the right man ? What 
 is all this talk about the one man and the one woman? 
 You are an intelligent girl. Granting then, for the sake 
 of argument, that every one has an affinity, is it likely that 
 out of the millions of young men in the world precisely 
 the right man is going to walk into your life at the right
 
 36 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 moment ? What is termed 'love' is nature. Few women, 
 few men for that matter, see perfection in their life- 
 partners. Women, more than men, to save their self- 
 respect and pride, cloak their coldness of feeling under 
 pretty phrases invented for the purpose. They speak 
 of respect and affection, and in truth, my Betty, some 
 sense and meaning lurks behind these terms. One thing 
 is certain. To the woman who has passionately loved 
 her husband and to the woman who has regarded her 
 spouse with coldness, love in a few years simply re- 
 solves itself into a sense of conjugal duty. I have heard 
 this too often, Betty, not to know." 
 
 Betty sighed deeply, and rising, buttoned her dress 
 methodically. 
 
 "Will you think it over, Betty?" 
 
 "Very well but that is not a promise." 
 
 "Very good. You had better not come down for 
 breakfast. It might be awkward for you to meet Mr. 
 Pidgin before everything is arranged. I will say you 
 have a headache." 
 
 "But I haven't," said Betty. "And I'm as hungry as 
 a wolf." 
 
 "Well, it won't hurt you to go without your break- 
 fast this once. It may do you good. I think you have 
 gained a little since we came here. I don't want you 
 to lose your sylph-like slimness. Your waistline looks 
 a little larger." 
 
 "If I'm to marry Mr. Pidgin," Betty pouted, "I don't 
 see that it matters whether my waistline is nineteen or 
 twenty-nine. He would have no right to complain if it 
 were thirty-nine." 
 
 Mrs. Garside laughed. Betty's pleasantry promised 
 well. 
 
 "After breakfast," she said, "I want you out of the 
 way. Go over to the stable loft and practice." The
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 37 
 
 piano for practice purposes was kept in this singular 
 place so that the occupants of the house would not be 
 disturbed by the noise. "I have ordered some new 
 music from Telfer's. They have desk room in the drug- 
 store at the village this year, you know, and the young 
 man in charge promised to have it up here by nine this 
 morning." 
 
 "Oh, very well," said Betty. Practicing on an empty 
 stomach did not seem particularly alluring. 
 
 The breakfast bell rang. Mrs. Garside put a finish- 
 ing touch to her own toilet, and went from the room.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Betty stood in silence for a few moments. Then, 
 stooping, she pulled the volume of Swinburne from under 
 her pillow, and seated herself near the window. It 
 seemed profanation, in view of the commerce-drenched 
 talk with her mother, to open these intoxicating pages. 
 Betty swallowed hard. She was very near crying, as 
 she perceived with chagrin, for her tearlessness was one 
 of the qualities upon the possession of which this young 
 aristocrat prided herself. 
 
 To calm herself she went to the window, and removing 
 the screen, seated herself on the window-sill. Her room 
 was on the first sleeping floor and looked out upon the 
 roof of the large porch, where the boarders congregated 
 at all hours of the day except at mealtime. Her win- 
 dow was the last in the row, except one. Beyond that, 
 the roof fell away abruptly, disclosing an elbow of the 
 piazza which ran out at right angles from the main 
 veranda to meet the driveway and walk. 
 
 Betty, owing to her abbreviated sleep of the night be- 
 fore, felt a sudden spasm of abnormal hunger. On the 
 spur of the moment she decided to call to the bell boy 
 to get her a box of chocolates, and fetch it to her room. 
 She dared not go down for it herself, fearing to en- 
 counter the redoubtable Mr. Pidgin. 
 
 She began calling "Richard, Richard !" He was stand- 
 ing at the door of the reading room, abutting upon the 
 elbow of the piazza, evidently speaking to someone. He 
 turned, and was about to walk away. 
 
 "Richard, Richard," she called again. 
 
 38
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 39 
 
 The young man stopped, looked up at Betty and 
 smiled bewitchingly. Betty started back in surprise 
 rather than alarm. The young man whom she had hailed 
 so familiarly as "Richard" was not the bell-boy at all. 
 He was taller, and older, and Betty's breath came in 
 spurts, very much handsomer. 
 
 Betty did not hazard to explain her mistake to her- 
 self. The break, she felt, was inexcusable. 
 
 When she regained her self possession, which, for a 
 moment, had basely deserted her, it seemed to her that 
 she had lived ages. Thoughts pelted her like hailstones, 
 coming from without in wild turmoil, not evolved from 
 within. Before he spoke, she knew that the young man's 
 voice would be as music to her ear, that to have him read 
 to her one of the sweet, delightful poems of the night 
 before would be the height of felicity. All this she 
 thought, and more so madly did the cauldron boil 
 wherein are fused thought -and emotion before the 
 stranger, whom she had hailed familiarly as Richard, 
 spoke. 
 
 "Richard is my name," he said. "And though I have 
 not the pleasure of your acquaintance, I trust you will 
 allow me to render you the service for which you de- 
 sired to requisition the other Richard." 
 
 There kindled in his eyes the light of admiration which 
 Betty had seen in the eyes of many men before; but, 
 for the first time, it was not disagreeable to her. And 
 again eons sped past v while a moment of sweet de- 
 lirium lasted. Thus was Oberon's prophecy fulfilled : 
 
 The -first thing which she waking looks upon, 
 On busy monkey, or on meddling ape. 
 
 But this young man had nothing about him of the monkey 
 or the ape. He was stalwart, straight of limb, and
 
 40 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 clean-cut; the deep red dyed his cheeks the color of the 
 blush rose, his eyes were blue and honest, his brown hair 
 promised softness of touch to caressing fingers, and, as 
 if nature had repented of making too pretty a pre- 
 sentment of a man, his nose stood out from his face a 
 bit awry. Betty saw and did not disapprove. So great 
 was the divine madness that had fallen upon her that 
 architecturally proper noses, noses whose angles were 
 true and plumb, noses raising themselves in orthodox 
 fashion from the face would henceforth be abhorred by 
 Betty. 
 
 Then, she was delighted to see that with fine courtesy 
 he anticipated her in acknowledging that she had mis- 
 taken him for someone else, instead of forcing upon 
 her the embarrassment of an explanation. 
 
 "You are very kind," Betty said. "I couldn't think 
 of troubling you. Unless, indeed, you wouldn't mind 
 calling the Richard whom I wanted. He is sweeping the 
 piazza, probably." 
 
 "Not here." 
 
 "On the other side of the piazza?" 
 
 "I would hear his footsteps." 
 
 "Then I will wait." 
 
 "If it is an urgent matter ?" 
 
 "Not at all." Betty would rather have died a hun- 
 dred deaths than acknowledge possessing anything so 
 vulgar and carnal as an appetite. At that moment, the 
 book, with which she had been playing nervously, slipped 
 from her fingers, and began flip flapping down the slant- 
 ing roof of the piazza. A letter which she had placed in 
 it as a book-mark fell from the scattering pages and 
 hopped, flew and skipped down to the runnel whither it 
 was followed by the somersaulting book. 
 
 "Oh," said Betty. 
 
 Richard the stranger laughed.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 41 
 
 "I'll get it for you in a minute." He disappeared. 
 Betty heard the clicking of something hard upon wood, 
 and the next moment his head reappeared, this time 
 below the roof. He swung himself easily from the post 
 up which he had climbed upon the roof itself. 
 
 "Here I am," he said, "and over there is the book." 
 
 The book, the wind lapping through its pages, lay some 
 two yards away from him. He crawled cautiously along 
 the edge of the roof, secured both book and letter, and 
 regained his first position on the roof. Betty besought 
 him nervously not to attempt to crawl upward along 
 the ledge of the roof. 
 
 "I shall have to take it down to the office, and have 
 them send it up to you, unless you happen to have a 
 long string. 
 
 "You tie a pebble or something heavy to one end to 
 weight it down and then you throw the weight to me. 
 That will enable me to tie the string around the book, 
 so you can haul it in. That's the way they save peo- 
 ple's lives in fire and shipwreck." 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course," said Betty. She was delighted 
 with the idea. She went to search for some cord, and 
 found a stout string. 
 
 "I have no pebble," she said. 
 
 "Anything else will do." 
 
 "A box of matches?" 
 
 "Not heavy enough." 
 
 "A paper-weight?" 
 
 "Too heavy." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 "Oh, a jack-knife, or a pair of scissors." 
 
 Betty was delighted with the stranger's fertility of 
 thought. She procured her little silver embroidery scis- 
 sors, tied it to a string and sped back to the window to 
 hurl the weighted string to the stranger. She found him
 
 42 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 sitting crosslegged on the roof, the open volume of Swin- 
 burne on his knees, reading. And while he read he ran 
 his fingers through his hair uninterruptedly. They were 
 beautiful fingers, long, slim and tapering, like a woman's, 
 and his hand was without a blemish. Betty gazed with 
 rapture at the young man. He had come up to her from 
 the garden-walk, but he might as well have dropped 
 from the clouds. Men's hands were usually things to 
 shudder at coarse, uncared for, ungainly things, but 
 the young stranger's hands were quite perfect. 
 
 "Don't you love Swinburne?" he asked, as without 
 warning from Betty, the embroidery scissors flipped 
 down upon the open page before him. 
 
 "I adore him," Betty replied in the tone in which 
 we speak of a long cherished possession. It seemed to 
 her that she had travelled miles since yesternight. 
 
 Instead of tying the string about the book, as he had 
 agreed to do, the young man became contemplative. He 
 rushed into an impassioned eulogy on Swinburne, and 
 he was full of his subject. He explained to Betty that 
 Swinburne had been a Grecian, rather than a Greek, 
 that the Greek outlook upon life and love and beauty had 
 seemed so beautiful to him that to see things thus had 
 become second nature to him. His joy in the sky, the 
 clouds, the night, the rain, the earth had been augmented 
 a hundredfold by the purely intellectual pleasure of 
 viewing them through Greek glasses. Like the Greeks, 
 too, he worshipped art rather than life. Like the 
 Greeks, the manifold manifestations of life interested 
 him not primarily because they were segments of life, 
 but because they were subjects for art to exploit. There- 
 fore, like the Greeks, he adhered to an exaggerated love 
 of form, of statuesque beauty, of polished serenity in 
 dealing with even the most frantic passions, the wildest 
 emotions, the most violent heart-burnings. This repres-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 43 
 
 sion in a modern of the modern instinct for sacrificing 
 form to emotion, gave to his poetry an exotic charm. 
 Mad thoughts, expressed in harmonious language, lost 
 the sense of panting, raving madness. Rhythm, exploited 
 by him with an adroitness which no poet, ancient or 
 modern, had rivalled, assumed the hue of magic, and 
 the witchery of carefully compounded alliteration super- 
 imposed upon the enchantment woven by the rhythm 
 drugged the intellect and sharpened the perception of the 
 senses. 
 
 Having exhausted the subject, he opened the book. 
 
 "May I read to you one of my favorite poems?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 But she did not listen to the words which the boy, 
 he was little more, was reading to her. She was too 
 full of the wonders which her destiny was scattering 
 about her ears. As the scythe mows away knee-deep 
 grass impeding the landscape, so there was razed away 
 before her spiritual eyes all the trivialities of life ^yhich 
 had obscured her outlook. This, at last, was life, not 
 the miserable, fetid pettiness which had heretofore 
 passed as such. 
 
 The boy had closed the book. He was busy tying 
 the string about the book. 
 
 "Besides," he said, "Swinburne was an expert on the 
 vital matter of life." 
 
 "The vital matter of life?" 
 
 "Love," he said simply, "the right woman." 
 
 "Or the right man?" she queried. 
 
 "It comes to the same thing, doesn't it?" 
 
 "Then you believe " Betty began, and stopped in 
 
 confusion. 
 
 "In what?" he asked. 
 
 "That love is an actual thing that it really exists
 
 44 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 . . . . " It seemed incredible that she, Betty Garside, 
 was having this marvellous adventure. 
 
 "Yes," he said, without levity, "I think it is the only 
 actual thing in the world." 
 
 "I did not know," she hazarded, her words almost 
 unintelligible, so fearful was she of the thought to 
 which she was about to give expression. "I did not 
 know it was thus with a man." 
 
 The young man became greatly excited. Evidently 
 he had many convictions and opinions and ideals, and 
 she had rubbed roughly over one of them. 
 
 "That's just it," he cried. "The world would be so 
 much happier if men and women would only realize that 
 there is only one thing which is worth while love, the 
 real, genuine, to-the-death love, you know." 
 
 "Perhaps it doesn't really mean so much to most 
 men." 
 
 "It must. It cannot be otherwise. A fellow meets a 
 lot of bright, pretty, fascinating girls. He likes them 
 immensely, but he knows right along that not one of 
 them is the woman. It isn't a matter of complexion, or 
 wit, or beauty. It's something deeper. And then, one 
 day, when he least expects it, he meets the right girl, 
 and if she is the girl, the one woman, you know, he 
 realizes it in a twinkling. And no mistake." 
 
 "I didn't know," murmured Betty. 
 
 "You knew it as being true of a girl, of yourself, 
 didn't you?" the question was an entreaty. 
 
 "I hardly know," faltered Betty, feeling that she was 
 being taken by storm. 
 
 "You didn't believe in love at first sight?" 
 
 "I never thought about it before." 
 
 "Think about it now," he begged. "Well?" 
 
 "I dare say you are right," Betty's eyelashes 
 dropped, and the young man sighed as if he were
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 45 
 
 sighing away his soul with sheer joy in their length and 
 sweep. 
 
 "And doesn't it make all the difference in the world ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "For a girl more than for a man, I imagine." 
 
 She spoke with a passion of emphasis, and, as al- 
 ways when deeply stirred, she crossed her arms over 
 her bosom, and dropped her chin upon her crossed 
 hands. 
 
 He divined that there had been a recent tragedy of 
 some sort in the life of this adorable creature, and 
 realized that, no matter how candid she would be with 
 him in generalizing upon the moods and fancies of the 
 heart, reticence, modesty and breeding would not per- 
 mit her to particularize specific facts. 
 
 "A good many fellows never meet the right girl," he 
 continued. "I can tell you if a chap does meet her, it 
 is going to give him an impetus to make good com- 
 pared with which ambition is nothing." 
 
 "To make good at what?" 
 
 "Oh, whatever he is tinkering away at. To make good 
 so that he has a right to approach her has a right to 
 win her." 
 
 Betty's eyes shone, her face was radiant. A simi- 
 lar mutation had occurred in the young man's appear- 
 ance. By leaps and bounds, lightning-wise, they had 
 reached the point where generalities are accepted and 
 understood to be personalities. With charming naivete, 
 a naivete of which only unspoiled and virginal natures 
 are capable, they were not in the least ashamed of the 
 intense interest with which they inspired each other. 
 
 "You see," the boy continued, "a chap wants to be 
 everything to that girl everything. . . ." he stopped 
 modestly, and then continued as if to modify any bru- 
 tality which she might imagine he had intended to con-
 
 46 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 vey but of which he was guiltless, ". . . he wants to 
 feel that the mere fact of his existence makes her exist- 
 ence worth while and lifts it from merest commonplace 
 to the noble heights of real life." 
 
 "Then it's not selfish, or vain, to want someone to 
 care for you like that?" 
 
 "Selfish? Vain? Who told you that?" He de- 
 manded almost viciously. "Why, it's that feeling of 
 being indispensable to someone, of feeling you are 
 needed by someone, that underlies every manly and 
 womanly quality." 
 
 He became greatly agitated, and Betty implored him 
 to be careful not to fall off the roof. Then, suddenly, 
 the humor of their conversation between window-sill 
 and roof occurred to them, and they laughed long and 
 merrily. Forgetting the haven of abstractions in which 
 they had been navigating so assiduously, they glori- 
 fied in the mere fact of being alive, of being to- 
 gether, of having discovered each other. There fell a 
 pause, a pause during which they looked at each other 
 frankly, and their looks seemed to bring them nearer 
 together than words, or handclasp, or touch of lips. 
 
 He was the first to speak. 
 
 "I forgot to put your letter in the book," he said, and 
 tried to shove it into the book between cover and fly- 
 page. In doing so, he glimpsed the name and address. 
 
 "Miss Garside?" he asked. "Then you are the young 
 lady I brought the music for from Telfer's. I'm run- 
 ning Telfer's summer branch up here, as an experiment, 
 you know." 
 
 "And you had to come up the mountain on account 
 of my music?" 
 
 "It was a treat." The compliment, now that he had 
 paid it, frightened him, and he covered his indiscretion 
 neatly by saying:
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 47 
 
 "You see, the druggist allows me to ride his horse any 
 time in the morning before ten, and when there's a 
 place to ride to, it makes it so much pleasanter." 
 
 "It's nice to be able to ride," said Betty. It was an 
 accomplishment she lacked, and one which she had al- 
 ways wished to possess. 
 
 "You have a finer accomplishment." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "You must be a pretty fair pianist to be able to play 
 the music I brought you." 
 
 "I'm too indolent, I'm afraid, to ever learn how to 
 play well. Do you play?" 
 
 "Rather." 
 
 "That means that you play well." 
 
 "If I were to admit that it would be inviting your 
 censure if I were ever fortunate enough to play for 
 you." 
 
 "Oh, I do want to hear you after that." 
 
 "I shall work hard in anticipation of that day." 
 
 "You have worked hard in the past, haven't you?" 
 He did not reply, and she added entreatingly after a 
 short pause, as if to cajole him into a confidence by 
 using child's slang: 
 
 "Honest Injun?" 
 
 "Honest Injun, I have." 
 
 "Tell me all about it," she begged, settling herself 
 comfortably on the window-sill. It was his turn to 
 caution her against headlong precipitation from the 
 roof. Again their laughter rang out clear and distinct. 
 When it had abated, he began: 
 
 "To go abroad and study is my most cherished desire. 
 At least, it was my greatest wish until this morning." 
 This time he did not attempt to obliterate the impres- 
 sion of having paid her a compliment, but looked at 
 her with frank admiration beaming from his blue eyes.
 
 48 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Perhaps you will be able to go some day." 
 
 "Perhaps." And unaffectedly, with charming can- 
 dor, he told her that he had been "saving his pennies" 
 and had over a thousand dollars in the bank now. He 
 called this his "Europe fund." When he reached the 
 fifteen hundred mark he was going abroad for three 
 years. He spoke modestly, without self-vaunting, but 
 a new element had suddenly crept into his manner. He 
 wound up with: 
 
 "I don't want to be a nobody all my life. I want to 
 be someone, somebody." 
 
 He stopped abruptly, bent forward and listened. 
 
 "Sss," he said. "They are beginning to get up from 
 the table. I had better go. It might be awkward for 
 you, you know this situation " 
 
 She thanked him with her eyes. He flung the book 
 upward, she hauled it in dexterously, then he swung 
 down from the roof. For a moment he hung in mid- 
 air. Then, with the footing which a friendly pillar 
 afforded to steady himself upon, he remarked : 
 
 "The drug-store at which Telfer's hangs out has ex- 
 cellent soda-water." 
 
 Betty laughed. 
 
 His shoulders were no longer visible, but the hand- 
 some head, with its bright patches of red cheek and 
 dark shock of hair, still appeared above the roof. Sud- 
 denly his hand shot upward and waved a good-bye. He 
 declaimed sententiously : 
 
 "Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I could part all 
 day till it be morrow." And then, as Betty caught her 
 breath sharply, he flung her a kiss with his hand. She 
 had a vague sensation that, for dignity's sake, she ought 
 to frown. But there was no resisting the merry, honest 
 blue eyes and their mischievous glances. Once more 
 he re-emerged, and said gravely:
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 49 
 
 "Romeo always does that in the play, you know." 
 
 Then he extinguished himself. Betty, in her heart, 
 blessed him for that ultimate phrase which had robbed 
 his conduct of every vestige of impudence. 
 
 She had occasion to rejoice once more in his discre- 
 tion. The voices which he had heard in the hall were 
 now on the veranda, and as he mounted his horse and 
 rode past Betty's window, he did not so much as glance 
 in her direction. 
 
 Could a prince have shown a finer courtesy? 
 
 Betty abased herself before him in spirit. She wove 
 airy fantasies about him. What did he do at Telfer's? 
 Who was he? Did he have much talent? Genius, per- 
 haps? She remembered with a start that she did not 
 even know his surname. Her imagination was on fire. 
 It did not burn as one substantial holocaust, but shot 
 out myriad little tongues of flame simultaneously all 
 eager, all ardent, all dying away so quickly as to be 
 almost indistinguishable. She could not capture the fu- 
 gitive and transient thoughts that came to her regarding 
 this young man; as well hope to carry home a slice of 
 the ocean in a shad net because it circumvallated water 
 while stretched in the sea from its stakes. 
 
 With a start she realized that her mother was in 
 the room. Betty had completely forgotten the for- 
 midable Pidgin. Now she remembered him overwhelm- 
 ingly. 
 
 "The music has come from Telfer's," her mother an- 
 nounced, handing Betty a package, and Betty, who had 
 never equivocated before, said in a tone of agreeable 
 surprise : 
 
 "Oh, has it?" 
 
 She laid the volume of Swinburne down under the 
 slender package containing the sheet music, so as to be 
 able to slip it under her arm unperceived by her mother.
 
 50 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 So quickly did equivocating act follow equivocating 
 word. 
 
 Betty went to the door. 
 
 "By the way," said her mother, making a footnote of 
 the matter of prime importance, "have you thought the 
 matter over?" 
 
 "What matter?" Betty inquired nonchalantly, though 
 her heart beat high at expectation of a fray. 
 
 Mrs. Garside frowned. 
 
 "Mr. Pidgin, and the marriage." 
 
 "Yes, I have thought it over. I've got to be true to 
 myself, mother. I'd lose my self-respect if I married 
 him." 
 
 "Self-respect! True to yourself! Don't be theatri- 
 cal, Betty." 
 
 "Well, then, untheatrically, I won't, I can't, I shan't." 
 
 "If you had not given me your word that there was 
 no other man, I would think such wilfulness would be 
 due to nothing but a previous attachment." 
 
 "Well," said Betty, "I did give you my word, didn't 
 I? I have never lied to you, you know." She won- 
 dered vaguely whether she was lying now. "I am going 
 to the barn to practice," she said, and rapidly made her 
 exit. 
 
 She had no intention of practicing. She meant to 
 think over the occurrences of the morning. She wanted 
 to think and think hard about Richard of the Unknown 
 Surname. But she had hardly settled herself comfort- 
 ably in the barn loft, which, though it smelt vilely of 
 cows and horses, seemed a sumptuous abode to Betty 
 that morning, because it permitted continuity of thought, 
 when one of the maids came to summon her to return 
 to the house, as her mother wished to see her at once. 
 
 With a sigh, Betty left her comfortable chair, and 
 leisurely returned to the house. She supposed her mother
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 51 
 
 wanted to reopen the Pidgin matter. She hardly cared. 
 She was busy thinking of the Stranger. She remem- 
 bered his every movement, gesture and mannerism so 
 vividly that she seemed almost to see him. She loved 
 his handsome hands, with their slender, long, nervous, 
 tapering fingers, dainty and well-kept as a woman's, yet 
 masculinely strong. They were ideal pianist's hands, 
 as she was enough of a musician to know. She won- 
 dered how he played, and told herself immediately after- 
 wards that he could not possibly play other than well. 
 She wondered whether his last name was euphonious ; 
 whether he thought as much of her as she was thinking 
 of him. 
 
 Betty found her mother sitting in her own room with 
 a large, official-looking envelope in one hand, a type- 
 written letter in the other. She was the picture of 
 dismay. 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "Yes, mother?" 
 
 "The copper mining company, our mining company, 
 is insolvent." 
 
 Betty said nothing. She looked at her mother uncom- 
 prehendingly. 
 
 "That means, child, that we are ruined." 
 
 "Won't you get anything?" 
 
 "Nothing. It means that all we have in the world is 
 the pittance I have in the bank and the few bills I have 
 in my purse some three hundred dollars in all." 
 
 Still Betty stared at her mother mutely. She realized 
 what her mother was about to say to her and she 
 wanted to ward it off, she wanted to speak, but her 
 tongue seemed wrapped about heavily, as in a wet 
 blanket. 
 
 "Betty, I renew my entreaties concerning Mr. Pid- 
 gin. This failure means going to work, and that as
 
 52 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 quickly as work is to be had, unless you will accept Mr. 
 Pidgin." 
 
 "I told you before that I am perfectly willing to 
 Jvork, and I was quite sincere in saying that," said Betty. 
 
 "I know, my dear, but you will not be able to earn 
 enough to support us both. I will have to go to work, 
 too." 
 
 "No, no, mother, that's not to be thought of." 
 
 "I will have to think of it, nevertheless, Betty, un- 
 less- 
 
 Betty became very white. She thought the pressure 
 her mother was exerting unfair and selfish. She was 
 too young to realize that her mother was not putting 
 forth this appeal because she feared hardship for her- 
 self, but because she knew that her daughter would fear 
 hardship for the mother rather than for herself. It was 
 in reality a very high tribute Mrs. Garside was paying 
 Betty in attacking her as she was doing. 
 
 "What am I to do?" Betty asked in a heartbroken 
 voice. 
 
 "Betty, my daughter, listen to me. You expressed the 
 belief before that filial devotion is as strong as maternal 
 love. Let me tell you of an occurrence of which you 
 know nothing, and after I have told you the story, you 
 can prove to me, if you wish, that your contention is 
 right." She paused a moment, then asked swiftly: 
 
 "Do you recall Mr. Ogden, whom we met last winter 
 at Lakewood?" 
 
 "Do I?" Eyes of mother and daughter met, and 
 there arose before their mind's eye the face of a man 
 pinched and withered, marked as much by vice as by 
 disease, a creature utterly repulsive and loathsome. 
 
 "Betty, he was extremely wealthy, much wealthier 
 fchan Mr. Pidgin." 
 
 "Very wealthy, mother, and very vile. Did he want 
 to marry me, too?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 53 
 
 "He did, Betty. I had tried to deflect his attentions 
 to myself. I would have married him willingly for your 
 sake, if he had been a thousand times more horrible 
 than he was." 
 
 "Oh, mother, dear, how could you?" 
 
 "My maternal love, child, would have made it pos- 
 sible. I would have stifled my loathing, but I failed, 
 failed lamentably. You perceive, Betty, how perishable 
 is that asset which I am begging you to make use of in 
 your own case." 
 
 "Oh, mother, don't, don't talk like that." 
 
 "You are too young, Betty, to realize what marriage 
 to a man like Ogden means for a woman. I would 
 have seen you dead before I would have consented to 
 let you marry him. Yet I would have endured the 
 ignominy of such a union, would have risked the prob- 
 able wrecking of my health for the sake of procuring 
 for you the advantages which wealth bestows and the 
 possibility of allowing you your own choice of a hus- 
 band." 
 
 Betty looked up quickly ; she did not understand what 
 her mother had reference to in speaking of the pos- 
 sible wrecking of her health ; she was to wonder a good 
 deal about it in the future. Her mother's manner even 
 more than her words had softened Betty, and she asked 
 gently : 
 
 "Before you said love didn't matter? Now it seems 
 you think it does, after all." 
 
 Mrs. Garside said wearily : 
 
 "It doesn't matter in the end. But I suppose the 
 illusion is pleasant while it lasts. For the sake of let- 
 ting my little girl have her illusory start, I was willing, 
 nay eager, to sell myself. But I failed. I failed." 
 
 Mrs. Garside's voice had become very pathetic. 
 Betty's nerves were snapping. She felt that she must 
 go insane if her mother said "I failed" just once more
 
 54 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 in the same pathos-laden tone. Suddenly she realized 
 that her mother was waiting for her to say something, 
 was waiting for her decision. A strange feeling of fear 
 crept through her as she realized that upon her answer 
 depended her mother's future. If she refused her 
 mother might have to stand behind a counter, matching 
 ribbons or fitting gloves, and there arose before her 
 inward vision the faces of innumerable saleswomen 
 whom she had seen in the large shops or on the street, 
 hurrying to work in the cold dawn of a winter's morn- 
 ing. She shuddered. She could not endure the thought 
 that her mother should be dragged to such a pitiable 
 level. 
 
 With the impetuousness of youth she felt that this 
 last alternative was the most intolerable of all. She 
 said abruptly: 
 
 "I will marry Mr. Pidgin." 
 
 Mrs. Garside closed her eyes, and sighed deeply. 
 
 "Thank Heaven," she said. "Thank Heaven." 
 
 Betty misunderstood the exclamation. She took it 
 as an evidence of the grossest, most callous selfishness. 
 She was making the biggest sacrifice of which a woman 
 is capable for her mother, and all her mother said was 
 "Thank Heaven." Betty reflected that it was herself, 
 Betty, not Heaven, whom her mother should have 
 thanked by rights. 
 
 Filled with bitterness, but not wishing to betray her 
 anger, she sprang from her chair and flounced out of 
 the room. Her mother called after her, but Betty pre- 
 tended not to hear. 
 
 She went down to the piazza., and sat down in a 
 corner where the conversation was in full swing, and 
 her coming, in consequence, would cause no comment. 
 Presently her mother appeared. Anxious-eyed, her 
 glance trailed up and down the long piazza until it lo-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 55' 
 
 cated Betty. Then her face brightened. She came and 
 stood near Betty, who felt constrained to offer her 
 mother a chair. But instead of sitting down, her mother 
 drew Betty's arm through her own, forcing her to walk 
 with her, away from the chattering group of women. 
 
 "Betty," she said, "Mr. Pidgin has just asked me to 
 drive around the mountain with him." Driving around 
 the mountain was the favorite pursuit on a hot day at 
 Penascapet, probably because it was the only drive on 
 level ground in that locality. "The dog-cart will be 
 here in ten minutes. You'll stand pat?" 
 
 "Yes, mother, I'll stand pat." 
 
 "He will probably want to get married early in the 
 fall. Are you willing so soon ?" 
 
 "Some girls when they have a toothache," Betty said, 
 "keep putting off their visit to the dentist as long as 
 possible. I always go right off. I like to get through 
 with disagreeable things. You can hand me over to my 
 new owner next week, if you wish." 
 
 Until now Betty had always answered plain "Yea" 
 and "Nay," but the suffering she had undergone in the 
 last hour had whipped her imagination into seeking an 
 outlet for her anguish in metaphor and irony. Her 
 mother looked at her in alarm. The pale, high-bred 
 face was a shade paler than usual. It seemed aged. 
 The girl had receded into the background, the woman 
 was in the ascendant. The tense, psychic experience she 
 had lived through had heightened the quality of repose, 
 which she always possessed, to an unnatural degree. She 
 had more aplomb than her mother, as her mother saw 
 with something akin to dismay. 
 
 "Betty," said her mother, with a warmth very un- 
 usual in her, "kiss me, child." 
 
 "I cannot kiss you now, mother." 
 
 "It is for your best. Do not be angry with me."
 
 56 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Angry?" The girl's resentment overflowed. "An- 
 gry ? Heaven forgive me I hate you for this, mother." 
 
 Mrs. Garside caught her breath with a sharp intake. 
 She was about to retort when a voice, a voice that held 
 all heaven in its cadences for Betty, interrupted them. 
 
 "Pardon me, Mrs. Garside, the druggist where Tel- 
 fer has his stand had some medicine to deliver here, 
 and I brought it for him. As there was some new 
 music in this morning's mail, I brought it with me, 
 thinking you would like to see it. Keep it till to-morrow 
 and if you don't want it, send it back by the mail- 
 wagon." 
 
 Mrs. Garside smiled. 
 
 "Betty," she said, "this is Mr. Pryce, of Telfer's." 
 
 Betty smiled in acknowledgment of the introduction. 
 She admired the shrewdness with which Richard, no 
 longer the Unknown, had managed to place himself 
 upon a footing of respectable acquaintanceship with 
 her. She admired his adroitness in subterfuge. She 
 admired the astuteness with which he kept his eyes 
 averted from her face, as if fearing to betray their 
 secret. She admired his manner of easy self-possession 
 in addressing her mother. Last of all, she again ad- 
 mired his hands, the hands of which she had been dream- 
 ing ever since she had first seen them that morning. 
 
 Mrs. Garside thanked him and said they required no 
 more music at present. Richard, no longer the Unknown, 
 lifted his hat and bade her and Betty a good-morning. 
 Just as he mounted his horse, Mr. Pidgin drove up in 
 the dog-cart, and Betty, to escape speaking to him, 
 turned to go to the house. 
 
 "Good-bye, Betty," said her mother. 
 
 "Good-bye, mother." 
 
 She ran to her room, and from her window watched 
 the dog-cart scuttle off at a brisk pace. She tried to
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 57 
 
 compose herself, but seeing the two men in juxtapo- 
 sition, as she had seen them a minute before, made 
 the ordeal awaiting her seem doubly cruel. Richard's 
 voice rang in her ears, and she thought how gently he 
 would clasp the hand of the woman he loved. Her 
 head seemed on fire. She thought that her agony must 
 be visible in her face, but when Louise passed under 
 .her window, giggling because she had found a red liz- 
 ard, Louise waved her hand to Betty as if nothing un- 
 usual was to be seen in her lineaments. 
 
 A half-hour passed, and suddenly Betty's anxiety 
 passed away. A conviction swept over her that she 
 would not have to marry Mr. Pidgin after all. Some 
 miracle was bound to intervene, though she could not 
 have said what that miracle would be. Betty had the 
 optimism of the artistic temperament, which is hugely 
 different from the optimism of the democratic mind. 
 The democrat has faith in the future, because he has 
 faith in his own strength and competence in molding 
 that future. But the aristocrat has faith in that future 
 because subconsciously he believes that nature and for- 
 tune must join hands in being kind to one as finely 
 fibred as himself. 
 
 Betty was certain some miracle would happen in her 
 behalf. While she was nursing this agreeable belief, 
 there sounded on the piazza, voices raised to the pitch 
 of intense excitement. Subsequently the dead silence 
 was followed by a sob from Louise. Betty knew it was 
 Louise sobbing because Louise always sobbed at the 
 first intimation of a thunderstorm and kept on sobbing 
 until the storm had passed. Betty looked out at the 
 sky. There was not a cloud to be seen. 
 
 She went to the door, meaning to go downstairs to 
 see what had happened to Louise, but as she opened 
 the door she found Louise's mother standing there, at
 
 58 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 the threshold, in the attitude of someone about to knock. 
 
 "Betty," said Louise's mother, "may I come in?" 
 Betty stood aside, her sense of wonder growing, for 
 Louise's mother had never called her Betty before. She 
 was a stately, handsome woman of dignified manner, 
 but Betty saw that she was trembling violently as from 
 suppressed excitement. 
 
 "Betty something terrible has happened." 
 
 There are moments when prescience speaks as plainly 
 as words. 
 
 "What has happened to my mother?" Betty asked. 
 "Is she dead?" 
 
 "Yes." Mrs. Reynolds tried to tell Betty what had 
 happened, but her courage failed her. Again and again 
 she essayed the task. It was Betty, quiet, tearless, com- 
 posed Betty, who had told her mother half an hour 
 prior to her death that she hated her who got the story 
 from her piecemeal. 
 
 The road "around the mountain" was being repaired, 
 and the workmen had forgotten to place a danger sig- 
 nal on a new piece of road running over a bank of shale. 
 The shale was not yet underpropped, and as the swiftly 
 moving vehicle passed over it, the soft, mushy stuff 
 crumbled away like sand, sending the dog-cart down a 
 precipice two hundred feet deep. Both Mr. Pidgin and 
 her mother had been instantly killed.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 They were all very kind to Betty, overwhelmingly, 
 unbelievably, crushingly kind. They were horribly wor- 
 ried because Betty did not cry, or give signs of violent 
 emotion. They stood about in the hall, on the veranda, 
 in the garden walks, asking each other, "Has she cried 
 yet?" 
 
 Betty did not cry. The feeling that was uppermost in 
 Betty these days was horror. Her grief was submerged 
 by acute self-reproach. She had told her mother that 
 she hated her a brief half-hour before her death. She 
 had said nothing to mitigate that statement. The 
 thought of this drove her almost insane, and she could 
 not escape from it. She remembered how the feeling 
 had come to her that a miracle was being enacted in her 
 behalf to save her from the hated marriage, and the 
 miracle that actually was saving her was the tragedy 
 involving her mother's death. 
 
 Through the interstices of this torrent of self- 
 reproach and pain she perceived a face, like a face seen 
 on the other side of the street through a November fog 
 under the ghostly glare of an electric light. And the 
 face was Richard Pryce's. 
 
 She had the conviction that Richard Pryce would 
 come to her, whether on some pretext or scornful of 
 any pretext, she did not know. She knew that those 
 slender fingers of his would hold her hands in his be- 
 fore many days had passed by. She knew that to have 
 her hands clasped by his would bring her unspeakable 
 comfort. She could see the curious gleam in his eyes 
 
 59
 
 60 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 when the spirit quickened in them. And she had a 
 singular sensation of being part and parcel of him, of 
 being his, of belonging to him, and this feeling swept 
 over her again and again. She had never even touched 
 his hands, and yet it seemed to her that she had touched 
 them a thousand times. He had never kissed her cheek, 
 and she, so undemonstrative and aloof, knew that it 
 was merely a matter of time before he would kiss her; 
 knew, furthermore, that she would like him to kiss her. 
 
 She told herself that the breach she was committing 
 against decency in harboring these thoughts so shortly 
 after her mother's death was monstrous. The innumer- 
 able sacrifices her mother had made for her came back 
 to her. She remembered a pretty blue dress which her 
 mother had sewed for her at night, after she was 
 through with the day's work which brought money into 
 the family till. She remembered what her mother had 
 said about the difference between maternal and filial 
 love, and then for the first time she wept, wept with a 
 passion and an abandon that brought her to the thresh- 
 old of hysterics. And at that moment, if she could 
 have brought her mother back, knowing that she must 
 contract a hateful marriage, she would willingly have 
 made the sacrifice. 
 
 Mrs. Reynolds telegraphed her husband, and at con- 
 siderable inconvenience to himself, he answered the 
 summons and came up to Penascapet. He took charge 
 of the funeral, attending to all arrangements necessary 
 for conveying the body to the family plot in New York, 
 where Mrs. Garside's parents were buried. Mrs. Rey- 
 nolds went to New York with Betty, and brought her 
 back the same night to Penascapet, while Mr. Reynolds 
 attended to Betty's business matters for her, and on 
 seeing how meagre was the bank account, paid part of 
 the funeral expenses himself, instructing the under-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 61 
 
 taker to send Betty a bill for the balance as if it were 
 the entire bill. 
 
 Last of all, he offered Betty a home in his family. 
 He was a self-made man, and had a habit of pinching 
 his daughters' cheeks. To Betty, he had always seemed 
 coarse and familiar, and she had wondered to see the 
 caresses his two daughters bestowed on him of a Satur- 
 day evening when he arrived from the city. 
 
 "You're much too pretty, my dear," he said, "to go 
 out to earn your own living. You had better make your 
 home with us for the present. We will be glad to have 
 another grown-up, attractive daughter in the house, par- 
 ticularly as Emma is being married and that leaves us 
 one daughter short. There's a brigade of young men 
 forever camping on our doorstep, and our second and 
 third daughter will step off like the first. Well, what 
 do you say? Come to us, and we'll marry you off to 
 some prosperous young chap immediately." 
 
 Betty winced, but gave no outward sign. She 
 thanked Mr. Reynolds for his kindness, and asked to 
 be permitted to consider his offer. She knew very well 
 that she would never accept it; financial dependence on 
 strangers seemed to her a shameful thing, and besides, 
 she knew that Richard would come to her one day and 
 that her affairs would adjust themselves somehow. 
 
 Emma Reynolds was married three days after Mrs. 
 Garside's interment, and the entire house, which had 
 wept and bewailed with Betty at her mother's funeral, 
 laughed and rejoiced at Emma's wedding. This left 
 Betty feeling bewildered and helpless. These people 
 had cried as much as herself, some more than herself, 
 when her mother was taken away, and now they en- 
 tered with zest and zeal into merrymaking. 
 
 Betty had gone to the pavilion merely to see Emma 
 married, and effaced herself immediately afterwards.
 
 62 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 She went to her little room, and thought of Richard. 
 She thought of him incessantly these days. She thought 
 of many things. Her mother's terse candor regarding 
 certain matters forced her thoughts into unusual chan- 
 nels and impelled her to give thought to matters which 
 she formerly would not have considered. She felt cer- 
 tain that Richard Pryce was not like other men. To 
 think that when he married it would be with the usual 
 object of matrimony was to sully him. So distasteful 
 did the matter of sex appear to her, and what her 
 mother had said had rebuttressed this attitude of 
 Betty's, that all experience, all history, all nature, and 
 her mother's cynicism to the contrary, she believed that 
 Richard Pryce, alone among men, was sexless. That 
 sexlessness was to her the only state of purity possible. 
 When Richard Pryce married, it would be with the 
 same objects in view as herself companionship, affec- 
 tion, and mutual respect. 
 
 And she was certain that he was coming to her. 
 
 Her faith in him, at least as regards the last particu- 
 lar, was not misplaced. Early one morning, before the 
 first week of her mourning was over, she saw him 
 coming up the mountain. He was still half a mile away 
 and on horseback, and a moment after she had glimpsed 
 him he was lost from sight behind a clump of elder- 
 berry bushes and wild cherry trees. She finished dress- 
 ing in haste, and walked down the road to meet him. 
 His coming was a high festival to her, and she did not 
 wish her joy in him dissipated by chance interruptions 
 from inquisitive and prying guests. 
 
 They came upon each other some ten minutes walk 
 away from the hotel, near a small rustic summer house, 
 standing in a secluded hollow. He jumped from his 
 horse the moment he saw her, and slipping the bridle 
 over his arm, he walked slowly uphill. He was dressed
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 63 
 
 in a khaki riding habit, which suited his tall, slim figure 
 particularly well, and his tan riding boots, strapped and 
 buckled, gave him a military and commanding appear- 
 ance which made Betty's heart beat faster. He was 
 hatless, but his entire bearing betokened an indescribable 
 courtesy as he advanced, as if to extenuate the fact that 
 for lack of a hat, he could not give the usual salute upon 
 first catching sight of her. 
 
 With a little sob, which she did not attempt to check, 
 Betty held out her hands to him. He dropped the bridle, 
 and possessed himself of the proffered hands. 
 
 "Miss Garside," he said, "Miss Betty." She saw that 
 his emotion was no less than hers. No words of com- 
 miseration could have betokened greater sympathy. The 
 strong clasp of his fingers seemed to promise protec- 
 tion. As he held her hand, Betty remembered how she 
 had anticipated the touch of his fingers. A feeling of 
 intense peace and security came to her. 
 
 "I knew you would come," she said in a low, intimate 
 voice. 
 
 "I came as soon as I could," he said. "I have been 
 to New York since I saw you. I wanted to see you, 
 because I had a feeling that you had no relatives, no 
 one, you know, whom you can depend upon to help 
 you." 
 
 "A family here at the hotel has been extremely kind," 
 said Betty. "But you are right; I have no relatives, no 
 one in the world." In thought she added the words, 
 "except you." They trembled on her lips. Physical 
 violence, almost, seemed to be necessary to keep them 
 from overflowing. So tense was the moment that she 
 thought she must have spoken them after all. Richard 
 Pryce said quietly: 
 
 "Except me." 
 
 "Did I say that?" Betty asked, a little frightened.
 
 64 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Not with your lips," he said. "I have no one in 
 the world, either, except you." 
 
 "A lot of good I will be to you," said Betty. 
 
 "If I can help you, you will be of more use to me 
 than I to you," he said very seriously. "Don't you re- 
 member, dear Miss Betty, that we spoke about that the 
 other day, the feeling of being necessary to someone? 
 Well, this is my chance, my opportunity of making my- 
 self indispensable to you, and it is going to make me 
 the happiest man alive." 
 
 He had led the way up to the little rustic summer 
 house, while they were talking. Slipping the bridle 
 around a tree trunk, he left the animal to munch laurel 
 leaves and clover, and then returned to Betty's side. To- 
 gether, side by side, his hand clasping her arm as he 
 helped her up the steps, they walked into the little rustic 
 summer house and sat down. He released her arm. 
 For a moment they sat in silence. She wanted to tell 
 him about her self-reproaches, about the penultimate 
 cruel thing she had said to her mother. She wanted him 
 to exonerate her, to help her forget. But she could not 
 find the right words in which to tell him. And sud- 
 denly, while he was looking at her, she began to speak, 
 and told him disjointedly, unconnectedly, with disre- 
 gard of the context, that she had told her mother she 
 hated her. 
 
 "Why?" he asked. "You must tell me what preceded 
 that, you know. You must tell me all about it." 
 
 His quiet assumption of gentle authority soothed her 
 immeasurably. 
 
 "Because she wanted me to marry someone " she 
 
 wanted to say someone else, but stopped herself in time, 
 and again, as before, he completed her thought for her. 
 
 "Someone else?" 
 
 "Yes."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 65 
 
 The question was asked and answered with utmost 
 calmness. Then Richard Pryce said with noble sim- 
 plicity : 
 
 "You must not worry about that. If your mother 
 could see you now, she would understand, and she would 
 be happy that things were arranging themselves for the 
 best. She would know now that you were right and 
 she wrong. You must not worry now." 
 
 Again they sat in silence, side by side. It seemed to 
 her that she could hear his heart beat. Or was it only 
 her own? The faint odor of a cigarette hung about 
 him, and she liked it. 
 
 Suddenly, at sight of her, her pallor heightened by 
 her mourning, he overflowed with pity. 
 
 "You poor little thing," he said, "you poor little 
 thing." Betty lifted her eyes to his face. Some look 
 in his eyes went to her brain and to her heart. The 
 memory of the loneliness and the horror of the days 
 which she had lived fell upon her oppressively. The 
 purely human joy of being in close proximity to some 
 human being she loved swept over her. 
 
 Hardly aware of what she was doing, she laid her 
 right hand upon his shoulder, and bending over, laid a 
 kiss upon his cheek. Then, amazed, and more horrified 
 than she would have been if he had kissed her instead, 
 she drew back. 
 
 "Don't think me quite, quite horrid," she entreated. 
 "I have been so lonely, and so afraid." 
 
 "You poor little thing," he repeated, and then very 
 gently he lifted both her hands to his lips, kissing first 
 the one and then the other with great reverence. 
 
 It was fortunate indeed for Betty that the boy with 
 whom she had allowed herself this unconventional be- 
 havior was what he was. A woman can make the first 
 advance or offer the first caress with impunity only to
 
 66 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 a man of pure heart and untainted mind. A libertine, 
 a man of pleasure, a roue will invariably see in the 
 most innocent caress or advance an offer of complete 
 surrender, because to a man of that calibre every caress 
 has to do with the passions, and the affections are an 
 unknown and uncomprehended quantity. Richard Pryce, 
 however, was pure in mind, unseared in heart, unstained 
 in imagination as Betty herself, and he realized intuitively 
 that in kissing him her spirit had made of her body a me- 
 dium for its expression. If she had only known it, 
 that kiss of hers consecrated him to her service for life. 
 He was a modest boy. He had never played the Don 
 Juan as some boys do even in their schooldays; he had 
 pilfered no hair-ribbons to display as trophies, had 
 stolen no kisses to boast of as kisses voluntarily yielded 
 to him. No woman had ever kissed him before; nor 
 had he ever desired a woman's kisses. The adventure 
 for him, as for Betty, had all the fragrance and sweet- 
 ness of first love. 
 
 "I have come," he continued bluntly, "to see how 
 you are fixed. I mean, will you have to do something ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Betty, "I will have to try to find work." 
 
 "Then I have an offer to make you." 
 
 He spoke quickly, as if anxious to get through with 
 this matter of business on which he had come. He 
 seemed a trifle ashamed of his errand. His employer, 
 Mr. Telfer, had recalled him from Penascapet Summit, 
 because the new venture had not been successful. Tel- 
 fer's, Fifth Avenue, New York, publisher of songs, 
 librettos, opera scores and sheet music, always engaged 
 the services of a first-class pianist to play new music as 
 well as classical repertory for customers desirous of 
 making pianoforte selections. It was not a disagreeable 
 position. Richard Pryce had met many interesting 
 people, some of them musical celebrities, during his
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 67 
 
 connection with Telfer's in this capacity, but now, after 
 three years, Mr. Telfer had decided to advance Richard 
 to the position of manager of the circulating music li- 
 brary, which would require virtually his entire time, 
 and his former position was thus falling vacant. On 
 hearing of the death of Betty's mother, it had immedi- 
 ately occurred to Richard that Betty might like the 
 position, and as Mr. Telfer had left the finding of the 
 new incumbent entirely to Richard, he was able to make 
 her the offer. He had asked for a leave of absence of 
 two days for the express purpose of making it in per- 
 son. 
 
 "I can only offer you eighteen a week to start with," 
 he said apologetically. "It is not a fortune, certainly, 
 but you couldn't do better elsewhere. He jumped me 
 from eighteen to thirty in three years, which is not bad. 
 Thirty dollars," he added, "is almost enough to get 
 married on." 
 
 "Thirty dollars," Betty said quietly, "ought to help 
 swell the Europe Fund. If you get married, you will 
 not be able to save up for Europe." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I will," he said. "I will be earning more 
 in another year. Which will enable me to get married 
 and save up for Europe both." 
 
 There was no mistaking the meaning in his words 
 and in his eyes, and to deflect his attention, Betty 
 pointed to a russet and orange chipmunk, who sat on 
 his haunches, his bushy tail standing up like a plume. 
 The little creature, apprehensive of evil, sat perfectly 
 still, looking at Betty in stony fascination. 
 
 "Look," said Betty. 
 
 But Richard did not look at the chipmunk. He was 
 looking at Betty. If he had filled Betty's head with a 
 hundred and one delicious new thoughts, Betty had filled 
 his heart with a thousand and one delicious new sensa-
 
 68 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 tions. Never in all his life had he experienced such a 
 coursing of joy through his entire body. He had sup- 
 posed that one could feel the body only when in pain, 
 but now he experienced the sensation that to own a 
 body was a supreme and intense pleasure. Ever since 
 he had sat down beside Betty, since he had touched her 
 fingers, and more particularly since he had felt the touch 
 of her soft lips upon his cheek, he had been suffused 
 with an agreeable, drowsy languor very much like the 
 torpor engendered by the heavy old port which he drank 
 on red-letter days Christmas, New Year's and Thanks- 
 giving. But the languor produced by the wine was 
 heavy and material compared to the ecstasy that was 
 now flooding him, and in spite of which, or because of 
 which he seemed burningly, smartingly, alive. He de- 
 sired to kiss her, but he told himself that his wish for 
 a kiss as compared to the kiss she had voluntarily given 
 him was gross and raw. He suppressed the desire. He 
 would not have offended her for worlds. He would not 
 have had her think that he was attempting to kiss her, 
 because in an unguarded moment she had allowed him 
 a glimpse of her soul by kissing him. He was humbly 
 eager to make clear to himself the difference between 
 them. She ranked barely below the angels, and he 
 well, he had discovered quite suddenly that he was no 
 stranger to the feelings inherent in normal manhood. 
 But the discovery did not displease him. 
 
 "Do you want the position?" he asked. 
 
 "Do I? I should say so." 
 
 "Fine. And when are you willing to start?" 
 
 "The sooner the better. But look here, Mr. " she 
 
 hesitated, appalled by the absurdity of calling him Mr. 
 Pryce. She had thought of him as Richard, and her 
 lips found it difficult to run counter to her thought. 
 
 "I say, let me call you Betty, and you call me Rich-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 69 
 
 ard, will you? I told Mr. Telfer we were old friends, 
 so it's an innocent hypocrisy we will be acting/' 
 
 Betty laughed. She became mischievous. She wanted 
 to tantalize him ever so lightly. She had never under- 
 stood why girls gloated over the silly pranks they played 
 on their boy friends. Suddenly she comprehended. 
 
 "I won't call you Richard," she said. 
 
 "Please do. Miss Garside, even Miss Betty, is so for- 
 mal." 
 
 "I'll compromise." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "I'll call you Dick or Dicky." 
 
 "Dicky?" 
 
 "Has anyone ever called you Dicky before?" 
 
 "Not a soul." 
 
 "Well, then," she cried mischievously, "I'm giving 
 you an individual name, a name that hasn't been hack- 
 neyed by every chance acquaintance of yours." 
 
 Having said that much, she feared that she had said 
 too much. She blushed furiously. 
 
 She looked at him and laughed shyly, confusedly, 
 happily. Suddenly the effort he was making to check 
 himself from kissing her appeared to him in a different 
 light than before. Since she had kissed him, though 
 the kiss had flown to her lips directly from her white 
 little soul, was it not churlish of him to pretend 
 to greater self-command than she had exercised? 
 His soul, too, was sincerely set upon kissing 
 her. He stooped quickly, and brushed her cheek with 
 his lips. 
 
 "Dicky, oh, Dicky!" 
 
 She looked at him reproachfully. 
 
 "I merely returned what I had no right to keep," he 
 explained. They were both blushing. "Betty, I am so 
 happy. As soon as I earn forty dollars a week regu-
 
 70 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 larly, and I think that will be very soon, you are going 
 to marry me." 
 
 "Such presumption we have met just three times !" 
 
 "We have met three times only, it is true," he said 
 soberly. "But ever since we met the first time, our 
 souls have been inseparable. Mine clove to yours, yours 
 to mine, don't you know that?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And you know that you have changed the face of 
 the universe for me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And that nothing can come between us?" 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 "And you know that I love everything about you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Your soft, drooping hair, and your eyes, Betty, your 
 eyes, which in expression are like a mountain lake be- 
 fore a storm, inscrutable, alluring, mysterious. And I 
 love your soft little white hands, Betty, and your mouth, 
 Betty I love your mouth because it turns up at both 
 ends as if to express that you are always looking up- 
 ward and onward, as if nothing in life would ever un- 
 dermine your happy outlook upon life." 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 "And you know that I love the breathless, fluttering 
 way you have of answering me, don't you, Betty?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And I love your name Betty, Betty Garside you 
 know that, too? Don't you?" 
 
 Betty bubbled over with merriment. She felt she 
 must set a period to the compliments, veiled as ques- 
 tions, which he was hurling at her. 
 
 "If you love my name, why do you want me to 
 change it?" she teased. 
 
 "Because I want you to love my name as much as I
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 71 
 
 love yours, and because, if you do, you will be quite 
 willing to change from yours to mine," he retorted. 
 "By January first, perhaps before, I will find means of 
 adding to my income, and then " 
 
 "Then you will add generously each week to your 
 Europe Fund," Betty said quickly, "so that, in time, 
 you may become a great artist." 
 
 Richard rose and kneeling upon the bench on which 
 Betty was sitting, faced the sun, which floated high 
 and serene above the opposite crest of mountains. Enor- 
 mous eddies of dense white cloud steamed up from the 
 valleys, hiding, in their white, opaque embrace, all life 
 and its manifold activity in the village below. The hoot- 
 hoot of an invisible locomotive pierced through the 
 surging mist, recalling to them that they were not wholly 
 alone in the world. The tap-tap of a woodpecker, the 
 flip-flap of ripe acorns upon the soft earth accentuated 
 the silence rather than broke it. 
 
 "I do not need Europe now," said Richard. "I will 
 become a great artist without Europe." 
 
 "Didn't you think Europe indispensable ?" 
 
 "I thought so formerly. That was because Europe 
 meant stimulus, enchantment, a new outlook. Now I 
 have found that at home. Of course," he hesitated, 
 "if I could afford Europe, it would help me wonder- 
 fully. If nothing else, the prestige of having studied 
 abroad means so much." 
 
 "And the masters ?" 
 
 "Yes, yes the teachers abroad, they say, are finer 
 than ours." 
 
 He stood in silence a minute, amazed at a current of 
 mental virility that was sweeping through him. Never 
 before had he experienced such a sensation. He had 
 been skeptical of the delightful feeling ascribed to being 
 in love as described in operas and novels. But this feel-
 
 72 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing transcended anything he had ever heard or read 
 about. He told himself that, with this feeling locked 
 in his heart and his mind there was nothing, absolutely 
 nothing that he could not accomplish as an artist. And 
 he felt a boundless gratitude to the pale, virginal, black- 
 haired girl who had created these feelings in him. 
 
 "Betty," he stood before her flicking some pine 
 needles from the bench with his whip. "There is some- 
 thing I have forgotten to say. Are you going to board 
 when in town? Or live with friends? Telfer's shop 
 is open two evenings a week until eleven, and in lieu 
 of extra pay we receive two free afternoons a week in 
 return for our evening work. You're not living in Har- 
 lem or the Bronx, are you?" 
 
 "Mother and I lived in Harlem," Betty replied. "I 
 would have to find a new boarding place, at any rate. 
 I don't suppose I could find rooms downtown, could I ?" 
 
 "I am sure you could." He hesitated. "Will you 
 allow me to find you a room? I want to make sure 
 what sort of a house you get into, and I would like you 
 to be not too far from my boarding place, so that I can 
 call for you and see you home Wednesdays and Satur- 
 days, the evenings you work until eleven." 
 
 "Don't you work the same nights ?" 
 
 "No. Those are my afternoons off. I work Tues- 
 days and Fridays. But I shall try to arrange matters 
 so that we are both off together at least one afternoon, 
 preferably Saturday." 
 
 "Hasn't your landlady a room for me ?" Betty queried 
 innocently. 
 
 "Mrs. Presbey has a room." Richard fell silent. "I 
 did not suggest your coming to Mrs. Presbey 's, because 
 I didn't know how you would feel about coming to the 
 same house, you know." 
 
 "That's true," Betty faltered.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 73 
 
 "Supposing," Richard continued, "I ask her whether 
 she thinks it all right? We can safely take her word." 
 
 Betty clasped her hands with a gesture of supplica- 
 tion. She sat looking at him without replying. 
 
 "She is a very charming old lady, really, a gentle- 
 woman, and she would not let you come unless she 
 thought it just right." 
 
 "I'll do whatever you say in the matter," Betty said 
 quietly. 
 
 "Thank you for trusting me." 
 
 He pulled the watch from his pocket, and whistled. 
 
 "It's eight o'clock," he said, "and I've got to make 
 the 9.05 from Penascapet Valley, gives me barely 
 time to ride back and change to my street clothes. Walk 
 down to the grove of pines, will you?" 
 
 Betty rose with alacrity, and they walked the twenty 
 yards involved in silence, her arm resting lightly on his. 
 In a dimple of the road, known as a thank-ye-mum, they 
 stopped. 
 
 "Good-bye, darling," he said; "we will arrange all 
 particulars by letter." 
 
 He did not kiss her again. To kiss her lightly, 
 quickly, without due reverence, he felt would be to pro- 
 fane her. He shook hands with her and swung himself 
 lightly into the saddle. A moment later the winding 
 road eclipsed him. 
 
 Betty turned. In the middle of the road, gravely 
 watching her, sat the chipmunk. 
 
 "Eavesdropping again?" she cried, and the little crea- 
 ture scurried away, disappearing among ground creep- 
 ers, stunted rhododendron and laurel, huckleberry 
 plants, wintergreen berries, sassafras, morning glories 
 and a few yellow alfalfa blossoms that had straggled 
 up from a farm below. 
 
 Betty, reclimbing the distance to the house, thought
 
 74 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 of her mother. It was curious that she should be able 
 to feel so happy so soon after her great grief. All her 
 self-reproaches had been swept away by Richard's 
 words. It seemed to her that her mother was very close 
 to her, and was rejoicing at her good fortune in having 
 found such a friend. 
 And while she smiled, she wept.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 If Richard Pryce had been a gay Lothario, a heart- 
 less and unscrupulous Lovelace, a past master in the 
 arts of seduction and an expert as to the material means 
 of accomplishment, he could hardly have devised a plan 
 more filled with craftiness for the undoing of a maid 
 than the innocent scheme he had evolved of bringing 
 Betty to his own boarding house so that he might insti- 
 tute himself her protector. 
 
 Mrs. Presbey, his landlady, was the widow of a phy- 
 sician. Herself a woman of refinement and education, 
 she had contrived to remain every inch a lady in spite 
 of the fact that she rented out rooms. She occupied a 
 small house in Irving Place, nearer Gramercy Square 
 than Fourteenth Street. It was a very small house in- 
 deed, and admitted of the renting of three rooms only. 
 Every spring Mrs. Presbey threatened to move uptown 
 and "take a larger house," and every spring the threat 
 had remained an idle menace. Richard occupied the 
 large room to the rear, one flight up, where, if he had 
 a mind to, he could practice all evening without disturb- 
 ing anyone. The room above his was occupied by an 
 obese gentleman of uncertain age, inalterable deafness 
 and asthmatic inclinations, who lived on his income and 
 spent most of his time at his club. The front room on 
 the top floor was occupied by Mrs. Presbey herself. The 
 remaining room, the room on the first sleeping floor, 
 was the room which was vacant, and which Richard 
 hoped the old lady might be willing to let him have for 
 Betty. 
 
 75
 
 76 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 When he suggested this, Mrs. Presbey looked at him 
 with horror in her eyes, and so potent is the moral 
 indignation of age that Richard felt quite as much em- 
 barrassed upon encountering the old lady's eyes as if 
 he had actually projected the profligacy which she 
 seemed to impute to him. 
 
 "Impossible, Richard," she cried, for she had taken 
 to calling him by his first name. 
 
 "Why not?" Richard feigned lamblike innocence. 
 
 "I'm surprised at you, Richard. You cannot bring 
 a young girl of your acquaintance to live in the same 
 house with yourself." 
 
 "Well, if a young girl I didn't know were to come 
 here, I would become acquainted with her. Would you 
 put her out for that reason?" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "Come, Mrs. Presbey, be honest with me." 
 
 "The cases are utterly dissimilar. Miss What's-her- 
 name, Garfield, Gartwright, cannot come here to live 
 while you are in the house." 
 
 "Very well, then I will move." 
 
 "What ?" 
 
 "Just so." 
 
 "Do you mean, Richard, that you will move to a 
 house where they will permit you to bring her with 
 you?" 
 
 "Mrs. Presbey!" 
 
 The old lady bridled ; she was very indignant. 
 
 "I mean, Mrs. Presbey, that I will move elsewhere, 
 so she can come here. I wouldn't be satisfied to have 
 her anywhere but under your roof." 
 
 Richard waited until that crafty compliment had sunk 
 into the landlady's heart, and then continued suavely: 
 
 "Mother Presbey, I'm going to tell you a secret." 
 
 "Urn."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 77 
 
 "We're engaged, or as good as engaged." 
 
 "What does that mean? As good as engaged?" 
 
 "Well, I haven't really proposed. I the fact is I 
 just took it for granted that she would marry me, and 
 as she didn't demur I suppose I may truthfully say we 
 are engaged." 
 
 "Well, of all things " 
 
 "Come now, be nice about it. Let me bring her here, 
 and stay here myself as well." 
 
 "If you really are engaged, and I do not quite com- 
 prehend the situation, 1 admit, it makes the matter worse 
 than ever. Miss Garfield " 
 
 "Garside, if you please." 
 
 "Cannot come here. In my day engaged couples were 
 allowed to see each other only twice a week." 
 
 "A silly rule." 
 
 "A wise rule. Young folks are young folks, and 
 young folks who are engaged are doubly young folks, 
 and the devil has kept his hand well in practice at the 
 game of temptation, if we may believe the newspapers." 
 
 "Mrs. Presbey !" It was a very red and angry Rich- 
 ard that glared down upon the little white-haired woman. 
 "Miss Garside is the sweetest and best and purest girl 
 that ever lived, and " 
 
 "I have not said a word against Miss Garside," Mrs. 
 Presbey interrupted Richard with asperity. "I was 
 never one to blame the woman. I always blame the 
 man." 
 
 The anticlimax made Richard laugh. He said : 
 
 "I never thought that you would doubt me." 
 
 "I don't doubt you, but, my boy, an ounce of pre- 
 yention is worth a pound of cure." 
 
 Richard hid his laughter. He cajoled: 
 
 "Think, Mother Presbey, when I'm gone, who will 
 'see that I have the proper blend of tea and very thin
 
 78 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 toast when I get home at eleven o'clock at night too 
 tired to eat anything else? Who, when I get a gastric 
 attack, will boil me barley water? Who will prepare 
 my eggs by pouring boiling water on them, instead of 
 boiling them, because boiled eggs make me bilious? 
 Who, I say, will do all that for me if you force me to 
 
 move away 
 
 Mrs. Presbey was in tears at this picture of Rich- 
 ard's desolation. 
 
 "I force you to move away?" she cried. "Heaven 
 forbid. I cannot see your digestion ruined. I cannot 
 risk that. I will take the other risk instead. Bring 
 your Miss Garfield, Gartwright, Garson, or whatever 
 her name is, if you wish." 
 
 There ensued a week of room-renovating such as 
 Mrs. Presbey had never lived through before. Fre- 
 quently Richard had had occasion to see the interior of 
 the room which Betty was to occupy. The last lodger 
 had been an old Frenchwoman for whom Richard had 
 sometimes played her favorite selections with the hall 
 doors open to permit the passage of sound. She had 
 been a hideous old woman and had died of gangrene a 
 week after being taken to a hospital. Richard had for- 
 merly thought the room comfortable. Now he dis- 
 covered that the color scheme was atrocious, if one 
 could dignify a threadbare Brussels carpet, on which 
 only the garish red roses retained their original color- 
 ing, and a peacock blue wall-paper by so authoritative a 
 term as color scheme. The black walnut furniture, built 
 in the amorphous mid-Victorian style, with marble slab 
 tops on bureau and table, and black horsehair on the 
 seats of chair and sofa, were unspeakable, and when 
 Mrs. Presbey pointed with pride to the modern brass 
 bedstead, Richard became violently denunciatory. 
 
 The truth of the matter was that Richard had seen
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 79 
 
 Madame Zournier in bed on one occasion, when cos- 
 metics, false hair and artificial teeth had been wanting 
 to relieve her general repulsiveness. It was insufferable 
 to think that the same bed that had held the grotesquely 
 horrible Frenchwoman should feel the precious weight 
 of Betty's white, chaste, virginal body. The thought 
 was so vivid that it assumed the form of a picture. He 
 seemed to see the form of the girl he loved the slim, 
 firm young limbs with their long gracious lines stretched 
 at full length upon a white, curtained bed in a dim, cool 
 room. He saw her head reposing upon the pillow, her 
 hands clasped above the black curls, showing the exqui- 
 site white arms, bare to the elbow. The very atmos- 
 phere was filled with her essence. He seemed to per- 
 ceive even the delicious perfume of her wholesome, soft 
 young body the perfume of her hair, of her skin, the 
 pressure of her hands, the touch of her lips. 
 
 A sensation, almost of pain, such as he had never 
 experienced before, stabbed him. His heart beat vio- 
 lently. His pulses leapt. He tried to expel the vision, 
 and to do so effectually he continued to berate the style 
 of the bed, mechanically using the same phrases of con- 
 demnation again and again. Amid much pother and 
 fuss he alighted upon a picture of Holof ernes being 
 murdered by Judith. This was execrable, an impossible 
 adjunct to a delicate-minded young girl's room. 
 
 He called to his assistance the Norwegian maid of all 
 work, an Amazon in stature, with the hair and com- 
 plexion of a Lorelei, and before Mrs. Presbey could 
 help herself, he had taken the furniture apart, and was 
 moving it into the storeroom. 
 
 Mrs. Presbey expostulated that it would be impos- 
 sible to buy an entirely new set of furniture. Richard 
 retorted that it was not impossible by any means since 
 good furniture was to be had in dozens of stores. As
 
 80 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 to the cost, he of course intended defraying all expenses, 
 but it was out of the question for his Betty not to have 
 the best of everything. He chafed because it was Sun- 
 day and no shops were open to admit of immediate pur- 
 chases. He turned the entire house, cellar, storeroom 
 and living-room upside down because he remembered 
 there had been a catalogue of Grand Rapids furniture 
 makers in the house. When, finally, after an hour's 
 search conducted in a hurricane of excitement, the Nor- 
 wegian maid discovered the catalogue under the ash bar- 
 rel in the yard, Richard decided peremptorily that they 
 were of no use at any rate, as even telegraphic orders 
 would hardly bring the furniture to New York before 
 the end of two weeks too late to have the room ready 
 for Betty's arrival. Then, Sunday or no Sunday, he 
 insisted on taking up the vitiated Brussels carpet, be- 
 cause he must needs convince himself that the flooring' 
 was in good condition. 
 
 "Why not have parquetry floors ?" Mrs. Presbey asked 
 with fine scorn. Richard replied seriously that that 
 would be the very thing, but abandoned the plan be- 
 cause time was pressing. 
 
 Nothing less than an Axminster rug would do for 
 Betty; furniture, chairs, chiffonier and Davenport of 
 Circassian walnut; last of all he rented a baby grand, 
 and raved and stormed and ranted about the house like 
 a madman for an entire evening because the piano- 
 maker sent a rosewood case instead of Circassian wal- 
 nut. He himself stained the floors after caulking them, 
 to Mrs. Presbey 's consternation; for Richard was her 
 divinity, and it seemed little short of sacrilege to the 
 dear old lady to see her idol kneeling on the floor, ordi- 
 nary workman's tools in his magic fingers and callous- 
 ing with unspeakable little tacks and a paint brush the 
 hands that were capable of producing such ravishing 
 music.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 81' 
 
 The bills for rug, papering, furniture and pictures 
 aggregated eight hundred dollars. This diminished the 
 Europe Fund to a bare three hundred. Mrs. Presbey, 
 who shared his financial secrets, being sworn to secrecy 
 as to the fact that he had defrayed all expenses for 
 Betty's room, shook her head, as old ladies have a pro- 
 voking way of doing, to show their disapprobation of 
 their junior's antics. Richard thereupon caught her 
 about the waist and waltzed through the room with her, 
 kissing her thrice on each withered cheek, and when he 
 deposited her, breathless and half-angry, upon one of 
 Betty's new chairs, he brushed away her pretended 
 anger by telling her that he knew she had been just as 
 sweet as his Betty when she had been a girl, and he 
 only hoped that his Betty would grow into so charming 
 an old lady as herself. Neither of which statements 
 were sincere, for the young rascal was convinced that 
 nowheres in the world, not in the present, past or fu- 
 ture, there had been, or was, or would be such a para- 
 gon, such a nonpareil, as his Betty. 
 
 All was propitious, then, and after Betty's arrival 
 there followed Arcadian days. They seemed to draw 
 a magic circle about each other those first weeks, which 
 no hostile personality had the power to invade. If they 
 had been alone in the universe, they could not have been 
 more isolated than they were now in the heart of the 
 great city. Perhaps lovers are never quite normal. 
 These two saw everything through a transcendent golden 
 haze, of which they themselves were the nucleus. Per- 
 sons, environment, the commonplaces of life were their 
 stage-setting, barely the supporting cast, of the drama 
 which they were enacting for their own delectation. It 
 was an unexampled adventure. 
 
 They went to a theatre once a week, and once a week 
 to a concert. Twice or thrice they went in the full
 
 82 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 panoply of pomp, on two-dollar seats, going and com- 
 ing in a taxicab, with a dinner at Martin's and a sup- 
 per at Sherry's and one or two lavender orchids for 
 Betty to wear. But Betty demurred against this ex- 
 travagance, and she exercised great ingenuity in invent- 
 ing pretty excuses for preferring gallery seats at sev- 
 enty-five cents to orchestra chairs, and a forty-cent 
 table d'hote dinner to a sumptuous repast at Sherry's 
 or Rector's. There was more atmosphere in the gallery, 
 she said, because all the impecunious art and music stu- 
 'dents sat there, while stalls and orchestra chairs were 
 occupied by persons who were present not for love of 
 music or the drama, but for the purpose of displaying 
 their clothes, or their shoulders, or their diamonds. 
 Betty had no desire to play the parvenu. Such ma- 
 terial splendor absolutely diverted the attention from 
 the higher enjoyment of art. And a forty-cent dinner 
 was to be preferred to a feast because, since it did not 
 taste as good, one was not tempted to eat so much, thus 
 leaving an edge on the spiritual appetite, which was 
 not the case when the grosser appetites had been sated 
 to the point of repletion. Dicky took these little ser- 
 mons in good part. He knew enough of women both 
 from observation and hearsay to know that during the 
 average courtship the woman is likely to be an elegant 
 sort of vampire or shark, whose sole endeavor is to 
 get what she can in the way of amusement and sweet- 
 meats and drives. How different was his Betty! He 
 told himself a dozen times a day that he was the luck- 
 iest of men and that his Betty was an angel. 
 
 Then there was the joy of hearing each other play 
 and sing. Richard's playing left Betty breathless with 
 pleased astonishment, and her voice, when one evening 
 she began to hum "Auld Lang Syne," sent him into 
 transports of enthusiasm. He began to teach Betty to
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 83 
 
 sing that very evening, for she had never had a singing 
 lesson in her life, and he was amazed and enchanted 
 with the strength and volume of her voice as it began 
 to develop. 
 
 "Betty," he said one evening, at the end of a half- 
 hour's vocal practice, "I think your voice is quite re- 
 markable. With proper training, I believe you will 
 make a much greater singer than I a pianist." 
 
 "If you say that again, Dicky, I shall sing for you 
 no more," Betty retorted. "One genius in the family is 
 quite enough, thank you." And she repeated the musi- 
 cal phrase, which she had been singing, holding the last 
 note so long that it seemed to promise eternal duration. 
 
 Betty's voice was a soft, mellow mezzo-soprano, and 
 Richard believed that under the tuition of an expert 
 teacher, the range of Betty's voice might become so 1 
 extended as to change it into a soprano. But he did 
 not trust himself to attempt the metamorphosis. Her 
 voice was wonderfully pure and flexible; there was 
 only one quality in her voice that perplexed him. It 
 was cold as ice. There was no warmth in it, and it 
 communicated no warmth to him, although he was so 
 much in love with her by this time that the contem- 
 plation of any one of her perfections, or the accidental 
 touch of hand or fingers, when he tried to forestall her 
 in turning the sheet music, raised him to the pitch of 
 delirium. There were days when he did not dare to 
 kiss her or take her in his arms, so cruelly turbulent 
 was his blood for hours afterwards in recollection of 
 the endearment. 
 
 Richard was fast approaching the danger-point when 
 kisses and the usual caresses of courtship are no longer 
 an outlet of the emotions. He was holding himself 
 well in hand. He was stifling desire, suffocating pas- 
 sion by sheer force of will. But the dikes that held
 
 84 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 back emotion and the tumultuous flood coursing in his 
 veins were weakening perceptibly, and he knew it. 
 
 Because they had to do with music, it pleased them 
 to regard themselves as Bohemians of the "Quartier 
 Latin" of Fifth Avenue, New York. To foster their 
 Bohemian propensities they made an expedition to an 
 East Houston Street restaurant, of whose unregeneracy 
 and splendid cooking Dicky had heard a good deal. 
 They were sure that something very terrible happened 
 there every night. Just what the very terrible thing 
 was neither he nor she could imagine. But after all 
 their anticipatory thrills nothing happened but that a 
 few girls who had tossed off a little more wine than 
 was good for them sat on their "gentlemen friends' " 
 knees and kissed them. Then Dicky flushed and Betty 
 blushed, and in a little while they came away vocifer- 
 ously protesting to each other that "it was horrid," but 
 he, at least, was secretly disappointed that nothing more 
 had happened. 
 
 Dicky's Bohemianism was not wholly assumed. When 
 he was not rhapsodizing at the piano, he had a habit of 
 stalking about Betty's rooms, his long, slender body 
 moving hither and thither with incredible swiftness. All 
 the while he smoked innumerable cigarettes and dis- 
 coursed on every topic under the sun. The ashes from 
 his cigarettes he deposited wherever he happened to be 
 standing, on mantel, book-cover, or magazine. One 
 night he chanced upon a small china drinking-cup from 
 which Betty drank hot water mornings and evenings, 
 and promptly he deposited his ashes therein. After 
 that Betty drank her hot water from a glass, for the 
 ashes of her Dicky's cigarettes were sacred to her. She 
 treasured the ashes for several days; then, one evening 
 when she was very sleepy because she had been out the 
 hight before, she forgot, and poured her hot water into
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 85 
 
 the cup and drank it off by mistake. She wept for half 
 an hour to think the relic had such an unromantic end, 
 and then she began to worry about the effect of diluted 
 cigar ashes upon her system. She was undecided 
 whether to take an emetic or castor oil. But she had 
 neither in her room, and finally she went to bed, con- 
 vinced that she was going to die in agony through the 
 night. And she sobbed bitterly on picturing to herself 
 Dicky's woe on finding her gone. But she was very 
 tired, and waiting for one's own death throes when one 
 is eighteen and has done a hard day's work is a tedious 
 task. She fell asleep and awoke the next morning filled 
 with utter amazement to find she was still alive. 
 
 So much for Arcady. The days of their sojourn in 
 that uncharted land were numbered. They were fast 
 drawing to a close.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Arcady came to an end on November 3rd, having 
 lasted just three months and three days. It happened 
 in this way. 
 
 The day was a Sunday, and they had gone for a long 
 tramp through the Staten Island woods. They ate a 
 dinner of boiled dandelion and corned beef at a farm- 
 house and declared it a banquet fit for a king. Then 
 they sallied forth again and tramped until dusk. The 
 day had been one of those perfect Indian summer days 
 when the general decay of nature seems not only to 
 halt on the down stretch, but to be reversed. Twilight 
 came in a blaze of turquoise and rose. They sat down 
 upon the gnarled and rheumatic-looking roots of an old 
 oak standing upon a knoll of ground near the road. 
 The eager, nipping air had whipped every drop of blood 
 in their bodies into a sense of being cryingly alive, and 
 to be cryingly alive meant one thing only for Richard 
 these days. 
 
 He had taken small joy in the excursion, and had 
 been silent and taciturn all day. His feelings for Betty 
 had reached their culmination. Formerly tempestuous 
 passion had swept through him only when away from 
 her, and his desire had been vague, undefined, general. 
 Lately he suffered most when with her, and his need 
 of her was now distressingly well-defined. Palavering 
 with himself was no longer possible. He desired her 
 ardently every moment of the day and night. His love 
 for her now transcended every other emotion. His need 
 
 86
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 87* 
 
 for her was monumental. He suffered incessantly. De- 
 sire to possess her obsessed him. Intimate thoughts of 
 her assailed him like the breath from a fiery furnace. 
 Try as he would, and he tried with every atom of the 
 manhood that was in him to quell the strange insurrec- 
 tion of his blood, he did not succeed. It almost seemed 
 to him that the more he strove to control himself the 
 more he suffered. 
 
 Betty, entirely ignorant of his tormented state, began 
 teasing him. 
 
 "Poor Dicky, are you so tired? Lean up against my 
 knee and rest." She put both her arms about his neck, 
 kissed him gently and drew his head back against her 
 knee. He repulsed her, shook himself free almost 
 roughly, and, pulsing with passion, but still self-con- 
 trolled, sat as straight as a ramrod. 
 
 "Gloomy Gus," she mocked. "No, that won't do at 
 all. Let me see, what alliterates with Dicky Detrimen- 
 tal Dicky, Ducky Dicky, Darling Dicky." Here she 
 tickled the back of his neck with a straw. 
 
 "Stop it," growled Richard savagely. Some current 
 seemed to be communicated to him from her fingers 
 with the straw as a connective. Every nerve in his body 
 tingled. 
 
 "I've got it," she laughed, throwing her head back as 
 if to more easily emit the flood of jubilant mischief that 
 came bubbling from her lips. "Doleful Dicky." 
 
 "If you don't stop, I'll alliterate you." 
 
 "Try I don't believe you can." 
 
 To escape the straw, with which she was still wor- 
 rying him, he changed his position, and sat down beside 
 her. 
 
 "Do you mean that I haven't the ability?" he asked, 
 "or that there are no words in the dictionary to suit 
 your case?"
 
 88 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "No words to suit my case! The idea! Detestable 
 Dicky, oh, no, I don't mean that," and to cover the 
 slip she put her arms around him and laid a lingering 
 kiss upon his cheek. 
 
 "Does that soothe the feelings of my dilly-dallying 
 darling, ducky, doleful Dicky?" 
 
 Her kiss added to his misery. But he tried valiantly 
 to continue the game. 
 
 "I see there's nothing to be done, Betty, but to alliter- 
 ate you." 
 
 "Instead of threatening to do it, do it, if you can." 
 
 "Bitter-sweet Betty." 
 
 "A silly word. Besides, I am all sweet, am I not, 
 Dicky? There is nothing bitter about me, is there?" 
 
 "I'm not so certain." 
 
 "Richard !" 
 
 "Heavens, now you will begin alliterating Richard to 
 punish Dicky." 
 
 "Dicky never misbehaves; it is only Richard who re- 
 quires chastisement." 
 
 "Why? How so?" 
 
 Betty thoughtfully ran a dry blade of grass along her 
 teeth. 
 
 "Well, Richard is masterful, full of odd notions about 
 not caring about Europe, careless of the Europe Fund, 
 careless of his future as an artist." 
 
 "Cut it out." 
 
 "Why, Dicky, you look positively danger6us. Ah! 
 Dangerous Dicky." 
 
 "Look out, Bossy Betty, or Dicky may become dan- 
 gerous." 
 
 "In what way?" she asked wheedlingly. "Won't he 
 buy me a supper to-night? Won't he take me to the 
 Sunday night concert? Well, Dangerous Dicky, speak 
 up."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 89 
 
 "Bossy Betty, I'll be dangerous in a different way. 
 I'll hire an aeroplane to kidnap you, and I'll never set 
 you down on earth again until you promise to marry 
 me out of hand." 
 
 "Who wants to be set down on earth again?" She 
 bubbled over with laughter. "I would love to live in 
 
 the clouds. Dangerous Dicky " She pulled a box 
 
 of chocolates out of his coat pocket which he had been 
 carrying for her, and opened it. "Dreamy Dicky 
 that's more like it dreamy, downcast, silly little Dicky." 
 
 She had selected a chocolate and sat surveying it. 
 
 "Dicky !" 
 
 The bantering note had died out of her voice. She 
 held a chocolate up between two dainty waxen fingers 
 in which the nails lay like bits of exquisitely-carved 
 pink jade. 
 
 "Dicky, this is a chocolate raspberry jelly. Try it! 
 You shan't refuse! You must!" 
 
 "Bossy Betty again!" He was still trying to keep 
 himself in hand, to check the passion that was sweeping 
 through him with such force that every nerve in his 
 body sang and hummed like an electric wire during a 
 thunderstorm. 
 
 "Come, Dicky open your mouth and shut your eyes, 
 and I'll give you something to make you " 
 
 Betty did not enunciate the last word of the old nurs- 
 ery rhyme. Something in his eyes, a look she had 
 never seen there before, wiped the words from her lips. 
 She sat stock-still, looking at him in fascinated surprise. 
 
 "Betty, Betty!" he cried hoarsely, and clasping his 
 arms about her shoulders, he began kissing her fever- 
 ishly, with a sort of maddened abandon. He sought to 
 kiss her mouth, which his lips had never yet touched, 
 and of which, lying awake in the small hours of the 
 morning, he had thought often and often as a famish-
 
 90 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing man thinks of bread, or as a connoisseur of wine 
 thinks of a treasured bottle of Madeira of rare vintage. 
 He had thought to enjoy that first kiss leisurely, deli- 
 cately, as a man of culture and refined tastes enjoys* 
 a splendid painting or fine music; and now he was 
 struggling wildly to obtain the coveted privilege, as men 
 threatened with asphyxiation struggle for air. 
 
 "Betty, Betty," he panted, kissing her blindly, crazily, 
 without direction, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her 
 neck and shoulders through the lingerie waist under the 
 open coat, "Betty, Betty!" 
 
 At first she had passively submitted to his kisses, but 
 her passivity was not due to acquiescence, merely to 
 surprise. Then, twisting twirling, writhing, trying to 
 escape from his greedy mouth and his eager hands, she 
 managed to free herself from his embrace. She was 
 terrified into silence. She could not believe that this 
 madman, whose kisses bruised her flesh, whose arms 
 seemed like the coils of a serpent, could be her gentle 
 and reverent Dicky. She bounded to her feet ; he after 
 her. She stumbled away. 
 
 "Don't run away from me, Betty," he called out. "I 
 did not mean to frighten you. Don't run you'll hurt 
 yourself. Look out." 
 
 The warning came too late. The partially unearthed 
 loop of an enormous tree-bole caught her foot, and with 
 a little cry she pitched forward, tried to catch herself, 
 only to fall stumblingly. She uttered a sharp cry of 
 pain. Richard was at her side even before she had 
 extricated the injured member, and helped her rise. 
 She gave another cry of distress. 
 
 "I've twisted my ankle, Dicky, I cannot rise, I 
 cannot get up! What in all the world are we going 
 to do?" 
 
 "I guess you will have to let me get off the shoe
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 91 
 
 before the ankle begins to swell, and tie my handker- 
 chief around it as firmly as possible," he suggested. 
 
 "I couldn't think of it." 
 
 He entreated; she refused. The sun had gone down, 
 the afterglow was thin and meager. Darkness crept up 
 about them, making the landscape, brown barren fields, 
 tree boles and fantastic branches look weird and un- 
 natural, like one of Rackham's drawings. Shadows 
 stole forth from earth and upturned roots like hobgob- 
 lins; odd shapes crept toward them from the road and 
 mocked them; and the clouds turned to purple canopies 
 that threatened to fall upon them. 
 
 Finally she consented to allow him to carry her down 
 from the knoll to the road. 
 
 "I'll run back to the farmhouse we passed, Betty, 
 and get them to hitch up a wagon." 
 
 "Oh, Dicky, don't leave me, I'm frightened to 
 death." 
 
 "But, Betty, darling, we cannot stay here all night." 
 
 "The village isn't more than a mile away. I remem- 
 ber this part of the road perfectly. I can walk it." 
 
 "Dearest you cannot." 
 
 "I can." 
 
 She walked a few steps, only to collapse again, this 
 time without having uttered a sound. But her cheek 
 was wet with tears. 
 
 "And it's all my fault," he said, filled with self- 
 loathing and abasement. 
 
 "Mine, Dicky, for running away from your kisses." 
 She strove to speak merrily, as if sitting in the middle 
 of an unlighted country road, miles away from any- 
 where, with a sprained ankle as the result of a nervous 
 shock, were part of the ordinary program of her life. 
 
 "Dicky, I have an idea. Before it gets darker, try 
 to find me a strong limb of a tree with a fork formed
 
 92 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 by two diverging branches, and I will use it as a 
 crutch." 
 
 He complimented her upon her ingenuity, and ran 
 off, returning in a few moments with a miscellaneous 
 assortment of branches. He had come upon a lot of 
 dead timber heaped up against a stone hedge, and had 
 discovered half a dozen of possible crutches. They 
 selected the most suitable branch. Dicky tied his own 
 and Betty's handkerchiefs around the forked end as a 
 pillow. Then they began their journey. 
 
 It was laborious and painful traveling. Betty bore 
 her agony like a soldier, but when they finally reached 
 Stapleton, having walked a mile and taken three and 
 a half hours to do it in, Betty fainted dead away. At 
 the drug store to which Dick and a passerby carried her, 
 it was found that the ankle was so swollen that it was 
 necessary to cut the shoe in order to get it off. The 
 druggist's wife got her some warm milk to drink, while 
 the druggist, an old man in a dark blue velvet smoking 
 jacket, who looked as if he had stepped out of Thacke- 
 ray's pages, applied compresses of arnica and witch- 
 hazel. 
 
 "How soon can you get her home?" he asked. 
 
 "About an hour and a half," said Dicky. "I suppose 
 there is a garage here somewhere, so I can get an auto 
 or a taxi." 
 
 "I'll telephone for you," said the druggist, "and I'll 
 give you a bottle of this stuff to take with you. It's a 
 cold night," he shivered a little, "so I will get you a 
 closed vehicle, and I will make a fresh application just 
 before she leaves. Then, as soon as you get her home, 
 you want to apply either ice or hot-water compresses. 
 One is as good as the other, but whichever you apply, 
 you'll have to continue with through the night at inter- 
 vals of twenty minutes. If you do this, the foot will be
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 93 
 
 all right by to-morrow evening. Otherwise the young 
 lady will have a bad time of it, a bad time !" He shook 
 his head dolefully. 
 
 The instructions seemed easy enough. Mrs. Presbey 
 would probably arrange to take turns with Nora, the 
 Swedish Lorelei-haired Amazon, in tending Betty. Rich- 
 ard felt that the matter was adjusting itself more easily 
 than he had dared hope. 
 
 But on reaching home, Richard found a note from 
 Mrs. Presbey pinned to the old-fashioned hatstand, say- 
 ing that owing to the sudden illness of her only sister's 
 child, she was forced to remain away for the night. 
 She had instructed Nora to wait up until nine in case 
 he or Miss Garside wanted something to eat. If Nora 
 was asleep when he got in, he was to go to the icebox 
 and help himself. Then followed minute instructions 
 as to the location of the cold chicken, the egg salad in 
 cups, the coffee jelly with whipped cream and the iced 
 tea in a milk bottle. 
 
 The sheet of note paper fluttered to the floor back 
 of him as he sprang up the stairs, three steps at a time, 
 in his journey to the top floor. 
 
 "Nora," he cried, "Nora!" and began pounding upon 
 ;the Amazon's door. But the Amazon was emitting 
 Brobdinagian snores which proclaimed her safe from 
 intrusion, and Dick called and knocked in vain. The 
 snores continued their placid tenor at even intervals. 
 
 Sick at heart and a little frightened, Dick went heav- 
 ily downstairs, and told Betty what they "were up 
 against." 
 
 "Well," said Betty calmly, "there's nothing to be 
 done. You'll have to help me to my room, and I'll 
 make a fresh application of the arnica he gave us every 
 time I wake. To-morrow Mrs. Presbey will help me 
 out with the hot-water compresses."
 
 94 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Dick said nothing. He was diplomatic enough to 
 help Betty upstairs first, and then began to argue. 
 
 "You know what the old chap said, Betty," he re- 
 minded her. "You don't want to be laid up for weeks, 
 and risk having an inflammation of some sort, do you?" 
 
 "I guess I will have to." 
 
 "No, you won't. You are going to let me take care 
 of you this night." 
 
 "Impossible." 
 
 "No, dear, it's not impossible. You are going to un- 
 dress and get to bed, and after you are in bed, I'm com- 
 ing back to your room to apply the hot-water com- 
 presses." 
 
 "No, Dicky, you are not." 
 
 "Betty, why not?" 
 
 "It would be flying in the face of convention and 
 decency." 
 
 "Convention, yes, decency, no." 
 
 "Dicky, don't tease me." 
 
 "Betty, don't you trust me?" 
 
 He tried to catch her eye, but she averted her head 
 and began blowing into the fingers of her gloves as she 
 had a habit of doing to keep them from wrinkling. 
 
 "Betty, are you afraid of me?" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "Betty, answer me." 
 
 Still she did not reply. 
 
 "Betty, do you trust the man you have promised to 
 marry so little? You trust me enough to place your 
 entire life in my keeping, but you do not trust me 
 enough to allow me to remain in your room for one 
 night to play nurse?" 
 
 Still she maintained her singular silence, and stung 
 by her mute opposition more than by openly avowed 
 distrust, he continued excitedly:
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 95 
 
 "Is it because of what occurred this afternoon?" 
 
 She looked up at last, and in the blind look of fright 
 in her eyes he read his answer. Without a word he 
 rose, and walked to the door. 
 
 "Dicky, where are you going?" 
 
 "To ring up the New York Hospital and see if they 
 can send us a nurse for the night." 
 
 "But it's after eleven, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes. I doubt whether we can get someone from 
 there to-night. If not, I am going out to a nurse's home 
 in Fourteenth Street, where I went last year for Mrs. 
 Presbey. I cannot telephone, because I don't know the 
 exact address. But I can locate it easily by going there." 
 
 "Dicky, you are not going to leave me alone in the 
 house ?" 
 
 "Apparently you'll feel safer alone than with me 
 near you." 
 
 "Dick, don't go, please don't go. I'm afraid to be 
 left alone," she entreated. 
 
 He had spoken without looking at her. Now he 
 turned and faced her. He was very white, and his 
 anger and resentment now overflowed in such a cata- 
 ract of words that coherency of speech, even clarity of 
 enunciation were precluded. 
 
 "What an unutterable brute you must think me ! What 
 under the sun do you think me capable of? What have 
 I done that you should think so ill of me? Because I 
 kissed you with a little more ardor than usual this after- 
 noon, you jump at the conclusion that I'm not to be 
 trusted, that I'm some sort of an unmentionable cur 
 a cur, yes, that's what you evidently think me." 
 
 "Dicky, oh, Dicky, please don't go on like that." 
 
 "As if any halfways decent-minded man would think 
 of anything but alleviating the suffering of the woman 
 he loved when she is in pain."
 
 96 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Dicky, please " 
 
 "You cannot imagine I would have the poor taste to 
 make love to you while I am in your room caring for 
 your ankle. And even if there was nothing the mat- 
 ter with your ankle, if you were not ill, don't you sup- 
 pose you would be safe with me anywhere, at any time, 
 until I mean always " 
 
 He broke off, and she said conciliatorily, in her soft- 
 est, most ingratiating way : 
 
 "Yes, Dicky, of course, of course. It's very sweet of 
 you to offer to sit up with me, and if you are sure you 
 don't mind, I'll be glad to have you." 
 
 He came and took both her hands in his, and looked 
 searchingly into her eyes. A look of utter wretched- 
 ness had succeeded the blind look of fright. 
 
 "Please don't scold me any more," she said in a pit- 
 eous voice, "and don't leave me just now. I feel I 
 really feel ill." 
 
 She began to cry softly, and he sat down beside her. 
 
 "I'm cold," she sobbed, "I am so dreadfully cold." 
 She began to tremble violently with a nervous chill. He 
 brought her jacket to her, but she shook her head. 
 
 "Please get me my eiderdown flannel, instead." 
 
 He went to the closet in which she kept her clothes, 
 which was as large as a small room, and walked into it. 
 Her gowns and waists, neatly turned inside out, fra- 
 grant with the perfume of her own sweet, virginal 
 body, faced him in unimagined, immaculate intimacy. 
 A sense of bewilderment passed over him, that was im- 
 mediately swept away by a sense of ownership, of pos- 
 session. His imagination played him the trick of pre- 
 senting to him the episode in perspective, as if he had 
 stood in that sanctuary dozens of times before. 
 
 "It's quite near the door," said Betty's voice from 
 between chattering teeth.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 97 
 
 He found it, thrilling at touch of the garment, car- 
 ried it across the room, and wrapped it about her. But 
 even the warm wrapper lacked potency to check those 
 convulsive chills. 
 
 "Dicky," she whispered, "put your arms around me." 
 
 Obediently he encircled her with his strong arms, 
 and in a few moments the warmth of his body against 
 which she lay limp and flaccid like a broken flower, 
 quieted her. 
 
 "Dicky," she whispered, "I don't deserve your being 
 so sweet to me," and of her own accord she offered him 
 her lips, the lips which he had longed to kiss so often 
 and so passionately, and which, until that moment, she 
 had invariably refused him. Remembering the terror 
 with which he had inspired her that afternoon by his 
 unwonted warmth, he kissed her mouth very deli- 
 cately, very lightly, feeling, too, that more prolonged 
 kisses would be unfair to himself, would make the 
 night's adventure harder for himself than was neces- 
 sary. 
 
 Mercilessly he thrust into the background the emo- 
 tions which were arising in him. 
 
 "And now, Bossy Betty," he said, "you are going to 
 be bossed. You are to be in bed in fifteen minutes. 
 Then I am coming back with the gas cooker which I 
 will abstract from the kitchen, and the little copper tea- 
 kettle of which I will deplete the parlor. Then pre- 
 pare to be parboiled and tortured with water heated 
 beyond boiling point, as if you were a victim of the 
 Inquisition." 
 
 "Dicky I couldn't. I will just lie down on the Daven- 
 port, without undressing, you know?" 
 
 "Dearest, I thought we had settled that? You are 
 worn out. You must get to bed. I am afraid you will 
 be ill unless you get a sound night's rest."
 
 98 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Very well, Dicky." She spoke like a small child 
 that has been out-reasoned and out-argued. 
 
 "Good-night, my dear girl. When I get back here, 
 remember, I will not be your dear Dicky. You are to 
 address me as 'Nurse.' I will be highly professional, 
 and expect to be treated with the respect and submission 
 due my authoritative position." He bustled about in 
 imitation of the manner espoused by trained nurses. 
 
 In spite of Richard's heroic efforts to place the entire 
 episode on a humorous footing, it was a very white and 
 frightened looking Betty that sat up in bed as he came 
 back into the room. The sight of the sweet face of the 
 girl he loved, with her black curls falling about her 
 shoulders like a fountain of liquid ebony, her black eyes 
 looking out of the white face like twin mountain lakes 
 harassed by an impending storm, sent the forked light- 
 ning through him. But he was in full control of him- 
 self. Whatever suffering the unique and embarrassing 
 situation in which they found themselves might entail 
 upon himself, he was determined that for Betty the 
 night's adventure should present no disagreeable fea- 
 tures in retrospection. 
 
 Therefore, paying no heed to Betty's very apparent 
 nervousness, he tied a large bath towel about his lean 
 person, as if it were a nurse's apron, and in a falsetto 
 voice extolled the medicinal virtues of hot water, while 
 he busied himself with the gas cooker and the tea- 
 kettle. He was not very successful in creating a sem- 
 blance of jollity. There are many brands of humor, 
 and the rollicking, minstrel-show, freak brand was not 
 for Dicky to essay. But his intentions were good, and 
 his antics helped fill up awkward pauses. 
 
 When at last the crucial moment arrived and Dicky 
 stood before Betty's bed, hot, dripping compress in 
 hand, she extended her foot quite naturally. In spite
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 99 
 
 of the red, swollen ankle, it was such a white, beauti- 
 fully sculptured foot, with toes and instep as exquis- 
 itely modelled as any new-born infant's, that Dicky 
 forgot the part he was playing, and exclaimed : 
 
 "What a perfect little Trilby it is, Betty." 
 
 He slapped the hot compress over the ankle. She 
 shivered a little. 
 
 "Is it too hot?" 
 
 "No, it feels good, now it is on." 
 
 "And now, Betty," he had pulled the covers over her 
 foot and stood looking down upon her, "you had better 
 go asleep I'll watch the kettle boil and the clock wag 
 its tail, and when twenty minutes are up, I'll contrive 
 to apply a new compress without waking you. Good- 
 night." 
 
 "Good-night, Dicky." 
 
 He crossed the room and sat down beside the drop 
 light, about which he had built a semi-circular barricade 
 to shield Betty's eyes from the light. He had brought 
 the score of an opera with him to study while he kept 
 his vigil, but he found that he had brought with him 
 Tristan and Isolde instead of Lohengrin. 
 
 He opened the book at haphazard and chanced upon 
 the Liebestod. He was familiar with the opera, and 
 the perusal of the score invoked in him a poignant recol- 
 lection of the music. As his eye traversed the page, the 
 cold type of the score leaped into life, setting on fire 
 his musician's imagination. He experienced what may 
 be called an aural vision. He seemed to hear the synco- 
 pated passionate music, each bar of which was a heart- 
 beat, each phrase a pulsing of the senses. One by one the 
 voices of the orchestra became apparent to him. The mad 
 onslaught of the violins the circling music of the wood 
 instrument, and above the harmonious roar of the or- 
 chestra there rose triumphant the limpid and strong
 
 100 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 voice of the woman, and by fantastic trick of fancy, 
 amounting almost to a hallucination, it seemed to him 
 that the woman who was singing the wonderful music 
 thus passionately, the woman whose voice was a musical 
 apotheosis of sex was Betty white-faced, black-haired 
 Betty, in whose voice there was not the remotest sug- 
 gestion of sex ! 
 
 He tried to shake off the singular fantasy. He closed 
 the book and put it away. But the music continued to 
 ring in his ears continued to disturb him, to rouse him, 
 to titillate through him. 
 
 Then a keen sense of the actual situation came to 
 him. The woman he loved lay not two yards away 
 from him; it was midnight; they were alone in the 
 house, or as good as alone. He shuddered and trem- 
 bled, as with ague. This would never do. As soon as 
 Betty was asleep, he would get the score of Handel's 
 "Messiah" or Verdi's "Requiem Mass" to help him 
 keep his heart clean of unworthy thoughts through this 
 night at least. 
 
 "Dicky." 
 
 "Betty?" 
 
 "Dicky, darling, I am a selfish pig. I never once 
 thought of your hands. They're so sensitive to ex- 
 tremes of temperature. The hot water is sure to hurt 
 them." 
 
 "Don't worry about that, little girl. A little cold 
 cream will fix 'em up all right. Just go to sleep." 
 
 His temples throbbed, his blood burned in his veins 
 like a fever. He stretched out his hands, and laid them 
 upon the cold marble of the mantelpiece; but the marble 
 grew warm before his hands became cool. 
 
 "Dicky, dear!" 
 
 "Yes, Betty?" 
 
 "Dicky, dear, I've been horrid to you. I want to 
 apologize."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 101 
 
 "That's all right, Betty. No cause for an apology, 
 I'm sure." 
 
 "You are sure you're not angry with me?" 
 
 "Quite sure." 
 
 He placed his hands, cool at last, against his burn- 
 ing temples. He could feel the blood humming in his 
 pulses with an indefatigable persistence that was com- 
 municating dizziness to his brain. 
 
 "Dicky, dear!" 
 
 "Yes, Betty?" 
 
 "Dicky, dear if you're not angry with me, why didn't 
 you kiss me 'Good-night'? It never happened before, 
 you know." 
 
 "Chance, Betty." 
 
 If she had been a seasoned coquette she could not 
 have troubled him more cruelly. Great waves of an 
 intangible something, some wild-running sort of energy 
 seemed to traverse his brain. 
 
 "Dicky, dear, won't you kiss me 'Good-night' now? 
 I think I will be able to sleep if I'm sure you're not a 
 wee bit provoked." 
 
 The room seemed to gyrate before him. He made a 
 Herculean effort to steady his nerves, rose and walked 
 across the room. The words rose to his lips, "Betty, 
 I dare not kiss you, now"; but now that she had ac- 
 cepted as quite in place the unusual situation and was 
 trusting him so sublimely, the thought of admitting his 
 lack of self-control offended him. He rose to the height 
 of the heroism required of him. He stooped and kissed 
 her. 
 
 To cut off further conversation and temptation, he 
 continued : 
 
 "Betty, I will play you Schumann's 'Schlummerlied' 
 I will play it so softly that it will be your lullaby." 
 
 He went to the piano, and began playing. "Velvet 
 Fingers," the epithet bestowed upon Chopin by George
 
 102 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Sand, was the term Betty had applied to Richard, un- 
 conscious of the illustrious use made of the designation 
 a century ago until he told her of it. To-night Richard 
 played with velvet fingers, indeed. When he had finished 
 the lied, he found, on looking up, that Betty had fallen 
 asleep. 
 
 There ensued a half hour of exquisite torture. Rich- 
 ard did not wish to look at Betty asleep, and yet some 
 invisible chain seemed to drag him toward her. Her 
 lips had parted lightly; she was smiling; one white arm 
 lay above her head, half buried in the black billows of 
 her hair ; the other arm lay across her breast, accentuat- 
 ing the outlines of the glorious young bosom. 
 
 With the last bit of sanity that remained, Richard 
 recrossed the room, and sat down at the open window. 
 His torment increased, towered, became Gargantuan. 
 Phials of hostile poisons seemed to have entered his 
 veins, to be struggling with the ferocity of famished 
 beasts of prey maddened by sight of blood. Sinister 
 and black thoughts assailed him, crowded about him, 
 enveloped him; thoughts so infamous and abysmal that 
 even in that hour of madness, when every manly fiber 
 seemed relaxed and powerless to dam the tide of passion, 
 he shuddered to think that such iniquitous thoughts 
 could inhabit in him, shuddered as he would have shud- 
 dered on finding upon his body a leprous spot. 
 
 All his life, in a way, he had ignored sex. He had 
 supposed that when love came it would come decor- 
 ously, placidly, sweetly. He had taken the romantic, the 
 sentimental view of love. He had despised those who 
 regarded it in any other light. He had supposed that 
 he would always be the master of love, that he would 
 welcome it into his life only as a new chord on which to 
 play on a moonlight night. Yes, decidedly, he had con- 
 sidered love in its sentimental aspect only, and having
 
 "ONLY TO KISS HER! ONLY TO KISS HER!" HE WHISPERED TENSELY. p. 103
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 103 
 
 kept his imagination clear and his heart pure it seemed 
 some devilishly unmerited, unjust retribution of fate to 
 fling into his veins these myriad flaming cauldrons that 
 corroded and vitiated and burned. He no longer won- 
 dered that men, when love usurped the reins, became 
 capable of every infamy, of every excess. He himself 
 felt capable of he knew not what. "Only to kiss her, 
 only to kiss her," he whispered tensely. He understood 
 now why experienced men and women opposed the 
 living under one roof of engaged couples. Now, 
 too, he understood Mrs. Presbey's objection to his 
 bringing Betty to the house. But why, in heaven's name, 
 did they shift the burden of the objection upon the 
 shoulders of convention? Why cloak and disguise and 
 mask the truth? Why not say plainly that propinquity 
 breeds the fever of temptation, the miasma of seductive 
 thoughts, as nothing else can do? Was every conven- 
 tion hedging about the young grounded in some in- 
 violable law of nature? 
 
 He had longed for Europe, not merely for the sake 
 of a superior instructor, but for the sake of the stim- 
 ulus which Europe was supposed to supply. Yet what 
 stimulus could Europe offer comparable to this? And 
 he, fool of fools, green, silly untried fool that he had 
 been, had thought love a soft, inconsequential thing, a 
 little tiny thing to harness down in a wreath of forget- 
 me-nots and roses ! Love the sex-element he saw it 
 plainly now, was the one great stationary fact in life, 
 the one constant, unchangeable milestone, the motive 
 power, the fulcrum, the pivot, the hub. 
 
 How very plain this unreasoning, blind, driving force, 
 that had been unleashed within him, was making many 
 things? The flames in his blood had set fire to his 
 imagination. Protean, bizarre visions flashed past his 
 spirit eye with lightning rapidity. In his early adoles-
 
 104 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 cence, when the mystery of sound had first embraced 
 him with arms of enchantment, the Catholic Church, as 
 it existed in the Middle Ages, with lure of ritual and 
 glamour of mysticism, had thrown its spell upon him. 
 He had spent many a vapory hour on golden summer 
 days in reading of the customs and manners of bygone 
 days. He had conjured visions of monastery gardens, 
 made dim and cool as the monastery itself by the leafy 
 panoply of century-old hemlocks and oaks and beech, 
 where sober-faced monks, lean and gaunt and gray, had 
 taken somber half-hours of recreation at twilight. They 
 had led hard, laborious, lack-luster lives. Their days 
 had been days of toil and fasting, and their rest at 
 night had been broken by voluntary vigils and compul- 
 sory prayers. And not satisfied with the truceless gloom 
 shed over their lives by incessant toil and deliberate 
 hardships, they aggravated the somberness of their lives 
 by self-inflicted tortures. They did not consider that 
 the omnipresent flesh was sufficiently mortified by con- 
 stant denial. They voluntarily superimposed positive 
 pain upon negative discomfort, believing that they 
 thereby pleased God, and to compass divine benediction 
 they flagellated themselves with cruel whips which 
 lacerated and ate into their flesh. 
 
 Richard had never been able to comprehend these 
 flagellations. It seemed crude and raw and brutal to 
 him that men of cultured minds, of spotless lives, of 
 active charity should inflict upon themselves monstrous 
 tortures. Now, in a flash of insight, he understood that 
 although the world judges men by their actions, men 
 of probity judge themselves by their hidden thoughts 
 and unexpressed desires. He could now conceive how, 
 filled with shame and humiliation because of vagrant 
 yearnings of the flesh, they had embraced physical tor- 
 ture as a welcome means of cleansing themselves from
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 105 
 
 the pollution of poisonous thoughts. Or, perhaps, they 
 had lashed themselves from a purely human desire to 
 escape the greater pain, knowing that no external agony 
 could equal the inward torment. 
 
 Now also he could understand why the Roman Church 
 exacts celibacy of its priesthood. In demanding that, it 
 demands the supreme sacrifice. Poverty, labor, vigils 
 what are these as compared to the suppression of the 
 ultimate craving of the flesh, the supreme intoxication, 
 the final, incessant, crying need of humanity? 
 
 And yet, in spite of his suffering, Richard felt that for 
 no consideration would he have parted with it or with 
 the new knowledge, the new insight into life which the 
 awakening of the sex element had bestowed upon him. 
 "Ye have eyes and ye see not; ye have ears and ye hear 
 not;" That had been the case with him. That feeling 
 was the "Open Sesame" to the mystery underlying all 
 life. Now the veil that had shrouded life from him was 
 withdrawn. He told himself proudly that now there 
 was nothing he could not fathom or divine. A sixth 
 sense seemed to have been bestowed upon him. He lik- 
 ened himself to a colorblind man, who having sensed all 
 the manifold splendor and majesty of field and coppice 
 and stream as a gray etching, through some necromancy 
 of science receives the gift of color perception, and for 
 the first time apprehends the subtle, poignant joyousness 
 which color bestows upon the landscape. 
 
 He was intensely proud of the fire through which he 
 had passed, and of having come off so cleanly. He 
 became calmer. He was able to look at Betty now with- 
 out relapsing into the condition of an unreasoning brute. 
 He reflected that Betty was wholly untouched by a 
 change such as had occurred in him. It was the same 
 Betty who, thinking no evil, had asked him to kiss her 
 while in bed before falling asleep, and who had kissed
 
 106 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 him in the rustic summer-house at Penascapet at sun- 
 rise one morning. There had been no growth, no devel- 
 opment. This perplexed him. He did not wish her less 
 pure, but more mature. He remembered how she shrank 
 away from him whenever his hands became a trifle bold 
 in their wooing, how she froze whenever his kisses were 
 prolonged beyond the point which she thought seemly. 
 
 He felt that in justice to both himself and her, he 
 must make some effort to awaken her, but his horror 
 of offending her had so far made abortive every attempt 
 of his in this direction. His great hope was that after 
 marriage her awakening would come about by itself. 
 Whereas his former hopes had centered in a career, 
 they now centered in the thought of making Betty his 
 wife. His career would have to look out for itself. 
 
 The clock struck one. He started from his revery. It 
 was time for a new compress.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Mrs. Presbey did not return the next day, and Betty 
 was left with Nora the Amazon to attend to her. Nora's 
 heart was kind, but that circumstance did not make her 
 hands less clumsy, and Betty writhed in pain more than 
 once when the boiling compress was slapped roughly 
 upon the sore ankle. 
 
 However, Betty's optimism came well to the fore as 
 always. Her suffering was abundantly compensated for 
 by the testing of her Dicky. True, the accident had been 
 due to very singular behavior on his part, to which she 
 was unable to assign any explanation except such a one 
 as she most earnestly did not wish to consider. The 
 subsequent happenings of the night had made it sat- 
 isfactorily clear to her that her Dicky in no way shared 
 the strange appetites of men. Dicky was a law unto 
 himself. Nature had cast him into the mold of a 
 man, but had refrained from injecting the lower man 
 nature into that mold. Dicky was above certain mun- 
 dane emotions. Dicky had gloriously vindicated himself. 
 
 Dicky came home a little earlier than usual. He barely 
 touched the diced chicken on toast which Nora had pre- 
 pared in imitation of Mrs. Presbey's very delicious dish 
 of the same name, and when he ran up to Betty's room, 
 he found her tasting the messy-looking stuff very gin- 
 gerly. 
 
 "Don't eat that stuff, Betty," he implored; "Nora 
 must have seasoned it with sawdust and colored it with 
 
 107
 
 108 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 wash-blue. I am going to order a dinner to be sent 
 from the St. Denis or Mouquin's." 
 
 "Oh, no, don't do that," said Betty. "It would hurt 
 Nora's feelings so horribly, you know." 
 
 "Do you think Nora's sensibilities can be hurt?" 
 
 "Why not?" Betty retorted sturdily. "She is a human 
 being like you and me." 
 
 Dicky laughed. 
 
 "Excuse me," he said, "but I object strenuously to 
 your comparing either yourself or me to our kitchen 
 Amazon. Come, let's think up a menu." 
 
 "Dicky," said Betty with sweet seriousness, "do you 
 realize what an effort it must have been for Nora to get 
 up this dinner for us all by herself? She isn't a cook, 
 and she tried very hard to prepare a dinner just like 
 Mrs. Presbey's lovely Monday night dinners for us." 
 
 "Surely, you don't call that fricasseed dog's meat a 
 dinner, do you ?" 
 
 "I certainly do, and I intend to eat it. I wouldn't 
 hurt Nora's feelings for worlds." 
 
 "And this Land of Goshen what have we here? 
 As I live by bread a bouquet of soup celery and the 
 green ends of carrots and yes, it's parsley, if I may 
 believe my eyes." 
 
 "You shan't laugh at it, Dicky. She meant it so 
 kindly. She said, 'A little green do make the tray look 
 finer, Miss.' You are positively horrid, Dicky. I prize 
 Nora's bouquet of parsley and soup celery as much as 
 the roses you sent me. Yes, I do." 
 
 "Oh, Betty!" 
 
 "Don't look at me like that, Richard. Not quite as 
 much, my foolish, darling Dicky. How could I ? There, 
 don't frown. Of course I'd love a weed you brought 
 me better than diamonds and sapphires tendered by any- 
 one else. Now, are you content?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 109 
 
 "You sentimental little darling " 
 
 "It was sweet of you to send the roses, Dicky. Thank 
 you." 
 
 "Well, keep Nora's bouquet, Betty. Shall I press it 
 for you? Between Tennyson's 'Lotus-Eaters' or Shel- 
 ley's 'Sky-Lark'? Which?" 
 
 "Dicky, you have a corrupt mind. I never suspected 
 it before. No, you must not kiss me now. I am going 
 to eat this what-do-you-call-it?" 
 
 "Ragout de chien." 
 
 "Dicky, how absolutely abominable you can be. I 
 shall eat it. Did you eat yours ?" 
 
 "No, I didn't feel called upon to embrace martyrdom 
 just yet." 
 
 Betty's fork was poised in the air and was about to 
 descend upon the plate, when Dicky, with a quick ges- 
 ture, drew away the plate. Spreading a newspaper, he 
 prodded the toast with its layer of chicken from the 
 plate upon the paper with a knife, and then folded up 
 the paper. 
 
 "Now Nora's feelings won't be hurt," he said. "I'll 
 go for a walk later on and drop it into an ash barrel 
 where some marauding dog will find it and have a Lu- 
 cullian repast. Sweets to the sweet, and dogs to the 
 dog." 
 
 "Dicky, what is the matter with you to-night?" 
 
 "I'll tell you in a very little while. First of all. What 
 am I to order? Oyster cocktail?" 
 
 "Oyster cocktail? You don't mean to order a course 
 dinner ?" 
 
 "I sure do. I have programs, beg pardon, bills of 
 fare, from two restaurants in my pocket. Oyster cock- 
 tail? Or crab cocktail?" 
 
 "Dicky the Europe Fund. . . ." 
 
 "Bother the Europe Fund. Oyster cocktails for two.
 
 110 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 How about ochre consomme, or would you prefer onion 
 soup?" 
 
 "Onion soup? Horrors!" 
 
 "Ochre consomme, then Escargons or chicken liver 
 saute?" 
 
 "Dicky, dear, how can I eat all that when I've sat 
 still on the sofa all day." 
 
 "People who sit still all day must eat, nevertheless. 
 Escargons ?" 
 
 "Not for me." 
 
 "Chicken liver saute, then. And a nice, tender, juicy 
 tenderloin steak will suit us both, with baked artichokes 
 and fried egg plant. What desert ? Tortoni or chocolate 
 Charlotte Russe or French cream? Cream I see it in 
 your eyes. There, I'll telephone the order, and then 
 I'll tell you the great news." 
 
 Within five minutes he had telephoned and was back 
 in the room. He drew up a chair alongside of the 
 Davenport, on which Betty was lying, and settled him- 
 self close beside her as for a long talk. 
 
 "Now, Betty," he said tenderly, taking her hand in 
 his, "I have great news for you. Mr. Telfer was asked 
 to recommend a pianist to illustrate the music of various 
 composers at the Weekly Lectures given by the Musical 
 Progress League, and he recommended me. That means 
 fifteen dollars extra a week right into June, and that 
 in turn means, sweetheart, that we can get married." 
 
 He had expected her to exclaim joyously and perhaps 
 to demur perfunctorily. But he had expected to have 
 his way in the end. However, although her face had 
 brightened and her black eyes had lightened as they had 
 a way of doing when things went well with him, a 
 look of determined, flinty opposition such as he had 
 never seen in her usually passive face succeeded the 
 other look when he spoke of marriage.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 111 
 
 ''We mustn't think of getting married just yet." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "In the first place, Dicky, dear, there is your future 
 to be considered." 
 
 "I must decide about that." 
 
 "Not if you decide wrong." 
 
 "Betty, listen to me. If I had the means to devote 
 myself to music without foregoing you, I would do so. 
 As it is I must abandon my career. I cannot forego 
 you. I want to get married, Betty." 
 
 "How unreasonable you are, Dicky. We're as good as 
 married." 
 
 "Not quite." 
 
 "We are always together, Dicky, we live in the same 
 house, we eat our meals together, we work in the same 
 business. We could not be together more constantly 
 than we are." 
 
 "We are not always together, Betty. Think, dear, how 
 sweet it would be never to part for the night you asleep 
 in my arms." 
 
 She drew back, alarmed by the look in his eyes. It 
 was the same look that had made her run from him on 
 Sunday. The horrible suspicion flashed across her mind 
 that after all there might be more than an external re- 
 semblance between her Dicky and other men. Some of 
 the cruelly brutal things her mother had said to her 
 about men came rushing back. "All men are alike. 
 When they marry it is for one thing only." She flushed. 
 She looked dazed, helpless, she thrust the thought away 
 from her. It libelled her Dicky. He had never really 
 given her cause to suspect him of such depravity, and 
 with a little shiver of joy she remembered how tenderly 
 he had attended to her through the night. Passion, de- 
 sire, other men might make those lower instincts their 
 goal, but her Dicky was actuated by other motives.
 
 112 
 
 Surely, he had meant nothing beyond the actual meaning 
 conveyed by his words. 
 
 "We are always together, Dicky," she repeated help- 
 lessly. "Why should we marry? I suppose you 
 wouldn't allow me to go on supporting myself, and I 
 would hang about your neck like a millstone." 
 
 "Betty, dear, you are inventing obstacles." 
 
 She did not reply. She was lying among the sofa 
 pillows, and as she lay there under the uncertain gas 
 light, the sense of her fragile beauty came rushing over 
 him like the waters of an eddy. His suppressed 'craving 
 for her, the unspeakable torment through which he had 
 passed only the night before shook him to the very 
 marrow. Caution, prudence, reserve, the necessity of ob- 
 serving the utmost delicacy in dealing with her went 
 down in that whirlpool of desire like so many straws. 
 
 "Betty, Betty," he begged. "Betty, Betty, let me kiss 
 your lips; let me kiss you, only once, as I want to kiss 
 you!" 
 
 His arms, clasped her waist. She unclasped them 
 forcibly. His mouth approached hers. 
 
 "No, no," she cried in terror. "No, Richard, no." 
 
 "You offered me your mouth to kiss last night," he 
 said, his voice hoarse with passion. 
 
 "You were different then." 
 
 "I am always the same." 
 
 "No, no, you were different." 
 
 "I cloaked my feelings. I was the same. My feelings 
 for you never vary. Let me kiss your mouth." 
 
 "No, no, I don't know why I allowed you to do so 
 last night. I never allow anyone to kiss my mouth 
 even my mother never kissed it." 
 
 "I am your future husband. A husband has privi- 
 leges. . . ." 
 
 "Richard!"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 113 
 
 Her face was gray with horror, her eyes large and 
 lustrous with fear. Having brokeir the ice, Richard 
 plunged on in headlong, reckless haste. 
 
 "Betty I am mad for you quite mad. You have 
 promised to be my wife. I am able to offer you a com- 
 fortable home now, and you shall not keep me waiting 
 any longer." 
 
 All the purple and golden mists which had swathed her 
 love were rudely torn away. The fragrance, the dew- 
 iness, the ethereal loveliness of her love lay flawed and 
 shattered. 
 
 "Richard how can you say a thing of that sort to 
 me," she gasped. 
 
 "I would have preferred your understanding without 
 my being so plain. But you forced me to be blunt." 
 
 "I refuse to continue the conversation." 
 
 "Betty, we are to be man and wife." 
 
 "The more reason why you should respect me." 
 
 "Respect you! Good Heavens!" Richard strode up 
 and down, running his fingers nervously through his 
 hair. He had considered himself the luckiest of men in 
 the promise of Betty's hand, but here was a point in 
 which his Betty was not calculated to make him happy. 
 Here was the rift in the lute. "Respect you!" he re- 
 peated. "You don't suppose respecting you consists in 
 treating you as if you were a disembodied spirit, do 
 you?" 
 
 "I refuse to listen." 
 
 It occurred to him that she might be ignorant as 
 well as innocent. 
 
 "Betty," he demanded brusquely, "do you know the 
 meaning of love? I really wonder if you do." 
 
 "What you are trying to tell me about is not love. 
 It's oh, I cannot even say the poisonous word." 
 
 "Betty, dear," he said very patiently, sitting down
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 beside her again, "you must understand that in true 
 love there is a feeling very different from mere affec- 
 tion. There can be no love without passion, but there 
 can be passion without love. What I feel for you is 
 true love, since my affection was wholly yours before 
 you awakened in me " 
 
 "Don't say the horrible word again," she begged. "It's 
 odious." 
 
 " the deeper, more intense feeling," he said very 
 
 quietly. 
 
 "If you knew how this revolts me." 
 
 "Then, Betty, I am afraid you do not love me." 
 
 "I do, I do. I haven't a thought that is not for you. 
 I live only for you, Dicky. How can you say I do not 
 love you ?" 
 
 "I know you believe you do, darling. But do you? 
 The feeling you have for me differs quantitatively only 
 from what you have felt for others, your mother, girl- 
 friends. But love for the man you are going to marry 
 should differ qualitatively as well. You must realize 
 this, Betty." 
 
 "You cannot imagine, Dicky, that I no, really, I 
 cannot continue this conversation." 
 
 "Sweetheart, if you cannot bear to discuss the most 
 vital matter in life with me how could you bear to 
 think of marrying me?" 
 
 The look of fright in her eyes deepened to panic. She 
 said nothing. He continued. 
 
 "If you have not this strange, wonderful, intense 
 feeling that craves the most intimate relationship pos- 
 sible between human beings between lovers you do 
 not love me." 
 
 "Oh, Richard, I I do not believe any woman can be 
 go low, so vulgar, as to feel like that." 
 
 "Low? Vulgar?" He stared at her. Then he rose
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 115 
 
 and resumed walking the floor. "Good Heavens," he 
 said, "is that the way it seems to you?" There fell a 
 brief pause. "Betty," he said, speaking with such a 
 degree of tenderness as, tender though he habitually was 
 with her, she had never known him to employ, "the only 
 feeling that renders the marriage relation pure and en- 
 nobles it is passion, passion allied to the affection which 
 needs no explaining. To approach marriage in any 
 other way makes it unchaste and unhallowed. Nature 
 has meant this to be so, or she would not have implanted 
 the strong, primordial sex-instinct in men and women." 
 
 She had not met his eyes once while he was speaking, 
 and he could see that his words had filled her with re- 
 sentment and hostility. 
 
 "Won't you try at least, Betty, to understand my 
 viewpoint?" he pleaded. 
 
 "Certainly not. I would despise myself if I could 
 look at the matter in any other light. Certain things 
 are so unspeakable that self-respecting women do not 
 attempt to understand them." 
 
 "Betty you are a child, an unawakened child; your 
 more mature faculties are still dormant. If I were 
 to try to marry you now, I would be a monster. I 
 would be violating your innocence." 
 
 He paused. A horrible fear swept over him. 
 
 "It is possible," he said, speaking with profound emo- 
 tion, "that what I suggested before is quite true. You 
 may not love me. If you loved me, it seems to me that 
 I would have the po\ver to stimulate in you the feelings 
 which you have stimulated in me. I will not again 
 urge you to let our marriage take place until I am sure 
 of this point until I know that I have awakened a 
 corresponding feeling in you." 
 
 "Then we will never be married," she said com- 
 posedly.
 
 116 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Her quiet, deliberate, unshakable obstinacy angered 
 him unreasonably. 
 
 "Now that I know how you feel about marriage," he 
 said with the iciness of passion arrested and reversed, 
 "I can only marvel at the singularity of the mental 
 processes that led you to make the rash promise of 
 marrying me. Frankly, why did you engage yourself 
 to me?" 
 
 "Do you mean," she faltered, "that now that you 
 know how I feel about things what I think you wish 
 to break our engagement?" 
 
 Inexperienced as Richard was with women, intuition 
 told him that no mature woman would have asked that 
 question. Her pride would have impelled her to seek 
 more devious means of ascertaining the man's wishes. 
 Realizing the significance of the candid question, Rich- 
 ard felt his anger melt away. 
 
 "No, little Betty," he said gently, "I do not wish to 
 break our engagement. I love you so well that I will 
 wait, wait indefinitely in the hope that you will awaken 
 some day to your woman's heritage. But tell me, Betty 
 I am really curious to know how did you have the 
 courage to engage yourself to me to anyone?" 
 
 Betty did not reply. Her face was a chalky white 
 as she sat with lowered eyes, her hands crossed above 
 her bosom, as if to restrain the beating of her heart. 
 The characteristic gesture told of her inward turmoil. 
 Suddenly he comprehended. 
 
 "Betty, darling, did you think that yourself and I 
 were alike in that we differed from all other men and 
 women?" 
 
 In response, she nodded her head, without speaking. 
 To facilitate resting her head against the pillows, she 
 had not pinned up her hair, and the black curls bobbed 
 up and down and around the snowy neck as she nodded.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 117 
 
 At the moment she looked not like a young woman of 
 eighteen, but like a girl of thirteen or fourteen. A di- 
 vine tenderness welled up in him, a tenderness so acute 
 and intense and reverent that it swept passion before it 
 and scattered it to the winds. 
 
 "And now that you know, darling, that what I feel for 
 you is due to my red corpuscled blood, you don't want 
 to throw me over?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Betty, that means, doesn't it, that you believe the 
 other feeling may come some day?" 
 
 "No, Richard, no." 
 
 Her tone conveyed repugnance and contempt. Per- 
 plexed, he stared at her for a few moments, then he 
 put his arm about her, and drew her gently to his 
 breast. 
 
 With a little sob she surrendered herself to his em- 
 brace. Her eyes were closed, but the eyelids fluttered 
 lightly, like the wings of a bird not wholly at rest. A 
 dull, smoldering resentment began to burn in him be- 
 cause of this unforeseen barrier which was interposing 
 itself between them. He realized that he lacked the 
 experience to tear this barrier away, and this realiza- 
 tion was a new source of bitterness and rancor. He 
 suspected that if he had led what is commonly described 
 as a man's life, if he had had experience with women, 
 he might not now be so utterly at loss as to the path 
 to pursue in making Betty look at "things" in a normal 
 way. He was paying the penalty of a pure life. Dis- 
 gust, and a wholesome, invincible respect for his own 
 body, which in its reverent intensity was almost Greek 
 in character, had made him keep to the narrow path of 
 clean living. Richard had a very deep-rooted respect 
 for nature which was all the stronger because he was 
 unconscious of it, and this unquestioning respect for
 
 118 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 nature and her methods made Betty's attitude all the 
 more inexplicable to him. Moreover, it seemed hor- 
 ribly unfair that this attitude on the part of the girl he 
 loved should have been his portion, because he had 
 lived so cleanly in every respect. 
 
 For once his ready sympathy with others failed him. 
 He did not guess how turbulent were the thoughts that 
 inhabited the head resting placidly upon his shoulder. 
 Betty was trying to reconstruct her little world, which 
 had come crashing about her ears. Her idol had clay 
 feet. He was not divine merely human in Betty's 
 cruel young eyes a little less than human. But her na- 
 tive optimism would not allow her to sink into a slough 
 of despond. She reminded herself that for some time 
 she must have suspected this subconsciously more than 
 half, since she had so vociferously assured herself over 
 and over again that he was unlike other men in this 
 one respect as in all others, and vociferous asseveration 
 of one's belief is usually the index of faith at low ebb. 
 At any rate, if Dicky shared the curious desires of man- 
 kind at large, she was quite certain that there was no 
 man alive who did not, and so, according to her 
 woman's logic, her Dicky, since he was Dicky, still 
 stood head and shoulders above everyone else. 
 
 She supposed that she would have to endure her hus- 
 band's embrace as other women had endured theirs be- 
 fore her. Women, it seemed, were foredoomed to be 
 martyrs and sufferers in one way or another. At least 
 that is the way it appeared to her. 
 
 Roughly speaking, women, as regards virtue, are of 
 three kinds. In the first class belongs the woman who 
 is irremediably a courtesan, and who, no matter what 
 her station and income, continues a courtesan because 
 impropriety has a charm for her and irregularity pre- 
 sents a glamour. In the second class belongs the woman
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 119 
 
 who has remained virtuous because temptation either 
 did not come her way, or was not great enough to lure 
 her. This class comprises by far the greatest number 
 of women, and their virtue is more or less a matter of 
 accident; being normal, they might have been tempted, 
 being tempted, they might have been led astray. The 
 reason that the largest number of women in this class 
 keep to the narrow, thorny path of virtue is that the 
 path, after all, is not so very narrow and thorny in the 
 case of the average woman. Then, too, the man in 
 question may have been a bungler in the arts of se- 
 duction. 
 
 In the third class belongs the woman who is temper- 
 amentally incapable of going wrong, because she does 
 not know the meaning of passion. The consummation 
 of marriage is to her a concession made to man's lower 
 nature, and no consideration under the sun can impel 
 her to leave the path of virtue, except under the sanc- 
 tion of the law. For marriage to her is a divergence 
 from virtue, celibacy the only state of purity possible. 
 She marries for a host of reasons, never for the natu- 
 ral one. The status which marriage confers upon the 
 woman, a betterment of herself in a financial way, af- 
 fection, a romantic attachment, because it is the cus- 
 tom, curiosity these are the lode-stones that drag her 
 into the matrimonial net. After marriage, she remains 
 passively hostile to her husband, and passes through 
 life half-awake, half-asleep, not infrequently bearing 
 children, yet remaining a virgin in feeling and compli- 
 menting herself upon the fact as upon a colossal achieve- 
 ment in saintliness. Her coldness vindicates her in her 
 own eyes for her lapse into the married state. Medi-< 
 cal science calls such women defective. 
 
 Betty belonged to the third class. The brutal cyni- 
 cism of her mother had fortified her attitude. She felt
 
 120 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 certain that she alone was right. She would either have 
 to lose Richard, his companionship and affection, or 
 submit to the inevitable. There was no help for it. 
 She would have to make the best of things. And as 
 there is no time like the present, she decided to make 
 the burnt offering at once. 
 
 "Dicky !" 
 
 "Yes, Betty?" 
 
 "Dick, I'll do as you wish, dear. If you wish to get 
 married soon I am willing." 
 
 He looked at her in amazement. For one moment he 
 thought that she had changed her viewpoint. Then he 
 understood. 
 
 "You mean, without loving me, you are willing to 
 yield yourself in marriage?" 
 
 "I mean," she corrected him gently, "that I love you 
 so well that I am willing to submit to what is unavoid- 
 able." 
 
 She spoke proudly. The beautiful face had lost its 
 childish expression of sweet obstinacy. The pride of 
 having conquered herself, of having partially renounced 
 her own criterion, gave her an almost regal air, and 
 the tragic element of the episode made her appear for 
 the first time as a thorough, full-fledged woman. Some 
 quality about her awed him. He was filled with won- 
 der that, though appearing so wholly a woman, she 
 was not entirely a woman. At the moment it was 
 not so much pity for her, or tenderness for her 
 child nature, or love or sympathy, but pride and 
 self-respect. 
 
 "It's not to be thought of. I would not think of 
 marrying you after all you have said, until your atti- 
 tude in regard to marriage is changed materially." 
 
 "I think you should be satisfied with the change that 
 has already occurred," she said.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 121 
 
 "But I'm not," he assured her. If he dared say to 
 her what he thought that, loving her as he did, he 
 would not, could not, degrade her by marrying her un- 
 less she fully responded to his love. He essayed to 
 formulate the thought in language which would not be 
 offensive to her, but did not succeed. He could not be 
 raw with her. He was astonished to find himself thus 
 frank with himself. He was amazed furthermore at 
 the sudden knowledge of things vouchsafed him, and not 
 the least wonder of it all was that his vocabulary was 
 enlarging to keep pace with the enlargement of his 
 horizon. 
 
 "Betty," he said, "can't you try to look at it in this 
 light? It is nature's way of providing for the perpetu- 
 ation of the race." 
 
 "Richard, are we never to leave the subject?" 
 
 "But, dearest children surely you care. . .?" 
 
 "When we marry, I shall expect to assume all the 
 duties of a wife." 
 
 Her inflexibility, her frigidity, was beginning to wear 
 him out. He experienced a feeling akin to physical 
 fatigue. But his passion did not abate. He felt des- 
 perate. 
 
 "Betty," he said, "isn't there some older woman whom 
 you could speak to about this? There are things I 
 cannot say to you. . . ." 
 
 "Certainly not," said Betty. "I would allow no one 
 to discuss such matters with me except yourself. Re- 
 member, Dick, I have told you I will marry you when- 
 ever you wish. More than that you cannot expect of 
 me, for surely you cannot demand that I pretend to 
 emotions of which I am totally ignorant." 
 
 Richard became intensely excited. 
 
 "Surely you are too honest to pretend to anything that 
 is not true," he said. "It's like cheating at cards."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Very well, I am glad you do not wish me to cheat 
 you," Betty retorted. 
 
 "Darling," he whispered desperately, "I want to teach 
 you to look forward to marriage as a completion, a 
 culmination of our spiritual unity." 
 
 "I consider ourselves bound in a spiritual unity so 
 inviolable that it requires neither culmination nor com- 
 pletion." 
 
 He caught his breath. He had played his trump card 
 without avail. He sat and looked at her, broodingly. 
 How wonderfully beautiful she was! 
 
 He noted her many perfections, as if they had been 
 new to him ; the arched red mouth, with its upward dip, 
 the mass of black hair falling about the alabaster col- 
 umn of throat. Her skin exerted the chief fascination 
 upon Richard, because it was not dusky, like the aver- 
 age brunette's, but a dazzling, pearly white. At the 
 temples the skin was so fine and delicate that it re- 
 vealed a network of blue veins. 
 
 He thought of Charmides, and he no longer won- 
 dered at the mad ecstasy that drove him to shower kisses 
 upon the statue of the goddess. Mad thoughts bubbled 
 through his brain. In the studio of a sculptor whom 
 he had met through Telfer's, he had seen the life-size 
 statue of a New York society woman. It pleased Rich- 
 ard to think that if he possessed such a statue of Betty 
 he would take an infinite joy in folding in his arms 
 the cold marble, in madly kissing the unresponsive pre- 
 sentment of arms and shoulders and bosom. 
 
 There was something of the feminine in Richard 
 Pryce, as there is in all artists. He was capable of 
 running through as many moods in an hour, or a min- 
 ute, as the most capricious of women. Suddenly the 
 sight of Betty, so cold and self-possessed, made him 
 furious. He began pounding up and down the room,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 123 
 
 flinging question after question at her, and accusations 
 as well. He accused her of being willfully cold to tor- 
 ment him. In the next breath, wholly unconscious of 
 the inconsistency, he told her that she was cheating 
 herself of the greatest joy which life holds in store for 
 anyone. Betty had seen him furious upon minor provo- 
 cations before, and fortunately had sufficient self-com- 
 mand to refrain from retorting. She knew that in half 
 an hour he would be on his knees begging her pardon 
 for words which he remembered were cruel but which 
 themselves he would not be able to recall by that time. 
 
 She propped herself up comfortably on her pillows, 
 and allowed the emotional tornado to sweep over her. 
 Just then the anticlimax occurred. Nora entered the 
 room, without knocking, and announced that a man 
 from a restaurant was below, with dinner. What was 
 she to do? Bring it upstairs? 
 
 Richard laughed hoarsely. 
 
 "You may eat it yourself for all I care," he said, and 
 strode from the room, downstairs and out of the house.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "Hello, my dear chap; glad to see you yes, I'm just 
 back from Europe!" 
 
 A tall, square-shouldered, singularly handsome and 
 debonair man shook hands effusively with Richard, but 
 the effusiveness of his greeting was tinged with a sur- 
 face veneer and deliberate grace of manner which hall- 
 marked the debonair gentleman as being of the stage. 
 His enunciation was that of a Chumley; his manner 
 Chesterfieldian. 
 
 Betty, sitting on the gallery that ran lengthwise of 
 the store, where she superintended the mail order girls 
 on mornings when business was dull in her own de- 
 partment, looked curiously over the railing to get an- 
 other glimpse of the individual who had caused the 
 general hubbub, for the girls had all become pleasantly 
 flustered, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. Now that the 
 roseate and golden mists of the Arcadian landscape had 
 been dissipated, she was ready once more to take a 
 normal interest in the rest of the world, not that she 
 loved her Dick less, but the quality of blind admira- 
 tion which had made a unique thing of her love had 
 died the day she made the cruel discovery that her 
 Dicky was only human. And as her passion still slum- 
 bered, if, indeed, it was ever to be aroused, thre was no 
 other feeling to take the place of her dead, blind wor- 
 ship of him. 
 
 Having completed the amenities of greeting, the hand- 
 some gentleman inquired of Richard:
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 125 
 
 "Mr. Telfer not down yet? It is almost eleven. 
 Really, I shall have to discharge him." 
 
 The girls giggled. 
 
 "Ain't he the jollier?" stage-whispered Miss Connors 
 to Miss Sharpe, a lackadaisical Polish-American Jewess 
 who prided herself upon her "elegant" vocabulary and 
 ''ladylike" manners. Miss Sharpe's name had originally 
 been Schapirowitz, but, at the early age of nine, her 
 astute Jewish mind, further polished and sharpened by 
 an American public school, perceived the very obvious 
 advantages of Americanizing her name, which she had 
 proceeded to do by easy stages. The cycle of changes 
 read, "Schapirowitz, Schapiro, Shapiro, Shap, Shaap, 
 Sharp, Sharpe an evolution as astounding sociologi- 
 cally as the physiological changes recounted by Profes- 
 sor Haeckel as occurring to the human embryo. 
 
 "He is handsomer than ever," said Miss Sharpe. 
 
 These varying expressions of sincere admiration left 
 Betty as much in the dark as before as to the debonair 
 gentleman's identity. He was insolently handsome; his 
 personality was striking enough to be termed aggressive ; 
 all in all it was impossible to ignore him, but much as 
 she wanted to know who he was, she was too proud to 
 ask either of the two girls. Betty was slightly old- 
 fashioned. She thought it bad taste to evince an in- 
 terest in any man. Just then she heard Richard, in 
 answering, address the stranger as "Mr. Telfer." Then 
 Betty knew that the radiant personage was Mr. Telfer's 
 actor-son, who had been summering abroad, and who 
 was cast in the titular role of a play called "The Sun- 
 God," heralded as "the most spectacular show ever pro- 
 duced on any stage." 
 
 Archibald Telfer followed Richard across the floor 
 to Richard's private office, a dignity to which Richard 
 had attained since his promotion. Half across the
 
 126 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 main room he halted and turned. Betty could not sup- 
 press a smile as she realized how neatly he had com- 
 puted the exact distance which would allow him to 
 glance up to the gallery without being forced to assume 
 an ungraceful attitude or to crane his neck unduly. 
 
 "I perceive," he said, bowing with mock gallantry, 
 "that the gallery goddesses are still there." His eye 
 fell upon Betty. For a moment he stood silent. The 
 insolent, handsome face did not move a muscle. The 
 only indication of having seen her which he gave 
 was a barely perceptible kindling of the eyes. Then he 
 raised his hat once more bowing pointedly to Betty 
 only. 
 
 "I salute the new goddess," he said; "when she de- 
 scends from the clouds, I hope to be introduced." 
 
 Turning on his heel, he prodded Richard's waistline 
 with his stick, and said: 
 
 "Come on, Pryce, I want a little talk with you." 
 
 Richard, looking anything but pleased, walked into 
 his office, holding open the door for "the old man's 
 son" with very poor grace. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, I wish they would leave the door 
 open so we could see him. Ain't he the one grand 
 thing?" sighed Miss Connors. "In a world of ugly 
 men, ain't it a sight for sore eyes to see the handsomest 
 creature that ever walked on two pins without having 
 to pay fifty cents for a back seat in the peanut gallery 
 for the privolidge? Ain't it now, honist?" 
 
 Miss Sharpe smiled indulgently. Her liquid, almond- 
 shaped eyes had deepened in intensity, telling plainly as 
 words that she too was not unimpressed by Archie Tel- 
 fer's pleasing exterior. 
 
 "I know a girl," pursued Miss Connors, "who goes 
 to the show he plays in year after year onct a week in 
 purfurence to seeing other plays just so she can look
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 him over. That girl's in love with him. Yes, ma'am," 
 she concluded, "she's plum crazy about him." 
 
 "Really?" inquired Miss Sharpe, weighing the little 
 word down with as much emphasis as it could possibly 
 carry. Her irony was too fine to check Miss Connor's 
 flow of eloquence now she had a subject worthy of it. 
 
 "Sure thing daffy, that's what she is about him. 
 But he is a good-looker, and no mistake. Why, merely 
 to see him sit down is an edoocation in Delsheart move- 
 ments." 
 
 She paused, rolled and gummed into a wrapper the 
 sheet of music she was handling. Then she turned to 
 Betty. Had Miss Garside ever seen him sit down? 
 
 Betty had not, as she told Miss Connors frigidly. 
 Then, chin in air, she walked away, furious with her- 
 self for having betrayed even a superficial interest in 
 anyone who interested these two vulgarians. 
 
 Archie Telfer, meanwhile, had performed the rite 
 which Miss Connors described as a part of the "Dels- 
 heartian edoocation." 
 
 "Well, Richard," he exclaimed with much show of 
 good-fellowship, "I haven't seen the governor yet. Hale 
 and hearty as always, I suppose? Wonderful constitu- 
 tion for a man of his age. Yes, I'm just off the boat." 
 
 "What boat did you come on?" asked Richard, in 
 order to say something. Archie Telfer always irritated 
 him unaccountably. 
 
 "The Proteus." 
 
 "The Proteus? Why, she got in three days ago," ex- 
 claimed Richard in surprise. 
 
 Archie Telfer sounded the laugh which a groveling 
 press in appraising the value of each individual per- 
 fection of the "Adonis of the Stage" had valued at a 
 hundred dollars a week. Richard became more and 
 more angry. He could not have said why.
 
 18 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "There was no reason under the sun, my dear boy," 
 said Archie Telfer, the soft, resonant laugh having died 
 away, "why I should inflict myself upon the poor man 
 the moment I landed because he happens to be my 
 father particularly in view of my marital entangle- 
 ments." 
 
 "What?" exclaimed Richard in surprise. "Did you 
 get married this summer?" 
 
 "Softly, softly, my good fellow, not yet. But no less 
 than three ladies are at present aspiring to the advan- 
 tage of my hand and name." 
 
 Richard looked uncomfortable. He suspected some 
 unsavory story. 
 
 Archie Telfer pulled out a cigarette case of lizard 
 skin with monogram mounted in diamonds. He offered 
 Richard a cigarette. Richard declined. Archie, in light- 
 ing his, performed . the fifty-dollar-a-week parcel of 
 his attractions. Archie Telfer always used his own 
 blend of cigarettes a small package of which was given 
 free to each matinee idolater at every hundredth matinee 
 during the season. Miss Connors, smelling the aro- 
 matic weed, almost burst into tears because she had 
 not see him light it. 
 
 Archie continued suavely: "Of course, such an im- 
 broglio would be impossible for you, who are a Joseph. 
 But I am not a Joseph. I love the ladies, God bless 
 'em. And they love me. God bless 'em again." 
 
 He inhaled the smoke luxuriously and sat regarding 
 Richard with a satisfied air. Like many another man 
 of lax morality, Archie Telfer's manner was quite im- 
 peccable. Richard, looking at him, felt a sudden tight- 
 ening of the heart strings. This man was lionized wher- 
 ever he went. Although his person was groomed to a 
 finish, and his manner overlaid with a myriad of petty 
 artifices, he was still a man of intense masculinity, while
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 129 
 
 in Richard, in spite of the mad jets of passion which 
 flared and burned in him, the woman-nature was always 
 more or less apparent, as perhaps it is in all men in 
 whom the artistic sense predominates. The streak of 
 femininity in him came to the surface now. He felt 
 a singular desire to take Archie Telfer into his confi- 
 dence. Reason, saner than emotion, cautioned him to 
 beware of the man and whispered that spiritual com- 
 munion with him must needs bring spiritual pollution. 
 
 Archie was everything that Richard was not. He was 
 frankly a debauchee, glorying in and boastful of his 
 career as a libertine. He was not overscrupulous in 
 money matters. He regarded his art merely as a liveli- 
 hood and played up his personal beauty whenever and 
 wherever he could. A moment ago Richard had hated 
 him, but his tortured and harrowed nerves, like a 
 woman's, swung now to the opposite extreme. He felt 
 a sudden fascination for the man, not in spite of his 
 wickedness, but because of it. Richard felt vaguely 
 that Archie, known as a pastmaster of every seductive 
 art, might be able to help him and advise him how to 
 overcome Betty's strange frame of mind. The thought, 
 now he had formulated it, seemed odious to Richard. 
 He shrank with something akin to shame from himself 
 who would have discussed Betty's purity with this man. 
 Nevertheless the longing to wrest from Archie the se- 
 cret of his success with women remained. Richard was 
 beginning to feel his inability to awaken Betty as a per- 
 sonal shortcoming, and this longing made Richard more 
 placable in conversation than it was his custom with 
 Archie Telfer. 
 
 "I am not a Joseph," resumed Archie Telfer. "I can 
 tell you, my dear Pryce, there is no pleasure on earth 
 comparable to the pursuit of a woman. Don't look 
 shocked, my dear boy. No man is wholly a man until
 
 130 
 
 he has become an infallible judge of the eternal femi- 
 nine. To be that means to be master of the situation, 
 and the pleasures, after the chase has been successfully 
 completed and the game run to cover, are not to be 
 despised." 
 
 He smoked in silence. Richard told himself that 
 even to enter into a conversation with this man who 
 spoke thus lightly of women was despicable. But a 
 blind, unreasoning force seemed to push him on. 
 
 "Tell me, Archie," he said, leaning forward and speak- 
 ing in an undertone, as if ashamed of his own words, 
 "did you ever fail with a woman?" 
 
 The fifty-dollar-a-week laugh again enriched the un- 
 appreciative air. 
 
 "My dear boy, that question is indeed a prodigious 
 compliment." 
 
 "But did you?" 
 
 "I wish to goodness I had failed with at least one 
 of the present trio," sighed Archie. "Think of it my 
 dear boy three breach of promise suits in the courts 
 against me, at one time. But what a lot of free adver- 
 tising 'The Sun-God' will get out of it, eh?" 
 
 "Defending the suits will cost you a pretty penny, 
 won't it?" 
 
 "I may marry one of the three at the last moment 
 in order to make the other two suits impossible. I tell 
 you, my dear chap, this three-ring circus will get me a 
 full-page write-up in every enterprising Sunday paper 
 in town. The seat sale starts next Monday two months 
 in advance of the opening night, and they have four 
 paper baskets of mail orders in the box office even now. 
 Think what the seat sale will be after the story of my 
 triplicate of would-be wives gets into the papers. On 
 the whole I do not regret my triangular conquest." 
 
 "All three this summer?" Richard hated himself for
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 131 
 
 feeling something vaguely approaching envy. The mas- 
 culine element in him was in abeyance at the moment, 
 the feminine was in the ascendant. He experienced 
 the anomalous emotion of whole-heartedly regretting 
 the clean life he had led, not for the sake of pleasure 
 foregone but of wisdom ungathered. 
 
 "All three," Archie replied, inhaling the smoke from 
 his cigarette with huge satisfaction. "Tell me, Richard, 
 you don't look up to the mark. Like Hamlet, you ap- 
 pear to be in a morbid frame of mind. 'Man contents 
 me not no, nor woman either, though by your smiles 
 you seem to say so.' You are making a mistake, my 
 boy, in wasting your life in interpreting all too rigidly 
 the meaning of celibacy. Take it from one who has 
 never regretted his misspent youth. The only way to 
 live is to enjoy, to enjoy fastidiously and moderately, 
 day by day, night by night, week by week. 'Wine, 
 women and laughter' old Martin Luther's all-embrac- 
 ing doctrine of life is the sum of every sane man's 
 philosophy." 
 
 "Isn't there a line in Shakespeare," Richard asked in- 
 nocently, which runs, 'The devil can cite Scripture for 
 his purpose'? Poor old Martin Luther, to be thus 
 abused." 
 
 Archie Telfer laughed. 
 
 "And there was good old Samuel Johnson," he said. 
 "You remember, don't you, what he said to David Gar- 
 rick? 'Nay, nay, Davie, I'll come no more behind your 
 scenes, for the white bosoms and silk stockings of your 
 actresses excite my amorous propensities.' " 
 
 Richard sat stonily silent. He regretted having en- 
 tered into this conversation, but his suffering had cor- 
 roded the marrow of his moral resistance. He hated 
 himself for it, but he wanted to hear more of this man's 
 blatant immorality.
 
 132 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "What's the matter, Pryce?" asked Archie. "I've 
 never seen you so down in the mouth. I'm no fortune- 
 teller, but I'll hazard one guess. You're in love, and 
 your inamorata does not return your passion. Am I 
 right?" 
 
 "I am in love," Richard replied. His voice grew 
 husky at the mere thought of Betty. Until now he had 
 confided the agony which had been his daily portion for 
 the past months to no one. Now that his reticence had 
 suffered the first breach, he was ready to pour himself 
 out to the first chance listener. He would have voiced 
 his lamentations to a statue. 
 
 "I'm crazily, idiotically, in love," Richard continued. 
 /'I never imagined it would be like this. It's just hell, 
 that's what it is, and yet I wouldn't part with the feeling 
 for worlds." 
 
 "Did you try to win her or did you ask her to marry 
 you?" 
 
 Richard flushed. 
 
 "Naturally, I asked her to marry me," he said. 
 
 "I beg your pardon. I might have known it. Of 
 course you belong to the type of man who, because of a 
 fleeting infatuation, finds it incumbent to offer to sup- 
 port the woman, who inspires it, for life." 
 
 Richard frowned. He wished to retort, but his mind, 
 all jangled and out of tune with suppressed passion, 
 was no match at the moment for the worldly-wise, 
 gracefully philosophical mind of Archie Telfer. 
 
 "How foolish you are, Richard," Archie continued, 
 "to take yourself so seriously. Do you suppose a nor- 
 mal man falls in love only once in a lifetime? Roman- 
 tic love, pah! there is no such thing! I assure you, 
 as a man gains in experience, the chase is the principal 
 feature. At times I prolong it purposely one drinks 
 a cocktail slowly at times when one's appetite is low.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 133 
 
 Come, my dear fellow, you haven't told me yet what the 
 trouble is. Doesn't she reciprocate your ahem love?" 
 
 Again a tocsin of warning sounded somewhere inside 
 of Richard's brain. But his nerves were demoralized 
 to the degree reached by a horse when, from fear of 
 fire, it leaps directly into the flames. 
 
 "She has promised to marry me," he said, as warily 
 as he could. 
 
 "Marriage and love are not synonymous." 
 
 "She loves me." 
 
 "Then what's wrong ? Who, by the way, is the "lady ?" 
 
 "Never mind who she is." 
 
 Archie Telfer looked hard at Richard and under- 
 stood. He laughed. 
 
 "The new gallery goddess," he said. 
 
 "Don't call her that." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 "She takes my position as chief clerk and pianist." 
 
 "Very well. I'll call her your divinity instead of 
 goddess. And now that her identity is established, I 
 think I can diagnose the trouble. A perambulating ice- 
 berg, eh?" 
 
 "I don't care for the expression." 
 
 "Come, come, my dear boy, cultivate a sense of hu- 
 mor. It helps one over many rough bumps, even the 
 bumps of an iceberg." 
 
 Richard bit his lip. This served him right, he thought 
 bitterly, for broaching the subject of his love to this 
 roue. It was insufferable that Archie should suspect 
 Betty's identity. 
 
 "No woman is really cold," said Archie. "I dare say 
 she is merely a consummate little hypocrite." 
 
 "She is not a hypocrite," Richard retorted hotly. "She 
 is the sweetest and purest girl imaginable. She is so 
 pure that she cannot even comprehend passion." Even
 
 134 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 to defend Betty to this man was to pollute her and the 
 sacred albeit normal love he felt for her. 
 
 Archie Telfer once more sounded the famous fifty- 
 dollar-a-week laugh. 
 
 "My dear boy," he said, "the whole trouble lies with 
 you. Man is the player, woman the instrument, as a 
 clever writer once remarked. Your passion has swept 
 you off your feet. Even icebergs can be made to melt, 
 though whether at a thousand or two Celcius or Fahren- 
 heit I cannot say. But the feat of thawing a cold 
 woman does not lie in the actual temperature of the 
 man's love so much as in the judicious, pyrotechnical 
 display he makes of it." 
 
 "What a disgusting materialist you are!" 
 
 "Thanks, I am. I glory in being just that. I can 
 parallel my last remark by an example in acting. Poor 
 actors declare they feel every emotion they portray. 
 The clever actor never permits himself to feel while 
 acting. With him acting is a matter of intelligence, 
 warmed and tinctured by the memory of restrained feel- 
 ings, not by feelings themselves." 
 
 "You haven't any more heart than a stone." 
 
 "Quite true. But now I will prove to you that I, ma- 
 terialist or sensualist, whichever you called me, am 
 more controlled than yourself. I can win any woman 
 by an infallible method, while you can not. Whether 
 in love with her or not, I control my real emotions so 
 admirably that I impress her merely with the delicacy 
 of love, not with its grossness." 
 
 "In other words, you merely act as if you were on 
 the stage." 
 
 "If you like, call it that. At any rate, I never offend 
 a woman by too openly displaying my emotions." 
 
 Richard rose from his chair and strode excitedly
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 135' 
 
 through the room. He ran his fingers through his hair 
 nervously again and again. 
 
 "I wonder if it was that," he said suddenly, speaking 
 to himself rather than to Archie. "I wonder if it was 
 that." 
 
 "Look here, Pryce, I would like to ask you a ques- 
 tion. Are you still a Joseph, or in the interim since I 
 last saw you, have you perchance lost your virtue?" 
 
 Richard crimsoned angrily. 
 
 "Your question is outrageous," he said. "I have told 
 you I do not know how many times that to me purity 
 is as essential in a man as in a woman. There is no 
 reason why a man should go scot free for committing 
 the offense which brands a woman as a pariah." 
 
 "Hear! Hear!" Archie held his cigarette between 
 his lips, and having freed his hand from its incum- 
 brance, applauded vigorously. Flushing, Richard sat 
 down and stared at Archie sullenly. 
 
 "My dear fellow," Archie continued, "if I could only 
 bring you to realize how ridiculous and untenable is 
 your position. If you intended running as simple a 
 mechanism as a steam launch, you would first try to 
 gain a little experience of its contraptions. Yet you 
 intend plunging headlong into matrimony. It is reck- 
 less, Richard, really reckless !" 
 
 Richard stared at the other in mute disapproval. His 
 signal lack of poise, due to the demoralized condition 
 of his nervous system, made him utterly incapable of 
 coping with the brilliant though shallow sophistry of 
 this Adonis of the stage. 
 
 "Look here, Pryce," Archie went on, "I have an in- 
 vitation to go out of town on a twenty- four hours' 
 cruise down the bay on a private yacht. I know the 
 chap who invited me well enough to ask to bring a
 
 136 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 friend. Will you come? It's a stag-party but there 
 will be ladies, and they will all be good-lookers." 
 
 Richard looked at the other uncomprehendingly. 
 
 "What in thunder do you mean ?" he asked. "A stag- 
 party and ladies?" 
 
 "Yes, Simple Simon, just so. The married men are 
 not bringing their marriage licenses, their wedding rings 
 or their wives." 
 
 Richard rose, white to the lips. 
 
 "You hound," he said. "If you weren't the old man's 
 son I'd throw you out." 
 
 Archie Telfer merely laughed. The sonorous, beau- 
 tiful timbred laugh echoed and re-echoed through the 
 long, narrow main floor. He laughed twice the length 
 of the period prescribed by the fifty-dollar-a-week 
 gauge. The gallery goddesses raised their eyes in mute 
 ecstasy. 
 
 Having artistically rounded out that classic laugh, 
 Archie rose. 
 
 "I bear you no ill-will, Pryce," he said. "Lunatics 
 should be treated compassionately. I will even do you 
 a good turn. I'll give you an object lesson in love- 
 making. Introduce me to your divinity, and I'll lay 
 you a wager of five ponies that I'll contrive a way of 
 thawing her." 
 
 "You cur," said Richard, between clenched teeth. 
 
 Archie Telfer rose, smiling. 
 
 "What an ungracious little boy," he said in an indul- 
 gent tone, as if addressing a child. Then, aggrievedly: 
 "I am a man of honor, Richard. I never encroach 
 on another man's preserves, especially when I have 
 so many more rabbits than he within my own com- 
 pound." 
 
 He opened the door. 
 
 "Since you refuse to introduce me," he said, "I will
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 137 
 
 introduce myself. You had better stop pouting and 
 come out and watch me." 
 
 Betty had come down from the gallery and had 
 seated herself at the piano. Beside her, on the bench, 
 lay several sheets of new music, which she had brought 
 with her to play for herself before playing them for 
 prospective purchasers. She was running her fingers 
 over the piano, trying this scale and that, to limber up 
 her fingers before essaying the difficult music before 
 her. It was program music a sonata entitled "Good 
 Friday," and as she played the austerely beautiful open- 
 ing bar and broke into the first theme, vibrant with re- 
 ligious fervor, Richard, standing behind Archie Telfer, 
 thrilled to the finger tips with reverent love for the girl 
 who had promised to be his wife. She looked very 
 lovely sitting there in the somber half-light of the 
 cavernous long store, under the one electric light which 
 she had turned on to light the music she was reading. 
 Her mourning heightened her pallor and helped weave 
 the illusive vision that she was a religious devotee. For 
 a moment Richard forgot Archie Telfer. Then he re- 
 membered him overwhelmingly. 
 
 The Adonis of the Stage was attitudinizing shame- 
 lessly. He held his hat in his hand, above his stick. 
 The handsome head was bowed, as if in unconscious 
 reverence. The bright dark eyes gazed meditatively at 
 the young girl, their very expression denoting a kindly 
 veneration. It was a piece of superb acting, and Rich- 
 ard, knowing the man was rotten to the core, felt 
 hatred boiling* up in himself. At the moment Richard 
 harked back for untold generations. He became the 
 primitive man the cave-man, the man who knew no 
 rule save that of club and spear and fang. He could 
 have committed murder at the moment, had a weapon 
 been at hand.
 
 138 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Betty stopped playing. Blinded by the light, and 
 seeing the figure of a man at her side, she mistook 
 Archie for a customer. 
 
 Rising, she asked: "Can I do anything for you?" 
 
 "You are very kind," said Archie in his resonant act- 
 ing voice. No one who had ever heard that voice and 
 that tone, "the ideal love-making voice," according to 
 Archie's press-agent, ever forgot it. Betty started. 
 
 "I have asked Richard to introduce me, and he, sel- 
 fish dog, has refused. So I am forced to introduce my- 
 self. I am Archibald Telfer." 
 
 "Oh, indeed !" 
 
 Never in all her life had Betty felt quite so foolish. 
 Being a young girl and human, she could not help being 
 somewhat flurried at thus suddenly seeing the beau 
 ideal of matinee girldom at close range, standing before 
 her in a position denoting humble admiration. 
 
 "I think Richard was a little afraid that I would 
 continue with you a conversation I had begun with 
 him." 
 
 Betty laughed helplessly. Archie Telfer was a type 
 of man she had never met before, and his very pres- 
 ence made her vaguely uneasy. Certainly he was good 
 to look at, and his pulsing baritone was the most musi- 
 cal speaking voice she had ever heard. But he made 
 her uneasy. She felt an instinctive distrust of him. 
 
 "I was telling Richard," Archie continued, nothing 
 daunted by her diffidence, "that some day when I have 
 time perhaps next summer I shall give a series of; 
 lectures under the title, 'Advice to the Inept Lovelorn/ 
 
 You see, Miss " he stopped, looked at Betty softly 
 
 and caressingly, and his voice was enticingly tender, a$ 
 he said after a brief pause : 
 
 "You haven't handed me your card in return fot 
 mine."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 139 
 
 "My name is Garside," said Betty stiffly. 
 
 "You see, Miss Garside, I honestly believe that many 
 a capital chap has failed to win the woman he loves 
 because his wooing was so clumsy." 
 
 "I suppose that is true," Betty conceded. 
 
 "And many a woman has failed to capture the man 
 she loved because she was a careless fisherwoman." 
 
 "Wouldn't it be nicer to assume that the man is al- 
 ways the captor?" Betty was alarmed at the sound of 
 her own voice, and at the temerity she displayed in 
 taking an active part in the conversation. She was 
 dimly aware also that Miss Sharpe and Miss Connors 
 must be craning their necks in envious curiosity. 
 
 "Not at all. To realize how much prettier it is to 
 assume that the woman is the captor and not the cap- 
 tive, you must try to visualize an allegorical painting 
 showing both phases, and done, let us say, in Alma 
 Tadema or Burne- Jones style. Picture, then, the fol- 
 lowing : A man kneeling before a woman, he bound in 
 garlands made of violets and roses, sweet and effective 
 symbols of the feminine daintiness and charm that be- 
 witches man. The reverse picture is not as pleasing. 
 'A man leading a woman loaded down with heavy chains 
 of jeweled gold, emblems of the heavy, clodhopper 
 means the average man resorts to in courtship in order 
 to cover up his own meager intellectual and personal 
 charms." 
 
 Betty was struck by his cleverness, but her uneasiness 
 increased. He was so big and handsome and mascu- 
 line. She wished to think of something to reply, of 
 some clever answer to make, and yet she realized that 
 it would be wiser to terminate the conversation at once. 
 She found herself fancying that, to a girl whose affec- 
 tions were not engaged elsewhere, Archie Telfer might 
 become enormously dangerous.
 
 140 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Besides," Archie Telfer continued, "if we happen to 
 be disciples of Bernard Shaw, we must believe with 
 him that woman is the pursuer, man the pursued." 
 
 "That is perfectly odious," said Betty, not hiding her 
 disgust. 
 
 "I suppose the thought put that baldly does sound 
 offensive," Archie said, speaking in a voice light and 
 crisp as thistledown. "At any rate, I am going to give 
 my lectures serious thought." 
 
 "They will attract large audiences," said Betty. 
 
 "That, of course, will be a new experience for me." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," Betty said, laughing. Suddenly 
 she felt at ease with him, and for the first time she 
 looked him squarely between the eyes. Decidedly he 
 was handsome, quite overwhelmingly, aggressively hand- 
 some. 
 
 "If we believe the comic operas, there are as many 
 different kinds of kisses as there are species of bac- 
 teria. But no one has as yet thought of scientifically 
 classifying them. That shall be my task." 
 
 "I do not see how you can do it," said Betty. 
 
 "Well, you see, I'm an expert, not merely on paper 
 or on the stage." 
 
 Betty blushed. Archie Telfer tucked the smile occa- 
 sioned by Betty's blush into one corner of his mouth, 
 where it was all but invisible, and continued in the same 
 strain. 
 
 "And then there are glances. An adept can express 
 so much in a glance. Do you sing, Miss Garside ?" 
 
 "A little," Betty answered, wondering at the question. 
 
 "Well, then, you know that in singing, as in elocu- 
 tion, we must learn to modulate the voice, to get com- 
 plete control of it. In acting we must learn facial con- 
 trol as well as vocal control, and the expert actor refines 
 on this as much as he pleases and can."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 141 
 
 "I see." 
 
 "Now the average lover knows how to control his 
 voice. Everyday life teaches him that. But does he 
 know how to make his glances a vehicle of expression ?" 
 
 "Some men do, don't they?" 
 
 "Some, but only a few. There are seven kinds of 
 glances." 
 
 "Seven?" 
 
 "The glance of greeting, the glance offensive, the 
 glance provocative, the glance of challenge, the glance 
 affectionate, the glance caressing, the glance posses- 
 sive." 
 
 "Goodness, that's very interesting." Betty was in- 
 finitely entertained and guileless enough to show it. 
 
 "Now let me see whether you can guess which is 
 which." 
 
 He glanced cursorily at Betty, lifting his hat. 
 
 "The glance of greeting," he said. 
 
 It was so obviously that that Betty, to pay him back 
 for his tripping her before, said: 
 
 "I thought it was the glance provocative." 
 
 "Ah, no, you didn't." He quickly changed his atti- 
 tude and regarded her with an air so impertinent that 
 she longed to box his ears. He was very clever, to be 
 sure! 
 
 In quick succession he illustrated the various glances, 
 all except the glance caressing, throwing so much hu- 
 mor into his acting that Betty laughed heartily more 
 than once. Then he said: 
 
 "The glance caressing I dare not illustrate with your- 
 self as the objective, because Richard is within arm's 
 length. Richard," he called, "where are you? Come 
 here, you unamiable scamp, and perceive that I have 
 not yet kidnapped Miss Garside." 
 
 The "unamiable dog" was bending over a newly
 
 142 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Opened box of music, and was sorting it. He growled 
 out an unintelligible answer, and went on with hi 
 work. 
 
 Archie Telfer laughed. 
 
 "I would classify kisses in the same way only there 
 are not seven or fifty-seven, but at least seventy-seven 
 different varieties of kisses." 
 
 "Seventy-seven?" Betty asked incredulously. "Dp 
 enumerate them." 
 
 "No, no, not with that volcano back of me ready to 
 envelop me in brimstone and ashes at the least intima- 
 tion of anything out of the ordinary. I simply dare 
 not." 
 
 Betty hated herself for laughing. Richard's ears, 
 which alone were visible, as he was stooping over the 
 box, were a bright pink. She wanted to call out, "Dicky, 
 dear, come here ; you are missing a lot of fun," or some 
 other simple, everyday, commonplace little thing that 
 would establish their footing in Archie Telfer's eyes. 
 But she couldn't. She was not yet sufficiently at ease 
 in the effulgent presence of Archie Telfer. She turned 
 to him. She meant to reprove him, and thoroughly be- 
 lieved she was doing it, when she asked: 
 
 "Are you really going to illustrate the seventy-seven 
 varieties of kisses on the stage, when you cannot illus- 
 trate them in private?" 
 
 Archie Telfer came a step nearer to Betty, and be- 
 stowed upon her the glance sixth in order as enumer- 
 ated by himself, the glance which before he had pro- 
 fessed not to illustrate because of fear of Richard. He 
 allowed his eyes to linger and to caress, and then, in the 
 softest of tones, he said: 
 
 "We can sometimes explain things when a lot of 
 folks are present which are dangerous to speak about 
 when we are alone. Besides, while I could illustrate
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 143 
 
 the glances by myself, I need some one to receive my 
 illustrations of the seventy-seven varieties." 
 
 Betty blushed furiously, and was furious with her- 
 self for blushing, furious also for having made the 
 absurd remark which afforded Archie Telfer the op- 
 portunity of being impertinent. She wanted to rebuke 
 him, but did not know how. 
 
 Archie Telfer meanwhile had tucked his stick under 
 his arm in approved stage fashion, and was drawing a 
 card from a silver-cornered leather cardcase. 
 
 "I'll be grateful to you for seeing my father gets 
 this," he said, handing her the card. Betty had risen, 
 with the intention of placing the same on Mr'. Telfer's 
 desk in his private room. Archie Telfer began to walk 
 toward the door, while he continued to speak. Betty, 
 willy-nilly, was forced to walk along in order to hear 
 what he said. Archie threw Richard, fuming and red, 
 a killing look of triumph as Betty, wholly unconscious 
 of the little comedy weaving itself about her, walked 
 along at Archie's side. 
 
 "I really don't know whether I am right in troubling 
 you," he said. "You're my father's private secretary, 
 aren't you?" he asked, although he knew perfectly well 
 she was not. 
 
 "Mr. Telfer's secretary is away for a week," Betty 
 replied, "and I am trying to write the few letters that 
 go out from Mr. Telfer's private office for him on the 
 machine, so, in a fashion, I suppose I may describe my- 
 self as acting secretary." 
 
 "You succeed, of course?" 
 
 "Your father is indulgent enough to say I do." 
 
 Archie Telfer glanced at her. He was quick at divin- 
 ing character. He liked her aristocratic way of carry- 
 ing herself, and the pure, well-modeled profile, with its 
 mass of black hair, the tiny tendrils climbing 1 away from
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ebony billows. He liked her gentle way of speaking 
 and her indifferent manner. 
 
 He was just a little tired of women with tempera- 
 ment. He had no idea of engaging in a serious flirtation 
 with this slim, dark-eyed, dark-haired girl, but he im- 
 agined that it would be pleasant and soothing, a great 
 relief from his troubles, to chat occasionally with this 
 suave creature in whom the eternal feminine was so 
 well kept in the background, in which it seemed a mere 
 external quality, and in no way a perpetual challenge, 
 as in so many women, to his own masculinity. 
 
 To make her speak, he inquired : 
 
 "What do you do here as a rule?" 
 
 "Oh, I play new music, songs, dances, sonatas, and 
 old music, too, for that matter, for prospective pur- 
 chasers." Then swiftly, quoting from the firm's adver- 
 tising booklet, she added : "A purchase of five dollars 
 entitles purchaser to have one of Telfer's expert pianists 
 play any desired selection for the period of a half- 
 hour; a purchase of ten dollars entitles purchaser to 
 have one of Telfer's expert pianists play any desired 
 selection for the period of an hour; and a purchase of 
 twenty-five dollars entitles purchaser to have one of 
 Telfer's expert pianists call at purchaser's residence to 
 play any desired selection for any length of time." 
 
 "A very easy way, I should say, of getting a delight- 
 ful young lady to call on one," Archie retorted, laughing. 
 
 Betty did not know whether to take this as an imper- 
 tinence or not. Wisely, she decided to ignore the sally. 
 Certainly, Mr. Telfer's son presented undreamed of con- 
 versational vistas. But he worried her subtly. She felt 
 very much as a paralyzed man feels at whose feet a 
 cannon fire-cracker has suddenly fallen, and of which it 
 is impossible to say whether it is lighted or not. 
 
 "If you are a musician," Archie Telfer continued
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 145 
 
 easily, "it will interest you to know that we had several 
 celebrities of the musical world aboard the steamer. 
 Caruso, Sembrich, Direktor Markheim of the Metro- 
 politan Opera. Has he been here yet?" 
 
 "No that is I don't know. I have never seen him." 
 
 "You would have been told by some one that it was 
 he. He and my esteemed parent are great cronies. 
 Father thinks Markheim couldn't run the opera com- 
 pany without him and his advice. And Markheim is 
 just as fat as my father. Their mutual affliction of being 
 overweights further cements their friendship. Wait till 
 you see them ambling through the store side by side. 
 There won't be room left on either side of them for a 
 sheet of paper. Then there was Earlcote, Stanley Earl- 
 cote." 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "Who is You don't mean to say you have never 
 
 heard of Stanley Earlcote, the most picturesque per- 
 sonality of the twentieth century?" 
 
 "I confess my ignorance with shame." 
 
 "Well, if reports are to be credited, he is or was 
 the most wonderful pianist that ever lived." 
 
 "Is, or was?" queried Betty. "You speak as if he 
 were dead." 
 
 "Worse than dead disabled by being trampled upon 
 by the pet elephant of the Gaekwar of Hajaputani, 
 which had broken away from his mahout. Earlcote 
 had spent three years in India at the Court of the Gaek- 
 war, and during those three years all personages of 
 consequence that heard him, from the Viceroy of India 
 to the Crown Prince of Germany, vied with each other 
 in trumpeting his fame through Europe, so that his 
 return to civilized parts was looked forward to with 
 hysterical excitement in musical circles. A week be- 
 fore his projected return the accident happened. The
 
 146 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 pet elephant trampled upon Earlcote, injuring his spine, 
 mutilating his hands, making the career to which he 
 had looked forward to, and which would have been a 
 career of unexampled triumph, impossible." 
 
 Archie Telfer made a rhetorical pause. 
 
 "How horrible," exclaimed Betty. 
 
 "The Gaekwar, heartbroken by the accident which 
 had overtaken his favorite, loaded him down with gifts 
 of Oriental splendor and richness. Stanley Earlcote 
 is fabulously wealthy, and it is said that he owes his 
 tremendous fortune to the Gaekwar, who, among other 
 .treasures, presented him with the Kasi-nook." 
 
 "And what is the Kasi-nook?" Betty inquired. 
 
 '"The Kasi-nook is the largest and most beautiful 
 black opal in existence. Earlcote wears it continually 
 as a watch-charm. A superstition attaches to the gem." 
 
 "Does it bring bad luck?" 
 
 "It is said to. This is the verse all the papers printed 
 at the time the Gaekwar presented Earlcote with the 
 gem, some four years ago: 
 
 "Honestly come by 
 
 Fortune and joy 
 And health it will buy. 
 Dishonestly come by 
 
 Health, wealth and joy, 
 It will surely destroy." 
 
 "What an extraordinary story. Is he an Englishman 
 or an American?" 
 
 "An American Bostonian. However, there is a ru- 
 mor extant that his mother was a descendant of one 
 of the famous New Orleans octoroons, the women who 
 were famous for their beauty and infamous in charac- 
 ter, and who flourished in the old quarter in New Or- 
 leans for generations before the Civil War."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 147 
 
 Betty's face expressed scornful disdain. 
 
 "Of course this is merely a rumor," Archie Telfer 
 continued easily. "The papers, of course, have avidly 
 seized upon the story of his doubtful antecedents. If 
 it is true that Earlcote has negro blood in his veins, it 
 would explain his marvelously temperamental playing." 
 
 "You have heard him play?" 
 
 "No, but I have read volumes about it. While on 
 board several ladies begged him to play, but he refused, 
 pleading that he endured agonies after playing. A few 
 days later a concert was given to aid some steerage 
 passengers who were sufferers from a flood. Earlcote 
 was again asked to play, and again refused. One of 
 the coal barons was on board, and commissioned some 
 ladies to tell Earlcote that he offered to contribute ten 
 thousand dollars to the fund they were raising, if Earl- 
 cote would consent to play Chopin's two line prelude." 
 
 "Did he play it?" 
 
 "No, he refused again." 
 
 "He cannot be very charitable," Betty said sternly. 
 "Surely, if he is able to play at all, the pain he suffers 
 in consequence cannot be so intense as to warrant a 
 refusal of that sort." 
 
 Archie Telfer laughed. 
 
 "You haven't heard all. Earlcote's refusal was 
 tendered in a way no king could have bettered. He 
 wrote out a check for twenty thousand dollars and 
 handed that to the two ladies." 
 
 "What an extraordinary man ! How does he look ? 
 Does he show his mixed blood?" 
 
 "He is not as dark as a Spaniard or a Mexican, but 
 his eyes have a strange fire. As to his l^oks well, 
 should you ever meet him, you had better be careful; 
 you might fall in love with him." 
 
 Betty drew back startled. The introduction of pointed
 
 148 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 remarks into an impersonal talk was a conversational 
 phase for which her limited experience with men had 
 not prepared her. Her eyes looked troubled. Archie 
 said blandly : 
 
 "He is so very, very ugly, you know and it is oppo- 
 sites that attract." 
 
 The troubled look in Betty's eyes deepened. She was 
 not clever in talk with strangers, and she did not know 
 how to reply to Archie Telfer. 
 
 "Besides, Miss Garside," he continued suavely, "it is 
 a well-known fact that extreme ugliness, grotesque ugli- 
 ness, can exert a great fascination." 
 
 "It would never fascinate me," said Betty. "I love 
 beauty. I know, of course, that the modern ideal of art 
 is to portray character in painting and sculpture instead 
 of classical beauty, but in that respect I am hopelessly 
 old-fashioned and out of date, for I love beauty." 
 
 "An Adonis, then, is more to your taste than a Cali- 
 ban?" 
 
 Betty was about to reply in the affirmative when 
 she remembered that Archie's cognomen was the Adonis 
 of the Stage. Her lips closed and the color in her 
 cheek deepened. Never in all her life had she felt so 
 uncomfortable. As has been said before, she was not 
 clever in conversation dreamers usually lack the acute 
 sense of timeliness that makes for conversational 
 prowess, but she felt blindly that she must make some 
 retort. 
 
 "In sculpture, by all means." 
 
 "In flesh and blood?" 
 
 This was intolerable of him. She replied, showing 
 some spirit: 
 
 "I prefer some defect good-looking men, they tell 
 me, are unbelievably conceited." She flushed a little, 
 having sped her arrow.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 149 
 
 Archie Telfer laughed. He was a good sportsman, 
 and could take a blow without losing his temper. 
 
 "I'll have to tell Richard that," he said slyly. "Do 
 you think it will please him?" 
 
 So Archie Telfer knew ! Betty heaved a sigh of re- 
 lief. She felt as if the name "Richard" could conjure 
 away all impending ill. 
 
 "Why not?" she asked, laughing. "Dicky's nose isn't 
 quite straight. I love him for it." 
 
 "Contradictory, like all women," sighed Archie, "and 
 not ashamed to tell one man that you love another." 
 
 "Not merely not ashamed, but proud," Betty retorted, 
 chin in air. 
 
 Archie put out his hand and Betty extended hers. 
 
 "I envy Richard," declared Archie enviously. His 
 face was the mirror of every manly virtue as he added : 
 
 "What wouldn't I give to have a sweet, pure little 
 girl like you love me?" 
 
 "Unless your press agent invents all the stories one 
 reads," Betty said, laughing, "there is no dearth of little 
 girls for you to choose from." 
 
 "My press agent," Archie retorted gracefully, "is at 
 times an unconscionable liar." He shook his head sadly. 
 "Sometimes, again, he tells the truth. He will soon 
 print an extravagant story of three women who are 
 quarreling about the privilege of becoming my wife." 
 
 "Oh !" Betty was reduced to a monosyllable. 
 
 Archie Telfer simulated embarrassment, as, with 
 downcast eyes, he poked his stick at the door, for they 
 had reached the front of the store by this time, and 
 were standing in full view of the street. 
 
 "A woman as sweet and pure as yourself, Miss Gar- 
 side," he said, "is unable to comprehend the machina- 
 tions to which some women will descend. You must 
 believe me when I tell you that never, never did I make
 
 150 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 love to any one of those three women, and yet each one 
 claims that I asked her to marry me. Why, Miss Gar- 
 side," Archie Telfer walked back a few steps, and sit- 
 ting down on one of the small tables on which was 
 displayed new sheet music, gracefully beat a tattoo with 
 his stick against a comely small foot encased in faultless 
 patent leather, "I never made love to them any more 
 than I am making love to you just now ! And yet they 
 claim that I wanted to marry them. As if I would be 
 likely to care for flirting and love-making!" He sighed 
 deeply, as if saddened by the turpitude of womankind. 
 "Think of the love-making / have got to get through 
 with on the stage eight times a week through the season, 
 and then ask yourself whether I would care to make 
 love and flirt off the stage as well." 
 
 Betty laughed. Innocent as she was, she was not 
 simple enough to be duped by Archie's lachrymose man- 
 ner. She was infinitely entertained, and her amusement 
 had a double edge, for she was amused both by the man 
 and by the actor. 
 
 Archie gracefully withdrew from the table on which 
 he had been sitting. 
 
 "I almost feel," he said, "like disappointing all three 
 by going off and marrying someone else some sweet 
 little girl, you know." 
 
 His glances conveyed very plainly which sweet little 
 girl he had in view for the distinction to be conferred. 
 It was impossible to be angry with such colossal impu- 
 dence. Betty laughed, and holding up the card he had 
 given her before, she concluded : 
 
 "I will see your father receives this as soon as he 
 gets in." 
 
 Turning, without giving him a chance to say more, 
 she walked to the rear of the store, and after placing 
 the card on Mr. Telfer's desk, entered Richard's private 
 office.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 151 
 
 A curious weakness of humanity makes the recipient 
 of a compliment, although realizing the insincerity of 
 the compliment, feel buoyant and satisfied with the 
 world in general. Betty, in spite of the fact that she 
 was in love with her Richard, was no exception to the 
 general rule. 
 
 "Oh, Dicky," she said, "isn't he handsome?" 
 
 Richard did not look up from his desk. 
 
 "And what a wonderful speaking voice he has." 
 
 No answer, but the papers on Dicky's desk were in 
 wild, fluttering commotion. 
 
 "And Dicky, how gracefully he expressed himself." 
 
 Richard's right hand plowed its remorseless way 
 through his hair. He rose, and stood confronting Betty, 
 looking very pale and handsome and boyish. 
 
 "Betty," he said, "he's the worst man in New York." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 Perhaps no other word in the English language, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, can be used to better purpose 
 in tantalizing the person to whom it is addressed than 
 this expletive. Richard choked with mortification and 
 jealousy. 
 
 "Betty, you're not, you're not " 
 
 "Not what ?" Then she understood and laughed. 
 
 "You deliciously silly, Dicky. Sit down this moment, 
 and let me hold the little mirror you keep in your desk 
 for you, so you can brush your hair." 
 
 "Bother my hair." 
 
 "Dicky, how abysmally, ridiculously absurd you can 
 be. Don't you know you are the only person who exists 
 for me in the wide world?" 
 
 "Doesn't seem like it," Richard growled. 
 
 "Dicky, you know you are my 'inexpressive he,' don't 
 
 you 
 
 "The trouble is," he snapped, "I do not believe I am 
 your 'he' at all."
 
 152 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Richard, what do you mean now?" 
 
 He looked at her curiously. 
 
 "I wish," he said, "I could make plain to you what 
 I mean. But you wouldn't understand. You're in- 
 capable, I think, of judging. A man to be perfect in 
 your eyes would have to be a disembodied spirit." 
 
 Betty became very serious. She shrank away from 
 Richard's desk where she had been standing. 
 
 "I thought we had agreed not to reopen that subject," 
 she said. 
 
 "But if you think that Archie Telfer is a disembodied 
 spirit " 
 
 Betty stepped forward and placed her hand lightly 
 on the young man's arm. 
 
 "Hush, Dicky," she said gravely, "aren't you allowing 
 a fit of unjustifiable jealousy to carry you too far?" 
 
 The touch of her cool, sweet fingers sent a thrill 
 through him. 
 
 "Look here, Betty," he said roughly, "let's continue 
 this 'in our next.' I have work to do. And I imagine 
 you have, too." 
 
 "What a perfectly charming mood you are in, Rich- 
 ard." 
 
 Betty went to the door, then turned once more to 
 look at him. She hoped that he would call her back. 
 She was temperamentally incapable of harboring anger 
 for any length of time against any one whom she loved, 
 and it hurt her to think of leaving him in this frame 
 of mind. But he, writing with feverish haste, paid no 
 attention to her. She marveled at his concentration, 
 and it hurt her to think he could go back to his work 
 so quickly and thoroughly after they had exchanged 
 hasty words. Slowly she walked back to him and stood 
 at the side of his desk without speaking. Without in- 
 tention on her part, her eyes happened to fall on the
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 153 
 
 sheet of paper over which his pen was traveling so 
 rapidly. He had not been writing at all, he had merely 
 been drawing his pen in crude scroll work across the 
 paper with the evident intention of giving her the im- 
 pression that he was writing. She fell back guiltily. 
 She did not wish to humiliate him by letting him see 
 that she had discovered his pretense. And yet, intensely 
 sorry as she felt for him, because of her non-compre-* 
 hension of the nature of his passion, she had not the 
 remotest notion of what he was suffering. 
 
 "Are you still here, Betty?" 
 
 She noticed the deep blue circles under his eyes as 
 he looked up at her. He spoke roughly. Whole-heart- 
 edly he wished her out of the room, and yet he knew 
 that the moment she was gone he would wish her back. 
 His nerves were playing him strange tricks these days. 
 
 Regarding him earnestly, she remembered that he had 
 complained of sleeping poorly. 
 
 ''Dicky," she said tenderly, "you know you have prom- 
 ised me quite a number of times to go and consult a 
 doctor about your insomnia. Won't you go to-night 
 before you come home?" 
 
 Her gentleness was balm to his quivering nerves. All 
 his resentment, the dull, smoldering rancor which he 
 was cherishing against her because she had talked and 
 laughed with Archie Telfer left him. He was ashamed 
 of his churlishness and lack of self-control. 
 
 "Very well. Betty," he said quietly. "I'll go to-night." 
 
 She went from the room at last, and burying his face 
 in his hands, he abandoned himself for a few moments 
 to the sweep of his feelings.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Richard had never had occasion to consult a physi- 
 cian, and he was forced to ask the cashier, a blond, stout 
 German-American by the name of Hoffman, for ad- 
 vice, and with the name and address of a reputable 
 practitioner in his pocketbook, he left the office at five 
 o'clock. It was almost a relief for him to leave the 
 office without Betty. At the outset of his courtship he 
 had desired her society incessantly, but of late the close 
 propinquity in which their lives were cast was becoming 
 intolerably irksome to him. 
 
 The physician whom he consulted was a business-like 
 man of about forty. 
 
 "Since when have you been sleeping poorly?" 
 
 "About seven weeks two months something like 
 that." 
 
 "Ever suffer from insomnia before?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "You wear no glasses, I notice. Sometimes insomnia 
 is due to a slight astigmatism. Any headaches, bilous- 
 ness, nausea?" 
 
 "No," said Richard, "I simply cannot sleep, that is 
 all." 
 
 Doctor Moran began to ask more intimate questions. 
 He tested Richard's heart and lungs. Finally he con- 
 cluded : 
 
 "You're as sound as a nut. A little nervous, that's 
 all. I'll give you a sleeping powder, which you can 
 take whenever you need it." 
 
 154
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 155 
 
 He scribbled the prescription upon his pad, handed 
 the slip of paper to Richard, and escorted him to the 
 door. The door was already half-open, when he said : 
 
 "By the way, you look like a prosperous young man." 
 
 Richard smiled. 
 
 "Fairly prosperous." 
 
 "Well, doctors sometimes ask questions that seem 
 impertinent but are merely pertinent. Are you prosper- 
 ous enough to get married?" 
 
 "Why, yes." 
 
 "Perhaps you are engaged?" 
 
 "I am." 
 
 Doctor Moran opened the door all the way. The 
 maid who sat in the hall rose and went to summon the 
 next patient. The physician laid his hand upon Rich- 
 ard's shoulder with professional familiarity. 
 
 "My advice to you, Mr. Pryce," he said, "is to marry. 
 Marry as soon as you can and your nervousness and 
 insomnia will disappear. Good-evening." 
 
 Richard was furious. He wanted to retort angrily, 
 but the maid was already appearing with the next pa- 
 tient. Patient and physician disappeared into the doc- 
 tor's office. The maid held open the street door for 
 Richard, and he found himself out on the stoop. 
 
 For an hour, fury at high tide, he tramped the streets. 
 He himself, sparingly, it is true, had allowed himself to 
 think with longing of the time when Betty would be 
 his wife. But Dr. Moran, it seemed to him, had offered 
 Betty, without knowing her, the last insult in recom- 
 mending her to him as a sort of pleasant medicine, a 
 panacea for insomnia! He was furious with himself 
 for having been so stupid as not to divine the cause of 
 his insomnia. Last of all, he was furious with Betty 
 for being what she was so unsensual and devoid of 
 passion that to a decent-minded man marriage to her
 
 156 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 became impossible unless by some wizardry to which 
 Richard did not hold the key he could transform her 
 into a normal, natural, flesh-and-blood woman. 
 
 Finally his wrath abated. He telephoned home to 
 Mrs. Presbey not to wait dinner for him; then he went 
 to a drug-store, and drank a cup of tomato bouillon 
 and ate a chicken sandwich at the soda-water fountain. 
 
 After that he went for another walk along the bril- 
 liantly lighted Great White Way. 
 
 It occurred to him that he might marry Betty, with- 
 out entering into his conjugal rights, trusting to the 
 intimate propinquity that necessarily exists between two 
 people living side by side in the same room day and 
 night to bring to the surface Betty's latent womanhood. 
 But he feared to put his plan into execution, because 
 he did not trust himself. He acutely remembered the 
 night which he had spent in her room attending her 
 sprained ankle and he feared that, once she was his 
 wife and the specter of degrading her to the plane of 
 vulgar immorality be removed as a deterrent, he would 
 be unable to carry out his high resolution. 
 
 He did not realize that what Archie Telfer had hinted 
 at was true; that the eyes can be made a vehicle of 
 appeal, the hands a vehicle of eloquence as well as the 
 mouth, and that a kiss can be made an instrument of 
 almost illimitable allure and intimacy. 
 
 He became contemplative. He, a man, who passion- 
 ately desired the woman he loved, was offended by the 
 purely natural view of marriage taken by the physician. 
 How keenly, then, must Betty have suffered from his 
 insistence. Betty, who was so deficient in womanhood 
 that the very word "passion" was offensive to her. It 
 seemed to him now that if the natural view of marriage 
 was a corrective needed for Betty's point of view, the 
 romantic view was a corrective needed more urgently
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 157 
 
 for his own viewpoint. He accused himself of having 
 been blatantly raw and brutal with her. He realized 
 poignantly that the natural ardor of the lover must have 
 appeared to her as grossness. He vowed that in the 
 future, no matter what suffering he might thereby en- 
 tail upon himself, he would in no way give her offense. 
 And as if it were true indeed that virtue is its own 
 reward, the unrest and misery which had filled him the 
 last month passed from him. He went home at last, 
 rejoicing in his chastened frame of mind.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Mr. Telfer's private office was situated at the back 
 of the store, and between it and the salesrooms was a 
 small anteroom for visitors who were kept waiting any 
 length of time. Part of Betty's duties were to keep 
 this room in order, to see that magazines and periodi- 
 cals were taken away and new reading matter left on 
 the files and tables. The door of this room had been 
 clumsily devised. The iron staircase, enclosing spiral 
 stairs and leading to the gallery, abutted almost imme- 
 diately on the threshold of the door, so that only a 
 triangular passage was left for egress or entrance. The 
 iron staircase, which continued along the gallery for 
 several yards, making one end of it contiguous to the 
 stairs, when the door was left ajar, acted as a sort of 
 speaking tube, and every word spoken in the anteroom 
 could be plainly heard on the gallery in consequence, 
 and vice versa. 
 
 Betty, arranging magazines in the anteroom, eaves- 
 dropped unwillingly more than once, for Miss Connors 
 and Miss Sharpe jabbered incessantly, and the conver- 
 sations she overheard contributed to the dislike which 
 she felt for the two girls. It was a dislike which they 
 reciprocated with compound interest. Miss Sharpe, 
 whose would-be polished exterior was misleading, Betty 
 had at first honestly tried to like. She felt there was 
 no reason why she should not be at least friendly with a 
 young lady who expressed such admirable sentiments as 
 did Miss Sharpe upon every possible and impossible 
 occasion. 
 
 One evening when Betty and Miss Sharpe left the 
 
 158
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 159 
 
 store together, Betty warmed perceptibly toward Miss 
 Sharpe, who had been discoursing beautifully upon 
 music. Betty did not guess that part of the insert pro- 
 grams published by the Philharmonic Society, and known 
 and valued by every New York concert goer, had been 
 memorized for her especial benefit. She discovered 
 the fact about a week later in looking through some 
 old programs of Richard's, and from that day on she 
 felt justified in nourishing her distrust and dislike of 
 Miss Sharpe. 
 
 One morning in December the following conversa- 
 tion was wafted down to Betty, who was sorting new 
 magazines from old, in the anteroom : 
 
 Miss Sharpe : "Oh, my, what a book, Mamie ; how 
 can you bear to waste your time on such unliterary 
 gush?" 
 
 Miss Connors : "Oh, go chase yourself, Rachel. 
 Gush, is it? If you ever fall in love, you'll be more of 
 a gazaboo than the girl in the book." 
 
 Miss Sharpe : "I say, Mamie, show the book to 
 Prudy and see what she says." 
 
 Miss Connors : "I will not. Prudy ain't half as weak- 
 minded as you'd like to make her out to be. 'Tain't 
 her fault, poor thing, that her Fifth Avenue manners 
 are genueye-an, while yours are eckquired." 
 
 Miss Sharpe: "What a cantankerous shrew you are, 
 Mamie." 
 
 Miss Connors : "Talk United States, will you ? Your 
 grouch against Prudy ain't nothing but jealousy, any- 
 how. She didn't have to go floppin' herself all over 
 Richard the Innocent's desk like some other folks I 
 know, to get him to make the goo-goos at her. Poor 
 other folks!" 
 
 Miss Sharpe : "I really do not know whom you mean 
 by 'other folks.' "
 
 160 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Miss Connors : "Don't, eh ?" 
 
 Miss Sharpe: "If you mean me I never wasted 
 time on him. Richard the Innocent is such a pill that 
 a girl could clasp his hand to her heart without inter- 
 esting him." 
 
 Miss Connors: "Did you make as desprit an effort 
 as all that, Miss Schapirowitz ?" 
 
 Miss Sharpe: "Miss Connors, you're insulting. My 
 name is Sharpe." 
 
 Miss Connors: "Insulting, am I? That's what one 
 of my gentleman friends said to me the other day, when 
 I called him down." 
 
 Miss Sharpe: "I suppose he objected to your having 
 more than one 'gentleman friend.' " 
 
 Miss Connors : "My opinion is that girls who approve 
 of only one gentleman friend were never troubled by 
 more than one at a time." 
 
 Miss Sharpe: "Certainly I wouldn't like to have 
 friends who were troublesome." 
 
 Miss Connors : "Oh, I know how to take care of my- 
 self believe me. I believe as a man has got certain 
 liberties while he is courting a girl, but " 
 
 There followed a list of prohibited liberties graphi- 
 cally described in detail. 
 
 Betty clenched her little white hands and ran up to 
 the gallery. 
 
 "Girls," she said, "you must not speak of im- 
 proper things in office hours. I have spoken of this 
 before." 
 
 Betty was surprised at the authoritative ring of her 
 own voice and at her courage in speaking thus to the 
 two girls, both of whom were considerably older than 
 herself. She expected an outbreak of some kind, but 
 they, recognizing her authority, did not answer. Sud- 
 denly, however, Miss Sharpe began a disjointed conver-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 161 
 
 sation on this plan, in which Miss Connors' retorts ably 
 seconded her. 
 
 "Mamie, dear, hand me the mucilage, will you?" 
 "Certainly, dear." "Thank you, dear." "Don't men- 
 tion it, dear." "Rachel, I think I left my pen on your 
 desk." "Oh, yes, Mamie, here it is. Do you want it?" 
 "Yes, will you hand it to me?" "Of course, don't 
 move." "Thank you." "Don't mention it." 
 
 The coming of Betty, the common enemy, had ce- 
 mented the lacerated friendship. 
 
 Betty was on the verge of tears. The means her 
 two subordinates chose for venting their resentment 
 against their superior was so insidious that no one could 
 have analyzed wherein the offense lay. It was so subtly 
 managed. Betty was thankful when the buzzer sum- 
 moned her to Mr. Telfer's room. 
 
 As she entered the anteroom she saw Archie Telfer 
 lounging in one of the wicker easy chairs in his best 
 Lord Chumley manner. He sprang to his feet, bowing 
 elaborately as she crossed the room to the door leading 
 to Mr. Telfer's private office. To Betty's surprise, Mr. 
 Telfer was not there. 
 
 "Did your father go out?" she inquired, in surprise. 
 
 "My father? He hasn't been down this morning, I 
 am told." 
 
 "I think he rang for me." 
 
 Archie Telfer gave her a dazzling smile. 
 
 "I had the impudence to ring for you," he said. 
 
 "The buzzer is there for the purpose of summoning 
 me when I am wanted," Betty retorted coldly. "What 
 can I do for you?" 
 
 "Converse with me." He offered her a chair with a 
 grandiloquent flourish of the hand. 
 
 "Conversing with Mr. Telfer's callers is hardly one 
 of my duties." She turned to go.
 
 162 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Don't go, Miss Garside, or I shall think that Rich- 
 ard has been telling you what a sad, bad man I am." 
 
 "Really, I am not aware, Mr. Telfer, that Richard 
 and I ever discussed you at all." 
 
 "Wow, wow, now will I be good. Come, come, Miss 
 Garside, that's cruel. Why break a butterfly on the 
 wheel? Why, I say?" 
 
 "I shouldn't think that a great big man would care 
 to describe himself as a butterfly." 
 
 "Why not? There are masculine as well as feminine 
 butterflies. Otherwise the species would die out, Lady 
 of the Glacial Temperament.'* 
 
 Betty looked at him helplessly. He continued rapidly, 
 circling around the room as gracefully as if he were 
 indeed the insect to which he had likened himself. 
 
 "You know, really, there was no occasion for landing 
 on me with both feet as you did." He came to a stop 
 at the door, and stood leaning up against it, right elbow 
 resting upon cupped left hand, fingers of the right hand 
 gently fondling his chin. At the moment some one tried 
 to open the door from without. Archie felt the im- 
 pact of the shock and moved from the door. But no 
 one entered. Betty had not even noticed the inci- 
 dent. 
 
 Archie continued: 
 
 "That pretty little head of yours has been thinking 
 all sorts of horrid things about me. Poor me! Be- 
 cause of the three graces who have entered the arena 
 for my hand, I have been so considerate of you and 
 your reputation that I have not even asked you to lunch 
 with me." 
 
 "If you had asked me, I wouldn't have accepted the 
 invitation," Betty said bluntly. 
 
 "Well, although two is company and three is a crowd, 
 some day, with Grandmamma Pryce to chaperone us,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 163 
 
 you and I will go on a marvelous, matchless, murder- 
 ous, murmurous, midday spree." 
 
 "If we three were to lunch together, Dick wouldn't 
 be the crowd." 
 
 "Slap-dash bing-bang what a straight shot you are, 
 Miss Absolute Zero. I never met a girl of the Ice Age 
 before, Miss Garside. You'd make an excellent com- 
 panion, I imagine, on a sweltering July day!" 
 
 Betty could not keep from laughing. It was impos- 
 sible to be angry with Archie Telfer for any length of 
 time. She always had the sensation, when speaking 
 with him of participating in some scene in a play on 
 the stage. 
 
 "How silly men can be," she said; "great grown-up 
 men who ought to know better." 
 
 "And that to the Adonis of the Stage!" He struck a 
 languishing attitude, but Betty, paying no further heed, 
 left the room. 
 
 Out of the room, her smile died away. She had 
 laughed at Archie Telfer's nonsense, and yet, absurdly 
 enough, although there had been nothing disrespectful 
 in his manner, and his words had not been offensive, she 
 felt subtly annoyed. She resolved to see as little as 
 possible of Archie in the future. 
 
 Passing Richard's door, she hesitated a moment. 
 There was nothing to tell him in particular, but the 
 strange desire to be near him, to hear his voice, to see 
 him, came over her, as it always did when she knew 
 that he was near. Vaguely, at times, this feeling had 
 troubled her, because she suspected that it might be the 
 beginning of the madness from which all men and 
 women, herself excepted, seemed to suffer. But to-day 
 she gave it no thought. 
 
 "Dick," she said at the open door, "the mail orders 
 were very light a little over ten dollars."
 
 164 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 She stepped out and allowed the door to swing to be- 
 hind her. 
 
 "Betty !" 
 
 She caught the swing-door, flung it back, and asked: 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 Richard looked at her fixedly for a moment, and 
 then said very gently: 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 Disappointed because he had nothing to say to her, 
 because he gave her no excuse for lingering in his room 
 for a moment, she closed the door and went back to 
 her work. 
 
 Archie Telfer, finding himself alone, strode with Beau 
 Brummelian air into Richard's office. 
 
 "I'm not disturbing you, my boy, am I ?" 
 
 "Frankly, you are." 
 
 "What's the matter, Pryce?'' 
 
 Richard wheeled around savagely in his swivel-chair. 
 
 "Look here," he said hoarsely, "how did you dare to 
 lock the door after ringing for Miss Garside?" 
 
 Archie whistled. "Well," he said, "it takes a man 
 with a clean bill of health like yourself to think ill of a 
 girl like Miss Garside." 
 
 Richard snorted. "It's not Miss Garside I am think- 
 ing ill of." 
 
 "You're a brute, Pryce. I was leaning up against 
 the door by chance I vow it was chance and I moved 
 away instantly when I felt someone try the door." 
 
 "Oh, very well," said Richard surlily. 
 
 "Do you know," Archie said amiably, "you are as 
 sour-tempered lately as an old maid or a disappointed 
 widow. I'd like to prescribe for you, Pryce. If the 
 Lady of the Glacial Temperament chills your too ardent 
 soul and gives your heart chilblains why, allow me
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 165 
 
 to suggest to you that there are other pretty faces in 
 the world." 
 
 "Mind your own business, will you?" 
 
 "Pryce, you're a blithering idiot. What's the use of 
 being a Puritan?" 
 
 "If you don't keep still, I'll throw you out." 
 
 "Nice, gentle, amiable, courteous way you have of 
 treating your employer's son. However, I bear you no 
 ill-will. I'd like to drug you, Dicky Pryce, and trans- 
 port you into a harem filled with houris whose beauty 
 and witching loveliness would make Semiramis and 
 Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba look like so many 
 counterfeit nickels." 
 
 "You " 
 
 "Hush! Don't call me a cur again." Archie was 
 laughing good-humoredly. "Perhaps you are right, 
 after all. Perhaps your divinity is worth the sacrifices 
 you are making for her, my Joseph. Oh, oh, for the 
 might, a soul so white, to lead from the path that is 
 narrow and right for sure she's a dream, not a vaude- 
 ville scream but a moonbeam, a sunbeam, a bowl of 
 tV^-cream. In the bargain, she's a peach alas, beyond 
 reach some things to teach her the admirable creature 
 
 I would risk my neck I sure would, by Heck 
 
 Ah, Richard Pryce, Dicky Pryce, how can I go on with 
 my poetastering when your face is set to so sinister a 
 pattern? Ta-ta, son deviate not from the narrow 
 path, desert it not for the primrose path of dalliance. 
 Ta-ta, I hear the melodious voice of the author of my 
 being." 
 
 Telfer senior had just entered with another gentle- 
 man who was quite as fat and portly and puffy-looking 
 as himself. Betty, seeing them pass, remembered Ar- 
 chie's description of Direktor Markheim and his father, 
 and had no difficulty in guessing that the plebeian-look-
 
 166 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing companion of the elder Telfer was the famous 
 impresario of the opera, Direktor Markheim. The great 
 man chose to retain the German title given to theatrical 
 and operatic managers, a fact which escaped ridicule in 
 a company composed almost exclusively of foreign stars 
 and having only a very small native-born contingent. 
 
 Betty went on faithfully with her work. After a half- 
 hour or so, Mr. Telfer suddenly appeared at her side 
 with the Direktor. 
 
 "Miss Garside," he said, "I want you to meet Direktor 
 Markheim." 
 
 Betty was about to rise, but the great man wagged his 
 fat head, and said : 
 
 "Sit still, my child. I have a little music here which 
 I would like you to sing for me." 
 
 Betty grew red with fright. 
 
 "I do not sing," she said. 
 
 Mr. Telfer waved his big hand. 
 
 "Mr. Pryce tells us you do, enough for this. There- 
 fore, if you please." 
 
 Betty gave her employer an agonized look, but he 
 nodded encouragingly. 
 
 "Oh, Markheim knows you are not a Mary Garden 
 or an Emma Eames. Just to oblige him, you know." 
 
 The ground being cut from under her feet, her heart 
 beating like a trip-hammer, Betty essayed the unwelcome 
 task. The music was a little German song by Schumann 
 on which Richard had drilled her, a coincidence which 
 she would have found astonishing had she not been too 
 confused to give the matter a thought. The episode 
 had arranged itself so quickly that, in spite of her mo- 
 mentary fright, she had no time to give way to nervous- 
 ness. She was singing the music before she realized 
 that she was actually in the thick of an adventure. 
 
 When she finished the fat little Direktor, his eyes
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 167 
 
 squinting like the eyes of a Japanese from beneath heavy 
 rolls of fat, said: 
 
 "Sehr gut sehr gut." 
 
 "It will do?" Mr. Telfer asked eagerly. 
 
 "I should say so." 
 
 Mr. Telfer turned to Betty. 
 
 "Thank you, Miss Garside. Will you please go to 
 Mr. Pryce and tell him I said it would do." 
 
 Poor Betty, dazed and perplexed, asked : 
 
 "What will do?" 
 
 "Just say 'It will do.' He will understand." Mr. 
 Telfer nodded his head kindly at Betty. He was a big- 
 hearted, whole-souled man, and had shown Betty many 
 kindnesses since she had entered his employ. Looking 
 at him, Betty had often wondered how father and son 
 could be so utterly dissimilar. Betty rose to go, when 
 Direktor Markheim said: 
 
 "You are fond of going to the Metropolitan Opera 
 House, heinf" 
 
 "I have never been inside the Metropolitan," said 
 Betty. 
 
 "Unglaublich! And you have lived in New York 
 for a long time ? Telfer, can such things be ?" 
 
 Mr. Telfer laughed. 
 
 "You can remedy that quickly enough," he said. 
 
 "Herrje, so I can. Wait, my child. One mo- 
 ment." 
 
 And the fat Direktor drew a fat wallet from his 
 pocket. He was so fat that Betty wondered whether 
 his arms would not break out of their sockets under 
 the strain of passing his arms way around his body to 
 get at his vest pocket. But no mishap of the sort oc- 
 curred, and presently Betty found herself with a flimsy 
 bit of paper in her hand, to which he had signed his 
 initials, and which, he informed her, entitled her to two
 
 168 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 seats at the opera for any evening it would please her 
 to select. 
 
 Betty thanked him, and then went on her errand to 
 Richard's room. She found him tipped back in his 
 swivel chair, his hair standing out at all angles. He 
 sprang to his feet as she entered. 
 
 "Well?" he demanded feverishly. 
 
 "Mr. Telfer says it will do." 
 
 "Ah, I knew it!" Richard sprang from the chair 
 and called an office boy. "I don't want to be disturbed," 
 he said. He came back to Betty. "Betty, I want a 
 long talk with you." 
 
 He sat down upon his chair and rested his arm upon 
 the desk. A curious feeling of being remote from him 
 swept over Betty. He did not seem like her Richard, 
 her Dicky, who was always so conscious of her pres- 
 ence, so eager to do for her, so completely wrapped up 
 in her. What had happened? 
 
 "Betty, I did something without consulting you which 
 may make you a little angry with me. To begin with, 
 the Musical Progress League has been getting together 
 a fund to be used for European scholarships, and 
 the judges in the award of the three years' scholar- 
 ships are Mr. Telfer, Direktor Markheim and Stanley 
 Earlcote." 
 
 "The Man of Mystery?" 
 
 "The same. Now, Mr. Telfer, although he is the 
 owner of the largest music publishing house in America, 
 knows nothing of music, and depends upon Markheim, 
 and Markheim, although he is the manager of the 
 greatest opera company in the world, is very diffident 
 as a critic, and in turn depends upon Stanley Earlcote. 
 You know that a good deal of curiosity has been aroused 
 as to the reason of Earlcote's return to America. Some 
 folks do not believe he is disabled at all, and think that
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 169 
 
 the story of the catastrophe which befell him is a huge 
 press agent's hoax." 
 
 "But is it?" 
 
 "No, it is not. The real reason of his return is that 
 he is to help Markheim whenever Markheim needs him 
 in coming to a decision upon any question of vocal and 
 instrumental musicianship. This, at least, is one of the 
 real reasons of his return. Of course, the salary of six 
 thousand a year which the opera company pays him for 
 acting as advisory counsel, in view of his enormous 
 wealth, in no way helped influence him to accept this 
 post." 
 
 "What then ?" Betty's cheeks were glowing with 
 
 excitement. This was life, romance, such as one read 
 of in books ; mysterious motives, intrigues ! Oh, this 
 was life, indeed! 
 
 "I do not know, I do not care," Richard replied. "Per- 
 haps he is glad of some active interest in musical mat- 
 ters. At any rate, the Musical Progress League has 
 not enough money this year to send more than one 
 artist abroad, although they hope, within three or four 
 years, to get enough money together to finance four or 
 five different artists. So, for the present, the violinist, 
 the pianist, or the singer of greatest promise will get 
 the three years' scholarship. And that is where you 
 come in." 
 
 "I? What do you mean?" stammered Betty. 
 
 "I mean, dear, that I have taken the great liberty 
 of entering your name as an applicant for the vocal 
 scholarship." 
 
 "Dicky, how could you? My poor little voice? And, 
 besides, I have no ambition at all. I would hate a 
 public career." 
 
 "You think you have no ambition ; you think a public 
 career as singer would be distasteful to you, but you
 
 170 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 do not know and cannot know just what your senti- 
 ments in the matter are until you know whether or 
 not your voice is worth cultivating. I spoke to Mr. 
 Telfer, told him how diffident you are, and he devised 
 the plan of getting you to sing for Direktor Markheim 
 without your knowing what it was all about." 
 
 "But if Markheim is no judge?" 
 
 "Oh, judge enough to know whether a voice is worth 
 something or nothing." 
 
 "When does the contest come off?" 
 
 "Ten days hence, December fifteenth, at the Mark- 
 heim residence. And now tell me, dear, that you are 
 not angry with me." 
 
 "Nothing that you could do, Dicky, could make me 
 angry with you. But couldn't I crawl out of it the 
 contest, I mean?" 
 
 "If you 'crawl out of it/ as you call it, you will stul- 
 tify me. You wouldn't want to do that, would you?" 
 
 "Certainly not. But Dicky, even if that dreadful 
 Earlcote says that my voice is worth cultivating, I am 
 going to refuse to go to Europe unless " 
 
 "Unless what, Betty?" 
 
 "Unless you get the scholarship, dear, and take me 
 with you as your wife." 
 
 Richard looked very grave. 
 
 "We will decide nothing just now," he said. 
 
 "Dicky, I know my own mind. I know there is one 
 thing I want in the world your love and yourself, dear, 
 and nothing could outweigh the joy of being your wife, 
 the right to care for you, to do for you. I would not 
 forego that joy, not if I were to be a second Melba or 
 Patti. I think, Dick, a woman's love precludes all other 
 aspirations for herself." 
 
 "Yes, dear, a woman's love but that, darling, ac- 
 cording to your own statements, is not the feeling you
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 171 
 
 have for me. Don't interrupt me, dear. I am not going 
 to offend you. I shall be very delicate in my choice 
 of words. I feel, dear, as I told you before, that you 
 may have made a mistake in promising yourself to me. 
 I hope not. But I do not know. I am unable to wake 
 the responsive feeling in you, and that may mean that 
 you do not love me after all." 
 
 "Dicky," Betty asked impetuously, "this isn't jealousy 
 of Archie Telfer, is it?" 
 
 "No, Betty. I was afraid at one time that he would 
 insinuate himself into your good graces. But I think 
 you have taken the measure of that hound." 
 
 "Why do you always call him hard names, Dick ? He 
 has never deserved them through his manner to me." 
 
 "Well, that's what he is, nevertheless. Don't ask 
 questions, Betty, but continue to give him a wide berth. 
 He's incredibly low." 
 
 Betty sat quite still for a moment. Then she asked: 
 
 "Dicky, you don't really think I could ever care for 
 anyone but you? You know you are on a pedestal in 
 my heart, and that feeling, dear, I will never have for 
 anyone else." 
 
 "Betty, I want to be fair with you. I have to be fair. 
 I love you more intensely than you can imagine, for 
 I love you in just the same way as you love me, and I 
 have an additional love for you as well. It would be 
 terribly hard to lose you, but there is one thing which it 
 would be harder still to bear. I could not endure think- 
 ing that I had cheated you of your chance your chance 
 of happiness, your chance of life, your chance of love, 
 your chance of knowing what the deeper feeling, the sub- 
 tler tie can mean to a woman. I cannot take the risk of 
 defrauding you of that. At first my passion for you 
 seemed to turn to a virulent poison when I realized that 
 you did not care for me in that way. But now I have
 
 172 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 the desire to deal fairly with you under all circumstances 
 and conditions, and I would even have the strength to 
 renounce you if it were for your best." 
 
 "Dicky," she said, a little awed by the exaltation with 
 which he had spoken. "I did not know you cared for me 
 as much as all that. Dicky, let me withdraw from this 
 Contest!" The sweet face was clouded with misery. 
 "Dearest, it occurs to me only now that if I should 
 by any chance receive the award, you would be barred. 
 Let me withdraw now, since my mind is firmly made up 
 to refuse the scholarship should it come my way." 
 
 "No, dear, I insist, and, moreover, I want you to prom- 
 ise me faithfully that if you receive the award, you 
 will not step aside on my account. If you feel, then, that 
 cultivation of your voice will bring you happiness, I want 
 you to promise me that you will not hesitate to accept." 
 
 "I can safely promise that," Betty said, laughing. 
 "You are forcing me to play a farce because you have 
 Quixotic notions. So be it. It is very sweet to know, 
 my dearest Dicky darling, that you love me so unsel- 
 fishly. I had a notion, dear, that because of the other 
 feeling, your love could not be unselfish. But now I 
 see I am wrong. I believe, Dicky, that you love me more 
 unselfishly than I love you. You have longed and hoped 
 and prayed for a chance to go to Europe all your life, 
 and now you are willing to minimize your chances of 
 Europe because you want to treat me honestly. You 
 would renounce me, even, if it were necessary to secure 
 my happiness. I am not as good as that. I cannot 
 imagine any circumstance arising which would make me 
 willing to give you up. Perhaps another woman could 
 give you more than I can give could give you the deeper 
 feeling, the stronger love of which you speak so much. 
 But I would not be willing to renounce you on that ac- 
 count. What I am giving you is my all, my everything
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 173 
 
 gold of my heart, the very marrow and pith of my inward 
 self, and the voice of the heart tells me that you are 
 meant for me, and I for you. I cannot express just what 
 I feel for you, Dicky. You entered my life at a time 
 when everything seemed black and grim, when I was all 
 alone, and even before you came I knew you would 
 come. You were my staff, my friend, my counselor. 
 Did I say you entered my life? You filled it, you ab- 
 sorbed it into your own, and you cannot filter it away 
 again." 
 
 Very reverently he took her hands and kissed them. 
 
 "Please God," he said, "the deeper feeling may still 
 come."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Because they were both very nervous concerning the 
 formidable event which was to transpire on December 
 fifteenth, Betty wholly on Richard's account, Richard 
 principally as to the general effect upon his life, they 
 very sensibly decided not to sit at home nursing their 
 anxiety, but relieved their worry by judicious relaxation, 
 judicious relaxation for them meaning music, of course. 
 Betty loved music, and Richard had taught her how to 
 listen intelligently. Once in the concert hall, she surren- 
 dered herself completely to the magic of the melodies, the 
 witchery of the myriad throated orchestra. She lost the 
 sensation of time, space and self. Her soul seemed to 
 become a disembodied thing that hovered somewhere be- 
 tween orchestra and singers, merging itself now with the 
 one, now with the other, self-forgetful, self-unconscious, 
 existing in a trance of undreamed-of delight. 
 
 But it was the opera "Tannhaeuser," which they heard 
 on the pass provided by the Direktor, which was des- 
 tined to wholly subjugate Betty's imagination, to satisfy 
 her completely, to enter into and dominate her life, to 
 become part of herself. She had glanced over the score, 
 she had read the libretto before she took her seat in the 
 darkened auditorium; but the words had meant nothing 
 to her, and the score had left her imagination untouched 
 and cold. Yet so sensitive was she to the message con- 
 veyed by individual musical phrases that she responded 
 perfectly to the delicate shadings of the score, inter- 
 preting them to herself with unflinching insight, with 
 a wealth of understanding that made the mystic sig- 
 
 174
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 175 
 
 nificance of the opera stand out allegorically and with 
 the neatly limned precision of a flute player of Arcady or 
 a Wedgwood vase with its "silent melodies." 
 
 In the prelude was mirrored the Titanic struggle that 
 was to ensue. The motif of the enchantress of the 
 Venusberg and the motif of the pilgrims came into clash- 
 ing contrast at the very outset, and shadowed forth the 
 revolt against sanctity, the rebellion against sensuality, 
 the subjugation by purity, the submission to evil, the 
 entire strange flux of chaste thinking and sinful living. 
 They shadowed forth all this, and hinted vaguely at the 
 ultimate goal, the final spiritual ravishment, the love 
 of a pure woman and her strength to conquer the mani- 
 fold enemies that beset her lover, the glamour of for- 
 bidden things, his own frailty, the lurid memories of 
 dead sins, the terrors of the imagination lashed into life 
 by a superstitious-ridden, soul-greedy church. 
 
 These two motifs clashed, conflicted, persisted side by 
 side. They warred with each other, they stormed at 
 each other, clamorously proclaimed their detestation of 
 each other. Now one was in the ascendant, now the 
 other. But though in the ascendant for the moment, 
 neither was triumphant, neither was jubilant with the 
 sense of ultimate and permanent victory. The other 
 motif glided stealthily beneath it, interlaced it, punc- 
 tured it, encroached upon it, and though no more dis- 
 tinct at times than a shadow at noon, the shadow grew 
 and miraculously gained in strength until it forced into 
 the background its enemy. Now the conditions were 
 reversed, and the erstwhile ascendant motif bided its 
 time, watched its opportunity to break through the pha- 
 lanx of the musical armor arrayed against it; broke 
 through it at last and reversed the conditions once 
 more. And thus continued the interminable truceless, 
 ceaseless struggle, that has subsisted since time imme-
 
 176 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 morial, whose birth was contemporaneous with the birth 
 of the world and which will continue to exist so long 
 as gold glitters, fire burns or flesh tempts flesh and blood 
 can leap in loathing and pulse in ecstasy. 
 
 The motif of the Venusberg was full of the promise of 
 soft pleasure. It was eloquent of the enchantment of 
 secret and forbidden rites. It wooed, cooed, danced trip- 
 pingly. It was gracious, full of allure, brimful of ease. 
 It was redolent of soft cushions, softer limbs and lips 
 whose touch was softer than rose petals or velvet or 
 honey. Its onrush was like a silver gale whistling 
 through a shower of golden rain, like the rustling of 
 gem-laden skirts of a myriad of damosels fallen from 
 grace. But its wooing became monotonous, the witchery 
 of the whirlpool of sound in which it moved, sweeping 
 all resistance before it, lost its note of ecstasy, leaving 
 behind it a vision of contorted limbs. Its convolutions 
 were no longer agreeable; the air seemed filled with 
 writhing, wriggling, suffering, inutterable weary things; 
 its monotony held a menace ; it told of the deadly same- 
 ness of vice, it proclaimed that pleasure alone can never 
 suffice, that nothing can beget such disgust and fatigue 
 and loathing as an endless round of sterile pleasure. 
 The magic of the swishing cauldron of music in which 
 the confused images had floated with such gossamer, 
 tempting, fairylike insistence but a brief period before, 
 now seemed oddly like the hissing of the sulphurous 
 fumes escaping from some purgatorial cavern enriched 
 by the moaning of innumerable wretches held in that 
 ante-chamber of hell. 
 
 Now the motif of the pilgrims tittilated through the 
 uneasy harmonies, elusively, ravishly, like the sane elu- 
 sive sweetness conveyed by the fragrance of the bud- 
 ding vine, evoking pure dreams of mystic enchantment. 
 The motif of the pilgrims shone through the motif of
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 177 
 
 the Venusberg like a face through a veil, and as the 
 features of a face assume shape and outline when the 
 veil is drawn taut, so the outlines of the pilgrim motif 
 became sharply limned, lucid and distinct beneath the 
 disturbing phantasms of those shrilly insistent melodies; 
 the face pierced the veil, broke its frail threads, emerged, 
 and the crepuscular, vitiating beauty of the Venusberg 
 receded into the background, completely submerged by 
 the gloomy beauty of the pilgrims' chorus. Like a rich 
 old tapestry, hidden in the cavernous depths of some 
 monastery for centuries, its colors mellowed by age, 
 but by no means faded since it had been kept away from 
 the vulgar daylight, the melody of the pilgrims' chorus 
 unrolled itself, breathing the mysterious witchery of 
 imperishable things, exuding an aroma of mystic sanc- 
 tity. About it there was no note of vulgar jubilation. 
 The dignity in which it was swathed was so lofty that it 
 barely stooped to recognize its enemies, secure in the 
 knowledge that no mundane citadel can hold out against 
 its unearthly and ghostly preeminence. It did not sweep 
 all before it by brilliant onslaught; it absorbed, gently 
 pushed aside, utterly dissipatefl the melody that had 
 opposed it. It strove upward and ever up; but it did 
 not dash upward in a violent rush; gently, firmly, irre- 
 vocably, moving step by step, receding as often as it ad- 
 vanced, yet ever advancing a little more than it had 
 receded, it moved on, until it attained its highest point, 
 where the immensity of sound hung suspended for a 
 moment as if pinned to a star, as if imbedded in a cloud, 
 as if punctuating the apex of the upward striving lat- 
 tice work of a Gothic window, and like a Gothic design 
 forming an incomprehensible symbol of the pure desires 
 of the spirit. 
 
 Beside the austere beauty of the pilgrims' chorus the 
 filigree lace work of the Venusberg motif seemed a
 
 178 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 sorry and pitiful thing; in retrospection its filminess ap- 
 peared flimsy, its titillations puerile, its allure trivial; 
 and yet, when it reappeared, the brief lapse into virtue 
 had refreshed the jaded senses like a cold bath, and its 
 sensuous charm, its superheated fancifulness, its whirl- 
 ing, sweeping diablerie lashed and maddened and de- 
 lighted the nerves as before, whipped and goaded and 
 tortured them with ever increasing vigor as the cur- 
 tain rose on the first scene, disclosing the enchantress 
 on her couch of pleasure in the Venusberg. 
 
 Never were arms so white, bosom so pearly and invit- 
 ing, handmaidens so frothily agile. They danced, hurled 
 themselves hither and thither, human will-o'-the-wisps, 
 seemingly mere visible emanations from the seething 
 tempest of sound that boiled all about. Presently, they 
 began to pall, their agility bored where it had erstwhile 
 delighted, their amazing genuflections seemed senseless 
 and insipid. Life seemed a hopeless and barren thing in 
 such an atmosphere of tempestuous motion. Tannhaeu- 
 ser's desire to leave this cavern of pleasure and lust be- 
 came understandable. Was he merely sated or truly re- 
 pentant? Perhaps he himself did not know. 
 
 His escape could not be easily compassed. The tur- 
 moil subsided, the will-o-the-wisp handmaidens disap- 
 peared. Venus herself put forth her every endeavor to 
 hold her lover. 
 
 Never were arms so white, hands so caressing, fin- 
 gers so eloquent. Those arms, those hands, those fin- 
 gers seemed living entities. They added their individual 
 entreaties to the wooing of the ravishing music that 
 lulled the senses like a bath of some perfumed anodyne. 
 The undulations of those white arms, the movements 
 of those snowy hands, the gestures of those rosy fin- 
 gers were each a melody or a poem that superimposed 
 their beauty upon the harmonic beauties that were being
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 179 
 
 lavished in such spendthrift fashion by the orchestra. 
 And this beauty that was being squandered for his de- 
 lectation vindicated Tannhaeuser. It was not in the 
 nature of man born of woman to be sated by this ; the 
 appeal of Venus was too near-human, too near-divine, 
 too entirely superb. He was repentant, not sated, and 
 because a spiritual necessity and not a jaded appetite 
 craving plainer fare had driven him to his resolve to 
 leave the Venusberg, he remained true to his resolve. 
 No caress, no promise of future embraces, no anticipa- 
 tion of unceasing ecstasies could lure him from that re- 
 solve. 
 
 Never were arms so eloquent, hands so white, fingers 
 so caressing. But the black magic of the flesh lost its 
 potency when it opposed itself with such temerity to the 
 white magic of the spirit. At last, humiliated and in- 
 furiated by her failure to forge new chains upon her 
 lover, Venus's promises were turned into threats, her 
 wooing was transformed to a menace, her white arms 
 were no longer sentinels that invited to a haven of 
 rest and delight but serpents that writhed and twisted in 
 impotent rage ; her fingers moved and laced and twitched 
 like ribbons of flame with power to burn and consume 
 and poison. And from all that Tannhaeuser effected his 
 escape. 
 
 Almost the first sight that met his eyes on emerging 
 into the sane, healthy world of commonplace things was 
 a band of aged pilgrims, setting forth on a pilgrimage 
 to Rome. Those gnarled and bent figures, some of whom 
 must inevitably fall by the wayside before reaching the 
 Holy City, appeared to him a good omen. The wondrous 
 melody of the pilgrim's chorus was now heard for the 
 first time in unimpeded beauty, unhampered by the dis- 
 turbing suggestiveness and concupiscence of the melodies 
 of the Venusberg. The entire orchestra engaged in sing-
 
 180 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing it. It was unfurled like a sacred banner, like some 
 holy flag pointing the way to a bloodless, spiritual vic- 
 tory. 
 
 Tannhaeuser now met his old friends, the Landgrave, 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach and others, and they, magnan- 
 imous and beneficent souls, rejoiced on finding him. 
 They had an old quarrel with him, but they cherished 
 no rancor, no resentment. But they did not guess where 
 and how he had spent his absent days. Had they known, 
 they would have spurned Tannhaeuser instead of wel- 
 coming him. 
 
 It was Wolfram von Eschenbach who acquainted 
 Tannhaeuser with the fact that Elisabeth, the Landgrave's 
 daughter, loved him and has pined for him ever since he 
 left his circle of friends. Stupendous magnanimity! 
 For Wolfram loved her himself, and hoped that in the 
 coming Singing Festival he would carry off the prize, 
 and in winning the prize move Elisabeth sufficiently by 
 his singing to win her in marriage. 
 
 What could Wolfram von Eschenbach offer Elisabeth ? 
 What the other suitors for her hand? Men of pure 
 lives, of sanctified aspirations, the tenor of whose lives 
 was undisturbed by unlawful thoughts, by unhallowed 
 desires, they were bound to regard Elisabeth as a semi- 
 angel, not as flesh and blood, as a reward, not as a 
 helpmate. But Elisabeth was not a woman to be thus dis- 
 posed of. Though worn as a crown, a crown in her 
 eyes was a chattel and a chattel she would never con- 
 sent to be. As the wife of Wolfram or any of the other 
 lofty and serene souls that adored her as a semi-saint, 
 she would have been a most highly cherished possession, 
 a chief treasure. She would never have been her hus- 
 band's peer, his equal. She would have been both higher 
 and lower than himself, higher, because he would have 
 seen in her a beatified creature, lower, because he would
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 181 
 
 have protected and spared her in every conceivable way. 
 In no manner could such a man have fulfilled the cry- 
 ing need of her womanhood. She was not fascinated by 
 Tannhaeuser because he had sinned, for as yet she did 
 not even know how deeply steeped he was in sin of the 
 most sinister sort ; but she divined that his spirit needed 
 her spirit, his flesh her flesh to help him on his pilgrim- 
 age through life, and this need of his satisfied the pri- 
 mordial, eternal, unquenchable need of her womanhood, 
 the desire to be incorporated in the closest of unions with 
 the man of her choice, to satisfy his every need, to an- 
 swer and respond to his every desire. 
 
 All this was to be made clear to Elisabeth herself only 
 upon the day when the competing singers met in the 
 great hall of the Wartburg. Her life, until that hour, 
 had flowed in statuesque dignity, like a mighty stream, 
 whose unruffled grace may appear majestic to some, 
 sluggish to others. Nothing had disturbed the equanim- 
 ity of her spirit, stimulated her imagination, or awak- 
 ened the senses. Music, to these grave and faithful 
 men was not a relaxation, not a stimulant, not a pleas- 
 ure, but a deep and abiding joy, a sort of votive offer- 
 ing to the soul of the world. For they distrusted pleas-: 
 ure, they viewed it askance as being an impermanent, 
 shifting, fleeting, earthy thing, but they coveted joy, 
 which they conceived not as a superficial or surface emo- 
 tion, but as state of the spirit, which, once it had been 
 attained, can be maintained forever, a state so profound 
 that it underlies every human experience; it neutralizes 
 sorrow itself and converts even poignant grief, such as 
 grief at the death of one whom we love, into a feeling 
 of melancholy exaltation. 
 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach was the first to sing. His 
 singing inevitably reflected his reverent personality. He 
 conceived love to be a thing wholly of the spirit; he
 
 188 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 knew naught of flesh tints ; he was purity embodied. But 
 that purity, that tranquillity, that serenity were bound to 
 arouse Tannhaeuser's ire, they awakened in him a thou- 
 sand devils of recollection, myriad imps of defiance. In 
 answering Wolfram, he forgot time and place, forgot 
 Elisabeth's presence, and in a passionate outbreak of 
 song committed the breach against decorum and good 
 taste of extolling Venus and her charms. 
 
 Consternation fell upon all present. The Venus- 
 berg! To extol the love of Venus in the presence of 
 Elisabeth ! They rushed upon Tannhaeuser with drawn 
 swords, they would have killed him, but Elisabeth in- 
 tervened. She besought the infuriated singers not to 
 send Tannhaeuser's soul to everlasting perdition by kill- 
 ing him unshriven. 
 
 After that enormous offense one hope only remained. 
 Rome ! To seek pardon in Rome ! 
 
 Followed days and weeks and months of ceaseless 
 agony of spirit for Elisabeth. She prayed almost in- 
 cessantly during those weeks. She became thin and 
 wan from loss of sleep and anxiety. Her entire life 
 resolved itself into a prayer for Tannhaeuser. 
 
 The Pilgrims returned from Rome. Tannhaeuser was 
 not among them, and Elisabeth, filled with cruel fore- 
 boding, threw herself upon her knees in passionate 
 prayer. The prayer was destined to be her last. Ill, ex- 
 hausted, broken-hearted, death claimed her while praying 
 for the man she loved. 
 
 The irony of fate ordained that Tannhaeuser should re- 
 turn almost immediately afterwards. Broken in health 
 and in spirit, cursed by the Pontiff in Rome, despairing 
 of his soul's salvation, he returned to his former haunts, 
 a mere phantom of his former self. 
 
 "Sooner shall the staff of dead wood in your hand 
 break into bud than that your sins shall be remitted
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 183 
 
 you!" Plunged into an abyss of hopelessness by the 
 cruel words of the Holy Father, Tannhaeuser, ill, weary 
 unto death, desiring merely a shelter, now determined 
 to return to the Yenusberg, the only abode that remained 
 for him. Wolfram, filled with horror, argued with 
 him. Venus appeared, stretching out her arms to Tann- 
 haeuser, and those arms, so eloquent, so white, so full of 
 promise and allure with their pleading, entreating rosy 
 fingers, seemed to draw him toward her, to magnetize 
 him, to rob him of even the desire of salvation, just 
 as the cruel words of the pontiff had robbed him of its 
 hope. Again the witching music of the Venusberg was 
 heard; modified, it was not so boisterously insinuating 
 as before; it promised oblivion, a brief respite and rest 
 before the sulphurous flames of hell claimed their own. 
 Just then the body of Elisabeth was carried by in 
 solemn procession by the pilgrims. Wolfram von Esch- 
 enbach, staunch friend and loyal spirit, battled heroically 
 with Tannhaeuser. "One word, and you will still be 
 saved. It is not too late," he cried, and Tannhaeuser, 
 overcome with grief on seeing Elisabeth's body, fell 
 upon his knees. Filled with sudden detestation and ab- 
 horrence for Venus, he abandoned himself to his grief 
 for Elisabeth, barely thinking of himself. "Pray for 
 me, Elisabeth," he cried, but that cry did not voice fear 
 for his soul's welfare but rather a sublime, self-for- 
 getful repentance at having caused the death of her 
 whose body was lying before him. That repentance, that 
 self-forgetfulness, that abnegation wrought his salvation, 
 because they compassed his redemption. Sin was cast 
 out at last, its corroding poison overcome by a subtler, 
 holier force. 
 
 Betty left the opera house in a state of stupefaction. 
 The maze of faces, the enormous hordes of human beings
 
 184 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 who had partaken of the same musical feast as her- 
 self and Dick, bewildered her. It occurred to her that 
 the music had carried the same message to no two human 
 beings, and she wondered whether Dick's interpreta- 
 tion vaguely resembled her own. 
 
 "Let us walk," she whispered as they reached the side- 
 walk at last. "Let us walk." 
 
 The night was clear and cold. The pavements were 
 swept clean by a light, brisk north wind, and a gossamer 
 moon looked down from a deep blue sky, its noble glory 
 obscured by the glaring electric lights of the Great White 
 Way. 
 
 "Dicky what does Tannhaeuser mean to you ?" 
 
 "The continual struggle between good and evil be- 
 tween Ormuzd and Ahriman, as the ancient Persians 
 called it, making a god beneficent and a god malignant of 
 the two forces. The same thought recurs in every re- 
 ligion, because the struggle between good and evil is 
 one of the fundamental laws of life. The world cannot 
 be wholly good or wholly bad." 
 
 "Why can the world not be wholly good?" 
 
 "I do not know. I have often wondered. The sub- 
 ject is one that eludes reason. One's thoughts seem to 
 run around in a circle and arrive nowheres." 
 
 "But why? Have you no theory?" 
 
 "No, Betty, I have not." 
 
 "But, Dicky, can you imagine any man as fine-fibered 
 as Tannhaeuser being so horrid at the same time?" 
 
 "Oh, I suppose so. Some men are that way." 
 
 "Even if he loved another woman?" 
 
 Richard did not reply, and Betty repeated her ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "I suppose Wagner wanted to visualize the continual 
 temptation of the flesh. Your question is loosely framed, 
 Betty."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 185 
 
 "Well, you know what I mean." 
 
 "You mean, could any man loving a good woman find 
 pleasure in being the lover of another, a wicked 
 woman ?" 
 
 "Yes," her voice was almost inaudible. "Can you 
 understand that, Dick?" 
 
 "No, Betty, I cannot." 
 
 He felt the clasp of her fingers upon his arm tighten. 
 Neither spoke again until they reached home.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The evening of December fifteenth arrived at last. 
 As Betty was still in mourning, she wore a simple, girl- 
 ishly made white gown, with black ribbons at her waist, 
 but because her hair and her eyes were so black the rib- 
 bons sounded the note of mourning but ineffectually, and 
 seemed rather the last refinement of fin de siecle chic than 
 a badge of sorrow. Her pristine, virginal loveliness was 
 thrown into high relief by this setting of black and white, 
 and Dicky scrutinizing her intently at her own and Mrs. 
 Presbey's request, the latter having helped dress her, 
 felt a strange conglomeration of emotions sweep 
 through him. Her purity was so apparent that it should 
 have precluded passion. Nature should have allowed her 
 the privilege of eternal virginity. But, owing to the 
 brutal significance of life, eternal virginity meant a drab 
 and meaningless middle age, meant unlovely and unloved 
 spinsterhood. The only truly kind way, then, in which 
 Nature could preserve temperaments such as Betty's 
 from the contamination which life must inevitably bring, 
 was to dole out death. But death, again, before fruition 
 and fulfilment of love, meant the blighting of hope, the 
 perpetuation of an unextinguishable fire, the agonies of 
 purgatory for the man with whom death had so fraudu- 
 lently dealt. 
 
 It was a rainy night, and they were thankful when 
 at last they were safely ensconced in the taxicab, which 
 Richard, fearing Betty might take cold in the thin sum- 
 mer gown, had ordered. 
 
 "Oh, Dicky, how heavenly this is. When we are rich, 
 
 186
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 187 
 
 dearest, we will take a taxicab ride every rainy night in 
 the year." 
 
 "Why on rainy nights?" 
 
 ''Because rainy nights are caused by the falling of tears 
 of lovers who are in heaven, and we, dearest, will be 
 selfishly happy and rejoice that we are still on earth, 
 where tears are rare." 
 
 "Sweetheart !" 
 
 "Don't attempt to kiss me, Richard, because of the 
 dress." 
 
 "If it were not for the dress ... ?" 
 
 "I am as ready for kisses as you are, am I not, dear- 
 est? Who gave whom the first kiss, silly?" 
 
 "Betty, sweetheart, you are adorable." 
 
 "Oh, adorable hear him !" 
 
 "Darling, you were never quite like this before so 
 playful, so wheedlingly entertaining." 
 
 "Am I usually so dull?" 
 
 "Sweetheart, you know what I mean. You do love 
 me, don't you, Betty?" 
 
 "Um, um possibly a little." 
 
 "How much, Betty?" 
 
 "How can one measure love or weigh it? Pound 
 avoirdupois or troy?" 
 
 "Betty, Betty, you are driving me mad. One kiss, 
 dearest !" 
 
 "If I gave you one kiss, Dick, you would wish two, 
 and two would inevitably lead to four, and four, geo- 
 metrical progression be thanked, to sixteen. And my 
 dress, Dicky, my dress is to be considered." 
 
 Richard's brain reeled. Never before had she indulged 
 in banter of this sort. Never before had the feminine in 
 her held the upper hand so completely. Hope bounded 
 sky-high. He had not believed her capable of such de- 
 licious love-banter ; did it emanate from her heart or her
 
 188 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 head, was it due to high animal spirits? He had never 
 known her to possess anything vaguely resembling that 
 usual concomitant of youth. Was she at last to dis- 
 cover that not only the spirit but the flesh as well must 
 participate in love to give it well-rounded proportions? 
 Then he rebuked himself for the second time that even- 
 ing for indulging in such thoughts. He was determined 
 to stifle his desire for her. 
 
 "Dicky !" 
 
 "Darling?" 
 
 "Dicky, when you are rich and famous, we will have 
 everything we want for yourself and myself, too. Won't 
 we ? How heavenly it will be." 
 
 "Are there many things you want ?" 
 
 "Loads." 
 
 "For instance?" 
 
 "A Cornelian cameo for your watch-fob." 
 
 "Oh, but that doesn't count. That is for me. What 
 do you want?" 
 
 "And a scarf-pin the one we saw in Maiden Lane 
 the other day, with a pink pearl, do you remember? It 
 was set in a crescent of small diamonds. Price three 
 hundred and fifty dollars." 
 
 "But that is something for me again. Why not think 
 of something for yourself?" 
 
 "Then I want a real Corot to hang over your piano 
 right above a bust of Beethoven, and of course, instead 
 of the plaster Beethoven we want a bust in marble, and, 
 oh yes, a real Stradivarius to loan to anyone who wants 
 to play a violin concerto with you." 
 
 "Betty, oh Betty, have you no wishes for yourself?" 
 
 "Yes, if it were not selfish, I'd rather we would re- 
 main poor so I could wash and scrub for you." 
 
 "As if I'd let you!" 
 
 " k You'd never know the difference you dear thing!
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 189 
 
 But, perhaps, after all, it would be better to be rich, 
 because of course, if you weren't rich it would mean 
 that you were not successful. Instead of being poor, you 
 might be so nervous that you couldn't stand having a 
 servant around you, and I could still do for you as if 
 we were poor." 
 
 "You are certainly mapping out a great future for 
 me poverty or neurasthenia thank you." 
 
 "Oh, you darling Dicky. I hope you will become a 
 multi-millionaire so you can have the pleasure of buying 
 me everything I want." 
 
 "Yes, but what do you want?" 
 
 "Nothing, but I will invent a lot of fictitious wants 
 for you to fill every day." 
 
 He pressed her hand and they fell silent. 
 
 The mansion of Direktor Markheim was brilliantly 
 lighted, all too brilliantly, Betty thought, for so shabby 
 an interior. Shabby the furniture seemed to her, and 
 shabby the rugs and hangings. Betty, in her unsophis- 
 tication in matters of art, had no idea that the shabby 
 hangings were priceless old Bayeux tapestry, that the 
 threadbare rugs were precious Kurdistan and Ghiordez 
 and Shiraz rugs, and more valuable than the most gor- 
 geously splendid contemporary rug to be found in any 
 department store, and that the mangy-looking chairs 
 were genuine Jacobean chairs, having as carefully au- 
 thenticated a pedigree as any race horse. 
 
 Direktor Markheim's residence was in fact a museum 
 rather than a home. Bronze Buddhas, from India; a 
 Chinese Joss and rose-colored armor from old Nippon 
 were jumbled together with Sevres vases on which draw- 
 ing-room shepherds and shepherdesses danced minuets 
 with freshly laundered lambs gamboling about in the 
 background. The rooms, though spacious, were not 
 large enough for the enormous throng of people as-
 
 190 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 sembled in them. Betty and Richard were caught in a 
 swaying mass, as closely packed as the Christmas crowds 
 in a popular-priced department store. 
 
 They were pushing, or being pushed forward when a 
 voice back of them remarked : 
 
 "The Herr Direktor likes to pack even his own private 
 house, just to keep his hand in practise in packing the 
 big house on Broadway." It was Archie Telfer. He 
 looked aggressively handsome in evening clothes, and 
 contrived to look cool and perfectly at ease in spite of 
 the crush. As usual, his manner brought the color to 
 her cheeks. She saw Richard's eyes harden as her 
 color mounted, and in consequence anathematized 
 Archie. He, nonchalantly paying no attention to Dick's 
 frigid manner or her own diffidence, found what he 
 described as "an Indian trail through this dense for- 
 est of imported civilization." Certainly it was the most 
 cosmopolitan assemblage of men and women that Betty 
 had ever found herself in, and willy-nilly, Richard not- 
 withstanding, she was grateful to Archie for steering 
 them away from the draughty entrance hall toward 
 Frau Direktor Markheim, who was receiving, and then 
 into a back parlor where there was much more vacant 
 floor space. 
 
 "By the by," said Archie, having safely piloted them 
 to a small alcove, "Richard, my son, the Herr Direktor 
 is very anxious to see you as soon as you come, con- 
 cerning the order in which the various contestants are 
 to appear. You will find him and Mr. Earlcote at the 
 head of the stairs." 
 
 Richard was furious because he must leave Betty in 
 the society of the man he had every reason to distrust 
 and dislike, but, mustering as much grace of manner 
 and countenance as he could, he went his way. 
 
 "I am going to initiate you a bit," said Archie Telfer,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 191 
 
 looking Betty over leisurely. "Not nervous, are you?" 
 Her color had died away, and she had the sensation of 
 being frightfully pale. 
 
 "A wee bit, perhaps," Betty replied. "Are many ce- 
 lebrities present?" 
 
 "Everybody present is a celebrity past, present or 
 future," Archie retorted, laughing. "If you are nerv- 
 ous because of the celebrities, I think I can help you 
 overcome your stage- fright. I'll introduce one or two 
 to you. Do you see that man yonder, who looks as if 
 he had used shoeblacking on his mustache?" 
 
 The description fitted the gentleman, whom Archie 
 indicated by a glance, like the proverbial glove. Betty 
 laughed. 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "For one thing he is the champion beer drinker of 
 the musical colony in New York. He has been known 
 to consume fifty-five glasses of Pilsener heavy im- 
 ported beer, you know at one sitting." 
 
 Betty looked incredulous. 
 
 "I am going to angle him for you, so you can ex- 
 amine him at your leisure. The Dutchmen are all alike, 
 and the Italians are alike in a different way. One type 
 drinks its beer and the other eats his spaghetti. At 
 eleven o'clock a buffet luncheon is provided, in which 
 the tastes of each nationality are catered to, for the 
 Herr Direktor, when he has his 'evenings' does not 
 treat his guests like the stork and the fox in the fable 
 but provides cosmopolitan fare, so that none of the. song- 
 birds, whether German, Frenchman, Italian or Spaniard, 
 need fast. Ah, there is he of the shoeblacked hair. I 
 will introduce him to you, so you can examine a celeb- 
 rity at your leisure." 
 
 "Don't," said Betty feebly, fearing she knew not 
 what.
 
 192 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Why not?" Archie threw back at her, his amiabil- 
 ity undisturbed. "I suppose that rascal Richard has 
 been warning you against me. Now, my dear young 
 lady, when I offer you a glass of soda-water, you may 
 justly misdoubt it for fear that I, villain that I am, have 
 put into it knockout drops or some other species of fic- 
 titious dope, such as exists only in the pages of dime 
 novels and the science supplements of the yellow papers. 
 But when I offer to introduce someone to you, to amuse 
 you, in a house as eminently respectable as the Direk- 
 tor's, you really must not suspect me of setting afoot 
 a conspiracy to kidnap you." 
 
 "I never did," said Betty a little indignantly. 
 
 Archie laughed, and before she could say another 
 word, darted off nimbly in pursuit of the gentleman 
 against whom he had humorously influenced Betty. He 
 returned with his prey a few seconds later, and, by way 
 of introduction, mentioned an unpronounceable name to 
 Betty. 
 
 "Miss Garside," Archie continued, "I think will be 
 the Emma Eames of the rising generation of singers. 
 Her voice is to be tested to-night." 
 
 "Indeed," said he of the shoeblacked hair very calmly, 
 as if future Emma Eames were of slight importance to 
 the world. "In appearance you remind me a leetle of > 
 no, not of Eames, but of della Florenzia. Not so, Mr. 
 Telfer?" 
 
 "I had not noticed it," said Archie indifferently. 
 
 "Joost a leetle," said the shoeblacked gentleman. 
 "Joost a leetle, when della Florenzia is made up to look 
 like a nice, pretty leetle maiden. But I hope your voice, 
 Mees Garside, is better than della Florenzia's. Not so, 
 Mr. Telfer?" 
 
 "To believe that it were no better would be an insult 
 to Miss Garside," said Archie magnificently.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 193 
 
 "True, quite true," assented the mustachioed gentle- 
 man. "Veil, we will see. We will see." 
 
 And with this prophecy, which signified nothing, he 
 made his bow and passed on. 
 
 "Who was he ?" asked Betty, smiling. Her smile car- 
 ried the quality which smiles wear when amusement at 
 the expense of someone else has been suppressed. 
 
 "The new musical conductor for the Wagnerian music- 
 dramas, none greater," said Archie. "Miles have been 
 written about his unsurpassed and unsurpassable inter- 
 pretations." 
 
 "Not really?" 
 
 "Assuredly." 
 
 "And of whom did he say I reminded him?" 
 
 Archie pursed his lips enigmatically. 
 
 "A well-known vaudeville star," he replied, "and, as 
 I said, I never noticed the faintest resemblance. The 
 young lady is over there, near the tallest palm in the 
 bay window." 
 
 Betty craned her neck discreetly, and caught a glimpse 
 of a young woman, hardly older than herself, dressed in 
 the choicest of French skin-tight gowns, and displaying 
 a figure which might have tempted a sybarite ; the shoul- 
 ders which surmounted the figure would have under- 
 mined the fortitude of St. Anthony himself. Jewels 
 tinkled at her corsage, a rope of pearls was wound 
 about her right arm, which was bare to the shoulder, 
 while the left sleeve, consisting of lattice-work of black 
 velvet ribbon, secured with seed pearls, terminated at 
 the elbow. One side of the gown was black, the other 
 cherry-colored. Her entire little person exuded diablerie 
 and witchery. Three layers of men were crowded about 
 her, and it was only when a waiter approached with a 
 glass of water which someone had requested that the
 
 194 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 circle of homage-doers parted sufficiently to allow Betty 
 a glimpse of the enchantress. 
 
 "She is very beautiful," Betty said, "isn't she?" She 
 asked the question in all innocence, not realizing that an 
 accomplished man of the world like Archie Telfer would 
 take it as an invitation for a compliment. 
 
 "Not nearly as beautiful as the young lady she is said 
 to resemble," he replied. "And now that my attention 
 has been called to it, I believe there is a resemblance, 
 though it is very slight. But there is a great difference 
 between you in every other way." 
 
 "In what way, for instance?" Betty queried. "Her 
 hair and eyes are black. So are mine. That is the 
 entire resemblance, as I see it." She was not egotisti- 
 cal as a rule in seeking to focus the conversation about 
 herself, but something about this woman, some subtle 
 quality, a gliding, mysterious something, seemed to 
 challenge her to invite Archie Telfer's comparative 
 views. 
 
 "Well," said Archie, "for one thing, you won't mind 
 the comparison, I hope she is more skillful than your- 
 self in the art of dressing, and infinitely less scrupulous 
 in pressing to the uttermost the seductions of which that 
 art can be made capable." 
 
 Betty opened her eyes wide. Whatever might be said 
 of Archie Telfer, a half-hour spent in his company was 
 certainly not dull. His entire trend of thought seemed 
 so opposed to that of every other person she had ever 
 met, and his viewpoint on every conceivable subject 
 seemed so totally unlike all ideas she was familiar with 
 that she found him mightily interesting. That Dicky 
 did not approve of her interest she was fully aware, 
 and as she was convinced that the interest was purely 
 platonic, purely conversational, it did not worry Betty 
 very much that Dicky did not approve.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 195 
 
 "Do tell me a little something about what did you 
 say her name was?" 
 
 "I didn't say at all. Her real name is Katharine 
 Kitty, for short Florence. But Kitty Florence didn't 
 suit this New York girl after she began to make a hit 
 abroad, and she transformed herself into Katarina della 
 Florenzia. Quite an improvement, eh? Well, Katarina 
 had her affections badly wrenched last year. Count Hel- 
 lersperg, scion of one of the oldest families of Austria, 
 and the young lady were very much in love with each 
 other last season." 
 
 "Why didn't they get married? Was there an ob- 
 stacle?" 
 
 Archie suppressed his amusement. 
 
 "Well, I believe, so I've been told, the young man's 
 father objected." 
 
 "If he loved her, I would think he would have mar- 
 ried her all the same." 
 
 Archie thought, "Oh, Jehovah, what innocence," but 
 he said, "So would I and so, of course, would any 
 gentleman." 
 
 But if Betty was innocent, she was by no means silly. 
 She asked abruptly: 
 
 "By the way, have you decided which of the three 
 you are going to marry?" 
 
 "Bow-wow," said Archie. "However, the question 
 does not phaze me in the least. I may have to answer 
 it in court, and I shall answer in court as I answer you, 
 that I may marry a fourth lady, a young lady with black 
 hair, and black eyes, and a pair of the sweetest red lips 
 I have ever seen." 
 
 He thought to embarrass her, but Betty said, laughing : 
 
 "Then surely you must be thinking of marrying Kata- 
 rina della Florenzia." 
 
 "No, no, Katarina's near-double."
 
 196 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Has she more than one near-double?" asked Betty, 
 enjoying the nonsense thoroughly, and not realizing the 
 danger of playing with a man of Archie Telfer's type, 
 not knowing how formidable even the idlest badinage 
 may become if it happens to touch the Achilles heel of 
 so unscrupulous and accomplished a libertine as the 
 handsome man beside her. 
 
 "She has only one near-double as far as I know," said 
 Archie Telfer, "and she " 
 
 "Is engaged, as far as I know," said Betty, laughing. 
 
 The natural excitement which the events to which she 
 was looking forward that evening had engendered in 
 her, the heavy air of the room permeated with the no- 
 ticeable, peculiar quality existing in every room where 
 many human personalities commingle, the drowsy fra- 
 grance of the cut-flowers, the undercurrent of music stir- 
 ring somewhere behind the palms of the bay window 
 and weaving itself through the rich, sonorous ocean of 
 voices as a bank of clouds interlaces itself with the sky, 
 all this had stimulated in her a quickness and alertness 
 of thought and repartee which she ordinarily lacked. 
 To Archie Telfer, expert appraiser of women, she had 
 never seemed so womanly, in fact, she never had ap- 
 peared to him as a woman at all until this evening. She 
 had always seemed to him a naiad or a wood-nymph, a 
 delicious fragrant young thing to look at, but rather 
 tedious and unstimulating to all the senses except 
 that of vision. He had never even desired her, as men 
 are prone to desire women. To desire a woman with 
 Archie Telfer was to secure her, since the women who 
 attracted him were usually of loose or at least unstable 
 virtue. This process Archie Telfer termed "picking 
 flowers by the wayside." He had never expected to 
 add this particular, tender, fragrant little hothouse blos- 
 som to his nosegay. He was not sure that he wanted it
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 197 
 
 now. He merely wondered, and decided to remain 
 watchful. 
 
 "Engaged as far as you know," he repeated the 
 phrase. "Engagements are made to be broken, you 
 know." 
 
 "No, they're not," said Betty, speaking shyly, yet 
 with pretty dignity. "They're contracted to culminate 
 in marriage. Tell me more of Miss Kitty." 
 
 "What is there to tell ? That she is not above making 
 money by unscrupulous means ?" 
 
 Archie hazarded the statement couched as a question 
 to test Betty's innocence. He supposed, that after what 
 he had previously said about Kitty's unfortunate love- 
 affair, that Betty would now guess what the unscrupu- 
 lous means of making money were. But Betty was 
 divinely innocent with the innocence of the truly moral, 
 which, though cognizant that evil exists, never attempts 
 to connect any particular person with evil. Betty said : 
 
 "What do you mean? Smuggling? Playing bridge? 
 Gambling? Not drinking?" 
 
 These were the worst and only forms of dissipation 
 of which women could be guilty which occurred to 
 Betty at the moment. Archie shrugged his shoulders, 
 and said nothing, but in that brief second of time he 
 became poignantly aware that, if he could, he would pick 
 this particular blossom. W T hat he felt for her was as- 
 suredly not love, since her innocence in no way attracted 
 him to her, but merely made her appear ridiculous; he 
 scarcely even desired her, for she aroused no intense 
 pitch of emotion in him ; his wish for her was simply the 
 wish of the filthy-handed little guttersnipe who, seeing 
 a clean, neatly dressed little child, does not rest until he 
 has soiled the dainty freshly laundered gown of the 
 other child with his own grimy hands. Archie Telfer was 
 curious to see just how such purity, such whiteness
 
 198 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 would conduct itself under given conditions. He con- 
 cluded it was worth a try. He regretted that he had 
 to leave town the next day, as he and his management 
 had abruptly decided to postpone the opening night of 
 "The Sun-God" in New York another two months, to 
 the unutterable chagrin of the ticket-purchasers of the 
 advance sale, in order "to try the show on the dog," the 
 dog in this case being a string of towns stretching from 
 New York to Chicago. Here, however, was something 
 to look forward to upon his return. Gravely he pulled 
 out his scented cambric handkerchief and knotted one 
 corner of it. 
 
 "What are you doing that for ?" Betty asked. 
 
 "To remind me of a matter I have to attend to on 
 returning to New York." 
 
 "And will you keep the handkerchief in that gnarled 
 condition all the time you are on the road?" 
 
 "No I'm a methodical person. Every evening, like 
 a sea-captain, I enter the knots I have made in my 
 book." 
 
 "Who is that lady, an Italian, I think with the sweet, 
 sad face?" 
 
 "That? Theresia Hudrazzini the famous soprano." 
 
 "Yes, thank you I knew, of course, that she was a 
 soprano and famous," Betty laughed. "What an an- 
 gelic face!" 
 
 "She is a very charming woman. She also was on 
 the Proteus. She was married when she was eighteen, 
 and her husband died on the third anniversary of 
 their marriage. She has not remarried, in spite of 
 her extreme youth at the time of her husband's 
 death, an unheard of state of affairs among operatic 
 stars." 
 
 "I think it beautiful," said Betty enthusiastically. 
 
 Richard approached them, making his way with diffi-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 199 
 
 culty through the crowd of people that separated him 
 from Betty and Archie. He looked pale and excited. 
 
 "Instrumental contestants are to play first," he said. 
 "There is one vocal contestant only, Betty yourself. 
 You are the last on the list. I come just before you." 
 
 "What's the object of having all these people here?" 
 asked Betty. 
 
 "Direktor Markheim says Earlcote wants to judge of 
 the stage presence of the contestants," Richard replied. 
 "Hence he invited all these folks, and erected a small 
 platform at the end of the room, as a miniature stage. 
 They are drawing the curtains now." 
 
 "Has Earlcote come?" Betty asked curiously. "Have 
 you seen him?" 
 
 Richard shuddered visibly. "I have seen him," he 
 answered. "God forgive me for hating a man because 
 he is a cripple. But I hate him. And I wish I were 
 well out of this." He hesitated a moment. "If you do 
 not wish to sing, Betty, ask Archie to take some mes- 
 sage to the Direktor. You will, won't you, Archie, if 
 Miss Garside wishes it?" 
 
 "Sure thing," said Archie. "You look as if you had 
 the ague, Richard." 
 
 Richard shook himself to efface the disagreeable im- 
 pression made upon him by Earlcote. "Did he affect 
 you that way, too, Archie?" 
 
 "He affects everybody that way," Archie replied 
 dryly. "He gives everybody a turn. I have warned 
 Miss Garside not to fall in love with him, you know." 
 
 "You two men strike me as being very foolish and 
 wicked," interpolated Betty calmly. "If Mr. Earlcote 
 is a cripple, as Richard leads us to infer, that surely 
 is a valid reason for pitying, not for hating, him." 
 
 "Suspend your judgment yet a while," Archie de- 
 claimed in his finest Shakespearian manner. "Wait till
 
 200 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 you see him, my dear Miss Garside, and perhaps even 
 your charity will take wings and fly away. Who is the 
 first contestant, Richard?" 
 
 "A violinist chap named Isaac Abrahamovitz." 
 
 "Race unknown," remarked Archie Telfer. 
 
 "And the second?" Betty inquired. 
 
 "Another violinist Patrick O'Rourke." 
 
 "A Frenchman from Cork. Next?" 
 
 "A pianist Guiseppe Bartellomeo." 
 
 "A spaghetti-eater. Well, God be good to all of 
 them." 
 
 "Last of the instrumentalists myself. Then, Miss 
 Garside." 
 
 Betty leaned forward excitedly. 
 
 "They are about to begin, Dick." 
 
 The two rooms, noisy with voices but a moment ago, 
 were hushed and still. In front of the platform sat Mr. 
 Telfer and the Direktor, and in a huge armchair, seated 
 so that the back of the chair hid him from Betty's view, 
 sat Stanley Earlcote. She watched the chair fascinat- 
 edly, hoping that his head might appear. She felt a 
 singular curiosity to know what the musical pope, whose 
 judgment all deferred to, looked like. Everybody was 
 now seated, except the three liveried footmen, who, one 
 by one, effaced thmselves through the double entrance 
 door leading to the hall. Then, suddenly, the odd sen- 
 sation came over Betty that sometimes comes in a dimly 
 lighted room, and for a moment she seemed transplanted 
 from the world of reality to the realm of dreams, for 
 there, against the doors stood two figures which Betty 
 had not noticed before, two turbaned figures in Oriental 
 costume, standing so immovably still that for the space 
 of five seconds Betty thought they were figures carved 
 in wood or statues cast in bronze or hewn out of stone 
 and merely part and parcel of the strange paraphernalia 
 that littered the room.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 201 
 
 "Look," she whispered to Archie Telfer, "are they 
 real ?" 
 
 Archie nodded, smiled gaily, and whispered : 
 
 "They are Dushka and Hahdjan, Earlcote's Hindu 
 servants. He cannot walk any distance without their 
 assistance, you know." 
 
 Betty had not known, and her new knowledge unac- 
 countably sent a chill down her back, and rilled her with 
 a throbbing, fascinated interest. Her glances alternated 
 as between two magnets from the back of Earlcote's 
 chair to his two servants. She began to wish that she 
 had taken Richard's advice, and had made some excuse 
 for not singing. She began to fear this man without 
 knowing him. His very servants exuded an atmosphere 
 of subtle, menacing malignancy. Incredibly still they 
 stood, like well-trained supernumeraries in some Ori- 
 ental extravaganza, the bizarre lavishness of their East- 
 ern dress heightening the fantastic weirdness which was 
 engulfing Betty. 
 
 The audience began applauding the good-natured, 
 meaningless applause extended as an amenity of greet- 
 ing, a sort of aural handshake, to a public performer. 
 Isaac Abrahamovitz, a swarthy young Hebrew of de- 
 cidedly prepossessing exterior, made his bow, and waited 
 for the accompanist to begin. 
 
 He had not played for more than five minutes when a 
 sharp voice Earlcote's voice, since it emanated from 
 behind the chair cried: 
 
 "Stop it, stop it." 
 
 The young man, abashed and perplexed, thinking he 
 had misunderstood, after a momentary break, continued 
 his playing. Again the metallic voice of Earlcote 
 clanged through the room. 
 
 "Stop it stop it!" 
 
 Isaac Abrahamovitz, looking amazed rather than em- 
 barrassed, came to a dead stop. The accompanist hur-
 
 202 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ried on for a bar or two, then, perceiving that something 
 was wrong, stopped also. The voice of Earlcote, each 
 note of which sounded like metal ringing upon metal, 
 rasped : 
 
 "My advice to you is to go back to a musical kinder- 
 garten for a while." 
 
 The insult was so gratuitous and so unexpected that 
 young Abrahamovitz, utterly at sea, for a few seconds 
 stared in silence at the man who had hurled it at him. 
 Then, without a word, he left the platform. 
 
 Mr. Telfer and Direktor Markheim looked at each 
 other with faces that were worth studying. They 
 glanced at each other questioningly, and they glanced 
 apologetically and commiseratingly at the victim of Earl- 
 cote's brutality, but they dared offer no protest. 
 
 Patrick O'Rourke, the second violinist, stepped upon 
 the platform. The jaw of his handsome Irish face was 
 set to a bulldog pattern. 
 
 "If Earlcote dares do the same over again," Betty 
 whispered to Archie, "something is going to happen. He 
 looks as if he would like to kill Earlcote." 
 
 "He may think so," Archie whispered back, "but he'll 
 change his mind quick enough once Earlcote looks at 
 him." 
 
 Young O'Rourke had begun playing. Betty thought 
 he played very well and with much feeling. But sud- 
 denly, without warning, as before, came Earlcote's com- 
 mand: 
 
 "Stop it stop it !" 
 
 O'Rourke heard him perfectly, but went on playing, 
 glaring defiance from the platform at Earlcote. Again 
 Earlcote snarled out his command, and again O'Rourke 
 defied him. Suddenly a stick, wielded by Earlcote's 
 hand, began beating upon the platform, splitting 
 O'Rourke's playing into a series of jarring, discordant
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 203 
 
 sounds. O'Rourke stopped, and shook his fist at Earl- 
 cote, whose voice rasped out : 
 
 "You use your violin as if it were a nutmeg-grater. 
 Off with you." 
 
 For one moment it seemed as if there might be a 
 scuffle, so belligerently did the young Irishman glare 
 down upon his verbal assailant. Then suddenly his bel- 
 ligerency changed into disgust, almost terror. Mutter- 
 ing something, he turned and went from the platform. 
 
 This time Telfer and the Direktor interfered. They 
 bent over Earlcote's chair, both speaking at the same 
 time. What they said was not heard, for throughout 
 the room a hubbub of voices arose. Whatever their 
 little professional jealousies may be, professional folk 
 are courteous souls, and indignation ran high. They 
 were protesting in no uncertain way in French, German, 
 Italian, Spanish. They were reading Earlcote a polyglot 
 riot act, and their gestures seemed to indicate that they 
 contemplated throwing him out of the room. 
 
 Suddenly the Direktor, seizing a baton, rapped upon 
 the platform. The undercurrent of voices was hushed, 
 and finally died away. 
 
 "Signer Guiseppe Bartellomeo will now favor us," he 
 said. 
 
 The Italian was a fragile-looking youth of about three 
 and twenty, who looked badly scared. He was per- 
 mitted to play all of the Barcarole he had selected as his 
 first piece. When he finished, Earlcote began : 
 
 "I beg to suggest, my young friend, that you learn to 
 use the piano more gently. It is not a kettledrum. 
 Expressive playing is due not to muscular strength but 
 to feeling. You need not play your second selection. 
 You are not ripe for a European scholarship." 
 
 The Italian, thankful to have come off so easily, made 
 his escape from the improvised stage. Betty became
 
 204 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 intolerably nervous. She shifted her chair, and in doing 
 so, caught sight of Earlcote for the first time. She 
 suppressed a cry of horror only with difficulty, and un- 
 consciously, as if for protection, stretched out her hand 
 to Archie, who was not slow to take it, pressing it caress- 
 ingly; but she, trembling violently from the shock which 
 the sight of Earlcote had communicated to her, was not 
 even aware of the liberty of which Archie was availing 
 himself. 
 
 The face of Earlcote was the most hideous face she 
 had ever seen. His complexion was very pale, the com- 
 plexion of an Octoroon or a Creole. There was not a 
 vestige of color in either cheeks or lips, but the tip of the 
 nose was faintly pink, by which token those who hated 
 him pretended to establish his negro ancestry. The 
 small, greenish-gray eyes had no brilliancy, but were 
 dull and heavy, like the eyes of a dead fish. The entire 
 head of Earlcote was as grotesque, as repulsive, and as 
 suggestive of evil as the heads of gargoyles which are 
 found on all mediaeval churches, those fictitious mon- 
 sters so hideous to look upon that the onlooker cannot 
 gaze upon them, though they are presentments of mon- 
 strous forms that never existed, without emotions of dis- 
 tress and loathing. Hideous as was the face of Stanley 
 Earlcote, his body was more repulsive still. As he sat 
 there, hunched together in the deep recesses of the com- 
 fortable chair which had been placed for him, he seemed 
 an invertebrate mass of flesh, flesh without underlying 
 structure of bones to hold erect, to dignify, to ennoble 
 into purpose and dynamic force and form. 
 
 His one hand lay inert and motionless upon the arm 
 of the chair, but it seemed not the hand of a human 
 being, rather the monstrous conception of some weirdly 
 imaginative artist depicting some defunct specimen of 
 near-man that existed before Adam, a specimen of a
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 205 
 
 species so outrageous that nature had mercifully wiped 
 it away from the sane and beautiful earth. His ringers 
 were hideous stumps, the knuckles, where the fingers 
 join the hand, were gnarled and contorted and twisted. 
 
 "Good Heavens," whispered Betty. "That thing, that 
 monster, that prodigy to judge her Richard !" 
 
 Archie looked at her feelingly. She thought only of 
 Richard, not of herself, but Archie thought he detected 
 in her an acute attack of stage fright, and since even he, 
 the Adonis, the Sun-God, the ne plus ultra of men who 
 adorned the stage, had experienced that species of tor- 
 ment, he felt sorry for her. 
 
 "Don't get stagitis, whatever you do," he whispered, 
 pressing her hand. It was purely by a reflex action that 
 Betty withdrew her hand from his, for she was as un- 
 conscious of the fact that Archie had been holding it 
 as of the fact that she herself had extended it to him. 
 
 "There is Richard now," she murmured. 
 
 Richard, looking pale and exaggeratedly composed, 
 made his best bow, seated himself and began. He had 
 chosen one movement from Beethoven's Sonata, Op. 53, 
 to be followed by Chopin's Funeral March. In view of 
 Earlcote's summary measures, it was, of course, doubt- 
 ful whether he would be permitted to play his second 
 selection. Betty felt an intolerable nervousness surging 
 up in her as she watched Richard. To her surprise, he 
 was perfectly self-possessed and played as authorita- 
 tively as at home. If he was nervous, it was not appar- 
 ent in his playing. And his interpretation, to which he 
 had given months of study, was emphatic and lucid. 
 
 Betty, satisfied that all was well with her Dick, gave 
 her attention to Earlcote. As she watched him while 
 he listened to Richard's playing, a curtain seemed lifted 
 from that evil countenance. A look of alertness came 
 into the dull, dead eyes; and the colorless mouth, which
 
 206 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 before had seemed a mere slit in the gray face, was 
 pursed as in token of subtle satisfaction. She felt cer- 
 tain from watching Earlcote's face that Richard was 
 playing well, very, very well indeed, and that he, at 
 least, had nothing to fear from Earlcote. But suddenly 
 the expression of satisfaction on Earlcote's face changed 
 and was succeeded by an ignoble look of malice, cun- 
 ning and deadly hatred. The inert, malformed body 
 seemed to become infused with malevolent energy. 
 
 Betty was perplexed. Had Richard made some mis- 
 take. Was his nervousness getting the upper hand, to 
 the detriment of his playing? She divided her attention 
 between Richard's playing and Earlcote's face, riveting 
 her eyes upon the man who was to judge her lover and 
 decide his future. Suddenly she clenched her hands in 
 impotent anger. She understood the expression on Stan- 
 ley Earlcote's face now. Love made the simple, inex- 
 perienced, artless little girl clairvoyant. Oh, yes, she 
 understood! Let Stanley Earlcote now have the temer- 
 ity to criticize her Richard's playing! 
 
 "Play the next piece," rasped the discordantly harsh 
 voice of Earlcote. Richard, who had risen to acknowl- 
 edge the plentiful applause accorded him, reseated him- 
 self and played Chopin's Funeral March, played it som- 
 berly, delicately, intelligently. Betty was jubilant. She 
 revised her estimate of Earlcote. He had asked Richard 
 to play his second selection, so that he was just after all. 
 Probably the others had played vilely, and the man, 
 being a monumental genius himself, could not tolerate 
 mediocrity in others. Such things had been. She had 
 misinterpreted the expression in his face, and in her 
 heart she asked his pardon. But when she looked at 
 him there welled up in her anew repugnance and loath- 
 ing a hatred bitter and deadly, corroding and poison- 
 ous. She tried to reason with herself. Never before
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 207 
 
 had she been caught in the toils of so unreasonable and 
 unjustified a feeling as this, and she was a little ashamed 
 of its virulence and of her inability to cope with it. 
 
 Richard had finished. Once more there was a salvo 
 of applause, and when this died away Earlcote's voice 
 rang out clear and cold : 
 
 "You have a marvelous facility of touch, marvelous. 
 Your phrases are cleanly trimmed. But that is all that 
 can be said in favor of your playing. You play with as 
 much expression as an automaton. You pride yourself, 
 very evidently, upon your intellectual playing don't 
 interrupt me. I know what I know." 
 
 Richard's face was ghostlike in its pallor as he an- 
 swered : 
 
 "I certainly think that the interpreter ought to at- 
 tempt to make intelligible to the audience the composer's 
 ideas." 
 
 "Composer's ideas ! Nonsense." Earlcote's voice was 
 terrible. He waved his hideous hands to and fro as if 
 to emphasize what he was saying. "Ideas, so that is 
 what music exists for to make ideas intelligible. It is 
 the fashion, nowadays, I know, to talk of musical ideas 
 and color in music. Music, my friend, is great enough 
 to stand on its own merits. It need not borrow ideas 
 from books, or color from painting. No really great 
 composer composed because he had 'ideas' which he 
 wanted to render intelligible. He composed to give vent 
 to some feeling, an emotion, a love, a hate. By and by, 
 when you begin to compose don't tell me you won't, 
 because you will you will probably try to go Richard 
 Strauss one better. He was content to attempt to render 
 intelligible Nietzsche's 'Also sprach Zarathustra.' Per- 
 haps you will attempt to explain through the medium, 
 of music Kant's Das Ding an Sich, I hope you will suc- 
 ceed."
 
 208 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Richard, pale and erect, stood glowering upon Earl- 
 cote as the latter poured forth his torrent of sarcasm. 
 Earlcote continued : 
 
 "Let me show you the mire into which your intel- 
 lectual playing betrays you. You are so hot on the 
 trail of 'ideas' that you take unwarrantable liberties with 
 the score. In the Sonata you overlaid the counterpoint 
 of the treble with emphasis, you elaborated and embroid- 
 ered it, thereby degrading the cantus firmus in the left 
 hand, and rendering it wholly inconspicuous. That is 
 the result of having 'ideas' which you feel yourself 
 called upon to infuse in the music, instead of contenting 
 yourself to play the music and play it again and again, 
 until the composer's mood, like a fiery cloud, has de- 
 scended upon you. Ideas!" 
 
 "From what I have read about the interpretation of 
 music," Richard began, but Earlcote interrupted him 
 roughly : 
 
 "There you are you read about music you haven't 
 enough music in you to make you feel how a thing 
 should be played. And you pretend to be a musician, a 
 pianist ! Music, my young friend, is meant to be heard, 
 not to be read about. I suppose you read your score 
 half a dozen times before attempting to play it. Do 
 you ? You read it by the hour, and by and by you begin 
 to have 'ideas.' At such and such a passage, you say 
 to yourself, 'Here the composer meant to tell us that he 
 believed in a future life, and that he based his belief not 
 on Christian anthropomorphism but on natural law in 
 the scientific and spiritual world. And then, at last, you 
 go to the piano and begin to play. Am I right?" 
 
 Richard, white and distrait-looking, answered not a 
 word. Earlcote continued his tirade: 
 
 "There are composers who compose on paper without 
 use of any musical instrument. They, too, have ideas,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 209 
 
 not feelings. But music generates here," he indicated 
 his heart, "not here," he tapped the brow of his gargoyle 
 head. 
 
 "Then," he continued, "you had the impertinence to 
 leave off the Finale from the funeral march. I sup- 
 pose this presented no new idea worth your while, be- 
 cause someone has been inconsiderate enough to 
 describe it as invoking the vision of the night wind 
 sweeping over graves. Am I right ?" 
 
 "It is not played usually," said Richard. "Therefore 
 I omitted it." 
 
 Earlcote paid no attention to Richard's reply. 
 
 "So much for your ability," he said. "Well, you, too, 
 will not travel to Europe at the expense of the Musical 
 Progress League, not until there is a little more feeling 
 evidenced in your work. At present a mechanical piano- 
 player made by a third-rate manufacturer and bought at 
 fourth hand for a seventh-rate saloon in the slums plays 
 with more expression than yourself." 
 
 Richard drew himself to full height, gave Earlcote a 
 scathing look of contempt, and sprang lightly down the 
 steps of the platform. Simultaneously a hundred voices 
 were raised in protest. 
 
 "Outrageous!" cried one Spanish tenor who had set 
 all New York by the ears with his beautiful voice. "Out- 
 rageous! He played excellently well." 
 
 "Why, the young man has a touch that will be golden 
 when time has mellowed it," authoritatively declared a 
 woman of about fifty, who, as Betty learned later on, 
 was the dean of the foremost musical conservatory of 
 the city. One and all these artists, who had been asked 
 to come and listen, were constituting themselves judges 
 not only of the player, but of the player's judge. It 
 was a dramatic scene. Stage folks, almost all of them, 
 and accustomed to the large, free gestures required by
 
 210 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 grand opera, they were backing up their opinions with 
 eloquent hands. It was a Babel of tongues and digits 
 that clamored about Earlcote's chair. 
 
 He rose heavily, supported by the Direktor and Mr. 
 Telfer, and, leaning against the platform, faced the 
 turbulent crowd of men and women, like a mad dog 
 holding at bay its pursuers. 
 
 "I have given my honest opinion," he snapped. "The 
 Herr Direktor and Mr. Telfer may take it or leave it, 
 as they please. Of course if I am to be disregarded and 
 my opinion flaunted, money being spent where I disap- 
 prove, I will ask to retire at once, instantaneously, from 
 the committee to which I have been appointed." 
 
 Direktor Markheim held out imploring hands; Mr. 
 Telfer looked supinely afraid. It was easy to see that 
 they would not risk incurring the disaster with which 
 Earlcote threatened to overwhelm them by taking de- 
 cisive steps in Richard's favor. 
 
 An unusual sensation swept over Betty. Keenly aware 
 of what she was doing, she rose. At the moment it 
 seemed to her that she was not the timid, shy little girl 
 whose face looked out from the mirror every morning 
 while she was combing her hair, but an entirely different 
 person. It seemed to her that the spirit of an older 
 woman had suddenly possessed itself of little Betty's 
 body, and was using it as a mouthpiece. She was 
 amazed at what was happening, and yet she knew that 
 she could not act otherwise than she was doing. 
 
 She stepped upon the first step of the stairs leading 
 to the miniature stage, in order to be able to make her- 
 self heard. Then addressing Earlcote, she said: 
 
 "You said just now that you gave your honest opinion 
 of Richard Pryce's playing. That is not true. You 
 know that he played well, wonderfully well. One could 
 read that in your face while he played. But you pre-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 tend to find his playing contemptible, you disparage if, 
 because you are jealous of him. That's all." 
 
 Mr. Telfer and Direktor Markheim made their way 
 to her side, imploring her to be silent, but Betty's clear 
 young voice rang out triumphantly above theirs. 
 
 Earlcote turned heavily and slowly, and, leaning on 
 his elbow, looked at her. Betty's heart sank within her 
 as that graceless, flabby, seared countenance was turned 
 Joward her. 
 
 "And who are you?" Earlcote asked. 
 
 "Richard Pryce's affianced wife and the vocal con- 
 testant," Betty replied. There was a little quaver in 
 her voice, and in her frantic nervousness she began 
 plucking at the roses she held in her hand. The soft 
 white petals, bruised and crushed, gave up an enchant- 
 ing fragrance, but Betty noticed it not. One by one the 
 roses dropped from their stems, dismembered by the 
 girl's nervous fingers. Earlcote watched her, without 
 speaking, until the last petal had fluttered to the floor. 
 Then he spoke. 
 
 "If you are the vocal contestant, perhaps you had 
 better sing. Have you also 'Ideas' about music?" 
 
 "At present," said Betty, "I haven't a single ideaj 
 only an emotion." 
 
 "And that emotion ?" 
 
 "The primitive and savage emotion of hatred," said 
 Betty, shaking a little, and speaking the angry words in 
 a very small voice indeed. "Hatred for the man who, 
 because he is jealous of my Richard's ability, is trying to 
 ruin his future." 
 
 Earlcote laughed. 
 
 "Come, come," he said, speaking very gently, his me- 
 tallic voice metallic still but chiming now like bells ring- 
 ing across the snow. "I like you. It is not often any- 
 one has the courage to defy me." He made an inviting
 
 212 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 gesture, signifying that he wished Betty to step upon 
 the platform. It was a gesture such as a prince might 
 have employed in doing homage to a queen, and this 
 astonishing and unexpected gentleness on the part of 
 Earlcote frightened Betty intensely. She stared at him 
 in alarm. 
 
 "You need not be afraid," he said, speaking more 
 gently still. His voice was almost a caress. "You need 
 not be afraid. I do not treat little white roses, little 
 white human roses, as cruelly as you have treated the 
 white buds at your breast." 
 
 Only then Betty became aware that she had torn 
 the flowers to pieces. She threw away the stems, and 
 with the courage of despair ran up the steps to the 
 platform. It was only when she stood beside the piano, 
 with the accompanist already playing the introductory 
 bars, that Betty became poignantly aware of the con- 
 spicuous part she had allowed herself to play before all 
 these celebrated men and women. For one moment she 
 thought she must die of shame. Then, remembering 
 she had publicly proclaimed herself to be Richard's fu- 
 ture wife, she essayed to do her best. 
 
 She sang Schumann's "Schlummerlied" and "Erlkoe- 
 nig," and, so nervous was she, she expected Earlcote to 
 interrupt her momentarily. She dared not look at him 
 for fear of reading contempt and disdain in those sneer- 
 ing features. But when she had finished, he said : 
 
 "The evening has not been wholly wasted. At last 
 we have heard an artist who is worth the expenditure 
 of a small fortune. This child has a golden voice, a 
 voice all limpid sweetness and rich purity and unfeigned 
 strength. We will make a great singer of you, little 
 white rose." 
 
 Betty stared down upon Earlcote and the sea of 
 friendly faces that confronted her incredulously. There
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 213 
 
 was incessant applause mingled with hisses because it 
 was apparent that Earlcote wished to say more. The 
 strange, potent agency known as the psychology of the 
 masses was at work, and from being an object of detes- 
 tation because of his brutality to the four young men, 
 Earlcote suddenly assumed the proportions of a hero in 
 the eyes of those present because he was treating with 
 generous courtesy the young girl who had offered him 
 a mortal affront. 
 
 "I wish to talk further with you," said Earlcote to 
 Betty. "You have not had much teaching, have you ?" 
 
 "Hardly any." 
 
 Betty wanted to tell him then and there that she had 
 no intention of becoming a singer. But some mysteri- 
 ous power forced back her words. She wanted to cry 
 out and tell Earlcote that she wanted none of his kind- 
 ness, but words failed her. She wished ardently that 
 he would be rough and rude with her as he had been 
 with Richard; his gentleness that intolerably caressing 
 note in his voice was more of an assault than any verbal 
 brutality would have been. 
 
 Earlcote was speaking again. 
 
 "Before we have our personal talk," he said, "I am 
 going to do for you what I would not do for any other 
 man or woman here present ; what I refused to do at the 
 request of the German Emperor or the Czar though 
 each of those potentates offered me a small fortune. I 
 am going to play for you." 
 
 Like a serpent, undulating, swift, now here and now 
 there, word ran through the assemblage that Earlcote 
 was going to play. They proclaimed it in all languages : 
 "He is going to play!" "Er wird spielen!" "II nous 
 donnera quelque chose!" "Come! Suona!" "El va a 
 tocar!" 
 
 They were mad with joy. They all but embraced each
 
 214 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 other. Their delight approached frenzy. "Earlcote is 
 going to play!" 
 
 Dushka and Hahdjan were summoned, and they 
 helped him up -the stairs. Terrific applause resounded 
 as he seated himself at the piano. 
 
 "I want no applause," Earlcote rasped. "I am not 
 playing for you or you or you." Swiftly the hideous 
 hands emphasized the phrase by pointing to two or three 
 of those whose applause was loudest. "I am playing 
 because it suits me to play for a little white human 
 rose." 
 
 He poised his hands in midair, then faced Betty once 
 more. 
 
 "There are excellent folks, musicians some of them, 
 who think that the piano is not a musical instrument at 
 all, and that its only legitimate function is to help com- 
 posers evolve the melodies of the various instruments 
 while fixing them on paper. Those good folks forget 
 that in conceding the piano's value in orchestration, they 
 tacitly admit that every voice in the orchestra is con- 
 tained in the piano. And that is the truth. You shall 
 hear. 
 
 "One word more. Do not think that I am going to 
 play because you accused me of being jealous of that 
 whipper-snapper. I play to please you, because your 
 singing pleased me." 
 
 He ran the hideous mis formed stumps, that served 
 him for fingers, across the keys of the piano. 
 
 "Because it fatigues me greatly to play," he said, "I 
 can play you one piece only. I chose Chopin's funeral 
 march, complete with the finale. After you have heard 
 me play that, I think you will not accuse me of being 
 jealous of any pianist, dead or alive, past or present, 
 again." 
 
 He had not played a dozen bars before Betty under-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 215 
 
 stood the excitement of those present upon hearing that 
 Earlcote would play. Richard had taken her to hear 
 many famous pianists, but she realized now that the 
 others were the merest tyros compared to Earlcote. He 
 had spoken truly when he said that every voice of the 
 orchestra lurks in the piano and only waits to be awak- 
 ened to the pianist's touch. Even as she stood watching 
 him play, it seemed incredible to the girl that this incon- 
 ceivable volume of melody, this tempestuous flood of 
 sound, this ocean of harmony should be drawn from 
 one single instrument. The gentle voice of the flute was 
 heard, the plaintive wail of the oboe, the sound of 
 argent-throated chimes, the fierce braying of the kettle- 
 drum, the insidious sweetness of French horn and bas- 
 soon, the sonorous loveliness of the 'cello; even the 
 pizzicato of violins rose as by magic from under Earl- 
 cote's fingers. How did he do it ? It was the prodigious 
 feat of a supreme musical genius. Presently her won- 
 der at the plenitude of witching sound which he was 
 extracting, as by magic, from the one miserable instru- 
 ment, ceased. For a few moments a vague thought per- 
 sisted that it was monstrous that those deformed fingers 
 should be capable of producing music so heavenly. Even 
 that thought died away. She had the sensation of hav- 
 ing been lulled asleep on a vast bosom of sound. Thought 
 abandoned her, sensations only rippled and thrilled 
 through her. She crept closer and closer to an elusive, 
 intangible something which she knew intuitively was 
 her own soul. But she could not think. She tried to 
 rouse herself, to translate her sensations into words. 
 Language eluded her, leaving her the prey of myriad 
 emotions, bizarre, gigantic, untried. Suddenly fear came 
 upon her a horrid, weird, ghastly fear. Earlcote was 
 playing the finale, and Betty shuddered as a sleep-walker 
 may shudder who at midnight wakes to find himself
 
 216 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 wandering among graves, with the night wind and fall- 
 ing leaves as his sole companion. 
 
 The music ceased. Betty came back to time and space 
 as from a trance. Dead silence reigned not a soul 
 applauded. The sensation Earlcote had created was so 
 startling as to preclude applause. 
 
 Earlcote had risen from the piano and was speaking. 
 He addressed Betty directly. It no longer seemed singu- 
 lar to her that he should address himself solely to her. 
 
 "They do not applaud," he said. "Nor do you. That 
 is not out of deference for my wish, but because I have 
 made them forget themselves, because I have made 
 them forget the habit of rewarding the trick dog by 
 making a noise." A low, mocking laugh came from his 
 lips. "No one can do just that but I, Stanley Earl- 
 cote." 
 
 "It was the most wonderful thing I ever heard," Betty 
 said truthfully. 
 
 "Really? Then you have modified your judgment 
 you realize I am not jealous, eh? Now, we will have 
 our little private talk, you and I." 
 
 His Hindus helped him down from the platform, and 
 carried rather than assisted him to his chair. A change 
 had come over him. Exhausted, his face was paler 
 than before, his lips were drawn into a sinuous curve 
 with an intense effort of some sort. His eyes closed and 
 he sat in silence in the large armchair. Fascinatedly, 
 Betty stared at him. Loathing, repugnance, disgust were 
 uppermost in her mind, but she could not drag her eyes 
 away from the man who inspired these emotions. 
 Finally he spoke, his eyes still closed. Betty came and 
 stood near his chair. The others tactfully turned away 
 and formed little animated groups among themselves. 
 
 "You have a wonderful voice, Miss Garside. But you 
 ill-treat it. You use it as if it were a mechanical toy.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 217 
 
 There is no soul in it. That is wicked. A voice such 
 as yours without feeling and depth behind it is a mon- 
 strosity, a worse monstrosity than myself." 
 
 He opened his eyes and fixed them on Betty's face. 
 
 "Have you ever been in love?" he said. 
 
 "I told you before that I am engaged to Richard 
 Pryce." 
 
 "Engaged, yes. One marries for a host of reasons 
 other than love. Do you happen to love the whipper- 
 snapper ?" 
 
 "Yes, devotedly." 
 
 "Devotedly? Hm! Passionately?" 
 
 Betty flushed furiously. 
 
 "I consider the question an impertinence," she said. 
 There was no occasion for speaking as viciously as she 
 did, and she was aware of it, but she wanted to defy 
 this creature, this self-dubbed monstrosity who played 
 like a god. 
 
 "A physician may ask any question he likes," Earl- 
 cote responded quietly. "And I am the physician of 
 your singing voice. So, if you please, answer me. Do 
 you love the whipper-snapper passionately?" 
 
 Betty bit her lip. 
 
 "Passion," she said slowly, "is a thing I despise. I 
 have never felt it, and never intend to feel it. I should 
 hate myself if I did. One cannot expect anything else 
 from men, but women should be above it." 
 
 Earlcote laughed long and mockingly. But he did not 
 sneer. And the fact that he again treated her mildly 
 infuriated Betty anew. She was insolent, brutal, im- 
 pertinent to him, and he, who outrageously insulted 
 everyone else, remained gentle and pacific under her most 
 stinging remarks and unmistakably vicious retorts. 
 
 "You have much to learn," he said finally. "There 
 are thorns on the stem of the white rose, and she knows
 
 218 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 how to use them. Passion, Miss Garside, slumbers in 
 the heart of all, and some day it will awaken in you. It 
 will not be to your detriment. You wish to be a famous 
 singer ?" 
 
 "I do not." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "I do not. Richard Pryce entered my name without 
 consulting me, and I could not withdraw without stulti- 
 fying him. I do not intend accepting the scholarship. 
 It is rightfully Richard's, at any rate." 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me that you are going to throw 
 away this splendid opportunity because you love a silly, 
 incompetent boy so devotedly? Or is it rather because 
 you are too lazy to put forth the exertion which is un- 
 avoidable in the career of every great artist?" 
 
 "You certainly ask the most extraordinary questions." 
 
 "I ask questions that go beneath the surface, that eat 
 right into the human soul and bite into its marrow. It 
 is a habit of mine to penetrate to the holy of holies. 
 Witness my playing. Well, I am waiting for your an- 
 swer?" 
 
 "I have never thought about it, really," said Betty 
 gravely. "I love Dicky, and I wish you wouldn't call 
 him a whipper-snapper and other things. I want him 
 to go abroad and have a big career. And I hate you 
 for giving an unfavorable verdict." 
 
 "Well, well you will get over that. By and by you 
 will realize that you are of more consequence to your- 
 self than to anyone else. Believe me, my child, love 
 passion are valuable, because they help us delve down 
 to the very bottom of our own souls. We do not know 
 ourselves as we are until love has touched us. And 
 when love comes to you, give yourself up to it, speak 
 about it, write about it, read about it, dream about it, 
 for days, nights, weeks, months and years, but do not
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 219 
 
 make the fatal mistake of forgetting your emotions. 
 Retain those. Gather them in the precious chalice of 
 your soul, and when you sing great music, the priceless 
 drops of recollection which you have collected in that 
 precious cup will filter one by one into your voice. No 
 woman can be a great singer unless she has loved. Love 
 alone unbars the citadel of the universe for women, even 
 more than for men." 
 
 Betty looked at him in helpless bewilderment. 
 
 "You speak like a poem," she said with grudging 
 admiration. "But I will never change." 
 
 Earlcote regarded her quizzically. 
 
 "You're a normal woman, aren't you?" he asked. 
 "You were born of normal parents? You're not an 
 artificial womanikin, made of wood and animated by 
 ingenious clockwork? You're flesh and blood, aren't 
 you? Being all that, the passions of womankind are 
 bound to come to you, and once you are married, and 
 know the ecstasy that passionate kisses bring, then there 
 will enter into your voice the quality it now lacks the 
 one quality it needs to make it perfect." 
 
 "How dare you say such things to me?" Betty de- 
 manded. "How dare you?" 
 
 "I dare many things, when I wish to gain my point. 
 You are right. You must not go to Europe. You will 
 remain here, in New York, and I will teach you I, 
 Stanley Earlcote and I will make of you the greatest 
 singer of the century." 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "How you hate me, you little white thing." 
 
 "Yes, I do." 
 
 "I will play for you. I will play for you so often 
 and so sweetly that to please me and because you want 
 to hear me play again, you will be willing to learn to 
 sing with me."
 
 20 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "You are mistaken." 
 
 "Yes, you will. Do you realize what a sacrifice I 
 made when I played for you?" He lifted his poor 
 maimed hands. "Look I am in intolerable anguish 
 because I played. I will suffer all night." 
 
 "I am glad of it." 
 
 For the second time that evening a woman, older and 
 more experienced than herself, seemed to have usurped 
 dominion of her body and organs of speech. Perhaps 
 her future self, such as she would be after life had 
 emptied a phial of cruelty into her soul to subsist side 
 by side with the compassion which was her heritage 
 as a woman. 
 
 She knew that her reply had been monstrous, un- 
 feminine, insensate, and even while she voiced it. she 
 was sorry for her words. 
 
 Earlcote did not reply. A smile seemed to flicker 
 about the thin, colorless lips. 
 
 "I am sorry," she stammered. "Please forgive me 
 it was quite, quite horrid of me to say that." 
 
 "There is a good deal of passion in you," he replied 
 enigmatically, "and it will wake, perhaps, who knows, it 
 is waking now." He looked at her shrewdly, his little 
 cat's eyes agleam like beryl or green jade. 
 
 "Mr. Telfer tells me you are one of his pianists," 
 Earlcote continued. "I am coming to the store some day, 
 and then we will have a long talk. I am too tired now 
 to argue with you any longer. Good-night, and pleas- 
 ant dreams." 
 
 He put out his hand, but Betty shrank visibly from 
 the clasp of that deformed hand. Her horror of it was 
 pictured in her face. She sought to control her features. 
 She was sorry that she was showing the aversion, the 
 overwhelming physical repugnance which she experi- 
 enced at the mere thought of having to touch that hid- 
 eous member, but show it she did.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Earlcote withdrew his hand. Betty's face was crim- 
 son. 
 
 "I am ashamed of myself," she said in a low, sub- 
 dued voice. 
 
 "You need not be," Earlcote responded. "I do not 
 blame you for drawing back in shuddering horror from 
 touch of my hand. I would not have offered it had I 
 remembered. Sometimes, mercifully, I still forget that 
 they are what they are, that I am what I am. Once 
 more, good-night." 
 
 Turning, Betty found Archie Telfer at her side. 
 
 "I have great news for you," he said, ignoring Earl- 
 cote. "Madame Hudrazzini asked me to find you and 
 bring you to her. Unfortunately, in the crowd we be- 
 came separated, and I must locate her before I can take 
 you to her." 
 
 He took Betty to a quiet corner, and then went in 
 search of the famous singer. 
 
 Betty's brain was awhirl. A host of new emotions 
 were crowding upon her. She was bitterly ashamed of 
 herself for having spoken so brutally to Earlcote. He 
 had been gentle and kind to her, and she had wantonly 
 offered him insult upon insult. What had possessed 
 her to do so? Then, with a start, she remembered his 
 brutality to Richard, and it seemed disloyal of her that 
 she had forgotten that for even one single second. She 
 .was glad now that she had spoken with the effrontery 
 she had employed. She felt a new access of cruelty and 
 hatred, and pressing her hands together as they lay in 
 her lap, she wondered vaguely at the change which was 
 occurring in her. 
 
 Archie Telfer was wandering about meanwhile in 
 search of the famous Italian soprano. In his perambu- 
 lations he came upon Earlcote, still lolling in his chair, 
 with closed eyes. Archie Telfer stopped, looked sneer-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ingly upon the recumbent figure, and drawing up a 
 chair, sat down beside Earlcote. He changed the ex- 
 pression of his face with the facility of the expert actor 
 before addressing the great pianist. 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote," he asked, "do you really think Miss 
 Garside's voice so very wonderful?" 
 
 "Why should I utter an untruth?" Earlcote opened 
 his eyes and glared venomously at Archie. 
 
 Archie laughed. 
 
 "Honey and a spider's web to catch a dainty, pretty 
 little fly," he said. 
 
 Earlcote scowled. 
 
 "You judge others by yourself, Mr. Telfer. The 
 girl has a marvelous voice. I am going to teach her." 
 
 "Has she consented?" 
 
 "No, but she will." 
 
 "Not if I know her." 
 
 "What do you mean? Why do you say that? Do 
 you know her very well?" 
 
 "Not nearly well enough," Archie replied, giving a 
 peculiar emphasis to the words so as to bring out their 
 double meaning. Earlcote looked at him with withering 
 contempt. 
 
 "Aren't three breach of promise suits enough, Mr. 
 Telfer?" he asked cuttingly. 
 
 "There are women who would rather die than bring 
 a suit of that sort," Archie retorted carelessly. Earl- 
 cote contrived to raise himself on his elbow. 
 
 "What's your object in palavering like this?" he de- 
 manded. 
 
 "To do you a good turn." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 Archie raised his Jovian brows and intently regarded 
 the tip of his faultless patent-leather boot. "Miss Gar- 
 side," he said, "is devotedly in love with the boy whom
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 223 
 
 you subjected to such a merciless grilling Richard 
 Pryce." 
 
 "Devotedly ! That is the same expression she herself 
 used." 
 
 "Proof positive that I know what I am talking about. 
 So long as this devoted and romantic attachment con- 
 tinues not you or any man or woman alive will contrive 
 to make her consider a career for herself." 
 
 "The inference?" 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote, you are usually shrewd enough to draw 
 your own inferences. Yet, lest you accuse me of cow- 
 ardice, I will dot the I and cross the T. The attach- 
 ment to Richard must be broken." 
 
 "And you propose, I suppose, to do that by replacing 
 Richard in Miss Garside's affections?" 
 
 "To go about the thing in that way is impossible. 
 Does that admission surprise you? At least it proves 
 that I am not the conceited jackanapes I am usually 
 represented to be. I am distinctly aware of my limita- 
 tions. With a certain type of woman I need only ap- 
 pear on the scene to complete a conquest. But that 
 little white rose to use your own pretty simile is 
 loyal to the bottom of her little white heart. Richard 
 for her always and forever unless Richard prove faith- 
 less." 
 
 Archie paused, and Earlcote looked at him search- 
 ingly. 
 
 "You certainly have crossed the T," he said. "Now 
 you had better go ahead and dot the I." 
 
 "Richard also is loyal to his Betty. But alas, Earl- 
 cote, you and I, we know the genus man. The nature 
 of the beast makes an occasional wallowing in the mire 
 almost inevitable. Now, if Richard's affections might 
 be alienated, I say might you perceive the point?" 
 
 "I see. Delightfully diabolical, Telfer. And once 
 Richard's affections have been alienated, what then?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "With Richard out of the way, who would stand the 
 better chance with her, you or I?" 
 
 Earlcote winced, but recovered himself quickly. 
 
 "Her voice," he said quietly, "is all I want." 
 
 "Her voice," said Archie Telfer, "is not what I want. 
 You are welcome to it. We shall not conflict." 
 
 "What an unutterable knave you are." 
 
 "Yet you will profit by the knave's suggestion, or I 
 err greatly in my estimate of yourself. Look yonder 
 quick." 
 
 Katarina della Florenzia, alias Kitty Florence, was 
 going through the room on the arm of the Direktor, 
 with a half-score of adorers in her wake. 
 
 "Well?" asked Earlcote. "What has she got to do 
 with it?" 
 
 "Someone pointed out to me that she slightly re- 
 sembles Miss Garside. Possibly you have seen her 
 abroad, in Lehar's operetta the latest one?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She took the part of sweet seventeen. Do you re- 
 member ?" 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "She need only repeat that makeup in real life to 
 make herself look so much like Betty Garside that the 
 two might appear in a sister act if the stage were in 
 Miss Garside's line." 
 
 "Well, what of it?" 
 
 "You are forcing me to dot the I with a vengeance, 
 Earlcote. If Kitty set herself out to alienate Richard's 
 affections, garbed not in silks and satins and tons of 
 jewelry, but in sprigged muslin and coral beads, do you 
 think she would succeed?" 
 
 "You certainly are a knave of the purest water, Tel- 
 fer. But you're clever, I'll admit that devilishly 
 clever."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 225 
 
 Archie rose and made Earlcote a sweeping bow. 
 
 "Machiavelli complimenting Beelzebub," he said. "At 
 any rate, I have tipped you off, and a word to the wise 
 is sufficient. Au revoir, my dear Earlcote." 
 
 Leaving Earlcote in frowning solitude, Archie made 
 his way through the room, found Madame Hudrazzini 
 quite readily in the alcove where she had been sitting 
 all the time, and then went back to Betty. Having in- 
 troduced Betty at last, he tactfully withdrew. 
 
 The famous singer was a tall, large brunette, with a 
 brilliantly sweet smile. She had the ineffably grace- 
 ful, bewitching, ingratiating manner of the prima donna 
 who has been brought up on bel canto and torrents of 
 nightly applause. 
 
 "My dear," she said to Betty, "I am enchanted with 
 you. Yes, yes, also with your voice, which is all Earl- 
 cote says, but particularly, carissima, with you and your 
 courage. You will be a very great singer some day, 
 much greater than poor little Hudrazzini." 
 
 Betty's ears tingled. 
 
 "That could never be," she said, and because the great 
 lady smiled upon her so adorably, and petted her hand 
 and cheek, she found courage to launch into a longer 
 speech than she would have trusted herself with ordi- 
 narily in much less distinguished society. "Do you re- 
 member the story of one of Napoleon's Marshals, 
 Madame Hudrazzini? Napoleon said of him, 'It is pos- 
 sible that another man may be as honest as he, but more 
 honest, impossible.' One might paraphrase that to apply 
 to your voice. Some day some other soprano may be 
 found who has a voice as beautiful as yours, but more 
 beautiful impossible." 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini was so delighted with Betty's 
 little speech that she clapped her hands and kissed her 
 fingers as if to waft a kiss to Betty with the pretty,
 
 226 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Latin, curtain-call gestures which made a devoted slave 
 of every individual in her nightly audiences. 
 
 "I am more and more enchanted, my dear," she cried. 
 "Will you come to see me? I am living at the Astor 
 until I find a suitable apartment for myself. Yes, you 
 must come. When will you start for Europe? Has 
 anything been decided? I saw you speaking to Earlcote 
 for a long time." 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote wishes to teach me himself," Betty 
 said. "But I have no ambition whatever." 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini held up her hands in blank 
 amazement. 
 
 "Surely you will not refuse to let Earlcote teach you," 
 she said. "He is reputed to have more musicianship 
 than any man or woman alive. After hearing him, I am 
 willing to subscribe to that." 
 
 "But I am engaged to Richard Pryce." 
 
 "Yes ?" 
 
 "I wish to see him happy. I want him to make a 
 great name for himself." 
 
 "That does not preclude the possibility of your doing 
 the same for yourself, carissima." 
 
 "But I do not wish to," said Betty obstinately. 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini took Betty's hand in hers. 
 
 "Dear child," she said, "think well before you refuse 
 Earlcote's offer. Let me tell you a little of my own 
 life. I was desperately in love with the man I married, 
 and if it had not been for our abject poverty, I would 
 not have continued on the stage, for I loved him so 
 dearly that I wanted to live only for him. I resented 
 everything else as an intrusion. That is how you feel?" 
 
 "You understand me perfectly," said Betty. 
 
 "Well, after a few years my husband died. Then, 
 carissima, I think I would have gone insane if it had 
 not been for my music. Always keep two interests in
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 227 
 
 your life, a big one and a little one. For a woman, love 
 must always be the big interest, art the little one. With 
 a man it is the reverse. For him, no matter how he 
 loves, love is a lesser thing to him than his day's work. 
 That is right and just, hard as it may seem to us." 
 
 "I do not believe that is so," said Betty with trembling 
 lips. "I do not believe Richard puts his art before me." 
 
 "Possibly not," said Madame Hudrazzini dryly. "Bui: 
 for us women, dear child, love reaches deeper than with 
 men, though it touches us less violently. With a man 
 passion is a mighty, majestic, turbulent river, flowing 
 tempestuously within narrow limits all the stronger 
 perhaps because thus forced into narrow bounds, but 
 leaving the adjacent territory arid and untouched. With 
 a woman passion is an expansive system of placid lakes 
 interminably bound together by canals and streams and 
 fed by innumerable rivulets and brooks, which leave 
 not one inch of ground untouched, unfertilized. The 
 most inaccessible regions are penetrated into, contribut- 
 ing to and receiving the most unexpected treasures from 
 the still waters of her seemingly mild passion." 
 
 "Passion," said Betty vehemently. "You mean love, 
 do you not?" 
 
 "I mean passion, dear child ; for the love of a woman 
 for a man, if it be the genuine feeling and not a spuri- 
 ous one that binds her to him, must contain passion as 
 well as love." 
 
 Betty looked at the famous singer in mute horror. 
 
 "You are so young, carissima" Madame Hudrazzini 
 continued. "You cannot understand as yet. Your eyes 
 are the eyes of a child. They are clear and cold and 
 pure as rock crystal. The woman nature has not yet 
 softened and subdued them has not yet lighted them 
 with the inner flame. Because you are so very young, 
 passion seems impure and unchaste to you. Try to look
 
 228 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 at it in a different light. Think only of the noble and 
 lofty emotions which a legitimate passion sanely in- 
 dulged in can engender. When you are a little older 
 you will understand that passion can be either the vilest 
 or the highest thing in life, according to the manner in 
 which we approach it. 
 
 "Meanwhile, cultivate your art. Should the man you 
 love be snatched from you by one of life's many dis- 
 asters, you will not be wholly bankrupt. 
 
 "We have philosophized long enough. Mr. Pryce is 
 waiting for you. Introduce him to me." 
 
 Richard, as Betty saw on turning, stood not a yard 
 away from them, and she obediently introduced him to 
 Madame Hudrazzini, who was very gracious and sweet 
 with him, and bade him bring Betty to see her. 
 
 A little later they made their way out of the Direktor's 
 house. Richard had ordered the taxicab to come back 
 for them, and opening the door of the vehicle, he pushed 
 her into it. 
 
 "I am not going to ride," he said. "I am going to 
 walk. You will have to go home alone." 
 
 Betty jumped from the taxicab. 
 
 "I won't ride home without you, Dicky. Where you 
 go to-night, I go too." 
 
 "I want to be alone," he said gruffly. Betty became 
 seriously alarmed. He had never spoken to her roughly 
 before. 
 
 "I don't care if you do, Dicky. I'll be as still as a 
 mouse, but where you go, I go." 
 
 He looked hard at her, but replied grudgingly: 
 
 "Come along, then." 
 
 He made no further protest, and she walked with 
 him in silence after he had dismissed the taxicab. Seem- 
 ingly without direction, they threaded their way through 
 the streets, reaching home within an hour.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 229 
 
 Mrs. Presbey was waiting up for them. 
 
 "Well?" she inquired. 
 
 "Miss Garside was told that her voice is a high- 
 class mechanical toy and I was told that a pianola in a 
 saloon plays with more feeling than myself." 
 
 At the recital of this blasphemy, Mrs. Presbey ut- 
 tered an indignant "Oh !" and was about to burst into a 
 torrent of abusive revilement when Betty, before follow- 
 ing Richard upstairs, put her fingers against her lips. 
 
 "Good-night," he said roughly. 
 
 "Good-night, Dicky." 
 
 But Betty did not undress, nor did she open the 
 Davenport. She was certain that sooner or later that 
 night Dicky would come to her for consolation. And 
 though he came at three in the morning, her door would 
 be open to him. 
 
 Presently, a little before one, he tapped at the door.. 
 
 "May I come in?" 
 
 She opened the door, and he walked in quietly and 
 sat down on a corner of the Davenport. He looked 
 huddled and broken and old. She could not bear to 
 see his boyish face thus seared and changed, and to 
 hide his face from her eyes, as well as to afford him 
 what consolation she might, she sat down on the arm 
 of the Davenport, and gently, protectingly putting her 
 arms around Richard, drew him against her shoulder. 
 Intuition told her that not through words but only 
 through a caress could she hope to soothe him. 
 
 "Betty," he exclaimed suddenly, "it was splendid of 
 you to say what you did to Earlcote." 
 
 "I never thought, Dicky, that I was capable of feeling 
 so downright wicked as I did at that moment. I am 
 really sorry I said what I did." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 She did not reply. She was so rigidly, inflexibly
 
 230 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 honest that she could not think of some innocuous pre- 
 varication with which to reply, for the real reason of 
 her regret was the fact, of course, that her outbreak 
 had decided Earlcote to play, thereby establishing his 
 immeasurable superiority over Richard, and through 
 affording Earlcote a chance to treat her generously, had 
 regained for him the good esteem of those present which 
 his harsh treatment of Richard had lost him. 
 
 Richard continued : "If you are sorry because he 
 played owing to what you said, you needn't be. I don't 
 regret it. It was a revelation to hear him. Of course 
 a man who can play like that has a right to say what 
 he pleases to a poor bungler like myself." 
 
 "Dicky, you are not a bungler." 
 
 "You know I am after hearing that damnable Octo- 
 roon. Oh, I beg your pardon, but I want to say it 
 again, that damnable, detestable beast of an Octoroon. 
 God! How I hate him how I hate him!" 
 
 "And so do I," Betty said fervently. 
 
 "Until he played I had a vague, sneaking hope that 
 you might be right, that professional jealousy had in- 
 spired the unmerciful roast he gave me. But, heavens 
 and earth, how he played ! I've heard Paderewski, and 
 Hoffman, and Rosenthal, and Joseffy, and d' Albert, and 
 Busonyi I've heard 'em all, but there is not a single one 
 of them whom he does not eclipse as the sun eclipses 
 the moon. He could almost make one believe in 
 magic." 
 
 Betty sat very still for a moment, and again, as 
 earlier in the evening, love made her clairvoyant. 
 
 "Dicky," she said, "this is what I saw. The man's 
 soul was revealed plainly in his face while you were 
 playing. I tell you that once or twice, at least, you 
 carried him away, just as he carried us away later on. 
 He is not jealous of you as you are now, dearest prac-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 231 
 
 tically untaught and untrained but he is jealous of the 
 artist you may develop into with the proper tuition." 
 
 Richard would not take this view of it. He talked 
 on and on. He never thought to ask Betty what Earl- 
 cote had said to her, or what decision she had reached 
 concerning Europe. It was only on the morrow that 
 he remembered to think of these matters. At the mo- 
 ment he was eaten up with disappointment and injured 
 vanity and fury. 
 
 Betty sat there, with Richard in her arms, thinking 
 over the evening's happenings. Chords of whose very 
 existence she had been in ignorance had been whipped 
 into vibrant life that evening. New impressions, ideas 
 and personalities had crowded upon her thick and fast. 
 Madame Hudrazzini's words rang clamorously in her 
 ears. Above everything her love for Richard was ram- 
 pantly alive in her as never before. And because, as 
 the great singer had said, a woman's passion is inex- 
 tricably bound up with her holiest and most tender 
 feelings, with everything that is most sacred and divine 
 in her soul and acutest and most delicately balanced in 
 her body, Betty's cheeks began to glow, her eyes to 
 shine with a new and deeper luster, until the rock 
 crystal look of limpid clearness was gone, and they 
 glimmered instead like the velvet petals of a black 
 pansy. Most of all she felt tenderness, infinite and in- 
 expressible, for her Dicky. Her blood sang in her veins 
 like some ineffably sweet song, some song which evaded 
 her ears although it filled her soul. She lost the fac- 
 ulty of precise and accurate thought. She experienced 
 a hazy sensation that it would be sweet not to have to 
 part with Dicky at all that night, that it would be sweet 
 to sleep with his arms about her. 
 
 How near to happiness was Richard now ! The mir- 
 acle for which he had prayed was all but performed. A
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 little well-advised ardor and she would have been his 
 completely. But the golden moment vanished. Plunged 
 in mortification and despair, filled with fury and resent- 
 ment, he allowed a conjunction of conditions, which 
 might not occur again in a lifetime, to pass without 
 using them. Miserable, utterly wretched, humiliated 
 and shaken, he rose suddenly, and bidding Betty good- 
 night, went from the room without so much as kissing 
 her. 
 
 And Betty Betty was so innocent that she was 
 ashamed of the unreasoning happiness which was suf- 
 fusing her, ascribing it to unjustifiable self-love because 
 Earlcote and Madame Hudrazzini had been kind to her ; 
 she accused herself of disloyalty, unwarrantable petti- 
 ness and egotism because she was capable of feeling 
 happy when her Dick was plunged in despair. She 
 had yet to learn the contradiction of human nature by 
 which there is distilled in a woman's heart the feeling 
 of supreme joy when she is comforting the man she 
 loves for some extraneous sorrow.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Before leaving town, Archie Telfer asked to be al- 
 lowed to send Betty postcards, and hardly a day passed 
 without bringing her two or three choice souvenir pos- 
 tals, each one a little work of art. Sometimes they 
 brought her brief word of his doings, sometimes they 
 conveyed no message except the briefest greeting. Al- 
 ways they were in unimpeachable taste. 
 
 The "dog" was taking kindly to "The Sun-God," and 
 Archie's press agent's inventiveness was taxed to the 
 utmost to fabricate adequate stories for the various Sun- 
 day papers which besieged him for sensational new ma- 
 terial in the career of "Adonis." Of course "the three 
 graces" came in plentifully for their share of the write- 
 ups, nor did the spiciness of their individual existence 
 lose salt in the telling. Betty, who never looked at the 
 popular Sunday papers, was shown one of these articles 
 by Miss Sharpe, who imagined that Betty would read 
 the amazing chronicle through green spectacles. Betty 
 merely glanced over the reportorial confection and, hand- 
 ing it back to Miss Sharpe, said : 
 
 "It is rather horrid, isn't it? I don't see how a nice 
 chap like Mr. Telfer could contrive to get himself into 
 such a mess. It must be horribly mortifying for him to 
 see the affair discussed in the papers." 
 
 Miss Sharpe looked unutterable things, and winked 
 at Miss Connors, who continued pasting labels in wrap- 
 pers with an air. of stolid scorn. 
 
 "Yes, she may be a fool because she doesn't see 
 through him, but she ain't no fool in that she doesn't 
 
 233
 
 234 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 give Archie more thought than she does you or me. It 
 is still Richard the Innocent for her believe me. But 
 does any sane woman refuse postcards or a box of 
 Huyler's or American Beauties? Not on your tintype, 
 Miss Sharpe." 
 
 Betty did not show those postcards to Richard. It 
 was an innocent enough deception, if deception there 
 was. Richard had happened to see the first postal, and 
 had gone into a Berseker rage at the impudence of "that 
 cur, that hound," in writing to her. 
 
 "Aren't you a bit hard on Archie?" Betty inquired. 
 She remembered that at the Direktor's house Richard 
 had asked Archie to carry a message for her, and she 
 forthwith drew the conclusion that Richard objected to 
 Archie only when he himself was not there to chaperon 
 her. 
 
 "Archie!" Richard snorted hotly. "Don't refer to 
 him by his first name. Did I say 'cur' ? 'hound' ? Well, 
 I would like to qualify that with an expression I cannot 
 use in your presence." 
 
 Betty naturally concluded that Richard's attack of 
 fury was due to jealousy, and to avoid intensifying that 
 feeling, allowed the postcards she received in every 
 morning's mail to disappear before Richard strolled over 
 to her desk. She did not reply to any of the cards. 
 That, she reflected, was the beauty of the postcard sys- 
 tem it absolved the stay-at-homes from replying to the 
 tourists. 
 
 Earlcote, accompanied by Dushka and Hahdjan, came 
 to the store one morning at half-past eleven. It was on 
 a brisk, clear morning in January that brought the color 
 to everybody else's cheeks, but Earlcote looked just as 
 colorless and gray as on the memorable evening on which 
 Betty had first seen him, and to heighten the livid, leaden, 
 lifeless effect, he had donned a suit of gray that almost
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 235 
 
 matched the indescribably pale, pasty complexion. His 
 jade-green eyes were the only trace of color about him, 
 for even the scarfpin which he wore in his gray tie was 
 a moonstone set in platinum. 
 
 "Well," he said, removing his hat with difficulty and 
 giving it to one of his servants to hold, "how are we 
 this morning?" 
 
 Betty had been bracing herself for this meeting. De- 
 cency, as well as policy, suggested that she employ ordi- 
 nary courtesy in whatever social intercourse with Earl- 
 cote events might force upon her, and she, who had 
 never remotely thought of using anyone, so inveterate 
 was her repugnance to time-serving, now told herself 
 that for Richard's sake she must be civil to Earlcote, 
 for she still hoped, she knew not by what means, to 
 persuade him to reverse his verdict concerning Richard's 
 playing. 
 
 She smiled mechanically in recognition of Earlcote's 
 greeting. 
 
 "I am very well, thank you. I trust you are well," 
 she ventured. 
 
 Earlcote glanced at her shrewdly. 
 
 "How much do my purchases have to amount to in 
 order to entitle me to hear that matchless voice of 
 yours ?" 
 
 "I'm not busy this morning," Betty said, without meet- 
 ing Earlcote's eyes, "so, if you wish me to sing some 
 little song for you I shall be glad to do it, even if you 
 make no purchase. Besides," she added, "you are the 
 great Stanley Earlcote and a friend of Mr. Telfer's, and 
 are therefore entitled to additional courtesy." 
 
 "Hm! You are treating me very decently to-day. 
 Have you by any chance reconsidered your imbecile 
 decision to refuse my offer?" 
 
 "I still hold to the imbecile decision."
 
 236 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Earlcote extended his gloved hand, in which Dushka 
 placed a parcel. He handed this to Betty. 
 
 "Will you undo it, please," he said. "It is the score 
 for Gounod's 'Faust.' I have placed a bookmark to 
 indicate 'The Jewel Song.' Please sing it." 
 
 The quiet authority of the voice admitted no choice. 
 Betty's heart began jumping with anger, unwarrantably, 
 as she was fair enough to realize. 
 
 "I am unfamiliar with the score," she objected. "I 
 have never even tried the opera or that particular song." 
 
 "Hum it to yourself before singing it," he said. "It 
 does not matter if you make a mistake in reading the 
 music. I want to hear your voice." 
 
 Presently Betty began to sing. Although she was not 
 nervous, she was unwilling, she could not have said 
 why, to have this man hear her sing again. And yet she 
 herself had offered to sing for him, hoping to propitiate 
 him for Richard's sake. When she had finished, he said 
 curtly : 
 
 "My judgment was correct. A wonderful voice like 
 a bell in the upper register. It is mezzo-soprano and 
 can easily be extended in range to become a full soprano. 
 But no emotion, no feeling at all." 
 
 Betty flushed angrily. 
 
 "You are, to all intents a normal, healthy young 
 woman, and you sing this exquisite bit of feminine 
 music music so feminine that it must inevitably reach 
 down into every heart with its human appeal as if it 
 were a hymn to chastity." 
 
 "I do not care a rap what you think of my singing 
 or my voice," Betty said, all her good resolutions going 
 to the wall. She closed the book, flung it down on the 
 bench from which she had risen, and turning, faced Earl- 
 cote, all her repugnance for the man in the ascendant. 
 
 "I hate you, I hate you," she gasped, and even as she
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 237 
 
 spoke she was aghast at her lack of self-control, fright- 
 ened at the vehemence she displayed. Earlcote, with the 
 utmost good-nature, inquired : 
 
 "Do you happen to realize why you hate me so bit- 
 terly?" 
 
 "Because you spoiled Dick's future." 
 
 "Nonsense. No one can spoil another man's future 
 unless he ruins his health." He made a significant ges- 
 ture with his hands. "Besides, Richard Pryce has noth- 
 ing whatever to do with the feeling with which I inspire 
 you, and deep down in your heart you know it." He 
 leaned forward, and when he spoke again he had dropped 
 his voice to a whisper. "You hate me for a reason 
 personal to yourself and myself personal to yourself, 
 a woman, and personal to myself, a man." 
 
 Betty was white with anger. 
 
 She demanded: "Do you wish to insinuate that I 
 pretend hatred for you to hide love ? Surely you haven't 
 the hardihood to pretend that I would fall in love with 
 such as you?" 
 
 Earlcote laughed mirthlessly. 
 
 "What a child it is," he said indulgently, "what an 
 untried, foolish, impotent little fledgling." He regarded 
 Betty quizzically. "If you were a mature woman," he 
 continued easily, "suspecting me of so monstrous an 
 egotism, you would have sought to punish me by making 
 me fall in love with you, which would have been a far 
 more cruel thing to do than to utter an imprecation 
 more cruel, and far less raw." 
 
 Betty hung her head. 
 
 "As I was saying," Earlcote continued, "the reason of 
 your hatred for me is a reason personal to you and to 
 me. Emotions which are new to you are awakening, 
 and I am the cause of that awakening." 
 
 Betty made a Herculean effort to keep from breaking
 
 238 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 into another fit of rage. Pressing her folded arms across 
 her bosom, with her characteristic gesture, she said : 
 
 "I do not want to be rude to you again, Mr. Earl* 
 cote but please, please don't say such things to me." 
 
 Earlcote ignored her interpolation completely. 
 
 "Contrary to general belief, sex may be active in a 
 hatred, in a repugnance, quite as much as in an attrac- 
 tion, in a love. But such a repugnance is much rarer 
 than a great love. In isolated cases only will such a 
 repugnance assume notable proportions. This, my dear 
 Miss Garside, is your case in regard to myself." 
 
 Betty looked at her tormentor helplessly. 
 
 "It is true I hate you as I never imagined I could hate 
 anyone," she said, "but I deny that the feeling is other 
 than a hatred I might feel for a woman. Any other 
 supposition is absurd." 
 
 "Why? If you ascribe to loathing a purely spiritual 
 basis you make it a more magnificent and noble thing 
 than love. Besides, you know as well as I do that no 
 woman would inspire in you precisely the feeling I 
 arouse in you. The dominion exerted by sex is incal- 
 culable, far-reaching, mysterious, and not one of us can 
 escape from it. Hereafter, unless you wilfully oppose 
 yourself to the new factor in your life, your singing will 
 change, your voice will become an emotion?! voice, not 
 a mere musical instrument." 
 
 "I will never sing for you again." 
 
 "Yes, you will, quite often, I am sure. For by and 
 by, you know, I am going to teach you." 
 
 Betty felt the cold perspiration stand on her brow. 
 Earlcote's quiet tone of conviction was uncanny. At 
 the moment she feared him even more than she hated 
 him. 
 
 "Sex is the alpha and omega of all art," he resumed. 
 "True greatness of conception and execution or inter-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 239 
 
 pretation can be achieved only by that man or woman 
 in whom sex is normally and sanely developed. Sex 
 gives us many gifts, the gift of understanding, of sym- 
 pathy, of unselfishness, of sin." 
 
 "And you call sin a gift?" Betty was aghast, baffled; 
 yet in spite of herself she was intensely interested. 
 
 "Yes, one of the greatest of all gifts. The perfect 
 man, the impeccable woman never quicken with sweet 
 sympathy. That is why I call sin a great gift. It 
 teaches us the weakness and insignificance inherent in 
 all, and it acquaints us with the splendor, the magnifi- 
 cence that dwells in every soul. Some few rare natures, 
 of imaginative bent, can fathom the misery of toppling 
 into the abyss without actually plunging into it, but 
 most of us, phlegmatic and uninspired, must knock our 
 ribs and scratch our knees and stub our toes and skin 
 our elbows by an actual tumble into the great gulf 
 before we can fully comprehend and compassionate 
 those who are unhappy through a fault of their own." 
 
 "At this moment I do not hate you," Betty said im- 
 pulsively. 
 
 "That in no way invalidates my theory," Earlcote re- 
 torted, smiling. "There are moments when we do not 
 love those whom we love. Love and loathing what 
 are they but the convex and concave surface of sex? 
 Take a jug, a cup, a vase. Where there is a convex 
 side, there is a concave side also. Any other condition 
 is unthinkable." 
 
 "You are very brilliant," Betty said grudgingly. 
 
 Earlcote ignored the compliment and continued : 
 
 "The uses of sin are twofold. The individual use, to 
 teach us and broaden us and make us more fit in every 
 way, if only through the long, hard upward struggle 
 that succeeds sin; and its social use to give virtue an 
 opportunity for active service."
 
 240 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Here, no matter how faulty Earlcote's theory, was 
 offered an explanation of the problem which Richard 
 had been unable to expound for Betty. 
 
 "Tannhaeuser," she said quickly, her tone a cross be- 
 tween a question and an ejaculation. 
 
 "Exactly," Earlcote took her up. "Tannhaeuser is 
 one of the most wonderful works of art ever produced 
 because it touches the vital things of life; the two cur- 
 rents, goodness, evil subsist side by side. They over- 
 lap and interweave, but never blend. Each of us is 
 now in one stream, now in the other, for absolute good- 
 ness is as fictitious a quantity as absolute evil. Neither 
 can conquer, neither can be vanquished, for if one 
 would be obliterated, the other would necessarily cease 
 to exist, for what conception could we form of good- 
 ness if its antithesis were not there to serve as its 
 measure ?" 
 
 "And that is why Tannhaeuser is greater than Elisa- 
 beth herself. Having sinned, he had the strength to 
 recross to the other current. That argues more strength 
 than to pursue the passive tenor of a noble life because 
 temptation has never beckoned." 
 
 "I have always disliked to think of sex at all," said 
 Betty musingly. 
 
 "There is no reason why you should. Sex is the 
 yeast that leavens the entire inert mass of our human 
 paste. Without it there would be no progress, no art 
 nothing. 
 
 "Good-by," he said, and extended his gloved hand 
 tentatively. "Will you shake hands with me to-day? 
 See, I have not removed my gloves in order to spare 
 you the sight of my hands." 
 
 Conquering her aversion, Betty put her hand into his. 
 Even through the heavy dogskin glove she could feel 
 the mutilations conspicuous knuckles and gnarled fin-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 241 
 
 gers. Her face was pale and drawn as she quickly with- 
 drew her hand from his. 
 
 "I met Madame Hudrazzini the other day," Earlcote 
 said. "She asked for you. She promised to bring you 
 and the whipper-snapper down to Earlcote Manor some 
 day in her car. Will you come?" 
 
 "Thank you, yes," said Betty, thinking that at Earl- 
 cote's house she might have a better opportunity to plead 
 for Richard than anywhere else. 
 
 "When are you at leisure?" 
 
 "Wednesday afternoon." 
 
 'And Richard Pryce?" 
 
 "Richard takes Friday afternoons off, but if we are 
 not too busy he may be able to take the same afternoon 
 as myself." 
 
 "I see. When you visit me, I will play you some 
 Hungarian gypsy music. I warrant you have never 
 heard anything like it before. I am going to enchant 
 you with my playing, and my aviary, and my Aladdin's 
 Orchard, and by and by you will be quite content to 
 be my pupil." 
 
 Betty sat very still for a good quarter of an hour 
 after Earlcote was gone. Such a medley of feelings 
 swept over her that she felt quite unequal to the task 
 of analyzing or classifying them. Repugnant he was to 
 her horribly so, and she was fair enough to admit that 
 since this repugnance was a physical sensation, it might 
 have its origin in the feeling he named. The thought 
 was so completely new to her that she examined it care- 
 fully from every viewpoint and every perspective. She 
 deeply resented the fact that this gargoyle-faced man 
 should be able to arouse in her any sensation whatever. 
 She thought of Richard, whom she loved so devotedly. 
 Why, if what Earlcote said was true, did Richard lack: 
 the power to awaken her dormant womanhood ? For the?
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 first time in her life she desired to understand the mean- 
 ing of passion; she blushed; she was ashamed of the 
 wish; it seemed impure to her; she sought to exonerate 
 herself in her own eyes by saying that the wish arose 
 merely out of the knowledge that Earlcote, whom she 
 hated, exerted a power over her which Richard, whom 
 she loved, lacked. 
 
 Then she remembered Madame Hudrazzini's impas- 
 sioned words, the reverence with which she had spoken 
 of the stronger tie, the deeper bond between man and 
 woman. And for the first time, too, the thought came 
 to Betty that after all her attitude toward the mystery 
 of life, toward the deeper significance of sex, might be 
 all wrong. She remembered her mother's attitude. It 
 had seemed clear once but now, though she remem- 
 bered her mother's words distinctly, it seemed blurred 
 and indistinct. One thing was clear. As she, Betty, 
 had rejected her mother's theory that affection was 
 quite indispensable in marriage, there was no earthly 
 reason why she should not also reject her mother's at- 
 titude toward marriage the aversion which her mother 
 had tacitly allowed her daughter to believe she felt. So 
 intensely had Earlcote stimulated her mind that for the 
 first time the thought came to her that her mother's at- 
 titude might have been hypocritical. She remembered 
 the curious sensation of tenderness, of happiness which 
 had come to her the evening of Earlcote's verdict when 
 she held Richard in her arms. She wondered whether 
 at that moment she had not stood upon the threshold of 
 a fuller life. 
 
 At that moment a great resolve was born in Betty's 
 soul. Henceforth she would try to understand, to feel, 
 and failing, she would some day screw up her courage 
 and pretend to Dicky that the change which he had so 
 ardently desired had actually occurred in her feeling
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 243 
 
 for him. Perhaps, if she pretended hard enough, the 
 change would ultimately occur. 
 
 Earlcote's invitation came the very next day. It was 
 written on note paper as thick as blotting paper, and it 
 was rough to look at but smooth to the touch, and the 
 note was enclosed in a double envelope. The flap of the 
 envelope bore the Tiffany imprint. 
 
 A mild, agreeable excitement took possession of Betty 
 and lasted through the four days that intervened be- 
 tween the arrival of Earlcote's invitation and Wednes- 
 day afternoon, the day on which Betty, chaperoned by 
 Madame Hudrazzini, was to visit Earlcote Manor. 
 Richard refused absolutely to accompany them. He 
 seemed hurt that Betty should contemplate visiting Earl- 
 cote, but when she attempted to explain why she was 
 going, he gently but firmly declined to listen. Betty did 
 not insist upon explaining. She feared that if Richard 
 knew the real reason of her visit, he would interfere 
 with her going. 
 
 Earlcote Manor had been written about to repletion by 
 the entire New York press, and Betty, in some small 
 measure, was prepared for its wonders. 
 
 Overlooking Long Island Sound, the enormous estate, 
 covering some four hundred acres, was laid out with a 
 view of securing a picturesque and spacious, rather than 
 a garden effect. Shrubs and flowers were all of the 
 large, ornamental type, hydrangeas, rose bushes, peonies, 
 hardy azaleas, gladiolii, cannas, these in summer, filled 
 the gardens with a riot of color. But the real glory of 
 Earlcote Manor were its buildings, all of which were 
 modeled upon some famous Indian prototype. The 
 Manor House was a modification of the architecture of 
 the Jasmine Tower, of Agra Fort, used as a zenana by 
 one of the moguls. Seen at high noon, flooded by the 
 white sunlight of winter, itself white as the snow-robed
 
 244 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 landscape from which it rose when Betty first glimpsed 
 it, with its three rows of delicately fashioned columns 
 rising plateau- wise one above the other, and separated 
 by architraves and lattice work as intricate and lace-like 
 in design as filigree work, the building seemed almost as 
 .unsubstantial as the snow itself seemed part of a 
 dream landscape wrought by fairies out of the snow to 
 while away the tedium of a mid-winter vigil. 
 
 A boat-house, rising from the water some hundred 
 feet from the shore, was modeled in imitation of the 
 Golden Temple of Amritsar, the blue water back of it, 
 and the blue canopy of sky above, showing like a piece 
 of indigo satin in the rear of the colonnades of the 
 Manor House. It made the snow-laden landscape an 
 exquisite symphony in blue and white and gold. 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini and Betty were admitted by a 
 Hindu servant, who led them through an interminable 
 corridor finished in marvelous arabesques and scroll 
 work, and furnished with divans, Persian and Arabian 
 rugs, grinning idols and burning censers. Finally they 
 came into an enormous apartment surmounted by a glass 
 dome. It was the interior of Earlcote's famous aviary, 
 the exterior of which was built in exact imitation of the 
 Taj Mahal, the tomb of Arjamand, the consort of Shah 
 Jahan. 
 
 Betty and Madame Hudrazzini stood still in bewilder- 
 ment, upon entering the aviary. It was more like a gar- 
 den than a habitat for birds. A bronze fountain in the 
 center poured water, perfumed with sandalwood, into a 
 white marble basin, on the steps of which sat two Arab 
 boys playing mandolins. They were naked save for a 
 loin cloth, and wore anklets and bracelets of heavy gold, 
 and their bodies, anointed with oil, glistened as if sculp- 
 tured out of agate. Pink water lilies floated on the 
 bosom of the fountain, wonderful hand-woven rugs cov-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 245 
 
 ered the inlaid marble floor, wonderful tapestries hung 
 from balustrades of lace-like design. Enormous cages 
 containing gaily colored parrots and green and white 
 cockatoos, swung high above the visitors' heads. A fla- 
 mingo laved its pink legs in the water near the floating 
 lilies. 
 
 Out of all this dazzling mass of color Earlcote de- 
 tached his colorless self and came forward with out- 
 stretched hand to greet his visitors. Betty was grateful 
 that he wore gloves, and as she shook hands with him 
 she noticed that as a fob he wore a gem different from 
 anything she had ever seen, and which, from Archie's 
 description, she guessed was the Kasi-Nook, the famous 
 black opal. 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini insisted on strolling about to look 
 at everything. Earlcote called a Hindu to show her 
 about, pleading fatigue as an excuse for himself for not 
 accompanying her, and asking that Betty keep him 
 company until Madame Hudrazzini's return. 
 
 Betty noticed that Earlcote gave all instructions 
 through Dushka or Hahdjan, the deaf-mutes, who stood 
 behind his chair, and when Earlcote turned his head, one 
 of the two darted forward. Earlcote's lips moved, but 
 he did not speak. Immediately the Hindu, making an 
 obeisance, walked away to summon the servant whom 
 Earlcote had designated as a guide for Madame Hudraz- 
 zini. There was something uncanny in these silent com- 
 mands of Earlcote and their incredibly swift exe- 
 cution. Who but Earlcote, thought Betty, would have 
 conceived the idea of not pronouncing the words which 
 he wished his deaf-mutes to read from his lips. The 
 incident, trifling as it was, heightened the sense of weird 
 unreality which was creeping over Betty. 
 
 When they were alone, seated on a marble bench in 
 front of a marble table, Earlcote said:
 
 S46 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Well, Miss Garside, how do you like my enchanted 
 palace ?" 
 
 "It is wonderful." 
 
 "Yes, but it has one drawback. The birds, being 
 tropical, do not sing. Now what I need, what I want 
 and what I desire above everything is a song-bird, a 
 live, human song-bird to make music for me." 
 
 He leaned his elbows on the table and brought his 
 face close to Betty's. The girl's blood seemed to con- 
 geal in her veins as the terrible green eyes approached 
 her own so narrowly, but she gave no outward sign of 
 perturbation. 
 
 "You are gaining in self-control," said Earlcote, "or 
 is the aversion for me wearing away?" 
 
 "Please, please, Mr. Earlcote," Betty implored. 
 
 "Oh, very well. What I long for now, as I was say- 
 ing, is a human song-bird whom I could teach." 
 
 Betty again said "Please, please," rather asininely. 
 
 "Well, then, if I am not to speak about that either, 
 tell me about the whipper no, that word also is pro- 
 hibited. I shall have to make a list of what I may and 
 of what I may not speak of in your presence. Tell me 
 about the young man whom you love so devotedly." 
 
 "What am I to tell?" 
 
 "Didn't you come here, Miss Betty, for the express 
 purpose of discussing him with me?" 
 
 Betty blushed furiously. 
 
 "You came here, I think, to plead with me for your 
 Richard." 
 
 "Well, yes, I did." 
 
 "You love him, but you do not love him passionately." 
 
 "Certainly not. I have told you before that I do not 
 love him passionately." 
 
 Earlcote laughed. 
 
 "My dear young lady," he said, "you had better be-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 247 
 
 ware. If you treat your Richard too frigidly he will 
 some day go off and marry someone else. Why, you 
 carry your obstinate self-deception so far that you pro- 
 nounce the very word 'passion' as if your mouth were 
 sprinkled with cayenne pepper, and it were agony to 
 speak. You are a foolish, silly, absurd little girl. You 
 pride yourself upon the spiritual tie that binds you to 
 your Richard. Spiritual ties ! As well tie up a criminal's 
 hands with ribbons of smoke as expect to bind a man 
 and a woman together by spiritual ties only. We are of 
 the earth, earthy, and we cannot escape from our earthy 
 heritage. 'Blood is thicker than water/ the old adage 
 says. Perhaps that offends you also by its coarseness. 
 If not, it is because you lack the faculty for coherent 
 and logical thought. There could exist no blood rela- 
 tionship whatever not the tender bonds uniting sister 
 and sister, the strong tie which unites brother and 
 brother, if it were not for the exercise of this particular 
 function of Nature." 
 
 Betty's self-possession gave way. She made no effort 
 to fence with this remorseless intellectual machine, clang- 
 ing out its opinions in concise, metallic terms. 
 
 "I cannot help it," she said supinely. "I have tried 
 to understand I have tried to overcome ,^he shrinking > 
 but I do not succeed." 
 
 "That is the first sensible thing I have heard you say 
 on the subject." 
 
 Earlcote leaned back in his chair and gazed at her 
 meditatively. "You will learn," he said. ''There is no 
 doubt but that you will learn, and you will some day 
 be a great, no, I will make no predictions as they only 
 annoy you." 
 
 His eyes, fixed upon Betty, scrutinized her at leisure. 
 Without moving, without speaking, without as much as 
 a quiver of lip or eyelid, he sat and looked at her with
 
 248 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 his green cat's eyes, and Betty, shrinking away from that 
 gaze, felt herself grow limp as a rag or flaccid as jelly. 
 All her aversion, which she had heroically contrived to 
 keep under control, surged up in her. She had the sen- 
 sation that Earlcote was a huge cat and she a mouse 
 with which he was playing. 
 
 With a terrible effort of the will she dismissed the 
 morbid fancy. She remembered that she was leagues 
 from the subject which she had come to discuss. She 
 came back to it clumsily. 
 
 "To return to Richard," she said, "I am sure that his 
 career is the one thing that will make for his happiness. 
 Dear Mr. Earlcote, won't you be nice and recommend 
 him?" 
 
 "Dear Mr. Earlcote assuredly, that word addressed 
 to me must have made you suffer," Earlcote repeated 
 almost blithely. "Dear Mr. Earlcote." 
 
 Betty bit her lip. 
 
 "I am trying, honestly trying, Mr. Earlcote, to over- 
 come my childish dislike for you." 
 
 Earlcote bent forward quickly and touched Betty's 
 arm with his gloved hand. Unconsciously she shrank 
 back from his touch. 
 
 "That is how you will overcome your aversion be- 
 cause it is not a childish one, as I told you the other 
 day. You cannot help yourself. It flatters me quite as 
 much as if you had fallen in love with me." 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote, I beg of you, let us speak of Richard 
 for a little while." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 "I implore you once more to reverse your opinion. 
 You can do it easily enough." 
 
 "How? I cannot give myself the lie." 
 
 "You might say that, after hearing him play again, 
 his playing seemed very much better to you."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "I thought you were honest, Miss Betty? And here 
 you are asking me to do an extremely dishonest thing." 
 
 "No, I'm not." Betty spoke quietly. A significant 
 undercurrent in her tone and manner made Earlcote ask 
 sharply : 
 
 "What do you mean ?" 
 
 Betty's sweet grave face became very white. She said 
 bravely : 
 
 "You know as well as I do if you were to say that 
 it would be merely telling them your true opinion of 
 Dicky's playing." 
 
 "Surely you are not trying to revive the silly notion 
 that I am professionally jealous of Richard now that 
 you have heard me play the piece that he had previously 
 murdered ?" 
 
 "It is not a silly notion. You are not jealous of him 
 as he is now of course not but you fear him as a 
 rival in the future. You want to go down to history 
 as the great pianist of all ages and you know that 
 Richard, if he had a fair chance, would be your close 
 second, perhaps your equal." 
 
 Earlcote's gray face grew more cadaverous. He was 
 furious that this slip of a girl, this silly chit of a girl, 
 whom he would not have considered worth a moment's 
 notice if it were not for the incomparable voice that 
 lodged in her throat, should have read his inmost 
 thoughts so perfectly. He would have liked to crush 
 her brutally, to get rid of her, to send her about her 
 business. But there was her voice, the voice which he 
 desired and coveted with a passion and enthusiasm he 
 had not felt since his body had been wrecked, making 
 it impossible for him to express himself through his 
 own medium. He controlled himself, and said diffi- 
 dently : 
 
 "Your infatuation for your Richard blinds your judg-
 
 250 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ment, just as it allows you to stoop to conduct for which 
 you would otherwise despise yourself." 
 
 "What do you mean? What conduct? What have 
 I done?" 
 
 "You are trying to make use of one of your friends > 
 you are trying to use me." 
 
 "In the first place," Betty replied vigorously, chin 
 high in air, "I am not trying to use you. I am trying 
 to get you to be just instead of unjust; in the second 
 place, if I were trying to use you, it would not be a 
 friend whom I wanted to use. One feels no dislike for 
 one's friends, I think." 
 
 Earlcote's thin lips became taut and straight until they 
 formed a barely perceptible line in the hideous face. 
 
 "If we are not friends, there is no reason why we 
 should not drive a bargain with each other, is there?" 
 
 "None." 
 
 "Very well. Now tell me, what would you be willing 
 to suffer for your Richard's sake." 
 
 "Anything in the wide world." 
 
 Earlcote took a wallet from his pocket, and counted 
 out five one-thousand dollar bills. 
 
 "Would that cover Richard's expenses abroad for 
 three years?" 
 
 "It certainly would. But I do not want your money, 
 Mr. Earlcote." 
 
 "I may give you a chance to earn it." 
 
 He turned his head, his lips moved. Dushka in obe- 
 dience to the silent command, ran off with the stealthy, 
 gliding movements of a tiger, returning a minute later 
 with a pair of scissors. Again Earlcote's lips moved, and 
 Dushka cut the five one-thousand dollar bills in half, one 
 by one. Then he withdrew. 
 
 Earlcote gathered up one set of these mutilated bills; 
 the other set of halves he pushed toward Betty.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 251 
 
 "The set in my pocket," he said, "which pasted to the 
 set which are yours, will place five thousand dollars at 
 your disposal. They will be handed to you by me if 
 you will consent to call for them here at midnight." 
 
 Betty drew back aghast. Her black eyes glimmered 
 like burning coals. 
 
 "How dare you?" she said in a low, indignant voice, 
 "How dare you offer me such an insult?" 
 
 "There you are. You tell me you are willing to endure 
 'anything in the world' for your Richard," he imitated 
 the semi-pathetic, semi-strenuous inflection of a woman's 
 voice. "I make you a proposition, a harmless, fair busi- 
 ness proposition, and you immediately flare up, and say 
 'How dare you insult me like that?' The inconvenience 
 to which my proposition would have put you is very 
 slight, as you will admit." 
 
 "It is not a case of inconvenience, it is a case of 
 wrong-doing," Betty flung back indignantly. "I would 
 certainly not do anything wrong, not even for Richard's 
 sake." 
 
 Earlcote laughed. 
 
 "Poor love," he said, "if it weighs and measures with 
 Puritanical drams and grains to ascertain whether 
 service be service only or sin as well. You thought, did 
 you, of poor Ophelia's words: 
 
 'Went in a maid that out a maid 
 Never departed more' 
 
 You imputed motives of that sort to me, didn't you, you 
 
 little white thing? But, if you will recollect, I did not 
 
 say so." 
 
 "If you didn't mean that, what did you mean?" 
 Betty's face was crimson. She was on the verge of 
 
 tears tears of mortification and shame.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Ah, there you are. Perhaps, as in Monna Vanna, I 
 would have asked you to sit all through the night with 
 me, robed only in a mantle. Perhaps I would have 
 thought that the torture of anticipating that you would 
 be expected to submit yourself to my will would be 
 sufficient suffering to earn your five thousand dollars. 
 Then again perhaps I didn't think that. Will you test 
 me?" 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 Earlcote laughed. 
 
 "Well keep the mutilated set of five one-thousand 
 dollar bills. If you ever wish the other set of halves, 
 telephone me that you are coming. I will understand, 
 and expect you that same evening. And I promise you, 
 on my honor as a gentleman, that whatever my inten- 
 tions may be, if, at the last moment, you desire to leave 
 my house with the one set of halves only in your pocket, 
 you shall be as free to go as you were to come, unmo- 
 lested, unharmed." 
 
 "You are detestable," said Betty, impetuously. Rising, 
 she pushed the five half bills across the table to Earl- 
 cote. 
 
 "If you do not take your set with you, Miss Betty, I 
 shall think that you are afraid of trusting yourself with 
 them afraid of the temptation, afraid of familiarizing 
 yourself with temptation." 
 
 Betty gave him a look of infinite scorn. She swept 
 the vast apartment with her glances. Again she ex- 
 perienced the curious accession of a different personality. 
 Again she felt older, more experienced, more mature, a 
 woman capable of dealing with the vexatious situation 
 which confronted her. 
 
 "I will go and meet Madame Hudrazzini," she said. "I 
 think I will not impose on your hospitality any longer."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 253 
 
 Earlcote struggled from his chair. Seriously alarmed, 
 he protested : 
 
 "My dear Miss Garside I apologize, I do indeed. Per- 
 haps we can make a different bargain, a bargain which 
 will be acceptable to you." 
 
 Betty, her back turned to him, remained immovable. 
 Earlcote, leaning heavily on the table, brought his face 
 forward so far that it almost touched her shoulder, and 
 leering hideously, continued : 
 
 "Supposing just supposing I were to offer you this 
 sum of money if you in return will consent to be my 
 pupil?" 
 
 Betty turned and faced him. Her serenity, the se- 
 curity and authority with which she found herself pre- 
 pared to summarily handle the situation filled her with 
 an aloof, detached amazement. She seemed to be spec- 
 tator as well as actor in the little comedy which was in 
 process of enactment. The thought flashed across her 
 mind that from Earlcote himself she was drawing some 
 of the strength, the resourcefulness, the wariness with 
 which she miraculously found herself invested. 
 
 "You should have thought to offer that bargain first," 
 she said. "You can hardly expect me to consider any 
 proposition of yours after the deadly affront you offered 
 me." 
 
 Earlcote regarded her quizzically. His crafty eyes 
 changed from green to a gray so deep that they were 
 almost black. 
 
 "Perceive, if you please, that just now I made no defi- 
 nite offer I merely postulated the possibility of such 
 an offer. You might have been ready to pronounce ac- 
 ceptable a bargain which, after all, I would not have 
 been ready to make." 
 
 "Why did you try to get my opinion of it, then?"
 
 354 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "So I could make up my mind at leisure as to whether 
 that particular exchange was worth my while." 
 
 "How worth your while?" 
 
 "Whether it was worth putting down five thousand 
 dollars for the pleasure of enrolling you as a free pupil." 
 
 "Yet you were willing to put down five thousand dol- 
 lars for the pleasure of a night's conversation with me." 
 
 Astounded, a little frightened at her own fluency of 
 thought and facility of speech in giving this twist to 
 Earlcote's insulting proposition, Betty began tapping the 
 table with her fingers. In spite of the harassing and 
 mortifying position in which she found herself, she was 
 surprised to find that she was experiencing something 
 akin to pleasure in the maturity of thought and manner 
 which she was displaying. 
 
 Earlcote looked at her keenly for a moment before re- 
 plying. 
 
 "Perhaps," he said slowly, "I made you the first propo- 
 sition as a bona fide and not as a tentative proposition 
 because I was absolutely sure that you would not stoop 
 to it." 
 
 Automatically, Betty's fingers stopped their tapping. 
 The chaste, pale face became very still. The lustrous, 
 penetrating black eyes with their glint of light in the 
 pupils lay in her head like burning coals. She was think- 
 ing rapidly and economically, wasting no time in fruit- 
 less discursiveness. Facts that dovetailed, statements 
 that conflicted, presented themselves to her. 
 
 "You are adroit of speech, Mr. Earlcote. But you are 
 forgetting an important point. In offering me the af- 
 front which you term your 'first proposition' and which 
 you now pretend to have known I would not abase myself 
 to accept, you practically destroyed five thousand dollars." 
 
 "I have only to paste them together again." 
 
 "But I might have taken your dare and walked off
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 255 
 
 with one set of halves. Then you would have been five 
 thousand dollars out of pocket, without getting any- 
 thing in return." 
 
 "I was certain you would not take my dare." 
 
 Betty looked hard at Earlcote. Before her, on the 
 table, still lay the one set of half bills. Deliberately, her 
 lips wearing a semi-amused, semi-mischievous smile, she 
 swept them into her purse. 
 
 "I did not think, Miss Garside, that you would do so 
 daring a thing. It is daring, you know." 
 
 "I shall be glad to return them to you the day my 
 Richard receives the scholarship from the Musical Prog- 
 ress League. I leave it to your ingenuity to think of 
 ways and means." 
 
 Earlcote pretended to become indignant. Secretly he 
 was more entertained than he had been in years. He 
 had underrated this chit of a girl, and he now hoped 
 to see more of her. She amused him. Also he was a 
 a good sportsman and the fact that the game was going 
 against him, lent zest to it. 
 
 "I, too, have my' honor," he protested. "As I told 
 you before, I cannot give myself the lie." 
 
 "Honor nonsense. It is simply this Mr. Earlcote: 
 You are going to decide within the next week what you 
 want more, five thousand dollars or the spoiling of Rich- 
 ard's future, so far as it lies in your power to spoil it." 
 
 "I think you must be a paranoic." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "Paranoia is the terrible form of insanity that begins 
 by imagining that someone is persecuting us. In you it 
 takes the form of an ineradicable belief that I am hound- 
 ing your adored and adoring Richard. If you don't look 
 out, you will end in a lunatic asylum." 
 
 Betty was greatly amused. She was so amused that 
 she threw back her head, venting peal after peal of ex-
 
 56 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 quisite laughter, that ripple from her throat with a 
 wealth of euphony. It was irresistibly contagious. Earl- 
 cote's face was puckered into a smile which had lost every 
 trace of sourness or a sneer. 
 
 Because there was more to this girl than he had imag- 
 ined, he made another desperate effort to gain his point. 
 
 "Look here, if I arranged for the scholarship, would 
 you be willing to let me teach you?" 
 
 "Evidently you are trying to make up your mind which 
 you want more to block Richard's career or secure my 
 voice. I will consider no tentative offers. But tell me, 
 Mr. Earlcote, why are you so anxious about my voice? 
 I fail to comprehend your motives in that particular, I 
 confess." 
 
 "Can't you imagine what it means for a man of my 
 temperament and musicianship to be suddenly deprived 
 of an outlet for my feelings? To the positive pain of 
 deprivation is added the negative pain of boredom. I 
 am bored to death. I do not know how to pass the time 
 of day since I am unable to play. Day after day I sit 
 reading the scores of operas and symphonies and con- 
 certos of mazurkas and nocturnes and barcaroles, the 
 most insignificant of which, were I to play it, would 
 mean exquisite torture for me. I came back to the 
 United States, hoping that a great specialist of whom I 
 heard while abroad, might be able to restore my spine 
 and arms to usefulness. My hopes were disappointed. 
 As long as I live, when I play, if I play, I must expiate 
 for doing so with inconceivable suffering." 
 
 "And what has my voice to do with all this?" Betty 
 told herself that it was monstrous that she could not feel 
 compassion untinctured by aversion for Earlcote. What 
 she felt for him was the repugnance she would have felt 
 for a wounded animal, a bear or a coyote always repul- 
 sive, but doubly repulsive when seen in its death throes.
 
 257 
 
 "You have everything to do with it, Miss Garside. 
 I cannot use my hands, but I can use my brain, and 
 using my brain with your throat as my instrument, I will 
 play on your voice as I formerly played on a piano. It 
 will give me something to do to teach you. It will help 
 pass the endless, weary, memory-haunted hours." 
 
 "Nevertheless, I will never be your pupil." 
 
 "You will. Kismet you will." 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini was approaching, gesticulating 
 and waving a branch of purple flowers which Betty had 
 never seen before. 
 
 "You're not going to make a scene of any sort, are 
 you?" Earlcote asked anxiously. 
 
 "No, I am going to say nothing of what has hap- 
 pened. But please understand, Mr. Earlcote, I refrain 
 from 'making a scene' as you call it, not on your ac- 
 count, but on Madame Hudrazzini's, who, since she is 
 acting as my chaperone, would be horribly mortified to 
 think I had been subjected to any unpleasantness through 
 her brief absence." 
 
 "See, carissima," said the great soprano, "this is a bou- 
 gainvillea, a tropical flower. Is it not lovely?" 
 
 Earlcote rose from his chair. 
 
 "I have promised to play for you ladies," he said, "I 
 will play now." 
 
 He played some Hungarian dances, wild gypsy music, 
 whose constant ceaseless changes of rhythm, tempo and 
 accentuation irritated nerves, not accustomed to such 
 truceless syncopation, almost to the breaking point. 
 Betty's imagination was on fire, her blood seemed 
 changed into a myriad tiny hammers that tapped against 
 brain and heart and throat. 
 
 After that they ate the most delicious confections 
 Betty had ever tasted, under a palm tree which she sud- 
 denly discovered was carved out of green and brown
 
 258 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 jade. The pink-legged flamingo came and ate tidbits 
 out of Earlcote's hand, and suddenly a troup of Indian 
 dancing girls, all glistening brown limbs and tinkling 
 spangles and jewels large as hen's eggs and fluttering 
 veils, appeared in the quadrangle on the other side of the 
 pool. 
 
 Then, Earlcote took it into his head to show them 
 photographs of himself taken before he had become crip- 
 pled. His pictures showed him to have had a tall, well- 
 knit athletic figure and a shapely prepossessing head as 
 far as features were concerned, but looking at the pic- 
 tures made it clear to Betty that her invincible repugnance 
 for Earlcote was not for Earlcote the cripple so much 
 as for Earlcote the man. She realized that he was per- 
 fectly right in his diagnosis of her aversion. 
 
 Finally, an hour later, Betty and Madame Hudrazzini 
 were speeding Manhattan-ward in the great singer's auto- 
 mobile. 
 
 "Like an Arabian night, eh?" asked Madame Hud- 
 razzini. 
 
 "To me it seems as if I had escaped from the house 
 of an ogre who eats little children, strayed from home." 
 
 "I think this ogre means to be very good to one little 
 child, if the little child will only let him. Here we are 
 good-by, my dear, and come to see me very soon at my 
 new apartments. I am in every evening at seven." She 
 bent forward and kissed Betty. "If I can ever do any- 
 thing for you, anything in the wide world come to me. 
 I am your friend always."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 After the departure of his guests, Earlcote remained 
 seated for a few moments, eyes closed, as if deep in 
 thought. Then, turning his head, his lips moved in a 
 silent command which was read by the Hindu attendant. 
 
 Stepping noiselessly across the vast apartment, and 
 pushing aside a crimson hibiscus vine, the Hindu turned 
 the knob of a lattice-work door which was completely 
 hidden by the foliage. The chamber into which the door 
 opened was dark, and out of it stepped a young lady who 
 walked briskly out into the courtyard of the aviary. It 
 was Katarina della Florenzia, alias Kitty Florence. She 
 tripped lightly across the floor to Earlcote. 
 
 " Ton my word, Earlcote I thought you would keep 
 me penned up in there till doomsday. What do you 
 mean by allowing me to cool my heels in a musty, stuffy 
 stable loft like that so long? I couldn't even understand 
 a syllable of what you and the girl were saying. And 
 your pantomimes were not wholly expressive. One thing 
 is sure. The lady does not love you. And I do not love 
 her." 
 
 "No doubt. She is everything that you are not. She 
 is virtuous, pure-minded, chaste. Her voice is exquisite 
 and she is so single-minded that she cannot be double- 
 faced, for the sake of her single-minded devotion, even 
 with an enemy." 
 
 "Look here, Earlcote, don't run away with the idea 
 that you can verbally turkey-trot with me. If you want 
 me to render you this service, whatever it is, you will have 
 to quarantine your tongue." 
 
 259
 
 260 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Earlcote made her a mock heroic bow. 
 
 "I am forgetting to be hospitable," he said. "Will 
 you have a plate of ice-cream?" 
 
 "Thanks, no I have taken the pledge. Carbo-hydrates 
 are so fattening." 
 
 "A glass of Benedictine or wine of cocoa ? Come now, 
 a cordial ?" 
 
 "I drink nothing but creme de menthe or champagne." 
 
 Earlcote gave the instructions to Dushka in the usual 
 way, and Kitty arched her pretty brows in surprise as 
 she saw Dushka walk away and return with the creme de 
 menthe without having received any oral order. 
 
 "Why didn't you have the young man here so I could 
 look him over, as you agreed to do? Really, I'm rippin' 
 mad at having been mewed up in that dungeon." 
 
 "You saw him the other evening at the Direktor's." 
 
 "Heavens I saw four unfortunate young puppies 
 how am I to know which particular one is the man?" 
 
 Earlcote drew a newspaper clipping from his pocket, 
 which reproduced Richard's picture, printed by the 
 Musical Gazette at the time Richard had received 
 the appointment to illustrate the musical lectures of the 
 League. 
 
 Kitty took it up and looked at the picture disdain- 
 fully. Her disdain changed to approval. 
 
 "A nice-looking boy," she said. "Precisely what do 
 you want me to do?" 
 
 "Briefly I want you, you pretty little vampire to 
 lure Richard away from his Betty." 
 
 "Better not call me a vampire. Better sugar-coat this 
 job all you can, if you want me to undertake it, or I'll 
 drop it like a hot cake." 
 
 "Does the task appear to you to be very difficult?" 
 
 "Difficult?" Kitty laughed harshly. "You men are all 
 alike," she said contemptuously. "No matter how much
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 261 
 
 a man loves a woman, if another woman offers him the 
 sweetmeats all men desire, he doesn't refuse them." 
 
 " 'Sweet-meats' is good," said Earlcote, with unction. 
 
 Kitty luxuriantly sipped the creme de menthe which 
 Dushka had brought her. 
 
 "Aint it funny what a difference just a little Irish ice- 
 berg makes," she hummed. "The green stuff always 
 makes me see the world through rosy glasses. How 
 much is there in this job for me?" 
 
 Earlcote pushed a tiny bag across the table, and Kitty 
 opened it with fingers trembling with greed, awkwardly 
 spilling the contents upon the table. A large blue dia- 
 mond, and several smaller yellow diamonds, pattered 
 about the table, like peas. Earlcote caught one of them in 
 his hand, as it was about to roll to the floor. 
 
 "Look here," Kitty asked with sudden suspicion, "is 
 all this junk real? Or are they just chips of glass?" 
 
 "I always play fairly, Miss Firebrand. They are real 
 right from the treasure chamber of the Gaekwar of 
 Hajaputani." 
 
 "Well, it's a jolly lot of sparklers you are offering 
 me." Kitty had laid the stones one by one upon her 
 arm lengthwise. To keep them from falling off, she 
 pressed them firmly into her white flesh with pretty af- 
 fection. "Jim-dandies, every one of them. You must 
 be mighty keen about this business or you wouldn't be 
 planking down enough hardware to treat every chorus 
 girl in the old burg to a small hot bird and Tiffany water 
 in Lobster Square for a year. Now, would you ?" 
 
 "It is possible that I overestimated your price." 
 
 "Oh, I rake in all I can, when and where I can be- 
 lieve me but. . . ." The pretty face darkened. "Look 
 here, Earlcote," she spoke imperiously. "Before I start 
 on this job I want to know all about it, I want to know 
 what's what, I want to know all about the game. What
 
 262 
 
 is it? If you want the engagement to this boy broken so 
 you can get your talons on the girl, I'm not with you 
 on the deal. On the level, is that your game?" 
 
 "On the level," Earlcote pronounced the slang gingerly, 
 "it is not." 
 
 "You will have to tell me what it is very plainly," Kitty 
 pursued remorselessly. "I am a bad egg, I am, as you 
 hinted so delicately before, and I do not like the girl 
 because well, because I don't. But there are a few un- 
 infected spots left in my moral make-up, and if I thought 
 you wanted to try monkey shines of any sort hypnotic 
 or otherwise, upon the girl, I wouldn't touch this propo- 
 sition with a ten-foot pole." 
 
 "Calm yourself, Miss Morality. I am not in love with 
 the little girl. I want to teach her to sing, and the en- 
 gagement has got to be broken before I can arouse her 
 ambition." 
 
 "Is her voice really so beautiful?" 
 
 "Marvelous." Earlcote, astute observer of men and 
 women, noted the ring of envy in Kitty's voice. The 
 Kittys of this world pride themselves upon their cold- 
 bloodedness, when in reality the passions that sway 
 womankind vanity, jealousy, envy lie so near the sur- 
 face that it needs no Machiavelli to manipulate them. 
 Earlcote was not slow to take his cue. He praised Bet- 
 ty's voice extravagantly, piled adjective upon adjective, 
 metaphor upon metaphor, superlative upon superlative. 
 At the end of two minutes Kitty interrupted him. 
 
 "You gush like a geyser. Guess my lady can look out 
 for herself, and I hope to own the sparklers within a 
 month." 
 
 "And you'll make the most of the slight resemblance 
 that exists between you and Miss Garside, won't you?" 
 
 "Oh, I'll make myself up to look the part, don't you 
 fret." Kitty swept the gems into the bag as one sweeps
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 263 
 
 bread crumbs from a table, and then tossed the bag 
 across the table to Earlcote. Suddenly, frowning with 
 interest, her eyes narrowed to scrutinize more readily the 
 object that was interesting her. 
 
 "What's the stone in your fob?" she asked. "I've 
 never seen anything like it before." 
 
 "It's the Kasi-Nook." 
 
 "The Black Opal with the hoodoo reputation?" 
 
 "The same." 
 
 "I say," Kitty tapped Earlcote's sleeve confidentially, 
 "the sparklers aren't in it with that thing like the face 
 of a summer night's sky. I'll take it in pay, instead of 
 the other glass." 
 
 "No, you don't. I don't part with the Kasi-Nook." 
 
 "Very well, then find someone else to pull off this 
 trick for you." 
 
 "Look here, Miss della Florenzia," Earlcote said, ca- 
 jolingly, "it wouldn't be right for me to give you this 
 hoodoo gem. It would bring you ill-luck." 
 
 "I'm not superstitious." 
 
 "Superstitious or not superstitious, this gem has been 
 the cause of untold tragedies." 
 
 "Then I should think you would be only too glad to 
 get rid of it." 
 
 "It brings ill-luck only when come by dishonestly. 
 
 "Honestly come by 
 
 Fortune and joy, 
 And health it -will buy. 
 Dishonestly come by, 
 
 Health, -wealth and joy 
 It will surely destroy. 
 
 "It was given to me by the Gaekwar, in hopes it would 
 bring me some good fortune to compensate for the ter- 
 rible disaster which had befallen me at his court."
 
 364 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Well, I like your nerve ! Am I not earning it ? And 
 if you earn something, you come by it honestly, don't 
 you? I'm in earnest about this, Earlcote." 
 
 She began buttoning her gloves, pulled her furs closer 
 about her shoulders and regarded Earlcote menacingly. 
 Earlcote, seeing her determined, haggled a while longer, 
 and then said brusquely, 
 
 "Oh, very well, have you own way. By the by, there 
 is a question I would like to ask you. Can you speak 
 English, or only slang?" 
 
 Kitty laughed goodnaturedly. 
 
 "Sure thing, I can hand out the high-brow slush as 
 well as anybody, but no sane New Yorker returning to 
 the old burg from the European Hinterland would think 
 of speaking anything but the vernacular of the home 
 tepee. So let's get down to hard-pan. Trot out some 
 hard-hearted facts. How and where do I meet our Jo- 
 seph?" 
 
 Earlcote's lips compressed themselves into an unbe- 
 lievably thin line. 
 
 "Sit down," he said, "and I will tell you."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 It was only when Betty reached home that she re- 
 membered the set of cut bank bills which she had taken 
 up from the table. She had meant to return them to 
 Earlcote before leaving. Covered with shame and con- 
 fusion she sat down in the center of the Davenport. 
 Why had she allowed a silly spirit of bravado to usurp 
 her better judgment? What if burglars were to get into 
 the room that night and steal them? If she was unable 
 to return them to Earlcote, on demand, or without, was 
 she herself any better than a thief? 
 
 She propounded to herself a series of similarly sooth- 
 ing questions, with the result that she was almost fever- 
 ish with fear by dinner time. She dared not return them 
 by messenger for fear the messenger might lose them 
 or be robbed. She did not know where to hide them at 
 night. Finally she telephoned a telegram to be sent to 
 Earlcote. Her message ran: 
 
 "Will you be in town to-morrow? If so, where can 
 I see you?" 
 
 She flattered herself that the message was so worded 
 as to convey nothing of her ulterior motive in wishing 
 to see Earlcote. An hour later she received an answer: 
 
 "If you insist on returning articles of value now shall 
 ascribe conduct to fear. If determined, appoint hour 
 and place and I will be at hand. EARLCOTE." 
 
 Betty sent no answer to this. She was mortally afraid 
 of Earlcote, and of keeping the mutilated bills, but she 
 was still more afraid of letting him know that she was 
 afraid. 
 
 265
 
 266 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 She went to her room, to devise a place of safekeeping 
 for the wretched things. Finally she put them in a small 
 chamois bag in which her mother had carried money in 
 traveling, and this bag she suspended about her neck 
 from a loop of tape. 
 
 Then, although it was only eight thirty, and she was 
 not in the least sleepy, she opened her Davenport and 
 went to bed. Shivering, not with cold but with nervous- 
 ness, she pulled the bed-clothes up under her ears, twist- 
 ing the pillow into such shape that it screened the gas 
 jet from her eyes. 
 
 For a few minutes the creature comfort of lying snugly 
 in bed on a cold midwinter night among the harmonious 
 surroundings of her luxuriously furnished room, pre- 
 vailed over her mental discomfort. Then that reasserted 
 itself. 
 
 Her brain seemed on fire. Thoughts unmanageable 
 and evading capture, flitted hither and thither. Only 
 one fact was distinct and paramount. She was a coward, 
 an unspeakable, thoroughgoing, miserable coward. She 
 was afraid of Earlcote, and of the money, and most of 
 all she was afraid to tell Richard just what had happened. 
 He had bitterly opposed her going, and she did not know t 
 what would happen if he were to learn of Earlcote's in-j 
 credible impertinence. 
 
 But she longed for Dick's protection. At the moment 
 she wished ardently, in spite of her chronic fear of mar- ( 
 riage, that she and Dick were married. She wanted his 
 name, she wanted the public brand upon her of being 
 his possession. She wanted all the world, Earlcote par- 
 ticularly, to know that Dicky was her legitimate pro- 
 tector. She wanted to shift the responsibility for certain 
 decisions from her own weak shoulders to his. Never 
 had she felt so supinely helpless, so clingingly, almost 
 cringingly feminine in her dependence upon Richard. *
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 267 
 
 It occurred to her that she was very selfish in not 
 procuring the scholarship for Dicky at the expense of the 
 personal discomfort involved for herself, for she had 
 little doubt that Earlcote's proposition to this effect had 
 been perfectly sincere. But she felt that she did not 
 have the moral strength required for the carrying out 
 of such a distasteful arrangement. It was an arrange- 
 ment requiring superhuman courage, and this she did not 
 pretend to possess. She had her good points, but cour- 
 age was not one of them. 
 
 Suddenly she decided that she would tell Richard she 
 was willing to marry him at once. She remembered the 
 memorable scene between them in which he had told 
 her that he would not marry her unless her attitude 
 toward marriage changed very materially. Betty was at 
 loss to know whether the change that had occurred in 
 her outlook would seem adequate to him. 
 
 Betty's mental processes were normally slow. She was 
 not one of your Catling gun thinkers, whose meditations 
 'zigzag across the horizon of the mind with lightning-like 
 rapidity. She had earnestly striven to modify her views, 
 but her feelings remained unaltered. Would Dick con- 
 sider that the change was sufficiently great to warrant 
 marriage ? 
 
 A flood of tenderness, of gratitude for the love which 
 he showed her in a thousand and one unconscious actions 
 every day welled up in her. She heard him come in, talk 
 to Mrs. Presbey in the parlor and then walk upstairs. 
 She thought how sweet it would be if she had the right 
 to call to him now and have him take her in his arms, 
 and fall asleep thus. 
 
 Her cheeks flushed. Her innate modesty made even 
 ;these feelings, feelings so steeped in affection as to render 
 them wholly unsensual, seem indecorous. And suddenly 
 she remembered the flood of tenderness, new and never-
 
 268 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 felt-before, which had invaded her the evening of Earl- 
 cote's scathing criticism, while she held Richard in her 
 arms. She divined that she had stood upon the thresh- 
 old of the miracle that night. 
 
 She felt, too, that she had been cheating Richard of 
 something which should have been his for some time. 
 He had been exquisitely, divinely considerate of her. 
 Now that she had had a little experience with men, now 
 that Archie had ogled her and Earlcote had ridden 
 roughshod over every maidenly instinct of modesty and 
 reserve, she was able to appreciate Richard's delicacy and 
 restraint. 
 
 She understood now so much at least had she learned, 
 that Richard was suffering intensely. She pitied him. 
 She screwed up her courage to a mighty act of heroism. 
 She would lie to him pretend to feelings which she as 
 yet did not own. It was true, he had succinctly and 
 emphatically stigmatized such pretense on a woman's part 
 as shameless, but to her it still seemed that the shame- 
 lessness was in feeling, not in pretending to feel. 
 
 She heard Dicky tiptoe softly to her door. Evidently 
 he was worried about her. 
 
 She was seized with an impulse to call to him to 
 wait, while she dressed and tidied up her room, and tell 
 him the great virtuous lie then and there. She had a 
 dim notion that before she had finished telling him the 
 lie, through the magic of his presence, the lie might be 
 converted into a truth. But just because of this pre- 
 monition, she was unable to carry out her decision. She 
 still clung to her own point of view. She crept to the 
 door. 
 
 "Dick!" 
 
 "Betty Sweet-heart, you're not ill?" 
 
 "No, darling." 
 
 "Can I do anything for you? Any powder? Drug?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 269 
 
 "No, Dicky, I need neither powder nor drug." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 "Dicky, darling, play me something anything." 
 
 "Gladly. Good-night, dearest." 
 
 "Good-night." 
 
 She crept back to bed. From the adjoining room, 
 muffled by intervening closets and hallways, floated the 
 strains of Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Betty loved the 
 gentle music, gentle as any shepherd's roundelay. To- 
 night it seemed more adorable than ever. She turned out 
 the gas, and crept back to bed. Her last conscious 
 thought was, "Why should my Dicky, who can make 
 such heavenly music, not be content to love as if we 
 were disembodied spirits spirits unfettered and un- 
 dimmed by the trammels of the flesh ?
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 It took Betty several days to screw her courage to 
 the sticking point. More than once she essayed to speak 
 to Richard, but Richard was somewhat unapproachable 
 these days. The wrecking of his hopes regarding the 
 European scholarship hurt him cruelly, and his Betty 
 was responsible for suffering of a very different kind. 
 Between the two agonies he felt that the only way in 
 which he could "keep a stiff upper lip" was to ensconce 
 himself in an armor of cool, supercilious indifference. 
 
 Betty understood all this thoroughly, but she did not 
 possess the hardihood, the robust assurance necessary to 
 break through Richard's reserve. 
 
 One evening he dropped a note on her desk, asking her 
 not to wait for him at the office, and not to have Mrs. 
 Presbey wait supper for him at home. It was after ten 
 when he came in, and whistling blithely, he ran up the 
 stairs three steps at a time. He rapped vigorously at 
 Betty's door. She opened it for him. His face was 
 radiant. 
 
 "What's happened?" she asked. 
 
 "Guess." 
 
 "Europe?" 
 
 His face quivered slightly. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Money?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Briefly he told her that Mr. Telfer was interested in 
 a new concern which imported music from abroad. He 
 was to play new music sent on approval one night a week, 
 
 270
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 271 
 
 and Mr. Telfer was carrying him on the payroll for an 
 additional "ten spot." 
 
 "Oh, Dick, how perfectly splendid! If you are eco- 
 nomical, Europe will be feasible after all." 
 
 "In a few years, yes. Meanwhile, without jeopardizing 
 my hope of Europe, it makes something else more feas- 
 ible than ever." 
 
 "Does it?" 
 
 He came and sat down beside her, and with gentle force 
 took her by the shoulders and turned her about so that 
 she faced him. Her eyes avoided his. Suddenly she 
 said, 
 
 "Aren't you ever going to ask me to marry you again, 
 Dicky?" 
 
 "Didn't I, just now?" 
 
 "Did you?" 
 
 "And you answer with a question." 
 
 "Did I ? What an absent-minded beggar I am, Dicky. 
 Please ask me to again. 
 
 "Elizabeth Garside, are you ready to marry me ?" 
 
 "Richard Pryce, I am." 
 
 "Betty, you know what I mean by putting the question 
 that way." 
 
 "Dicky, I know." 
 
 "Betty this is a very serious matter. You are cer- 
 tain, dear, that you feel the right way about marriage 
 now?" 
 
 Betty's heart beat wildly. The moment had arrived 
 for launching the great, white virtuous lie upon a credu- 
 lous lover. She said bravely: 
 
 "I've changed, Richard." 
 
 He took her in his arms. 
 
 "Betty," he said, "I was beginning to despair. I was 
 disheartened, discouraged, utterly discouraged. Then he 
 kissed her lips, kissed them lingeringly, hungrily. In-
 
 872 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 wardly Betty recoiled from that kiss. But she gave no 
 outward sign. She simply closed her eyes and allowed 
 the swift current of his passion to brush over her as it 
 listed. 
 
 "Betty," He was almost incoherent. Held in check, 
 trampled upon, disregarded, flaunted, whipped out of 
 sight, his passion was now an aggression, a tempest, a 
 whirlpool. Again and again he whispered, "It is too 
 good to be true." Again and again he kissed her pas- 
 sive mouth, and her throat, and her shoulders, gleaming 
 white through the thin black lace waist, Still he re- 
 strained himself. Betty felt the delicacy of sentiment, the 
 reverence for herself implied by this restraint, and she 
 was more determined than ever to play the farce to the 
 finish without allowing him to guess her indisposition 
 for the completion of their love. The thought was an 
 unhappy one. 
 
 There came sweeping over her again with torrential 
 force all her terror of marriage the strange feeling of 
 panic and horror and outraged modesty which comes at 
 times to every woman, and which no man, perhaps, can 
 fathom or comprehend. It was unfortunate, further- 
 more, that Richard should have kissed her eyes at this 
 moment, kissed them with such vehemence that she felt 
 impelled to open them. What he read in her eyes so- 
 bered him in an instant. 
 
 "Betty, it's not true you've been deceiving me." 
 
 It did not occur to her that she might continue to lie. 
 
 "Only for your sake, Dicky." 
 
 "Betty !" 
 
 "I was so sorry for you, Dicky. You've had so much 
 trouble lately. I wanted to make you happy." 
 
 "Sorry for me!" He rose, and walked through the 
 room, rumpling his hair with his long nervous fingers. 
 He laughed gratingly. "Sorry for me because I'm a
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 273 
 
 rotten failure, because you think I will never amount 
 to anything." 
 
 "Dick, how can you? How can you? Sorry because 
 that toad of an Earlcote cheated you out of an oppor- 
 tunity." 
 
 "And to make it up for me in some way you were 
 going to sacrifice yourself!" He was terribly excited. 
 His mouth twitched, the thin, agile fingers shot through 
 the heavy crop of hair incessantly. "In Heaven's name," 
 he broke out finally, "what do you take me for? I 
 thought I made that plain, I thought " he broke off, 
 ejaculating incoherent words. 
 
 "Dicky, listen to me, I did not deceive you wholly. 
 I've changed immeasureably. I am trying to change. I 
 want to understand now. I am anxious to understand. 
 I Oh, Dick, won't you make things a little easier for 
 me?" 
 
 He came and sat down beside her. But he did not 
 touch her. He did not dare to put his arms around her, 
 for fear that the high criterion of conduct which he had 
 set himself would then become impossible. It was Quix- 
 otic it was perhaps blunderingly stupid. But Richard 
 had high notions of what he owed his Betty. He would 
 win her in his own high-minded way, or not at all. 
 
 "You mean, Belty, you would like to feel that you 
 understand the universal need of womanhood when in 
 love?" 
 
 "Yes, Dick. Can't you let it go at that? I do not 
 believe I am capable of any deeper feeling. Perhaps 
 some women are. But I know this, Dick. I could not 
 love you more dearly than I do. It couldn't be Dick. 
 You are my first thought in the morning, my last thought 
 at night. You are with me all the time. I think of your 
 dear face, your beautiful hands, and your heart, Dicky
 
 274 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 don't laugh at me your heart of gold. You're with me 
 always, all the time. Since I know you, Dick. It seems 
 to me I have not been alone one second. Dick, I couldn't 
 love you any more, could I ? 
 
 He took her hands in his and kissed them with gen- 
 tle passion. 
 
 "Betty!" he whispered, his voice hoarse with sudden 
 -desire, "Betty!" 
 
 "Dick, I am asking you to marry me." 
 
 He jumped up, and resumed his march around the 
 room, his tapering, strong fingers as usual at work upon 
 "his hair. He was shaking with suppressed feeling, but 
 he held valiantly to the light as he saw it. Suddenly, 
 controlled once more, he came to her side, and dropped 
 on his knees, putting his arms around her waist. 
 
 "Darling," he said, "darling because you have never 
 felt the fires of passion you cannot comprehend what 
 suffering has been my portion. But you can at least 
 understand that my willingness to wait for you is an 
 earnest of my deep and reverent love for you." 
 
 "Yes, Dick, I understand that. And I, dear, love you 
 so well, that listening to the voice of the heart, I lied to 
 you, I lied, Dicky. Do you realize what that means to 
 a girl like me?" 
 
 "Sweetheart, I do. I love you so well that I cannot 
 bear to think you may some day judge me for marrying 
 you prematurely, for accepting the gift of your love 
 before acceptance of mine seems to you also a gift, not 
 an imposition. I cannot bear to have you shrink from 
 me in any way, least of all, in that way. In ordinary 
 friendship, darling, we do not use our friends. It's not 
 nice, not ethical. Any gift a friend makes us, we accept 
 gladly in the spirit in which it is given. But we resent 
 the gift of anything that is not cheerfully, even eagerly 
 given. But you are taking it for granted that I am will-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 275 
 
 ing to accept the greatest gift one person can make an- 
 other without adequate return. I love you too well, 
 dearest, to merely accept your love. Not until you can 
 honestly surrender every fiber, every atom of body and 
 soul to me, can I take the gift of your love. A heart 
 for a heart, a soul for a soul, only in that way can the 
 stronger tie between man and woman be cemented sanely, 
 without prejudice to either or both. 
 
 "And I am sure, sweetheart, that one day you will 
 realize all this. I am certain, darling, that under the 
 surface of snow there slumbers the volcanic heart of a 
 true woman." 
 
 ''Why do you think so, Dicky?" 
 
 "Because your thoughts focus a good deal on this 
 point. If it were otherwise, if you were defective, a 
 woman incapable of love, you would have married me 
 long ago without giving thought to anything but your 
 carving cloths and pillow shams. But you have delved 
 beneath the surface, darling, and the fact is a telling 
 one." 
 
 "I believe you are right, Dicky." Betty said humbly. 
 "I hope you are. I hope so principally for your sake."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Dick went to his room a little later in a pitiably per- 
 turbed state. His nerves were completely unstrung. 
 And yet, with the obstinacy of the virtuous man, he told 
 himself that he could not have acted otherwise. The 
 feminine part of his nature gave him an undue and per- 
 haps hurtful insight into the nature of a woman's heart, 
 and it was intolerable for him to think that he might 
 roughly tamper with the delicate adjustment of Betty's 
 woman nature, possibly flawing and scarring it for all- 
 time. 
 
 Sleep evaded him. His blood sang in his ears. His 
 imagination was burning torchwise, became riotous, be- 
 came more and more bold. He fancied himself in the 
 sanctuary of Betty's arms at night alone, fancied that 
 her chaste lips were raining burning kisses upon his, 
 fancied that he felt her head with its fountain of black 
 curls pillowed upon his breast. 
 
 The milk wagons were rattling past when Richard fin- 
 ally fell asleep. 
 
 This interview occurred on Tuesday evening. On 
 Wednesday Betty left at three, while Richard, as usual, 
 was slated to remain at the store during afternoon and 
 evening. At about five o'clock a young lady, whose ad- 
 vent caused a ripple of excitement, entered the store. 
 
 "Aint she like Prudy?" ejaculated Miss Connors. 
 
 "She is and she isn't," retorted Miss Sharpe. 
 
 "Well, Prudy ain't never had such a corking suit. 
 Look at them 'luppells,' will you ? And them dinky little 
 Frenchy-looking buttons down the back." 
 
 276
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 277 
 
 Richard had started forward as the girl entered, but 
 had immediately seen his mistake in confounding a 
 stranger with Betty, and was about to retire to his own 
 little cubby-hole, when he saw that the young lady was 
 walking directly toward him with the evident intention of 
 speaking to him. 
 
 "Mr. Richard Pryce?" 
 
 "That's my name." 
 
 "I've been told to ask for you." Kitty spoke briefly, in 
 a businesslike way. She had been asked to play some 
 piano duets with a friend at an evening reception and 
 she desired to purchase some music of this description. 
 
 Richard had the desired scores brought, and while she 
 was fingering the music, offering this and that criticism 
 as to editions, she said: 
 
 "I'll want someone to come up and play these duets 
 with me. Several years have elapsed since I played them, 
 and as I do very little piano playing these days, I'm 
 not quite certain of myself. Could I make an arrange- 
 ment to have someone call, someone who knows enough 
 about music to point out the mistakes which I am liable 
 to make?" 
 
 "I shall be happy to call whenever convenient to you." 
 
 "This evening?" 
 
 "Certainly. At what time?" 
 
 "Let me see. Is half past eight too early, or too late ? 
 [Will that time suit you?" 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "By the way I'm Katarina della Florenzia." She 
 handed him a card. "That's my stage-name, as you, of 
 course, know, and there's my hotel address. You had 
 better ask for Miss Florence at the hotel." 
 
 For the first time she looked frankly at Richard. He 
 had studied her features at leisure, telling himself that 
 her resemblance to Betty was really very elusive and
 
 378 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 slight. But when Kitty looked at him, the dark eyes, so 
 very much like Betty's in color, startled him. "What a 
 pleasant, unaffected little girl," he thought, "even if she 
 is a vaudeville star." 
 
 That was all. It had all been very brief and business- 
 like, but her going left him in a flutter of excitement. It 
 was pleasant to look forward to spending the evening 
 with a girl who resembled Betty, though ever so vaguely, 
 pleasanter at any rate, than standing behind the counter 
 and answering the foolish questions of musical igno- 
 ramuses. 
 
 Then he wondered whether he ought to go home and 
 change to a Tuxedo. He spent a good half hour debating 
 the point, then decided to ask Mr. Telfer's advice. But 
 the amiable and easy-going principal of the establishment 
 at this moment made his exit through the side-door with 
 a sheaf of new librettos under his arm, a sign that he 
 had left for the day. 
 
 Then Richard decided suddenly to go home and don 
 his Tuxedo. 
 
 After all he was so busy with a multitude of harassing 
 details that he could not even find time to go to a res- 
 taurant for supper, much less to go home for his clothes. 
 So he sent a messenger boy to Mrs. Presbey with request 
 to send him his Tuxedo, and dined in his office on a 
 ham sandwich and a glass of milk. There also, he made 
 his toilet, bestowing as much care upon it as if he were 
 going to a ball. He wanted to appear right in the eyes 
 of the girl who resembled his Betty. Her hair was like 
 Betty's, and her skin was as dazzlingly white, and alto- 
 gether there was a resemblance of a sort. But now that 
 he remembered her eyes, which had seemed so like Betty's 
 when she looked at him the first time, it seemed to him 
 that their expression was very different. Betty's eyes 
 were dreamy and pure dreamy as a fleecy cloud, pure
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 279 
 
 as cold spring water and as clear and cold. But in the 
 vaudeville actress's eyes was a scintillating, titillating 
 twinkling something the mere recollection of which 
 puzzled him and made him strangely nervous. 
 
 Finally he was dressed. If Kitty had not expected him 
 to appear in evening clothes, he reflected that his doing 
 so could not possibly be construed as anything but a wish 
 to appear comme il faut. 
 
 It was about quarter of nine when he entered the 
 little parlor which Kitty occupied. Although he had been 
 announced by telephone, she was not in the apartment 
 when he entered, but came in a moment later from the 
 adjoining bedroom. Before coming forward to greet 
 him, she hastily pulled the portieres to, and while he 
 apologized for his tardiness, he wondered again at the 
 resemblance, and now it seemed to him much more pro- 
 nounced than in the afternoon. 
 
 Kitty, as Archie had truthfully said, was a genius at 
 makeup. Such a talent presupposes the existence of a 
 certain degree of psychological insight, and this Kitty 
 undoubtedly possessed. She had played many parts both 
 off and on the stage, and among those parts was that of 
 ingenue. To-night she had dressed for her part with 
 extraordinary and self-repressive skill. Gone from her 
 person was every chicanery of toilet which to the demi- 
 mondaine is an indispensable adjunct of dress; gone was 
 towering, complicated coiffure; gone were diamond- 
 studded, crocodile-shaped bracelets and three tier deep 
 serpentine rings; gone was golden meshwork clasped 
 with sapphires as a net for the hair ; gone was the refined 
 suggestiveness of varying sleeves; gone every tell-tale 
 token that would have proclaimed her a woman of the 
 world. The girl that stood with clasped hands and down- 
 cast eyes before Richard Pryce, was as innocent-looking, 
 as virginal and sweetly, fragrantly maidenly as Betty her-
 
 280 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 self. Nor had Kitty overdressed the part. The plain 
 white gown, it is true, was a chiffon voile, not ordinary 
 cotton voile such as Betty, more likely than not, would 
 have worn, and the lace with which it was trimmed was 
 genuine Italian filet. Her fingers were innocent of all 
 but one ring, the customary solitaire affected by the 
 young girl of good family. Her hair was dressed simply, 
 girlishly, with only one white rose tucked among a bil- 
 lowing mass of ebony. A beautiful pair of superbly 
 rounded arms peeped from sleeves that were not too 
 short. 
 
 So fine was Kitty's art that, without having been in 
 Betty's immediate proximity, she divined that Betty 
 would eschew every perfume for her healthy, wholesome, 
 beautiful young body, save that given by Nature and 
 stainless cleanliness. And to simulate that fragrance of 
 spotless purity, Kitty, for the first time in many years, 
 wore undergarments unperfumed with heliotrope or 
 violet, but laid away for three days among a smothering 
 mass of powdered Italian orris-root, which, she knew, 
 was the only possible means of approximating the in- 
 'describably sweet and evanescent perfume of virginal 
 youth such as Betty's. 
 
 "Will we go to work at once?" she asked, lifting her 
 eyes to Richard's face. He mumbled assent and, with 
 clumsy fingers, began untying the package of mwsic which 
 lay unopened as his boy had delivered it. 
 
 Side by side they sat down at the piano, and Kitty 
 began asking him questions about the music, about his 
 conception of a correct interpretation. She had chosen 
 Jensen's titillating Wedding Music, Moszkowski's de- 
 lirious Spanish Dances and Brahms' Valse, Op. 39, and 
 she indicated her wish to begin with the dances. 
 
 "I'm very uncertain about them," she said, adding as 
 an afterthought that she earnestly hoped he would not
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 281 
 
 hesitate to correct any blunders in her interpretation. 
 Richard thought her deference adorable. 
 
 Kitty played very well. She blundered twice or thrice, 
 noticed her breaks herself, and asked Richard to play 
 the passages with her again and again until she was 
 letter-perfect. It was a curious fact which escaped 
 Richard's attention that the passages which she desired 
 him to play with her once more were invariably highly 
 colored phrases, music so pulsing and vibrant and seduc- 
 tive that they were bound to communicate their throbbing 
 intensity to the performer, and every time that Kitty 
 asked Richard to replay a passage with her, she accom- 
 panied her request with a glance of her eyes, agleam and 
 aflame with a deep, rich glow that made Richard's breath 
 come hard and fast. Kitty prided herself that she could 
 run her prey to ground without speaking or dancing or 
 walking, merely by judicious use of eyes and lids and 
 lashes. She had on one occasion in Vienna made a bet 
 to this effect and won it, the object upon which she prac- 
 ticed her arts in that instance being a notorious roue, 
 who had arrived at the age which Voltaire describes as 
 the age when our vices leave us, not we our vices. To 
 a woman, who could make easy conquest of a case- 
 hardened, seasoned libertine and who knew every femi- 
 nine trick calculated to lure and snare, a Richard Pryce 
 seemed contemptibly easy prey. 
 
 After they had played Moszkowski's Dances three 
 times, Richard's nerves were jumping like live wires, 
 and Kitty suddenly exclaimed : 
 
 "Before we go on, we really must have something to 
 eat. And to drink. The other music will not give me 
 so much trouble." 
 
 It appeared that she had prepared a light repast con- 
 sisting of caviare and smoked salmon sandwiches and 
 champagne, in a small alcove which Richard had not
 
 282 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 perceived before. Into this she invited Richard. The 
 alcove was really a tiny apartment by itself, shut off 
 by heavy portieres from the larger room in which they 
 had been sitting. Violets and lilies of the valley stood 
 on the table, and filled the room with their fragrance, 
 and a large lamp, with a dark red shade, was its sole 
 method of illumination. 
 
 "I won't ring for a waiter to open the champagne," 
 said Kitty. "I dare say you and I can manage it alone. 
 Can't we?" 
 
 "I suppose so," Richard found himself saying, which 
 was diametrically the opposite of what he wanted to say. 
 He did not wish to accept Kitty's hospitality. He had 
 a sudden horror of sitting down and drinking champagne 
 with her. The girl who vaguely resembled his Betty 
 should have conducted herself just as Betty would have 
 done. And now he experienced a curious feeling of 
 resentment against his hostess because of the resemblance 
 which at first had seemed a guarantee for her character 
 and manner and morality. 
 
 Somehow he opened a bottle of champagne neverthe- 
 less. Somehow a glass filled with the sparkling beverage 
 found its way into his hand. He put it down again, and 
 to hide the fact that he was not drinking, he ate a 
 sandwich. He had had a very light supper, and the 
 sandwich was delicious, so he ate another. Then Kitty 
 bade him try the other kind, and he ate two little sand- 
 wiches of that. Neither smoked salmon nor caviare 
 conduce to absolute temperance; the salt irritated 
 Richard's throat, and he was ashamed to ask for a glass 
 of water, so he sipped the champagne, and after he had 
 sipped it, he forgot his resolution not to drink of it, 
 and emptied his first glass. 
 
 She began asking him questions, questions of no mo- 
 ment, questions concerning trivial and commonplace
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 283 
 
 things. Then, without being questioned, she told him 
 intimate incidents of her own life, of a stunted child- 
 hood and deprivation-ridden youth. It is true, most of 
 the pathetic incidents were spurious, but how was 
 Richard to know that? 
 
 His heart warmed to her. Enchantress and vixen that 
 she was, she had, by using pulverized rock-candy mixed 
 with a raw egg, modulated her commonplace and strident 
 voice into softness and pliability. She was very like 
 his Betty after all, Richard decided quite suddenly. Of 
 course it was all wrong for her to be drinking champagne 
 in a dimly lighted room with a strange young man, but 
 poor child, being so very innocent, the thought had 
 probably never occurred to her that some young men 
 were not to be trusted. Richard had had some three 
 or four glasses of champagne when he arrived at this 
 point of his meditations, and he now began to wish 
 earnestly that she would not look at him, her eyes held 
 a quality that made the sparkle of the champagne he 
 was drinking flat and stale in comparison. And because 
 it was flat and stale, he drank still another glass, and 
 another to quench his unquenchable thirst. 
 
 "Now, tell me about yourself? There is something I 
 would like to ask you. Would you resent a personal 
 question ?" 
 
 "Why should I? Between friends?" 
 "I have been told that I slightly resemble the young 
 lady to whom you are engaged. Do I ?" 
 "You do and you don't." 
 "Begin with the don'ts. In what particular?" 
 "Well, for one thing your eyes are different." 
 "That means that mine please you less." 
 "Hers would please me more if they possessed one 
 quality of yours," he replied, thinking that he would 
 give, he knew not what, to see in Betty's eyes the shift-
 
 284 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing lights which proclaimed a fiery temperament, and 
 with which Kitty's eyes were replete. 
 
 Kitty's finesse was fiendish. She did not exclaim 
 "Flatterer" or "Really," or in any way accept the sen- 
 tence as an amiable compliment, but, with masterful simu- 
 lation of sincerity, began soberly to express her dis- 
 approval of it. 
 
 "You have no right, you know, to say that," she re- 
 buked him gently. "The girl to whom a man is engaged 
 should be perfect in his eyes." 
 
 "She is perfect, not only to me, but in reality." 
 
 "You are a puzzling sort of person. If she is perfect, 
 why should you wish her eyes like mine?" 
 
 Richard opened his mouth, only to shut it again with- 
 out having spoken. He possessed the fine sense of 
 loyalty that made it distasteful to discuss Betty even 
 with Betty's near-double. His brain was somewhat be- 
 fogged, but he remained true to his breeding. 
 
 "Why?" Kitty questioned again. "If I were different 
 from what I am, I would be immensely pleased by what 
 you said. But I like to see men faithful in speech 
 and thought as well as in act." 
 
 Richard flushed resentfully, as he replied : 
 
 "I am faithful to Miss Garside. Oh, I'll tell you what 
 I mean. I think you have more temperament than she, 
 and I wish she had just a little of that." 
 
 "Is she cold?" 
 
 "Cold and pure as snow." 
 
 "It is well to be pure as snow. But sunlight is pure 
 also, and has the additional advantage of warmth. I 
 am sorry for you. Why do you sit over there in the 
 dark, Mr. Pryce? Come, sit here, near the table or 
 shall I make room for you here beside me on the divan ?" 
 
 Richard rose and obediently sat down beside Kitty on, 
 the divan. The action was purely mechanical, for he was.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 285 
 
 so wholly occupied with the desire to clear himself of 
 the imputed disloyalty to Betty that unconsciously he 
 obeyed Kitty's suggestion to change his seat, just as a 
 well-bred man subconsciously hands the salt and the 
 ketchup at table upon request, without allowing that 
 request to penetrate the channel of thought in which 
 the table talk is flowing. 
 
 "That is better," said Kitty, when he was seated beside 
 her. 
 
 "Yes," said Richard, "that's better. His thoughts were 
 in a curious snarl. He wanted to further explain the 
 remark he had made about Betty's temperament in 
 justice both to himself and to her. He wanted to eluci- 
 date her beauty of character and spirit and blame him- 
 self for having normal desires. To do so, however, 
 would not be quite honest, and he wanted to be honest. 
 
 All the while Kitty sat regarding him with eyes of 
 crepuscular sheen, eyes which flickered like the fluttering 
 motes of gold that rise from a wood-fire. He experienced 
 a desire to unbosom himself to Kitty concerning Betty's 
 strange lack of emotion. He felt certain that Kitty 
 would understand perhaps be able to help him. But 
 his vocabulary seemed to abscond as he tried to begin 
 his story. 
 
 Kitty helped him. 
 
 "I should like you to tell me about your sweetheart," 
 she said softly. "That is, if you care to. She may 
 merely appear cold. We American girls are brought up 
 that way, you know. She will change." 
 
 "Do you think so?" 
 
 "I am sure of it. You will change her." Kitty bent 
 forward so that her face was near Richard's. She gazed 
 tenderly into his eyes, her voice was caressing, soothing, 
 alluring. "I am sure you are sweet and gentle with 
 her. Some day you will have your reward. She will
 
 286 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 say, 'I love you. I adore you wholly and whole- 
 heartedly. I am yours, wholly yours.' " She stressed the 
 last sentence, and the edge she thus gave to it brought 
 out its double meaning. 
 
 "Do you really think so ?" Richard asked stammeringly. 
 Waves of enormous length and sparkling heat seemed to 
 leap from his heart to his brain. 
 
 "How could it be otherwise?" The eyes which held 
 the love-light which all his ardor and wooing had been 
 unable to bring to Betty's eyes looked up at him out 
 of the face so like and yet so unlike Betty's. "Poor boy 
 poor boy, how you love her the mere thought of her 
 changes you makes you different very different." 
 
 "How different?" 
 
 Richard's voice was husky. By no effort could he 
 clear it. 
 
 "You know different. Poor boy! But believe me, 
 she would not be cruel to you if she only understood." 
 
 Richard leaned back and closed his eyes. 
 
 "She does not know," he said, valiantly defending his 
 absent love. "She is so pure. She does not know." 
 
 "Pure will she be less pure when she turns from 
 marble image into a living woman?" 
 
 "No, of course not." 
 
 "It is your own fault, I am afraid that she is as she 
 is. After all, you do not really wish her other than 
 she is." 
 
 "I do though only in that particular." 
 
 "Change her." 
 
 "I have tried," he groaned. "I have tried." He sat 
 erect, very pale, hair slightly disheveled, shaken, but 
 master of himself once more. To her chagrin Kitty 
 saw her prey loosening the lasso she had thrown over 
 him. The discovery that he was not as easy to deal with 
 as she thought put her on her mettle.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 287 
 
 "You have not tried enough." 
 
 "How? What do you mean? Every legitimate argu- 
 ment." 
 
 "Arguments instead of kisses!" 
 
 "There has been no dearth of kisses." 
 
 "But to argue, to attempt to argue such a point, you 
 dear, foolish boy, when you yourself laud her coldness 
 and call it purity. That undercurrent of thought, you 
 know, is bound to neutralize any specific argument." 
 
 "I suppose that is true." Richard was wholly sobered. 
 
 "Poor boy," Kitty's voice held a cooing, wooing quality 
 that sent poison-tipped arrows through Richard. "Poor 
 boy. How pale you are, and only from thinking of 
 her if she saw you thus would she not thaw ? I can- 
 not think she wouldn't. . . . To see the man she loves 
 suffer what greater suffering for a woman ! And when 
 she knows that she causes that suffering that it lies 
 in her power to alleviate it in hers only " 
 
 Kitty's voice trailed off into infinitude, leaving the 
 phrase hanging in midair, unfinished, only half its mean- 
 ing expressed, double its meaning suggested. 
 
 "In hers only," Richard repeated. Intuitively he felt 
 his danger and he spoke the words which he repeated 
 after Kitty as a sort of invocation, a prayer for de- 
 liverance, a verbal talisman. But the woman's eyes with 
 the titillating, flickering light, and the voice of honey 
 and cloves, and the white rose-petal face, the intoxicat- 
 ing, heavy fragrance of flowers, the dim, twittering twi- 
 light were doing their deadly work. 
 
 Sick, giddy, feeling strength in him to trample moun- 
 tains into crumbling dust, to snatch oak trees from their 
 century old foundations and hurl them into space, to 
 take the woman he loved into his arms and hold her 
 against all the world he leaned back once more, and 
 once more closed his eyes. Once his fingers fumbled
 
 288 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 through his hair, then, with their latent powers of un- 
 expended strength in them, fell inertly to his side. 
 
 "If she could only be brought to realize," murmured 
 the voice. 
 
 "She does not realize." He was writhing in misery, 
 but had enough sanity left to defend her whom he 
 loved. 
 
 "Poor boy." 
 
 "Don't pity me." 
 
 "But I do I cannot help it. My heart aches for 
 you." 
 
 "It's sweet of you to care." 
 
 "Care! If I thought you cared to have me care!" 
 
 He felt cool fingers laid on his burning eye-lids. 
 
 "Oh," he gasped. Then reached for her fingers and 
 pulled them away. "Don't/' he said. "Please don't." 
 
 "Don't what, Richard?" 
 
 "Don't touch me with your fingers." 
 
 "You are holding them." 
 
 He relinquished her hand. He tried to brace him- 
 self, to pull open his eyes, but instead, he felt upon his 
 eyes the soft pressure of lips, and a moment later the 
 lips had closed upon his. 
 
 His inert, limp body became galvanized into towering, 
 Herculean force. He took her into his arms, and clasped 
 her to his breast, and rained mad showers of blindly 
 directed kisses upon the sweet upturned face lying in his 
 embrace with closed eyes. But he knew the light that 
 lay behind the lids still flickered and invited, still 
 twinkled and harassed, still gleamed and maddened, al- 
 though the lids shut out from his eyes all these myriad 
 caprices. 
 
 Even while he kissed her he told himself that he was 
 doing a shameful thing. But he did not care. He was 
 only human, only flesh and blood. Poor flesh and blood
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 289 
 
 that ultimately must succumb to thumbscrews and burn- 
 ing stake! 
 
 He was possessed to see her eyes once more, and he 
 fell to kissing the soft lids, with their sweeping black 
 lashes, kissing the delicate, sensitive things almost as 
 tempestuously and as roughly as he had kissed the lips. 
 
 "Don't, don't, you are hurting me.'' 
 
 She struggled away from him. Betty, too, had re- 
 pulsed him. Betty's repulses had repulsed in good 
 earnest, while this girl's repulse only lashed his fever 
 into increased heat. He captured the hand that was 
 warding him off. He possessed himself of the sweet 
 hands and arms, and kissed on with blind fury. Now 
 and then she cried, "Don't, don't, you are hurting me," 
 and now and then she demanded, "Kiss my lips again." 
 
 He no longer felt culpable. He was not mad now. He 
 had been mad before when he had resisted and sparred. 
 It was his Betty, his own, who was thus transformed. 
 It had been a silly dream of his in which he had thought 
 her someone else. 
 
 A little later she disengaged herself from his embrace, 
 and leaving him sitting on the divan, his head resting 
 in his cupped hands, she went to the door. She re- 
 turned with the key in her hand. 
 
 "Richard," she said, and when he looked up she gave 
 him the key. He received it uncomprehendingly, 
 stupidly. But when she looked at him with orbs that 
 swam in liquid fire, his stupefaction gave way to blinding 
 comprehension. 
 
 He stood with the key in his hands, watching her as 
 she retreated into the room that adjoined the parlor. 
 For a brief interlude, sanity returned to him, bringing 
 with it biting self-denunciation. He felt a desire to drop 
 the key where he stood and to make his escape. The 
 odor of the flowers stifled him; the heat was suffocat-
 
 290 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing ; he felt dazed, stupid, heavy ; it occurred to him that 
 to leave now, without a word of explanation, would be 
 the worst affront a man could offer a woman. Curiously 
 enough, he hardly thought of Betty, and yet she seemed 
 to be there with him he seemed to sense her presence. 
 At that a blind impulse seized him, and obeying it, he 
 made his way out of the alcove, across the room and 
 to the door. He fitted the key into the lock, and was 
 about to open the door through which he firmly intended 
 to leave. 
 
 "Richard!" 
 
 He hesitated before turning. He knew that to turn 
 was to stay. And he wanted to go, to get away. Had 
 Kitty been less of an artist in the role she had essayed, 
 she would have called his name imperiously the second 
 time, and the sound of a sharp tone, issuing from that 
 mouth, so like his Betty's, would have restored com- 
 plete sanity to the boy's bewildered brain. But Kitty 
 was an artist. When she spoke his name again, it was 
 in an appealing, not a commanding tone. 
 
 "Richard !" 
 
 Slowly, as if some invisible hand were turning him on 
 a pivot, he turned. She was forced to speak his name 
 a third time before he faced her. He started. She had 
 consummated one of the lightning changes of dress for 
 which she was noted and stood before him, her black 
 curls, secured only with a white ribbon, flung over one 
 of the pair of gleaming white shoulders revealed by the 
 low-cut white kimono made of material so diaphanous 
 that, as the light was burning brightly behind her, while 
 the apartment in which Richard stood was only inade- 
 quately lighted by the dark red drop light on the table, 
 every line of the exquisite young figure, gracious curves 
 of bust and hips, and long cool lines of torso and limbs, 
 were plainly limned.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 291 
 
 Slowly, without speaking, without removing her liquid 
 black eyes from his face, she stepped back into the ad- 
 joining room. Quickly, without speaking, in his eyes 
 a wolfish gleam, he followed. 
 
 His very virtue, the abstinence he had practiced all his 
 life, the passion he had so long suppressed were con- 
 tributing to his undoing.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 When Richard awoke it was one o'clock. One o'clock 
 and a moonlight night! At first he did not remember; 
 the strange surroundings, the wine he had taken the 
 night before and to which he was unaccustomed held 
 him for a few moments in the ante-chamber of slumber, 
 the strange state between sleeping and waking when the 
 brain seems awake and the body asleep. 
 
 Leaning upon an elbow, he glimpsed his companion. 
 Even then remembrance halted and shuffled stumblingly. 
 For one moment he thought that he had gone insane; 
 that there was a lapse in his conscious memory; that 
 things had finally so arranged themselves that Betty had 
 become his wife. 
 
 At that moment the moonlight fell aslant his com- 
 panion's face, and the boy recoiled in horror. Re- 
 membrance rushed over him turbulently. Every detail 
 of his shame came back to him. 
 
 Was this the woman who resembled his Betty, as he 
 had thought? Waking, past mistress of acting that she 
 was, and necessarily in perfect control of her facial 
 muscles, Kitty had simulated the artless and innocent 
 young girl to perfection ; asleep, all muscles relaxed, lack- 
 ing the driving force that temporarily cancelled the traces 
 of evil living and substituted instead the expression left 
 by sweet and gracious thoughts, the only resemblance be- 
 tween the two young women was the black hair and pale 
 complexion, and even the latter, in Betty always sug- 
 gestive of the fragrant delicacy of the white rose, now 
 
 292
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 293 
 
 seemed coarse-grained and unhealthy and artificial in 
 Kitty. 
 
 Richard's heart seemed to vault out of his body in a 
 gigantic parabola. What he remembered was too hideous 
 to be dwelt upon. Fire ran through his veins. 
 
 Employing infinite precaution, he crept from the bed, 
 gathered up his belongings and carried them into the 
 sitting room. He dressed in the alcove with shaking 
 fingers, in terror lest Kitty should awaken. He felt him- 
 self unequal to facing her, unequal to deal with such an 
 impossible situation. The odor of the dying flowers 
 sickened him; the stale smell of the champagne glasses 
 and bottles produced nausea. And all the while some 
 little mechanism in his head seemed to tick out the words, 
 "And you thought her like Betty." 
 
 Finally he found himself outside in the hall. He did 
 not wait for the elevator but walked down the five flights 
 of stairs. His knees were like jelly; he thought every 
 moment that he must fall. He felt so very ill, that he 
 wondered vaguely whether a glass of something or other 
 would not do him good. But he did not know what to 
 ask for, what to take for this unearthly, creepy feeling. 
 
 At last, when he was out under the bright moonlit 
 January sky, he stood at the curb, drinking in the crisp, 
 cold night air like a man who has just made his escape 
 from a cavern filled with sewer-gas. He began to walk, 
 he did not know and did not care in what direction. But 
 he walked with frantic haste, as if violent exercise alone 
 would kill thought. 
 
 When the clock on Herald Square struck three, he 
 found himself at the junction of Fifth Avenue and 
 Thirty- fourth Street. Suddenly he felt chilled to the 
 marrow. He hailed a taxicab and jumped into it. 
 
 In his own room at last, without undressing, he threw 
 himself upon his couch bed. Here, in his own familiar
 
 294 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 surroundings, he felt that he would be able to give 
 adequate thought to the unspeakable thing that had hap- 
 pened. As if thinking" it over would mend matters ! But 
 he did not think. After intense nervous shocks nervous 
 temperaments experience a bodily fatigue that courts 
 sleep. Richard slept heavily until seven in his clothes. 
 
 He undressed, bathed, and redressed, and while thus 
 occupied had ample time to consider the situation. He 
 was utterly crushed with a sense of his iniquity ; he told 
 himself that he had fallen into the bottomless pit, and 
 that if he had any courage and manliness and decency 
 left in him, he would go to Betty and make a clean breast 
 of the whole miserable affair. On the other hand, his 
 fine sense of courtesy and modesty suggested that to 
 unburden himself by confession to Betty would be to add 
 cowardice to guilt. The sense of sin would be much 
 harder to bear if he forebore making his confession. To 
 do without her forgiveness, when, he felt certain he 
 might have it for the asking, at the cost, however, of pol- 
 luting her innocence, that, he told himself, was to be his 
 punishment. 
 
 On his way to the dining-room he remembered the 
 question she had asked him the night they had heard 
 Tannhaeuser: "Can you understand how a man loving 
 one woman can be the lover of another?" And he had 
 answered "No." And he had not understood and did 
 not understand, although he was culpable of the same 
 odious offense. 
 
 Had he been less modest-minded, he would have con- 
 sidered himself partially exonerated by the fact that Kitty 
 resembled Betty for he was sufficiently unsophisticated 
 not to suspect Kitty's make-up. But resemblance only 
 added another damning item to his guilt. He had not 
 merely polluted himself he had spattered Betty with 
 mud. His self-revilement knew no bounds.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 295 
 
 Thrice he turned away from the dining-room before 
 he could muster sufficient courage to enter. Finally, 
 hearing that Mrs. Presbey had come in from the kitchen, 
 he took his courage in his hands and walked into the 
 room. He found he was afraid, horribly afraid, of being 
 alone with Betty. He had wondered, while dressing, that 
 his features did not bear some shameful mark his eyes 
 some sign of his guilt. He thought that iniquity such as 
 his, acting like a toxin, must poison and distort the entire 
 visage. 
 
 While he pretended to eat his oatmeal, he suffered 
 great suspense lest either Mrs. Presbey or Betty or both 
 would ask him at what time he had come in. But Betty 
 chatted merrily ab'out some funny incident she had wit- 
 nessed in the street, and Mrs. Presbey had a laughable 
 anecdote to relate of Nora's unparalleled stupidity. 
 
 Suddenly Mrs. Presbey said: 
 
 "I didn't hear Richard come in last night. Did you 
 hear him, Miss Betty?" 
 
 "No," said Betty. "One never hears him when he 
 comes in late. My Dicky is always considerate." 
 
 "Considerate !" Richard grew crimson. 
 
 Mrs. Presbey laughed. 
 
 "Just look at your Dicky blushing because you are 
 patting him on the shoulder. Well, Richard, I will say 
 this for you. You are a good boy. You've lived in my 
 house for five years, and I fancy I know you as well as 
 anybody does. I don't believe you could do a wrong 
 thing." 
 
 Having thus eulogized her favorite, Mrs. Presbey rose 
 and majestically sailed from the room to superintend 
 the frying of Richard's wheat cakes, which, being des- 
 tined for Dicky's stomach, Nora was not competent to 
 handle. Betty and Richard were alone. 
 
 "Isn't she a dear to say all that about you? Of course
 
 296 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 it's true. You are the only and original package in the 
 way of masculine perfection." Bubbling over with 
 laughter, and masking her pride in her Dick under the 
 cloak of slang, Betty leaned toward Richard. "You 
 haven't kissed me, yet, sir," she said. 
 
 "Haven't I?" Dick simulated absent-mindedness. 
 Beads of perspiration stood on his brow. How could 
 he kiss her his Betty spotless and pure beyond the 
 reach of the imagination, after the occurrence of the 
 previous night? 
 
 "Dicky, darling, what's* the matter with you ? Did 
 you have an unpleasant evening?" 
 
 "Not so awfully pleasant." 
 
 She brushed a recalcitrant curl from his brow. He 
 shrank visibly from her touch. His perfervid imagina- 
 tion, always proceeding by leaps and bounds, propelled 
 him into a vision of the lepers of old, who, segregated 
 in one quarter of the town, were forced by the inflex- 
 ible, religious law of the day to cry out, "Unclean, Un- 
 clean," when a stranger passed them by the wayside or 
 in the streets, lest he defile himself by accidentally brush- 
 ing against them. If he, Richard, were to have his due, 
 "Unclean, Unclean," would be his cry of warning to 
 ward off Betty's caressing fingers. 
 
 "Poor dear, I won't bother with questions." And she 
 began chatting about indifferent subjects, with the evi- 
 dent intention of deflecting his thoughts into pleasant 
 channels. 
 
 He contrived to see little of her all day. When even- 
 ing came, instead of walking home with her, he pre- 
 tended to be too busy to go home for supper. Although 
 he was not busy, he remained at the store until eleven, 
 creeping stealthily to his room when he got home. 
 
 Through the night he felt ill. The next day certain 
 symptoms alarmed him, and leaving the office a little
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 297 
 
 earlier than usual, he stopped at Dr. Moran's. Dr. 
 Moran, after a brief talk, confirmed Richard's worst 
 fears. 
 
 "My dear young man," he said not unkindly, "you 
 should have taken my advice. As you are able to afford 
 marriage, you should have married, instead of taking this 
 risk. If young men would only learn to keep clear of 
 such intrigues not from ethical or religious scruples, but 
 for physiological reasons." 
 
 Richard said not a word. He was stunned by the phy- 
 sician's words, enervated by this horror which had 
 swooped down upon him, dazed by the circumstance that 
 the man of medicine evidently believed he had committed 
 the offense with deliberate intent. His head seemed split- 
 ting asunder. He wanted to clear himself in the physi- 
 cian's eyes of this aspect of the guilt. He wanted the 
 practitioner, scribbling a prescription upon his pad, to 
 know that he had not been as vile as all that. Finally 
 he stammered, 
 
 "It was not " 
 
 "Not what?" asked Dr. Moran, without looking up 
 from the prescription. 
 
 "Not deliberate, on my part." 
 
 "Not deliberate ?" Dr. Moran gazed at Rich- 
 ard in amazement for a moment, then he said, kindly, "I 
 understand. Unfortunately nature makes no allowances. 
 Professionally it comes to the same thing. I wish all 
 young men could be made to realize that marriage is the 
 only safe outlet. Of course some do realize it, and take 
 the risk nevertheless. That's due largely to the high 
 cost of living, and not to inherent immorality, as some 
 folks would have us believe. Our complex civilization 
 makes it impossible, except for a favored few, to marry 
 before thirty or thirty-five, because it takes a man so 
 much longer now-a-days to equip himself for the dis-
 
 298 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 charge of his professional or business duties. But young 
 men are young men now as formerly at a much earlier 
 age, and nature unfortunately is inconsiderate enough 
 not to prolong the period of physical adolescence to 
 match the prolongation of man's present educational 
 adolescence. Hence men take the risk of becoming phys- 
 ical pariahs for several years." 
 
 "A physical pariah," gasped Richard, "what do you 
 mean?" 
 
 The physician, having adroitly brought the conversa- 
 tion to the point which gave him the desired opening, 
 continued : 
 
 "Mr. Pryce, I am very sorry for you. How you came 
 to let yourself in for this I do not know, and, as I am 
 your medical and not your religious adviser, it is none 
 of my business. But I can see this. The phrase which 
 is frequently applied to women can aptly be applied to 
 you. You have been more sinned against than sinning." 
 
 Richard looked at him gratefully. 
 
 "But tell me, why didn't you marry?" 
 
 "I'll tell you, Dr. Moran. The girl I am engaged to 
 has a horror of marriage. In your profession, do you 
 find that attitude unusual?" 
 
 The physician became very grave. 
 
 "It is very much more usual than is generally believed," 
 he said. 
 
 "And I loved her so well, that, although she was willing 
 to marry me, I insisted on waiting. I wanted her to 
 change, first." 
 
 "That spirit of consideration is unusual." Dr. Moran 
 looked at Richard curiously. "Usually men care only 
 for themselves." He rose, and putting his hand on Rich- 
 ard's shoulder, said: 
 
 "My boy, I am really more sorry for you than I can 
 say. Buck up. I'll pull you through all right. But, of
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 299 
 
 course, as a man of honor, you will not marry for three 
 years. You know, of course, that it takes that long, 
 sometimes longer, to cure this disease. Apparently 
 you will be well in a few months as far as your gen- 
 eral health is concerned. You will be somewhat weak- 
 ened, that is all. But the danger of infecting others re- 
 mains. You understand me?" 
 
 "Yes," said Richard, thickly. His lips seemed glued to- 
 gether. Good Heavens what if Betty were to declare 
 herself willing in good earnest to marry him now? The 
 miracle he had hoped and wished and prayed for had 
 become a thing to be feared. He listened as in a dream 
 to the physician's instructions. Blindly he walked from 
 the office, and out into the street. He was trembling so 
 violently that he could hardly stand. He leaned against 
 a railing for support. 
 
 "My God," he said, "My God," and it was not a curse 
 but a prayer of a soul in mortal agony. 
 
 A matronly, wholesome-looking woman of about forty- 
 five stopped, glanced at Richard's chalky face and asked, 
 kindly : 
 
 "Are you ill ?" She spoke with the quiet dignity which 
 a well-bred woman evinces when extraordinary circum- 
 stances force her to accost a stranger. 
 
 "No thank you, I am not ill." 
 
 The woman lingered. 
 
 "I am not ill," Richard repeated. "I have had a nerv- 
 ous shock, that is all." 
 
 The woman walked away slowly. Once she turned, 
 glanced back, and then walked away. 
 
 And now one word and one only rang through the boy's 
 maddened brain. "Unclean, unclean, unclean." He had 
 thought himself spiritually polluted. That had been bad 
 enough, but to suffer spiritual pollution carried with it 
 a certain dignity. But this ! He shrank from himself in
 
 300 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 horror. His self-loathing, self-abasement and self-dis- 
 gust knew no bounds. 
 
 The thought of suicide came to him. "The wages of 
 sin are Death." Odd, how Bible words and Bible phrases 
 came bubbling to the top of the cauldron of thought. But 
 what good would his suicide do Betty? 
 
 A sudden spasm of fury possessed him. It seemed to 
 him that the wrong-doing into which he had been trapped- 
 was receiving a punishment out of all proportion to its 
 magnitude. The access of fury cleared his brain and re- 
 laxed the fearful tension of his nerves. He set his jaw 
 grimly, pulled himself together vigorously and walked 
 rapidly in the direction of his home. His manliness had 
 reasserted itself. He was ready, to use his own phrase, 
 "to take his medicine like a man."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The delicate question, whether honor required that he 
 tell Betty or keep his shame from her, consumed Rich- 
 ard's every leisure moment for days to come. He was 
 still in the throes of his mental struggle when the un- 
 expected happened. 
 
 ''Dick," said Betty one evening after supper, when, as 
 usual since his downfall, he was trying to get to his 
 room unperceived by her, "I would like a long talk with 
 you. Have you time ?" 
 
 "Yes, Betty." 
 
 "Dicky dear," she said nervously, when they were 
 seated side by side on the Davenport, "I am getting the 
 habit, I am afraid." 
 
 "What habit, Betty, dear?" 
 
 "Of proposing to you, Dick?" 
 
 "I think I did the proposing a good many months 
 ago." 
 
 "Yes, proposing to be engaged. But I propose that we 
 get married. Dicky, darling, for selfish as well as un- 
 selfish reasons, I want you to marry me. I don't want 
 you to cross-examine me again as to this and that. I 
 cannot explain just why, dear, but I want your name 
 I want to be your wife." 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "I have the floor, Dicky, so don't interrupt me. And 
 then, dear, I am afraid I am not going to change fur- 
 ther than I have changed. And, Dicky, dear, if I love 
 you well enough to be willing to marry you feeling as I 
 
 301
 
 302 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 do, you ought to love me well enough to marry me in 
 spite of my shortcomings, for the love I am giving you, 
 dearest, is very precious even if it lacks one element, and 
 Dicky, I am humble now. I am no longer proud of 
 feeling as I do. You, dearest, will have to help me over- 
 come my shortcoming as if it were a deficiency of 
 speech, or eyesight, or hearing." 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "Dicky, don't make me do all the love-making. I am 
 through with what I have to say. It sounds rather thin 
 and meagre, I cannot make words chime like music as 
 you can, but I love you, Dicky, I love you, oh more, far, 
 far more than I can say. And if it were not sinful, I 
 would wish that some misfortune would befall after we 
 are married, some illness I hardly know what so I 
 can prove to you how I love you." 
 
 "Betty, sweetheart " 
 
 He sat with his head buried in his hands. She slipped 
 from the Davenport and knelt down beside him. She 
 clasped her hands over his, trying with gentle force to 
 pull them away from his face. 
 
 "Dick," she said, "Dick, what is the matter? Surely, 
 dear, I have said nothing to make you cry?" 
 
 His soul was in process of upheaval. He could not 
 tell the naked, unvarnished truth to this spotless flower 
 of womanhood, this girl who was so incredibly pure. 
 How to disinfect words, how to render them antiseptic 
 so that in telling her he need not sully that pristine soul ? 
 
 "Dick, what is it?" 
 
 "Betty, at present it will be impossible for us to 
 marry." 
 
 "What has happened?" 
 
 He did not reply. 
 
 "Anything wrong with your position at Telfer's, 
 Dick?" 
 
 "No, Betty."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 303 
 
 "What then ?" 
 
 "The truth is, I'm not quite well, Betty. It will be 
 some time before I am well. It wouldn't be fair to marry 
 you before I am all shipshape." 
 
 "Dicky," her voice was jubilant, "I'm so sorry, of 
 course, dear, but isn't this just the opportunity I have 
 been anxious for? Darling, it's a curious thing for a 
 girl to beg her betrothed to marry her. And I am on my 
 knees too! What an affecting scene, Dicky!" Laughter 
 tripped from her lips. "Dicky, Dicky, you cannot be 
 so very ill, or I would be much sadder than I am. But 
 you must marry me at once, dearest. There will be so 
 many little things I can do for you once we are man 
 and wife." 
 
 He did not reply. His ordeal surpassed in cruelty any- 
 thing he had imagined possible. 
 
 "Dick?" 
 
 ''No, Betty, it would not be right." 
 
 "But Dicky, I want it I . . ." She broke off, and 
 studied him attentively. "Dick, is the trouble serious? 
 What is it? Your insomnia?" 
 
 She became very grave. All the ripples of laughter 
 died from her face. Only the light remained in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Dearest," she entreated, "won't you tell me what is 
 wrong? If it's insomnia, there is some ulterior cause 
 for that, isn't there?" 
 
 He looked at her humbly, mutely. 
 
 "Dicky," she persisted, "if it is insomnia, when we are 
 married, I can sit by your side and sing you to sleep 
 as you played me to sleep the night you nursed my bad 
 ankle. Do you remember?" 
 
 Did he remember! 
 
 "Betty," he said, "it is not to be thought of. We will 
 have to wait until I am quite well." 
 
 "What is the real trouble, Dicky?"
 
 804 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "I cannot tell you, dear." 
 
 "I see. Dick, is it really serious?" 
 
 "No, darling, you must not be alarmed. It is not 
 dangerous, if that is what you mean. But it is impossible 
 to marry just now." 
 
 She allowed the subject to drop. The young girlish 
 face looked pinched and furrowed. In her eyes was a 
 look of troubled perplexity. Throwing her arms im- 
 petuously about his neck, she kissed him tenderly. 
 
 "Dicky, I think you are the most unselfish man that 
 ever walked the earth." 
 
 For a long time they sat hand in hand, cheek to cheek. 
 It was torture indefinable for him to sit with her thus, 
 but the agony was very different from the agony of 
 former days. 
 
 Most bitter of all was the thought that now after the 
 voice of the heart had spoken so eloquently from Betty's 
 lips as to sweep away all the scruples he had enter- 
 tained of marrying her before the voice of the flesh 
 also had spoken, he could not marry her after all. That, 
 perhaps, was the most refmedly cruel part of his punish- 
 ment.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 On the following Wednesday afternoon, Betty left 
 the office at three as usual, and at four Mr. Telfer made 
 his final exit through the surreptitious side door. Rich- 
 ard, remembering that he had forgotten to look up a press 
 notice in one of the musical gazettes which Mr. Tel- 
 fer wanted mailed that night, went into the small apart- 
 ment serving as an anteroom to Mr. Telfer's private of- 
 fice to consult the file rack containing the current 
 periodicals. 
 
 While he was bending over the table, penknife poised 
 to sweep down upon the item in question as soon as he 
 had located it, the door was pushed open slowly and cau- 
 tiously. Kitty, sweeping aside office boys and clerks with 
 the authoritative air of the stage favorite, had achieved 
 the impossible and penetrated into the sanctum of Mr. 
 Telfer's private rooms without being announced. 
 
 Richard, when he saw her, was aghast. 
 
 "You!" he cried. 
 
 "I." Without taking the trouble to close the door, 
 which would have necessitated her turning away from 
 Richard, she came forward, eyes bent upon Richard, 
 gliding over the heavy Wilton carpet with the serpentine 
 grace of the boa-constrictor, fascination and danger sug- 
 gested by every movement of the subtle body. Upon 
 Richard, suddenly there flashed the old, old simile of the 
 serpent and the apple before the fall. He thought he 
 understood now why the serpent, of all created things, 
 was chosen to represent the obnoxious part allotted it. 
 
 305
 
 306 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 For the second time it struck him as curious how Scrip- 
 tural metaphors, and phrases and thoughts came harking 
 back to him since his sin. 
 
 "You do not seem particularly pleased to see me." 
 
 His innate courtesy forbade the obvious retort that 
 she was quite right. 
 
 "I am surprised to see you." 
 
 "Surprised? Not as greatly surprised as I was on 
 Thursday morning, a week ago, Richard " the glorious, 
 wicked eyes were playing hypnotically upon him. "Don't 
 you think, dear sir, that taking French leave as you did 
 was highly ungallant, to say the least?" 
 
 Richard looked at her coldly. 
 
 "I think that between you and myself we need not 
 mince words. I never wish to see you again, Miss Flor- 
 ence." 
 
 His bluntness made her angry, piqued her vanity, an- 
 noyed and amazed her incredibly. 
 
 "You are a novelty, certainly," she said. "I have 
 never met anyone just like you before. The first time, 
 practically, that we meet, you carry me off my feet, and 
 then " 
 
 "I carried you off your feet?" 
 
 "Well, didn't you?" She asked impudently. She had 
 taken his measure and correctly appraised his fine 
 courtesy. But being evil herself she could not compre- 
 hend that repentance can follow moral delinquency. 
 
 "No," said Richard very gravely, "I think it was the 
 other way. I think I was carried off my feet." 
 
 Kitty caught her breath with a quick intake. She 
 grew crimson with anger. She was about to vent her 
 displeasure, but remembered in time that only a complete 
 alienation of the betrothed couple would place her in 
 possession of the Kasi-Nook. 
 
 "You flatter me," she said smoothly. "You ascribe
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 307 
 
 the little entr'acte to my charms while I ascribe it to 
 yours. We will not quarrel about it. Being a woman, I 
 will accept your compliment. So be it. I am responsible 
 for what occurred." 
 
 Richard looked at her in blank astonishment. Such 
 adroitness in fencing, such moral callousness in speaking 
 lightly, with raillery, of an offense which loomed before 
 his vision as the sin of sins, shocked him terribly. He 
 made no reply. 
 
 Perceiving that her tactics had been at fault, Kitty 
 continued, falling into a different tone : 
 
 "Richard, why do you treat me like this ? Why do you 
 treat me with such pretended indifference? Surely, you 
 must have some feeling for me ?" 
 
 She touched his arm lightly with her gloved hand. 
 He shook it off as he would have shaken off an obnox- 
 ious bug, an ant or a spider. There was no mistaking 
 the gesture as one of contempt. 
 
 Kitty frowned. The task that lay before her was diffi- 
 cult. Her feminine self-love and vanity formed an even 
 stronger incentive to persevere in hopes of ultimate suc- 
 cess, than the single desire to possess Earlcote's black 
 opal. She become tenderly serious. 
 
 "Won't you tell me why you are so angry with me? 
 Surely, you are not the man to show brutal scorn to a 
 woman for loving you too well unwisely?" 
 
 Richard stared at her in outraged silence. 
 
 "Richard!" 
 
 The power of speech came back to him at last. 
 
 "Miss Florence," he said, "the situation is perfectly 
 clear. Let us call things by their black, ugly, common 
 names, and not apply pretty, delicate, scented names to 
 a very sordid and pitiful affair. I did not lead you 
 astray. And I am ashamed, more bitterly ashamed of 
 the affair than I can say. I am engaged to the sweetest
 
 308 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 and best and truest girl in the world and through you 
 I must forego marriage with her indefinitely." 
 
 In imagination Kitty saw the black opal suspended as 
 a pendant from her neck. How well the bluish glimmer 
 would go with her hair and eyes ! 
 
 She masked her eagerness under the guise of solici- 
 tude. 
 
 "You haven't been foolish enough to tell her?" 
 
 "Ultimately I will have to." 
 
 "Haven't you an uncommonly sensitive conscience, my 
 dear Richard?" 
 
 "I have got to tell her. There can be no other way, 
 ultimately." 
 
 Something in his voice, some quiet dignity of man- 
 ner wholly free from cheap pathos struck a chill to her 
 heart. She did not grow pale. Outward protection ren- 
 dered Kitty's cheeks immune to sudden and embarrassing 
 changes of color. But her face underwent a terrible 
 change. 
 
 "What do you mean ?" she asked. 
 
 "I mean that my physician tells me I must not marry 
 for at least three years to come." 
 
 Kitty put out her hand and caught blindly at the table 
 as if to steady herself. Her lips moved without speak- 
 ing. After a little while she asked, 
 
 "Are you sure?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She walked through the room and suddenly he saw her 
 collapse into a chair. 
 
 "I didn't know," she gasped. "I didn't know." 
 
 Richard had every reason to hate and despise her, but 
 now, realizing that she was enduring the same panic that 
 had swept through him in Dr. Moran's office, the chivalry 
 toward women practiced by countless generations of men 
 of gentle birth and breeding, came to the fore.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 309 
 
 "I had no idea that you did not know," he said, "or I 
 would not have told you so brusquely." He went to the 
 ice-cooler and drew a glass of water. 
 
 "Drink that," he commanded. 
 
 Natures like Kitty's rally quickly from the severest 
 nervous shocks. While she was drinking the water she 
 reflected that the alienation was really more complete 
 and final than any she had believed possible. The black 
 opal was hers. She smiled composedly as she returned 
 the glass to Richard. 
 
 "Good-bye," she said. "Needless to say I am sorry." 
 And she tripped lightly from the room. 
 
 From the gallery, two-pairs of knowing eyes, eyes 
 made knowing by ears that had heard the entire conver- 
 sation through the open door and the encased staircase, 
 looked at each other and winked.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 While Kitty was on the gallery the next morning, 
 checking up the mail orders, Miss Sharpe said: 
 
 "Do you know Katarina della Florenzia, Miss Gar- 
 side?" ' 
 
 "No," said Betty. 
 
 "But you know of her, of course?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "She was here yesterday." 
 
 "Well," Betty remarked, indifferently, "a good many 
 stage celebrities come here, don't they?" 
 
 "They do. But they usually come to buy music." 
 
 Something in Miss Sharpe's tone made Betty look up. 
 
 "And didn't Miss della Florenzia come to buy music ?" 
 
 "She may have." 
 
 A vague uneasiness came over Betty. 
 
 "Evidently she didn't." 
 
 "Well, whatever she came for, she didn't buy any 
 music. She didn't ask to be shown any music. She 
 didn't speak to any of the salesmen." 
 
 Betty came over to Miss Sharpe's desk. 
 
 "What do you mean ?" she asked. She had the sensa- 
 tion of an impending calamity. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," said Miss Sharpe, and glanced past 
 Betty toward Miss Connor's desk. "Oh, nothing." In- 
 finite malice were contained both in glance and tone. 
 
 "Certainly you wished me to infer something or other 
 from what you said just now, Miss Sharpe." Betty felt 
 annoyed and showed it. "I suppose I am obtuse. Won't 
 you please be plain?" 
 
 310
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 311 
 
 "Plain about what?" 
 
 Betty became angry. It was a rare occurrence for that 
 gentle spirit to show downright anger, but Miss Sharpe, 
 on more than one occasion, through her provocative man- 
 ner, had achieved the seemingly impossible. 
 
 Without another word, Betty walked away, back to 
 the table on which she checked the work done on the 
 gallery. 
 
 Miss Sharpe's manner, even more than her words, filled 
 Betty with haunting discomfort. She suspected nothing 
 definite. It never occurred to her that Miss Sharpe 
 wished her to infer that Richard was in any way im- 
 plicated in the vaudeville actress's visit. Richard and she 
 belonged to each other so completely, that the possibility 
 of his giving even a fleeting thought to any other woman 
 never suggested itself to Betty. Only a nature wholly 
 spiritual can attain such a state of utter unsuspiciousness. 
 Often she had seen him chat and laugh and jest with 
 women customers, just as she chatted and laughed and 
 jested with men for whom she played this or that song 
 or dance or sonata. 
 
 Miss Sharpe had more than once set Betty's nerves 
 a-quiver with her irritating half-spoken, half-suppressed 
 statements, statements which usually had some palpable 
 objective; but her remarks to-day had been as intangible 
 as moonshine on water. By four o'clock Betty had be- 
 come so nervous not merely from remembering Miss 
 Sharpe's allusions but even more from the insidious 
 glances which Miss Sharpe cast above and around, 
 but never at her, that Betty threw discretion to the winds. 
 
 "Miss Sharpe," she said, "I really wish you would do 
 me the favor to explain what you referred to this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "What are you referring to?" in a tone of utter non- 
 comprehension.
 
 312 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Miss Florence, della Florenzia." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "What did you wish me to tell you, Miss Garside?" 
 
 "Why did she come here?" 
 
 Miss Sharpe sighed. 
 
 "I do not know that I do right in telling you." 
 
 "If you feel that way, I really do not know why you 
 tried to arouse my curiosity." 
 
 "Well, you see, in a way I feel it is my duty to speak 
 out." 
 
 "Your duty?" 
 
 "Don't you think, Miss Garside, one decent girl owes 
 another decent girl the truth in certain matters?" 
 
 "I suppose so. What in all the world has that to do 
 with Miss Florence?" 
 
 "Miss Florence came to see Mr. Pryce." 
 
 Betty swallowed hard to keep in check the tidal wave 
 of rage that rose within her. 
 
 "What of it?" she asked. "Mr. Pryce, through his 
 connection with the Musical Progress League, may have 
 business of a private nature with her." 
 
 "Her business with him was of a private nature, in- 
 deed," said Miss Sharpe, dryly. 
 
 Betty's heart fluttered wildly. 
 
 "You will have to speak plainly now, Miss Sharpe." 
 
 "Well, Wednesday a week ago, Mr. Pryce was asked 
 to go to Miss Florence's hotel with music she wished him 
 to play with her." 
 
 "Nothing unusual in that, is there?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Again the tone which belied the words, the tone which 
 harassed and tortured nerves sensitive to masked hos- 
 tility. Betty looked searchingly at Miss Sharpe, who 
 continued :
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 313 
 
 "Something unusual happened at her hotel." 
 
 "What grounds have you for saying so?" 
 
 "From what she said to Mr. Pryce." 
 
 "And pray, how do you know what she said to Mr. 
 Pryce?" 
 
 Miss Sharpe jabbed her pencil in the direction of Mr. 
 Telfer's room. 
 
 "Our speaking-tube," she said, "and they omitted to 
 close the door." 
 
 Betty could not misunderstand the allusion this time. 
 
 "I really think," she said, "that I have listened long 
 enough." 
 
 "I suppose you are afraid to hear the end ?" 
 
 "Afraid? Hardly. Perhaps you had better say all 
 you have to say, after all." 
 
 "Well, from what they said to each other, Mr. Pryce's 
 visit to her the other evening it's difficult to tell, you 
 know." 
 
 "What you hint at is impossible. Mr. Pryce is not 
 that sort of a man." 
 
 "Well, it's so, nevertheless. There are consequences." 
 
 "Consequences ?" 
 
 Betty grew white to the lips. "Consequences?" She 
 could hardly speak, so shaken was she. "Miss Sharpe, 
 you don't mean " 
 
 "Not for her, if that is what you thought. For him." 
 
 To Betty, in her divine innocence, this came as an 
 anti-climax. The suspicion which she had harbored col- 
 lapsed like a balloon pricked with a pin. She laughed. 
 
 "Miss Sharpe," she asked, "aren't you talking non- 
 sense ?" 
 
 "Well, I heard what I heard." Realizing Betty's un- 
 believable ignorance, Miss Sharpe became frightened. 
 She had meant to make Betty temporarily miserable, but 
 her malice was not great enough to make her desire to
 
 314 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 see Betty plunged in an abyss of misery. She anticipated 
 an unpleasant five minutes. It was impossible, of course, 
 to beat a retreat. Betty was in total ignorance of the 
 terrible disease which stalks in the trail of forbidden 
 pleasure, and Miss Sharpe was forced to elucidate and 
 explain a good deal more than she found agreeable. She 
 was badly frightened by the deathlike pallor that spread 
 over Betty's features. 
 
 Miss Sharpe's communication had a strange effect upon 
 Betty. A terrible hatred rose in Betty's heart, not for 
 Richard, nor for Kitty but for Miss Sharpe. She kept 
 telling herself over and over again that it was all a lie, 
 that there was no truth in the whole story. But one 
 fact of colossal importance stared her in the face and 
 argued in favor of Miss Sharpe's having spoken the 
 truth. Richard's story of a mysterious disease dove- 
 tailed perfectly with Miss Sharpe's tale. 
 
 At four o'clock she told one of the clerks that she was 
 ill and was going home. The rule of the office required 
 that Richard, who was in charge, be consulted as to the 
 curtailing of hours for any reason whatsoever, but Betty 
 found it impossible to go to him. The salesman to whom 
 she gave the message, frightened by her white face, and 
 knowing of her engagement to Richard, ran pell-mell into 
 Richard's room and hurled the information at him that 
 "Miss Garside is awfully sick and has gone home." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "This minute." Richard picked up hat and coat, and 
 rushed from the store without waiting to put on his over- 
 coat. He struggled into it as he ran after Betty, who was 
 half a block away by this time. He was at her side in 
 less than a minute. 
 
 "Betty, what is the matter?" 
 
 "Oh, Dick!" 
 
 "Betty !" He put his arm under hers to support her.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 315' 
 
 "Let me take yours instead, Dicky." 
 
 "Darling, what is it? Headache? Nausea?" 
 
 "Wait till we get home." 
 
 She clung to his arm desperately. "Dicky, oh Dicky," 
 she said once or twice. Only her inherent breeding kept 
 her from collapsing on the street and giving vent to the 
 myriad feelings which oppressed her. 
 
 Finally, when they got home, he followed her into her 
 room. Without speaking, even before she had taken off 
 her hat, she flung herself into his arms, crying bitterly. 
 
 A definite fear came over him. He soothed her as best 
 he could, led her to a chair, contrived to get her hat off, 
 doing it very clumsily, and then asked, 
 
 "Now, Betty, you must tell me what is wrong." 
 
 "Dick, someone has been saying such horrid things 
 about you." 
 
 "About me?" 
 
 "And I was foolish and wicked enough to believe them. 
 Dicky, tell me they are not true." 
 
 "I'll have to know first what they are, won't I ?" 
 
 "About you and Miss Florence?" 
 
 At the moment he thought only of her. His suffering 
 was purely vicarious. She was half prepared to have 
 him confirm the story, he could see that, but he wanted 
 to prepare her still further. 
 
 "What made you believe the story?" 
 
 "Your postponing our marriage." 
 
 He understood in a flash that the conversation be- 
 tween himself and Kitty had been overheard. 
 
 "If I did not tell you the entire truth the other evening, 
 Betty, it was for your sake, rather than for mine. Ulti- 
 mately I expected to tell you. But I could not tell you 
 just now." 
 
 "Then it is true?" 
 
 "Yes, Betty."
 
 816 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 He offered no excuses in extenuation ; in a little while 
 she said: 
 
 "You shouldn't have lied to me the other evening. 
 You should have told me the truth then." 
 
 "I couldn't; Betty, don't you understand, I was 
 ashamed to speak to you about it?" 
 
 She rose and went to the window. She had stopped 
 crying, even her sobbing had ceased. She leaned her 
 throbbing forehead against the cold window pane and 
 closed her eyes. All her little world seemed to crumble 
 away, just to crumble until there was nothing left no 
 ideals, no love no Dicky. She remembered how she had 
 felt the day he had allowed her to realize that mar- 
 riage to him would mean marriage no less. She had 
 quickly readjusted herself to the facts, shocking though 
 they seemed to her. She now asked herself whether she 
 could possibly readjust herself to this fact? 
 
 She came back to where he was sitting, his arm rest- 
 ing on the table. He was playing with a paper knife in 
 the most commonplace, everyday manner, as if nothing 
 of any moment had occurred. Richard had lived through 
 this scene so frequently in imagination that, like all 
 highly strung natures, his fancy had exhausted his ca- 
 pacity for suffering, had, in fact, exhausted every pos- 
 sibility, every phase of what might happen. What act- 
 ually was happening was flat and stale compared with 
 what he had been through in imagination. He did not 
 wholly realize that Betty actually knew. He realized 
 vividly that he was in a warm room after a long, windy, 
 distressing walk, and that the paper knife he held in his 
 hand was remarkably flexible for a steel cutter, and that 
 the hatpin stuck out of Betty's hat at a ridiculous angle, 
 because he had been afraid to push it far into the dainty, 
 lacy fabric. Also he realized keenly that Betty was 
 calling him Richard, not Dicky. That variation in no-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 317 
 
 menclature appeared to him ridiculous. It did not seem 
 like Betty to emphasize her displeasure by such trivial 
 methods. 
 
 "Richard, I am going to move away from here." 
 
 He seemed to awaken from a dream. 
 
 "No, you're not. I've thought of that. I am going 
 to move. Of course you cannot remain under the same 
 roof with me now that everybody knows but you have 
 got to stay here. I want to know you are well taken 
 care of by Mrs. Presbey." 
 
 They plunged into vigorous discussion. It was rather 
 ridiculous, this chaffering about a side issue at such a 
 dynamic moment, but it was characteristic of both and 
 typical of their love for each other. Something serious 
 had happened to their love ; it was frightfully jarred and 
 shocked and hammered out of all semblance to itself. 
 But it was not broken. It was a ball of steel that had 
 been flattened by the impact of a terrific blow not a 
 fragile vase that had been cracked and flawed by 
 a fall. 
 
 "And I am going to leave Telfer's, Richard." 
 
 "Nonsense. I promise not to speak to you at all, ex- 
 cept when absolutely necessary. If you wish, I'll see 
 that you are transferred to the new branch at Forty- 
 second Street. But I won't have you throw away a 
 good position because I have been a skunk. Promise me 
 Betty!" 
 
 "I must, Richard." 
 
 He became vibrantly excited. "Betty!" He stormed 
 up and down the room. "Betty!" the eloquent fingers 
 were blazing a trail through the thick crop of hair. 
 "Look here, you're not going to chuck the job because I 
 got it for you, are you? You don't despise me quite as 
 much as that, do you?" 
 
 "No, I don't think it is that yet, perhaps it is, partially^
 
 818 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 I had not thought of it. I just cannot bear to see you. 
 I want to get away away from you entirely." 
 
 "You're not going to throw me over for good?" 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 "Of course I fully realize that for the time being, for 
 some time to come you wouldn't want to see anything 
 of me but I hoped, I did sincerely hope that you would 
 not break with me entirely. You're not going to, are 
 you?" 
 
 "I don't know," said Betty. "I don't know where I am 
 at. I'm, oh Dicky, how could you, how could you?" she 
 cried in a sudden spasm of moral revulsion. 
 
 "That's what I've been asking myself all the time, 
 Betty," he said, bitterly. 
 
 It occurred to him that he might partially exonerate 
 himself by telling Betty how craftily he had been tempted. 
 But his chivalry toward both women forbade his doing so. 
 He could not denounce the woman who had led him into 
 disgrace, nor could he insult Betty by telling her of that 
 woman's fancied resemblance to herself. 
 
 "Betty, do you hate me?" 
 
 "Nothing you could do could make me hate you," she 
 said with noble simplicity. 
 
 "Then why not promise that you will forgive me ulti- 
 mately a long time hence five years hence, let us say ?" 
 
 "I cannot promise that, if you mean marriage by for- 
 giveness," she said. "Whatever I decide upon ultimately 
 in that respect would have nothing whatever to do with 
 my feelings for you. Those nothing can change. But 
 I must make my decision independently of my sentiments 
 for you. You have no right to ask anything of me at 
 this moment no right whatever." 
 
 He went to the door, flung himself into his overcoat, 
 feeling for the first time in his life that his masculine 
 bigness and strength was really an offense, a horrible
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 319 
 
 offense of some sort feeling, too, oddly enough, a lit- 
 tle resentful. He stood at the door, stroking his hat. It 
 was horribly unjust, he told himself, that he could not 
 plead the circumstances which would have helped his 
 defense. How utterly Betty would ultimately condemn 
 him, he could not guess. He knew her slow manner of 
 arriving at conclusions. She required time for even little 
 matters how much more for such a vital matter as this ? 
 It might take her months, a year, before she arrived at a 
 satisfactory conclusion, and all that time he would be 
 enduring the pangs of remorse and suspense. 
 
 "Richard!" 
 
 "Yes, Betty?" 
 
 "It is only fair to tell you that it is going to make a 
 big difference in one particular. I feel now that I was 
 right in my attitude in my belief that no chaste-minded 
 woman can feel anything but affection." 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "I mean it. If you, who are so good and noble, can 
 sink to such a depth through that feeling, then that feel- 
 ing is what I always considered it, contemptible." 
 
 The thought carried her high and dry above the hu- 
 manizing influences which had been refashioning and re- 
 modeling her soul, carried her back to her original po- 
 sition. Hereafter she would wrap herself in proud and 
 suspicious contempt for men and women who did not 
 concur with her views. She vowed her soul to eternal 
 virginity. 
 
 "But Betty, darling " he was in despair, and so ex- 
 cited that he could hardly talk. 
 
 "I'll never change now. Nothing you can say can 
 alter me after this. If you prefer for this reason to 
 break the engagement at once very well. If not, I must 
 have time to think matters over. I may break it later 
 on."
 
 820 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "I certainly do not wish to break it," Richard cried. 
 "And if you break it I will go and kill myself. You are 
 the only woman I ever loved and . . ." 
 
 "Evidently I am not." 
 
 "Betty, Betty, how can you be so cold?" 
 
 "Cold? I am glad I am cold," she said. "I glory in 
 being cold." 
 
 His excitement became more intense. He entreated, 
 implored, begged her he knew not what. The feminine 
 part of his nature had never been so completely in the 
 ascendant. He babbled as incoherently, and to as little 
 purpose as a hysterical woman. His condition verged 
 on hysteria. The thought that she would probably reject 
 him made him conduct himself like a madman. 
 
 "Oh, why did this happen to me !" he cried. 
 
 "Happen to you? You speak as if you had met with 
 
 a disaster when, in truth " she hesitated, blushed 
 
 and stopped. 
 
 "In truth what?" he prompted. 
 
 "In truth it was the result of not suppressing that part 
 of your nature. I am willing, on one condition, to prom- 
 ise you now that I will ultimately marry you." 
 
 "What is the condition?" 
 
 "That we will live together as brother and sister." 
 
 "Impossible, Betty!" 
 
 "There are many persons now-a-days, Dick, who be- 
 lieve in marriage for the sake of children only. I under- 
 stand, of course, in that case, that it cannot be avoided 
 and I will allow motherhood, if and whenever you may 
 think it desirable to make a legitimate exception to the 
 rule." 
 
 "Impossible," he cried again. "Impossible. I cannot 
 argue with you on this point because I have never thought 
 much about it. I have only felt that, well that mar- 
 riage is marriage."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 821 
 
 "And where did your feelings lead you to?" she asked 
 with scathing scorn. 
 
 "How terribly hard a good woman can be," he said. 
 
 "Then, Dick women sometimes fall ill after marriage. 
 How do I know that if I were ill you would not feel it 
 incumbent on you to 'round out your love' elsewhere ? As 
 you have done now." 
 
 "For the love of heaven," he cried, his nervous hands 
 interlacing and clenching themselves into knots, "for 
 the love of mercy, do you think I did this thing delib- 
 erately?" 
 
 "I beg of you, Richard, I desire to hear no details." 
 
 "I haven't given you any, have I?" he retorted pas- 
 sionately. "If we were married, and you were to fall 
 ill, we would still be one flesh, wouldn't we? Nothing 
 could change that fact, or alienate us." 
 
 "Yet, if I trusted you, undeliberately, you might repeat 
 the offense you have just committed." 
 
 "If I did," he said, his self-respect getting the upper 
 hand of his excruciating nervousness, "I would have the 
 manliness to come to you and ask your forgiveness." 
 
 "Why didn't you have the manliness to come and do 
 that now?" 
 
 "I refrained from telling you out of modesty, and re- 
 spect for the woman, who is not yet my wife," he replied. 
 
 "Ah, you admit it, then ? You will feel less respect for 
 me after we are married?" 
 
 "No, no," he cried indignantly. "Only after mar- 
 riage, it would be natural for me to feel I could speak 
 to you of anything." 
 
 He dashed about the room wildly, upsetting a chair 
 as he strode from corner to corner, his fingers at work 
 all the time with each other, with his hair, his brow. He 
 had come to the end of the tether. He could endure no 
 more. His horror of losing her was eclipsed for the
 
 822 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 moment by the more immediate horror of breaking into 
 tears. He seemed to feel tears trickling down from brain 
 to eyes and scalp, and running up from throat and ears 
 and nose. If they came there would be a flood of them. 
 He bent every effort of his unnerved and tortured will 
 to preserve at least an outward show of dignity. 
 
 Finally he come back to her. 
 
 "Betty, before I go, will you let me kiss you?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Just once once more." 
 
 "No, Richard, I cannot, I really cannot." She shrank 
 from his eyes and from his outstretched hands. "You 
 should not expect it," she said. "You cannot imagine 
 how utterly loathsome it all seems to me." 
 
 "Loathsome !" He himself had used the word in his 
 tumultuous self -communing after he had seen Dr. Moran. 
 Loathsome ! If he, the delinquent, a man, had felt it to 
 be that, the word probably expressed his spotless Betty's 
 sentiments only feebly. He stood irresolutely twirling his 
 hat. He could think of nothing to say in his own behalf. 
 After all, he held himself just as blamable as she. And 
 yet he knew how he had been tempted, how the forbidden 
 fruit had been dangled before his eyes and made to ap- 
 pear almost like unforbidden fruit. He knew that and 
 she didn't. There was nothing more to be said. 
 
 He wanted to ask her to at least call him "Dick" be- 
 fore he left her room. But he could not frame the 
 request. At last he went from the room without having 
 spoken again.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 After many half hours of arguing, Betty promised to 
 remain at Mrs. Presbey's, and not to leave Telfer's 
 unless a suitable position was offered elsewhere. Un- 
 expectedly, the suitable position offered within a week 
 with a musical house that made a specialty of "renting 
 out" accompanists to singers for practice work. As 
 Richard had left Mrs. Presbey's within ten days after 
 his confession, it happened that by the end of March 
 Richard and Betty saw as little of each other as if she 
 had been in the Klondike and he in Timbuctoo. 
 
 More than once before he left Mrs. Presbey's, Betty 
 had been tempted to call out, "What does it matter, Rich- 
 ard, remain here." But she told herself that she owed it 
 to morality in the abstract to maintain the stand she had 
 taken. Pure minded though she was, she could not 
 help trying to realize how the unspeakable thing had oc- 
 curred. That a woman could tempt a man was a pos- 
 sibility which did not even remotely occur to her. Her 
 youth, her sex, her upbringing, all made her regard the 
 man as the logical wrong-doer, the woman as the 
 wronged. The great mystery for her, then, was the 
 fact that Dicky, so high-minded, so true a gentleman; 
 Dicky, so delicately fibred that he refused to marry her 
 while the thought of yielding herself to him as his wife 
 remained in the least obnoxious to her, should have com- 
 mitted an offense which was abominable even when 
 judged by the canons of those men and women who saw 
 in matrimony not merely a justifiable institution or a 
 
 323
 
 324 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 necessary evil, but something sacred and holy and pure. 
 Bad enough for a man how much lower for a woman ? 
 Thus Betty reasoned. The woman then was detestable, 
 and Betty detested her fervently, without having formed 
 any adequate notion of the part she had played. 
 
 In April she met Louise Reynolds on the street one 
 day. Louise's gestures of greeting were always those 
 of an affectionate puppy, and she literally fell on Betty's 
 neck and embraced her. Nothing would do but Betty 
 must spend the week-end with them. The arrangement 
 was that the two girls in the afternoon were to go and 
 see "The Sun-God," which, after a successful canine 
 tour, had finally made its way to New York. They were 
 to go "Dutch treat" and Betty was to accompany Louise 
 to Brooklyn in the evening and stay until Monday morn- 
 ing. Louise, having more time than Betty, bought the 
 tickets, which, of course, had to be procured in advance, 
 but when Betty, between acts, offered to refund the 
 money, Louise, with her flippant little giggle, demurred. 
 
 "Oh, Dad said I was to treat. He gave me a five- 
 spot. We'll each get ourselves an orchid after the the- 
 atre, and a big box of Huyler's to eat to-morrow. Or do 
 you prefer Repetti's?" 
 
 Betty, always desperately independent, felt uncom- 
 fortable, but had to let it go at that. 
 
 The Reynolds were extremely hospitable. They made 
 Betty welcome and exacted her promise to spend Sunday 
 with them frequently. 
 
 "Liberty Hall," said fat Mr. Reynolds, with a spacious 
 gesture of the hand indicating the house and all it con- 
 tained. "You must feel at liberty to come and go as you 
 please." He patted Betty's little white hand between his 
 enormous, red, calloused paws. Mrs. Reynolds unbent 
 from her usual majesty of manner so far as to kiss 
 Betty on both cheeks. Betty wondered why these folks,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 825 
 
 ^ ^-^-^ ^ ^^-^ ^ ^ ^^^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ 
 
 on whom 'she had no claim whatever, should be so kind 
 to her. Mrs. Reynolds remembered that Betty was par- 
 ticularly fond of chocolate pudding, with whipped 
 cream, and had that for dessert. Mr. Reynolds recol- 
 lected that Betty liked to read the Evening Post on Sat- 
 urday afternoon, and the Tribune on Sunday, and 
 had ordered both papers for her from his newsdealer. 
 Louise gave her a handsome, hand embroidered collar 
 similar to one she herself owned, which Betty had ad- 
 mired the day they met on the street. Even Louise's 
 brother, a wild coltish-mannered boy of twelve, bought 
 her a bag of freshly roasted peanuts which he had bought 
 for a nickel previously obtained from his father by ca- 
 jolery. 
 
 Yet, in spite of this big-hearted hospitality, this more 
 than mere friendliness and courtesy, Betty did not really 
 enjoy her stay at the Reynolds'. Mr. Reynolds' sole ob- 
 ject in life, it seemed to her on the occasion of her first 
 visit, was to make money for his family, and the fam- 
 ily's sole object, apparently, was to spend it. Louise's 
 career centered in attendance at parties, theatres, dances, 
 and the attention bestowed upon her by her dancers, and 
 her impartiality toward young men, who were young and 
 had money to take her about, struck Betty as being in 
 excessively bad taste. She hated herself for criticizing 
 Louise, usually so sweet and kind to her, but she could 
 not suppress a creeping sense of horror upon hearing 
 Louise discuss the comparative advantages accruing to 
 marriage with no less than three different young men. 
 
 Betty thought of her own supreme love for Richard, 
 for she had had abundant time by then to realize that 
 her devotion for him had in no way been impaired by 
 the occurrence which had resulted in their temporary 
 separation; and she wondered at Louise's lack of sensi- 
 bility.
 
 326 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Betty had dreaded that the Reynolds might question 
 her about Richard Pryce and her reason for leaving Tel- 
 fer's. But they accepted the fact that she was in a dif- 
 ferent position from the one to which she had gone on 
 leaving Penascapet, without comment, and Betty con- 
 strued as tact what in reality was indifference. The 
 Reynolds would do for her what they could ; they gave 
 her a rousing good time, according to their lights, which, 
 after all, as Betty was to discover subsequently, was not 
 so very different from her own ; they would have helped 
 her financially or provided her with raiment and food and 
 'shelter if she had been in need; but their good-will was 
 expended in active benevolence, which, from kind-heart- 
 edness, not from delicacy, they did not set down as an 
 eleemosynary sentiment. But Louise's friendship lacked 
 that ultimate spiritual germ which makes the doings and 
 thoughts and life of those we love as interesting when 
 away from us, if not more so, as when with us. 
 
 Nevertheless, Betty spent another week end, and an- 
 other, in the bosom of the Reynolds family. It was diffi- 
 cult, indeed, now they had rediscovered Betty, to evade 
 their kindness without showing incivility in return for 
 big-hearted friendliness. 
 
 One Saturday afternoon, at the suggestion of her 
 father, who had placed the automobile at the girls' dis- 
 posal, Louise took Betty through Prospect Park and then 
 to the Brooklyn Institute of Art to look at Tissot's paint- 
 ings illustrating the life of Christ. 
 
 "Now those paintings are really worth seeing," said 
 Mr. Reynolds, emphasizing his words by smacking his 
 lips. "I don't take any stock in pictoors as a rule. But 
 these pictoors, well, they are worth seeing, that's all." 
 
 "I've seen them twice," Louise objected. 
 
 "It won't hurt you to see them a third time," her father 
 retorted. "Miss Garside, I imagine, will enjoy them."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 327 
 
 This was a new side of Mr. Reynolds, and Betty won- 
 dered more than once that afternoon at the glimpse of 
 the soul of Louise's father thus unexpectedly afforded 
 her. Somehow she had never suspected that he might 
 care for anything but the price of butter and eggs and 
 his family's material comfort. 
 
 To see beautiful pictures always aroused in Betty the 
 same mood of spiritual exaltation as to hear good music. 
 And these five hundred odd paintings by Tissot, the con- 
 ception and execution of which forms one of the most 
 remarkable episodes in the history of art, raised her 
 exaltation to a pitch which it heretofore had never as- 
 cended, and as she passed from picture to picture, famil- 
 iarizing herself with the history of their genesis, there 
 descended upon her one of those precious moods which 
 deify the Spirit, which seem to disintegrate and remove 
 what is gross and unworthy in the human heart, which 
 apparently vaporizes the body, freeing the soul as nearly 
 as possible from its earthly trammels. 
 
 Filled with a burning wish to portray pictorially the 
 life of the Saviour, Tissot disdained to employ as models 
 such human material as was obtainable from the Ghetto 
 of France. No medieval monk, mewed in a perpetual 
 monastery cell, gifted with talent for pen or brush and 
 dedicating the better part of his life to the illumination of 
 some missal, a book of hours or a gospel, and working 
 upon the same in the vigils of the night by the dim light 
 of rush candles brought a finer religious fervor, a more 
 keen ecstatic frenzy, or as much penetrating spiritual in- 
 sight to the exigencies of his work than did Tissot to 
 his. A Frenchman of the Nineteenth Century, an artist 
 of that epoch and race which had the hardihood to dis- 
 countenance, plunder and humiliate the Church which 
 had been a leading beneficent factor in the upbuilding 
 of the Gallic nation, he possessed the genius and the re-
 
 328 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ligious fortitude in the face of all disturbing and dis- 
 tracting modern influences, to prepare himself for his 
 work with a humility and patience and a far-reaching 
 comprehension of detail which may have been equalled 
 in the world of science, but which is matchless in the 
 world of art. For over a decade he made his home in 
 ihe Holy Land, believing that the Jewish types seen there 
 retained in greater purity, with only a trifling accretion 
 of spurious modern traits, the habits, customs, manners 
 and appearance of the Hebrews who flourished in Pales- 
 tine when Jesus lived. He permeated himself with the 
 spirit of the Old and New Testament. He studied the 
 atmospheric conditions of Palestine at morning, noon 
 and dusk, and at night as well; he visited innumerable 
 abodes, hovels as well as the homes of prosperous mer- 
 chants, to glean what hints he might that would prove of 
 service in the unparalleled task he had set himself. 
 
 The monumental work he achieved is the apotheosis of 
 patience linked to comprehension; of the religious in- 
 stinct wedded to the joy of the artist. No other work 
 can compare with it, except Tissot's own Old Testament 
 paintings conceived and executed under similar condi- 
 tions. Michael Angelo in his frescoes, Raphael in his 
 madonnas, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Filippo Lippi, Carlo 
 Dolce and Correggio, achieved beautiful and divine mas- 
 terpieces of religious painting. That these masterpieces 
 transcend Tissot's work in splendor and vigor of work- 
 manship, in magnificence of coloring and draughtsman- 
 ship of the human figure, in no way minimizes or cheap- 
 ens the glory and marvel of Tissot's accomplishment. 
 Half of those early Italian artists allowed their full- 
 blooded joy in human flesh and human form and human 
 life and human love to divest their work of the finer re- 
 ligious significance, while the other half, in escaping the 
 robustness of their age took refuge in allegorical symbol-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 329 
 
 ism, which as often as not, made of their madonnas and 
 saints and angels mere lovely dolls invested in all the 
 circumstance and pomp in which their age effloresced. 
 
 Tissot alone has thrown the veil of subtle enchant- 
 ment arising from hallowed religious traditions rever- 
 ently regarded and idealized over his work. The robust, 
 sensuously-living Scriptural characters lose none of their 
 robustness, none of their characteristically healthy animal 
 life, in his hands. Nevertheless he has contrived, by 
 some trick of genius, to represent their robustness in 
 such a light that it does not repel, while their sensuous- 
 ness appears debrutalized because the very foreignness 
 of their appurtenances, the intense insistence upon the 
 minutest detail of dress and race and habitat, removes 
 them so far from our own plane and ken that we do not 
 identify the passions that moved them as being the same 
 as the passions that move us, glossed over, refined and 
 modified by the passing of twenty centuries. 
 
 Perhaps none but a Frenchman, quick-witted in his re- 
 ligiosity and innately courteous with that courtesy which, 
 though it may offend against morals, never offends 
 against good taste, could have done this. 
 
 The spiritual atmosphere which enmeshed the paint- 
 ings enchanted Betty. One painting particularly held her 
 spell-bound. Innumerable hands, strata upon strata of 
 ghostly arms and hands and fingers stretch out toward 
 the recumbent figure of the Saviour, and the intense 
 appeal of those outstretched entreating hands, surround- 
 ed by and rising out of a bluish mist which appears as 
 a vast luminous shadow, was eloquent as a prayer. 
 
 Thoughts of Richard ran continually in Betty's mind. 
 Every art gallery visited by her heretofore had been 
 visited in his company, and suddenly it seemed to her 
 that those tapering, supplicating, imploring hands were 
 stretching out toward herself in appeal for Richard. A
 
 830 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 feeling of sanctity invaded her. At that moment she 
 realized that Richard was carrying his punishment about 
 with him ; that the suffering of the innocent from what- 
 soever cause, can never approach the suffering of those 
 who know themselves guilty. 
 
 The pleading, ghostly hands haunted her. She saw 
 them in every shifting cloud picture of the sky, in the 
 indistinct outlines of trees and houses in the lowering 
 twilight. 
 
 "Louise," she said suddenly, "I cannot play bridge 
 to-night, I really can't. Will you excuse me if I go 
 to my room after dinner?" 
 
 "Why don't you want to play bridge ?" Louise asked, 
 comfortably. 
 
 "I don't want to erase the feeling left by those pic- 
 tures," Betty answered, honestly. 
 
 Louise thought this very funny. She repeated Betty's 
 words as a huge joke at the supper table. Mrs. Reynolds 
 smiled serenely. Tom gave a fair imitation of his sis- 
 ter's giggle and was reprimanded by mother and sister. 
 But Mr. Reynolds said: 
 
 "Miss Betty is quite right. I am not going to play 
 bridge to-night, either." 
 
 "Oh, Papa," said Louise, "you never play at my par- 
 ties, you know." 
 
 "Well, Louise, it is kind of you to excuse me," her par- 
 ent continued. "I vote, Miss Betty, that you and I go 
 off alone and enjoy ourselves after our own misunder- 
 stood fashion. What do you say, my dear?" 
 
 And so, after dinner, the old man and the young girl 
 sallied forth together, Betty having not the remotest no- 
 tion where Mr. Reynolds was taking her. Tom, after 
 the fashion of the Twentieth Century American school- 
 boy, demanded to know "where are Pop and Miss Betty 
 going to elope to."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 831 
 
 They were within a block of their destination when 
 Mr. Reynolds remarked : 
 
 "My dear, I am taking you to hear Handel's 'Mes- 
 siah,' sung by a local Oratorio Society. I hope that 
 pleases you." 
 
 "Oh, it's angelic of you," said Betty. 
 
 "Tut, tut, wait till you hear them sing and then say 
 that if you please," said Mr. Reynolds. "I've not missed 
 one of their oratorios in years. Oh, I know they don't 
 sing like trained performers, and the orchestra needs pol- 
 ish and practise, but I enjoy these oratorios as I enjoy 
 no other music, and I will tell you why, Miss Betty." 
 He explained to her that the young men and women 
 taking part in the chorus, were not paid for their serv- 
 ices. They joined the society for no other purpose than 
 the joy of singing the music of the master. Most of 
 them worked during the week. There were teachers and 
 clerks, stenographers and shop girls. Every Sunday aft- 
 ernoon during the winter months they met and practiced 
 for no other reason than that they humbly loved the 
 beautiful music which they sang in public once or twice 
 a year. That was the right spirit in which to approach 
 any art, wasn't it ? "And so," Mr. Reynolds concluded, 
 "when anyone tells me that religion and idealism are dead 
 among us when folks start palavering in that strain to 
 me, I always refer them to the five hundred young men 
 and women of this oratorio society, and the thousands 
 of applicants who are turned away every year because 
 the ranks are full. And this is the twentieth century, 
 too." 
 
 Betty looked in surprise at the butter merchant. She 
 remembered how she had misjudged him when at Pen- 
 ascapet. She recalled her wonder that Emma and Louise 
 should come and kiss and hug him as they invariably 
 did when he put in appearance on Saturday afternoon.
 
 332 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Suddenly she felt that if he were her father, she would 
 feel the very same affection for the unkempt, rough-and- 
 ready figure beside her that Louise did. She had never 
 known her father, and she felt now, for the first time, 
 the wish that she might have known him. She remem- 
 bered, too, how bitterly she had resented Mr. Reynolds' 
 suggestion that if she would make her home with his 
 family during the winter, he and his wife would "marry 
 her off." The subtle influences which, during the last 
 year had been at work upon her, made her regard the 
 suggestion in an entirely different light than heretofore. 
 Then it had seemed vulgar in intention and gross in 
 expression. Now it seemed a kindly intention clumsily 
 worded, because she realized now that Mr. Reynolds 
 had wished to help her to what he considered the supreme 
 good in life for a woman. 
 
 Although she was familiar with the score, Betty had 
 never heard the Messiah. The wonderfully beautiful 
 music, worthy to be sung by the angelic hosts, painted by 
 Fra Filippo Lippi, completed what the afternoon's ex- 
 perience had begun. As she stood with the remainder 
 of the audience during the singing of the Hallelujah, 
 every trace of anger and resentment and bitterness was 
 wiped from her heart. She forgave Richard freely. 
 Henceforth it was only a matter of time until she would 
 write him. 
 
 On the way home, Mr. Reynolds said: "Now we 
 won't tell them where we were. Louise will be plaguing 
 you all day to-morrow to tell her. Just plague her back," 
 and at the breakfast table the next morning, sure enough, 
 Louise began teasing: 
 
 "You might have least come into the parlor last night, 
 instead of going to bed, Betty, when you came in." 
 
 "Where were you last night, anyhow?" Tom de- 
 manded. "You and Pop. Ma, I should think you'd keep 
 an eye on the gov'nor."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 333 
 
 "Ssss" said Louise, pretending to disapprove of her 
 brother's question because she wanted to talk herself. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "where were you? I guess Father 
 took you to a vaudeville show," and as Betty merely 
 smiled instead of answering, Louise asked: 
 
 "Mother, do you know where they were?" 
 
 Mrs. Reynolds smiled her inscrutably majestic smile. 
 She was serving her spouse to a second helping of two- 
 inch deep French omelette. 
 
 "Sugar, father? Jelly?" 
 
 "Both," Tom answered for his father, unreproved. 
 
 "Well," giggled Louise, "if you won't tell, you won't. 
 I am going to dress for church." She went out of the 
 room, and began playing rag-time in the parlor, which 
 was located directly above the dining-room. 
 
 ''Tom, go and tell Louise to stop," Mrs. Reynolds com- 
 manded. "Louise knows her father detests ragtime at 
 breakfast." 
 
 Tom departed only to reappear immediately. Through 
 an inch wide aperture of the open door, he hurled the 
 information into the room that "Louise says the ragtime 
 is ragtime by Wagner and therefore not ragtime at all." 
 
 "Oh, let the child play what she likes," growled Mr. 
 Reynolds. "Next Sunday, I'll bring cotton downstairs 
 to stuff in my ears so I can read my paper in peace. 
 Tom, you rascal, go and blacken your boots this min- 
 ute, or I won't take you with me to the barber shop." 
 
 Tom began to whine. Why couldn't the "ginny" in 
 front of the barber shop black his boots while he was 
 waiting for his father? His father argued with him, 
 Tom "answered back" through an enlarged aperture his 
 father became impatient and flustered, Tom tearful. 
 
 Only then did Mrs. Reynolds see fit to interpose. 
 Without disturbing her habitual serene smile, she said 
 majestically, in the voice of a tragedy queen : 
 
 "Go."
 
 334 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Tom went. 
 
 "Thank heaven," said Mr. Reynolds, "now I can read 
 my paper." He was soon deep in the mysteries of a 
 double deck in the magazine section of his paper. 
 
 "My dear Miss Betty," said Mrs. Reynolds, "my hus- 
 band asked me to hand you this little check. He has 
 just handed me a check for the same amount to spend 
 on Louise's summer outfit, and he wished you to have 
 the pleasure of buying what you would like for your- 
 self." 
 
 She pushed the check across the table to Betty, and 
 rose to leave the table. Betty stammered. 
 
 "It is awfully kind of you but really, I could not think 
 of accepting it, you know. I ..." 
 
 Mrs. Reynolds turned on her way to the kitchen. 
 
 "You will have to talk to Mr. Reynolds about it," she 
 said. "I merely acted as envoy." And she left the room. 
 
 Betty was alone with Mr. Reynolds. She repeated to 
 him what she had said to his wife. He laughed at her; 
 Betty became more insistent in her refusal; he pro- 
 tested, so did Betty. Ultimately he declared: 
 
 "I rather like you for being so very independent. But, 
 look here, my girl, if you ever need money, something 
 unforeseen sickness, loss of position may arise, and in 
 that event I want you to promise to come to us to my 
 wife or myself, for assistance." 
 
 "I promise," said Betty, and Mr. Reynolds, without 
 another word, threw the check for two hundred and 
 fifty dollars into the roaring Baltimore heater, saying 
 jocularly : 
 
 "That's the first time my signature has ever been re- 
 fused." 
 
 By the beginning of May, the Reynolds had closed 
 their house. Mrs. Reynolds had been in rather bad 
 health for some time past and her husband was taking
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 335 
 
 her abroad to Karlsbad or Bad Nauheim for a cure. 
 Louise joined a party of friends on a Cook's Tour 
 through Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and 
 Tom was expedited to some school-camp in the Adiron- 
 dacks. Before leaving, Louise extracted a promise from 
 Betty to v-'ite her, promising to deluge her with letters 
 in return, and at first post cards came in thick and fast. 
 After a while they diminished in numbers, and a little 
 later they ceased altogether. Volatile Louise, as her 
 father said, did not forget her friends. She merely for- 
 got to remember them. 
 
 At the end of April, Madame Hudrazzini returned 
 from Chicago, where she had been singing in opera on 
 an especial engagement. Before leaving for Europe for 
 her summer's holiday, she was to give a series of re- 
 citals in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Betty 
 spent several evenings with her in a charming apart- 
 ment she had furnished for herself. Madame Hudraz- 
 zini's largess was very different from that of the Rey- 
 nolds household. There everything hinged on money. 
 The entire family discussed money matters dressmaker 
 and grocer's bills, the relative cost of steam and hot 
 air heating with the most charming candor and uncon- 
 cern for the guest at their table. The house was over- 
 decorated and overfurnished throughout. Every article 
 of furniture the massively carved mahogany sideboard 
 as well as the rose-patterned Axminster carpet conveyed 
 the mute message to the observant beholder "I cost so 
 and so much." At Madame Hudrazzini's rigid simplicity 
 reigned supreme. Spindle legged Sheraton sideboard 
 with knife urns, diamond-paned Hepple white bookcase, 
 Adam chairs and table, high-boys and low-boys, as well 
 as the Oriental rugs of unobtrusive tints, were so mel- 
 lowed and subdued by the passing of years that the 
 money they had cost and into which they might be con-
 
 336 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 verted at any moment, was wholly lost sight of, the po- 
 tential financial value being eclipsed by the aroma of 
 paramount and enduring worth which hangs about arti- 
 cles which were old when our grandsires were young. 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini, unlike the Reynolds, did not 
 hesitate to question Betty concerning Dick. She had 
 heard of their estrangement through Direktor Markheim. 
 who had the story from old Mr. Telfer. At the end of 
 a delightful five-course luncheon in her own apartments, 
 she broached the subject. 
 
 "Carissima," she said, "I am desolated by the idea that 
 you may have broken with your young man for good. 
 Not so?" 
 
 "Nothing definite was agreed upon," said Betty. "I 
 could not bear to see him for a while. I was so horribly 
 hurt. I wanted to be alone." 
 
 "He does not know where he stands with you ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And he made no effort to see you?" 
 
 "He wouldn't, you know, having tacitly agreed not to." 
 
 Madame Hudrazzini became thoughtful. 
 
 "It is not," she said, "that I wish to frighten you. 
 But you have done a foolish thing. You may lose him 
 by thus sending him from you." 
 
 "Dick will never turn from me," said Betty proudly. 
 "In spite of everything, we belong to each other." 
 
 "Men are men. He has shown that once. Write him 
 to-morrow to-night, carissima, and bring him to your 
 side." 
 
 "I am not afraid of losing him," Betty said with stub- 
 born pride. "I would not write him for that reason. 
 But I have forgiven him and in a few days I will tell 
 him so." 
 
 "Ah," said the Italian, "have a care, carissima. Do 
 not make him how do you say eat too much humble
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 337 
 
 pie. Men do not like to eat humble pie as a dessert to 
 follow their misdeeds." 
 
 "He has eaten it already," said Betty composedly. 
 
 "You are hard hard and cold as marble, little one. 
 You will have to change. Your Richard loves you now, 
 but men are men, and, believe me, carissima, there are 
 times in every woman's life when she must overlook." 
 
 Betty looked at the great prima donna curiously. She 
 remembered that the widow Hudrazzini had been faith- 
 ful to the memory of her husband for ten long years; 
 and that husband, she could not but infer from the com- 
 plexion of Madame Hudrazzini's remarks, had been 
 faithless to her, perhaps more than once. A sudden 
 shivering fear of men and their ways struck to her 
 heart. Were they really all like that? Even her Dick? 
 Her Anglo-Saxon blood rose in sudden hot revolt against 
 that form of deception and moral laxness which the 
 Latin woman accepted so tranquilly, and condoned. 
 
 "I will never overlook," she said almost viciously. 
 "And I will not change. I want to remain as I am 
 hard and cold." 
 
 "This one offense you should overlook," pleaded the 
 great singer. "See, carissima, you are not even mar- 
 ried. Before marriage, a man may sow his wild 
 oats." 
 
 Betty shook her head in vigorous negation. 
 
 "The same law for man and woman," she said. 
 
 "No, no; love is a very different thing for man than 
 for woman. A woman gives every fiber of herself to 
 the man she loves ; not so the man. And then, carissima, 
 we women must be a little bit better than men there is 
 the pleasure of forgiving, you know." 
 
 "It is a pleasure I will gladly forego," said Betty. 
 
 In spite of her brave pretense at fearlessness in regard 
 to being sure of Dick, Madame Hudrazzini had stirred to
 
 338 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 life in her heart a vague uneasiness that became more 
 and more specific as the days went by. 
 
 And now, just because she was uneasy, she would 
 not communicate with him. Finally, after much com- 
 muning with herself, she telephoned to Telfer's and 
 asked for Mr. Pryce, without giving her name. She was 
 told he was west and would return some time in June. 
 More disappointed than she liked to admit, she rang 
 off without asking for his address. It occurred to her 
 subsequently that she might address a letter to him to 
 Telfer's marked, "Please forward." But, after all, she 
 'decided to await his return and tell him orally that she 
 had wiped the past off the slate. 
 
 She thought things over a good deal at night, and 
 began carefully reading the scores of the standard 
 operas. She happened upon Tannhaeuser. She remem- 
 bered the deep impression that opera had made upon 
 her, but when she remembered Earlcote's belief that sin 
 was necessary for the growth and maturing of the soul, 
 she threw the book aside in disgust. How was sin to 
 further the growth of Dicky's soul, for furthering 
 meant helping, and how was Dicky being helped by his 
 lapse? The thought of sin, in connection with herself, 
 never occurred to her. 
 
 Earlcote came to see her one day in her ofBce. Ever 
 since the evening on which he had turned over to Kitty 
 the Kasi-Nook, he had had a private detective shadow 
 Betty. But he feigned ignorance of everything that had 
 transpired. 
 
 "Well," he said, smiling sourly, "so I have found you 
 at last." 
 
 Betty nerved herself to answer lightly. 
 
 "That sounds as if you had been looking for me a 
 long time." 
 
 "I've been looking for you ever since you disappeared
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 339 
 
 from Telfer's. I cannot allow the little song-bird I wan? 
 to snare to get too far beyond my reach." 
 
 All Betty's fear and dislike for this man, which had 
 been forced into the background of her thoughts by her 
 recent trouble with Dick, came rushing back. 
 
 "You will never snare this particular song-bird,'' she 
 said coldly. 
 
 Earlcote laughed the low, sneering, derisive laugh 
 that always made Betty ache to strangle him. 
 
 "We will see," he said. 
 
 "Did you wish to see me about anything in particu- 
 lar, Mr. Earlcote ? Otherwise I am busy." 
 
 "Oh, come, come surely, you are not going to turn 
 me away with such a scant welcome as all that. I have 
 had a great time locating you. Your whipper-snapper 
 refused point-blank to give me your address." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 "He did. Still too much in love with him to think of 
 a career for yourself ?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "Yes or no?" 
 
 Instead of replying, Betty attempted to look bored, 
 but her effort was not a signal success. 
 
 "I fancied," Earlcote continued, "I fancied you had 
 asked him not to give your address to me." 
 
 "And what made you think that, Mr. Earlcote?" 
 
 "You are going to be angry, furiously angry, with me 
 when I tell you. I had a notion that you left Telfer's 
 because you were afraid of me hoping, you know, that; 
 I would lose your trail." 
 
 Betty was too amazed to be angry. Finally she said : 
 
 "Absurd." 
 
 "I see I was mistaken. That's humiliating for me, I 
 assure you. I was enormously flattered to think that 
 your terror of me had reached such a climax."
 
 340 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "I give you my word," said Betty, laughing, "I do not 
 believe that I have thought of you once these last weeks." 
 
 "Worse and worse," Earlcote smiled wanly. "Think 
 of me now. Or rather, think of your voice and your 
 future. Think of the dresses, jewels, carriages, horses ; 
 think of everything your voice will be able to procure for 
 you once it has been cultivated." 
 
 "I desire only such dresses, jewels, carriages, horses 
 as my husband will some day be able to give me." 
 
 Earlcote looked at her searchingly. 
 
 "Look here, Miss Garside," he said, "I know what has 
 happened through Mr. Telfer why you broke your en- 
 gagement to Mr. Pryce." 
 
 "You are mistaken. Our engagement is not broken 
 merely suspended indefinitely." 
 
 "I thought you a girl of more spirit than to go on 
 loving a man who has so far forgotten himself as Rich- 
 ard Pryce did." 
 
 Betty had been sitting with her face turned sideways 
 to Earlcote. She worked while she talked, but now she 
 abruptly dropped her work, swinging around in her 
 revolving chair, and, facing Earlcote, her arms crossed 
 over her bosom, prepared to have her say. Again she 
 felt the inexplicable access of a more mature personality 
 than her own, which came to her so often in Earlcote's 
 presence. The very thoughts she uttered when she be- 
 gan speaking did not seem her own. But as she con- 
 tinued it seemed to her that they had lain cradled in 
 *the chaos from which thought is born and brought forci- 
 bly to the threshold of speech and crystallized into pre- 
 cise nuggets of thought, by Earlcote's arraignment. 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote," she said, "in spite of all your worldly 
 wisdom, in spite of your vaunted knowledge of love, I 
 think you know nothing whatever of its real nature. 
 l*Real love endureth all things/ all trials and sorrows.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 341 
 
 Because Richard has done wrong, do you think I could 
 turn from him? If I were capable of doing that, I 
 would never have loved him. If anything, I feel I must 
 love him all the more because of his wrongdoing. En- 
 emies and the public guardians of morality judge us and 
 condemn us, and if love were content to do the same, 
 were content to judge and condemn, wherein would love 
 differ from hate and from justice? Love, instead of 
 judging actions, sympathizes with temptations and fail- 
 ings gets the viewpoint of the culprit, and forgives. 
 Richard is everything to me, and I know that I am 
 first in the world to him always, although I have nftt 
 seen him for months. You may sneer all you wish. 
 I know what I know. The voice of the heart tells me 
 this is so, and I believe it." 
 
 "His sex calls to you that is why you forgive him," 
 said Earlcote brutally. 
 
 "I did not suppose you could understand. You are 
 as incapable of rising to my views, as I, I am happy to 
 say, am unable to lower myself to an understanding of 
 yours." 
 
 Earlcote grew a trifle paler; his jaws moved con- 
 vulsively for a moment. 
 
 "Why do you despise me so?" he asked. 
 
 "Because you are bad, evil. Oh, I know nothing 
 of you or your life further than what you have told 
 me. But you cheated Richard out of his chance, 
 and a man who can do that is well weak and 
 contemptible." 
 
 "Instead of flinging words at me, let me propose some- 
 thing to you a bargain." 
 
 "Thank you, none of your bargains, Mr. Earlcote." 
 
 "Bona-fide?" 
 
 "I will not be your pupil, if that is what you want to 
 suggest again. Why, even if I were ambitious, I would
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 not consent to have anything to do with you. Nothing. 
 I despise you too heartily." 
 
 She uncrossed her arms, which she had held firmly 
 clasped across her bosom, as if to protect the tabernacle 
 of her heart, in which her love lay enshrined, against 
 the malevolence of her interlocutor. 
 
 "That reminds me," Betty continued, "I still have 
 the set of half bills which I was foolish enough to pick 
 up at your house. Will you allow me to return them to 
 you now?" 
 
 "Do with them what you wish, you little love-sick 
 fool!" 
 
 She had made Earlcote angry at last. His cadaverous 
 face was livid. "Your self-conceit is insufferable. You 
 pride yourself on your coldness, your austerity, your 
 unselfishness, your sinlessness yes, not only on your 
 sinlessness but on your incapacity for sinning. You'll 
 be brought low, yes, into the dust, my fine lady, and, 
 mark my words, you'll suffer! Heavens and earth, how 
 you will suffer ! On the whole, I am glad you refuse to 
 be my pupil. I would have been out both time and 
 money and, in all probability, have had nothing to show 
 for it. I don't believe your voice will ever amount to 
 anything anyhow." 
 
 "The grapes are sour," Betty was stung into retorting. 
 
 Earlcote laughed harshly. 
 
 "You haven't the brains or the heart to vivify your 
 voice," he went on. "It's a spiritless toy, and while you 
 obstinately continue to bolster up your pride in being 
 different from the rest of the human race, in being im- 
 mune from the emotions which sway the rest of hu- 
 manity, your voice will not change." 
 
 He motioned to his Hindus, and if they had not been 
 there to support him he would have fallen. His fury 
 had sapped his vitality, such as it was. Fascinated, and
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 343 
 
 in silence, Betty saw the Earlcote servants support him 
 from her office. 
 
 Earlcote's rage on passing left him weak-kneed and 
 nauseated. The temperature maintained in his automo- 
 bile was eighty degrees, but in spite of this torrid heat 
 he had a nervous chill on entering the vehicle. He was 
 furious that his plans had miscarried; furious that he 
 had parted with the Kasi-Nook without having some- 
 thing to show in return ; furious with the "little love-sick 
 fool" ; furious, most of all, with himself for being furi- 
 ous. His enfeebled health did not permit him to indulge 
 in paroxysms of rage with impunity. 
 
 Arrived at home, he sat moodily in the gathering dusk 
 settling down over the vast aviary. His pet, the pink- 
 legged flamingo, came and, unnoticed by its master, 
 begged for tidbits. The kingfishers flapped and 
 screamed, the cockatoos chattered, the monkeys palav- 
 ered, the palms stirred with ghostly, phantomlike move- 
 ments in the air, vaguely set into motion by the twilight 
 activity of the birds. And the man who owned all this 
 splendor sat in a forlorn little heap, thinking sinister 
 thoughts and incubating sinister plans. 
 
 His mind, lashed into desperate resolution, traveled 
 along unbelievable lines. There lay the pool where the 
 herons and kingfishers and flamingoes lived. The 
 water, changed day by day, was sweet and pure. Re- 
 maining unchanged for a few weeks, it would be stag- 
 nant, impure, putrid. Young oysters placed there, as they 
 waxed fat and succulent, would become infected as 
 well. Infected oysters eaten by a guest by Richard 
 Pryce, and Mr. Telfer, if asked on a suitable pretext, 
 would send him would mean probably typhoid. Ty- 
 phoid, since Richard was in relatively poor condition, 
 would inevitably mean death. 
 
 It was a tempting plan. The chances were ninety-nine
 
 344 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 to a hundred that it would not miscarry. And once 
 Richard was out of the way, Betty would work hard, and 
 her voice would be his to train, to fashion, to mould. 
 
 But Earlcote was afraid to put this plan into execu- 
 tion. He had all the amateur criminal's fear of the 
 law. He did not fear for Earlcote, the individual, the 
 man who had been trampled upon by an elephant; he 
 feared for Earlcote the musician. It was insufferable 
 to think that the lustrous name of the unequalled, un- 
 matchable pianist of all history should be tarnished by a 
 crime. 
 
 The languid energy of Earlcote's hybrid blood during 
 his sojourn in India had become tinctured with the in- 
 vincible patience of the Asiatic. In India he had learned 
 the secret of waiting stealthily until opportunity throws 
 the ball of fortune into one's lap. He had learned that 
 sooner or later, the phalanx of each man's destiny ad- 
 mits an opening wedge through which his enemies, if 
 ever alert, can penetrate. 
 
 As the clock struck seven Earlcote reached his deci- 
 sion. He would wait. And fortune was to favor him 
 sooner than he had anticipated in a way curiously in 
 consonance with his secret wishes.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 May passed in a whirl of golden light and spring 
 tremors. June came in dressed in burning gold and the 
 pink of magnolia blossoms and cherry trees. 
 
 Coming home one Saturday afternoon, Betty was im- 
 pelled by the strange ardors of the season and the 
 mingling of spiritual turmoil and bodily lassitude, to 
 arrive at the mighty decision that she would telephone 
 Richard early the next morning, for, meeting Telfer's 
 cashier, Mr. Hoffman, on the street the week before, she 
 had heard through him that Richard was back in New 
 York. 
 
 When she entered the house Mrs. Presbey met her 
 with a grave face. 
 
 "I am forced to break a promise I gave Richard a 
 long time ago," she began rather sententiously. 
 
 "Why? What is it?" 
 
 "Before you came to live here Richard made some 
 changes in your room. Among other things, he rented 
 a piano for you." 
 
 "Do you mean that he has been paying for the piano 
 I am using all this time?" 
 
 Mrs. Presbey nodded. 
 
 "Well, he didn't pay for it this week, and the collector 
 came here to say that unless the rental is paid by next 
 Wednesday, the piano will be removed." 
 
 "Dick is in town that means that he is ill. Have you 
 telephoned the office?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Betty rushed from the room and to the telephone. 
 
 345
 
 846 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Give me " she stumbled so hastily over the number 
 that she was forced to repeat it three times. 
 
 "Is this Telfer's? This is Miss Garside. Will you 
 tell me whether Mr. Pryce is ill? What? Typhoid 
 pneumonia? Where? Post Graduate or Bellevue, you 
 don't know which? Thank you." 
 
 She rang off and came back into the room. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Presbey," she gasped, "he has typhoid 
 pneumonia ! and he has been in a hospital for five days." 
 
 Both women sat very still for a moment. Suddenly 
 Mrs. Presbey said in an emphatic tone: 
 
 "Typhoid! Well, his stomach never was strong, and 
 I suppose since he left here he has been living on regu- 
 lar boarding-house fare. I can only say it was a pity 
 he wasn't allowed to remain in my house, which, he al- 
 ways said, poor boy, was the only home he had ever 
 known." 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Presbey," cried Betty, stung by the older 
 woman's remarks. "I didn't ask him to go. I asked 
 him to stay. I wanted to leave here instead." 
 
 "All I can say is I wish I had never consented to have 
 you come here." 
 
 "You didn't want me to come?" stammered Betty. 
 
 "I certainly did not." 
 
 Mrs. Presbey closed her lips tautly, closed them with 
 a snap, like a steel spring closing upon some poor, 
 trapped thing. Betty caught her breath sharply. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "I had no idea of that. You've been 
 so kind to me, you know. I never guessed." 
 
 "I didn't want you to come," Mrs. Presbey continued,, 
 her wrath gathering rapidly, "because I had a feeling, a 
 premonition, that no good would come of it. Although 
 I didn't anticipate the thing that actually happened." 
 
 "What do you mean," stammered Betty, "by 'the 
 thing that actually happened'?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 347 
 
 "I mean that you would drive Richard into what 
 happened to him by your heartlessness and coldness." 
 
 "Heartless? I? Why, Mrs. Presbey!" 
 
 "You didn't in the least appreciate his honesty in not 
 allowing you to marry him without telling you the truth," 
 Mrs. Presbey continued. "Many a man wouldn't have 
 told, would have lied himself out of it, would have mar- 
 ried the girl to whom he was engaged. But Richard 
 acted honorably with you, and small thanks he got for it, 
 I must say." 
 
 Betty sat very still. 
 
 "Mrs. Presbey," she said, "I never wavered in my 
 love for Dick never. And now nothing matters but 
 Dick's pulling through." 
 
 Mrs. Presbey softened. "What are you going to do?" 
 Betty's distress made the old lady pity the girl. Her 
 anger against Betty vanished. 
 
 "Do you think they will allow me to stay there, in 
 the hospital with him?" 
 
 "Hardly." 
 
 "But I cannot stand being away from him, now he 
 is ill! I want to look after him; to take care of him." 
 
 "Ah! you do loVe him after all." 
 
 "Love him? I adore him." 
 
 "Hm." 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Presbey," Betty continued, choking back 
 the tears that were rising, "I must be near Dick. I 
 have almost a hundred dollars saved up. If it takes my 
 last penny, I must be near Dick. What do you think 
 they will charge me for my board in the hospital?" 
 
 "You cannot go to the hospital," said Mrs. Presbey 
 with sudden gentleness, "and you had better keep your 
 hundred dollars. You'll be needing the money for odds 
 and ends when he begins to rally. I think, Miss Betty, 
 if he can be moved, we'll bring him home."
 
 348 
 
 But Dr. Moran, who had had Richard removed to 
 the hospital on finding he had typhoid, would not allow 
 him to be taken away. There followed weeks of heart- 
 breaking, soul-harrowing suspense. The hospital was 
 so crowded that Betty was unable to obtain a room in it, 
 even if she had been able to pay for one, which, on 
 inquiry, she found would have been out of the question. 
 Every leisure moment was consumed in trips to the hos- 
 pital. On such evenings, when she was unable to see 
 Dick because his temperature was high, she sat in im- 
 potent anxiety in the waiting-room for hours, hoping 
 blindly to receive word of a change for the better before 
 going home for the night. 
 
 Then there was the indescribable, overwhelming, mad- 
 dening agony of each seventh day, on which the crisis, 
 sooner or later, was bound to occur. Once, on the 
 twenty-first day, Dick was so low that it seemed as if 
 the crisis was actually at hand. But the dreaded day 
 passed without a change for better or worse. It seemed 
 to Betty, in the week that intervened between the twenty- 
 first and twenty-eighth day, that the uncertainty was 
 worse than any possible certainty could be, and she 
 prayed fervently that the approaching twenty-eighth day 
 would mean a turn in the tide. But when the twenty- 
 eighth day dawned, she realized that rather than lose 
 her Dicky she would live in uncertainty all her life. It 
 was, after all, a week later that Dick finally began to 
 rally and was declared out of danger. In another fort- 
 night they brought him home to Mrs. Presbey's. 
 
 Betty herself was worn to a shadow. Deep circles 
 were formed under her eyes; her complexion, always 
 pale, was now white as alabaster; but her heart was 
 filled with blithe songs, though eyes and limbs were 
 alike heavy from sleepless nights. 
 
 When Richard was taken away from the hospital Dr.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 349 
 
 Moran asked the Superintendent to return Richard's 
 valuables, left in the office for safekeeping, to Betty. 
 Among the valuables were Richard's bank book, and two 
 unopened letters bearing the Telfer imprint. An ac- 
 counting that showed that Richard, on the day he was 
 brought to the hospital, had paid the sum of three hun- 
 dred dollars by special check on his savings bank. He 
 had been there seven weeks, at sixty dollars a week, mak- 
 ing the total amount of his indebtedness four hundred 
 and twenty dollars. In other words, one hundred and 
 twenty dollars were still due the hospital. Betty went 
 to her bank and drew her entire savings, amounting to 
 but a few dollars more than the sum she paid the hos- 
 pital to clear Richard's indebtedness. 
 
 There was nothing heroic in her doing so. If it had 
 been necessary for her to sacrifice her savings for Rich- 
 ard, she would gladly have done so, but she believed that 
 Richard's bank account showed a considerable balance, 
 and she drew her own money to pay the hospital bill 
 merely because the physician had warned her against tax- 
 ing Richard's nervous system and mind in any way for 
 some weeks to come. Betty had Richard's bank book in 
 her possession, but she did not open it, nor did she open 
 the letters for him from Telfer's. Near and close as 
 she was to him, a fine sense of chivalry, more unusual 
 in women than in men, made her shrink, even at such 
 a moment, from reading his correspondence or looking 
 at his financial accounts. 
 
 Betty obtained a week's leave of absence without 
 pay, after Richard's return to Mrs. Presbey's, as Mrs. 
 Presbey was unable to assume the entire burden of 
 waiting on him, and Betty figured that it would have 
 been more expensive to engage a trained nurse at 
 twenty-five dollars per week, than to forfeit her own 
 salary of eighteen dollars, apart from the sentimental
 
 350 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 reason that she wanted to be near her Dick during this 
 first week of his convalescence at home. 
 
 Dr. Moran took Betty aside on the second day of 
 Richard's removal and said to her: 
 
 "Pryce has been a pretty sick man, and he had not 
 been in first-class physical condition for some time before 
 he fell ill." 
 
 "Yes, I know," murmured Betty. 
 
 "You understand, Miss Garside, that you will have 
 to get him out of the city just as soon as you can." 
 
 "When do you think we can move him?" 
 
 "We'll have to be able to move him a week from to- 
 day or to-morrow." 
 
 Something in Dr. Moran's voice sent a wave of ap- 
 prehension through Betty. 
 
 "Why, what do you mean?" she stammered. 
 
 "I mean that, although we have pulled him through 
 the actual disease, he is in such a feeble condition that 
 the uphill fight back to health is going to take months 
 months. It's July now. He won't be fit to go to work 
 before December at the very earliest. And he has got 
 to have good care and cheerful company. If he is to 
 pull through someone has got to go away with him to 
 give him constant attention either a nurse, or yourself, 
 for he is going to require continual care." 
 
 "I suppose I can go with him," faltered Betty. 
 
 "That would be best. Pryce had something on his 1 
 mind when he fell ill I mean about your falling out." 
 
 "Yes," Betty assented, blushing. 
 
 "And that didn't tend to give him a better chance. 
 If you can manage to go away with him, it means that 
 the battle is half won. I am not an alarmist, but it is 
 absolutely essential that you get him away as quickly 
 as possible." 
 
 "Where is he to go?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 351 
 
 "I'll give you a couple of addresses a farmhouse at 
 Pocono, and a very delightful large boarding-house in 
 the Adirondacks. The latter would be the better place 
 to go to, as they have all modern equipments, steam 
 heat, hot water, in fact, all the essential conveniences." 
 
 He wrote down the addresses for Betty, and handed 
 them to her. 
 
 "By the way," he said, "I don't suppose you young 
 folks are very rich. You needn't worry about my bill. 
 Richard can pay it after he gets back to work, some 
 time at the end of next year. I am very fond of Richard, 
 and if I were a little richer myself I would offer to help 
 you out with a little ready cash. But I dare say you can 
 manage." 
 
 "Yes, I dare say we can," said Betty. 
 
 Again Dr. Moran opened the door, and again he closed 
 it. 
 
 "You'll be sure to get him off within a week?" he 
 asked, insistently. "He is very weak, and the weather is 
 devilish." 
 
 "I'll be ready within a week," Betty said. She had 
 the feeling of delivering herself blindly into the hands 
 of a juggernaut destiny as she made the simple state- 
 ment. 
 
 The door closed at last behind the physician. 
 
 Betty sat down on the lowest step of the stairs, and 
 folded her hands over her knees. How fluently she 
 had repeated that they would be able to manage to get 
 away, but the future loomed before her excited imagina- 
 tion like some preposterous mountain, iceberg or vol- 
 cano, ready to crush both of them beneath its overtop- 
 pling weight. Neither she nor Richard working, and 
 five months' board to be paid for both of them ! 
 
 Inactivity became insufferable. She darted nimbly up- 
 stairs, into Richard's room. He had fallen asleep. The
 
 352 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 room was darkened, but in spite of the four large 
 pieces of ice placed near the bed to cool the tempera- 
 ture of the room, the frightful heat and humidity which 
 had made of the city a sort of purgatorial torture cham- 
 ber for the past weeks, seemed to penetrate even to this 
 sequestered room. The throbbing arteries of the city 
 through which flowed incessant tumult and truceless 
 noise sent tokens of the city's ruthless activity into the 
 sickroom. Each truck that lumbered past, every elec- 
 tric car clanging heavily on noisy wheels, sent a cruel 
 jar of apprehension through Betty. Would Dick waken ? 
 She trembled at sound of a dishpan clattering from the 
 stove to the kitchen floor two floors below, and of an 
 ironing board falling heavily upon a washtub, the noise 
 of the latter being borne across the narrow backyard 
 from an opposite apartment house. 
 
 Betty knelt down beside Richard. She did not touch 
 his hand or his face, but, kneeling, stared at him in 
 mute anguish. Dick, her Dick, so strong, so well a 
 short time ago, turned into this living skeleton; she 
 buried her face in her hands and wept silently. Her 
 tears ceased as abruptly as they had begun. 
 
 "Ah, Dick " she did not whisper the words but 
 merely formed them on her lips. "Oh, Dick you're 
 mine, you belong to me, you shan't die." 
 
 She tiptoed across the room and with nervous fingers 
 began searching for the two unopened envelopes from 
 Telfer's, and for Richard's bank book. Once a comb 
 scraped the wood of the drawer in which it lay, and she 
 turned in an agony of fear to see whether she had 
 awakened Dick. She wanted to stop and defer her 
 search, but a blind, unreasonable and unreasoning fear 
 had taken possession of her and drove her on. Finally 
 she found what she was looking for. Hastily she ripped 
 open the envelopes. Each one, as she had surmised, con-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 353 
 
 tained a check for Richard's salary thirty-five dollars. 
 They bore the dates of the first two weeks of Richard's 
 illness, and the later check was accompanied by a note 
 from Hoffman, the cashier, stating curtly that Mr. Tel- 
 fer, before leaving New York, had issued instructions to 
 pay Mr. Pryce two weeks' salary, and to suspend his 
 name from the payroll. 
 
 Betty's hand shook as she opened Dick's bank book. 
 She knew, he himself had told her, that the Europe Fund 
 amounted to a little over a thousand dollars at the time 
 he met her. She remembered with a pang that he had 
 insisted on spending most of his salary on giving her 
 pleasure after she had come to New York. It was pos- 
 sible, after their rupture, that he had resumed his frugal 
 habits. 
 
 His bank book showed credits in round figures 
 amounting to eleven hundred dollars. Drawn against 
 this were the three hundred dollars he had paid the 
 hospital in advance, and an earlier amount of eight hun- 
 dred dollars. The balance remaining in the bank was a 
 mere bagatelle, five or six dollars, which he had allowed 
 to remain in his name with the evident intention of not 
 discontinuing the account. 
 
 The item of eight hundred dollars fascinated Betty, 
 She gazed long and earnestly at the business-like figures 
 as if some occult power dwelt in them, to admit her to 
 some carefully guarded, but not disgraceful secret of 
 Dicky's soul. Suddenly it occurred to her to look at 
 the date. It was August fourteenth. She had come to 
 New York the following week. What did it mean? 
 Like a flash, a suspicion swept across her mind. Noise- 
 lessly she crept from Dick's room and entered her own, 
 and now she stood in speechless consternation because of 
 her own stupid blindness. Dicky's room was shabby 
 and threadbare the furniture was a medley of chairs,
 
 354? THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 an odd wash-stand, an odd bureau and a bed. No two 
 pieces in the room matched, except that one chair and 
 the wash-stand were black walnut. Mrs. Presbey's room 
 was similarly furnished. Her room alone was in fault- 
 less taste each piece of furniture, even the Davenport, 
 was of Circassian walnut, a wood which had come into 
 general use for furniture purposes only within the last 
 half decade. And the carpet and wallpaper harmonized 
 perfectly with the furniture. 
 
 She ran downstairs and burst upon Mrs. Presbey, 
 paring peaches to be preserved. 
 
 "Mrs. Presbey," she demanded, "did Dick pay for the 
 furniture in my room?" 
 
 "I promised not to tell you," Mrs. Presbey said, 
 defensively. 
 
 Betty held up the bank book for the landlady to see. 
 Gone was the reticence as to Dicky's affairs and fine 
 courtesy to keep even herself from penetrating into them 
 too intimately. 
 
 "He has beggared himself for me," she cried, excitedly. 
 "Oh, Mrs. Presbey, he has beggared himself for me ! 
 Between us we have seventy-five dollars in the world. 
 And he has got to go away, for months what shall I 
 do? What in all the world will I do?" 
 
 She threw herself into a chair and looked at 
 Mrs. Presbey with terror-stricken, preternaturally bright 
 eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Presbey dropped her hands, with a half-pared 
 peach in one and a paring knife in the other, into the 
 bowl of peaches in her lap. 
 
 "I've expected this right along," she said. "I tried to 
 take up a second mortgage on the house, in order to 
 have the ready cash for you. But I couldn't get any one 
 to take a second mortgage. All I have is a couple of 
 hundred you're welcome to that if it's enough."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 355 
 
 ""i 
 Betty jumped up, and, following a sudden impulse, 
 
 threw her arms around the old lady's neck and kissed her. 
 
 "God bless you," she said. "I wouldn't touch your 
 money. I I have some wealthy friends. Some one will 
 help me out." 
 
 She went downtown immediately afterwards to 
 Mr. Reynolds' office. She had not heard from Louise 
 for over six weeks, but she was certain that Mr. Rey- 
 nolds, whose paternal kindness had touched her so 
 deeply, would lend her what money she needed. She 
 was told by his secretary, an impertinent, stand-offish, 
 important young man that Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds were 
 both abroad. 
 
 "Will you please give me his address?" Betty said, 
 couching a request in form of a question, as is the habit 
 in New York. She was amazed to hear the important 
 young man reply vigorously : 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 "Why not?" she asked, innocently. 
 
 "I'm not permitted to give his address to every Tom, 
 Dick or Harry who happens to ask for it." 
 
 Betty flushed painfully, as she said, indignantly: 
 
 "I am not every Tom, Dick and Harry. I'm an inti- 
 mate friend of his daughter, Miss Louise." 
 
 "Then, why don't you ask her for her parents' ad- 
 dress?" parried the young man, showing huge satisfac- 
 tion in his own adroitness. 
 
 Betty choked back her anger. 
 
 "Is she still out West?" 
 
 The important young man laughed. "Really," he said, 
 "I fancy that you, an intimate friend of Miss Louise's, 
 are surely in a much better position to guess at her 
 present whereabouts than I, who am merely an employee 
 of her father's." 
 
 Still Betty persisted.
 
 356 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Won't you at least tell me," she begged, "whether 
 Mr. Reynolds is at Karlsbad or Bad Nauheim?" 
 
 "At neither place," replied the young man, contemptu- 
 ously, and, turning on his heel, he walked away. 
 Ashamed, humiliated, with a dull, impotent anger burn- 
 ing in her heart, Betty followed him. "If you knew how 
 urgent this business is," she said, "you would not refuse 
 Mr. Reynolds' address." 
 
 "Urgent for yourself," said the young man, disdain- 
 fully, "I have no doubt it is. But I am here to take care 
 of business which is urgent for Mr. Reynolds, and no 
 one else." And walking into the private office, he 
 slammed the door in Betty's face. 
 
 It was, perhaps, the most humiliating experience 
 through which Betty had ever gone. She could barely 
 keep from crying, as she walked through the long store, 
 and out into the street. How bitterly she regretted not 
 having accepted the check for two hundred and fifty dol- 
 lars which Mr. Reynolds had offered her ! 
 
 Mr. Reynolds' store was located on Vesey street, and 
 Betty walked eastward until she reached Broadway. 
 Finding a public telephone booth in a drug store, she 
 called up Penascapet to ascertain whether or not Louise 
 Reynolds was there. Louise was not there, and no one 
 knew where she was. 
 
 Next Betty went to Madame Hudrazzini's hotel apart- 
 ment. The famous soprano had not communicated with 
 Betty on her return from Boston, and Betty entertained 
 a fleeting hope that she might still be in New York, but 
 she was informed by a dapper, polite young clerk at the 
 hotel that Madame Hudrazzini had left for Europe a day 
 after her return from the Bay State. He looked at 
 Betty, questioningly. 
 
 "Would you mind telling me your name ?" he asked. 
 
 Betty gave it.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 357 
 
 "I have a letter for you from Madame Hudrazzini." 
 He opened a drawer hurriedly searched through a pack- 
 age of letters, found the one he was looking for and 
 handed it to Betty. 
 
 "Madame forgot to put down your street address," 
 he said. "She gave it to me to post five minutes before 
 leaving the hotel. I kept it, pending her return in the 
 autumn." 
 
 Betty thanked him, tore open the envelope and glanced 
 over the letter. It was a brief note, telling Betty that 
 owing to her brief stay in New York, she was unable 
 to look up her dearest, most cherished and beloved young 
 friend. She closed by enjoining Betty to "make up" 
 with Richard. 
 
 It was three o'clock by this time, and the sun's torrid 
 heat had the effect of a burning glass. The asphalt on 
 Fifth avenue was a thick, mushy paste, and Betty's head 
 felt as if it were clamped in a steel vise. She remem- 
 bered that she had tasted neither food nor drink since 
 seven o'clock that morning, but the mere notion of eating 
 nauseated her. Hailing a stage, she got into it to escape 
 from the intolerable heat beating upon the pavements 
 without, although Telfer's was but three blocks below. 
 Telfer's was her last hope. 
 
 At any other time, Betty would have endured agonies 
 of apprehension at the thought of meeting Miss Sharpe 
 again. To-day, steeped in utter misery and soul wretch- 
 edness, she gave neither Miss Sharpe nor Miss Connors 
 a thought. She had hardly entered the store, however, 
 when the gallery goddesses as well as the other 
 clerks gathered about her with every sign of friendly 
 welcome. 
 
 A few minutes elapsed before she was able to disen- 
 tangle herself from the impromptu reception given her. 
 Making her escape at last, she went to Mr. Hoffman and
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 briefly told him the financial difficulty in which she was 
 placed. 
 
 "I'm awfully sorry, Miss Garside," said Hoffman, 
 "the old man's orders were to take Richard off the pay- 
 roll after two weeks. He is cruising on Markheim's 
 private yacht up Norway or Sweden way, and there is 
 no possibility of reaching him. They haven't a wireless 
 on board." 
 
 "When does he get back?" 
 
 "Not before October. No address was given before 
 then. He's under the doctor's orders to cut out all busi- 
 ness until then, and he is doing it with a vengeance." 
 
 "But why was Richard dropped from the payroll?" 
 Betty asked. "Mr. Telfer always seemed uncommonly 
 fond of Richard, and he has kept others, clerks with 
 whom he never came in contact personally, and who had 
 been in his employ only a few weeks when they fell ill, 
 on the payroll for two or three months." 
 
 The cashier lowered his eyes and did not reply. 
 
 "Mr. Hoffman," Betty said, speaking with dignified 
 insistence, "can't you take the responsibility of advanc- 
 ing me a few hundred dollars? I'll give you my note." 
 
 "Can't do it." 
 
 "I am sure, if Mr. Telfer knew the circumstances, he 
 would not refuse to help Richard." 
 
 "I don't think so myself," .said the cashier, dubiously. 
 Betty thought he was weakening. 
 
 "Can't you give me an advance a loan?" 
 
 "I cannot, Miss Garside. Really, I cannot. It 
 wouldn't be honest, you know." 
 
 "But you yourself think Mr. Telfer would be satis- 
 fied to have you do it," Betty implored. 
 
 "Well, I don't know for sure. You see, the truth is, 
 Mr. Telfer was a little down on Richard lately." 
 
 "Why? What happened?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 359 
 
 "Oh, no business matter," Hoffman flashed a quick 
 glance at Betty. "I might as well be frank. When he 
 found out why you quit, he was as mad as a hatter. 
 Pryce was fool enough to tell him. Why, he all but 
 fired Pryce, he was so mad. You see Mr. Telfer thinks 
 a good deal of you in every way." 
 
 Betty was quick to see her advantage and to use it. 
 
 "Then, if Mr. Telfer thinks a lot of me," she said, 
 eagerly, "surely, knowing my entire heart is set on 
 saving Dick's life, for that is what it amounts to he 
 wouldn't refuse." 
 
 Hoffman braced himself visibly against this unanswer- 
 able feminine logic. 
 
 "I wish to heaven I could let you have the money my- 
 self, Miss Garside," he said. "But I have been a d. f. and 
 gambled in stocks, and my bank account is wiped out. 
 It stands at zero. I wish I could help you." 
 
 Betty stood, hands clasped across her bosom, staring 
 at Hoffman's busy-looking desk with unseeing eyes. 
 A sound, a cross between an ejaculation and a smacking 
 of the lips, made her look up. 
 
 "Look here," Hoffman spoke, excitedly, "perhaps you 
 can get a satisfactory answer from Archie." 
 
 "Archie ? Is Archie in town ?" 
 
 "He is coming in to-day. He will be here in a few 
 minutes. He wants to get some documents I am keep- 
 ing in the safe for him. He has actually had to marry 
 one of the three have you heard?" 
 
 "I have read no papers recently," Betty answered, 
 evasively. 
 
 "Well, the one he married, it appears, has a little for- 
 tune of her own. Trust Archie to know what side his 
 bread is buttered on." 
 
 "But has Archie the right any more than you to let me 
 have the money?"
 
 360 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Hoffman laughed. 
 
 "After all, he is the boss's son and if he gives me an 
 order in writing, so that he cannot crawl out of the 
 transaction afterwards, who am I to refuse his orders? 
 You see, Mr. Telfer always allows Archie the privilege 
 of drawing on him for about five thousand a year. That's 
 a state secret, of course, so mum is the word. Frequently 
 he runs up to seven thousand. He's only got six thou- 
 sand so far this year, so, if Mr. Telfer doesn't approve, 
 he'll make me debit Archie's account with the amount he 
 gives you. See? Oh, they have fine scenes in the little 
 office in the rear, father and son have. But they always 
 close both doors." 
 
 Betty said nothing. Innate tact suggested to her the 
 bad taste of discussing derogatively a man of whom she 
 was about to ask a favor. 
 
 She had an uneasy feeling that it was not just the 
 thing to ask Archie to help her. And yet, to whom 
 was she to turn? And if Hoffman was willing to take 
 Archie's signature for a loan to be made to herself, it 
 was, after all, Hoffman's business and not hers. The 
 money belonged to Telfer, senior, even if Telfer, junior, 
 gave an order for it. 
 
 She had not waited ten minutes, when Archie swung 
 into the room, looking handsomer and more modish and 
 more splendidly groomed than ever. He nodded con- 
 descendingly in Hoffman's direction and went right to 
 his father's rooms. 
 
 "He didn't see you," Hoffman said to Betty. "Will 
 you go right after him and tackle him, or do you want me 
 to talk for you ?" 
 
 "Thanks," said Betty, rising. "Perhaps I had better 
 'tackle him' myself." 
 
 As she was about to enter the room, Archie appeared 
 in the doorway.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 361 
 
 "What an unexpected pleasure!" He performed an 
 elaborate handshake simultaneously with an elaborate 
 lifting of the hat, which he held conspicuously aloft 
 during the ceremonious handshake. "Won't you come 
 in? I trust I am not presuming unduly when I ask 
 whether or not you came to see me, Miss Absolute 
 Zero?" 
 
 They both laughed, remembering that Archie had once 
 said Betty would make excellent company on a sizzling 
 summer's day. 
 
 "I assure you I feel like anything rather than absolute 
 zero to-day," Betty said, still smiling. Archie Telfer's 
 airy nonsense always acted upon her nerves like a sooth- 
 ing lotion. 
 
 "What? You amaze me! Is the Great Ice Period 
 about to be terminated by this ungodly heat with which 
 we are visited ? Joking aside, what is the matter ? You 
 do not look quite yourself." 
 
 "I'm not quite myself, Mr. Telfer. I'm in serious 
 trouble." 
 
 The smile of well-bred good-fellowship was wiped 
 away from Archie's mobile features. A look of grave 
 and sincere concern succeeded. 
 
 "Oh, I am sorry, indeed ! Won't you come in ? Per- 
 haps I can serve you." 
 
 He held the door open for her in his best Chesterfield- 
 ian manner, and, after entering himself, drew up a chair 
 for her with that graceful haste which a certain type 
 of stage-gentleman invariably employs in doing a woman 
 a service. He waited until she was seated, and then sat 
 down himself. His entire manner was charming, ingra- 
 tiating. Betty had never liked him better than at this 
 moment ; she remembered the reputation he had and the 
 unkind things Dick had said of him and the impolite epi- 
 thets he had bestowed upon him. It seemed odd that for
 
 362 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Richard's sake, she was about to place herself under deep 
 and lasting obligations to this man. 
 
 "Now, what can I do for you?" Archie asked, with a 
 manner which, had it been sincere, would have been 
 absolutely charming. "Command me won't you?" 
 
 "Dick has been awfully sick. Typhoid." 
 
 Archie's countenance expressed alarm and concern. 
 
 "And, to cut a long story short," she continued, "my 
 bank account and Richard's as well have declined to 
 approximately nothing. Your father, Mr. Telfer, had 
 Richard dropped from the payroll after two weeks." 
 
 "What a shame of my father to do that!" 
 
 Betty's color came and went with the fleetness of a 
 1 cloud tossed across the heavens by a stormy wind. 
 
 "I do not know where to turn. I have got to get 
 Richard out of the city, if he is to live, and I have no 
 money. Mr. Hoffman says he will let me have three 
 or four hundred dollars, if you say so." 
 
 "That's very nice of Mr. Hoffman that's downright 
 good of Mr. Hoffman, thoughtful fellow ! But how can 
 I ? I've never meddled with my father's business affairs. 
 He might resent my doing so, now. And, frankly, I'm 
 not in position at the present moment to antagonize him." 
 
 "I see," Betty's tone was illustrative of her decline of 
 hope. 
 
 "However, I will be glad to help you out personally." 
 
 Betty flushed to the roots of her hair. 
 
 "I cannot expect you to do that, Mr. Telfer, and I 
 don't see how I can accept a loan from you." 
 
 "Nonsense, you are merely a proxy. It is Richard 
 to whom I am lending how much did you say ?" 
 
 "Would three hundred be too much?" 
 
 "Three hundred? That won't carry you very far. 
 Let us say six hundred." 
 
 Archie produced a pocket check-book and a fountain-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 363 
 
 pen and began writing industriously. While he wrote, he 
 talked. His gestures reminded Betty of a scene in "The 
 Sun-God," in which Archie's part called for his writing 
 a letter on the stage. Archie Telfer's grace of manner 
 and elusive charm were as extreme off the stage as on. 
 
 "Richard is a fine fellow takes himself a bit seri- 
 ously, art is a goddess to him, not a profession always 
 disliked me a little I'm afraid he disapproves of me 
 for not spelling 'drammer' with a capital D." 
 
 The check was written out, the signature affixed. 
 'Archie blotted it, tore it from the stub. He handed it to 
 Betty, then suddenly drew it back. 
 
 "By the way," he said, "I have no right to give you a 
 check. Just fancy, a man with my reputation ! I owe it 
 to a charming girl like yourself to protect her name. 
 No, decidedly, I must not give you a check. That mon- 
 key of a valet of mine confound the fellow always 
 looks through my checks when they come back from the 
 bank, and he's a sieve, a perfect sieve. Let me see 
 what's to be done !" 
 
 He tore up the check and dropped its infinitesimal 
 remains into the waste-paper basket. Then he took out 
 his wallet and counted the bills contained in it. 
 
 "A miserable fifty," he said, "is all I have with me. 
 Miss Garside, I am compelled to ask you to do something 
 which I dislike extremely to ask. I have some business 
 downtown, but will be at my hotel at six o'clock. At 
 eight I have to make the Sag Harbor train. Will you 
 come up to my hotel, and wait for me in the lobby? 
 We'll find some unobserved corner in which I can hand 
 you the money. They will cash my check for me in the 
 office of the hotel." 
 
 "Can't Mr. Hoffman cash it for you ?" Betty inquired. 
 
 "I doubt it at this hour however, I will see." It 
 did not occur to Betty that Archie was doing a singular
 
 364 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 thing in going out to see Hoffman, instead of ringing for 
 a boy and telling him to ask Mr. Hoffman to step in to 
 see him. Nor did it occur to her that Archie might 
 merely walk out of the room in which they were sitting, 
 and, in a few minutes, walk back again without having 
 seen Hoffman. Nor did it occur to her that the simplest 
 way of letting her have the money would be for Archie 
 to give Hoffman a check made payable to cash, with 
 instructions that he was to pay the money to Betty the 
 next morning, as soon as the banks were open. 
 
 When Archie came back into the room, he said, in 
 a tone which commiserated the import of his words : 
 
 "Hoffman cannot cash it. I'm awfully sorry that I 
 have to put you out to the extent of coming up to my 
 hotel." 
 
 His manner, more than the commonplace words, con- 
 veyed unfathomable depths of feeling. Betty's heart 
 warmed to him more and more. 
 
 "You're not going to embarrass me by apologizing to 
 me in addition to doing me this very great kindness, 
 Mr. Telfer?" 
 
 He replied with a platitude, a platitude which, to a 
 girl of small experience in the ways of men, seemed a 
 further indication of true friendship. Every caution 
 against Archie dinned uninterruptedly into her ears by 
 Richard was relegated to oblivion. If anything, she was 
 a little ashamed that the man whom Richard had never 
 referred to except in terms of contempt and opprobrium 
 was showing her such unexampled and delicate kindness. 
 
 They were standing opposite each other, preparatory 
 to her leave-taking. Impetuously she stretched out her 
 hand to him with a gesture half-shy, half-intimate. 
 
 "Mr. Telfer," she said, "you cannot know how much 
 your kindness means to me. I I had been elsewhere 
 before I came here and I was almost in despair. I
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 365 
 
 thank you more than I can say." She hesitated a moment, 
 and then continued, bravely: "It is good to know that 
 one has such a friend. I hope some time, in some way, 
 to be able to show my gratitude." And again the color 
 ebbed and flowed on her cheek like clouds on a wind- 
 blown April day. 
 
 He took the hand she offered him so charmingly. He 
 shook off his grandiose, impressive manner and became 
 nobly straightforward exquisitely simple. He did not 
 relinquish her hand immediately, but for a moment 
 placed his left hand over it gently, caressingly. He 
 immediately released it, however, before she had time 
 to become confused or embarrassed and continued, 
 reassuringly : 
 
 "I want you to feel always that I am your friend." 
 
 It was half-past four when Betty left Telfer's shop. 
 She had barely time to go home and be at Archie's hotel 
 by six o'clock, so she walked across to Union Square 
 and sat on a bench near the red geraniums. A song of 
 thanksgiving filled her heart. It was so poignantly sweet 
 that she forgot her fatigue and her hunger. Even the 
 heat had dwindled into a negligible fact before the divine 
 certainty that she was to have the wherewithal for 
 taking Dick away. 
 
 Punctually at six she was in the lobby, and Archie, 
 twirling a stick, came walking through a few moments 
 later. He bowed quietly when he saw her the most in- 
 conspicuous bow he had ever given her, and pretended 
 to great surprise. In view of his remarks of the after- 
 noon to her, she gathered that he pretended to be sur- 
 prised at seeing her so that no one should guess they 
 were meeting by appointment. The conviction which 
 had been born in her that afternoon, that his reputation 
 was much worse than himself, was fortified and strength- 
 ened by this new courtesy. Surely no man could have
 
 366 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 been more thoughtful, more gentlemanly not even her 
 Dick. 
 
 "Let's find a sequestered nook," he said, in an under- 
 tone, and Betty followed whither he led. But they came 
 upon no "sequestered nooks." Every room they entered, 
 every corridor they turned into, was occupied. Archie's 
 brows contracted in displeasure. He said "too bad," 
 "exasperating," "very unpleasant," and walked on and 
 on, carefully avoiding one or two tiny parlors reserved 
 for guests of the hotel, of which, on application, he 
 might have obtained solitary occupation. 
 
 "I'm afraid I will have to ask you to come up to my 
 rooms? Do you mind? I have a suite, you know a 
 parlor attached. I cannot possibly hand you a roll of 
 bills here." 
 
 For one moment Betty's heart misgave her. But a 
 year of business life had bevelled off some of the cast- 
 iron rules with which every gently nurtured girl enters 
 life. She knew that there are times when a woman who 
 is fighting her own battle in the world is frequently 
 placed in a singular position, a position the reverse of 
 conventional. And that, she assured herself, was all 
 there was to the situation in which she was now placed. 
 Archie Telfer was put upon a little pinnacle in her es- 
 teem. Archie Telfer was a much maligned man. Archie 
 Telfer was a gentleman. And Archie Telfer was a 
 friend. 
 
 She nodded in acquiescence of his suggestion. In the 
 elevator, a sudden spasm of fear lighted a blaze in her 
 soul, and she wished herself safely out of the hotel. She 
 quieted herself with the reflection that "no man would 
 dare . . ." 
 
 They walked through a dimly lit, Holland shrouded 
 corridor, over inch-thick carpets, like balsam to tired feet. 
 Archie's rooms opened out on a courtyard in which a
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 367 
 
 fountain gurgled gently among palms and rubber-trees. 
 He placed a chair for her at the open window, then, as 
 some one passed the door, went and closed it. In a busi- 
 ness-like way he pulled the roll of bills from his pocket, 
 counted them out to Betty upon a small table that stood 
 between them, and pushed them toward her. Betty gath- 
 ered up the money, and placed it in her reticule. 
 
 "Don't you want me to sign a note, or a receipt, or 
 something?" she asked. 
 
 "Nonsense," said Archie Telfer, in his biggest, most 
 masculine way. "Nonsense." 
 
 Betty rose. 
 
 "The only thing I can think of saying seems trite and 
 commonplace," she said. "But I'm grateful, intensely 
 grateful. I only wish there was some way of showing 
 my gratitude. I wish that very earnestly." 
 
 Archie Telfer walked around the small table and stood 
 beside her. He put out both his hands. Shifting the 
 reticule over her wrist, she placed her hands in his, as 
 he invited her to do, with a little, timid gesture meant 
 to express her thankfulness. He clasped her hands 
 firmly, warmly, and she noted, with a little start, how hot 
 and dry were his palms, for she had removed her gloves 
 to count the money, and when she looked up at his face 
 she saw that in his eyes was a smouldering, glimmering 
 light. She became terribly frightened in an instant 
 she wanted to say something, anything to break the op- 
 pressive silence that suddenly filled the room and beat 
 between them like the fluttering wings of a bird, and 
 seemed to link her and Archie together as with a tangible 
 chain. She stammered, confusedly: 
 
 "You don't know what I've been through to-day." 
 
 Suddenly her tears began to flow. Lack of food, 
 fatigue, the nervous strain she had been subjected to all 
 day, the frightful heat, broke down her self-control.
 
 368 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Her tears flowed thick and fast. She wanted to reach 
 for her handkerchief to staunch them, but Archie had 
 not yet released her hands. He held them in his burning 
 palms, and though she tried to disengage them, she did 
 not succeed. She told herself that she had been clumsy, 
 had not made him understand that she wanted to free 
 her hands, and she tried again, with no better success. 
 
 "I want to get my handkerchief," she sobbed. 
 
 "Poor little girl, poor little girl." 
 
 Archie's voice was alluringly caressing. Suddenly she 
 felt her hands released and his voice said, breathlessly, 
 very near her face : "I will dry your tears for you," 
 and then, with incredible swiftness, before she realized 
 what was happening, he had folded her in his arms and 
 was raining kisses upon her eyes and cheek. 
 
 "Let me go, let me go !" she cried. 
 
 She struggled, but her struggles were no more effect- 
 ual than the struggles of a rabbit caught in a steel trap. 
 She found herself enveloped as in steel sheeting. Twist- 
 ing, twirling, she tried to escape from him, and to escape 
 from his voracious mouth, she threw her face forward 
 and backward, but he contrived to hold even her head in 
 his embrace, so that he might kiss her uninterruptedly. 
 He did not kiss her roughly. Memory harked back to 
 the cruel kisses Dick had showered upon her on one or 
 two occasions, kisses that hurt because they were so 
 rough. Archie Telfer kissed her slowly, gently, softly, 
 not roughly, not brutally. 
 
 "Your poor little thing," he whispered, "let me kiss 
 away your tears, though you are shedding them for an- 
 other man. Betty, Betty, I love you, I adore you. I did 
 not mean to tell you but I could not help myself, my 
 little darling." 
 
 She had stopped struggling at last, and he thought 
 that his kisses, the pressure of arms and hands upon her
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 369 
 
 limp body were subjugating her. In reality, she was 
 merely husbanding her strength to take advantage of an 
 unguarded moment in which to break away from his 
 hold. 
 
 Assured of victory, as he thought, he kissed her more 
 ardently. She contrived to loosen her right arm from 
 his grip, and, with clenched fist, she struck blindly, furi- 
 ously at his face. The impact and suddenness of the 
 blow, which had happened to land upon the beautiful 
 Greek nose of which the papers made so much, sent him 
 staggering away from her with a cry of pain. 
 
 With rare self-possession, Betty glanced toward the 
 table for a possible article of defense. She caught up a 
 match-receiver of heavy, chased silver, freshly filled 
 with matches. It made a formidable projectile and the 
 thought flashed into Betty's brain that it might be made 
 to do splendid protective service in another respect. 
 
 Clutching the match-receiver in one hand, she tugged 
 furiously at the clasp of her reticule. It flew open. 
 Pulling out the roll of bills which Archie had handed 
 her, she flung it at his feet. 
 
 "There is your money," she said, quietly, "now please 
 let me go." 
 
 "You're not going to refuse the loan because because 
 my love got the better of my discretion?" He was 
 standing between her and the door, and now made one 
 step in her direction. 
 
 "Don't you dare come near me!" Menacingly, she 
 held up the heavy receiver. "I wish to leave your rooms, 
 Mr. Telfer. Kindly step aside so I can get to the door." 
 
 "Betty Miss Garside, listen to me. I was mad, quite 
 mad about you. I've been in love with you ever since I 
 met you the first time. I knew I had no chance with 
 you, because you loved Pryce, but that did not kill my 
 infatuation. If it hadn't been for Pryce, I would have
 
 370 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 offered to marry you. Upon my word, I would have 
 offered you marriage." 
 
 "Very kind of you, I'm sure." 
 
 "Offered you marriage ? Is that what I said? I would 
 have begged you to marry me. Betty, I've been engi- 
 neered into a marriage, but, happily, Reno is still on the 
 map. Will you marry me after I get a divorce?" 
 
 "Your question is a new insult. Please get out of my 
 way. I want to leave this room." 
 
 "Listen to me only for a minute," he implored, "take 
 the money, at least, won't you?" 
 
 "Sell myself for money? Not even for Dick's sake, 
 Mr. Telfer." 
 
 "No, no, heaven is my witness," the handsome face was 
 set to a pattern which was a model of contrition "that, 
 that was not in my mind. Haven't I just told you the 
 reason why I never even told you that I was in love with 
 you ? I promised you a loan of that money without any 
 return that never entered my head for a moment. But 
 you yourself spoke of gratitude this afternoon, and 
 just now, again, I thought it was an intimation that you 
 had guessed my sentiments for you, and that out of 
 sheer kindness, pity, compassion for my suffering, out of 
 gratitude for relieving your mental anguish, you had 
 determined to ameliorate my suffering in return." 
 
 Betty was so shocked that she could only gasp out, 
 "Mr. Telfer!" 
 
 "If I misunderstood you or attached too subtle a 
 meaning to your words, I can only beg of you to forgive 
 my indiscretion, and to take the money I cannot bear 
 to think of your worrying yourself sick about a paltry 
 sum of money while I have more than I need. Please, 
 please, dear Miss Betty, take the money, and forget 
 the unpleasant scene of which I unhappily was the 
 author."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 871 
 
 He took another step in Betty's direction. 
 
 "Will you accept the money?" he asked, ingratiatingly. 
 
 "If you come near me," Betty said, "I will set the cur- 
 tains on fire. I have the matches in my hand, and I 
 can easily do it before you reach me. I think you will 
 then open the door quickly enough." Terror and deadly 
 fear gave her the resolution she ordinarily lacked. 
 
 Archie stood stock-still. His face was a study. Out- 
 raged innocence, kindly motives misunderstood played 
 over his handsome face in quick, seemingly pained suc- 
 cession. 
 
 "How you misunderstood me," he said, in the tone 
 which, as Richard the Third, he employed in reading 
 the line, "I thank my God for my humility." 
 
 "I certainly do not misunderstand you now," said 
 Betty. "I did entirely when I entered this room. I 
 was filled with gratitude beyond power of words to 
 express. And you grossly insulted me." 
 
 "But Betty, Miss Garside, do me the justice to at 
 least believe my explanation. If you had meant to make 
 a certain sacrifice for me, as I believed, if you had in- 
 tended that I was to thus interpret the wish you ex- 
 pressed for 'some way' of expressing your gratitude, II 
 suppose it would have behooved me to act the part of a 
 demi-god and nobly reject your offer. But I am not one 
 of the stage-heroes I am forced to portray. I am flesh 
 and blood. I am human and I am insanely in love with 
 you." 
 
 "Since you will not step aside," Betty replied, "I am 
 going to walk around you to the door. I warn you, if 
 you make one move to intercept me, I shall set fire to 
 this room." She pulled out her handkerchief and placed 
 it in the left hand. With her right hand she extracted 
 a match from the receiver and lit it, and slowly began 
 her march to the door.
 
 372 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Archie picked up the roll of bills. 
 
 "I am coming," he said, "to put this roll of bills in 
 your reticule." 
 
 He stepped forward, and Betty promptly brought the 
 lighted match into close juxtaposition with her thin 
 handkerchief. Archie stopped and laughed. 
 
 "You're game," he said, "you certainly are game. 
 Don't be so obstinate. Don't cut off your nose to spite 
 your face. It was stupid of me to misunderstand, but it 
 was not an irreparable or unforgivable blunder. I have 
 known good and true women, out of gratitude to men 
 whom they could repay in no other way, offer that which 
 I thought you offered me. I didn't, of course, expect 
 you to offer it in bald words I merely offered to make 
 the sacrifice as easy for you as possible." 
 
 "You Oh, you are vile!" said Betty. 
 
 "No, Betty, I am not. If you had made a gift of 
 yourself to me, this day would have been a divine and 
 priceless recollection ; in my eyes, Betty, you are but little 
 lower than an angel, and if the angel had shown human 
 compassion for me she would have been an angel still 
 an angel even more than before." 
 
 Richard the Third, wooing Anne over the dead body 
 of her husband's father, husband and father both mur- 
 dered by himself, did not work harder or more plausibly 
 at his task of blinding virtue than did Archie Telfer. 
 But Betty was not to be gulled again. 
 
 She did not reply to his last speech. She struck a new 
 match the fourth one, and continued her roundabout 
 journey to the door. Archie shrugged his shoulders, 
 walked rapidly away in an opposite direction, to the 
 window, and, hands in trouser pockets, surveyed her 
 superciliously. 
 
 "Perhaps you will deign to stop that childish by-play 
 now."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 373 
 
 Betty had reached the door. She turned the knob, 
 placed her foot back of the door to keep it from closing 
 again. Then she deposited the silver match-receiver on 
 a chair that was near enough to reach easily. 
 
 "Will you listen to me for just a moment?" he begged. 
 "After leaving here, you may regret refusing to take 
 the money which I offer you freely and unconditionally. 
 If so, come here to-morrow evening at the same time. 
 I will be in my room the door will be open to admit 
 you. And if you need more money, say a thousand 
 dollars, they are yours." 
 
 A little pale, and a little haggard, Archie Telfer was 
 handsomer than ever. The breeze from the open win- 
 dow, playing about his thin Panama cloth suit, revealed 
 to advantage the faultless lines of his figure. But he had 
 lost control of his facial expression. 
 
 Betty stared at him for a moment in silence. Then, 
 aghast at his audacity in offering her a larger sum, her 
 contempt overflowed her lips, oddly enough in the same 
 terms of revilement which Dick invariably applied to 
 Archie. 
 
 "You cur!" she said. "You hound!" 
 
 And she had been simple enough to believe that men 
 "did not dare." She shivered with horror as she real- 
 ized what a merciful escape she had had. Then she be- 
 came contemplative. She speculated as to what there 
 was to fear for a man of Archie Telfer's type should 
 he succeed in overpowering a girl after luring her to his 
 rooms. The abyss of impotence which was irretrievably 
 the girl's portion in an affair of such a sort, was ghastly. 
 The chances were that the girl would never speak of the 
 degradation she had suffered, and if she did who would 
 believe her wholly innocent? 
 
 Then the thought shivered through her that Dick 
 her Dick, might in some such way have overpowered the
 
 374 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 girl whom she knew only by name. But her heart re- 
 belled against the accusation preferred by her brain. In 
 whatever manner Dick had contrived to compass his own 
 disgrace, she felt sure it had not been in such a fashion. 
 
 As in a dream, she walked through the dim halls 
 over the inch-thick carpet, into the elevator and out into 
 the street. As in a dream, seeing all things through a 
 murky, unclean mist, she hailed a street-car. Mechanic- 
 ally, the stupor still enfolding her, she left the car and 
 made her way home. She fumbled for her latch-key, 
 found it, but lacked the sense of direction necessary for 
 inserting it in the keyhole. Mrs. Presbey, hearing her at 
 the door, came and opened it. 
 
 "I've been worried to death about you why, what has 
 happened ? Didn't you succeed ? Are you ill ?" 
 
 Betty opened her mouth, essayed to speak, and with a 
 heartbroken smile on her lips, crumpled up in a swoon- 
 ing, forlorn little heap at Mrs. Presbey's feet.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Mercifully, physical distress, pain or fatigue, kills 
 mental pain. Betty slept soundly through the night, 
 after taking a glass of warm milk with sherry and an 
 egg beaten into it, which Mrs. Presbey made her drink 
 in bed. She awoke at five the next morning with the 
 sensation that an unfulfilled task awaited her. Oddly 
 enough, along with the sensation came a recollection not 
 of the previous day's experience, but of the five muti- 
 lated bills belonging to Earlcote which were still in her 
 possession. 
 
 Curiously, she had not given these a thought for weeks 
 past. Now, the recollection of possessing them came as 
 a vivid experience. Would Earlcote, if she returned 
 him the mutilated bills, be willing to let her have a small 
 loan? It was possible that he would, since he had told 
 her that he regretted having made her the offer, as her 
 voice would never amount to anything after all. She 
 blushed a deep red under the bedclothes, as she remem- 
 bered the taunt she had flung at him in reply. Would 
 he hold that against her? She had not much faith in 
 the success of her plan, but she told herself that she must 
 spare no effort, however wild it appeared, to obtain 
 money. 
 
 She steeled herself and went to Richard's room. He 
 was still asleep, and she knelt at his bed and prayed 
 fervently for courage and fortitude. 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 Her head, brushing against his hand, had awakened 
 him. 
 
 375
 
 876 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Betty, you're not crying?" 
 
 "No, Dick praying." 
 
 "Were you praying for me?" 
 
 "A little for myself. Dearest, how are you to-day?" 
 
 "Fine, Betty, fine as silk, as Hoffman would say. But 
 I am a little weak still. Betty, it was worth being so 
 sick to find out how dearly you loved me." 
 
 "Did you doubt my love?" 
 
 "A little, dear, just a little." 
 
 "Promise me you will never doubt it again, Dick, 
 not under any circumstances. I never doubted yours, 
 though you gave me reason to once." 
 
 "Don't," he said, looking deeply pained. "Please don't 
 do that." 
 
 She kissed his cheek and laid her own face against his. 
 
 "Dicky," she said, "you're to get up to-day and every 
 day this week every day you are to sit up a little longer 
 than the day before. Doctor's orders. And a week from 
 to-day you and I are going to the country for a month 
 or so." 
 
 "A week from to-day I'll be going back to business." 
 
 "No, Dicky, you won't." 
 
 "Look here, Betty, don't excite me. I tell you I can't 
 go to the country. No cash." 
 
 Betty had expected this, and had prepared herself to 
 weave any required elaborate tissue of lies in order to 
 gain her point. She, so truthful and scrupulously honest, 
 was prepared to lie to an unlimited extent to put a 
 quietus upon the financial apprehensions of the man she 
 loved. 
 
 "Dicky, dear, you mustn't worry about details just 
 now. There are a few checks you will have to sign in 
 a day or two. And then, dear, Hoffman held back our 
 salary for the last month, knowing you were too ill 
 to endorse checks. And it seems Mr. Telfer has author-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 377 
 
 ized him to advance us you, I mean any required 
 sum." 
 
 "That's awfully decent of Teller," said Dick. "I 
 didn't expect it. I'll have to write and thank him." 
 
 "He is not in town now, Dicky, and we may be back 
 in New York before he returns. So you'll let me take 
 you away, won't you ?" 
 
 "Will they hold your job for you?" Dick asked, 
 anxiously. 
 
 "I don't know, dear. I only know that you need my 
 care just now and that I am going with you." 
 
 "It's not to be thought of," he said, excitedly. "I 
 cannot let you throw up a good job for my sake." 
 
 "Dick, love makes all things possible makes it pos- 
 sible to sacrifice and to make sacrifices as well. It is 
 true I will have to sacrifice my position. But you, dear, 
 will have to sacrifice your money, you will have to pay 
 my board as well as your own." 
 
 "Naturally," said Richard, "naturally, but that's no 
 sacrifice. That is mere fairness. That's, oh, hang it, 
 my head is ringing like a buzzer." 
 
 "You need your breakfast. I'll get it." She rose from 
 her knees, brought him a towel and a wash-basin, and 
 placed them on the chair beside him. 
 
 "Can you wash yourself ? Or shall I help you ?" 
 
 "Thanks, no I'm not as weak as all that." 
 
 "After you have had your breakfast, dearest, I have 
 got to go down and see my 'boss.' He sent a note by 
 messenger, asking me to come down for a few days." 
 
 "Oh, very well," said Dick surlily, "everybody is for- 
 ever whisking you away from me." 
 
 "Wait till we get to the country," Betty responded, 
 laughing. "You'll see more of me than you want to." 
 
 It was a very sombre-eyed, white- faced girl who, a 
 L few hours later, rang up Earlcote Manor on the long
 
 878 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 distance telephone. What in all the world was she to 
 do if her plan with Earlcote miscarried? Where was 
 she to turn for money? While she waited, receiver in 
 hand, she was filled with a sudden panic of misgiving 
 as she remembered how unwarrantably rude she had 
 been to Earlcote, and more than that, the thought troubled 
 her that Earlcote, on hearing why she wanted the money, 
 for of course she could not keep it from him, would 
 refuse it because he would be glad to hear of the death 
 of the man whom he feared as a future rival. 
 
 "Here's your number." 
 
 "Hello Is this Earlcote Manor? Can I speak to 
 
 Mr. Earlcote? Miss Garside, please." 
 
 Her blood hammered so clamorously against her tem- 
 ples that she could scarcely hear the voice at the other 
 end of the wire, but before Earlcote hailed her, her ex- 
 citement had abated sufficiently to insure control of both 
 voice and hearing. 
 
 "Miss Betty?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Earlcote." 
 
 "What gives me the pleasure of hearing that incom- 
 parable voice of yours, even over the telephone?" 
 
 "Then you still think it incomparable?" 
 
 "Yes, Miss Yankee, I certainly do." 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote, when and where can I see you?" 
 
 "What's that? Am I to understand you wish to call 
 on me?" 
 
 "If you will allow me to." 
 
 "Heavens and earth, I will prepare the fat of the 
 land for your entertainment. But, pray, allay my cu- 
 riosity, or you will find only poor clay to greet you when 
 you arrive. What has happened?" 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote, I'm in trouble, serious trouble." Betty's 
 voice wavered and broke off falteringly.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 379 
 
 "Can I serve you in any way?" 
 
 "You can, if you will." 
 
 "Well, you must come and tell me all about it. When 
 are you coming?" 
 
 "I haven't looked at a time-table. Is there a train 
 somewhere around eleven?" 
 
 "Oh, you must not travel by train on a sweltering 
 day like this. I'll not hear of it. That adorable, angelic, 
 peerless voice of yours to be choked with dust, irritated 
 by particles of coal, tortured by the heat of a parlor 
 car? Nonsense. My car will be at the foot of Queens- 
 borough Bridge, New York side, at eleven o'clock. The 
 chauffeur is a Hindu. You cannot miss it." 
 
 "Very well," said Betty meekly. "Thank you." 
 
 She hung up the receiver, and sat for a moment, chin 
 resting upon the instrument. What would Earlcote say, 
 and do, on finding out the nature of her errand? Was 
 it foolhardy, after her experience with Archie Telfer, to 
 go alone to Earlcote Manor? The last question she dis- 
 missed summarily as unworthy of a moment's considera- 
 tion. What physical violence had she to fear from Earl- 
 cote broken, crippled, so weak that he could hardly 
 stand without help? What indeed? Moreover, she felt 
 that even if Earlcote had been sound and strong, he 
 would fight with other weapons than mere brute force 
 weapons that would call for every grain of astuteness 
 and shrewdness in her own make-up. 
 
 But what if he were to bring up the same old question 
 of making a bargain with her, a bargain involving her 
 voice, since he had told her over the telephone that he 
 still considered that incomparable? She grew sick with 
 fear. Dick's life was at stake she had tried every 
 other resource and failed to obtain the necessary money. 
 Therefore, if Earlcote insisted, nothing would remain
 
 380 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 but to agree to his condition. But the thought of having 
 to spend three or four hours a day in close proximity 
 with him for years to come, as his pupil, made her giddy 
 and sick. 
 
 She hoped against hope that this cross would not be 
 laid upon her.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Even in the winding labyrinth of leafy glades of ever- 
 green, cultivated rhodendron shrubs, hardy azaleas as 
 tall as a man, thriving privet growths, and rose pergolas 
 through which Dushka led Betty, the heat and humidity 
 of the sultry day were noticeable. They went down a 
 shelving, barren, rocky incline covered with sweet fern 
 and bracken and water plants that throve on a thin 
 trickle of water oozing between the rocks, then up again 
 through crowding pillars and domes of box and walls of 
 red rambler roses. The path then became undulating, 
 and each serpentine twist revealed a different shade of 
 evergreen trees, ranging from palest sea-green to deepest 
 olive. The path terminated abruptly and, spread out be- 
 fore them, lay the huge aviary, built in imitation of the 
 Taj Mahal. The white light of a summer noon beating 
 upon it, made it appear white as the foam of the sea, 
 and its dazzling splendor was reflected by a long, narrow 
 pool of water, overgrown at one end with pink pond 
 lilies. Flamingoes, herons and kingfishers were laving 
 themselves in the water, and near the pink pond lilies 
 several black swans arched their graceful necks as they 
 swam majestically to and fro. Box, weeping willows, 
 cypress trees and cedars, growing in orderly confusion 
 along the narrow footpath on both sides of the pool, 
 gave a mournful dignity to the landscape. The four 
 towers of the Taj Mahal, altered in this counterfeit 
 presentment to serve as dove-cotes, were surrounded 
 by a legion of fluttering birds, whose white plumage 
 rivalled the snowy whiteness of their homes. 
 
 381
 
 382 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Betty gave a little cry of astonishment. The startling 
 loveliness of the scene pierced through the sheath her 
 anxiety had woven about her sensibilities. Her guide 
 beckoned to her to follow. Into the heart of a tiny 
 pine forest they plunged, and a few yards further on, 
 walking upon a fragrant carpet of pine needles that had 
 been centuries in the weaving, they came upon a pavilion 
 of white marble so exquisite and fairylike in design that 
 its architraves and pillars seemed like the edge of some 
 filmy lace handkerchief transmuted by magic into stone. 
 The pavilion was a copy of the tomb of Muzar Khan 
 Baluchi Kurmath, at Tatta, but this, of course, Betty did 
 not know. 
 
 In this pavilion, in a wicker chair, dressed in white 
 flannels with a white cashmere shawl about his shoulders 
 and white silk gloves upon his hands, sat Earlcote. At 
 his feet, upon the steps of the pavilion, crouched the 
 two Hindu page boys, their nude bodies shining like 
 century old cedar wood, and, as they moved, though ever 
 so slightly, the apron of beads and coins which was their 
 sole garment made strange sweet music that blended 
 softly with the soughing of the south wind in the pines. 
 In their hands they held enormously long-handled fans, 
 made of peacock feathers. Betty had the sensation as 
 on her first visit to Earlcote, of stepping into a scene 
 from the Arabian Nights. 
 
 "I will not offer to shake hands with you," said Earl- 
 cote's sharp, metallic voice. "Sit down opposite me. 
 That is the coolest corner. And if you still feel warm 
 after having been here a few moments, Abdullah and 
 Mahomet will fan you." 
 
 "It is deliciously cool here," said Betty. 
 
 "You will find it more comfortable here than in the 
 house," said Earlcote. "I will have lunch served here. 
 You will join me?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 383 
 
 "Thank you," said Betty. "I am not hungry." 
 
 Her invincible repugnance for the man was rampant 
 in her once more, and she could not quell it. The 
 thought of having to exchange social platitudes with him 
 over a slowly served luncheon was intolerable. How 
 then, if his society was so insufferably obnoxious to her 
 for the brief period of a luncheon, would she be able 
 to tie herself down to the bondage of studying with him 
 for years to come; she quailed at the mere thought of 
 such a possibility. 
 
 Earlcote regarded her shrewdly. Betty thought his 
 eyes showed a diabolic delight in her fear of him. 
 
 "You are not hungry," he said, his voice clanging 
 ominously. "But I am. Once more I ask, will you join 
 me at luncheon?" 
 
 Betty grew very pale. She did not make the mistake 
 of underestimating the man she hated because of her 
 hatred. She realized that she could not afford to an- 
 tagonize him by being candidly unamiable as in the past. 
 She chafed horribly under that thought, chafed still more 
 also, because she knew that he thoroughly understood 
 the situation, and would correctly construe a suave an- 
 swer. She hated herself for not daring to be brusque 
 with him. But she did not dare. 
 
 "Thank you," she said thickly. "I shall be glad to 
 lunch with you." 
 
 "You mean," Earlcote said icily, "that you submit to 
 the inevitable. The service you wish me to render you 
 must be great indeed." 
 
 He kept his wicked eyes fixed on her even after he 
 finished speaking, nor did he once remove his glance 
 from her face while his lips moved silently as he gave 
 his instructions to Dushka and Hahdjan. A feeling of 
 terror raced over Betty. She was in the ogre's strong- 
 hold indeed!
 
 384 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Luncheon was served with lightning-like rapidity. 
 Earlcote made no attempt at conducting a conversation 
 while Dushka and Hahdjan set the table, and placed 
 the viands upon it. He continued to stare at Betty, and 
 went on staring until the girl's hands were cold as ice 
 and her heart beating with fear and repugnance like the 
 heart of a snared bird. 
 
 She forced herself to eat some of the food to which 
 Earlcote insisted on helping her. He ate little himself, 
 but urged her to eat, and, as she dared not refuse, she 
 made a valiant effort to consume at least some of the 
 food on her plate. Finally the table was cleared and 
 the servants dismissed, all except the two Hindu boys, 
 who stretched their brown, shining bodies at full length 
 upon the marble steps and went to sleep. 
 
 "Now," he said, looking at Betty with narrowing eyes, 
 "now, what can I do for you ?" 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote," said Betty, the tension she had been 
 under during the past half hour raising her voice to 
 such a pitch that it was almost a cry, "I have come to 
 you in my despair, and I am throwing myself upon your 
 mercy. Richard has been very ill, and unless I can take 
 him away to the mountains, there is no hope that he 
 will live." . 
 
 Betty had half expected Earlcote to ask sharply, "And 
 what concern is that of mine ?" She had braced herself 
 for that, and was prepared to beg Earlcote eloquently to 
 give her his help. Instead, a complete change in Earl- 
 cote's manner took place. The malevolent smile with 
 which he had regarded her left his face. When he 
 spoke it was with a gentleness such as she had never 
 seen him manifest before. So guileless was she in spite 
 of her manifold experiences of the last months, that no 
 suspicion of double dealing or insincerity occurred to 
 her.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 885 
 
 "I am sorry," he said. 'Tell me all about it." 
 
 "I have told you all that counts." 
 
 "What ailed him?" 
 
 "Typhoid-pneumonia." 
 
 "And now you want to take him to the mountains. 
 How am I to serve you?" 
 
 "I hardly dare tell you what I came to ask of you." 
 
 "You will have to. How otherwise am I to know 
 what you wish me to do?" 
 
 Betty took the five mutilated one thousand dollar bills 
 from her purse and laid them on the table one by one. 
 Speaking earnestly, she said : 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote, you have the other pieces the pieces 
 which, if added to these, make these bits of paper worth 
 five thousand dollars." 
 
 Earlcote had lowered his eyes. 
 
 "What follows?" he asked. 
 
 "Five thousand dollars is a large sum of money,"' 
 Betty said. "To me it seems a small fortune, and rich 
 as you are, that sum must be of some consequence ta 
 you." 
 
 "Of so little consequence, Miss Betty, that I confess 
 I had entirely forgotten the five mutilated bills." 
 
 Betty felt herself cruelly checkmated. Did Earlcote 
 wish to indicate to her gracefully that her voice no longer 
 seemed the desirable toy he had once thought it? Her 
 desperate frame of mind gave her the courage and faith 
 we attain only under supreme pressure. She believed 
 that she must have power to move Earlcote to com- 
 passion. 
 
 "You remember them now, don't you?" she asked 
 after a pause. 
 
 Earlcote smiled wanly. 
 
 "Now that I see them I can hardly help but re- 
 member."
 
 386 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote, I want to return these mutilated bills 
 to you so that, by piecing them together, you regain 
 five thousand dollars. And I ask, beg this of you. Will 
 you loan me one tenth of the sum thus restored to you 
 for the period say of one year? Every cent will be 
 repaid you." 
 
 "Do I understand that you make the return of the 
 half-bills dependent upon this loan?" 
 
 Earlcote's voice cut like a razor. It jarred every 
 nerve in Betty's body, but she held herself in hand and 
 replied with as much humility as she could muster : 
 
 "Certainly not. The half-bills are rightfully yours. 
 As you will remember, I wished to return them to you 
 long ago. I am returning them now, irrespective of 
 whether or not you will loan me the five hundred for 
 which I am asking you." 
 
 For the first time during that strange interview Earl- 
 cote dropped his eyes. His face wore an inscrutable 
 smile. He replied, his metallic voice as nearly expres- 
 sionless as such a vehicle of discord could be : 
 
 "But, of course, you hope that I will loan you the 
 money. You are very, very anxious for it aren't you ?" 
 
 Betty's heart gave a great jump of joy. Earlcote's 
 attitude seemed propitious. With the optimism of youth, 
 which develops every desirable possibility into a proba- 
 bility, and that into a certainty, with no other grounds 
 for so doing than its own desire, she believed that she 
 had all but attained her end, and that it needed merely 
 a bit of impassioned pleading on her part, to melt Earl- 
 cote into acquiescence. 
 
 "Anxious is hardly the word," she said. "Richard is 
 everything to me, as you know. His life is dearer to me 
 than my own. If you will help me, Mr. Earlcote, I will 
 be everlastingly grateful to you."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 887 
 
 "Yon have no one else to turn to, I suppose," he said, 
 not unkindly, as Betty thought. 
 
 "Every other friend to whom I might apply is out 
 of town." There was a pause. Earlcote still sat with 
 lowered eyes, and suddenly, by some subtle means of 
 apprehension, some mysterious undercurrent of thought 
 transference, perhaps, Betty felt that the pause was 
 ominous. A cold breath of wind seemed to pass over 
 her heart. She felt chilled to the marrow. And at 
 last Earlcote lifted his eyes to her face and squarely met 
 her gaze. 
 
 "Miss Garside," he said coldly, "the five thousand 
 dollars are yours on one condition." 
 
 "I had hoped you would loan me the comparatively 
 small sum I ask for without any condition except that 
 of repayment." 
 
 "Five thousand, or five hundred, or fifty thousand * 
 it makes little difference to me," Earlcote said calmly, 
 "so I get what I want in return." 
 
 "And that is " 
 
 "Your voice, and " 
 
 "And ?" A hideous fear clutched at Betty's heart. 
 
 Would he dare renew the preposterous proposition which 
 he had made her first of all, the day he had handed her 
 the bills? 
 
 "I desire to marry you." 
 
 The glory of the day was obliterated for Betty. For 
 a moment she seemed to have gone blind. Then every- 
 thing flashed back vividly into acute distinctness the 
 marble pavilion, the torrid heat without, the hideous 
 creature who sat opposite her, smiling malignantly, and 
 who had just calmly told her that he wished to marry 
 her. 
 
 "Why do you wish to marry me?" she stammered;
 
 888 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 then, as he laughed, her cheeks crimsoned. "You do not 
 love me," she said. 
 
 "You are right," he said brutally. "I do not love 
 you. I do not love you in the least." 
 
 Betty drew back. She experienced the sensation of 
 having a snail crawl over her bare skin of having that 
 loathsome snail inform her that she not himself, was 
 the undesirable party. 
 
 "Then why?" she asked, speaking in a thick voice. 
 
 Earlcote leaned forward. His green cat's eyes stabbed 
 like rapiers. "I do not feel called upon to give my 
 reasons," he said. "I desire to make you my wife. 
 That is all that concerns you. You may take my offer, 
 or leave it, as you choose." 
 
 Betty sat in horrified silence, staring at Earlcote as 
 he had before stared at her. Before the undreamed-of 
 ghastly reality all her previous fears of what he might 
 exact shrank into a Lilliputian limbo of oblivion. She 
 told herself that this thing could not actually be; that 
 he was merely amusing himself a little at her expense. 
 
 "You cannot possibly mean that," she said. 
 
 "I most emphatically do mean it," he replied. 
 
 "But last autumn you offered me five thousand for 
 for my voice alone. Now I only ask you for five hun- 
 dred. You cannot expect to make the bargain as hard 
 for me as all that?" 
 
 . "One expects to make a bargain as advantageous for 
 oneself as possible." 
 
 "But what you suggest is unfair, frightfully unfair to 
 me. Oh! It's impossible!" 
 
 "If it is impossible, well and good go elsewhere for 
 the money." 
 
 "I have told you I have no one else to turn to !" 
 
 "Exactly, it was very foolish of you to give me that 
 itiformation. You see, you gave yourself away."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 389 
 
 Betty said, in pained amazement: 
 
 "But you asked me, and I answered." 
 
 "Exactly. I repeat, it was very, very simple of you 
 to answer that question of mine. I really did not expect 
 that you would answer it. It was like taking pennies 
 from a child. You realize, don't you, that you threw 
 your cards down on the table for me to see?" 
 
 "Do you mean that if you hadn't known I had no one 
 else to go to you might have been satisfied with my 
 voice alone?'' 
 
 "Precisely." Stone crashing on stone, iron clanging 
 upon iron, could not have been more harsh than that 
 one word, as pronounced by Earlcote. 
 
 Betty became indignant. 
 
 "You cannot be as cruel as all that! It's fiendish!" 
 she cried. 
 
 Earlcote laughed. A gargoyle laughing! Betty 
 clenched her hands. Before that laugh of derision, 
 caution, prudence, self-repression went to the wall. 
 
 "I hate you," she gasped. "I hate you ! I hate you I 
 Marry you! I would let myself be trampled to death 
 by wild horses or be burned at the stake before I would 
 marry you !" 
 
 "Unfortunately, being burned at the stake or being 
 trampled to death by wild horses will not bring you 
 the money you need. Also, allow me to point out to 
 you how inconsistent you are!" Earlcote's voice had 
 assumed its gentle, silvery tone it was no longer akin 
 to iron but to well-attuned chimes floating over a snow- 
 bound Christmas landscape. "You malign me in one 
 breath and in the next try to flatter me, in the most 
 childish way, into relinquishing my obvious advantage. 
 You tell me I am a fiend " 
 
 "No, no, I didn't say that!" Reason was returning 
 to Betty now that her blind fury had spent itself.
 
 390 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Not to-day, perhaps but my memory is long, al- 
 though I had forgotten the trifling sum of five thousand 
 dollars which I had tied up on a gamble upon your 
 voice." 
 
 Betty's anger was running through her veins in a 
 quick torrent of flame. This iteration on Earlcote's part 
 of the negligible esteem in which he held the sum of 
 which a paltry one-tenth stood to her as the equivalent 
 of Richard's life was little short of diabolical. She did 
 not trust herself to speak. 
 
 "You not merely called me a fiend," Earlcote con- 
 tinued, "which, being a token of impotent rage on your 
 part I might have construed as a compliment, but you 
 told me that you despised me that I am bad and evil, 
 that I am utterly contemptible; you took no pains to 
 hide the fact how repulsive I am to you physically. 
 And now you come here softly and pleasantly and ex- 
 pect me to act the part of an amiable humanitarian who 
 expects nothing in return for a good deed but the con- 
 sciousness of good performed. You are, as I have said, 
 very inconsistent. If I am bad and evil, as you say, and 
 I do not quarrel with you for calling me that, then surely 
 I am strictly within my right in acting selfishly and 
 evilly now." 
 
 Betty became intensely white. 
 
 "I should not have said unkind things to you," she 
 said. "I regret having done so." 
 
 "Of course you regret having done so now because 
 you realize they are a stumbling block in the way of 
 your getting from me the trifling sum of five hundred 
 dollars." 
 
 "Mr. Earlcote," Betty begged, swallowing both pride 
 and repugnance, "I apologize to you for anything I 
 have said in the past, and I implore you, if you have a
 
 "HOW BADLY YOU NEED THO8E TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS" SAID EARLCOTE. p. 391
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 391 
 
 grain of mercy in your composition, not to play with 
 me as you are doing." 
 
 "I am not playing with you. I have told you the 
 condition on which you can have the five hundred or the 
 five thousand. The conditions are the same for either 
 sum, and they are irrevocable." 
 
 Betty gave a heart-broken sob. 
 
 "Loan me two hundred for two months," she said. 
 Her brain was thinking with unwonted rapidity. Within 
 two months Mr. Reynolds would be back in New York, 
 or she would have heard from Madame Hudrazzini, and 
 from one or the other she would be able to obtain what 
 money she needed. "It is all I ask. I will even promise 
 to become your pupil. Surely for two hundred dollars 
 you cannot ask more than that?" 
 
 "How very badly you need those two hundred 
 dollars," said Earlcote. "And because you need them 
 so badly, I do ask more. I adhere to my condition." 
 
 Betty grew hot and cold in quick succession. She 
 was beginning to comprehend the indomitable, inflexible 
 mercilessness of this man. Yet, though she compre- 
 hended, she did not realize it. She possessed in pre- 
 eminent degree the peculiar form of idealism which, all 
 evidence to the contrary, believes in the innate good- 
 ness of all of God's creatures. Her hatred for Earlcote 
 she had always held to reflect upon herself, rather than 
 on him. Surely it needed merely adroit pleading on 
 her part to quicken into active sympathy the latent good 
 in him. But she was at a loss as to the words and method 
 to choose in softening him, and the physical repugnance 
 of him made it difficult for her to plead felicitously. 
 
 "I do not even understand why you still wish to teach 
 me to sing," Betty said. "The last time we met you 
 told me that, after all, you did not consider my voice 
 worth your while."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "It is and it isn't," snapped Earlcote. "I have ex- 
 plained fully to you its desirability and its undesirability. 
 It is a perfect musical instrument, but there is no soul 
 back of it because of your emotional deficiency. That 
 is why I desire to marry you. I will arouse the element 
 which you lack, and it will become fused with your voice, 
 making you, after I have trained your voice, the greatest 
 dramatic soprano of the twentieth century. Now you 
 have the situation in a nut-shell. Now, too, you will 
 understand that I cannot be moved one jot or tittle from 
 the stand I have taken." 
 
 Betty looked at Earlcote in fascinated distress. She 
 felt as if a net were closing about her encasing and 
 enfolding and enmeshing her, and any word spoken by 
 herself might be the ultimate thread to bind fast and 
 close the last aperture of that net. She felt limp and 
 sick and helpless. 
 
 "Do you agree?" Earlcote asked, as Betty continued 
 to sit in immovable silence. 
 
 "I will never amount to anything if I am forced to 
 marry you," Betty said slowly. "Since it is only for 
 the sake of my voice that you wish to marry me, you 
 must realize that I will be able to do better work if I 
 am allowed to marry the man I love." 
 
 "The man you love!" Earlcote spoke with contempt 
 indescribable, his voice grating like steel on an iron file. 
 "What is the use of rehashing all that? Richard Pryce 
 has your romantic love, but he has been unable to awaken 
 the woman in you. I am not such a fool as to suppose 
 that I could ever win your love, but I repeat what I 
 told you a month ago. Your hatred for me has an ele- 
 ment which your love for Richard Pryce lacks, it is sur- 
 charged with sex. By and by you will begin to com- 
 prehend many things and your voice will assume a new 
 quality, and you will sing heavens and earth, how you
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 393 
 
 will sing! And mine, mine will be the glory of the 
 achievement! Now, do you understand?" 
 
 Earlcote stretched forth his gloved hands. His entire 
 being seemed galvanized into a vitality which Betty had 
 never seen in him before. 
 
 "My God," he said, "do you dimly comprehend what 
 this golden chance means to me, who have been con- 
 demned for five horrible years to musical inactivity? 
 Do you realize what that matchless voice of yours 
 means to me? No, no, I will have you, body and soul, 
 to fashion and mould, to make and to develop as I 
 please ! No more endless days of enervating listlessness, 
 but the world of music to reconquer, the great, magnifi- 
 cent, difficult battle to fight all over again, knowing that 
 I, with your voice as my instrument, will win out a 
 second time as I won out before!" 
 
 Terror swooped down upon Betty before this tor- 
 rential outpouring of passion. In Earlcote's eyes burned 
 the fire of invincible purpose which propels all fanatics 
 for all souls dominated by only one overmastering pas- 
 sion are fanatics of a sort, whether they be delicate 
 dreamers akin to Handel, surreptitiously practicing his 
 scales in a garret in his childhood to evade the persecu- 
 tions of a commercially-minded father, or to the multi- 
 fold soul of Islam, burning and pillaging under duress 
 of its bigotry. 
 
 Betty recognized the futility of opposing her will 
 against this man's. Beside him she was a pigmy, but 
 something of his ruthless iron spirit seemed to enter 
 into her. She nerved herself for a supreme effort. She 
 knew it was useless to beg, and yet she begged, pleaded, 
 entreated and implored with an impassioned poignancy 
 which until then had been alien to her. Here was a 
 lew Betty, indeed. Until now she had allowed common- 
 sense to prevail. Heretofore she would never have at-
 
 394 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 tempted the impossible. Now, even as she begged and 
 supplicated, she knew that her endeavors were fore- 
 doomed to failure. And yet, knowing that she must fail, 
 with a persistence that held the element of grandeur, she 
 continued to implore his clemency. Her solicitations 
 ended always in the same phrase: 
 
 "You cannot be so cruel for such a small sum it is 
 like asking my soul in return." 
 
 "I do ask it in return although the phrase is usually 
 used in quite a different sense." 
 
 "If it were a larger sum?" 
 
 "The larger sum! I have told you you can have as 
 much as you ask. Larger or smaller, the money is 
 nothing to me." 
 
 Betty fingered the mutilated bills still lying on the 
 table between them. Earlcote suddenly took a small 
 envelope from his wallet and showed her that it con- 
 tained the companion half-bills. 
 
 He laid the envelope on the table, and then, pulling 
 out his cigarette case, placed a cigarette in his mouth. 
 He struck a match, but instead of applying it to the 
 cigarette, he lighted one of the half-bills which Betty 
 had placed on the table, and with that burning half bill 
 he lighted another, and so on until the fifth had burned 
 to a crisp. With this finally he lighted his cigarette. 
 
 "Now," he said, "do you understand of how little value 
 money is to me?" 
 
 The sensations which Betty experienced were those of 
 a starving man or woman who sees a rich man deliber- 
 ately destroy bread. 
 
 She said in a low voice which had the effect of soft- 
 ness: 
 
 "Murder has been done for lesser provocations. If 
 I could, if I knew how, I think I would murder you 
 now."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 395 
 
 "The poison is working," said Earlcote. "You will 
 leave me now in high dudgeon. To-morrow morning 
 you will come back and signify your willingness to take 
 my name and the five thousand. Five, or ten, it will be 
 for you to say which. Stanley Earlcote will not haggle 
 about money with the woman he marries." 
 
 Betty rose and pulled on her long gloves. 
 
 "After this assuredly I will not marry you," she said. 
 "Even if Richard is to die in consequence. But he will 
 not die." 
 
 She expected Earlcote to ask for an interpretation of 
 the last statement. She imagined he would become 
 alarmed; that he would fear that after all she had 
 resources at her command of which she had said nothing. 
 But her poor little desperate move was wasted on the 
 astute Earlcote. 
 
 "No," he said, "Richard Pryce will not die. You will 
 save him by doing as I wish." 
 
 "I will save him by doing as someone else wishes," 
 said Betty. "I was not quite accurate when I told you 
 that I had no one else to turn to. I have an offer of 
 the necessary funds from someone else." 
 
 "Nevertheless, you will accept my offer not someone 
 else's." 
 
 "I would not be too certain." 
 
 "The other offer is even more distasteful to you than 
 mine, I am quite certain." 
 
 "Could anything approximate in distastefulness an 
 offer of marriage from you?" Betty asked tauntingly. 
 "I think not" 
 
 "I think 'yes.' Otherwise you would not have listened 
 to me for such a length of time. I am not a mind-reader, 
 but I can tell you why the offer is even more distasteful 
 to you because it involved dishonor. Am I not right 
 in my conclusion?"
 
 396 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Betty buttoned her glove with an assumption of in- 
 different calm. Earlcote's shrewdness filled her with 
 sudden volcanic rage. Her blood literally seemed to 
 boil; to seethe and foam in a chaotic violence that af- 
 fected her throat. And again the strange sensation of 
 being older, more experienced, herself yet not herself, 
 took possession of her. 
 
 "You are right," she said quietly, without looking at 
 Earlcote, "in that the other offer involves dishonor. 
 However " Betty looked up and squarely met Earl- 
 cote's eye, "however, even dishonor is less disagreeable 
 to me than marriage to you." 
 
 She looked Earlcote over with deliberate insolence. 
 She did not understand herself. She knew that her face 
 was expressive with sinister eloquence at the moment, 
 and she gloried that in some way which she herself 
 did not understand she was so thoroughly able to show 
 Earlcote how deep and abysmal was her contempt for 
 him. 
 
 Earlcote's eyes narrowed to tiny slits. 
 
 "If your voice were trained, with what expression you 
 would sing now ! Ah I am on the right track. I will 
 make a great singer of you yet." 
 
 Betty stepped from the pavilion into the path. 
 
 "Don't be too sure," she said. "It's a gamble, you 
 know." The feeling of being a mature woman and not 
 a mere girl grew stronger. Why oh why had she not 
 felt thus at the beginning of the interview? Why had 
 she been so stupidly, asininely frank with him? "If I 
 were you," she continued, "I wouldn't gamble. I would 
 take the certainty." 
 
 "The voice without the woman? No, thank you, I 
 prefer the gamble, because I am confident of the out- 
 come." 
 
 Betty gave him a look of indolent contempt.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART S97 
 
 "Will you call your man to guide me out of this 
 labyrinth?" she asked. 
 
 "He is waiting for you at the next lilac bush and the 
 car is waiting for you a little beyond." 
 
 "Thank you. Good-bye." Without vouchsafing him 
 another glance, she walked away.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Betty dismissed Earlcote's automobile at the same 
 place where it had picked her up the Fifty-ninth 
 Street entrance to the Bridge. She rode across to Fifth 
 Avenue in the trolley; then, filled with intolerable ner- 
 vousness, she left the trolley and stood irresolutely at 
 the junction of the two great thoroughfares. 
 
 In spite of the season, Fifth Avenue was not de- 
 serted. Vehicles of every description, automobiles and 
 touring cars, plied busily up and down. She remembered 
 how Dick and she had stood more than once at that 
 very point, trying to count how many autos passed in 
 a minute, and how they had amused themselves by 
 selecting the machine which each would choose to own, 
 if they were rich. She became angry, indignantly angry. 
 Surely in this big town, in this "little old New York," 
 noted for the big-hearted, whole-souled responsiveness 
 of its citizens, to every cry of distress proceeding from 
 no matter what remote corner of the earth, there was 
 more than one man or woman who would help her, if 
 they only knew of her trouble. But how to make her 
 distress known to those charitable souls? She could 
 neither proclaim her trouble from the house-tops nor 
 advertise it in the papers. The latter possibility fas- 
 cinated her, but after dallying with it she dismissed it 
 as untenable. A year in New York had taught her 
 that an advertisement soliciting financial assistance was 
 bound to bring one sort of offer only. 
 
 Rapidly she began walking down the Avenue. She 
 thought of Archie Telfer. She seemed to be adrift upon 
 
 398
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 399 
 
 a sea of fear and indecision. When, to alarm Earlcote, 
 she had threatened to accept Archie Telf er's dishonorable 
 offer, she had not for one moment intended accepting it. 
 Now, however, it seemed to her that of the two proposi- 
 tions Archie's was preposterous in a minor degree. A 
 new feeling stirred in her. While thought of marriage 
 to Earlcote made her sick and giddy with fear and 
 repugnance, she realized that if Archie, instead of Earl- 
 cote, had insisted on marriage, she would have regarded 
 the sacrifice required of her in a very different way. She 
 would have deplored the loss of Richard as her life- 
 companion, but she would have looked with comparative 
 equanimity upon the necessity of becoming Archie's 
 wife. 
 
 She was woman enough to realize that to marry one 
 man while she loved another must mean supreme 
 anguish. But there was in that anguish a certain nobility, 
 a certain austere joy of self-immolation. It was like 
 sinking in quicksand, earth and sky gradually receding 
 from the sight of the victim. To perish like that held 
 an element of grandeur. But there was no grandeur in 
 the thought of yielding herself to a man whom she de- 
 tested as cordially as she detested Earlcote. To marry 
 such a man as Earlcote was not to sink in quicksand 
 it was to sink in a quagmire, a morass. 
 
 In her perturbation she almost raced down the Avenue. 
 She was forced to stop for a minute at a crossing, and 
 she realized that she was within a block of Archie 
 Telf er's hotel. Why not go there? Why not end the 
 terrible mental struggle that was rending her? What 
 was an hour of shame and humiliation and dishonor com- 
 pared to a lifetime of ignoble bondage to Earlcote? She 
 told herself that she was mad, quite mad to hesitate. It 
 would, of course, ultimately be necessary to tell Richard 
 of her dishonor, but Richard, who had erred himself,
 
 400 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 would certainly not withhold his forgiveness, particularly 
 as her sin was to be the means of saving his life. Would 
 she not sin more deeply against Richard in marrying 
 Earlcote than in selling herself to Archie. She ran 
 down the street like one demented. She whispered to 
 herself that on no account must she think. Reproaches 
 and self-condemnation would inevitably follow in the 
 trail of her sin, but no matter how black and heinous 
 the pangs of remorse they, anything and everything, 
 were preferable to marriage to Earlcote. 
 - She walked into the lobby of Archie Telfer's hotel, 
 and asked the clerk to telephone her name to his room. 
 
 Utterly miserable and wretched, she sat down in a 
 huge leather arm chair and waited. Her heart beat 
 frantically. Disjointed events and episodes came back 
 to her. She remembered her mother's eloquent warn- 
 ing against that breach of morality which she was about 
 to commit. The circumstances, the details of that episode 
 stood out against the horizon of her memory with vivid 
 distinctness. But she hardened herself against that 
 warning coming to her from beyond the grave. She 
 acquitted herself with the plea that the circumstances of 
 her case were not merely exceptional but unique. 
 
 Her thoughts were brought to a violent standstill, as 
 a train is arrested by a collision, by the appearance of 
 Archie Telfer. Suave and smiling gravely, his hat in 
 his hand, his every gesture the very posture of his 
 figure, denoting submission and respect, he approached 
 her. 
 
 "I am glad to see you," he said. 
 
 The words, inoffensive in themselves, but tinctured 
 with a subtle meaning, sent the blood away from Betty's 
 heart. Suddenly, in a moment of inexpressible, flash- 
 light vividness a comprehension of the position in which 
 she was about to place herself, came upon her.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 401 
 
 She had come there for the express purpose of selling 
 herself to Archie Telfer for the sum of six hundred 
 dollars. She had come here to prostitute herself. She, 
 Betty Garside, had been about to do this thing ! 
 
 She rose and said abruptly : 
 
 "I came here thinking I could give you what you desire 
 in return for the money which was to save Richard's life. 
 I find I am mistaken. I am not willing to make the 
 exchange." 
 
 Turning, she walked quickly away and out of the 
 hotel. 
 
 She had acted from no moral conviction, no fear of 
 consequences, no acquiescence in her mother's warning. 
 She had been impelled not to dishonor herself merely 
 by the blind, unreasoning impulse which, for the average 
 woman of gentle birth and breeding, makes the giving 
 of herself to a man whose name she does not bear, not 
 so much a thing wicked and evil as low and inexpressibly 
 vulgar. 
 
 Outside of the hotel a feeling of supreme inertia, of 
 leaden fatigue came over her. She reflected dimly that 
 now there remained no means of saving Richard's life 
 save by marrying Earlcote. She was amazed at her 
 exceeding placidity with which she now regarded the 
 inevitable. 
 
 She was conscious no longer of aversion or hatred. 
 Only two facts remained clear-limned. She loved 
 Richard, and she was tired, desperately tired. It came 
 to her that on the morrow she would be a rich woman. 
 No need now to save pennies for Richard's sake. Her 
 fatigue became intensified to the point of physical and 
 nervous exhaustion. 
 
 She stepped into the street and accosted a policeman, 
 asking him to hail a taxicab for her. As she stepped into 
 it she experienced merely a sensation of physical relief;
 
 402 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 no fear of the next day; no fear of the ultimate fate 
 awaiting her. 
 
 Arriving at home, she ran directly to Dick's room. 
 
 "Dearest, did you have a very long day without me?" 
 
 As she knelt by his bedside, and felt his thin arm 
 about her, every thought and emotion save that of love 
 for him vanished. She remembered suddenly that she 
 must fabricate a plausible story to account for the money 
 she was to receive the next day. She smiled, she kissed 
 his cheek, she stroked his hand, and then, though he 
 protested vigorously, she kissed it. 
 
 "I wouldn't stay away from my Dicky a minute if I 
 didn't just have to," she said. "And I've got to be 
 away again to-morrow, too." 
 
 "All day?" Leaning on his elbow, he regarded her 
 wistfully. 
 
 "All morning I hope to be back earlier than to-day. 
 Why are you in bed, Dicky ? Are you feeling worse ?" 
 
 "I was tired, very tired," he said, speaking querulously 
 like a child, "that's because you were away from me." 
 
 "After to-morrow, darling, I will not be away from 
 you one single minute all day. It is all arranged. Hoff- 
 man is to give me a substantial sum in bulk as an advance 
 on your salary account. If agreeable to you, he will 
 make the check payable to me, so as to save you all 
 bother. Later, when you are well enough to attend to 
 financial details, I can transfer the bank account to you. 
 Is that satisfactory?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Dicky, "and if I continue to be this 
 lazy I shall be glad not to have to look after the money 
 end at all. Betty, dear, you little white saint isn't all 
 this too much for your fragile shoulders ?" 
 
 "No, dear." 
 
 "Where are you taking me to, Betty?" 
 
 "I think, dear we will have to settle ultimately to-day
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 403 
 
 where we are going that the place in the Adirondacks 
 is more suitable. Satisfied ?" 
 
 "Yes, Betty. But will my bank account stand it?" 
 
 "The board is a little high. However, I am getting 
 the money in bulk. He is loaning me Oh, what's the 
 use of bothering you with details? I have it all figured 
 out, dear, and we will pull through very nicely." 
 
 "Very well, dearest." 
 
 His utter indifference, the fatigue he manifested even 
 after a short unexciting talk, made her realize keenly 
 how necessary it was to get him away. Her heart con- 
 tracted with a sudden horrid fear as she looked at his 
 white face and emaciated arms. What if he were to die 
 after all?" 
 
 "Betty," he said suddenly with closed eyes, "have you 
 forgiven me entirely?" 
 
 "Yes, Dicky." 
 
 "If I had behaved myself I would not be quite as 
 ill as I am. I mean, I might have taken typhoid, but I 
 would have rallied much more quickly. Do you realize 
 that?" 
 
 "Fully, dearest." 
 
 "You are paying more heavily for my sin than I| 
 You paid in giving up your position at Telfer's to take 
 one not nearly as agreeable, and you are paying now in 
 giving up your present position. I am ashamed of my- 
 self, Betty, bitterly, horribly ashamed. It seems it is 
 always the woman who pays even the perfectly innocent 
 woman has got to pay in some way or another when her 
 lover or husband goes wrong. Betty, tell me again that 
 you forgive me." 
 
 Betty gathered Dick in her arms and laid her cheek 
 against his. Without speaking she held him thus for a 
 few minutes like a sick child. She was paying, indeed, 
 for his wrong, more heavily than he suspected and now
 
 404 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 a great wave of thankfulness swept over her for having 
 escaped Archie Telfer. Ultimately, on telling Richard 
 of that, she would have excoriated him. If he had 
 dragged her into dishonor through his own wrong-doing, 
 he would never, in all the world, have forgiven himself. 
 Remorse and self-reproaches could have corroded his 
 mind, poisoned his heart and vitiated his entire life. To 
 tell him of her marriage to Earlcote would, in truth, 
 be horrible enough. Her marriage to Earlcote well, 
 she was not married yet, and she still hoped, with the 
 supreme optimism of youth, that some miracle would 
 save her from the necessity of contracting such an 
 alliance. 
 
 Still holding Richard in her arms, she said, speaking 
 with sudden passionate intensity: 
 
 "Dick, darling, I have learned much these last weeks. 
 I know now, darling, that love must make a man and 
 woman one in spirit; that their unity must be so com- 
 plete if one falls, the other falls too; that if the man 
 errs, his fault is due quite as much to some short- 
 coming on the woman's part as to his own viciousness. 
 I do not quite comprehend this as yet, but I feel that 
 it must be so. Neither of us, since we love each other 
 truly and wholly, can commit an isolated act. All our 
 acts bind and tie us together. They are chains of iron 
 or velvet thongs, but velvet or iron, they hold firmly and 
 closely and indissolubly. You and I are one, Dicky; for 
 any fault of either, for the sin of one, the error in 
 judgment of the other, both must pay. Otherwise love 
 would not be love, and we twain would not be one."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The words which sprang so spontaneously to Betty's 
 lips amazed her quite as much as they amazed Richard. 
 She had every reason to be rilled with despair and with 
 fear. Yet the words which came unbidden from the 
 subconscious depths of her heart lulled and soothed her. 
 She slept soundly through the night, and when, the next 
 morning, she finally sat opposite Earlcote in the marble 
 pavilion, she felt a courage and resolution very different 
 from the shrinking horror of the day before. She had 
 a purpose to fulfill, and she would fulfill it. She was 
 about to promise herself in marriage to a man she 
 loathed, to tie herself to him in bodily and spiritual 
 bondage, and yet she felt that in some subtle way an 
 ineffable something, the quintessence of her soul and 
 therefore of herself she would reserve for Richard. Her 
 spirituality had never been more intense than at the 
 moment. And her brain was clear, clear as a bell. She 
 would not blunder to-day. Richard's life and well-being 
 and happiness were at stake. 
 
 "Well," she said, speaking in a casual voice, without 
 giving Earlcote a chance to sneer at her, "I have come 
 back as you prophesied." 
 
 "You are ready to marry me?" 
 
 "That was your condition. I also have a condition to 
 make. 
 
 "Name it." 
 
 "I am to have the right to dispose of the sum of ten 
 thousand dollars exactly as I wish." 
 
 405
 
 '406 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "That, of course, is understood. You realize, natur- 
 ally, that I am going to insist upon an immediate mar- 
 riage." 
 
 Betty's self-possession wavered, swayed to and fro 
 like a pendulum and righted itself. 
 
 "You mean to-day?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "But who is to take care of Richard? It is absolutely 
 necessary that I go away with him. Won't you give me 
 three months' time?" 
 
 "You shall have three months or a year's time if you 
 wish. Immediately after the ceremony, to-day, you are 
 at liberty to go and rejoin your Richard." 
 
 "Very well," Betty said quietly. "I agree. As to the 
 
 disposition of the ten thousand dollars " She paused, 
 
 looking keenly at Earlcote. He said impatiently: 
 
 "I have already agreed to your condition." 
 
 "You have. It remains for me to explain what I 
 wish done with the money." 
 
 "It is not necessary for you to tell me." 
 
 "Pardon me, it is." 
 
 "Eh?" Earlcote was startled out of himself by the 
 surprise communicated to him by the statement. 
 
 "I asked for the larger sum for this reason. The bulk 
 of it is to go into a scholarship for Richard to cover 
 a period of three or four years." 
 
 "A scholarship?" Earlcote rasped, emphasizing the 
 word by shooting out his hideous hands toward Betty. 
 He wore no gloves to-day and Betty recoiled". Earlcote 
 said viciously, as she shrank from him: 
 
 "You will have to get accustomed to them now." 
 
 "Yes," Betty assented feebly. "Meanwhile, let us 
 revert to the scholarship. You will have to let it come 
 to Richard in such a way that he does not suspect whence 
 the money emanated."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 407 
 
 "Nothing of the sort," Earlcote snarled. "What sort 
 of an easy mark do you take me for?" 
 
 "I can retort by putting the same question to you," 
 Betty responded coolly. "If the condition does not suit 
 you my other offer still is open for your acceptance 
 five hundred and my voice." 
 
 Earlcote brought his hand down upon the small round 
 table furiously. 
 
 "You wanted to save Richard Pryce's life," he 
 screamed. "I am furnishing the money for that. You 
 don't suppose I will help him in his career?" 
 
 "So I was right about your jealousy of him? And 
 you are not willing to have me dispose of the money as 
 I pleased?" 
 
 "I am perfectly willing that you should do so." 
 
 "No, you are not. You were foolish enough to offer 
 me a much larger sum of money than I asked for out 
 of mere braggadocio." She mimicked Earlcote's manner 
 of the day before, succeeding admirably. "It was very, 
 very simple of you to throw your cards upon the table 
 so recklessly, Mr. Earlcote." 
 
 He fumed with rage, and she continued : 
 
 "This is where I have the whip-hand, and you will 
 do as I say or I will call the deal off." 
 
 "I have no means at my command to make it appear 
 as if Richard Pryce were receiving a scholarship," Earl- 
 cote said at length. 
 
 "You will have to find means. You are connected in 
 various ways with half a dozen musical organizations. 
 You can create a scholarship in one of them for his 
 especial benefit. But I am not going to make the 
 tremendous sacrifice you exact of me merely for Richard 
 Pryce's life. What would life mean to him without my- 
 self and without a career. His art and myself are his two 
 great loves. If one or the other is eliminated from his
 
 408 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 life he will still be able to go on. But deprive him of 
 both, and life would mean for him a void, a burden, 
 a nothing. I would be doing him a poor service, indeed, 
 to save his life and rob it of everything that makes it 
 worth while." 
 
 Earlcote lowered his eyes. Usually he stared those 
 with whom he was talking out of countenance. Betty, 
 remembering that his craftiness of the day before 
 was accompanied by the same gesture, was on her 
 guard. 
 
 "The money is yours," Earlcote said. "Why this 
 nonsense about a fraudulent scholarship ? Why not hand 
 the money to him yourself?" 
 
 Betty replied with spirit: 
 
 "You know as well as I do why not. Richard would 
 not be the man he is; he would not be the man I love 
 if he would accept money for any purpose whatsoever 
 from the girl he loves procured at such a price. You 
 know this. You count on this in your calculations. But 
 I am not quite as foolish and simple as you think. 
 Either you agree to arrange matters so that Richard 
 Pryce believes the scholarship abroad comes to him 
 through some institution, or our deal is off. And one 
 word more, Mr. Earlcote. You yourself must not figure 
 in the transaction. You must take excellent care to 
 arrange things so that Richard will not suspect any- 
 thing of the truth. If he does, if he refuses the scholar- 
 ship in consequence, I although I will then be your 
 wife legally, will not be your pupil. This is final and 
 ultimate." 
 
 Earlcote looked at her in surprise. She had spoken 
 with the aplomb and assurance of a woman of the world. 
 
 "The woman in you is fast developing," he observed. 
 
 "It is," Betty said, coldly. "It is only now, when I am 
 being forced to give up Richard Pryce as my life-corn-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 409 
 
 panion that I am beginning to realize how dear he is 
 to me. That being so, I am going to give him every 
 chance of happiness in his art." 
 
 "You will have to decide," Betty went on, "whether 
 you prefer having my voice to train and looking forward 
 to Richard as a great pianist, or not having my voice 
 to train with the chances dead against Richard. For if 
 you refuse, Mr. Earlcote, I am going to take my chance 
 on pulling Richard through right here in the city. He 
 may not pull through, and then, again, he may. The 
 best physicians make mistakes." 
 
 Earlcote looked up quickly. 
 
 "I will do as you say," he said. "Do you wish a con- 
 tract, in writing?" 
 
 "It is not necessary. You live up to your part of the 
 agreement and I will live up to mine." 
 
 Earlcote said, gravely: "I trust you implicitly, Miss 
 Betty I know that you will live up to your part." 
 
 A little later Earlcote counted out ten thousand dollars 
 in crisp, new five-hundred-dollar bills to Betty, and after 
 that the minister, whom Earlcote had summoned, mar- 
 ried them. The expeditious, business-like dispatch with 
 which the momentous event was carried through turned 
 Betty's knees to jelly. While she listened to the mar- 
 riage service her heart seemed to gyrate throughout her 
 entire body. She gave the promise "to love, honor and 
 obey," with the liveliest emotions of hypocrisy and 
 shame. There fell an awkward pause. The moment had 
 come for the bridegroom to kiss the bride. Betty turned 
 agonized eyes upon Earlcote. He remained immovable 
 and silent, and the minister, after a momentary pause, 
 continued, concluding the ceremony. 
 
 After he was gone, Earlcote said : 
 
 "When am I to expect you ?" 
 
 "Three or four months hence, as soon as Richard is
 
 410 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 perfectly well, but not before the matter of the scholar- 
 ship has been arranged." 
 
 "There is nothing you wish to say to me before 
 you go ?" 
 
 Betty hesitated for a moment. 
 
 "I thank you," she said, nervously, "for the generosity 
 you showed in not kissing me in allowing me to return 
 to Richard with lips unsoiled by the touch of another's."
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 With the blandness of youth, Betty had failed to real- 
 ize what a strain she had entailed upon herself. She 
 looked forward to the day when she must surrender her- 
 self to Earlcote as the apex of her sacrifice, but she was 
 to perceive, in the weeks that followed the ceremony of 
 her marriage, that though the zenith of her suffering lay 
 in the dim, distant land of the future, there was an appre- 
 ciable quantity of suffering for her along the road she 
 was traveling to reach that future. 
 
 First of all, there was the immediate anxiety for 
 Richard himself. For many weeks after they reached 
 Mount Eerie, his life seemed to hang in the balance. 
 The slightest change in temperature, the tiniest digres- 
 sion from the diet prescribed for him, affected him 
 adversely. Betty had once expressed the wish to be 
 able to serve and wait on Richard, to do for him con- 
 stantly. The wish now was abundantly gratified. She 
 heated his milk for him, prepared the malted milk, took 
 the temperature for his bath, laid out his fresh linen 
 she even turned on the steam in his room in the morn- 
 ing before he got up to dress. 
 
 "To all intents you two might be married," said one 
 of the boarders, a woman of about forty. 
 
 "To all intents, except one," Betty responded, gravely. 
 "I hope you do not think ill of me for being a trifle 
 unconventional." 
 
 An elderly woman, with a sweet face framed by white 
 hair, who was knitting a pink and white afghan, dropped 
 her work and said: 
 
 411
 
 412 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "No, my dear, we do not. There is not a person in 
 the house but loves and respects you for the self-sacrific- 
 ing devotion with which you are nursing Richard Pryce." 
 
 Betty clasped her arms across her bosom and broke 
 into the swift eloquence with which she was gifted only 
 when deeply moved. 
 
 "There is no self-sacrifice attached to it," she said. 
 "If it were not selfish, wicked, even, I could wish for 
 nothing better than to have him dependent upon me 
 always. I am happiest when I am doing something for 
 him. I wish I had the right to go to the kitchen and 
 cook his soup. Oh, you will laugh at me, of course, but 
 there are mornings when I resent having running water 
 in the house. I would like to have to go to the well, on 
 a cold winter morning, and draw bucket after bucket of 
 water and carry the buckets up three flights of stairs, 
 one by one, and then heat them for his bath not to 
 prove that I love him, but just for the sake of doing for 
 him." 
 
 "Oh, my dear," interposed the woman of forty, "that 
 task would be far too easy. There is a pond a half 
 mile away from the house. Why not go there on a 
 morning when mercury is fifty below, and chop a hole 
 into the ice for the water. The hole would be caked 
 over by the time you got back to it for the second bucket, 
 and you could have the pleasure of chopping a new hole 
 into the ice for every new bucket." 
 
 "I suppose you do think me awfully silly," said Betty. 
 
 "I, for one, think you are a darling, even if you are a 
 sentimental little goose," said a bride of three months. 
 "Catch me slaving for my husband, if he were to fall 
 sick, the way you are doing for your sweetheart. Be- 
 lieve me. Nothing doing." 
 
 But the sweet old lady, with the halo of white hair, 
 protested.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 413 
 
 "Miss Betty's spirit is the right spirit. It is far too 
 much on the wane. The love that suffers all things and 
 endures all things, that courts hardships and glories in 
 overcoming impediments, is the true love. My dear, I 
 would like to kiss you." 
 
 Betty received the kiss of the old lady in silence, and 
 the good-natured laughter of the others was brought to 
 an end by the arrival of the house-wagon, lumbering up 
 the road with the mail-bag in full view. They all scur- 
 ried off for the morning's mail. Among the letters 
 handed to Betty was one addressed to Richard, in a hand 
 she did not know, and she carried it to his room, wonder- 
 ing from whom it might be. 
 
 "Dicky, are you asleep?" she whispered at the door. 
 
 He opened it, by way of reply, and invited her to 
 enter. Both Betty and he had asked to have cots sub- 
 stituted for beds in their rooms, as owing to his precari- 
 ous condition it was unavoidable that they enter each 
 other's rooms during the day. 
 
 "From whom is it?" Betty asked. 
 
 "Haven't the remotest idea." 
 
 He opened it, furrowed his brow, and then gave a 
 joyful exclamation of surprise. 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "What is it, Dick ? May I glance over your shoulder ?" 
 
 "Betty, darling sweetheart, it is from the secretary 
 of the Musical Progress League." He began reading 
 aloud, skipping words here and there, but giving the gist 
 of the letter, "having reconsidered our decision, believing 
 the verdict by a certain judge to have been not wholly 
 unbiased four years Europe allowance of two thou- 
 sand a year ! Betty . . ." 
 
 Betty's face indicated almost as much surprise as his. 
 She had expected to hear from Earlcote prior to his 
 taking action, and the particular way in which he had
 
 414 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 taken action, without as much as notifying her, amazed 
 her intensely. This especial way of doing the thing was 
 the very last solution of the problem she would have 
 expected. 
 
 The letter made her realize keenly that the pact be- 
 tween herself and Earlcote was in full force, and she 
 experienced a sensation of nausea. Some day, no matter 
 how remote that day now seemed unless death merci- 
 fully snatched her away, she must surrender herself to 
 Earlcote. She was innocent, but she was not as ignorant 
 as she had once been, and more than once her imagina- 
 tion had dwelt upon possibilities, in her future relations 
 with Earlcote, too hideous to be contemplated with any 
 sensation but that of acute horror. 
 
 "Betty, you do not seem a bit happy." 
 
 "I am very happy for you, Dick." 
 
 "That sounds as if you and I had different interests. 
 Two thousand a year ! Oh, Betty, I'll be a great artist 
 some day, after all. I'll " he spoke so fast that he 
 stumbled over his words and his sentences became tele- 
 scoped into intelligibility. While he spoke he ran up 
 and down the room, rumpling his fingers through his 
 hair. It was the first time since his illness that he had 
 done this particular thing. He was intensely agitated 
 with joy. "Betty, Betty why do you seem so indiffer- 
 ent, so sad, almost? You have been so sweet with me 
 all along." 
 
 He came and placed his hands on her shoulders, as if 
 to swing her about. She resisted gently. She realized 
 that her face was an index of her feelings, and that she 
 must put it in order before he caught sight of it. The 
 thought came to her to let him see her face ; to arouse his 
 suspicion by continuing silent and sad. Then if he 
 suspected if he arrived at the truth, she would, thanks 
 to the one clause of her agreement, be able to crawl out
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 415 
 
 of her pact with Earlcote. But her sense of justice and 
 probity told her how dishonest such a course would be. 
 Moreover, Richard was not yet quite well; she dared 
 not excite him, and because of this, and because Earlcote 
 was playing fair, she felt that on no account would she 
 be more base than he. 
 
 When she faced Richard at last, she had her face 
 under control. 
 
 "I am happier for you, Dick, than I can say." 
 
 "You have a queer way of showing it," he grumbled, 
 somewhat disgruntled. 
 
 "I am a little selfish, dearest. I would love to have 
 you to myself always. This splendid good fortune will 
 take you from my side." 
 
 "Nothing of the sort! Two thousand a year is a small 
 fortune. We'll get married as soon as we get back to 
 New York. Of course, dear, for the present, for years 
 to come, marriage must mean that you take my name 
 only. You trust me as to that, don't you? You know 
 that you are sacred to me, don't you, Betty?" 
 
 "Yes, dear, I know." 
 
 "Then say you will marry me. Darling, it will be 
 good, so good, to know that, after all, my talent will 
 secure you ease and comfort." 
 
 The element of grim humor in the situation did not 
 escape Betty! But the grimness was decidedly more 
 apparent than the humor. She said, evasively : 
 
 "Don't let us plan for the future, dear. Let's enjoy 
 the present. We were so happy, weren't we, dear?" 
 
 "Happy? I should say I am happy!" The exquisite 
 egotism of the man nature in combination with the art- 
 ist soul made possible perfect indifference to the low 
 spirits of the girl he loved and who loved him so devot- 
 edly. Betty saw it with a pang. For the first time a 
 doubt came to her as to the measure of his love for her.
 
 416 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Similarly situated, would he hare made a sacrifice ap- 
 proximating in cruelty the one she had made for him? 
 
 "Betty, Betty, I am so happy. Where is my music? 
 That tinpanny piano downstairs is a little out of tune. 
 But I will perish unless I give expression to my happi- 
 ness. As Schumann said to his Clara, 'I should like to 
 sing myself to death, like a nightingale.' " 
 
 "I am afraid you will sing yourself to death, indeed, if 
 you go to the piano now," said Betty. His condition of 
 febrile excitement seriously alarmed her. "Your nerves 
 are jumping. Come, let us take a long walk to quiet 
 them." 
 
 "Nerves! I'll go insane unless I hear music, good 
 music, at once." 
 
 "I'll sing for you. Will that do?" 
 
 "Betty, you are certainly perfect." He kissed her, 
 then resumed tramping the floor. "Your voice will soothe 
 me. I confess, I am a little jerky now." 
 
 "What shall I sing, Dicky?" 
 
 The simple offer to sing involved heroism on her part, 
 for because of her bargain with Earlcote, she fairly 
 loathed her voice these days. 
 
 "Sing Schumann's 'Im wunderschoenen Monat Mai.' " 
 
 "Very well, come and sit down in the Morris-chair." 
 
 "I cannot sit still. I am too nervous." 
 
 Betty insisted. She arranged the chair for him, and 
 persuaded him to sit down by pretending that she was 
 unable to sing unless she felt his hand in hers. Her ruse 
 succeeded. He sat down, leaned back and closed his 
 eyes. She drew the shade down; he protested; she de- 
 clared the light hurt her eyes ; he acquiesced. Then, tak- 
 ing his hand in hers, she began singing. She sang the 
 song he had asked for, and another and another, and fin- 
 ally she felt his fingers relax in hers. He had fallen 
 asleep.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 417 
 
 She stopped singing and sat, regarding him. A pro- 
 found sorrow swept over her. For the first time that 
 day she had thought him egotistical. She now ques- 
 tioned herself as to the sin he had committed. That, too, 
 in a way, had been due to egotism, and it was for that 
 egotism, that old sin of his that she was to suffer a life- 
 term of bondage. Because he had been selfish and weak 
 she had been forced to take upon herself the most ignoble 
 servitude imaginable for a woman of spirit marriage 
 to a man she loathed. For the first time she questioned 
 her wisdom. Was Richard worthy of the colossal sacri- 
 fice she was making for him? Then she wondered 
 whether this attitude on her part marked a new era 
 an epoch of beginning selfishness in her life. She ana- 
 lyzed herself and her emotions narrowly, realizing keenly, 
 as she did so, that she was no longer the na'ive, unso- 
 phisticated and charitable girl of a year ago. She now 
 completely forgave him his sin as such. She regretted 
 it not so much on moral grounds as for the concrete con- 
 sequences in which it involved herself. She herself 
 was doing wrong, for she was lying to him, and the fact 
 that the deception she was practising on Richard was 
 based on unselfishness on her part made it no whit less 
 a deception. 
 
 Right or wrong, worth while or not worth while, she 
 loved him. She became intensely aware that, being 
 human, he as well as she had sharply defined limitations. 
 But she loved him. And suddenly it seemed to her that 
 the vista before her was not as hopeless as it had ap- 
 peared. Somewhere in the distance happiness beckoned. 
 Nothing could ultimately deprive Richard and herself 
 of that. She could not explain the feeling. She did not 
 attempt to dissect it. Intuitively she felt it was good for 
 her and that she must cling to it. 
 
 The enormous sadness that invaded her suddenly dis-
 
 418 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 solved itself in tears. But she was afraid to give away 
 to the luxury of weeping. She knew that she was so 
 wrought upon that her tears would come not as a sum- 
 mer shower but as a wintry tempest. A tempest of 
 tears would shake her, set to quivering the hand that 
 held his, and that quivering of her hand might wake 
 him. Therefore, she controlled her emotion and choked 
 back her tears. 
 
 Richard improved rapidly after that. The first week 
 in October brought the first cold weather, and the brisk, 
 cold air seemed to buoy up Richard to an almost normal 
 condition. Betty realized, with horror, that another five 
 or six weeks would restore him to health. She now tried 
 to retard his complete restoration to health. She did 
 not insist on his taking as many milk punches, nor so* 
 much of the calf's-foot jelly as before. She was not as 
 eager to keep him from long, fatiguing walks, or from 
 playing too long. She almost rejoiced when he seemed 
 less well, as happened occasionally. She was in the 
 anomalous condition of wishing him perfectly recovered, 
 but not quite well, for when anything ailed him she was 
 sick with fear of a serious relapse. Her emotions swung 
 to and fro, like a pendulum. 
 
 Betty practised daily self-repression in these weeks. 
 Every day brought her a step nearer the hour of her 
 surrender. Her nerves were at constant tension. She 
 thought of Marlow's Faustus, and that last moving, ter- 
 ror-filled speech, "Now, Faustus, thou hast scarce an 
 hour to live, and then thou shalt be damned perpetually." 
 She felt as if she had signed away herself to perpetual 
 damnation. Yet, with the sublime heroism of which 
 only women are capable, and which transcends the great- 
 est gallantry achieved by any soldier, the greatest feat of 
 daring performed by any sailor, she smiled and joked 
 and laughed and forced herself to appear happy.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 419 
 
 The weather was perfect. The house at which they 
 were boarding, was deserted by the younger, gayer ele- 
 ment by the beginning of November, and house and 
 grounds were so large that Richard and Betty seemed 
 to be in a little paradise all by themselves. 
 
 Richard's mood approached exaltation. Never, noli 
 during his early courtship, had he shown such ecstasy. 
 The sweet fever of convalescence, which painted all the 
 world rosy for him, conjoined with the promise of a 
 splendid future, aroused in him a rapturous fervor. 
 
 One afternoon, having played the twenty-four Pre- 
 ludes of Chopin, with Betty at his side, in tender and 
 poetic language, he invoked a vision of that monastery 
 in Majorca, where the master, on being denied shelter 
 by the inns and hostelries because of his disease, sought 
 refuge with George Sand and the faithful coterie of 
 friends who, adoring in him the master as well as the 
 kindred, though exalted spirit, had followed him to his 
 winter's exile. Situated on a promontory that overlooked 
 the sea; wind-swept, sea-battered, inhabited by hooting 
 owls, cawing crows and haunted by predatory eagles, 
 the deserted, gloomy, crumbling old monastery, which 
 was scarce fit to serve as a human abode, by the very 
 pitifulness of the estate to which it had fallen, stimulated 
 the mind of the master into the various moods perpetu- 
 ated in the preludes. 
 
 Richard likened the preludes to precious gems. Not 
 only is every mood, every emotion, every passion depicted 
 in them, but they possess a strange potency of visualiza- 
 tion. They invoke, by some subtle means, pictures at 
 once passionate and poignant, and the infinitesimal 
 shades which they reflect, from the peace inhabiting 
 deep autumnal hues russets and grays and browns of 
 the Fifth, to the somber passion of the Twentieth, from 
 the dainty swish of fairy wings and caroling of birds 
 of the Eighth and the majestic sweep of eagle wings in
 
 420 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 the Tenth, through countless gradations, allied and yet 
 diversified, similar and yet unlike, they have their equiva- 
 lents in the unbelievably minute differences in shades 
 which characterize the topaz, aquamarine and sapphire, 
 all of which are blue, and the hiddenite, chrysoberyl, 
 nephrite, jadeite and peridat, all of which are green. 
 
 Betty finally interrupted Richard's rhapsody. 
 
 "Let us take a walk before twilight," she suggested. 
 They stood at the window, which commanded a view of 
 barberry hedges showing a strawberry pink at a distance, 
 and serving as a background for an enormous bed of 
 pampas grass, the feathery tops of which swayed in the 
 wind, like the plumes of King Henry of Navarre. A 
 grove of spreading beech trees of enormous girth, stood 
 to one side, half of their sulphur-yellow leaves strewn 
 at their feet, the other half suspended against the western 
 sky, like tiny disks of translucent gold-leaf. 
 
 Richard did not wish to walk. He waved his hands 
 to indicate the landscape without. 
 
 "Next week," he said, "I will have to leave all this. 
 I will be well enough to return to New York." 
 
 Betty's heart failed her. He had made similar an- 
 nouncements half a dozen times before, when a return 
 to business was apparently warranted by his health. To- 
 day the announcement was justified. He was the picture 
 of health. 
 
 "You're not well enough, Dicky," she began, but he 
 interrupted her vehemently with: 
 
 "I am well enough, dearest, and you know I am." 
 
 "One week more, Dicky." 
 
 "Dearest, it isn't honest. Think, I have to tell Mr. Tel- 
 fer about this scholarship and to make arrangements 
 to repay him the amount of money Hoffman advanced 
 you on account of my salary. It is really only fair that 
 I get to New York as quickly as possible in order to
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 421 
 
 adjust matters. It's a matter of acting honorably, you 
 can see that." 
 
 Betty became alarmed. He had been so supremely 
 happy all day that it seemed an impossible task to topple 
 him down from the height of his bliss. She had braced 
 herself for the moment, but now that it had come the 
 blow fell in much the same way as a death which has 
 long been expected. It found Betty in an anticipatory 
 mood and yet unprepared. 
 
 She entreated Richard to remain one more week. 
 
 "For my sake, Dick. I feel as if my life depended on 
 it. It isn't dishonest or dishonorable. If I could only 
 convince you." 
 
 "You must allow me to judge." 
 
 "My feelings are more dependable in this than your 
 judgment." 
 
 "Feelings are never dependable." 
 
 Still she begged and he gainsaid. She clung to his 
 neck. In her terror of the revelation which she would 
 have to make, she unconsciously resorted to feminine 
 artifices such as she had never employed before. She 
 laid her cheek against his. She kissed him repeatedly 
 even his mouth; she brushed back his hair with her 
 hand; but his fine sense of duty made him adamantine. 
 
 Finally, to end the combat, he said : 
 
 "Betty, it's useless. Mr. Telfer returned to town three 
 days ago. I had no chance before then to write and 
 thank him for his more than kindness, and " 
 
 "You haven't written him, now, have you?" Betty 
 demanded, the blood chill in her veins. 
 
 "I have." 
 
 "Oh, Richard! And mailed the letter?" 
 
 "No, dear; it will go with te-night's mail." He mis- 
 understood her gesture of relief. 
 
 "You will not Have to mail it, Dick."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Betty, sweetheart," he was a little vexed, almost 
 cross, "don't start all over again." 
 
 "Dick, you haven't Mr. Telfer to thank at all." 
 
 It was out at last. She had said it not in the least as 
 she had pictured herself beginning her painful task, but 
 at least the beginning was made. She felt, as she looked 
 into his face, mirroring a look of polite surprise, as if 
 flames from a fiery furnace lapped between them. He 
 was calm now. Five minutes hence he would be raving 
 through the room like a madman, and it was reserved 
 for her to say the thing that would bring about the 
 transformation. 
 
 "What do you mean ?" he inquired. 
 
 "Mr. Telfer did not advance the money which we have 
 been spending during your convalesence." 
 
 Richard said, in a tone which was disproof personified : 
 
 "But you told me he did, Betty." 
 
 "I told you an untruth." 
 
 "You ! Nonsense. You are saying this to make 
 me hold back the letter." 
 
 "No, Dick, I am saying it because inevitably I will 
 have to tell you the truth." 
 
 He was still politely incredulous. 
 
 "Who else?" he asked. 
 
 "Dick, I was in desperate straits. The doctor told 
 me I would have to get you away in order to save your 
 life. I went to every one I could think of to pro- 
 cure a loan. Madame Hudrazzini was abroad the 
 Reynolds were on the Continent, Direktor Markheim and 
 Mr. Telfer were away on a long cruise. Then . . ." 
 
 She broke down under the intense, taut look of his 
 eyes which told her he was beginning to realize that her 
 story of Mr. Telfer's loan had been some sort of merciful 
 fiction. 
 
 "And then ?" he asked, quietly.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 423 
 
 "Then then I sold myself." 
 
 "You sold yourself! You sold yourself! Betty!" He 
 sprang toward her. "It's not true it cannot be true! 
 I will not believe it! No, no, NO!" He clenched his 
 hands, he beat his knuckles together and bit his lips 
 savagely. 
 
 "Not in that way, Dick !" 
 
 A sensation almost of peace came over her in her 
 gratitude that she had escaped Archie Telfer. 
 
 "I knew it was not so, Betty ! When a woman speaks 
 of selling herself, she means one thing only." 
 
 "Not always, Dick. A woman can sell herself in 
 marriage." 
 
 "In God's name," he begged, his face gray with fear, 
 "tell me quickly what you mean." 
 
 "I could have sold myself the other way, but I chose 
 to sell myself in marriage, rather than dishonor myself. 
 Say I did right, Dick !" 
 
 "That means," he groaned, "that my chance of happi- 
 ness is destroyed, utterly destroyed, forever." Tears ran 
 down his cheeks. He was completely unstrung. 
 
 Wretched as she was, Betty did not fail to note the 
 complexion of his wail. He thought of himself, not of 
 her, whose suffering was positive while his was merely 
 negative. Were all men, even he who, in her eyes, was 
 the best of men, so different from women? But, while 
 she criticized him, she remembered that she must be 
 careful of him. The nervous shock might otherwise 
 bring on serious consequences of some sort. 
 
 "You must not blame me, Dick," she said, gently. "I 
 consented to this marriage only after I had exhausted 
 every other plan." 
 
 He asked, with sudden fierceness : 
 
 "Whom did you consent to marry ? Archie Telfer ? I 
 thought he had married some one else."
 
 424 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Not Archie Telfer." 
 
 "Who, then?" 
 
 "Earlcote." 
 
 "What . . . ?" She had known, of course, that he would 
 fume and rage and bluster, but not in her wildest dreams 
 of anticipation had she expected such an outpouring, 
 such an upheaval as followed. A chaotic stream of fury 
 and disgust ran lava-like from his lips. And now, too, 
 he was thinking of her. 
 
 "It cannot be. You shall not sacrifice yourself. You 
 shall not marry that fiend." 
 
 "Dick I am married already." 
 
 "It can't be, it can't be!" In his face she read his 
 thoughts. She shivered a little as she realized how far 
 her education, guided by Earlcote, had progressed. 
 
 "I came away immediately after the ceremony, Dick! 
 He merely wanted to be sure of his legal right." 
 
 "Such a marriage is a farce it can be annulled." 
 
 "I do not see how it can be annulled. And even if it 
 could be I would not ask to have it annulled. It wouldn't 
 be fair, you know, would it?" 
 
 "Fair? Who thinks of being fair to that cheat, that 
 toad, that blot upon the fair face of the earth?" In his 
 wrath Richard became Shakespearian. The epithets he 
 heaped upon Earlcote would have done credit to the 
 imagination and vocabulary of a Paris fishwife. "I tell 
 you I will kill him before I would allow you to be held 
 to such an unholy bargain." 
 
 "But killing Earlcote wouldn't be honest, Dick. You 
 were so full of honesty talk when you thought Mr. Tel- 
 fer had helped us." 
 
 But Dick was at the moment not amenable to reason. 
 He continued to rave distractedly. A little later he 
 begged : 
 
 "Let us go away together, and say we are man and
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 425 
 
 wife. Let us go West somewhere where no one 
 knows us." 
 
 "Is it Richard who suggests this to me?" 
 
 "Oh, I know it's base of me, doubly base because of 
 my illness. But come away with me come away with 
 me only to escape him, as my sister, if not as my wife." 
 
 "No, Dick." 
 
 "But, Betty you cannot it's unthinkable let us kill 
 ourselves. Be good to me, be kind to me I shall go 
 insane . . ." 
 
 She hardened herself against his wail. 
 
 "Because we have been cheated, Dick, it does not fol- 
 low that we must turn into cheats ourselves." 
 
 "I cannot understand you, Betty. You, to whom the 
 idea of marriage was so distasteful it cannot be that 
 you have fallen in love with Earlcote ?" 
 
 "Dick, are you out of your mind ? I have pledged my 
 word what else is there to do?" 
 
 She was limp and weak with the fever which had 
 been running through her veins, and she spoke with 
 seeming diffidence. His wrath increased, towered, 
 burned into a frenzy. She became more and more diffi- 
 dent as he became more and more intense. A homicidal 
 mania possessed him. He wanted to kill Earlcote and 
 Betty and himself, and then, again, he declared that he 
 would kill Earlcote only. He vowed it was his duty to 
 do this. 
 
 "Any jury would acquit me," he cried, "if all the facts 
 of this infamous deal were to be made known. And 
 then there will be no impediment to our great happi- 
 ness." 
 
 "I promise you I will never marry you if you murder 
 Earlcote." 
 
 "Heavens and earth! To lose you, to lose you! 
 Surely, no man was every punished for his sin as cruelly
 
 426 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 as I am being punished." He raved on; he threw dis- 
 cretion to the winds. 
 
 Pale and trembling, Betty listened in silence to his out- 
 break. When Richard paused at last to draw breath, 
 she said, coldly: 
 
 "Earlcote does not love me." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 She explained briefly why he had insisted on marriage. 
 
 "And because he does not love me, Dick," she said, "I 
 entertain one little ray of hope the hope that he thinks 
 the terrific strain I have been under all these weeks 
 will bring out what it pleases him to call my 'latent 
 womanhood,' and that he will release me from marriage." 
 
 "That's very clever of you," said Dick, "but I do 
 not believe that he harbors any such eleemosynary 
 intentions." 
 
 "Dick he didn't kiss me at the ceremony." 
 
 "No ?" Dick's brow contracted. "May have been pure 
 devilishness to make you think the very thing you are 
 thinking. Betty if he insists on marriage to you I 
 won't kill him, since you say you will not marry me in 
 that event, but I will kill myself. I cannot go on living 
 knowing that you are the wife of another man, and that 
 man Earlcote." 
 
 "No, Dicky," she said, quietly, "you will not kill 
 yourself." 
 
 "I will, I will." He began tramping the floor, the slim, 
 eloquent fingers at work in his hair. "I will, I will." He 
 said it stubbornly, not excitedly. 
 
 Betty met him as he tramped to and fro, and gently 
 arrested his walk by placing her hands on his shoulders. 
 
 "No, Dick," she said, "you will not kill yourself, and 
 I will tell you why. You no longer own your own life, 
 dear, and therefore you have no right to throw it away. 
 .Your life belongs to me. I have paid a horrible price
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 427 
 
 for it the most cruel price any one can pay, and I 
 claim it as my own. Even if the scholarship had not 
 come to you, which, contrary to all expectations, makes 
 your career almost a certainty, I would expect you to 
 go on living. You know as well as I do, Dick, that love 
 of your art, now you have means to pursue it thoroughly, 
 will compensate you in some degree for loss of my- 
 self, or, at least, make loss of myself more tolerable." 
 
 "No, no," he cried, vigorously, but she realized that in 
 invoking the vision of a dazzling future she had obtained 
 the desired effect. She was focusing his thoughts upon 
 the good, not the ill of the future. 
 
 "But you did not know this chance would come to 
 me," he said, suddenly, "and you saved my life, never- 
 theless. To what end would you have expected me to 
 live? Wasn't it a little a wee little bit selfish of you, 
 Betty, to save me ?" 
 
 She spoke hurriedly, in a sort of exaltation. 
 
 "I think," she said, "that if I am sturdy enough to 
 accept my future, you would have been robust enough 
 to live yours. The fact that this wonderful opportunity 
 has come to you seems a sort of vindication of my belief 
 that in the end everything will come out right. Your 
 work will make your future easier, and I feel certain, I 
 cannot say why, that something will come into my life to 
 make mine easier also. We are both young. The hap- 
 piness we both long for may yet be in store for us. 
 
 "It is unthinkable that God should have put this great, 
 wonderful love into your heart and mine only to allow 
 it to remain unrequited. We may be separated from 
 each other for years, but, in the end, dearest, we will 
 be united. And I, for one, Dicky, love you so truly, 
 so dearly, that I am content to assume the burden of 
 years of heartache and homesickness for you, and of 
 actual suffering as well, in hopes and in belief that we
 
 428 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 may yet be happy and if I knew now that our happi- 
 ness were to be ever so brief, that ultimately it was des- 
 tined to last only a few months, a few weeks, a week, I 
 would yet be willing to endure all hardship and suffer- 
 ing that intervenes for the sake of my love for you. 
 And you must realize, Dicky, that I am bearing the 
 brunt of this. You, it is true, have the pain of losing 
 me. But in addition to losing you, the frightful anguish 
 is in store for me of a union with Earlcote." 
 
 Sobbing, she flung herself into his arms. 
 
 "Oh, Dicky," she sobbed, "promise me that you will 
 not rob me of this one ray of hope this last desperate 
 hope of some day being happy with you, by killing your- 
 self. Promise me ! Think, darling, I would have to go 
 on, nevertheless ; my part of the bargain would have to 
 be performed, and imagine what a horrible blank, what 
 an unspeakable desert my life is bound to be if I haven't 
 that last straw to cling to." 
 
 "Dearest," he put his arm about her and held her 
 close, "dearest, what a cad, what a brute I have been. 
 I promise, darling, I promise anything and everything 
 you ask." He pacified her with caresses, soothed her 
 with gentle kisses. 
 
 "And you'll do your level best, Dick, in your work? 
 If you are successful, dear, it will make my cross so 
 much easier to bear." 
 
 "I promise," he said solemnly. 
 
 Quiet and at peace at last, she lay in his arms. It 
 seemed to him that there was a certain abandon and sur- 
 render in her inertia which she had never manifested 
 before. His passion leapt into life anew. He wanted to 
 whisper in her ear and ask her whether at last she 
 loved him fully. But some quality of awe, a look of 
 divine innocence in her face, held him silent.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 "So you have come," Earlcote said. He received 
 Betty in a room which she had never been in before. 
 He was sitting in front of an open pine- wood fire which 
 tossed and writhed in fantastic shapes as it sent showers 
 of fiery rain chimneyward. It was at dusk when Betty 
 entered the room, and the wood-fire alone illuminated the 
 gaunt-looking, wainscoted apartment. Gigantic shadows, 
 lean and ghostly looking, flitted across the room. Deep 
 in its recesses, or in another apartment which opened 
 into this, crowded denser shadows clustering about old 
 mahogany which reared itself upward in magnificent 
 but twilight-masked shapes. 
 
 "So you have come," Earlcote repeated. "I did not 
 expect you before your year of grace was up." 
 
 Betty, upon conciliation bent, began : 
 
 "It was kind of you to give me a year of grace." 
 
 "Not kind at all," Earlcote interrupted her tartly. 
 "Why did you come before the year was up ?" 
 
 "Because I told you that I would come as soon as 
 Richard was well." 
 
 "Do you expect me to believe that?" 
 
 Betty bit her lip. She reminded herself that under 
 every circumstance she must keep a grip upon her 
 temper. 
 
 Earlcote continued, roughly: 
 
 "Shall I tell you why you come to me now. Because, 
 like most folks, if a disagreeable task is before you, you 
 prefer getting through with it to having it hang over 
 
 429
 
 380 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 your head. Conversely, I was willing to give you the 
 year of grace because it prolonged my pleasurable 
 anticipation." 
 
 Betty made an heroic effort not to show the alarm 
 that was agitating her. 
 
 "It is possible," she said, "that I was not absolutely 
 truthful. Perhaps I came so soon because I hoped that 
 you would be merciful." 
 
 "Merciful?" 
 
 "And annul our marriage." 
 
 "Haven't I explained to you why I married you?" 
 
 "Yes, and for precisely that reason I beg of you to 
 let me off. Surely, joy and happiness will be better de- 
 velopers of my voice than fear and unhappiness." 
 
 "Sincerity in thinking will be the best developer pos- 
 sible for your voice." Earlcote leaned forward and shot 
 out his hand at Betty as was his habit. She forced her- 
 self not to show a tremor as it lay near her, not a yard 
 away, illuminated by the blood-red glow of the fire into 
 a thing of hideous weirdness. "You are one of those 
 women whom pride and self-conceit keep sometimes 
 for the length of their entire life from being sincere 
 with themselves." 
 
 "What do you mean ?" In spite of her resolutions, de- 
 fiance crept into Betty's voice. 
 
 "Fear and unhappiness," Earlcote fairly hissed out 
 the words Betty had used. "What you meant was not 
 fear and unhappiness. It was terror and loathing. 
 But because you hope to mollify me you substituted 
 words intended to quicken my pity without causing me 
 annoyance. Well, am I right?" 
 
 "Yes," Betty said, quietly, "you are right. And surely, 
 if there is a grain of manliness in you, you must realize 
 that to force me to marry you with this feeling against 
 you is monstrous."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 431 
 
 An intolerable nervousness swept over Betty. To 
 quiet herself, she began walking up and down the long, 
 gloomy apartment. 
 
 "You will release me," she cried, "won't you? Oh, 
 1 am sure that the hourly torture in which I lived has 
 made a change in my voice. Hasn't it?" 
 
 "No, it has not." 
 
 "You have not heard me sing." 
 
 "I am hearing you talk entreat. No, no, my estimate 
 of you is right. One thing only, one thing can change 
 you. The consciousness of sinning." 
 
 "Sinning ?" Betty flared up at last. "Sinning ? I and 
 sin? Do you remember the day I vowed that I would 
 rather let Richard die than marry you? I went away 
 from here with the intention of selling myself you 
 understand rather than marry you, and at the last 
 moment, call it what you will education, instinct, moral- 
 ity or breeding made it impossible for me to commit 
 that particular sin." 
 
 "Nevertheless, I tell you that you are about to commit 
 a sin more grievous than the one you ran away from." 
 Earlcote's face, smirking and leering at her in the now 
 almost dark apartment, was hideous to see. "You will 
 realize what a deep-dyed sin it is to marry such as me 
 when you love such as Richard when I hold you in my 
 arms the first time." 
 
 "Don't! Don't!" Betty stretched out her hands in 
 supplication. 
 
 "That, Betty for you are my wife and therefore 
 henceforth we must be Betty and Stanley to each other > 
 that, Betty, is the greatest sin a woman can commit, 
 because it is a sin against nature, while the other, the 
 conventional sin, is a sin against society only. That, 
 also, you will comprehend by and by." 
 
 Betty held up her hands as if to shield herself against
 
 432 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 a physical onslaught. "Don't!" she cried, wildly. "Oh, 
 don't!" 
 
 "We grow through sinning," Earlcote continued, ruth- 
 lessly. "The sinless person, or he who thinks himself 
 sinless, stagnates, remains stationary, immature and un- 
 developed. It is through realizing our imperfections, 
 through realizing that sin is the common heritage from 
 which none is immune, that we expand and become 
 strong." 
 
 "I do not believe it," Betty cried. 
 
 Earlcote disregarded her feeble interpolation. He 
 continued : 
 
 "I gave you a chance to sin, to commit a sin of a kind, 
 a sin which, insignificant and small as compared to the 
 sin of being my wife, would, nevertheless, have achieved 
 the result I am anxious to obtain, since it would have 
 troubled your conscience." 
 
 The man's cold-blooded devilishness sent the blood 
 simmering to Betty's head. 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 "Would any mature woman ask that question ?" Earl- 
 cote laughed long and hideously. "I mean this. To what 
 purpose did I give you a year of grace ? I counted upon 
 the fact that when you told Richard Pryce of your mar- 
 riage to me he would beg you to go away with him. 
 Did he?" 
 
 "Yes," Betty faltered. 
 
 "But you didn't go. You refused. Why? Morality?" 
 
 "Honesty, common, every-day honesty," Betty said, 
 indignantly. "Apart from the immorality of such an 
 act, what would I have been but a common cheat if I 
 had broken my pact with you?" 
 
 "What is honesty but morality?" Earlcote rasped. 
 "It is one and the same thing. In Anglo-Saxon coun- 
 tries only is the word 'morality' used to denote one par-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 433 
 
 ticular brand of honesty. You see, you threw away the 
 golden chance I beneficently gave you of committing an 
 agreeable sin nothing remains for me but to force upon 
 you a disagreeable sin." 
 
 The man's deviltry was amazing. Betty sat mute and 
 helpless and filled with terror that verged on panic before 
 his laughter, which tripped on and on, till her nerves 
 seemed to crack like worn-out violin strings. Suddenly 
 her inertia dropped away. She became terribly, keenly 
 alive to the situation. She began to implore Earlcote 
 to be merciful. She used every possible and impossible 
 argument. She repeated herself; she dragged in irrele- 
 vant arguments ; she lost control of her nerves ; she fell 
 down on her knees before Earlcote; and to that abase- 
 ment she added the further humiliation contained in 
 frantic words and frenzied gestures such as only extreme 
 and supreme terror can wring from the human heart. 
 
 Finally, receiving no reply, she looked up and saw 
 Earlcote's eyes fastened upon her face in a sardonic 
 stare. Something in his look warned her against further 
 abasing herself. Haggard and pale, she staggered to 
 her feet and began brushing the dust from her skirt 
 where she had knelt. 
 
 "Well?" Earlcote inquired. "Do you submit to the 
 inevitable? Do you consent to be my wife in fact as 
 well as in name?" 
 
 "Apparently," Betty replied, coldly, "there is nothing 
 else to do." A sudden resolution flooded her veins. 
 Other women had endured and suffered. Women had 
 been burned alive at the stake. Women had been 
 drowned for witches. Women in all ages had endured 
 torture in every form and manner. She must not fall 
 below the example set by her sisters in suffering through- 
 out bygone ages. She must acquit herself decently and 
 with dignity.
 
 434> THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 With that thought uppermost in her mind, she walked 
 with outward composure, her head held high like any 
 queen's on her way to execution, into the dim apartment 
 beyond, toward which Earlcote pointed; and the huge, 
 canopied four-poster looming up out of the darkness 
 seemed to her terrified imagination a scaffold rather than 
 a bed.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Metropolitan Opera House, its forbidding pile 
 having lain fallow and in yellow desolation all summer, 
 blossomed out that October in its usual autumn dress of 
 delft-colored posters, on which appeared the notices of 
 the advance sales of seats for subscribers and the general 
 public. 
 
 Side by side were announcements of the first appear- 
 ances in New York of Betty Earlcote, as Isolde, and of 
 Richard Pryce, "The world's most intellectual pianist," 
 at the opening Sunday night concert. 
 
 Two men, both groomed to a finish, and marked by 
 the unmistakable air which distinguishes successful and 
 prosperous artists, stood studying the two neighboring 
 posters from different angles. Suddenly, shifting their 
 positions, their eyes met. 
 
 "Richard Pryce, as I live by bread !" 
 
 "How d'ye do, Archie !* 
 
 Richard, whom Betty had never told of Archie's per- 
 fidy, extended his hand more graciously than he would 
 have done of old. Time abrases certain impressions, 
 and Richard, arriving home after five years abroad, was 
 almost glad to see a familiar face. His graciousness, 
 moreover, was authoritative. Of the two, Richard was 
 now by far the more famous. Heralded by every critic 
 of reputation on the Continent and in England as the 
 pianist whose virtuosity and intelligence were bound to 
 make him eclipse all living pianists, his manner, though 
 unassuming and quiet, showed that calm, invincible, 
 
 435
 
 436 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 tranquil assurance worn only by men and women whose 
 position, social or artistic, is absolutely unassailable. 
 
 Richard's quick eye noted certain changes in the 
 Adonis of the stage, who, to combat the ravages of time 
 and fast living, was now forced to resort to painting 
 his face when on the street, like any demi-mondaine or 
 superannuated beauty. 
 
 "Four years at least since we've met," Archie com- 
 mented. He was secretly a little envious of Richard's 
 manner, proclaiming as it did the man who has out- 
 distanced all competitors in his own particular walk of 
 life. Archie Telfer, who had outdistanced others only 
 by the prowess of his personal beauty, was rapidly de- 
 clining from the zenith to the nadir of his reputation. 
 
 Richard corrected him. 
 
 "Five years, Archie. I've been abroad five years. 
 Think of it ! Studied for four years and have been con- 
 certizing one year." 
 
 "And now you will tour our savage Continent." 
 
 "Our savage Continent," Richard smiled, gravely, 
 "stands for shekels. The enlightened Continent from 
 which I have just come stands for fame. I've achieved 
 the one, and now I am coming home to gather in the 
 other." 
 
 "So even you have not wholly escaped the mercenary 
 taint," Archie mused. "In the olden days you were all 
 moonshine and romance." 
 
 "Not wholly nor is the mercenary taint very deep 
 now. But lack of money, Archie, caused a great grief 
 in my life, years ago and now that I have the earning 
 capacity, I am going to earn money all I can. Heaven 
 knows how and when I may use it." 
 
 "Heavens," said Archie, "that sounds quite tragic." 
 He pulled his still handsome face into a grave pattern. 
 "By the way, that was a curious ending to your
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 437 
 
 romance. How in all the world did little Betty Garside, 
 whom they now acclaim to be the world's greatest 
 Isolde, come to marry that beast of an Earlcote, after 
 being engaged to you for a year r" 
 
 "Are you sure her marriage marked the end of our 
 romance?" Richard asked gently. "I have never con- 
 sidered that it did. I have always considered her mar- 
 riage to Earlcote merely as an interlude. Life would 
 have been insupportable had I taken any other view of 
 the affair. I believe that our romance Betty's and 
 mine is yet to come." 
 
 "Not really? You interest me," Archie exclaimed. 
 "You know, my dear chap, I myself was a little smitten 
 with Betty Garside not very deeply, you understand, 
 but I paid her the homage which every man ought to 
 pay every pretty woman. I fell just a little in love with 
 her. By the by I cannot comprehend how she can play 
 'Carmen' ? And they say she is magnificent greater 
 than Calve." 
 
 "Why shouldn't she be? You heard her sing that 
 night at the Direktor's. Her voice was incomparable 
 even then. And now she has had the benefit of Earlcote's 
 training." 
 
 "I'm not speaking of her voice, Pryce. I'm speaking 
 of the part as a part. No singer can make a success of 
 'Carmen' unless she acts as magnificently as she sings. 
 And consider, Betty Garside, all snow and ice playing 
 'Carmen,' that 'she-rose out of hell,' as Swinburne called 
 her. Can you reconcile the two ?" 
 
 Richard shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "We will see and hear to-morrow evening," he said. 
 "They've changed the bill from 'Tristan and Isolde' to 
 'Carmen' on the opening night. Isolde follows two 
 nights later. I suppose you will be present at both 
 operas ?"
 
 438 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "You forget, I am less fortunate than yourself," 
 Archie replied. "I am playing Mark Antony in a revi- 
 val of 'Julius Caesar.' So I won't be able to be on hand 
 at the opera." 
 
 "I condole with you." 
 
 "But, as I work while you play and play while you 
 work, I will be able to hear you at Sunday night's con- 
 cert. I look forward to that with pleasure." 
 
 "So good of you to say so," said Richard, indifferently. 
 His face was wholly devoid of expression. 
 
 The two men parted. Richard crossed the wide lobby 
 of the opera house, and halted before an enormous frame 
 showing Betty as "Carmen" in every conceivable posture 
 and scene. To Archie, Richard had spoken with some- 
 thing like indifference of Betty as an artist; in reality, 
 he felt the most acute and poignant interest. He, too, 
 had his misgivings as to her ability to portray "Carmen." 
 His little Betty, so pure and white and innocent how 
 was she to play convincingly the part of the most infa- 
 mous of all operatic heroines? 
 
 The past seemed very real. Was Betty happy in her 
 success as an artist? Had she overcome her aversion 
 for Earlcote? Had she, perhaps, forgotten himself, 
 Richard? She had interdicted correspondence, and he 
 had had no direct news from her for years. It did not 
 seem possible that the famous Betty Earlcote should 
 waste any thought, any heartburnings on him. Then he 
 remembered that, in his way, he was quite as famous 
 as she in hers, and that it was possible that she was 
 entertaining like doubts of him. 
 
 But after hearing her in "Carmen" the next evening, 
 a terrible unrest and doubt came to him. A woman of 
 Betty's character and temperament a woman all pristine 
 purity and single-mindedness, who could give so vivid 
 and compelling a portrayal of a woman whose sinister
 
 439 
 
 motives and callous diablerie made her the exact anti- 
 thesis of herself, was indeed one of the world's greatest 
 prima donnas. A few nights later he heard her as 
 Isolde, heard her unmatchable and bell-like voice sing 
 with a crescendo of passion and abandon that made the 
 audience delirious with appreciative joy and terrified 
 him beyond measure. 
 
 Was this the same Betty he had known ? Was all that 
 passionate outpouring of love, that sweetly feminine sur- 
 render of herself merely histrionic art? He could not 
 believe it. Carmen had been a tour de force. Isolde, 
 however, must be a subtle reading of the feelings agitat- 
 ing her own heart, and, himself agitated with a profound 
 and searching jealousy, he began to cast about for the 
 causes and the personality that had worked this amazing 
 change in Betty. Was it Earlcote himself ? Was she in 
 love with her husband? 
 
 Richard went to his hotel that night in a state of 
 supreme wretchedness. Through the entire five years of 
 their separation he had never ceased to love her. No 
 other woman had stirred him, none had moved them. 
 Friends he had made among women, but Betty, alone 
 among women, seemed to him to possess the ineffable 
 charm which always brought to mind a flower; Betty, 
 alone among women, had appealed to his manhood. As 
 time went by, his desire sank somewhat into the back- 
 ground. But his love for her was all the more secure, 
 because purged. He thought of her almost as if she 
 were dead, once the detestable vision of imagining her 
 in Earlcote's arms became less obstreperous. But now, 
 having seen her in the glory of her mature womanhood, 
 the world at her feet, singing in a voice whose purity 
 was unapproachable, herself instinct with every emotion 
 of womanhood, his passion leapt to the fore again and 
 his jealousy of Earlcote assumed dimensions and a viril-
 
 440 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ity which beggared the proportions of his jealousy in 
 the past. 
 
 Richard spent a sleepless night. When morning came, 
 his nerves were frayed, jangling, raw things, and his 
 brain a soppy something, like a wet sponge, that lodged 
 in the rear of his head. It was the day of his opening 
 recital Saturday the day preceding the concert at the 
 opera house for which he was billed. He telephoned his 
 management that he would not be able to play that 
 afternoon, and went back to bed, harassed by the most 
 absurd fears, and when his excited manager succeeded 
 in forcing his way into Richard's room, he found Richard 
 in a state bordering on hysteria. 
 
 "Vot has habbened?" Herr Hengstler, being a South 
 German, rounded off the sharp corners of some dentals 
 and labials and gave a raw edge to others. 
 
 Richard said, violently: 
 
 "I cannot play." 
 
 "For vy?" 
 
 "Because I am sick. I heard Betty Garside sing last 
 night." 
 
 "Almost could I inver vrom zhat zhat you are seek 
 because you heard Betty Earlcote seeng," said Herr 
 Hengstler, mopping his dome-like pate with an enormous 
 linen handkerchief. 
 
 Richard raised himself on his elbow. 
 
 "You know," he said, "don't you, that she and I were 
 engaged to be married years ago ?" 
 
 "Booh! Vot apout zhat?" Herr Hengstler meant to 
 say "Pooh," but invariably produced the monosyllable 
 supposed to be used in frightening the timid. "Booh 
 divorced beoble hear each other seeng and blay and eet 
 does not make them seek." 
 
 "I'm sick," Richard continued, "because, compared to
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 441 
 
 her I am a miserable dummy, a ninny, a know-nothing. 
 I'll not play." 
 
 "Py heafen, you must and veel play!" shouted Herr 
 Hengstler, the perspiration, of which all traces had been 
 finally mopped away, breaking out afresh in great beads 
 upon his brow. "You must and veel ! Do you vant to 
 ruin me ? Zhink of zhe adverteesements, a dollar a line 
 haf I bayed for some, and zhe bress noteeces." 
 
 "I don't care a rap whether I ruin you or not," Richard 
 responded, amiably, "I am not going to ruin my reputa- 
 tion by playing when I know in advance that I am going 
 to be a dire, dismal failure." 
 
 "For vy ? You a vailure ? For vy ?" 
 
 "I worked all these years in hopes of having 
 Mrs. Earlcote hear me play some day," Richard contin- 
 ued, "and now I know, after hearing her sing, that she 
 won't bother to hear me at all. She's forgotten me." 
 
 "And pecause a girl vot you were engaged to half a 
 century ago isn't bining to deazh for you, you refuse 
 to blay ? You are grazy Nehmen Sie es mir nicht uebel, 
 you are grazy." 
 
 "Don't you dare say that to me again," Richard 
 shouted, sitting up in bed. "I know I would play la- 
 mentably this afternoon, my nerves are shattered by a 
 sleepless night, and I won't have her hear me play like 
 a fourth-rate automaton." 
 
 "Fun moment you say she ees not goming, fun moment 
 you say she ees," roared fat Herr Hengstler. "Vot eees 
 eet, zhen? You talk like an hysterical woman. Come, 
 pull yourself together, or you weel preak down at the 
 beeano zhis afternoon." 
 
 "What?" Richard vaulted out of bed and confronted 
 the amazed Hengstler, indignantly. "Did you ever know 
 me to break down? Do you think I lack self-control?
 
 442 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Oh, yes, I will play this afternoon. I will play, if only 
 to show you that I never break down. I'll be down with 
 brain fever to-morrow, or typhus, or something from the 
 diabolical strain you are subjecting me to you inhuman 
 threshing machine but I'll play, I'll play, I'll play!" 
 
 And, forthwith, Richard sat down at the piano, accou- 
 tered in only his pajamas, and began playing a rhapsody 
 by Liszt. 
 
 The astounded Hengstler, too astounded to mop away 
 the beads of perspiration that were purling down his fat 
 face, held up his hands in thanksgiving at the unexpected 
 turn events had taken and at the total lack of consistency 
 and self-control of all artists, European and American 
 alike, and silently made his way from the room, believ- 
 ing, like a wise man, that it is best to leave well enough 
 alone. 
 
 Richard played that afternoon in the concert hall as 
 he had never played before, but to him it seemed that he 
 was touching not keys of a piano but nerves as raw and 
 palpitating as his own. He endured torments while he 
 played but he played, bowing automatically between 
 numbers to acknowledge the enthusiastic and uproarious 
 applause. 
 
 When he had played his last number, he refused abso- 
 lutely to give an encore. Hengstler besought him, in 
 tears, not to merit the charge of being "stingy" upon 
 this, his first performance, but he was not to be moved. 
 He was, in fact, in a state of nervous collapse. He 
 threw a horseshoe of flowers at his valet who ventured 
 to hand him his muffler before he wanted it, and he 
 mortally offended a critic of one of the largest and most 
 substantial evening papers in the city by telling him that 
 the entire press of New York City was subsidized by 
 the billionaires and the opinion of not a single critic 
 was worth a pot of beans. Poor, fat, perspiring Heng-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 443 
 
 stler unwound yards of mispronounced eloquence to 
 pacify the irate critic. 
 
 Still plunged in unaccountable depression of spirits, 
 Richard then motored through the park, and when he 
 reached his hotel the clerk handed him a letter on very 
 thick, white notepaper, addressed to himself in Betty's 
 hand. And, lo ! suddenly the world was bathed in glory, 
 and even effete critics of a subsidized press seemed kith 
 and kin. Under an electric light suspended from a plush- 
 covered pillar he tore open the envelope and read its 
 contents eagerly. 
 
 "DICKY You have heard me sing- twice and didn't 
 show me the courtesy of calling to tell me what you 
 think of my voice. I am writing to ask you to call, 
 because, having heard you play only once, I want to tell 
 you what I think of your playing. BETTY. 
 
 "P.S. Call either to-night or to-morrow at six o'clock 
 sharp." 
 
 Richard rushed from the lobby like a madman, hailed 
 a taxi and, within a few minutes, found himself at the 
 door of Betty's apartment-house. The clock on Times 
 Square pointed to six o'clock as he followed the maid 
 through the hall into a small, old rose and gold reception- 
 room. 
 
 The room bore the imprint of a woman's personality, 
 but it was a personality which he did not know. A mass 
 of bibelots were displayed on a table in one corner of 
 the room, little porcelain shepherdesses, tea-cups, an 
 egg-shell vase, a Chinese head-dress profusely orna- 
 mented with seed-pearls and feathers of the king bird, 
 and a host of other obj'ets de vertu such as his Betty 
 would formerly have passed with a shrug of the shoul- 
 ders. A filmy lace handkerchief, which she had evidently 
 dropped, lay under the table. He picked it up, noted
 
 '444 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 that it was scented, though ever so faintly, with violets 
 and that her initials were embroidered above the point 
 lace edge, not once, but repeatedly, the individual let- 
 ters joining hands rather than interlacing, so as to form 
 an embroidered border above the point-lace edging. 
 Richard read the B. E. B. E. repeated endless-chain 
 fashion, over and over again, and it struck him as singu- 
 lar that the little Betty he had known, so artless and 
 simple in her tastes and shrinkingly unassuming, should 
 own a handkerchief such as this. 
 
 He sat down, with the handkerchief in his hand and 
 contemplated it gravely for a long time. That together 
 with her stationery, the sea-green, ermine-lined coat of 
 which he had a glimpse as the maid carried it through 
 the hall, all spoke of a Betty very different from the 
 Betty he had known. Her stage presence had dazed him, 
 her voice and beauty had intoxicated and inflamed him, 
 and now the little intimacies of toilet and taste of which 
 he was being vouchsafed a glimpse, frightened him. He 
 wished he had not come. He feared disillusionment and 
 chid himself for being disloyal for harboring the thought. 
 
 Suddenly he became aware that she had entered the 
 room. 
 
 He rose and looked at her, fear in his eyes, a multiple, 
 compound fear which he could not have anaylzed. There 
 was no fear in her eyes, only friendliness, the same 
 sweet friendliness as of old. Her figure remained un- 
 changed. It was as girlish and svelte as ever, but her 
 face showed the firm, strong lines of a woman who had 
 suffered much, and those lines, which in no way marred 
 her beauty but merely gave it strength and character, 
 touched him as deeply as her voice had touched him. 
 
 She smiled, stretched out both hands, and said: 
 
 "Aren't you going to tell me that you are glad to 
 see me?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 445 
 
 "Glad !" he echoed rather asininely. 
 
 "Glad yes, Dicky. And, Dicky, you disappointed me 
 horribly at your recital." 
 
 He flushed. 
 
 "Not as bad as that, I hope?" 
 
 "Dicky, Dicky don't you remember that you and I 
 agreed you would enter from the left side of the stage, 
 so that the audience would not perceive the slight Tower- 
 of-Pisa-like formation of your nose? And, after all, 
 you weakly followed time-honored tradition and came in 
 from the right side." 
 
 Richard laughed. Embroidered handkerchiefs and 
 bibelots to the contrary, this was the same old Betty he 
 had known and loved and still loved. 
 
 "Betty," he said, in a low, tender voice, "you are 
 adorable." 
 
 "I've been told so before," she laughed, "by yourself 
 And your playing, Dick your playing . . ." 
 
 "Say nothing, Betty," he implored. "I didn't want to 
 play. I was in no mood to play. I just knew you 
 would come, and I knew I would play abominably, and 
 I did." 
 
 "Abominably? Oh, Dick you played marvelously 
 marvelously." She stood facing him across a small 
 satin-wood table. -"Didn't you know, Dicky, honor 
 bright, that you played ravishingly ?" 
 
 "Really? You're not just saying it?" he asked 
 incredulously. 
 
 "No, Dicky. Other pianists play with their fingers, 
 but you play with your naked soul. What did George 
 Sand call Chopin Velvet Fingers ? I think, Dick, I will 
 call you Magic Soul. Oh, Dick your life was worth 
 saving, wasn't it?" 
 
 Her sweetness, her charm, so well remembered, yet 
 imbued with a new, indescribable something, sent the
 
 446 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 blood pulsing through his veins. He walked around the 
 table and stood beside her. 
 
 "Betty, Betty," he stammered, "let me kiss you. I'm 
 more madly in love with you than ever. Betty, Betty, all 
 these years I have lived with your image, yours only, in 
 my heart. Why did you send for me? Was it right to 
 let me come here, to ask me to come, if you and I are to 
 treat each other like mere friends? Betty, Betty, why 
 don't you answer me?" 
 
 She stood with lowered eyes, on her lips a sweet smile 
 the subtler inwardness of which evaded him. 
 
 "Betty, may I kiss you ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Betty it is not for me to question your denial, but 
 answer me one question truthfully. Surely, a woman 
 who sings Isolde as you do, cannot take offense at 
 love?" 
 
 "That is quite true." 
 
 Still the strange smile hovered upon her lips. His 
 arm seemed to be raised by an occult power, and he 
 crooked it into a circle to steal it about her waist, and 
 then the same strange power seemed to push his face 
 forward, forward, to bring his lips near and nearer and 
 still nearer to hers. 
 
 "Betty," he whispered, "Betty." 
 
 "No, Dicky, you mustn't kiss me. I am another man's 
 wife. Not on his account but on yours and mine. We 
 must not smirch our beautiful love, Dick." 
 
 His arm fell limply to his side. 
 
 "Oh, Betty," he cried, "I cannot give you up again. 
 I won't. I gave you up once but you're mine, you were 
 meant to be mine by Nature, Heaven and Providence." 
 
 She had contrived to place the table between them 
 again. 
 
 "I am glad," she said, quietly, "that you love me still,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 447 
 
 for though what you speak of is passion and not love, I 
 know now that the two are indissoluble. I am glad, 
 Dick, more glad than I can say that you still feel as 
 you do." 
 
 "Did you ever doubt me, Betty?" 
 
 "I have a confession to make, Dick. Yes, I did doubt 
 you. I doubted your love, for five years is a long, long 
 time for a man to remain true to a recollection. And a 
 long time ago, Dick, I doubted you in another way 
 although that, too, had to do with your love, and that 
 old doubt of long ago has plagued and tormented me all 
 these years." 
 
 "What was the doubt?" he asked, in surprise. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "I cannot tell you not to-day. Later on perhaps 
 to-day there are too many other things, things of vital 
 importance to us both, to tell you." 
 
 "What things?" 
 
 "Let us sit down." She led the way to two chairs, 
 placed as if for an eternal tete-a-tete, and in following 
 her, he noticed the graceful undulations of her body, as 
 she walked. This, too, was a new attribute, and he 
 wondered anew that the present Betty could be so like 
 and so unlike the Betty of the past. It did not occur to 
 him that a similar change had taken place in himself, 
 that his exterior, too, was the conventional, polished, 
 machine-made exterior of the man of the world and 
 fashion. 
 
 He seated himself beside her and waited for her to 
 begin, leaning forward so that, if she chose, she might 
 lower her voice in speaking. 
 
 "Dick," she said, "I will have to touch on some un- 
 pleasant topics. You will forgive me for that when we 
 get to the end of our talk. Of course, you remember 
 'Kitty Florence, alias Katarina della Florenzia ?"
 
 448 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Did he remember the cause of his troubles and 
 tribulations ? 
 
 "I saw her last week. She called on me." 
 
 "You should not have received her." 
 
 "I declined to at first. She persevered, and finally 
 sent in a note couched in terms so urgent and insistent 
 that I consented to see her. And I am very glad that I 
 did. What do you think she told me?" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Dick you never attempted to justify yourself for 
 your wrongdoing, and in those days I was such an ignor- 
 ant, innocent little simpleton that I did not guess that 
 a man, quite as much as a woman, can be led astray. I 
 might have judged you less harshly had I known. Why 
 didn't you tell me?" 
 
 "How could I ? I couldn't, you know, without offend- 
 ing your modesty and reticence." 
 
 "Well, Dick, Kitty told me the other day that she 
 had been paid by Earlcote to bring about your downfall." 
 
 "Incredible!" Dick sprang to his feet and began 
 prancing up and down, fingers at work in his hair, with 
 the gesture she recalled so well. "What was the object?" 
 
 Betty repeated the story Kitty had told her. 
 
 "She received in return the Kasi-Nook, Earlcote's 
 famous black opal. You remember the verse: 
 
 Honestly come by, 
 
 Fortune and joy, 
 And health it will buy. . 
 Dishonestly come by, 
 
 Health, wealth and joy, 
 It will surely destroy. 
 
 Well, Dick, her health is gone, and so are her looks. 
 She is merely a shadow of the Kitty you knew. I'll not 
 go into harrowing details. Of course, loss of beauty
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 449 
 
 involved loss of livelihood. She was reduced to such a 
 state that she was forced to sell her jewels, among them 
 being the Kasi-Nook. And now, Dick, a strange thing 
 happened. The other gems she sold without difficulty, 
 though at a loss. But the Kasi-Nook no jeweler she 
 went to, and she tells me she visited a baker's dozen, 
 was willing to purchase. The reason they gave for their 
 unwillingness was the bad reputation of the jewel. Then 
 she remembered that Earlcote had warned her when she 
 insisted on this particular gem as the purchase price 
 for the infamy he wished her to perpetrate. Well, Dicky, 
 to phrase it vulgarly, she lost her nerve. We stage-folks, 
 they say, are all, more or less, superstitious. At any 
 rate, though it sounds like bally nonsense, Kitty became 
 so terrified that she thought the curse might still be 
 lifted from her if she came and made a clean breast of 
 the whole, miserable, sordid story to me." 
 
 Betty drew a small, shagreen bag from her bodice. 
 This she opened and took from it a gem which she held 
 out to Dick on the palm of her right hand. 
 
 "Behold," she said, laughing, "the hoodoo gem of 
 Australia the great black opal, the Kasi-Nook." 
 
 "Gad, but it is beautiful." Richard surveyed it with 
 intense interest. "You weren't foolish enough to allow 
 her to get rid of it to you were you?" he queried 
 abruptly. 
 
 Betty laughed. 
 
 "Yes, Dicky, since I am on the stage, I, too, have 
 grown superstitious, and you must remember, dear, that 
 the Kasi-Nook confers happiness on them that come by 
 it honestly. Now poor Kitty gave it to me in hopes of 
 getting rid of the curse so that I have come by it not 
 merely honestly, but have done a good deed in 
 acquiring it." 
 
 Dick asked in amazement,
 
 450 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "You don't really believe in this tommyrot, do you?" 
 
 But she would not be serious with him. She jested, 
 
 she cajoled, she teased, she pretended now to one thing 
 
 and now to another. As he listened to her his eyes grew 
 
 very tender. 
 
 "Dearest," he murmured, "you are adorable." 
 "Hush, you must not call me that just yet." 
 "Just yet?" 
 
 "Did you really think, Dicky, that I asked you to come 
 and see me just to torment you, just to let you see, you 
 know, what you had lost? For I am worth while now, 
 am I not, Dicky ?" She retreated from both his eyes and 
 hands. "And that, Dicky, is where the black opal comes 
 in. It is going to bring good luck to you and me. And 
 don't you see, Dicky, the very fact that it has given 
 me this belief means that the battle is half won?" 
 
 "I do not know what battle you are speaking of, Betty, 
 but I do know that there is soon going to be an almighty 
 scrap between that that between your husband and 
 myself." 
 
 "No, Dicky, you must leave it to me to deal with him." 
 "Absolutely not, Betty. Henceforth I am going to 
 take matters into my hands. I am not the weak, roman- 
 tic, half-sick boy I was five years ago." He was tramping 
 the room, his fingers busy with his heavy crop of hair, 
 and to all intents he looked not a whit older or more 
 manly than at the immature period of which he spoke so 
 disparagingly. Betty repressed a smile. Intuitively she 
 felt that she had changed more than he. She believed 
 herself to be more mature in her outlook upon life and 
 more competent to deal with its problems. And the old 
 doubt of years ago, the doubt of which she had spoken 
 to him, the doubt which had harassed her so cruelly all 
 these years, the doubt that he would not make nearly as 
 great a sacrifice for her as she had made for him sud-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 451 
 
 denly sprang- luminously to the front, confronting her 
 with glaring insolence, like an impudent, staring electric 
 sign. She repressed her agitation; she told herself that 
 such was the law the world over the woman's will- 
 ingness to bear and suffer so much more for the man she 
 loves than the man would be willing to endure and suffer 
 for her. Then she reproached herself for these thoughts, 
 accused herself of being morbid because she dwelt so 
 much on woman's superior moral caliber; probably her 
 own sex took a sort of unhealthy pleasure in suffering 
 of this altruistic sort. 
 
 "Yes, sir," Dick continued, emphatically, without inter- 
 rupting his walk through the small room, "yes, sir, I am 
 going to deal with that husband of yours." 
 
 "How?" Betty took no pains to hide her amusement. 
 
 "How?" Dick echoed. "I don't know, but never you 
 fear, I shall deal with him, deal with him summarily, 
 that's all." 
 
 "Listen to me, Dicky boy. You have no weapon at 
 your command to fight Earlcote. I have. And I am 
 going to use it." 
 
 "It's not to be thought of, Betty. I have got to see 
 him." 
 
 "What a firecracker it is just like you always were. 
 Come and sit down beside me, like a good little boy, 
 and listen to the plan I have incubated." 
 
 Obediently he came and sat down beside her. She 
 resumed : 
 
 "When Earlcote forced his cruel bargain upon me, I 
 believed that he had played fair; that is, I believed that 
 he was merely taking advantage of circumstances which 
 chance had thrown in his way. In consequence I dealt 
 fairly with him. Now, however, since I know that he 
 was instrumental in shaping the circumstances which 
 made me his prey, I consider myself free of the agree-
 
 452 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ment, and to-night I shall tell him so. Remember, 
 Dicky boy, it is the singer, not the woman he cares for 
 so he has always declared, and because of this peculiar 
 condition I will be able to apply the thumb-screws to 
 him. Unless he agrees to a divorce, I am going to refuse 
 to sing. I will break my contract with the opera you 
 know what that means? In addition to heavy loss of 
 money, in the way of indemnity, for which Earlcote 
 will not care, there will be a terrific scandal; wild, fan- 
 tastic rumors concerning my voice will be spread, which, 
 in turn, will reflect upon my teacher himself. He is 
 almost as proud of my voice which his monumental 
 egotism makes him describe as an instrument upon which 
 his musicianship enables him to play as he used to be 
 of his piano playing. That is my bludgeon, and I am 
 going to use it. I do not, as a rule, approve of divorces, 
 but I feel that the entire history of my marriage is such 
 a monstrous outrage that I am justified in securing a 
 divorce and in remarrying." 
 
 "But if you fail, Betty?" 
 
 "I won't fail," she said, doggedly. 
 
 "But if you do, Betty, will you come away with me ?" 
 
 "It is unthinkable that I should fail." 
 
 "You are very sure !" 
 
 "I know Earlcote only too well. There will be a ter- 
 rific scene, and then I will carry the day." 
 
 "I do not believe he will consent to give you your 
 freedom," said Dick. "I do not see, Betty, how a man 
 who is your husband, whose wife you have been and are, 
 can be willing to give you up. Betty, Betty, you are a 
 superbly beautiful woman and, oh, God! The thought 
 that you have been that man's wife drives me mad ! 
 And, more cruel still and more harassing is the thought 
 that there must have been times when you did not hate 
 him."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 453 
 
 "Dick," Betty said very quietly, "it will calm you to 
 know that for over a year and a half we have not lived 
 as man and wife." 
 
 He did not speak, but looked at her with unbelieving 
 eyes. 
 
 "Dick," she said, gently, "why do you torture yourself 
 with thoughts like these in your mind at present? It is 
 unworthy of you. You cast a terrible slur on me a mo- 
 ment ago. If, loving you, I had ever thought with love 
 of another man, though that man was my husband, would 
 I be myself?" 
 
 "But, Betty, I do not understand you are such a 
 womanly woman now if Earlcote did not work the 
 change in you, who did ?" 
 
 "I cannot answer that question at the present moment. 
 It involves too many things touching yourself, too many 
 things, dear, that I cannot say to you while I bear an- 
 other man's name." 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 "Yes, Dicky boy. As soon as I have Earlcote's consent 
 to a divorce you shall know all and everything, and he 
 will set me free. He will have to. The glory of having 
 cultivated my voice will outweigh the pleasure of label- 
 ling me as his possession, particularly as I am willing to 
 agree to retain his name on the operatic stage and to 
 continue my career. Ah, Dicky, Dicky, if I had my way, 
 I would never sing in public the greatest happiness in 
 the world would come to me as your wife, your wife, 
 Dick, in every sense of the word your wife your wife, 
 do you understand?" 
 
 "Betty !" He was intensely touched. "If you feel that 
 way, sweetheart, why, instead of making a new bargain 
 with that arch-fiend why, I say, not come away with 
 me ? Think of George Eliot and Lewes ! Did any one 
 blame them ? A few Pharisees, perhaps. You would be
 
 454 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 my wife and I your husband as surely as if we were 
 thrice married." 
 
 "No, dear. Much as I dislike the limelight, and I 
 dislike it exceedingly, much more than you, who love it, 
 can guess I feel that I must choose what I consider the 
 only honorable way the only way, I mean, that would 
 not bring dishonor to you and me." 
 
 "Your dislike of the stage seems very odd to me," 
 Dick said. "I love it, Betty, I love it dearly. I have 
 often wondered whether I was sufficiently grateful to 
 you for saving my life, by sacrificing yourself. Oh, 
 Betty, the glorious, divine feeling of knowing, at a 
 recital, that you sway thousands of human souls, that 
 thousands of human hearts beat in unison with yours. 
 In spite of my continual heart-hunger for you, dearest, 
 this last year has been a year of superlative satisfaction." 
 
 "I am happy to know you are happy, Dicky." 
 
 "I did not speak of happiness, dearest. I spoke of 
 satisfaction." 
 
 "Are happiness and satisfaction not the same?" 
 
 "No, satisfaction is joy in doing, happiness is joy in 
 living, and wonderful as is the emotion of feeling that 
 you impose your mood be it merry, or sad, or contem- 
 plative upon myriads of human beings, the joy, dear, 
 of having the right to hold you in my arms as my wife 
 would far transcend the other joy." 
 
 "I am afraid, Dicky boy, that you hitched on the last 
 phrase only out of gallantry." 
 
 "Betty ! I have often wondered whether I would have 
 been grateful to you at all for saving my life if I had 
 not received the scholarship which made possible my 
 artistic career. You see, I am telling you this because 
 I do not want you to think me better than I am. But 
 circumstances played into your hands. And I am grate- 
 ful, extremely grateful, to you."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 455 
 
 For one moment she was sorely tempted to tell him the 
 truth concerning the scholarship. She hated to have a 
 lie, even so virtuous and kindly a one, between herself, 
 and him. Then her delicacy prevailed, and she remained 
 silent. Womanly fineness of feeling told her that while 
 he, the man, could gratefully accept his life at her hands, 
 and acknowledge that indebtedness, it would be humiliat- 
 ing for him to be told after all these years that he owed 
 her his career as well. 
 
 "Do not use the word 'grateful,' Dicky it is such a 
 horrid, horrid word. I want only your love, dearest. 
 Oh, surely, there is no sin in calling you that now. Dear- 
 est, dearest . . ." She extended her hands to him, and 
 reverently he lifted them to his lips. The light that 
 shone from her face was undimmed by any mundane 
 emotion. Richard felt the sanctity of the moment, and 
 his passion sank back into smouldering embers before 
 the overwhelming force of this woman's beauty of soul. 
 "Dearest, dearest," she repeated, "I have earned you, I 
 am going to have you, and you must never speak of 
 gratitude again. To do so is to load our love down in 
 chains." 
 
 "But, Betty, what if he refuses a divorce?" 
 
 "How you hark back to that, Dick! I tell you it is 
 unthinkable. He will not refuse." 
 
 "Then, if you are so certain, you ought not to be 
 afraid to promise me what I ask of you in case of 
 failure." 
 
 Betty's face became very grave. He continued : 
 
 "You hesitate that means that you are not as cer- 
 tain, as you are trying to make yourself believe, of the 
 outcome of your ultimatum." 
 
 "From your viewpoint, Dicky, I can see the justice 
 of what you say." 
 
 "Dearest, I shall go mad unless you give me some
 
 456 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 assurance. Promise, in case Earlcote refuses, that you 
 will come away with me and openly proclaim that you 
 consider yourself my wife. Surely, you must realize 
 that you are justified in doing this that in taking this 
 step, your conduct is sincere, courageous, noble and in 
 no way base or low." 
 
 Arms crossed over her bosom, Betty sat in silence for 
 a moment. Then she answered him: 
 
 "You are right. I am justified in taking such a step. 
 My marriage to Earlcote, while he insisted upon its 
 being a marriage, was a ghastly mockery, an infernal 
 farce. Cruel? I have promised to tell you all some 
 day." 
 
 "Then you promise?" 
 
 "What was I to promise you?" she asked, her eyes 
 fixed blindly upon a distant point, reminiscently seeing 
 past horrors. 
 
 "Betty!" he cried in anguish. What must she have 
 suffered for his sake to ask so wandering a question. 
 "Betty, you were to promise me that if Earlcote will not 
 consent to a divorce . . ." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I remember. Very well, Dicky, I promise. 
 You are right. If we are forced to take this step we are 
 not doing an immoral thing. We are strictly within 
 our right." 
 
 "Betty," his arm crept about her, "Betty, sweetheart, 
 may I kiss you now ?" 
 
 "No, Dicky. Would clandestine kisses not make us 
 lose our self-respect, our respect for each other? Very 
 soon I will be yours, yours to hold, to kiss, to enfold 
 yours, entirely yours. But married or unmarried, there 
 must be nothing surreptitious in our love, nothing to 
 vulgarize it, to debase it from a noble passion into a low 
 intrigue." 
 
 "Betty, Betty, you are splitting hairs." He could
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 457 
 
 scarcely contain himself. "Be merciful, darling; be 
 merciful, sweetheart, and let me kiss you." 
 
 His lips became audacious. Gently placing her fingers 
 upon his lips, she pushed him away. 
 
 "Dicky," she said, tenderly, "I have borne and endured 
 many things for you. When I tell you what I have 
 promised to tell you, tell you all that language can in 
 decency convey, after I have stripped my heart naked 
 for you to see, and if I had the power to use lurid and 
 inflammatory diction in painting the misery I endured 
 for years, then ultimately you might have a dim notion, 
 a vague idea of the purgatory I lived through. All that 
 I endured for you, but there is one thing I could not 
 endure to be disappointed in you. I could not bear, 
 Dicky, to think that you would be willing to do a dis- 
 honorable thing." 
 
 He drew back as if stung by a whip. 
 
 "Dishonorable?" he asked. "That's a strong word to 
 use, isn't it, for my desire for a kiss?" 
 
 She did not reply, she merely looked at him, and 
 looking into her clear, clean eyes, the full import of her 
 words and the justice of them dawned slowly upon him. 
 But while he looked, the old persistent doubt began to 
 harass and torment her again. Would he have done as 
 much for her as she for him? 
 
 She shook off the harrowing suspicion. She loved 
 him, and there is unwisdom in doubting where we love. 
 
 "Dicky," she said, "to-morrow evening I sing in "La 
 Tosca." After the performance I will see Earlcote. He 
 conies in from Earlcote Manor whenever I sing, and 
 after the performance he dines or sups with me and 
 criticizes my interpretation." 
 
 Richard snorted out the one word, "Presumption." 
 
 "Not at all, Dicky. His criticisms are always profit- 
 able. At any rate, after supper, I will broach the sub-
 
 458 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ject. We will have a lively night. I will send you a note 
 the next morning as to the immediate outcome. Of the 
 ultimate outcome I have no doubt." 
 
 "Why not write me as soon as you know ? A night of 
 suspense will be unendurable." 
 
 "If there is time, I will. But I fancy we will continue 
 our session until the small hours of the morning." 
 
 She rose and began pacing the floor. Finally, in a 
 low, vibrant voice, she commanded: 
 
 "You had better go now, Dicky." 
 
 "Let me stay a little longer," he begged. "Oh, Betty, 
 Betty, the inconceivable bliss of being with you like this 
 with the sweet familiar intimacy of bygone days." 
 
 "Please go." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 She did not reply, merely looked at him, and he com- 
 prehended that her insistence arose from her fear that 
 her self-control was going. It was a new aspect of her. 
 The color mounted to her cheeks, her sweet lips were 
 tremulous, her eyes glowed with passion. Her entire per- 
 son breathed of love and ardor and longing for him. 
 
 "Dick," she murmured, "go, dear, please go. I do not 
 want to throw myself in your arms, and I am longing 
 to do just that. I am longing, dearest, to lie against 
 your heart, to feel your arms about me, to feel your lips 
 against my cheek and upon my mouth. Go, dearest 
 
 go." 
 
 She covered her face with her hands. He stood ir- 
 resolute, filled with an almost irresistible desire to strain 
 her to his breast, to kiss the nape of her neck, yet want- 
 ing to do as she asked. A man less delicate-minded than 
 Richard would have made the mistake of construing her 
 words as an invitation to take the initiative, and for 
 fear of offending her modesty, would have kissed her 
 with an exaggerated ardor. But what she had said to
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 459 
 
 him about maintaining their self-respect and their respect 
 for each other was luminously impressed upon his mem- 
 ory. Because her viewpoint seemed so unusual, he paid 
 her the tribute of recognizing her utter sincerity in speak- 
 ing as she had done. It seemed to him that to kiss her 
 or to take her into his arms in this moment of her weak- 
 ness, or even to touch her hand caressingly, would be to 
 take an unfair advantage of her. 
 
 He loved her holily as well as passionately, and he was 
 incapable of doing anything that would lower her in her 
 own estimation. He must, if necessary, as in this in- 
 stance, protect her against herself. 
 
 Quietly he walked to the door. Standing there, he 
 said: 
 
 "I am going, Betty, as you wish." 
 
 Her hands fell away from her face. He saw that she 
 had regained her self-control completely, but her lips 
 moved as if in silent prayer. Suddenly she stretched out 
 her hands and came toward him. She spoke rapidly. 
 
 "Dick, it was sweet of you to be strong while my weak- 
 ness lasted." She placed her hands on his shoulders. "I 
 knew I was not mistaken in you," she said. "I knew 
 you were just that sort of a man. God bless you and 
 keep you."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Dick spent the following day in wandering about his 
 former haunts. He did not share Betty's sanguineness, 
 and he had an abiding sense of impending disaster. He 
 waited in the lobby of his hotel until long after one 
 o'clock in the morning, nursing the hope that he would 
 receive a message of some sort from Betty. Then, his 
 nervous force at low ebb from the terrific nervous strain 
 he had been under, he went to his rooms. 
 
 By half -past five he was awake, and by six he was 
 entirely dressed. An intolerable nervousness possessed 
 him. He decided that, unless he heard from her by ten 
 o'clock, he would go to her apartment and ask to see her, 
 her wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 He had just seated himself in the restaurant, with the 
 intention of drinking a cup of black coffee when a mes- 
 senger boy came running into the dining-room, shouting 
 his name. Richard claimed the letter the boy carried. 
 It was from Betty. 
 
 "DEAREST : 
 
 "Earlcote refuses. Await me. Will be with you al- 
 most immediately after letter reaches you. 
 
 "BETTY." 
 
 Richard swallowed the cup of coffee hastily, and push- 
 ing aside the rolls which the waiter had brought him, 
 went to the lobby. He consulted his watch. It was pre- 
 cisely half-past seven. Eons afterwards, it seemed to 
 him, when he had looked at it again the hand had moved 
 ,one minute. 
 
 460
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 461 
 
 Viciously he thrust the watch into his pocket and 
 began walking up and down the long hall. Time crawled 
 by and finally, at eight o'clock, Betty walked into the 
 lobby. She had come afoot, and though there were deep ! 
 circles under her eyes, the raw November morning had 
 painted her cheeks a healthy red. 
 
 She greeted Richard with a very grave face. 
 
 "Where can we speak uninterruptedly?" she asked. 
 Without replying, he led the way to one of the small 
 rooms opening out from the lobby. At this hour of the 
 morning it was entirely deserted. 
 
 "Well, Richard, Earlcote not only refused to divorce 
 me he threatened to have me incarcerated as insane if 
 I insisted on breaking my contract with the Metropolitan 
 Opera by refusing to sing. He agreed to let me have 
 twenty- four hours to think matters over. That was at 
 three o'clock this morning, after a four hours' session. 
 The game's up, Dick. I am glad now, dearest, that you 
 foresaw this possibility, and exacted the promise you did. 
 Earlcote tells me he will have no difficulty in getting 
 alienists to pronounce me insane if I persist in refusing 
 to sing. That may be so, if I remain with him. But if 
 you and I openly declare our intentions, I do not believe 
 any alienist of character would dare risk his reputation 
 by alleging that I am out of my mind. I am sure of it." 
 
 "So am I," said Dick, and suddenly, in a rush of joy, 
 he realized the import of her words. She had come to 
 him to give herself to him as if she were indeed his wife. 
 And the happiness which he felt made great waves of 
 dizziness vibrate through his head. 
 
 "Dick," said Betty, speaking quickly and with sub- 
 dued passion, "Dick, you will never make me regret, 
 will you, what I am about to do? My reason and my 
 heart tell me that I am justified in coming to you like 
 this, but deep down, Dicky, my girlhood training, in-
 
 462 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 stinct, breeding, love of convention, assert themselves and 
 I feel that I am about to do a very terrible thing in leav- 
 ing the man I am married to no matter how bitterly 
 and with what cause I hate him for another man. Dick, 
 promise me that you will never give me cause to regret 
 the step I am taking ; that, in no way, I will sink in your 
 estimation for taking it." 
 
 "Betty," he showered burning kisses upon her gloved 
 hand. Then, deftly unclasping the glove, he pulled it 
 down until it adhered only to her finger tips, and now 
 he kissed the back of her hand and then, turning it about, 
 he kissed the dainty palm, and suddenly he pulled off her 
 glove and was kissing her finger tips, crushing them 
 passionately in the hollow of his hand. 
 
 "Betty, Betty, how can I prove to you that I would 
 not have suggested this thing to you if I did not believe 
 it right ? I do not wish to deal in platitudes. But surely 
 your own reason must tell you, Betty, that to a case as 
 isolated and unique as ours the ordinary criterion of 
 conduct cannot be applied with justice." 
 
 "Do not all lovers think their case unique?" Betty 
 interpolated. 
 
 "Ours is unique," he repeated, dogmatically. "And 
 your sensibility must tell you how grotesque and hideous 
 was the sin Earlcote forced upon you you, all purity 
 and chastity and innocence when he made you his 
 wife." 
 
 "It is curious, Dick," replied Betty, "on the day I went 
 to Earlcote Manor, after you had regained your health 
 the day that shut me off from you for five long years, 
 Earlcote said precisely the same thing to me that it was 
 a sin for a woman to marry a man she does not love. 
 And I was soon to know that he was right that such a 
 union is not merely a flagrant outrage to every instinct 
 of decency, but that it is sin, blood-red, deep-dyed sin,
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 463 
 
 a sin not merely against a woman's own self, but against 
 nature at large. And, Dick, he prophesied that compre- 
 hension and sympathy would come through sin, and he 
 was right. Even sin has its uses. That seems a curious 
 thing to say. But all that has happened seems so 
 strangely interbound. I realize now that if I had been 
 just a little different as a girl, a little less cold, a little 
 less 'pure/ as I then termed it, you, my Dicky boy, 
 would never have thought that I would be happier as a 
 singer than as your wife and you would not have entered 
 my name at the contest; Earlcote would never have 
 heard me sing, and, in consequence, would not have 
 resorted to foul means to bring about a rupture between 
 us. Or, if he had resorted to foul play, in order to side- 
 track you you, Richard, would not have gone wrong. 
 I failed you you wished to spare me, to be sweet and 
 tender and reverent with me and you paid dearly for 
 your attitude. And I paid, too, we both know how 
 terribly. But in paying, I was broadened. I am a better 
 and stronger and broader woman because of the ordeal 
 I have been through, and I feel that my love for you has 
 an element which it would have lacked if I had been 
 spared the suffering I went through. My love for you 
 is deep and strong and sweet; it is both pure and pas- 
 sionate, and my marriage to Earlcote has made it plain 
 to me, so palpably plain that you were right when you 
 said to me years ago that in marriage there is purity only 
 in passion. It cannot be otherwise . . ." 
 
 She remained silent for a while, then continued : 
 "Because I am a thoroughly normal woman now, 
 Dicky boy, I long to be your wife. I long for your con- 
 stant companionship to live with and for you, to serve 
 you. Ah, Dick, Dick, you may marvel at the change that 
 has taken place in me. I cannot tell you how it came 
 about. It came slowly, almost unnoticably, through the
 
 464. THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 slow, creeping hours of a year. And one summer's 
 day, Dick, when Earlcote and I were in our home in the 
 Pocono Mountains, in walking through the grounds of a 
 neighboring hotel I saw a curious thing. Near a small, 
 daintily built summer-house in which we were resting, 
 was a mound of decaying matter, and from this grew 
 the three most perfect and beautiful ears of wheat that 
 I have ever seen. They were perfect things of their 
 kind, large, exquisitely formed, as high as a man almost, 
 and without blemish or flaw. As I looked at their golden 
 heads, swaying gracefully to and fro on the strong, tall 
 stalks, they seemed to me to typify Hope, Faith and 
 Charity, the three most sacred and tender and pure 
 emotions of which the human heart is capable. Then it 
 occurred to me that just as those three perfect ears of 
 wheat had grown out of the waste matter, so did the 
 finest and purest and most spiritual emotions grow out 
 of what seems to us the lower human nature, and to be 
 as closely dependent upon that for sustenance as the 
 three ears of wheat were dependent upon the soil from 
 which they grew. Then, in a flash, I realized how foolish 
 I had been, how stupidly arrogant had been the pride 
 in my belief that I, alone among men and women, was 
 free from what it had pleased me to call 'the trammels 
 of the flesh.' I understood, dearest, that there are depths 
 and heights in human nature which words cannot fathom 
 or explain, depths and heights above and below reason, 
 and that it rests with the individual whether the dross 
 of love be used as a soil for what is highest and best in 
 us, or whether, remaining untilled, the weeds in it run 
 to seed and choke up the spirit. Oh, Dicky, Dicky, I had 
 suffered before but what I suffered after that realiza- 
 tion came to me, you will never be able to comprehend. 
 Then, finally a new optimism was in me. It seemed to 
 me that in sacrificing myself so that you might live, I
 
 "REASON AND THE VOICE OP THE HEART APPROVE OF THE STEP." p. 465
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 465 
 
 had not been wholly unselfish. Deep down in my heart, 
 sub-consciously, unrecognized by myself, hope and faith 
 had been imbedded right along that you and I would 
 some day be truly united. 
 
 "But now, Dick, for a little while, I could almost wish 
 back the old days of spiritual pride and contempt for 
 the flesh, because I would then feel myself so much more 
 justified in doing what I am doing. Ah, Dicky, if 
 mothers would only be frank with their daughters, teach 
 them to look at marriage and love in the right way, in- 
 stead of treating the closest tie in nature as something 
 to be absolutely avoided and shunned in all conversation. 
 
 "And, Dicky, in spite of all I have endured, I am 
 almost thankful for my bitter experience. My views 
 were garbled at the outset. My mother I do not wish 
 to blame her gave me a distorted view of marriage and 
 love. Even you, dear, were so mortally afraid of wound- 
 ing me, or offending my purity that I think you would 
 have allowed me to pass through life without awakening 
 me. Earlcote did not hesitate to awaken me. He forced 
 me to speak and think about those matters which I hated 
 most to think and speak about. He was merciless and 
 remorseless but you, dearest, you and myself, will profit 
 by the pains which he took for the sake of my voice. 
 
 "I know I am right in doing as I am doing, reason 
 and the voice of the heart approve of the step. But deep 
 down in my soul, Dick, there is a sediment of shame, and 
 that feeling of shame I cannot wholly combat." 
 
 Dicky sat very still for a few minutes, her hands be- 
 tween his. Then he said, softly: 
 
 "Dearest, I love you too well, too sacredly, to allow 
 the slightest alloy of untruth to tincture what I say to 
 you. The feeling of shame you speak of arises from 
 the fact that in taking this step we are committing not 
 a breach against morality in the abstract, but an offense
 
 466 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 against organized society. Society, to protect itself 
 against irregular unions and children born outside of 
 wedlock, must taboo the participants in an irregular 
 love affair. Society cannot allow the individual to be 
 judge of the merits of his or her own case, and the only 
 reason society does not deal as summarily with such 
 offenders as with thieves and burglars, by placing them 
 under lock and key, is the circumstance, that if all irregu- 
 larities of conduct were made public and punished, the 
 gigantic task of jailing the offenders and of providing 
 sustenance and clothes for them during the term of their 
 imprisonment, as well as of carrying on the business of 
 the world in the interim, would devolve upon about one- 
 half of society, I imagine, for the other half would be 
 in jail. 
 
 "Betty, darling, society has progressed. Our case is 
 unique. Society will be lenient in dealing with us. All 
 the world loves a lover, you know, and the sacrifice 
 you have made for me will go far towards smoothing 
 our way. 
 
 "However, dearest, if you cannot suppress the feeling 
 of shame of which you speak, if you feel that that emo- 
 tion of shame is bound to persist then, sweetheart, you 
 must not remain here with me. Then, at least for the 
 present, return to your own home, and reconsider and 
 weigh the consequences of coming to me." 
 
 He had relinquished her hand, and sat moodily staring 
 at the carpet, running the fingers of his right hand 
 through his hair. 
 
 Doubt came to her. Was he trying to extricate him- 
 self from a position which, he knew, would be distaste- 
 ful to himself now that he came to examine it closely? 
 Was this the true reason of the protective attitude he 
 was assuming? She hated herself for doubting him, but 
 the feeling of insecurity persisted, and the older doubt.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 467 
 
 the doubt that had harassed her for over five years, 
 gathered about the new doubt and made it grow in 
 stature as a rolling snowball thrives and fattens. 
 
 She sat in mute misery. She was crushed by the 
 sense of impotence which comes to every one at some 
 time or other upon realizing the utter hopelessness of 
 trying to penetrate the innermost thoughts of another. 
 
 Suddenly he looked up, and his manner and his words 
 gave her the most trustworthy proof of his single- 
 mindedness that she could have asked. 
 
 "Betty," he cried, "how can I give you up now? I 
 can't bear to think of losing you, after the hope not 
 merely of knowing you my wife in all but name, but of 
 having you as my constant, inseparable companion. I 
 love you, Betty, I love you deeply, but just because I 
 love you I feel in honor bound to protect you against 
 yourself, against your generosity to me. I must not take 
 advantage of your generosity or of your weakness, or 
 of both conjoined. Therefore go back and reconsider, 
 but, oh, Betty!" he clasped his hands together, fren- 
 ziedly, again and again, "if you intend taking my advice, 
 then go soon, and go quickly, otherwise my sweetheart, 
 I will lose control of myself. After all I am only human, 
 Betty. I am a man, and you are the woman whom I love 
 and idolize. And, oh, how I want you want you as 
 wife and companion for ever and ever." 
 
 He threw himself into a large arm-chair and pressed 
 the fingers of his right hand over his eyes. With the 
 left hand he gripped the arm of the chair with such 
 intensity that there was no longer any doubt of his 
 suffering. 
 
 Betty crossed to him and sat down upon the vacant 
 chair-arm. Leaning over, she gently tried to pull away 
 the hand held before his eyes. 
 
 "Dicky," she said, "Dicky, I shall never leave you now.
 
 468 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Listen to me, dearest. A moment ago I thought that you 
 were afraid on your own account to take this step. I 
 thought you wanted to get out of the affair as gracefully 
 as you could." 
 
 "Betty !" His hand came away from his eyes and he 
 regarded her indignantly. 
 
 "Yes, Dicky." She stooped and kissed first one eye, 
 and then the other. "It was horrid of me, I admit. You 
 see, dear, I am not quite perfect, as you love to think 
 I am. And now that I know that you really want me, I 
 am not going to reconsider. You have got to protect me 
 now, dearest, not against myself or yourself, but against 
 Earlcote. I am afraid of him, Dick. I would not go 
 back to him after the scene of last night for worlds. 
 After all I said to him yesterday it would be impossible 
 for me to go back. As I told you, Dick, we have not 
 been man and wife for over a year, but Earlcote is cruel 
 you can hardly understand how terribly cruel he can 
 be; and I am not a woman who can live in a state of 
 perpetual warfare, nor could I submit myself to him 
 after seeing you again, Dicky, after speaking to you as 
 I have spoken, and after kissing you." 
 
 Abruptly she threw herself into his arms and offered 
 him her lips. 
 
 "Kiss me, Dick," she commanded, "kiss me, dearest, 
 kiss me as you used to in the dear sweet days of the 
 past." 
 
 A few minutes later, her face lying against his 
 shoulder, she said : 
 
 "There are things, dearest, I could never tell you 
 except like this, my face hidden in your embrace. Oh, 
 Dick, the inferno I lived through! No, no, I cannot 
 tell you all not even now wait !" 
 
 Too indignant to trust himself to speak, Richard held 
 her in his embrace without kissing her, petting and sooth-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 489 
 
 ing her as she wept tempestuously, by stroking her hair, 
 caressing her cheek, whispering tender, foolish words of 
 endearment. 
 
 Finally, when she had stopped crying, he said, 
 determindedly : 
 
 "Betty, darling, I am going to go and see Earlcote." 
 
 "No, no. It would do no good." 
 
 "However, I wish to see him. Some one will have 
 to tell him of our decision, and it seems to me I am the 
 one to do it. To save our dignity, dear, we must apprize 
 him in advance of what we are going to do." 
 
 "I am afraid he will kill you, or you him." 
 
 Dick laughed. 
 
 "And, then, Dicky boy, I am afraid to be left alone. 
 I positively am. Earlcote is not above locking you up 
 in the apartment, and sending some of his servants to 
 kidnap me. I am afraid, horribly afraid, to be left 
 alone." 
 
 "That being so, I will telephone to police headquarters 
 for a brace of able-bodied detectives." 
 
 And telephone he did. He awaited the arrival of the 
 detectives, and turned Betty over to them for. safe- 
 keeping, to her intense chagrin. Then he went to Betty's 
 apartments in hopes of there learning Earlcote's where- 
 abouts. 
 
 He was told that Mr. Earlcote had just come in and 
 was in the library, awaiting Mrs. Earlcote's return. 
 Richard had himself announced, and a moment later 
 followed the servant through the little rose-and-gold 
 ante-room, in which Betty had greeted him two days 
 ago, into the library, a dainty apartment in white and 
 sea-green. 
 
 Huddled in a large fur coat, a fur tippet about his 
 throat and a fur cap upon his head, Earlcote sat in front 
 of the gas-log fire. His face was smaller and more cadav-
 
 470 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 erous than when Richard had last seen him, five years 
 ago, and his complexion, in the pale light of the cold 
 winter morning, seemed green rather than gray. 
 
 "What gives me the unexpected pleasure?" He mo- 
 tioned Richard to be seated, but Richard said, curtly : 
 
 "Thanks, I prefer standing. I will be brief. I came 
 in regard to the matter of which Mrs. Earlcote spoke to 
 you last night." 
 
 "What have you to do with that?" 
 
 "Everything, it seems to me. Mrs. Earlcote, I think, 
 was explicit. She told you frankly that, unless you con- 
 sent to divorce, she will abandon her stage career. I 
 do not know whether she told you that her intention is 
 to live with me as my wife." 
 
 "As your mistress, you mean! And you have the 
 audacity to come here to tell me that !" 
 
 "Manliness, not audacity, prompted me to come here. 
 Mr. Earlcote, your entire line of conduct has been so 
 infamous that words cannot express the indignation I 
 feel. Nevertheless, you are Betty's husband, and, as 
 such, are entitled to be apprized of our decision." 
 
 In a low, menacing voice Earlcote replied : 
 
 "Have a care. I know my wife better than you do. 
 She will never fly in the face of convention, not though 
 she loved you a thousand times more than she does, and 
 hated me a thousand times worse than she does." 
 
 "I may convince you that I am right when I tell you 
 that although I entreated her to return to her home for 
 at least a few more days in order to thoroughly recon- 
 sider this step, she refused to do so." 
 
 Earlcote's breath came and went like a series of 
 hisses. Richard continued : 
 
 "Not only did she refuse to return to you, but she 
 implored me to protect her against you, which I did 
 effectively by surrounding her with a cordon of detec-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 471 
 
 tives, who, also, are aware that I have come to this 
 apartment." 
 
 "That sounds almost as if you were afraid of me." 
 
 "If I were afraid I would not have come. But to save 
 time and possible complications, I thought it well to let 
 you know that several police officials know that I entered 
 this house at a certain hour." 
 
 There was a brief pause. Richard, watching Earlcote 
 narrowly, thought he detected a marked change in him. 
 Formerly, in spite of his poor, twisted body, he had given 
 the impression of forcefulness. This morning, he seemed 
 broken and small; even his malignancy seemed less 
 appalling than formerly. 
 
 "You did not come here merely to notify me that 
 Mrs. Earlcote intends breaking her marriage vows?" 
 
 "I came for that purpose, yes. I came, also, because 
 I entertained a fugitive hope that you might still recon- 
 sider her proposal, and consent to a divorce in considera- 
 tion of which she would pledge herself to retain your 
 name and to continue on the stage." 
 
 Richard paused, and as Earlcote said nothing, Richard 
 resumed : 
 
 "Surely, to a man of your temperament, it would be 
 intensely cruel to see the labor of years go for nothing. 
 I fail to understand why you hesitate, since you do not 
 love her." 
 
 "That's neither here nor there," Earlcote broke in 
 angrily. "As my wife, she is my possession, and, as 
 long as she is my wife, I can hear her sing when and 
 where I choose at midnight, if I wish, at three o'clock 
 in the morning, if I please. I will not give her up to 
 you." He sat erect his grayish-green face flushed 
 slightly, some of the old malignancy and egotism seemed 
 to flash from his eyes. "I hate you," he said, "I hate 
 you more bitterly than I have ever hated any one, and
 
 '473 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 I cannot bear to see you in possession of everything that 
 I covet in vain." 
 
 Richard looked at Earlcote in amazement. It sug- 
 gested itself to Richard that Earlcote was referring to 
 his, Richard's career. He remembered Earlcote's former 
 jealousy, the story that Kitty had told Betty. But it 
 seemed to him that Earlcote's jealousy was unfounded. 
 He remembered Earlcote's playing as being superhu- 
 manly perfect, while his own, in spite of the fame he 
 had achieved, seemed deficient to him as compared to 
 the highest criterion he knew Earlcote's musicianship. 
 He stood, somewhat dazed by the compliment which 
 Earlcote was paying him, somewhat frightened lest Earl- 
 cote should adhere to his refusal because of his profes- 
 sional jealousy. 
 
 Earlcote continued: 
 
 "The world is at your feet. The very critics dare not 
 carp for fear that in belittling you they will merely 
 belittle themselves. That precisely that, was my posi- 
 tion in the musical world when the accident occurred 
 which tumbled my future in the dust. But there is one 
 difference. I had reached the pinnacle of my career, I 
 could have gone no further, but you have not yet reached 
 your highest altitude. The world at large does not know 
 that; the critics have not enough ability or discernment 
 to know but you know it, and I know it, and every 
 pianist who has ever heard you knows it. Three years 
 hence, in addition to brilliance of technique and tone 
 and a profundity of intelligence such as I would not have 
 believed possible in any one but myself, you will add 
 mellowness, depth and sweetness. There was a time 
 it is not long ago when I scoffed at intelligence in inter- 
 pretation, when I believed that feeling only should govern 
 our playing. I have come to think differently in the last 
 year, in which a change has come into my life, of which
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 473 
 
 I will not speak now. In me, emotions were developed 
 first, intelligence only late in life. In you the intellectual 
 development preceded the emotional. Three years hence 
 you will not be merely the peer of the Earlcote who 
 played in public for the last time seven years ago you 
 will be his superior. And I I am forced to sit by and 
 see you encroaching on my fame, see you eating it up, 
 overshadowing it. Oh, my God what suffering, what 
 intolerable suffering !" 
 
 He stopped speaking. His face had lost its twisted, 
 contorted, gargoyle expression, and, as he leaned back, 
 exhausted from his passionate speech, Richard marveled 
 to see that a certain grandeur was apparent in this man. 
 Richard had every reason to hate and despise him, but 
 as he looked at the haggard white face, upon which 
 mental and physical suffering had set the patent of their 
 own ineffacable nobility, he felt neither hatred nor con- 
 tempt, merely a deep and profound pity. 
 
 Leaning back in his chair, eyes closed wearily Earlcote 
 spoke : 
 
 "You must understand now that what you ask of me 
 is more than any one who is a mere man could possibly 
 accede to. I must cling to the forlorn hope that if I do 
 not consent to a divorce, her courage to take the decisive 
 step will fail her at the last moment, or that, taking it 
 and overcome with remorse, for her conscience is very 
 tender and her pride in her spotless reputation very 
 great, she will yet return to me. And now go, go." 
 
 So small and colorless was the face which lay against 
 the high back of the chair imbedded in tippet and cap 
 of fur that it looked like the face of a wax doll, or of a 
 corpse. 
 
 Richard turned and went from the room, without 
 bidding Earlcote adieu. He had entered the apartment 
 filled with deadly hate. He left it feeling awed realiz-
 
 474 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 ing that if he himself and Betty had suffered, this man, 
 who had caused their suffering, had suffered no less. 
 If it had not been for Betty, he would have forgiven 
 Earlcote, but isolated phrases of Betty's story rang in 
 his ears. He could forgive for pain inflicted upon him- 
 self, not for torture to which his Betty had been 
 subjected. 
 
 He stepped into the elevator, but before the elevator 
 boy had time to close the gate, an idea flashed into 
 Richard's head, and he jumped from the car, and nerv- 
 ously began pacing up and down the long hall. 
 
 It seemed to him that Earlcote hated him and envied 
 him with greater intensity than he loved Betty's voice 
 and gloried in its possession. It was likely, then, that if 
 he, Richard, promised to renounce his career, Earlcote 
 would agree to a divorce. The possibility of carrying 
 through this plan excited him intensely. The sacrifice 
 involved for himself was monumental, and he recoiled 
 with something like terror from the vista of a future 
 barren of public homage and the joy of publicly practic- 
 ing his art. The struggle, however, was brief. He put 
 the question to himself selfishly. What was dearer to 
 his heart, public success or Betty's happiness? For this 
 was the fine point, as he, with his delicate perception of 
 abstractions, was quick to see. Betty was his, whether 
 he decided upon making the burnt offering of himself 
 for her sake, or not. But Betty's happiness could be 
 insured in no other way, and by no other means, for, 
 coming to him unmarried, Betty would never be wholly 
 happy, or contented, or at peace with herself. She would 
 be merely less unhappy than as Earlcote's wife. 
 
 His mind, set on fire by the feasibility of the idea, 
 sprang, flame-like, from crag to crag, from point to point 
 of the discussion into which he was about to enter. It 
 was thus that Richard thought ; no slow, pedantic, labori-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 475 
 
 ous reasoning out of a problem, but a sort of incan- 
 descent absorption, seeing every phase of a question 
 as white-hot light or visible shadow. 
 
 Finally he went back to the door of the Earlcote apart- 
 ment and rang the bell. 
 
 "Is Mr. Earlcote still in the library? If so, you needn't 
 announce me." Betty's English man-servant, puzzled 
 and a little shocked by Richard's unceremoniousness, 
 prepared to interpose an objection, but Richard brushed 
 past him and strode into the library. Earlcote was sit- 
 ting there in the same posture in which he had left him. 
 
 "I have come back again, Earlcote, with another 
 proposition." 
 
 Earlcote, without stirring, opened his eyes. 
 
 "Well?" he asked wearily. 
 
 Richard drew off his gloves, flung them upon his hat, 
 and, without an invitation, drew up a chair and sat down, 
 close at Earlcote's side. Then he asked, in a low eager 
 voice : 
 
 "Will you agree to divorce Mrs. Earlcote if, in turn, I 
 agree to abandon my career on the day of our marriage ?" 
 
 Earlcote looked Richard between the eyes fully a 
 minute before answering. 
 
 "Are you serious?" he asked. 
 
 "I certainly am." 
 
 "Do you realize what you are offering to do? Look 
 at me I gave you a glimpse of my disappointment and 
 bitterness before, but, believe me, it was only a glimpse. 
 Is any woman worth such a sacrifice?" 
 
 "I do not think you quite understand the situation," 
 Richard said, gently. "Betty has promised to be mine 
 you understand marriage or no marriage. But it is 
 Betty's happiness and peace of mind of which I am think- 
 ing. I told you before that I tried this morning to get 
 her to reconsider this step. She refused to do so.
 
 476 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 She is anxious to burn her bridges. But I realize more 
 keenly than she does that if she comes to me as my 
 well, not as my wife she is going to suffer cruelly. I 
 wish to spare her that suffering. She has suffered so 
 much, so very much in the past, that out of my great 
 love for her I feel I want to do what I can to make her 
 future life cloudlessly happy. That is why I returned 
 to your apartment with this new proposition. It oc- 
 curred to me in the hall. Well, will you accept it? Yes 
 or no?" 
 
 "Tell me," Earlcote spoke, musingly, "tell me, is it 
 really only love that prompts you to make this sacrifice, 
 or is it gratitude? Is it the feeling that you owe it to 
 her to give up your career because she saved your life 
 and made possible your career?" 
 
 Something in Earlcote's voice attracted Richard's at- 
 tention and perplexed him. He said: 
 
 "If I were actuated by gratitude, I would be doing 
 Betty a very poor service. She would inevitably dis- 
 cover, sooner or later, that my gain in having her my 
 wife does not outbalance the loss of my career. And the 
 cognizance of that would make her unhappy, just as my 
 cognizance of her suffering if she were not my wife 
 would make me unhappy. We must both be gainers, she 
 and myself, if our happiness is to be firmly established." 
 
 "I see," Earlcote said, musingly. 
 
 "Besides," Richard's voice vibrated, "besides, I must 
 correct a slight inaccuracy contained in your statement. 
 I do not owe my career to Betty further than that she 
 saved me for the brilliant chance that came to me." 
 
 "Pardon me, but you do owe your career to Betty." 
 Earlcote spoke with averted eyes. "When she promised 
 to marry me, she insisted that I arrange to pay part of 
 the sum of money agreed upon between us to some 
 musical organization, arranging with them that the money
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 477 
 
 be represented to you as a scholarship emanating from 
 that organization. I am surprised she never told you." 
 
 Richard rose and stood looking into the fire, leaning 
 his elbows heavily on the mantel. After a little while 
 he said : 
 
 "No, she never told me." Again he fell silent, Earlcote 
 watching him furtively from under contracted brows. 
 Richard was mentally searching for something, some- 
 thing that Betty had said, something that concerned the 
 thing Earlcote had just told him. An abnormally quick 
 intuition was among Richard's feminine traits, and it 
 came to him that what Earlcote had just told him had to 
 do with Betty's doubt of him. But what? 
 
 Finally he turned to Earlcote and asked: 
 
 "Well, have you made up your mind yet, is it yes 
 or no?" 
 
 "Betty is to continue on the stage, bearing my name ?" 
 
 "Only until the divorce is arranged." 
 
 Earlcote demurred. They haggled over this, as Betty 
 and Earlcote had once haggled over Richard's future. 
 Suddenly, at the moment when Richard least expected a 
 weakening of purpose, Earlcote gave in. 
 
 "And when do you retire from public life?" 
 
 "On my wedding day." 
 
 Earlcote wished him to retire at once, but Richard 
 pressed the point that he needed money that it was 
 necessary for him to provide for at least one or two 
 years of the future. Earlcote said, brusquely : 
 
 "Oh, very well. Have your way. Do me the favor to 
 sign a paper, containing our agreement. It would not 
 stand in any court of law, but between gentlemen you 
 will find ink and paper on the table yonder." 
 
 Richard seated himself at the table indicated. 
 
 "Do you wish me to word the agreement, or will you ?" 
 asked Richard.
 
 478 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 Earlcote stretched out his hand. "Write this," he 
 said, imperiously, as if speaking to an amanuensis : 
 
 " 'In consideration of the fact that Mrs. Earlcote will 
 receive her freedom at the hands of her husband, Stanley 
 Earlcote, I, the undersigned, hereby agree to terminate 
 my career as a pianist on my wedding day. After that 
 event I will not play anywhere at all in public.' " 
 
 Richard wrote as Earlcote directed, and silently signed 
 the paper. Earlcote, on receiving it, folded it without 
 reading it. Richard walked to the door. There, his 
 hand on the knob, he halted and asked : 
 
 "On returning to her home Mrs. Earlcote, I suppose, 
 need have no apprehensions?" 
 
 "Apprehensions of what?" 
 
 "Of an undesirable intimacy." 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 "Besides, I will show her the courtesy of not coming 
 here at all. You are aware, I dare say, that these are 
 her apartments, not mine." 
 
 "I was not sure. Thank you again. And, good- 
 morning." 
 
 "Good-morning." Earlcote echoed the farewell in 
 the same bland tone Richard had employed. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later Richard walked into the room 
 where Betty was waiting for him, at his own hotel. He 
 dismissed the detectives at the door, and then sat down 
 beside her as for a long talk. 
 
 "You seem strangely happy, Dicky. You do not mean 
 to tell me that Earlcote has consented to a divorce." 
 
 "Yes, Betty, he has." 
 
 "How did you manage it?"
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 479 
 
 "I trafficked and bargained." 
 
 "Dick !" 
 
 "I promised, dearest, that after our wedding day my 
 career as a pianist will be at an end." 
 
 "Oh, it's infamous of him to exact such a promise." 
 
 "He did not exact the promise. I myself made the 
 offer." 
 
 "You must rescind the agreement." 
 
 "It is signed, Betty. There can be no rescinding of it." 
 
 "No, Dick you shall not do this for me you and 
 your art are one." 
 
 "I will still have my art, Betty, but I will not be able 
 to ply it in public. Listen to me, sweetheart, I had to 
 choose not between you and my public life, but between 
 something far more precious to me even than yourself. 
 I speak of your happiness, dear. I chose what I wanted 
 most." 
 
 "Dicky, oh, Dicky!" 
 
 "And now, dear why did you deceive me all these 
 years ?" 
 
 "I never deceived you, Dick," she faltered. 
 
 "Earlcote told me of the spurious scholarship." 
 
 "Ah I didn't want you to know. I did not want you 
 to feel obligated to me not for your career." 
 
 "Oh, Betty, Betty, how you have loved me always." 
 
 "Yes, Dick, but once I doubted you. I thought that 
 you would not be willing to make as great a sacrifice for 
 me as I for you and now, Dicky, you are giving up 
 for my sake what is dearest to you." 
 
 So that was the fact he had delved for without bring- 
 ing it to light. 
 
 "I thank heaven, dearest, that, being weighed in the 
 scales, I have not been found wanting. And, Betty, dear, 
 there is a clause to our agreement after we are married, 
 dear, you are at liberty to leave the stage."
 
 480 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 She began to cry softly. 
 
 "Oh, Dick, it was worth enduring all I did to look 
 forward to such complete happiness as your wife. For- 
 give me, dearest, I am selfish, I forgot that you are 
 paying the purchase price." 
 
 "As you once paid it for me," he said. "But I will 
 have my recompense, dearest." And to soothe her, for 
 she was still crying, he said, soothingly, as if speaking 
 to a child : 
 
 "In the next six months, dear, I will earn enough to 
 buy a tiny, tiny bungalow in the woods, just big enough 
 for you and me and happiness. We will re-enter Ar- 
 cady, dear, where we once lived do you remember? A 
 long, long time ago. And we will give elaborate con- 
 certs only for ourselves and the birds, the crickets and 
 frogs. And when we get tired of ourselves, and of the 
 birds and the crickets and the frogs, we will ransack 
 the neighborhood for honest rustics, and invite them to 
 come and hear us play and sing. And when we die, we 
 will be buried in one grave, and a tablet above us will 
 bear the inscription: 'He was a famous pianist, she a 
 great singer, but they forsook the world to live only 
 for themselves.' " 
 
 She had stopped crying at last, and now sat, his hand 
 clasped in hers, looking blindly through lashes still wet, 
 across the room, at nothing in particular. 
 
 Never had she been dearer to him than at this mo- 
 ment, but, even as he held her hand in his, there entered 
 into his soul a fear, a horrid, ungainly fear of what the 
 future would mean after he was deprived of his splendid 
 career. He did not regret what he had done; he knew 
 that he would have done it all over again; but fear 
 entered his soul at that moment, and he realized that 
 thereafter it would walk at his side.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 At eight o'clock in the morning of April thirtieth they 
 were married quietly in the Little Church Around the 
 Corner. The opera season had ended the week before. 
 Richard's and Betty's "last appearance in public" had 
 taken place simultaneously on the previous day. Both 
 the Opera House and Carnegie Hall had been packed. 
 The two events, and the romance linking them together, 
 had made a terrific stir in the musical world. Richard 
 had repeated the same program thrice running on three 
 consecutive days an unprecedented event. 
 
 Betty had plainly stated that her reason for leaving the 
 stage was her marriage to Mr. Pryce, but Richard had 
 been less communicative. It was obviously impossible 
 to tell the press the truth, so he maintained a stony and 
 dignified silence. Betty wept bitter tears on reading the 
 press comments on Richard's projected retirement, for 
 Richard went so far as to refuse to even definitely com- 
 mit himself as to his retirement. He hated anything in 
 the way of unlegitimate press agent work, and neither 
 repudiated nor confirmed the rumors which had spread, 
 no one knew how, concerning himself. 
 
 Richard had bought a tiny cottage in the Adirondacks, 
 very near Mount Eerie, where they had spent what it 
 pleased Richard to call their "first honeymoon." They 
 intended leaving for their home immediately after the 
 ceremony. 
 
 As they left the church, a messenger boy who was 
 standing in the tiny pavilion between the church and 
 parsonage, came forward and addressed Richard. 
 
 481
 
 482 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 "Mr. Richard Pryce?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The boy handed him a long, official-looking envelope, 
 received Richard's signature and effaced himself. Betty, 
 peeping over Dick's shoulder, observed : 
 
 "Why, Dick, it is Earlcote's writing." 
 
 They walked to the pavilion, arm-in-arm, and standing 
 in its shelter, Richard tore open the envelope. It con- 
 tained a smaller envelope and a letter. From the smaller 
 envelope Richard took the paper which Earlcote had 
 dictated to him the day on which Earlcote had agreed 
 to a divorce. 
 
 Hastily unfolding the letter, Richard read the commu- 
 nication aloud. 
 
 "DEAR MR. PRYCE: 
 
 "It is, I believe, wholly without precedent that the first 
 husband should send the second husband a wedding gift. 
 Yet this is what I am doing. I am returning you the 
 agreement you signed, thereby releasing you of the 
 promise contained therein. 
 
 "Have the kindness not to thank me, for frankly I 
 am not doing this for your sake. I am cutting a suffi- 
 ciently ridiculous figure as it is. I am, in brief, releasing 
 you of your promise for your wife's sake. 
 
 "You will infer from this that I love her, and this is 
 the truth. Certain emotions, entertained by myself, must 
 strike the onlooker as laughable in the last degree, yet 
 I trust that the kindness of your heart, of which you 
 have given proof on several occasions, will help make 
 you refrain from mirth of which I would be the butt. 
 
 "Yes, I love Betty Garside. Understand me I did 
 not love her when I married her. I loved only her voice. 
 I was mad to cultivate that the rest you know. 
 
 "She hated me this also you know. I ignored her 
 hatred, as she, no doubt, has told you. Then, about two 
 years ago a singular thing happened, with which I fancy 
 her delicacy did not permit her to acquaint you. It is 
 possible, also, that she has forgotten the occurrence.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 483 
 
 "One evening, after she had been singing Elisabeth's 
 prayer for me, I said to her, allowing myself a latitude 
 in giving expression to my thoughts in which I rarely 
 indulge : 
 
 " 'Betty, I would give, I know not what, if, of your 
 own accord, you were to put your arms about me and 
 kiss me.' 
 
 "She replied: 
 
 " 'You can hardly expect me to do that. I have never 
 refused to kiss you when you commanded me to kiss you. 
 It is part of our bargain. But your request for a caress 
 must be couched in words of command.' 
 
 "I was stung into replying: 
 
 " 'All that because I had the misfortune to become 
 crippled.' 
 
 " 'All that,' she retorted with spirit, 'because you are 
 not the man I love. You know as well as I do that if a 
 similar accident were to befall him, I would go on loving 
 him all the same.' 
 
 " 'Well/ I replied, 'I will not command you to kiss me, 
 but heaven knows, I would sell my immortal soul for a 
 voluntary kiss from you. I speak not of a kiss of pas- 
 sion, but of a kiss of mere affection.' 
 
 "She did not reply, but resumed singing. I do not 
 know what she sang. For once I did not listen. Ut- 
 terly wretched, in a state of dejection and self-contempt 
 which I have never duplicated before or after, I sat in 
 my chair buried in mournful reflection. I had been mar- 
 ried to my wife for over three years. I had made a 
 great singer of her. She respected my authority in every 
 way and at all times, but I could not hope for so small 
 a thing as a kiss of affection. And yet I had been fool- 
 ish enough to believe on several former occasions that 
 she felt a sort of luke-warm affection for me because she 
 showed me such trifling but comfortable attentions as a 
 daughter may show her father, as reminding me of my 
 rubbers if the earth was moist, or getting a forgotten 
 muffler for me if the wind was sharp. 
 
 "I do not know how long I sat there, brooding. She 
 stopped singing, and presently she came and sat down 
 beside me a very unusual thing for her to do. And
 
 484 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 suddenly she put one arm about my neck and kissed me 
 thrice, on the cheek, on the brow and on the temple. 
 Then she rose, and turned up the lamp and offered to 
 read Shelley's 'Queen Mab' for me, and when bedtime 
 came, in bidding me good-night, she touched my brow 
 with her fingers. 
 
 "It was that evening, I think, that I began to love her, 
 or perhaps it was only the realization that I loved her 
 which was born that evening. At any rate, though I 
 desired her more than ever after the fashion of a man in 
 love I respected her disinclinations after that evening, 
 and never after that did I seek an entrance to her room. 
 Thus was I, the cynic, the materialist, the utilitarian, 
 brought to my knees when the voice of the heart began 
 to speak. Do you mock me? I mock myself. 
 
 "When you came to see me that morning in Novem- 
 ber, I was filled with deadly hatred for you. While you 
 talked I began to realize how deep and sincere was your 
 love. Then, because I loved her, the thought came that 
 after all it would be sweet to know her happy. But I 
 felt a fierce desire to test you, to prove you unworthy, so 
 that I might have an excuse for not releasing her. Pur- 
 posely I told you what I did about my envy of you; you 
 are no fool; I realized that the thought of the sacrifice 
 you proposed ultimately would come to you, and I 
 wanted to see if you possessed the nobility of soul to 
 come back to me with that proposition. 
 
 "The rest of the story I need not rehearse. You 
 proved yourself worthy of my Betty. I call her that for 
 the last time. Take her then, and make her happy, and 
 be happy yourself, since without your happiness hers 
 would be imperfect. 
 
 "I have not much longer to live. Mock me, if you will. 
 I deride myself. But it is better to sweep the heart clean 
 of hate than to nurture it, for hatred, as I have learned, 
 hurts not him who is hated so much as him who hates. 
 Perhaps, after all, my motives in this singular affair are 
 purely selfish. Let us assume they are. It is more in 
 keeping with my character. I was ever a prince of 
 egoists. 
 
 "EARLCOTE."
 
 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 485 
 
 Richard and Betty stood in silence, shoulder to shoul- 
 der, after reading the letter. It was a perfect day. The 
 church gardens were lapped in the glory of early spring. 
 Tender little leaves, curly and soft as the down of a 
 chick, ran along every branch and twig and made the 
 very air where twig crowded upon twig, leaf upon leaf, 
 appear verdant. From the earth rose the sweet odors 
 of spring; the winter's mold quickened by rain and sun- 
 light gave out a rich, warm fragrance as sweet to those 
 who love it as the fragrance of any flower. 
 
 Betty was the first to speak. 
 
 "Dick," she said, "the one thing wanting to make our 
 happiness complete has come. It was kind of Earlcote." 
 
 Richard asked, abruptly: "Betty, after reading that 
 letter, do you still hate him? Is there not perhaps a 
 spark of love for him in your heart, after all? Answer 
 me truthfully, dear. The man's nobility, belated as it is, 
 may have touched you." 
 
 "Dicky, I have suspected more than once what the 
 letter tells you. I suspected, also, more than once, that 
 he might release you of this promise. Earlcote seemed 
 so changed the last few times I saw him." 
 
 "You have not answered my question." 
 
 "Dicky boy, Earlcote is trying to make amends for 
 past evil, to atone for past wrongdoing. That is splendid 
 of him. I admire him for it. And, if you approve, when 
 we get back to town I will call on him at least once a 
 week and sing to him. But as to love oh, Dicky, Dicky 
 boy, I gave you my love, all of it, the first time I saw 
 you and I have never wavered or faltered in my allegi- 
 ance to you. I endured a martyrdom for your sake! I 
 can forgive and pity him who inflicted it upon me. But 
 I love him for whom I endured it. I paid a price for 
 you, dearest, just as you were willing to pay a price for 
 me. You and I, sweetheart, belong to each other. We
 
 486 THE VOICE OF THE HEART 
 
 have paid for each other thrice over in heartache and in 
 pain." 
 
 She put her hand upon his arm. In her sweet face 
 was painted the adorable April of bitter-sweet feelings. 
 Forgetting that they were within a stone's throw of the 
 street, Richard clasped her in his arms. One or two 
 passersby smiled and walked on. The sparrows that 
 lived in the trees chattered wildly; a few street urchins 
 nudged each other and ran howling gleefully down the 
 street. 
 
 But Richard and Betty heard neither street urchins nor 
 sparrows, saw neither passersby nor the kindly rector 
 who stood smiling behind the curtained windows. 
 They had forgotten everything and everybody except 
 themselves and their happiness. 
 
 THE END.
 
 THE GREATER JOY 
 
 By 
 MARGARET BLAKE 
 
 What the Critics Say 
 
 " A great deal of curiosity has been aroused as to the author- 
 ship of ' The Greater Joy,' a daring love story that is having a run, 
 especially in New York. Margaret Blake, the name on the title- 
 page, is undoubtedly a pseudonym, and several well-known authors 
 have been suspected of hiding behind it because of the startling 
 frankness with which the sex problem is handled. The novel has 
 already gone through several editions, but only the publishers and 
 author know the real name of Margaret Blake." 
 
 Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " A novel daringly conceived and boldly written . . . yet the 
 book is by no means a mere study of immorality, nor is the purpose 
 a shadowy one." Boston Herald. 
 
 "... Its love episodes throw the Robert W. Chambers 
 fiction far into the shade." New York Herald.} 
 
 "Though a realistic story, the author points the value of a 
 genuine and reverent love." Buffalo Express. 
 
 " Such a situation becomes of intense dramatic interest, and 
 the author has succeeded in compelling the reader's respect and 
 sympathy for the man and woman, even when they placed them- 
 selves beyond the pale of law and custom." Boston Globe. 
 
 " It can safely be called a tumultuous romance." 
 
 American Club Woman. 
 
 " In ' The Greater Joy ' we are given the old social problem 
 which serves the dramatist and novelist so well, and which, if inter- 
 estingly handled, as in this instance, is sure to attract." 
 
 San Francisco Bulletin. 
 
 " An international romance in which temperament and passion 
 run riot." Pittsburg Post. 
 
 "Margaret Blake has begun and sustained throughout her 
 romance a strong note." New Orleans Times-Democrat. 
 
 Bound in Cloth, Illustrated. $1.25. 
 
 G- W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY, New York 
 
 Publishers
 
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 Ill 
 
 A 000130480 7