MY 
 
 JHf TRUE tj 
 LOVE 
 
 [A-M1TCHELL 
 
 KEAYS 

 
 ' 86 5 B
 
 fii
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE
 
 A 
 -** 
 
 T the first word Christina turned, her face 
 
 suddenly white, her eyes wide, her hand 
 clenched and slightly lifted 
 
 See page 346
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 BY 
 
 H. A. MITCHELL KEAYS 
 
 Author of The Road to Damascus, He That Eateth 
 Bread with Me, etc. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BT 
 
 LESTER RALPH 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 1910
 
 TO NAN 
 
 NEAREST OF FRIENDS 
 
 2136784
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAG* 
 
 I THE PRIMROSES IN OVERSHOT WOOD i 
 
 II THE MANSION HOUSE 23 
 
 III MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER . . 38 
 
 IV THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 49 
 V " CONCERNING CATHERINE "... 69 
 
 VI MRS. DICKY WARDER .... 80 
 
 VII POINSETTIAS IOI 
 
 VIII MADAM KITTY 104 
 
 IX THE GOVERNOR 115 
 
 X "Vows AND THINGS" . . . . 134 
 
 XI KITTY OF THE PRIMROSES . . . 146 
 
 XII Is THIS FAR END? 150 
 
 XIII THE EYES OF A BOY 163 
 
 XIV DICKY WARDER 175 
 
 XV MEN ALWAYS SAY So 191 
 
 XVI THE GOVERNOR'S LADY . . . . 213 
 vii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOI 
 
 XVII MATRIMONY BY LEASE .... 234 
 
 XVIII IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER . . . 243 
 
 XIX HER HUSBAND EMERITUS . . . 253 
 
 XX MISERY IN SCARLET 270 
 
 XXI THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE . . 289 
 
 XXII THE SIMPLE I WILL .... 305 
 
 XXIII " TINA ! TINA !". . VV ". t 326 
 
 XXIV THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS . . 341 
 
 Vlll
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PRIMROSES IN OVERSHOT WOOD 
 
 "Dear Kitty:" 
 
 But there Mrs. Dicky Warder stopped. 
 It was incredible impossible. 
 
 Yet the next moment a curious numbness 
 succeeded the flash through all her nerves; 
 the letter slipped from her fingers to the 
 table, and she let it lie, her eyes not leaving 
 those two words. Beneath the surface con- 
 fusion of her thoughts, she seemed to be 
 hearing them, repeated again and again by 
 a voice that had no place here in this room 
 in this house ; a voice that saying gently, 
 " Dear Kitty," seemed yet to be charged 
 with antagonism with intent to wound. 
 i
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Presently her gaze faltered from the open 
 page to the envelope beside it. " Mrs. War- 
 der." It looked no! she was not going 
 to say how it looked in his handwriting. It 
 was preposterous; it was not decent. That 
 was how it looked. And she remembered 
 the only letter of his that she had kept out 
 of the wreck the first one that he had writ- 
 ten to her after their marriage; she under- 
 stood now that she had kept it with a woman's 
 irrational clinging to the thing that she wil- 
 fully puts from her. " Mrs. Iliel Sargent." 
 She could see it still, though she had not 
 opened the drawer in which it had lain in all 
 these years. 
 
 That was twenty years ago ; and yester- 
 day she looked at the postmark on the 
 envelope he had written her this letter, 
 and had addressed it, " Mrs. Warder." 
 
 What had he thought? 
 
 She was motionless with that wonder for 
 a long time; when she at last moved, it was 
 2
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 to look at herself in the mirror behind her. 
 It did not matter what Iliel Sargent thought. 
 
 Yet all the while she was distantly con- 
 scious that she was only waiting for the mo- 
 ment when, her pride should allow her to 
 read his letter. 
 
 She got up and went to the window and 
 looked out upon the avenue in its sere Nov- 
 ember dullness, and it struck her that all 
 this fuss of living and dying was a great 
 waste of Something that had blundered hope- 
 lessly in search of self-expression; yet when 
 little Donny Nevil, brave in his new scarlet 
 coat, turned the corner with his nurse, she 
 threw open the window and called down to 
 him : " Oh Donny darling, how is your 
 mother this morning?" 
 
 The child looked up, his dimpled face very 
 round and very grave. " It wasn't measles 
 at all," he said, in a clear, precise treble. " It 
 was a little sister. And she's very young. 
 Mamma says she's younger than me." 
 
 3
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Donny, you dear!" she crooned. 
 " Now catch ! " She threw him the fattest 
 chocolate in the box at her elbow, and then 
 shut the window abruptly, for Eben Gregory 
 was coming slowly down the avenue in his 
 car, and it crossed her mind that some day 
 he would discover that he had come that way 
 once too often. 
 
 She went back to the table, her eyes sweet 
 from the sight of Donny in his scarlet coat; 
 she loved that little boy, and, with the thought 
 of him fortifying her, she picked up Iliel 
 Sargent's letter and read it without a pause. 
 
 FAR END, MASS., 
 
 November 4. 
 Dear Kitty : 
 
 I want to say something to you about 
 Christina. She was nineteen on Monday. 
 Do you remember that when you went away 
 and left her with me, I asked you whether 
 you wished it to be understood that you 
 
 4
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 washed your hands of all responsibility to- 
 wards her? Your answer was that when she 
 was a woman and needed to understand, I 
 might send her to you. I am not sure that 
 I know yet what you meant the question 
 as to you and me, or the larger one, for her, 
 of her own life and its ways. 
 
 I may as well tell you that I never expected 
 the time to come when I should be willing 
 for you to do anything for my child. Yet 
 it has. I expected to bring her up to think 
 as I thought to wish as I willed. But ap- 
 parently there is some change in me, for I 
 now desire her to take her own course. I 
 want her to realize herself as a problem that 
 has to be worked out to some dispassionate 
 and rational solution, unless she intends to 
 take life in a series of blunders disastrous 
 not only to herself, but to the other person. 
 For Christina is like her mother there will 
 always be the other person. He is there 
 now, and Christina will marry him, unless 
 
 5
 
 you and I prevent it. And then she might 
 want to unmarry him she is her mother's 
 child. 
 
 It is not that I do not believe in Benny 
 Faber as a husband for her. I do. She 
 could not have a better one. But she must 
 find that out for herself, and that is why she 
 must not marry him not yet, at least. 
 
 But as she will marry, I have thought that 
 perhaps you would give her the benefit of 
 your judgment. I realize that I do not know 
 what she thinks or what she wants, when it 
 comes to the matter of men. But I think 
 you will know. 
 
 So I ask you to take my child for a time 
 and help her to find the way to a future in 
 which there shall be no heartbreaks either 
 for her, or because of her. 
 
 When may I send her to you? 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 ILIEL SARGENT. 
 6
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 Mrs. Dicky Warder laid the letter back 
 upon the table; she could feel her face grow- 
 ing white. 
 
 But the next moment a wave of color 
 washed red to the roots of her hair. Who 
 ever heard of a man's writing a letter like 
 that and after all these years in which she 
 had been unknown to him? 
 
 It was unthinkable that Iliel Sargent should 
 offer his child to the woman who had left 
 him, weary of him, weary of poverty, weary 
 of the motherhood thrust upon her before 
 she was out of her teens. His child indeed; 
 she had never thought of it as hers. 
 
 " Iliel Sargent." The signature held her 
 eyes. How simple it all was to understand 
 now! He had married her because she was 
 a rosebud of a girl with a troubling charm 
 that left no man unstirred; because her soft 
 brown hair grew low on a forehead beneath 
 which came the warm gray eyes, and the 
 7
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 lips designed since the beginning of the world 
 to meet upon his. So he, dreamer of poetical 
 phantasies, had dreamed. 
 
 Kitty Warder sighed. That girl her- 
 self twenty years ago ! Of course he had 
 loved her; there had been nothing else for 
 him to do. And naturally, she had married 
 him; there had been nothing else for her to 
 do. For he had been no ordinary lover. 
 
 Remembering, there returned upon her 
 now in all its spring-scented freshness the 
 morning when she had seen him coming to- 
 wards her along the English lane, its high 
 hedges shutting them in and all the rest of 
 the world out. She could feel again the 
 beat of the girl's heart, and the tremor that 
 shook her body like the wind of the dawn 
 through an eager string, and then, because 
 she could not go a step farther, she had 
 turned, and begun to look for violets where 
 none grew. 
 
 " See " it was his voice beside her " I 
 8
 
 have brought you these. I got them in Over- 
 shot Wood." 
 
 She took the primroses from him she 
 could smell them now, and something in her 
 shrank as from the fear of a stirring wound 
 
 but she could say nothing to him ; she 
 could only look at him, and think how tall he 
 was, and broad and fair, and quiver again, as 
 she felt without understanding the mute call 
 of his lips to hers. 
 
 Then : " Kitty ! " he had cried suddenly 
 
 and her hands were in his. 
 
 " My primroses ! " she answered, as he 
 crushed them closer. 
 
 " Primroses ! " he echoed. " Aren't there 
 a million more for you in Overshot Wood? " 
 
 "No," she said swiftly. "There will 
 never be any more like these in any wood." 
 
 That was where the story should have 
 ended. But marriage on the love-in-a-cot- 
 tage income followed, and then the round of 
 days in a little house in a little American vil- 
 
 9
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 lage, with no escape from the sordid details 
 of cheap living. It was true that Iliel re- 
 mained' the lover, and worked at his pre- 
 carious trade of literature with feverish per- 
 ception of his responsibilities as a married 
 man. But the lover as lover and as husband 
 were not quite the same; Mrs. Warder re- 
 membered with quick pity how the young 
 wife had remained a mute and bewildered 
 instrument at the strange touch of passion, 
 and the boy husband had not understood, his 
 own content being probably sufficient unto 
 itself in those early days. 
 
 And then the baby came, and against that 
 day and night there was set in Kitty Sar- 
 gent's memory a mark of horror. She was 
 pathetically young and rebellious, and not 
 afraid to question the things that yield a 
 stone for bread in the answering. She did 
 not want that baby; oh perhaps, some day, 
 but not then! She hated pain and discom- 
 10
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 fort, and what appeared to her the coarse 
 service demanded of her for the child. She 
 speedily decided that the joys of love were 
 open to suspicion in their adjustment to the 
 woman, too generously apportioned to her 
 by a sardonic Creator and Dispenser of the 
 privileges of sex. 
 
 Iliel of course worked hard, but he was 
 doing the thing he liked to do and had chosen 
 to do, and he had his bodily freedom. She 
 would never have hers again; there would 
 always be a child to bear or to nourish, or 
 to care for in some distasteful way. 
 
 She was not without love for her baby, but 
 she grew to feel that both it and she were 
 victims. What was the use of being young 
 and charming with no one by to dream back 
 into her eyes her own sweetness? Iliel had 
 ceased inventing new ways of telling her that 
 she was adored; all that he had once said 
 to her he now put on paper, and though he 
 II
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 read it to her very interestingly, she found 
 it less satisfying to be used as a model for 
 heroines than she could have foreseen. 
 
 And then Dicky Warder came Iliel's 
 college chum who was spending the summer 
 at Looking-Glass Lake with his affluent aunt. 
 As the good lady owned most of the land to 
 be seen, east, west, north, and south of the 
 four walls of Looking-Glass Lodge, it fol- 
 lowed that the neighborhood offered little in 
 the way of immediate entertainment accord- 
 ing to Dicky Warder's kind, and with the 
 best intentions in the world towards his pros- 
 pects, he had to own to himself that they 
 were likely to be the death of him if no ad- 
 venture occurred to relieve the dullness of 
 days that began with cribbage and ended 
 with more cribbage. 
 
 But the devil had always had a soft spot 
 in his heart for Dicky Warder. And so it 
 happened that, as the young man drove 
 through Far End one warm July afternoon, 
 
 12
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 he came upon Iliel Sargent. And Iliel, des- 
 perately anxious- to exhibit his prize, took 
 Dicky to the little home that was so frail a 
 guard for it. 
 
 After that there were no more dull days 
 for anyone, and Iliel rejoiced that he need 
 no longer feel importuned to seek diversions 
 for Kitty. Warder was always in and out, 
 so lightly and so naturally, and Kitty had 
 never been sweeter, and the long hours of 
 work never swifter. They fell into the 
 habit of driving in the early evenings she 
 and Dicky on the front seat, and he behind, 
 resting and dreaming. Dreaming that 
 was it. 
 
 Mrs. Warder got up and walked to the 
 window again, and looked up and down the 
 wintry avenue; in this moment she wanted 
 to escape from the memories that long train- 
 ing had forbidden to her, but which to-day 
 were pressing upon her like pointed swords. 
 
 13
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Dicky Warder? no, she would not think 
 of some things. She never had, since that 
 last hour, when with struggling breath he 
 had said to her: " Do you love me? " and 
 she had answered : " Yes," and then waited, 
 frightened, until he spoke again. " You lie 
 well, Kitty," he said, and with the little smile 
 she dreaded, he closed his eyes. 
 
 That was five years ago. 
 
 She could not escape thinking. She had 
 to remember, and with a sudden rush of 
 tears to eyes that had known few, she whis- 
 pered: "You were cruel to me, Dicky." 
 
 That afternoon she went to see Mrs. Nevil 
 and the little sister that was younger than 
 Donny. Usually she shrank from babies, 
 conscious of herself as unfemininely alien to 
 them. But to-day she said to the nurse: 
 "May I have her?" and when she had 
 the tiny thing across her knees she looked at 
 it so long and so strangely that at last Mrs. 
 14
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 Nevil said : " Kitty, what are you think- 
 ing?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder gave back the child abruptly 
 to the nurse. " Oh, so many, many things," 
 she said with a little laugh : " about babies, 
 and why they come, and what they mean." 
 
 Mrs. Nevil was puzzled. " I suppose it's 
 the women who don't have them who philos- 
 ophize about them. Kitty, didn't you ever 
 want a baby? " She looked wistfully at the 
 friend to whom she told almost everything, 
 and who told her so little. 
 
 "A baby? Yes once." There was a 
 swift change in Mrs. Warder's face. " I 
 saw one in the street there was something 
 about it I wondered if I had looked like 
 that when I was a baby. Oh, all sorts of 
 things, and I flew home, and Dicky found 
 me crying, and I couldn't tell him why, but 
 he made me. He wasn't pleased. He said 
 that I and my beauty were worth a hundred 
 
 15
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 children to the world I was never to be 
 marred by any child." 
 
 "Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Nevil 
 deeply. 
 
 " Yes. He said I was never to speak to 
 him of that again. I said I never would, 
 and when he was gone, I looked at myself in 
 the glass, and then I smashed it that 
 mirror. I hated it. The woman I saw in it 
 was a manufactured creature." 
 
 " Kitty darling ! " Mrs. Nevil's face 
 flushed hotly. 
 
 " Oh Sally, I mustn't talk to you like this. 
 The nurse will be putting me out." 
 
 Mrs. Nevil shook her head. " I like to 
 hear you talk like that," she said with a 
 touch of shyness. " You don't often get se- 
 rious, Kitty." 
 
 Late that night Mrs. Warder sent a letter 
 to the post. The words of it were brief: 
 
 ' You may send Christina to me. When 
 shall I expect her? " 
 
 16
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 Then she read Iliel's letter through again, 
 suddenly ravaged by a passion to know what 
 manner of man he had become. For she 
 discerned that he was no longer of the sim- 
 ply woven fabric that had composed the na- 
 ture of the boy whom she had loved and 
 wedded, and so lightly left. Of course not; 
 he was Iliel Sargent the successful play- 
 wright now, and the man of the world, as 
 much the man of the world in his way as 
 Dicky Warder had been in his. 
 
 The thought of the girl, held aloof through 
 the long hours of this troubling day, forced 
 its way in past the guards she had set against 
 it, and waited silently, until in self-defence 
 she began to argue her case with this un- 
 known daughter. What did the girl know 
 of her? What had she been brought up to 
 believe about her mother? 
 
 It did not matter; she could meet the 
 child unashamed. She had not sinned against 
 Iliel Sargent; she had left him with no stain
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 upon her. She had remained in exile from 
 Warder until she was honorably free to 
 marry him. But she remembered that in 
 that time she had lived upon his letters 
 those letters that he had made her bring to 
 him and then burn, soon after their marriage. 
 They had served their purpose, he told her, 
 and there came a time when she understood 
 what he had meant. For by every device 
 known to a connoisseur of that art in which 
 the least subtle and the dullest pulsed of 
 men is, at some moment in his life, an artist 
 divinely or diabolically endowed, those let- 
 ters were written with the intent of suffusing 
 a girl's unconscious passion with elements 
 well calculated to pique the taste of a young 
 man of exclusive preferences. 
 
 Mrs. Warder put out the light and turned 
 
 to her bed. It was no use; she was not 
 
 ready to sleep yet. The thoughts that she 
 
 had kept under restraint for five years were 
 
 18
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 leaping at her like hounds torn loose from 
 an outworn leash; she could no longer pro- 
 tect the name of the man who had been her 
 husband from the gall of her memories. Her 
 life with him stood out before her appraised 
 at his own valuation of it. Dicky Warder 
 had been no novice in the art of love like 
 Iliel Sargent. From the moment of their 
 marriage he had treated his wife as an ex- 
 quisitely strung instrument from which pas- 
 sion should evoke for him the most passion- 
 ately varied confession, but with the most 
 delicately rhythmic accent. And yet to her 
 memory nothing could be more flagitious 
 than the training she had received from the 
 man who, in a week, had silently defined his 
 possession of her to be that of the master. 
 She obeyed him, because of her fear of him, 
 and because there seemed to be nothing else 
 to do. In a year she had grown dependent 
 upon the luxuries of her position; it was but 
 
 19
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 natural that she should shrink from the 
 thought of any life less sumptuously minis- 
 trant to her ease. 
 
 Her face burnt now as she recalled his 
 remark made to her when he declared himself 
 finally satisfied with the panther-like grace of 
 her carriage the grace he had spent hours 
 in patiently developing and directing : " No 
 man could ever see you walk without wanting 
 to take you in his arms." 
 
 It was the only time he was betrayed into 
 indiscreet admission of his point of view. 
 And his ideals for her being what they were, 
 it was small wonder that he was annoyed by 
 her desire to have a child. " That is the 
 best use to which most women can be put," 
 he told her. " Women like you, of whom 
 there are few enough in a generation, are not 
 meant for service as instruments of race per- 
 petuation." 
 
 " What am I meant for then? " she had de- 
 manded rebelliously. 
 
 But he had declined to discuss that, and 
 20
 
 THE PRIMROSES 
 
 then, after he had left her, she looked at her- 
 self in the glass at the curve of the bosom 
 which ached for the face of a child against it 
 and smashed the glass. For she under- 
 stood, for the first time, that she was no wife, 
 but a man's mistress. 
 
 Iliel Sargent and the child that had been 
 hers were never mentioned between her and 
 Dicky Warder; she had soon discovered that 
 that part of her life must be as if it never had 
 been. 
 
 Now, as she sat alone in the darkness, a 
 thrill of joy went through her that at last 
 she possessed herself that she was owned 
 by no man. She realized that she had en- 
 dured an experience such as scorches few 
 women, but she had come out of it curiously 
 unscathed; she was still able to approach her 
 own purity in reverence. 
 
 And in strange, sudden confusion of im- 
 pulse, she wished that Iliel Sargent could 
 know that. 
 
 21
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Yet the next moment swept her back to the 
 mood in which she had begun the day. It 
 was impossible outrageous ! That girl 
 Christina she must not come. Iliel Sar- 
 gent should have known better than to ask 
 such a thing; it was unfair; it was not decent. 
 
 He had always been an unreasonable man 
 clearly he was so still. 
 
 Had he always been unreasonable? 
 
 She shook the thought from her. To- 
 morrow she would write again, and explain, 
 as he did not seem to understand, that in the 
 circumstances it was not possible for her to 
 receive his daughter. He had flaunted the 
 expression my child in his letter; let him keep 
 his child! 
 
 In that mood she fell asleep. 
 
 22
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 Conditions had changed since the days when 
 Iliel Sargent set up housekeeping with his 
 young wife " over on the North Side " of 
 Far End. For many years now he had lived 
 on the West Side, in what was locally known 
 as the Mansion House, and as his circum- 
 stances progressed through the various stages 
 of increasing ease towards affluence, he had 
 carefully restored the old place to its original 
 simplicity. It had been built three-quarters 
 of a century before by a man of his own 
 blood, and Sargent had in his possession a let- 
 ter written by his mother when she had visited 
 there in her girlhood, in which for the enter- 
 tainment of her family, she described minutely 
 the house and its furnishings. With its aid 
 
 23
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 he had been able to call back the beauty of 
 the early days ; even the rose-jars in the draw- 
 ing-room were back in their old place on 
 either side of the great black marble mantel- 
 piece, from which there had been scraped 
 many layers of the white paint laid on to ap- 
 pease the artistic sensibilities of the last tenant 
 a lady whose ideas of " art " were de- 
 rived from the household magazine which 
 nourished her intellect and provided patterns 
 for her clothes. The amazing wall-paper 
 was replaced by one of " palest lavender tone 
 with a smooth satin finish " as his mother 
 had described it; and at the many windows 
 hung curtains of plain white silk. The rug 
 that covered the floor matched the walls in 
 color, and scattered upon it were enormous 
 roses in a faintly deeper shade of lavender 
 with delicate green leaves and stems. The 
 room was a witness to the best in Early Vic- 
 torian decoration, and many mornings, before 
 his day's work began, Iliel Sargent spent a 
 
 24
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 few minutes there, ministered to by its homely 
 charm; he loved to feel the glow of the old 
 mahogany against the low key of color that 
 served to bring out all the secrets of the 
 wood; he had searched far and patiently for 
 the chairs and the table and the adroitly 
 curved sofa which one and another of the vil- 
 lagers had bought at the auction sale thirty 
 years before. They were not all there yet, 
 but he knew where they were, and he cher- 
 ished in himself a belief that they were de- 
 creed one day to return. But he discovered 
 early in his search that he had to employ a 
 variety of means if he would secure the re- 
 turn of erstwhile family possessions; money 
 unadorned was not enough. There was that 
 pretty Mrs. Dryder she had all the furni- 
 ture belonging to one of the bed-rooms and 
 refused to part with it at any price. But that 
 was only after she had permitted him to call 
 upon her countless times in regard to it, al- 
 ways insisting upon his going up-stairs to 
 25
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 look at it; the carving on the four bed-posts 
 was elaborate, and she particularly liked him 
 to observe that there was not a speck of dust 
 in any cranny. 
 
 " And I couldn't, Mr. Sargent I could- 
 n't intrust the care of that furniture to any- 
 one but myself, and yet it's the dearest wish 
 of my heart to see it where it belongs in the 
 Mansion House." 
 
 Sargent looked at her and muttered 
 blankly, " I'm sure you're very kind, Mrs. 
 Dryder," and walked home, a wise if not a 
 willing man. 
 
 Yet why should he be unwilling? He had 
 to admit that he had found his calls upon 
 the lady very entertaining; the little woman 
 had a great deal of charm in a bird-like, co- 
 quettish way, and she came of a family as 
 good as his own. He wished that she had 
 not put that marrying idea into his head. It 
 was strange that after all these years in which 
 the lure of marriage had been the least of his 
 26
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 temptations he should be assailed now by 
 annoying visions of its possibilities by di- 
 rect thoughts of a pretty wife in the Mansion 
 House. Yet it was easily explained, he as- 
 sured himself. Christina had suddenly 
 grown up; she would surely marry and leave 
 him to the starvation pangs of life alone with 
 Cousin Belle, the best and most devoted of 
 house-keeping women. Christina was such a 
 darling, such a dainty flower of a girl, such 
 an appealing, joyously pathetic realization of 
 all a man's dreams of maidenhood, from the 
 crown of her willful head to the tip of her 
 adored little foot ; Christina, with her ribbons 
 and her furbelows and her laces and her per- 
 fumes, and her saucy caprices and reprehensi- 
 ble extravagance of mood and conduct. To 
 him the Mansion House was a frame for 
 her; when he had married it had been with 
 the determination that it should one day be a 
 frame for his wife; to that end he had slaved 
 at his work while she played through a sum- 
 27
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 mer with Dicky Warder. When the next 
 summer came he remembered his dreams with 
 curses for his blindness; but the years passed, 
 and Christina grew out of babyhood into girl- 
 hood, and he began to dream again, and the 
 most fiercely happy day of his life came when 
 he led his little daughter into the home he 
 had intended for her mother. 
 
 And now when he sat in the great drawing- 
 room and watched her flitting about, filling 
 the vases with flowers, he was content; he 
 wanted nothing more. She had grown up in 
 the setting he had desired for her; the poetry 
 of the old place her room, the same that 
 his mother had occupied, with its quaint 
 chintz hangings, its dainty dressing-table with 
 the heart-shaped mirror that seemed made 
 only to reflect a girl's face; the garden, 
 where the old-time flowers grew, hollyhocks 
 and love-lies-bleeding and heavy scented 
 pinks; and beyond the stone wall, the or- 
 chard, where to-day the blossoms blew and 
 28
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 to-morrow the- fruit gleamed palely green 
 among the greener leaves, or blushed ripe and 
 red for winter's storing the poetry of all 
 these things had entered richly into Chris- 
 tina's life, and had done, each its part, in 
 making her the rare creature that she was a 
 creature of the winter's snows and the sum- 
 mer's winds, with the tinted breath of wild- 
 roses on her lips and the purpled blue of the 
 wayside gentian in her eyes. There was 
 nothing of her mother in her looks; in that 
 respect she was simon-pure Sargent. 
 
 But there was everything of her mother in 
 her temperament; wise student of men and 
 women that he had become, her father met 
 and acknowledged that fact, and determined 
 to make the best of the situation for his 
 daughter. 
 
 It was in pursuit of this determination that 
 
 he had written to Mrs. Dicky Warder the 
 
 letter that she found so disturbing; perhaps 
 
 her answer, which he perceived on the top of 
 
 29
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 his pile of letters when he went into his 
 " workshop " on the morning of the sixth of 
 November, produced a flash of the nerves in 
 him, even though he was expecting it. But 
 he set it aside and dictated the day's answers 
 to his correspondence to his secretary, Miss 
 Maroline Spence. 
 
 "Why Maroline?" he had asked briefly 
 when he engaged her. 
 
 " Names of my grandmothers Mary, 
 Caroline," she had explained a trifle wearily. 
 " Parents disagreed. Compromised on Ma- 
 roline." 
 
 He had looked at her doubtfully, reflecting 
 that the uninitiated man would probably pro- 
 nounce her a business-like and unsentimental 
 person. But he had had experience with all 
 kinds, and as it always had been, so it proved 
 to be in this case. He had begun by dis- 
 missing them for it, but now he hardened his 
 heart and endured it that Miss Spence's pas- 
 
 30
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 sion for him should nourish itself upon her 
 own devotion to his service. 
 
 After he had disposed of his business let- 
 ters and warded off a conversation he had 
 seen forming itself for days upon Miss 
 Spence's flat-nosed countenance, he picked up 
 Mrs. Warder's note opened and read it 
 put it back in its envelope, and took it to a 
 secretaire and shut it away in a drawer. Then 
 he settled himself in the chair in which he 
 always sat when he wrote, and plunged into 
 the last act of his play the act for which 
 Harriet Winship, the actress cast for the lead- 
 ing lady's part, had been clamoring this 
 month past. 
 
 To-day he was suddenly aware of a pas- 
 sionate interest in the act; he wrote vehe- 
 mently, exulting in the consciousness that he 
 was doing unusual work. He was driven by 
 a feverish desire to get himself down while 
 he was in this mood. 
 
 31
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 But at half-past four that afternoon there 
 came an imperious knock on the door, and 
 then Christina's voice. " Father, I'm com- 
 ing in. I am." 
 
 " Well " he answered weakly, and 
 threw on the floor the last page of the act at 
 which he had been staring vacantly for longer 
 than he knew. 
 
 Christina came in. She was carrying a 
 tea-tray for which she cleared a space on the 
 floor with her foot, as there was not a spare 
 inch on table or chair, and then she sank down 
 beside it and began to pour tea and talk with 
 equal precipitation. 
 
 " I've had such a day." 
 
 " You always do," he murmured between 
 two bites at a muffin. 
 
 She looked at him disapprovingly. " When 
 I found you weren't going to walk to Look- 
 ing-Glass Lake with me " 
 
 " I couldn't," he protested. " I had to 
 
 32
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 write to-day. The fourth act of The Fire 
 Fools is done." 
 
 " Done! " she echoed. " I really think I 
 ought to sit on your knee for that." 
 
 " There'll be an awful collision of tea-cups 
 if you do," he said anxiously. " Perhaps 
 you'd wait a little." 
 
 " You will," she retorted. " You're the 
 only man I know who holds off my offers. 
 But as you've finished your fourth act I'll let 
 that pass." 
 
 " Thanks. But tell me what you've been 
 up to." 
 
 " Well lunching with Mrs. Dryder for 
 one thing." 
 
 "With Mrs. Dryder?" 
 
 " Yes." Christina eyed her parent specu- 
 latively. " I'm afraid you've been flirting 
 awfully with her." 
 
 "Tina!" But Sargent blushed slightly. 
 
 " She does too," said Christina, pinching 
 
 33
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Sargent's cheek. " Very becomingly if 
 you're not his daughter." 
 
 " Now, Tina, you know " 
 
 " Everything." Christina's tone was 
 blandness itself. " She thought she was 
 pumping me, but I extracted from that help- 
 less woman her most secret hopes and fears. 
 I couldn't help doing it, father. She over- 
 did the innocent so awfully to begin with, and 
 told me so many things just to have me tell 
 them to you, and I really can't be used that 
 way without doing my little part too. She's 
 really all right, you know. She's just a bit 
 silly for the time." 
 
 Sargent nodded. 
 
 Christina got up from the floor and came 
 and stood beside him. u I'm not going to 
 tell you anything more about her. And 
 you're to be nice to her in a careful way." 
 
 " You think " began Sargent slowly. 
 
 " No, I don't," said Christina, " but so 
 long as she can never have anything more, I 
 
 34
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 think she might as well be happy with her 
 silly dreams. You're a perfect fit for that 
 kind of thing." 
 
 Sargent laughed and drew the girl down 
 beside him, and after she had kissed him a 
 great many times she put her hands on his 
 shoulders and looked at him gravely. 
 
 " This marrying business is a nuisance," 
 she said. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know." Sargent spoke 
 lightly and blew a ring of smoke over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Well, I do, and you ought to. And you 
 would if you had Benny Faber on your mind 
 the way I have." 
 
 " Take him off it." 
 
 " That's just it. I'm going to." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Sargent. 
 
 Christina looked at him critically. " I 
 wonder what that ' Oh 1 ' means. I suppose 
 you would like me to marry Benny." 
 
 Sargent got up and set Christina on a pile 
 
 35
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 of books on the table. She was such a di- 
 minutive, decorative thing that the big man 
 had a habit of perching her about wherever 
 she appeared most effective. 
 
 But he was not thinking of that now. 
 " Tina 1 " he exclaimed almost violently, " do 
 you think that the father who is fit to be 
 called father ever wants his daughter to 
 marry any man? " 
 
 " Oh 1 " said Christina, in a tone so exact 
 a repetition of Sargent's a few moments be- 
 fore that they both laughed. Then she 
 added: "Don't you see, father? Benny's 
 the only one. And that won't do. I want 
 them to fall in love with me by the dozen. 
 But the trouble is, where are the dozen ? Not 
 in Far End, certainly." 
 
 "No," said Sargent slowly; "not in Far 
 End." 
 
 He stood looking at her. And she sat on 
 her pile of books, looking at him, her adored 
 36
 
 ' s 
 
 N ' T y u see > f a tber? Benny's the 
 only one. And that won't do. I want 
 them to faH in love with me by the 
 dozen ' '
 
 THE MANSION HOUSE 
 
 little feet swaying under the table and out 
 again. 
 
 Suddenly she cried out. " Father, don't 
 stare at me like that! Aren't you happy 
 about me? What have I done? " 
 
 " Come, we must get ready for dinner," 
 he said. And lifting her on his shoulder he 
 carried her up-stairs to the door of her room. 
 
 37
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER 
 
 " You see, I've been thinking, Tina." 
 
 Christina looked up from the absurd gar- 
 ment she was making for the gardener's last 
 and most superfluous baby. " I'd be careful 
 about that. It might become a habit." 
 
 " Not this sort." Sargent hesitated. " Be- 
 cause it's true, Tina what you said. 
 You don't see a man from one month's end 
 to another that you can try your young af- 
 fections on." 
 
 "Oh! that/" 
 
 11 Yes that. But it's rather serious after 
 all. I've thought about it a great deal more 
 than you have." 
 
 " Then you do want me to get married ! " 
 
 38
 
 MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER 
 
 " I don't," declared Sargent stormily. 
 " But you will." 
 
 11 Oh yes, I shall," assented Christina eas- 
 ily. " That's why I'd like to have a little 
 choice, and not have to take Benny Faber 
 just because I loved him, and there was no- 
 body else.'* 
 
 ' You think you love Benny? " demanded 
 her father, staring at her. He was often 
 staggered by the ease with which she appro- 
 priated the great experiences as her own. 
 
 " Think I love him! " she flashed. 
 'Then why I'm rather in the dark, 
 Tina." 
 
 " I don't see why," said Christina slowly. 
 " Some things are hard to explain. You see 
 Madam Kitty loved you, father." 
 
 Sargent was silent. 
 
 " Didn't she? " insisted Christina. 
 
 " She thought so," he admitted. He had 
 to; he was remembering Overshot Wood. 
 
 "Well, that's it, you see, father. That's 
 
 39
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 what troubles me. Loving doesn't seem as 
 sure as you'd think it would, and as every- 
 body pretends it is. Does it? " She leaned 
 forward and made him look at her. 
 
 " Little girl, I don't know." 
 
 " But you ought to know, father. You've 
 had a long time to think about it." 
 
 11 1 ? " He waited. " That doesn't help. 
 I know less about it, child, perhaps, than you 
 do." 
 
 She was silent a while, looking at him as if 
 she saw him in a new light. Then she said: 
 " Some people are sure. Some of them fall 
 in love and get married and stay married, 
 and they are happy. You remember that 
 little Mrs. Symons we met when we were 
 in Switzerland that Englishwoman. She 
 talked to me about the silly boy who made 
 such awful love to me." 
 
 "What boy?" demanded Sargent. 
 
 " Oh, never mind, father. I didn't, but I 
 40
 
 MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER 
 
 think she got afraid I might. She didn't 
 understand my way with a man that was 
 all. She took everything that had anything 
 to do with love so seriously, but after I had 
 convinced her, she talked to me about mar- 
 riage in quite a lovely way. Her idea was 
 that you fell beautifully in love and then lived 
 or died all the rest of your life just for that 
 man. I liked to hear her talk, but of course 
 I wasn't going to keep still forever, and one 
 day I said that marriage could only be an 
 experiment no matter how much falling in 
 love you had done beforehand. She asked 
 me what I meant, and I told her that I sup- 
 posed the chances of good luck were about 
 even, and that if you made a marriage that 
 turned out all wrong, you must just be sensi- 
 ble and get out of it as quietly and comfort- 
 ably as possible and hope for better cards 
 next time. My! but she was shocked. She 
 let fly at me, and I've never forgotten some 
 41
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 of the things she said. She had such a 
 well, a sort of sacred idea about the whole 
 thing. It was rather nice." 
 
 Christina waited, watching her father. 
 
 " Some people have that way of looking at 
 it, Tina." 
 
 " Madam Kitty didn't." 
 
 " No, Madam Kitty didn't." 
 
 " And you've always told me that you 
 didn't blame her, father that she did noth- 
 ing wrong that she did the only sensible 
 thing there was to do, and and all that." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well " Christina threw down the lit- 
 tle garment and got up and stood close to 
 him " is that what you believe now 
 when I want to know ? " 
 
 Sargent got up too. " Tina, don't ask me 
 things like that ! Madam Kitty was perfectly 
 honorable there was nothing else for her 
 to do. She was your mother, Tina, and " 
 
 "But, father" 
 
 42
 
 MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER 
 
 / 
 
 He came over to her and laid his fingers 
 across her lips. 
 
 "Child, don't!" he said. 
 
 For in this moment he understood himself 
 as in all these years he had never done. He 
 understood that all his wisdom, all his cooled- 
 on-ice philosophy of life had been but as a 
 sophistical veil that he had woven to hide his 
 wound from his own eyes. To-night, for 
 the first time, he understood just what it had 
 meant to him when his wife went her way, 
 and left him and his child to go theirs. 
 
 But he had had twenty years' discipline in 
 his philosophical creed, and though he was 
 suffering in a way new and strange, his belief 
 as to what was due to his wife and his daugh- 
 ter did not waver. He realized that his ideals 
 for his own conduct were quixotic repre- 
 hensible, many good people would consider 
 them. They seemed almost that to himself 
 in this crisis, but that was just why he meant 
 to adhere to them. For they were the fruit 
 
 43
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 of years of suffering and of unflinching study 
 of himself and his kind, and now, because he 
 was tempted by the desire to doubt them, he 
 would be true to them. 
 
 " I am going to tell you something, Tina," 
 he began at last. " It is what I have been 
 thinking about. How would you like to go 
 and stay with Madam Kitty for a while? " 
 
 Christina's lips parted; for a moment she 
 said nothing; then she asked: "With 
 Madam Kitty?" 
 
 "Yes." He tried to speak lightly. 
 " Why not? To see the world as a woman 
 of it sees it to meet the men a woman in 
 it meets to get the big view to be able 
 to make comparisons." 
 
 " Father! " cried the girl. " What do you 
 mean ? " Her young thinking eyes were keen 
 on his face. " Besides," she added swiftly, 
 " Madam Kitty I don't believe she'd want 
 me." 
 
 " She does." 
 
 44
 
 MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 " She says so." 
 
 " Have you seen her, then? " There was 
 resentment in the quick question. 
 
 " No. She wrote to me." 
 
 "Where is her letter? Had you written 
 to her?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Without telling me?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Father! " She was in a flame. " You 
 had no right to do that to write to her 
 about me without without " 
 
 " My child, she is your mother." 
 
 " She's nothing to me, father, and you 
 know she isn't. I've lived all my life with- 
 out her. I don't want to know her now. I 
 won't." 
 
 " Come here ! " he said. And melted, she 
 flew to him, and perched on the arm of his 
 chair and laid her head against his, and let 
 herself be comforted and coaxed, and waxed 
 
 45
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 so sweet in her love for him that Sargent 
 could have groaned. 
 
 But he only said: " I will explain to you, 
 little girl. You see, it's like this you're 
 Madam Kitty's daughter as much as you are 
 mine. There is as much of her character in 
 yours as there is of mine. I think there's 
 more, Tina." 
 
 " No, no ! " she protested. But he held 
 her still. 
 
 " And some day perhaps five, ten years 
 from now that might come out, in such a 
 way that it would hurt you, darling, when it 
 shouldn't hurt you at all, if we are only wise 
 and patient. I've thought it all out. It has 
 taken me a long time. I want to give your 
 mother's temperament its rights now not 
 afterwards when there might, perhaps, be 
 others to hurt. I want you to know your 
 mother. I want you to come into the closest 
 contact with what she thinks and does. I 
 want you to understand her attitude towards 
 46
 
 MADAM KITTY'S DAUGHTER 
 
 life and to make up your mind about it 
 whether it is right or wrong or neither. She 
 is a woman of the world. They say she is 
 clever that she knows life better than most 
 women." He paused, and then added: 
 " She must; she couldn't escape that. Well, 
 that is it, Tina. I want her to tell you what 
 she knows and what she thinks about it. 
 Child " he put her off his chair; it seemed 
 as if he could not endure her sweet nearness 
 so soon to be gone from him. And she stood, 
 looking at him, with something of the mys- 
 tery of his sorrows in her eyes " child, I 
 have been so afraid. I have wanted not to 
 do this. I have wanted to keep you all to 
 myself. But that isn't fair to you. Some 
 day, when you can understand, I want you to 
 be able to see that your father was faithful to 
 you in a hard place. And if what I have 
 taught you of life is true, it will stand. 
 If it is not true, I want it to go. Some of it 
 will anyway. Little girl " he caught her 
 47
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 to him in sudden passion, in desperate need 
 of her tender woman's understanding " lit- 
 tle girl, do you see that it will never be again 
 for us as it has been until to-day ? that it 
 will never again be just you and I? " 
 
 She clung to him. " Father, don't make 
 me go. Don't! I don't want to. I 
 won't!" 
 
 " It's written," he said, with a sudden, 
 whimsical smile. And neither tears nor pro- 
 tests brought another serious word from him 
 that night.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 " I'm rather troubled, Iliel," said Cousin 
 Belle as she carefully folded a skirt to fit into 
 Christina's trunk. " It seems to me there's 
 something I ought to say and I don't want to 
 say it." 
 
 " Then you know how sorry you'll be after- 
 wards," said Sargent. " One more duty left 
 undone, and never again the chance to do it, 
 in all eternity." 
 
 He had wandered into his daughter's room 
 with the feeling that he must set foot within 
 it once again, while the breath of her young 
 life was still warm in it before her step 
 had vanished from it and the shades were 
 drawn and the door closed upon what had 
 become for her the past. 
 
 49
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Cousin Belle smiled gently. " Of course 
 you're laughing at me, Iliel. I don't won- 
 der." 
 
 She was a small-sized woman of fifty, with 
 a figure which was a spiritual stumbling-block 
 to her of no mean proportions ; she could not 
 resist? thanking God for it every time she 
 looked in the glass, and feeling pity for less 
 favored women notably Miss Spence. In 
 her purest moments she was aware that her 
 gratitude to her Maker and her sympathy for 
 Miss Spence were but subterfuges to cloak 
 her unholy satisfaction in a matter of mere 
 carnal endowment. 
 
 She had been used to hearing her face 
 spoken of as " homely " when she was a girl, 
 and had therefore early made up her mind to 
 forget that she had a face, which perhaps ac- 
 counted for its sweetness and simplicity of 
 expression. Her brown hair streaked with 
 gray had pretty little kinks in it that she 
 sought to conquer by strenuous brushing, with 
 50
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 results that were a humiliation to a woman 
 of serious character. 
 
 Sargent sat down in Christina's rocking- 
 chair it was the one concession to modern- 
 ity in the room. 
 
 " Laughing at you? Of course I'm laugh- 
 ing at you. I've been doing that for 
 nearly twenty years, haven't I?" 
 
 Cousin Belle nodded. " But, Iliel, you do 
 know, don't you? that I believe that there is 
 nothing real but the life of the spirit, and 
 that we are one with God all of us 
 whether we believe it or not, and that in Him 
 there can be nothing evil." 
 
 "Well?" said Sargent as she paused; he 
 was actuated by a desire to keep her from 
 condoling with him by occupying her with 
 her own mental processes. 
 
 " Well but, Iliel, how can you let that 
 dear child go " she drew herself up 
 bravely " into what seems to us to be 
 evil?" 
 
 51
 
 Sargent had in his hand a little slipper that 
 he had picked out of the corner into which 
 it had been tossed. 
 
 "What an absurd thing!" he said, bal- 
 ancing it on his finger. 
 
 Cousin Belle looked at him and shook her 
 head; she adored her big, well-favored man 
 relative, and loyally endeavored to discover 
 spiritual meanings in his untimely flippancies, 
 but it was sometimes hard to do so. 
 
 " Please, Iliel " she began again, and 
 then stopped, for Sargent was looking at her 
 with the directness that always frightened 
 her. 
 
 " You are sure that Madam Kitty is evil? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Oh Iliel, as to that " she faltered, in 
 her perturbation nearly sitting backwards into 
 the trunk. 
 
 " As to that," he repeated. " Then let us 
 put it this way. Could you imagine yourself 
 doing as she did? " 
 
 52
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 "Iliel!" 
 
 " Of course not. And neither can I im- 
 agine Madam Kitty doing as you have so 
 unselfishly done all these years in my house 
 packing trunks, and preserving fruit, and 
 checking the bills, and all the rest of it. It's 
 a matter of predestination of character, my 
 dear Belle. The wrong, if there was any, 
 was mine in mistaking the destination of 
 Madam Kitty's. Bat we adjusted that er- 
 ror, thus making way for you in your pre- 
 destined place here." 
 
 " Yes yes," murmured Cousin Belle. 
 There surely were many ways of looking at 
 a thing. 
 
 " And as for evil " Sargent's tone 
 changed " I am sending my little girl out 
 into the world as we call it as if she 
 hadn't always been in it to find out the 
 good in it and the good in herself. And 
 she will find it. She will find it, Cousin 
 Belle." 
 
 53
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 He got up and went out of the room be- 
 fore Cousin Belle had readjusted her mind to 
 a new point of view; Iliel talked so unex- 
 pectedly of things you supposed he never 
 thought of. He was a child of God, of 
 course, but a most unconscious and inconsis- 
 tent one. She had really been troubled to 
 hear him reading the last act of The Fire 
 Fools to Christina before luncheon; a line 
 from the Bible in one breath, and in the next 
 a joke at which they both shouted. Cer- 
 tainly the dear child had had strange train- 
 ing. 
 
 It did not occur to Cousin Belle at this 
 moment to remember that she was herself 
 considered a most inconsistent child of God 
 by her consciously consistent fellow Christians 
 in Far End. For here was a woman of un- 
 impeachable integrity of daily life, who not 
 only said that Romanists and Baptists and 
 Presbyterians were equally necessary mani- 
 festations of Divine truth, or they would not 
 54
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 exist, but who acted as if she believed it in 
 ways that made the reproofs she deserved 
 very difficult to administer. When the 
 O'Meara boy was burnt to death, she knelt 
 for hours with his mother before the shrine 
 of the Virgin in Saint Patrick's, and when she 
 came away her face had upon it the effulgence 
 of one who believed that she had delivered 
 to the especial care of the Mother of Sor- 
 rows a daughter who had sore need of her. 
 
 As soon as he felt that she had had time 
 to recover from the excitement of a distress- 
 ing occasion, Cousin Belle's own minister 
 called upon her and talked to her in a kindly 
 but faithful way of the sin of Mariolatry, 
 and she listened to him and said " Yes, yes " 
 when she thought yes, and nothing when she 
 thought no. 
 
 But as she shook hands with him she 
 looked up with a flash in her face. 
 
 " I still believe in the Virgin Mary," she 
 said sweetly. 
 
 55
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " What do you mean by that? " he asked 
 helplessly. 
 
 " I don't know. But I know she was a 
 great comfort to Nora O'Meara." 
 
 " But that's utterly irrational," he said, 
 more helplessly than before. 
 
 " I suppose so." She nodded and smiled 
 and shut the door softly, as he seemed to 
 have nothing ready to say. 
 
 The Reverend Austin Brown went home to 
 write a sermon on the faith that was once 
 delivered to the saints meaning Presbyte- 
 rianism. But as he wrote he began to be trou- 
 bled by the vision of a hewn and painted 
 figure such as he had seen in his foreign wan- 
 derings a figure at whose feet men and 
 women, knelt in devotion, a great host of 
 them, the poor, the ignorant, the betrayed, 
 the condemned. 
 
 The Nora O'Mearas and all the rest of 
 them what was there in the religion he 
 had to offer them to fill the place in their 
 56
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 sorrows of this Mary, whose face was the 
 face of Cousin Belle? 
 
 He went on with his sermon, but it grew 
 illogical, as if it were being written, not for 
 the elect in the pews, but for the outcast and 
 the deserted whose feet bled upon the by- 
 ways of despair. And it occurred to him 
 strangely that hitherto he had regarded them 
 merely as theological illustrations to his text. 
 
 Cousin Belle finished packing Christina's 
 trunk very slowly; it was a labor of love; 
 she thought caressingly of the girl in each 
 garment as she folded it and smoothed it into 
 place. When she heard the clang of the 
 front door and the rush of Christina's foot- 
 steps in the hall below she ran to the head of 
 the stairs and said: " I'm up here, dear. 
 Let's have our tea in your room your fa- 
 ther won't be in until dinner." 
 
 " All right," caroled Christina, and to the 
 sounds of many scramblings and much laugh- 
 ter, she appeared, followed by Kad, her little 
 
 5.7.
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Yorkshire terrier, who lived with his eyes 
 fixed on the face of his mistress. 
 
 " I've been over to say good-by to the 
 Fabers," she said, as she threw off her 
 coat and hat. " Mrs. Faber said, * Poor 
 child ! ' and asked me when I had heard from 
 Benny and what he thought, and Mr. Faber 
 said that Benny said that the man at the head 
 of the Survey was a damned fool " 
 
 " Tina ! " 
 
 " But he did, Cousin Belle. And that if 
 things weren't managed better, Benny would 
 resign, and I said, Oh no, he wouldn't 
 that he'd stick to the job until the job quit 
 him. And Mr. Faber said, You bet he 
 would that no one ever knew Benny Faber 
 to back down, not after he'd once set his mind 
 to a thing. They're such dears, Cousin 
 Belle. It always makes me sort of home- 
 sick for Benny when I see them. And he 
 won't be back for a whole year, and by then 
 as like as not, I'll be ' wooed and won and 
 58
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 married and a' " Her voice trailed off 
 into a murmur of demi-semi quavering. 
 
 " Tina, you won't I " protested Cousin 
 Belle. " You know that Benny believes that 
 you are going to marry him, and you know 
 that you are, and that there isn't another boy 
 like Benny in this whole world." 
 
 " Of course there isn't," agreed Christina 
 disconsolately. " That's the awful thing 
 about it." 
 
 Cousin Belle handed her a cup of tea with 
 a severe expression. 
 
 " Do you ever tell Benny that maybe you 
 won't marry him after all? " 
 
 "Tell him that! I shouldn't dare to. 
 Benny's grown up believing we're to get mar- 
 ried as soon as ever we could. It's awful ! " 
 Christina went to the window and looked out ; 
 light snowflakes were beginning to fall and 
 her mind went back to the winter afternoons 
 when Benny used to come to take her coast- 
 ing down Sunset Hill. They would walk 
 59
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 home together in the early darkness hand in 
 hand, and Benny would talk of the big 
 things the world was waiting for him to do. 
 He had begun doing some of them at col- 
 lege, but in so simple and unspectacular a way 
 that it took some people a long time to find 
 out that in reality Benny was a very spectacu- 
 lar person. 
 
 The snowflakes fell, faster and faster, just 
 as they used to fall, but Benny was gone, and 
 to-morrow she would be gone; there was t'o 
 be for them no more coasting on Sunset Hill 
 and no walk home in the dusk with Kad and 
 Cardinal rushing madly out of sight along 
 the winding road, and then back again with 
 gasping breath and red tongues lapping the 
 frosty air. 
 
 Christina sighed. Those were nice days 
 free of all the tiresome complications that 
 had arisen since it had become apparent that 
 Benny really intended to marry her, and that, 
 perhaps, uncomfortably soon. Of course she 
 60
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 loved him; how could you do anything else? 
 Benny, with his beautiful face you 
 couldn't call Benny's face anything but beau- 
 tiful and his dark, thick, crisply turned 
 hair. His face was as square and determined 
 looking as his figure, but his gray eyes and his 
 mouth oh everything sweet and wise and 
 everlasting as the hills was in them I 
 
 " Oh dear! " she said aloud, and sat down, 
 and held out her cup to be filled again. 
 " You see, Cousin Belle, the trouble is, Benny 
 doesn't understand. Or else he won't 
 perhaps that's it. He insists upon taking it 
 for granted that I'm just as crazy to marry 
 him as he is to marry me. He talks as if 
 marriage were Paradise as if the sun and 
 the moon and the stars and all created things 
 had been designed since the beginning of 
 Time just to get us married to each other." 
 
 " Bless him! " ejaculated Cousin Belle. 
 
 " That's all foolishness," said Christina 
 decidedly. " Benny thinks when you're 
 61
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 married you're caught up into a golden cloud 
 and live in it ever after. But I know that 
 you come down to earth bump a year later, 
 if not eleven months and twenty-nine days 
 sooner. The trouble is that Benny doesn't 
 know me at all since I've grown up and be- 
 gun to think." 
 
 Cousin Belle laughed softly. " My 
 dear, very much grown-up women like you 
 may like to think they think all they want to 
 think they think, but in the long run they do 
 the same old thing that women always have 
 been doing with very little thinking and a 
 vast amount of feeling." 
 
 " Oh, I dare say. Now, if I were thirty " 
 Christina gazed reflectively at the absurd 
 red slippers on her bits of feet " why, if I 
 were thirty, of course, I'd marry Benny to- 
 morrow." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Cousin Belle, when you're thirty " 
 
 " As to that, I'm not sure," said Cousin 
 62
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 Belle rather loftily. " There are women of 
 fifty " she was thinking of the minister, 
 for in spite of her simplicity, she was fem- 
 ininely aware that the Reverend Austin 
 Brown's interest in the purity of her theo- 
 logical beliefs was not primarily a matter of 
 ecclesiastical devotion on his part. He 
 thought it was, of course. 
 
 There had been a time when she had 
 strongly disapproved of the remarriage of 
 the bereaved, but that was well, some time 
 ago. Dear Mrs. Brown had been dead these 
 ten years that was a long while, and surely 
 made a difference. People changed a great 
 deal in ten years she knew that she had. 
 Mr. Brown was probably hardly the same 
 person that he was when his poor wife died. 
 And she had been ill for years before her 
 death; that made it seem even more " differ- 
 ent." 
 
 " I suppose so," said Christina vaguely. 
 " But there can't be much fun in it." 
 
 63
 
 Cousin Belle blushed. That was all the 
 dear child knew. 
 
 Christina looked at her critically. 
 " Cousin Belle, do you know that you are 
 getting to be a pretty woman. Father said 
 so the other day." 
 
 "Oh, my dear!" Cousin Belle's tone 
 deprecated, but her dimple exulted. 
 
 " Yes, you are," Christina ruminated. 
 "Madam Kitty's pretty, isn't she?" 
 
 " She's lovely. At least, she was." 
 Cousin Belle's expression implied that even to 
 the Scarlet Woman she would be just. 
 
 " It's a great thing to be a pretty woman." 
 Christina looked wise. " It really means 
 that you can do anything you like." 
 
 " Maybe it does," said Cousin Belle, in a 
 tone strongly marked by a preserving sense of 
 Christian charity she never thought of 
 Madam Kitty if she could help it " and 
 ten chances to one what you like is a very 
 wrong thing to like." 
 
 64
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 " That's what I want to find out." 
 
 " Well, if that's all you " But there 
 Cousin Belle paused, remembering just in 
 time that it was not for her to judge. 
 
 Christina got up suddenly and walked rest- 
 lessly about the room; then she stopped as 
 suddenly and looked at her face in the heart- 
 shaped mirror. " I wonder what sort of little 
 girl you'll be if you're here to look in the 
 mirror a year from to-day," she said softly. 
 
 She stood in silence looking, looking ; 
 and Cousin Belle watched her, her tender 
 soul miserably distracted by the same won- 
 der. 
 
 The next moment Christina was on her 
 knees beside her. " I know what the matter 
 is, Cousin Belle. I'm a child of trouble." 
 
 " My dear, no ! " Cousin Belle was hor- 
 rified. " If ever a child was a child of joy, it 
 has been you." 
 
 " Yes, I know. But that's been because 
 of father because he's been so strong and 
 65
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 brave. I've never thought of it before. But 
 I'm a wicked thing. Yes, I am. To-day I 
 love my father, and I love my home I love 
 this room. I love the pine trees on Sunset 
 Hill. I love the smoke of these chimneys. 
 I stood and watched it curling up into the 
 sky as I came home, and it seemed to me as 
 if my soul was in it, I loved it so. The 
 smoke in your home chimneys it means the 
 light and the warmth inside that you've grown 
 up in it means everything that has made 
 you what you are. And yet " she waited 
 a moment " to-morrow I shall be gone. 
 And the trouble is that I shan't care. I shall 
 love all the new things just as I've loved the 
 old ones. Nothing that's gone will matter 
 to me. That's the trouble now about 
 Benny. He isn't here, and so he well, 
 I'm wicked, that's all. I'm like Madam 
 Kitty, I suppose. I never felt that until to- 
 day. Father's right. I've got to find out 
 what it means to be her daughter." 
 66
 
 THE PINE TREES ON SUNSET HILL 
 
 Then looking up, and seeing the expression 
 on Cousin Belle's face, she laughed. 
 
 " Dear Cousin Belle, don't look so over- 
 whelmed. Oh me ! " She clasped her hands 
 across her collar-bone. " I've just thought. 
 We should have let Maroline Spence have tea 
 with us this afternoon." 
 
 Cousin Belle's eyes were full of contrition. 
 " Still, I'm so glad we didn't remember 
 sooner," she added truthfully. " Just let's 
 have some more tea and have her up now." 
 
 " In your room, then. And mind, Cousin 
 Belle, don't you let her mouse around father 
 while I'm gone any more than you can 
 help." 
 
 " I thought you said you wouldn't care 
 about anything after you were gone." 
 
 The girl turned away. " Oh, well fa- 
 ther " and then she began to sing. 
 
 And at home that night Maroline Spence 
 said to her mother: "She's the most un- 
 feeling little thing I ever heard of. She
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 doesn't care that for her father, and I think 
 he's beginning to see the difference." 
 
 She did not explain what she meant by the 
 difference. 
 
 68
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 " CONCERNING CATHERINE " 
 
 "Oh, father, look!" exclaimed Christina. 
 " Look at the bill-boards." 
 
 She was staring out of the cab window as 
 they drove from the West Station to the Lor- 
 raine. The street they were passing through 
 was a babel of trucks and cars and carriages 
 and automobiles; the walks on either side a 
 confusion of faces suggestively Hebrew. 
 The untidy windows of a succession of un- 
 tidier shops presented, in one, a frowzy fowl, 
 sprawling yellow-skinned and lean against a 
 platter of some deplorable looking fleshly 
 substance; in the next a hat wreathed with 
 blue roses making strident appeal to beauty's 
 passing daughters to come in and buy. There 
 were strange little shops sunk half-way into 
 69
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 the basement with dark, uncertain steps and 
 men stumbling over them and each other, 
 and everywhere women and children and ba- 
 bies, and wherever there was an unoccupied 
 space or a vacant window, theater bills blaz- 
 ing big-lettered attractions, with a star's face 
 or even a whole picture from an act of the 
 play. 
 
 " Yes," said Sargent in answer to Chris- 
 tina's excited remark, " Concerning Cath- 
 erine didn't I tell you it was on here ? 
 We're going to see it to-night. It's made a 
 hit. But The Fire Fools will make a bigger 
 one," he added, more to himself than to her. 
 
 " Concerning Catherine I lie I Sargent," 
 repeated Christina, transported with pride. 
 " And you haven't seen a play of your own, 
 father" 
 
 " Not for a long time. Not since The Ten 
 Spot absurd thing, but it made me, so far 
 as the public goes." 
 
 "How could you keep away?" wondered 
 70
 
 " CONCERNING CATHERINE " 
 
 Christina. " Think of the ones you've had 
 on. The Marriages of Martha that was 
 a dear. And The Heel of Achilles that 
 was horrid." 
 
 " Quite otherwise. It was the dear," pro- 
 tested Sargent. 
 
 " Oh, it was clever enough," admitted 
 Christina scornfully. " But you wouldn't 
 have me say I thought it was nice, would 
 you?" 
 
 " I should turn you over to the police as a 
 suspicious character." 
 
 Christina was satisfied. 
 
 They had crossed the bridge now, and 
 were coming into a neighborhood that began 
 by intimating a taste for cleaner windows 
 and ended in clean ones; the street widened 
 and grew quieter, and conversation ceased to 
 be a matter of vocal high jump and pole 
 vaulting. 
 
 " It's easy enough to stay out of it," con- 
 tinued Sargent, evidently following his own 
 
 71
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 train of thought. " When once you know 
 how, you're better clear of the horde of peo- 
 ple who only half know. I've worked out 
 my dramatic salvation in my own way, but 
 it's all really owing to Far End. You can 
 think in Far End. A man can't think here. 
 You'll see after to-night. He can learn to be 
 smart and entertaining, if not witty, but all 
 that goes. Some other man comes along 
 with a new twist to his smartness and wit, and 
 your day is over. If you would keep your 
 place year after year, you must give the world 
 something not that it need think about 
 it has no time for that but something 
 that you have thought about for it. And at 
 Far End " 
 
 " Oh, Far End ! " murmured! Christina. 
 In a moment she was back again in yesterday, 
 looking out of her window toward Sunset 
 Hill, watching, as she and Benny had so 
 often watched in silence, the sun speed the 
 72
 
 " CONCERNING CATHERINE " 
 
 day's last arrow of light across the silver 
 pallor of that sea of space whose depths were 
 known neither to the night nor the morning 
 cradled within its mystery. 
 
 " Far End," repeated Christina, " and 
 then these streets, father! Snow was never 
 meant to fall here. And all those chil- 
 dren " she was thinking of the gutter as a 
 playground " there shouldn't be any chil- 
 dren, either." 
 
 " My dear, the interests of the State de- 
 mand " 
 
 " Then the State's an old brute and had 
 better be fired." 
 
 " That has been said before, if differently," 
 remarked Sargent. " And yet in that jellied 
 mass of humanity there occurs the miracle. 
 One day in the midst of it something squirms 
 and keeps on squirming harder and faster, 
 until it evolves for itself a backbone and 
 upon it begins to shape the image of divinity, 
 73
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 and by and by it stands forth and challenges 
 the attention of all the backboned sons of 
 men, and there's your Lincoln or your " 
 
 " Father! I'm sure Lincoln began with a 
 quite respectable family backbone compared 
 with" 
 
 " There ! You've spoilt it with your in- 
 sufferable New England literalness," sighed 
 Sargent. " I wing my soul on fancy's flight 
 and my daughter, airy creature that she looks, 
 holds me down with hands that weigh a ton 
 apiece." 
 
 " You've been flippant all day." Chris- 
 tina's tone reproached. 
 
 "Flippant?" Sargent considered. "But 
 of course " 
 
 "Of course? When I'm" 
 
 But they were at the hotel, and Sargent 
 hurried her to her room with the admonition 
 that she dress quickly, so that they might have 
 a leisurely dinner and reach the theater in 
 good time ; he was suddenly pricked with cur- 
 74
 
 " CONCERNING CATHERINE " 
 
 iosity as to his play. It made a difference 
 when you came up in the elevator, and listened 
 to a gay group of women and their escorts 
 planning to see Concerning Catherine, and in 
 despair over the improbability of securing 
 seats. 
 
 " It's no use we shall have to go and see 
 The Wish Horse. Everything's taken this 
 week." 
 
 He knew that. But it was different to 
 hear it said there in your ears by a woman 
 who was looking at you, because conceivably 
 you were better worth looking at than the 
 man she was with a woman who did not 
 know that you were you. That was childish 
 of course, but it was refreshing to let go and 
 just be a child once in a great while. The 
 spirit of the city was at work upon his blood. 
 
 But he knew its tricks of old, and while he 
 felt the swifter flow and exulted that the 
 youth in him was not yet dust, he knew that 
 all that he had said to Christina was for him 
 
 75
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 the truth of life. For him it had had to be 
 the protected solitude of Far End, or an exis- 
 tence long since burnt over by the fires that 
 are always seeking fuel. If at forty-five he 
 had in his face the expression of a man who 
 knew his strength, at twenty-five he had had 
 only strength enough but that was much 
 
 to comprehend the menace of his weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 The winter after his wife had left him he 
 had spent in New York, learning his " trade " 
 from the people who only " half knew how." 
 He had learnt many other things and taken 
 the memory of them back to Far End, and 
 there threshed out the stern significance of 
 the deeds that men do when the ship drags 
 anchor. He had spent the winter in throw- 
 ing things overboard the loves and faiths 
 and fears that were his inheritance. Let her 
 ride high upon whatever sea sucked her keel ! 
 
 this human craft set out upon a quest that 
 ended in the darkness in which it had begun. 
 
 76
 
 " CONCERNING CATHERINE " 
 
 But when he reached home again it was to 
 find in the face of his child something that he 
 had overlooked in his reaction against all that 
 was lasting as God in mortal love. 
 
 And upon that rock he had begun the re- 
 building of his house of life. 
 
 "Flippant all day?" Bless the child! 
 She understood him better than that, and he 
 understood her well enough to know that the 
 little reproach had been a half cry to him for 
 comfort now that the fact of their separation 
 was really upon them that they were here 
 in the city where he was to leave her alone to 
 new experiences to a readjustment of her- 
 self as something other than the Christina 
 she had known and understood. 
 
 But he had no comfort to give her; he was 
 too sorely perplexed and in need of it him- 
 self. He wrestled with the hidden power 
 that was driving him to a step that led he saw 
 not whither, the while he was conscious that 
 the momentous decisions of his life had been 
 
 77
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 effected invariably in obedience to that veiled 
 authority. Long ago he had gathered prim- 
 roses in Overshot Wood and kissed a girl in 
 a high-hedged lane because he had to, and 
 when that girl, grown but lovelier to him in 
 marriage, left him and his child, believing that 
 in another love she had found what she 
 missed in his, he let her go in silence, and 
 stilled himself upon the teachings of the phil- 
 osophers, choking down the heart in his 
 throat with precepts as to the rights of the 
 individual, and the joys of sharing with the 
 sages the purer vision denied to the man pos- 
 sessed by the devil of his own self-righteous 
 passions. 
 
 He had let her go, because he saw with the 
 prescience of the man of quick and young 
 imagination that the way that took her from 
 him was the one that she must follow if she 
 were ever to reach beyond her own limita- 
 tions. There were moments when he was 
 dimly and humbly conscious that in admitting 
 78
 
 " CONCERNING CATHERINE " 
 
 this he laid hold for an uncertain instant upon 
 the garments of the Unseen, yet in the next 
 breath his rebelling soul felt only the pricks 
 that met his wounds. 
 
 And to-morrow he would speed his child 
 from him; she too must go. He knew that, 
 although he did not understand or accept the 
 explanations of his decision that he offered so 
 plausibly to Cousin Belle. But there was 
 upon him the consciousness that the power 
 that had controlled his life to the furtherance 
 of its own secret ends was once again at the 
 helm; he must set his sails for the open sea, 
 asking naught of the hooded figure in the 
 stern. 
 
 79
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 "Look at the adorable little creature!" 
 
 Sargent glanced at Christina; she met his 
 eyes frankly and laughed. 
 
 " Never mind, father," she said consol- 
 ingly; "it's really only my frock. You 
 know what a fright I am unadorned. But 
 I'm very glad they think it's pretty, for I sup- 
 pose " She did not finish the sentence, for 
 in these later days they were not mentioning 
 Madam Kitty. She peeped around her 
 father's tall figure for another glimpse of 
 the two ladies whom the crowd in the en- 
 trance to the theater had pushed so close to 
 them, but there were only two stupid men 
 there now. 
 
 " It's the greatest day of my life," said 
 80
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 Christina solemnly, when they were disposed 
 in their seats and arranged to see and hear 
 to the utmost of their seeing and hearing 
 capacity. She read the program over and 
 over again: " Mr. Daniel Merryman pre- 
 sents Miss Edith Borringdon and Mr. 
 Charles Agnew in the comedy CONCERNING 
 CATHERINE, by Mr. Iliel Sargent." 
 
 She looked at her father with quivers of de- 
 light ; there he was this very great man 
 and she was sitting beside him, and nobody 
 knew anything about it. She gazed excitedly 
 at the crowded house, and then at the people 
 close around them; it was ridiculous of them 
 to be so preoccupied with themselves. 
 
 After the play began Sargent sat leaning 
 forward a little into the aisle with a watch- 
 dog look in his eyes ; yet sometimes he smiled, 
 but that was generally when no one else did; 
 Christina imagined that perhaps he was re- 
 membering something he had thought when 
 he wrote that sentence. And once he uncon- 
 81
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 sciously held up his hand and said: "Oh 
 no! " but no one noticed him, for the house 
 was almost immediately in a roar, and the 
 curtain was coming down and going up again, 
 and " Catherine " was smiling and bowing, 
 and then the lights flashed on and the theater 
 buzzed like a big gilded insect with comment 
 and laughter. 
 
 "Well?" demanded Christina eagerly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know." Sargent considered. 
 " I'm glad I came, of course. It's better 
 than I thought on the stage. It's a real 
 thing." 
 
 " Do they do it the way they ought to?" 
 
 Sargent smiled. " There are only a few 
 places where they made it hard for me to 
 understand myself. But there's a sentence in 
 the next act the whole play is epitomized 
 in it I'm wondering if Miss Borringdon 
 has got it. I wish we could get up and 
 walk about," he added. " But they don't 
 82
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 do that here. And anyway, I suppose we 
 couldn't." 
 
 Every time Sargent looked at Christina it 
 was borne in afresh upon him what a blossom 
 she was. Perhaps these people around them 
 who were talking about her he had caught 
 that would see her here again they 
 might even be the people who were to know 
 her friends and acquaintances of Mrs. 
 Dicky Warder perhaps. Well to-night she 
 was all his. 
 
 " Father, you're scowling fearfully," ob- 
 jected Christina. " People won't think 
 you're nice if you do that. You look as if 
 you were bound hand and foot in the camp of 
 the enemy." 
 
 " I am." 
 
 " You won't forget about everything 
 
 everything that I've told you about?" she 
 
 asked in a voice grown suddenly breathless. 
 
 " You'll let the little Ninde boy go out rid- 
 
 83
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ing with you on Domino? It will be a 
 wonderful thing for him." 
 
 " Yes yes ! " He was glad the curtain 
 went up just then; the thing that was like 
 the wrenching away of a limb from his body 
 was too irretrievably upon him now to bear 
 discussion. 
 
 The act went with a tremendous swing; 
 he forgot all about his technical interest in it 
 and watched and listened like a boy at his 
 first show, with just an uneasy wonder now 
 and then as to the possibility of maintaining 
 the enthusiasm of an audience at this pitch 
 through two more acts. 
 
 He and Christina sat silent through the 
 next interval, her hand tight in his, her eyes 
 more often on his face than anywhere else; 
 the wonder of her father grew upon her, and 
 all the love in her heart crowded to her lips 
 to tell him so. The man behind them said 
 softly to the other man that he wouldn't 
 blame any boy who lost his head over a little 
 84
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 beauty like that, and Sargent, catching the re- 
 mark, turned it over haltingly in his mind. 
 He had never recognized Christina as a 
 beauty. Beauty to him implied a tall splen- 
 dor-diffusing type of woman like Beatrix 
 Esmond. He thought Beatrix Esmond; 
 what he really meant was Mrs. Dicky Warder 
 as he remembered her twenty years before. 
 
 But Tina Tina was just an adorable lit- 
 tle girl with all the charms of youth and in- 
 nocence, thank God! It was absurd to call 
 her a " beauty." Tina was too small and too 
 intimately, capriciously sweet in her looks 
 and her ways to be handicapped by any such 
 description as that. She was just Tina; 
 there was nothing more descriptive to say. 
 
 At the end of the third act Sargent for- 
 got himself; in the same moment with the 
 man behind he shouted: " Brava ! " and 
 Miss Borringdon, monotonously bowing and 
 smiling, looked suddenly at her particular 
 admirers in the third and fourth rows; she 
 
 85
 
 1 AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 had never met Sargent, but she had a photo- 
 graph of him. The result was that a few 
 moments later an- usher hurried down the 
 aisle and handed him a note. 
 
 Sargent read it and considered; then he 
 scribbled a reply, aware meanwhile of the 
 flutter of interest in the people around them. 
 " He's got all the looks of somebody," he 
 heard the big man say the big man who 
 splashed remarks as freely as a big dog 
 splashes water in a puddle too small for him. 
 
 " Father, what was it?" Tina's blue eyes 
 sparkled with excitement. 
 
 " Miss Borringdon," he said repressively, 
 and passed the note to her. 
 
 " Shall you go? " she asked, giving it back 
 to him. 
 
 " I said I would," he answered in a regret- 
 ful tone. 
 
 He was more than regretful when he 
 turned in a moment and found at his elbow a 
 little man with eager eyes and a nose pleas- 
 86
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 antly perched above a wide, persuasive mouth. 
 
 But he smiled and said: "Mr. Beebe! 
 And I can't say one word now. I wonder if 
 you would care to breakfast with me to-mor- 
 row at ten at the Lorraine? " 
 
 And Beebe, though self-assured that he was 
 the most powerful dramatic critic in Amer- 
 ica, was inordinately flattered by being rec- 
 ognized by a man whom he had only once 
 met, years before, and allowed himself to be 
 dismissed, and the curtain went up, and Sar- 
 gent forgot his quick annoyance at being once 
 more at the mercy of the man with the note- 
 book, and prepared to listen, this time alto- 
 gether unemotionally, to the fourth act, in 
 which occurred the scene that a great foreign 
 actress had recently described as the most 
 dramatic in any modern play. He had said 
 " Rot! " when he read that, but that was in 
 Far End. To-night he was here, and for 
 once he would be the outsider and forget that 
 the sweat of his soul had been demanded of 
 87
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 him in the making of plays that were success- 
 ful because primarily they " entertained " the 
 crowd. So had Shakespeare's, and perhaps 
 a hundred years from now the " Plays of Iliel 
 Sargent " would have won their place upon 
 the immortal shelves as the most serious com- 
 ment of literature upon the questions of their 
 day. 
 
 Yet presently he found himself resenting it 
 as an aspersion upon the character of his in- 
 tentions when he saw the woman in front 
 begin furtively to wipe her eyes. Couldn't 
 she distinguish between comedy and tragedy? 
 He was afraid to look at Tina, and then, 
 all at once, he was conscious of an unbidden 
 lump in his own throat. 
 
 Oh undoubtedly, taken as a whole, this 
 was a strong act! 
 
 " Tell you what, Eben ! This is the stuff. 
 It gets me every time," said the big man to 
 his companion. " Saw it three times in New 
 York." 
 
 88
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 " It'll do." 
 
 But Eben Gregory was not thinking partic- 
 ularly of the play; he was watching the au- 
 dience, for he was a psychological politician, 
 and it was the people The People and 
 what stirred them, and the reason, that con- 
 cerned him. Many years before, poor and 
 unknown, he had begun a journey on foot to 
 the White House ; he was very near there now, 
 traveling in a private car at the expense of 
 the State. He had been busy for days on 
 his next big speech, looking in every face he 
 met for points for it. The little girl in front 
 had given him one, and over there, in the box 
 with the Nevils, the sight of Mrs. Dicky 
 Warder had given him another. 
 
 But he was not especially pleased with Mrs. 
 Warder to-night ; she was having a small and 
 intimate supper-party for Miss Borringdon 
 after the play, and he was not invited. He 
 understood; my lady was holding back. He 
 was not annoyed by her reluctance ; he merely 
 89
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 objected to some of her methods of display- 
 ing it. However, that would right itself; 
 he denied all doubts as to the outcome of the 
 struggle between them. 
 
 He had deferred marriage because he had 
 realized, at an age when he saw other young 
 men making fools of themselves, that in his 
 case it must be made to wait upon his am- 
 bitions. But by the time he had reached the 
 place where he could afford to consider his 
 desires, he had become critical, as much, in a 
 way, to his own regret as to that of the 
 women whose attractions charmed him but 
 failed to involve his emotions. 
 
 That, however, was before he had made 
 his quiet entrance into the exclusive circle 
 where politics were of less import than tea- 
 trays. For there he met Mrs. Dicky Warder, 
 and it did not take him long to discover that 
 she was the woman for whom he had been de- 
 creed to wait. He was too facile in social ac- 
 quirement to be betrayed into evidence of his 
 90
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 origin by his habits, big or little the origin 
 which he never denied, but exploited with a 
 dexterity that proclaimed him no mean stu- 
 dent of human nature; but there were times 
 when he despised himself for the bourgeois 
 that he knew himself to be, and never more 
 than when he found himself reflecting that 
 if you had not achieved family by birth, you 
 had better do so by marriage. 
 
 Yet that was his intention. Besides, there 
 was Mrs. Dicky Warder herself. 
 
 It was a great act. As he watched it Sar- 
 gent wondered confusedly just what made it 
 that, as might any ignoramus who knew noth- 
 ing of the structure of a drama. Yet he un- 
 derstood as none other who listened, all that a 
 man may understand of the difference that 
 makes of him a genius and of the man next 
 to him a show-case with nothing to show. 
 Here was no mere triumph of adroitly manip- 
 ulated stage-craft; it was life up there on the 
 boards, lived through and transcribed with
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 that surety of selection that compelled the as- 
 sent, not only of the emotions, but of the in- 
 tellect of every man and woman who watched 
 and listened. 
 
 "Father!" exclaimed Christina. "Did 
 you know it was like that? " 
 
 He smiled, for at that moment it seemed 
 to him that all that he had ever felt of the 
 things that mattered to a man was in that act; 
 what he had never quite realized until to-night 
 was, how clear a mirror his own head was of 
 every other man's heart. 
 
 " Now what shall I do with you? " he said 
 to Christina, when the curtain went down for 
 the last time and the lingering house remem- 
 bered with a plunge into its wraps that it was 
 not spending the night in opera chairs. " I 
 had rather not take you with me." 
 
 They were standing in the aisle, and Sar- 
 gent spoke somewhat loudly in his perplex- 
 ity. 
 
 " Pardon me " Gregory, also in the aisle, 
 92
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 handed his card to Sargent, who received it 
 somewhat unwillingly " perhaps you would 
 be willing to intrust the young lady to my 
 care. I have had the pleasure of sitting near 
 you this evening, and I understand that Miss 
 Borringdon wishes to see you." 
 
 " Yes yes. I am Mr. Sargent and this 
 is my daughter. You are very kind." But 
 Sargent hesitated. 
 
 Christina looked at the card in her father's 
 hand, and then at Gregory. 
 
 " Oh ! " She considered him gravely. 
 " Are you really the governor of the state? " 
 
 Gregory laughed. " I'll never admit it if 
 it is going to disqualify me for the office I am 
 at present seeking." 
 
 " And you haven't any gold lace or a 
 cocked hat! " exclaimed Christina disapprov- 
 ingly. " I always thought governors wore 
 nothing else." 
 
 " Really, Tina " 
 
 But she waved her father away. " She's 
 93
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 stamping by this time. You needn't worry. 
 I'll take the best of care of the governor. I 
 feel like a real mounted policeman." 
 
 And Sargent seeing that she intended to 
 be disposed of in a manner so entirely 
 in keeping with her taste for adventure, hur- 
 ried away, and stumbled around behind the 
 stage amid the amazing and dreary litter 
 characteristic of the wrong side of the curtain, 
 saying, "Miss Borringdon?" to everyone 
 he met, until he found himself at a sudden 
 turn, confronted by the actress herself. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Sargent! " she exclaimed, hold- 
 ing out both hands to him; " I thought you 
 were never coming. And you look so quiet 
 and not a bit excited and isn't it wonderful? 
 And I'm so glad now that you didn't tell me 
 that you were going to be here, yet when I 
 really saw you my spirits went up and up and 
 up. I hope you don't think I ought to play 
 the part better, because I never can no one 
 could." 
 
 94
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 " No. You almost satisfy me." But Sar- 
 gent's smile atoned. 
 
 Miss Borringdon was already in her wraps, 
 and as she talked she turned into a long, 
 straight passage which led directly to the side- 
 street door. 
 
 " I'm going out to supper," she explained, 
 " and I suppose I'm keeping my hostess wait- 
 ing out there. But tell me, when can I really 
 see you? Oh look! " she made an ex- 
 travagant gesture " there's Mrs. Dicky 
 Warder coming for me. She's the kind of 
 woman you mustn't keep waiting. Please " 
 
 " I'll say good-night then," said Sargent. 
 " And to-morrow I'm at the Lorraine. 
 I'll call you up. Good-night." 
 
 But Miss Borringdon clung to his hand. 
 " Don't go ! Please stay and meet Mrs. 
 Warder. She'll ask you to supper. It'll 
 be" 
 
 He got away somehow, but there was only 
 one visible path of escape open to him; he 
 
 95
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 walked directly towards Mrs. Dicky Warder, 
 feeling as if he were suddenly stricken blind 
 and deaf and dumb, and yet hearing the rush 
 in his ears, and seeing her so distinctly that 
 as he saw her now he never forgot her, his 
 brain seeming to act as a perfect recording 
 instrument, but quite independently of him. 
 
 She came resplendently, her skirts held 
 daintily from the floor her white brocaded 
 coat with its sable trimmed edges thrown back, 
 so that in his single swift glance the remem- 
 bered line from her cheek to the spring of 
 her shoulder set singing in his blood the re- 
 frain of a melody that a man once having 
 heard never forgets. 
 
 But he could not meet and pass her, face to 
 face; at his left hand he saw a door and 
 opened it, pushing himself backward into the 
 darkness. 
 
 But the door remained open. And Mrs. 
 Dicky Warder went by.
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 She found Miss Borringdon in her dress- 
 ing-room, whither that overflowing soul had 
 returned for the rose she simply must have 
 for her hair. 
 
 " Oh Mrs. Warder, I've kept you waiting 
 and you've come after me alone ! " 
 
 " But of course Mr. Budgett wanted to 
 come with me," said Mrs. Warder calmly. 
 " He always wants to come, no matter where 
 you're going. I tell him that his malady 
 is involuntary locomotion." 
 
 " I don't believe it's that," gurgled Miss 
 Borringdon. She was a great emotional ac- 
 tress, and took her revenge by being an ab- 
 surdly trivial person in her own part. 
 
 " Yes, really. If I told him I was leaving 
 for Paradise to-morrow, he would buy trans- 
 portation and have all his luggage checked 
 too, and I cannot imagine anyone more out 
 of place as an angel than Mr. Budgett." 
 
 " I don't know," said Miss Borringdon re- 
 
 97
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 flectively, as she pinned the rose below her left 
 ear. " When you think of it, that's a pretty 
 hard test" 
 
 " It was meant to be, I suppose." 
 Mrs. Warder thought about that for a mo- 
 ment, her mind running quickly into a channel 
 not adapted to interest Miss Borringdon. 
 Then she said: " It was a silly thing to do 
 prowling about after you alone but the 
 mood for adventure was upon me. And I 
 felt I was in for it in that horrid, half-lighted, 
 everlastingly long, narrow passage, for a man 
 came plunging towards me and then vanished 
 into a deadly dark room. Of course I didn't 
 look as I went past the door, for it took all 
 the courage in me to go by at all, for there 
 wasn't a sound in that darkness, and yet I felt 
 he was there, looking at me. He wasn't 
 really, you know." 
 
 Miss Borringdon turned around from the 
 mirror. 
 
 98
 
 MRS. DICKY WARDER 
 
 " That's funny," she said slowly. " Mr. 
 Sargent said good-night to me at this end of 
 the passage just as you came in at the other. 
 I saw you and ran back for my rose, and he 
 went on towards you." 
 
 " Oh ! you said Mr. Sargent? " 
 " Yes. Iliel Sargent, I mean. At the end 
 of the second act to-night I looked down and 
 there he sat in the third row. He's never 
 seen the play before. I sent him a note, and 
 when he came up, I begged him to stay and 
 meet you. I did my best to keep him, but he 
 went off like a rocket. Oh, he's an inveter- 
 ate recluse. And it's a shame, for he's the 
 stunningest man I've seen in many moons 
 the great, splendid, blue-eyed Viking sort. 
 He lives an ideal kind of life somewhere in 
 the country with his daughter. Well, I'm 
 ready at last." Miss Borringdon gave a final 
 twitch to the yards of lemon-colored veiling 
 she had been tying about her blonde head. 
 99
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Still, that was queer. I wonder why in the 
 world he dashed into that room, because the 
 worst recluse on earth, if he had half an eye, 
 and this man has very much two, would a 
 great deal rather meet you in a narrow pas- 
 sage than not." She laughed merrily. 
 " Would he? " said Mrs. Warder. 
 
 100
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 POINSETTIAS 
 
 In the dusk, alone with him for their last 
 moment, Christina clung to her father. 
 
 " But I don't want to go in there," she said, 
 with a resentful look at the heavy, black door. 
 " Father, let me go back to the Lorraine with 
 you. We'll have such a good time together 
 to-night, and we we'll forget all about 
 this. I don't understand. What am I going 
 in there for? " She looked at the door again. 
 " Why did I come when I don't want to? 
 What did I let you bring me for? Father 
 I'm not going." 
 
 She took a step down the long flight; the 
 cabman expectantly gathered the slackened 
 reins tighter. 
 
 " Tina " Sargent's hand rested a mo- 
 101
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ment on her shoulder "we won't begin 
 that all over again. I thought we had settled 
 it and were quite happy this afternoon." 
 
 " Yes I know. I promised, but " 
 She hid her face against his coat sleeve. 
 Then she looked up. " Very well. You 
 may ring." 
 
 He rang the bell, and they stood silent, like 
 any conventional callers. Cabby surmised 
 that he would get tired of sitting, and got off 
 his box, and walked up and down swinging 
 his arms, partly for exercise and partly be- 
 cause the damp evening was coming on with 
 its own peculiar chill; in the half-light he 
 looked like a weirdly human adjustment of 
 Indian clubs. 
 
 Sargent's eyes wandered up and down the 
 street; the orderly rows of houses on either 
 side stretched on and on, growing duller and 
 duller, until all of a sudden they were caught 
 up and glorified and forever lost in a smother 
 of sunset haze. 
 
 102
 
 POINSETTIAS 
 
 " After all, little girl, even here, just as in 
 Far End " But the door behind them 
 opened silently; they felt a difference and 
 turned to see a maid who stood waiting with 
 a smile of welcome on her Irish face a 
 smile that Sargent remembered to his com- 
 forting. 
 
 " Good-by, Tina." 
 
 The child said nothing. 
 
 Half-way down the steps Sargent stopped 
 and looked back the door was already 
 closed; he was glad of that. But Tina was 
 there; he craved a picture of the house, and 
 so he stood seeking an impression that should 
 be some solace to him in the days to come. 
 
 And what he saw was poinsettias poin- 
 settias flaming scarlet at every window; the 
 thought of them haunted and bewildered and 
 hurt him for many days. 
 
 For between primroses and poinsettias the 
 dividing years were set like swords. 
 
 103
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MADAM KITTY 
 
 Christina followed the maid through the 
 warmly lighted hall, up the staircase, then 
 through another hall until they came to a 
 little suite of rooms set by itself; there was a 
 sitting-room and beyond it a bed-room; the 
 sitting-room all in gray and white, even the 
 furniture being of a pale gray wood such as 
 she had never seen before. The bed-room 
 was apparently a white room, yet even there 
 she caught a glimpse of poinsettias. 
 
 " I will tell Mrs. Warder you are here," 
 said the maid. " These are your rooms, Miss 
 Sargent, and if you find anything not as you 
 wish, please speak to me about it." 
 
 " Oh thank you," said Christina vaguely. 
 104
 
 MADAM KITTY 
 
 Her rooms ! she had never felt anything 
 less hers in her life than these rooms. She 
 thought of her simple, dignified room at Far 
 End, and glanced about her, drawing the con- 
 trast. 
 
 " If I belong in one, I certainly don't in the 
 other." And with a sweep of tears to her 
 eyes she wondered again why she was here. 
 Benny and Domino and Kad their names 
 sounded strange and unreal in this place. 
 And Cousin Belle she felt as if she had 
 lived somewhere a hundred years ago with 
 Cousin Belle. 
 
 To-morrow her father would be back at 
 Far End again, in their home but even the 
 Lorraine had been home to her with him. 
 
 She was still standing in the middle of the 
 room, her mind active with plans for flight to 
 Far End and the bliss of being already there 
 to receive her father upon his return, when her 
 ear caught the soft flow of satin and the 
 sound of a light step crossing the bare floor 
 105
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 at the end of the hall. Instantly, every- 
 thing she had heard about her mother rushed 
 tumultuously through her mind; one emotion 
 clashed with another; she was like a person 
 drowning in a sea that rose up and clamored 
 at its prey. 
 
 Just for an instant on the threshold 
 Mrs. Dicky Warder paused. And in the flash 
 of this first sight of her mother, Christina was 
 conscious only of the intricate pattern of a 
 priceless lace, woven of wonder threads by 
 some convented soul bred to the things of the 
 spirit while fashioning webs for the adorn- 
 ing of some sister out in that world in which 
 the pale brides of Christ had no part. 
 
 Lace such lace as Christina had never 
 dreamed of. Yet it was girlishly simple 
 this gown that Mrs. Warder had chosen to 
 wear at dinner to-night mounted over the 
 palest pink-shot blue, with not a gather or a 
 ruffle to mar the sincerity of line from the 
 shoulder to the tip of the slipper that seemed 
 106
 
 MADAM KITTY 
 
 but an embroidery of pink over a pale blue 
 foot. 
 
 " Christina ! " 
 
 Mrs. Warder came quickly; the thought 
 darted through Christina that she was not 
 nervous; great ladies like this never were. 
 
 " Oh Madam Kitty ! " Christina took the 
 hand held towards her. " I'm very glad 
 it's very nice to see you and I'll stay a little 
 while , but " Then, at something in Mrs. 
 Warder's eyes, she paused. 
 
 " Madam Kitty? " The tone expressed no 
 comment; it merely inquired. 
 
 Christina had never heard a voice quite like 
 that; she found herself remembering the faint 
 green of a glass of wine she had once watched 
 a wonderful auburn-haired girl drinking at 
 table d'hote in the inn at Wernigerode with 
 a wonderful offizier whom she called 
 " Prance " in her adorably odious French. 
 
 But that was an absurd thing to be remem- 
 bering now, and Madam Kitty looking at her 
 107
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 with the beginning of a smile a teasing 
 smile. 
 
 The next instant Mrs. Warder laughed. 
 " Let us sit down, at any rate even if you 
 are only going to stay a very little while." 
 She chose for herself the beguilingly curved, 
 little gray satin couch, while Christina seated 
 herself in a straight, uncomfortably high chair 
 which put the floor at a disadvantage in re- 
 gard to her feet. 
 
 Mrs. Warder leaned forward. " Now 
 tell me why Madam Kitty? " 
 
 "Oh! " Christina considered. "But 
 we've always called you Madam Kitty." 
 
 " Oh ! " It was Mrs. Warder's turn to 
 consider; for an instant there was surely a 
 cloud upon her brilliance. That " we " ! 
 " I see. But you can imagine. It was unex- 
 pected." 
 
 "Oh!" said Christina again. "I dare 
 say. Does it sound odd to you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed. "Odd?" She 
 108
 
 MADAM KITTY 
 
 glanced at herself in a mirror and repeated 
 as if listening to a description of the woman 
 she saw there : " Madam Kitty. How ri- 
 diculous ! " 
 
 Christina sat straighter then ever, looking 
 anxious but determined. 
 
 " I couldn't call you anything else, you 
 know," she said, in a careful, kindly tone. 
 
 Instantly, Mrs. Warder was suffused with 
 mirth. " Dear child, you need not. Madam 
 Kitty forever! It's delicious." 
 
 She was thinking of the Nevils and the Dor- 
 chesters and Eben Gregory, and all the differ- 
 ent things they would say. Yet, secretly, she 
 was immensely relieved; the question as to 
 what her daughter would call her had been 
 as a nightmare to her. " Mother " ? She 
 abhorred the word; she had only to look in 
 her glass to remember that. It would be a 
 ludicrous word applied to her now an epi- 
 thet. "Mrs. Warder"? That would be 
 insufferably bourgeois. But " Madam Kit- 
 109
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ty " ! She smiled. There was a certain dis- 
 tinction in that from daughter to mother, and 
 for fifteen years she had been trained to seek 
 that quality above all others. 
 
 She flashed a quick, appraising look upon 
 Christina. This was the child whom she had 
 steadily assured herself she would not have in 
 her house until ten minutes ago. Then 
 shielded behind a mass of poinsettias she 
 had seen Iliel Sargent's face as he turned to 
 look at the house transformed by the closing 
 of a door into an impregnable barrier be- 
 tween himself and his child. 
 
 And she had vowed that she would not 
 look out of a window that day never more 
 vehemently than when she heard the bell ring 
 at the appointed hour ! It was disappointing 
 to discover oneself so weak. 
 
 This was the child. Then she had been so 
 
 close to him last night that she must have 
 
 touched him Iliel ! when Mrs. Nevil 
 
 pointed out the exquisite little creature in 
 
 no
 
 MADAM KITTY 
 
 front of them. She had looked at Christina 
 and said: "Yes, isn't she?" and looked 
 again; all through the evening the face of the 
 little girl thrust itself in among her thoughts 
 of the play and of the man who had written 
 it. 
 
 She now became aware of the fact that 
 Christina was appraising her. That amused 
 her, but she felt little interest in her estimate. 
 The child was charming to look at, but prob- 
 ably a very miniature affair, mentally as well 
 as physically. 
 
 " You might take off your Hat," she said, 
 smiling. " Joanna will have charge of your 
 things. And she will help you get ready for 
 dinner." 
 
 " I don't need anyone to help me." Chris- 
 tina's tone was decided. 
 
 " Really? Still, hooks and eyes and 
 things." 
 
 " Oh well! " Christina's tone conceded. 
 
 " Dinner is at seven. Joanna will bring 
 in
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 you some tea at once. You won't have more 
 than just time to dress." 
 
 " Does it matter what I put on? " asked 
 Christina, suddenly perplexed and nervous. 
 
 " Ask Joanna. She will know." 
 
 It had been a relief to Mrs. Warder to ob- 
 serve that " the child " was quite normally 
 clothed in the simple, dull blue coat and skirt, 
 and hat to match, with its flopping brim and 
 scarf of silk about it. But when it came to 
 dinner Heaven knew what spicily bedecked 
 garment her little soul might array itself in. 
 Hence the responsibility of saving the situa- 
 tion must be put upon Joanna ; she had no in- 
 tention of becoming involved in personal de- 
 tails with a daughter who really did not in 
 the least belong to her. The little girl was a 
 guest to whom she had every desire to be kind 
 and attentive. 
 
 That was the situation. It was an unusual 
 one, and the coolness with which the girl ac- 
 cepted it was rather striking; as she thought 
 
 112
 
 MADAM KITTY 
 
 their meeting over in her own room after she 
 had left Christina, it occurred to her that she 
 might have more possibilities on her hands 
 than she had bargained for. She had put 
 great emphasis on her own detachment with- 
 out any thought that she might find herself 
 faced by her match in that respect. It was 
 rather comical, and promised entertainment. 
 
 She rang the bell for Joanna, and when 
 that Irish-eyed handmaiden appeared, she said 
 to her : " Miss Sargent will want your help 
 about what to put on presently, Joanna. Of 
 course I don't know what she has, but do the 
 best you can, and if you can't do anything, 
 well," Mrs. Warder's rare dimple was just 
 to be seen " put her in one of Sister Mary 
 Delphine's nightgowns take some tucks in 
 it and tie a sash a very big one around 
 her waist, and Mr. Gregory will never know." 
 
 " Indeed, ma'am, and no man would but 
 us," commented Joanna, and went away 
 laughing. 
 
 "3
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 But no responsibility for Christina's ap- 
 pearance rested upon Joanna that night. For 
 when she returned to her charge Christina's 
 sense of her capacity to manage her own af- 
 fairs was uppermost again, and Joanna was 
 told quietly which gown to take from the 
 trunk, and beyond " doing up " three hooks 
 and eyes was permitted no further privileges. 
 
 114
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 " There's something I must tell you," said 
 Mrs. Warder a trifle reluctantly Eben 
 Gregory thought. 
 
 "Well?" he smiled. 
 
 " I have a little girl staying with me 
 you will meet her at dinner. She is going to 
 stay with me for for some time, I dare 
 say. I really don't know. It all depends. 
 I don't exactly know why she's here. It's 
 rather strange and a little difficult to explain." 
 She hesitated, feeling herself in some confu- 
 sion. And Mrs. Dicky Warder was not used, 
 of late years, to anything but a state of com- 
 placency for herself. 
 
 "Well?" said Gregory again. It was 
 rather astonishing to him to discover my lady
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 in any such uncertain phase as this, but it 
 added distinctly to his entertainment, and 
 suggested that at last she might be in the ap- 
 proachable mood he was always hoping to 
 surprise in her. He had a sudden vision of 
 this woman as wife; he took a deep, hidden 
 breath. 
 
 " I feel I must tell you about it. You sec 
 you come here a good deal " Mrs. 
 Warder's eyelids half lifted; she was un- 
 doubtedly confused, even annoyed at having 
 to make explanations to anyone neverthe- 
 less, she was unable to resist playing with the 
 knowledge that she was producing a " mo- 
 ment " between herself and Gregory. She 
 was a born coquette, and her training had 
 made of her a flirt of a peculiarly capricious 
 type ; she impressed the ordinary man in 
 spite of the fact that the depth of her cele- 
 brated shoulders made it possible for her to 
 wear her gown appreciably lower than any 
 other woman dared as a cold and prudish 
 116
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 person. And she found the imposition of 
 such an attribute of the utmost service in pro- 
 tecting her from the dull attentions of the 
 ordinary man. She thought it altogether de- 
 sirable that she should be popularly supposed 
 to be what she knew herself not to be; it was a 
 protection to those dense creatures to whom 
 the subtleties of a thoroughly sophisticated 
 woman figured as inexcusable obtuseness. 
 She had sat with a man more than once, talk- 
 ing to him in her clear, cool voice, aware that 
 his eyes hardly left her beautiful throat, the 
 while he rebelled at her indifference to him- 
 self; she watched, amused, understanding 
 more than he did, tormenting and repelling 
 him in the same glance, securely scornful of 
 his weaknesses. To play with him coldly 
 was her pitiful reprisal for the moral outrage 
 that she had suffered as the wife of Dicky 
 Warder. 
 
 But Eben Gregory was not of that type; 
 she had found him her match each time that
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 she had ventured an experiment upon him, 
 and as simplicity was irksome to her and 
 would never be believed of her by him, she 
 had felt herself lately somewhat perplexed 
 as to the most satisfactory method of deal- 
 ing with a man masculinely sophisticated, 
 but by no means tired of the game. She had 
 been sufficiently interested in the idea of mar- 
 rying him to avoid any direct consideration of 
 the subject; she took a side-path through the 
 fields whenever she found herself squarely 
 confronted by the question in the highway. 
 
 She really had no desire to marry Eben 
 Gregory or anyone else ; that which she would 
 get in exchange would be no equivalent for 
 her loss. She had been released from the 
 holy estate in a confusion of mind concerning 
 it that she had since been content to accept as 
 negligible, and while she recognized in Greg- 
 ory a type of man entirely different from her 
 husband, man was man ! and the woman 
 in her shrank, recalling past chastisement. 
 118
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 Deep within her consciousness there was 
 scarred the memory of her first and only 
 violence against her master, and of his light 
 remark as he held her silent in his arms: 
 " Confess now that you have enjoyed being 
 taught obedience as much as I have enjoyed 
 teaching you to obey." 
 
 She gave him no further opportunity for 
 that sort of enjoyment; her pride sustained 
 her in submission in spite of her suspicion that 
 he understood her attitude and derived still 
 keener amusement from it. 
 
 And yet she perceived that, notwithstand- 
 ing all this, there was a proximate chance 
 that, sooner or later, she would marry not 
 Gregory, but somebody, anybody. She loved 
 little Donny Nevil, and she knew why she 
 abhorred the word " mother " ; she had for- 
 saken her right to it, to have it later denied to 
 her, and so she turned upon it and smote it. 
 But away beneath all this tumult of the sur- 
 face, she knew. Hidden in her was the in- 
 119
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 satiable need of motherhood the need of 
 spending the tenderness, the rich capacities 
 for sacrifice and suffering going to waste in 
 her. That was what she resented that she 
 was still nothing more than an ornament upon 
 life; that she had no imperative relation to it. 
 She knew more; she knew that somewhere in 
 her soul there was the vision, unobscured and 
 uncorrupted, of all that the love of a man 
 might mean to the heart of a woman. 
 
 That is, she knew all these things in rare, 
 very rare moments. Then she saw them with 
 blinding clearness, and afterwards the mem- 
 ory of them lingered, tormenting her like 
 the perfume of an unknown flower, and ren- 
 dering her a capricious, dangerous, troubling 
 woman to any man whom she might happen 
 lightly to fancy. For she was troubling and 
 dangerous to herself of late; there was devel- 
 oping in her a sheer passion to possess some- 
 thing of which she felt she had been: de- 
 frauded. 
 
 120
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 And yet she had no avowed intention 
 of marriage. 
 
 And still and often, when she reached 
 this place in her reflections, she began to smile 
 if he only knew it, no marriageable man 
 was safe with her! For it might at any mo- 
 ment happen that the mood that was such a 
 perplexity to herself might overwhelm her 
 and sweep her and the momentary man to de- 
 struction and the altar. She had even, 
 when she first met him, taken the measure of 
 Ally Budgett with such a mood in mind. 
 But Ally ! the thought of him now as a 
 matrimonial gamble always restored her bal- 
 ance. One could not marry a man who 
 possessed in perfection the qualities one 
 adored in one's dog. 
 
 " Yes, I come here a great deal," said 
 Gregory, slowly, in answer to her remark. 
 " Am I becoming too constant? " 
 
 She ignored that. " You will see the little 
 girl to-night." 
 
 121
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 "Oh! she's coming down to dinner?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder looked grave. " Yes for 
 dessert." 
 
 There was a pause; then Gregory said: 
 " Does it interest you to have a child about? " 
 
 " That's what I'm interested to find out." 
 She hesitated, and listened; she had caught 
 the sound of Joanna's light tap. " You shall 
 see her at once I will bring her in now." 
 
 He protested. " Honestly, I'm not much 
 on children." 
 
 She made a counter protest with a light 
 shrug of her shoulders, and he reflected that it 
 was perhaps worth enduring the child for a 
 few moments to watch her walk the length 
 of the room with the indolent, sweeping step 
 that hurried for no man's pleasure. There 
 was a contradictory, listless eagerness in her 
 grace that had an alluring effect upon a spec- 
 tator, were he a man. Gregory had heard 
 women allude to Mrs. Warder as a person 
 who courted observation at all costs, but when 
 
 122
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 he ventured to inquire of a bevy of her critics 
 exactly what it was that she did that was 
 " different," he obtained all the amusement he 
 had sought by his question. For, ruled down 
 to a final analysis, each lady's answer carried, 
 in spite of its lesser or greater sting, an im- 
 plication that there were points of resemblance 
 between herself and the impaled Mrs. War- 
 der not to be ignored; for what woman would 
 deny herself possessed of the fascinations, if 
 not of the arts, of the other? 
 
 After the door closed upon Mrs. Warder he 
 looked about the familiar room with a newly 
 critical perception that it was evidently true 
 what he had recently heard stated that 
 Dicky Warder had furnished his town house 
 in pallid, neutral tints expressly designated 
 to exploit his wife's mental and physical bril- 
 liance. It was to be questioned whether in 
 his time those great masses of purple asters 
 would have been permitted in this room toned 
 to a single note of color the pearl of clear 
 123
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 smoke. He wished he had known. Dicky 
 Warder; the stories told of him were suffi- 
 ciently contradictory vouchers for a unique 
 and baffling personality. Mrs. Warder al- 
 ways spoke of him gracefully, whereas she 
 never mentioned her first husband at all, 
 which after all was not strange, for really 
 one deceased husband was all that a woman 
 should be required to memorialize; the line 
 had to be drawn somewhere. She must have 
 been a very charming young widow when 
 Warder met her in the West, Gregory 
 vaguely remembered hearing. 
 
 Mrs. Warder found Joanna waiting in the 
 hall. " Miss Sargent is ready, ma'am." 
 
 " How does she look, Joanna ? Have you 
 made her presentable ? " 
 
 " She did that for herself, ma'am," said 
 Joanna quickly. " She looks more like a 
 wild rose than anything I ever saw that 
 wasn't one." 
 
 "Well, bring her down." Mrs. Warder 
 124
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 smiled; she was thinking of Gregory. Still, 
 Christina was a child. 
 
 Her thought was that the girl's first ques- 
 tion would be an inquiry as to whether she 
 would " do." But Christina looked at her 
 and said nothing, and Mrs. Warder reflected 
 that when you were such a veritable wild rose 
 of bewitchment the most becoming thing for 
 you to do was doubtless to manifest a superior 
 unconsciousness of your charm. She felt a 
 little stupid when she remembered that in the 
 theater last night the child had drawn the 
 admiration of Mrs. Nevil and herself, but it 
 had been a trying day for her, and Christina 
 was still a medley of girls to her the one 
 she had preconceived her to be, and the one 
 at the theater, and the one she had talked to 
 superficially for a few unconvincing moments. 
 
 She gave her daughter her hand with a 
 gracefulness in which there was nothing ma- 
 ternal and led her into the drawing-room, 
 while she reflected that none of Sister Mary 
 125
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Delphine's most skillfully wrought night- 
 dresses could have been more dainty than this 
 little white silk frock with its deep border of 
 embroidered daisies. 
 
 " Mr. Gregory, this is my daughter, Miss 
 Sargent." 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad!" exclaimed Christina 
 instantly, her impassive face breaking into 
 smiles. 
 
 Mrs. Warder looked from her to Gregory. 
 
 " I'm so glad it's you," added Christina 
 joyfully. 
 
 "Well, well! to think it should be 
 you ! " said Gregory. He looked at Mrs. 
 Warder. 
 
 " Please explain. I'm quite in the dark," 
 she complained. 
 
 " So am I," remarked Gregory. 
 
 " Oh Madam Kitty, last night at the 
 play we we saw him there. He took 
 care of me afterwards because " Chris- 
 tina stopped ; the rose in her face flushed deep. 
 126
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 Before she would mention her father's name 
 in this' house there were some things that 
 she meant to understand. 
 
 But Gregory was interested. " Miss Sar- 
 gent and her father did me the honor of hav- 
 ing supper with me last night," he said 
 smoothly to Mrs. Warder; he was already 
 busy fitting the various parts of this story to- 
 gether. 
 
 " How delightful to meet the author of 
 such a play at such a triumphant moment for 
 him," she answered with equal smoothness. 
 
 " Yes, I really preferred it to meeting the 
 actress." 
 
 Mrs. Warder understood and smiled. " I 
 think dinner is served," she said sweetly. 
 
 And then Christina had a new experience. 
 She had grown up assuming a place for her- 
 self in any conversation as her right; to-night 
 she discovered that it was for her to sit still 
 and listen. She had never heard a woman talk 
 upon such a variety of subjects with such an 
 127
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 apparent profundity of knowledge as Madam 
 Kitty displayed; she reflected with a growing 
 sense of inhibition and injury that of course no 
 man would want to talk to her, a mere girl, 
 when he could talk to Madam Kitty. What 
 did she, Christina, know of or care about a 
 " message " and " operative " and " non- 
 operative political principles " ? As time 
 passed she decided to tell her father that Gov- 
 ernor Gregory was not nearly as interesting 
 as they had both thought him. It was funny 
 that they should have been so mistaken about 
 him. 
 
 Mrs. Warder had invited Gregory to din- 
 ner because she shrank from a first evening 
 alone with Christina ; she felt that her wisdom 
 had received its reward, for she had undoubt- 
 edly added a new piquancy to the problem she 
 had always been aware that she was to him; 
 it was evident that as he talked to her he was 
 reconstructing her in a past, dominated, not 
 by Dicky Warder, but by Iliel Sargent. 
 128
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 And for her part she was thinking that 
 last night Gregory had had supper with the 
 man who in the last few weeks had been 
 achieving a curious hold upon a region of her 
 mind that she must presently isolate as a 
 species of infected spot for which she was not 
 in the least responsible. All the while that 
 she was discussing the immediate political situ- 
 ation with the blithe fluency of knowledge at 
 which Christina marveled, a fluency derived 
 in part from a clever study of the daily papers, 
 she was wondering intensely what Gregory 
 had thought of Iliel Sargent. Moment by 
 moment her desire to know a dozen different 
 things was doubling and trebling, and there 
 was no question that she could ask either of 
 Gregory or Christina. She must arrive at the 
 knowledge she craved by the tormentingly 
 slow methods of deduction. 
 
 They went to the library after dinner, and 
 Gregory settled in to a comfortable smoke. 
 He was on the point of asking Christina 
 129
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 whether her father had returned to Far End, 
 but a glance at the girl's face silenced him; 
 he remembered the evening before, the 
 laughter and lightness and charm, and the evi- 
 dent joy of the father and daughter in each 
 other. The girl's eyes now had a bewildered, 
 shut-out look, as though there were much that 
 she did not understand. There might easily 
 be that, he thought, in a situation in which 
 there were evidently as many conflicting ele- 
 ments as there must be in this one. 
 
 He turned to Mrs. Warder. " You're not 
 smoking," he remarked. 
 
 " I think you might do far worse than let 
 Bond have that secretaryship," she answered. 
 " I have an idea that, given a chance, his soul 
 is the soul of the born clerk." 
 
 Gregory smiled; who could have believed 
 that Mrs. Warder would be affected towards 
 sentimental reserves of conduct by the pres- 
 ence of her own or any other person's daugh- 
 ter the other person, in this case, being 
 130
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 apparently Iliel Sargent, of all people! Be- 
 sides, there was that gay little supper last 
 night he had no intention yet of overlook- 
 ing the fact that he had not been invited to it, 
 merely because he had consented to come to 
 dinner to-night and be used as a shield be- 
 tween his hostess and an unexplained daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 " Oh please," he entreated. " I feel my- 
 self a stranger within your gates. What is 
 wrong ? Bond or anybody else you like shall 
 have that place if you'll only not be quite 
 so" 
 
 " What made you think I wasn't going to 
 smoke ? " she asked calmly but she regis- 
 tered a vow against Eben Gregory. " I'm 
 lazy to-night tired, perhaps. Edith Bor- 
 ringdon is such a mad person the most ex- 
 hausting creature I know. I went shopping 
 with her this morning it's an impossible 
 experience. That's why I'm going again, to- 
 morrow."
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Have you known her long? " asked Greg- 
 ory, as he watched her roll a cigarette as 
 Dicky Warder had taught her to roll it 
 twenty years before but then there had 
 been tears in her eyes; now she did the trick 
 charmingly. 
 
 " She's wonderful on the stage and hope- 
 less anywhere else," she answered. " But she 
 amuses me, and I'm trying to teach her that 
 if she will only cultivate the habit of sitting 
 about in great silences, she will add amazingly 
 to her reputation for temperament. She is a 
 remarkable example of an actress who is so 
 physically sensitive to her part that she cre- 
 ates the impression of being intellectually 
 equal to it." 
 
 But Christina could keep silence no lon- 
 ger; she felt as if she had been stone-still for 
 a thousand years. And to watch she 
 leaned forward. 
 
 " Father hates women who smoke," she 
 said, in the tone of one who excommunicates. 
 132
 
 THE GOVERNOR 
 
 For a moment Mrs. Warder looked at the 
 girl; then she laughed delightfully: " My 
 dear, you are a charming little person," she 
 remarked. 
 
 133
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " VOWS AND THINGS " 
 
 " Haven't you had any education? " asked 
 Mrs. Warder. 
 
 She and Christina were sitting in the morn- 
 ing-room, a gay, sunny spot with a more cozily 
 feminine air than any other room in the house. 
 
 " Nothing that you could particularly 
 call education," replied Christina cheerfully. 
 " Of course Fve read everything and all that, 
 you know." 
 
 "Everything?" 
 
 " Everything a man reads. Father always 
 said that while I wasn't in the least educated, 
 I had a most companionable mind." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " And that's really all a woman needs," 
 pursued Christina in a confidential tone. 
 134
 
 h VOWS AND THINGS " 
 
 " Naturally, I'm always meeting women who 
 think I am too ignorant to talk to, but I never 
 found a man who thought that." 
 
 " Oh! " said Mrs. Warder again. 
 
 " Perhaps I'm not giving you quite a fair 
 impression." Christina looked a little anx- 
 ious. " And yet when you really come down 
 to it, I can't do anything, actually, except 
 talk in three languages I talk beautiful 
 French and Italian, but that's because we've 
 been abroad so much, one time and another 
 and I play my violin well, rather stun- 
 ningly, you know." 
 
 "The violin?" 
 
 "Yes. Can't you see me?" Christina 
 jumped up, tucking an imaginary fiddle under 
 her chin, and bowed away very effectively. 
 
 " You understand I play it pictur- 
 esquely," she added as she sat down. 
 
 " Ally Budgett can accompany you," re- 
 marked Mrs. Warder. " He plays just like 
 that. It will be entertaining." 
 135
 
 " I dare say," said Christina. " He's the 
 tall, fair, young man who looks anxious 
 the one we saw yesterday at Mrs. Nevil's, 
 isn't he?" 
 
 " He isn't very young. He's forty at 
 least." 
 
 " Dear me ! I thought he was twenty-five, 
 and I talked to him as if he were sixteen. He 
 made me think of Benny by being not a bit 
 like him." 
 
 "Benny?" Mrs. Warder's tone ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 Christina considered. Then she said: "I 
 dare say you might as well know all about him 
 at once. Benny is my fiance." 
 
 " Are you really engaged to him? " 
 
 " Of course I am." Christina's eyes opened 
 widely; she pulled a pillow from the couch 
 and sat down on it on the floor; she always 
 seemed more comfortable there than any- 
 where else. " That is, I am as much engaged 
 to him as vows and pledges of undying love 
 136
 
 " VOWS AND THINGS " 
 
 can make you engaged. But I'm never trou- 
 bled much about that. Things like that don't 
 really count." 
 
 "Things like that?" 
 
 " Yes. Vows and things. And love 
 you know. Some girls take all that dread- 
 fully seriously. I don't." 
 
 " Oh ! " Mrs. Warder was in a morning 
 gown of some white crepe-like stuff with a 
 knot of violets at her belt; her dark hair 
 seemed to be tied high on the top of her head 
 with a soft white ribbon; she looked fascinat- 
 ingly young and slim to-day, and Christina 
 liked her in this grave mood which was 
 well, in view of the fact that in these three 
 days there had been many moments when she 
 had cordially detested Madam Kitty, and 
 been quite ready to say so, as Madam Kitty 
 had definitely understood. 
 
 " But Benny takes it seriously. That's the 
 mean thing about it." 
 
 137
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Would you rather that he didn't? " asked 
 Mrs. Warder quickly. 
 
 " I'd simply never forgive him if it wasn't 
 a matter of life and death to him." 
 
 Mrs. Warder smiled faintly. 
 
 " Don't you think it is? " demanded Chris- 
 tina. " Well, you'd know if you knew Benny. 
 Benny thinks of nothing else but me morn- 
 ing, noon and night just me." She pointed 
 at herself with a small finger. " That's so 
 strange. I think of a thousand things every 
 day besides Benny. You see there's really 
 nothing to think about, except that he's the 
 finest and best and truest and dearest thing in 
 the world. That's all. And you can't keep 
 saying it over and over. And as for getting 
 married, that he's always dreaming about 
 he has sort of deep, muddled gray eyes 
 perhaps you don't think when you see him 
 first that they're beautiful, but when you've 
 known him a long time you just watch Benny's 
 138
 
 " VOWS AND THINGS " 
 
 eyes, and you wait for the little slow smile 
 that creeps around his mouth and you just 
 love him. That's all." 
 
 " I see," said Mrs. Warder. 
 
 " But as for marriage ! that seems to me 
 a tiresome, upsetting kind of thing. Don't 
 you think so, Madam Kitty?" 
 
 " Mrs. Nevil doesn't," said Mrs. Warder 
 quickly. 
 
 " No." Christina meditated. " Of course 
 there are those children. And they are such 
 dears. I can understand that. I should like 
 a lot of children three, anyway." 
 
 " But in her case it's Mr. Nevil," said Mrs. 
 Warder perversely. 
 
 " Yes." Christina's monosyllable suggested 
 profound consideration of all the idiosyncra- 
 sies of the case. " That's the strange thing. 
 It's the having to stick to one man part of it 
 that I'm not sure of. I feel I could love so 
 many." 
 
 139
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mrs. Warder inexpressively. 
 
 " But didn't you? " Christina leaned for- 
 ward. 
 
 "My dear!" 
 
 " Yes. But tell me about that. I want to 
 know. I don't understand. There's father 
 and there's Benny. They're both wonders, 
 and yet " 
 
 There was a tap at the door and Mrs. 
 Nevil came in, a radiant, fair " darling of a 
 woman," as Christina described her. 
 
 " I've been out with Baby," she said 
 laughing, " wheeling her up and down Sig- 
 nal Street myself. You can't imagine how 
 nice it is to do that you feel yourself so 
 worth while, and you know that it annoys 
 some of our friends dreadfully to see you do 
 it. Mrs. Dorchester asked me why I didn't 
 wear a nursemaid's uniform. I told her I 
 should love to, and I would." 
 
 " You'd look a dear in it," said Christina 
 140
 
 " VOWS AND THINGS " 
 
 emphatically. " I shall do that and wheel all 
 my babies about myself too." 
 
 The two women laughed. Then Mrs. 
 Warder said : " The question that is trou- 
 bling Tina now is, who shall be the father of 
 these apparently inevitable children. At 
 present she is desirous of experimenting " 
 
 " Oh no ! " broke in Christina. " That's 
 only with husbands. I couldn't let anyone 
 but Benny be the father of my children." 
 She looked indignant. 
 
 "Tell me" Mrs. Warder laid her 
 hand on Mrs. Nevil's knee " what is Sybil 
 Dorchester saying?" 
 
 " My dear, everything! " Mrs. Nevil gur- 
 gled with amusement. " I think she has not 
 removed herself from her telephone for three 
 days. She has rung up everyone she ever 
 knew, and she begins each time : * Have you 
 heard about Mrs. Warder, and don't you 
 think it's dreadful?'" 
 141
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Lovely! " murmured Mrs. Warder. 
 
 " Well, at any rate, it's giving Concerning 
 Catherine a great vogue." Mrs. Nevil darted 
 a glance at her friend; Iliel Sargent had not 
 been mentioned between them, and the ex- 
 planation she had been given as to the arrival 
 of Christina had been more subtle than en- 
 lightening. 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed and got up from 
 the couch. " I'll only be gone a moment. 
 Stay with Tina until I come back, Sally. I 
 must look at that hat from Madeira's." 
 
 Mrs. Nevil and Christina chatted cozily 
 together, for they had taken a fancy to each 
 other, until with a change of manner the girl 
 said abruptly: " You're very fond of Madam 
 Kitty, aren't you, Mrs. Nevil? " 
 
 Mrs. Nevil wondered what was coming. 
 " I'm very fond of her." 
 
 " And she's very fond of you." 
 
 " Yes. She's fond of me." 
 142
 
 " VOWS AND THINGS " 
 
 Christina leaned forward. " Then why do 
 you let her do some things? " 
 
 "What things?" 
 
 " Well this ! " Christina's hands swept 
 across her shoulders. " I hate it." 
 
 "Oh I" Mrs. Nevil considered. "But, 
 dear, her neck is lovely." 
 
 ' Yes. But I hate anyone to know 
 it." 
 
 Mrs. Nevil looked unhappy. " Dear 
 child, I have heard that artists say that no 
 other woman in the world has such shoulders, 
 and you see, when it's a question of beauty 
 like that, that makes a difference. Your 
 mother thinks nothing of what offends you. 
 It's a mere matter of usage with her, and I 
 think Mr. Warder " She checked herself 
 as the door opened and Mrs. Warder trailed 
 in, the hat she had spoken of poised on her 
 hand; she was considering it. But something 
 in the two faces caught her attention. 
 
 143
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 "What is it, Sally? "she asked. 
 
 " My dear, nothing. Nothing.'" 
 
 " You were talking about me." Mrs. War- 
 der sat down beside Mrs. Nevil; there were 
 moments when she felt in herself a curious 
 resemblance to Dicky Warder when his 
 methods came naturally to her as her own 
 when she felt herself lashed by the desire to 
 torment. 
 
 She turned to Christina. " What was it? 
 Tell me, Tina." 
 
 Mrs. Nevil got up. "I can't stay, Kitty. 
 I ran in to ask you about those new Beringer 
 people. Is one to call on them? No one 
 seems to know." 
 
 Mrs. Warder smiled. " When in doubt, 
 don't! " Then her eyes went back to Chris- 
 tina. " Tell me ! I'm really interested, 
 Tina." 
 
 For a moment Christina sat silent; then 
 she gathered herself together. " I don't 
 want to tell you, Madam Kitty. But some- 
 144
 
 "VOWS AND THINGS" 
 
 thing makes me care so. I don't like it I 
 hate it when you do some things. I hate it 
 when you smoke. And I hate it when you 
 wear you know the gown last night." 
 
 "Poor little girl!" 
 
 If the words carried a suggestion of sar- 
 casm, it was belied by a certain wistfulness 
 in Mrs. Warder's face. But the next mo- 
 ment she added with a touch of hardening: 
 " Don't worry, Tina ! It all comes to a 
 woman, child, whether she will or not. You 
 don't understand. Perhaps you never will. 
 Sally " she turned to Mrs. Nevil 
 " what do you think of this creation? " She 
 put the hat on. / 
 
 " That it's such a stunning style as to be a 
 positive fright on any woman except you," 
 responded Mrs. Nevil promptly. 
 
 " That's what I wanted to be sure of. 
 Now you may go, dear, as you're in such a 
 hurry."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 KITTY OF THE PRIMROSES 
 
 Within a month Christina was settled as 
 securely in her mother's circle as if she had 
 been born in it; no one perceived that more 
 clearly than her father. Her letters to him 
 were a riot of high spirits with occasionally 
 a descent into such abysses of homesickness 
 for him and Kad and Cardinal that his jeal- 
 ous misery was for the time assuaged. There 
 were moments when the impulse to bring her 
 home almost conquered him, but when that 
 mood came upon him, he ended by setting 
 his jaw against it and going for a long wintry 
 walk with the dogs, or else, true to his 
 promise, for a ride on Caliph with the little 
 Ninde boy at his side on Domino. 
 
 He had other troubles. Mrs. Dryder and 
 Maroline Spence had apparently united in 
 146
 
 KITTY OF THE PRIMROSES 
 
 an effort to obtain him for one or other of 
 them, having grown faint-hearted as to the 
 ultimate success of single-handed attack. 
 At times he saw himself wedded to Mrs. 
 Dryder with Maroline permanently estab- 
 lished in his household as contributory cause. 
 He perceived with amusement the indignant 
 but ineffectual efforts of Cousin Belle to keep 
 these women at his arm's length; she was 
 no match for them. Besides, she had affairs 
 of her own on hand; it was impossible to 
 secrete any longer the import of the Rev- 
 erend Austin Brown's constant visits. Cousin 
 Belle bloomed and dimpled so delightfully 
 that Sargent admitted with a sinking heart 
 that she was clearly designed by God and 
 Nature not to be a housekeeper, but a home- 
 maker. He had provided a position for her 
 under his roof with an unacknowledged feel- 
 ing that he was benevolent; he understood 
 now that perhaps her benevolence had out- 
 weighed his. 
 
 147
 
 It was small wonder that he felt forlorn 
 and that there grew in him a fear that he 
 was about to be deserted by all that had 
 made his hearth his home. He came slowly 
 to a belief that Christina had gone from him 
 for good whether ultimately to Benny 
 Faber or to some other man he could not tell, 
 though he shrewdly suspected that the chances 
 would presently develop in favor of the other 
 man. 
 
 What would there be then for him? 
 Day after day more work, more fame, more 
 money and more weariness of soul and 
 body. 
 
 So he wrote, at a pace that filled Miss 
 Spence with tender alarm and gave her the 
 opportunity for attempted ministrations as 
 to an invalid, such as she believed highly 
 becoming to her and eventually effective with 
 any man, however splendidly cold and fa- 
 mous. 
 
 Sargent's only consolation lay in perceiving 
 148
 
 KITTY OF THE PRIMROSES 
 
 that he regretted nothing, though he under- 
 stood less distinctly as time went on why he 
 had persisted in sending Christina to Madam 
 Kitty. All that he did understand was that 
 his reasons had been less simple and per- 
 sonal to his daughter than he had supposed. 
 There were moments when he caught 
 glimpses of his mind seething with thoughts 
 of Kitty Kitty Sargent, and with interro- 
 gations as to this strange Mrs. Dicky Warder, 
 of whom, through Christina's letters, he knew 
 at once more and less than he desired. She 
 seemed to be back in his life a regnant, 
 compelling woman sweeping past him as 
 he stood shrinking from her in the darkness, 
 a woman of alien philosophy and faiths. 
 
 And yet, there were times, confusing, heart- 
 beating moments, brought upon him by a 
 single word, perhaps, in Christina's letter, 
 when Mrs. Dicky Warder was just Kitty to 
 him Kitty of the primroses. 
 
 149
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IS THIS FAR END? 
 
 Governor Gregory's big blue touring car 
 was standing at Mrs. Warder's door; it stood 
 there so often that Mrs. Dorchester was im- 
 pelled first to comment, then to innuendo as 
 to the reason of its persistence, and finally to 
 asseveration. 
 
 " It's the little girl. She's cutting her 
 mother out," she averred jubilantly. She 
 had her own reasons for desiring the abase- 
 ment of Mrs. Warder, for early in Eben 
 Gregory's rise upon the political and social 
 horizon, Mrs. Dorchester had proceeded to 
 collar and tag him as her own, only to dis- 
 cover later that he was an adroit brute with 
 a fancy for a free neck and no woman's ini- 
 tials branded in brass on it. That might 
 150
 
 IS THIS FAR END ? 
 
 have stimulated her to still further indulgence 
 in an entirely single-handed romance, but 
 when Gregory proceeded to exhibit a delib- 
 erate preference for the society of another 
 woman no, Sybil Dorchester had no in- 
 tention of submitting unheard to that slight 
 upon the superior quality of her offerings. 
 
 " My dear, really, you talk as if you had 
 been Gregory's affianced bride," said her hus- 
 band lazily to her one night, after he had 
 listened with the patience of the humorous 
 and self-contented man to a fresh outburst 
 concerning the Governor's treachery. 
 
 " Edward, please don't be vulgar. Any- 
 thing but that Our friendship was a mis- 
 take, of course, but while it lasted it was 
 unique and beautiful, and now that it is 
 past " 
 
 "You mean mine and yours?" inquired 
 Dorchester mildly. " I wouldn't be tragic 
 about it, Sybil. I find you a delightful ac- 
 quaintance, and so long as we guard ourselves
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 against any lapse into undue familiarity 
 intimacy, I should perhaps say I see an 
 agreeable future before us. I beg. you to 
 avoid putting a serious interpretation upon a 
 relationship which can never be anything but 
 a species of well, shall I call it joke? 
 to the mature of heart." 
 
 "Edward!" exclaimed Mrs. Dorchester. 
 " How can you talk so ! You wound me 
 deeply when you know that to me marriage 
 is the most exclusive and the most sacred of 
 all human ties." 
 
 " Exclusive ! You bet I know it 1 " Dor- 
 chester whistled his terrier Yap to his knee 
 and fondled her and reflected that some fel- 
 lows were lucky Nevil with that little boy 
 Donny, for instance. But there was no sense 
 in getting sour over things; ten years ago 
 Sybil Markley had been a great catch for 
 young Dorchester, and she was not to blame 
 because he had agreed with the majority 
 opinion. So he went contentedly on with his 
 152
 
 IS THIS FAR END ? 
 
 game of solitaire, a game he recommended so 
 frequently to those suspected of matrimonial 
 disillusionment that he was known among his 
 intimates as Lone Hand Freddy. 
 
 Christina was a success; no one doubted 
 that, least of all Christina. She duetted with 
 Ally Budgett and pirouetted all around the 
 Governor played with any man and was 
 serious with none. Mrs. Warder watched 
 the turning of events with the amused but 
 detached interest that she had learned from 
 Dicky Warder; the stir created among her 
 friends and associates by the advent of 
 Christina was entirely to her liking, the child's 
 father being a man of such distinction that 
 she was conscious of a new and startled curi- 
 osity as to her history in a society that 
 had always spoken of her as, " Oh, Mrs. 
 Warder!" 
 
 It was a relief to be able to produce a sen- 
 sation with so little effort; all that was re- 
 quired of her with so active an aide as Chris- 
 
 153
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 tina was to sit back and let her part " do " 
 itself. Sometimes it occurred to her as anom- 
 alous that the child should, so rapidly and 
 completely, have become so absorbing an in- 
 terest in her life; she did not love her, why 
 should she? They had hardly two opinions 
 in common; they crossed swords a dozen 
 times a day; and yet she admitted for like 
 all super-subtle people she had a preference 
 for knowing the exact truth about herself 
 that the days of the weeks had acquired a new 
 significance for her since the energies and 
 interests of Christina dominated them. 
 
 What she did not quite understand was 
 her indifference to the backslidings of her 
 admirers; if they preferred gamboling with 
 Christina to fencing with her, let them gam- 
 bol ! she watched the game, bored or di- 
 verted, but never jealous. Sometimes she 
 was perturbed by a strange feeling of loneli- 
 ness, but when she sought alleviation in the 
 society of men she knew and liked, she was 
 154
 
 IS THIS FAR END? 
 
 forced to confess to herself that she was lone- 
 lier with them than without them. Perhaps 
 the child had come in time to save her from 
 a great blunder; she realized now that she had 
 been close to the admission that Gregory 
 would " do " that in his political ambitions 
 she would find scope for her own, and that 
 such a marriage had lured her as a species of 
 insurance against the coming of those 
 autumnal years in which beauty and power 
 should still be hers, but upon so short a lease. 
 At other times she scorned the uplifting in 
 her of the still, small voice of idealism in 
 her! Gregory might gambol as youthfully 
 as he chose with Christina, but when she was 
 ready, she would marry him, despite those un- 
 attached rumors that his political enemies 
 set adrift like fire balloons in the electoral 
 skies all that was no concern of hers. A 
 bachelor's private life was his own affair, and 
 the loves and marriages of middle age were 
 not those of boy and girl romance. This 
 155
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Benny Faber would doubtless bring to Chris- 
 tina the freshness and inexperience of inno- 
 cent passion of course he would; she was as 
 romantically determined to believe that as she 
 was cold-bloodedly determined to believe 
 that Gregory, unmarried, owed no account- 
 ing of his conduct to anyone, so long as no 
 one claimed public gaze as an injured, inade- 
 quately requited recipient of his idle fancies. 
 She thought about Benny a good deal, for 
 Christina never spoke of him without saying 
 something that was an unconscious plea for 
 the boy. It was to be hoped she wouldn't be 
 a fool; girls married with such impossible 
 ideas in their heads. This little fling was 
 rather a dangerous experiment for such an 
 impressionable child, but Benny was clearly 
 a masterful person and able to take care of 
 his own; she had gathered that from the ex- 
 tracts of his letters that Christina read to 
 her. 
 
 But after all, the girl had better find out 
 156
 
 IS THIS FAR END ? 
 
 something about the big world as it really 
 was ; it might save her from undue hankering 
 after it in days to come. 
 
 These and many thoughts came and went 
 in her mind while Governor Gregory's tour- 
 ing car waited outside her door, because he 
 must hear Christina play everything she 
 knew on the wild violin that seemed some- 
 times the true mate of her leaping, witch- 
 ing spirit. Patient Ally Budgett per- 
 formed impossible feats of accompanying 
 with occasional sighs, but he was in the sev- 
 enth heaven and knew it, and didn't really 
 care how many composers Christina mur- 
 dered if only he might murder them with 
 her. 
 
 " I want the ' Humoreske,' " said Christina 
 suddenly, pausing in the midst of a bar, and 
 Ally scrambled for the Dvorak as if his life 
 depended upon the haste with which he 
 found it. The girl's mood changed; the 
 plaintive, melancholy eagerness of the little 
 
 '57
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 piece seemed to pass from' her violin into 
 her; the gay face stilled, then paled and 
 flushed; the hint of sheltered tears was in 
 the downcast eyelids. And Eben Gregory 
 watched, while there grew in him the longing 
 to soothe and caress her as he would a fright- 
 ened child. He glanced at Mrs. Warder, 
 but she sat calm, a slight smile on her lips. 
 He resented that; what tenderness could one 
 be sure of from her to this little dependent 
 thing who, after all, needed a man's strong, 
 protective affection? 
 
 " Oh I " With a quick, outbreaking sob, 
 Christina thrust her violin at Gregory and 
 turned to Mrs. Warder. " I'm homesick, 
 Madam Kitty. I want father. I want him. 
 I'm going to call him up this minute. I 
 must. He said I never was to unless I was 
 ill. And I'm worse than ill. I shall die if I 
 can't speak to him to-night. You don't know 
 what it is to feel like that. But he's my 
 father, and I can't bear it any more. I don't 
 158
 
 IS THIS FAR END ? 
 
 mean that you aren't all very kind to me " 
 Her benevolently inclusive glance annoyed 
 Gregory; he wished Budgett would get out, 
 and not sit there staring at Christina like a 
 besotted owl. 
 
 " Tina ! " Mrs. Warder's quiet tone and 
 manner were suggestive. 
 
 " No ! You're not to say no, Madam 
 Kitty 1 I didn't sleep last night, and I shan't 
 to-night. I wanted him so. And I know 
 he wants me. Don't you see, Madam 
 Kitty? But you don't know what it's like to 
 do without him when you want him. And 
 now he'll just have stopped writing 
 he'll be going for that quick little walk before 
 dinner with Kad and Cardinal, and he'll be 
 thinking about me. He'll look up at my win- 
 dow when he goes out Oh no ! he won't, 
 for he'll remember not to, and he'll think that 
 I'll never stand there again watching for 
 him." In her excitement she laid her hand on 
 Madam Kitty's shoulder. " I know he'll be 
 
 159
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 thinking that, and I want to tell him that I'm 
 coming soon, and that I love him oh better 
 and better and better than anybody except 
 well, except " She turned to the door. 
 " You must come, Madam Kitty. You must 
 call him up for me. Don't you see that I 
 couldn't?" She broke into sobs. " If you 
 had read his letter to-day, you'd understand. 
 He hasn't anybody but me, and he thinks 
 Oh, you will call him up, won't you ? I can't. 
 I shall cry. And they'd never know what I 
 wanted." 
 
 Gregory stepped forward. " Please let 
 me." 
 
 " Oh no," said Mrs. Warder. Her voice 
 was very light and cold. She went out qui- 
 etly, followed by Christina, to the telephone 
 room. As she sat down and raised her head 
 to the receiver even the girl noticed the white- 
 ness of her face. "Oh Madam Kitty!" she 
 cried. "Are you ill?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder shook her head and the next 
 1 60
 
 IS THIS FAR END ? 
 
 moment was saying clearly: " Long distance, 
 please." Then after a silence: " I want Mr. 
 Sargent at Far End." She repeated that 
 several times in her usual calm tone, then 
 turned and said: "We must wait, Tina 
 she will call us." 
 
 They sat still, saying nothing, until the bell 
 rang sharply; a sigh broke from Mrs. War- 
 der, but she spoke at once. " Yes ! yes ! 
 Is this Far End? I want to get Mr. Sar- 
 gent Mr. Iliel Sargent. It's Mrs. Warder, 
 but it's Miss Sargent Oh, I beg your 
 pardon." She held out her hand blindly, un- 
 consciously, to Christina this child who 
 was the link between her and the man who 
 was suddenly so perilously near; she had not 
 considered what it would be like to feel his 
 voice so close, and yet it was because of an 
 uncontrollable longing to hear it that she had 
 gone to the telephone at all. 
 
 Christina held her breath, curiously sub- 
 dued by a sense of something beyond her ken 
 161
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 something that was happening upon that 
 invisible wire; she looked down at the hand 
 that had grasped hers, delicate and strong, 
 and wondered at the quivering that passed 
 from it into her own. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mr. Sargent. I did 
 not realize that it was you. It is Mrs. War- 
 der speaking. Christina asked me to call you 
 up for her. She is tired and nervous to-night. 
 She cannot be happy unless you let her speak 
 to you. She is here." 
 
 Mrs. Warder stepped back and Christina 
 took her place. 
 
 When she looked around, a few moments 
 later, after her first wild burst to her father, 
 she saw that she was alone. 
 
 162
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE EYES OF A BOY 
 
 " Yes, I know, but I can't help it," said 
 Christina fractiously. " I'm sure it doesn't 
 matter a bit how late we are at that old 
 musicale." 
 
 " It will annoy Mrs. Planter dreadfully," 
 protested Mrs. Warder. " Going to Moor- 
 way Court to a function is always to me like 
 going to church at Saint Peter's and being 
 waited for at the door by the Pope." 
 
 " Well, I'm not afraid of Mrs. Planter." 
 Christina tossed her head. " I want to be 
 late now." She took up her pen again and 
 went on with her letter, while Mrs. Warder 
 resigned herself to waiting and consider- 
 ing Christina. She was aware that the child 
 163
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 and she had made a striking pair to-day 
 Christina in her dull pink cloth with a pink 
 felt hat encircled by a long black feather, 
 and she in severely sumptuous black velvet. 
 But they were as unlike mother and daughter 
 in appearance as could be; that suited her. 
 It would have been annoying at this date to 
 find oneself confronted by an understudy who 
 had all the advantages of time and opportu- 
 nity in her favor. But that was not all. 
 Christina's fair crinkly hair was good to look 
 at; Mrs. Warder had touched it once tim- 
 idly, the spell of remembrance strong upon 
 her; and Christina's fair flushing skin and 
 straight blue eyes were so wholesome, so di- 
 vinely young and reassuring. More and 
 more she set the boy, Benny Faber, beside the 
 girl in her mind's picturings, the boy with 
 the dark head and the " muddled gray eyes " 
 and the idyl of young love singing in his 
 heart. Couldn't the child see that she be- 
 longed to him? that separation from him 
 164
 
 THE EYES OF A BOY 
 
 was like the parting of the perfume from the 
 rose? 
 
 So she thought as she watched Christina 
 writing at her usual helter-skelter speed 
 and the next moment she turned upon her- 
 self and scoffed. What was the matter with 
 her that she took to driveling sentimentality 
 like a school-girl or a gray-beard? She 
 looked up, suddenly conscious, at the great 
 picture of Dicky Warder that had given him 
 an international prestige because it had linked 
 his name enduringly with that of the artist 
 who had painted it. Sometimes she had a 
 curious feeling that he would one day step 
 from the canvas and .set her back where she 
 had been five years before. 
 
 "Are you writing Benny?" she asked, as 
 Christina's speed showed no signs of halting. 
 
 " No father." Christina glanced up 
 and went on again. 
 
 The color came into Mrs. Warder's face. 
 
 "Whatever can you find to say to him?" 
 165
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Everything." The pen flew on. 
 
 " I hope you don't speak of me, Tina." 
 The severity of the tone indicated an unpar- 
 donable quality in such an offence. 
 
 "H'm! To-day it's been all about you," 
 said Christina calmly. 
 
 Mrs. Warder stood up. " That's not nice 
 of you, Tina. I credited you with a finer 
 feeling." 
 
 Christina surveyed her mother impartially. 
 " I suppose it seems to you like spying. It 
 would be in most cases. But this seems 
 to me different. I'll read you what I've writ- 
 ten if you like." And before Mrs. Warder 
 had time to arrange her emotions, Christina 
 had plunged and was sentences deep in the 
 letter a letter that held her hearer listen- 
 ing however much against her will. 
 
 "I still don't know how to describe Madam 
 
 Kitty to you, father. I wish you could see 
 
 her. We'd have a great time talking her 
 
 over together afterwards. In a way she's 
 
 166
 
 THE EYES OF A BOY 
 
 lovely when she wants to be but I can't 
 tell you how. It's all that light, floaty, vanish- 
 ing kind of thing that you can't pin down in a 
 description. Perhaps you'll understand what 
 I mean when I say that if she comes to my 
 room and sits a while and talks and goes away, 
 she's still there afterwards you feel as if 
 some strange flower had been in the room and 
 left its color behind. Sometimes I adore her 
 you can't help yourself and then I hate 
 her. There are days when she's all scratches 
 and thorns, such dainty ones, and she does 
 things that I loathe. I hate to see her smoke, 
 and she flirts, father oh, in a wonderful 
 way that's all her own and very misleading." 
 
 " Tina !" Mrs. Warder stood back, against 
 the frame of the great picture. " How dare 
 you? You're cruel! It isn't fair! What 
 will your father think? " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Christina. She stood up. 
 " Do you care what he thinks? You didn't 
 once." 
 
 167
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Mrs. Warder sat down; she had not ex- 
 pected that. But the next moment she got 
 up and walked unhurriedly to the table; she 
 picked up the closely written sheet and tore 
 it in two. " Send it to him if you like," she 
 said indifferently. "At any rate it carries my 
 contempt of such gossiping with it." 
 
 " It shall," retorted Christina, blazing. 
 " And it will make a pretty little story for 
 father. I shall tell him exactly what hap- 
 pened, and what do you suppose he will think 
 of you then!" 
 
 Mrs. Warder smiled unexpectedly. " It 
 won't matter, Tina." 
 
 " You mean " 
 
 " It doesn't matter what I mean, and you 
 never could guess. And now I won't wait 
 any longer for you, if I may go, dear." 
 
 " You may." Christina sat down and re- 
 arranged the torn sheet. " I shall not go at 
 all." 
 
 But just as Michael was about to drive off, 
 168
 
 THE EYES OF A BOY 
 
 she came flying down the steps, and tumbled 
 in upon Mrs. Warder. 
 
 " Of course I didn't mean that," she ex- 
 plained. " Though I think you were horrid, 
 and after all the lovely things I had said to 
 father about you ! " 
 
 " You said there were times when I was all 
 thorns and scratches." Mrs. Warder had 
 difficulty in keeping a smile out of sight. 
 
 " So you are." 
 
 " And all that about the cigarettes 
 and " 
 
 " So you do. Oh, I understand," said 
 Christina coolly. " You can take any man 
 away from any woman if you want to, and 
 you- know it. You've only given me Mr. 
 Gregory and Ally Budgett because it amuses 
 you more to do that than to keep them for 
 yourself. You needn't think I don't know. 
 What I'm wondering is what man is it that 
 you've got up your sleeve that I don't know 
 anything about? Because there is one, you 
 169
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 know. You'd never be so self-denying if 
 there wasn't." 
 
 " Tina ! You're positively vulgar." Mrs. 
 Warder was genuinely embarrassed. 
 
 " I'm often that," said Christina carelessly. 
 " It doesn't worry me. And now for Mrs. 
 Planter." 
 
 " Don't look at her as if you didn't like 
 her, Tina. She's none too fond of me as 
 it is." 
 
 " Oh, she isn't!" Tina's tone was one of 
 deep offence. " Well, I'll smile at her and 
 just make her like me you'll see but it 
 won't be because of her." 
 
 The look that Christina flashed at her 
 mother sent Mrs. Warder into " the Pres- 
 ence " with the bloom of a disarming sweet- 
 ness upon her that paved the way for Chris- 
 tina's adroitest advance upon Mrs. Planter's 
 susceptibilities. 
 
 "My dear " it was Mrs. Dorchester 
 who reached out a long arm and grasped 
 170
 
 THE EYES OF A BOY 
 
 Mrs. Warder's elbow " do sit down here 
 right beside me. We can talk delight- 
 fully. There won't be anything else for five 
 minutes, thank goodness ! That Czersch- 
 wonsky or something man has just finished, 
 and I'm perishing to tell you that I'm simply 
 infatuated with your little girl. I can't call 
 her your daughter, dear. I don't believe she 
 is, though of course that doesn't prevent her 
 being Mr. Sargent's, does it? But you're 
 too young absurdly too young to have a 
 marriageable daughter. We all know that. 
 Really, I consider it one of the most valid 
 arguments against having children they're 
 a perfect tombstone as to your age. And 
 you see you may be a grandmother any 
 day." 
 
 Mrs. Warder suppressed a smile. 
 
 "But as I say, no one could believe she was 
 
 your child. She's so sweet. I tremble for 
 
 the men, and really now-a-days the married 
 
 men are so gregarious I mean about other 
 
 171
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 women. They flock literally flock after 
 any new woman. I think it's much more re- 
 spectable to be a bachelor, because then every- 
 body knows you have no morals and it's all 
 quite right. There's Governor Gregory " 
 she darted a glance at Mrs. Warder " the 
 things one hears! Somebody told me the 
 other day that he had a son at Harvard, but 
 I said I thought that was a very good place 
 to have a son, and I think it's tremendously 
 fine of him. I'm sure if all these men put 
 their sons that sort, I mean in Har- 
 vard Oh, do look at Mrs. Flatt, and I 
 know her husband lost thousands in the Ar- 
 genta-Apex squeeze! And there are those 
 people beginning again ! How can they 
 think anyone wants to listen to Mozart in 
 these days ! I'm all for Strauss I think mu- 
 sic ought to mean something. Don't you? " 
 Mrs. Warder leaned back and withdrew 
 her thoughts from the people and the things 
 about her to give the clear, intelligible strain 
 172
 
 THE EYES OF A BOY 
 
 of beauty a chance to weave its spell upon her 
 mood; she forgot where she was; she forgot 
 the odious woman at her side, and all the 
 others of the gaiety-crazed mob with their bill- 
 board clothes and their manufactured faces. 
 
 Primroses, yellow primroses Christina 
 should carry them at her wedding. 
 
 But that letter ! What would he think she 
 had become? 
 
 That was of no importance to her; she 
 straightened herself haughtily. 
 
 But what had she become? The question 
 persisted all through the precise, delicious 
 flowing of the music. 
 
 Primroses primroses sweet and wet 
 with the dawn's rain still upon them. And 
 a boy's eyes, blue and straight as Christina's 
 own, looking into hers plighting there a 
 troth that he believed as enduring as the 
 length of his days and hers. 
 
 "Thank God, that's over!" exclaimed 
 Mrs. Dorchester in a tone that was a prayer. 
 173
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Really, what one suffers for one's 
 friends !" 
 
 " Do you ?" said Mrs. Warder most inno- 
 cently. " Then you must surely sacrifice 
 yourself very generously one should only 
 suffer for one's enemies." 
 
 " Now how do you make that out, my 
 dear? But you're so witty. I must remem- 
 ber to repeat that to Freddy. He thinks 
 you're quite the most " 
 
 "How charming of him !" said Mrs. War- 
 der, rising from her seat. " Please make to 
 him my most sincere remerciments." 
 
 If Christina only would not send that 
 letter ! 
 
 No ! she wished it to go.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 Christina sat on the broad arm of a library 
 chair, her feet on the seat of it; she was 
 smoking a cigarette and Governor Gregory 
 was watching her and thinking that he had 
 never gazed on such an adorably distracting 
 compound of girlhood in his life. Christina 
 with all her little puritanical reservations had 
 seemed to him the most appealing thing the 
 heart of man could conceive, but the Chris- 
 tina of these later days had possessed her- 
 self of attractions that had a slightly pungent 
 flavor all their own. Gregory no longer 
 evaded; he understood what he wanted, and 
 he understood that he meant to have it in 
 spite of Mrs. Warder and in spite of Benny 
 175
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Faber. Of course there was the child's 
 father to reckon with, but a man who knew 
 the world as Sargent did could be relied on 
 to see the advisability of something less prob- 
 lematical than a boy and girl marriage for his 
 daughter. The man's own experience was 
 behind him as a gauge of that sort of thing, 
 and though Faber was undoubtedly a fine 
 fellow, it was going to take something more 
 than an undoubtedly fine fellow to handle a 
 piece of fireworks like Christina on a conju- 
 gal basis. 
 
 But these were days in which Gregory 
 learned the pain of regretting. There were 
 things he would never want little Tina to 
 know things she need never know. But 
 they were there and they troubled him. For 
 the first time in his hard life he wished for a 
 clean heart into which the eyes of this little 
 girl might safely look. For love had come 
 to him love as compelling and as tremu- 
 lous as any boy's, but with the grip of pathos 
 176
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 that has no place in young love's dreams. 
 He remembered his schemes for an ambitious 
 marriage with distaste; that was what the 
 world did with a man hardened and de- 
 graded him, teaching him the adaptation to 
 self-interest of all that was best in him. 
 
 Yet in spite of his amorous preoccupation 
 he was not without speculative question as to 
 the political effect of so youthfully charming 
 a mistress of the State House; Christina 
 as a vote-inducer would be something for his 
 opponents to reckon with. 
 
 " Greg, why don't you marry Mrs. Plan- 
 ter?" 
 
 " Tina !" exclaimed Mrs. Warder. 
 
 " He doesn't mind. He likes it, don't you, 
 Greg?" 
 
 Gregory smiled tolerantly. 
 
 " You wouldn't like me to call him 
 ' Eben,' would you?" continued Christina. 
 " That would be shockingly intimate. But 
 seriously about Mrs. Planter, Greg." 
 177
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Tina, come off that chair," said Mrs. 
 Warder unhappily. 
 
 " No, no," protested Christina. " There 
 are such a lot of things you can't say when 
 you're behaving properly things that it's 
 awful to say, and that I simply must." 
 
 " If you're in that mood I shall go away," 
 said Mrs. Warder, with a touch of her daugh- 
 ter's manner. 
 
 "Please not!" exclaimed Gregory. But 
 she passed him. 
 
 " Sit down," said Christina impatiently, 
 as Gregory remained standing, looking some- 
 what uncomfortable. 
 
 "But " 
 
 " She'll come back just as soon as she wants 
 to." 
 
 He sat down. 
 
 "Now, as to Mrs. Planter, Greg?" 
 
 " She's ten years older than I am more." 
 
 " There'll be ten years less of her then," 
 remarked Christina consolingly. "And then 
 178
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 think " she looked profound " you'll 
 have that place, and all her heaps and heaps 
 of money, and pictures and statues, and " 
 
 " If I could only be sure of that !" Greg- 
 ory was serious consideration personified. 
 " But she has an immense family connection. 
 I shouldn't like to try the experiment without 
 a pretty stiff ante-nuptial contract, and she 
 might acquire the suspicion that I was marry- 
 ing her from a mercenary state of the affec- 
 tions." 
 
 Christina had finished her cigarette and 
 got off her perch, settling herself on a straight- 
 backed chair rather near Gregory. 
 
 " I could talk her into it," she remarked. 
 "I will if you like." 
 
 " And exactly what would you say?" 
 
 " That would depend. At first she would 
 probably be angry, but she couldn't help be- 
 ing interested. Women are when you talk 
 to them about love and marriage." 
 
 " Really?" 
 
 179
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 "Oh yes. And she's taken a fancy to me. 
 She says so." 
 
 " That's curious." 
 
 In spite of her audacious belief that she 
 had the upper hand, Christina was momen- 
 tarily embarrassed by the look in Gregory's 
 eyes. 
 
 " If women like to talk of love and mar- 
 riage " 
 
 " With women,'* she interposed. " Not 
 with men, Greg. There's nothing so dull." 
 
 " I understand. Not with men," he re- 
 peated coolly. " But with one " 
 
 " Go home," said Christina decisively. 
 She stood up. " You're dreadful. At this 
 moment you look like a definition of matri- 
 mony out of the dictionary. Go away." 
 
 Gregory went. He had ventured as far 
 as he wished to-day. 
 
 But he was no sooner gone than Christina 
 relented. She had been having such a good 
 time; why must she be a silly and spoil it? 
 180
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 She ran to the window and caught Gregory's 
 backward glance as he steered away; she 
 gravely saluted and the Governor smiled 
 a smile that Mrs. Dorchester caught in pass- 
 ing as well as the charming picture of Chris- 
 tina, which was the cause of her saying later 
 to Lone Hand Freddy : " It's deplorable, 
 Frederic that little Sargent minx and Mr. 
 Gregory." 
 
 "Oh! Is she " Freddy paused and 
 chose the refined word "is she abducting 
 him?" 
 
 " Abducting? " She gathered breath. 
 
 Lone Hand Freddy looked at her, consid- 
 ering. " Shall you be more than twenty min- 
 utes, my dear?" he asked blandly. "I'm 
 expecting Artie any moment." 
 
 After she turned away from the window 
 Christina sat down in some depression; she 
 had a feeling that Madam Kitty's door was 
 standing open at the head of the staircase, 
 and that Madam Kitty intended speaking to 
 181
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 her. Very well; if that was it, she wouldn't 
 go up-stairs if she never went again. 
 
 Madam Kitty was waiting, and after she 
 had exhausted her slight patience in that 
 method of passing time, she went down-stairs 
 and found Christina standing contemplatively 
 in front of Dicky Warder's portrait. 
 
 " I don't like him," she announced, without 
 unnecessary preamble. " He always makes 
 me think of Rome and the Inquisition and 
 stilettos and the Bridge of Sighs. Did you 
 like him?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder went to the extreme end of 
 the room and sat down. 
 
 " Of course he's very handsome," con- 
 tinued Christina, " all in that fine knife-y kind 
 of way. He has wonderful hands, hasn't 
 he? They look as if they would enjoy 
 strangling you artistically and gently. And 
 his eyes they're always after me. I think 
 he doesn't like me here, Madam Kitty." 
 
 " I shouldn't think he would," said Mrs. 
 182
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 Warder coldly. " Not when you act as you 
 do." 
 
 " Oh! " Christina sat down; the length of 
 the room was between them. 
 
 " I think your head is a little turned, Chris- 
 tina. I'm not sure, as I think it over, that it 
 was a good thing; for you to come here. 
 You have begun lately to do some things that 
 I" 
 
 " You mean smoking? " 
 
 " For one thing." 
 
 " I should like to understand about that," 
 said Christina. " Why is it right for you and 
 wrong for me?" 
 
 " That is not a point that you and I will 
 discuss, if you please. Have you told your 
 father that you sit smoking with Mr. Greg- 
 ory?" 
 
 " No, but I've got to," said Christina mis- 
 erably. " And he'll make the dickens of a 
 fuss, Madam Kitty. Oh, I wish you'd just 
 write and tell him that I'm a bad girl. Then 
 
 183
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 he'd get so angry with you that he'd forget 
 about me." 
 
 "And Benny?" 
 
 " Oh as to Benny " Christina's chin 
 lifted. " Benny has nothing whatever to do 
 with it. I don't dictate to him why should 
 he to me? why should anybody? If I 
 were a boy " 
 
 " But you're a girl, Tina, and there are, in 
 consequence, some things that I think you had 
 better understand at once, if you wish to save 
 yourself embarrassment and mortification 
 later on. I suggest, for instance, that you 
 do not call Mr. Gregory what you do call 
 him any more." 
 
 The color flashed in Christina's face. 
 " He likes it, Madam Kitty." 
 
 Mrs. Warder considered. " Just how 
 
 much it is wise for women to do what men 
 
 like has been found to be a debatable point, I 
 
 believe." She hesitated. " Tina, don't 
 
 184
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 you understand that Mr. Gregory is not the 
 kind of man a girl can play mouse with very 
 satisfactorily? " 
 
 " I'm not playing with him," said Chris- 
 tina rebelliously. 
 
 '* Then is he playing with you ? " 
 
 Christina laughed. " Perhaps." She 
 got up and walked towards Mrs. Warder. 
 " But all the same, I shall marry him if I 
 want to, Madam Kitty." 
 
 Mrs. Warder got up from her chair. 
 " Shall you? " she said, so coolly that Chris- 
 tina wanted to slap her. " I hadn't thought 
 of that. It might be interesting. But I 
 fancy you would find it dull after a bit. Oh, 
 I must hurry. Marie will be frantic. It's 
 the Courtenay dinner to-night, and she has 
 ideals as to the impression I am to create." 
 
 "You think I don't mean what I said?" 
 demanded Christina. 
 
 "My dear, how should anyone know?" 
 185
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Mrs. Warder moved with elaborate grace to 
 the door; she was conscious of herself as cu- 
 riously angry. 
 
 " You will see. I shall marry Governor 
 Gregory." The demon, of contrariety was 
 fully aroused in Christina. " I should get 
 into the history books then, I suppose. How 
 nice to think of the children a hundred years 
 from now reading about the wife of one of 
 the state's most distinguished governors. I 
 like that." The girl's tone was enough to 
 provoke a saint, but Mrs. Warder was a 
 great advance on anything so primitive. 
 
 " Tina, you're quite hollow-eyed, and as 
 nervous as a bat. Do go to bed early, child. 
 It's a case of too many dances altogether." 
 
 " As you like." Christina flitted up-stairs 
 before her mother. " But don't forget what 
 I've said." 
 
 At eleven o'clock the next morning Joanna 
 asked Mrs. Warder's maid if her mistress was 
 awake. 
 
 186
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 " Yes. And she wants to see you at once 
 about Miss Sargent's gown for Wednesday 
 night." 
 
 Joanna listened patiently while Mrs. War- 
 der talked about white chiffon and rose-pink 
 ribbons, and when that was all settled she 
 said slowly : " I'm a bit troubled, ma'am. 
 Miss Sargent said she was not to be called 
 until ten she was tired last night, and Mr. 
 Gregory came in only for a few min- 
 utes " 
 
 "Mr. Gregory!" exclaimed Mrs. War- 
 der. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. And this morning when I 
 went to Miss Sargent's room, she wasn't 
 there. No one saw her go out. But she 
 must have." 
 
 " There's nothing strange about that, Jo- 
 anna. She's only gone for a walk, of 
 course." But Mrs. Warder's tone belied 
 her affectation of indifference. 
 187
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. But the traveling-bag she 
 carried when she came has gone too." 
 
 "Oh!" Mrs. Warder sat up at last. 
 " She has gone to see her father then." To 
 herself she added: " I wonder why." 
 
 And in the instant she felt the sting of this 
 unexplained desertion of her in a way that 
 annoyed and amazed her. 
 
 She got up and dressed and went into Chris- 
 tina's room; it was a charming cage, but to- 
 day its look of orderly desolation was depres- 
 sing. 
 
 This was absurd; she would order the car- 
 riage and take Donny Nevil for a drive; he 
 loved to go driving with her. But Donny 
 had a cold he had been feverish all night, 
 and his mother, who went with her instead, 
 was nervous and preoccupied and anxious to 
 be at home again at the end of fifteen minutes. 
 So after doing a little tiresome and unneces- 
 sary shopping, Mrs. Warder went home 
 again herself, and sat through the dull after- 
 188
 
 DICKY WARDER 
 
 noon listening for the tempestuous slam of 
 the front door that had so often disturbed 
 her. It occurred to her that she hated the 
 trained stillness of this perfectly regulated 
 household, and she remembered the parlor- 
 maid whom she had dismissed for breaking 
 out into singing as she dusted the drawing- 
 room in the early morning. 
 
 Of course there was just one sane thing to 
 do that was to call up Far End and find 
 out if Christina had arrived there. But she 
 did not do it, though she arranged and rear- 
 ranged a hundred times each single word that 
 she would say. 
 
 Would he do more than accept her mes- 
 sage with a perfunctory " Thank you "? 
 
 Late in the afternoon a telegram was 
 brought to her. It said simply : "Christina 
 is here. I hope you have not been anxious. 
 ILIEL SARGENT." 
 
 Then he had not desired to speak to her. 
 For he might have telephoned. 
 189
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 But late that night she sat long, with the 
 yellow paper in her hand, before she put 
 out the light. 
 
 190
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 Late the next evening Mrs. Warder was 
 called to the telephone to speak to Mr. Greg- 
 ory. " I'm at the Binghams'," he said. 
 " May I come in to see you for a few mo- 
 ments?" 
 
 She assented with an indifference that was 
 hardly negligible, but he thanked her 
 blithely, and she was barely settled in the 
 drawing-room again when he was at the door. 
 
 " I was here the night before last, you 
 know," he said as he shook hands; " but only 
 for a moment." 
 
 " So I understood." 
 
 "And disapproved?" 
 
 She made a gesture. " I have not thought 
 about it, Mr. Gregory." 
 191
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " It seemed to you of no importance, 
 then?" 
 
 She smiled; the responsibility of Chris- 
 tina was no longer resting upon her shoulders, 
 and she felt that she could afford to play a 
 little with Gregory. 
 
 He answered her smile deliberately. 
 
 " I came in that night because I was like 
 any foolish boy I knew I shouldn't sleep 
 unless I saw Tina again, even if it was only 
 for a moment." 
 
 His remark indicated to her an arranged 
 policy, as he knew it would. His sense of 
 his dignity as a man and as a governor was 
 great, and he had realized in the last twenty- 
 four hours that he had arrived at a place 
 where there was danger of his making a fool 
 of himself, or being made a fool of. He was 
 in love with Christina, and he understood that 
 his attentions attracted and flattered her, but 
 the wind that blew her to him was as likely as 
 not to blow her from him, light, willful thing 
 192
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 that she was, unless something strong and de- 
 termined held her firm. 
 
 This way and that he turned his problem 
 until it came to him that there was only one 
 method of dealing with it; Mrs. Dicky War- 
 der must become his ally. Such a proposition 
 would never have occurred to an inexperi- 
 enced man, for it was only a matter of weeks 
 since he had been actively engaged in the woo- 
 ing of Mrs. Warder herself. But Mrs. 
 Warder was an unusual woman; she had a 
 rare sense of humor of which she was rather 
 vain; she was capable of a large generosity 
 to the man who appreciated her philosophical 
 indifference to the surprises of the Jack-in- 
 the-Box Providence, who jumped out when 
 the lid flew open and unconcernedly upset the 
 plans of mice and men. 
 
 That philosophical repose, however, would 
 not have been sufficient, even in the case of 
 the most rarely humorous of women, to rec- 
 oncile her to such flagrant disloyalty as Greg- 
 
 193
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ory's; the point was, as he shrewdly and joy- 
 fully perceived, that she herself had been in- 
 different; she would have married him, per- 
 haps, but she would have done so, scoffing 
 at herself and at him for a pair of fools. 
 Now she was free to scoff at him alone; she 
 would do that, but not venomously. And he 
 admitted himself fair game for her shafts; 
 any man would be who, at forty-five, wanted 
 to take to wife a child like Christina, who 
 would probably harass and torment him un- 
 endurably. But that was what he wanted; 
 he wanted to be jealous, and happy, and mis- 
 erable the driven shuttle-cock of passion 
 like any boy of twenty; he glorified in this 
 rush in his veins of reckless, amorous emo- 
 tion. 
 
 There was only one thing to do: to invite 
 Mrs. Warder to share the secret of his ut- 
 most weakness. Once persuaded, she would 
 be a far surer ally than Sargent, who might, 
 after all, manifest paternal idiosyncrasies of 
 194
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 an obstructive nature you never could 
 count on men where their daughters were con- 
 cerned. They were apt to be more roman- 
 tic and sentimental than the maddest of 
 lovers. 
 
 Gregory had no intention of playing a 
 young Lochinvar part in the acquiring of 
 his bride; his imagination waxed warm over 
 the details of a publicly picturesque wooing, 
 and a still more public and picturesque wed- 
 ding; he conned the story as he would assist 
 the newpapers to present it the girl-wife 
 with her estranged and notable parents, and 
 the distinguished groom, fortunate alike in 
 love and war political war. 
 
 He had thought it all out, and to-night he 
 had come, strong in the belief of his winning 
 power. Eben Gregory the name stood 
 for success; the days of probation and defeat 
 were past for him. 
 
 Mrs. Warder looked at him with the little 
 smile that mocked. " You couldn't sleep un- 
 
 195
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 less you saw Tina again for just one mo- 
 ment," she repeated. 
 
 She sat back in a wonderful pose, and it 
 came over him that he had never seen her 
 look as she looked to-night. She was all in 
 black soft, thin, dull stuff that fell tensely 
 about her, weighted with heavy borders of 
 black embroidery a gown that reached 
 high about her throat and sleeved her arms to 
 the wrists. It was all and more than Chris- 
 tina could have demanded of her mother, 
 but Gregory felt, in some wonder, that he 
 had never seen this woman in more willfully 
 attracting guise. He knew women well; had 
 he been as certain of Mrs. Warder as he was 
 of all others, he would have said to-night 
 that only one thing was capable of invest- 
 ing her with this cool blue light that made 
 him think of the flames that presage a burn- 
 ing splendor by and by. 
 
 As he watched her the same thought 
 crossed his mind that Christina had voiced so 
 196
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 frankly to her mother. Was there someone 
 else? Had she merely been amusing her- 
 self all these weeks that he had deemed her 
 growing acquiescent to a marriage with him 
 that should be a subtle blend of reason and 
 adroit passion? 
 
 Yet he had admitted her indifference. 
 Yes; because it suited him to admit it. 
 
 Well if there were someone else so 
 much the better for him I 
 
 " I've come to throw myself on your 
 mercy," he said simply. "If you won't help 
 me, I'm undone." He smiled at the melodra- 
 matic word; Mrs. Warder smiled. 
 
 "What help do you want?" 
 
 " I want that little girl." 
 
 She gave him a quick look; if he knew 
 women, she knew men. 
 
 " Do you want to adopt her? " 
 
 " You're unkind." 
 
 " No," she said slowly. Then she 
 laughed; she was thinking how simple a mat- 
 197
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ter it would be to unsettle this man's desires; 
 she knew her power. She had let him go 
 without understanding her reason; she could 
 bring him back, even after this confession 
 even because of it. But she was tired of all 
 that she was done with it. She had 
 played the silly, purposeless part for long; 
 once, because it gratified the pride of Dicky 
 Warder in possessing her, and later, because 
 all other means of diversion were tame in 
 comparison as methods of smothering the 
 loneliness in herself that she made such des- 
 perate effort to ignore. 
 
 " No. I'm not unkind," she repeated. 
 " But I'm not thinking of you I'm thinking 
 of Tina." 
 
 "Well?" He wished she would talk 
 more and consider less. " So am I." 
 
 She flashed a look at him. " Not much. 
 Not of the real Tina the woman that's 
 there beneath the child." 
 198
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 "Oh yes!" he protested. "That's it. 
 That's exactly what I feel." 
 
 She shook her head. " If you did, you 
 would not be asking me to help you make 
 her your wife." 
 
 He drew up. " What else does a man de- 
 sire for the woman " Then he hesitated. 
 " I can't say these things to you. You make 
 me feel that they sound foolish." 
 
 "They do, don't they?" she agreed with 
 discomforting readiness. " And do you 
 think they should? Do you think they 
 would if they were said by " 
 
 He interrupted her; at this moment he 
 could not bear the boy's name. 
 
 " I don't understand you. I thought that 
 you, of all women, were able to rate at their 
 real value the passions of the bib and tucker 
 age as selfish as the appetite for jam." 
 
 " I agree with you," she retorted calmly. 
 " But are yours less selfish ? And have you 
 199
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 as much to offer as as Benny Faber has? " 
 
 "I?" He stared at her. "What has 
 that boy " 
 
 She could not endure it. " Everything 
 in comparison ! " She stood up ; even in the 
 anger that swept him he paid involuntary 
 homage to the charm that held through all 
 her defiant scorn. " Everything that she 
 needs my poor little girl ! everything 
 that she must have if she is to become the 
 woman that she ought to be." 
 
 "You!" He checked a sneer. "You 
 say that! you, who threw away pre- 
 cisely " 
 
 Her hand lifted, and he waited. 
 
 " That was it. I threw it away. I didn't 
 understand, you see. And I had no one to 
 tell me. It meant nothing to me the love 
 of a boy, clean and strong. I saw only the 
 selfishness in it. And I hated the poverty. 
 I did not see that for me the true marriage 
 and the true motherhood were matters of 
 200
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 growth and attainment, as they must always 
 be to difficult natures. I thought Iliel sim- 
 ple and uninteresting he had no fascinat- 
 ing mysteries nothing to be ashamed of 
 nothing he would have shrunk from my know- 
 ing." 
 
 " Every man has that. Every boy has. 
 You're sentimentalizing when you pretend to 
 believe that he hadn't." 
 
 " Men always say so," she rejoined calmly. 
 " They ought to know. I will shift my 
 ground to suit your assertion. I will say that 
 I prefer that my daughter should marry a 
 man who has behind him as brief a period 
 as possible for the acquiring of experience not 
 fit for her knowledge. Marriage being what 
 it is, that seems to me the fairer thing to 
 her." She looked straightly at Gregory. 
 
 " Your philosophy is derived from your 
 experience as the wife of Dicky Warder? " he 
 inquired suavely. 
 
 She flushed, but she answered him in the 
 201
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 tone she had maintained with slight excep- 
 tion so far. " We need not consider that. 
 Dicky Warder as you call him is not 
 accountable for my mischievous theories. I 
 have lived to see where I was wrong, and I 
 will not let my child make a mistake if I 
 can help it. She shall have the romance that 
 her youth has a right to. She shall under- 
 stand that it comes only once to a woman, and 
 only in one way that youth must wed 
 youth, and that together she and Benny must 
 work out the salvation that lies beneath the 
 romance. That is her right, and I shall fight 
 for it for her." 
 
 " You think then that a life of experiment 
 with a boy who has no settled position to offer 
 her no settled convictions is better for 
 her than life with a man who is old enough to 
 have proved most things and to have come to 
 a place where he is at least able to hold fast 
 some that he has proved to be good? " 
 202
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 "How do I know? how shall anyone 
 know?" There was weariness in her voice. 
 " All that I do know is that one thing seems 
 to me right and the other seems wrong." 
 
 He thought a moment; then he said: 
 " Why are you so ardently championing this 
 boy? You know nothing of him." 
 
 " I feel as if I knew a great deal. Chris- 
 tina reads me his letters." 
 
 " Oh ! any man can write when he's 
 in love." 
 
 " But this Benny can't. At least not as 
 you mean. He thinks of just two things 
 Christina and his work. And just now he 
 makes the cardinal mistake of putting his 
 work first, because it is the means by which 
 he will obtain her. She doesn't understand 
 that. One sees that he is a man more con- 
 cerned with doing than with thinking. He 
 describes surveys to her and takes her inter- 
 est for granted. She doesn't read any of 
 203
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 that. Lately I have read those pages to her 
 and made her listen. They reveal the boy as 
 she must learn to understand him." 
 
 Gregory smiled. " It seems to me I 
 haven't much to fear from Benny." 
 
 " Haven't you? " She studied him coolly. 
 " It would seem so, I suppose. But at the 
 root of him, Benny is the born lover." 
 
 He smiled again. " But he is there." 
 
 " And you are here. Yes." 
 
 "But I do admit " Gregory went back 
 to the thought upon which he had begun 
 " that I have a good deal to fear from you." 
 
 She was silent, and he watched her, an ir- 
 ritated, baffled feeling growing in him. 
 
 " I don't understand you," he said at last. 
 " I have always thought you the wisest 
 woman I knew, and here, in a matter that 
 concerns the happiness of your daughter's en- 
 tire life, you act more capriciously than any 
 girl." 
 
 204
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 She still said nothing ; he was not even sure 
 that she listened. 
 
 " Really I wish you would tell me 
 what are you thinking?" he asked impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 She turned to him a slight derisive 
 smile on her lips. 
 
 " I shall see Tina's father," he retorted 
 somewhat ponderously, and at once despised 
 his lack of humor. 
 
 " It will be of no use." 
 
 The assurance in her voice stung him. 
 
 "Why should you be so certain of that? 
 Do you think that you do you mean to 
 influence him against me ? " He laughed 
 easily. 
 
 There was not even the flash he had hoped 
 to evoke in her eyes; he had never seen 
 her so coolly unresponsive, and his annoyance 
 got the better of his judgment. 
 
 " You think Iliel Sargent would be predis- 
 205
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 posed to listen to a plea from you in support 
 of young romance of its charm? of its 
 endurance? " 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 Gregory laughed. " My dear lady, 
 doesn't it occur to you that you deceive your- 
 self?" 
 
 She drew up. " He would listen if he 
 saw that I believed." 
 
 " That you believed ? What do you 
 mean? " 
 
 She looked at him steadily. " That I be- 
 lieved now that what I threw away 
 was the best that a woman can have." She 
 leaned back and spread her arms wide until 
 they rested upon the ends of the divan on 
 which she sat; there was unconscious revela- 
 tion in the gesture; it hinted of the relaxing 
 of long tension. 
 
 " You mean " Gregory began and then 
 paused; this woman was not the woman he 
 had known as Mrs. Warder. " Do you 
 206
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 know what you mean? Do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 She gathered herself together. " I under- 
 stand," she said simply. 
 
 "Oh no you don't!" He spoke 
 brusquely. " You're merely trying another 
 way of amusing yourself." 
 
 She laid her hand on his arm. " I found 
 out to-day. I never understood before." 
 
 " Understood what? " he asked coldly. 
 
 " That I love Iliel that I always have 
 loved him." 
 
 He drew a breath. Wonderful ! the 
 lengths to which women would go in their de- 
 sire for fresh forms of amorous excitement. 
 Men were content with the more obvious, 
 more accessible methods of enjoyment. 
 
 She understood his thought and drew back 
 proudly. " Why should I tell you ? " Then 
 her manner changed swiftly. " But I was 
 sorry for you. I wished you to understand 
 why I wanted Tina to have " ^ 
 
 207
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 '* Yes yes," he interrupted; he had no 
 intention of discussing his own case any fur- 
 ther with her at the moment. " I'm inter- 
 ested enormously interested. Do you in- 
 tend to tell Sargent what you have just told 
 me?" 
 
 " Tell Iliel? " The words seemed fright- 
 ened out of her. 
 
 " But you want him to know it," he said, 
 with a touch of contempt that was doubtless 
 brutal, but, after all, this lovely woman was 
 a declared enemy to his hopes; she was not 
 going to spare him he saw that. 
 
 She stood up, and walked a few steps away 
 from him. Then she turned. 
 
 " I hadn't thought of that." 
 
 " That's not the truth," he said coldly. 
 
 She laughed softly the color in her face 
 in a flood. 
 
 A sudden envy of the man Sargent came 
 over Gregory as he looked at her; she would 
 go back to him for what man could resist 
 208
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 her? and they would begin life again to- 
 gether at the flood-tide of a passion beside 
 which the memories of their first rapture 
 would seem but as foreshadowings of this 
 later, deeper joy. 
 
 " Well " he considered " in the light 
 of what you tell me, your opposition to my 
 marriage with Tina assumes less importance. 
 For I understand that in talking of what you 
 call her * right ' a youthful romance you 
 are in reality fighting for the integrity of 
 your own the romance of the girl that you 
 were once and of the boy that Sargent was. 
 At the root " he looked at her quizzically 
 " you're as selfish as I am." 
 
 She smiled. " Just as selfish." 
 
 " You're worse. If you will forgive me 
 you're a fool. You're letting yourself fall 
 in love with an ideal. It's- the same old 
 trick" 
 
 " I admit it," she interrupted. " But an 
 ideal is an immensely satisfactory thing to be 
 209
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 in love with. And if I'm happier as a 
 fool " She broke off with a shrug; the 
 mocking grace that she had set aside for a 
 serious moment came back upon her, and 
 she looked at him with a faint smile that 
 seemed touched with contempt of herself as 
 surely as of him. 
 
 He watched her, wondering. She had 
 said that she loved Sargent. Had she meant 
 it? There were a dozen questions he would 
 have liked to ask. But he remained silent. 
 Mother and daughter! The charm of the 
 one was the charm of the other; with no 
 outward resemblance to proclaim the tie be- 
 tween them, in temperament they were one. 
 For all her wisdom in the ways of the world, 
 this woman had still the recklessness, the su- 
 perb and undaunted determination to live 
 eventfully that would always constitute her a 
 problem and a torment however adored 
 to the man she chose to make her own. 
 
 And Sargent he. had known a decade 
 210
 
 MEN ALWAYS SAY SO 
 
 and a half of lonely play-writing peace 
 peace that was threatened at this moment 
 by all the magnificent possibilities of vol- 
 canic disturbance. 
 
 14 Well " Gregory stood up, and held 
 out his hand " I may come again as usual, 
 in spite of my intentions? " 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " And Tina you'll give me my chance? " 
 
 She spread her hands. " Tina went back 
 to Far End this morning." 
 
 He stared at her. "To Far End? 
 Why?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed. " She may have 
 feared too easy surrender," she said de- 
 murely. 
 
 He looked disturbed. " You're sure Faber 
 isn't at Far End?" 
 
 "Benny? Oh no I Poor Benny is safe 
 
 in the fastnesses of dear knows where just 
 
 now." She leaned over and struck a chord 
 
 on the piano. " The field is yours, my 
 
 211
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 friend." And then, with the light touching 
 of another chord, she sang softly: ' For men 
 must marry, and women must weep.' " 
 
 " What a cynic you are I " exclaimed 
 Gregory. 
 
 But when he reached the door he looked 
 back, in a confused effort to carry away with 
 him some clear impression as to the woman 
 he was leaving. 
 
 "Well?" she said and laughed. 
 
 " Honestly " he ventured " did you 
 really mean what you said " 
 
 " Honestly ! " she gibed. " Is one ever 
 honest when one is driven to the necessity of 
 being serious? " 
 
 212
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 " This is the evening of the Valentine 
 party," said Christina irrelevantly. 
 
 " Oh ! " remarked Sargent. " You were 
 going?" 
 
 "Yes with Ally Budgett." 
 
 " There's still time." Sargent looked at 
 the clock. "You could just get the 4:58." 
 
 " Yes, if I wanted to." 
 
 Sargent went on writing, but with no sense 
 of the inevitable flow of spontaneity that 
 made work a delight to him; he had been 
 looking over his manuscript appalled to find 
 how little he had accomplished in the last 
 week. The descent of Christina upon him 
 had been a matter of no ordinary jubilation; 
 for three days he had partaken of her frenzy 
 213
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 of excitement in a way that made him feel 
 ten years younger. Mrs. Dryder was routed, 
 and Maroline Spence ceased from her sug- 
 gestively ministrant labors; the house re- 
 sumed its old-time high-pitched gaiety of tone, 
 with the glow of many lights at night, and 
 the fire again upon the great hearth in the 
 drawing-room. The doors that had been 
 closed stood open, and Cousin Belle tripped 
 about singing: 
 
 " O Love Divine, how sweet Thou art I 
 When shall I find my willing heart 
 All taken up by Thee?" 
 
 and blushed when from a distant part of the 
 house the voices of Christina and Sargent 
 joined heavily in the assertion: 
 
 " I thirst, I faint, I die to prove " 
 
 and then ceased with a concentrated sudden- 
 ness that was very disturbing to spinsterly 
 reserve. 
 
 214
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 But everyone was happy; Kad and Car- 
 dinal chuckled in their sleep, and awake they 
 were imbecile in their joy. And the Fabers 
 felt as if it were almost Benny who had come 
 home; they read his letters to Christina, and 
 she read his last one not all of it to 
 them, and Mr. Faber said that the next thing 
 would be Benny home again himself and then 
 wedding-bells, of course. 
 
 " I didn't contradict him, father," said 
 Christina; "but I know that Benny can't 
 come home not for ages and ages. He's 
 really Acting Superintendent of the Survey. 
 I suppose that's quite a wonderful thing for 
 so young a man." 
 
 " You could go to him," suggested Sar- 
 gent. 
 
 "Yes I could!" And with that she 
 was in a rough-and-tumble scramble with 
 the dogs, while Sargent wondered about many 
 things, principally perhaps as to Benny's 
 actual knowledge of the girl he loved. He 
 215
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 had no idea why she had come home not 
 because she had given him no reason, but 
 because he suspected the genuineness of the 
 delightfully simple and obvious reasons that 
 she offered to him with such engaging frank- 
 ness. There were depths of perversity, in 
 his daughter that he knew it was always safe 
 to count upon. 
 
 Presently she settled the dogs and then 
 curled herself up in his big chair, and for 
 some minutes he watched her in silence. 
 
 " Really couldn't you get on with 
 Madam Kitty?" he asked, at last, very sud- 
 denly. 
 
 She came out of a dream to answer him. 
 " Anybody could get on with her, father." 
 
 " Oh I I thought from several things you 
 wrote that she was sometimes a little diffi- 
 cult." 
 
 u She's an adorable person." Christina 
 spoke with decision. " She gets in tempers, 
 of course, but she's lovely in a temper. I 
 216
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 like her that way best. She's so dainty and 
 fine and horrid about it. You hate her, but 
 you admit afterwards that she's never unfair. 
 She understands. She's the most understand- 
 ing woman I know." 
 
 " Really? I hadn't suspected that," said 
 Sargent drily. 
 
 "But you see, you don't know anything 
 about her, father. Of course, she did an 
 awful thing, but she was only a girl anyway, 
 and I don't think it matters now, because she 
 simply hates that Dicky Warder." 
 
 Sargent laid down his pen. " She hasn't 
 told you so?" 
 
 Christina laughed. " That isn't her way. 
 But you'd know. She never speaks of him, 
 unless she has to. She won't even look at 
 his picture if she can get out of it. I've tried 
 to make her. She won't." 
 
 "Oh well!" said Sargent, and reflected 
 that there were many things a little girl like 
 Christina couldn't understand; he picked up 
 217
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 his pen and wrote a page rapidly. Then he 
 laid it down again, and said as suddenly as 
 before: " She never speaks of me?" 
 
 Christina considered. 
 
 " Oh, of course, she wouldn't," he added 
 hastily. " She would have the good taste 
 not to do that." It annoyed him to think 
 how much Christina knew that she would not 
 tell him, and about which he could ask 
 nothing. 
 
 Christina laughed. " Then she has very 
 bad taste. I was thinking I hadn't 
 thought it out before. Why, she loves to 
 talk about you or rather to hear me talk." 
 
 Sargent felt himself absurdly near to a 
 blush. 
 
 " Why " Christina meditated aloud 
 " one way and another we talk about you 
 and around you a tremendous lot." 
 
 The communal " we " caught Sargent. 
 
 " Then you mean to go back," he said 
 quickly. 
 
 218
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 Christina avoided his eyes. " I don't 
 know. How should I know?" 
 
 "Come! We'll go for our walk." And 
 Sargent jumped up. "Which way shall it 
 be? Sunset Hill road?" 
 
 " I don't care." 
 
 " I thought you liked that walk best." 
 
 " Oh, I do I do," she averred. 
 
 But as she went, laughing with her father 
 and scampering with the dogs, it was not 
 Benny she was thinking of; except in little, 
 quick, poignantly unhappy moments, her 
 thoughts were in Signal street, or at the 
 Valentine party that would be so gay, and at 
 which she would have looked her prettiest 
 she was sure. Sometimes she thought of 
 Governor Gregory, because she had to; she 
 could not manage to forget all the time the 
 single sentence that had frightened her back 
 to her father. It seemed to be always pes- 
 tering a girl and spoiling her fun that 
 stupid question of marriage. She liked Gov- 
 219
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ernor Gregory she liked whirling about 
 with him in his big car, she in the seat beside 
 him, and all the town with eyes upon them. 
 Her quick imagination reveled in the spec- 
 tacular aspects of his fancy for her; she 
 preferred to call it " fancy," that being a 
 reasonably comfortable word, and occasion- 
 ally, in spite of her determination, against 
 him, and her declared incapacity to contem- 
 plate the state of bondage known as matri- 
 mony, her mind would slip along the despised 
 path, and lo ! she was the Governor's lady 
 in a sort of triumphal procession and pageant 
 that should extend through the length of her 
 days. 
 
 Benny? Why, of course she meant to 
 marry Benny some day, when she was old 
 and quiet, and wanted to settle down and rest 
 when everything had stopped happening. 
 
 "Have you written to Madam Kitty?" 
 asked Sargent, a day or two later. 
 220
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 Christina shook her head. " What should 
 I say?" 
 
 " Tina, it's not polite. Of course I sup- 
 posed you had written." 
 
 " You can." She nodded encouragingly 
 at him. " You asked her to take me. She'll 
 expect it. If you don't, she'll think why, 
 I can't think what she'll think." She re- 
 garded him with a severe expression. 
 
 " I'm not going to write to her," he re- 
 torted sharply. " You and she seem to be 
 very good friends." 
 
 Christina leaned forward. " I should 
 think you'd be so glad of the chance to write 
 her," she said, as she studied him. " You'd 
 be sure to get some kind of immensely inter- 
 esting reply." She yawned, and then sat up 
 suddenly very straight. " Father ! Why 
 shouldn't we ask her here ? and Ally, and 
 some of the others? Just think what a time 
 we'd have in this house every room full, 
 
 221
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 and the skating and the sleighing, and the 
 evenings I Oh! this place is meant for that 
 kind of thing. Do let us do it!" 
 
 Sargent regarded his daughter. " You 
 think she would come?" 
 
 Christina laughed. " Well at any rate, 
 she'd be crazy to. Of course she's simply 
 dying to see you." 
 
 " Ta see me?" Sargent sealed and ad- 
 dressed a letter and then said: " What makes 
 you think she would care to see me?" 
 
 Christina's face dimpled with merriment. 
 
 " I know how I should feel." 
 
 "It doesn't follow" 
 
 " Yes it does. Glory ! What a frenzy 
 she's been in to know what I've been saying 
 to you about her." 
 
 " Oh I Do you think that would interest 
 her?" 
 
 Christina cast a withering look upon him. 
 41 Well, for a man and a play-writer to ask 
 222
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 a question like that, and yet they say you do 
 your women well! " 
 
 Sargent laughed ; he felt that so far he had 
 managed very well. " That was absurd, 
 Tina. A woman is always interested to 
 know what's said about her, especially to a 
 
 man." 
 
 " Of course," assented Christina compan- 
 ionably. "I know there are things she won't 
 want me to tell you." 
 
 " Ah ! " Sargent lighted a cigarette. 
 " Have one? " he asked, on a sudden impulse 
 
 and held his case out to her. 
 
 Had Christina been, by nature and train- 
 ing, less at home with her father, she would 
 have been both consciously and unconsciously 
 on her guard. As it was, her hand went out 
 
 then shot back. 
 
 " I thought so," said Sargent quietly. 
 Christina sprang up; she threw the cigar- 
 ette-case to the other end of the room; then, 
 223
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 as there seemed to be nothing else to do, she 
 sat down and looked vengefully at her father. 
 
 " Well? " he asked, contentedly puffing. 
 
 " It was a mean trick," she stormed. 
 
 He laughed. " Confess that it was a neat 
 one," he cajoled. 
 
 For a moment she held out ; then she strug- 
 gled with laughter. 
 
 " It was darned neat," she owned ruefully. 
 " And I meant you never, never to know." 
 
 " Did you think I should object." 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " Tisn't like me to object." 
 
 " No," she admitted, as if it were " Yes." 
 
 He smoked for a few moments in silence; 
 then he said: "It's so irrational to ob- 
 ject. There isn't any argument in favor of it 
 for a man that doesn't hold good for a 
 woman. But my mother didn't, Tina." 
 
 " Madam Kitty " began Christina un- 
 happily. 
 
 "You were very hard on her about it in 
 224
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 one of your letters not so many weeks 
 ago." 
 
 " I know," she said miserably. " And I 
 made her wretched about it. You remember 
 that was the letter I sent you the one 
 she tore in two." 
 
 " I remember." 
 
 How should the child know that that letter 
 had a value all its own to him, because but 
 reasons were obscure, perfunctory things, and 
 he knew himself as an illogical person who 
 got on very well without them. 
 
 " You see," continued Christina, " that's 
 the kind of thing she hates you to know about 
 her. It was rather mean of me to tell you 
 for I don't believe she's smoked a cigarette 
 for weeks. I actually believe she's stopped. 
 That's temper, of course." 
 
 " Has she other sins equally heinous ?" 
 Sargent saw himself becoming the lowest of 
 sneaks, but once in a life-time there were 
 things a man must know. 
 225
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Of course she can't help being a flirt," 
 said Christina, reviving. 
 
 Somehow Sargent could not take that up, 
 but neither as he found presently could 
 he leave it alone. 
 
 " Naturally a great many men go there," 
 he observed. " Madam Kitty is an attractive 
 woman." 
 
 " No not so many. You see they're all 
 rather special men the sort she lets come." 
 
 " Gregory you used to speak of him 
 quite often in your letters, but lately you've 
 hardly mentioned him." 
 
 "Haven't I?" 
 
 " Does he still go there as much as he 
 did?" 
 
 "I suppose I haven't mentioned him be- 
 cause I got so used to seeing him, and there's 
 nothing new to say about him." 
 
 Sargent smoked and pondered, with the re- 
 sult that at last he plunged. " Is Madam 
 Kitty going to marry him?" 
 226
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 "Madam Kitty marry Mr. Gregory? 
 Oh, I don't think so," said Christina slowly. 
 " I don't think she wants to." 
 
 " I should think it would be rather a de- 
 sirable marriage for her." Sargent's tone 
 indicated a fine benevolence in regard to Mrs. 
 Warder's future. " Gregory is a big man, 
 and while he is a politician through and 
 through, he has managed to be a reasonably 
 clean one. I should think marriage with him 
 would appeal to her ambition." 
 
 " I don't see why you are so determined to 
 marry her to him," said Christina, a trifle 
 sharply. " I don't think it would be nice 
 at all. I think she has been married 
 enough." 
 
 " There is that view of it. But a woman 
 of forty and a handsome woman " He 
 went on with his thinking. 
 
 " Perhaps Governor Gregory doesn't want 
 to marry Madam Kitty," said Christina pres- 
 ently in rather a light voice. 
 227
 
 Sargent laughed. " Perhaps not. Gossip 
 says otherwise, Tina." 
 
 Christina's color rose. " All right. But 
 he doesn't." 
 
 Sargent's smile scoffed. " Did she tell you 
 that? Child, that's a woman's way when 
 she's making up her mind whether a man 
 shall marry her or not." 
 
 41 But Governor Gregory doesn't want to 
 marry her," repeated Christina. 
 
 Sargent, looked at her. 
 
 " He wants to marry me," added Christina 
 with lofty gravity. 
 
 Sargent laid down his cigarette. "You!" 
 
 Christina nodded. " And I think I shall 
 marry him. That's what I came home to 
 think about." She stood up, and added with 
 elaborate indifference: "I must go now to 
 Cousin Belle. She said she had something 
 to tell me. I wonder if it's about Mr. 
 Brown." 
 
 " Sit down, Tina," said Sargent. 
 228
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 She sat down. 
 
 " Now tell me about this." 
 
 " There's nothing to tell." 
 
 He looked at her for a few moments in si- 
 lence, his thoughts supplying what she with- 
 held. 
 
 "And Benny?" 
 
 She pouted. 
 
 " I thought you thought you cared for 
 him." 
 
 " I do." 
 
 "Then what in thunder Why, this 
 man Gregory is as old as I am." 
 
 " Lots of girls would marry you, father." 
 
 " Well, I'm not a fool. I don't want to 
 marry them." 
 
 " No," said Christina sweetly. She curled 
 up in the big chair, looking perversely inno- 
 cent she had on a childishly simple blue 
 frock, and her hair was in a state of be- 
 witching disarrangement. 
 
 "But what does Madam Kitty say?" 
 229
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Sargent realized that he was merely helplessly 
 beating the air in asking questions, but before 
 he set his foot down, as of course he in- 
 tended to set it down, it was well to under- 
 stand on what basis this utterly absurd condi- 
 tion of things was supposed to rest. 
 
 " She says I'm a foolish girl," replied 
 Christina serenely. 
 
 " You didn't " began Sargent, and then 
 paused. 
 
 Christina's eyes sparkled. " No, I didn't. 
 She gave him to me. She didn't want him 
 any more." 
 
 Sargent reflected. " You'd better find out 
 why she didn't want him. It's probably 
 for a reason that should be sufficient for 
 you." 
 
 Christina shook her head. " She hasn't 
 any reason against him that amounts to any- 
 thing. She just didn't want to marry him, 
 because she probably does want to marry 
 somebody else." 
 
 230
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 " Oh ! " Sargent lit another cigarette. 
 " Who's that, then?" 
 
 " Ah ! she's too clever to let you know that, 
 father. But there's someone. I know." 
 
 " Of course there is." Sargent spoke irri- 
 tably. " There always is with that with 
 some women." He got up, kicking aside a 
 foot-stool, and began to pace the floor in a 
 way that Christina knew well. " I don't see 
 what difference it makes to him," she thought. 
 
 " See here, Tina " He stopped and 
 looked at her. " I don't like it. I don't 
 want you married to anybody. You know 
 that. But this I don't like it, that's all. 
 'Tisn't the thing for a little girl like you. 
 Gregory ought to be ashamed of himself. 
 Now Benny if you must get married, and 
 of course you must, sooner or later after 
 all, there's something wholesome and inevit- 
 able in a girl's being willing to marry Benny. 
 But Gregory No, it won't do." 
 
 " You're exactly like Madam Kitty," said 
 231
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Christina composedly. " You're romantic 
 that's what's the matter with both of you." 
 
 " Both of us 1 romantic ! " Sargent 
 looked disgusted. 
 
 " Now I'm not. I love Benny. But there 
 wouldn't be anything exciting in marrying 
 Benny. We'd be poor for years r and I'd 
 have to live in all sorts of weird places, and 
 I'd be bored to death." 
 
 " A woman is never bored when she's with 
 the man she loves," said Sargent severely. 
 
 " Rats 1 " exclaimed Christina. She climbed 
 out of her chair. " I really must go to 
 Cousin Belle. And don't talk to me about 
 this. It won't do any good. You've always 
 said that marriage was a ridiculous contriv- 
 ance, and that people took it altogether too 
 seriously. And that's just what I think, so 
 I'm not going to be serious about it. I'm 
 going to marry Governor Gregory, but I'm 
 not going to think about him at all." 
 
 " See here " Sargent laid his hand 
 232
 
 THE GOVERNOR'S LADY 
 
 rather heavily on Christina's shoulder 
 " you can't marry a man on that basis, Tina." 
 
 " But I'm going to cross my heart, but- 
 ter my toes, and kiss a cabbage ! " 
 
 " Listen to me, Tina. When you're his 
 wife the mother of his child, perhaps " 
 
 " Never! " Christina blew lightly on her 
 finger-tips. " Besides there'd always be 
 Benny in reserve. That's what I'm keeping 
 him for." 
 
 233
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 MATRIMONY BY LEASE 
 
 Sargent stood, a picture of dismay, in the 
 middle of the room; he had an open letter 
 in his hand. 
 
 " Well," remarked Christina, looking in at 
 him, " you have all the aspects of a smitten 
 creature." 
 
 " Come here ! " He looked at her se- 
 verely. " I wish I had never been such a 
 fool as to send you to Madam Kitty." 
 
 " I don't. But 'tisn't my fault that you 
 did." 
 
 " You see the result," he accused. " I 
 write a polite letter explaining your impolite 
 disappearance, and hinting, as you insisted 
 that I should, that you had an idea of return- 
 ing for a brief visit. She replies " he 
 234
 
 MATRIMONY BY LEASE 
 
 waved the letter at arm's length, but when 
 Christina approached to take it, he drew back 
 " saying that she is unwilling to receive you 
 again unless I will bring you to her myself, 
 and indicate just what policy I wish adhered 
 to in regard to you." 
 
 " Well bring me," said Christina. 
 
 "Tina!" 
 
 " When shall we go? to-morrow? No. 
 Heaps of my things are in the wash. How 
 funny that is ! I never thought of The Wash 
 all the time I was away, but Cousin Belle 
 worships it in capital letters for exactly 
 one half of every week. Still, they could be 
 expressed to me. Yes. Let's go to-mor- 
 
 row." 
 
 Sargent cast upon his daughter a look that 
 would have blighted a person of less hardy 
 temperament than Christina. 
 
 " Now, what is it? " she wheedled. " You 
 want to see her, don't you? I can tell you, 
 235
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 you'll be everlastingly sorry some day if you 
 let such an opportunity slip." 
 
 " I'm surprised at you, Tina. I should 
 have supposed that even you could have per- 
 ceived the gross impropriety " 
 
 " Impropriety ! " Christina scoffed. " You 
 leave that to Madam Kitty. She doesn't do 
 things that aren't proper." 
 
 " That is, of course, a matter of opinion," 
 said Sargent loftily. " There are probably 
 a great many things that she does that you 
 know nothing about. A woman who is 
 thinking of marrying " 
 
 " I didn't say marrying, I am sure," pro- 
 tested Christina. " I said I thought there 
 was someone she likes. That's quite differ- 
 ent. And I think you're horrid, father! 
 You're talking about Madam Kitty as if you 
 knew exactly the sort of woman that she is, 
 and you don't know at all. Madam Kitty's 
 a good woman I don't care what you say." 
 236
 
 MATRIMONY BY LEASE 
 
 " She was always that," said Sargent per- 
 versely. 
 
 " Listen! " Christina sat down on his 
 knee and took his chin in her hand. " You're 
 not nice, are you? You're calling Madam 
 Kitty names " 
 
 " I? calling her names?" 
 
 " That's just what it comes to. If you saw 
 her, you'd understand. You'd probably fall 
 in love with her, just like any other man." 
 
 Some strange exclamation escaped Sar- 
 gent's lips. 
 
 Christina smiled. " Yes, but you would 
 if she wanted you to. Do you suppose 
 Governor Gregory would ever have looked at 
 me if she had cared to keep him? P-f-f! 
 Poor little Tina ! " She looked at Sargent, 
 considering. Then she said, suddenly: 
 " Father, what did you let Dicky Warder 
 have her for?" 
 
 " Upon my soul ! " exclaimed Sargent, put- 
 ting her off his knee. " Let him 1 " 
 237
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Of course you let him. My ! If I was 
 Madam Kitty, I'd never forgive you. All 
 you had to do was just to keep her. He had 
 to get her. And I bet you it wasn't easy." 
 
 " Tina, you don't understand." 
 
 "No, I don't. And I'm sure Madam 
 Kitty didn't either." 
 
 "Well" Sargent spoke slowly "if 
 it's come to this, you had better go back to 
 her. Apparently all your sympathies are 
 with her." 
 
 Christina ignored the remark. " My! 
 but she does want to see you badly." 
 
 " I don't see any overwhelming evidence 
 of that here," said Sargent, looking at the let- 
 ter. " It's very brief and business-like." 
 
 Christina laughed. " Madam Kitty isn't 
 as simple-minded as you are. At this mo- 
 ment she's absolutely rioting in the thought 
 cf seeing you. Fancy! one's ex-hus- 
 band!" 
 
 ' You are a flippant, ignorant girl, Tina, 
 238
 
 MATRIMONY BY LEASE 
 
 with ideas that you ought to have more re- 
 serve of feeling than to express in regard to 
 to your parents." 
 
 "Parents!" echoed Christina. She went 
 off into a peal of laughter. " You don't 
 seem to me any more like parents, either of 
 you, than two children. Now don't pose, 
 father. Mr. and Mrs. Faber are parents, 
 but you and Madam Kitty Oh no, no I 
 She isn't a mother she doesn't know how 
 to be. Sometimes I've looked at her and 
 tried to imagine me her baby. It won't work. 
 I don't believe she ever really had me. And 
 yet she loves Donny Nevil. It's queer. 
 Sometimes I've been almost jealous of him. 
 She has sweet little ways with him. Yes, it's 
 queer. You'll understand when you see her." 
 
 " I shall not go," said Sargent stiffly. " If 
 I had thought for a moment of doing so, I 
 could not after the impossible things that you 
 have said. And I may as tell you that I don't 
 intend you to go either." 
 239
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 "Oh! Very well." 
 
 Christina's tone was so cloyed with filial 
 devotion that her father looked at her in sud- 
 den suspicion. 
 
 " Now, Tina " 
 
 ;< Why, of course I shall go," she said 
 calmly. " I can't stay away. I love Far 
 End, but it's so dull, father. I've seen noth- 
 ing but old men for two whole weeks, and " 
 
 " I thought you preferred them." 
 
 " No. I like them just in their prime, 
 isn't that what you call it? " 
 
 " See here " Sargent recognized that this 
 was a time when he must act the parent no 
 matter how badly he did it " do you re- 
 alize, that if you marry that man, you may 
 have to live with him twenty-five years, and 
 that he'll be a gibbering grandfather when 
 you're in your prime? " 
 
 Christina shook her head. " I wouldn't 
 undertake to live with anybody twenty-five 
 years. I've thought . it out I'm going to 
 240
 
 MATRIMONY BY LEASE 
 
 have him draw up a contract for one 
 year's " 
 
 " Lease," suggested Sargent. 
 
 " Renewable at my " 
 
 " Pleasure." 
 
 " Yes at my pleasure." 
 
 " Go ahead," said Sargent. " You're 
 safe." 
 
 "Oh! You think he won't." 
 
 " He's sure to. Think of the advertis- 
 ing!" 
 
 " You mean " Christina paused in in- 
 dignation. 
 
 " He's a politician," observed Sargent. 
 " It would be such a pretty story for the 
 public. What a time you'll have with the re- 
 porters." 
 
 Christina tossed her head. " I think it's 
 a much too serious thing to laugh about," she 
 said with dignity, and Sargent, looking at her, 
 whistled and said no more. He was aware 
 that the matter threatened to develop into a 
 241
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 thoroughly annoying affair, and he wished he 
 could have discussed it with someone else 
 someone who understood Tina. But that 
 was impossible. 
 
 " Of course if you won't take me to 
 Madam Kitty " she said later in the day 
 
 " You need not rush upon conclusions, 
 Tina," he said coldly. " Of course I shall 
 take you to Madam Kitty." 
 
 She looked at him in amazement. " But 
 you said " 
 
 " What one says is not of the least sig- 
 nificance. It's what one means." And he 
 called the dogs and went alone for a walk. 
 
 242
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER 
 
 Christina met Joanna carrying a breakfast 
 tray through the upper hall it was the 
 morning after her return to Signal Street. 
 
 " Oh Joanna, is Madam Kitty awake 
 yet?" 
 
 " Indeed she is, miss, and looking like a 
 rose off the same stem with yourself for its 
 bud." 
 
 Christina smiled approval. " I wonder 
 whether she's sorry I've come back, Joanna." 
 
 " Sorry? Well, by all the tokens, visible 
 and to be seen, that is, I should say she was 
 not," said Joanna. 
 
 "Then, Joanna, there's a dear please 
 ask if I mayn't come in while she's having 
 243
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 breakfast. I tried to stay awake until she 
 got home last night, but I couldn't." 
 
 " Well, I'll try it," observed Joanna cau- 
 tiously. " But I've told you before that she's 
 never quite as happy with herself before 
 eleven o'clock as she is after twelve." 
 
 Joanna went away, and presently came 
 back smiling. " You may go, miss. She 
 seemed quite agreeable to the idea." 
 
 Christina paused on the threshold. 
 " Father said I was to apologize with the first 
 breath I drew inside this house for running 
 away, you know, without a license." 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed. She was grateful 
 to the girl for this unconventional saluta- 
 tion; as she had heard her step outside the 
 door a fear had assailed her that Christina 
 might expect to be kissed, and at the moment 
 she could think of nothing more appalling to 
 her. There was between them no near-draw- 
 ing relation as mother and daughter, yet the 
 fact that they were such occasionally rendered 
 244
 
 the barrenness of their association uncom- 
 fortably obvious. 
 
 "My! but you're a picturesque person 
 in bed," exclaimed Christina, sitting down 
 and surveying her parent with frank interest. 
 
 " I dare say. You know what they always 
 say of the Sprague girls that they should 
 be seen in a ball-room and nowhere else." 
 
 " Horrid things !" remarked Christina 
 calmly. 
 
 " Oh! do you think them appreciably dif- 
 ferent from me ? " 
 
 " Madam Kitty ! They're vulgar I " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "But you couldn't be not even when 
 you're your very worst." 
 
 They laughed and Mrs. Warder said: 
 " It takes so little art to look pretty in bed 
 that I've always wondered why women don't 
 accomplish more with so much opportunity." 
 
 " That's it, I suppose," flashed Christina. 
 " It takes little art, but more nature." 
 
 245
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 They laughed again; then Christina said: 
 " You know father is coming to see you this 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Yes. I had a note from him yester- 
 day? No, on Monday. I suppose he is at 
 the Lorraine." 
 
 " Yes. But he's very cross." 
 
 " Because he's at the Lorraine?" 
 
 a No. Cross at me, and cross at his play, 
 and cross at Cousin Belle because she's going 
 to marry the minister." 
 
 " That's unfortunate. But if she's ever 
 going to get married " 
 
 " That's what I said. But he called them 
 a pair of condemned fools. He's in that 
 kind of mood." 
 
 " Oh 1 But why is he cross about his 
 play?" 
 
 "Well, you see, it's all wrong. Title and 
 
 everything. I told him I liked the title, and 
 
 he said, of course I did that all a fool 
 
 play-writer needed was to get the word 
 
 246
 
 IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER 
 
 ' marry' into his title this is called When 
 a Maid Marries and all the fool women 
 would pack the play-house." 
 
 Mrs. Warder smiled. " He does seem in 
 a bad way. But why is he cross with you?" 
 
 " What are you going to wear this after- 
 noon?" asked Christina abruptly. "Are you 
 going to look very pretty?" 
 
 " Must I make a particular effort?" 
 
 " I want you to look lovely." 
 
 "But why? why?" 
 
 " Well " Christina looked so profound a 
 picture of wisdom that Mrs. Warder hid a 
 smile " do you think father has had what 
 you could call a happy life?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder turned and piled the pillows 
 higher behind her head. Then she said in a 
 voice that cooled with each word : " I have 
 never thought about it." 
 
 " Neither had I until I looked at him in 
 the train yesterday." 
 
 " He has fame and wealth." 
 247
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Yes. But I suppose nobody cares much 
 for that when they have it, do they?" 
 
 " I do," said Mrs. Warder promptly. 
 " I wouldn't be without a grain of my small 
 fame, or a dollar of my money for anything." 
 
 " I wonder. I dare say." Christina con- 
 sidered. " But of course you're a queer sort 
 of woman." 
 
 " I'm not at all queer." 
 
 " Well, don't let's fight about that, because 
 we shan't agree," said Christina consolingly. 
 " I think you're just like me about those 
 things. I love money and power and all that, 
 but most women are too feeble-minded to ap- 
 preciate those privileges except when they 
 mean more cut glass and a more extravagant 
 brand of millinery, and it's really " 
 
 Mrs. Warder burst out laughing. 
 
 But Christina took no notice of that; she 
 
 was absorbed in her own imaginings. " Well, 
 
 at any rate, you can't imagine a man like 
 
 father caring anything for wealth and fame 
 
 248
 
 IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER 
 
 because it is wealth and fame. And when I 
 looked at him yesterday it just came over me 
 that he's had a pretty lonely time, and when 
 I'm married it's going to be fearful. The 
 end of it will be that he'll be simply driven 
 to marry Mrs. Dryder." 
 
 " Mrs. Dryder?" 
 
 " She's very pretty," said Christina ex- 
 tenuatingly. " And she may be nice, but I 
 think she's a fool. Still if he marries her, 
 I suppose I shall have to put up with it." 
 
 " Well " Mrs. Warder spoke after rather 
 a long silence between them "I really don't 
 see what all this has to do with your wanting 
 me to look my loveliest this afternoon." 
 
 Christina leaned forward, her small, serious 
 face resting on her hand. " Somehow, I'd 
 like father when he sees you to think that 
 you're very beautiful and very good and very 
 sweet. I think he'd feel better he wouldn't 
 be so sorry to remember how he had loved 
 you " 
 
 249
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Oh! Then he hates me, I suppose? " 
 
 " Of course he does." 
 
 "Of course?" 
 
 "Well " Christina felt that she had a 
 right to be justly indignant " what else 
 could any man do ? You didn't expect him to 
 love you, did you?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder's eyes danced. " To be 
 quite honest undoubtedly I did." 
 
 " Now what do you mean by that?" mused 
 Christina. " No man could, Madam Kitty, 
 after the way you acted." 
 
 " Then what has he to be aggrieved about ? 
 If he only loved me as long as I loved 
 him, then his love wasn't worth any more 
 than mine. And all those eternal things that 
 he said that morning in Overshot Wood, little 
 girl " Mrs. Warder blew a light breath 
 across the tips of her fingers. 
 
 " Overshot Wood ! How darling it 
 sounds!" exclaimed Christina. "Where was 
 it? You see, I don't know anything. It's 
 250
 
 IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER 
 
 funny not to know how your father and 
 mother fell in love." 
 
 " Overshot Wood," repeated Mrs. War- 
 der. " 'Tisn't like any other wood in all 
 the world. Primroses grew there yellow 
 English primroses, the sweetest flower there 
 is!" 
 
 Christina nodded. " I know," she said 
 gravely. " They're wonders." 
 
 " You shall carry them at your wedding," 
 said Mrs. Warder lightly. 
 
 Christina's eyes clouded with tears. With 
 her usual inconsistent constancy her thoughts 
 flew straight to Benny. Of course you could 
 carry primroses at your wedding if you mar- 
 ried Benny, but 
 
 " Oh, you must go." Mrs. Warder looked 
 at her watch. " I have heaps of things to 
 do" 
 
 " But I think you might have said that 
 you knew he wouldn't marry Mrs. Dryder," 
 protested Christina. 
 
 251
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " But he will. Of course he will. And 
 you and I will give the groom away, little 
 girl." 
 
 Christina stamped her foot. 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed. But as Christina 
 prepared to leave the room, she added in- 
 differently : " I suppose your father has a 
 great many women friends." 
 
 " Heaps 1" said Christina emphatically. 
 " He's a besieged man. Letters and photo- 
 graphs by the pound. Sometimes he reads 
 me the letters, but not always." 
 
 " Oh!" remarked Mrs. Warder, still more 
 indifferently. 
 
 252
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 Mrs. Warder remembered because she 
 needed the remembrance that it had often 
 been said to her that the one spot which per- 
 fectly became her was her own smoke-gray 
 drawing-room. 
 
 She came slowly, with a vague sense of de- 
 scending a shifting flight of stairs, yet she 
 came calmly, and when she reached Sargent 
 Sargent, who had not moved a pace to 
 meet her she held out her hand, smiling 
 faintly, momentarily. 
 
 " It is very good of you to come," she said. 
 
 And Sargent touched her fingers, murmur- 
 ing that it was his pleasure. 
 
 " Where will you sit ? here ? " She indi- 
 253
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 cated a chair, seating herself near him, and be- 
 gan on the subject of his call with frankly 
 confidential directness. " I meant to have 
 talked more to Tina before you came, but I 
 was out late last night and did not see her 
 until this morning, and then we talked about 
 all sorts of things I can hardly remember 
 what instead of about the one thing that 
 was on my mind." 
 
 " Yes? " Now that he was here, Sargent 
 wondered what had possessed him to come 
 to the house of Dicky Warder; he had not 
 thought of that until the moment of crossing 
 the threshold. And this woman ! it was 
 a pretty gown, a simple, blue silk, girlish-look- 
 ing thing, and she had doubtless studied a 
 part to match it. Well, it would be interest- 
 ing to watch her work it out. 
 
 "You see " she went on " perhaps I 
 don't understand Tina as you do, or perhaps 
 I understand her better." 
 
 " Perhaps you do," he admitted. " But 
 254
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 how are we to be sure ? the deeper question 
 being, what is it that is Tina ?" 
 
 " Oh ! but that is simple." 
 
 " Is it?" 
 
 " Yes." She glanced at him in a puzzled 
 way ; her little airs were very effective. " Of 
 course I want to be sure I am right. I think 
 I am, but I want to know exactly how free a 
 hand you are willing to allow me in dealing 
 with her." 
 
 " But one can't 'deal with ' Tina," he said, 
 half-smiling. " That is just it." 
 
 " Can't one?" She smiled openly. 
 
 " Oh no ! If her mind is once made up 
 she's off." 
 
 " Then she has come back determined to 
 marry Governor Gregory?" 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " Well " she paused " what are you 
 doing about it?" 
 
 "What am I doing? There's nothing to 
 do." 
 
 255
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Then you approve?" 
 
 "Approve? How could I?" 
 
 "Why couldn't you?" 
 
 " You don't," he said stoutly. 
 
 She smiled. " We're talking about you." 
 
 " Oh well 1 " he leaned back in his 
 chair "the thing is preposterous. Forty- 
 five and nineteen. That little girl and a man 
 like Gregory! She doesn't understand, but 
 we know " He stopped short. 
 
 " She's certainly a most distracting combi- 
 nation of innocence and cynicism," said Mrs. 
 Warder lightly, " and if you attack her on 
 one count she shifts to the other with discon- 
 certing agility." 
 
 " She does," he admitted. " Of course she 
 is going to be eternally true to Benny, which 
 she will prove by marrying Gregory." 
 
 They smiled together; then Mrs. Warder 
 said: "Naturally she will marry Mr. Gregory 
 unless you prevent it." 
 
 "I prevent it?" 
 
 256
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 She laughed. " Do you really feel as help- 
 less as that?" 
 
 "Don't you?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Well ! " He rested contentedly on the 
 word. 
 
 " But as I said, I must understand." She 
 looked at him steadily. " If I am to do any- 
 thing, it must be with your entire co-operation 
 and approval." 
 
 " Oh, of course." 
 
 " Well ! Then I am to understand that 
 you distinctly disapprove of the Gregory af- 
 fair." 
 
 " Distinctly." 
 
 She laughed softly. " It's quite foolish 
 and quixotic, you know. I don't think there 
 is another father in this town who wouldn't 
 accept Governor Gregory for his daughter 
 with open arms." 
 
 " I dare say," said Sargent, a trifle haugh- 
 tily. 
 
 257
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " And you disapprove because she is nine- 
 teen and he is forty-five ? " she asked, in a 
 thinking voice. " Does that seem to you a 
 good and sufficient reason?" 
 
 " There are plenty of other reasons. I 
 have heard it hinted that Gregory is a man 
 with a past." He let the sentence stand, un- 
 relieved, with some curiosity as to what she 
 would do with it. 
 
 " I suppose so," she said calmly. "But I 
 think it hardly fair to hold that against him. 
 I believe he has not broken dishonorably with 
 his past" 
 
 " He has not broken with it dishonor- 
 ably?" Sargent's tone invited explanation. 
 
 " The boy is at Harvard," she answered 
 coldly. " That is the best thing I know about 
 Governor Gregory. A woman might well 
 marry him on the strength of it." 
 
 He was silent a moment; then he said: 
 " But not Tina." 
 
 " No not Tina." 
 
 258
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 An instant of embarrassment rose between 
 them; Sargent's gaze traveled about the 
 room and still traveled as she volunteered 
 no rescuing remark, until in desperation, he 
 observed: " It's a curious tone for a room 
 this and such a self-sufficiency of it." 
 
 She looked about as if newly considering it. 
 " I suppose it seems so." Then she added: 
 " The house was decorated with the idea 
 that it should be a setting for me." She 
 glanced at him with flinty eyes, glad to re- 
 taliate with a remark that would offend him; 
 that sentence as to Gregory's " past " rankled. 
 
 The reference to Dicky Warder seemed to 
 him so inexcusable that he let it fall between 
 them, giving her merely a look that though 
 casual was expressive. 
 
 Or so she felt it, and a faint color came into 
 her face. But she reminded herself that she 
 owed this Iliel Sargent nothing ; there was evi- 
 dently little left in him of that Iliel whose 
 memory Gregory had accused her of guard- 
 259
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 ing in her fight for the rights of Benny Faber. 
 
 That reminded her . " And as to Benny ?" 
 
 "Benny?" Sargent considered. "You 
 think that if it isn't Gregory it must be 
 Benny?" 
 
 " I think that if it isn't Benny it will be 
 Mr. Gregory. Don't let us waste time argu- 
 ing that. All I want to know is that you 
 don't disapprove of Benny." 
 
 " I don't disapprove of him," said Sargent, 
 almost regretfully. 
 
 " Well then ! " she sat up very straight 
 " I know what to do." 
 
 "But really " he protested "why do 
 want to drive her into marrying Benny ?" 
 
 " She'll never be happy unless she does." 
 
 " I don't think so." He spoke decid- 
 edly. " Her feeling for Benny is mere 
 youthful capriciousness. And I think he is 
 quite too young to understand a great deal 
 that he needs to understand if he would make 
 a success of marrying Tina.'' 
 260
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 " He must learn." 
 
 Sargent smothered an exclamation. " Men 
 don't do that." 
 
 " They don't except " she broke off. 
 
 He looked sharply at her, wondering, and 
 the next moment despised his imbecility in sup- 
 posing her capable of any form of regret. 
 She was a lovely, cold-blooded woman, even 
 now involved in a fresh affair with some man ; 
 there was inherently nothing of the wife about 
 her; she was the spinner of webs, the de- 
 stroyer, the power eternally unconquered that 
 men feared and adored. 
 
 " I don't quite see what we are talking 
 about," he said, in a detached voice. " You 
 appear to think that Tina really wants to 
 marry Benny. Then why doesn't she? 
 There is nothing to prevent her doing so." 
 
 " That's it." 
 
 Sargent looked annoyed. " I suppose it is 
 puerile to make remarks about the inevitable 
 contradictiousness of women." 
 261
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " I suppose it's unnecessary to make re- 
 marks about the inevitable obtuseness of 
 men," she answered, unsmiling. 
 
 "But Benny " 
 
 " Oh, poor Benny, he's a deplorable exam- 
 ple. He loves Tina with all that he has to 
 love with, and she knows it. It never crosses 
 his mind that she might finally throw him 
 over and she knows it. He couldn't be- 
 lieve, if the Angel Gabriel swore it to him, 
 that she would ever let another man make 
 love to her, and he takes it for granted that, 
 being the pledged mate of his soul, she is 
 enamored of the United States Survey be- 
 cause he happens to be its slave, which he is 
 because he understands that the harder he 
 works the sooner he will have Tina. That's 
 Benny, and anything finer or stupider may the 
 heart of woman pray to be delivered from !" 
 
 She ended in a blaze, for which her indigna- 
 tion against Benny seemed harder to account, 
 and Sargent reflected, with an admirable sense 
 262
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 of detachment, that this was the kind of thing 
 you must expect from woman, whose emo- 
 tional nature courted emotional crises as a 
 species of ultimate sedative a fact rarely 
 understood by the involved male. 
 
 Having thus plumed himself, he said gen- 
 ially: "What would you have Benny do?" 
 
 " I shall think that out," she flashed. 
 
 He reflected that he had come little in con- 
 tact of late with a woman of this type; it was 
 inevitable that he should over-rate her attrac- 
 tiveness. There was something rather fasci- 
 nating in her willful self-assurance ; it was clear 
 that she had no fears as to her ability to ar- 
 range the fates of these two children for their 
 own and everyone else's ultimate good. 
 
 " What I don't understand," he remarked, 
 " is your devotion to Benny's cause, especially 
 as you consider him fine, of course, but 
 stupid." 
 
 " // faut s'amuser! " she retorted. 
 
 There was a moment's silence ; then he said : 
 263
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Not when it's a question of of Tina's 
 future, surely." 
 
 "Your daughter I" She drew herself up. 
 " My daughter, you mean. What good are 
 you to her now? You are worse than noth- 
 ing. You would stand still and let your 
 resignation to a thing that I should call a 
 crime be taken for granted. When I ask you 
 what you are doing to prevent this marriage 
 you say to me, * Doing? ' " she mocked his 
 tone. " Well, you shall see you shall see 
 what I will do." 
 
 " Then when you said you were amusing 
 yourself " Sargent stood up, so did she ; they 
 were on fair fighting ground at last, and each 
 glad of it each remembering the unsettled 
 score between them. 
 
 "I lied," she flamed "lied! You're 
 just as fine and just as dense, Iliel, as you were 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 His face paled. " Then will you tell me 
 264
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 just what is your reason for desiring the mar- 
 riage of Benny and Tina?" 
 
 She stepped back from him, laying her arm 
 along the back of a chair. 
 
 " I believe in love," she said quietly. 
 
 "Love!" he echoed. "You? Yes! the 
 kind of love " He glanced about the 
 room. 
 
 " No," she answered. " The kind there 
 was between you and me when you did love 
 me, Iliel the only kind that's worth any- 
 thing the kind that some day Tina must 
 know she has, and that I will help Benny 
 Faber to give her." 
 
 He stared at her. "You believe in that? 
 But you " 
 
 " Yes, I ran away from it. Because it had 
 grown dull because you took no pains to 
 keep it bright. I was a child I wasn't 
 twenty, and I didn't understand. I wanted a 
 lover's love not a husband's. I wanted to 
 265
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 be told every day that I was lovely and adored. 
 It was silly, wasn't it? " But her lip quiv- 
 ered. 
 
 " You knew all that," he said, stung to a 
 futile plea. 
 
 " Knew it 1" She looked at him with open 
 scorn. " What was that compared with hear- 
 ing it? " Still looking at him, she smiled, but 
 he felt the bitterness in the smile. " But I 
 didn't have to depend on you, did I ? and I 
 wasn't twenty. I had to be amused you 
 understood that and so " she tossed out 
 her hands " you let me be amused. You 
 did by me just as you would do now by Tina 
 you would stand by and let her marry 
 Gregory, who would treat her as a toy, and 
 then some day my little girl would learn what 
 her right had been the right she had been 
 cheated of and then, if she went to you 
 you, who ought to have known, whose busi- 
 ness it was to protect her against herself " 
 266
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 " Kitty you aren't just to me." The 
 note of suffering was deep in Sargent's voice. 
 " You forget that I was only a boy. You for- 
 get that I didn't understand. You forget 
 that I was satisfied because you were my wife 
 because my child was in your arms." 
 
 " I understood all that," she said wearily. 
 " That was just the bitterness of it. That is 
 what a man never understands. He never un- 
 derstands that, at first, to a girl of romantic 
 ideals, marriage is a dethronement. But 
 what does it matter? Don't let us talk about 
 it. All that does matter is that you gave me 
 to Dicky Warder " 
 
 "I gave you to Dicky Warder? How 
 can you say such a thing?" Yet he remem- 
 bered Tina's accusation. 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed. " You handed me 
 
 over to this " she looked around the gray 
 
 drawing-room " you let me go into a life 
 
 where I was framed like a picture, and 
 
 267
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 adorned like a king's favorite " she stood 
 back " and I will never forgive you for it, 
 Iliel never I " 
 
 "Kitty you are cruel! I let you have 
 what you wanted, and it has ruined my 
 life" 
 
 She came towards him, her hand out- 
 stretched smiling, sweet of look; the sud- 
 den change bewildered him. " I'm sorry," 
 she said gently, " so sorry. Good-by. It 
 was wonderful of you to come." 
 
 He watched her go, gracefully calm as she 
 had come, unable to think of a word to re- 
 call her. 
 
 But she had said that he was to blame; it 
 was intolerable. As he went out he passed 
 the library where the great portrait of Dicky 
 Warder hung. It was as if his enemy stood 
 again before him in the flesh. Strange, un- 
 intelligible passions seemed to break loose in 
 him. This man had taken her from him 
 the girl Kitty, his wife. 
 268
 
 HER HUSBAND EMERITUS 
 
 He went back to his hotel, and then to the 
 station, and all the way to Far End, and 
 further, there remained with him the sting of 
 that faint, Venetian smile, the smile of the 
 man who had beaten him in the sorest of all 
 conflicts. 
 
 269
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 Mrs. Warder sat reading a long a very 
 long letter, when Christina came into the 
 room like a whirlwind. 
 
 " I'm all ready for the sleigh-ride," she 
 said, " and don't I look stunning? " 
 
 " Very ! That is, as stunning as such a 
 very little person can look." 
 
 Christina pouted. " I'm sure all this scar- 
 let a big woman couldn't wear it at all. 
 Anyway, my toque's a triumph. Don't these 
 fur streamers tie deliciously under my chin? " 
 At this moment she caught sight of the letter, 
 which Mrs. Warder held under her hand. 
 
 "Why that looks like " Christina 
 came close " 'tisn't Benny's writing? " 
 
 It was a very positive question. 
 270
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 Mrs. Warder turned the envelope over. 
 
 Christina laid down her huge white muff. 
 
 " Is Benny writing you? " 
 
 " Apparently." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " He's very fond of writing letters, isn't 
 he?" 
 
 'To you?" The wrinkle in Christina's 
 forehead grew deeper. "What about? 
 me?" 
 
 " No. Not particularly. About himself 
 mostly." 
 
 " About himself." Christina came still 
 nearer. " Is this the first letter you've had 
 from him? " 
 
 " No." ' 
 
 " It isn't ! " She looked resentfully at the 
 letter. " Did he write you first? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 ' You wrote him ! " She sat down beside 
 Mrs. Warder. " You don't mean that 
 you've been telling him that you've told 
 271
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 him that I'm going to marry Governor Greg- 
 ory?" 
 
 " No." This was surely true. Mrs. War- 
 der hardly believed that Benny could have got 
 her longest letter yet. 
 
 Christina appeared relieved. " Because I 
 must tell him that myself. I know just how." 
 
 " There's so much in that," observed Mrs. 
 Warder. 
 
 " Yes." Yet Christina's tone implied an 
 accession of doubt. " I wish that was over. 
 If Benny wasn't so so believing, but 
 and I suppose he'll marry somebody else. 
 Of course, I want him to." 
 
 "Oh, he'll do that," said Mrs. Warder 
 comfortingly. " They always do." 
 
 " Yes, of course. But Benny " 
 
 " Do you think he's different from the 
 rest?" Mrs. Warder smiled. 
 
 Christina jumped up. " He's Benny," she 
 said, with a little catch in her voice. " I hate 
 that old Survey. He's so far off." 
 272
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 " Would you like him here? " 
 
 " Why, of course I would, Madam Kitty." 
 
 " I see. You would marry Governor 
 Gregory and have Benny at your right hand, 
 your very best friend." 
 
 Christina sat down on the floor and rested 
 her chin in her hand. "If he only would, 
 that would be perfect," she sighed. 
 
 " It's a form of perfection difficult to recon- 
 cile men to." 
 
 " I know. But Benny ought to under- 
 stand. He's so straightforward and " 
 
 " Straightforward? Benny? " mused Mrs. 
 Warder. " I think he's a very complicated 
 person." 
 
 " Complicated? Benny? Why you don't 
 know him!" 
 
 " I think I know him very well," said Mrs. 
 Warder complacently. " He writes such long 
 letters." 
 
 "Well, I hope he doesn't talk about all 
 sorts of things you never heard of, and don't 
 
 273
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 care a button about." Christina tossed her 
 head. 
 
 " That wouldn't bore me. Benny says de- 
 lightfully subtle and unexpected things about 
 his experiences." 
 
 " Oh ! " Christina's tone sharpened. " I 
 never discovered that he had anything that 
 you could call an experience in that forsaken 
 place." 
 
 " Probably a good many things happen to 
 Benny that he would hardly speak of to you. 
 He's certainly met some remarkable men, and 
 an amazing woman or two, to say the least." 
 
 "Women? Why, I thought they were 
 away off where " 
 
 " It's difficult for a man to get so far away 
 that some woman can't find him." 
 
 Christina thought for a moment. Then 
 she said shyly: "Awful women, Madam 
 Kitty? " She looked troubled. 
 
 Mrs. Warder considered. Then she said 
 slowly: " Some of those strange daughters 
 274
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 of the West have charms that are not to be 
 despised. A handsome fellow like Benny 
 he is handsome, isn't he? " 
 
 " Oh my ! " exclaimed Christina, in real 
 tribulation. " He's dreadfully handsome, 
 Madam Kitty." 
 
 " I was afraid of that. Of course one 
 can't really judge from a photograph, but 
 when I was looking at the one on your dress- 
 ing-table the other day it occurred to me that 
 it was the kind of face that belongs to a man 
 women are never willing to let alone." 
 
 " Oh, I feel dreadfully uncomfortable," 
 said Christina, in a woeful voice; she got up 
 and leaned drearily against the wall. " It's a 
 fearful thing for Benny to be meeting peo- 
 ple like that." 
 
 " It certainly is. I suppose he could tell us 
 stories that would make us feel well, we 
 shall never hear them that's one good 
 thing." And Mrs. Warder went over to re- 
 arrange a silver bowl of daffodils. 
 275
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Oh dear! I wish you would let me see 
 that letter, Madam Kitty. Benny has never 
 said a thing to me about anything like that." 
 
 " I'm sure he wouldn't," said Mrs. 
 Warder warmly. " There's a beautiful 
 honor about him in regard to you. He tells 
 me something here " she glanced at the 
 letter she still held " and says that when 
 it was all over, he went out of that hell-hole 
 there was some horrible fight I think 
 about a woman the men were drunk 
 and walked a long hard mile over the snow 
 and thought of Tina. It was really very 
 charming the way he put it." 
 
 "Charming!" exclaimed Christina. "It 
 was lovely! Oh dear, dear! what will he 
 think?" 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 " Why, when I marry Governor Gregory, 
 of course." 
 
 " Misery in scarlet ! " Mrs. Warder 
 smiled. " My dear, he'll say the things that 
 276
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 men always say in the circumstances the 
 things that we, who are the women, always 
 resent." 
 
 " Well " Christina walked to the win- 
 dow and looked out, but the sleighs were not 
 there yet " there is a chance that I shall 
 marry Benny after all." 
 
 "Is there?" 
 
 " Yes. But I'm so afraid so horribly 
 afraid that I shan't." 
 
 " I don't quite understand." 
 
 " You couldn't. You see, it's this way." 
 Christina sat down with a strong effort to ap- 
 pear like a composed and sensible person; to 
 her mother she seemed a very pathetic and 
 helpless child, into whose hands for what 
 strange purposes? there was given the set- 
 tling of the destinies of men. " I've been so 
 worried so dreadfully worried, though 
 I've always pretended I wasn't. I love 
 Benny, but I want to be the Governor's wife, 
 and if I married Benny and things ever went 
 277
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 wrong, I should be furious to think I hadn't 
 married Greg." 
 
 " But, Tina, just as many things would go 
 wrong " 
 
 "Ah! but I shouldn't care. And I 
 shouldn't mind being horrid to Greg, but I 
 couldn't be horrid to Benny. If I marry 
 Greg and things go wrong, there'll be so 
 much to cover it up. Anyway, he'd be a 
 kind of state husband " 
 
 " No husband is ever that, Tina." 
 
 " Well, Madam Kitty, there'd be so much 
 going on all the time we'd always be ' ap- 
 pearing ' at functions and all that we 
 wouldn't have to spend as much time alone as 
 Benny and I would we couldn't be as inti- 
 mate. I wouldn't be." 
 
 " My dear little girl " Mrs. Warder 
 laid her hand gently on Tina's " you fancy 
 that everything depends on you. You forget 
 the man, and that he " 
 
 " Oh well ! I'm not going to think about 
 278
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 it any more," said Christina decisively. 
 " Whichever one I marry, it isn't my affair 
 now." 
 
 " Not your affair?" 
 
 " No. I've fixed it this way, and it's settled. 
 Whichever way it goes now, I shall know it 
 was meant to go. If it happens to be Benny, 
 this way, I shall never say to him when things 
 go wrong that I wish I had married Gover- 
 nor Gregory. And if it's Greg " But in 
 the instant her self-control gave way: "Oh, 
 Madam Kitty, what shall I do if it's Greg?" 
 
 " Tina, child, what do you mean? " 
 
 " This." Tina's voice was tragically in- 
 tense. " While I was at Far End I wrote 
 their names like this ' Benny and Tina ' 
 and * Eben Gregory and Christina Sar- 
 gent * on two slips of paper and locked 
 them up in my silver ring-box. And every 
 night, after I've said my prayers, I shake the 
 little box up and down, and I say to it, 
 ' Benny ! Benny I ' You can never say that 
 279
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 I haven't tried to marry Benny. He can 
 never say I haven't wanted to be true to him." 
 
 There was consternation in Mrs. Ward- 
 er's face. " But, Tina " 
 
 " No, Madam Kitty. It's settled." 
 
 " You would decide so great a thing " 
 
 " By leaving it to the judgment of God," 
 said Christina, in a tone suddenly calm. 
 
 " The judgment of the , I should say." 
 Mrs. Warder shrugged her shoulders; she 
 felt an overwhelming desire to shake a little 
 sense into this distraught child. 
 
 But Christina faced her hardily. " It 
 seems to me quite as sensible a way of selecting 
 a husband as most people's. And it saves me 
 from any responsibility in the matter." 
 
 Mrs. Warder was more appalled than she 
 chose to let Tina understand. The fatalistic 
 obstinacy that she inherited from both her 
 parents threatened disaster to the child's fu- 
 ture; it was an evidence of the same weakness 
 that had taken her to Dicky Warder and 
 280
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 persuaded Iliel to give her up the blanched 
 and enervated belief that what was to be 
 would be. 
 
 But in the child the weakness was intensi- 
 fied until it became a malign species of 
 strength. 
 
 " In a way, you know," continued Chris- 
 tina, with an effort towards blitheness, " I feel 
 that when once this is over, I shall settle down 
 into being the calmest, most reasonable person 
 alive. But it's an awfully unsettling thing 
 when you can't imagine who you're going to 
 be this time next year." 
 
 " It must be," said Mrs. Warder. " And 
 to think of yourself probably as the wife of 
 Governor Gregory not the fiancee, but the 
 wife" 
 
 " I can't think why you're so down on poor 
 Greg, Madam Kitty." 
 
 "As a husband to you, Tina?" Mrs. 
 Warder leaned towards her; there was tender 
 wistfulness in her face. " Can't you under- 
 281
 
 LAND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 stand, child, that just for this little perfect 
 while you are the sweetest thing there is in 
 the world an unspotted girl ? Some day 
 you will look back and think it strange that 
 you didn't understand the sweetness of that. 
 You will feel bitter to think how little you 
 cared how ready you were to throw away 
 your treasure. Because Governor Gregory 
 he is a disillusioned man of the world. 
 The edge has long ago been taken from all 
 his sensibilities towards women." 
 
 " You would have married him," said 
 Christina bluntly. 
 
 " I? " The color came into Mrs. Ward- 
 er's face. 
 
 " Oh yes you would ! And if he was good 
 enough for you, he's good enough for me." 
 
 " Oh no ! " Mrs. Warder walked rest- 
 lessly about the room. " You don't under- 
 stand, Tina. That's quite different." 
 
 " I don't see why." 
 
 " You have a right to some things " 
 282
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 " That you haven't? " Tina asked, as Mrs. 
 Warder hesitated. 
 
 " Child, it's so different. I couldn't make 
 you understand." 
 
 " I don't see why it's different," persisted 
 Christina. 
 
 " Well never mind that. As a matter 
 of fact, Tina, I didn't think Governor Gregory 
 good enough." 
 
 "Oh-h!" Christina smiled provokingly. 
 " It's just what I told father. You're both 
 as romantic and sentimental as you can be. 
 You haven't any practical view of life what- 
 ever. Anybody would think that two people 
 who had been divorced " 
 
 " Tina, please ! " Mrs. Warder held up 
 her hand in indignant dismay. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose I musn't say anything, but 
 you know you and father both talk as if you 
 were the most disillusioned people, and " 
 
 " Tina, if you say another thing like 
 that" 
 
 283
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Madam Kitty, I won't I really won't. 
 Except just that you and father are really such 
 a perfect match in your ideas Oh, I 
 won't I won't! I will be good if you 
 will let me have Benny's letter." 
 
 Mrs. Warder drew away. 
 
 " Did you think I didn't mean to have it? " 
 continued Christina. " Did you think I was 
 going to let you write to Benny and get an- 
 swers that I wasn't to see?" 
 
 " Well, really! " exclaimed Mrs. Warder. 
 
 " Give me the letter," said Christina 
 quietly. 
 
 " I can't give it to you, Tina." 
 
 " Please give it to me. If you don't " 
 Christina threw her muff violently on the 
 table " I will never marry Benny, no mat- 
 ter what the little box says." 
 
 " There are things in it that you mightn't 
 like, Tina things that might make you 
 angry." 
 
 284
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 Christina stamped her foot. " Do you 
 think you can make me any angrier than I am 
 now ? I want that letter." 
 
 Mrs. Warder was a picture of perplexity. 
 Outside, in the street, there was the sudden 
 crash of sleigh-bells and a confusion of voices 
 in contending speech and laughter. 
 
 Christina looked out of the window. 
 " They're here, but I shall not go unless you 
 give that letter to me." 
 
 " Very well." Mrs. Warder spoke with 
 cold decision. " You may have it. I shall 
 of course have to tell Benny that I was dis- 
 loyal enough to give it up." 
 
 " Please don't take the trouble," said Chris- 
 tina loftily. " I will tell Benny myself all 
 that he needs to know." 
 
 Mrs. Warder went to the window and 
 watched Christina take her place beside Gov- 
 ernor Gregory, winsome, willful, Christina, 
 the gayest looking little girl in all the town to- 
 285
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 day; a child who had never felt the dark and 
 knew no fear of the night. The sun was al- 
 ways somewhere in the sky for Tina. 
 
 Mrs. Warder sighed and then smiled. 
 The child was at once an uncomfortably keen 
 and a very dense young person. It was to be 
 hoped that it would never occur to her that 
 Madam Kitty had designed her to read that 
 letter. It was a triumphant justification of 
 her statement to Mr. Gregory that Benny was 
 a born lover. There were sentences in it that 
 Mrs. Warder had read once and not again; 
 they revealed with unconscious transparency 
 what was, after all, for her little girl alone. 
 
 Would the girl understand? Perhaps 
 not. She herself had not understood. But 
 Benny was not the sort of youth that Iliel had 
 been. A born lover, he was also a born 
 fighter, and it was on his ability to fight that 
 Mrs. Warder was now counting. 
 
 She no longer tried to explain it to herself 
 she shrank from analysis of the passion to 
 286
 
 MISERY IN SCARLET 
 
 defeat Gregory that was filling her days with 
 energy and her nights with scheming. The 
 reasons that she had defiantly given to him 
 and to Sargent she refused now to remember. 
 
 // faut s'amuser. The board was beside 
 her the pieces under her hand ; she would 
 be a fool to let pass so rare an opportunity of 
 playing Providence. 
 
 But as she sat there, thinking, the look that 
 grew upon her face had little of amusement 
 in it. That ring-box! The poor child! 
 She had an impulse to go up-stairs and find it 
 and walk with it to the river. 
 
 But that mood passed. Let be I Perhaps 
 Tina's uncouth way of forcing speech upon 
 the Sphinx was of that innocence of the babes 
 which would prove wiser than the cunning of 
 the serpent. In so hopelessly tangled a prob- 
 lem as marriage there was no straight road to 
 happiness, whatever the finger-post might say. 
 
 She felt suddenly tired and disheartened. 
 She must see the end of this affair, whatever 
 287
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 it might be, and then go away she would 
 go abroad. 
 
 11 Sentimental and romantic ! A perfect 
 match in their ideas ! " And Christina had 
 said that to Sargent. 
 
 She sat up straight, coloring like a girl. If 
 he supposed but there she stopped. What 
 could he suppose from the way in which she 
 herself had talked to him ? 
 
 But as for him ! Iliel Sargent was as de- 
 plorably unromantic as a man who wrote 
 subtly romantic plays was bound to be. 
 
 That was one thing she was sure of, so 
 sure that she kept on insisting upon it with 
 herself, her sense of humor for the time being 
 in abeyance. 
 
 288
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 8 1 SIGNAL STREET, 
 
 March n. 
 Dear Mr. Sargent: 
 
 (Sargent muttered something; then he read 
 on.) 
 
 It has occurred to me that you may like to 
 know what is happening here. You may 
 gather from Tina's letters that nothing is hap- 
 pening that would be a mistake. 
 
 I did not tell you when I saw you that I 
 had been writing Benny Faber and hearing 
 from him. Our correspondence was not par- 
 ticularly interesting then, because I was 
 merely finding my way about in his mind. 
 (Sargent smiled.) It has become interesting 
 289
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 since. I have written to him that he must 
 come East at once and marry Tina, and he has 
 replied that he cannot that it is impossible 
 for him to desert the Survey at this moment, 
 as they are going farther north, and that his 
 only means of getting leave would be by re- 
 signing his position, a disastrous thing for him 
 to do. As he seems to be unable to under- 
 stand that he will lose Tina unless he does 
 something desperate, I have to-day tele- 
 graphed him to come at once and I think 
 my telegram will bring him, unless they have 
 already started north, in which case he ad- 
 vised me that it would probably be impossible 
 for any word to reach him so much de- 
 pending on the weather. 
 
 It has been very hard to convince him 
 that anything more serious was the matter 
 than one of Tina's moods. He has insisted 
 that I did not understand her. He feels that 
 she belongs to him inseparably. If he were 
 only here, there would be no need for anyone 
 290
 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 to worry, for he does not lack faith in himself 
 as the only possible husband for Tina. 
 
 My telegram to-day was a long one. He 
 will come. 
 
 Has Tina told you about the ring-box? 
 You see, it all turns on that. I have tried to 
 find out when it is to be opened, but she will 
 not tell me. 
 
 As to Mr. Gregory but I cannot talk 
 of him. 
 
 Of course you may not approve of what I 
 am doing. That no longer matters to me. 
 
 KITTY WARDER. 
 
 Sargent lighted a cigar; when he had fin- 
 ished it, he lighted another. Then he wrote 
 a note. It began " Dear Kitty," and was 
 signed " Iliel," and it consisted of a single 
 sentence: "Tell me about the ring-box." 
 Then he walked with it to the station to catch 
 the mail-train. 
 
 When he came back he smoked more cigars, 
 291
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 for he had begun waiting for the answer to 
 that note as soon as it was posted. After 
 a while, thinking on Benny's irrational youth 
 and the pity of it, he wondered what kept the 
 boy from going crazy, away out there, where 
 letters, if they ever reached you, were ancient 
 history, and where telegrams assumed the sig- 
 nificance of death-warrants. 
 
 Three days later he was still smoking, and 
 still waiting for the answer to his note. 
 
 It became unendurable. For all he knew, 
 anything might have happened; Tina might 
 have married Gregory. He went to the tele- 
 phone, and after an eternity of " holding the 
 line," he succeeded in procuring speech with 
 Mrs. Warder, but it seemed as if a great many 
 other people were " holding the line " too, or 
 else she was purposely maladroit ; he could not 
 discover which. His letter? Oh yes! Yes, 
 she would answer it. He was worried 
 about Tina? But why? She was taking 
 care of Tina. Oh, did he wish to hear from 
 292
 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 her ? She had not quite gathered that from 
 his did he call it a letter? She had 
 rather thought it was a note. 
 
 That was really all his little outing over 
 the wire achieved for him. He had spent 
 hours planning the subtle things he would say, 
 but there was little chance for subtlety by the 
 long distance route. He realized now that he 
 had said good-by to her three times without 
 the least intention of doing so, and that each 
 time she had answered: " No, I don't think 
 so." What possible question of his had she 
 supposed herself answering? Or had she 
 been merely amusing herself? She was cap- 
 able of that. 
 
 It would have been far better to write; he 
 looked resentfully at the telephone it was 
 an instrument of man's indignity. " Hulloa ! 
 Hulloa ! " he exclaimed scornfully, and began 
 an elaborate argument with himself that the 
 world had been much better off before its in- 
 vention. 
 
 293
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 At all events Madam Kitty had written him 
 first; that was a fact that it consoled him to 
 remember. After his interview with her in 
 town, he had come home to go through many 
 moods. He set himself back into the youth 
 of his marriage in the light of Mrs. Warder's 
 interpretation of it and him, one day deny- 
 ing that he had failed in his part, and the next 
 scorning himself for a young, thick-headed 
 driveler of hang-dog philosophies. He had 
 let her go to Dicky Warder; he had helped 
 her to go with his idealistic maunderings as 
 to the rights of the individual. 
 
 Bless the boy! She had had no rights 
 apart from him. When she married him, her 
 rights and his were fused; it was no longer 
 " Thou and I," but the indivisible " We." 
 
 No! He shook his head. That argu- 
 ment would not hold water; in fact no argu- 
 ment of any sort that concerned marriage 
 sustained itself with that simplicity of convic- 
 tion that so persistent a human institution de- 
 294
 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 manded as its basis, save such as his friend 
 Shaw took delight in vociferating. And for 
 that species he had, at the moment, no taste. 
 
 Indeed his brains appeared to have gone off 
 on a vacation; he was certainly not the man 
 who, a month before, had written Susan Al- 
 ways Said in forty-eight hours, and who, in 
 forty-eight more, had news of it in rehearsal. 
 He had not wits enough left to write a 
 comedy for cats, much less to finish The Moth 
 and the Marquise, which he had begun in 
 such ardor. 
 
 Tina even Tina had said that he let 
 Dicky Warder take her mother away. 
 
 He might have kept her! That was the 
 thought that was driving what little of mind 
 he had left round and round in a circle. 
 Kitty Sargent, as she might have been by now, 
 a sweetly magnificent sort of woman, a won- 
 der of tenderness and loyalty, and all those 
 womanly qualities that the heart of man 
 justly adored 1 
 
 295
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " What a luscious lollypop 1 " he exclaimed, 
 his sense of humor getting the upper hand of 
 his dreams; it occurred to him that a man was 
 never able to describe other than stupidly 
 what he desired in the woman he would have 
 as wife. 
 
 But certainly not Mrs. Warder a spoilt, 
 capricious, selfish woman of the world, 
 charming, distracting, troubling every- 
 thing that was a temptation to a man's emo- 
 tions, and a superficial luxury. She went 
 with the champagne and the glitter of facti- 
 tious living she was a gilded rose, per- 
 fumed anew each night, and picturesquely re- 
 freshed each morning. There was nothing 
 spontaneous or natural left in her. 
 
 That was, perhaps, a trifle sweeping. Of 
 course, the reason that she gave for her inter- 
 est in Benny's cause was a clever bit of his- 
 trionism; no, not altogether; she undoubtedly 
 had a strain of simplicity in herself that she 
 still cherished. Women always managed to 
 296
 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 preserve a sentiment for the extraordinary 
 hodge-podge of emotion, chastely afflicted 
 with sensuousness, that they called love. The 
 Lord knew, perhaps, what they thought they 
 meant; no man ever had. 
 
 But what obstinate belief in her own wis- 
 dom there was in this fight against Gregory 
 against Tina ! He puzzled long over the 
 secret of that, always with the picture of her 
 in his mind as she had stood while she said to 
 him : " Because I believe in love the kind 
 there was between you and me when you did 
 love me the only kind that's worth any- 
 thing." 
 
 It would help away the sting of some things 
 that still remained bitter to him if he could 
 only think that she believed that. After all, 
 why not accept her statement as the only ex- 
 planation of her interference in, Tina's af- 
 fairs? give her the benefit of belief in her? 
 It was a graceful, if not imperative, thing to 
 do in view of the fact that he was unable to 
 297
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 devise an even temporarily plausible substi- 
 tute for her own simple assertion. 
 
 But she had lived for fifteen years with 
 Dicky Warder. 
 
 When he came to that place in the circle, 
 he turned and went back. 
 
 Occasionally he chid himself for his lack of 
 concern as to Tina's affairs; all sense of re- 
 sponsibility had slipped from him. It was 
 not that he had ceased to care, but his day 
 with Tina was by. He understood that with 
 degrees of bitterness that varied with his 
 moods. He no longer counted with her, after 
 all the nineteen years in which she had been 
 his first thought; no one counted. Tina was 
 waiting, unconscious, helpless child, for the 
 word that should open wide to her the barred 
 way of love and pain. If she married Greg- 
 ory what use to think about it; he could 
 not believe Mrs. Warder would permit that 
 to happen. 
 
 298
 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 Sargent waited three days more, but her 
 promised letter did not come; then he made 
 up his mind to go to town. He was not able 
 to write, and Far End, unless you were busy 
 and at peace with your Maker and your soul, 
 was a weariness of hill and sky. He dreaded 
 the long evenings in the big, still house. It 
 was different when Tina was there, but she 
 would never be there, at home, again. He 
 knew that now. 
 
 He had meant to go to the post-office to 
 see if the last train from town brought in any 
 mail, but he had argued himself out of his in- 
 tention. Of course there would be no letter 
 for him. Mrs. Warder was well, it was 
 all his own fault for his madness in sending 
 Tina to her to begin with. 
 
 He looked at his watch, but it was too late 
 now to reach the office before it closed. No 
 doubt if he had gone, this time, there would 
 but there was a knock at the door. 
 299
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Came in, Cousin Belle," he called out. 
 
 She came in, stepping gently in the dark- 
 ness. 
 
 "Shan't I turn on the light, Iliel?" she 
 asked, in her soft, solicitous voice. 
 
 " Yes turn it on," he said resignedly. 
 
 She did so, and pulled down the shades, and 
 the sloping line of pine trees that climbed 
 Sunset Hill in the winter twilight was shut 
 from him. 
 
 But Cousin Belle sat down contentedly in 
 the cheerful light she had brought into a dark 
 place. " I have something I want to say to 
 you, Iliel," she began, " and I have your mail. 
 I was there when the train came in." 
 
 She opened her bag and handed him the 
 letters; the papers and a magazine she laid 
 neatly on the table at his elbow. 
 
 Sargent ran quickly through the letters; he 
 kept one and pushed the others away from 
 him. 
 
 As she was not told to go, Cousin Belle re- 
 300
 
 THE BARRED WAY OF LOVE 
 
 mained, sustained by a conviction that what 
 she had to tell Iliel was quite as momentous 
 as anything in the letter he was reading so 
 devouringly. It was a long letter and he read 
 it apparently to the last word, and then be- 
 gan in the middle again, and when he had 
 finished the second time, he went back to the 
 first page and looked at the date the date 
 was often such an important thing in these 
 business letters. 
 
 At last he looked up. " Oh, Cousin 
 Belle ! " He appeared to adjust his intelli- 
 gence to the fact that she was there with some 
 difficulty. 
 
 " You look as if you had good news," she 
 said pleasantly. 
 
 "Good news!" He stared at her in a 
 puzzled way. " No I haven't. I think 
 it's bad news, Belle." 
 
 " Bad ! " she exclaimed. " But you seem 
 happy, Iliel." 
 
 " I am," 
 
 301
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Happy over bad news, Iliel? " 
 
 " There's something else, too. But never 
 mind that. You wanted to talk to me?" 
 Sargent ran his hand through his hair and 
 looked at her in such a strange way that she 
 felt disturbed. She had seen him in many 
 moods, but never in one like this, she was 
 sure. 
 
 " I'm so sorry, Iliel I have no wish to 
 speak of my own affairs when you well, I 
 mean now, but you see, Mr. Brown oh, 
 Iliel, I have given him my word that I will 
 marry him on the second of April." 
 
 She looked ready to cry, and yet she was as 
 contradictorily happy as Iliel himself. 
 
 "Well?" he said kindly. "Isn't that a 
 very fortunate thing for Mr. Brown? " 
 
 "But Iliel! What will you do?" 
 
 "I? Oh, I'm all right." 
 
 She regarded him mournfully. " All 
 right ! left with only servants in the house, 
 and in spite of all I've taught her, I know 
 302
 
 Bessy will never do the dusting with her con- 
 science when I am not here to watch, and yet 
 she is a dear girl." 
 
 Sargent got up and went over to her, laying 
 his hand on her shoulder. 
 
 " Dear Belle, don't worry. I'm going to 
 get married myself." 
 
 Cousin Belle looked up at him slowly. 
 * You're going to get married yourself, 
 Iliel? When? Who to?" 
 
 11 1 don't know." 
 
 "You don't know." 
 
 " I mean when. Oh, as soon as I can, 
 Belle as soon as I can. But she doesn't 
 know yet." 
 
 " She doesn't know yet? " A certain anx- 
 iety crept into Cousin Belle's eyes mingled of 
 many elements. If it was Mrs. Dryder after 
 all but you couldn't imagine Mrs. Dryder 
 not knowing. It was that last play that 
 was what it was; she had always said that 
 sooner or later Iliel would have brain fever. 
 
 303
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Sargent laughed. " You'll have to remem- 
 ber now that you don't belong to every church 
 in town." And then he added: " She 
 doesn't know that she is going to marry me." 
 
 And with that he put Cousin Belle gently 
 out of the room. For at last he understood 
 his part and he wanted to be alone with it. 
 
 304
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 Mrs. Warder stood at the end of her draw- 
 ing-room saying good-night to the last of her 
 dinner guests, who happened to be Governor 
 Gregory. It struck him that she had never 
 justified her reputation as the most distin- 
 guished hostess in town more significantly 
 than this evening; everything had been per- 
 fect of its kind the combination of mutu- 
 ally attractive men and women, the conver- 
 sation, the lights, and the color. 
 
 And Mrs. Warder herself had never looked 
 more effective. Her gown was of lemon-col- 
 ored velvet, made with the simplicity for 
 which she was noted; a necklace of wonder- 
 fully cut topazes and a spray of them in her 
 305
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 dark hair served as high lights in the delicate 
 glow of her costume. In this smoke-gray 
 room, with a single great jar of yellow daffo- 
 dils as a decorative link between itself and 
 her, she had seemed all the evening like a star 
 apart, attended by its own radiance. Yet she 
 had never been sweeter or simpler; she ap- 
 peared to have changed places with Tina 
 Tina, who to-night had borne herself with the 
 airs of a young princess. 
 
 As he stood beside the girl earlier in the 
 evening she had said to him abruptly : " I 
 have something to say to you to-morrow, 
 Governor Gregory. You may come to see 
 me at three o'clock." She was panoplied in 
 a dignity that had all the seals of office upon 
 it. 
 
 " Thank you," said Gregory, with an an- 
 swering gravity that he found it difficult to 
 maintain. But Tina was a capricious person; 
 the game of politics was a simple affair com- 
 pared with that of making love to her. He 
 306
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 was no such fool as to imperil at the eleventh 
 hour what it had required weeks of the most 
 cautious effort to accomplish. 
 
 But he could not suppress the exhilaration 
 he felt as he stood taking leave of Mrs. War- 
 der. 
 
 " Good-night," she said, with smiling ab- 
 sence of emphasis. 
 
 He looked around and saw that Tina was 
 gone. 
 
 " Are you a little bit well, overdoing 
 it?" he asked. 
 
 " Overdoing what, Mr. Gregory? " 
 
 " The unrelenting parent, I think they call 
 it." 
 
 Her eyes smiled. 
 
 " You see " he continued "I'm afraid 
 you'll have to come to it." 
 
 "To what?" The smile flickered ador- 
 ably about her mouth. 
 
 " Well " He knew that he was acting 
 the boy, impatient and indiscreet, but he was 
 
 307
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 past caring for that with her. He was in 
 love, he, Eben Gregory, and the little girl he 
 loved was going to tell him to-morrow at three 
 o'clock that she would marry him. In his 
 life he 'had had to buy and pay for everything 
 he had enjoyed with wages earned by hard 
 work ; to-morrow he was to get for the asking 
 that which he had grown most insistently to 
 desire. He had traveled a long, hard road; 
 he had known hunger and cold and heat and 
 the brow's sweat; he had made his mistakes 
 been a fool where duller men were wise 
 but he had never auctioned his birthright in 
 the market-place. There were things he 
 hoped this little Tina would never have to 
 know, but if she must, he would not 
 deny them. He had never evaded, never 
 shirked the consequences of any of his deeds, 
 however unjustly the balance may have 
 seemed sometimes to dip on his side of the 
 scales. 
 
 But that was past for him now; he had paid 
 308
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 his debts and torn up the score. To-morrow 
 he was to begin again with a clean sheet. 
 
 " Well, you see, Christina has told me that 
 to-morrow at three she would have something 
 to say to me." 
 
 "Yes?" said Mrs. Warder. "You are 
 quite sure," she added, giving him a long 
 glance. 
 
 " How can I be anything else? " 
 
 " Tina is fond of sensational effects," she 
 suggested. 
 
 " So am I," he answered gaily, and said 
 good-night. 
 
 Mrs. Warder went up-stairs to her room 
 intending to read a while before she went to 
 bed. But she found one book after another 
 unsatisfactory; she was thinking of Tina; 
 then by a natural gradation her thoughts 
 slipped to Sargent. Presently she faced the 
 fact that of late she had thought of little else 
 but Sargent. The dinner this evening had 
 been for him alone; he had been the unseen 
 
 309
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 guest for whom she had worn her yellow 
 gown to whom she had talked and smiled 
 with a sweetness that was sweet to herself. 
 As she had gone down the staircase and 
 fronted the great mirror, she had stopped and 
 looked at herself, wishing that he could see 
 her. She was lovely to-night and young ; 
 she had not looked like this that afternoon 
 when he had seen her. He might not like 
 her of course he hated her but to-night 
 he would have been compelled to admire her ; 
 she stood long before her mirror and trium- 
 phantly assured herself of that. 
 
 Tina would soon be married to one man 
 or the other, and she would be alone again. 
 But now she would know that she was lonely. 
 Five years ago to be lonely had meant free- 
 dom. 
 
 She was tired of everything tired of this 
 dull town with its eternal round of exhausted 
 social activities; she could imagine the inter- 
 est of it for people who were still climbing, 
 310
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 but when she had married Dicky Warder, she 
 had taken her place at the top of the ladder 
 there was nothing for her to aspire to or to 
 struggle for. Her social position had been 
 bought and paid for by generations of Ward- 
 ers she owned it as she owned her house 
 and horses. 
 
 She had a volume of Sargent's plays beside 
 her; she picked it up and turned to the scene 
 in The Master of Lone Pine where Acacia dis- 
 covers that the man she loves is a pawnbroker. 
 She read it again and shook her head at the 
 same place that she always shook it; any 
 woman could have told Sargent that Acacia 
 would never have said that to Spenderson. 
 Apparently he used to read to Tina every- 
 thing he wrote. What did Tina know? 
 She shut the book feeling annoyed with him 
 and with herself for caring what mistakes he 
 made in that play or any other. It was no 
 concern of hers. 
 
 Really, after all the trouble she had taken
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 for him and his daughter, she had received but 
 the scantiest acknowledgment. A single line 
 in answer to her letter ! then a talk over 
 the telephone, in which he upbraided her for 
 not answering his precious six-word note. 
 That was just like Iliel. She got up and 
 found the letter it was not difficult and 
 read it again in order to impress its indiffer- 
 ence upon her mind. By and by she smiled. 
 " Kitty " and " Iliel " and only those six 
 words between I It was rather charming con- 
 sidered in that light. But it was only women 
 who discovered sentiment in trifles like that; 
 in their relations with women after they had 
 passed a certain point, men only understood 
 the flatly obvious. 
 
 Still, Iliel was not the ordinary man. In 
 spite of psychological inaccuracies here and 
 there in his plays, it must be admitted that he 
 drew his women well. In twenty years he 
 had learned more than most men as to the 
 312
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 nature of the protagonist in the great human 
 play. 
 
 She wondered, as she had wondered a hun- 
 dred times, what he had thought of her that 
 afternoon. She had talked outrageously 
 her face burnt whenever she remembered one 
 thing that she had said. But an interview 
 with the man who had once been one's hus- 
 band was a difficult matter; she must never see 
 him again; she would never need to after this 
 affair of Tina's was settled. 
 
 At the thought of Tina she started up in 
 sudden aprehension. What was the child go- 
 ing to tell Gregory to-morrow? She had 
 hardly seen her all day. Was it possible that 
 she had already opened that hateful box? 
 
 Such alarm seized her that she went at 
 once to Tina's room ; she knocked softly. 
 
 There was a stir, then unanswering silence. 
 She knocked again, after a little pause. In- 
 stantly, the door was thrown open, and Tina 
 313
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 stood there in her night-dress ; it was evident 
 that she had been crying, and without a word 
 she held a slip of paper towards her mother. 
 
 Mrs. Warder took it; on it was written, 
 " Eben Gregory and Christina Sargent." 
 She shut the door and silently drew the child 
 to her until she had her in her arms. 
 
 Presently she said softly: "Tina, Tina, 
 little, naughty Tina ! " A flood of tears an- 
 swered her. 
 
 She began to think quickly; in the face of 
 such evident misery it seemed incredible that 
 Tina could remain loyal to the lot she had 
 drawn. But she would. There was the un- 
 believable crotchet in the girl's temperament, 
 compounded of obstinacy and superstition, and 
 Mrs. Warder was in no mood to flinch 
 from acknowledgment of that acquired be- 
 lief in marriage as a feeble expedient that the 
 separation of her parents had produced in her. 
 From the days of her babyhood she had heard 
 marriage treated as the butt of jest and satire; 
 
 314
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 inevitably she comprehended nothing of the 
 human need that underlay the simple " I will " 
 that set a man and a woman apart as one. 
 The child understood something of love 
 enough to feel that love was more apt to be 
 marred than to be glorified by marriage. 
 That was all. And she had before her, in 
 the case of her father and mother, irrefutable 
 evidence of the flimsiness, under strain, of 
 vow and wedlock. 
 
 There was only one way; Mrs. Warder 
 understood in this moment all the meaning 
 of the cry in her own heart, of her restless- 
 ness, her fear of loneliness she must tell 
 the child. She must tell her the truth as she 
 was learning it after all these years. 
 
 " Tina," she began gently, " you must 
 marry Benny. There is nothing else to do." 
 
 "No, no!" Christina drew away from 
 her. 
 
 " But you must. Listen to me. You've 
 come to a place where you must take my word 
 315
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 for it, child. I know things that you don't. 
 I know what marriage is and what a bitter 
 thing it can be to some women women like 
 you and me. And it's only love that avails 
 in the hard places, Tina enough love 
 always more and more of it. That's what a 
 boy and a girl don't understand. They're not 
 careful of the love they begin with, Tina. 
 They wound it in so many ways. Little 
 girl " she held Christina nearer to her 
 " try to understand what it is so hard for me 
 to explain to you. You think of it as getting 
 married. But it's the long afterwards that 
 you must think of. When the child comes, 
 Tina, the man is satisfied, and she if she 
 is like you and me is never less satisfied. A 
 man like Governor Gregory would care noth- 
 ing for that, but I think Benny would, if you 
 were patient and helped him to understand." 
 " Why weren't you ? " asked Christina, in a 
 voice that was steady and cold; she was no 
 longer tearful. 
 
 316
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 " Because I didn't know. I had no one to 
 tell me as you have. I had married believing 
 as most girls believe, and as people let them 
 believe, that marriage was a state in which 
 I was to be continually adored, and when 
 all the little backbiting miseries of poverty 
 had to be reckoned with when I had pain 
 to suffer, and endless duties to perform I 
 let go, Tina. That wasn't my idea of mar- 
 riage." The tears were suddenly in Mrs. 
 Warder's eyes. 
 
 Christina looked at her with frigid curi- 
 osity. " I shall not have poverty to contend 
 with." 
 
 " No." The color came into Mrs. War- 
 der's face. " / didn't have after I mar- 
 ried Mr. Warder." 
 
 " It seems to me you had everything in the 
 world to be thankful for," said Christina 
 hardily. " You had all the money you 
 wanted, and no children." 
 
 " Yes. I had all the money I wanted and 
 
 317
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 no children." Mrs. Warder hesitated. 
 " Think about it a minute, Tina. There are 
 ways in which all the money she wants and 
 no children may be destruction to a 
 woman." 
 
 "I don't think so." The girl laughed 
 flippantly. " I don't want any children." 
 
 " Be quiet! " Mrs. Warder's face paled. 
 " You don't know what you're talking about. 
 You don't know what it is to feel that every- 
 thing in you that is finest has been created 
 just that you may have a child, and then not 
 be allowed to have one, because your beauty 
 must not be marred because you were 
 bought to be enjoyed and exhibited as a work 
 of art. Tina ! " she wrung the girl's hand 
 " I've paid a price for what I understand, 
 and I don't want you to pay it too." 
 
 " I shall marry Governor Gregory," said 
 Christina. 
 
 Mrs. Warder looked at her; they looked 
 at each other. But in that moment the
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 mother remembered those days in the poor 
 little house at Far End before the child was 
 born and afterwards, when she had rebelled 
 at every detail of her woman's lot and re- 
 sented the waste of her youth and beauty 
 upon a boy who made the mistake of accept- 
 ing his wife as a matter of course, and not 
 acclaiming her every new morning as a spe- 
 cial creation wonderfully mated with his un- 
 worthiness those days when rebellion had 
 been the keynote of all her thoughts and ac- 
 tions, and the spirit of it breathed deep into 
 the soul of the child at her breast. 
 
 " Perhaps you will," she said gently, " but 
 if you do, you shall do it knowing all that I 
 can tell you. I want you to think of yourself 
 married to Mr. Gregory, and coming in time 
 to understand what love is, and then finding 
 out that what you feel for Benny is that 
 love." 
 
 " I've thought of it," said Christina in- 
 differently. 
 
 319
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 Mrs. Warder shook her head; the color 
 came again into her face; she moved away 
 from Christina, and sat for some moments 
 in silence. When she spoke her voice was 
 light and breathless. " Tina, don't you see? 
 
 don't you know why I'm talking to you as 
 I am ? Oh, it's so hard ! I don't know how 
 to tell you. I don't know how to tell my- 
 self." But she controlled herself proudly. 
 " I love your father, Tina. I have always 
 loved him. T think there has never been a 
 day since 1 left him when he has been out of 
 my thoughts. I made a great mistake. I 
 do not want you to do that too, and you must 
 know, child somebody must tell you that 
 love is real that it's meant for every day 
 
 that it" 
 
 "You love father?" Christina looked 
 hostilely at Mrs. Warder. " That doesn't 
 seem to me a very nice thing for you to tell 
 me." 
 
 320
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 "Nice?" Mrs. Warder felt curiously 
 helpless. 
 
 " It's horrid. Why, you can't even con- 
 sider father an acquaintance of yours, and to 
 say that you love him I " Christina deliber- 
 ated; then she added: "Please don't ever 
 say a thing like that to me again. There 
 isn't any need for you to love father. / love 
 him." 
 
 In other circumstances Mrs. Warder 
 would have smiled at the girl's effort to dis- 
 pose with dignity of a situation that did not 
 meet with her approval, but she perceived, 
 with new alarm, that Christina was now in 
 the mood when everything became fuel to 
 her obstinacy, and that her sacrificial avowal 
 of her enduring love for Sargent was apt to 
 have only disastrous results. 
 
 She rose to go, saying quietly: "There 
 are some things one does not speak of twice." 
 Then she melted at the sight of the forlorn 
 321
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 little figure Tina looked such a baby in 
 her night-dress. She bent over her. " Go 
 back to Far End, Tina. Go back to your 
 father to-morrow." 
 
 Christina clasped her little hands despair- 
 ingly together. " I shall never go back to 
 Far End again, Madam Kitty never like 
 that. That's all gone." 
 
 " What is the matter? " cried Mrs. War- 
 der, suddenly beside herself. " Do you know 
 that you seem to me to be making misery for 
 everyone, just because you want to know what 
 it's like!" 
 
 For answer Christina picked up the slip 
 from the table where Mrs. Warder had 
 laid it. 
 
 "That! Benny will soon make short 
 work of that ! " 
 
 "Benny?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder threw her discretion to the 
 four winds. What was the use of it in deal- 
 322
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 ing with a child like this? " Yes. You see 
 he will be here " she reckoned silently on 
 her fingers 
 
 "Benny?" said Christina again; she put 
 her hand up to her throat. 
 
 " I telegraphed him this morning." 
 
 " You telegraphed him? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I thought he ought to be here. I 
 thought you needed him, Tina." 
 
 " Was that for you to say? " 
 
 " I think so," said Mrs. Warder gently. 
 
 For a moment there was silence; then 
 Christina said in a low voice: "Go away, 
 please." 
 
 "Tina!" 
 
 " Will you please go away ? " 
 
 "I can't." Mrs. Warder felt herself 
 nearer to a fit of hysterics than she had been 
 for many years. " Not while you are so an- 
 
 323
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 gry and so irrational, Tina. I can't stand 
 by and see you hurt yourself and Benny with- 
 out" 
 
 Christina was on her feet. " If he comes 
 I shall die. Why didn't he come before? 
 Why did he leave me alone so long? I told 
 him I couldn't stand it. I can't love a man 
 I never see, Madam Kitty. I've told Benny 
 that, over and over again, and he's always 
 laughed. He's always said he knew me bet- 
 ter than I knew myself. But he didn't, 
 Madam Kitty he didn't. He doesn't 
 know me a bit. His letters have been all 
 wrong they've hurt me so I've cried 
 myself asleep over them so many nights. 
 But now it's all over, and it's Benny I'm 
 sorry for. Poor Benny! But who's going 
 to tell him? Do you expect me to tell him 
 that I'm going to marry Governor Gregory? 
 Tell Benny that!" 
 
 " My child, you won't have to. He 
 knows." 
 
 324
 
 THE SIMPLE I WILL 
 
 Christina stood back. " You've told 
 him?" 
 
 Mrs. Warder nodded; she saw, too late, 
 that she had made a mistake. 
 
 For a moment the girl stood still ; then she 
 went to the table and took out of the little 
 ring-box the slip that lay in it. 
 
 " Benny and Tina," she said in a strained 
 voice, and tore the slip in two. 
 
 It was nearly dawn when Mrs. Warder fin- 
 ished her letter to Sargent the letter with 
 the bad news that was good, and so mystify- 
 ing to Cousin Belle. She wrote it with little 
 thought of herself; her mind was full of her 
 child. 
 
 325
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 " TINA ! TINA ! " 
 
 A few minutes after Christina met Gov- 
 ernor Gregory in the drawing-room the next 
 afternoon, she had promised to marry him 
 in three weeks; he demonstrated to her that 
 there was nothing to be gained by delay. 
 He also suggested that the wedding should 
 be an absolutely private affair, which was 
 contrary to his earlier intentions; but he felt 
 that he had excellent reasons for haste 
 Tina was an uncertain young person. The 
 business of the box was an amusing affair 
 very lucky for him but he had his ques- 
 tions as to the enduring nature of the spell 
 of so blind a decree. As Mrs. Warder had 
 observed, Tina was fond of sensations; that 
 slip of paper constituted for the moment a 
 326
 
 "TINA! TINA!" 
 
 very powerful one, of which he must take im- 
 mediate advantage. The risks he foresaw 
 with her he was willing to run, for his career 
 promised excitement enough to keep her pre- 
 occupied, and he had, moreover, the belief 
 in his ability to hold a woman in marriage 
 that a strong and successful lover of women 
 always has. 
 
 He asked to see Mrs. Warder, and Chris- 
 tina went and her mother came to-day a 
 mocking, indolent woman; but Gregory had 
 no intention of being irritated. He ex- 
 plained to her that he and Tina were to be 
 married in three weeks. 
 
 " How delightfully soon ! " she exclaimed. 
 " Is it to be a spectacular affair? " 
 
 " Quite private," he answered, in his most 
 business-like tone. " Tina can have all the 
 pageants she wants later on. Only ourselves 
 and Mr. Sargent I hope? " His look in- 
 quired. 
 
 " You know his address," she suggested. 
 
 327
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Of course I shall write to him at once." 
 He stood up. " You have not congratulated 
 me, Mrs. Warder." 
 
 " On what? " she asked, suddenly serious. 
 But she would not wait for him to answer. 
 " On the luck of getting a child to marry you 
 who does, not know her own mind ? or 
 rather, who does know it, and who because 
 of some strange and fateful obstinacy will 
 not accept happiness ? " 
 
 " You persist in being tragic," he said 
 lightly. " It suits you." 
 
 " Sooner or later we all get our turn." 
 She smiled and let him go. 
 
 Later in the afternoon Mrs. Warder went 
 out driving with Christina, but they said little 
 to each other; the girl seemed to have drawn 
 a circle around herself within which her 
 mother might not step. She was as stupidly 
 gay as a mechanical doll; all her youthful 
 spontaneity was gone. Mrs. Warder looked 
 at her and reflected that as the wife of Gre- 
 328
 
 'TINA! TINA!" 
 
 gory she would probably become an auda- 
 cious, glittering kind of person, shop-worn 
 and tired by the time she was thirty. 
 
 She wondered whether Christina had told 
 Gregory that Benny was coming; she thought 
 not. 
 
 The next morning there was a special de- 
 livery letter for Mrs. Warder from Sargent, 
 with so little and yet perhaps so much in it 
 that she spent the day trying to decide ex- 
 actly what it did not mean. He was evi- 
 dently sufficiently anxious about Christina, for 
 he said that he was coming to town immedi- 
 ately ; there might be something that he could 
 do she would know. At any rate she 
 must not be left alone with such a serious and 
 difficult matter on her hands. 
 
 She went to a theater party that evening 
 and to supper somewhere afterwards, but 
 when Lone Hand Freddy said to her: 
 " What did you think of the play, Mrs. 
 Warder? " she looked at him, and answered: 
 329
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 "The play, Mr. Dorchester?" and he dis- 
 covered that she did not even know the title 
 of it. She was embarrassed and tried to re- 
 member of what she had been thinking. But 
 it was all a blur, with perhaps a good deal 
 of Far End behind it, and some strange mem- 
 ories of the little home that, for a while, had 
 been Iliel's and hers. She could not think 
 of him as the master of the Mansion House; 
 that had always seemed to them such a won- 
 derful place; she recalled how they used to 
 walk past it, in that first springtime of their 
 marriage, and dream their bright, impossible 
 dreams of some day possessing it. 
 
 She answered his letter. But when she 
 read what she had written, she put it away; 
 it was for herself not for him. 
 
 Besides, to-morrow he would be at the 
 Lorraine; perhaps he would come to see her. 
 
 But the next morning he called her up on 
 the telephone; Cousin Belle was ill appar- 
 ently seriously ill ; he must not leave Far End 
 330
 
 "TINA! TINA!" 
 
 until there was some improvement in her con- 
 dition. He seemed troubled and anxious. 
 Tina ? he had no patience with Tina 
 she needed to be whipped and put to bed. 
 As for Gregory he needed to be thrashed 
 for an old fool. 
 
 Mrs. Warder laughed. " Oh, be gentle ! 
 We all have more or less fool to work out of 
 our natures." 
 
 u I dare say," he answered. " But at 
 forty-five don't you think " 
 
 " Oh yes, I do." 
 
 In spite of the telephone he discerned the 
 quick sadness in her voice. 
 
 " I suppose I must see Gregory at once," 
 he said. " But I'm afraid I shall accomplish 
 nothing." Then he added: " It is you that 
 I want to see." 
 
 That " you " was with her through the 
 night when she could not sleep; she was not 
 unhappy awake. 
 
 The next day and the next brought no an- 
 
 331
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 swer to her telegram to Benny. That meant 
 that the Survey had gone further north; she 
 grew nervous. For some reason, all her own 
 happiness seemed dependent now on her suc- 
 cess in securing Benny's welfare; the matter 
 had ceased to be a question solely of the boy 
 and the girl it had become personal to her- 
 self. Benny and Tina and Sargent in her 
 thoughts they belonged together. She could 
 not imagine Gregory as Sargent's son-in-law 
 there was something preposterous in the 
 idea; the years would but increase the hostil- 
 ity of the father against the worn man of 
 the world who had made his daughter his 
 wife. In the other case there was the com- 
 pelling fitness of things, and the innocence in- 
 separable from youth to dignify the mating of 
 these children born to love as the flower to 
 bloom. 
 
 But a wedding in less than three weeks and 
 no word from Benny! And Cousin Belle 
 dangerously ill, fighting pneumonia, with the 
 332
 
 Reverend Austin Brown praying at one side 
 of her bed, while the doctor practiced at the 
 other, and Iliel waiting, longing to go, yet 
 not willing to leave this friend who had been 
 all patience and unselfishness in his household 
 these long years who had kept burning for 
 him and Tina the hearth-fire in a forsaken 
 home. 
 
 So the days that followed passed for Mrs. 
 Warder in a curious stillness and inactivity, 
 marked, however, by a change in herself that 
 puzzled and fascinated her. Time and 
 again she found herself in front of Dicky 
 Warder's picture, answering it arguing, 
 defying as she had never answered or de- 
 fied the living man. 
 
 " You're dead, Dicky," she said aloud one 
 day, " and it doesn't seem fair, but these 
 things have to be said." 
 
 Then she felt suddenly faint with the 
 weight of her body so it seemed; the mo- 
 ment before she had been clear spirit, face 
 333
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 to face with Dicky. But her old fear was 
 gone the fear from which she had suf- 
 fered ever after the instant when he had 
 said to her: "Now, at last, you are my 
 wife." Because then, for the first time, she 
 had understood what it was that she had done 
 to Iliel Sargent and herself. It would be 
 so with Tina, the first time she found herself 
 alone with Eben Gregory the husband. The 
 child would know then the wrong done to 
 herself and Benny. But how could she be 
 made to understand that now, before it was 
 too late? Mrs. Warder did not know, for 
 the barrier between mother and daughter rose 
 higher each day. Tina was buying and or- 
 dering clothes with reckless indifference, but 
 that was the only sign of an approaching 
 wedding. Any direct reference to it had be- 
 come impossible between them. 
 
 Afterwards Mrs. Warder remembered of 
 these days little beyond her talks with Sar- 
 334
 
 "TINA! TINA!" 
 
 gent over the telephone. Time and again he 
 was on the point of starting for town, but she 
 kept him at Far End; his presence there was 
 Cousin Belle's due, and she was still too ill 
 to bear any explanation of his absence. 
 
 Sargent had heard from Gregory and had 
 replied to the Governor with disapproval that 
 amounted to denunciation of his intentions, 
 but Gregory maintained his serenity even 
 through an interview with Mrs. Warder that 
 must have pricked his temper. She asked, 
 not that he give up Christina, but that he con- 
 sent to a longer engagement. 
 
 " At my time of life ! " he exclaimed, smil- 
 ing. " No, no, Mrs. Warder. I regret 
 your lack of sympathy for me, but by and 
 by we shall be friends again. In the mean- 
 time as long as Tina is satisfied " he spread 
 his hands. 
 
 "Satisfied? Do you think she is? Can 
 you look at her these days and believe that? " 
 
 335.
 
 "The way of a maid!" He shrugged 
 his shoulders. " Marriage has its own happy 
 ways of settling all that." 
 
 A bitter answer rose to Mrs. Warder's lips. 
 But she held it. After all, Benny might 
 yet come, and she felt sudden pity for this 
 man who must early have been forced to the 
 use of tooth and claw in the getting and keep- 
 ing of what he needed. The wonder was 
 that there should be so much of grace left in 
 him. 
 
 Of that grace Christina saw more in these 
 days than any mortal ever was to see, and 
 that but added to her bewildered misery. 
 For somewhere amid her confusion of 
 thought there was a belief that sooner or 
 later Gregory was to be hurt, and that she 
 was to hurt him. It was her consciousness 
 of this, and not the stirring of love for him 
 as Gregory believed to his intoxication, that 
 touched her manner sometimes with a dis- 
 tracting tenderness. Those were the times 
 336
 
 CT'HERE were times when Gregory forgot the 
 
 *- press and anxiety of official affairs and 
 
 remembered that be adored this little girl 
 
 whose charms were hedged within so many 
 
 thorns
 
 4 TINA! TINA!" 
 
 when Gregory forgot the press and anxiety of 
 official affairs and remembered that he adored 
 this little girl whose charms were hedged 
 within so many thorns. But it was easy to 
 be patient; his hour was near. 
 
 Alone with herself, Tina knew that she was 
 sick sick from the tormentings of the de- 
 mon that had entered into her. There were 
 times when she looked at the people about 
 her and wondered that they did not under- 
 stand that they did not take her and put 
 her to sleep in some quiet, white-walled place 
 where she might dream and dream, and wake 
 at last to find herself a child again and Benny 
 waiting for her, out there in the sunshine, 
 calling, "Tina! Tina!" 
 
 But no one understood. Her father had 
 sent her to Madam Kitty for no reason that 
 he had ever been able to explain to her; she 
 remembered how helpless he had seemed. 
 That was part of this. No one had stood up 
 and said she was not to leave Far End, and 
 
 337
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 no one now said that she was not to marry 
 Governor Gregory; they wanted to argue 
 with her about it, as if she would listen to 
 that ! Benny would have said " No " to 
 everything; but he was too far away. She 
 had always told him trouble would come of 
 that. If he came now but he would not 
 come; she was sure of that. Madam Kitty 
 had told him about the box, and he would 
 never forgive that. He would say that if 
 she could choose between him and another 
 man, she was to take the other, whatever the 
 lot might be. Benny was a stern person. 
 She remembered his slapping her once when 
 she was a naughty little girl and then stand- 
 ing her in the corner and keeping her there 
 until she cried to him again and again, 
 " Benny, I good now. I good now." They 
 had often laughed about that. 
 
 Yes, if Benny had never gone away, all 
 this would never have happened; he would 
 have understood. 
 
 338
 
 'TINA! TINA!" 
 
 Sometimes she wondered dully what all the 
 fuss was about, when the sole thing that she 
 wanted was to be let marry Benny. But that 
 was impossible now. She had promised to 
 marry Governor Gregory, and Benny would 
 let her do it, and be glad of it. So that was 
 settled. 
 
 She hated Madam Kitty for not telling 
 her anything more about him. It was a 
 week and more since she had had a letter 
 from him a strange letter, with here a sen- 
 tence about his work, and there one begin- 
 ning, " Do you remember, Tina " and then 
 something that hurt as nothing had hurt her 
 in her life. 
 
 And so the days passed, and he did not 
 come. She had been right; he would never 
 come again. 
 
 But one morning there was a telegram for 
 Mrs. Warder, which she opened and read in 
 a silence so difficult to her that she found it 
 impossible to remain in the room with Chris- 
 
 339
 
 tina; the girl's open indifference was unen- 
 durable. For all that she inquired or ap- 
 parently cared, Cousin Belle might be dead, 
 and this a notice of her funeral. 
 
 It was not that. Benny had got through 
 to the railroad. He was coming. 
 
 And in her own room Mrs. Warder shut 
 herself up and cried like a girl of twenty; she 
 had never been so happy since that morning 
 that Iliel had given her the primroses that 
 he had gathered in Overshot Wood. 
 
 340
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 Gregory's big blue car was standing at the 
 door of 8 1 Signal Street; it had been stand- 
 ing there a long time, and Gregory, waiting 
 alone in the drawing-room, had grown im- 
 patient. But at last he heard Christina com- 
 ing, very slowly, down the staircase. She 
 paused in front of the great mirror; he knew 
 that and smiled; she was looking at herself, 
 vain little bird ! Then he caught a snatch of 
 the song she was murmuring: 
 
 " But 1 and my true love will never meet 
 
 again 
 
 On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch 
 Lomond." 
 
 and he smiled again. 
 
 341
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 But he found her a stately and intangible 
 person to-day; she would not go out with 
 him, and she would not talk about their wed- 
 ding. She sat straight and chill on a chair 
 too far away, and Gregory unfortunately dis- 
 covered himself tormented by an untimely 
 desire for some approach to a normal condi- 
 tion of things between two people soon to be 
 wed. He was growing tired of this bread- 
 and-butter love-making; he craved a little 
 spice. 
 
 " Father's in town," said Christina sud- 
 denly. 
 
 "Oh! When did he come?" 
 
 " Yesterday. No the night before." 
 
 " Is he at the Lorraine? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Has he been here?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " He hasn't been troubling you? " 
 
 Christina looked at Gregory. " I don't 
 think he's thinking very much about me." 
 342
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 Gregory wondered. But aloud he said 
 blithely: " That's good. There really isn't 
 any reason why he should, when I'm think- 
 ing so much about you." 
 
 He found it strangely difficult to say that, 
 for Christina was still looking at him in an 
 oddly disconcerting way. It was absurd 
 this touch-me-not attitude; he was heartily 
 sick of his pretence of enjoying it. There 
 was only one compensation in the present 
 condition, and that was in the contrast that 
 marriage would afford to it. But to-day he 
 felt that it was unduly hard on a lover to de- 
 mand that he subsist entirely on anticipations, 
 especially as Christina, in her youthful inex- 
 perience and innocence, knew very little as to 
 the possibilites of enjoyment in the state into 
 which she was about to enter. She probably 
 supposed that he experienced the maximum 
 of bliss when he imprinted a polite kiss upon 
 her forehead. 
 
 " I wish " she began then she paused. 
 
 343
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Well? Hadn't you better say it? " 
 
 She leaned towards him; she was looking 
 very sweet, and he felt himself quiver like a 
 boy with the sudden hope that she would be 
 sweet to him. 
 
 " Let us give it all up, Greg, before it's 
 too late. You aren't going to be happy with 
 me, and sometimes " a wistful look came 
 into her eyes " I think you know it." 
 
 " Tina ! " he cried out. But it was the 
 truth; somewhere something was saying that 
 to him. A girl had loved him once, and he 
 had known it ; he had not needed to persuade 
 himself of it. 
 
 "No you aren't going to be happy," 
 she repeated. " You don't understand. 
 You think I'm a little girl and that I don't 
 understand. I've talked so much about be- 
 ing the Governor's wife " She clasped her 
 hands with a quick little sob and looked at 
 him with wide eyes " What is that to 
 be the Governor's wife I It's nothing. I've 
 344
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 been awake all night, thinking about it. And 
 I've thought over all the ways in which I 
 should make you unhappy. Oh, you don't 
 know. I should be dreadful. I should want 
 to make you unhappy." 
 
 Because he doubted because he was him- 
 self afraid, Gregory blundered. He laughed 
 and caught Christina's hands in his. 
 
 " Don't bother about it, Tina. Every 
 girl thinks about it as you're thinking now, 
 just before she's married. It all comes right 
 afterwards. Give me a kiss and forget it. 
 You never have kissed me, you know." 
 
 Christina looked at him and felt some- 
 thing that she had never felt before. 
 
 " I think I'm not well to-day," she mur- 
 mured in confusion and fear. " Isn't it very 
 warm in here? I wish you'd open a win- 
 dow." 
 
 " Yes I'll open it," he said wearily; he 
 felt suddenly tired and discouraged and old. 
 
 As he passed her, Christina stood up. 
 
 345
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 "I'm sorry." She spoke breathlessly: "I 
 haven't been good. Everything's been 
 wrong. Some day you'll forgive me, because 
 because I've tried, even though it doesn't 
 seem so, to be fair to you before it was too 
 late." 
 
 " You mean " began Gregory 
 
 But there was a sudden stir in the hall 
 the opening and shutting of doors, and a sub- 
 dued confusion of voices; then Sargent's 
 voice, standing out alone. 
 
 " The train was so late." 
 
 Then Mrs. Warder's voice. " Do let me 
 help you. Iliel, what is it? What is the 
 matter with him? " 
 
 " Oh, don't worry, Mrs. Warder. It's 
 nothing much mostly bandages." 
 
 That was another voice young and 
 strong and sure. And at the first word Chris- 
 tina turned, her face suddenly white, her eyes 
 wide, her hand clenched and slightly lifted. 
 
 " Benny ! " she whispered. " Benny ! " 
 346
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 She ran the length of the room, and 
 through the hall to the door of the library. 
 
 " Benny ! " she cried aloud. " Benny ! " 
 
 Mrs. Warder and Sargent stepped back. 
 The boy held out his arms to the girl, and 
 she went to him like a dove to its cote. He 
 kissed her, murmuring, " Tina, Tina ! " and 
 she looked up at him with eyes that asked. 
 
 " Your hands? " she said at last. " What 
 is the matter with your hands, Benny? " 
 
 ; ' They got frozen," he said happily. 
 " That awful forty miles, Tina to drive 
 and walk in a blizzard the worst of the 
 winter that did it. Never mind now. 
 Why, it's all right, Tina ! " 
 
 For she was crying and clinging to him, 
 and whispering wild and bitter things. But 
 he stilled her, in his strong and gentle way, 
 and then turned to Mrs. Warder. 
 
 " They got your telegram through to me 
 just as that storm came on. They said I'd 
 never get to Elko alive. I knew I should, 
 347
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 and I had such luck. I always do. And at 
 Council Bluffs a doctor got on the train he 
 took care of me all the way here. He wants 
 to see you, Tina." 
 
 " Benny you didn't you didn't tell 
 him about me? " 
 
 " Sure sure I did. Guess I didn't tell 
 him about much else." The boy broke into 
 an open laugh. " I had to have a good ex- 
 cuse for having acted like a fool, Tina." 
 
 Late that night Mrs. Warder came down- 
 stairs and found Sargent in the library before 
 the fire. 
 
 " Everything all right? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes everything." She smiled trem- 
 ulously. " I'm to tell you they want to 
 be married at once, and go to the Mansion 
 House for their honeymoon. Then they will 
 be near Benny's parents, and yet by them- 
 selves. It's like a fairy tale. The boy is 
 wonderful." 
 
 348
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 " He's grown to be a man since he went 
 away," said Sargent. " We shall never 
 know what a time he had in the blizzard." 
 
 " No. But Tina understands. She has 
 crossed the divide she will never be again 
 what she has been in the last three months. 
 He does have luck. Those hands of his 
 Tina will never forget them as long as she 
 lives. They will have their honeymoon and 
 go back. He doesn't know whether he has 
 lost his place or not. He had no time to 
 think of that. But it doesn't matter. He 
 will always have what he calls luck, because 
 he will make it, if he has to, out of his mis- 
 fortunes. I've sat and watched him up there, 
 until I thought I should fall in love with him 
 myself." She laughed unsteadily. " I know 
 all that Tina means when she talks about his 
 muddled gray eyes and his slow smile. You 
 see what an absurd mood I'm in ! " 
 
 But she would not give Sargent time to 
 answer her, and she did not look at him. 
 
 349
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 " Why ! I've just remembered. Gov- 
 ernor Gregory was here when Benny came. 
 He must have gone without saying a word 
 to anyone. And Tina has never thought of 
 him since. I know she hasn't. It seems 
 cruel." 
 
 " Yes, it's cruel," said Sargent. " But 
 Gregory would take chances. And he's lost. 
 I'm sorry for him. He's a good sort, but he 
 made a bad mistake. He gambled, and he 
 lost. That's just it." 
 
 " Yes, he has lost." Unconsciously Mrs. 
 Warder looked up at the picture at the end 
 of the room. 
 
 Had Dicky Warder always known the 
 truth? had he understood what she her- 
 self had not understood ? had he loved 
 her, knowing after a while that she had never 
 loved him that she never would ? 
 
 His last words came back to her, bringing 
 a strange sorrow to her heart. He, too, had 
 gambled and lost, and had died knowing it. 
 350
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 And for the first time she looked at him for- 
 givingly, for she realized- that she herself 
 had much need of forgiveness. 
 
 She knelt down in front of the fire and 
 spread her hands to the blaze, shivering 
 slightly. 
 
 " Are you cold? " asked Sargent anxiously. 
 
 " No, I don't think I'm cold. But I love 
 the fire," she answered. 
 
 Silence fell between them in the quiet 
 house, but their thoughts traveled together 
 to the children up-stairs the children be- 
 ginning with just the number of years upon 
 them with which they had begun, but begin- 
 ning so differently. For behind them there 
 was all the strength and understanding of a 
 man and a woman who had traveled far in 
 quest of love, far from each other, only to 
 come face to face at last in a turn of the road, 
 and find love where it always had been in 
 the heart of the one for the other. 
 
 "Kitty!" 
 
 351
 
 I AND MY TRUE LOVE 
 
 She turned and looked at him. 
 
 " She shall carry primroses at her wed- 
 ding," she said. 
 
 He saw the tears in her eyes. 
 
 " Kitty ! " he said again. 
 
 " Ah ! but you couldn't you couldn't 
 forgive me," she cried. 
 
 But her words were such a supplication that 
 he took her in his arms. 
 
 " Forgive you ! " he whispered. " Oh 
 Kitty, Kitty! how can I ever forgive my- 
 self?" 
 
 " But we have them the children," she 
 answered. 
 
 " You mean " 
 
 " They'll never make our mistakes. We'll 
 never let them." 
 
 11 We ? " he echoed. " What good am I ? 
 If it hadn't been for you " 
 
 " For me I " She laughed softly, but 
 there were more tears. " Iliel, don't you un- 
 derstand don't you know, that I've only 
 352
 
 THE HARVEST OF HER DAYS 
 
 been able to do what I've done for Benny 
 and Tina because because of this." 
 
 " Of this? " he asked, questioning his joy. 
 
 " Oh yes ! this, this 1 " she answered, out 
 of the abundance of her peace. " I did it 
 for them, because I loved you because I 
 loved you, Iliel." 
 
 And up-stairs Benny and Tina kissed each 
 other good-night for the hundredth time. 
 
 " She's a double track," said Benny. 
 " That's what she is." 
 
 " I think she's my mother," said Tina 
 softly, " but I shall always call her Madam 
 Kitty." 
 
 353
 
 LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000043655 o