Paradise A LOST PARADISE 'Good Lord, Dick!" she gasped. "What do you want?' A LOST PARADISE BY FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER FRONTISPIECE BY WILL GREFE NEW YORK W. J. WATT & COMPANY PUBLISHEBS COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY W. J. WATT & COMPANY A LOST PARADISE 2136S05 A LOST PARADISE. CHAPTER I. SUCCESS! It pulsed and vibrated throughout the entire theatre, from the footlights to the outermost limits of the lobby, from the orchestra seats to the eerie heights of the peanut gallery, in subtle telepathic waves. Some suggestion of it penetrated even to the grim fastnesses of the box-office, where scepticism rules ram- pant, and with thin-lipped cynicism watches the waver- ing line at the ticket-window, until, perchance, put to flight by weeks of "capacity" business. A brilliant audience was crowding into the lobby, an audience of evening clothes and automobiles, good- natured, prosperous, smiling with pleased expectancy. The play had been well advertised. The theatre was a popular one. They looked for a success, since here successes in the past had been the rule. Even the name of the play, "The Winner," glowing across the front of the theatre in electric brilliancy, seemed to nullify any idea of failure. Success vibrated in the air, elusive, yet unmistakable. 5 6 A LOST PAEADISE. To the tired-eyed actors in their dressing-rooms, how- ever, these vibrations did not extend. Between them and the front of the house hung an asbestos curtain, a wall between the land of the real and the land of the make-believe. These hard-working folk, whose make- believe is so bitterly real as well, in its hardships and its disappointments, had learned, by experience, to feel no surety, no certainty of success, until it had been defi- nitely won. And then, too, it is considered an evil omen, in that stronghold of superstition back of the footlights, for the actors to feel great confidence in a new play. Too often has it presaged disaster. The body of the house, cunningly "dressed" as is usual on opening nights, presented a brilliant and viv- idly interesting spectacle. Everybody, it might almost be said, was there. Down front sat the implacable " death watch," the habitual first-nighters, habitually bored. With them might have been seen the critics, in the aisle seats of the first few rows, some of them trying to evolve witticisms at the expense of the title of the play, and already blocking out their criticisms in ad- vance; others boredly reading their programmes, won- dering, the while, what the devil it was all about, this time. Seeing from one to two hundred new plays a sea- son has its disadvantages. One is apt to become ultra- sophisticated. Toward the centre of the house sat the manager's friends, and his friends' friends, to the number of two or three hundred, all, like the department-store clerks and sales-ladies in the first balcony, ready to applaud vociferously anything that might afford the least sem- r A LOST PAEADISE. 7 blance of an excuse for applause. A "paper" audience largely, ready-handed, and, with the exception of the "death watch" and the critics, an indulgent one. Here and there were to be seen prominent actors or actresses, out of an engagement for the moment, wel- coming the opportunity to be, as it were, on the side- lines, instead of in the game ; rival managers, eager to see the latest attempt of the opposition, secretly hoping for failure; magazine editors, playwrights and "near" playwrights, newspaper men, friends of the various members of the company, and a sprinkling of the general public. The brilliant evening gowns of the women, punc- tuated more or less regularly by the sombre black and white of their escorts, gave to the assemblage the appear- ance of a huge and animated flower garden, in which the men played the part of stakes to which the various plants were affixed. A subtle perfume, an electrical buzz of conversation, a thrill of delicious, although secret, cruelty, swept through the audience. Not without reason did La Rochefoucauld say, "There is that in the misfortunes of others which is not displeasing to us." This atti- tude was by no means confined to the outsiders. Even the friends of those most intimately concerned felt it, although they were not conscious of it. Before them grim conflict was about to be unfolded, a conflict between failure and success. Much was at stake the price of victory might run far into six figures. They would not have been human, had they not felt an impersonal interest in the outcome of the struggle, and, if the time 8 A LOST PAEADISE. should come for turning down the thumb, even the self-interest that would prevent them from doing so could not destroy the secret joy of the impulse. There are but three people, perhaps, in this audience of several hundred, in whom we are particularly in- terested. One is the manager, florid of face, painfully, almost unreally calm, nervously smoking his cigar in the lobby. The house is nearly full. The orchestra has begun the overture. In eight minutes, or possibly ten, the lights will flash for the rise of the curtain. He has, in all, some five thousand dollars at stake the production has been a fairly costly one, for a play of the type. He is wondering whether he will lose it, or whether it will multiply itself a hundred-fold in the sunshine of success. In a little while he will go inside, and, leaning over the brass rail behind the last row of seats, will watch, not the performance, but the audience. Just at the moment, two friends of his, who have seen the dress rehearsal, are telling him how impossible it would be for the play not to be a tremendous hit. He listens to this with ill-concealed annoyance, regarding it as an unfavorable sign. The second person with whom we are for the moment concerned, is a keen-looking, middle-aged man, who occupies a seat alone in the tenth row. He has pointed gray mustaches, of a military flavor, and slightly gray hair. From his close-lipped, rather cynical mouth, one would judge him to a man whose acquaintance with human nature was both varied and intimate. His smile, however, although it intensifies the net-work of wrinkles about his eyes, gives the lie to the cynicism of A LOST PAEADISE. 9 his mouth. A man with a heart, although the road to it might not be an easy one. He gazes about, nodding here and there to some of the professional people in the audience, from which it might appear that he is of their world. This to a limited extent is true. Ed- mund Taylor is the owner and also largely the editor of a magazine, the keen and incisive wit of which but serves to give point to the weightier matter for which it is noted. A man of the world, in the best sense, Mr. Taylor. We shall see more of him, hereafter. He has come, to-night, because of an exceptional interest in the author of the play. The third person concerning us directly at this time is also a friend of the author a friend, that is, for want of a better term, since she has about made up her mind to marry him. She is a handsome young woman of twenty-eight, who looks twenty-two and thinks forty. The first impression that reaches the casual observer is one of exceptional beauty. Through the haze of it presently appear two rather remarkable gray-green eyes, notable both for their unsuspected flashes of sophistica- tion, and for the fact that they are set perhaps a trifle too close together. She is, however, very lovely and charming, and that causes one to forgive her some- what self-assertive manner. Her chin is firm, excellently molded, and full of character. Her hair is deep brown, with reddish high- lights. Her figure is ultra-modern, of that box-like variety, narrow of hip, flat of back, which robs women of the purely maternal attribute, but lends them a more 10 A LOST PARADISE. far-reaching sex appeal, no doubt because it is both more bizarre and more elusive. Her rather too flagrant exposure of her shoulders and breast finds palliation in their ivory-like beauty, and in the girlishness of their contour. Youth can so brazenly defy the conventions, when it affords its own excuse. Inez Gordon radiates youth, being both old enough and wise enough to conceal her sophistication behind a mask of girlish innocence. This is the more easy, no doubt, since she is an actress. She sits alone, with perhaps as deep an interest in the play as anyone in the audience, not excepting the manager and the author. This arises from the fact, already mentioned, that she has made up her mind to marry the latter, in case the play proves a success. It must not be supposed for a moment that the object of her intentions knows this. He supposes she is going to marry him in any event, since they love each other, and have many times agreed, between them, that love is the most perfect flower of human existence, or words to that effect. And lest the foregoing do either of these young per- sons an injustice, let it be said that they do love each other, although no shock of adversity has yet come, to prove whether that love is founded on the rock of truth, or on the shifting sands of opportunity. Its strength has not as yet been tested. She sits nervously fingering her programme, and wondering why the rise of the curtain is so long delayed. It is but two minutes past the half-hour, yet these two minutes have seemed like ages. She wonders how long A LOST PARADISE. 11 it will be before she stands on the opposite side of the footlights, on such a night as this, starring in a play of her famous playwright husband. The play in which she is to star has, in fact, already been started. Only the weeks of rehearsal incident upon the present pro- duction have prevented its completion. Inez Gordon is a native of New York, and a product of it, as well. Gordon is not her name. Neither is Inez. She was baptized Sophie Walsh, and her father has been for many years a clerk of the Supreme Court. She has drifted to the stage because of her beauty. She has stayed there because of her ability. So far, ingenue parts, and leads in small summer stock companies, have been the limits of her success. At present, she is out of an engagement, because the show in which she opened in January ran but two melancholy weeks. She has known the author of the present play for seven months, and they have both looked forward for three to this evening with high hopes. Hence her nervousness, as she awaits the rise of the curtain. Behind that curtain, a seemingly hopeless confusion prevails. A half-dozen stage-hands are rushing here and there, under the direction of the head carpenter, adjusting a hundred tiny details of scenery. The prop- erty-man is taking a final look about, consulting with nervous intensity a typewritten list he holds in his hand, and making sure for the twentieth time that nothing, down to the box of matches on the smoking table, or the broken paper-knife on the desk, has been forgotten. A "scenic artist" is daubing brushfuls of paint on certain scars in the scenery, which have re- 12 A LOST PARADISE. suited from the wear and tear of the previous three nights "on the road." The stage-director is inspecting everything with an anxiety born of responsibility, for upon his shoulders the burden of the production rests. He has just called the electrician's attention to the fact that one of his "baby spots," the purpose of which is to focus itself with unvarying pertinacity upon the face of the leading woman, is striking one of the set pieces, thereby not only defeating its primary purpose, but illuminating a box of artificial geraniums in a window sill until they fairly leap across the footlights. In a few moments, the signal will be given for the rise of the curtain. The actors, garish in their make- up, crowd the wings, nervously repeating to themselves their opening lines. Upon the faces of all of them rests a look of fear. This is an opening night. The dread spectre of a missed cue, a forgotten line, a mis- taken piece of "business," haunts them. They know the temper of the audience beyond that protecting cur- tain. They know that, for all its friendliness, it will pounce upon them, and rend them to bits, if they fail. They know the thin dividing line, the feather edge, between tragedy and laughter. They know how fright- fully easy it is to overstep that line. They feel like early Christian martyrs, about to enter the arena, and even the most seasoned of them perhaps particularly the most seasoned of them is afraid. There are many little tragedies behind their grease- paint. Here is a man who has been without an engage- ment for nearly a year, and who has gone into debt for hundreds of dollars at his club, in order to live. To him A LOST PABADISE. 13 the success of this play means even more than it does to the manager, for the latter can laugh at the loss of a few thousands, but the former may sit in a hall bedroom and think of suicide. Here is a woman, who has two children to support, and looks to her thirty-five dollars a week to support them. If the play fails, she may be obliged to borrow money from the wolf-eyed man who has been for weeks so over-ready to lend it. But these little tragedies are outside our story. The public, out in front, knows nothing of them. The critics may know, but they are judging a play, not life. " The play's the thing." Let us leave the actors to their fate. And what of the author all this time? He is the cause of all this excitement and bustle, all this hoping and fearing. He has sat in his room, and written a hundred and twenty pages of typewritten manuscript, and as a result perhaps ten thousand people have done ten thousand things, all tending toward the vibrating moment when the curtain shall rise, and the audience sit back with a sigh of relief, and begin to watch the action of the play. Scenery has been painted for him. Properties have been bought, borrowed or manufactured. Costumes have been made. All the resources of department stores, antique shops, electrical manufacturers, rug-dealers, furniture-makers, and what not, have been drawn upon to contribute toward his success. Nearly a thousand people have so ordered their lives that upon this par- ticular evening they sit in this particular theatre, to witness the result of his mental efforts. Taxicab drivers, car conductors, have brought them. All the 14 A LOST PARADISE. machinery of civilized life, in one way or another, has, by his cerebration, been brought to bear, for the moment, upon this thirty-foot stage, in order to win him success. And yet we seem to have forgotten him. By searching diligently through the mass of scenery and properties which litter the rear of the stage, we shall presently find a distressingly pale and nervous- looking young man, sitting on a packing box in a corner, smoking a cigarette, the while he pretends to read the contents of a sheaf of congratulatory telegrams which he holds in one hand. He is in evening dress, the cut of which is a trifle archaic, owing to its having been made some five years before. His soft gray hat is pulled rakishly over one ear. His face, handsome, clean-shaven, somewhat boyish, shows deep lines of sleeplessness and overwork. He has sat up for the past three nights, rewriting cer- tain scenes, which on the road have developed un- suspected weaknesses. His eyes have the brightness due to over-stimulation. He is so nervous that he can scarcely read the kindly wishes for success which the telegrams have brought him. The stage door-keeper, remembering several excellent cigars donated during re- hearsals, comes up and hands him more telegrams. "Hope it's a knock-out, Mr. Randall," he says pleasantly. The young man nods, smiling a rather ghastly smile, and slips the telegrams into his pocket. " Sure to be," he replies, "if the wishes of my friends can make it so." He lights another cigarette, and, rising, begins to pace restlessly up and down. He A LOST PARADISE. 15 wishes himself a thousand miles away, yet could not be induced to stir a dozen paces from where he now stands. He is a man of good height, and would be of good build, as well, were he a trifle heavier. His clothes hang a little too loosely on his frame; evidently he weighs less than he did when they were made for him. His half-humorous, half-whimsical smile develops deep lines in his face. It suggests, in a way, the tired face of a gambler, and not without reason. If this play fails Richard Eandall will not only be flat broke, but he will be nearly two thousand dollars in debt, as well. If it succeeds, he may make a hundred thousand perhaps even two. It is quite as exciting as roulette, or any other gambling game, and the stakes are larger. Men have committed suicide, at Monte Carlo, for less. And the wheel is about to begin spinning. In two hours and a half indeed, in less, for the end of the third act will tell the story all will be over. No wonder the man is nervous. He selects from the envelopes in his hand a single one, which contains, not a telegram, but a folded sheet of paper. Upon it is written, "Success for you, Dick, and for us. Inez." He kisses the bit of paper, looking about furtively, to see whether or not any of the stage-hands have observed him. They have not, being all far too busy. Suddenly, there is a cessation of bustle upon the stage. The stage-hands crowd into the wings. The director gives a last look about, and whispers, "Ring !" An electric button is pressed. The orchestra ceases its 16 A LOST PARADISE. playing, with a flourish. The curtain rises. Kandall hears a clear voice saying, "Here is the morning's mail, Miss." He throws down his cigarette, and walks slowly toward the stage entrance. The conflict is on. " Vae victis." CHAPTEK H. EICHAED RANDALL walked slowly toward the stage door. A beautiful woman, her face blazing with rouge, her eyebrows and lashes encrusted with grease paint, met him as he reached the foot of the stairway leading to the dressing-rooms. " Oh, I do hope it will be a success, Mr. Kandall," she said. " I wish it for you with all my heart, and I believe you're going to get it." He smiled and pressed her hand between both of his. "You dear!" he exclaimed. "I know I shall, if it rests with you. Good luck, to-night and always." She laughed, and arranged the flowers in her corsage. " You're not going ? " she inquired, glancing toward the stage door. " Just to get a little air. You see, I'm sort of nervous I guess, and " He paused, smiling. " So am I," she remarked, with a little moue of dis- satisfaction. "I always am opening nights, but I'll get over it as soon as I've spoken my first lines." She paused for a moment, listening. "For heaven's sake, don't let me miss that cue." " Run along then. I'd never hear it, in my present state." He patted her shoulder affectionately. " You're superb, Miss Ellis. If the thing's a go, I'll owe a lot 17 18 A LOST PARADISE. to you." He flashed her a smile that matched in its genuineness the note of feeling in his voice. " I don't know where we'd have been, if anyone else had played the lead." She started suddenly. "That's me!" she cried, and ran toward the wings. "Good-by." With her very next breath she was speaking the opening lines of her part, as she made her entrance. Randall paused for a moment, smiling, as he listened to her clear, steady voice, then passed out into the alley beside the theatre. In the street, he debated whether to go around to the front of the house, and see the first act, or to walk on toward Broadway. He decided upon the lat- ter. He knew the play by heart, and felt too nervously excited to be able to endure hearing it again. He strolled on toward the maze of electric signs that marked Broadway. A dozen reasons told him that the play would be a success. It had been most favorably reviewed upon the road. It was written with sincerity, with a real striving toward the truth. It had been given an excel- lent production, and in the main a competent cast. It was not his first play. A bitter failure the pre- ceding season had, he believed, taught him much. The critics had been savage, on that occasion, but beneath their cheap witticisms, their cynical derision, he had found much that was true, much that was helpful. He believed that he had profited by it. The only fear in his heart arose from a knowledge that sincerity A LOST PARADISE. 19 and truth, in a play, are by no means always in its favor. Sometimes people resented these things. They came to the theatre to be entertained, not shown their littleness, their shortcomings. Yet such plays had succeeded. He revolved end- lessly about this theme, as he made his way into the cafe of a near-by hotel. He felt strangely tired almost apathetic. He was experiencing the reaction from the bitter strain of the five preceding weeks. He had worked very hard had built such great hopes upon the success of this play. It meant more to him, indeed, than just the money it might bring him. All these letters and telegrams in his pocket spoke of a faith, on the part of his friends, which it was necessary, now, for him to justify. They had stuck by him, loyally, through one failure. He could not ask them to do so through a second. Then, there was Edmund Taylor, the editor, who had proven such a splendid friend. During the past eighteen months, he had lent Randall nearly two thou- sand dollars, just because he believed in him and his ability. What would Taylor say, what would he think, if another failure were to be scored against him ? And, above all, there was Inez Gordon. Randall felt in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a ring, a heavy band of gold, curiously enameled, and contain- ing a sapphire. It was not a costly ring he was in no position to spend money for jewelry but he had taken a small sum from the advance royalty of five hundred dollars, which Harrison, the manager, had paid him upon closing the contract for the play, and 20 A LOST PARADISE. had bought this ring, a curious antique, for a specific purpose. He meant, if the play was a success to- night, to ask Inez Gordon to marry him, and this ring he intended should be her engagement ring. He slipped the ring quickly back into his pocket as a man came up to him. "Hello, Kandall!" he said. "How's the boy?" "Pretty well. Have a drink?" He nodded to the bar-tender. "What'll it be?" "Little whiskey for me. Why aren't you at your show ? You open to-night, don't you ?" "Yes, I I just ran out for a moment." "How's she going?" "Too early to say yet." "Well, I wish you luck." He tossed off his drink. "Got great notices out of town, I hear. Say, if you've got any other plays, bring 'em around. I'd be glad to read 'em. So long. Got a party waiting for me over at the Astor, so I can't stop." He hurried off. Randall walked back toward the theatre, an amused smile about the corners of his eyes. This man, Sle- singer, was a manager whom he had been vainly trying, for some months past, to get to read one of his plays. The manuscript had remained in his office unread, for many weeks. It was there now. How greatly even the possibility of success changed the aspect of things. If to-night proved his worth as a playwright, he knew that to-morrow would find his wares at a premium. Managers would even compete with one another, to secure the output of his pen. Anything he wrote would find at least an immediate reading, with excellent A LOST PAEADISE. 21 chances of acceptance upon the strength of his suc- cess. It was, indeed, a large stake, for which he was playing. He reached the theatre just as the curtain was rising on the second act. He passed the ticket-taker with a nod, and entered the darkened auditorium. As he stood behind the rail, listening to the familiar words of the dialogue, someone touched him on the arm. It was Harrison, his manager. "Where've you been ?" the latter whispered. "Back." "First act went great." "Did it? That's good." "Six curtains. That Ellis girl's a wonder." "Glad you think so. I always did." There was a winged dart in this latter remark. Harrison had objected to Randall's choice for the lead strenuously, and had only given in after many predictions of dire failure. "I know you did. I'll hand it to you." The man- ager was a big-enough man to admit his mistakes when he made any. They stood in silence, watching the remainder of the act. It moved smoothly, rapidly, vitally. The audience was undeniably interested. There was none of that rustling restlessness which so quickly becomes evident whenever a scene fails to hold. Both Har- rison and Randall dreaded that shifting of feet, that moving of programmes, that low clearing of throats, more than they would have dreaded open and condemna- tory hissing. The latter might mean a sensation, 22 A LOST PARADISE. which, though unpleasant, the town would crowd to see. The former could only mean the dulness that spells failure. The act terminated. Randall and his companion counted the calls. By clever manipulation of the cur- tain they totaled twelve. And only the second act! It certainly looked like a success. "Let's get a drink," said Harrison, as they hurried out to avoid the rising crowd. Randall assented at once. He had no desire to talk things over, at this stage of the game, with the many acquaintances who would shortly throng into the loLby. He preferred to wait, and meet them when success was assured beyond all peradventure. "I'm going back, for this act," Randall said, when they had returned from the cafe at the corner. "All right. And be in the first lower entrance, for the curtain. If this is a real success, and not a false alarm, you may have to go on. I'll be there." Randall shivered. He dreaded the ordeal, much as he hoped for it. He had no desire to appear and make a perfunctory bow, yet he knew that failure to call for him would be a distressingly bad sign. He never knew, afterward, how he got through the forty minutes of that act. It seemed longer than all his previous life. He sat in a far corner of the stage, unnoticed, and consumed cigarette after cigar- ette, scarcely knowing what he was doing. Every few moments he glanced at his watch, for he knew that the curtain would be down at about ten, twenty-five; yet, had he been asked the time a moment after he had 'A. LOST PARADISE. 23 replaced the watch in his pocket, he could not have told it. One of the minor actors, Miss Vincent, a young girl of about twenty, espied him, and, coming over, sat beside him. "It's going great," she said. "Oh, Mr. Randall, I wish you'd write me a play. Or a vaudeville sketch. I've got an idea about a girl that's brought up in the country, and gets kidnaped by a burglar, and he finds out later on that it's his own daughter, that he hasn't seen for ten years. And then the girl's mother her step-mother, I mean " Randall never heard the end of this remarkable plot. As the girl rambled on, suggesting that he come to her apartment some afternoon to talk it over, he became conscious of the clear, virile voice of Jane Ellis, speaking the lines which formed the concluding speech of the act. He threw down his cigarette, and ground it under his heel, thrust his soft hat into the pocket of the overcoat, and went toward the first entrance. The stage-director was there, and with him Mr. Harrison. Several of the members of the company, who did not appear in the concluding scene of the act, clustered about. Randall made his way through the little crowd, and stood beside Mr. Paulson, the director. The curtain had just fallen. A ghastly stillness came over the people on the stage. They moved neither hand nor foot, but listened for that first tumultuous burst of applause, the spoa- 24 A LOST PARADISE. taneity of which their trained ears could gauge with almost unvarying correctness. In an instant it came, beating against the wall of the curtain with a dull roar, like that made by breakers upon a beach. Harrison smiled, and raised his hand. The curtain went up. "King!" he called, instantly, and it fell again. Mr. Paulson, the director, was calling out the prearranged orders for the appearance of the various members of the company. First came the second picture, with Miss Ellis and the leading man in a close embrace, then Miss Ellis alone, then with her companion in the scene, then the latter appeared alone, then the two of them, accom- panied by the others who had figured in the act, in carefully arranged groups. The applause did not diminish in volume. Harrison's smile became more and more broad. He knew, of course, that much of the clapping came from his own cohorts, but there seemed to him a genuine ring about it that indicated success. After the eighteenth curtain, Paulson turned to Eandall. "They're calling for the author," he said. "You'd better show." Harrison raised his hand. "Don't say anything," he warned. "Just make a bow and beat it." The warning was quite unnecessary. Randall could not have spoken a dozen words if his life had depended A LOST PARADISE. 25 upon it. His brain seemed utterly at a standstill, his feet made of lead. In some manner never to be explained, he presently found himself walking out against a blinding glare of light, beyond which rocked a sea of faces, a whirl of white shirt fronts and women's gowns. He saw no one individually. He felt none of the pride of achieve- ment of which he had so often dreamed. All he wanted to do was to get off the stage as gracefully and as quickly as he could. He made a jerky nervous little bow, directed toward the house in general, said, "I thank you," with his lips, although no sound came forth, then managed to back with more or less awkwardness, into the friendly shelter of the wings. He gasped, drew out a cigarette, and asked the head carpenter for a match. "Strike!" called Paulson to the stage-hands. Harrison took Randall by the arm. "Let's get some air," he said. "It's hot as the devil in here." They went out into the narrow alleyway which sur- rounded the theatre, and started toward the street. "Well what do you think ?" Harrison demanded. Randall looked up suddenly. He had supposed the fight over the victory won. "Isn't it a success ?" he asked. Harrison rolled his cigar around in his mouth, several times, before replying. "Yes," he said, presently; "I think it is. Looks like it, anyway." With a huge sigh of relief, Randall lit his cigarette. 26 A LOST PAEADISE. They were on the sidewalk now. A group of men was headed toward Broadway. They seized upon the two at once. "Author author !" mimicked one of them, in falsetto tones. "Congratulations, old chap. Hope you make a barrel of money out of it." It was Harrison's press- man, and his smile indicated the satisfaction he felt. He introduced his companion. "Mr. Edgerton," he said, "America's foremost comedian. No play is com- plete without him. Say, Ed, you and Mr. Randall here ought to get together. He might be able to fix you up for next season." "Under my management," remarked Harrison, dryly. "I was just talking with Willard," the press-man went on, mentioning the name of a well-known critic. "Couldn't get him to say much." "Did he knock ?" asked Harrison fearfully. "No. Said he enjoyed the performance very much." "H-m. Afraid to commit himself, I suppose, until he finds out what Glauber and the other fellows on the morning papers have to say. He's with the other side, anyway. Well here we are." He entered the swing- ing door of the cafe. "I guess they can't any of them knock very hard. Too good a show." "Eight you are," remarked Edgerton, heartily. "Do you know, though, Mr. Randall, I think you make a little mistake in playing up this socialistic stuff so strong? People go to the theatre to be amused. Make 'em laugh. Don't try to teach 'em how to treat their fellow-men. They don't want it not in the theatre, at least. May go in a church." A LOST PARADISE. 27 "They seemed to like it to-night," said Eandall, a trifle stiffly. "I know I know. But remember what I tell you, my boy. I'm old enough to be your father, and believe me don't get the idea in your head that the stage is an instrument for good, a moral uplift, or anything like that. They'll stand that for that sort of thing in Chicago, occasionally, but not here on old Broadway. Don't try to make 'em think, make 'em laugh shock 'em appeal to tneir primitive instincts and emotions, but nix on the Ibsen stuff. You may get a niche in the hall of fame, when you're dead, but I imagine it's royalties you're after. Laughs, lingerie or crime. That's what they want, nowadays. What are you boys going to have? Buttermilk for mine." Mr. Edgerton's remarks filled Eandall with a sud- den disquietude, but he soon shook it off. !Nobody could deny the evidence of those nineteen curtain calls, or of that tumultuous and long-continued applause. He thought of Inez Gordon, and caressed the ring in his waistcoat pocket, a warm glow of happiness in his heart. The drink served to dispel some of the weariness that oppressed him. He began to feel a sense of im- portance, a foretaste of the intoxication of success. A manager affiliated with Harrison joined the group. Eegarded throughout the theatrical world as a man almost glacial in manner, his greeting of Eandall was comparatively warm. "You got a good show there," he said. "Little too talky, at times not quite enough action, but a good 28 r A LOST PAEADISE. show. Ought to make some money. . . . Yes. I'll have a glass of seltzer." They walked back to the theatre to see the last act. Eandall went around to the stage entrance he wished to see Miss Ellis, and the other members of the com- pany, and congratulate them, after the performance. The last act was short. At a few minutes before eleven, he found himself in the leading woman's dress- ing-room. She had already taken off her gown, and sat in a kimono before the mirror of her dressing-table, chatting with some women friends who had come back, after the performance, to offer their felicitations. She turned to Eandall with a radiant smile. "I hope you were satisfied, Mr. Eandall," she said. ".Wasn't it splendid ?" The role had offered her great advantages, and she had made the most of them. "You were splendid," he said, taking her hand. "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don't know what would have happened, without you." "How does it feel, to be a successful playwright ?" she asked, joyously, after presenting him to her friends. "Well," he said, deprecatingly, "I don't exactly know. The only way I feel, right now, is frightfully tired." She threw a searching look into his face. "You ought to be in bed," she remarked, laughing, "I know it," he said. "And so I'll say good-night. See you to-morrow." He bowed and was about to go. She took a gardenia from a bunch she had worn, and handed it to him. A LOST PARADISE. 29 "This for luck," she said. He put it in the lapel of his coat. "Thanks, and good-night." He was in a hurry to meet Inez, but still he had to say a word to the leading man, and to one or two of the other members of the company. It was after eleven when he left the stage-entrance, and started down the alleyway toward the street. Inez was to meet him here just inside the iron gate. She, impatient at his delay, had come part way down toward the stage-door, and, almost before he knew it, she appeared out of the darkness, and ran up to him. "Oh, Dick!" she cried, throwing her arms about his neck. "Isn't it glorious ! The play is over and over big. You ought to have heard what the people around me said. I'm so glad !" It was a moment or two before he recovered from the shock of her unexpected appearance. Then he swept her into his arms with a sudden laugh, and kissed her over and over, holding her slim body close to his. The relief, the joyous relief of feeling, after all these nerve- racking weeks of thought, rushed over him in a flood of warmth and happiness. "Dear little girl," he said, "I'm the happiest man in New York." "You ought to be " she looked up at him proudly "after your success to-night." "It isn't only that. It's it's you! Now we can be married." 30 A LOST PARADISE. "Married?" She pretended, playfully, that his words came as a surprise. "Yes." He drew the ring from his pocket, and, taking her hand, slipped it upon her finger. "Nothing shall ever separate us again. From now on we belong to each other." Again he encircled her with his arms. "You dear!" "Oh, Dick! Do you want me really?" "I love you. I love you, and I want you more than anything in the world." She looked up at him with joy and happiness in her eyes. "I love you, dear," she said, "and, from now on, we'll never leave each other any more." The opening of the stage door warned them that some of the members of the company were about to come out into the alleyway. They drew away from each other. "Let's go to Jack's, and get something to eat," he said. "I'm awfully hungry." "Let's. And I'll tell you all about the nice things the people around me said." They moved toward the sidewalk. "It's the greatest thing in the world," remarked Randall, to himself, as they turned toward Sixth Ave- nue. "What?" she asked. "Success," he replied, and, putting his arm through hers, drew her close to him. "It makes everything else possible." CHAPTER III. THE restaurant was only partially filled when Randall and his companion entered. The night crowd had not yet begun to arrive. They chose the down- town side, as it was more quiet, and they had been in the habit of sitting here at a certain table in the rear corner. It was luckily unoccupied. As they took their seats, the waiter came up with a smile. "Wiirzburger ?" he asked, inquiringly. Over and over they had come here, after rehearsals, to discuss the play, and its progress. Randall had been in the habit of drinking the imported beer; he fancied it quieted his nerves, and made him sleep. He shook his head, and smiled up at the waiter, boyishly. "We're going to have some champagne, to-night." Success such success as he felt he had won, deserved to be celebrated in something more fitting than beer. He gave the waiter the name of the brand. "A quart, please, and let me have the bill of fare." Inez smiled joyfully at him, across the table. "I know what you want," she said ; "and so do I." "What ?" He laughed back at her. "Soft clams a la Newburg." It was a favorite dish of his. "And a caviar sandwich first, for an appe- tizer." 31 32 A LOST PARADISE. He gave the order, and, leaning across the table, stroked her hand. "Isn't it splendid, dear, to know that from now on money doesn't make the least difference with us ? We can have everything we want." "How much do you expect to get out of this play, Dick?" she asked, delighted at the change in him. Eandall had been gloomy, preoccupied, of late. "Oh, six or seven hundred a week at least from this company alone. You see my royalties are five, seven and a half, and ten. Five per cent, on weekly gross receipts up to five thousand, seven and a half on the next two thousand, and ten per cent, on all over that. If then they do nine thousand dollars a week, which would be only fair, for that house, I'll get let me see." He began to make figures on the margin of the menu card. "That would be six hundred a week. They will probably do better. Then, if they put out say two road companies, I'd get not less than five hundred a week from each. Say fifteen hundred a week from the three. That would be quite an income, wouldn't it? I should feel as though I had suddenly become possessed of Aladdin's wonderful lamp." She looked lovingly at the ring he had placed on her finger, turning it this way and that, as the light of the little table lamp flashed blue fire from the sapphire. "I do love you, Dick," she said. "And, next season, I'll open in my own play." He frowned slightly. "Why bother about that ? Wouldn't it be a lot more A LOST PARADISE. 33 fun, to take a trip to the Mediterranean Cairo and all that ? You know, I'm pretty well tired out, and I've always wanted to go to the East. We could have a lovely time, and it would do us both lots of good to get away from the cobblestones, for a while." She considered this for some little time, busying her- self with the bits of bread and butter she was eating. "It would be splendid, Dick," she said at length. "But, you know, I have ambitions, too. I'd never be happy, just to do nothing. You see, I made up my mind, five years ago, that some day I'd see my name in electric lights, on Broadway. I suppose it's a foolish ambition, but I can't give it up. You'll help me, won't you, dear ?" "I'm not sure I'd want my wife " he lingered over the word lovingly "to spend her time acting, when she ought to be with me. Why don't you give up the idea ? There's no real happiness in it, and, in the end, something always happens. You'd probably fall in love with your leading man, and forget all about me." He spoke playfully, but there was an under- current of earnestness to what he said, that was not lost upon the girl. "Now, Dick!" She took his hand, and, pulling it down upon the table, began to caress it. "You're not going to be as old fashioned and silly as all that, are you? You know I'd never fall in love with anybody else, as long as I have you. It doesn't show much confidence in my my feeling for you, I must say." Her tone, carrying with it a suggestion of reproof, reduced him to instant submission. 34 A LOST PARADISE. "Of course, I don't doubt your love, dear," he said. "How could I, after the way you've stuck by me, through all these months ? Now that I've got success, I'll not forget those who were really my friends." A momentary shadow crossed his face. "There were a lot who weren't, you know. You, and dear old Tay- lor I'll never forget all you've done for me. If you want to act, dear, I'll write you a play that will make you the biggest actress in the country. You know I can do it. I've proved that now, I guess." He turned and glanced about the room, as the waiter arrived with the sandwiches and the wine. "There's Paulson, over there," he said, nodding and smiling to a couple at a table across the room. "He's got that Vincent girl with him. She was asking me, to-night, to write Tier a play. Told me a long-winded plot I forget what about." Miss Gordon scrutinized the girl critically. Then she laughed. "That little idiot ! She certainly has nerve. I don't doubt though that, now you've made good, everybody in the company, down to the woman who plays the nursemaid, will be after you to write plays for them. It's the usual thing." "I suppose so. However, I can pick and choose, now. Edgerton wants me to do something for him, next season." "What the comedian ?" "Yes." "H-m ! He'll want to write half of it himself, and put his name on the bills as co-author. He always A LOST PARADISE. 35 iloes. You can't afford to bother with people like that. Take my advice, Dick. Make yourself more import- ant. You're too nice to people too agreeable. Put these second-rate actors in their place. Let them run after you. You've got to do that, in this game. If you're nice and accommodating, they'll despise you. If you take no notice of them, and let them beg you for stuff, they'll think you're the greatest ever. That's the game, along Broadway. Don't depreciate yourself. Eemember that you're a successful author, now." She raised her glass, and looked at him with glowing eyes over the rim. "To the play !" she said. "And to you!" He took a sip of the wine. "Do you know, dear, it's your love the fact that we are going to be married, that malkes me so happy to- night ? Of course, I'm glad about the play, more glad than I can tell you. But this thing between us is a bigger thing. I like to feel that, even if the play had not succeeded, you would have come to me, and said: 'Never mind. We love each other, and that is more important that a hundred plays.' " "You know I would, dear," she said, her voice very low, very soft and caressing. "Didn't I love you even before to-night ?" "God bless you yes. I'm the happiest and the luckiest man in the world." He began to eat hungrily. "I feel better already," he said, between mouthfuls. "You'll never know, Inez, how tired I've been for the past five weeks. Sometimes, when I've got up in the morning, I've felt as though I simply couldn't go on. The terrible nervous strain of the thing the loss of 36 A LOST PARADISE. sleep the irregular eating. I tell you, if it had kept up for another month, I'd have been on my back in a hospital." "I know it, dear. You're terribly run down. Why don't you take a rest ?" "I mean to. I'll tell you what we'll do. I want to stay around town for another week, to see that everything is going smoothly, and settle up some busi- ness matters, and then we'll be married, and go down to Atlantic City for a month or so, just as a sort of preliminary honeymoon." He looked at her eagerly. "What do you say ?" "I think it would be wonderful. You know how I love the sea. And we could work together, on that play for me just -a little, each day, you know, so as not to tire you." "I'd rather forget work, for a while," he said. "If I have you, it will be quite enough, I guess, to occupy my time." She joined in his laugh. "All right, dear, just as you say. But I'd be willing to bet that at the end of a week you'd be wanting to do something. You couldn't help it. Your brain is so active ! You see, I know you better than you know yourself." As she spoke, Paulson, the stage-director, came over from the opposite table. "I don't think I had an opportunity to congratulate you, Eandall," he said, extending his hand. "Looks like it got over in great shape." A LOST PARADISE. 37 "Thanks." He shook Paulson's hand warmly. "Let me present you to Miss Gordon." The two bowed. "Miss Vincent tells me," Paulson said with a smil- ing glance at his companion across the room, "that you are going to do a play for her. Glad to hear it. A girl with remarkable talent, Randall. I've known her for some time, and I'm greatly interested in her." Randall suddenly remembered that it was to Paul- son that Miss Vincent owed her position in the cast. "I I was talking to her about the matter to-night," he stammered. "I'd be glad, to do a play for her, sometime." "Fine. I want you to. Tell you what when I see you to-morrow, we'll make an appointment, and go up to her apartment she lives at the Arlington, you know and we'll go over an idea she has, and block out a scenario. She's been telling me about it. Sounds pretty good. Of course, furnishing the plot, she might want a piece of the thing say twenty-five per cent., but that could be adjusted later." Randall caught a glimpse of his companion's eyes through the haze of the smoke from his cigarette. There was a curious glitter in them, which he had never observed before. "I'm afraid Mr. Randall is too worn out to attempt any new work at present," she said, pointedly. "He has just been telling me he's thinking of going away for a long rest." Paulson flashed a quick, inquiring glance at the girl, 38 A LOST PARADISE. evidently wondering where her interest in the matter lay. "Time enough," he said suavely. "Couldn't do any- thing, now, before next season, anyway. See you later." He nodded to Randall, bowed silently to Miss Gordon and recrossed the room. Miss Vincent looked over, and gave Randall a bright smile. She was a pretty girl, with very large eyes and a superb complexion. Inez frowned slightly. "For goodness' sake, Dick," she said, "don't let people like that make a fool of you. That girl's nothing but a little fluff. She can't act, and never could. Paul- son wants to do something for her, of course. He's crazy about her. Don't let them get you tied up. Twenty-five per cent, interest, indeed! Ridiculous!" "Don't worry," said Randall, laughing. "I'm not going to get tangled up in any such propositions. You see, I never could work on other people's ideas, any- way. Don't see why I should, in fact. I've got plenty of my own. . . . Yes, you serve it," he said to the waiter, who came up with the blazing chafing dish. It was after midnight now, and the character of the crowd was beginning to change. The after-the-theatre parties, composed, so many of them, of out-of-town busi- ness men and their wives and daughters, feeling that they had spent a very riotous evening over their oysters and beer, began to depart, and another element began to take their place. This gradual change in the character of the patrons would go on until the early hours of the A LOST PAEADISE. 39 morning. The real night life had not yet begun, but its advance guard began to straggle in. The change was particularly noticeable in the women. There is a striking difference in appearance between those who start homeward at midnight, and those who are just starting out. The men, too, were different, being less staid in appearance, and younger. An hour or two later, still another type of men would appear keen-eyed, heavy-jawed individuals, who knew life and the underworld, as neither of the two preceding types would ever know it. These latter men came alone, to eat with women who were no longer young or foolish. And with them would come the rattle, outside, of the milk wagon, and the boys selling the morning papers. Randall eyed the changing throng without interest. The night life of New York was an old story to him, now. "How tired I am of it all !" he remarked as he sipped his champagne. "Tired of what ?" Inez, busy with her clams, and her dreams of early stardom, had not followed his train of thought. "This sort of thing." He waved his cigarette largely about the room. "Oh!" She went on with her eating. "I rather like it, Dick. I'm a terrible night-owl, you know." "Once in a while, it's well enough, but I feel like getting away to the country the sea. You love that, too, don't you?" "Of course, I do. I think Atlantic City is great. But I'd never want to live anywhere except in little old New York. You see, I was born here, and I 40 r A LOST PAEADISE. suppose I can't get it out of my system. You weren't. That makes a difference. Just the same, it's the only place for a man who's doing the sort of work you're doing. You've got to keep in touch with things." Randall regarded her critically. "I thought, when we are married," he said, slowly, "that perhaps you'd like to take a house up the Sound somewhere, say at New London. Somewhere where we could get to town in a couple of hours, if we had to, but where we could have the water, and nature." She laughed a thin, silvery laugh. "I'm not very strong on nature, Dick," she said. "Of course, I like the country, but one can't afford to bury oneself. You ought to be where you can see all the new shows, and belong to the right clubs, and keep in touch with life. I think too much of you, dear boy, to let you lose yourself in the wilds of New London. In the summer, fine; but in winter your place is right here." "I guess you're right," he said, smiling at her enthu- siasm. "Perhaps we'll have enough to keep a studio in town, and a bungalow at the sea-shore as well." "Of course, we will. That's just my idea." She saw a newsboy coming through the room calling a morning paper. "Here's a boy with The Planet" she said. "Now, you can see what a great man you've become." He bought the paper, and opened it eagerly, turning at once to the page containing the dramatic reviews. Inez, watching him, saw a sudden shadow settle over his face like a cloud, through which played lightning- like flashes of astonishment and pain. A LOST PARADISE. 41 "What is it, Dick ?" she exclaimed, clutching at the paper. He extended the sheet to her. The headlines seemed to flame before her. A sudden sinking of the heart left her speechless. They read: 'THE WINNER' BELIES ITS NAME. JANE ELLIS DOES GOOD WORK IN STUPID PLAY. CHAPTER IV. INEZ GORDON allowed the newspaper to drop from her trembling fingers. It fell into the plate from which she had been eating, but she was too excited to notice it, or to care, if she had. "Dick!" she exclaimed, in a voice thin, wiry, tone- less. "Isn't that rotten!" For a moment, he made no reply. The shock had been too great. It seemed unreal, ' unbelievable, that the play, his play, which had been so flatteringly received, so loudly applauded, but a few hours before, should be referred to in this way. "Let me see it again," he said, in a dull and tired voice. Even now, he could scarcely believe that he had read the lines aright. He recovered the paper from his companion's plate, and began, with flushed face, to read the criticism. He felt an unreasoning hatred for the author of it, a man, as a matter of fact, quite unknown to him. It seemed to him that this man had shamefully, wantonly, unjustly attacked and destroyed his work, the creature of his brain, and in so doing had destroyed his hopes for the future, the joyousness of his love, the very fabric of his life. Yet he knew in his heart that the review was entirely impersonal. A LOST PARADISE. 43 "Dull and full of platitudes/' he read at random. "For the last act there is no excuse whatever. The writer evidently thinks that he has made a discovery in social economics, when he announces gravely that 'all men are not born free and equal.' The love scene in the second act is sentimental piffle. One wonders that managers can be induced to spend money on such obvious balderdash. If young -Mr. Randall, whoever he may be, imagines that ISTew York is ready to listen to warmed-over socialistic tracts, he is sadly mistaken. The superb work of Jane Ellis saved 'The Winner' from being a loser of the worst type. It is doubtful if even her ability can drag it into a second week." He could read no more. No words rose to his frozen lips. He handed the paper to Inez. "Read it," he said. She took the paper from him, and read the criticism through. An angry gleam crept into her eyes. "It's a shame this sort of thing," she said; "a crime. It ought to be stopped. Has this man anything against you ?" "I've never even met him," Randall replied, play- ing nervously with a bit of bread. "Then he must have it in for Harrison." "I believe not. Harrison told me they were good friends." "But Dick the play could never be as bad as that. Of course, there were some places some scenes I didn't quite like. I'll admit the last act was a little tiresome. But you could easily fix that. The rest of it was great. And the audience thought so, too." 44 A LOST PARADISE. "It seemed to me so," he said, his voice trembling a little. "There were lots of Harrison's friends there." "Not so many; only a couple of hundred. And I heard lots of people all around me saying the finish of the third act was immense. Of course, that love scene in the second act was a trifle long, but you could so easily cut it. I wouldn't pay any attention to the thing." She crushed the paper in her hands. "The Planet isn't the only paper in New York. . . . Here, boy," she called to one of the coat boys, who was crossing the room. "See if you can get us some morning papers. Not The Planet. We've got that." They sat looking at each other, waiting for the boy to return. Before them a misty gulf seemed suddenly to have opened. To Randall, it meant that his plans for the future had been rudely upset; in fact, so far as he could see, in the first rush of his despair, there was no future. He had staked everything upon this turn of the wheel, and, if he lost, he lost everything except Inez and her love. That still remained to him. The girl's thoughts were somewhat different. To her, the yawning gulf separated them. They stood on opposite sides of it. She knew of Randall's situation, his financial situation, perfectly. She knew that, should this play fail, he would be, for the time being at least, quite unable to marry her. She herself had no means. By virtue of carefully hoarded savings, she had hitherto managed to bridge the long arid spaces between the oases of profitable engagements. Now, instead of a summer with Dick at Atlantic City, A LOST PARADISE. 45 or in Europe, she was confronted by a certainty of a wearisome stock engagement in some dull New Eng- land town, with a new part to learn each week, and incessant rehearsals day after day, preparing the next week's bill while playing six nights and three matinees during the current one. She hated stock work. She had dreamed, with Dick in her thoughts, a beautiful dream, leading along golden paths to the entrancing position of a star with a playwright for a husband. No position in the world, she felt, could be so delightfully secure. The shock that had come to her was revolutionary unbelievable. She refused to permit herself to consider it. After all, The Planet was but one paper out of many. With a chilling heart, she awaited the boy's return. He came back presently with two more papers. Randall threw him a quarter, and seized upon one of them with feverish haste. Inez took up the other. The one was a dramatic and sporting paper, in which the week-day reviews were little more than notices of openings. They reserved their real criticisms for the Sunday edition. Randall threw it down. "NotKing here," he said. "Just a notice that the play opened, and the cast." Inez passed him the paper she held in her hand. It was a prominent journal of the popular variety, and the critic who represented it was a noted one, both for the humor of his reviews, and for- the unbiased nature of his opinions. No one had ever suggested, no matter how they might smart under his vitriolic wit, that he could be bought. His headline was character- istic. 46 A LOST PARADISE. "THE WINNER" OBJECTS TO FILTHY LUCRE. AUTHOR'S DISTASTE FOE IT LIKELY To BE GRATIFIED. Randall laughed, in spite of himself. After all, he had too often enjoyed this man's "roasts" at the expense of others to object now that he himself was the victim of one. No doubt this was funny, he thought, but was it really criticism ? There had been a line in his play, in which one of the characters, a young state senator, had said : "I care nothing about money. What I want is to know that I've done my duty by the men who trusted me." Apart from the context and situation, the line became melodramatic, lending itself readily to burlesque. The critic had pounced upon it, and utilized it as the theme of his review. No other line, no other situation in the play was so much as mentioned. "Money!" he wrote. "Get thee behind me, Satan. I'll have none of you, though me che-ild be forced to work for a living. I cast it in your teeth, you sinful plutocrats. I live on condensed breakfast food and peanuts. What need have I for money? 'Tis trash. Away with it. I am here to hand out words, words, words. I shall not starve, for, if need be, I can eat them, but no U. S. currency for mine. The very mention of the word makes me boil with indignation, and gives me a pain in my pocket-book." So the review went on for half a column. Randall felt the blood creep into his face. He felt humiliated, degraded. What he had written, good or bad, he had A LOST PARADISE. 47 written sincerely. He had handled a problem of the day to the best of his ability, really believing that he had pictured, to some extent, the evils which follow the curse of selfishness. He would not have felt so bitterly hurt, had the reviewer merely denounced his play as weak, tiresome, ineffective. But to deride it, to burlesque it, to hold it up to scorn, to make it a laughing-stock surely this was not a fair return for the sincerity and honesty of his effort. Inez was watching his face. She had hoped after the unfavorable review in The Planet, that the other papers might turn the tide. Now she began to lose hope, although she was too plucky to show it. "That's not criticism," she said; "it's horse-play buffoonery." Randall laid down the paper. "Whatever it is," he replied, "it kills." "You mean the play?" "Yes, the play and something inside me." He fingered a button of his coat. "Something that no amount of ordinary criticism could touch. My self- respect." "Nonsense, Dick! Don't let this thing discourage you. He always does it." "It doesn't discourage me, dear. Nothing could do that. But it makes me say, 'What's the use ?' It isn't discouragement, is it, if a man refuses to pour water into a sieve, when he knows he can never fill it up ? I'm not discouraged. I merely think that New York doesn't want the sort of plays that I can write. They want other things different things, things that are 48 r A LOST PAEADISE. artificial, funny, sensational, risque. Good enough, in their way, but not in my line. Edgerton was right. I apparently don't write box-office plays." "Nonsense ! A good play is always a money-maker." He interrupted her. "That isn't true. Some of the best plays that were ever produced in New York have been rank failures, and some of the worst have run a season. People don't want to think. Edgerton was right, but I'm not going to follow his advice." She touched his hand. "You're not going to be a quitter," she said. He straightened up, flushing. "Never that," he said. "You know better than that. I'm not going to stop writing. I couldn't. But I'm not going to write their kind of plays. I'll find an audi- ence, some time, for mine." She realized the bitterness that gave rise to his words, and knew that it was but a phase, which would pass, with rest and reflection. "Let's go home, Dick," she said. "You're tired, and so am I. Never mind about the newspapers. Wait for the verdict of the public. It has packed many a show that the critics have damned up hill and down dale. Go home and get a good night's rest. You'll feel better in the morning." Their ride up-town, in a Broadway car, was a dia- mal one. Luckily it was not long. Inez lived on Fifty- seventh Street. Randall conducted her to her door, and kissed her good-night, with little joy in his heart, in spite of the knowledge that she loved him. Hia A LOST PAEADISE. 49 hurt had been too bitter, too deep, to be so lightly shaken off. "Good-night, dear," he said. I'll come up to-mor- row afternoon, late, and we'll go to dinner." She pressed his hand as she left him. "Don't be discouraged, now," she said, "It may be a go yet." "It may be a go yet." The phrase rang in his ears like the tolling of a bell. He turned toward the sub- way station, at Fifty-ninth Street, then suddenly decided to walk down-town. It was nearly two miles to his boarding-house on Irving Place, and the fresh air of the early spring morning did him good. The grim spectres of poverty, of failure, which had haunted him for the past two hours, began to fade away, as the brisk walk smoothed out the kinks in his jangled nerves. He began to feel tired physically tired as well as mentally and nerv- ously so. When he creaked up the steps to his third- floor room, he felt better than he had since morning. He threw himself into an easy chair, and looked about the room. It was not very large, and by no stretch of the imagination could it have been con- sidered luxurious, but it was home, for the time being, and he was glad to return to it. He filled his pipe, and began to smoke. How strange seemed the events of the evening ! At midnight he had been planning a honeymoon abroad, a summer in' Europe, a house on the Sound, and a studio in town. At four in the morning, he was wondering whether or not he would be able to keep even this little four-walled 50 A LOST PAEADISE. place on the third floor that he called home. It was almost like the Arabian nights the story of the beggar, for one night made the Sultan. He laughed at the irony of the situation, and, pick- ing up a picture of Inez from his dressing-table, kissed it reverently. How fine she had been! How courage- ous ! Not once, during the dismal ending of the eve- ning which had begun to joyously, had she failed him. It pleased him to think that she had been even more brave than he himself had been. She was a splendid girl. He would make himself worthy of her love. If this play should fail, and that was by no means certain, he would write another that would succeed. Meanwhile, to live, he would get a position on some newspaper or magazine. He had done wrong, he reflected, to borrow the money from Mr. Taylor. That would have to be paid back, in any event. And he had felt so sure of success! He sat smoking for a long time. It was nearly dawn, when he at last crept into bed. By that time his mind was a dull blank. He was so utterly tired that nothing seemed to make any difference. His last thought, as he put out the light, was that, if Harrison would only keep the play on for two weeks, and give it a chance, it would be bound to succeed, in spite of any criticism, no matter how adverse. CHAPTER V. OPTIMISM rose in the heart of Eichard Randall, that April morning, as the sun rose in the east, proclaiming the new day. The clear freshness of the air, the warmth of the sun- shine, the sweetness of the spring, seemed to penetrate even to the dull city streets, and give them a breath of new life. Their message sang loud in the heart of Richard Ran- dall, dispelling the gloom of the preceding night, and all its disquieting shadows. Inez loved him. The play would surely prove a success. The world seemed a good place in which to be. He had slept late. It was close to eleven o'clock when he left the house, and went toward Broadway. There was a hotel at the corner, at which he some- times breakfasted. He went into the cafe, gave his order, and began to look through a pile of newspapers, which he had secured at the news-stand as he came through the lobby. The first of the reviews which he read was a favor- able one, and it gave him a thrill of satisfaction. The paper in which it appeared was solid, conservative. It seemed that the tide of ill luck, which he had so greatly 51 52 !A LOST PARADISE. feared the night before, had turned. With a sigh of relief he began to eat his breakfast. There were a dozen or more papers in the pile, some morning editions, some afternoon. He picked up an- other with a feeling of confidence, after having cut out the first review with his pocket-knife, and laid it beside his plate. Inez would wish to see them all, he knew. His confidence was short-lived. Paper after paper gave the play unfavorable notices. Some of them, espe- cially the afternoon papers, were particularly savage in their attacks. It almost seemed to him that in daring to write a play he had committed a crime, for which these self-appointed judges now proceeded to arraign him with relentless fury. He felt bewildered, unable to arrive at any clear understanding of wherein he had failed. Criticism, he had supposed, should be something more than destruct- ive. It was easy, indeed, to tear down, to destroy. Yet these people offered nothing to replace that which they condemned ; in fact, no two of them condemned the same things. There was no unanimity of opinion, no verdict, as it were. Each man had a different set of ideas, a different reason for condemnation. None seemed to find any for praise. The mere fact that this newcomer had dared to put forward a play at all seemed sufficient reason for their vituperation. He ceased to cut out the reviews, and sat for a long time staring at his uneaten breakfast. All the joyous- ness, the optimism of the day, had departed. The sun no longer shone. A gray mist of uncertainty, of failure, closed about him, choking his hopes, dulling his enthu- A LOST PARADISE. 53 siasm. Whatever the merits of his play, whatever be- lief he might have in its power to hold the public, it seemed impossible that it could succeed in the face of such attacks. He left the table, and staggered out to the bar, look- ing about furtively as he did so, to see whether there was anyone in the lobby who might know him. In the raw and bleeding state of his soul, it seemed as though the whole world stood ready to point the finger of scorn. He did not realize that in all the vast and manifold activities of this busy city, scarcely one person in a. hundred thousand had enough interest in himself or his play to give either five minutes' thought. He poured out a drink with fingers trembling from nervousness, and, when the bar-keeper ventured a re- mark about the beauty of the morning, he started as though another accusation had been launched against him and his play. Over and over he revolved it in his mind, scene by scene, trying to see to understand wherein he had failed, if, indeed, he really had failed at all. The effort only left his mind the more con- fused. At one o'clock, he was to be at Harrison's office. He had made the engagement, the night before, believ- ing that they would together read the favorable criti- cisms he so confidently expected. Later on, perhaps, Harrison might want to talk about a second company, to open in Chicago. He had looked forward to the in- terview, anticipating with delight the congratulations of Harrison and his assistants, the probable requests 54 A LOST PAEADISE. for interviews from the newspapers, the admiration of the many friends and acquaintances he would meet. Now, all was changed. Smarting under the lash of criticism, he would have given anything to have avoided the interview altogether, yet he realized the failure on his part to appear would be regarded as cowardice, as an inability to "play the game." Then, too, he knew that Harrison must face all this adverse criticism Harrison, and Paulson, the director. It would be an act of cowardice to let them face it alone. He hurried up Broadway, feeling as though every person he passed was saying under his breath, "There goes Kandall, the man who just put over the awful fail- ure at The Crown." In the course of twenty blocks, he met but three persons whom he knew. One was Slesin- ger, the manager with whom he had been talking the night before. He nodded carelessly, and passed on. There may have been no intentional slight in his man- ner, but Kandall, in his unstrung condition, imagined one, and a flush of annoyance darkened his face. The other two persons he knew were Edgerton, the actor he had met the night before, and Vance, Harri- son's press-man. The former stopped, and shook hands. "How's everything going ?" he asked, genially. Randall winced. "You've seen the papers ?" he asked. "No ; just got up. Did they knock ?" "Yes. Something awful !" Edgerton raised his eyebrows. "You know what I told you about the socialistic 'A LOST PAEADISE. 55 stuff last night," he said. "Remember it, next time. And don't let the papers worry you. They may be wrong, too." He nodded and started on. "Don't mind if I hurry, old chap. Breakfast, you know. So long." It was in the next block, near the theatre, that he met Vance. The latter looked exceedingly glum. He nodded to Randall, and passed on. There was no mis- taking the curtness of his greeting, and Randall could not refrain from comparing it with the enthusiasm of his manner the evening before. All of a sudden, he began to realize just what failure really meant, just how many doors it closed, that success flung wide. He crushed down his pride, swallowed hard, for his throat seemed singularly dry, and went up the steps that led to Harrison's office. The latter's secretary met him, rather solemn of face. "Mr. Harrison won't be down until later," he said. "I just had him on the 'phone. He said you could see Mr. Paulson." The latter came out at that moment. "Hello, Randall," he said, with an assumption of cheeriness which the latter knew he did not feel. "Just going to lunch. How are you standing the shock, this morning ?" "Pretty well," Randall replied, with a rather mirth- less smile. Then, as Paulson seemed about to leave, he added, "I'll walk along with you, if I may. We can talk as we go." "Sure. Glad to have you. I'd ask you to lunch, but I've got an appointment at the club." "Thanks. I've just had my breakfast, anyway. And 56 A LOST PARADISE. then I'm not hungry. You haven't seen Harrison, of course ?" "'No. Had him on the 'phone. He won't show up till about four." "Does he want to see me, do you think ?" Paulson glanced quickly at his companion. "I guess not," he said. "I imagine he feels sort of blue about the notices, the same as the rest of us. Of course, we all pretend to pay no attention to them, but when a show gets hit as hard as this, it's handicapped from the start, and there's no use denying it." "You you think he will take it off ?" Randall asked, huskily. "Not if it does any business, of course. Harrison has plenty of nerve. He isn't the sort to throw up the sponge after the first round. I guess he'll keep it on a week or two, and see what happens." "What do you think?" Randall's voice, thin and metallic in timbre, showed very plainly the nervous strain under which he was laboring. "I ? Well, it's a pretty hard thing to say. You know what the season has been. Half the so-called successes in town are starving to death. Only being kept on to establish a value for stock. I can't say what the public will do, of course. They may come. But in a season like this, when it seems as though you had to fairly drag them to the theatre and chain them in their seats, I doubt it. Wish I could encourage you, old chap. I'd like to, God knows. As a director, it's not anything to my credit to put on a failure. But I suppose you want the truth, don't you, and not a lot of hot air ?" 'A. LOST PAEADISE. 57 "Yes, I want the truth. But after the way the play went last night, it doesn't seem as though what the papers said could be the truth." "Never trust a first-night audience, my boy. They applaud, because they think they're there to applaud, and then go home and knock. I thought we had a win- ner, myself, I'll admit ; but they tell me at the box-office there's no sale at all. May pick up, of course, but the house will look like a morgue to-night unless they paper it. Of course, they will, too. Harrison won't let The Crown show up badly, if he has to give away every seat in the house. He thinks more of that theatre than any- thing in the world, except his wife Well, so long. I'm due at the club at one-thirty. See you later." He was gone almost before Eandall realized it. In spite of the brilliant spring sunshine, the hurrying, laughing crowds, the air of care-free prosperity, Broad- way seemed horrible to Randall now. For nearly two years he had dreamed of walking down it, some day, with the knowledge that he was part of its wonderful life. Now, he felt himself but a discarded bit of flot- sam, a useless thing, cast aside, because he had been found wanting. He wandered over toward Sixth Avenue, wondering whether or not he should go up and see Inez. True, he had told her that he would not come until late, but somehow his heart yearned for her. He felt that, with her, he might forget the bitterness, the sickening pain that held him in its grip. He determined to call her up, and suggest that they have luncheon together, and take a walk in the park. 58 A LOST PAEADISE. He stepped into a restaurant at the corner, and rang up her number. The call was answered bj the boy who operated the switchboard. Miss Gordon had just gone out, he informed Kandall, and had left word that she would not return until half-past four. Eandall went over to a table in the corner, and or- dered a drink. He could think of nothing else to do, and he felt that he must have something, to drive this gloom from his heart, and give him, even though but temporarily, some feeling of well being. He had over two long hours to kill before he could meet Inez. He thought of going home, but it seemed as though the mere idea of sitting alone in that little room for two hours would drive him mad. Here, at least, there were people j here was life the life that, cruel and heartless as he sometimes felt it to be, he secretly loved. The waiter came up with the drink, and remained hovering about expectantly. Eandall ordered a chop, and sent him away. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Just at the moment he was wondering why Inez had gone out. Was it to look for an engagement ? He knew that before long the companies for summer stock that melancholy grind! would be forming. Poor little girl ! What a difference all this was going to make to her! He forced himself to eat, and, after he had done so, felt once more a stirring of the old optimism within him. Once more he said to himself, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, that success might still come, that the public might see in the play that which the critics had failed to see. He started off to meet Inez, with some A LOST PARADISE. 59 measure of courage in his heart, and a grim determina- tion to succeed, in spite of anything and everything that opposed him. She had come in a short time before, and was dress- ing. He waited in the little parlor, separated from the bedroom by a pair of tapestry curtains. Presently, Inez came through them, wearing a rose-silk kimono, and flung herself wearily upon a divan. "Dick," she cried, "I'm so tired !" He came over to her at once, and, kneeling on the floor, put his arms about her, and kissed her. "Are you, dear ?" he said. "I'm so sorry ! What have you been doing all day ?" "Looking for an engagement, of course. There isn't anything else to do now." "Inez !" His voice held a note of reproach. "Don't say it that way. Things may be all right, after all." She laughed that curious laugh which somehow al- ways reminded him of thin silver wire. "With a panning like that? Never in a thousand He rose, and walked up and down the tiny room for several moments in silence. Inez had apparently lost hope ; her voice, her manner, her words, all showed it. And the night before she had been so brave ! "You said, last night, dear, that we must wait for the verdict of the public." "I know, but I never expected anything like this. It wouldn't be so bad, if the critics had just condemned the play, but they've made it a joke. The whole town is laughing at it. I've been around, to-day, and I know." 60 A LOST PARADISE. He turned away for a moment to hide the spasm of pain that crossed his face. "At least, dear," he said at length, "we have each other." The girl laughed, a bit harshly. "It doesn't look that way," she exclaimed. "I'll prob- ably spend the summer in some wretched little hole, twenty miles from nowhere." "You mean then," he asked, gazing down at her, "that you're not going to marry me on account of this ?" Inez sat up, and rested her chin upon her two hands. For a long time she sat, her eyes fixed upon the ara- besque pattern of the rug upon the floor. The curious birds and flowers that covered it seemed to dance mer- rily to some silent tune. Presently she looked up. "Do you want me to marry you, Dick ?" she asked. "Yes you know that. I love you. How can I help wanting you to marry me ?" "You mean now ?" She searched his face. "Now ?" "To-day, if you will." Impulsively, he sat down be- side her, and took her in his arms. "In all this disap- pointment, this suffering I need you more than ever." For a moment, she yielded to his kisses. A strange wave of maternity swept over her strange, because to her quite foreign. Some sense of the hurt, the wounded boyish pride of the man, made her want to comfort him, to smooth the hard lines from his tired face. Then the absurdity of the situation rose, grinning before her. She knew that Randall was, for the moment at least, poorer even than she herself, and how much, or little, that meant, she fully realized. A LOST PARADISE. 61 "Dick," she cried, drawing back, and pushing him gently away, her hands on his shoulders. "Don't you see that, as things are now, it's out of the question? We'd starve." He, also, knew that she was right. "I know, dear," he replied. "I should not have said to-day. But we may not have to wait very long. I'm sure that Harrison will keep the play on for a month, at least, and I believe, even now, that it will make good. My royalties for a month ought to be a couple of thou- sand, anyway, and, then, there's that other play the one Slesinger has. He promised me the other night to read it at once. And, if they put 'The Winner' on the road, after a month in town, I'll get a good weekly in- come from it plenty for us to live on. And, if the very worst happens, I know I can get a position on some newspaper, or magazine, which would pay me enough for us to get along on, until things take a turn. Isn't it better for us to face things together than to spend the summer alone ?" He pleaded well, and for a moment his arguments swayed the girl. ]^o one in the world realized quite how she hated the summer work in stock. "Why not wait for a week or two, Dick ?" she tempo- rized, "and see how the play does get along ?" "Very well. Perhaps that would be better. And you'll not arrange anything else for the summer ?" He knew what her day at the theatrical agencies meant knew that at any moment an engagement might be offered her to which an immediate answer would be re- quired. 62 A LOST PARADISE. "No, Dick ; not yet. You know how much I love you. You know that I want to be with you, more than any- thing in the world. But we've got to be sensible, dear. If we must wait we must. I have a career so have you. There are certain things, in marriage " she hesitated, embarrassed "certain results, you know, that would wreck everything. We can't afford to do that. Let's wait a while, and be sure." "Very well, dear," he said, and kissed her again. There was a sharp jangling of the telephone bell. Inez rose to answer it. Her replies were monosyllabic, being confined to yes and no. The former occurred the more often. With a gesture of impatience she hung up the receiver, and turned to Randall. "Steinfeldt just called me up," she said. "He wants to see me." "Steinfeldt? Why?" "I I don't know exactly." She came over to him, and began to play with the button of his coat, her eyes ever so slightly veiled, her manner ingenuous, childish. "You see, Dick, I heard, on Broadway, to-day, that he was looking for a woman, for the summer show, to play a straight part no songs. The thing's got a plot, it seems. So, I went over and called on him. He was out, but I had a little talk with his brother, Isidor. He seemed to think that I might be just what they wanted type, you know. Now Ray calls me up, and wants me to take dinner with him, and talk the matter over." "Rather unusual, it sees, to me, to ask you to dinner. You're going?" ".Yes. I told him I would. Don't be silly, dear. At A LOST PARADISE. 63 least I can hear what he has to say. It may be a splen- did chance, and would keep me right here in town, all summer. That would mean a lot, you know, because we could see each other every day." "But about our marriage ?" "Oh, the rehearsals of this thing don't begin for two or three weeks. I wouldn't sign any contract yet. If things go all right with us I'd simply drop out, that's all. And if they don't, I'd be sure of a hundred a week or more all summer, and that would help some, dear boy, wouldn't it ?" Randall had turned, and was gazing out over the roofs of the city, upon which the late afternoon sun was lay- ing its fingers of gold. There seemed something sym- bolic about the sunshine the golden sunshine of suc- cess, which had, apparently, passed him by. How bitter this sense of failure ! Even now it was taking Inez away from him, driving her to dinner with a man whom he at heart despised, but whose success gave him a power which he, Randall, could not oppose. He turned to the girl, with a tired smile. "I'm selfish, I know," he said. "I had wanted you with me, to-night, but I guess you are right. If Stein- feldt can offer you a good engagement, I suppose you. ought to take it at least until we see how things turn out." She flung her arms impulsively about his neck, and kissed him. "You dear!" she said. "I knew you would see would understand. We'll dine together to-morrow, in- stead. And, if I were you, I'd call up Taylor, and have 64 A LOST PARADISE. a talk with him. He was there, last night, as you know, and he'll be expecting to see you." "I know." Mechanically he picked up his hat. "I ought to have seen him, before, but somehow, I just couldn't. He's been such a brick all these months he's believed in me so ! I felt ashamed. I was going to see him to-morrow, but I'll do it to-night, instead." "Do. And to-morrow you can tell me all about it." She put her arm through his, and drew him toward the door. "You will have to run along now, sweetheart. I've barely time to dress. Steinfeldt's coming up in his machine, at six-thirty, and I've got to look my best, you know. Good-night." She kissed him again, a trifle hurriedly. "Don't worry. Everything is going to turn out all right for us. I know it." Randall groped his way to the elevator. Somehow, life, for the moment, seemed singularly dull and barren. CHAPTER VI. BEING a bachelor, Edmund Taylor usually dined at his club. He was just on the point of leaving his office, when Randall's telephone message came, and he at once asked the latter to take dinner with him. "I've been expecting to hear from you all day," he said, in his big, cheery voice. "Meet me at the club, and we'll have a chance to talk things over, as we eat." Half an hour later, they were seated at one of the small tables, in the club dining-room. The two long tables in the middle of the room were already partially filled with men prominent in the theatrical world. Randall was acquainted, personally, with only a few of them, but the faces of nearly all were well known to him. A noted comedian, as famous for his rapid- fire succession of marriages and divorces as for his ability as an actor, was telling a funny story, which had set the whole table in a roar. An atmosphere of jollity, of good-fellowship, per- vaded the place. Under its genial influence, Randall began to feel his dejection slipping away from him. Taylor nodded to many of the men as they entered, and exchanged a word here and there, as he and Randall made their way to their table. "Bradley was just telling me he saw the show last 65 66 A LOST PARADISE. night," he said, nodding toward a slim, light-haired man wearing eye-glasses. "Said he thought it might have a chance." Eandall eyed the popular playwright with a slight feeling of envy. "I hear he's making nearly four thousand a week," he said. Mr. Taylor closed one eye slowly in a comical wink "He has a press-agent, my boy," he said. "Well, I only wish I were making a tenth of it," remarked Randall, as he attacked the bread and butter with unnecessary vigor. "You will," his companion laughed. "Don't be dis- couraged, just because you've got a few hasty criti- cisms." "I'm not discouraged. It isn't the money I care about. It's the not making good, after friends, like you, have backed me. I tell you that hurts." "Well, if I'm not losing confidence in your work, I don't see why you should." "And you mean to say you haven't ?" "Not a bit of it. You're bound to make good, in the end. You have the dramatic instinct." Randall crumbled a bit of bread in silence. "That's a big thing for you to say, Mr. Taylor," he exclaimed at length. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate it." "Nonsense! I understand this dramatic game back- wards. It's the toughest one to go up against that I know, and most people think it's as easy as rolling off a log. Why, there are millions of people who think they can write plays literally millions, and 'A LOST PAEADISE. 67 how many are there, to-day, who are doing it writing plays that succeed, I mean ? About twenty. Think of it. Think of the odds against you. Yet, every day, I meet people who tell me they have written a play, and want my advice and help. Only the other day, a woman who writes for our magazine a clever woman, too sent me a manuscript to read. Will you believe it, when I tell you that the first act was just eight minutes long, and the whole play wouldn't have run an hour ? Of course, you expect such things as that, from street-car conductors, or old ladies out in South Bend, Indiana, when they write plays to get enough money to pay off the mortgage on the farm ; but you'd think that a clever, up-to-date "New Yorker would study construction sufficiently, before attempting to write a play, to know at least how long to make it." "I suppose it looks so easy," laughed Eandall, "that they just dash off an act or two, over Sunday, when they haven't anything else to do." "That's precisely it. Really, somebody ought to publish the truth about playwriting, just to stop some of the tragedies of it. There was a woman who came to see a prominent manager here not long ago, who had taken a correspondence course in dramatic work had a regular parchment diploma with a big red seal, to prove that she really was a playwright, and not merely an amateur. She'd written a play about eugenics an awful thing, I heard seven acts, and characters enough to bankrupt any manager with nerve enough to produce it. Well, it seems her husband, a clerk in a bank down in Charleston, West Virginia, had got 68 A LOST PARADISE. so enthused over the thing that he'd thrown up his position, drawn out his savings, and come to New York with his wife to put the thing on. They expected to get it all settled in a few weeks, and then sit back and draw a couple of thousand a week royalties for the rest of their lives. Pitiful, I think. I heard afterward that, when the money gave out, the man drifted from one odd job to another, until one day he just jumped into the river. I don't know what became of the woman." Randall shuddered. "Poor devil !" he said. "Moths around the flame of success. I'm one myself, I guess." "Hardly !" Taylor reached over and put his hand on his companion's arm. "You've made a good fight. You've tried to get an intelligent idea of what you are about, and you've had something to say. You're learn- ing, and some day you'll 'put one over.' But you'll admit, now, won't you, that I was right, when I told you, a year or more ago, that it's a hard game ?" "Well, I should say so!" Randall laughed mirth- "After a man has written a play," went on Taylor, "and sold it, and had it properly produced, and gets, by one chance or another, a competent cast, and man- ages to escape damnation at the hands of the critics, and has hit upon an idea that strikes the public at the psychological moment, and has controlled a score or more of other factors almost as important, why, then, if he hasn't made a foolish contract, and gets the roy- alties that are coming to him, he may, if his play A LOST PARADISE. 69 runs in New York for a season, which not one in ten of even the so-called successes does nowadays he may, I say, granting all these conditions, make five or six hundred dollars a week for say thirty weeks that would be fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand dollars, from the first of October to the middle of May. In the case of a phenomenal success, with second, third and sometimes even fourth companies playing simultane- ously, in different parts of the country, he might double that, or even more. His agent's commis- sions of ten per cent., provided he has employed an agent and, if he hasn't, he's probably made a fool contract have got to be deducted, of course. There you have practically your top notch, say thirty or even forty thousand during the year, and even the best of them rarely manage to strike it more than once in every two or three years. That leaves your yearly average about ten thousand dollars. And mind you, I've been talking about unusual successes. In nine cases out of ten, even if you've written what's called a success, and have had a run of three months in New York, and the rest of the season on the road, you'll be lucky to have made ten or twelve thousand out of your play, and maybe you won't do it again for five years possibly never. "It doesn't look so alluring, when you come down to the real facts, does it ? All these stories you read in the newspapers about playwrights making a quarter or half a million during a season come from the imagination of press-agents. One prominent writer I know did it, once, but only because the managers 70 A LOST PARADISE. who took his play had so little confidence in it that they refused to put up more than half the money needed for the production. Made him furnish the other half, and, of course, share to that extent in the profits. He didn't want to do it, but he had to, in order to get the play produced at all, and it happened to be a big success. I understand that the author's share of the profits was, during the time of the play's vogue, about two hundred thousand dollars. Had he received author's royalties only, instead of profits, he would have received perhaps thirty-five thousand. The same man, by the way, has written three successive and complete failures this past season. "The thing's a gamble, Randall, and takes a gambler's nerve. When you lose, don't squeal. And, when you win, don't do as most gamblers do, and spend your money as though you were a millionaire. Bradley over there " Taylor nodded to the fair-haired young man with the glasses "is a corking good business man. He doesn't dissipate, and he saves his money. Been at the game ten years or more, and owns a part interest in a theatre. He's an exception. The best man of the lot five years ago isn't worth a dollar to-day. Drink, of course drink and women. You know, by this time, what a nerve-racking life it is how it gets you, until you feel sometimes thaj; you'd need the con- stitution of a horse to come through it safely. Any gambling game is like that it saps your nerves, your energy, your vitality, until you are driven to artificial stimulation, and then why, you generally go to pieces as a result." A LOST PARADISE. 71 "You certainly don't make the picture a very attract- ive one," said Randall, gravely. "I'm not trying to make it attractive. I'm trying to make it true. If, knowing it as it is, you have the grit to keep at it, you deserve to succeed." "It isn't only the grit, Mr. Taylor. It's to some extent a question of health and strength, and, beyond that, a question of money." He raised his hand, as his companion started to speak. "Don't think I'd let you lend me any more, even were you willing to do so, which I doubt. I never should have borrowed what I did. I never would, had I not thought that suc- cess would have come a whole lot quicker than it has." Mr. Taylor smiled, his cynical, but kindly, smile. "I lent you the money for two reasons, Randall," he said. "First, because I knew you were honest; and second, because I knew you had ability. I haven't changed my mind about either, so let's drop the matter. I haven't a doubt you'll make enough to pay me back, out of this play you've got on now; but, if you don't, there's the other one the comedy you read me some weeks ago. I'd be willing to invest a couple of thou- sand in that, any time. By the way, what's become of it?" Randall's face brightened. "Slesinger's got it. He told me last night he'd read anything of mine right away." "Good! Slesinger's a very capable producer. I hope he takes it." He glanced at his watch. "What do you say to running over to the theatre, and seeing Jiow things are going?" 72 A LOST PARADISE. "All right. I suppose I'd better show up. I called on Harrison to-day, but didn't see him. He'll probably be in the box-office to-night." It was after nine when they arrived at the theatre, and the first act was nearly over. They stepped inside for a moment, and glanced over the house. It seemed to be well filled, and the applause at the end of the act was plentiful and spontaneous. Randall felt im- mensely encouraged. With Taylor, he went to the box-office, and found Harrison talking with his house- manager. "How are you ?" he said, rather shortly. "Seen the notices, I suppose ?" "Yes. Pretty bad, weren't they ?" "H-m !" The manager rolled his cigar about in his mouth. "I don't pay much attention to those fellows." "Pretty good house to-night," Randall ventured, tentatively. Harrison smiled, a rather grim smile. "About two hundred dollars, I believe," he said. "Two hundred?" "Exactly! And our capacity is fifteen. The rest is paper." "What is your honest opinion of the show, Mr. Har- rison ?" Taylor asked. He had known the manager slightly for years. "I'm rather interested in the suc- cess of our young friend here." "It's a good enough show. Only question is: Will the public come to see it? You know, as well as I do, that it's all a gamble. Maybe they will maybe they won't. I can't tell. Nobody can. The box-office A LOST PARADISE. 73 is the answer." He turned, as a youngish man with glasses came up. They chatted aside for a moment. Then Harrison introduced the newcomer. "Mr. Peters," he said, "shake hands with Mr. Randall, the author, and Mr. Taylor. You know him, I guess." Mr. Peters laughed. "Sure," jie said. "Say, Mr. Randall, haven't got any up-to-date lyrics in your vest pocket, have you?" "Lyrics?" "Mr. Peters is a composer," Taylor explained. "Wrote 'The Lightning Rag,' and 'The Whistling Tango,' and a lot more." "Not forgetting my latest success, 'I should worry,' " Mr. Peters added, proudly. "Say, if you think up any novel words drop in and see me. I'm always on the lookout for something new Fitzpatrick Building, Tenth floor. Find me in usually from twelve to six. There's money in good songs. I'll split fifty-fifty, words and music. How's the show going?" "Pretty fair," said Randall, a trifle dazed. "Great title, 'The Winner.' Hope it's a go. Pity you haven't got any chance for a song or two in it. I've got a couple of new ones I guess they'll go into Steinfeldt's summer review. They tell me he's going to have a great bunch of skirts in it, this year. He always could pick 'em, though. Saw him dining with one at the Knickerbocker to-night. A swell dame, believe me. Chap I was with tells me he's nuts about her going to give her one of the leads. Name's Gordon, I believe. New one on me, and I thought I knew them all. . . . Well, so long, fellows. I've got 74 A -LOST PARADISE. to move. Good luck I" He passed out into the lobby, and disappeared down the street. Randall scarcely heard what Harrison and Taylor were saying, although he listened and replied mechan- ically. He knew Peters' type well enough to know that no woman's reputation meant anything to him, and yet the nasty slur, the intimation, regarding Inez cut deep. After all, it was no place for a woman, this world of cheap and tawdry imitation. He deter- mined to insist upon their immediate marriage, no mat- ter how matters turned out for the moment. Inez might object, but he felt that she loved him enough to allow him to overrule her objections. It would be the best thing for her in the end, of that he felt sure. On the way to the subway station, after the per- formance, he mentioned to Mr. Taylor a matter that he had been for some time turning over in his mind. It was, in effect, that the latter should use his influ- ence to get him a position upon the staff of some maga- zine, possibly even his own, thereby enabling him to earn a living, while at the same time carrying on his dramatic work. Mr. Taylor received the suggestion in silence. For a moment Randall thought that he had offended by making it. Then his companion spoke. "I'll see what I can do, Randall," he said. "We have no vacancies, just at present, but I might be able to arrange something elsewhere. The pay would be small, and you'd have rather long hours, but if you want to try it, why, I'll see what can be done. If I were you, though, I'd wait, and see how this play A LOST PARADISE. 75 turns out, and what Slesinger has to say about the - other one. I don't want to discourage you, but, if you mean to write plays as a profession, you'll need all your time for it. Working eight hours a day on the staff of a magazine will leave you mighty little time and energy for anything else. Think it over." They bade each other good-night at the station. Taylor went up-town, Eandall down. The latter returned to his room in a singularly dissatisfied state of mind. He had reached one of those crises in life, when the foundations of things seem shifting sands, upon which all attempts to build anything permanent result in failure. Yet, Randall was not in any way lacking in courage. He was ready to face any danger, any disaster, bravely enough. It was the intangible, lurking sense of help- lessness which he seemed unable to combat ; the shadowy presentiment of failure, which, in spite of all his inherent optimism, would not down. Then, too, the thing that he had heard about Inez troubled him. He did not doubt her in the least. He would rather have cut off his right hand than have harbored such a thought. But he bitterly resented the fact that the woman he loved should even for a moment be placed in a position in which such gossip, cheap and foolish as he felt it to be, was possible. He wanted her all to himself, to take her away from the environ- ment of money-getting which surrounded her. He was convinced that, once they were married, Inez would give up her ambitions as an actress, and content herself 76 A LOST PARADISE. with the more permanent joys which he believed their life together would bring her. And it was just here that his powerlessness made it- self most felt. No subsequent success, however great, he argued, could ever compensate him for a lack of money now, if that lack resulted in any separation between Inez and himself. A feeling almost superstitious in its nature filled him, whereby he came to believe that the happiness of Inez and himself was in some way irrevocably bound up with that of his play that the failure of the one would mean, inevitably, the failure of the other. He could not sleep that night, but tossed about, rest- less and troubled, until nearly dawn. A physician might have told him that he was on the verge of nervous prostration, and that the forebodings which oppressed him were nothing more than manifestations of his condition of health, but Randall would doubt- less have laughed the idea to scorn, and have persisted in regarding himself in a light wholly tragic. CHAPTER VII. WHEN Richard Randall first came to New York, some two years before the production of "The Win- ner," he possessed three weapons with which he hoped to achieve success. They were courage, health, and ability no mean equipment, in truth, for his purpose. He possessed also about five hundred dollars in money and the manuscript of a play. The mistake he made lay in his estimation of the time that would be required to accomplish his pur- pose, and of the difficulty of it. Like many another aspirant for fame, he felt that he could say, with Caesar, "I came, I saw, I conquered." It is a glorious characteristic of youth, this miscalculation of the obstacles that block the pathway to success; were they visible in all their grimness, few, indeed, would have the courage to essay the task. So Richard Randall, with the high courage of inex- perience, thought that with the aforesaid equipment of health, courage and ability, plus the five hundred dol- lars and the manuscript of the play, the task would be a comparatively easy one. For two years he had been learning that there is no royal road to success ; that adversity may rob one of 77 78 A LOST PARADISE. both health and courage, if not of ability, and that five hundred dollars is a very 4 small sum, indeed, with which to tempt the Fates. He was twenty-four, when he came to the city, and up to that time he had lived in his native city of Cleveland. His father had been, up to the time of his death, a man who dreamed of literary success while teaching history in the public schools. Perhaps the dream interfered with his teaching, or the teaching with his dream. In any event, his "Life of Alexander the Great," product of ten years of study and labor, was never published, nor did he ever rise above the ruck of the other automatons who daily fought with half a hundred unruly specimens of young America, striving to interest them in Charlemagne, or the Wars of the Roses, when their minds were clogged with visions of fishing holes, or the delights of base-ball or coasting down Jones' hill. Richard, as a result, grew up in an atmosphere heavily laden with literary aspirations; hence it is not surprising that, even as a boy, he dreamed of the novels he would some day write, or the plays he would some day have produced. The latter ambition was an offshoot of the former, and came about in this way: After his graduation from the public schools, including the high school, he managed to attach himself to the staff of a local news- paper at a salary of eight dollars a week. Occasion- ally, when shows came to town that the dramatic editor, for one reason or another, did not care to see, he would give Randall the tickets, leaving to him the A LOST PARADISE. 79 writing of the perfunctory review which the occasion demanded. Randall acquitted himself so well in this occasional capacity that he attracted the attention of the editor of one of the smaller afternoon papers, and was offered the position of dramatic critic, to fill a vacancy made by the resignation of the former incumbent of the office. This position he held for over two years, and not only acquired considerable local reputation as a writer who could criticize both pungently and fairly as well; but, in addition, gained what he supposed to be a good working knowledge of plays and their construction. It was therefore inevitable that he should himself write a play ; in fact, he wrote several, before he finally evolved what he secretly came to consider the great American masterpiece. No sooner had he reached this exalted mental state than he resigned his position, packed his trunk, drew forth from the Hank his savings, and departed amidst the hopes of his family, and the pitying smiles of his newspaper friends. They were older, and, knowing the "game," regarded him as a lamb going forth to the slaughter. Bets even were made in newspaper circles as to "how long Dick Randall would last," how many months would elapse before he returned, with his tail, metaphorically speaking, between his legs. The day following his arrival in New York, he sallied forth, armed with his play manuscript, and several letters of introduction which he had brought with him from home. Of these, but one proved of any material value, and 80 A LOST PARADISE. that was the one to Edmund Taylor. The latter had been a classmate of Randall's father, in college, twenty- five years before, and, being a keen judge of men, he concluded that he saw something in young Randall that differentiated him from the usual aspirant for literary honors, so he gave him more of his time than he would otherwise have done, and undertook to read his play. The result of this reading confirmed his first impres- sions, and, realizing that Randall was without either acquaintances or experience in theatrical circles, intro- duced him to a firm of play-brokers. These wide-awake gentlemen, after also reading the play, or to be exact, having it read by their critic, undertook to bring it to the attention of managers upon the basis of a commission of fifteen per cent. This left Randall free to begin the writing of another play, which he at .once did with his customary energy and enthusiasm. Working away, day after day, in his third-floor bed- room was not very enlivening, but the monotony was varied by frequent visits to his agents, and occasional dinners with Mr. Taylor. Gradually he came to know a few actors, and once or twice his head was almost turned by an introduc- tion to a manager a being in his eyes at that time almost supernal. And, then, the unexpected happened. After six months of waiting, his agents succeeded in making a contract with a manager for the production of his play. Randall never forgot the ecstasy with which he A LOST PARADISE. 81 received the news, nor the joy of the moment when he affixed his signature beneath the manager's, upon the important-looking document of ten typewritten pages, bound in light-blue paper. He immediately went out and bought himself a new suit of clothes, upon the strength of his success, for such he deemed it to be. Later he came to find out that the signing of the contract for the production of a play frequently means less to a manager than it does to an author. The contract was not a bad one, for a beginner. He received two hundred and fifty dollars, in advance royalties, less his agents' commission of fifteen per cent. ; and the production was to be made prior to the first of the following November. The contract was signed in June. He had nearly five months to wait. He spent the time in completing his new play, and beginning another. The summer was very long and hot. He found his five hundred dollars and the addi- tional two hundred and odd dwindling away with astonishing rapidity. He reduced the cost of his meals, cut down on all possible expenses, and took to prepar- ing his breakfast in his room. If he could but bridge the gulf until November, he felt that all his trials would be at an end. He did it, and in so doing he began to draw checks against the first of his assets, his health. When September rolled around, and then October, he began to feel nervous. His calls upon his agents became more frequent. They, busy with larger mat- ters, referred him politely to his manager. The latter 82 A LOST PARADISE. was usually out, or engaged. Once Randall managed to see him. It took him some little time to do this nearly an entire day, to be exact; and then his inter- view lasted but two minutes. Mr. Liebman remem- bered him with an effort, and inquired what he wanted. Pandall, nervous and eager, explained that but three weeks remained before the time set for the production of the play. The manager lit a cigar, and began signing letters. "Well, I still got three weeks, ain't I?" he said. "Anyway you're not going to kick if I run over the limit, are you? I'm putting on six shows, right now. Give me time, can't you?" That was the extent of the interview. Randall went back to the agents, and told them the results. They were sympathetic, but failed to see what action they could take now, since Liebman's contract still had three weeks to run. It was good logic. Randall waited the three weeks. Then his agents told him that they had refused to give Liebman an extension to January first, unless he paid an additional two hundred and fifty dollars, which he had refused to do. They had therefore taken the play away from him. Randall went home, looked at the seven dollars and forty cents remaining to him, and felt more downcast than he had ever felt in his life before. Checks were being drawn against his store of courage, 'as well as of health. He paid them, and went to see Mr. Taylor. The latter did not offer sympathy. He told Randall that he believed in him, believed in his future, and A LOST PARADISE. 83 offered to lend him five hundred dollars. Randall accepted, and wished to assign Taylor a half-interest in the play, but the latter refused it. "You will pay me back, my boy," he said. "I'm doing this to help you. I don't want to rob you. If your play is worth anything, and I think it is, a half- interest in it is worth a lot more than five hundred dollars." Randall went back to his room and his work. In six weeks, owing to the usual fall crop of failures, his agents succeeded in again placing the play, this time for an immediate production. Again he received advance royalties of two hundred and fifty dollars, less agents' commissions. He was able to repay Mr. Taylor half of the loan, and still have a comfortable sum on hand. At last he felt himself out of the woods. Rehearsals were to begin in ten days. The manager who had this time taken the play was a minor producer, named Pollock. He had a working arrangement with one of the prominent managements, whereby, in the event of his bringing out a success on the road, he could, by sacrificing a large interest in his production, obtain a New York theatre. Unfortunately, he had under contract a young woman, in whose success he was more than ordinarily interested, and he had leased Randall's play to pro- vide her with what, in theatrical parlance, is termed a "vehicle." She was a young woman, extremely good looking, but with little else to recommend her, either in the way of training or ability.- The leading role 84 A LOST PARADISE. in Eandall's plaj required an actress of some individu- ality, not a doll, and, above all, one of considerable emotional power. Randall did not meet his leading woman until the day set for beginning rehearsals. The members of the company gathered at a small hall on Madison Avenue, in which the play was to be rehearsed. Randall was introduced by Mr. Pollock. He had never met any of the cast, although one or two were known to him by name. He proceeded to read the play to them, in a rather nervous and halting voice. Miss Carleton, the leading woman, yawned, and looked out of the window. That afternoon Randall had a talk with his agents. "I don't know anything about this Carleton woman," he said. "Can she act ?" They assured him that there were a number of per- sons, including Mr. Pollock, who said that she could. They themselves had never seen her, and hence could not of their own knowledge say. The situation left Randall strangely disquieted. He had dreamed of having the part, over which he had so faithfully labored the part of a wife who sacri- ficed ambition, even honor itself, for the sake of her child played by some noted actress, some woman of proven ability. Yet he knew that he was powerless, for, unlike the established dramatists, he had no clause in his contract giving him the right to dictate the cast. He determined to do the best he could, delud- ing himself with the belief that his play was suffi- ciently strong to overcome whatever deficiencies Miss A LOST PARADISE. 85 Carleton might possess. He had never seen her act; when he approached Pollock on the subject, the latter reminded him of that. "You don't suppose I'm fool enough to put three or four thousand dollars into this thing just to lose it, do you ?" he demanded, rather brusquely. Randall had yet to learn that producers who do exactly that thing are by no means uncommon. The rehearsals dragged through three and a half weeks, -during which time Randall worked harder than he had ever worked in his life. Miss Carleton, being accustomed to sleep until noon, refused to rehearse before two o'clock. The rehearsals continued until midnight, or later, with an interval for dinner from six to eight., Randall generally got to bed about one in the morning, thoroughly tired out. At ten the next morning, accompanied by the stage- director, he would sally forth to buy "props." There were four acts in the play and three "sets," and hun- dreds of articles, from rugs to bric-a-brac, from artifi- cial flowers to tea-cups, had to be purchased, or other- wise arranged for. Pollock was not niggardly about the larger matters. He even permitted Randall to pay thirty-five dollars for a mahogany desk, which was "going some," as the stage-director expressed it, for him, but in small matters he was adamant. "A dollar a piece for tea-cups ? Ridiculous ! Get 'em at the five and ten-cent store." Randall tried to point out that in the home of per- sons of wealth, ten-cent cups were not used for after- noon tea. 86 A LOST PARADISE. Pollock grunted. "Can't tell the difference from the front," was his only comment. By dint of almost acrobatic exertions, Randall man- aged to get together furniture and other properties not altogether impossible, and the scenery, he found by going to the studio, was at least presentable. The scenic artist confided to him that Pollock was "going the limit," because Miss Carleton had him "buffaloed." The worst of Randall's struggles, however, were with the cast, and especially with Miss Carleton. She knew no more about acting than a child her forte was to look pretty, and smile an idiotic smile which she imagined to be an evidence of the aristocratic breed- ing which the part demanded. Line after line Randall was forced to cut out, simply because, in her mouth, it sounded absurd impossible. Scene after scene was changed, rewritten, and again rewritten, to suit, in some measure, her microscopic abilities. It was like fitting a Brobdignagian coat to a midget. Randall wept inwardly, but he was new to the game, and hoped that everything might still turn out well. After a time, when he had heard the various acts rehearsed so often that he knew them by heart, he reached a point where he could tell nothing whatever about the play. His perspective had become confused. Sometimes it seemed to him splendid. At others, he groaned and turned away, convinced that it was hopeless. In one of the acts a child, a little girl of ten, appeared in a tender and pathetic scene. They had a good deal of difficulty with this part. Randall pro- A LOST PARADISE. 87 tested so strenuously against the first candidate, a pert miss who had been doing a turn in vaudeville, that the matter was finally brought up to Pollock. Randall explained his objections. Pollock spat ten feet across the room, and, having hit the cuspidor at which he had aimed, turned with a pleased smile. "You don't know that kid," he said. "I saw her at Proctor's last year. She's a swell little actress, and the best buck-and-wing dancer in town. Why don't you write in a little specialty for her, in that act? It would bring down the house." Randall thought it very likely would, but managed at length to make Pollock see that a sweet and tender little child, after saying good-by to her sick father, would hardly burst forth into a ragtime song, or a buck-and-wing dance. He returned home staggered by the knowledge that such men really undertook to pro- duce plays, and, in the parlance of the street, "get- away with it." At last, the dreary and nerve-racking business was over, and Randall learned that the play would open in Buffalo the following week. He regretted this, principally because of the expense the trip would involve, but he was in the fight now, and it was neces- sary to make the best of it. The opening night went far better than Randall had dared to hope. The audience apparently liked the play exceedingly. Pollock was busy entertaining the local critics. The next day's notices were excellent. Randall did not yet know that they usually are, with new plays, out of town. He felt delighted, and sent 88 A LOST PARADISE. a wire to Mr. Taylor, telling him that the play was a "go." A week in Albany followed the one in Buffalo. Certain representatives of producing interests came up from New York to see the show. There was dicker- ing, arguing. A New York opening was arranged. Everyone was in high glee. Pollock even bought Randall a drink, and wanted to know if he had any other plays to sell. The New York production was an utter failure, as it deserved to be. Miss Carleton ruined the play- The metropolitan critics do not always know good acting when they see it, but they do know bad acting, and as Pollock was a manager of no particular note, no wizard of the stage, and Randall was a new and quite unknown author, they seized upon the play with shouts of glee and tore it to shreds. Their reviews were memorable, almost historic. The public laughed, and stayed away. Randall retired once more to his room. The two weeks out of town had made a big hole in his slender store of money. He had spent optimistically, believing he would win success. Mr. Taylor was regretful, but prophesied a brilliant future. "Every young playwright has to go through this sort of thing," he said. Randall wondered why, but set his teeth, and went back to his work. The checks against his health, his nervous system, his courage were heavy, this time, but he met them with the resources of youth. A LOST PAEADISE. 89 During the spring, Kandall's agents almost suc- ceeded in selling his second play "The Winner," half- a-dozen times. Each time, after it had been read and liked, after frequent interviews with actors, managers, or "near" managers, the negotiations, for one reason or another, fell through. One producer, a prominent one, kept the play for over five months, agreeing time after time to enter into a contract, but always, at the last moment, offering some excuse for his failure to do so. Randall dragged through the long, tiresome summer, rewriting, changing, working out new plots, always with success just ahead, yet never reaching it. Sometimes he reminded himself of the donkey, with the wisp of hay tied to its nose, which it followed up hill and down dale, but never was able to grasp. During this time, Mr. Taylor quietly made him advances of money, and still predicted success. "It's a long lane, my boy," he would say, "but it will turn." He had no children of his own, and had come to be very fond of his protege, as he called Randall When, therefore, during the second winter, "The Winner" was taken by a prominent management, Randall's hopes once more rose. This time the advance royalties were five hundred dollars, and Randall's agents predicted that within a twelve-month he would be making twenty thousand a year. He was glad of this praise. It justified him, in his own eyes, for having borrowed the money from Mr. Taylor. At times, he thought that it might have been better, had he secured a position, and abandoned the fight, but 90 A LOST PARADISE. his courage still showed a credit balance his faith in himself and his work still persisted. It was about this time that he met Inez Gordon. She had been at the office of his agents, when he called there one day, and they had been introduced. She came looking for a one-act play, having some idea of going into vaudeville. It was just after the closing of a play in which she had been appearing. Randall's agent laughingly introduced him as a rising young playwright who might do a play for her sometime. The girl, attracted by his personality, had given him her address, and suggested that he call. This he did, some days later, more to pass away a dull evening than with the thought of writing any- thing for her. The result had been one of those rapidly formed attachments which are so characteristic of theatrical life. In a week, these two young persons, both struggling against heavy odds for success, had told each other their troubles, and were calling each other by their first names. In another week, they were dining together at inex- pensive table-d'-hotes,. and talking of the future, as though they fully expected to share it. Randall per- haps more than the girl needed sympathetic and under- standing companionship; the sort of companionship, indeed, that a man gets only from a woman usually only from one who is in love with -him. There never was any formal declaration of their feel- ings for each other. Randall spoke to Inez of his love for her as though it had always existed a part of his life. Inez did not speak very much of her love A LOST PARADISE. 91 for Randall. She simply allowed him to take it for granted. She believed in him, and waited for events to prove the correctness of her belief. It was only after the New York opening of "The Winner" that she began to doubt. CHAPTEK VIII. BETWEEN Tuesday and Saturday Randall dined with Inez Gordon twice. Very little was said between them concerning her dinner with Steinfeldt, the man- ager. The girl, doubtless anticipating some questions on Randall's part, disposed of the matter in a few words. "He offered me the part," she said. "Seems to .think I'm just the type he wants. I'm to let him know." "When, dear ? I imagine he won't leave the matter open indefinitely. I'd rather you didn't take it. You know that." "I know." She mused over his words for a long time, under pretense of listening to the music. There was a blur of calculation in her eyes, which she masked by turning them away and looking at the orchestra leader. "Funny hair, hasn't he ?" she observed. Randall glanced up suddenly. "Hair?" he exclaimed. "Who?" Inez nodded toward the Polish violinist. "Just the kind women love to play with." "Oh, yes I see. I was thinking about something else." "What, dear?" 92 A LOST PARADISE. 93 "Why, about you, and and me, and our marriage. Inez, let's drop all this for the summer, and go away somewhere, and rest. Up on the Massachusetts coast say Cape Cod. There are lots of cheap places up there. We could have a lovely time together, and next fall" She interrupted him, placing her hand on his as it rested on the table. "Dickie, dear," she said, "where are we going to get the money ?" "It won't take much. We can easily do it for twenty-five dollars a week. That would be only three hundred dollars, for the whole summer. I'm sure to get four weeks out of the play in town. Harrison would never take it off, under that, if only to estab- lish it for stock. And then he'll surely send it on the road. Four weeks in town, at say only three hun- dred a week royalty, will give me twelve hundred." "Don't forget you've already had five, in advance." "I know. But that leaves seven. We'll just take the joy and sweetness of this summer together, and then come back to town in the fall, ready for anything. I'm tired out. I need it, and so do you. Then there's my other play the one Slesinger has. I rather think he'll take it, and that will give me five hundred more. I'll turn that over to Mr. Taylor, of course." "But suppose he doesn't take it ?" "Then, when we come back in the fall, I'll take a position. I can easily get thirty dollars a week on some magazine, and that will be plenty for us to live on, until the_ bigger success comes, I can finish up 94 A LOST PARADISE. that play for you, nights. Come along, dear. Won't you ?" He leaned over, urging her with his eyes, with the caressing power of his voice. Inez seemed unable to meet his gaze. "I can't decide now, dear. Suppose we wait until the end of the week. Then you'll know hetter how things are going with you. I've got to act in what- ever way will be best for us both, you know. Stein- feldt offers me a splendid salary." "How much?" "It isn't decided yet, but I believe I can get a hun- dred and fifty." Kandall made no reply. The power of money, the power to take this girl away from him, just now, when he felt he needed her so much, made him a trifle bitter, yet he knew that his failure, if indeed any failure existed, lay at his own door. He had had his chance. He was more romantic than Inez, and younger, if age be measured by willingness to ignore the practical side of life. She, with the note of calculation still blurring her eyes, decided that Randall was somewhat of a dreamer, and in this she was entirely right. "Suppose we leave the matter until Sunday," she said; and they fell to talking of other matters. On Saturday night they again dined together. The sixty-cent table-d'-hote was not greatly to Inez's liking, but it was possible to average it up; so to speak, with the dinner she had had the night before, with Stein- feldt, which had cost twelve dollars. Randall did not know of this dinner, and she saw no reason to tell him of it. Mr. Steinfeldt was inclined to be rather A LOST PARADISE. 95 persistent in his efforts to secure her services. She was quite sophisticated enough to realize that a deeper motive lay behind his persistence, but the woman in her responded to the flattery of his attentions. A con- tinual process of calculation was going on, behind the mask of her inscrutable eves. "Well, Dick," she said, as they sat down at their accustomed table, "how was the matinee ?" "Excellent; the best house, in fact, that we've had yet. We ought to do even better, to-night." She seemed a bit surprised. "I'm so glad!" she said. "Things may turn out well, after all." "I believe they will." He was all enthusiasm to- night. "And we can have our European trip after all." "Dear boy!" Her eyes took on a sudden tenderness. "I do hope everything will be as you expect. You've been so brave! What are the receipts, so far this week?" "I don't know yet. I'll get them, after they count up to-night. Won't you come along to the theatre with me ?" "I can't, dear. I'm going to the Winter Garden." She exhibited a seat-check. "Mr. Steinfeldt gave me a ticket." "Oh!" He seemed a trifle disappointed. "Then we might meet, afterward, and have a bit of supper." "No, I don't think we'd better, dear. You'll want to be with Harrison, and the others, after the show. Come to-morrow, at eleven, and we'll go for a walk in the Park, and decide about everything. Shall we ?" 96 A LOST PAKADISE. He smothered his disappointment. "I'd have liked it to have been with you to-night, but" "And then, dear, to tell you the truth, I've a sort of a headache, and I want to turn in early." The interjection of any question involving her health or her comfort swept away all personal considera- tions. "You ought to, dear," he said. "I'm rather selfish, I guess. You've been under a big strain this week. Get a good night's rest, and to-morrow I'm going to make you agree to marry me, and leave this town for a while. We both need the country. You have no idea how beautiful it is in the woods, now. I went for a run up through Westchester, yesterday, in Mr. Taylor's car. The dogwood is just coming into bloom, and the dandelions in the grass looked like millions of golden stars. I couldn't help wishing that you had been with me. I've longed, all winter, to be out in the country, with you. I've wanted to walk through the woods, and look for arbutus, and violets, and lunch at some little farm-house, and forget that such a place as New York ever existed." "But, Dick, I don't want to forget New York. I love it." "So do I, at times j but there are other times when I feel I'd give my soul, almost, to' get away from the bricks, and the cement, and the eternal smell of gaso- line." "You're a poet, Dickie," she laughed. "You'd prob- ably find, when you got out in the country, that it A LOST PARADISE. 97 was hot, and dusty, or it would probably rain, or the meal at the little farm-house wouldn't be fit to eat." "Nonsense! That just proves that you need to get 'away. You've lost your sense of proportion." "Well, maybe I have, dear. But when I go into the country, I prefer to go in a six-cylinder touring car, and stop at a good road-house for lunch, where they know how to cook. I suppose you'll think that gross mater- ialism, but it isn't. It's just common-sense." Randall did not pursue the subject. Inez sometimes disappointed him terribly, but he believed that she spoke as she did only because she had seen things from a wrong angle. He felt quite sure that, could she once get away from New York, she would enjoy the country quite as much as he did. His love for her made him invest her with a variety of ideal attributes that she by no means possessed. Love furnishes us all with magic spectacles, through which the objects of our adoration appear, not as they really are, but as we wish them to be. The orchestra had just begun to play a popular dance song. Inez's lithe body was swaying in unconscious rhythm to the music. "That's the 'Whistling Tango,' " she said. "One of Peters'. Don't you just love it ?" Randall laughed. "Lot's of go to it, isn't there ? I met Peters the other night. He told me he is going to have a couple of songs in the summer review." "So I hear. He's a wizard, when it comes to rag- 98 A LOST PAEADISE. time. Who could help wanting to dance to a tune like that?" "He said he saw you dining with Steinfeldt at the Knickerbocker, Tuesday evening." She stopped her swaying, and her eyes met his with sudden apprehension. "Certainly," she said. "I told you I was going." "I know. It wasn't that. He oh, well it wasn't anything." "What do you mean, Dick ? I insist upon knowing. What did he say ?" "He said that Steinfeldt was crazy about you." She laughed, and instinctively straightened her hat. "What rot, just because he asked me to dinner! Steinfeldt dines with hundreds of women. Surely, you're not going to be jealous of him! Come. Get your check. I don't want to be late." They walked over to the subway at Astor Place, and at Times Square he left her. "I'll see you at eleven to-morrow, dear," he said, pressing her arm lovingly. "And don't forget what I'm going to do. Monday, the license, and after that just you and me against the world." When Randall reached the theatre, he stopped for a moment at the box-office. "How was the sale, to-night ?" he asked. The box-office man shook his head. "Eotten," he said, and gazed gloomily at the ticket rack. His manner did not invite further conversation. Ran- dall stepped inside, and once more listened to the famil- 'A LOST PAEADISE. 99 iar lines of the play. There was a certain listlessness, an air of depression, about the members of the company, that impressed him unpleasantly. The house was but half-filled and this was Saturday night. All his fore- bodings rushed back with redoubled force. He could scarcely wait until the curtain fell on the last act. Harrison, whom he had not seen throughout the even- ing, stood in the box-office as he went out, smoking his inevitable cigar. Randall went up to him. "How was the week, Mr. Harrison ?" he asked. He hoped that, even with the fairly poor houses, it might not have been a losing one. Just how much "paper" the house had contained each night he did not of course know. Harrison, without replying, took up a slip of paper and handed it to him. Randall read it with horrified eyes. The total business for the week had been two thousand two hundred dollars. It should have been at least eight thousand. Mentally he figured his royalties five per cent, of two thousand two hundred was one hundred and ten. With his agents' commissions off, it would be less than a hundred dollars. And he had -al- ready been advanced five hundred ! At this rate, even though the play continued for five weeks, there would be nothing whatever due him. His hand trembled as he returned the paper to Harrison. "I'm sorry, Mr. Harrison," he said. "But perhaps in a couple of weeks business may pick up." Harrison revolved His cigar about, then took it from his mouth. "The show hasn't got a chance/' he said, slowly. 100 A LOST PARADISE. "I'm going to close it next Saturday night. The notice is already posted." Randall caught his breath, and clutched the side of the door for support. "Next Saturday night ?" he gasped, mechanically. "Yes," Harrison nodded. "And you're not going to try it on the road ?" ""No use. These out-of-town audiences are wiser than they used to be. They read the New York papers, and the criticisms in the magazines. If I'd put this show out, after only two weeks in town, with the notices it got, it would lose me a thousand a week maybe two. I'm sorry, but the only place for it now is the store- house." Randall stood still for a long time, gazing at the ticket rack opposite him. All the red and yellow and green bits of pasteboard danced before his eyes in kaleido- scopic patterns, each of which ultimately resolved itself into the hideous word "failure." The sounds of the street swept into the hot little box-office the carriage calls, the newsboys' cries, the raucous blasts of auto- mobile horns, and each seemed to repeat but the single word, "failure." Harrison pulled his slouch hat over his eyes, said good-night to the men in the office, and turned to the lobby. "Come and get a drink, my boy," he said. "And don't lose your nerve. I've dropped over seven thou- sand, on this thing, and I'm not losing any sleep. You've only lost a few months' time, and gained a lot of valuable experience. Brace up." A LOST PARADISE. 101 Seven thousand dollars and the man was reputed to be making a hundred and fifty thousand a year! And he, Randall, had lost only a few months' time. He thought of the ten or twelve dollars he had in his pocket, which represented his sole remaining capital, of the two thousand dollars he owed Taylor, of the blow to his reputation as a writer, of his shattered nerves, his broken hopes, and of Inez and laughed. "You're right, Mr. Harrison," he said. "Better luck next time. I'm only sorry, for your sake, that things didn't turn out better, and I thank you for giving me a chance." "That's all right, my boy. Don't let this thing break you up. I don't judge a man by one failure or two. If you'd come to me with a play that I liked to-morrow, I'd put it on. What'll you have ?" Randall poured out a large drink of whiskey. He felt reckless, almost like laughing at the blow Fate had dealt him. Yet in his heart hope still remained, bidding him keep up the fight. There was still the play in Slesinger's hands. And there was Inez, and her love. He would ask her to marry him, the next day, take the position about which he had spoken to Mr. Taylor, and win success in spite of all opposition. The drink improved his spirits. He ordered another, and when Harrison bade him good-night, and climbed into his motor car, he felt almost cheerful again. "I won't forget what you said about another play, Mr. Harrison," he called, as the latter drove off. Even the fact that Harrison made no reply did not seem to him important. 102 A LOST PAEADISE. Suddenly he was seized with the idea of going to see Inez. He would make her come out with him, and get some supper. He felt too nervous, too upset, to go to his room, alone. Companionship, of some sort, he must have, for an hour or two at least. And, loving her as he did, he felt a compelling desire to see her, to talk to her, to go to her with his troubles, his bad news, as he would have gone to her with good. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly twelve o'clock. In a few moments he had boarded a Broadway car. Randall had called upon the girl so often, in her little studio apartment, that he had no hesitation in doing so now, even at this late hour. The building was tenanted chiefly by professional people, whose comings and goings were equally a matter of indifference to the sleepy-eyed negro boy who operated the elevator and the telephone switchboard. Randall entered, nodded to the boy, who knew him well, and stepped into the elevator. At the door of Inez's apartment he hesitated a mo- ment, fancying that he heard voices within, then pressed the button. An appreciable interval ensued before Inez opened the dodr. Her face was flushed, surprised, and she, clutched her kimono closely about her breast. "Good Lord, Dick !" she gasped. "What do you want ?" Randall was a trifle taken aback. She had often re- ceived him, at this hour in fact, they had sometimes, after rehearsals and supper, sat in the little parlor and talked for half the night. "I have something important to tell you, Inez/' he said, very gravely. A LOST PARADISE. 103 "But you you can't come in now." "Why not ?" His face flamed with momentary chagrin. "Surely, Inez, you can see me for a few mo- ments. Something has happened " She glanced swiftly back over her shoulder, still hold- ing the door nearly closed. "But the room is all upset," she said. "What do I care, dear ? He took one of her hands, and pressed it lovingly. "I have something to tell you, and I I can't sleep, until I do." "Very well. Come in then. But only for a few mo- ments. I'm frightfully tired, and I want to turn in." "Ten minutes. It won't take longer. I couldn't wait until to-morrow." He strode into the room. Inez stood with her back to the drawn curtains which partitioned off the bedroom. "What is it?" she asked, very low. "What has happened ?" "It's it's about the show," he said. "It closes next Saturday night." Her eyes were fixed on his. There was an almost pathetic look in them, as though she had been hunted, trapped. "I know it," she replied. "You know it. How?" "I heard it at the Winter Garden, to-night. Harri- son's house-manager was there." He gazed at her intently, for a moment, as she stood against the curtains, her lithe form revealed by the clinging kimono. He longed to sweep her into his arms. A tremendous sense of loneliness came over him, a de- 104 A LOST PARADISE. sire to drown the jarring bitterness of his thoughts in a whirlpool of emotion; to feel passionately, deeply, and to cease thinking. He held out his arms. "Inez !" he cried. "You must marry me, anyway. I love you so, dear! I can't live without you now. I want you every minute. I know things look pretty bad, but I'm going to win out. I will, if you will help me. Don't you see that, right now, I need you more than I ever have before ?" He took a step toward her, his eyes searching hers hungrily. She stopped him with a sudden gesture, which for a moment puzzled him. Her two hands were at her breast, and with the one she was drawing from .her finger the ring he had given her. In a moment she had ex- tended it to him. "Here, Dick," she said. "I'm sorry, but it's all over. I'm not going to marry you." "Xot going to marry me ?" he gasped, scarcely under- standing what she said. "^"o. K"ot to-morrow not next fall not at all. I've thought it all over. I don't believe I love you the way I should. I don't believe it would make either of U3 happy. Here, take your ring, and good-by." There was no longer a blur of calculation in her eyes; a glint of determination, a depth of meaning and purpose, had taken its place. Randall saw it, and slowly took the ring. "Good-by," he said, quite mechanically, and with no realization of having spoken at all. Then he stumbled toward the door. As he did so, he saw, lying on a little A LOST PARADISE. 105 table, beside the wall, a man's soft gray hat, and a pair of gray gloves. For one instant, he turned and looked at her. She saw that he had seen them. A shadow swept over her face, and her lips parted, as though she intended to speak. Then Randall began to laugh, a hideous, crackling laugh, like the rattling of dry bones. He tossed the ring which he still held in his hand, toward her, as though the touch of it burnt him. "I guess I don't want it, any more," he said, and, turning, went out into the hall. CHAPTER IX. EVEET man possesses an elastic limit, beyond which he cannot be tried, mentally and nervously, without dangerously approaching the breaking point. Even the stoutest heart must, for a time at least, give way, when Fate gives the wheel of the rack its final turn. Richard Randall had not yet reached this point, when he left Inez Gordon's studio, and started aimlessly down-town, but he was perilously near it. The com- bined shocks of the collapse of his play, and the du- plicity he felt it was that of the woman he loved, had made such overwhelmingly heavy drafts against his small remaining stock of courage and health, that very little more was needed to reduce him to utter bank- ruptcy. He staggered toward Broadway, dazed and almost hopeless. The lights of a saloon on the corner attracted him. He went in and gulped down a drink of raw whiskey. In his present state, it affected him no more than so much water. Then, unable to remain long in any one place, he boarded a car and proceeded down- town. The flaming electric lights, the garish night life of Times Square, mocked him. He crouched in a corner of the car, filled with the sublimity of egotism which causes a man to think that the whole world is against him, that 106 A LOST PARADISE. 107 every man's hand is raised to strike. He wanted to get away, to put limitless distances between himself and this grinning, soulless place, that had stripped him of courage, of health, of hope and of love. A sense of self- pity enveloped him. At times it seemed almost as though the whole city had combined in a monster con- spiracy to ruin him. The very lamps of the countless automobiles seemed to flash derisively as they passed, the electric signs winked at each other, and laughed, the men and women crowding in and out of the restaurants pointed mocking fingers at him, the other passengers in the car raised their eyebrows, and smiled. The ab- surdity of his mental attitude did not strike him even the balm of a sense of humor is denied one at times. He left the car at Twentieth Street, and walked toward Irving Place. In a few moments, he had reached his room. He went in, dashed his hat upon the bed, and sank into a chair. A letter lying on the table caught his eye. It had evidently come late in the afternoon, and had been brought to his room by the maid. He picked it up with- out interest. In the corner of the envelope he saw the familiar name of his play brokers. He tore it open, and saw that it contained a note, transmitting an enclos- ure. The enclosure was a letter from Slesinger, return- ing his play to the agents, and saying that he had read it, and found it unsuited to his purpose. The last straw had been laid upon the camel's back, the last turn been given to the screw by the Fates. Randall crushed the letter in his hand, and sat quite still for over half an hour, his eyes closed. Then he rose. 108 A LOST PARADISE. A sudden energy of determination possessed him. He had quite evidently made up his mind to some immediate and definite course of action. He tossed the letter into the waste-basket, and slowly removed the contents of his pockets and placed them in a pile on the table. There was some eleven dollars and twenty cents in money, a knife, a pencil, a small bunch of keys, and a silver watch with a leather guard. Having done this, he took off his clothes, opened the trunk that stood along the wall at one side of the room, . and, taking out an old suit and a blue flannel shirt, proceeded to put them on. His low black shoes he exchanged for a pair of heavy and much worn tan boots. Then he proceeded to pack all of his belong- ings into the trunk, closed and locked it, and sat down again at hi-s writing-table. His first act was to take a bit of paper, write upon it Mr. Taylor's name and address, and paste it upon the top of the trunk. Then he carefully selected five one-dollar bills from the little pile of money on the table, and, placing them in an envelope, addressed it to Mrs. Baker, his landlady. The sum represented his room rent for the past week, and with it he enclosed his latch-key, and a short note, telling her that he would not need the room further, and that his trunk would be sent for. Then he wrote a letter to Mr. Taylor. "I know you will understand," it read, "when I tell you that I am going away. You will not think this cowardice on my part, for you have realized how worn out I am, how greatly in need of rest. By the A LOST PARADISE. 109 time this reaches you, you will have heard of the fate of 'The Winner.' It seems a pity, but no doubt Har- rison is right. "I am leaving my trunk here, with instructions to have it turned over to you. It contains nothing of any particular value, except the manuscripts of two plays. One of these, the one you know of, Slesinger has just refused. My agents also have a copy. The other is a new play, which I only recently completed. I herewith turn them, together with all interest in 'The Winner' as well as my other play, over to you, do with any or all of them whatever you may see fit, to secure to yourself the repayment of this money. "This is all I have to offer you, in return for your great and unvarying kindness to me. I hope that the stock rights of 'The Winner,' at least, may prove of some value. "Do not think hardly of me for not coming to say good-by. I have received some bitter blows to-day, of which you know nothing. They have hurt me very deeply. My only desire is to get away from it all as quickly as possible. "I cannot tell you where I am going, for I do not know, nor do I know when I shall come back, if, indeed, I come back at all. Good-by, dear friend. You have been very good to me. I wish I might have proven more worthy of your kindness. "Faithfully yours, "RICHARD RANDALL." 110 A LOST PAEADISE. Kandall rose, looked about the room, crushed the remaining six dollars into his trouser-pockets, and, shutting off the light, went out into the hall. The house was very dark and silent. It was long after two o'clock. With the letter to Mr. Taylor in his hand, he noiselessly descended the steps, and left the house. At the corner of Madison Avenue he got a stamp in the drug store, posted his letter, then went over to Broadway and took a car up-town. He felt singularly hungry, and, knowing nowhere to go for food at this hour of the night except Jack's, he made his way there without delay. A curious recklessness possessed him. He counted his money, and found that there still remained six dollars and thirteen cents. He took a table in an obscure corner, ordered a large steak, and a drink of whiskey. The latter he drank at once, while waiting for his steak to be cooked, and supplemented it by another before the meal was brought. The steak tasted very good to him, indeed, as did the several mugs of ale he drank with it. He purchased a Sunday paper, and sat reading it, eating very slowly and deliberately. A strange quietness had come over him. Things no longer seemed to matter much, one way or another, He was no longer Eichard Kandall, the playwright, who had so bitterly failed, but an entirely new indi- vidual, a man whose home was the world, whose heart was a piece of stone, whose nerves had suddenly become steel. And all this he had purchased at the cost of a little food and drink. The Fates, regarding A LOST PAEADISE. Ill him in his temporary state of exaltation, must have laughed. He finished reading his paper as the dawn rose, ghostly and pale, over the house-tops. He went out into the deserted streets. It was half-past five o'clock Sunday morning, the most silent of all the hours in the great city's week. He began to walk, without knowing where he was going. Down to Forty-second Street he went, through the park in the rear of the Public Library, and out into Fifth Avenue. Everywhere the same death-like silence over the sleeping city, the same ghostly quality of the dawn. For all the evidence of life he saw he might have been in a city of the dead. The blue-gray light was changing now to an amber shot with rose, above which presently flashed the first bright rays of the rising sun. He could see, down the cross streets toward Long Island, the glowing eastern sky, and against it the chimneys and buildings on the opposite shore, towering gaunt and black against the dawn. The sunrise spoke of nature, of peace, of wide stretches of sea, of the sweet, warm winds of the tropics. It seemed immeasurably above and beyond the sordid things for which he had so recently been striving. He walked on and on, past Thirty-fourth Street, past Twenty-third, and down to the very end of Fifth Avenue, with its silent marble arch. The Square, in its dress of tender green, welcomed him with the chatter of a thousand birds. He sat down 112 'A LOST PARADISE. upon one of the benches, and drank in the peace of the morning. After a time he slept. When he awoke, with a start, the sunlight was gilding the top of the arch, and the streets were no longer deserted. He glanced at his watch. It was half-past eight. The stimula- tion of the night before had worn off. The sleep had failed to rest him; on the contrary, it had but accentuated his need of it. He shivered slightly, for there was still a chill in the early spring air, and, rising, walked toward Fifth Avenue. He looked at the money in his pocket, and found that he still had three dollars and a half, and some coppers. Habit, and the chill that his nap had given him, made him long 'for a cup of coffee. He made his way to a French hotel and restaurant on University Place, at which he had once or twice dined with Mr. Taylor. The place was just waking up. Scrub women were cleaning the cafe. In the dining-room a single sleepy waiter was serving an equally sleepy guest. Randall sat down, and ordered eggs and coffee. In half an hour, he had eaten, and then retired to the cafe, seating himself heavily at one of the marble- topped tables. He felt old and tired. The depres- sion of the previous night again began to creep into his brain. How characteristic it was of him, he thought, that, having started out the night before to abandon New York forever, he had got no further than University Place. The cafe was quite empty. The single waiter looked A LOST PAEADISE. 113 at him askance, estimating him by his worn suit, his flannel shirt. Eandall cursed himself beneath his breath, and ordered more coffee, with brandy. With all its evil consequences, there is this sovereign power about drink: It deludes the senses, and pro- duces a false sense of security. Eandall had never been a drinking man, but, just now, drink seemed to him his only salvation. The slow, insistent on-coming of the depression of the night before terrified him. He felt that he must forget, else his career, whatever it might be, was likely to end in the East Eiver. Once he tried to argue himself into a more reason- able state of mind. Even though things had gone badly, could he not summon up enough courage to face them? It is likely that, had his nerves been in a normal state, he would have done so; but they were not, and the thought of Inez and her treatment of him made his soul shrink. He wanted to get away from his thoughts, and, in desperation, ordered more brandy. He sat in the little cafe dully, stupidly, until noon, consuming drink after drink. The habitues of the place, dapper-looking Frenchmen, tired-eyed Ameri- cans who had not slept, came in with their morning .papers. Eandall paid no attention to them. He wanted to get drunk he meant to get drunk and he did. By twelve o'clock, the tables were spinning about like pin-wheels, and there seemed to be innumerable- waiters in every corner. Yet the liquor had not stimu- 114 A LOST PARADISE. lated him. Instead, he felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. He staggered out to the desk, and asked, thickly, for a room. "The cheapest you have," he said. The clerk looked at him, decided that, in spite of his clothes, he was a gentleman, and calling a bell-boy, gave him a key. Then he asked Eandall for a dollar and a half. The latter drew from his pocket a single bill, and a handful of change. After paying for his room, he found that he still had forty cents. In a spirit of bravado, he gave the boy a quarter, and, when the latter had left the room, he pulled down the shades, tore off his clothes, and crept into bed. It was dark when he awoke, and a dreadful pain bound his head, like a circlet of steel. He reached for his watch. It was three o'clock, but whether three in the afternoon, or the morning, he did not know. He staggered to his feet, drank heavily from the water-bottle which stood upon the wash-stand, then, raising the shade, looked out of the window. It was night, and in the velvet sky shone many stars. He crept back into bed, hoping for sleep, but for many hours found none. The shade he had left up, and a faint light stole in from the night sky. For what seemed to him centuries he lay, looking up at the wall paper on the ceiling of the room a pattern of flowers, set in a field of stars. The minutes passed like whole days. He wondered whether he could endure it until the dawn came. Yet, after all, what would the dawn mean, to him ? A LOST PARADISE. 115 After a long time, he rose, switched on the light, and went to the little table near the window. On it he found writing materials, and he began to write. In the course of half an hour, he had produced the fol- lowing : "And so, for twice ten thousand years I lay And searched the pattern on my tomb's low roof. Poor futile flowers, dull, and drab, and small, That 'neath my burning eyes did live, and grow To passion flowers, red with life, and love. Around them spread a million tiny stars, That fell, like tears from some twice-broken heart, To blot the flowers out, or water them With sweet compassion's rain, and give them peace. Anon the roof seemed coils of snakes, like whips, That writhed about a cruel face of stone. Fate sneering at me with white frozen lips, The while she lashed in silence at my heart. There was no sleep, for sleep had been too kind For one so crucified." He read the lines over, then tore the sheet of paper into bits, and flung it from him. For some little while he thought of death, and wondered whether, should he leap from the window, the fall to the yard below would be fatal. Then he crept back into bed, and presently fell into an uneasy sleep. It was broad daylight when he awoke, burning with thirst. He dressed with feverish haste, and descended 116 A LOST PARADISE. to the ground floor. Suddenly he realized that he had no more money but fifteen cents remained in his pocket. He went out into the streets, hot with the morning sun, and, going to the nearest saloon, spent his remaining money for a glass of whiskey. A strange and terrible peace now possessed him. He felt that he no longer belonged to the world of living things, but was a creature apart, a being of another world, bound by no tie to the roaring city about him. The streets were filled with people. It was noon, and the denizens of the sweat shops were sallying forth for their lunch, and a breath of air. He looked at them, and laughed. He had nothing in common with these pallid creatures. A desire for another drink came over him, with a fierce and sudden intensity. He had almost entered a saloon when he realized that he no longer had any money. Then he bethought himself of his watch, a cheap silver affair that had cost perhaps fifteen dol- lars. He decided to pawn it. He had reached Sixth Avenue by this time, and, soon, the familiar sign of the three golden balls met his sodden gaze. He went in, threw the watch upon the counter, and asked how much he could borrow upon it. The man behind the counter looked at the watch carelessly. "Two dollars," he grunted. "Give it to me." Kandall took the two dollars and the ticket. The latter he tore up, and flung into the I A LOST PARADISE. 117 gutter. With the former, he at once purchased another drink. Then he began to walk down Sixth Avenue for a space, then over to Broadway, and then, turning by some instinct toward the east, he at last found himself on South Street, lined with its countless ships. He paused here a long time, having first obtained another drink, and a plate of bean soup from the free-lunch counter of a dingy water-front saloon. The ships attracted him. Coming as he did from the middle West, he knew little of the sea, but there was a touch of romance, a flavor of far-off climes, about their towering masts, their black and smoke-begrimed hulls, which enfolded him in a spirit of adventure, of mystery. Even the smell of the docks pleased him, with its combination of paint, tar, guano, sugar, and bilge- water. A cool, fresh breeze was blowing from the south-east, carrying with it the salt smell of the sea. He stood for a long time watching a rusty tramp steamer, which, with the assistance of two fussing tugs, was being warped out into the channel. Black clouds of smoke were pouring from her funnels. He wondered whither she was bound, and wished himself aboard. After a while, he tired of the inaction of standing about the docks. The sun was becoming unpleasantly hot, and the liquor he had drunk made him very dizzy. He wandered across the street, and into the bar-room of a sailor's hotel. Back of the bar, a dim, cool room invited. He snatched up a bit of rye bread and cheese, 118 A LOST PARADISE. ordered a drink of beer, and sat down at one of the tables. At another table a group of four men sat, eating and drinking. One of them, a red-faced man, in his shirt-sleeves, was talking earnestly to the others. "You boys had better sign," he was saying. "It's a good berth, and she sails to-night. What the devil do you want, anyway? Ain't The Green Star good enough for you ?" Kandall rose, and going unsteadily over to the other table, stood looking at the shirt-sleeved man, his glass of beer clutched tightly in one hand. "It's good enough for me/' he said, and sat down in a vacant chair. The men looked at him curiously. Some of them laughed. "Are you lookin' for a berth, mate?" the man with the red face inquired. "Yes." Then he called to the bar-tender. "Here, Cap ! Give us a drink for the crowd." He pulled from his pocket his remaining dollar bill, and flung it upon the table. "There's my last cent, boys," he said. "Drink it up. After that, I'll sign to go anywhere, hell included, and won't kick about the wages, either. All I want to do is to get away from New York." The red-faced man smiled grimly. "You're on, my boy," he said, then turned to the bar-keeper. "Make mine a whiskey." CHAPTEK X. WHEN Eandall awoke, it was dark, and the place in which he found himself was quite unfamiliar to him. It was a long, low-ceiled, dingy-looking room, faintly lighted by an oil lamp swinging from above. Someone was poking him violently in the ribs. It was a big man, with enormous square shoulders, and a rusty-looking red beard. "Turn out for your watch, you lubbers !" he roared. "We're getting under way. Turn out!" The man passed on, thrusting his huge hand into the next bunk with many and choice objurgations. Kandall sat up, and looked about him, somewhat dazed. The fumes of the liquor he had drunk still clouded his brain. He found that he had been lying in a narrow fore- castle bunk, upon a pillow composed of a greasy canvas bag, which seemed to be filled with articles of clothing. His hat, coat and waistcoat were gone, as were his shoes, but he still wore the trousers and the blue flan- nel shirt, which he had put on upon leaving his room in Irving Place. The men in the other bunks were tumbling out, blear-eyed and cursing. The red-whiskered man had gone. Kandall saw one of the others feel in his can- 119 120 A LOST PARADISE. vas bag, and presently haul out a pair oi low deck shoes. He did likewise, and found that those in his bag, although heavy and clumsily made, fitted him reasonably well. Having put them on, he slid to the floor and stood up. A frightful pain shot through the back of his head, and for a moment he was so dizzy he could scarcely stand. The other men, some seven or eight in all, were crowding toward the companionway leading to the deck. Randall joined them. The man nearest him, a youngish-looking fellow, with a tanned and rather attractive face, turned to him and laughed. "How're you feelin' ?" he asked. "Pretty fair," Randall returned, with a rueful smile. "What ship is this ?" "Avalon tramp freighter." "Where are we going ?" His companion grinned. "Bound for Hong Kong, by way of Suez. Ever been to sea before ?" "No," Randall replied, licking his parched and blistered lips; "never." "Hope you like it!", said the other, as they came eut on deck. It was night. The breeze from the south-east had become fresher, and a short, choppy sea covered the surface of the river, as the tide ran seaward against it. Randall gazed about curiously for a moment, as his eyes became accustomed to the half-light. He saw before him a long sweep of deck, above A LOST PARADISE. 121 which rose amidships a square deck-house surmounted by a single black funnel. Upon the latter were painted two red stripes, with a broader blue one between. The vessel was just drawing away from the pier, under the influence of two tugs. It was too late to turn back now, Randall realized, even had he felt any desire to do so, which he did not. Over the rail, he caught sight, for a moment, of the myriad lights of the city; it seemed to him that they still blinked in solemn derision. He hoped it would be a long time before he should see them again. A keen, nervous-looking man, with a black mustache and a weather-beaten face, whom Randall judged to be one of the officers, came toward them. "Here, you men!" he called out. "Lay aft there, and stow those fenders and lines. And make fast those booms, before they carry something away. Lively now !" The orders were Greek to Randall, but he followed the man who had given him the information about the vessel's destination, and tried to look as though he knew what he was about. He observed, as he ran aft with his companions, that there were other men upon the deck, the remainder of the crew, he concluded, who were swiftly performing a variety of tasks, the nature of which he did not in the least understand. The black-must ached man and the one with the red whiskers were shouting out orders with alarming frequency. Randall stood beside the sailor he had been following, and assisted him in hauling over the rail some huge masses of rope-work,, which even hia 122 A LOST PAEADISE. faint knowledge of nautical matters told him were fenders. Others of the men had swarmed to the booms which projected like giant fingers from the short masts, and were lashing them amidships, over the cargo hatches. Still others began to coil up apparently end- less dripping ropes, with a quickness and precision at which Kandall marveled. They were out in the stream now, and the tugs had cast off, and left them. From the sudden vibration of the vessel, Kandall knew that her propeller had begun to move. Huge clouds of black smoke, shot with red, rolled from her funnel, and streamed off toward the north-west, raining a shower of cinders and sparks upon the deck. Kandall winced as one of them burnt his cheek. The excitement of the moment, the cool freshness of the breeze, the novelty of the situation, had all combined to make Kandall forget both the immediate suffering due to his aching head, and the greater pain that gnawed at his heart. Now he once more began to feel them. With the other men with whom he had been work- ing he had gone forward. They stood about the deck and along the rail, watching the lights of the city. The vessel was well under way. Already they had passed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, with its fairy- like rows of lights, between which the trains and electric cars crawled like lazy fire-flies. Randall swept the New York shore with rebellious eyes. The towering cliffs, with their countless lights, represented majesty, power, success. He felt himself A LOST PARADISE. 123 an insignificant bit of dross, that had passed through the furnace, and been cast out, along with the other refuse that poured in a never-ending stream into the river. He thought of Inez, and shook his fist impotently at the winking lights. This city, this octopus, that had taken his strength, his courage, his hope, had taken her from him as well. Even in the bitterness of his despair, he did not altogether blame her. He had not stopped to inquire whose hat and gloves lay upon the table in her room; he knew they must be Steinfeldt's ; yet even now, he did not accuse her of any wrong-doing. In his heart, he strove to find excuses for her. Perhaps Steinfeldt had stepped into the bedroom, and drawn the curtains, merely because he did not wish it to be known that he was there, in Inez's rooms. Possibly he had come only to talk with the girl about the engagement he wished her to take. Yet however this might be, Bandall knew that Inez had taken that engagement that the money and power that Steinfeldt's success gave him had been strong enough to take her from him. He, alas, could offer her only love. Curiously enough he did not see, at this time, that, had the love she gave him been worthy of the name, it could not have been purchased by a hundred Stein- feldts, or a thousand theatrical engagements. He had idealized Inez, and would not permit himself to see that the woman he had enshrined in his heart was a very different creature from the one who had handed hira back his ring, two nights before. 124 'A. LOST PARADISE. He flung his impotent anathemas at the great city, quite unappreciative of the fact that he somewhat resembled a gnat defying Niagara Falls. Randall was young, and his sense of humor was as yet insuffi- ciently developed to enable him to laugh at himself. One of the men, who stood beside him, also gazing at the city, spoke up. "What's the matter, mate?" he asked, grinning. "Did your girl go back on you?" Randall turned, and saw the young man with whom he had been working a short time before. ."Yes," he said bitterly; "she did." The other laughed. "Lord," he said, "that's what sent me to sea, too. Ain't it funny, what a lot o' sailors women make ? Well, I got over it before we struck Rio I was goin' around the Horn, that trip and I been thankin' her ever since. I was a sickly rat then something like you. Now I got a pair o' arms on me like hams, and could eat my boots if I had to. God!" He ex- panded his chest, and drew in a breath of the salt breeze. "Ain't that great, after them rotten streets ?" They were passing Quarantine now, and the lights of the city had grown dim. Randall spat contemptu- ously over the side, and turned his back on them. "Thank God, we're going east," he said. His companion laughed. "About the only way there is to go, mate, from here," he said. "Leastways, you couldn't go west, very well not aboard ship. Never been to Suez, I take it." A LOST PARADISE. 125 "No." "Well, believe me, you'll see life out there real life. I made this trip once before, and I'll be glad when we get there again." The man with the red whiskers, who was standing amidships, came toward them, bawling out an order. Randall could not make out what it was. He asked his companion, as they hurried aft. "Never mind," said the latter, "I'll show you. Just you stick along with me." Randall caught one last glimpse of the cluster of lights astern, which marked the position of the city, then forgot all about them in the work before him. His course was set toward the east. It was not likely, he thought, that he would see New York for a long time to come, and in this supposition he was entirely correct. CHAPTER XL THE setting sun was just gilding the summit of Vic- toria Peak, as the P. & 0. liner, Batavia, drew slowly out of the harbor of Hong Kong. The flock of low-lying sampans fell slowly astern, as the vessel gained headway, and the bat-winged river craft tossed heavily, with a shrill creaking and groan- ing of their yards, as her bow wave caught them. Upon the sloping hillsides innumerable lights began to appear from out of the gloom, like glow-worms among the foliage, while in the streets along the water- front people of half a hundred nationalities sought the evening breeze. There was a curious thin mist upon the face of the water, so diaphanous as to be almost invisible, yet sufficient to blur the circling line of the horizon, and veil the lights along the shore, as the vessel drew away from them, with a soft mysterious haze. From the mouth of the river, a gentle land breeze brought down the smell of moist wet earth and of flowers, and with it a suggestion of the East, intan- gible, yet by those who know it never to be forgotten. A young man standing alongside the rail of the vessel, far forward, gazed back at the slowly disap- pearing city, and smiled whimsically to himself as 126 A LOST PARADISE. 127 he hummed, "The Road to Mandalay," beneath his breath. He was a sturdy-looking young fellow, quite evi- dently from his dress a sailor. His face, tanned to the color of leather, looked youthful enough, in spite of the brown beard that covered its lower portion. His eyes, sparkling with vitality, were encircled by no tell-tale wrinkles, while the smoothness of his skin, the self-reliant carriage of his shoulders, the elasticity of his movements, bespoke that perfection of health which comes from an active life in the open air, in close touch with nature. It was a full three months since Richard Randall had sailed, ill and broken-hearted, out past the Sandy Hook light-ship, and in that three months he had become a man. The process had been a trying one. His ignorance of life aboard ship had caused him much suffering at first, but he had endured it with the courage of a stoic, and had thereby proven the quality of the metal within him. Ill, nervously a wreck, anxious to forget the past, he had thrown himself into his new duties with the courage of desperation, and found to his great sur- prise that they were by no means as difficult as his first impressions had led him to suppose. Having an intelligent mind, he readily grasped the significance of the tasks that confronted him day after day, and his very anxiety to forget the events that had led up to the sudden departure from New York, caused him to concern himself the more deeply with the details which made up his new life. 128 A LOST PARADISE. The Avalon had made a rather slow outward pas- sage; thirty-five days to Suez, seventy to Hong Kong. Eandall had plenty of time to acquire his sea legs, learn the difference between a belaying pin and a capstan bar, and how to splice a three-inch hawser. He also acquired a fondness for ship's biscuit and salt pork, and to his astonishment his health, instead of breaking down under the hard work and coarse diet, improved from day to day by leaps and bounds. In a week, he had entirely lost sight of the fact that he possessed such a thing as a set of nerves. In a month, he found that his muscles were as hard as iron, that he had apparently gained ten to fifteen pounds, and that he slept like a boy of twelve. By the time he reached Hong Kong, Inez Gordon, his plays, all the turmoil of the past two years, seemed to have sunk beneath the horizon, along with New York and its malignant lights. He felt free, gloriously free, as he breathed in the wonderful life-giving sea air, and existence, which had worn such a grim and forbidding aspect, now smiled benignly upon him. He had drunk deep of the great recuperative forces of Nature, and they had made him whole again. He came at last to laugh at himself, and at the absurd terrors that had possessed him. In all its moods, from its hot glassy calms to the turbulence and riot of its north-west storms, the ocean was to him a source of delight. He felt as though he had begun a new life, a life that in itself was an end. And all of these miraculous changes were wrought by that single sovereign remedy, good health. 'A. LOST PARADISE. 129 At times, he wondered what his future would be, but these occasions were rare, and the mood lasted only a short time. The very fact that he was alive, and well, and free, seemed in itself sufficient to justify his being. With his innate love for beauty in all its forms, he had only to look at the sea, in some of its countless fantastic aspects, to find recompense for all the hardships he had undergone. And these hardships were many. Over and over, in the earlier weeks of the voyage, he had been made to feel the depth of his ignorance on all matters per- taining to life aboard ship, and, but for his unvary- ing good nature and patience, his willingness to learn, he would doubtless have fared hardly at the hands of his superiors. They realized, however, after a time, the stuff that was in him, and, contrary to the ac- cepted ideas of seafaring life, helped him to grasp the meaning of his duties, and how to perform them, instead of knocking him senseless with a belaying pin. The result was, that, when The Avalon dropped anchor in the harbor of Hong Kong, Randall was a first-rate deck-hand, if not an able seaman. At Hong Kong, he learned that the vessel was to charter for a cargo of silks to London ; he did not sign for the voyage, but, instead, drew the pay that was due him, and made his way ashore. He had no desire to return so quickly to the turmoil of every-day life. The East had laid its spell upon him he had the smell of its spices in his nostrils, the tinkle of its pagoda bells in his ears. He went ashore, found a boarding-place near the water-front, and proceeded 130 A LOST PARADISE. to see Victoria and the hinterland to his heart's con- tent, for somewhat over a month. At the end of that period, realizing that his store of money was becoming exceedingly low, he applied at the offices of the Pacific and Orient Company for a job as deck-hand upon one of their steamers. The result, much to his surprise, had been a berth upon The Batavia, then in port. Possibly his intelligent appearance, his air of self-respect and cleanliness, had much to do with it. At all events, he found himself, within forty-eight hours after having made his appli- cation, stowing his things away in The Batavia's fore- castle. It was the morning after they had left Hong Kong that Randall experienced the first shock which had come to him since he left New York. It was a marvelously quiet day, and excessively hot. The sun sizzled and boiled upon the freshly holystoned decks, and puffed up the paint on the rails in little bulbous-looking blisters. The sea was calm and motionless; even the ground swell was almost imperceptible. The sky, a thin, faded blue, seemed permeated with the tropic heat. A dazzling, quiver- ing radiance of the air arose perceptibly from the decks; it seemed as though the heat were fairly visible, as it was reflected from their immaculate surface. The oily expanse of the sea was- broken only by the dash of an occasional flying fish, as it hung suspended in a cloud of iridescent spray. A long white fur- row of foam extended to the right and left from the steamer's bow, losing itself in the wake churned up A LOST PARADISE. 131 by her propellers. Beyond this, the ocean stretched, limitless, to the hazy horizon. There was no breeze, except that made by the motion of the vessel. It served to carry away the thin gray wisp of smoke from her funnels, until it lost itself in the blue of the sky. The passengers were mostly seated aft, under the shade of an awning. Kandall, with two of his com- panions, was busy on the promenade deck forward, rigging a wind-shield. He had just completed his task, and was about to descend to the main deck, when he heard someone behind him, speaking in a voice so vibrant and com- pelling that he turned at once to observe the per- sonality of its owner. A girl of some twenty-two or three stood before him, dressed in a suit of thin white pongee, and wearing a Panama hat, tied about with a green veil. She was a trifle over the average height for a woman, and her figure was of that unusual quality which suggests strength and power without carrying the suggestion of size. Kandall, with his keen appreciation of the beauti- ful, felt a momentary shock of pleasure, as his eyes traveled from the girl's well-rounded shoulders and full, deep breast to her slender waist and exquisitely molded hips. She seemed to give out at once an im- pression of grace and of femininity, through which penetrated a suggestion of subtle and conscious power, a perfection of muscular development, which could have found its origin only in perfect health. But it was her face that most strongly held his 132 A LOST PARADISE. attention. He could not have told, at the moment, whether her eyes were light or dark, blue or brown; but he was conscious that they held his with a most extraordinary and compelling power. And, even while he was searching their depths, he became aware of her amused smile, and heard her repeat, in a voice at once musical and peremptory, the question that had at first attracted his attention. "Can you tell me, my man," she said, "whether or not that is the island of Hainan ?" She indicated with her parasol a hazy blue blur upon the horizon. "I I really don't know," Randall stammered, gaz- ing off to starboard. "You don't know! That's queer." "Not very, Miss. This is my first trip through the China Sea." "Oh, I see. Perhaps some of the others can tell me." She turned her back, and started toward the opposite side of the deck. Eandall watched her as she strolled aft, and his heart gave a singular and most unusual leap. The girl's manner had been coolly patronizing; she spoke to him quite as one speaks to an inferior; doubtless she regarded him as merely an ignorant laborer, like the usual run of his class. Yet he fancied he had detected, behind the barriers of class, a lurking gleam of responsiveness in the depths - of her cool gray eyes. She impressed him as a woman bound about so tightly by the bonds of convention and caste that her individuality had become oppressed, almost obscured by it; yet that momentary flash of her eyes, A LOST PARADISE. 133 as they met his, told him that, perhaps quite unknown to her, a spirit of rebellion dwelt behind the bulwarks of her training, which might rise up and devastate her soul, should occasion offer. The object of his thoughts, quite unconscious of the havoc her glances had made, strolled toward the awn- ing aft, radiating vitality, charm, in her every move- ment. Randall, oblivious of the fact that his com- panions had long since descended to the forward deck, busied himself with an imaginary adjusting of one of the lashings of the wind-shield, while at the same time keeping his eyes upon the girl. He had never met a woman just like her. By some intuition he knew that she was English, and realized to how much greater an extent convention entered into the lives of the women of that country than it did into those of his own at least such of them as he had met, Inez Gordon, for instance. He made the comparison invol- untarily, then shuddered. This woman seemed, for all the humanness of her frank and honest eyes, to be remote from the commonplace affairs of the world. She carried with her a suggestion of Old English manor houses, of peacocks in an Italian Garden, of race and breeding and ancestry that somehow placed at once a barrier between her and the things of every- day life. These and many more thoughts raced through Randall's brain as he completed his imaginary task, and returned to the lower deck. The ship's bell told him that his watch was over, and that dinner was ready below. He descended the companion-way, uncon- 134 A LOST PARADISE. scious of the heat, the steaming smell of cooking from the galley, the loud talking of his companions. A sweetness as of hawthorn hedges, or wood violets, per- meated his soul. He ate listlessly, mechanically, and, when the meal was over, flung himself into his ham- mock, and wandered in a long vista of day-dreams. It had seemed to him, when he left Hong Kong, that health, freedom, nature, spelt life. Now he be- gan to see that these things were, after all, only a preparation for the realities of existence. To obtain them, he had placed between himself and the people of his own class a wide gulf. Unless he could in some way bridge that gulf, lif would be but living as an animal lives, eating, sleeping, resting in the hot tropic sun. Already the call of battle, the desire to accomplish things, rang in his brain. Had he been a success as a writer, a playwright, the acquaintance, even pos- sibly the love, of a woman such as the one who had spoken to him on deck would be within his reach. Love ! He wondered why she had made him think of love. Was it possible that, in one momentary glance, she had caused him to care for her ? He smiled at the thought, yet it persisted, and even grew in force and intensity. Doubtless the romantic idea of love at first sight was a dream of poets, yet, when his watch again came around, he found himself searching the promenade with eager and persistent eyes, wondering whether, by any chance, he would again catch sight of the object of his thoughts. In this, however, he was disappointed. A LOST PARADISE. 135 If she came on deck at all during the evening, she doubtless remained aft, where he could not see her. That night he did not sleep well. Snatches of poetry whirled through his brain. He even found himself composing verses, which he regretted his inability to write down. The vessel plowed along, with almost uncanny steadiness, through a violet gray sea, which lay so still and silent that it mirrored the stars. There was an ominous note in the way the water slapped and gurgled against the ship's side. Randall, with some newly developed sixth sense, felt in the close, hot silence of the night the coming of a storm. He was awake long before dawn, and, although it was not yet the hour for his watch, he made his way to the deck, and, standing far forward, watched the rising of the sun. The vessel was headed nearly due east, and her wake was still enveloped in the ghostly shadows of the night. In the eastern sky, however, there showed a faint glow that dimmed the stars, and touched the mist upon the surface of the sea with a marvelous translucence. Apparently colorless, it yet suggested faintly all the prismatic colors. In an incredibly short time, the glow had increased in intensity, and deepened in tone, until it spread in a great fan of lemon and rose almost to the zenith. The mist upon the eastern horizon vanished. Flam- ing darts of red and gold shot heavenward. The flat surface of the sea changed from violet to a brilliant 136 A LOST PAKADISE. mauve, which slowly turned to silver as the rim of the sun arose above the horizon. And then, almost magically, the dawn had come, and the surface of the ocean danced in its radiance. About the sun long streaming clouds of orange and rose spread in either direction almost as far as the eye could reach. It was the sort of sunrise that presages rough weather, yet the sea was as quiet, as motionless, as death itself. Kandall was conscious of a tenseness, an electrical tingling in the air, which he had never observed before. He glanced at the cloud- less sky, laughed at his premonitions, and went below for breakfast. His thoughts were still centered upon the young English girl with the amazingly contra- dictory eyes. CHAPTER XII. IT was noon of the third day out, and Randall had not yet caught sight of the object of his dreams. He wondered whether she might be ill, yet realized the absurdity of such supposition. Rarely had he seen a woman who so radiated health. His duties, during the forenoon, much to his regret, kept him forward. It was, therefore, with something of a shock that he presently saw the girl advancing toward him along the main deck. She had a small camera in her hand, and was taking snap-shots of the various objects that attracted her attention. Randall, at the moment, was standing beside the capstan, polishing its brass-work with a bit of rag. His hands were grimy, his face flushed with the heat. He straightened up as the girl came toward him, and rather sheepishly touched his cap. "Oh, don't move, please," she exclaimed. "I want to get you just as you were." Randall resumed his polishing. Presently he heard the click of the shutter, then again looked at the girl. She seemed, if anything, more charming now than before. Her cheeks were glowing, her eyes dancing. He thought, as he observed her graceful, yet muscular, figure, that she must have done a great deal of out- door exercise. 137 138 A LOST PAEADISE. She came a bit nearer, and smiled at him quizzically. "It was Hainan," she said. "You ought to know, don't you think? in case anybody else should ask you." "Thank you, Miss." He again pulled at his cap. "I'll remember it, this time." "You're not an Englishman, are you ?" she inquired. "No, Miss. I'm an American." "Oh, that accounts for it. I thought you seemed a bit different. Do you think we are going to have a storm ? Captain Farrabee tells me the barometer is going down frightfully." "It looks like it, Miss." "I'm so glad!" she laughed. "I've always wanted to see a typhoon. What is that thing you're clean- ing?" "The capstan, Miss." "What's it for?" "To get up the anchor, Miss, although it's only used in case of emergency. They use steam, mostly." "Thank you," she said, with a pleased look, and passed on. Eandall realized fully that he was of no more importance in her eyes than the brass-work he was cleaning. She had questioned him as she might have questioned a deck-steward. It galled him somewhat, although he knew that only the fact that she so regarded him made it possible for her to speak to him at all. He sighed, and went on with his work. How absurd, after all, his thoughts were! He might as readily concern himself with the moon. A LOST PARADISE. 139 At four o'clock, Randall, who was lying in his ham- mock during the watch below, felt a gentle swaying movement, as the liner dipped to a long ground swell. It was the first motion of the sea that he had noticed since they left Hong Kong. He rose and peered out through an open port-hole. A faint puff of warm sultry air met him, but it ceased almost immediately, and he saw that the surface of the sea still presented the oily calm which had characterized it since the night before. The sun was still shining, but its rays were slightly veiled, as though they came through an invisible screen of gauze. He went back to his ham mock, cursing the intolerable heat. It was during his watch on deck, that evening, that the first breath of the storm struck them. Away off to the north-west he saw that the surface of the ocean presented a darker hue, and presently a long black line, like a shadow, began to move swiftly toward the vessel. It was the line of ripples caused by the on- coming breeze. At first but a few gentle puffs, moist and redolent with the odors of the land, swept the plume of smoke from the vessel's funnels, and carried it off toward the south. A low sighing, like the notes of a wind harp, vibrated through the air. The rigging of the liner creaked complainingly, as the breeze became stronger, and the ground swell grew in size. In half an hour, the force of the wind had increased to such a point that the passengers sitting on deck sought the lee side of the deck-house, and Randall 140 A LOST PAEADISE. felt from time to time the sting of a bit of salt spray, as it spun over the rail. The stars, which an hour earlier had been shining faintly in the misty sky, were now all blotted out, toward the west, by huge, towering inky clouds that crept toward the zenith with astonishing rapidity. Gradually the entire dome of the heavens became ob- scured, and a hot, close-pressing darkness wrapped the ship about. The passengers had by this time nearly all gone to their state-rooms. Randall and the other men in his watch were busy stowing away the awnings and wind-shields, battening down the hatch-covers which, owing to the heat, had been raised, and making fast with additional lashings everything movable about the decks. The wind steadily gained in strength. By midnight it tore through the rigging in long, mournful cadences, like the distant howling of a pack of wolves. The force of the ground swell had measurably increased. In great, ponderous masses, it rolled toward the ship, and, sweeping under her quarter, twisted her from end to end with a quivering motion that made her groan in every rivet and frame. When Randall went below, at the end of his watch, the darkness was so great that he could with diffi- culty make his way to the forecastle hatch, and the motion of the vessel nearly threw him from his feet. Accustomed as he had become to rough weather at sea, he still found great difficulty in sleeping. The roar of the storm increased, as the night wore on, and A LOST PARADISE. 141 the plunging of the vessel, as she wallowed through the tremendous seas, made her quiver from stem to stern. By morning the full force of the typhoon, had reached them. It was impossible to maintain a foot- ing on the wet and slippery decks, even in the shelter of the deck-house, without clinging to the rail. The sky was a deep-gray black, over the face of which darker masses of clouds, thin and widely spread, like smoke, tore with frightful rapidity. The sea was a tumult of towering waves, down the sides of which swept great masses of wind-tossed foam. The course of the vessel had been changed she now was headed more to the south, in an effort to escape beyond the limits of the storm's cyclonic whirl. It seemed ques- tionable whether she would be able to hold this course ; the rush of the waves against her starboard quarter seemed momentarily about to engulf her. From time to time the seas hurled themselves clear over the after rail, and swept knee-deep along the decks. Randall wondered if it could possibly blow ^ny harder, as he crouched in the lee of the deck-house forward, and watched the seething riot of the waves. With the exception of the other men of his watch and the officers on the bridge, the decks were deserted. He wondered what the young English girl was doing. He hoped that she was not seasick, like most of the other passengers. About eleven o'clock in the forenoon there came a slight cessation in the force of the gale, although the sea was, if anything, more tempestuous than before. 142 A LOST PARADISE. Eandall was glad of even a temporary relief from the grinding roar of the storm. Its force had been so great that he could scarcely breathe, and under no circum- stances could he have spoken the wind would have torn the words half -uttered from his mouth, and flung them, meaningless, off to sea. He raised himself painfully to his feet, for the long crouching in one position had left him stiff and sore. The rolling of the deck was tremendous. He clung to the rail, and swept a look aft, toward the north-west. But there was no indication of any relief. The smoky clouds were tearing southward with a speed almost as great as before, in an apparently endless procession. And then, to his utter amazement, one of the doors leading from the deck-house was suddenly opened, and he saw the young English girl, hatless and wrapped in a long water-proof coat, step out upon the tumbling deck, and fall, rather than walk, toward the rail. "I want to see the storm," she called, at the top of her voice. Through the tumult of sound, Randall barely managed to catch her words. He moved un- steadily toward her along the rail, and, when he had come up to her, roared into her ear. "Go below. It isn't safe. Go below." She laughed, and twisted her arm about a stanchion. "I'm all right," she said. "It's it's glorious." Randall was at a loss what to do. He knew that, should any of the officers learn of her presence on deck, they would insist upon her going below at once. The storm was by no means over; on the contrary, the sud- den rush of the gale, the shrieking and roaring of it, as A LOST PARADISE. 143 it again swept down upon the vessel, told him that the lull had been but a temporary one. The force of the wind evidently surprised the girl. She clung to the stanchion with both arms now, and her smile grew somewhat less confident. She tried to say something to Randall, but the roar of the storm was so great that he could not make out what it was. He pointed in silence to the door through which she had come, but she shook her head. And, then, a blast of wind struck them, compared to which the previous efforts of the storm seemed trivial. The vessel careened as though some mighty hand had struck her a blow. A mountainous roller swept over her quarter, and tore down the alleyway, foaming breast high along the side of the deck-house. Randall jumped for the girl, and, throwing his arms about her, clung with all his force to the stanchion. For an instant, it seemed to him that his arms were being torn from their sockets. He heard a cry above the roar of the storm from one of the crew who saw their predicament, and then, with a mighty wrench, the on-rushing water flung them over the rail as though they had been two bits of cork. As he plunged down the receding face of the wave, his arms still about the girl, Randall caught a moment- ary glimpse of the vessel as it tore by them in a cloud of spindrift and spray, and saw a round white . object, which he knew to be a life-buoy, come hurtling through the air toward him. He flung himself upon it, one hand clutching his companion's arm, and managed to grasp the life-buoy 144 A LOST PARADISE. with the other. The girl, in spite of the shock, was still conscious, and seemed to understand what he expected of her. Apparently she could swim, although little opportunity to do so presented itself in this boiling waste of surge and foam. She managed, however, to slip the water-proof from her shoulders, and clung with both hands to the buoy. There was a bit of rope attached to it. Eandall succeeded in getting this about the girl's waist, and making it fast. The task was no easy one, for the smother of foam, the force of the gale, as they rose to the top of the next wave, almost choked him. He was astonished to find that they lived at all, yet he saw that, when they swirled down the long sloping sides of the swells, they were almost completely protected from the force of the wind ; it was only when they rose to the crests that they felt its fury. The water was warm, and on this score they felt no discomfort ; their greatest dangers lay in the possibility that, when the crests of the waves swept over them, they would be suffocated, or that they might be wrenched from their hold upon the buoy. Eandall had secured the girl so that this danger did not threaten her, but he found his own arms already becoming sore from the effort to hold on to the slippery canvas ring. At last, in the momentary safety of a lull between two waves, he managed to take off his belt, and by buckling it about the buoy, formed a loop through which he could slip one arm. He soon found that, by turning their backs to the crests of the waves as they rose, they could hold their A LOST PAEADISE. 145 breaths until the welter of wind and foam swept over them, and thus avoid suffocation, for a time at least. And, after all, what was the use in prolonging the agony of their death ? For that death faced them,, he felt certain. The Batavia had long since disappeared in a welter of foam and spray to the south-east. She could not have paused in that headlong flight, even had the captain been foolhardy enough to have made the attempt, and to launch a boat would have been suicidal. It could not have lived a moment in that boiling sea. There remained, apparently, no possible chance for them, unless, indeed, some land were near, and this, Eandall felt sure, was out of the question. The Batavia had driven, he knew, since leaving Hong Kong, con- siderably out of her course, but whether she had passed to the east or the west of the island of Luzon, he did not know. The former seemed to him more likely, as her general course had been toward the south-east. In that event, they were in the Pacific, and probably hun- dreds of miles from any land. He looked at the white face of the girl, and shud- dered. How terrible that she should die like this ! She met his gaze with a courage that he admired in silence. "We we haven't got much chance, have we?" she gasped, putting her mouth close to his ear, so that her words might be audible. "While there's life, you know," he replied, and held his breath as a burst of wind and foam swept over their heads. He managed to get a glimpse of the sky toward the north-west, as they rose on the next wave. It seemed 146 A LOST PARADISE. to him that it was lighter, and that the fury of the gale had appreciably diminished. This momentary encour- agement, however, soon passed. Of what avail would it be, for the storm to pass away, only to leave them to die, without food or water, under the pitiless glare of the tropic sun? Indeed, he doubted greatly whether either of them could last through the night, storm or no storm. It had been close to noon when they were swept from The Batavia's deck, and they had now been in the water between three and four hours. Randall again made an observation of the western sky, and this time the greater ease with which he was able to face the rush of the wind showed him beyond doubt that the storm was waning. He had no knowledge of typhoons, but he had heard his companions on shipboard talking about them, the preceding day, and he had got an impression that such storms were not unlike cyclones, sweeping along in a well-defined path, whirling furiously about a moving center, and passing with tremendous rapidity. In that case, it was not unlikely, he argued, that the typhoon had swept off to the north-east, and that from now on the wind would gradually die down. In this supposition he was correct. Several hours later, when it was, he judged, about nightfall, the force of the wind was distinctly less, and 'they rose and fell upon the enormous seas without encountering the blast of foam and spray which had before threatened to suf- focate them. The waves, however, had not lessened in size or A LOST PARADISE. 147 power. Randall realized, as he had never realized be- fore, the tremendous, the almost irresistible, force of the ocean. He and his companion were no more than two specks of dust upon its vast surface; their very lightness and insignificance, indeed, were what had so far preserved them. The night fell very dark, and, as the sky was still obscured by the scudding, smoking clouds, they were almost unable to see each other, or realize each other's presence. Randall put out his free hand he had been holding on to the loop formed by his belt with each arm alternately and grasped the girl's wrist. "Do you think you can hold out till morning?" he asked. "Yes," she gasped, rather weakly; "I I think so." In spite of the warmth of the water, they were both becoming chilled. Randall moved his arms about, striv- ing to keep up the circulation. He urged the girl to do likewise, but she was apparently too weak to follow his advice. Hour after hour they tossed on the black surface of the sea, gradually growing weaker as the night wore on. The wind had dropped to a moderate gale now, but Randall had lost interest in it. He felt that their position was a hopeless one, and that they might just as well die now, in the darkness of the night, as prolong their suffering into the coming day. From time to time he reached over, and felt for his companion's hand. The faint pressure with which she returned his grasp showed him that she still lived. He wished that it were in his power to die that she might 148 A LOST PARADISE. be saved. Alone there, in the night, his heart went out to her he felt that here was a woman whom he might, indeed, have loved. He was clutching the buoy with tired arms, scarcely conscious of the passage of time, when suddenly there came to his ears a far-off sullen roar. Had the storm broken out again? He raised his head, but could see nothing. The sound rose and fell, above the moaning of the wind, the tumult of the ocean. He could not understand it, yet he knew that, whatever it was, they were approaching it rapidly. In half an hour it thundered in his ears like the sound of the firing of artillery. Suddenly, the water about him became rougher, more broken. He felt him- self raised up by some mighty force and swept irre- sistibly forward. With his free hand, he grasped the buoy, fearing lest he be torn away from it. And then he was whirled over and over, in a smother of foam; the life-buoy was wrenched furiously from him, and he lost consciousness in a seething rush of waters. CHAPTER XIII. WHEN Richard Randall awoke to consciousness, lie found himself lying on a bed of hot, coarse sand, with the sun beating down so fiercely upon his upturned face that he blinked with pain when he tried to open his eyes. He closed them again at once, and with his hands brushed aside the sand flies that swarmed about him, stinging his face, his lips. A strange and listless peace, born of utter weariness, possessed him. He threw his arm about his face, and once more dozed. After a time he woke again, tortured by a burning thirst. He licked his dry, salt-encrusted lips, and slowly rose to a sitting position. The hot, white bril- liance of the sunlight hurt his eyes. Shading them with one hand, he gazed curiously about. He was sitting upon a rough and shell-strewn beach, some forty feet above the line of the breakers. Directly before him spread out the ocean, dazzling blue, and reaching out to the endless rim of a hot and cloudless sky. The beach swept away to right and left in long barren curves of sand, along which a fringe of brown and sun- dried foam, intermingled with seaweed, pebbles and 149 150 A LOST PARADISE. shells, marked the furthermost limits reached by the now receding breakers. The sea, still angry and tumultuous, boiled in huge masses over the flat expanse of coral reef that guarded the shore, bursting into clouds of iridescent spra*y twenty feet in the air along its outer edge. Further in-shore, it pounded sullenly on the wet beach, as though regretting its inability to destroy the fabric that re- strained it. Randall rose uncertainly to his feet, and looked about. From the position of the sun, he judged it to be about eleven o'clock in the morning. His arms and shoulders ached, as did his head. His tongue and throat were dry and swollen, and his breath seemed made of flames. Visions of cool, shadowy springs, of fresh, tumbling waters, flashed torturingly through his brain. The whole world seemed made up of glaring, dazzling sunlight. As his mind became clearer, his thoughts turned to the woman who had shared the night and the life-buoy with him. What had become of her ? Far off down the beach, his eyes, now becoming some- what accustomed to the burning glare of the sun, fell upon a smudge of white, brilliant against the yellow brown of the shore. He set off toward it, staggering weakly through the loose shifting sand. Some instinct drove him presently to the firmer footing of the beach, still wet from the receding tide. Here he walked more easily, and the moisture cooled his feet. In the course of ten or twelve minutes, he reached the object that had attracted his attention. It was the 1 A LOST PARADISE. 151 circular life-buoy, and beside it lay the huddled figure of the woman who had been his companion during the tempest-ridden night. She rested upon one side, still bound to the buoy by the knotted rope. Her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed. Randall could not at first tell, as his gaze fell upon her, whether she was alive or dead. Her eyes were closed, and her brown hair, freed from its fasten- ings, lay in a cloud about her head. He fell upon his knees, and grasped her wrist. To his joy, her heart still beat, but its pulsations were faint and irregular. The heat of the sun had burnt her face cruelly. Randall loosened the rope which still fastened the girl to the life-buoy, put his arms about her, and strove to raise her from the sand. In the rear of the beach was a fringe of low trees. He felt tnat he must get her into their shade. He soon found that, in his weakened condition, he was unable to carry the girl in his arms. The mere effort of raising her body from the sand exhausted him. He was forced to let her slip gently back to her former position. For a moment Randall gazed about him, uncertain what to do. Then he staggered up the beach, toward the fringe of trees and underbrush that bordered it, and presently returned with a few branches, with broad fan-shaped leaves, which he stuck in the sand about the girl's head. The device afforded her some shelter from the sun. This done, he started off to look for water. 152 A LOST PAEADISE. He felt that, if he did not soon have something to allay his thirst, he would go mad. The shore ascended rather sharply toward the line of underbrush. Randall made his way up the eight or ten feet of declivity that separated the beach proper from the grassy plateau beyond. In a few moments he found himself in a sparse grove of low-drooping bushes, which resembled the Japanese umbrella trees he had seen occasionally at home. Beyond them stretched a series of sand dunes, covered with a variety of flower- ing trees and shrubs, none of which he knew. At the further edge of the dunes a thick tropical forest blocked his view. He made his way as rapidly as possible over the rough ground, looking everywhere for some sign of water, but only the coarse grass that covered the ridges of sand met his eyes. At length he reached the edge of the forest. Looking back, he judged that he had come nearly half a mile. The thought of leaving the girl alone for so long jp, time worried him. She was clearly very weak, and in need of immediate care. He plunged boldly into the thick underbrush that lined the edge of the forest. The ground here rose abruptly for perhaps fifty yards, and then sloped off into a little valley. Randall forced his way through a tangle of ferns, creeping vines and fallen trees, and at length reached a somewhat clearer space at the top of the rise. To his delight, he saw a tiny stream, meandering in a listless fashion through masses of underbrush and ferns at the bottom. *. He fairly tore down the slope, and flinging himself A LOST PARADISE. 153 flat on the ground, buried his face in the surface of a little pool, and drank deeply. The water was sweet and clear, with a faint "woody" taste, and surprisingly cool. Randall prepared to take a supply to his com- panion, then suddenly realized that he had no means for carrying it. He looked about, but saw nothing that suggested a solution of the difficulty. He reproached himself for not having brought a shell with him from the beach he had noticed a number on the sand that would have held a pint or more. At length he picked a broad spear-shaped leaf, and, twisting up the two ends, managed to make a sort of cup, in which he could carry a quart of water. With this he started back, careful of his steps, to avoid spilling its contents. As he was about to ascend the slope that led up from the stream, it suddenly oc- curred to him that the latter in all probability flowed toward the beach, in which event, by following it, he would find a much smoother and easier road back. He made his way slowly through the underbrush, and in the course of a hundred yards reached a little inlet, or cove, into which the stream emptied. Here he regained the beach, and in ten minutes more had returned along the hard wet sand to the point where the girl lay. She was still unconscious, although it seemed to Ran- dall that her breathing was somewhat more regular. He could not make use of either of his hands, as both were needed to hold his improvised cup; there seemed nothing, therefore, to do but dash the water into her 154 A LOST PARADISE. face. This he did, and watched eagerly for some sign of returning consciousness, but none was apparent. Randall became alarmed. The girl was lying on her side, with her face pillowed on one arm. He raised her head, and was horrified to find the under side of it covered with blood, which had oozed from a deep cut over the temple. Her burning skin seemed to in- dicate that she was suffering from a fever. Clearly the girl must be got off the beach, and into the shade. He was on the point of making another attempt to carry her, when she slowly opened her eyes, and gazed up at him with a half -frightened expression. Randall smiled down at her. "I'm so glad you've come to at last," he said. "You must get out of this fearful sun at once." She continued to gaze at him uncertainly, with a puzzled frown. "Who are you?" she asked. In her eyes there was no sign of recognition. "I was with you, last night after we were swept overboard, during the typhoon. Don't you remember ?" She shook her head, with a look of grave wonder. "I don't seem to remember anything at all," she replied. Randall concluded that she was weak and perhaps a little delirious, as well, from her wound and the fever. He knelt down, and, after removing the branches he had placed about her head, put his arm around her. "Do you think you can walk?" The girl sat up, and pressed her hand to her temple. "I'm frightfully dizzy," she said, "and my head A LOST PARADISE. 155 hurts." She took away her hand, and stared stupidly at the blood that covered it. "You must have struck against the reef, as you were washed ashore, or else against a piece of driftwood. Don't you remember?" Again she shook her head. "I don't remember anything," she repeated, with a dazed look. Randall gently assisted the girl to her feet. Then, supporting her carefully, he started along the beach in the direction of the little inlet, from which he had just come. "I'm so thirsty!" the girl moaned. "I'm burning." "There's water just down there." Randall pointed to the clump of trees that marked the entrance to the little cove. "We'll be there in just a few minutes now." The distance was scarcely a quarter of a mile, but it seemed to Randall that they were hours in covering it. At last, however, they reached the inlet, and, leaving the hot glare of the beach, turned into the shade of a large tree that stood just at the mouth of the stream. Here Randall placed the girl upon a stretch of coarse grass, with her back against the trunk of the tree, and, hastily securing a shell from the beach, brought her some water. He was forced to repeat the operation several times before her thirst was quenched. "Thank you," she said at length, in a peculiarly sweet contralto voice. "You are very good." Randall tore a bit of cloth from her dress, and soaked it in the stream. 156 A LOST PARADISE. <r You must let me wash your cut for you," he said. She thanked with a smile. When he had at length managed to remove the sand and bits of shell, which, with her hair, were matted into the wound, he saw that it was not so serious as he had at first supposed. A shallow gash some two inches long, over her left temple, it appeared, both from its torn and uneven edges and from the mass of bruises that surrounded it, to have been made by a heavy rounded object, such as a piece of floating driftwood, rather than by the sharp and rigid projections of the coral reef. When he had cleaned the wound, Randall bound the wet bit of cloth about the girl's head. "Are you hungry?" he asked. She shook her head. "No. I don't feel very well, yet." He improvised a pillow with some fallen leaves. "You lie down here, for a while," he said, "and sleep, while I have a look about. We've got to have something to eat, before we can go on much farther." He eased her head back until it rested comfortably upon the leaves. She gave him a smile of gratitude. "Thank you so much," she said, and closed her eyes. Although Randall's few months on shipboard had given him a working knowledge of life upon a tramp steamer, it fad taught him nothing of existence in the tropics. He was as much at a loss amidst this un- familiar foliage as he would have been in the wilds of Africa. He turned to the beach, as most likely to afford some means of subsistence. A LOST PARADISE. 157 In the tiny bay into which, the stream trickled, he saw many bright-colored fish darting about in the hot shallow water, but had no means at hand whereby he could capture any of them. He walked down toward the line of the breakers, and was amazed to find how greatly they had receded. The tide had been falling since morning, and a broad expanse of reef lay between him and the surf. It was filled with shallow pools, separated by stretches of sand and slime, above which projected here and there brownish-yellow knobs of coral, and masses of sponge and sea anemone. He walked out over the reef, picking his way cau- tiously to avoid slipping on its wet and muddy surface. In some of the shallows he saw starfish, and hundreds of mollusks adhering to the coral formation. Some of these had the appearance of oysters. He broke one off, opened it with his clasp-knife, and ate it. It was an oyster of some sort, he decided, and tasted extremely good. He managed to gather about two dozen, alto- gether, and, removing his coarse flannel shirt, placed them in it, and made his way back to land. His companion was sleeping when he rejoined her. He placed half of the oysters in a shallow pool near the base of the large tree, and then proceeded to eat the remainder with great gusto. Earely had any food ever tasted so good to him. He felt invigorated, and with his returning strength came a full realization of the desperate condition that confronted them. Whether they had been cast upon the mainland, or upon one of the innumerable coral islands that dot this part of the Pacific, it would be impossible to determine 158 A LOST PARADISE. until the girl was sufficiently recovered to be able to travel; just now, the only thing to do was to provide for her welfare and comfort until she should have re- gained her strength. The most necessary thing, now that the question of food and water was for the moment solved, was clearly some sort of shelter. He cast about him to see what he might provide. The sole implement that he possessed was a heavy clasp-knife, which he wore, sailor-fashion, upon a lan- yard. To this fact, no doubt, he owed its preservation. It possessed a stout blade, some four inches long, but while it would serve to cut down saplings up to an inch or two in diameter, he could not hope to do much with it in the construction of even the rudest sort of hut. The shore, from the head of the little bay, sloped sharply upward, forming a bluff some twenty or more feet high, sparsely covered with trees. A ravine, at the bottom of which ran the little stream, divided the bluff into two parts. Eandall ascended the left-hand slope, and in a few moments reached the top. A grove of small trees ex- tended back a hundred feet or more, gradually merging into the jungle. The ground beneath these trees was sandy, and covered with sparse brownish-yellow grass. In this grove, just at the edge of the bluff, he deter- mined to make their camp. It was -close to the sea, so that any passing vessel might readily be observed, and a supply of water was near at hand. Then, too, the condition of his companion made it impossible for him to go very far from their present location. A LOST PARADISE. 159 Two of the trees, each about a foot in diameter, stood, he observed, some ten feet apart, with a clear space between. Each had projecting limbs, at about the height of his head from the ground. He went back along the edge of the ravine, toward the forest, and presently found what he was looking for a long dead limb which had fallen to the ground from one of the many trees. It was fairly straight, and strong. He managed to break off the smaller branches that projected from it, and carried the limb itself back to the site of the camp. Here he placed it in the crotches formed by the pro- jecting lower limbs of the two trees he had selected. It spanned the distance between them, and, being four or more inches in diameter, was amply strong to form the ridge-pole of his hut. This much done, he was at a loss how to proceed fur- ther. At length he decided to hunt up more fallen branches, until he had secured enough of good size to lean against the ridge-pole from the ground on either side, in the shape of the letter A. It was slow work. The branches were plentiful enough, but they were heavy to carry, and the breaking off of the smaller limbs was tedious and sometimes diffi- cult. In the course of three hours' work he had secured enough only to form one side. He placed them as close together as they would go, and designed, when this rough framework was completed, to thatch it with the broad leaves of some of the many varieties of palms that he saw about him. He was hungry by this time, and, glancing over the 160 A LOST PARADISE. edge of the bluff, he saw that the girl was sitting up. He went down to her, and brought the oysters and a shell of water. "Do you feel better?" he asked. "Yes ; much better." Her smile was full of gratitude, yet Randall observed in her face the same puzzled ex- pression that had impressed him so forcibly before. "Would you mind telling me who you are ?" she asked, again. Randall informed her, explaining in a few words the way in which he came to be a deck-hand on The Ba- tavia. "And you ?" he inquired. She shook her head. "I do not know," she said. "You don't know? But I I don't understand?" The girl placed her hand gently upon the bandage that covered her wound. "It must have been the blow," she said. "I can't seem to remember my name, or who I am, or anything at all about the past. I don't even remember the storm, or being washed overboard. Everything seems to begin with the moment when I woke up this morning, and found you looking at me." Randall stared at her, momentarily incredulous ; but the expression of her eyes told him that she spoke the truth. She seemed tired and weak. Her fever had passed away, but the pain from the wound in her head had increased. "Never mind about it now," he reassured her. "No doubt you will remember everything in the morning. A LOST PARADISE. 161 Just now you are too ill to think about it." He began to open the oysters. She ate a few of them, but did not seem to enjoy them. Randall finished the others, and wished for more. A glance toward the sea, however, showed him that the reef was now covered by the tide. Clearly it would not do to depend upon such uncertain means of subsistence. "Have you a hairpin?" he asked the girl. Randall took the hairpin, bent it in the form of a fish-hook, sharpened the point upon a bit of stone, and with the sharp blade of his knife managed to form a sort of a barb, so that the hook would at least hold the bait. He then cast about him for a bit of string. At first he could think of nothing that he might utilize for the purpose, but all at once he remembered the life- buoy. How stupid of him to have forgotten it! He left the girl, and ran up the beach, hoping that the flood tide had not floated it away. It was still there, and he ran back with it at once. The girl, reclining against the tree, watched him, smil- ing interestedly. He removed the bit of rope, which proved to be about ten feet long, and began to untwist the strands. It was slow work, and the sun was close to the horizon when he at last found himself in possession of a clumsy line, some ten feet long, and about the thickness of a match stick. He attached his hook, baited it with a bit of one of the oysters that still remained in the shell, and, with a sapling for a rod, cast the tackle into the water of the little estuary at the mouth of the creek. 162 A LOST PAEADISE. His efforts were almost immediately rewarded. In less than five minutes he had landed a fish of some three or four pounds, which he took to be a variety of sea trout. It was only by sweeping upward with his rod the moment the fish seized the bait that he landed him, however, and he at once flopped off the hook and almost succeeded in regaining the water before Randall caught him in his hands. He was as proud of his catch as a school-boy. "Now we shall have a feast," he cried, laughing, and began to clean his prize. "But how are you going to cook it?" the girl asked, presently. BandalPs enthusiasm suffered a momentary set-back. He had quite forgotten that they had no fire. A search of his pockets revealed no matches had they, indeed, contained any, their soaking in the ocean for twelve or more hours would have rendered them useless. He hung the fish from a branch of the tree, and sat down, hungry and disappointed. "Perhaps to-morrow," he said, "I can find a bit of flint, and strike fire with the blade of my knife. It's too late, to-night. . . . See, there's the moon." He pointed to the horizon, over which the moon, nearly full, was rising like an immense red Japanese lantern. "Isn't it beautiful !" his companion remarked. "I've never seen the moon look so large. And the stars ! how bright and how strangely near they seem! Oh, look!" A brilliant metorite flashed across the zenith. "I've made a wish." A LOST PARADISE. 163 "What is it ?" he laughed. "Oh, I can't tell you. It wouldn't come true if I did." "I'm sorry I couldn't get the house done," said Ran- dall, glancing ruefully at the crazy structure on the bluff above. "I'll finish it to-morrow though. To-night you'll have to sleep on the ground, I'm afraid." "I sha'n't mind a bit," she said. "The sand is soft and warm, and with these soft leaves for a pillow I'll do nicely. But what about you ?" "I'm going to keep watch," he replied. "And not sleep?" "Not just yet, anyway," he said, and rose. "You'd better turn in now. I'll get you some water first." He brought the shell of water to her, and wet the bandage about her head to ease its throbbing. "Good-night," he said, when she was comfortable. "I'll sit here by the tree, and watch the moon rise." Before the moon had climbed half-way up the sky, Randall, as well as his companion, was sleeping soundly. The fatigue caused by the experience of the previous night and the labor of the day closed his eyes in spite of his determination to keep guard. The beach lay white under the moonlight, and the only sound that broke the silence was the dull roar of the sea as it fell in shimmering silvery cascades along the reef. CHAPTER XIV. THE sun was just turning the surface of the sea to molten gold when Randall awoke. He shivered a little, in the early morning mist, and, turning, glanced at his companion. She was still sleeping soundly, and he thought that she looked very lovely, as she lay with her head on one arm, her lips slightly parted, breathing softly, like a child. Her hair, in tumbled masses, almost hid the bandage about her head, and the clinging pongee dress out- lined her graceful figure in white against the darker background of the sand, in a way that suggested a statue in soft-tinted marble. Randall rose very quietly, so as not to disturb her, and, going to the beach, threw off his clothes, and plunged in. The water was delightfully warm, and the bath freshened and invigorated him. Resuming his clothes, he strolled along the beach, searching care- fully for a piece of flint. He found numbers of bits of pebble that resembled it, but none of them seemed sufficiently hard to strike fire from the back of his knife blade. At last, how- ever, with a fragment of glossy black stone, about the size of his two fingers, he succeeded in producing 164 A LOST PARADISE. 165 a shower of tiny sparks. He did not know whether it was flint, or not, but, whatever it was, it seemed to promise a fried fish for breakfast, and in his famished condition that was the most important consideration. He came back to the "camp," as he designated their friendly tree, and found that his companion had already got up, and was bathing her wound in the water of the little stream. "Good-morning," he shouted, gaily. "How would you like some fried fish for breakfast ?" "I'm terribly hungry," she laughed, "but the fish is gone." Randall glanced toward the limb upon which he had hung his catch of the night before. "Some early bird, I suppose," he said, smiling. "I'll catch another." This was easier said than done, for he found that he had no bait. He was too hungry, however, to wait for the falling tide to supply them with oysters, so he began to search along the sides of the stream for something with which to bait his hook. A large earth-worm finally rewarded his efforts. His bait, however, refused to sink until he had tied a bit of stone to the line. Again luck was with him, and another fish soon lay upon the shore, larger, if anything, than the one he had caught the night before. "Xow for the fire," he announced laughingly, and began to collect some bits of dried moss leaves and small twigs. When Randall finally succeeded in lighting his fire, 166 A LOST PARADISE. he felt a profounder respect for the past generations, to whom the match was an unknown quantity, than he had ever felt before. It took him over an hour. The little showers of sparks fell upon the bits of moss only to vanish completely; he worked until his arm was sore without causing it to ignite. It was only when he substituted some soft crumbling punk from the interior of a decaying log that success finally rewarded his efforts, and even then it looked for a time as though he would be obliged to eat his break- fast raw. He took the precaution, when his fire was once fairly alight, to scorch the linen of a handker- chief, which his companion produced from her dress, thus providing a more practical tinder for future use. Their breakfast was almost a joyous one, in spite of their predicament. The girl apparently felt much better, and the wound in her head was healing fast. Eandall broiled the fish over the hot coals, holding it upon a forked stick, and two broad green leaves served them as plates. Both ate ravenously, and were sorry when the last morsel had been consumed. "No dishes to wash, anyway," he laughed, as he rose and went for more water. "What are you going to do next?" the girl asked, smiling at him. Randall glanced at the fire, and threw on some sticks of wood. "First, I think I'll fix my fish-hook," he said, "and then I'm going to finish our house." He detached the bit of bent hairpin from the line, and thrust the point of it into the fire. "I'm going A LOST PARADISE. 167 to hammer the point out flat," he said, "and see if I can't make some sort of a barb on it." The girl watched him in silence as he beat the red- hot end of the hairpin between two stones. "I think I shall call you Richard," she presently announced, gravely serious. Randall looked up quickly. "I wish you would," he said. " 'Mr. Randall' would seem absurd under the circumstances. And what shall I call you?" "I I'm afraid," replied his companion, with the same puzzled frown about her eyes, "that you'll have to name me yourself. I can't be of any assistance in the matter not so far, at least." "You don't remember anything about the past any- thing at all ?" She shook her head with a rueful smile. "I've tried very hard, but I can't. After all, per- haps it doesn't matter so much, now. I am here, and alive, and well, and it is to-day and to-morrow that I must live not yesterday. I am going to try to for- get all about it." "I think," said Randall, after a time, "that I shall call you Eve." The girl blushed slightly, but met his boyish smile with an answering one. "Very well," she said. "It is a short name, and I rather like it. And I want to be your companion, really, now that we are here together. I mean that I want to do my share of the work, and help in every 168 A LOST PARADISE. way that I can. I don't intend to sit here and be waited on." Randall finished work upon his fish-hook, and cooled it suddenly in the water. "Look," he cried, extending it to her. "I've made a fairly good barb, don't you think? Now I'll polish it up a little." He began to sharpen the point of the hook on a bit of stone. "This thing is important. Without it, we might starve, you know." "Do you think you could make me a needle?" the girl asked. "A needle?" "Yes. I want to do a little sewing." She laughed merrily and gave him the two remaining hairpins. "You'd better keep these. I sha'n't need them any more." She indicated the two long plaits into which she had twisted her hair. Randall broke one of the hairpins in two, flattened out the end of one of the pieces, and with the point of his knife managed to pierce it with a tiny hole. Then he ground the other end to a sharp point, and handed the improvised needle back to her. She was already busy, separating some thin strands of hemp from the rope that had belonged to the life-buoy. "Do you think this will do?" She regarded the result of his efforts with delight. "Splendidly. Now I can fix everything." "I'm going to work on the hut," Randall announced, rising. "If I were you, I'd take a dip in the ocean. I did, before breakfast. It's great." "I'm going to," she said. "And, when I get my A LOST PARADISE. 169 clothes fixed, I'll come up and help you. Will you lend me your knife for a while ?" He handed it to her. "If you want anything, call me. I'll be just over the top of the bluff." He went back to the building of his hut, with a somewhat perturbed mind. Of all the astonishing things that had happened to him, it seemed the most astonishing that the girl should, by reason of the blow upon her head, have lost all recollection of her identity. He had often read of such cases, and knew that they were by no means rare; now that he was confronted by the actuality, it seemed hardly credible. Had he himself possessed any knowledge of the girl, or of her antecedents, he might have supplied the link that was necessary to enable her to bridge the mental hiatus caused by her wounds. As matters stood, how- ever, he knew nothing at all about her, not even her name. That she was a woman of breeding, of position, his brief experience with her prior to the coming of the typhoon had amply demonstrated. Now, by this curious stroke of Fate, all her preconceived notions of caste had been swept away, leaving her but a woman, as artless almost, as free from conventional barriers, as Eve herself might have been. He knew very well that, had she not received the blow which had accomplished this astonishing result, she would have continued, even in the present state of affairs, to regard him as a common sailor, between whom and herself must be drawn all the lines of 170 A LOST PARADISE. social difference, which she had so strongly empha- sized on shipboard. As it was, she now placed her- self on a plane of equality with him, regarding her- self as his comrade, his partner in their struggle for existence. In a way Randall was glad of it, yet he wondered what would result, should her memory of the past suddenly flash back upon her, to destroy the delight- ful camaraderie which had so far distinguished their relations. Up to now, their desperate situation had seemed almost a pleasant adventure to him, a delight- ful return to the natural out-door life which seemed almost heaven-sent, after the bitter experiences of his recent trials in New York. He set about the finish- ing of the hut with a light heart. Three hours of steady work sufficed to complete the rough framework. From the high ridge-pole there extended to the ground, on either side, a close row of smaller poles, making a sort of tent, the base of which was some eight feet across. Thin, strong vines, which he found everywhere in the forest, served to secure the tops of the poles to the ridge-pole. This done, he felt that the framework, at least, was secure. The greater problem of thatching it, so as to exclude the rain, now presented itself. Beneath some of the palm-like trees in the forest he found great masses of dead leaves, not unlike the familiar palm-leaf fans. A fallen tree, victim of some tropic storm, provided a-n unlimited supply of these, not more than a hundred yards from where he was working. By covering the sides of the hut with A LOST PARADISE. 171 these leaves, he felt that he could make a wall which would provide some shelter, at least, in case of rain. He broke off and carried to the hut several hundred of them, and then bethought himself of dinner. A glance over the edge of the bluff showed him that his companion was not there. Far down the beach he presently espied her, coming toward the camp. He descended the bluff, and once more began his fishing operations. ^"he newly barbed hook proved a great success. By the time the girl arrived at the camp, he had caught two fish of moderate size and of the same variety as those that had before rewarded his efforts. The little bay seemed swarming with them; he could see their silver and gray bodies flashing everywhere over the yellow sands. He turned as his companion came up to him, and the novelty of her appearance caused him to start back in surprise. She seemed painfully self-conscious and awkward, and faced him with a diffident smile. "Don't you think it much more sensible ?" she said. "Now I can help you work." She had cut off the lower portion of her skirt, until now it came only to her knees, and with strips taken from the part she removed, she had wound her legs, below the knee, as though with puttees. Her thin pongee coat she had discarded altogether, and from the free and graceful movements of her body Eandall could see that her corsets had shared the same fate. In her linen shirtwaist, short skirt and puttees, she looked very trim and capable. Randall returned her 172 A LOST PARADISE. inquiring smile. She seemed desirous of his approval, and he gave it without stint. "Much more sensible," he said, gravely. "The put- tees will protect you from the brambles and under- brush, and certainly in this weather, you don't need a coat, or much of anything, in fact, to keep you warm. Did you have a swim ?" "Oh, yes it was splendid ! And I found these among some rocks along the shore." She exhibited proudly two .large pinkish eggs. Eandall took them. "I wonder what they are?" he remarked. "At any rate, we'll try them. How would you like them cooked ?" He stirred up the embers of the fire, and, adding some dried leaves and twigs, soon brought it to a blaze. "Do you think you could boil them ?" she laughed. "I confess I don't see how." Randall took up the large, thick shell which they had been using as a drinking cup, placed the eggs in it, filled it with water, and set it between two stones. Then he poked some blazing embers under it. "I guess that will do it," he remarked. "Now, if you'll let me have my knife, I'll get these fish ready." "We won't be able to live on fish forever," he laughed, as he began to cook them. "There ought to be fruit in the forest and I've seen a lot of birds some that looked like small chickens, scampering through the underbrush. They were not very wild, either. I believe I could have killed one with a stone." A LOST PARADISE. 173 "If you will make me a bow and some arrows," she remarked, "I'll see what I can do." "Do you know how to use them ?" "Yes I I" She trailed off, confused, as though some vagrant strand of memory had eluded her. Randall knew that English girls were often experts at archery. "I'll make you one, as soon as I've finished the house," he said. "Do you want to come up and help ? I'm trying to thatch it with palm-leaf fans." She joined in his laugh. "I fancy the eggs are done," she said. "Shall I see?" '"Please." They were done, and extremely good. "Eggs, oysters, fish. We are living like epicures," said Randall, laughing. "Do you know I rather like this? Don't you?" "Yes; more than I can possibly tell you. I feel in some queer way as though I had been suddenly liberated as though I had escaped from prison." She drew in a deep breath of the salt-laden air. "This all seems so vital, so real! I love it. I am not at all sure that I care about being rescued at least, not right away." "Neither do I," Randall returned. "I'm happier than I've been in a long time." His meaning tone, the look he flashed at her, brought the color to her cheeks. "It is splendid, isn't it ?" she said, "to feel so well, to be so hungry, to feel much a sense of peace!" 174 A LOST PARADISE. They had loitered over their meal, and it was now long ppst noon. Under the shelter of the tree the air was pleasant, in spite of the heat. Even the numberless noisy inhabitants of the jungle seemed sleeping. A strange and noticeable silence wrapped them about. Along the beach the tide was far out, and over the white surface of the sand the heat waves danced in riotous whirls. Randall leaned back against the tree, and closed his eyes. "Peace," he exclaimed. "Sometimes, when I think of how people struggle and toil, and wear themselves out in the madness we call civilization, it seems almost absurd, when there is so much beauty, so much peace, in the heart of nature." The girl had flung herself carelessly upon the sand, her head pillowed on one arm. "I think I shall go to sleep," she said, smiling; "just for an hour. Then we'll go to work." she closed her eyes, and was soon sleeping like a tired child. Randall watched her, and a great wave of tender- ness swept over him. He felt like giving thanks to God for the strange accident that had placed this lovely creature in his care. An emotion akin to love was fast maturing in his heart, born of a sense of responsibility. He left her peacefully sleeping, and returned to his work upon the hut. The problem of fixing the dried palm leaves to the sides of the structure still confronted him. At last he solved it. Beginning at the ground, he placed a thick layer of the leaves from one end of the frame- A LOST PARADISE. 175 work to the other, and then, cutting a long thin sap- ling, fastened it across them, parallel to the ground, by means of some of the thin, rope-like vines. Then he placed a second layer, some ten inches higher up, overlapping the first in the manner of shingles. A second sapling served to hold these in place, in the same way as before. Thus working, he managed, in the course of a couple of hours, to completely thatch one side of the hut. By this time, Eve had roused herself, and come to his assistance. At sunset the other side was done, and a heavy layer of the leaves had been placed over the ridge-pole. Randall felt sure that in case of ordinary rains, at least, the hut would be water-proof. He gathered a great quantity of dried grass, and covered the floor on either side, thus improvising two fairly comfortable beds. "This will do, for the time being," he announced. "Later on, I'll build a real house. Shall we have supper ? I confess I'm hungry." "So am I." He took her hand, and helped her down the sandy face of the bluff. She accepted his assistance naturally, without coquetry or any suggestion of sex. When they had disposed of the inevitable fish, Randall sug- gested a stroll along the beach in the moonlight. They walked along hand in hand, like two children. The surf was breaking softly over the reef, so low as to be almost imperceptible. Its presence was indi- cated by a smother of creamy foam, and a sparkle of spray that shone in the moonlight like silver lace. 176 A LOST PAEADISE. "If it is an island," Randall remarked presently, "we may be here a long time." "Then I hope it is," she replied. "I am quite happy." % "Most people wouldn't be, under the circumstances." "No. I suppose they'd be thinking of the past of the things they'd lost. Since I haven't any past, I'm able to like the present very much, indeed." He pressed her hand, and she returned the pres- sure quite frankly. For a moment her response filled him with misgivings. Had he any right to take advantage of the position in which this girl's accident had placed her memory? He felt sure that, should her memory return, she would not for a moment be walking with him in this natural and unreserved way, along the beach in the moonlight. "Eve," he said, gently, "do you really mean that you don't want to go away?" "Why should I ? I can't remember about about all that came before, but sometimes I have a confused idea of noise and ugly city streets, and rain and fog, and doing the same things over and over, day after day it seems like a wretched Jurmoil that I have somehow escaped. Everything here is so fresh, so lovely, so beautiful!" She gazed out over the moon- lit sea, and a sigh of happiness escaped her. "I'm happy, just being. It seems as though it was what I'd wanted to do, always." They turned back, presently, toward the hut. Eandall did not speak for a long time. He, too, was conscious of a thrill of joy, of vital happiness, in A LOST PAEADISE. 177 their situation, which at times seemed almost unreal in its idyllic perfection. As they neared the camp, a new thought came to him. In the construction of the little hut, it had not, until now, occurred to him that he and the girl would be obliged to share it. He wondered how she would view the arrangement. As a matter of fact, she made no comment, but crept into her grassy bed with little sighs of weari- ness and content. "I'm awfully tired/' she said. "Good-night." Eandall, stalking about in the moonlight, outside, presently knew from her regular breathing that she was asleep. After a time he, too, crept into the hut, and, care- ful to make no noise that might disturb her, lay down upon the sweet-smelling grass. For hours he could not sleep ; his thoughts wandered unceasingly to the girl beside him. Presently he leaned over and kissed her hand as it lay white in the moonlight that shone through the open end of the hut. A sense of grave and tender responsibility toward her filled his soul. CHAPTER XV. THE weeks that followed the casting up of Randall and his companion from the sea passed in a haze of warm and golden sunlight. The soft, yet brilliant, dawns, the hot cloudless skies, the low droning of the countless insects in the forest, the sharp cries of the wild fowl, the sighing of the evening breeze through the jungle, the radiant moon, the clear brilliance of the stars in the purple night sky, all formed a won- derful panorama, combining hot, passionate life with a deep and infinite peace. Xo evidence of the presence of other human beings had appeared. Randall was of the opinion that they had been cast upon one of the thousands of small islands which are scattered throughout the western part of the Pacific. Later on, he proposed to make. a tour of investigation. For the present, the supply- ing of their material wants occupied all his time. Fish they were able to secure in abundance, both by means of his improvised tackle, and by spearing them, on the mud flats and shallows of the reef. For this purpose Randall had made a spear, its shaft com- posed of a stout six-foot sapling, its head of the tri- angular-shaped tooth of a shark, which he had found upon the beach. It was a very serviceable weapon, 178 A LOST PARADISE. 179 and he felt rather proud of the skill which he began to acquire in its use. But a diet of fish soon began to pall. Eggs, large and slightly pinkish in color, they found occasionally in rough nests throughout the underbrush, and Eandall had several times endeavored to kill one of the scurry- ing brush fowl with a hastily flung stone, but without success. He did however, on several occasions, manage to bring down with a club some smaller birds, resem- bling pigeons, which seemed, at first, to show little fear at his approach. They soon became wary, how- ever, and he could get them but seldom. When he did, they formed, broiled over the hot coals, a deli- cious addition to their bill of fare. Several varieties of fruit he had found in the forest, but the only one familiar to him was a sort of stunted and undersized banana, with a slightly bitter taste. These they ate freely, and with great relish. Once a cocoanut, swathed in its fibrous green husk, .was cast up by the sea, and they not only enjoyed its contents, but found very useful the two drinking cups that Randall managed to make from the shell. They searched the adjacent jungle carefully for cocoanut trees, but found none. Some greenish-brown, fruit, resembling pawpaws, and a number of large yellow gourds were the only results of the expedition. The former had a sweetish taste, not unlike a banana. The latter served to hold water and other supplies. Along the edge of the pools formed by the little stream Randall secured from time to time a number of large green frogs, which he ate with gusto; his 180 A LOST PARADISE. companion, however, could not be induced to touch them. She had very soon recovered from her wound, and, but for the strange loss of memory that it had caused, was none the worse for her experience. In fact, the simple, natural life in the open air had made them both feel superlatively well. The sun had browned them to the point where they no longer feared expo- sure to its rays, and the activities of their daily life left them, by night, happily tired, and ready to sleep like children on their beds of grass. A singular and charming intimacy, a comradeship, had grown up between them. In all their daily tasks, Eve, as Eandall had now come to call her, worked at his side. He had shown her how to clean and pre- pare the fish that formed so large a part of their daily fare, and even how to catch them, while he was gathering wood for the fire, or plucking their very occasional pigeons. With a bow and some makeshift arrows that he had manufactured, Eve tried her skill along the edge of the forest. The scrub fowl were far too quick and wary for her aim, but she found the pigeons easier game, and was as delighted as a child when she occa- sionally managed to bring one down. The light bamboo arrows, tipped with a bit of sharp shell, and feathered with the plumage of a pigeon's wing, were by no means to be despised as weapons of offense. Eandall constructed for himself a larger and stronger bow, and some heavier arrows, with which he prac- tised assiduously, convinced that even in a fight with A LOST PARADISE. 181 larger animals, should any such exist in the jungle, they would prove by no means useless. So far, however, nothing more dangerous than an occasional lizard or snake had manifested itself. The island, if island it was, seemed singularly free from animal life. They made a long trip down the beach one day, to where a point of rocks jutted out into the sea, crowned with umbrella trees and ferns. These rocks barred their further progress that day. The sea prevented them from passing around, and they decided to postpone the climb over the little cliff to another time. They hurried back in the late afternoon, as the rising wind and the clouding sky to the west gave promise of rain. Eve pointed out, with a smile, that, the two ends of the tent-shaped hut being open, the one facing the west would certainly, in the event of a storm, admit sufficient rain to soak them thoroughly. Randall proceeded to remedy the difficulty, as well as he could, by piling logs, pieces of stone, and brush against the opening. "It's only a makeshift after all," he said, regarding his work with a smile. "We'll have to get a better shelter than this, I'm afraid, if we have many storms." "The wind sweeps clear over this bluff, too," remarked Eve. "Wouldn't it be better if we could find a more sheltered place? ^There might be a sort of a cave among those rocks we saw this morning. Wouldn't it be nice, if we could find a big, roomy one, and make a really comfortable home ?" 182 A LOST PARADISE. "You talk as though you expected to stay here always," Randall laughed. "I do! I don't feel in the least like going away. Do you?" "No; but " He hesitated, unable to express just what he felt. The thought of not sharing his days with her sent a pang of unhappiness through him ; yet, caring for her as he did, he wondered how long it would be possible for them to live in this intimate and delightful companionship without recognizing the greater and more vital issues that such intimacy was certain to raise. Eve was a woman in whom, he felt certain, the stream of life flowed abundantly. Now that he admitted to himself his love for her, he felt many times an overwhelming desire to take her in his arms, to kiss her, to tell her of his emotion, yet the fact that her past had been taken from her restrained him, made him treat her, oftentimes, with a brusqueness which he was very far from feeling. Occasionally it seemed to him that this caused her some surprise, yet he could not explain his attitude without telling her the reasons for it, and therefore he contented himself with saying nothing. Once, indeed, he told her something about his affair with Inez Gordon. "I thought I loved her," he said, in conclusion; "but now I know that I did not."' "How do you know it, Dick ?" she asked, her wide, honest eyes searching his deeply. The question was a difficult one to answer; unless, indeed, he were to do so by telling her the truth. A LOST PARADISE. 183 "Since I have been here with you," he said, "I have been very happy. I could not have been, you know, had I cared for anyone else." She looked over the sea in silence for a long time. "I have never been in love," she remarked presently. "How do you know ?" he asked. "I am certain of it. I cannot remember about things before I came here but I am certain that I did not care for anyone. Had I done so, it would have left some memory, some trace. See !" She held out her left hand. "I am neither married nor engaged. Isn't that lucky ?" "Yes," replied Randall, fervently; "it is." "I'm glad you think so, Dick. Do you know, I'm not half -sorry, about the past? The present seems so wonderful! I'm very happy. This place seems just like Paradise." Randall pulled himself together, and put a tight rein upon his emotions, else he would have declared himself then and there. "People in your world and mine would think our life together here altogether too unconventional," he remarked. "I know. That is the trouble with the world, I fancy. Everything must be done according to rule. Even here, we practise it. We are just two children in the loving arms of nature, yet we wouldn't dare to take each other's hands, and go happily out into the surf for our daily dip. I must watch you swim- ming about from above, when I would love to be with you, and must wait until you have gone after fruit, 184 A LOST PARADISE. or eggs, before I dare venture in, myself. Somehow it seems very silly." Her words made Randall tremble, yet he saw that she spoke with the innocence of a child. "Perhaps we shall go, together, some day," he said abruptly. She looked at him with glowing eyes. "Please, do not misunderstand me, Dick," she said. "I know just how what I have said must sound. You must not think that I do not understand. I meant only that under such surroundings as these, in all the loveliness and peace of our life here, the con- ventions seem far away and unimportant." "If it is a sort of Paradise, Eve," Randall remarked, gravely, "we must not forget that in it there may grow the tree of knowledge." "And the tree of life, which is greater than knowl- edge. Oh, please don't misunderstand me You must not think me just a silly child. Perhaps you may know some day why I have spoken as I have." She rose, and they went toward the hut Randall was puzzled, and for a moment strongly attempted to pursue the question, and learn just what she really meant; but something within him held him back. "I hope the rain doesn't come through our roof to-night," he remarked, as they came up to the crazy structure. It was growing very dark, and the clouds in the West were hurrying toward them, bringing with them gusts of wind. The thatching of the hut, although held A LOST PAEADISE. 185 in place by saplings and limbs that covered it, flapped and fluttered in the breeze, and the swaying of the ridge-pole caused the uprights to groan and creak against it with dull notes of complaint. Eve groped her way through the doorway, and curled herself up on her bed of grass, and Randall at once followed. It was pitch dark within the hut; only by his com- panion's breathing was he conscious of her presence. For some nights past Randall had slept across the door, instead of within. It was a concession to the conventions, of course, and he knew it. Even situated as they were, he could not overcome a feeling of strangeness, of impropriety, in lying there by her side. The whole width of the hut separated them, it is true, but he had many times felt like bridging it, and drawing her into his arms. It was the very conscious- ness of this desire that had so often driven him to sleep without. To-night, however, the threat of the storm made his bed under the stars impracticable. He lay a long time gazing up at the blackness and wondering whether or not his Eve was awake. Presently he heard her, softly speaking his name. "Dick," she said, "are you asleep?" "No, not yet." "It's begun to rain. I hear the drops on the roof.* "Yes. And the wind is getting stronger, I think." After a long interval of silence she spoke again. "Are you happy, Dick?" she asked. "Yes, dear, very happy. Are you?" "I would be, Dick, if the rain were not dripping 186 A LOST PARADISE. down my neck." She laughed, and changed her posi- tion. "There it's all right now. Your roof leaks, I'm afraid." He was somewhat chagrined at this, and would have made her change to his side of the hut, but she refused to do so. "It's warm rain," she laughed, "and I don't feel it now, anyway." There was another long silence. Presently it was broken as the storm swept down upon them. The sprinkling of rain rose to a torrent, which thundered upon the thatched roof and swept in fine spray through the obstructions that Randall had placed against the western opening. He realized that his companion was likely to be drenched; he could hear the drip, drip of the rain as it came through the roof on her side of the hut, which faced the fury of the storm. "You must let me change places with you," he insisted. "No, Dick. I won't do it. I see no more reason why you should get wet than I. I really don't mind it in the least." His protestations were of no avail. Randall lay still for a long time, listening to the roaring of the rain. Occasionally he could hear Eve move restlessly about, and his conscience smote him. Doubtless she was getting wet and cold. His own side of the hut remained comparatively dry, but the dampness and the wind made even him shiver occa- sionally. After a long time she spoke again. "Are you asleep yet, Dick ?" she asked. A LOST PARADISE. 187 "No." "Don't you feel a little just a little cold ?" "Yes. Do you ?" "A trifle. I'm going to move down a little." He heard her moving in the grass. "Good-night, now. I won't disturb you again." "I really wish you'd take this side. I insist upon it." "Couldn't think of it. Good-night." An hour later Randall had fallen into a faint doze. He was not really asleep, but his thoughts had car- ried him far from the little hut in which he lay. Suddenly he started, and half-turned, as he realized that someone touched his arm. Then he heard Eve's voice, close to his ear. "I'm I'm so cold, Dick," she said; "so lonely and cold ! Do you mind ?" He swept her into his arms, and held her within their shelter. "Poor little girl!" he murmured. "You ought to have come long ago." She nestled beside him, and pressed her cheek to his. He realized that it was cold and wet. Suddenly a great wave of love swept through him. He drew her close, and kissed her, covering her face with his kisses as though to warm it. She flung her arms about him, and pressed her lips to his. "Oh, Dick!" she whispered, and lay very still in his arms for a long time. He was first to speak. 188 A LOST PARADISE. "I love you, Eve," he said. "Are you glad?" She did not answer him, but nodded her head softly against his breast. "I have tried to keep from telling you. Somehow it doesn't seem just just fair, under the circumstances. You might be very sorry, if if you remembered. But I can't help it. I love you more than I had ever dreamed of loving anyone. If you think that I should not have told you " She interrupted him by again placing her lips against his. Their message seemed to him unmis- takable. She loved him. He crushed her to him. "God, I love you so !" he cried. She gently pushed herself free. "Don't say anything more about it to-night, dear," she whispered softly. "I I want to think." CHAPTER XVI. THE storm roared upon the thatched roof of the hut throughout the greater part of the night. Eandall lay sleepless, with Eve held close in his arms. The knowledge that she loved him had brought him a happiness too great to be wasted in sleep. Occasionally he moved slightly, to protect her from the drops of rain, which, even on his side of the hut, found their way through the roof. Once or twice he kissed her, tenderly, reverently, upon the forehead. One of her arms lay about his neck. In the darkness he could not see her face, and did not know whether she slept or not. As the night wore on, he thought, from her breathing, that she did. Toward morning the rain ceased. At the first gray streaks of dawn, he gently disengaged himself from his companion's arms, and went outside. The storm had passed with the night, and the sun rose clear and brilliant. He walked swiftly down to the beach, and, throwing off his clothes, plunged in. The warm sea, the fresh morning air, revived him. In a short time he began collecting brushwood and placing it in the sun to dry, preparatory to lighting the fire for their breakfast. Eve had not yet appeared. Presently he saw her, making her way slowly down 189 190 A LOST PARADISE. the side of the bluff, toward the litfle pool in which she made her morning ablutions. He called a cheery good-morning to her, and started off through the brush, to gather fruit and eggs for their breakfast. When he returned, the fire, which he had already kindled, was blazing merrily, and Eve was boiling water in one of the large shells, in readiness for the eggs he brought. He went up to her, and laid the results of his expedition on the sand. "How do you feel, dear ?" he asked. She turned, with a faint flush. "Splendid! I had a lovely bath, while you were gone. Isn't everything fresh and sweet, after the rain?" He nodded, and began to prepare their meal. He wondered whether or not to refer to the events of the night, but in the end decided not to do so. She had said that she wished to think. He would wait, and let her be the first to speak. A tender shyness seemed to possess her during their breakfast. At times she seemed to fear to look at him; at others, when his own gaze was turned aside, Randall knew instinctively that she was devouring him with her eyes. She seemed very beautiful to him, this day. The white shirtwaist and short pongee skirt, washed and dried on the hot beach during her swim, were spotless. Her nair, in two great plaits, she had wound about her head like a crown, and fastened in pla.ce with two thin splinters of bamboo, each holding a mass of red blossoms. Her waist, open at the neck, disclosed the A LOST PAEADISE. 191 tender curves of her throat and breast, burned a warm brown by the sun. Her arms, bare to the elbow, were round and smooth and satiny brown, like warm-tinted ivory. A flush of health and vitality glowed through the tan of her cheeks. She seemed a veritable wood nymph, a dryad, crowned with forest flowers. He could scarcely refrain from taking her in his arms and kissing her, but first she must speak. That day they determined to explore the rocky cliff that jutted out across the beach at its eastern extremity. They set out immediately after breakfast, Randall carrying his shark's tooth spear, and Eve her bow and half-a-dozen arrows in a quiver which he had made her from a portion of the canvas covering of the life- buoy. It was a glorious morning, and they enjoyed the three-mile walk along the beach to the full. The surf of the preceding night had cast up a quantity of debris of various sorts, and among other things a huge turtle, which they found to be dead. Randall rolled its heavy carcass up safely beyond the line of the breakers, intending to use its shell, later, for a recep- tacle to hold water. The tide was out when they reached the little point of rocks, and Randall saw that it would be possible to pass around it, by wading out over the reef; but there seemed no object in doing this, so they decided to clamber up its side. This they managed to do with no great difficulty. The rock was overlaid in many places with earth, and 192 A" LOST PAKADISE. a heavy growth of brush covered its face on the side toward the land. Ip a few moments they had reached the top, and found themselves upon a ragged and water-worn cliff, which extended in irregular lines as far as the eye could reach toward the east. The face of the cliff was much broken, as though the rock had shelved away from time to time, under the influence of the weather. Innumerable small holes, like caves, broke its gray face, and the upper edge sloped back toward the south, and was crowned with a growth of coarse yellow grass, amongst which grew innumerable umbrella trees, ferns, and smaller tropical growths. Several of the caves appeared to be of fair size, and from all of them issued a constant stream of swift- moving birds, whose noisy cries at times almost deafened them. They proceeded along the edge of the cliff for per- haps a quarter of a mile, climbing over huge slabs of rock, and sometimes forced to ascend to the top- most edge of the plateau in order to make their way. After a time the cliff began to dip toward the level of the beach, and before long they found themselves upon the edge of a deep water-course, which foamed and eddied over the rocks as it plunged toward the sea. Here the rocks became almost like steps. They were able to descend without difficulty to the very edge of the little bay that marked the termination of the stream. On the further side the cliff again rose in 'A LOST PARADISE. 193 step formation, to a high, jagged point of rock, upon which stood a tall dead tree. They forded the little stream without difficulty, and clambered up the opposite side of the cliff. They had almost reached the top, when Randall gave a cry, and pointed to a large irregular opening in the face of the rock. "There's our new home," he exclaimed. His companion followed his glance, and smiled. "It must have been made for us," she said. The projecting face of the cliff, just beneath the line of shrubbery that crowned its topmost summit, extended outward for perhaps twenty feet, smooth and level, like a shelf. In the wall at the rear lay the opening that Randall had indicated. It was the mouth of a large cave. The level expanse of rock before it was reached by the irregular steps from the stream below. At the base of the cliff, a tiny beach lined the semi-circular shores of the bay. A sloping path led to the higher ground which formed the top of the plateau. The mouth of the cave faced toward the north-west. They determined to explore it at once. Randall grasped his spear firmly, and led the way, with Eve following. "No sign of life was to be seen, except the many birds that flew in and out. Their examination consumed but a short time. The cave was some twenty feet in depth, with a fairly regular floor, and its walls and roof were lined with bird's nests, cemented tightly to the rocks. The floor 194 A LOST PARADISE. was covered with twigs, bits of grass, egg-shells, feathers and the droppings of birds. "I'll clean this place out," Eandall cried, "and we'll move in at once. We couldn't have found anything better." The remainder of the morning was spent in carrying out his plans. The destruction and removal of the birds' nests resulted in a chorus of disapproval from the feathered occupants of the place, but Randall gave scant attention to their protests. Within two hours, he had made the place comparatively clean, and, leaving Eve to complete the work of preparation, he mounted to the top of the cliff, in search of material for their beds. An hour or more elapsed before he returned with an immense bundle of dried grass, which he threw down from the top of the cliff, and instructed Eve to place within the cave. "Here are some bananas," he called, as he tossed her a bunch of the fruit. "That's all we'll have for dinner to-day. I'm going back to the camp, and get our things. You wait here." The bringing of the various articles they had col- lected during their fortnight at the other camp, con- sumed the bulk of the afternoon. Eve arranged the grass upon the floor of the cave, and then, during one of Randall's absences, ascended to the plateau above, and came back with huge bunches of flowers, which she arranged in great masses about the place. Randall appeared at intervals, carrying their mol- lusk shells, cocoanut cups, his bow and arrows, the A LOST PARADISE. 195 life-buoy, the few articles of clothing which they had discarded, and on his last trip a string of fish and a handful of eggs. "ISTow we'll have supper," he an- nounced, and proceeded to build a fire upon the flat shelf of a rock in front of the cave. The sun was just setting when they finished their meal, and they sat upon their rocky porch and watched the beauty of the passing day. Beneath them stretched the quiet sea, sweeping flame-colored to the far-off horizon. The western sky glowed with orange and pink, above which it faded to a pearly Kile green. An infinite peace lay upon the surface of the ocean, blotting out the noises of the day. Randall took Eve's hand in his, and sat drinking in the beauty of the sunset. Before long the colors began to fade in the evening sky, and, almost before they realized it, the sunset had gone, and in its place shone the deep blue of the night, set with countless brilliant stars. The soft night wind, the murmur of the surf on the beach below, the radiance of the tropic sky, all spoke to Randall of love. He pressed Eve's hand, and wondered how long it would be before she would speak, as he had spoken the night before. "How wonderful the night seems!" he said, at length, looking into her eyes. She did not at once reply, but after a time, she began to speak. "It is the most wonderful night of our lives," she said slowly. "No other night will ever be like this, for it is our wedding night. I have thought over 196 A LOST PARADISE. what you said, and now I am ready to answer you. ... I love you. I would love you no less if this thing had not come to me that makes my past a blank. I love you because you reach my soul, because you speak to me in a way in which only love can speak. I know what it means, for me to say this to you. It means not only that we love each other, but that we give ourselves to each other for all time. It is what the world calls marriage between you and me. It is the earthly manifestation of a thing that is greater than the things of the earth. I love you, and I know that you love me no less. I give myself to you, because the essence of love is to give. Here, beneath the stars, in the sight of God, I pledge you my soul and my body, and to none other shall they be given, while I live." There was a wonderful solemnity in her words, which thrilled Randall's soul, and yet made him afraid. It was not that he doubted his love for this woman every fibre of his being responded to the love and passion in her voice. Yet, when he turned to her, and took her in his arms, a feeling of great tenderness, of responsibility, swept over him. Love the love -she gave him seemed here, in the vast peace of nature, to be a thing beyond all bitterness, all material considerations. He felt as though some holy of holies had opened, and bathed him in the light of the divine fire. Presently Eve spoke again. "My love has given me the peace that passeth all understanding," she whispered, and offered her lips to him. A LOST PAEADISE. 197 They sat thus, held close in each other's arms, for a long time. The moon, a brilliant crescent of silver, rose in the eastern sky. Only the soft murmur of the sea upon the little beach beneath them broke the silence of the night. After a time Randall spoke. "No matter who you are no matter what may come, hereafter you belong to me, until death." She laid her cheek beside his. "No matter what happens I am yours forever and ever." "But if you should regret?" "Then I should regret that I had ever been born." A sense of unreality tortured Randall's soul. He knew now that he loved this woman knew that, so long as he might live, no other woman could mean anything to him. Yet what had he to offer her? His efforts in New York had resulted in dismal failure. Here on this desolate island, he might seem to this girl a king; in the dreary bustle of the world, he would be as nothing a failure, a man without money, without position, without any of the things that go to make up life. Here these things were of little account, but in that great world beyond the horizon they counted for very much indeed for everything that constituted existence as the world knew it. And what right had he to assume that they would always remain here, in this far-off place? The very next morning might find a trading ship anchored off shore. Then this woman, who gave her soul unto his keeping would perforce go back to her friends the records 198 A LOST PAEADISE. of The Batavia would show clearly who she was. Had he the right to make her his wife, under the existing circumstances ? Was it honorable, fair, on his part, to take advantage of her position, her love ? He drew away from her, and gazed out across the sea in an agony of indecision. Presently he became aware of her hand stealing about his neck, of her breath upon his face. "What is the matter, dear?" she asked, a look of fright in her eyes. "Nothing. I I was thinking. I feel, somehow, afraid" "You love me, Dick ? Tell me that you love me." "Better than anything in the world better than my life." "Then why are you afraid ?" "It is because I do love you that I am." "But of what? If we love each other, isn't that enough ?" "I have nothing to give you, dear except myself." "And do you think I want anything more ?" "Not now, perhaps, but if we should leave here, if you should go back to your people She drew away from him, shivering slightly. "Is that the way you love ?" she asked. Something in her voice stung him. He turned and drew her fiercely to him. "I love with all my heart and soul, and with my very breath. But I want to do what is right what is best for you. I would rather die than bring you any pain -any regret." A LOST PARADISE. 199 She did not answer him. A strange trembling swept over her. She clung to him, seeking his lips with hers. "Oh, my love, my dearest love !" she cried. "Don't spoil this night with your foolish fears. I am yours yours ! If I thought that you did not love me, I should feel like throwing myself over the cliff into the sea." She clung to him, her arms about his neck. "Come," she said, and rose. "I have brought many flowers for you, and made ready our new home." Randall rose to his feet, and put his arm about the girl's waist. "May God bless the night, and forgive me, if I do you any wrong," he said, as they entered the shadow of the cave. The flowers made the place sweet with their perfume. Randall drew the girl to him, and kissed her. "My wife !" he said. "My wife, in the eyes of God." The surf broke softly on the little beach, and the new moon silvered its curling foam. The tender night wind whispered through the umbrella trees upon the top of the cliff, and all nature wrapped the two about with the soft mantle of its purity. A single shooting star, coursing toward the horizon, lit the sky with a momen- tary brilliance, then plunged into the sea. CHAPTER XVII. THE dawn broke radiant with scarlet and gold over a sapphire sea. Randall stepped out of the cave, and made his way slowly down the rocks toward the beach. A wonderful peace filled the air. The smell of the flowers, which festooned the jungle with vivid splashes of pink and red, swept softly over the edge of the cliff, and mingled with the salt smell of the sea. Randall threw his clothes upon the sand, and was soon beyond the breakers, clearing the placid surface of the sea with long, sweeping strokes. The sunlight sparkled brilliantly upon the broken crests of the waves, and gave warmth and color to the gray tones of the rocky cliff. He headed far out over the reef, in an exultation of spirit born of the freshness of the morning. After a time he turned back toward the beach. An object moving toward the line of the surf, caught his eye. At first he could not make out what it was then he realized that it was Eve, wading slim and white through the dancing foam. He called to her, but she did not hear him. In a few moments she had passed the line of breakers, and was swimming toward him through the pellucid sea. "Isn't it glorious !" she called, shaking the water in 200 A LOST PAEADISE. 201 diamond-like drops from her hair. "I feel like a mer- maid, taking her morning sun bath." Randall went to meet her, and together they headed toward the open sea. "I didn't know you could swim," he said presently. "Oh, yes; I learned it years ago. Down at at " She hesitated, shaking her head. "Never mind. I cant remember where it was, but I haven't forgotten how, have I, dear ?" She dove with the grace of a sea nymph, then appeared a few yards further out, the warm green water sliding from her white shoulders as she rose above its surface. "You certainly haven't," he said, admiringly, as he watched her slender body flash through the water. "We'd better not go out any further," he said at length. "There may be sharks, you know." "Do you think so ?" She shivered, and turned back toward the beach. He swam beside her, their shoulders touching. "Do you know, dear," she whispered to him, "I am so happy, this morning, that it seems almost too perfect to last !" "What can stop it, little girl ?" "I don't know. Nothing, I hope. But somehow things always seem to happen " "Come, come ! Don't be superstitious. We love each other, and we are alive and together. That is all the world has to offer." "I know." She rode easily over the first of the line of breakers and turned toward him as the long furrow of foam swept toward the shore. "But I'm afraid possibly because I'm so happy. Shall we go in now?" 202 A LOST PARADISE. "You go." He headed seaward again. "I'll be along in a moment." After a time he turned, and saw her, wrapped in her white coat, ascending the rocks toward the cave. He swam toward the beach, with a song in his heart. God had, indeed, been good to him, he felt, in giving him this woman's love. It was the affection of which he had dreamed, the perfect union of two persons who found in each other all the happiness that life has to offer. What mattered it, after all, that they were ma- rooned here on this lonely bit of sand ? Nothing that civilization held could have made them any happier. In fact, Randall doubted whether such perfect hap- piness as he now felt would be possible in the material atmosphere of a great city. He dressed with a thankful heart, and, clambering up to their rocky ledge, pro- ceeded to light the fire for their breakfast. They were to have a feast to-day a wedding break- fast. Eve had already begun to lay the table a slab of rock, which rose somewhat above the level of the remainder of the ledge. There were a bunch of bananas, half-a-dozen eggs, a couple of pigeons that Randall had knocked over the afternoon before, and a large sea mullet that he had speared at the mouth of the little creek. About the table she had placed masses of pink and white flowers, and a half-dozen large palm- leaves, for plates. Randall observed ner preparations with a happy smile. "A better breakfast," he remarked, "and a better appetite than all the money in the world could buy." A LOST PARADISE. 203 She came over to him, and kissed him. "What we have, Dick, is too precious to be bought, at any price. I only hope it will never be taken away from us." The recurrence of her thought worried him. "Why do you say that, dear? Nothing can ever change our love." "Who knows?" She gazed off toward the horizon. "Some day, a ship will come, and then " "And then we will refuse to be rescued," he cried, gaily. "Come, sit down and eat your breakfast. We are going to explore, to-day." "Explore ?" "Yes. I mean to find out whether this place is an island, or not." "I hope it is. Don't you ?" "Yes and uninhabited. It would be rather unfor- tunate to run into a village of head-hunters." < "Head-hunters!" She shivered. "Do you think it possible, Dick?" "Hardly, or we should have seen evidences of their presence, along shore. Come, get your bow and arrows, and we'll take a look about." They ascended the path that led to the brow of the cliff, and soon stood upon its highest point. Before them the sea extended northward as far as the eye could reach. To right and left the beach curved away toward the south. Behind them lay the jungle, thick with blossoms, cool, shady and green. The hum of a myriad insects sounded from its depths. The chatter of the birds along the edge of the forest was incessant. Kan- 204 A LOST PARADISE. dall strove to look landward, beyond the wall of green that marked the southern edge of the plateau; but the waving palms, the tall bloodwood trees, the thick screen of the tropic foliage, blocked his view. A tall gaunt tree, showing along its bark the rip of the lightning stroke that had killed it, rose skyward not far from where they stood. Randall went toward it, and threw his spear upon the ground. "I'm going to climb this, dear," he said, "and see whether or not I can get a view over the tops of the trees to the south." The many gnarled branches of the tree rendered the climb an easy one. In five minutes he had reached a point some forty feet above the ground. Eve called to him anxiously, fearing lest he might slip and fall. "I'm all right," he called back to her. "I can see the ocean on the other side. It goes all around us. We are on an island." "If we want to be rescued," he said, when he had descended and rejoined her, "we could put a signal of distress on the top of that tree, and it would be visible for ten miles in any direction." "Do you want to put one up ?" she asked him gravely. "Not unless you do." "Suppose we wait. When we get tired of it here, if we ever do, we'll run up a signal of distress." "Then we are likely to stay here for the rest of our lives," he laughed. "What do you say to making a trip through the jungle? The beach on the other side looks interesting. I don't believe it's more than three miles away." A LOST PARADISE. 205 "I'm ready. And we may find some cocoamit trees." The ground sloped downward toward the edge of the forest, and in a few moments they were making their way through the rough, close-growing under- brush. The passage proved anything but easy. The thousands of creepers and tough interlacing vines threatened to trip them at every step, while the luxuriant growth of bushes, the tall and close-set forest grasses and ferns rose at times above their heads, and made it almost impossible to tell in what direction they were going. After some two hours of struggling they emerged upon a sandy slope that led down to a long, curving white beach. A grove of cocoanut trees attracted Ran- dall's attention; he recognized them by the clusters of great green nuts, which were visible through the thick foliage. "Isn't that lucky ?" he cried. "!NVw we will have something besides bananas for dessert." To get the nuts, however, was somewhat of a problem. The tall, smooth trunks of the trees towered seventy or eighty feet in the air, without a limb, except the feathery cluster of branches at the top. Randall looked up and laughed. "I'm afraid I can't manage it," he said. "Of course, you can't." Eve put her arm through his, and held him close. "I'm not going to run the risk of losing my husband, just for a few cocoanuts." The fates, however, were more kind than they had an- 206 A LOST PAEADISE. ticipated. One of the trees, standing somewhat apart from the others, had been uprooted, no doubt, by the typhoon that had swept them upon the island, and it lay prone amidst a thick growth of underbrush and ferns. A number of the nuts still clung to the crown of the tree, while many more were scattered about the ground as a result of its fall. Randall took up one of them, and, after stripping off the fibrous green husk, broke it open with a stone. The interior was lined with a soft creamy moss, within which lay half a pint of milk. He handed a portion of the nut to Eve, who declared it delicious. Two more of the nuts he carried with him. They decided not to undertake again the rough journey through the woods, but instead, to make their way back along the beach. It was much further, he knew, but the easy walking made it preferable. It was a hot and tiresome walk, and before they were half-way back, Randall found the two cocoanuts a heavy burden. Eve relieved him of one of them, from time to time, but he felt rather tired out when they at last reached the cave. They spent the afternoon in fitting up the interior of their new home. Randall procured from the woods a number of long, thin saplings, and also some shorter and thicker pieces, and constructed the rough frame- work of a bed, lashing the pieces together with the re- mainder of a rope that the life-buoy had provided. He also managed to make a rickety chair, for Eve to sit in, A LOST PARADISE. 207 The slab of rock on the ledge outside the door provided a thoroughly satisfactory table. The problem of light inside the cave at night was one which he sought in vain to solve. He had heard that from the liver of the shark a rich oil could be obtained, but so far he had been unable to obtain the shark although he saw many of them skirting the outer edge of the reef. To advance against them in the water, armed only with his spear, would have been useless. He lived in the hope that sometime the sea might cast one up, the possible victim of a marine combat to the death. Their life, after moving into the cave, was golden with happiness and peace. The fierce heat of the tropic sun was tempered by the cool breeze that arose every afternoon, and swept in from the west, fresh with the smell of the sea. Flowers surrounded them constantly. Eve was extravagantly fond of them, and made the cave a bower of blooms from the luxuriant growths of the jungle. The majority of the blossoms was unknown to them, but some they recognized, particularly great orchids, deep gold in color, and others pink, like living coral. Eandall had added a number of new dishes to their somewhat limited bill of fare. In the course of fre- quent expeditions for cocoanuts to the grove on the opposite shore of the island, he found a new fruit, which he judged to be a mango, although his acquaintance with this tropic delicacy had heretofore been limited to seeing specimens in the windows of Broadway fruit shops. Whether mangoes or not, they found in these orange-colored masses, with their sweet and pungent 208 A LOST PAEADISE. pulp, a refreshing change from the rather tasteless bananas, which had served for so long as their sole delicacy. A bed of oysters on the reef facing the cave varied their diet of fish and pigeons. Eandall, eager to add to their conveniences, managed, after considerable search, to find a bed of yellow clay along the side of the plateau, and from this, with painstaking effort, succeeded at last in modeling some very serviceable earthen pots. They were crooked and ill shapen, and when he had dried them in the sun, and came to burn them in a wood fire, three-quarters of them cracked and fell to pieces, but several whole ones remained, and in these they were able to stew their oysters, and fish, instead of always broiling them over the coals. During the early part of September, the long, wet week of a monsoon kept them almost continuously within the cave. Randall found that a fire of certain varieties of hardwood could be maintained just inside the cave mouth without creating much smoke, and their rocky home kept them dry and comfortable during the rain. Finding that Eve was fond of chess, he scratched a board on the cave floor, and with bits of shell, and wooden figures laboriously carved with his clasp-knife, improvised a set of men, which gave them constant amusement during the dreary days. After the monsoon, another period of tropic heat and calm ensued. The equatorial sun kept them indoors, or among the shadows of the jungle, during the midday heat ; but the long soft evenings amply repaid them for these temporary seclusions. A LOST PARADISE. 209 Randall had never dreamed that the stars could shine so vividly, or the night sky seem so near. Often, when the beach shone white and clear in the moonlight, they went down to the sands, and enjoyed a night dip in the surf. At other times, although there was no moon, the stars enveloped them in a soft, yet brilliant, radiance they sat upon their rocky portico and talked of the future, and the past. He had told Eve all about his unsuccessful efforts in ~New York, and often pointed out to her the injustice he felt he had done her, in making her his wife, upon such faint material prospects; but at these times she smiled contentedly, and kissed him with a fervor that left no room for doubt as to her entire satisfaction with conditions as they existed. "If we ever do leave here, dear," she said, "and I suppose that some day we shall, we will first be married, of course, since the world will require that of us, and then we will find out who I am." She laughed whimsi- cally. "I may be a rich heiress, you know, or a princess in disguise." Randall joined in her laugh, although his mind was by no means at rest. "I'd far rather you were neither," he said. "I don't want to live on you, you know. When I go back to civilization, and as you say, we will probably do so, sometime, I mean to again take up the work I've been trying to do. I'll be well and strong then, and I'll have you, dear, to help me, and I feel that under those cir- cumstances I couldn't fail." "Dick," Eve asked, after a time, "why do you say 210 A LOST PARADISE. that sometime we will go back to civilization? Why do I?" "I don't know. I suppose it is something inborn, some inherited call of work, achievement, ambition, that we can't shake off if we would." "Yet we are perfectly happy here, aren't we ?" "Perfectly." "Then doesn't it seem absurd to leave it ? What, after all, can the world offer us, that we haven't, here ? Did all the things you had, in your other life, make you happy ? Did you ever enjoy your best meal in a New York restaurant half as much as you have our oysters, and fish, and fruit? Would it make us a bit happier to sleep in a brass bed instead of on our sweet-smelling grass ? Would the sky be as bright in smoky London, or the air as life-giving and fresh ? Wouldn't we miss the freedom, the wonderful joy of living, that nature is giving us now ?" He nodded, gravely. "All those things we would miss, and the things the physical things that we would get in return would not compensate us; but it is the mind that starves in such a life as this." She glanced at him quickly, then came over, and, kneeling beside him, pressed her body against his. "Are you tired, dear, already?" He swept her into his arms, and kissed her. "My girl, my precious girl, how can you ask me that ? I am so happy that I scarcely dare even to think of such a thing as going away, for fea.r something might happen to take my happiness, from me. But we were A LOST PARADISE. 211 born with the minds of civilized people. In time, in all the years to come, the mind hunger will grow and grow, and even the lovely peace of nature will fail to satisfy it. The people who can live forever under the con- ditions, the island savages, have the minds of children. Eating, sleeping, basking in the sun those things satisfy them. We are not like that. Our demands are greater. Sometimes people civilized people like our- selves stay all their lives in the jungle ; but their minds slowly die. They become more and more sensual more like animals. They drug their minds with the joy of the senses, and after a time they become beasts." Eve shuddered in his arms, and seemed alrao&t frightened by what he had said. "You are becoming tired, already, dear," she whispered. "I am so happy that I could go on like this forever. I suppose that is because I am just a woman. You are not content just to be happy. You want to live, to accomplish things. I understand. Per- haps I am glad, too, dear, for I love you, and wish all things for you. But I am afraid afraid that the world will some day take you from me, with its duties, its responsibilities, its cares. Then I should feel sorry that we had ever gone away that we had not remained in our Paradise." Eandall quieted her fears with his kisses. "After all, dear," he laughed, "we are troubling our- selves rather needlessly. For all we know, we may wait years before a vessel ever comes near enough to see our flag." He pointed to a streamer of white, the long canvas covering of the life-buoy, which he had 212 A LOST PARADISE. attached the day before to one of the topmost limbs of the tree on the brow of the cliff. She knelt, holding him close for a long time, her eyes searching the sweeping circle of the sea. "Somehow, dear," she said, "I feel that trouble is coming to us from off there out of the sea. I can't explain it. Perhaps I am just silly and nervous to- night but; I am afraid afraid!" "No trouble can come to us, sweetheart, so long as we love each other. Come it is time you were in bed." He lay for a long time that night, holding Eve close to his breast, and listening to the murmur of the surf along the reef. She slept, peacefully, in his arms, but to him sleep would not come. The waves spoke to him, gently, insistently, of other shores, of harbors thick with masts and funnels of ships, of hurrying, crowded streets, of brilliant lights, of life, roaring jubilantly along toward the goal of success. Eve had been right. Happy, supremely happy as he was, he still heard in his ears the call of the world. It was because of it, the day before, that he had climbed the tree, and flung the white signal flag to the breeze. CHAPTER XVIII. FOR many days the flag had fluttered in the breeze upon the cliff top, and Randall and his companion had almost forgotten that it was there. Once Eve had referred to it as "the white flag of surrender." Randall was very near to taking it down that day, but, when he mounted the top of the bluff to do so, she ran after him and stopped him. "I know you are right," she exclaimed. "I did not mean what I said as a reproach. Let it stay." They did not speak of the matter again in fact a new and interesting problem confronted them the problem of clothes. The thin and fragile things they had worn when the sea cast them up to safety, had, by reason of numberless washings, as well as the wear and tear of their daily life, become sadly dilapidated. They looked, Eve laugh- ingly said, like a pair of scarecrows, and no means seemed at hand, for replenishing their wardrobe. Randall had found, during his expeditions to the cocoanut grove, the burrows of a number of robber crabs, which ascended the trees, and after ripping the rough fibrous husk from the nuts, punctured the soft "eyes" with their claws, and devoured the contents. These 213 214 A LOST PABADISE. crabs, he soon found, lined their burrows with great quantities of the shredded husk. It resembled the ravel- ings of a cocoa-fibre rug, and he suggested to Eve the possibility of utilizing it for the making of a rough sort of cloth. He knew nothing of even the most primitive form of loom, but his natural ingenuity enabled him, after numberless experiments, to construct, at last, a rough wooden framework, over which Eve laboriously wove a fabric of the long, pliable fibres. In this way, after some weeks of work, she managed to produce enough of a coarse rough material to make for herself a skirt, and for Kandall a pair of clumsy knickerbockers. The needle that he had made from one of her hairpins enabled her to sew the cloth into shape. During these weeks, they said no more, concerning a possible return to civilization. Randall did not refer to the matter, fearing that he might hurt Eve's feelings, and she did not speak of it again, although she thought about it continually. Often she would observe him, in some fit of abstrac- tion, gazing into the sunset, or watching the northern stars, and she realized what their message to him must be. At other times she would find him scratching rude notes on bits of bark with a quill pen he had made, and she knew that the spirit of unrest was strong within him, that his work, his ambition, was calling. She might have better understood these moods, had her, own past life drawn her thoughts from the present, but it still lay before her, a blank page. And then occurred something, which, in the course A LOST PARADISE. 215 of a few moments, desolated their Paradise, and changed the whole course of existence for them both. They had gone one afternoon to the cocoanut grove, for the purpose of securing an additional supply of the cocoa-fibre. Randall had broken open several of the burrows of the robber crabs, and collected a large quantity of the lining, and they were resting after their labors until the cool of the evening, before attempting the long walk home. About four o'clock they noticed a perceptible increase in the force of the wind, and strong indications in the western sky of the coming of a storm. The clouds raced up from the north-west with as- tonishing rapidity, and they decided to leave the bale of cocoa-fibre behind, and make their way back to the cave by means of the shorter route through the jungle, before the storm broke. They had progressed about three-quarters of the dis- tance, when Randall, who was walking some fifteen or twenty feet in Eve's rear, saw a dead limb, which was swaying wildly in the heavy breeze, break off short, and pitch across her path. He called to her, and at the sound of his voice she turned. The moment was an unfortunate one the heavy branch crashed downward, tearing through the surrounding foliage, and struck her a glancing blow on the head. Its weight was considerable, and the force of its fall knocked the girl to the ground. Randall sprang forward, and to his dismay found tliat she was insensible. The heavy clouds that had been 216 A LOST PAEADISE. piling up in the western sky for the past hour promised an early downpour. He lifted the girl's unconscious figure in his arms, and stumbled hurriedly toward the edge of the jungle. A considerable distance still separated them from the cave. Randall, strong and rugged as he was from his active life, found difficulty in supporting his burden. Over and over he was forced to stop and rest, lowering the girl to the ground, and kneeling beside her, panting from his exertions. The falling limb had cut an ugly gash across the left side of her head. He tried in vain to stanch the flow of blood with bits of moss and leaves. When he at last staggered down to the platform before the mouth of the cave, he was thoroughly exhausted, and Eve was still unconscious. He arrived just as the rain swept down upon them in a blinding swirl. He laid her upon their bed, and washed the blood from her face and neck. Her cheeks were white, her eyes closed. Randall, in a frenzy of fear, thought at first that she was dead. He forced some water between her lips, and then, unable to do anything further, lay down beside her, and held her in his arms. The fury of the storm soon passed. In the course of an hour, the skies were once more clear, and the low rays of the setting sun turned to gold the pools of water on the rocky floor of their porch, and illuminated faintly the interior of the cave. Eve had not yet returned to consciousness. All through the night, Randall held her close to A LOST PARADISE. 217 his heart, torn with a terrible fear lest the daylight bring no light to her eyes. Toward morning she became restless, and moaned ceaselessly in her sleep words that to Randall meant nothing. When the light without told him that the day had come, he rose, and, with some cold water from the stream, washed her fevered face, and began to chafe her hands. She shivered slightly in the cool of the dawn, and he again lay down beside her, and, clasping her in his arms, strove to warm her body with the warmth of his own. And then, just as the brilliance of the dawn began to flood the interior of the cave, she opened her eyes, and gazed with an uncomprehending stare into his face. Randall rose at once, and grasped a gourd filled with fresh water. Coming over beside her, almost un- conscious of her terrified gaze, he tried to press the cup to her lips. She pushed it aside, still staring at him, in a frightened way. "Where am I ?" she gasped, faintly. "Here here with me, dear," he cried, kneeling beside her, and attempting to take her in his arms. She drew away, her eyes, fixed on his, filled with dread. "The typhoon !" she gasped. "I was swept overboard. What has happened ?" "We have been here ever since then, dear/' he whispered. "You are my wife now. Don't you remember ?" 218 A LOST PARADISE. She rose in the bed as he spoke, her face convulsed with terror. "Your wife!" she screamed. "Your wife!" Randall was unable to speak. The look in her eyes the expression of disgust, of horror, which swept over her face left him silent. "We were washed overboard into the sea," the girl went on. "That is all I remember. We clung to a life-buoy for hours. You were one of the sailors of the ship. You helped me. Oh, God you don't mean " She cowered away from him. "How long have we been here ?" "Four months. We we have loved each other so we have been so happy ! Don't you remember ?" She shrank away from him back against the wall of the cave. "Your wife! God! God! You you have done this to me!" She stared at him, her eyes burning into his, gasping for breath. Randall rose from his knees. His whole world seemed crumbling about him. "We have lived here together all that time. You said you loved me. I do not understand." Eve came toward him, pale with fury. "I don't know who you are," she cried, "but I hate you for what you have done to me. Go go away ! I can't bear to look at you. A common sailor ! Go go go!" He staggered back toward the doorway of the cave. "You you said you loved me. Eve listen to me please" A LOST PARADISE. 219 "No I I never want to see you again. Oh, God! What shall I do what shall I do ?" She covered her face with her hands, and leaned heavily against the wall. "Eve, please, listen to me you you couldn't remem- ber who you were but you you said you loved me " She turned on him scornfully, her eyes blazing with anger. "Loved you you a deck-hand ! God ! And you took advantage of my helplessness ! You you brought me me to this I Go ! I can't bear to look at you you have broken my heart." He once more attempted to approach her, whispering words of love, but she repulsed him. "If you do not leave me at once," she cried, "I will throw myself into the sea." CHAPTER XIX. RANDALL staggered through the door of the cave, and stood upon the ledge of rock outside. The whole world appeared to have turned black. The sky, the sea, the vivid sunshine on the rocks, seemed sinister and forbidding. Unable to understand the blow that had come to him, his mind groped toward practical things. He drew together the embers of their fire of the day before, and, after some difficulty, managed to set them alight. Then he rushed off into the jungle, to get fruit for their breakfast. In half an hour he had returned. A glance inside the cave showed hime Eve lying on the bed, sobbing, her face turned toward the wall. He arranged the mangoes he had brought upon the stone slab, and went down to the edge of the stream. Here he drew from a pool a pair of fish that he had caught and cleaned the day before. They had been suspended in the cold water, by means of a slender withe. He returned to the ledge, and broiled the two fish over the coals. Then he called to her very gently. "Won't you come out now, dear, and have your breakfast?" 220 A LOST PARADISE. 221 She did not reply. Presently he went to the cave door, and called again. There was no answer, and, glancing in, he saw her crouching against the wall, on the far side of the bed, apparently praying. Eandall uttered a groan, and turned helplessly away. There seemed nothing at all that he could do. Seizing his spear, which stood leaning against the face of the rock, he went up the slope toward the forest. All the morning he wandered aimlessly about, unable to think coherently. Over and over he made up his mind to throw himself over the side of the cliff, but each time he realized that Eve was alone and helpless, that without him she would be unable to exist. Toward noon he came across a flock of pigeons, clustered about some berry bushes in the underbrush. He hurled a bit of broken limb at them, and managed to bring down one. With this he returned to the cave. As he descended the path from the brow of the cliff, he saw Eve sitting upon one of his improvised chairs, gazing helplessly out to sea. She heard him stumbling down the slope, and at once rose and re- treated within the cave. Randall plucked the bird he had killed, and cooked it. Then he laid it upon the slab of rock, and, finding that the water gourd he had left for her breakfast was nearly empty, he went down to the stream, and refilled it. Throughout all this the girl within the cave made no sound. Randall called to her once, pitifully, but she did not answer. Again he plunged into the forest. 222 A LOST PARADISE. and roamed about the whole afternoon, a prey to the bitterest thoughts. Toward sunset he returned to the brow of the cliff, and stood beneath the dead tree upon which their signal of distress was flying. The evening breeze blew it gently toward the south-east. He turned from it impatiently, and gazed at the long, restless sea. After a moment he started, and, rubbing his eyes, looked eagerly westward. A faint smudge was visible upon the horizon, but whether it was the smoke from the funnels of a steamer, or merely a wisp of cloud, he could not at first determine. The tropic night fell with its bewildering suddenness, a transition from twilight to deep night that always seemed to him a miracle, many times as he had watched it. Below him the embers of the fire glowed dully among the shadows of the ledge. Far off to the north-west he saw, where the wisp of smoke had been, a cluster of twinkling lights, like tiny sparks against the deep night sky. It was a steamer, and she was headed toward the south-east. He sprang down to the side of the cliff, and reached the ledge. Eve was nowhere to be seen. Seizing a handful of sticks from a pile he had made against the wall of the cliff, he cast them upon the fire. More and more fuel he added in a quarter of an hour the flames were crackling ten feet into the air. He heard Eve moving about within the cave, but he idid not speak to her, and she made no sign. Steadily he watched the tiny far-off lights of the steamer, as they grew larger and larger. A LOST PARADISE. 223 It was clear that, unless attracted by his fire, the vessel would pass several miles or more to the north- east of the island. Eandall threw on more fuel, and, standing beside the swirling flames, waved a burning brand about his head in endless fiery circles. He continued to do this, snatching up a fresh torch as fast as the one he was waving went out, keeping an arc of fire continually moving before the dark face of the cliff. He hoped and prayed that his signals would be seen. To stay here longer with Eve, under the existing circumstances, would be impossible he felt sure that he would go mad before the expiration of a week. Whether or not he himself would leave the island he had not yet determined ; but she must be rescued, he knew, in any event. So far as he could judge from her actions, the blow she had received had restored to her her memory of the past, but in doing so had apparently robbed her of all recollection of what had occurred- since the moment, on the night of the typhoon, when she had been swept ashore through the breakers. It was as though the machinery of her mind, like that of a watch, had been stopped, by the blow she had received on that night, and had now been set going again at the precise point at which it had left off, with the inter- vening months a blank. Now that all memory of their life together, their love, had been thus obliterated, she must inevitably regard him as merely the rough, bearded sailor whom she had noticed on board The Batavia, and who had shared with her the perils of their night in the storm. 224 A LOST PAEADISE. She awoke to consciousness to find herself in his arms, to feel that this man this common deck-hand had made her his property, his plaything. All that Randall had told her of his past, of his position in life, had gone from her with her love. She was quite evidently horrified by the merest sight of him, unwilling for an instant to listen to any explanations he might have to offer, and determined, could she possibly avoid doing so, never to see him again. It was a situation with which he felt himself unable to cope. The coming of the vessel at this juncture seemed providential. If his signals were seen, and a boat were sent ashore, Eve, at least, would be saved. He did not feel so certain about himself. He was not at all sure that he wanted to leave the island with her. How could she bear the association, the daily inter- course with him, which many days on shipboard would entail ? How could he bear it ? She would avoid him completely, and yet his presence would distress her, cause her to suffer, as hers would cause him to suffer. As he watched the on-coming lights of the steamer, he could not see how either of them would be able to endure it. His fire began to burn low. He piled an armful of sticks upon it, and renewed his signaling. So far he was unable to determine whether it had been seen or not. With smoke-begrimed face and aching arms he continued to swing the fiery brands about his head, praying that his efforts might not prove unavailing. CHAPTER XX. RANDALL had continued his signals to the passing steamer for over half an hour, and he had almost come to the conclusion that they had not been seen, when suddenly he saw that the vessel had stopped. The cluster of lights that marked her progress now became stationary, instead of moving steadily toward the east. He redoubled his efforts, swinging the blazing branches about his head incessantly, in spite of his aching arms and scorched face. Thought of himself had ceased he desired only that Eve might be saved Eve, his wife, whose name, even, he did not know. After a long time he observed, far off on the black surface of the water, a single light, which crept toward the shore with exasperating slowness. Presently, the regular rhythmic beat of oars came to his ears. He flung away his signal torch, and hurried down to the shore. The boat came steadily on, heading directly toward the point where he stood. Randall saw that its oc- cupants were guided by the light of his fire, which still blazed feebly upon the rocky shelf above his head. He called loudly, "Boat ahoy!" and an answering, "Ahoy!" boomed back to him above the roar of the surf. 225 226 A LOST PAEADISE. In a moment the black hulk of the boat loomed through the darkness, close in shore ; then it was swiftly driven through the low surf, and beached upon the sand. Four men sprang out, and ran the boat up on the beach, beyond the line of the breakers. Then a fifth stepped out, a lantern in one hand, a revolver in the other. "What's wanted here?" he demanded, in rasping tones. Randall went up to him at once. The sound of the man's voice, gruff and uncompromising as it was, filled him with delight. He had heard no other, save Eve's, for many months. Through this bearded figure standing on the beach there seemed to speak the voice of the great outside world, calling him back to his work. His enthusiasm, however, was but momentary. He had scarcely taken half-a-dozen steps, when the recollec- tion of Eve's attitude toward him swept away his hopes? "We've been cast away here, on this island, for four months," he replied, dully. "Who's we ?" asked the man. "Myself, and a young woman. She's up there, in a cave in the rocks." He indicated the ledge above them. "I'll bring her down." In a moment he had turned and begun to climb the rough steps that led to the shelf of rock, leaving the rescue party waiting on the sands below. When he reached the ledge he found Eve standing beside the remains of the fire, gazing down at the boat and the men gathered about it. Her face was turned away from him ; he could not see the expression upon it, but he observed that she had thrown a piece of the r A LOST PARADISE. 227 cocoa-fibre cloth about her shoulders and was apparently ready to descend. Eandall held out his hand. "Come, dear," he said. "Let me help you." She turned and swept him with a look of bitter con- tempt. The scorn which blazed in her eyes told him more plainly than words could have done that even the very sight of the man who, she believed, had degraded her was well nigh unendurable. He shrank back into the shadow, and she quickly passed him and went down to the beach. Involuntarily he began to follow. Then a fuller realization of what her look had meant came over him. He was an outcast so far at least as she was concerned. His very presence was dreadful to her. Could he bring himself to go with her, to spend days, weeks, on ship- board near her, to endure her scorn, and more than all, to intensify her suffering by his daily presence ? He would be relegated to the forecastle ; as a deck-hand he could expect nothing else. The thought that she would see him there, would thus be daily reminded of the shame she felt he had placed upon her, left him weak and trembling. He felt that he could not bear it, and in his uncertainty he sank down on the slab of rock which had been their dining-table and lay there, utterly wretched. Below he heard the others talking. Eve was telling them, in a few words, her story. From the exclamations that came to his ears, the sudden tones of respect in which the officer in charge of the landing party ad- dressed her, he concluded that the story of her loss 228 A LOST PARADISE. from The Batavia was known to them. Possibly the vessel now lying off shore was one of the small P. & O. boats plying between Hong Kong and the Australian ports ; in any event, the washing overboard of a woman passenger from one of the crack P. & O. liners would be current gossip throughout shipping circles in Hong Kong. He listened eagerly, wondering whether Eve would speak in any way of that part of her experiences which concerned him so intimately. He might readily have realized that she would not, had the matter of their relations, their love, not been so close to his heart. Left to himself, he would have shouted their love for each other from the cliff-top, and requested the captain of the ship to marry them as soon as they got on board. Eve, however, referred to him only as a deck-hand, who had been washed ashore with her, and had helped her to exist during the period of their captivity. She spoke of him quite without emotion. That which he 1 knew she felt, she hid beneath an assumed pride. The way in which she mentioned him, the emphasid she seemed to place upon his inferior position, told him that between them had been raised the inflexible barriers of caste. That any man should have taken advantage of her temporary disability to rob her of her virtue seemed bitter enough, but that the man who had done so was little more than a common laborer made her disgrace seem doubly hard to bear. All that had passed between them during their months together on the island had gone from her, everything, in fact, save the brutal knowledge that this man had despoiled her. A LOST PARADISE. 229 She wondered whether or not he would boast of it, amongst his companions on shipboard. Her thoughts in some intangible way were reflected in Randall's mind. He pictured her, wretchedly pacing the deck, and finding daily increasing wretchedness in the sight of him, working about below. He felt that he could not endure it ; he was not willing that she should be obliged to endure it. Yet when he decided, broken- hearted, to remain behind and let her go alone, the thought that she, the woman he loved, was about to pass out of his life well-nigh maddened him. He groped his way to the steps in the rock and stood in hesitation, looking down at the others. Should he go, and endure the misery he knew would be his, or should he stay, and try alone, in the solitude of their lost Paradise, to bear the suffering which had come to him ? The ques- tion was one he seemed unable to answer. Presently he heard a voice from below, calling him. "Ahoy there, my man!" it said gruffly. "Are you going to stop up there all night ? We're waiting for you." - For a moment Randall could not speak. The agony in his soul choked him. Then he heard a voice that hei knew to be his own, although it sounded queer and un- real to him. "I'm not coming," it said. "Not coming ! What the dev " The officer smothered the exclamation out of respect for Eve's presence. "I'm going to stay here," Randall said, steadily. He wondered that he was able to speak so quietly, with such a tumult of emotions raging within him. 230 A LOST PARADISE. There was no response this time, but soon he heard someone stumbling up the side of the cliff, and saw a light bobbing in and out among the rocks. In a few moments the officer in charge of the party scrambled, lantern in hand, upon the ledge. "See here, my man," he grumbled, puffing from his exertions. "What's the meaning of this nonsense ? Go down and get aboard at once." Randall leaned back against the face of the rock, and shook his head. His voice was very low, but there was no longer any indecision in it. "I prefer to stay here," he said. "You you're crazy, man! Here alone on this island?" "Yes. I like it here. I mean to stay." The officer gazed at him for a moment in silence. He seemed unable to grasp Randall's meaning. "Well," he said at length, "I suppose I can't rescue you against your will, but I must say it's damned peculiar." Randall gripped his hands together behind his back and strove to appear natural, unconcerned. He dared not glance down toward the beach, for fear the sight of Eve standing there might even now cause him to waver in his purpose. "It isn't peculiar," he said, slowly. "I'm free here. I have plenty to eat and drink. Why should I go back with you? I'd only have to work like a dog to keep body and soul together. Go on. Let me be." Again the officer stared as though he thought the man r & LOST PARADISE. . 231 before him a trifle mad. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned away. "All right," he said. "It's your own affair, I suppose. Is there anything you'd like me to leave you ?" "Have you a box of matches, and some tobacco ?" The man drew a box of wax tapers from his pocket, and then a huge plug of chewing tobacco. "Take these and welcome," he said. "Anything else?" "Yes. A lead pencil, if you have one." Again the officer fished about in his pockets, then handed Randall a stub of a pencil. "Got a knife, I suppose ?" he asked. "Yes. I don't need anything more." The officer started to leave, then hesitated, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, as though his consciencce troubled him. "Seems like a mighty unchristian-like proceeding," he muttered, "to leave a fellow-being alone on a desert island like this." Randall shrugged his shoulders. "It isn't a desert island," he said, "and I want to be alone." "Very well," replied the other, holding out his hand. "Good-by and good luck." "Good-by," said Randall, his voice very husky. In a moment he was watching the lantern as it bobbed like some huge intoxicated fire-fly down the face of the cliff. He stood beside the embers of the fire and watched the men as they launched the boat. When the craft 232 A LOST PABADISE. had passed through the line of the surf, he ran down the slope and toward the beach. The darkness had swallowed the departing boat up, by now, although he could trace its progress by the bobbing light of the lantern. It seemed incredible, that he should be left here alone. He rushed into the surf until the water came up to his shoulders, calling wildly to Eve to come back to him, but the booming of the breakers silenced the faint echoes of his voice. For a time he raved madly, crying out curses against the Fates for thus a second time robbing him of all that he held dear in life. Then, as the futility of his pro- tests came home to him, he dragged himself once more up on the beach, and gazed hungrily at the distant cluster of lights that marked the location of the steamer. After -a time the lights began to move. Their motion was almost imperceptible at first, but soon, as the vessel gathered way, they drew off with increasing rapidity toward the east. Randall rushed up the face of the cliff to the ledge, in order to keep them in view as long as possible. In half an hour they had become a faint blur upon the horizon. And then, like the sudden snuffing of a candle, they were blotted out altogether, and he was alone with his grief and the stars. CHAPTEK XXI. IT must have been many hours after Eve had gone away before Kandall rose and groped his way toward the door of the cave. Half-blinded by the tears that sprang to his eyes, he threw himself down upon the bed in an agony of wretchedness and remorse. The whole world his world, at least had been swept away. All that he loved had been taken from him. Even the name of the woman whom he regarded as his wife the woman for whom he would gladly have given his life was unknown to him. She had vanished, possibly forever, into the night, and left him without even hope to enable him to take up once more the broken threads of life. Toward morning he fell asleep, and dreamed that Eve had come back to him, and was kneeling beside the bed, her arms about his neck. He awoke to an even keener realization of his loneliness. The dawn was just lifting the shadows from the surface of the sea, when he staggered out of the cave, and, descending to the beach, plunged in for his morning swim. The dip in the surf refreshed him; he went about the business of preparing breakfast with less of the black despair in his heart than had been there the night 234 A LOST PARADISE. before. Yet his grief and his love for the woman who had passed out of his life with the night were no less intense. He might readily have thrown himself down on the sand, and given himself up to utter wretchedness. That he did not do so arose from a purely animal desire to live the ever present instinct of self-preservation. He went about his daily tasks mechanically, conscious of the dull pain that tore at his heart, yet forgetting it, from time to time, in the work that occupied him. He secured some oysters for his breakfast, and stewed them, brought in a fresh supply of firewood from the jungle, gathered fruit, made a long expedition down the beach to the little inlet on the banks of which they had made their first camp, and caught some mullet for his midday meal. After this he lay on the sand, in the shade of the large tree, and slept during the greater part of the afternoon. On his way back to the cave, the white flag, made of the painted canvas covering of the life-buoy, caught his eye as it waved in the breeze. Now its usefulness was over. He had made up his mind to remain on the island, for the present at least, and by no means desired to attract the attention of passing vessels, in case any should come his way. He climbed the tree, and, taking down the strip of canvas, brought it to the cave. It was some two feet in width, and twelve in length, and its painted white surface was still fairly smooth and clean. He remembered the stub of pencil which the officer in charge of the rescue party had given him, A LOST PARADISE. 235 and the idea of utilizing the canvas as something upon which to write crossed his mind. Originally, when he asked for the pencil, he had intended to make, if possible, some shift at writing upon dried palm-leaves, to provide occupation for his lonely hours. The strip of canvas now offered a more satis- factory substitute. He spent the remainder of the after- noon cutting it into squares, about twelve inches each way, which he bound together in the form of a book. In this he began to keep a diary of his daily life, and of thoughts that came to him in his hours of suffering. He began it that day, and since he knew neither the day of the week, nor the date, he was forced to assign to the days numbers, beginning with the first that he had spent alone. The means of self-expression thus afforded, served to while away the tedium of his exile, and to some extent lessened the poignancy of his grief. Month after month he lived the solitary life of a hermit, con- vinced that existence held for him no possible happiness, no imaginable future worthy of the name. Some of the entries that he made in his diary, during the three months he spent alone on the island, indicate the blank wretchedness of his earlier days of exile, and the gradual rising within him of hope, the insistent call of the world. "Everything about me speaks of the sweetness of your presence," he wrote, at the close of his first after- noon alone. "Eve Eve how can I ever live without you ? Come back to me, or I shall die." Beyond this he could not write, but spent the evening in a fit of 236 A LOST PARADISE. abstraction, wondering how things were with her, this woman who had loved him so well, who had given her heart into his keeping. In the middle of the night, by the light of one of his wax tapers, he scrawled a line- "If much of the future is to be like this, I cannot live it." Occasionally he jotted down insignificant references to the events of his daily life : "Got two pigeons to-day. Killed a puff adder. ~No more cocoanuts on the fallen tree, and I can't climb the others. Tried to bring some down with a club, but it was no go. To-day it rained. Stayed in the cave all day making arrows. I wish I had some books." Usually however, what he wrote referred in some way to Eve. There was no incident of his daily life that did not remind him of her. The thousand and one little things they had been in the habit of doing together, seemed useless, tiresome, now that he was forced to do them alone. "A thrush has been singing in the edge of the jungle to-night," he wrote, by the light of the fire. "There was one that sang like that the night we were married. It seems queer, somehow, to write that word married, yet, situated as we were, the only marriage possible was the one made sacred by our love. It is the only marriage that I shall ever have." He wrote innumerable poems to her, some of them beautiful, some halting and worthless. At times the longing to see her, to hold her close against his heart, A LOST PARADISE. 237 almost drove him frantic. At other times he forgot her, for a brief space, in the tasks of the day. One day he wrote this query: "Would she have felt the same, had she known, had she remembered, that I am not just the common sailor she supposed, but a man of her own class ?" The next day he wrote, under this : "I ought to have told her have forced her to listen to me." These sentences indicated a changing mental state. After the first dulness of misery, of despair, he began to think that perhaps the gulf between them was not so wide as he had supposed. Might it not be possible for him to bridge it? Hope was beginning to assert itself in his soul hope that some day' he might again meet her, might find her among all the many millions of women in the world. The result of this train of thought was that at the expiration of the second month he again hung a signal of distress in the tree this time a broad square piece of the cocoa-fibre cloth, which he spent two weeks in making. He also kept a fire burn- ing day and night on the ledge. In spite of these devices, however, the sea greeted him morning after morning with its smooth and shin- ing expanse barren of any evidence of man or his works. He blamed himself bitterly at times for not having left the island when Eve did. Now, for all he knew, he might be obliged to remain here a prisoner for years. Apparently it was outside the beaten track of vessels trading among the island ports. <f The sea mocks me, with its smiling face," he wrote. 238 A LOST PAEADISE. "The birds in the jungle laugh at my loneliness. Yet you are always with me among the breakers in the morning on the hot sands, at noon throughout the long, silent evenings under the stars at night in the cave. You move silently about me like a shadowy presence, and bid me come to you. Sometimes I dream, and feel your cheek close to mine, your breath, like flowers, in my face, your breast against my breast, and when I wake the suffering is almost too intense to be borne." The passing of the tobacco that had been given him by the officer in charge of the landing party was recorded in feeling terms. He had been smoking it sparingly, in a pipe he had carved out of a bit of wood. On the day upon which he smoked the last pipeful, he wrote: "Tobacco gone. Might just as well be dead." "I must go to her," he wrote, on another day. "I cannot live, unless I can see her again." He sat for hours watching the ocean, straining his eyes at every wisp of cloud that suggested the smoke from a steamer, or at every flash of the white wings of a sea bird, giving momentary promise of a sail. And still his weary eyes beheld only the sweep of the sea, the clear far-off line of the horizon. His interest in the daily routine of life grew less and less. He moved about only enough to secure fire- wood, food and water. The remainder of the time he spent watching the sea, or writing in his diary. The great love he felt for this woman, whom he regarded as his wife, drew him, in thought, ever A LOST PARADISE. 239 toward the north-west. Day by day his desire to see her, to speak to her, to hear her voice, increased. Sometimes, during the long hot days, the lonely nights, he felt that if help did not come soon, he would die. And still he watched the sea in vain. CHAPTER XXII. THEEE months is after all not a very long time, but to Randall, marooned on Paradise Island, as lie and Eve had been wont to call it, it seemed well nigh in- terminable. Had he known, at the outset, that his captivity would be limited to that particular length of time, he might have found his position an easier one. Each day, represented by some entry in his diary, would have brought him one step nearer to a definite goal. As it was, he quite rightly argued that he might never be rescued at all. Some of the smaller of the innumerable islands in that part of the Pacific were never visited by trading ships, there being nothing, in fact, to attract them, but the collection of the beche- de-mer so highly prized by the Chinese epicures. Para- dise Island, being of trifling size, afforded poor hunting grounds for even this product of the sea. Randall had observed numbers of the sausage-shaped, jelly-like crea- tures along the reef, but being entirely ignorant of either their name or the use to which they were put, was unable to derive from their presence the small grain of hope that they might have afforded him. He continued to gather firewood, watch the sea from the edge of the cliff, and think continuously of Eve. 240 A LOST PARADISE. 241 By this time, he had made up his mind, could he but once escape from his present predicament, to make his way to London, secure employment of some sort, get on his feet, financially speaking, and try to find her. He realized the difficulties that lay in his way. Being ignorant even of her name, he did not at first see any way in which he could hope to discover her, but love and the hope growing steadily in his breast told him that, whatever the outcome, he must at least make the attempt. His rescue, when it finally came, was quite devoid of dramatic features. He had thrown himself down on the sands one hot afternoon, after eating his midday meal, and had gone to sleep, in the shadow of some water-worn rocks, at the base of the cliff. Above him, his cocoa-fibre flag flapped lazily in the hot breeze, and a thin column of smoke rose from the fire on the ledge, and drifted off toward the south. When he awoke, it was to find himself being shaken roughly by the arm. ".Wake up, can't you ?" he heard someone saying. He stumbled sleepily to his feet, and looked about. A short, rather fat man, in dirty brown khaki trousers and coat, stood beside him, peering into his face with an amused smile. "You're a heavy sleeper, mate," he grinned. "Yes I I am," Kandall stammered. "How did you get here ?" The man pointed to a small two-masted schooner which lay about half a mile off shore. "We were making for Singapore," he said, "when 242 A LOST PARADISE. we saw your smoke and your flag. How'd you come here?" "Washed off the P. & O. liner Batavia, during a typhoon, seven months ago." "H-m," the man grunted, and looked about. "Any- thing of value on the island ?" "Nothing but a few cocoanut trees, on the other side. A dozen or more, I should say." Again the man grunted. "Fresh water, of course ?" "Plenty." Kandall pointed to the stream that made its way down the narrow fissure in the side of the cliff. As he spoke, two men came toward them, one of them white, the other a Chinese or a Lascar, Kandall could not determine which. Further down the beach he saw a boat drawn up on the sand, and two more men standing near it. "Fetch the casks up here, Martin," the fat man said, as the others came up, looking at Randall curiously. The two returned to the boat, and Randall's com- panion, sitting down on a rock, drew out a Manilla cheroot, and lit it. "Have one ?" he asked, feeling in his pocket. "Thanks," Randall gasped, and lit the. cheroot with trembling fingers. "I haven't had a smoke for seven weeks." His companion grunted again. He seemed to con- verse largely in grunts, evidently considering words a waste of time in so hot a climate. Presently he asked : "How'd you live?" Randall told him. A LOST PARADISE. 243 "Pigeons, fish, oysters and fruit. I had enough to eat. It was the horrible loneliness that I couldn't stand." The four men were now rolling a couple of water- casks toward the little stream. Randall rose. "Guess I'll go up and get my things," he said, and ascended to the cave. There seemed something almost sacred about the place, filled as it was with memories of Eve, of their wedding night, their happy months together. He wrapped up his diary, one of the coarse pottery jugs he had made, and three or four of the chessmen with which they had been in the habit of playing, in a piece of cocoa-fibre cloth, and from a niche in the rock took a ring, and slipped it on his finger. He had made it for Eve, the day after their wedding, laboriously carving it from a bit of pink coral, and on the morn- ing after her departure he had found it lying on the cave floor. Since then, it had rested untouched in a hollow in the rock, too sacred even to be worn. Now he took it with him, hoping that, sometime, it might serve for a second and more lasting union between them. With a last look about, he picked up his little bundle, and went out on the ledge. Below he could see the four sailors filling the casks. The man in the dirty khaki suit was smoking sleepily on the sands. Now that he was about to leave the place, a feeling of regret swept over him, glad as he was to go. Here he had known the greatest happiness of his life, and the greatest wretchedness as well. He wondered whether he would ever know such happiness again. 244 A LOST PAEADISE. The water-casks were filled, by the time he had returned to the beach. "Let's be off," the fat man said, rising. "Hope you'll be able to lend a hand aboard, mate." He ap- praised Randall's stout shoulders and muscular arms with an appreciative eye. "We're somewhat short- handed, this trip." "I was a deck-hand on The Batavia" Randall told him. "I don't know much about sailing-vessels, but I'll do what I can." "Good. We'll make port in a couple of weeks. Won't need you after that." "Singapore, you said ?" "Yes. Straits Settlement." "Does the P. & 0. touch there ?" "Well, I should say so." The man grinned. "Plenty of 'em, to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Colombo, Port Said, London that's where you want to go, I take it." "Why do you say that ?" "Oh, the P. & O. hands mostly come from there, and want to get back. You English ?" "No; American." The man turned, smiling broadly. "No ! So am I. Put it there." He extended his broad flat hand. " 'Frisco's my home or used to be. I ain't seen the Golden Gate now for goin' on seven year. This country out here is hell, but somehow it gets you, once you have a taste of it. God! What wouldn't I give, for a nice juicy steak, and a cold bottle A LOST PARADISE. 245 of beer, down in a little restaurant I used to know on Market Street !" They had reached the boat by now. Fifteen minutes later Randall was scrambling up the side of the tubby little schooner, and by nightfall Paradise Island had become a faint purple blur on the eastern horizon. Eighteen days later, he landed in Singapore, with a decent suit of sailor's clothes, and a pound in money, both presents from his fellow countryman from San Francisco. The work aboard the ship had been hard, the fare coarse, and not always very palatable ; but the thought that he was once more on his way toward civili- zation, and, more than all, toward Eve, filled him with an enthusiasm which made light of all minor dis- comforts. At Singapore, realizing that the small amount of money in his possession would suffice to maintain him for but a very few days, he went at once to the offices of the agent of the P. & 0. Company in Collyer Quay. Here he explained the circumstances surrounding his loss from The Batavia, and asked that, if possible, a berth be found for him on a homeward-bound steamer. The agent, a tall, thin man, very yellow and dyspep- tic-looking, smiled with an entire absence of mirth. "You are not an Englishman, my good fellow ?" he questioned, when he had heard Randall's story. "No, sir. I'm a deck-hand, though, and if they need one " IH S ee I'll see," the agent fussed, putting Ran- dall's name down on a slip of paper. "Sometimes the homeward-bound vessels need a man or two. There 246 A LOST PARADISE. are desertions to be reckoned with. The Simla is due from Hong Kong tomorrow. Apply on board. You were on The Batavia, you say ? I'll advise the captain of the circumstances." Randall was waiting at the dock, the next morning, when The Simla hove in sight. His night at a small second-rate hotel, together with his meals and some other expenditures, had cost him seven of his twenty shillings. He estimated that, at this rate, he could exist in Singapore about four days. It was absolutely necessary for him to get a berth on The Simla, unless, indeed, he were to ask for assistance at the American consulate. Again, the fates favored him. One of The Simla's crew was ill with enteric fever. Randall got in his application almost before the vessel's anchor reached the mud. The fact that he had been a member of The Batavia's crew, and had gone overboard during a typhoon in trying to save one of the company's pas- sengers, helped him materially. When The Simla left Singapore, Randall's name was on the roster of her crew. He turned his face to the north, and to Eve, and went about his work with a growing joy in his heart. Each revolution of the screw brought him that much nearer to her. They had been driven out of Paradise, but the world beckoned, and he had found that even Paradise could be dismal and cold, when adventured alone. CHAPTER XXIII. SOME six weeks after leaving Singapore, Richard Randall stepped from the train at Liverpool Street Station, London, with the relics of his island life in a small parcel under one arm, and somewhat over twelve dollars, in English money, in his pocket. Civilization did not greet him with open arms, nor with a stern and forbidding frown in fact, it did not greet him at all, being quite unconcerned in the matter, one way or the other. There were so many- so terribly many! human midges like himself in this monstrous city that the coming or going of one more or less seemed of infinitesimal importance. The fact came to him with something of a shock, as he stood irresolute upon the sidewalk, and watched the ebb and flow of the human tide. Yet the shock was not by any means so great as would have been the case, had he been suddenly trans- ported, after the manner of the Arabian nights, from the South Pacific to Liverpool Street, without stopping by the way. To some extent the change had been gradual. At Hong Kong, at Colombo, he had touched once more the fringe of the garments of civilization, and progressing by way of Aden, Port Said, Marseilles, 247 248 A LOST PARADISE. Gibraltar and Plymouth, he slowly shook off the gold and azure spell of the tropics, and came once more to feel himself an integral part of the great gray life of the north. The transition filled him with renewed energy, with gripping desire to get back once more into the iron struggle. Dreaming away the days under a tropic sun no longer appealed to him. He felt his muscles harden- ing, his nerves growing taut for the fight. As The Simla plunged up the Channel, on a raw and bluster- ing day in March, the tang of frost in his face set his blood dancing to a more vital and rugged tune than any that the soft tropic breezes had afforded. This, indeed, was life. At Plymouth he had been obliged to invest a portion of his pay in a suit of cheap, but warm, clothes and a heavy pea-jacket, yet the night air, as he left the sta- tion and walked aimlessly in the direction of Cheapside, made him shiver with the cold. The streets glowed with light, and through them swept the never ending crowds of the restless city. No one looked at him; to none of these people was his presence of the least importance; their own affairs, indeed, occupied them fully. Kandall became con- scious of a feeling of vast loneliness, more keen than fcny he had known, during even his long solitary months on the island. London was to him a sealed book. Of its highways land by-ways he knew absolutely nothing. Low, dingy- looking buildings surrounded him, with, beyond, a circular park, indifferently well lighted. He wandered A LOST PARADISE. 249 on, aimlessly, uncertainly, with no definite idea of where to go, or what to do. An eating-house presently attracted his attention. He went in, and consumed a huge slice of roast mutton and some boiled potatoes with an appetite born of weeks of hard work at sea. Physically, he felt in better trim than ever before in his life; the past year had turned his muscles to steel, and given him the rugged health of a day laborer. After his meal, he sought a barber shop, and, having at length found one, went inside, and requested the astonished proprietor to trim his hair, and shave off his beard and mustache. The effect was revolutionary. When Eandall glanced at himself in the mirror, he seemed to be gazing at someone whom he had once known, but had not seen for a long, long time. The beard had made him appear at least thirty-five ; now he seemed almost boyish, as of old. There were lines of experience, of self- reliance in his face, however, that had not been there when he left New York, nearly a year before. He took up his little bundle, and went out. Thus cleanly shaven and groomed, he seemed more a part of the life about him. One might have imagined him a chauffeur, or a well-to-do young farmer, or, indeed, a follower of almost any calling that entailed constant, exposure to the sun and wind. His face burned to a ruddy brown, his eyes sparkling with vitality and health, denied all acquaintance with the over-heated and under-ventilated atmosphere of the city. He had secured, from one of the petty officers of The 250 A LOST PARADISE. Simla, the name of a small, but decent, hotel in Fleet Street. The officer had seemed surprised that a deck- hand should want to go to lodgings of so pretentious a sort, but Randall gave no information, beyond the fact that he had friends in London, and wished to be decently lodged. His plans for the future were somewhat vague, but they did not by any means contemplate continuing in the stratum of life in which he had found himself for the past year. His experience on shipboard had served its purpose, had given him the health and energy that he so sadly lacked the year before. In a general way, he thought of applying for work to some of the London newspapers, or, failing in this, perhaps to secure a position with some magazine, or publishing house. He believed that his standing as the author of two plays, even though they had not been successful ones, would enable him to get employ- ment of some sort as a writer. Perhaps he did not fully realize the overcrowded condition of the literary field in London, or he would not have been so confident of success. Failing to secure such work, he meant to take what- ever offered anything, in fact, that would enable him to live, and ultimately to accomplish his two great purposes : to- win success in his dramatic work, and to find Eve. Should he be obliged to take even the poorest-paying sort of a position, he determined so to arrange his life as to live within his income, and to complete a new A LOST PARADISE. 251 play, which had taken shape in his mind during his long unoccupied hours on the island. The problem of finding Eve would, he felt sure, prove a simple one. He had only to make inquiries at the London offices of the P. & O. Company, to ascertain the identity of the passenger who had been swept over- board from The Batavia the summer before, four days out of Hong Kong, and had been subsequently rescued. He would have secured this information, indeed, at Hong Kong, had he been permitted shore leave during The Simla's stop there, but this had been denied him. It was not the problem of finding Eve that troubled him, but of approaching her, after he had succeeded in finding her. To go to her as the sailor who had shared her captivity on the island was not to be thought of. He meant to meet her as an equal, confident that, both because of his completely changed appearance and of the curious hiatus in Eve's mind concerning their life on the island, she would have no idea whatever of his identity. As an equal, he meant to lay siege to her heart, be- lieving that her love for him lay too deep to be de- stroyed by any mental upheaval, no matter how violent. But how could he hope to go to her as an equal, unless he had first achieved material success ? As a writer of successful plays, he knew that he might hope to do so ; and, as matters were, he could see no other avenue of approach. The way seemed hard, indeed, as he con- templated the obstacles before him, but he laughed and made light of them. With a few shillings in his pocket, and an unbounded fund of confidence in himself 252 A LOST PARADISE. and his ability, he once more dreamed of conquering the world. After he had deposited his very meagre luggage in his hotel room, he went for a walk. His old love of life, of humanity in all its forms, was beginning to assert itself. He strolled along Fleet Street, toward where it broadens out into the Strand, with an eager and curious eye on all about him. It was after eight o'clock, and the Strand was teeming with cabs, automobiles, and men and women in evening dress, hurrying toward the many theatres that front upon it. Eandall glanced at the hoardings announcing this or that new play, with the keenest interest. Once he had lived this life ; once he had known the names of all the new dramatic ventures, not only at home, but abroad as well. His talk, his interests, his whole life, had centered about the theatre. Now he came to it a stranger. The whole kaleidoscopic picture had assumed a new aspect. New plays filled the stages ; new names bespoke the efforts of, to him, unknown authors. He regarded them all curiously, with a grim smile, as he thought of the way in which his own hopes had been crushed, less than a year before. It struck him as singular, astonishing even, that, suddenly set down in London, where he was as much at sea as he would have been in St. Petersburg, or Peking, he had without the least intention, wandered almost directly to the very heart of theatredom. Was there, then, some subtle and telepathic instinct that again drew him toward the life which had hitherto absorbed all his energy and time ? He compared him- A LOST AKADISE. 253 self, mentally, to the night moth, so persistently at- tracted by the candle. Here were the lights by the flames of which he had been so cruelly burned. In all their dazzling brilliance they appealed to him still. On every hoarding, displaying the title of some new play, he could see, in his imagination, his own name, proclaiming to the world and to Eve his success. There was a wonderful lure about it all. He paused near the doorway of one of the theatres, and watched the jostling throng making its way into the lobby. Here, judging by the crowd, was a success such a success as he might have had, as he, indeed, meant to have, if hard work could obtain it for him. He turned to the bill, fixed in a gilt frame beside the door, and idly began to read the announcement of the play. And then a queer, almost sickening sensation came over him. He stood for a moment absolutely Btill rigid unable to breathe, staring at the words of the bill. They seemed outlined in letters of fire, and danced ceaselessly around and around in blurred circles. As- tounded, he rubbed his eyes in sheer bewilderment. It could not be the thing was a trick of the imagina- tion, a coincidence, a dream. Yet when he looked again, the same miracle confronted him. There was the name of the play, glaring at him, in letters that seemed six feet in height : "The Long Lane." And below, in letters almost equally monstrous, fantastic, grotesque, un- believable, he read the words: "By Mr. Kichard Kandall." CHAPTER XXIV. FOB the second time in a twelvemonth, Richard Randall's whole world had, by a twist of fate, revolved completely upon its axis with a suddenness which left him gasping for breath. On the first occasion in New York, some ten months before, the revolution had whirled him from a state of imaginary opulence, to the dull, drab misery of utter failure. Now the process had with equal celerity been reversed, and he found himself walking on air, among the stars. It was too much. He refused to believe it. It was clearly a mistake, and yet, one of the two plays he had left with Mr. Taylor had been entitled, "The Long Lane." Mechanically he groped in his pocket, and drew out a handful of silver. In one way alone could the matter be tested. He must see the play. In his excitement, he had walked away from the theatre perhaps half-a-hundred feet. Now he came back again, and once more read the announcement at the door. A line attracted his attention it had escaped him before. "The Great New York Success," it read. He thought of Mr. Taylor. Clearly this was the result of his work. The play must have been put on in New York the autumn before. It all seemed so unbelievable ! His play a New York success ! It meant that, although 254 A LOST PARADISE. 255 he had but a few dollars in his pocket, he was rich. The knowledge that now he could find Eve Eve the woman of his dreams, without the long years of struggle which had but a few moments before confronted him, made him feel suddenly faint. He leaned against the doorway that opened into the lobby, and tried to collect his vagrant senses. A "bobby" in front of the theatre began to regard him with rising suspicion. Presently Randall became aware of it; he entered the lobby, and going to the box-office, purchased an inexpensive seat. It was the first time that he had been inside a theatre for nearly a year. How familiar, how natural, it all seemed! There was no denying it something in the atmosphere of the stage held him, and, after all these months, made him feel that here at last he was home again, back with his people. All the rest seemed strange, far away, unreal. The curtain rose. Instantly he recognized the open- ing act of the play as he had pictured it in his manu- script. There was the drawing-room of the summer cottage, with the veranda beyond, between the stone posts of which one glimpsed the distant sea. He settled back in his seat, and listened, eagerly intent. The play seemed almost new to him, so completely had it passed from his mind during his absence. He found himself laughing at his own wit, or leaning for- ward with half-parted lips, to catch the low-spoken lines of some of the tense, yet quiet, scenes. It was a good play a very good play. He knew that, now that he was able to judge it with a fresh and UD 256 A LOST PARADISE. prejudiced mind. And the audience knew it, and mani- fested its enjoyment in unstinted applause. When Randall left the theatre a little after eleven, he knew not only that he had written a successful play, but that its success was deserved. He stopped at the box-office, and asked the man at the window how long the play had been running in London. "Five weeks," was the reply. "Where can I find the manager ?" "You mean, Mr. Merryman ? He isn't here to-night. He'll be in his office upstairs anytime after noon to- morrow. Why ?" "I want to see him," Randall answered, turning away; "a personal matter. I'll call to-morrow." He squandered eight shillings on a lonely supper, and went to bed, convinced that the world was a very good place, indeed, in which to be. His last thoughts were of Eve; but this was not 'Unusual: his last thoughts had been of her every night, for many months. When he went to the theatre the following morning, he was almost convinced that the events of the night before had been a dream. Their reality, however, was impressed upon him by a series of quite unexpected happenings. Upon presenting himself at the office of Mr. Arthur Merryman, the manager of The Oberon Theatre, he of course sent in his name, but, even as he did so, he realized that he was likely to be confronted by a very serious difficulty that of establishing his identity. No Such difficulty was to hamper him, as matters turned out, A LOST PARADISE. 257 for within three minutes after he had given his name to the rather supercilious clerk, he heard a familiar voice, and, looking up, saw Edmund Taylor coming toward him, beaming welcoming smiles. "Randall!" he exclaimed, pumping the young man's arm up and down with joyous severity. "This is a sur- prise !" "Mr. Taylor !" replied Randall, laughing from sheer nervousness. "I'm so glad to see you !" "Come in. Where did you come from? And where the devil have you been all this time ?" A veritable volley of questions rattled about Randall's head. "It's a long story. I've been in China, and other places. I can't see that things have suffered much through my absence," he added, smiling. "In fact, you seem to have done very much better without me. How can I ever thank you ?" "Never mind about that," Mr. Taylor interrupted. "I always told you your stuff was all right. It has been a satisfaction, I assure you, to prove that I was not mistaken. Come inside. I want you to meet Mr. Merryman." Randall followed him through the door, and was soon shaking hands with an urbane and prosperous- looking gentleman, whose twinkling gray eyes were al- most lost in the ruddy fatness of his countenance. "Mr. Randall," he said, "I am delighted to see you. Everyone has been asking about you. I declare, you've become quite a mystery the vanishing playwright, and all that. Remarkably clever, I must say, your idea of disappearing." 258 A LOST PARADISE. "But why?" Randall gazed from him to Mr. Taylor. "Don't you see ?" laughed the latter. "I've played the story up for all it was worth, of course, just to arouse interest in your work. Now you've become quite a celebrity, without knowing it. Naturally it didn't seem strange, before the play succeeded, but afterward everybody began to wonder why you did not come forward and claim your royalties. It was incon- ceivable that you could have so effectually buried your- self that you would not know of your success. Some of the New York papers came to the conclusion that you were dead. Splendid advertising, of course. I be- lieve The Planet has offered a reward, to the first per- son who might succeed in solving the mystery." "Hadn't I perhaps better remain one ?" asked Ran- dall, laughing. "By no means," Mr. Merryman interrupted. "We'll get a magnificent bit of press work out of this. Where have you been, may I ask ?" Randall determined to suppress, for the time being, any mention of his life with Eve on the island. If his disappearance was to become a matter of newspaper notoriety, he preferred that she should not become in- volved in it. "I've been at sea," he remarked. "As a deck-hand, mostly. Just got in, yesterday, on The Simla, from Singapore." Mr. Merryman slapped his fat knee, and wrinkled his face in a delighted smile. "Superb! It will make a story in a thousand. I A LOST PARADISE. 259 suppose you happened upon a hoarding, with your name upon it, quite by accident ?" "Quite." "And were penniless starving, at the time?" "Not quite. I had a pound or two." "A mere detail, my dear sir. We will say that you were penniless, starving, ready to commit suicide saw your name in front of the theatre, made yourself known, and rise in one bound from poverty to affluence, from obscurity to fame. Superb! It will double our business." "What's the use ?" Taylor laughed. "The house is packed every night." "Ah, my dear sir! Advertising such as this will pack it for months to come. When can you see the newspaper men, Mr. Randall ?" Randall gazed at Mr. Taylor, rather helplessly. "I'd rather like to get some other clothes," he began. But Mr. Merryman interposed immediate and stren- uous objections. "Not to be thought of for a moment, Mr. Randall. That would spoil the story completely. They would become suspicious at once if you were well dressed, and might think that we were trying to 'put something over on them,' as you say in New York. No, sir; you look the part now, perfectly. I'll venture to say you got that pea-jacket, and that suit, at a real sailor's slop-shop. They are unmistakable. Stay just as you are. I'll arrange for an interview at four this afternoon." "All right," Randall laughed, and turned to Taylor, who had risen. 260 A LOST PARADISE. "Come along with me," the latter said, "and get a bit of lunch. That will give us a chance to talk. I'm mighty glad you came when you did," he added, as they descended the stairs. "I'm leaving for home next week." "How long have you been here ?" Eandall asked. "Ever since the play opened. I just ran over for a vacation and rest and to keep an eye on your interests, of course. You've made quite a lot of money, young man. I have it all safely in bank, waiting for you." "I don't see how I'm ever going to thank you for all you've done. I insist that you take a share." "Nonsense !" Taylor interrupted. "It really was no trouble at all. I've enjoyed it. I think " he con- sulted a memorandum book, which he drew from his pocket "that you are at this moment worth about thirty-five thousand dollars." "Thirty-five thousand dollars ! I'll have to keep pinching myself, to be sure I'm not dreaming." "You're not, my boy. And you're going to make more, too. Written any new plays since you left New York?" "Nat exactly I I've been doing other things, though." "What ?" They turned into a neighboring restau- rant. "You can tell me all about it as we eat. Splen- did chops here, and beefsteak pie; if you like it. I must say, Randall your year of travel certainly has done you good. You look as though you might have the appetite of a longshoreman." "I have," Randall laughed, as they seated themselves. A LOST PARADISE. 261 "I never before realized just how much fresh air and hard labor can do for a man. Now I'll tell you my adven- tures," he concluded, when they had given their order. The telling occupied close to two hours, and Mr. Taylor almost forgot to eat his luncheon, so interested did he become in the story. "And you really mean to say," he asked, when Ran- dall had concluded, "that you don't know the woman's name ?" "No, I haven't the least idea who she is; but I am sure that she is an Englishwoman. Of course, I mean to find out, at once. And you understand, I am sure, my reasons for wishing to keep the matter out of the news- papers. In spite of Mr. Merryman's desire for a press story, I am going to say nothing whatever about that part of my adventures. I'll tell these newspaper men that I've been knocking about the Far East as a deck- hand, and let it go at that." "You are quite right. The play doesn't need any artificial advertising, anyway. It's one of the biggest successes in London. I don't doubt it will run here four months. And that reminds me: You'll be wanting some money, of course." He drew out a check-book, and called for pen and ink. "I have an account at Brown's. Suppose I give you five hundred now. I'll arrange credit for you there in the morning, in case you mean to stay in London any length of time after I sail. I suppose you do," he concluded, with a mean- ing smile. Randall returned his smile. "I'm going to stay here until I find my wife," he 262 A LOST PARADISE. said, suddenly turning grave. "After that, I'll think about coming back to New York." His interview with the newspaper men was short, but they seemed greatly pleased with the results. When Randall saw the highly colored accounts of his adven- tures in the morning papers, he laughed to himself. Even Eve, he felt sure, would not recognize him in this dare- devil young soldier of fortune, who had, it seemed, done a little of everything, from tiger-shooting in India, to beach-combing in the Philippines. He threw the papers aside. There were more important matters to occupy his attention. That evening he moved to one of the better-known hotels, and the following forenoon saw him dashing madly about in a taxicab from haberdashers to tailor shops, from bootmakers to hatters, in pursuit of a ward- robe. It was not that he had become a celebrity, with Mr. Taylor ready to introduce him at literary clubs and the like that induced this: Randall was a man of simple tastes, and bore his new honors lightly enough. But he was to find Eve, and he meant to go to her as befitted his quest, the very antithesis of the bearded savage whose embraces had filled her with so much horror. By noon, the task was done; at least, so far as it could be done without waiting for clothes to be made to order. It was a very differenHooking individual, indeed, who asked for his key at the hotel, at luncheon time ; the clerk was at first a little dubious, but, when Randall laughingly explained the circumstances, he suggested changing him to a more expensive room at A LOST PARADISE. 263 once. The man of the night before in his pea-jacket and cheap hand-me-down suit, had not created a very favorable impression, and had been disposed of ac- cordingly. Eandall was too deeply concerned with the matter in hand to care greatly about his quarters. He ate a hasty luncheon, and once more set out, this time to the office of the P. & O. Steamship Co. There was, it appeared, a vast deal of red tape con- nected with the securing of the information he desired. Under clerks gazed at him blandly before passing him on to their superiors, and asked in pointed tones why he desired the information. He was forced to invent a plausible tale, to the effect that he had had a hand in the girl's rescue, and possessed some information which he wished to give to her. His persistence at last resulted in success of a sort. The passenger in question, he was informed, was a Miss Jean Rutherford, and she lived at Eastbourne. This was all the information they appeared willing, or able, to give. Randall returned to his hotel, tumbled his newly acquired wardrobe into his newly acquired trunk, dashed off a note to Mr. Taylor, and in fifteen minutes was driving furiously toward Victoria Station. CHAPTER XXV. IT was dark when Randall stepped from the train at Eastbourne, and the drizzling March rain sent him hurrying to a cab. From a guard on the journey down, who became agreeably loquacious under the influence of half a crown, he had learned something of the place. "Lively enough/' his informant had told him, "in summer, but nobody much comes down this time of the year. American, sir? I thought as much. You, should try it in August, sir, or September, when they has the tennis tournament. Afraid you won't like it much now, sir. Hotels ? Plenty of them, sir, but I should advise you to try The Inn, in the old town, just now. I never was much for the seashore, in March, sir. Gives me the creeps, somehow. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Even The Inn seemed dismal to Randall, although his supper was well cooked and appetizing, and his room contained a cheerful fire, which dispelled the dampness and the fog. He made some inquiries of the comfortable-looking old woman who seemed to be the proprietress of the place, and found her ready enough to talk. "Rutherfords, sir?" she replied, in answer to his 264 A LOST PABADISE. 265 > first question. "Oh, yes, sir. Fine old family, sir. Live about half a mile from here, sir, not far from Compton Place that's the Duke's place, sir. Duke of Devonshire, sir, though he rarely ever comes here. Are you a friend of the Kutherfords, sir ?" "No," Eandall laughed. "That is, not exactly. I I think I've met Miss Eutherford." "Miss Jean, I take it you means, sir." Eandall nodded. "Not a sweeter young lady in the county, sir, nor a better one, as many a poor family has good cause to know. Ever since she came back from abroad, last winter, she's done nothing but work among the poor* Seems like she's changed always sad, and low-spirited. Such a pity, and she so young and pretty! Time she had a good husband, I say, though I don't know as I have any right to be gossiping about my betters." Every word the old woman spoke went straight to Eandall's heart. The mere fact that she knew Eve, his Eve! he could not yet bring himself to think of her as Jean made her seem like an old friend. "Tell me more about her," he said, with a whimsi- cal smile. "I admire Miss Eutherford more than I can possibly tell you." This, indeed, was true enough. "Not much more to tell, sir. Hawthorne Manor, that's their place, sir, ain't what it used to be, when old Mr. Eutherford was alive, and the young gentle- men were at home. Both up in London now, sir, as fine a pair of young gentlemen as you'd care to see. Old Mr. Eutherford was in the East India trade tea and spices, and such like. Made a deal of money, 266 A LOST PARADISE. too, I hear. Miss Jean lives with her mother, but she has never been the same since she came back." Randall felt his face twitching. "She she had an accident, I understand 2" he ven- tured. 'TTes, the poor dear. You see, her brother, Charles, had to go out to some heathen Chinee place Shang- hai, I believe it was, though I can't say for sure to look after the business, after the old gentleman dies, and he took Miss Jean along, she wantin' to see some- thin' of the world, though what anybody would want to go to such outlandish places for, I for one can't see. One day, a terrible storm comes up, and washes the poor child overboard, and she has to live on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, for months and months, with nothin' to eat but bananas and cocoanuts and such like. It's a wonder she lived through it, and she a lady born and raised. I hear that when they found her, she was just skin and bones. A terrible experience, I calls it, for one so young. When she came back, she seemed well enough, but all her brightness was gone. I haven't never seen her smile since. I hear she just prays all the time, and visits the sick and the afflicted. Poor lamb ! Pity she ever went out there among those heathens! . . . Will you go up to your room now, sir? It's all ready." Randall followed her, very thoughtful. He began to see what their months together on the island had meant to the girl. Doubtless, she had come to regard herself as a fallen woman or, at least, one who, through force of circumstances, could no longer consider herself a A LOST PARADISE. 267 good one. He could picture to himself the torments that must constantly assail her pure soul, the bitterness that she must feel toward the brute in whose arms she had found herself when memory returned. It was clear, painfully clear, that, if he was ever to win her love, he must do so as a new interest in her life, not as an old one. On the latter basis, he could bring her but additional suffering. It would be useless to go to her and tell her who he was. She would be overcome with embarrassment, with shame, and doubtless refuse to listen to him. Yet how was he to meet her, in this place, in which he was entirely unknown ? The problem was, indeed, a difficult one. He drew from his pocket ia tiny leather-covered box, and took out the roughly carved band of red coral, which had been their wedding ring. Was ever a more fantastic situation? Within half a mile of where he now sat was his wife the woman he loved better than anything in the world, and she did not know his name, would not, in fact, know him, should she meet him face to face. He crawled into bed, impatient for the coming of the day. What to do he did not yet know, but one thing he had deter- mined upon: he would see her speak to her, at the very earliest opportunity. The rest was on the knees of the gods. The morning dawned bright and clear, with an elusive spring freshness in the air. Eandall rose early, and dawdled over his breakfast until nearly half-past eight. Then, with a cheery nod from the old woman who had been his informant the night before, he set off in the direction of Compton Place. 268 'A LOST PAEADISE. By questioning a postman making the morning rounds, He found his way, without much difficulty, to Hawthorne Manor. It proved to be a charming old house of weather-beaten and moss-stained brick, set in a tiny park, with a high brick wall about it. Through the trellised green gate he saw a gravel road, leading through the boxwood and rose-bushes to a porticoed door. "No one was about, with the exception of an old man, evidently a gardener, who was trimming the rose-bushes with methodical care. He glanced carelessly toward the gate, as Eandall paused before it, called to a collie that was awakening the echoes with his shrill barks, and went on with his work. Randall was in desperation. He could not pause longer at the gateway, without attracting attention. To remain in the vicinity for any length of time would probably lay him open to the charge of being a sus- picious character. There was nothing to do but walk on. He did so, with a fierce longing to see Eve in his heart. All these months he had loved her with an ever-increasing passion. At times it had seemed almost as though he could not wait until the moment should come when .he could hold her once more in his arms. And now, facing that closed and silent gateway, he felt himself further away than he had at any time since she left him on the island. Between them stretched a gulf of worldly customs and conventions, which he could see no way to cross. When he had walked some five hundred yards in the direction of the new town, he turned, and began to retrace his steps. It seemed incredible that, having A LOST PARADISE. 269 come so many thousands of miles to find her, he should now turn away, baffled, from her very door. Once more, walking alongside the ivy-covered brick wall, he ap- proached the gate. He could hear the dog barking within, and the sound of someone coming swiftly along the gravel path. From the trees in the park came the sound of birds, chattering in the morning sunshine. And then, he heard the gate creak slowly open, and his heart almost stood still. There before him, and not ten paces away, was Eve, looking very sweet and lovely, coming toward him with a swinging step, her splendid head held high, her face paler than when he had last seen her, with an indefinable expression of sadness upon it, which came near to breaking his heart. Before he realized it, he had started toward her, his arms a trifle extended, as though about to take her to his heart. The movement was involuntary, prompted solely by the love that swept through him like a flame. She had nearly reached him, by now, and seemed suddenly to become aware of his presence. Her eyes swept over him with the cool and indifferent stare of the high-bred woman noting, for a brief moment, a passing stranger. If anything in his manner attracted her attention, she gave no evidence of it. Randall realized instantly that she did not know him, that his presence meant nothing to her whatever. In a moment she had passed, sweeping by with the long easy stride of the practised walker. Randall knew that stride well often had it successfully matched his own in a five-mile walk upon the beach. She almost brushed his arm with hers in passing, 270 A LOST PARADISE. and for an instant there came to him a sweet and tender fragrance that made him tremble. Then she was gone. At first he was tempted to follow, but realized the futility of it. Already he feared that his actions, his expression, as she passed him, had been such as to attract her attention. To do so still further would be but to place additional barriers between them. Taking a firm grip upon his shaking nerves, Randall turned, and strode frantically off in the direction of the sea. He wanted to be alone to think. There must be some way out of this grotesque, this unbearable, situation. But what was it what was it ? Try as he would, he could find no answer. CHAPTER XXVI. THE beach at Eastbourne is more or less marred by a great iron pier, projecting from the Esplanade, and flanked by a theatre, a cycling track, tennis courts, and various other amusement devices dear to the heart of the seaside visitor. Randall gazed at them with indifference, not un- mixed with dislike, for in his present mood the things of men annoyed him. He wanted to get close down to the sea which he so greatly loved. He wandered about for a time, and at last found a flight of stone steps, leading down from the Espla- nade to the sand. In a few moments he had reached the beach, and began to walk slowly along it, flinging pebbles into the sea, the while he cudgeled his brains for some means whereby he might make Miss Rutherford's acquaintance. The very thought of seeking out some third person, to introduce him to the woman who for four months had slept with her head on his breast, seemed ludicrous, and yet the element of tragedy in the situation left him almost distracted. In all Eng- land, he knew no one but Mr. Taylor, and Mr. Merry- man, neither of whom, he felt certain, could be of the least assistance to him in obtaining an introduction 271 272 A LOST PARADISE. to a girl living down in Eastbourne. The situation was exasperating maddening. He flung a pebble viciously at the tumbling surf, and in helpless rage cursed the conventions that held Eve and himself apart. As he strolled along toward the west, he saw a slender pole, some five feet long, lying half-buried in the sand. It appeared to be the broken end of a boat-hook, and bore a faint resemblance to the shark- tooth spear that he had found so useful on the island. He picked it up, and began throwing it at a bit of rock near the side of the cliff. The exercise warmed him; the March day, in spite of the sunshine, held more than a suspicion of chill. He had become fairly proficient in throwing the spear, during the island days; now, the effort to strike the piece of rock served to relieve the tension of his over- wrought nerves. For half an hour he continued his efforts, smiling grimly whenever he managed to plant the pole fairly upon the mark. So engrossed did he become in his task that he did not observe a girlish figure standing on the chalk cliff above his head, watching him with tense face and an expression of eager wonder. Suddenly, by some chance, he glanced up, and saw her. At once he realized that it was Eve, and that her gaze was fixed upon him. He gave an exclamation of surprise, and she, too, startled by his cry, stepped back, dropping as she did so a walking stick that she had held in her hand. It tumbled noisily down over the rocks. Randall, A LOST PAEADISE. 273 inwardly offering up thanks to the fates who had so quickly solved his problem, recovered it, and holding it in his hand, clambered up to where she stood. The girl had scarcely taken her eyes from him, and in them stirred some suggestion of memory that seemed compounded of both joy and fear. She was still regarding him with this curious stare, when he came up to her, and handed her back the stick. "Thank you," she said, and made as though to turn away. Randall's heart sank, but for some reason she changed her mind. "You you were throwing that that stick as though you had done it often. Would you mind telling me why you you did it where you learned to to ?" She hesitated, stopped, and gazed at him in some embarrassment. "Oh, I used to do it, as a boy," Eandall replied, forcing a laugh. "It was a bit chilly on the beach, and I I thought it might warm me up." He looked closely at her, fearful that in some remote way she might recognize him. Doubtless, the sight of him on the beach, throwing the spear, had stirred within her some thread of memory that led deep into the for- gotten past. The impulse, whatever it was, that had caused her to turn back and speak to him, began to pass away, and the look of reserve crept once more into her eyes. Eandall, afraid that she meant to pass on and leave him, plunged desperately. "I I'm an American," he said, hastily, as though in some way defending himself. "I've never been at Eastbourne before. You see, I am a writer a play- 274 A LOST PARADISE. wright. I have a play now being performed at The Oberon, in London. 'The Long Lane' it's called. Per- haps you have heard of it." She regarded him with a grave smile, apparently trying to determine whether or not to resent his ad- vances. "I I don't go to theatre very often," she said. "I'm afraid I must leave you now." Again she turned from him. A narrow and irregular path, wandering along the edge of the chalk cliff, caught Randall's eye. It led toward a bold headland, which rose against the blue of the sky some three miles to the westward. So many times had he and this girl walked hand in hand over the rocks ! To have her leave him now seemed an incredible thing, not to be borne. "Please, let me walk along with you," he said. There was a note of appeal in his voice, which the girl did not fail to observe. Her eyes searched his face, a startled look in them. "But why ?" she began. tc i I haven't anyone to talk to. I don't know a soul in all England. It's terrible to be so lonely. If you will let me just walk beside you to the end of the path and back, I'll not even speak, if you don't want me to." She continued to regard him intently for a few moments; then the sight of his wo-begone face caused a little ripple of laughter to brush away her reserve. "Come along then, if you like," she cried, and set off down the path. 'A LOST PARADISE. 275 In that moment of laughter she became transformed. The spirit of Pan, the joyous freedom of untram- meled nature, danced in her eyes. Once more she was the happy care-free girl, who had shared his soli- tude, and flooded it with the sunshine of her love. Thoughts of the past held him silent; he walked be- side her for many minutes without uttering a word. "I'm a good walker," she remarked after a time, without looking at him. "Yes, I I know." He spoke absently, his mind on the past. "How do you know ?" Again her quick glance played over him. He recovered himself instantly. "I have to step out," he said, "to keep up with you. Do you walk a great deal ?" "Oh, yes every day. Out to Beachey Head and back." She pointed to the towering chalk cliff in the distance. "I love the sea. It is my only happi- ness almost." "Why ?" It was a dangerous question, and he knew it, but the word was out almost before he realized its significance. It was some little while before she answered him, and then she spoke slowly, choosing her words with care. "I I spent some months once, on an island. I remember very little about it almost nothing, in fact, that is tangible. But the sight of the ocean, the salt smell of it, the sunshine on the beach, the roar of the surf those things always make me glad, give* 276 'A LOST PARADISE. me a curious happiness. I can't account for it, but that's why I walk along here, every day. Sometimes I sit on the rocks, and watch the surf for hours. I love it." Kandall wondered at her frankness, but her words made him very happy. Somewhere deep in her sub- conscious mind, the happiness of their hours together remained, like the perfume of flowers long since withered and forgotten. "I love the sea myself," he said, carelessly, not wishing to pursue the subject of her island life further, for fear more unpleasant memories might be stirred. "I intend to stay in Eastbourne quite a while. It rests me, after the city. Do you go to London often?" ""No. I don't like it. My brothers live there. Sometimes I go up and see them for a day or two shopping, you know. But I'm always glad to get back to my ocean." She threw a loving glance toward the sea. "Look out there, where the sun strikes be- yond the shadow of that cloud. Isn't it a wonderful color peacock blue, shot with Nile green? I'd love to paint it or write about it, as you do." "I wish you'd come up to London sometime, and see my play/' Randall ventured. "I expect to go up on Thursday. It's at The Oberon, you say ? I'll get my brother to take me." "And might I come and speak to you? Perhaps you and your brother would go to supper with me." "I don't think that would be possible. I'm afraid I've done an awful thing in speaking to you at alL A LOST PARADISE. 277 Of course, I can see that you are a gentleman, but such things aren't done." The conventional woman was speaking now. "What could I say to my brother ?" "But," he argued, "I'm a sort of privileged character, you know. People always like to meet actors, and authors, and and dramatists. I might get the man- ager of the theatre to introduce me." She joined merrily in his laugh. "I'm afraid that wouldn't do. I don't know the manager of the theatre. Haven't you any friends in London, at all ?" "Not a one." He smiled gloomily. "Can't we ar- range a runaway, or an accident of some sort, so that I can save your life? Then you'd have to know me, if only out of gratitude." "I might tumble off the cliff," she laughed, stepping to the edge airily. For a moment it seemed to Randall that she had actually placed herself in danger. Her feet touched the very edge of the rock. Impulsively he grasped her arm. "Don't," he said, and drew her back into the path. The momentary contact thrilled them both. Ran- dall could scarcely restrain himself from taking her in his arms, and covering her face with his kisses. "Eve Eve!" he said to himself. "I'm never go- ing to let you go away from me, dear, as long as I live." Outwardly, he showed no evidence of his emotion. "I have a friend a Mr. Taylor in London. He is an American, but he belongs to several clubs, and 278 A LOST PARADISE. knows a lot of people. Perhaps lie could get me an introduction to your brother. I'll try." "That would be better," she said. And then: "Doesn't it seem queer that two people who like each other should be obliged to get the consent of a third, whom they may not like at all, before they can even speak?" "May I assume from that," Randall exclaimed, "that you like me ?" "At least, well enough to be walking to Beachy Head with you, which is something I've never done before with a perfect stranger. In some queer way, you remind me of someone I have known, though for the life of me I can't tell who. That was why I stopped and looked at you first. I hope you won't think any the less of me, for being so free. I know I ought not to have done it, but " She hesitated. "If you knew how much it has meant to me," he began, with enthusiasm; and then, checking himself, went on rather lamely. "You see, I was awfully lonely, and I am deeply grateful to you for talking to me. I've been worrying a lot about something and it it isn't easy to be alone when you have something on your mind." "A girl ?" she said, laughing. "Yes, a girl. I'm very much in love with her, and I haven't seen her for a long time at least " He paused, and looked at her, a great longing in his eyes. "You'll be going back to America soon." Again, Randall was silent, although it Was on the A LOST PARADISE. 279 point of his tongue to say that the girl in question was much nearer to him than America. "It's all over now," he said. "I don't expect to go back for a long time." When they reached the top of Beachy Head, a fine view of the sea lay before them. For a long time they stood in silence, watching the play of color on the surface of the water, as the sunlight shifted through the clouds. "Sometimes I feel like setting out and going 'way off, where everything is different, and never, never coming back again," she said. "To some tropic isle, where it is warm and golden, and people are not afraid to laugh and to love," Ran- dall suggested, watching her face. She colored, and turned quickly to him. "Why did you say that ?" she asked. "It's a dream I've had, all my life," he returned, his face impassive. "Most people have it, I think, at one time or another. We are so apt to become weary of the conventional things of life. Imagine living on fruit and fish, and and just whatever you could get, and running on the beach, like children, and bathing in the warm tropic sea and the stars at night, like fairy lanterns against the velvet sky, and the night winds, and peace." His voice trembled ; he realized that it was folly on his part to speak as he did, but a vague idea possessed him that by bridging the chasm in her memory the past might slowly come back to her, and with it her love for him. His courage failed him, however, as he saw the flash of pain that quivered 280 A LOST PARADISE. across her face. "I've dreamed that so often," he went on, in a lighter tone. "When I've been tired out and nervous and ill. But it's only a dream. I have my work to do. I fancy I'll never find my dream island." His tone apparently reassured her, but her agita- tion did not at. once pass away. "Let us go back now," she said. "I must be home for luncheon at one. Do you know, I'm rather glad we met to-day. You interest me curiously as though you had thought the same thoughts that I have, for a long time." They parted at the Esplanade. Nothing was said by either of them, beyond a conventional good-by, but each knew that they would see each other again. Eandall watched the girl as she disappeared in the direction of the town, and his heart sang with joy. A little later he returned to The Inn and wrote a long letter to Mr. Taylor. CHAPTER XXVII. IT took Mr. Taylor three days to find a man in one of his clubs, who knew a man in another club of which Mr. Charles Rutherford was a member. His intro- duction to the latter was quite casual. During the course of a ten-minute conversation, he referred to Randall's curious experience. It was a matter of general interest. Rutherford had read of it, in The Times. "Remarkable!" he exclaimed. "The idea of walk- ing down the Strand, with a shilling of two in one's pocket, and suddenly discovering that one had made a fortune I You know this chap, Randall, I suppose ?" "Yes, very well. Charming fellow, too. By the way, have you seen the play ?" "KTo. I've been meaning to go for some time, but things came up " "If you'd care to go to-morrow night," Mr. Taylor suggested carelessly, "I happen to have a box that I'm not going to use." Rutherford raised his eyebrows. Offers of boxes at The Oberon, from chance acquaintances, seemed a bit out of the ordinary. "Jolly kind of you, I must say," he remarked, "but 281 282 A LOST PARADISE. I couldn't think of it, you know. Besides, my mother and sister are coming up from Eastbourne to-morrow, and I'll be no end busy lookin' after them." "Why not bring them, too? I'm sure they would enjoy it." Mr. Taylor knew very well that Jean and her mother were coming to town the next day, having been so informed by a letter from Randall that morn- ing. "I don't doubt it, but I couldn't think of imposing on you." Taylor took an envelope from his pocket, and thrust it into Mr. Rutherford's by no means unwilling hand. "Take them," he said. "I'd appreciate your com- ing, and so would Mr. Randall. As a matter of fact, he's a total stranger here in London, and would greatly enjoy meeting a few really interesting people. I'll bring him to the box, and introduce him. You'd like him immensely, I know. Can tell you some remark- able stories of his wanderings in the Far East. You know that country yourself, I understand." "Rather ! Been to Hong Kong and Shanghai twice. Got caught in a typhoon once, and my sister was washed overboard, and nearly lost her life." "Indeed ! Then you and Randall will get along famously. He's becoming quite a celebrity now, on account of the success of his play. Take the seats, and be sure to come. I haven't anyone else to give them to, so you might as well have them as not." It is curious how the average person regards an offer of tickets to the theatre. Even men perfectly able to buy out the entire house, were they so inclined, A LOST PARADISE. 283 almost invariably feel a peculiar satisfaction in obtaining seats of a complimentary nature. Ruther- ford was no exception to the rule. Perhaps he looked upon Mr. Taylor as merely another example of the eccentric and impossible-to-understand American. At any rate, he took the seats, and Taylor wrote a note to Randall, at Eastbourne, informing him of the suc- cess of his strategy. Randall had arrived in Eastbourne on a Friday night, and Saturday saw his first meeting with Jean Rutherford. The following morning, he sought for her in vain. It was a beautiful day, warmer than the preceding one had been, with a soft spring-like note in the lazy south wind. Randall sat upon the edge of the low, chalk cliff, near the point where he and Eve had met the day before, with one eye upon the sea, and the other searching the winding path toward the Espla- nade. His waiting, however, was in vain. 'Not until the faint note of church bells sounded from the village did he understand the reason for the girl's absence. He sprang to his feet, and walked swiftly back to the town. Opposite The Inn there was, he remem- bered, a quaint old church of gray stone, overgrown with ivy. Many people were entering, as he approached vil- lagers in their Sunday best, farmers from the neigh- boring country, and a sprinkling of the gentry, who drove up in their motor cars, or the more archaic village carts and phaetons. There was an atmosphere of peace, of old-world simplicity, about the quiet vil- 284 A LOST PARADISE. lage street, which even the purring of the occasional automobiles could not destroy. He went into the church, cool and dark, save for the splashes of color from the stained-glass windows, and sat down in one of the rear pews, given over to the use of strangers. As soon as his eyes became accustomed to the sub- dued light, he began to look for Eve, but was unable to find her. After a time he concluded that his intuition must Have been at fault, or else that she had gone to some other church. The thought made him restless, ill at ease. It seemed impossible even to contemplate pass- ing the long day without a sight of her. And then, quite unexpectedly, he saw her advanc- ing up the aisle, with an elderly woman in black, whose gravely sweet face suggested in a remote way that of Eve herself. Eandall knew that it was her mother; he felt very happy, as he saw them take their places in one of the side pews, about half-way up the aisle. From where he sat, he could see the girl's face in profile, and he feasted his eyes upon her, to the exclu- sion of all thoughts of the service. When his neigh- bors rose, he rose likewise, and during the responses and the singing he listened eagerly for the clear notes of her voice. Sometimes he could distinguish them, through the maze of sound, and, when he did, it gave him a singular satisfaction. The simple beauty of the service made Eandall realize, as he had not done for a long time, the inher- A LOST PARADISE. 285 ent power of conventional things. Not a religious man, he found himself filled with the spirit of religion, the desire to render justly and fairly unto others, the impulse to bow in humility before some all-powerful, yet beneficent, ruler of the Universe. A feeling of thankfulness swept over him for the blessings he had received, and above all for the fact that he had found the woman who meant more to him than life itself. When the services came to a close, he left the church at once, and, crossing to the opposite side of the street, watched the departing crowd. Eve and her mother entered a phaeton, driven by a diminutive groom, and were presently whirled away in the direction of Haw- thorne Manor. So far as he was concerned, the day was done. The following morning he fared better. Jean came swinging along the path at a little after ten, quite evidently looking for him. He rose from his nook among the rocks and bowed. "Good-morning," he said. "I'm awfully glad you've come." "Oh, I always do. Every morning. I told you that." Her manner was very friendly, as she swung along beside him. "You didn't yesterday." "Neither did you. I saw you at church." He wondered at this. He had not seen her look toward him. "Did you? I was here before, though. It didn't seem the same at all, without you." She turned, laughingly. 286 A LOST PARADISE. "Compliments already. You're getting on. I've always heard that you Americans were rather rapid." "I didn't mean it for a compliment. It was the truth. I missed you. I feel, somehow, as though we had walked beside the sea many times " "Do you know," she interrupted him, "so do I! That's the queer thing about you. Ever since Satur- day I've been puzzling my poor brain, trying to find out who it is that you remind me of, but it won't come." A momentary frown clouded her face. "Sometimes," she went on, "I feel as though it wasn't anybody else at all, but just yourself. I realize the absurdity of it, of course; for we couldn't possibly have met. You've never been in England before, you say, and I've never been in America. I'm afraid we'll have to fall back upon a previous incarnation." "When you were a princess, on that tropic isle," Randall ventured, "and I was your devoted slave." The mention of the island brought deeper lines to her face, and Randall regretted his remark at once. "You must not speak of that again," she said, quickly. "I can't tell you why, but you mustn't. It seems silly to you, I suppose ; but there is something something I want very much to forget something I dare not think about." There were tears in her eyes now. "Please don't think me absurd," she went on. "I I can't help it." Randall's conscience smote him. "I'm so sorry !" he said, his voice very gentle. "I'll never speak of it again. I have hoped so much that we may be friends! I can't tell you how. much. I r A LOST PAEADISE. 287 know you will think it queer for me to say that, when I've only met you once, but I'm in earnest really and truly in earnest. I feel about you, as you say you do about me as though I'd known you all my life. Those things happen in this world, and, although we may not be able to explain them, they are none the less real. I know what your life, your training has been. It must seem very strange to you, to be talking in this way to a perfect stranger; but even though you try to make a stranger of me, you cannot, for the other thing is stronger, and it must mean some- thing, or it would not exist." "I told my mother about meeting you," Eve said, quickly. "She was terribly shocked, at first, but after- ward she seemed to quite understand. Mother is a dear. I wish you might know her." "I hope to. You say you are going to London on Thursday ?" "Yes." She looked at him inquiringly. "Why ?" "Because I've asked my friend Mr. Taylor, to hunt up your brother, and, while you are in town, I mean to be presented to you officially," he laughed. "It seems almost like a plot." "It is a plot against the conventions. Within three days I expect to be able to say good-morning to you without feeling that I have committed a mortal sin." They both laughed at this. "You don't seem to be in the least repentant to-day," she exclaimed. "I'm not. As a matter of fact, I'm a very human 288 A LOST PARADISE. sort of a being, and even the Bible tells us that it natural for human beings to sin. It's forced on us, in fact. Adam attended to that, I guess Adam and Eve." The word made her stop short. He had spoken it, quite unconsciously, in the loving and tender way in which he had always pronounced her name, in the past. For a moment they looked deep into each other's eyes, and she thrust out her hand toward him with a quick impulsive movement. He did not take it, but stood, looking at her with hungry eyes. Her hand went to her face, and she nervously thrust the strands of hair from her fore- head. "I I don't know what is the matter with me, to- day," she gasped, a frightened look in her widening eyes. "Please don't think me quite a fool. Something that you said upset me, for a moment." He was silent, wondering whether it was some vague and shadowy memory of their days together, which had been aroused by his words, or the very real recol- lection of her name, as he had used it on the night when she left him. He remembered now that even after she had regained her memory, he had begged her to listen to him, had called her by that name, only to meet with the horror and disgust with which her under- standing of their relative positions had filled her. He made up his mind then and there to keep close watch over his tongue, lest he say something that would open between them a gulf he might never be able to cross. Their conversation on the two mornings that fol- A LOST PARADISE. 289 lowed was, in the main, of themselves and of their hopes, and it brought them closer to each other, hour by hour. Randall steered clear of any reference to their past. He told the girl of his early struggles, his present success, his plans for the future, but made no mention of his wanderings in the Far East. It appeared that she had not read the vivid interview with him, which the newspapers had printed, and consequently had no idea that he had ever been further east than Beachey Head. He thought it wiser not to undeceive her. Perhaps, during these hours together, he talked rather more of himself and his future than did she of hers. Her work among the poor of the parish, to which she devoted her afternoons, and often her evenings as well, seemed to constitute her life. Whenever Randall at- tempted to draw her out, to discover what she expected the future to bring her, he was confronted by a wall of reserve which he could not pass. Her manner, which had at first been that of one calmly and resignedly enduring a hidden sorrow, gradu- ally changed. At times she became almost happy, almost the joyous creature of their Paradise. Then she would suddenly lapse into fits of depression, from which his utmost efforts failed to rouse her. "Tell me," he said, one day. "Why are you so un- happy, at times? What is worrying you? I don't mean to pry into your affairs, you know, but it dis- tresses me, to see you suffer, and sometimes I know that you do." 290 A LOST PAEADISE. She turned to him impulsively, then checked her- self. "I cannot tell you," she exclaimed, her eyes hold- ing a beaten, frightened look that made him long to com- fort her. "There are some memories that make me suffer, at times, but I beg that you will never ask me about them never refer to them again." "Indeed, I shall not." In a moment of impulse he took her hand, and it made him very happy, to find that she did not at once withdraw it. "We all have things that worry us that belong to the past. I think that the wisest plan, always, is to let them stay where they belong. Each day is a new day one of the days of our lives. There are not so very many, that we can afford to waste a single one in useless regrets." Something in his manner brought her a sense of comfort, of peace. At times she was amazed to find herself speaking so frankly, so intimately, with one she had known such a short time. In these moments she strove to place barriers between them, to treat him with coldness, with reserve, but always she found her- self drawn to him by some irresistible force which she was neither able to understand nor to overcome. In moments of introspection, she concluded that she was really falling in love with this man who had so curiously entered her sheltered and conventional life. The thought brought her no happiness, and she put it aside, and tried to convince herself that the attraction she felt was merely the natural outcome of meeting, in her lonely state, an interesting and congenial per- sonality. A LOST PARADISE. 291 When they parted, on the day before her trip to London, Randall took her hand, and pressed it between both of his. "You have made my days here wonderfully happy ones," he said, earnestly. "I am sorry that they are over. I am going to London myself, to-morrow. We shall meet there." She laughed a somewhat whimsical laugh. "Really, there doesn't seem much use in our going through the formality of being introduced now, does there? We seem such old friends, already! Good- by." In a moment she had gone. CHAPTER XXVIII. IT was not until the curtain had fallen upon the third act that Randall, accompanied by Mr. Taylor, sought the box in which Eve sat with her mother and brother. Throughout the evening, his eyes had seldom left the girl's face; even Mr. Taylor, standing beside him in the rear of the theatre, had laughingly given him up as hopeless. "I don't blame you, my boy," he chuckled. "If I'm any judge of character, you have won a prize." "I haven't won her yet," Randall returned, with a serious face. "How do you like the brother ?" "Very much. A trifle heavy, perhaps confirmed bachelor, and all that. Not much imagination, but a good sort, as they say over here. Come along. The curtain's down. They're expecting you." There was something about this mock presentation that made Randall feel awkward and constrained. Mrs. Rutherford, who knew that Eve had met him at Eastbourne, smiled upon him pleasantly enough, and made him feel at home at once. Poor woman! she had been glad enough to see her daughter manifest an interest in anyone; the girl had been so painfully gloomy and depressed for the past few months that Mrs. 292 A LOST PARADISE. 293 Rutherford had become seriously alarmed about her. She did not know the cause ; Eve had kept the reasons for her depression to herself. But her mother could not fail to see that some very real sorrow was eating out her heart, and hence the change in her manner, since Randall's coming, had proven a welcome one. She even hoped, secretly, that Jean might fall in love with him. It is true that she had an insular prej- udice against most things American; but, after all, she was, like people in general, something of a hero- worshiper, and the thought that Randall was a suc- cessful playwright, whose reputation and financial standing were both established beyond question, aided her considerably in reaching the conclusion that he might not prove entirely unacceptable as a son-in-law. The fact that Jean was clearly interested in him proved the deciding factor. Charles Rutherford had given Randall a hearty handshake, and began to tell him how greatly they were enjoying the play. Eve, too, had taken his hand the gentle pressure she gave it was a real welcome beneath the conventional one. Her mother was in the plot to keep the fact of their having previously met from Charles. After all, it was a harmless deception, and to tell him would result in no good to anyone. They chatted pleasantly for a few moments, Charles monopolizing the bulk of Randall's attention. He seemed to feel that the introduction had been arranged solely for his benefit, and insisted upon dragging Ran- dall off to the lobby, to smoke a cigarette. Randall left unwillingly enough, with a helpless backward 294 A LOST PARADISE. glance at Eve, and Mr. Taylor, who was making him- self agreeable to the ladies, winked broadly at him, and declined the invitation to smoke. Afterward Randall was very glad that he and Charles had left the others. The latter at once began a series of questions about his experiences in China and elsewhere, and he realized that, had Eve heard the con- versation, it would have set her to thinking along lines which might readily prove disastrous to his plans. He told Rutherford, briefly enough, of his exper- iences, omitting of course all reference to the island, and managed after a time to turn the conversation into other channels. At Mrs. Rutherford's request, he sat in their box during the remaining act of the play, and was delighted when Rutherford suggested a bit of supper at a well- known hotel upon the Embankment, at which his mother and sister were stopping. Mr. Taylor accom- panied them, and, to Randall's joy, launched into a description of American ways and customs, which absorbed the interest of both Mrs. Rutherford and their host, thus giving him an opportunity to talk to Eve. "It seems awfully good, to see you again," he whis- pered under the cover of Taylor's conversation. "How long are you to be in town ?" "Three or four days at least possibly a week. And you?" "I shall return to Eastbourne when you do," he re- plied, fervently. The girl glanced quickly at him, the old troubled look in her eyes. A LOST PARADISE. 295 "Do you like it there so much ?" she parried. "Few people do, out of season." "I don't think I'd care for it in season or out of it if you were not there." "You mustn't say such things, Mr. Randall." Her voice was very earnest and trembled. "We are going to be great friends, I hope, but but " "I had hoped we were that already," he said, quickly, noticing her embarrassment. "Aren't we ?" "Yes I I think so." "Then why shouldn't I find Eastbourne more pleas- ant when I have a friend there, to talk to, and take walks with, than I would if I were alone ? I've been alone so long !" he added, a note of sadness in his voice. "So have I. Perhaps that is why we are such good friends. I missed you to-day " "It seemed interminable to me. I thought the end of the third act would never come." "I didn't feel that way. I liked your play too well. It must be wonderful, to see your brain creatures walk- ing about and talking, just like real people. I should think you would be very happy." "That sort of thing doesn't make people happy. There is a bigger thing a so much bigger thing in life. Don't you think so ?" Before she could reply, they heard Mr. Rutherford asking their preference in placing the order for supper, and their little tete-a-tete was for the time being broken. Randall found himself obliged to answer all sorts of questions about his work, his life in New York, his plans for the future. Mrs. Rutherford seemed espe- 296 A LOST PAEADISE. cially curious to know when he proposed to return to New York, and remarked quite pointedly that she and her daughter had for a long time thought of visiting America. The match-making instinct possessed her a not un- natural attitude, when she saw the very evident happi- ness that Jean was deriving from Randall's presence. Of all this by-play Charles Rutherford saw nothing. He was glad that his mother and sister were having an enjoyable evening; at times the problem of entertain- ing them while in London had proven somewhat of a task, on account of his sister's recently acquired aver- sion to gaiety of all kinds. Now he was in his element; he was never so pleased as when ordering a meal, and prided himself greatly upon his selection of special dishes and wines. Randall and Eve ate mechanically, scarcely know- ing what was set before them. The former was plan- ning a formal declaration at the first opportunity that might present itself. The latter was concerned with deeper thoughts, and felt, in her heart, that she must ido all in her power to prevent her companion from declaring himself at all. The reason for this was very clear to her, at least, if not to anyone else. Even Randall, knowing as he did the cause of her depression, had, curiously enough, failed to realize its effect upon a sensitive and highly bred woman such as Jean Rutherford. After her return from the East, a profound melan- choly had settled upon her; she regarded herself, though through no fault of her own, as a woman with- A LOST PARADISE. 297 out a future. When, at last, she had sufficiently shaken off her depression to go about the daily affairs of existence, she made up her mind to devote herself, her life, to the service of the poor and the unfortunate. Marriage she felt, was not for her ; she could give her- self to no man, with the blot upon her soul that had been there since the moment when she had awakened from her stupor to find herself in Randall's arms. And, now, in spite of her lonely life, of her reluc- tance to take part in any of her former gaieties, of her absolute refusal to meet men, except as friends of the most formal and distant sort, she found the rock of solitude upon which she had set her feet trembling be- neath her she knew that she was falling in love. At times she put the thought from her, and gave herself up to the happiness of the moment; at others, it forced her into the deepest depression, and she made up her mind never to see Randall again only to find herself hurrying to meet him, the next day, with im- patient footsteps. Often she argued that the evil which had come to her, and wrecked her life, had come through no fault of her own. In these moods, she determined, should Randall ever ask her to be his wife, to accept him, and tell him nothing. Yet, deep within her she knew that she could do nothing of the sort that to marry any man with this dread secret between them, would be impossible. Thus she determined that, should he speak, she could give him but a cold and instant refusal. It was this knowledge that tortured her at times, past endurance. She realized that, if they were to remain 298 A LOST PARADISE. friends, she must use every means in her power to prevent him from ever asking her to become his wife. The little party broke up without her and Randall having had an opportunity to resume their tete-a- tete. Before saying good-night, he asked permission to come for her the next afternoon, and take her for a walk and tea. Mrs. Rutherford graciously accepted on Jean's behalf, before the girl had herself spoken. Randall went off, with Taylor and Charles Ruther- ford, to the latter's club, highly pleased with the out- come of their evening. CHAPTER XXIX. THEIR walk along the Embankment the next after- noon extended all the way to the Houses of Parliament, and back past the hotel to "Waterloo Bridge. When they started out, the sun had been shining brightly, for London at least, through the faded blue of an April sky, but now it had lost itself in a maze of misty shadows, and the lights of the city began to wink cheerily along the rapidly darkening streets. For two hours, Randall had endeavored to tell Eve of his love for her, and for two hours she had skilfully prevented him from doing so, although the effort had cost her much. |He on his part, foolishly blind to her reasons, be- came conscious of a feeling that verged upon annoy- ance. Twice within the past hour she had suggested returning to the hotel, for tea, and twice had he over- ruled the suggestion, and begged her to continue their walk. Now the approaching darkness warned him that he must either say what he had made up his mind to say at once, or postpone doing so until another day. "Really, I think we had better start back," Eve said, for the third time. "Mother will wonder what has 299 300 A LOST PARADISE. become of me. And it's awfully late for tea, you know." She spoke easily, without emotion, although her heart was near to breaking. She dared not let him speak. Randall could find no pretense for further detaining her. Her manner had almost convinced him that she felt for him no stronger emotion than that of a friend. He became silent, saying but little, his mind filled with doubts. "What are you doing to-morrow ?" he presently asked. "Mother and I are going to shop, all day. We put off buying everything, you know, until we came up to town. I suppose I'll spend most of the day at the dressmaker's and the milliner's." "And the evening?" She hesitated a moment. "If we finish everything to-morrow, we may return to Eastbourne at night." This was startling news, indeed, to Randall, and spurred him to renewed effort. "But your mother said you would probably stay a week." "I know. But, then, Mother likes London better than I do." "Then you want to go back ?" "Yes I I think so." "Then I shall go back to Eastbourne, too, as I told you I would." "You mustn't do that, Mr. Randall. I've enjoyed meeting you very much you know that. I hope we may see each other often. But I can't agree to walk A LOST PARADISE. 301 to Beachy Head with you every day for the rest of my life." She laughed, but stopped at once when she heard his next question. "Why not ?" he asked. The lights of the hotel shone not far ahead. In five minutes more she felt that she would be safe. "Isn't that rather an absurd question to ask, Mr. Randall?" she said, coldly. Her tone hurt him, but he had begun the great adventure now, and was determined to conclude it, whatever the results. "Do you think it absurd," he asked, "for a man to love a woman so much that he wants to be with her always ?" She felt her heart jumping frightfully. Just ahead was the entrance to the hotel. She quickened her pace. This then, was to be the end. "No," she said, very slowly; "I do not think that absurd. I think it very beautiful, very wonderful. But we were not speaking of love. We were speaking of two people, two good friends, walking to Beachey Head." A fit qf anger swept over Randall, anger with him- self, for his failure to tell her of his love, and, truth to tell, with her as well, for what seemed to him for the moment quite unnecessary coquetry. "Jean," he said solemnly, for the first time address- ing her by her Christian name, "I made up my mind, when I came to meet you to-day, that before I left you I would tell you something that means more to me than anything in the world." 302 A LOST PARADISE. "Oh, don't please please, don't! I beg of you, Mr. Randall" He put her protestations aside. "I must," he said gravely. "There are reasons reasons that you cannot understand. I love you. I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. Life means nothing to me has meant nothing to me since then. I cannot go on alone. I love you deeply, truly. I want you to be my wife." At last, the words were out, and they both stood trembling, in the shadow of the hotel entrance. Pas- sers-by regarded them curiously. Randall, unconscious of the presence of anyone in the world, except that of the girl beside him, took her hand. For a moment she clutched his in frantic helpless- ness, struggling to speak, yet finding no words. "Do you love me, Jean ?" he asked, looking into her pale and tortured face. The emotions within her almost stifled her, driving her lips to speak the truth, to tell him that she loved him with her whole heart and soul. He must have sensed this in some way, for he held her hand more tightly in his, and whispered to her, again and again, under his breath : "I love you I love you!" At last, she summoned up enpugh courage to tear her hand from his, and stood facing him, her face very pale, her lips like a thin thread of scarlet. She could not tell him that she did not love him; even the wretchedness in her soul could not make her thus lie to lo.ve. And so. she told him nothing, sQarching his A LOST PARADISE. 303 face with terrified eyes, unable to find any words to express what she must say. "You love me, dear? You will marry me?" he asked eagerly, not understanding her manner. Then her words came, very slowly, very deliberately, in a strange voice, so calm, so remote from the storm of love and passion which raged within her that she scarcely recognized it as her own. "I cannot answer you now, Mr. Kandall. You must give me time to think. To-morrow I I will tell you what I have decided to do. Good-night," Almost be- fore he realized it, she had thrust her hand into his for a moment, bade him good-night, and entered the hotel. The manner of his dismissal left him singularly disquieted. Her last words, "To-morrow I will tell you what I have decided to do," rang strangely in his ears. He was utterly at a loss to know whether she cared for him or not. Puzzled beyond all reason, he rushed off to dine with Mr. Taylor. The latter, observing Randall's dejected manner, divined that something untoward had happened, but, being a man of much wisdom, he made no reference to it. He was sailing for home the next day, and their talk was all of New York, and of the coming theatri- cal season. Randall had tried by every means in his power, to prevail on Mr. Taylor to accept an interest in his work ; but the latter would not hear of it. He was a man of ample means, and very fond of his protege, as he still laughingly termed Randall. 304 A LOST PAEADISE. "Keep your money, my boy," he advised. "You'll need it all, when you marry.. I'll do my best, with your other manuscript, until you return yourself. And get to work on this new play. There will be a de- mand for your work, this coming season. Better strike while the iron's hot." "I'll begin work on it soon, I guess," Randall remarked, rather gloomily. "In fact ; I rather expect to be returning to New York myself, very shortly." Something told him that his answer from Eve would be unfavorable. He was quite ready to believe that, much as she apparently liked him as a friend, her interest ceased there. The thought of leaving her, of never seeing her again, was agony, yet, should she refuse him, what could he do ? To annoy her further would be an act of'unkindness. There would be nothing left for him but to leave London at once. His suggestion that he might return at an early date caused Mr. Taylor some surprise, but he did not com- ment upon it, other than to say that he himself found New York, in the early spring, more enjoyable than London. That night Randall slept little. All the questions of the past year were to be decided, he felt, during the coming day. The greatness of his love made him realize how great would be his suffering, should he find that Eve did not care for him. It was not as though the girl held for him the charm of a temporary infatuation. Over and over he found himself saying that she was his wife, that their many months together had bound them to each other by ties which could A LOST PARADISE. 305 never again be broken. And then, in a rush, would come the terrible thought that while Eve the Eve he had known might have loved him beyond all ques- tion, this girl, Jean Eutherford, might not care for him at all. It was maddening, a frightful situation. He felt himself unable to meet it. In the morning he determined to telephone to her, as soon as he finished his breakfast, but this plan was upset by a letter, which arrived just as he was leaving the dining-room. The handwriting was quite unfamiliar to him, but in spite of this he knew at once that the letter was from Eve. The mere fact that it was a woman's hand, sufficed to tell him that. He knew no other woman in London. He took the letter to his room, and with nervous haste, read the contents. "Dear Mr. Eandall," it said, "I have thought all night long, of what you asked me this evening, and there can be but one answer. I cannot marry you. I have decided that it is better for me to write this to you rather than to attempt to tell you in person. It would be hard too hard, for both of us. I cannot express the grief that fills my heart as I write, but I know that I am doing what is best. It would be better, for us both not to see each other again. I had hoped that we might be friends, but I know, and you know, that after what has been said, we cannot. "Good-by. I am very unhappy, but I can give you no other answer. "Sincerely, "JEAN RUTHERFORD." 306 'A LOST PARADISE. Kandall read this letter over several times before he quite realized what it meant. In his confusion of mind, the words seemed illogical, meaningless. At last, he came to see that Eve had refused him, had put him out of her life, without giving him any reason for doing so. She had not even said that she did not love him. In fact, he almost began to believe, after reading the letter, that she did love him, but that some other consideration had forced her to write him as she did. Could her mother have objected, he wondered, or her brother? Was the fact that he was an American against him? Or was it his profession? None of these things seemed in any way adequate. The real reason had not yet occurred to him. Suddenly, he made up his mind to see Jean, in spite of her letter, and to find out whether her refusal had arisen from the fact that she did not love him, or from some other cause. He felt that he could never be satisfied to have matters remain as they were now. He hurried off to her hotel, regardless of the fact that it was only a little after ten o'clock in the morn- ing. The announcement that came in response to the card he asked to have sent to her room was strangely disconcerting. Miss Rutherford and her mother had left the hotel, he was informed, half an hour before. The clerk could not say where they. had gone. CHAPTER XXX. IT was after luncheon when Randall took the train for Eastbourne, and as he did so he felt no certainty that he would find Eve there. He had reasoned the matter out, however, during the remaining hours of that ghastly morning, and it seemed to him most likely that, if she wished to avoid him, she would have returned home. Of course, there was the possibility that she might have moved to another hotel ; but, if so, she would not in any event remain in the city more than a day or two longer in fact, she had told him the evening before that she and her mother expected to return to Eastbourne almost at once. In any event, he determined to go there himself, and find out, if that were possible, the real reason for her refusal of him, and her flight. If she should tell him, face to face, that she did not love him, he would have he knew, no other course than to leave her at once ; but, if there proved to be any other obstacle and his reflec- tions during the morning had brought at least a sug- gestion of its nature he was determined to use every effort in his power to remove it. He arrived late in the afternoon, and after a cheery 307 308 A LOST PAEADISE. welcome at The Inn, set off at once for Hawthorne Manor. Here a trim parlor maid, to whom he was quite unknown, informed him that Miss Eutherford was not at home. Further questioning, however, revealed the fact that she had returned from London some hours earlier. At first, he thought of asking for Mrs. Kutherford, but, on second thought, decided that nothing was to be gained by doing so. Doubtless the girl had gone out upon one of the charitable errands that usually occupied her afternoons. He turned away, restless and impatient, and to rid himself of his nervousness started toward the beach. The Esplanade was practically deserted, and the path along the rocks entirely so. He descended to the beach, and began to walk along it with nervous strides. He had no hope of finding Eve here ; he knew that she never came to the rocks during the afternoon. The thought left him desolate. He strode restlessly on, trying to find some solace in the roar of the surf, the smooth, heard beach, the beauty of the low afternoon sun as it struck across the edge of the chalk cliffs, casting deep warm shadows upon the yellow sands. In a short time, he found himself near the point where Eve and he had first met, on the day when she had observed him casting his improvised spear. He ascended the rocks here, to observe better the setting sun, and continued his walk toward Beachey Head. The sun shone in his eyes, so that he did not at first observe a figure in a gray sweater coat, coming along A LOST PARADISE. 309 the path toward him.. When he finally did so, his heart gave a great leap. He thought it might be Eve, although the figure, black against the low-lying sun, was recognizable at this distance only as that of a woman. He quickened his steps, and observed that, as he did so, the person who was coming toward him hesitated, stopped, seemed in fact debating how she might avoid him. Then he recognized her. It was Jean Ruther- ford. A great joy sang in his heart. She had come here, as he had come, because it was here that they had met because something had drawn her, as it had drawn him, to this place, where they had spent so many happy hours together. In a few moments they had come face to face. Randall eager, flushed, im- patient; the girl pale and frightened, unwilling almost to let her eyes meet his. He took her hand in silence, and led her to a nook in the shelving side of the cliff, where a natural seat was formed by a degression in the rock. "Sit down, Jean," he commanded. "I have some- thing to say to you." She obeyed him mechanically, almost listlessly. It was as though she had reached a crisis from which there was no escape, one that she would meet as bravely as she could, though the prospect filled her with horror. She looked at him inquiringly, but waited for him to speak. "I got your letter," he said, simply. "You did not say in it whether you love me, or not. Do you ?" 310 A LOST PARADISE. This was by no means the line of attack she had expected. She had supposed that he would beg her to reconsider her decision, and she was prepared to assure him, as many times as might be necessary, that it was final. But to ask whether she loved him! That, indeed, was another question. She could not at first reply to it. "Tell me," he went on, his voice very deep, very earnest. "Do you love me ?" She tried to shake her head, but the tears in her eyes belied her actions. She could not lie to him not about that for she loved him with all the depth and intensity of her nature. What she did was to cover her face with her hands, and sob, softly, but with long, shuddering sighs that well-nigh broke Ran- dall's heart. He took her hands gently, and tried to draw them away from her face. "Don't cry, Jean," he begged. "Please, don't. I believe that you do love me. Tell me that you do." In a moment she had regained command of herself. Her sobs were gone. She threw back her head almost defiantly. "Yes I do love you !" she cried. But, when he opened his arms, and would have swept her into them, she put his hands aside. "No. you must not do that," she said ; and he realized that she was very much in earnest. "If you love me, dear, you will marry me." "No. I shall not marry you nor any man." "But why why?" A LOST PARADISE. 311 "That I cannot tell you." "You must. It is our only chance for happiness. Jean Jean what difference could anything make? I love you. Isn't that enough ?" "I do not know," she replied, her voice like ice. "You must be the judge of that." "What do you mean?" "I will tell you, since you force me to do so, although I have tried hard enough to avoid it. But I warn you that I shall not marry you, no matter what pro- testations you may make. You might believe them, now, but the thing between us you would never forget and some day sometime " Again, she hesitated. "You need not tell me, if you would rather not," he said. "You accept my refusal as final, then?" "No no! But I think I know what you are go- ing to say." She laughed, a hard, biting laugh. "You could never know," she said. "Only one person in all the world knows, beside myself. But I will tell you, and, since you love me, you will never let there be more than three. I cannot marry you, because I am not what the world calls a good woman. Once I was cast ashore, on an island, in the Pacific, with a sailor. I was injured. It affected my brain. I could not remember my name, or who I was, or anything at all about the past. He made me his mis- tress. I remember nothing of it, except that I awoke to consciousness in his arms. All that time, for months and months, I had lived with this man. 312 A LOST PARADISE. Then I was rescued. The man remained. I do not know what has become of him. I do not even know his name. But I lived with him for four months. That is why I can never marry not even you, whom I love. Now, do you understand?" She rose, and turned as though to go. Randall placed his hand on her arm. "Don't go yet," he said. "I have something more to tell you." "I know what you mean to say that you do not care that you want me to marry you in spite of all this. I can't do it. I can't I can't!" Again she began to sob. "Let me go, please." "Not yet Eve," he said softly. She looked at him, with the old look of fright coming into her eyes. "Why why did you call me that ?" Eandall thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out the bit of coral which he had with so much labor converted into a ring. He extended it to her. "This was our wedding ring, Eve," he said, simply. "You are my wife." He took her hand, and placed the ring upon her finger. "You see, it fits you exactly. Don't you remember it, dear?" The shock was almost too great for her. That this man, the man out of all the men in the world, the man she loved, could be the red-bearded sailor, the memory of whom had filled her only with horror, was unbelievable almost grotesque. "Don't please!" she said, with a shivering laugh. "I have been hurt enough." A LOST PAEADISE. 313 "Yes you have been hurt enough, my precious girl," he cried, taking her in his arms. "But you shall not be hurt any more. I have searched for you for half a year. Do you think I shall let you go, now or ever ? I would have told you all this long ago but I didn't dare, until I knew that you loved me me ! irrespective of the fact that you were already, by force of circumstances, my wife." Although she remembered the ring very well, since it was after the return of her memory that she had taken it off, she could even now scarcely believe him. It seemed too preposterous, too unreal. "You were that man ! How is it possible ?" Then he sat down, and, drawing her to the seat beside him, told her the whole story. When he had finished, she put her arms about his neck, quite simply, and kissed him. "Thank God that you have come," she said. "I think, now, that I have loved you all the time." The twilight had come and gone, and the stars were beginning to make silver points in the gray-blue sky. Below them the surf rolled in, as they had seen it so often on the beach below the cave. "We have found our lost Paradise, Eve," said Kan- dall, gently, drawing her closer to him. "God willing, we shall never lose it again ?" "Amen," she whispered, and began to cry, very softly, and happily, her head against his breast.