iiii 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE HYPHEN 
 
 VOLUME I.
 
 THE HYPHEN 
 
 BY 
 
 LIDA C. SCHEM 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68 1 FIFTH AVENUE
 
 Copyright, 1920, 
 By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 PS 
 
 3537 
 
 V.I 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PROLOGUE . ... . v . . . i 
 PART I. CHILDHOOD 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I ....... . -37 
 
 II ...... . . . . . . .56 
 
 III ..... ... .. .,. 81 
 
 IV ........ ..... 99 
 
 V ...... . - . . . . . .106 
 
 VI ........ . . . . .118 
 
 VII ...... . ..... . ". .. . . 141 
 
 vni ..... . . ; . . . . .159 
 
 rx ....... ....... 181 
 
 X ............. 194 
 
 XI ........... -. . 215 
 
 PART II. YOUTH 
 
 I. ... ...... . . 233 
 
 II ....... . . . . . .240 
 
 III ...... ....... 264 
 
 IV ..... . ... . . . .288 
 
 V. . . . . . . . . . * . . 334 
 
 VI. .. . . , . . ..... 374 
 
 VII ..... , . . . . ... 413 
 
 VIII ...... . ...... 423 
 
 IX. . . . . ..... .... 456 
 
 X. ... . . . . * . . . . .481 
 
 XL . . . . ...... . . .488 
 
 XII ..... . . . " . . . . .508 
 
 END OF VOLUME I. 
 
 736286
 
 PROLOGUE
 
 THE HYPHEN 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 THERE are some few dates in history which shine 
 luminously out of the dim vistas of the past. They 
 are beacon-lights in the ocean of time, milestones on the 
 road of progress. They stir the blood and fire the imagina 
 tion as no battle-song or ballad has power to do. Such 
 dynamic dates are 480 B.C.; 121 5;. 1776; 1789. They per 
 petuate the glory of Greece, the manliness of England, the 
 idealism of America, the dauntlessness of France. The 
 year 1848 narrowly missed earning its place in this galaxy, 
 and Germany, not from lack of courage or dearth of ideal 
 ism, but through the political immaturity of the people at 
 large lost her golden opportunity and sank back into the 
 quagmire of political serfdom. 
 
 Among the gallant men who risked life and fortune in 
 the losing fight for German liberty, forfeiting the latter 
 and barely saving the first, was a young Prussian gentleman 
 by the name of Guido von Estritz. He had fought bravely 
 both with the pen and with the sword. When the last 
 street barricade in Berlin had been demolished, and with 
 it the hope of German freedom, young von Estritz stood 
 in the dense throng that watched in ominous silence while 
 the King, not daring for once to disregard the demand 
 of the infuriated populace, stood bare-headed on the 
 balcony of the Royal Palace, as the solemn procession 
 marched by carrying or wheeling away the wounded and 
 the dead. 
 
 Hope also both national and individual was dead in 
 young von Estritz s breast. He knew for a certainty that 
 for many a long year to come there would be no renascence 
 of the spirit of liberty in the country of his birth. An
 
 2 THE HYPHEN 
 
 amnesty, it is true, was to be proclaimed. That amnesty 
 would embrace those who had fought with the sword, but 
 would exclude all who had used the pen to promulgate 
 the monstrous theory that the people of Prussia were 
 justified in demanding a constitutional government. The 
 implied compliment to the smaller of the two instruments 
 which he had wielded made him an outlaw. To be taken 
 by the King s Guards would mean imprisonment for life. 
 Nothing remained but flight. 
 
 Travestied as an itinerant peddler, he made his way to 
 Switzerland. But Switzerland was not his destination 
 nor France, nor England. Washington, world-patriot, had 
 been the superman whose conduct von Estritz had sought 
 to emulate, and to the country that Washington had made 
 came Guido von Estritz, political refugee, in 1848. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was the apogee of 
 human wisdom in the opinion of the young enthusiast. As 
 a matter of course he repudiated allegiance to all foreign 
 potentates and became an American citizen. 
 
 He possessed some talent as a violinist, and had no diffi 
 culty in securing a berth with a local orchestra. He also 
 achieved an extraordinary popularity as a teacher of the 
 violin, a vogue due quite as much to his striking person 
 ality as to his talent. Among his pupils was a young 
 German-American girl, Irma Helger. Flaxen-haired, blue- 
 eyed, docile and unquestioningly feminine, her type was 
 uncompromisingly Teutonic, which von Estritz s was not. 
 From forebears other than German he had inherited a pallid 
 skin, black hair and almost Orientally luminous black eyes 
 which turned the heads of all the girls who were his 
 pupils. Von Estritz fell in love with pretty Irma Helger; 
 pretty Irma Helger prostrated herself in spirit as before 
 a god to the distinguished young aristocrat. Her father 
 was a wealthy silk manufacturer. An indigent, fiddle- 
 scraping son-in-law could hardly be expected to be to his 
 liking. But the magic prefix "von" before the lover s 
 patronymic and the name he had made for himself as an 
 Achtundvierziger won old Helger s consent. He so far 
 accommodated himself to his daughter s choice that he took 
 his handsome son-in-law into partnership. 
 
 After fifteen years this marriage was blessed with an 
 only child, Guido the Second, who was as like his mother
 
 PROLOGUE 3 
 
 in appearance as he was like his father in character. An 
 idealist of the purest water, he had conceived before his 
 twentieth year the ambitious idea of consummating a Syn 
 thesis of Political Principles. The Synthesis was to be 
 a treatise written by himself after a tour of inspection of 
 all the countries of the world. Proceeding from the theory 
 that every form of government embodies the experience 
 of the race which has produced it and therefore is bound 
 to incorporate at least a few grains of wisdom, the second 
 Guido desired to extract what was best from each govern 
 ment and to present, in practical form, suggestions for a 
 sort of multiple government whose common denominator 
 was to be human happiness. Such a multiple government, 
 he felt, must abolish poverty, and secure human happiness 
 in perpetuity. 
 
 His father approved of the plan tentatively, but scent 
 ing socialism in his son s flamboyant demand for a total 
 elimination of poverty and universal happiness, suggested 
 that Liberty be substituted as the Common Denominator. 
 The son protested that Liberty was too self-evident, too 
 fundamental, too basic, to require mentioning. Every gov 
 ernment, to insure happiness to the governed, must be 
 reared upon the bed-rock of liberty. The generation of 
 Washington had established that. His father asked whether 
 it really had. The Civil War, he reminded his son, had 
 been fought to re-establish the same issue. Without wish 
 ing to appear a prophet of evil, he feared that many more 
 wars would have to be fought ere the great principle of 
 liberty would be firmly established beyond reach of mishap 
 or malice. Many more wars? How? When? Where? 
 demanded the son. The older von Estritz looked grave. 
 He pointed out to his son that there was Germany, 
 Russia, sundry other less important nations were they 
 free? 
 
 "But Germany has a constitution now, hasn t she?" the 
 son demanded. 
 
 "Read it some day and see whether she really has," was 
 the paradoxical reply of the father. 
 
 The elder von Estritz died at the close of a cruelly hot 
 day as a result of heart failure, before the son had had 
 a chance to report on the suggested reading. The son was 
 heart-broken. His mother had died when he was a lad
 
 4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 of ten, his grandparents he barely remembered. He was 
 without kith or kin in the world save only those Prussian 
 cousins who had cast off his father as a pariah for espousing 
 the plebeian cause of liberty. 
 
 He finished his course at college and devoted eight or 
 nine years to the silk mills, a sorry occupation for a man 
 with a Synthesis of Political Principles germinating in 
 his head. His leisure time he devoted to the study of 
 modern language, his mastery of which particularly of 
 Russian was destined, later on, to stand him in excellent 
 stead. One day his chance came to dispose of the mills. 
 He sold them at a good round sum and began his tour of 
 the world. 
 
 England, democracy in all but name, was the first foreign 
 country he visited. He was too young and perhaps not 
 quite big-minded enough to deal comprehendingly with the 
 daily stain of Ireland upon the English page. Also, he 
 was American taught and the story of the Revolution was 
 not forgotten. He was neither as well-poised nor as well- 
 trained a thinker as his father had been. And his father s 
 race was strong in him, stronger than it had been in his 
 father. He went to Germany next. The well-ordered 
 life, flowing along smoothly and fluently as on ball-bear 
 ings, caught his imagination. He liked the clean, decent 
 streets, the well-fed appearance of the population, the 
 paternal nature of some of the Imperial decrees. He had 
 the good luck to be present at one of the autumn maneuvers, 
 and became a violent admirer and apologist of the German 
 Army. He lacked the penetration to apprehend that be 
 neath the glittering surface lurked the deadly menace of 
 the caste system, toward the strengthening of which all 
 currents military, governmental and educational were 
 tending. He forgot the discrepancies and hypocrisies of 
 the German Constitution at which his father had glanced 
 in his immortal paradox. He forgot his father s suggestion 
 that he use Liberty as the Common Denominator with 
 which to test his Synthesis. Was not happiness enough 
 or better? In confounding happiness with creature con 
 tentment, he made a not uncommon error. 
 
 Having become a frantic Germanophile, his quest for 
 the Synthesis was virtually ended before it was well begun. 
 However, an instinct that to keep faith with oneself is as
 
 PROLOGUE 5 
 
 essential as to keep faith with others, held him to his 
 search. 
 
 He had made many delightful friends in Germany, and 
 he unduly prolonged his sojourn there. The friend whom 
 he prized most highly, who, indeed, seemed to him the very 
 incarnation of all that friendship should be, was a woman 
 several years his senioV. 
 
 Ursula von Wendt was not a beautiful woman, although 
 she usually passed as such, for coloring and complexion 
 were perfect, and she had a superabundance of vitality 
 and charm, two great assets of personality which never 
 fail of effect. She was delicately modeled, very delicately 
 for a daughter of a race which usually molds its women 
 into undue corpulence or inelegant gauntness. Her hair 
 of mellow gold lay about her head in a heavy coil, giving 
 the impression of a brow banded by a wreath, say of 
 laurel. This singular coiffure emphasized the patrician 
 lines of her face, the nose, which narrowly escaped being 
 large, the firm, kind mouth, the finely chiseled determined 
 chin. Her complexion was brilliantly white and shell-pink 
 and her eyes blue as the corn-flowers which grow among 
 the wheat in German fields. 
 
 Ursula von Wendt passed as a widow among her Berlin 
 acquaintances, but one day, in a burst of confidence, she 
 told Guido von Estritz that she was a divorcee. She had 
 been married by her parents when very young to a Ritter- 
 gutsbesitzer in Mecklenburg. Mecklenburg was at this 
 time unique among the petty principalities, dukedoms, 
 kingdoms and republics which constitute the German Em 
 pire, in having no const ution whatever. The entire 
 management of Mecklenburg s internal affairs still smacked 
 strongly of feudalism. Thus, in his capacity of Ritter- 
 gutsbesitzer (Lord Knight of the Domain), her husband 
 exercised a virtually unrestricted power over the peasants 
 of his estate. He was a harsh man and ruled the men 
 and women who were serfs in all but name with a rod 
 of iron. It was no uncommon occurrence for an unfor 
 tunate peasant found guilty of poaching to be condemned 
 to thirty days imprisonment in the Kerker under the great 
 courtyard of the castle. The function of magistrate accrued 
 to him, and as it was not deemed improper in this anti 
 quated community that a man should appear in the same
 
 6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 case both as plaintiff and as judge, a peasant who had 
 incurred the displeasure of the Lord Knight had no chance 
 whatever of escaping severe punishment. 
 
 One day a very old woman was guilty of the heinous 
 offense of taking some twigs and branches from the pre 
 serves of the estate for kindling wood. She was condemned 
 to spend ten days in the ill-ventilated and unlighted 
 Kerker. In vain the young wife of the Rittergutsbesitzer 
 protested against the inhumanity of shutting up a woman 
 of eighty in a dungeon barren of every comfort and every 
 decency and lapt in perpetual darkness. Her husband s 
 will prevailed. At the end of five days the "thief" fell 
 violently ill with dysentery. She was removed to the hos 
 pital where she died of enteric fever a few days later. 
 
 This incident made such a cruel impression upon the 
 sensitive mind of the young wife that she left her husband. 
 She had never loved him. Now she both despised and 
 abhorred him. Failing in his endeavors to persuade her 
 to return to him, he divorced her. 
 
 After her divorce, her parents refused to have anything 
 to do with her. What else could perfectly respectable 
 parents be expected to do? Fortunately she had a small 
 independent income of her own. She moved to Berlin, 
 and lived the quiet, retired life of a recluse among her 
 flowers and her books. 
 
 Such was the history of Ursula von Wendt. 
 
 Guido von Estritz had not the remotest suspicion of the 
 truth. This woman, still young and more than ordinarily 
 attractive and intelligent, had fallen violently in love with 
 him. She had been married off by her parents before 
 understanding the nature and the function of love. Her 
 husband had filled her with spiritual horror and physical 
 loathing and after her divorce she shrank away from the 
 world of men with a fixed determination to keep clear of 
 all entanglements. 
 
 Guido von Estritz, appearing unexpectedly on the narrow 
 stage of her life, seemed to her like the harbinger of a supe 
 rior race. All the men with whom she had mingled hereto 
 fore were officers, Gutsbesitzer, gentlemen by birth and by 
 profession. For the first time in her life she was thrown 
 into contact with a man who was not an avowed mate 
 rialist. He confided to her his Quest of the Synthesis.
 
 PROLOGUE 7 
 
 Only dimly apprehending, she applauded. In spirit she laid 
 herself in the dust at his feet. She idealized him. Be 
 cause he was a spiritual-minded man, she saw in him a 
 manifestation of pure spirit, and she construed his failure 
 to pay her womanhood the supreme tribute as a further 
 confirmation of his unfleshly nature. Thus do some 
 women idealize and idolize the man of their choice. Per 
 haps they feel love to be so monstrous a reversal of every 
 dictate of decorum and propriety that, to make love tenable 
 at all, they invest the man whom they love with the attri 
 butes of a superman. For must not poor human frailty, 
 lodging in the breast of woman, be pardoned for capitulating 
 to a demi-god? 
 
 Although Ursula von Wendt failed to evoke the romantic 
 passion in the second Guido, the young German-American 
 was tremendously fascinated by this kindly, high-bred 
 gentlewoman. She was the soul of honor. She seemed to 
 radiate goodness and integrity. The young man thought 
 he had never seen those two jewels shine with so serene 
 and steadfast a light. 
 
 Perhaps if he had guessed the tumult in that gentle 
 heart for which he was responsible, a like tumult would 
 have been engendered in his own, for love begets love; 
 and this history would never have been written. 
 
 As it was, he bade Frau Ursula adieu one fine morning 
 with a blithe cheerfulness, little guessing what sharp 
 lacerations she was suffering as she smiled gently upon 
 him and wished him Godspeed. 
 
 His quest for the Synthesis next took him to Russia 
 perfunctorily for had he not discovered in Germany the 
 fount of all governmental wisdom? He found Russia in 
 teresting, alluring and contradictory. In Russia, also, fate 
 tracked him down in the person of Varvara Alexandrovna 
 Vasalov. 
 
 The Princess Vasalov was distantly related to the house 
 of Romanov. Born and bred as the heiress of a vast 
 estate, she had eschewed luxury and splendor, and almost 
 from childhood had devoted herself to mitigating the 
 suffering of her father s peasants. The contrasts between 
 the almost royal opulence which abounded in her father s 
 house and the dire distress a distress sharpened to the 
 starvation point during the greater part of the year
 
 8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 which held the peasants in its ruthless grip, struck her 
 even as a child. There were times when she resolutely 
 refused to eat the dainty food set before her because some 
 of her father s dependants were without bread. Her 
 father had her soundly flogged, deeming flogging a cure 
 for compassion, but her pity was fed by that which was 
 to elide it. Corporal punishment failing of the desired 
 effect, Prince Vasalov packed the youthful delinquent off 
 to St. Petersburg, hoping that in the house of his sister, 
 about whom gravitated a fashionable set of wits and 
 esthetes, his daughter would forget the vice of practicing 
 mercy. 
 
 The young girl had learned her lesson. She dissimu 
 lated. She pretended to be delighted with the round of 
 pleasures in which she, although much too young, was 
 permitted to join. Clandestinely and at night she led her 
 real life, the life of which her daytimes and evenings were 
 mere frivolous shadows. Although only fifteen years of 
 age, she joined the Radical Socialistic Party, and the man 
 who introduced her to this Party, and to the sinister work 
 which it had in hand, was her cousin, Dmitri Stepanovich 
 Vasalov. 
 
 These two, Dmitri Stepanovich and Varvara Alex- 
 androvna, were destined to become the terror and the 
 despair of the Police. They were known throughout the 
 length and the breadth of Russia as "The Little Cousins." 
 To cloak their conspiratorial activities they kept in sedulous 
 touch with fashionable life, a circumstance which also 
 furthered their work through placing at their disposal in 
 formation unobtainable from any other strata of society. 
 The Police suspected them for years, but lacking proof 
 positive dared not, because of their high rank, hurl an 
 accusation against them. 
 
 Guido von Estritz met Varvara Alexandrovna at a 
 fashionable supper. Life is full of repetitions which, 
 however banal and trivial to the onlooker, are exquisite 
 and unique to those to whom they come with the freshness 
 and the insouciance of spring. These two, the blond 
 German-American, as respectable and conventional-minded 
 as any bourgeois, and the dark Russian, with a face like 
 a flower and a soul like a shining sword, fell in love with 
 each other at first sight.
 
 PROLOGUE 9 
 
 She resisted his wooing of course. He was regaled 
 to repletion with the phrases which fall from the lips of 
 all high-spirited girls, and which wary lovers regard as 
 mere feminine embellishments of the immortal theme. She 
 would never marry. She had work to do. Work the 
 most urgent and important. He demanded to be told the 
 nature of her work. She regarded him curiously, won 
 dering whether his love would survive if she answered him 
 truthfully. He repeated his question, adding, "Do you 
 wish to become a writer? An artist? A musician?" 
 
 This was so naive that Varvara Alexandrovna laughed 
 outright. She assured him that she would never write a 
 novel, paint a picture or compose a serenade. 
 
 "Then what?" he demanded. 
 
 "I said important work, dearest. What are the most 
 important things in the world?" 
 
 "The most important love." 
 
 "To lovers, yes. But to everybody to young and old 
 rich and poor?" 
 
 "Life," he said, realizing that this was not a time for 
 pretty philandering. "And death." 
 
 "That is my work," the girl said, quietly. "Life and 
 death. I mete out death to a few that many may live." 
 
 There was in his eyes no flash of comprehension. His 
 conception of the Synthesis was not elastic enough to 
 embrace anarchism. It existed, as he knew, but it did not 
 enter into his scheme of things. 
 
 She realized that she must speak more crudely. 
 
 "My work," she said, "is assassination. I am a secret 
 member of the Radical Socialistic Party, and we practice 
 terrorism to stamp out terrorism." 
 
 Followed a stressful half of an hour. He began it by 
 telling her bluntly that it was impossible for her to be 
 that which she was. She a Lucrezia Borgia, a Catherine 
 de Medici impossible ! 
 
 She interrupted him. 
 
 "You mistake," she said, gently. "We are of the race of 
 Charlotte Corday." 
 
 "But murder! Poison! Bombs! The stiletto!" He 
 remembered a melodrama which he and a friend had seen 
 in an East Side theater, and which had struck him as a 
 huge joke. He was revolted. It was, of course, pre-
 
 io THE HYPHEN 
 
 posterous to connect this human flower with the mechanism 
 of violent death. He had an inspiration. 
 
 "You ve never taken an active part " he declared, 
 
 vehemently. "Surely, you have only arranged things, pulled 
 the wires, as we say in America " 
 
 "Allow others to do what I would not do myself !" she 
 exclaimed, scornfully. "I have three assassinations to my 
 credit now. Before we are a month older, if all goes well, 
 there will be a fourth." 
 
 Her lover shivered. That this should have happened to 
 him, of all men! 
 
 "Why not attempt peaceful reforms interest people by 
 distributing printed propaganda ?" 
 
 "We do that, of course. They send us to Siberia for that 
 as well as for assassination, if we are found out." 
 
 "Why not appeal to those in power?" he suggested, 
 faintly. 
 
 "To appeal to those in power is high treason," she said. 
 "Siberia is the remedy for that, also." 
 
 "Arguments with people of your own class " 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna laughed bitterly. Stripping back 
 her loose sleeve, she revealed an ugly, deep scar which ran 
 down from her shoulder almost to the elbow. 
 
 "That," she said, quietly, "was my own father s answer 
 to my arguments. Poor man ! I do not blame him. He 
 hoped that blows, administered in time, might save me 
 from Siberia. He was mistaken. Siberia is my goal and 
 nothing can save me from it." 
 
 Guido von Estritz had turned very white. His voice was 
 hushed and strained, as he said: 
 
 "You have suffered enough. Do not invite martyrdom." 
 
 "It is because I, like others of my class, have not suffered 
 at all that I must be a martyr," she said, darkly. "Some 
 day, if you remain with us long enough, you will stumble 
 into some snag of Russian life which will convince you that 
 my party is right. And then you will come to me and beg 
 me to be permitted to throw the next bomb." 
 
 "Never ! I believe in peaceful methods in evolution, not 
 revolution." 
 
 "Peaceful methods!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "Time 
 was when you had a revolution of your own. That was a 
 long time ago. Ours may be long in coming. But it must
 
 PROLOGUE ii 
 
 come. It will come. No country ever struck off its fetters 
 without a revolution." 
 
 "Instead of peaceful methods, I should have said 
 legitimate methods," said her lover, humbly. 
 
 "Legitimate " the girl laughed. "That s delicious. 
 
 Legitimate methods of fighting the Russian government. 
 Why, dearest, that is precisely what we are fighting for 
 for legitimate methods, and so long as they are withheld 
 we must fight from ambush wage guerrilla warfare with 
 bomb and knife !" 
 
 How would all this fit into the Synthesis? Guido von 
 Estritz was an ardent lover and wooer, but he was also a 
 student of political science. Large beads of perspiration 
 stood on his brow. He foresaw the defeat both of lover 
 and student. He resumed urging his suit. He told her 
 of the Synthesis. She applauded the idea, appending that 
 theories shall profit humanity little so long as so much 
 practical work remains to be done. 
 
 "Marry me!" he cried, her dark beauty suddenly smiting 
 him with all a lover s anguish. "Come with me to America 
 where all are free." 
 
 "Never," she said. "That is why the Old World lies 
 sick unto death. The fiery spirits embrace the easiest way 
 to freedom to comparative freedom and emigrate to 
 America. I will not desert my post. I will fight, fight, 
 fight and kill, kill, kill until I m caught and shipped to 
 Siberia or until I ve acomplished our revolution." 
 
 "But," pleaded the man, "is love to have no share in 
 your life?" 
 
 "Ah, love !" she said, smiling a wise, sad, wan little smile. 
 
 He took her hand and kissed it passionately. His heart 
 was too full for utterance. His profound agitation pled 
 for him as no word could have done. There was a gentle 
 ness about this blond, philosophical, moral lover of hers 
 that drew all her fire and flame into his orbit. It aroused 
 subtler emotions as well. She was now nineteen years 
 old, and the maternal instinct, in which she was rich, had 
 hitherto been lavished so generously upon all the children 
 of men that it had become diffuse and vagrant. The man s 
 unexpressed passion gave it focus and point. 
 
 "I cannot marry you," she said, impulsively, "because 
 a man s wife and the children she bears him belong to
 
 12 THE HYPHEN 
 
 him. They must live his life, whatever that may be. And 
 I am condemned to live in perpetual jeopardy. But I love 
 you, and I have a right to my love and to yours. There 
 fore take me! But our child must belong to me and to 
 the Cause!" 
 
 He shrank back as if she had struck him in the face. 
 Was this lasciviousness ? Or a momentary lapse from 
 virtue? He was a gallant gentleman and she the last 
 woman in the world whom he would have harmed. 
 Presently a whole world of intuitions came flashing upon 
 him. Moral, immoral or unmoral, her courage was mag 
 nificent ! How insignificant a thing was the Synthesis com 
 pared with this? Thought was to have been his medium. 
 Human flesh and human spirit were to be hers. He was 
 overwhelmed. He might have been swayed by her more 
 volcanic temperament, but he also had the parental instinct. 
 That saved him. No child of his should be predestined to 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Her prophecy had been correct. Before another week 
 had elapsed, Tersehogen, Chief of Police of a neighboring 
 city, was assassinated. There was a traitor among the 
 conspirators. Varvara Alexandrovna had gambled with 
 Siberia once too often. Within twenty-four hours after 
 the throwing of the bomb, the Princess Vasalov was ar 
 rested for the murder of Tersehogen. She languished in 
 prison for two years. In vain her frantic lover sought to 
 secure her pardon. Finally, after a perfunctory trial, she 
 was sentenced to Siberia for ten years. 
 
 Guido von Estritz moved heaven and earth to save the 
 woman he loved from her horrible fate. He invoked the 
 aid of the American Minister in St. Petersburg, who gave 
 him what letters of introduction he could. The prospective 
 author of the Synthesis saw functionaries of state, of the 
 law, of the police. Without avail. Varvara Alexandrovna 
 had been a thorn in the flesh of the Powers that be too 
 long. To Siberia she must go. 
 
 Did she regret having elected exile in Siberia to wife- 
 hood in America? Who shall say? Von Estritz came to 
 see her in prison as often as he had a ray of hope to hold 
 out to her. But he was not there to bid her farewell when, 
 at dawn, one morning, she and a dozen other women con 
 victs clad in the coarse gray linen shirt and skirt, the
 
 PROLOGUE 13 
 
 unshapely black slippers, the long gray overcoat with the 
 hideous yellow patch on the back of which the dress of a 
 convict consists, were led out of the dismal prison to the 
 dirty train in which they were to begin their long journey. 
 
 Prisons and railroad cars, all alike ill-ventilated, dirty 
 and unheated, followed each other in rapid succession. 
 The monotony of these repetitions was varied only by long 
 cruel tramps over snow-clad roads. Varvara Alexan- 
 drovna s footgear was inadequate. The snow soaked 
 through it. The rough stones of the road tore it. Her feet, 
 frost-bitten and bleeding, were an incessant torture, an 
 almost unendurable torment. 
 
 An itinerant peddler of the Gospels and Tracts, his heavy 
 wooden box slung by a strap across his shoulders, who 
 was traveling in the same direction as the convicts and had 
 asked permission of the guard to join the party, took pity 
 on her and bought her a pair of fleece-lined boots, which 
 he handed her, bowing obsequiously, for the common people 
 of Russia feel a respect verging on veneration for "polit 
 icals." This kindness on the part of a man who himself 
 was desperately poor, touched the unhappy woman deeply. 
 
 Villagers also showed them kindness by feeding them and 
 giving them warm undergarments. One old peasant, moved 
 by the youth and the beauty of Varvara Alexandrovna 
 and several other women convicts, asked permission of 
 their guards to drive them in his ox-cart to the town 
 where they were to entrain. When they reached their 
 destination, the man produced small loaves of bread which 
 he distributed among the convicts. Varvara Alexandrovna, 
 upon receiving her loaf, perceived that a tiny scroll of 
 paper protruded from the side of the bread. She pulled 
 it out and secreted it in the high boots which the peddler 
 had given her until she had a chance to read it. The paper 
 contained one line only: "Be of good cheer. Guido." 
 
 After that her courage never flagged. The others 
 wondered at her unflinching fortitude in the face of almost 
 insufferable hardships. 
 
 One by one the other exiles dropped off to be taken to 
 their respective villages. The itinerant peddler also left 
 them. Verkoyansk, Varvara Alexandrovna s destination, 
 was too far north for a poor vender of Holy Pictures and 
 Gospels, so he told the Guard in Varvara Alexandrovna s
 
 I 4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 presence, asking leave, at the same time, to present her 
 with a small Testament. She did not offer to pay him, 
 fearing to offend him. What was her amazement, on 
 opening the book, to find that it had a pocket pasted against 
 the lower inside cover, which contained a thousand roubles 
 in small bills. Varvara Alexandrovna s heart almost 
 stopped beating with joy. Had the peddler been an agent 
 sent by Guido, or had he been Guido himself? She could 
 not tell. She contented herself in patience, knowing that 
 she was not forsaken by the man she loved more passion 
 ately and more tenderly than ever. 
 
 For the last ten days Varvara Alexandrovna traveled 
 alone with the Guard. At sunset one evening in October 
 he delivered her to the Storosta at Verkoyansk for safe 
 keeping. 
 
 When the inhabitants of the village heard that their 
 "political" was an educated woman and could cipher and 
 read and write, their joy knew no bounds. The principal 
 shopkeeper of the little settlement had recently lost his 
 bookkeeper, and as the entire community had depended 
 upon this clerk to read and write their letters, and to keep 
 them posted on news from the outside world by reading 
 the newspapers to them, his death had cause something like 
 consternation throughout the town. Varvara Alexandrovna 
 thus found herself with an occupation before she knew 
 where she was to lay her head that night. 
 
 The pope the village priest who had a large family 
 of children, offered to take her in. His wife was an 
 illiterate woman, but she was clean, kindly and good- 
 tempered. Varvara Alexandrovna considered herself for 
 tunate. 
 
 Autumn drifted into winter, bringing her work and pay 
 but no word from her lover. What had become of him? 
 Why had he left her after following her so far? Did he 
 intend to come to her in spring, after making all arrange 
 ments for her escape? The virtually unguarded condition 
 in which she was allowed to roam at large would make 
 escape comparatively easy. Once or twice she accompanied 
 the pope s wife to neighboring villages, and occasionally 
 she accompanied the shopkeeper on short business expedi 
 tions which required her services as scribe. She thus be 
 came familiar with the nearby topography. She was earn-
 
 PROLOGUE 15 
 
 ing all she needed for her support. She had left the 
 pope s house after a few weeks, renting a small cabin 
 quite near the shop where she spent most of her time. 
 The Russian government allows its exiles a small sum for 
 their upkeep. The villagers kept her in food and in fuel 
 in return for her letter-writing and newspaper-reading, and 
 the shopkeeper paid her fairly well for her services. Russia 
 does not allow her exiles to follow former avocations in 
 Siberia, but as Varvara Alexandrovna s pursuits had been 
 those of revolutionist and society belle, the shopkeeper 
 argued that he was transgressing no law in employing the 
 "political" with whom Heaven had blessed his village. 
 
 She was thus, in a small way, quite prosperous. The 
 thousand roubles remained where she had found them in 
 the pocket of the cover of the little Testament. She de 
 cided to save what money she could in addition through 
 the winter, and if Guido did not return before spring, she 
 was determined to make a dash for liberty in April or 
 early in May. All winter the temperature was below the 
 freezing point of mercury. It was impossible for anyone 
 to attempt a long journey before spring. 
 
 Her greatest anxiety was caused by the necessity of 
 passports. How to attain them unaided she did not know. 
 
 Her hour of deliverance was closer at hand than she 
 knew. 
 
 One day in March, from her window in the shop, she 
 saw all the women in the village flocking down the street. 
 She left her desk, and wrapping her shawl about her 
 shoulders, stepped outside the door. 
 
 "Hurry, Varvara Alexandrovna," one of the women 
 called to her, "a merchant has come with jewelry such 
 jewelry! And so cheap. See, yonder he stands, near 
 the chapel." 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna s heart began to beat violently. 
 Looking in the direction indicated, she recognized the 
 itinerant peddler who had bought her the fleece-lined boots. 
 Was it Guido himself? She could hardly believe it. The 
 disguise was so perfect. 
 
 "Jewelry," he was saying, "jewelry, and so cheap! My 
 home is thirty miles away and I must close out because 
 my wife is dying. I saw her in a vision. Jewelry! And 
 one or two tracts!"
 
 16 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Let me see the tracts!" said Varvara Alexandrovna. 
 She was so excited that she could barely speak, for she 
 had recognized Guido von Estritz s voice. While under 
 surveillance of the guards, he had travestied his voice as 
 well as his appearance, but now he had spoken naturally. 
 
 He handed her the tract, open at the fly-leaf, across 
 which was written: "Give no sign that you recognize me. 
 I did not dare follow before because I feared to arouse 
 suspicion. I have everything money, a guide, a relay 
 of sleighs along the entire route. Also the necessary pass 
 ports. Meet me to-morrow night at eleven, thirty rods down 
 the road from the last house. Guido." 
 
 In the tumultuous onrush of emotions that followed the 
 reading of this message, Varvara Alexandrovna neither 
 paid for the tract nor returned it. The women were too 
 engrossed in paying five, ten, fifteen or twenty kopeks for 
 the cheap brass "jewelry" to notice her defection. 
 
 The escape was effected as planned. Guido had arranged 
 for every detail. Relays waited for them in every village, 
 and they traveled by day and night until they arrived at 
 Irkutsk, from whence they continued their travels by rail. 
 Varvara Alexandrovna would fain have lingered in St. 
 Petersburg to obtain news of her cousin Dmitri Stepano- 
 vich, but Guido would not brook an hour s delay. He fell 
 ill soon after they left St. Petersburg, but although he 
 suffered racking pains in the chest and throat, he refused 
 to tarry, and pressed on. Finally they crossed the German 
 frontier. Von Estritz was so ill by this time that he had 
 to be carried from the railroad depot to the hotel, and 
 months elapsed before he recovered from the effects of 
 his pleurisy and pneumonia. 
 
 Not a word had been said all this time about marriage. 
 At first Varvara Alexandrovna ascribed her lover s strange 
 diffidence in renewing his suit to a sense of delicacy. She 
 conceived that having rendered her the tremendous service 
 of rescuing her, he did not care to exact payment by claim 
 ing her hand. Presently, however, a subtler interpretation 
 of his motive in preserving silence dawned upon her. She 
 saw Guide s physician privately, and implored him to tell 
 her the truth. She had some difficulty in extracting it. 
 
 "There s no immediate danger," the doctor replied 
 evasively.
 
 PROLOGUE 17 
 
 "That means that there is danger, doesn t it?" she 
 queried. 
 
 "Madame," retorted the physician, "we must all die. He 
 may outlive you." 
 
 "How long do you give him?" the woman demanded, 
 bluntly. 
 
 The doctor regarded her curiously. 
 
 "Tell me the truth," she begged. 
 
 "With care, cheerful surroundings, happiness and the 
 right climate he may live three years more. Possibly four. 
 No longer. He must have suffered prolonged exposure 
 last winter in very severe cold." 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna nodded. 
 
 "He froze the tips of his lungs," the doctor continued. 
 "When the warmer weather came pleurisy and pneumonia 
 set in. For some reason he neglected himself, and now 
 he must pay the piper as all of us must who defy the 
 laws of nature." 
 
 "Does he know?" 
 
 "I have not told him." 
 
 "Then don t for the present." 
 
 The doctor looked at her curiously. He nodded cotn- 
 prehendingly. 
 
 "Very well," he said. 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna was typical of the women of her 
 race. She was passionate and tender-hearted, yet she 
 rarely allowed herself to be swayed by anything but reason. 
 She mistrusted all instincts excepting the instinct of 
 patriotism. Other instincts she held to be instincts of the 
 flesh. Patriotism alone was an instinct of the soul. This 
 deep-rooted conviction had been the source of her strength 
 in turning away from love and dedicating herself anew 
 to her "Cause." She was a woman who, had she fallen in 
 love with a tyrant, would have assassinated him as cheer 
 fully as if he had aroused in her no instinct save that of 
 contempt. 
 
 She now found herself confronted by a situation in 
 finitely more delicate. Gratitude and love pulled her in one 
 direction. Duty pointed in another. Presently, by clever 
 manipulations of the unknown quantities in this algebraic 
 problem, she had lined up duty alongside the two other
 
 18 THE HYPHEN 
 
 factors. There was no possibility of standing out against 
 such a mathematical preponderance. 
 
 That very evening she approached Guido von Estritz 
 on the subject. 
 
 "Dearest," she said, "you risked your life and abandoned 
 your life-work to rescue me. I cannot doubt your love. 
 Why do you not ask me to marry you?" 
 
 "You rejected me before," von Estritz replied, speaking 
 with great deliberation. "I have no reason to suppose that 
 you have changed your mind about certain aspects of mar 
 riage. It is probably your desire to remain a free agent." 
 
 "I am a free agent no longer," Varvara Alexandrovna 
 replied. "There s a price upon my head. Were I re-taken 
 now, they would sentence me to solitary confinement." 
 
 "You mean you are willing to abandon Russia?" her 
 lover demanded, incredulously. 
 
 "There is nothing else to do," she replied. "If we marry, 
 we may have a daughter who will take up my work where 
 I have laid it down." 
 
 "If we marry," said the man, "we may have a son who 
 will carry on my labor, where it has dropped from me." 
 
 They stared at each other, glowingly conscious that the 
 same thought was germinating simultaneously in both their 
 minds. He saw in Germany the apotheosis of government, 
 and detested the anarchic trend of Russia. She contended 
 that anarchistic socialism a complete non-interference 
 with the individual was the highest type of government, 
 being no government at all. She loathed the pseudo-social 
 ism and pseudo- freedom of Germany as much as he 
 calling it by another name adored it. 
 
 This mutual thought of theirs, as quickly as it was born, 
 became an obsession. 
 
 A child, born of spiritual natures so conflicting and 
 divergent, would be wiser than they, must be predestined 
 to discover the Golden Mean, would, by the very essence 
 of his nature, solve the problem of the Political Synthesis! 
 Neither perceived the sublime absurdity of expecting two 
 utterly dissimilar and opposing currents to unite them 
 selves in a third person and hereafter to flow as one. 
 
 Now they understood or thought they did why the 
 centuries had conspired for this moment. Everything that 
 had befallen her exile, their flight, Guide s illness had
 
 PROLOGUE 19 
 
 been propitious, had been a fortuitous preparation for this 
 supreme moment. Their love was to be no mere vulgar 
 gratification of self. It was to be the solvent of all the 
 ills of humanity. Their babe, as yet unborn and unbe- 
 gotten, was to be the legislative regenerator of mankind. 
 
 Ludicrous folly or divine wisdom? If motive counts for 
 anything, then the element of divinity was not lacking in 
 their fantastic hope. There was in their ambition for a 
 politically eugenic babe nothing pretentious or vainglorious. 
 There was almost humility in their conception of them 
 selves as two vessels which were to pass on the electric 
 charge of life in a clarified, intensified, resurrected form! 
 They were willing to repeat the sacrifice of Isaac. They 
 were offering their conjoined flesh and spirit to the Divine 
 Being for experimental purposes. 
 
 They were married quietly the next week. The follow 
 ing winter they spent in Italy. But von Estritz s cough 
 did not improve, and when spring came, bringing with it 
 the expectation of a child, the young husband longed for 
 home for Old Glory and the U. S. A. His wife was 
 amazed. He had expressed such love and admiration for 
 Germany and German institutions that she had come to 
 regard her husband as a spiritual expatriate. She was, 
 however, entirely satisfied to have her child born on 
 American soil. It was neutral ground. Accordingly they 
 sailed for New York early in summer. 
 
 Women there are who prepare spiritually for the advent 
 of their offspring by surrounding themselves with beauti 
 ful pictures, scriptural passages, sweet music. The von 
 Estritzes prepared for the coming of the Synthetic Babe 
 by talking political economy. Varvara Alexandrovna had 
 every desire to play fair with her husband in dowering the 
 child. They talked endlessly of Russia and Germany, for 
 getting apparently that in addition to those two extreme 
 tendencies there was a host of other intermediate forms of 
 government. 
 
 The little lad whose coming had been looked for by his 
 parents as a world-shaking event was born in January. He 
 was a frail, weak little creature, and it was doubtful at 
 first whether he would survive. But the hopes of his 
 parents were not to be dashed. He lived, although he re 
 mained weak and ailing. His parents reminded each other
 
 20 THE HYPHEN 
 
 that some of the world s greatest men had been exceed 
 ingly frail in childhood. There was Napoleon; there was 
 Alexander Hamilton ; there was Alexander Pope, the Wasp 
 of Twickingham. 
 
 "Our son shall be the Wasp of Russia," said the child s 
 mother. 
 
 "Our son shall be the Wasp of the World," said the 
 child s father. 
 
 "It comes to the same," said Varvara Alexandrovna. 
 "Russia shall regenerate the world. It is her mission. It 
 is our son s mission. Russia s mission and our son s are 
 identical. 
 
 Von Estritz died the following June. He had been too 
 ill to carry through an investigation which he had begun 
 regarding the exact status of his wife. As the wife of an 
 American, she, of course, automatically changed her na 
 tionality from Russian to American. But she was guilty 
 of four assassinations. It was an open question whether, 
 under the existing extradition treaties, Russia might not 
 at any time claim her, or at least, whether on re-entering 
 Russia Varvara Alexandrovna was not liable to arrest. 
 
 The young widow decided to take up the investigation 
 where her husband had dropped it. She went to Geneva 
 the following autumn with her little son, the third Guido, 
 and their pursued her inquiries. A former friend of 
 her family, a Russian of high birth and considerable 
 social prestige, who was returning to Russia, offered to 
 act as her mediator. Months elapsed. Then the Russian 
 noble returned with glad tidings. The Czar had pardoned 
 his distant kinswoman. 
 
 There was, consequently, nothing to debar Varvara 
 Alexandrovna from returning to Russia. The agreement 
 between husband and wife regarding their son s education 
 had been as unique as the rest of their story. The boy 
 was to be educated alternately in Germany and in Russia 
 providing that Varvara Alexandrovna might re-enter the 
 land of her birth without courting re-imprisonment in 
 rotating periods of from three to four years. Madame von 
 Estritz chose to begin her son s education in her own 
 country. She wished his infant impressions to be received 
 in Holy Russia. 
 
 A terrible surprise awaited her. At the fourth railroad
 
 PROLOGUE 21 
 
 station at which her train stopped after entering Russia, 
 several Cossacks boarded the train and arrested her. In 
 vain she protested. In vain she told them that she was 
 an American citizen. The Russian nobleman had been a 
 spy and the Czar s pardon pure fiction and a decoy to lure 
 her across the border. She and her babe were roughly 
 dragged from the train and shut up in a filthy cell in the 
 local prison. 
 
 She bribed the jailer to mail a letter for her to the 
 American Consul. The man accepted the money and the 
 letter but never mailed the latter. As the days went by, 
 without bringing the expected relief, Varvara Alexandrovna 
 verged on madness. She herself had endured worse things 
 but was the legislative regeneration of humanity to be 
 brought to nought through the untimely death of her babe? 
 The mother instinct became rampant. The cell swarmed 
 with vermin of every description. It was impossible to 
 obtain warm water to bathe the child. But she had no 
 soap to wash his garments properly. Her greatest vigilance 
 failed to keep his wasted body free from body-lice. The 
 child cried incessantly. She dared not leave him out of 
 her arm for a moment at night for fear that a rat might 
 attack him. 
 
 One day, when she had laid the child down to wash out 
 some linen, a rat did attack the infant. The jailer hap 
 pened to enter the cell at the moment. He was not desti 
 tute of humanity. Seeing the rat on the baby s back he 
 struck at the rodent with a heavy stick. The rat sprang 
 aside, and the stick struck full force upon the child s spine. 
 The man, overcome with grief at this untoward result of 
 his intended kindness, prevailed upon a young physician 
 to come and attend the child. The young doctor told 
 Varvara Alexandrovna frankly that the child s back had 
 been cruelly injured, and that the child would be crippled 
 if he did not receive proper medical attention and nursing. 
 He was a humane young man, and almost wept with pity 
 at the plight of the unfortunate woman and her child. 
 But he was a Jew, and was greatly disliked because of his 
 race and therefore was unable to help her in any way. 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna, after that, was tempted to 
 strangle her babe. She ran the entire gamut of human 
 suffering in the dark days that followed. But what she
 
 22 THE HYPHEN 
 
 had done in hatred she could not do in love. She could 
 not kill her own flesh and blood. 
 
 In her extremity she bethought herself of Ursula von 
 Wendt, the German friend of her husband of whom he 
 had spoken with such affection and with whom he had 
 corresponded to the day of his death. 
 
 Her woman s prescience told her that this woman had 
 loved her husband. Good she knew her to be from her 
 husband s description and from the tenor of her letters. 
 She divined furthermore that a woman might at first harden 
 her heart against the child of the man she had loved be 
 cause it was not her own, but that ultimately she must 
 love it because it was his. 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna wrote Frau Ursula. The jailer, 
 still conscience-stricken, mailed the letter. Frau Ursula, 
 on receiving the heart-broken appeal, lost not a minute s 
 time. She was eating her dinner when Madame von 
 Estritz s letter was handed her. She did not wait to finish 
 her meal, but hastily packed a small bag and got herself 
 into traveling gear. She had that day drawn her quarterly 
 allowance, so she was well supplied with funds. 
 
 The meeting that took place between the two women who 
 had so passionately loved the same man was one to touch 
 the imagination. Without speaking, Varvara Alexandrovna 
 drew her visitor to a corner of the cell where a little light 
 filtered through a grating. Without a word she showed 
 Frau Ursula the child s bruised back, the flea-bites which 
 disfigured his face, the uncared-for little body. Then, still 
 silent, she laid the child in Frau Ursula s arms. 
 
 Frau Ursula was appalled. In spite of Varvara Alex- 
 androvna s frantic letter, she*had not been prepared to see 
 what she saw. She had taken it for granted as adoring 
 women will that the child would be a miniature present 
 ment of his father. The black-haired, black-eyed, ema 
 ciated, cadaverous little wretch, who wailed incessantly, 
 was not the blue-eyed, fair-haired baby of which she had 
 dreamed. But the horror of the situation, and the distress 
 of the whining, puny infant, were too cruelly real to admit 
 of sentimental repining. Ursula von Wendt, in a sudden 
 access of divine pity, pressed the babe to her heart and 
 kissed the wasted, unlovely little cheek.
 
 PROLOGUE 23 
 
 "You will take him care for him?" Madame von 
 Estritz demanded in her broken German. 
 
 Frau Ursula nodded. She could not speak. Her throat 
 was rigid. 
 
 "I have bribed the jailer," Varvara Alexandrovna con 
 tinued, "he will pretend not to see the baby when you take 
 him away." 
 
 "But for you also," said Ursula von Wendt, speaking 
 for the first time, "something must be done. The American 
 Consul should be notified." 
 
 Varvara Alexandrovna shook her head in violent nega 
 tion. A fortnight ago she would have been willing and 
 eager to obtain her liberty on any plea. Now, after the 
 crowning inhumanity to which her babe had been sub 
 jected, she had only one idea to fight, to fight, to fight ! 
 Siberia? She had escaped once with her husband s aid. 
 She would escape again. Solitary confinement ? She would 
 escape on the way. Her soul was like a flaming torch 
 the thought of failure was inadmissible. And after her 
 escape she would preach such sermons as had never been 
 heard since the world began. She would preach openly, 
 eschewing henceforth all secret methods. The very high 
 priests of the iniquitous Russian police system would turn 
 converts to the Cause. She would set all Russia aflame. 
 
 Frau Ursula listened to the passionate outburst and 
 marveled. Did this woman really love her child? She 
 could not doubt it, since her wild words were caused by 
 her outraged maternal instincts. Also she remembered that 
 frenzied letter of appeal which had brought her hot-haste 
 to Russia. Ursula von Wendt had felt, in laying it away 
 among the heliotrope-scented handkerchiefs of her orderly 
 top bureau drawer, as if she were laying away a crushed 
 and bleeding human heart. 
 
 And so the strange bargain was made between the two 
 women who until this hour had been strangers and who, 
 temperamentally, were the very antithesis of each other. 
 
 Frau Ursula, showing unwonted energy, contrived to in 
 terest both the German and the American Consul in the 
 case. Innumerable documents were drawn up affidavits, 
 power of attorneys, letters of introduction. At the end 
 of a few days, Varvara Alexandrovna, as executor of her 
 husband s large fortune, had instructed her attorneys in
 
 24 THE HYPHEN 
 
 New York to administer the estate for her son until his 
 coming of age. The annual income was to be handed over 
 to Frau Ursula, who was also to receive outright a gift 
 of fifty thousand dollars. Privately she acquainted Frau 
 Ursula with the circumstances and hopes governing little 
 Guide s birth. Frau Ursula had never heard of a syn 
 thetic baby before, and would have thought the entire 
 yarn the wildest farrago of nonsense she had ever heard 
 if the man whom she had loved and revered had not had 
 part in it. 
 
 Meanwhile the American Consul, a small, dapper man of 
 no great ability, was floundering about in a sea of doubt. He 
 was not quite certain what course to pursue. His colleague, 
 the German Consul, urged him strongly to communicate 
 the story to the American Minister at St. Petersburg. That 
 was all very well, but the American Consul was not a 
 trouble-hunter. Since the woman herself begged him not to 
 advance her claims as an American citizen, what was he to 
 do? Murder was murder the world over, and the young 
 widow shamelessly and unrepentantly admitted four assassi 
 nations. Russia, in his opinion, no matter what discrimina 
 tions international law might make in favor of political 
 murders, was absolutely right in indicting this beautiful 
 young creature. Now, if she had killed a man who had 
 betrayed her, she would have elicited his complete sym 
 pathy, and he would have felt no compunction in dragging 
 in the United States in the hopes of saving her. But what 
 in thunder did a young girl reared in the lap of refinement 
 and luxury mean by going and killing four men whom, con 
 fessedly, she had never clapped eyes on before she expe 
 dited them to Kingdom Come. Russian ways were not 
 American ways. He thanked Heaven for it. 
 
 Nevertheless he acquired the habit of insomnia. The 
 post of Consul in this obscure little Russian town had been 
 procured for him by influential friends because he was re 
 cuperating from a nervous break-down and required an easy 
 berth. The irony of that did not tend to raise his spirits. 
 Nevertheless, he had all but nerved himself for the trip to 
 St. Petersburg when the unexpected happened. One fine 
 morning Varvara Alexandrovna had disappeared from her 
 cell. She had made her escape through the filed grating of 
 the window. Where had she procured the file? Neither
 
 PROLOGUE 25 
 
 Frau Ursula, nor the German Consul, nor the American 
 Consul could be suspected. The Governor of the prison was 
 furious, and the trembling jailer suggested that the tall, 
 handsome, dark young gentleman, who so strikingly re 
 sembled the prisoner and who had been admitted on an es 
 pecial pass of the Governor, had brought it. The Governor 
 roared out his wrath. He had given no especial pass to any 
 one, least of all to Dmitri Stepanovich Vasalov, whom he 
 easily identified from the jailer s description. 
 
 But the damage was done. Plot and counterplot; stroke 
 and counterstroke ; forgery and counter- forgery. That, 
 Frau Ursula reflected, was typical of Russia. She derived a 
 curious satisfaction from Madame von Estritz s flight. It 
 seemed to invest her incipient suspicion that the Russian wife 
 of the man whom she had loved did not really love her own 
 child with the authority of chapter and verse. Her escape 
 must have been long in preparing. If she had really loved 
 little Guido, would she not, knowing of the project to rescue 
 herself, have kept him by her? Instead of that, she had 
 abandoned the child. She had abandoned the child to give 
 herself anew to her Cause ! An infernal cause, Frau Ursula 
 reflected since its primary object seemed to be murder. 
 All her pity for Madame von Estritz was wiped away. She 
 could not pity a woman whom she considered destitute of 
 the maternal instinct. The letter among the heliotrope- 
 scented handkerchiefs to the contrary. 
 
 Ursula von Wendt left Russia within the hour. She de 
 tested Russia. She had a horrid fear that in some way these 
 Russian brutes would try to involve her in the case, or 
 would rob her of the child. Her fears were groundless. 
 She reached Berlin in safety and immediately began prepar 
 ations for emigrating to the United States. She had will 
 ingly acquiesced in Varvara Alexandrovna s request that 
 the Synthetic Babe be reared on neutral soil. She had ab 
 sorbed all of Madame von Estritz s other rules and regula 
 tions and by-laws for the upbringing of the boy without 
 making any definite promise. She wanted to digest the en 
 tire wild project involving the lad before committing her 
 self to it definitely. She might have proved recalcitrant 
 about emigration if she had not for a long time prior to her 
 expedition into Russia coquetted with the idea of translating 
 herself across the Atlantic.
 
 26 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Her departure was delayed by the ill health of her little 
 ward. The cruel blow upon his spine, which he had re 
 ceived by accident, was bearing evil fruit. Throughout sev 
 eral years the child required expert medical attention. At 
 the end of two years, he seemed as normal as any other child, 
 and splints and ointments were things of the past. They 
 might also be things of the future, the specialist who had 
 treated the child, warned her. There might be a recurrence 
 of the spinal trouble in the child s seventh or eighth year. 
 Wholesome food, light, fresh air, and exercise delicately 
 graduated and juxtaposed to periods of rest, were the only 
 preventive measures within reach. 
 
 Ursula von Wendt, remembered her promise to trans 
 plant the frail Synthetic plant to impartial America, but the 
 idea of uprooting herself, which had fascinated her two 
 years earlier, seemed less attractive to her now. She ex 
 perienced gloomy forebodings and a strong disinclination to 
 venture upon so hazardous an undertaking. She had, I think, 
 a lurking fear that Indians still prowled about the streets of 
 American cities after dark. And with no man to protect 
 her and the child ! 
 
 While she was in the throes of her uncertainty, a young 
 Berliner of her own age, who managed a small Confections- 
 laden for the widow of his former employer, drifted more 
 intimately upon the scenes of her life. Young Erich 
 Hauser was distinctly not of her own class. The son of a 
 well-to-do Metzgermeister, he had received an education far 
 above his station. His intelligence was keen and did not 
 move entirely upon a material plane, and it irked him that in 
 spite of his superior mentality and excellent education he 
 should be rigidly barred from the society of those whom he 
 conceived to be his peers but who regarded him as an in 
 ferior. 
 
 Frau Ursula, in whom the caste instinct was at this time 
 very strong, tolerated the man s society only because of his 
 kindness to little Guido. When he asked to marry her, she 
 took no pains to hide her amazement at his audacity. In 
 stead of resenting her assumption of superiority, he per 
 sisted in urging his suit. He was a Streber, and as such 
 could not allow himself to be side-tracked by rebuffs or 
 snubs. A Streber, though of a genus similar to that of 
 climber, presents marked peculiarities of his own. Erich
 
 PROLOGUE 27 
 
 Hauser had an excellent substratum of laudable qualities 
 with which to Tback his pretensions. He was well-read, a 
 fluent talker, an excellent business man. And he was abso 
 lutely honest. Nor was his good-nature, displayed in amus 
 ing little Guido, wholly an assumed virtue. Some calcula 
 tion there may have been, and considerable kindness as well. 
 
 Frau Ursula was too deep in Hauser s debt for the semi- 
 genuine, semi-spurious kindnesses showered upon Guido to 
 turn him out like a chimney-sweep, as she would have liked 
 to do. She froze hjm and he declined to congeal. She 
 snubbed him, and his servility became intensified. He was so 
 very meek and humble and deferential that she, whose tech 
 nique with men and women too was perfect, was unable 
 to disencumber herself of him. 
 
 It so happened one day that he told her that his chief am 
 bition was to emigrate to America. To that end he was 
 hoarding his savings. One trip to America he had made as 
 a lad, and he had received an overwhelming impression of 
 general prosperity which time had not obliterated. Given a 
 fair start in his line of business, and a capable man might 
 become a millionaire in ten years time. Might! He cor 
 rected himself. "Was bound to" was what he had meant to 
 say. 
 
 Frau Ursula turned over carefully in her mind all that 
 Hauser had said to her. She surmised that he had spoken 
 with a purpose. She saw nothing reprehensible in his view 
 of America as a country inviting exploitation, since she her 
 self, whenever her thoughts turned America-wards, was ac 
 tuated solely by her unfulfilled promise to Guide s mother 
 and by a desire to be rid forever of the vexatious memory 
 of the high estate from which she had fallen in divorcing 
 her husband, the Rittergutsbesitzer of Mecklenburg- 
 Schwerin. 
 
 She imagined furthermore that Hauser suspected that she 
 had considerable money, and that his suit was inspired not 
 so much by passion as by mercenary considerations. In as 
 suming this she was wrong. Even a Streber, being human, 
 must have appetites and may have a heart. Hauser was 
 doubtless attracted by Frau Ursula s higher social position 
 and independent means, but he was at the same time very 
 genuinely in love with her. To call a woman of Frau Ur 
 sula s superior caliber wife, to possess her, to have her bear
 
 28 THE HYPHEN 
 
 his name, was the apex of his dreams, the topmost pinnacle 
 of his Strebertum ambitions. 
 
 After mature reflection, Frau Ursula, observing due cau 
 tion, gradually removed the bristles and thorns from her 
 manner toward Hauser. He renewed his offer of marriage 
 as she had known he would do, and this gave her the desired 
 opening. 
 
 "Herr Hauser," she said, "I have a long and strange story 
 to tell you. It is possible that we may arrive at a compro 
 mise." 
 
 She told him the story of her rescue of Guido from the 
 Russian prison, of his mother s subsequent escape, of the 
 money waiting for the child in New York, of the large in 
 come derived from that money of which she had the use, 
 and of the gift made her outright by Guido s mother. She 
 did not tell him just how large little Guide s fortune was, 
 nor that she had loved Guide s father, deeming that this 
 concerned no one but herself. She concluded by offering 
 him the use of the fifty thousand dollars which Madame von 
 Estritz had given her, for an indefinite period, without in 
 terest, if in return he would be willing to enter into a purely 
 nominal marriage with her. All this was said by her on 
 the supposition that he did not love her. 
 
 Hauser listened attentively to her story, noting the hiatus 
 existing between her rescue of the child and an adequate 
 motive. His face was a blank, as he said, very blandly : 
 
 "I confess I do not entirely comprehend why you should 
 offer me the sum of fifty thousand dollars for an indefinite 
 period I may lose it, you know in return for my name, 
 when, as you say, you do not love me." 
 
 "I offer it because I know that you require money to carry 
 out your plans. I, on the other hand, need an honest man s 
 protection. You speak English, you ve been in America be 
 fore, you are a capable business man. You have all qualifi 
 cations for emigration which I lack." 
 
 "In other words, you desire a dependable courier whom 
 you can lose only through death?" he inquired, ironically. 
 He had the trick of sarcasm. He had purposively cultivated 
 it. He thought it gave him an aristocratic air. 
 
 "Delicacy forbade my couching the necessity I am under 
 in terms so crude," responded the lady, with some spirit. 
 "If you desire your freedom, after a reasonable time, as
 
 PROLOGUE 29 
 
 soon as I have found my bearings, you will not find me op 
 posed to a divorce." 
 
 "Are you sure that you do not mean that you will desire 
 your f reedoom after a reasonable time ? " 
 
 "I am not given to equivocation," said Frau Ursula 
 coldly. "I mean what I say. Also, you have expressed 
 yourself loosely. As I have no intention of resigning my 
 freedom, there can be no talk of regaining it." 
 
 "Marriage is a tie," said Hauser, tranquilly. 
 
 "Not in our case," said Frau Ursula, determinedly. "I 
 am afraid I have not made myself entirely clear. I do not 
 love you and there must be no expectations on your part 
 of a husband s privileges. Our marriage is to be purely a 
 marriage of convenience, a nominal marriage, as I have said 
 before." 
 
 "I understand that perfectly," said Hauser, with utmost 
 humility. Had Frau Ursula noted the sardonic smile that 
 lurked in the averted eyes, she might have thought the 
 Streber a creature meaner, and yet less mean and far, far 
 more formidable than she had conceived him to be. 
 
 "And this boy of yours who is not yours how strange 
 that you should feel such a self-sacrificing love for him !" 
 
 "Love is a luxury, we may dispose of it as we see fit," 
 said Frau Ursula with a harshness meant to convey that she 
 would not allow one jot or tittle of that delectable sweet 
 meat to be diverted to Hauser. 
 
 The Streber smiled. He was not much of a psychologist, 
 but he thought he was. Psychology is a dangerous avoca 
 tion for any but experts, as we shall see later. 
 
 He said: 
 
 "Exactly." And bowed acquiescence in her dictum as 
 gallantly as if his father had been a courtier instead of a 
 sausage butcher. "Would I be presuming if I asked some 
 further details of this strange pact of which Guido is the 
 subject? You have glanced at it " 
 
 "I am afraid I cannot tell you more about it just now," 
 she said. "I have not yet definitely made up my mind 
 whether I am going to carry out all the wishes of his par 
 ents. I have made no promise excepting the one that he 
 shall be reared in America." 
 
 The Streber shrugged his shoulders. He was not in the
 
 30 THE HYPHEN 
 
 least hurt at being thus unceremoniously thrust beyond the 
 outskirts of her confidence. 
 
 Frau Ursula despised him anew for his calm acceptance 
 of the snub which she had just visited upon him. She was 
 a good woman, but narrow and not over-clever. Had she 
 been as clever as she was good, her cleverness might have 
 acted as a brake for the universal condemnation in which 
 she drenched the Streber. She would then have known that 
 often we deem ourselves loyal to those whom we love when 
 in truth we are merely unkind to those whom we dislike. 
 
 "I think," said Hauser, "we might as well clinch matters. 
 I am perfectly willing to accept the post as your courier." 
 
 A strange bargain strangely consummated. Frau Ursula 
 had twice in the past acted upon her own initiative once 
 when she had left the Rittergutsbesitser, and in traveling 
 alone into Russia. Both times she had acted under the pro 
 pulsion of a tremendous impetus. She had no such impetus 
 to take her to America, and as a result she committed the 
 crowning folly of her life. 
 
 They were married a fortnight later. Hauser promised 
 to maintain absolute silence regarding the boy s nativity. 
 No one, not the child himself, was to suspect that Guido 
 Hauser was not Guido Hauser. 
 
 Within three days of her marriage Frau Ursula dis 
 covered the egregiousness of her venture. Hauser had no 
 intention of embracing the role of nominal husband as 
 signed to him. 
 
 He came briskly into the room one evening, and quickly 
 bending over, kissed her. 
 
 She drew away, frowning, throwing him the same sort of 
 look which had so often cowed him before. 
 
 He seated himself at her side: 
 
 "My dear Ursula," he said, "you are too sensible a 
 woman to believe that any man is going to be kept at arm s 
 length by his wife." 
 
 Frau Ursula opened her aristocratic eyes wide in aston 
 ishment. She did not entirely recognize in the man at her 
 side who showed such suave masterfulness and thorough 
 bred urbanity the despised Streber, the creature of an in 
 ferior social class, the upper servant who, for reasons of her 
 own, was for a while to masquerade as her husband, being 
 well paid for the honor. The profound contempt which she
 
 PROLOGUE 31 
 
 had entertained for him was somewhat shaken. Something 
 distantly akin to respect crept into her heart for his son of 
 the people who could muster so grand and so bland a 
 manner. 
 
 "I love you, Ursula," he said, speaking with a certain 
 noble simplicity. A bounder he might be when in the grasp 
 of ambition and greed, but he was anything but a bounder at 
 this moment, as Frau Ursula grudgingly admitted to her 
 self. 
 
 "I love you, Ursula," he repeated, "and I want you to 
 understand that I did not make this bargain with you be 
 cause of the money. I am glad to have the loan of it I 
 will return you double the sum before ten years have gone 
 by. But I would not have married you for the money if I 
 had not loved you. I intend to win you. It may take a long 
 time, but I am going to win out." 
 
 The calm assurance with which he spoke, the unabashed 
 passion with which he looked at her, caused her heart to 
 stand still with a choking sense of impotence and dismay. 
 For a minute she was too angry to speak. Then she said : 
 
 "You will never win me. If we are to remain friends you 
 will not attempt to make love to me." 
 
 "I am not aware that we have ever been friends," said 
 the Streber as coolly and superciliously as she herself might 
 have done. Frau Ursula quailed. She had a blinding in 
 sight into this man s possibilities and realized that she had 
 laughably underestimated him. She was furious with him 
 for having hoodwinked her, furious with herself for having 
 been so simple. 
 
 However bitterly she regretted having made the bargain, 
 there was nothing to do but to go through with it. They 
 sailed for New York in April, 1898. The steamer was 
 crowded, and it was difficult to obtain berths in separate 
 cabins. Frau Ursula anticipated a stormy scene with her 
 husband in this matter of separate cabins, but he acquiesced 
 in her suggestion with protest. He had, she perceived, some 
 delicacy. But delicacy and tact, although twin virtues, are 
 not identical any more than human twins are identical. On 
 board the steamer, when strangers were present, and she 
 dared not protest, he insisted on patting her hand, or touch 
 ing her cheek, or brushing imaginary wisps of hair from her 
 brow. Bred as she was, intimate gestures of this sort in the
 
 32 THE HYPHEN 
 
 full glare of publicity would have been insufferable though 
 coming from the man she loved. Coming from Hauser, 
 whom she no longer regarded as a mere Strebcr, they were 
 odious indeed. When alone with him she attempted to re 
 monstrate with him against these familiarities on the 
 ground of breeding. He thought her plea a subterfuge. 
 Had he believed in the sincerity of her objections, with his 
 keen zest for social values, he would have desisted. As it 
 was, he continued these blatant means of asserting his 
 dominion over her person. Then, too, in his preoccupation 
 with his wife, he was indifferent to the point of rudeness to 
 the claims of other women. To be discourteous to his 
 wife s sex was his notion of showing his love for her. 
 
 She magnified his every offense a thousandfold. The en 
 forced proximity on board the vessel made him seem a hun 
 dred times more odious than he really was. He had his 
 good points, she could not deny it. He was kindness itself to 
 her and to little Guido. And he was kindness itself to the 
 wife of an emigrant who fell ill during the voyage. He sent 
 her fruit and delicacies from the first cabin table, and when 
 she died, he took up a collection among the passengers for 
 the benefit of the widower, who seemed a helpless sort of 
 a creature to undertake the rearing of six small children sin 
 gle-handedly. 
 
 Undoubtedly, he had his good points. There were mo 
 ments when she wished he had not a single one. He got on 
 famously with men, and she could see also that in spite of 
 his wanton lack of courtesy toward women they liked him 
 and respected him. This amazed Frau Ursula, until one 
 day one of the women passengers told her that everybody 
 liked Hauser so much because one could see how utterly de 
 voted he was to his wife and boy. 
 
 Frau Ursula winced. The fellow-voyager s words con 
 tained a shadowy insinuation that Hauser s wife did not en 
 tirely appreciate Hauser and Hauser s love. As a result, 
 Frau Ursula s dislike for her husband waxed and throve. 
 But there had been injected into that dislike the germ of 
 respect. His manners might be offensive, even boorish, but 
 she knew that deep down in this man s nature was imbedded 
 a kernel of goodness and substantial worth which, hence 
 forth, she would never be able entirely to ignore. 
 
 His worst offense, of course, was that he was not Guido
 
 PROLOGUE 33 
 
 von Estritz. There was something of idolatry in the love 
 she had given the man who did not even suspect that she 
 cared for him. The chastest imagination has its hours of 
 blackguardly license; the cleanest heart owns a corner re 
 quiring chlorides and white-wash. Frau Ursula was as 
 good and as pure-minded a woman as could be found the 
 world over. But she was not an angel. And she had been 
 married before married in fact as well as in word to a 
 man whom she did not love. By the agony of a loveless 
 marriage she was able to measure the joyous intoxication of 
 wedlock based on love. 
 
 She had loved von Estritz passionately and with a full- 
 blooded love. She had not seen him in death. A curious 
 fatuity of the mind decrees that him whom the eyes have 
 not seen as lifeless clay the heart continues to sense as a 
 living, breathing soul. Thus she continued to picture Guido 
 von Estritz. She could not conceive that that ardent, en 
 thusiastic brain had been snuffed out, she could not think 
 of him as having passed on to the ultimate bourne. His 
 child, by a miracle, had been tossed into her life. His wife 
 had been eliminated from the scene, and the questions, 
 "Whither? Whence? Where?" as touching her person could 
 be answered with no more certainty than if she had been a 
 departed soul. 
 
 Frau Ursula was not a woman in whom the maternal in 
 stinct takes the trivial form of mere sensuous joy in the 
 pink and white loveliness of the little human toys. She saw 
 in every child a human personality in the bud. This particu 
 lar child must be her lost Guide s personality in counterfeit 
 presentment; for in spite of the utter dissimilarity in the 
 appearance of father and son, she could not repress the 
 conviction that this tiny creature was instinct with his 
 father s spirit. When she remembered the Synthesis which 
 the child was supposed to represent and to achieve, she be 
 came disdainful. She did not allow poor Varvara Alexan- 
 drovna a part in her own child. Had the Russian woman 
 not abandoned her babe? Frau Ursula spent hours at the 
 child s bed, hoping to surprise in the little creature some re 
 semblance, some trick of expression, some gesture that 
 might recall his father. She never thought of little Guido 
 as the child of Varvara Alexandrovna and of von Estritz. 
 It was von Estritz s child and hers. She was its spiritual
 
 34 THE HYPHEN 
 
 mother. In time she came to look upon herself as von Es- 
 tritz s widow or as his wife, since she did not distinctly 
 visualize his death. 
 
 Such being her frame of mind, the wooing of herself by 
 any other man was an impertinence and an immorality. 
 Yet it was to this impertinence and immorality that she 
 had condemned herself. After one or two impassioned ap 
 peals on Hauser s part, she began dimly to realize that years 
 might and would elapse before her rejections would 
 wear down his persistence. She set her teeth and smiled 
 grimly. What, after all, did it matter? Love sometimes 
 changes good women into the incarnation of selfishness. 
 Hauser s happiness did not enter into the equation in the 
 least in Frau Ursula s summation of facts. He had been a 
 necessary factor in her translation from the Old World to 
 the New. And she had won Estritz s child. That was the 
 great pivotal fact of her life. She was the guiding star, 
 the providence, the father, the mother, the guardian angel 
 and earthly guardian, the what not else of von Estritz s boy.
 
 Part I 
 CHILDHOOD
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 years have elapsed since Frau Ursula s dual trans- 
 lation from Frau Ursula von Wendt and the Father 
 land to Mrs. Erich Hauser and the Land of Illimitable 
 Possibilities, which was the semi-ironic, semi-sincere cog 
 nomen bestowed upon the United States by the Germans 
 of Frau Ursula s day. Almost half that time little Guido 
 Hauser had spent in bed, and yet he was not unhappy. 
 For to console and solace him he had a well-oiled imagina 
 tion that worked overtime without urging, which is some 
 thing to be valued more highly than the treasure of Captain 
 Kidd by a little boy condemned periodically to a two or 
 three years cruise in bed. 
 
 One morning in February, Guido sat propped up in bed, 
 watching the heavy, dropsical-looking snow descend in a 
 slowly-moving, thick curtain. It was not yet eight o clock, 
 and the -snow shut out the light. The child, since it was 
 too dark to read, contented himself with watching the un 
 rolling white drapery with a rapt, intent expression. His 
 white little face was so wasted that it looked haggard and 
 old. It was completely submerged by the brilliantly black 
 eyes which stood out from the pale face with the sparkling 
 vividness with which an illumined letter lifts itself from 
 a vellum page. 
 
 Suddenly the moving curtain of snow slackened its speed. 
 It became thinner in texture, less voluminous, almost 
 diaphanous. Rays of pale light stabbed through the white 
 sheen, crowded it aside, elided it entirely, revealing a 
 landscape piled high with ermine and diamonds. 
 
 "Mutterchen," Guido cried, or rather bellowed with a 
 vigor which showed that his lungs were quite undebilitated. 
 "Mutterchen, come here, quick !" Nothing but German was 
 spoken in the Hauser household. Frau Ursula came run 
 ning into the room, napkin in hand. 
 
 "Mein lieber Junge! What s the matter, dear?" 
 
 37
 
 38 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "You ve promised me a sleigh-ride the first fine day. 
 We ve waited all winter. And now it s stopped snowing!" 
 
 "Why, so it has !" said Frau Ursula, in feigned surprise. 
 
 "Mother, can we go sleighing to-day?" 
 
 "And do you really care for a sleigh-ride?" From her 
 tone one would have judged that a liking for sleigh-riding 
 was an abnormal taste. 
 
 "Mother ! You are teasing me. We are going." 
 
 "I ve not said so." 
 
 "No but we re going! I can tell. By your eyes. 
 You re a shocking tease, Mother. I m so happy." 
 
 He threw himself into her arms, snuggling his face into 
 her shoulder like a kitten. The weight of his frail little 
 body was as nought. Unlike a healthy child, which, when 
 clasped in one s arm, becomes a weight of lead after a 
 while, the slight pressure which Guide exerted seemed to 
 dissipate itself after a few moments. Her supreme love 
 for the child persuaded her into the grotesque belief that 
 his flesh was resolved into her own at such moments that 
 she thus achieved the mystical unity which exists between 
 mother and child before birth. 
 
 She had cast off her spiritual weeds at last Like many 
 an actual widow, she lived in the child his child. She 
 had completely ceased to think of the boy as not belonging 
 to her. His father was dead. His mother had undoubt 
 edly been recaptured, and had probably been sent to Siberia 
 again. To all practical intents she, too, was dead. These 
 things were things of the past, and she no longer harked 
 back to them. She no longer repined and regretted that 
 Guido did not resemble his father. The child s own per 
 sonality had conquered her. She loved him now for his 
 own sake, not because he was von Estritz s child. Some 
 times, under all his gentleness and meekness there showed 
 a wild fieriness, a flaming enthusiasm which lent itself to 
 quick transitions and fine gradations and which she was 
 at a loss to explain. He had not derived the trait from 
 his lymphatic father nor, she thought, from his fanatical 
 mother. At such times a great fear would descend upon 
 Frau Ursula. For might it not be the Synthesis germi 
 nating? Strange to say, as her spiritual widowhood re 
 ceded into the background of her thoughts, the Synthesis 
 came to the fore. She regretted that she had not a more
 
 CHILDHOOD 39 
 
 sharply limned recollection of all von Estritz had told her 
 about his plan, and about all Varvara Alexandrovna had 
 told her of the child s destiny. In vague outline she knew 
 perfectly what the project had been and understood along 
 which lines the von Estritzes would have educated the boy. 
 She had decided, generously, to carry out the wishes in 
 dicated by Varvara Alexandrovna, although she had made 
 no definite promise. Nor was she prompted solely by 
 generosity in this decision. She entertained a sort of 
 superstitious fear of the Synthesis, as if it were a new 
 species of ancestral curse. This held her to a minute ob 
 servance of all that Varvara Alexandrovna had prescribed. 
 
 "Guido, mein Liebling," she said, "unclasp me. If we are 
 to go I must hurry and make my arrangements for the 
 day." 
 
 "Then we are going! Oh, Mother." 
 
 "Yes, my pet, we are going. But you must be a good 
 boy. I do not want a temperature to-morrow as a result 
 of to-day s outing." 
 
 "I ll be as good as gold. Oh, Mother I love you so!" 
 
 "Schmeichelkaetschen! You must surely have kissed the 
 Blarney Stone." But she came back to the child s bedside 
 and kissed him once more. "I want you to rest quietly 
 on your back until I come to dress you," she called back 
 over her shoulder. 
 
 "Well," said her husband, as she came back into the 
 dining-room, "what was the matter with him now?" 
 
 That "now" was Shakespearian in its compression of 
 thunderous disapproval. 
 
 "We are going for a sleigh-ride," she .replied, shortly. 
 
 "Ah, indeed! The heir-apparent desires to go sleigh- 
 riding. Ordinary mortals therefore must do without their 
 second cup of coffee." 
 
 Frau Ursula colored, angrily. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," she said. "May I help you now?" 
 
 "Thanks, no, I don t care for cold coffee. Or yes, I ll 
 have it. Cold coffee you know the saying improves one s 
 looks. Perhaps if I become better-looking, you ll have eyes 
 for me as well as for our young lord." 
 
 Frau Ursula did not reply to this tirade, but her hand 
 trembled as she handed her husband the filled cup. Having 
 failed in his effort to win her, he had adopted this offensive
 
 40 THE HYPHEN 
 
 manner of punishing her. His manner now fluctuated con 
 tinually between downright brutality and a sarcasm no less 
 cruel. What might have passed as a good-natured banter 
 with a man of gentler breeding, became a deadly gibe on 
 his lips. Frau Ursula had long since realized that she 
 must not waste the vitality required by her service for 
 Guido in futile hatred of the man whose name she bore. 
 Perhaps, subconsciously, her conscience pricked her. She 
 realized in a dim way that the bargain between them was 
 not a fair one. Had her notion of personal purity been 
 less exalted, she might have yielded herself to him and 
 raised him to her own level. Indeed, she sometimes 
 thought that he had reached that level without her help. 
 He was well liked everywhere, and was considered one of 
 the leading citizens of the little town of Anasquoit, in 
 which they had settled. 
 
 Hauser had been very successful. He had made a great 
 success of the first department store of which Anasquoit 
 boasted, although everybody had predicted that no depart 
 ment store could exist in Anasquoit. The reason for this 
 dismal forecast which, luckily .for Hauser, had not been 
 realized, was the proximity of Anasquoit to New York. 
 Flung along the Jersey shore of the Hudson, like a broad 
 band of ribbon, almost directly opposite to the metropolis, 
 Anasquoit, with all the pretensions of a city, was in reality 
 little more than a suburb. It was this proximity to the 
 largest city of the world that for years had crippled its 
 industrial and financial growth quite as effectually as the 
 River which formed Anasquoit s eastern border, and the 
 Palisades, which rose frowning like turreted battlements 
 along its western fringe, had restricted its physical growth 
 and compressed it into its ribbon form. 
 
 New York was so close at hand that to ferry across the 
 River was barely more trouble than to step across the 
 street. The cars that ran from the ferry to all the large 
 stores were convenient and speedy, and, when the last was 
 said, the New York shops outdistanced the finest variety 
 that the most enterprising Anasquoitan store-keeper could 
 possibly afford to offer his clientage. Department stores 
 came in Anasquoit and lived their little day and were con 
 signed to the limbo of financial failures in the anti- 
 Hauserian days. Therefore the pessimists of the town
 
 CHILDHOOD 41 
 
 sought to dissuade Hauser from his mad enterprise. He 
 embarked upon it nevertheless, and made his venture pay, 
 and enlarged his store every few years. It was, of course, 
 not an Altman s, or a McCreery s, but it was an excellent 
 shop for medium-priced goods, and it was the pride of 
 Mauser s heart. The Streber s business ambitions had 
 climbed the first rung of the ladder which led to the goal 
 which he had set himself. But his personal aspirations 
 were precisely where they had been nine years earlier, and 
 this was wormwood both to his pride and to his love. 
 
 Having handed her husband his second cup of coffee, 
 Frau Ursula rose precipitately. 
 
 "Please sit down and finish your own breakfast, will 
 you !" Hauser said petulantly. 
 
 Frau Ursula had learned not to cross her husband s 
 wishes unnecessarily. She sat down again, obediently. 
 
 After a moment she said, meekly : 
 
 "If you do not mind very much, I should like to do my 
 telephoning now." 
 
 "Mind? Why should I mind." The insolence of his 
 sarcasm was superb. "Am I not accustomed to be thrust 
 aside at all times for the convenience of your young prince? 
 He might be the heir-apparent to the Romanovs, for all the 
 fuss you make over him, instead of heir-apparent to the 
 Fool Idea of a couple of Infatuated Lunatics !" 
 
 Frau Ursula, owing to certain singularities in the boy s 
 education, had been forced to take Hauser into the secret 
 of the Synthesis. She shrank into herself at his words. 
 
 "Erich!" she exclaimed, resentfully, "you promised me 
 never to speak of this !" 
 
 "Not to the boy not to any stranger. Did that include 
 you?" He laughed, harshly, bitterly. "Of course, we are 
 strangers. Still! Well, it seems I must ask permission to 
 speak in my own house. I dare say I shall accustom myself 
 to that, too." 
 
 This "too," like the "now" which he had flung at her 
 earlier in their interview, was a condensation of the re 
 pressed disappointment and mortification of years. 
 
 Frau Ursula bit her lips. After a moment she said: 
 
 "Erich, I thought we had agreed to be civil to each 
 other."
 
 42 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Oh, I try to be civil. But the fuss you make about 
 that brat gets on my nerves." 
 
 The contumelious word stung Frau Ursula into retorting : 
 
 "You owe your business prosperity to the brat s 
 money !" 
 
 "And I m paying him seven per cent, more than the legal 
 rate," her husband snarled. "Oh, well, continue to make 
 a fool of yourself over this young political Messiah !" 
 
 He dashed down his cup so violently that the saucer 
 cracked. Then, rising abruptly, he walked rapidly toward 
 Guido s door. 
 
 The apartment occupied by the Hausers was an ex 
 pensive one and boasted of a private hall, but instead of 
 taking the circuitious route to his own room, Hauser usually 
 walked through the rooms occupied by his wife and Guido. 
 Frau Ursula could not tell, therefore, whether he was 
 going to his own room or to the boy s. She exclaimed, 
 impetuously : 
 
 "Erich!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Erich, don t say anything unkind to the boy to-day. 
 The last time he was out of the house was in December. 
 It is February now. All winter he waited patiently for a 
 sleigh-ride. Don t spoil it for him." 
 
 Hauser laughed mockingly, tauntingly. He made her a 
 low bow. 
 
 "I shall endeavor not to annoy his Highness," he said, 
 and stepped across the threshold of the boy s room. 
 
 "Fool, fool that I was!" muttered Frau Ursula, and 
 braced herself to endure new torture. 
 
 But, long as she knew Hauser, she had not yet learned to 
 fathom his moods. He was this morning in not nearly 
 as bad a humor as she believed, but sarcasm had become 
 an ingrained habit. Perhaps it was a mask, as well. There 
 was, it must always be remembered, his side of the case 
 as well as hers. And if he made her miserable at times 
 it is only fair to remember that she made him unhappy 
 always. 
 
 "Your mother tells me," Hauser was saying to Guido, 
 "that I must not tease you to-day, because you are to have 
 a merry day. When you are indisposed I am not permitted
 
 CHILDHOOD 43 
 
 to aggravate you, either. Your Highness perceives the 
 advantage accruing to birth." 
 
 The blood mounted to Frau Ursula s cheek dully, heavily, 
 thickly. To bait the child like that ! Sarcasm is always 
 a cruel weapon, an unfair one when used against an op 
 ponent too young or too poorly dowered by nature to re 
 taliate. Guido, to whom Hauser s allusions were of course 
 entirely unintelligible, had the sensation of being lashed to 
 right and to left by a scourge that was invisible but which 
 blistered and ripped open every spot upon which 
 it descended. Usually he writhed cruelly under his 
 father s ridicule for as such he construed the irony which 
 he did not comprehend remembered it, pored over it, 
 could make nothing of it and ended by wondering why 
 his father hated him so much. There were times when 
 he hated his father so viciously that all currents of heart 
 and mind seemed to merge themselves into a stream feed 
 ing that hatred. Other times there were when he enter 
 tained something like indulgent pity for his father, ap 
 prehending blindly that only a canker-eaten heart can pro 
 duce fruit so bitter. 
 
 To-day he pitied him, a little contemptuously. Antici 
 patory joy had forged a sort of spiritual armor for him 
 which was dented but not broken by the shafts which his 
 father hurled at him. 
 
 "We are going for a sleigh-ride, father," the child ex 
 claimed. "Can t you come, too?" 
 
 "No, my son." Hauser s "my son" was always obscurely 
 wicked, pregnant with reproach and with insolence. 
 "Sleigh-rides are for the elect of the earth for lady-like 
 little boys and their sweet mammas. Base wretches like 
 myself must labor in the sweat of their brow." 
 
 Frau Ursula, listening intently, perceived that Hauser s 
 voice had changed subtly. The note of cruelty had almost 
 died away. Almost, almost, his words might have been 
 set down as the pleasantry of a vulgarian. 
 
 "I m sorry you cannot come," the child replied, quietly. 
 Never had the sweet, boyish treble seemed so pristine and 
 so pure. The tears sprang to Frau Ursula s eyes. 
 
 Her husband had re-entered the dining-room. He was 
 now equipped for the street in overcoat and rubbers. His 
 hat was in his hand. In speaking to her he never failed
 
 44 THE HYPHEN 
 
 to assume a deferential attitude, even when his tongue 
 made cruel havoc of her feelings. And upon his lips there 
 was always a mocking smile. 
 
 "Tears!" he said. "Tears." And as if to convince her 
 of the absurdity of weeping, he went back to Guide s door 
 and said, quite pleasantly: 
 
 "Good-bye, Guido, have a good time and don t forget to 
 bring me home a big snow-ball to eat for my dessert." 
 
 The child s laughter rang uncertainly through the room 
 as the door closed behind the man. Frau Ursula sat quite 
 still for a moment. 
 
 "He s not wholly evil," she reflected for the thousandth 
 time. The bargain had been a dishonest one on her part, 
 without a doubt. That he had pretended to accept it, and 
 in doing so had been equally dishonest did not exculpate 
 her. Women are more moral than men or ought to be. 
 She, in this instance, had not been more moral than the 
 man, and that was the crux of the situation. He was 
 justified in despising her. Matrimony was not a cloak, 
 nor a mask. It was a sacred institution. All civilized 
 society was based on its recognition and on a moral and 
 upright observance of its principle. She had offended 
 against that principle in a somewhat unusual way. But 
 she had offended and the impropriety of her conduct could 
 not be explained away. These thoughts harrowed her 
 not for the first time. Amends! Could she make them? 
 Should she? If she did make them it would be solely for 
 the ulterior purpose of persuading Hauser to change his 
 manner toward Guido. For Guide s sake she was willing 
 to make very nearly any sacrifice. She thrust the thought 
 into the mental cupboard where she kept all the tentatives 
 and possibilities which required serious consideration at 
 an indefinite future time. 
 
 She roused herself from her revery and began her 
 preparations for the day. The immediate thing to be at 
 tended to was the telephoning. 
 
 She rang up Guide s physician first. 
 
 Dr. Koenig was a very old man and he and Frau Ursula 
 were excellent friends. Like the first Guido von Estritz, 
 he too was an Achtundvierziger, but he did not speak often 
 of that period of his life. The recollections evoked were 
 too painful. Possibly, also, he felt that his listeners felt
 
 CHILDHOOD 45 
 
 a perfunctory interest only in what had been to him the 
 most vital part of life. He was hale and hearty at eighty, 
 and quite as sound mentally as physically, circumstances 
 which he ascribed to the conjoined facts that, as an old 
 bachelor, he had escaped the vicissitudes and excitements 
 of matrimony, and that he ate plain, wholesome, coarse 
 food derbe Hausmannskost as he called it. He had 
 been through the Civil War as a surgeon. Of that ex 
 perience also he was loath to speak. There clung to him 
 and emanated from him an air of such superlative honesty 
 and unfeigned, downright goodness that Frau Ursula on 
 meeting him nine years ago, had, as she subsequently 
 avowed, loved him from the first as a sort of secondary 
 father. 
 
 She rang up Dr. Koenig ostensibly to obtain his permis 
 sion for the outing. In truth, she desired to shift the re 
 sponsibility to his shoulders, for she knew very well that 
 he would approve. 
 
 "Praechtig," he cried back over the wire in answer to 
 her query. "You couldn t have a finer day. I have a 
 serious operation at the hospital. Otherwise I d be tempted 
 to go with you and my little patient." 
 
 Next she telephoned for the sleigh. The third call was a 
 message to be carried to Frau Schuster, a very old and 
 decrepit lady who came every day to sit with Guido. This 
 gave Frau Ursula liberty of movement and time to attend 
 to her household duties and to her tasks at the store, which 
 she had voluntarily assumed and which consisted of a daily 
 inspection of the kitchen of the restaurant which Hauser 
 had installed in the basement of his shop in imitation of 
 the New York stores. Frau Ursula also attended to the 
 ordering for the restaurant, paid the bills, kept tab on the 
 linen closet and on the stores and generally acted as 
 manager. Hauser had offered to pay his wife a regular 
 salary. This she had declined. Caste pride was by no 
 means extinct in her, and it had gone against the grain 
 to identify herself with something so plebeian as the res 
 taurant of a department store. She had done so solely 
 because she hoped that her largeness of view would in 
 duce in her husband a responsive kindness and that his 
 behavior toward Guido would be materially modified
 
 46 THE HYPHEN 
 
 thereby. Her hopes, as we have seen, had not been ful 
 filled. 
 
 Last of all she telephoned to Frau Baumgarten. Otto 
 Baumgarten had been a classmate of Guido s during 
 Guide s last brief interim of health. After Guido s relapse 
 into invalidism, Otto, with doglike devotion, came punc 
 tually every day at half-past three to bring Guido the day s 
 lessons and to elucidate what was needful for a comprehen 
 sion of the home-work. The scheme worked admirably 
 and had enabled Guido to keep up with his class through 
 out two years. Both boys were exceptionally intelligent, 
 and Otto s role of tutor and coach was facilitated by 
 Guido s aptness as a pupil. 
 
 Frau Ursula informed Frau Baumgarten of the project 
 in hand, asking her to allow Otto to miss this one day in 
 school so that he might share the pleasure of his little 
 friend. 
 
 "Ach!" Frau Baumgarten at the other end of the wire 
 heaved an audible sigh. "My lad would love it! But, what 
 will you? So strict is my man with the boy. He would 
 be angry. Ach! So very angry if such a thing I per 
 mitted." 
 
 "Couldn t you phone your husband at his office and 
 get his permission?" Frau Ursula suggested. 
 
 "What? Phone him to his office?" The consternation 
 expressed by Frau Baumgarten s voice struck Frau Ursula 
 as exquisitely funny. Frau Baumgarten was a plump, 
 good-hearted, whole-souled but simple-minded woman, 
 who stood greatly in awe of her spiessbuergerlicher hus 
 band. Frau Ursula pictured the good little woman stand 
 ing at the other end of the wire, mouth agape, eyes popping 
 out of her head with horror at Frau Ursula s ruthless 
 attempt to instigate a domestic rebellion in the Baumgarten 
 household. "Never, never could I think of doing such a 
 thing, Hebe Frau Hauser ! Ach, you are lucky ! Your man 
 allows you a free hand with your boy. But I thank you for 
 the invitation all the same." 
 
 With a little shrug of contempt Frau Ursula rang off. 
 Frau Baumgarten had remained the typical German Haus- 
 frau. She had absolutely no will and no mind of her own. 
 She did her husband s bidding, thought his thoughts, used 
 his language. America had wrought absolutely no change
 
 CHILDHOOD 47 
 
 in her mental outlook. Frau Ursula sighed. The contempt 
 which she had felt a moment before for Otto s mother 
 became strongly tinctured with pity. She herself had 
 undergone such a spiritual expansion since her transplanta 
 tion that it was difficult for her to understand the arrested 
 growth, the rigid adherence to primitive forms of wifehood 
 which hall-marked so many of her German-American 
 sisters. 
 
 Guide had been straining every nerve to catch what he 
 could of the telephonic conversation. 
 
 "Won t Tante Baumgarten let Otto come?" he demanded. 
 
 "She would, I think. But Otto s father would object," 
 Frau Ursula replied. 
 
 "Fathers," said the boy with great unction, "are a 
 nuisance." 
 
 "Guido !" 
 
 "I shouldn t have said that, I know," said the boy, un- 
 repentantly. 
 
 "You shouldn t have thought it," said Frau Ursula with 
 an entirely insincere emphasis. 
 
 "Well, didn t Father begin by being horrid again this 
 morning?" Guido retorted. "Why does he always call 
 me your Highness? Why does he always sneer at me 
 the way he does? Is it because I m sick all the time? 
 That s not my fault, is it? And 1 tried to be decent. I 
 asked him to come with us though neither of us really 
 wanted him why can t he be half -ways nice " 
 
 "I decline to discuss your father with you," said Frau 
 Ursula. Her blood was beating wildly in her heart, at 
 her temples, against her wrists. "Amends !" The thought 
 which she had scrapped and cast into the junk-room of her 
 mind for consideration at some uncertain date, resurrected 
 itself and came and stared her impudently in the face. 
 
 If her husband continued to drench the child in sarcasm, 
 serious injury to the boy s character was bound to result. 
 Moral cowardice and dissimulation were the most negligible 
 of these injuries. Alternating with fear, she had seen on 
 Guide s face the shadow of so black an anger that her 
 heart had stood still with fright. For she realized that 
 anger, continually fed by righteous indignation, must turn 
 itself into an explosive as pregnant and deadly as dynamite. 
 Moral and mental attributes, von Estritz and Varvara
 
 48 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Alexandrovna to the contrary, are perhaps not synthetizable. 
 There was in Guide s blood that which Frau Ursula must 
 look upon as the taint of blood-guilt. What shape, then, 
 or form, would an explosion of his anger take? Frau 
 Ursula felt a tremor of painful apprehension. 
 
 She banished these distressing thoughts, spoke cheerfully 
 to Guido, who was looking unhappy because she had re 
 buked him, and dressed herself and the child. They started 
 at ten o clock. Mercury had dropped steadily since dawn, 
 and the day had brightened perceptibly. The sharp decline 
 in the temperature had transformed the landscape for miles 
 around into surpassing, unimagined loveliness. Every 
 pillar and post was a sentinel raimented in argent armor, 
 shining more magically and brightly than the most splendid 
 coat-of-arms ever forged by Italian armorer. Every tree 
 was a tower of silver. The very roads were shimmering 
 incandescently as if studded with all the jewels of Aladdin s 
 cave. And the music made by the wind as it moved among 
 the branches of the trees, stiff and unresponsive in their 
 precious raiment, was something no orchestra nor instru 
 ment thereof not violin nor lute nor woodhorn nor even 
 the voice of the harp wedded to the song of the organ 
 might imitate. 
 
 The ice-encased wind which beat against their faces made 
 conversation impossible. Frau Ursula slipped a veil across 
 the child s forehead and mouth to protect him from the 
 unaccustomed cold, and the ride continued in a silence 
 unbroken save by the merry jingling of the sleigh-bells and 
 the crunching of the runners against the hard crust of the 
 snow. Guido was strangely silent throughout the dinner 
 which they ate at a small road-house. Frau Ursula thought 
 he was too fatigued to speak, and hired a room for a few 
 hours so that Guido might rest. But he could not or 
 would not sleep. And he refused to speak. His pre 
 occupation continued throughout the homelap, and extended 
 itself through the evening meal and evening. To all of 
 her agonized questions, "Are you quite well, mein Herzens- 
 junge? Nun, wo fehlt es, denn?" he replied with vapid 
 politeness : 
 
 "I am quite well, thank you. Ich habe mich koestlich 
 amuesirt." 
 
 She fell back upon her theory of fatigue, and ascribed
 
 CHILDHOOD 49 
 
 to that this curious inhibition of his speaking powers. She 
 put out his light a nine o clock he had gone right to 
 bed on reaching home and, not hearing a sound, concluded 
 that he had gone asleep. At half-past eleven, however, 
 after she had retired to the couch in Guide s room on 
 which she slept during his long illnesses, she heard a 
 plaintive wail issuing out of the darkness. 
 
 " Mutter chen, are you asleep?" a very wide-awake voice 
 inquired. 
 
 "Nein, mein Liebling." 
 
 "Mutterchen, I cannot sleep. Mutterchen, the dark 
 bothers me." 
 
 She rose and lighted the gas. Guido was sitting up in 
 bed, his hair disheveled by the combing of nervous fingers, 
 his cheeks flushed and warm, his eyes shining with a 
 feverish light. 
 
 "Mutterchen! The beauty of all we saw stabs me like 
 a knife. It hurts. All those fairy bowers those those 
 Pantheons of snow and ice!" 
 
 So this ecstasy was the reason of his strange silence 
 throughout the excursion and throughout the evening. And 
 she had thought him numbed with fatigue! 
 
 The child burst into a rhapsody which would not be 
 quelled. He insisted on analyzing, dissecting and describ 
 ing his experience. In his hands, under his fingering, the 
 excursion became an adventure, a thing unique, a thing of 
 beauty and moral significance. He ransacked the books 
 he had read and he had read much for a boy of eleven 
 for comparisons, only to reject them as stale and inade 
 quate. Then he fell to inventing descriptions of his own. 
 The flights his imagination took were sparkling, electric, 
 dashing. In spite of his meager child s vocabulary, plugged 
 here and there with royal words, every phrase held a com 
 pressed thought, every sentence was volcanic. His lyric 
 ecstasy led him into a wilderness peopled by strange, elfish 
 creatures, which, having long inhabited the subconscious 
 stratum of his imagination, now boldly scurried out into the 
 welcome light of full consciousness. 
 
 Frau Ursula, on that momentous night, experienced the 
 same sensations which had flowed through head and veins 
 upon her first reading of "Kubla Khan." The thing was 
 eerie, extramundane. Through two long hours she tried
 
 50 THE HYPHEN 
 
 in vain to soothe the febrile excitement which seemed to 
 eat into the very flesh of the child and to shrivel it before 
 her eyes. 
 
 She was frightened from the first and finally she became 
 terrified. Should she telephone for Dr. Koenig? He was 
 so old that she hated to ask him to come out on a bitter- 
 cold and slippery night. Bromides? Possibly, Dr. Koenig 
 had cautioned her against administering them unless abso 
 lutely necessary. Yet neither Dr. Koenig nor bromides 
 were required that night for Guido. Unexpectedly the door 
 opened and Hauser slipped into the room, clad in a warm- 
 looking, dark-red and black blanket-robe. 
 
 "What s the matter now?" he demanded, using his favor 
 ite phrase. "Do you know what time it is ? It s long after 
 midnight. I was asleep. But what does that matter? 
 When his Royal Highness goes atraveling, the stars stand 
 still in their courses, the earth stops revolving, and little 
 men must lie awake !" 
 
 Guido stared stupidly at the apparition in the bath-robe, 
 which now bowed, including woman and child in the 
 mockery of the genuflection. 
 
 "May a mere mortal inquire whether your Highness in 
 tends to rave all night? If you desire, I ll fetch pencil 
 and pad and act as your amanuensis. You may wish to 
 publish some day." 
 
 A look of fright came into the child s face. His eyes 
 lingered on Hauser s face in dread fascination. 
 
 Frau Ursula rose from the child s bed. She looked very 
 lovely in an old-rose dressing gown of soft taffeta, trimmed 
 with rich falls of creamy lace at the neck and wrists. The 
 gown opened low upon the bosom, hinting of unrevealed 
 splendors. She was roused past the point where prudence 
 cloaks itself in meekness, and she rose before the man 
 like an avenging angel the pale aureole of honey-colored 
 hair which framed the white, fiercely quiet face suggesting 
 the analogy. 
 
 She was at the moment entirely magnificent in a purely 
 feminine way, and her husband was by no means impervious 
 to her charm. There was on his part a quickening of the 
 respiration, a sharp intake of breath, a dilating of the 
 nostrils. And, "Ursula" he breathed, the century-old stress 
 of Adam in his voice.
 
 CHILDHOOD 51 
 
 "You will kindly leave my room at once !" said his wife. 
 Her tone scorched, froze, annihilated. The man flushed 
 to the roots of his hair. Without another word he turned 
 and went from the room. 
 
 "Go to sleep now, Guido," she said, quietly. 
 
 To her surprise, Guido turned over on his side, and 
 breathing deeply, fell asleep almost instantly. The shock 
 which Hauser s unexpected advent had communicated to the 
 boy, had resolved the nervous complex which had tormented 
 him all afternoon and evening. 
 
 Noiselessly Frau Ursula turned down the gas. Then she 
 fortressed her room by shooting the bolt. But she could 
 not sleep. An emotion lying half-way between anger 
 and fright, an emotion, moreover, of which Guido for once 
 did not enjoy the lion s share, impelled her to go to the 
 dining-room to seek such comfort as an oil-stove and a 
 lamp might give. To her amazement she found that both 
 oil-stove and lamp had already been pressed into service. 
 At the table, a stack of letters and bills before him, sat 
 the husband. 
 
 "If you desire to be alone," he said, "I can go to the 
 parlor." There was a new note in his voice. 
 
 The parlor was uninhabitable at one o clock of a Feb 
 ruary morning, and she said so, adding, as a sudden impulse 
 came to her: 
 
 "I would like to speak to you if you can spare the 
 time." 
 
 He laughed sardonically the suggestion was so absurd. 
 He rose and fetched her a chair and although she was 
 eager to attribute the motive of mockery to his action, she 
 was unable to detect in him any derisiveness, veiled or 
 otherwise. This softened her. She began, pointlessly: 
 
 "I have not always been fair to you in the past." 
 
 "Nor I to you, Ursula," he retorted, gently. 
 
 Was he scenting her half-formed, half-chaotic impulse 
 to make him what amends she could? Was he indulging 
 in vagrant hopes? His wife contrarily stiffened into im 
 placable animosity on the instant. 
 
 "We cannot possibly go on this way any longer," she 
 resumed, a statement whose vagueness he again chose to 
 interpret amiably. 
 
 "No," he said, meditatively, "we cannot. That is true."
 
 52 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Erich," she leaned forward, impetuously, "at the time 
 of our marriage " 
 
 "Marriage ?" He had relapsed into ironic bitterness and 
 she became frightened, nervous, disheartened. She had 
 intended to say to him she hardly knew what. Perhaps, 
 subconsciously, she was more willing to place their union 
 on an honest footing than she realized. But now that he 
 had put her out, she began to blunder and stumble, and she 
 found herself saying that which she was not at all certain 
 she had intended to say when she began. She had hoped 
 that he would help her and he had not helped her. She 
 was miserably ill at ease. 
 
 "Bargain, then," she said. "At the time of our marri 
 bargain I told you that if at any time you desired a 
 
 divorce " She hesitated and stopped. She was all 
 
 awry. The muddle between them was hopeless hope 
 less 
 
 "Is that what you ve come to say to me at one o clock 
 in the morning?" he roared, in sudden anger. 
 
 "Sssssh you ll wake Guido," she cried, in alarm. 
 
 "D n Guido," quoth the man. She was fair enough 
 not to blame him for that, but that did not deter her from 
 suggesting, craftily: 
 
 "If he wakens, he will keep you awake, too." 
 
 "Bah !" Hauser shoved himself back from the table. 
 "The racket Guido made woke me it is true, but it s not 
 Guido who is keeping me awake. It s you. Oh, Ursula !" 
 
 She shrank back abashed. And yet she knew how matters 
 were with him. She was too fine-grained a woman not 
 to realize that the man s fiercely denunciatory utterance of 
 her name was a cry of the soul piercing the mask of the 
 flesh, not a cry of the flesh itself. She had the grace to 
 be thoroughly ashamed. Her innate goodness rose in 
 revolt at the sight of her own handiwork. "This," her 
 inner voice whispered, "is the result of Virtue militant and 
 triumphant. What might Virtue conciliatory have made 
 of this man?" And again the words, "Amends, amends, 
 amends" roared in her ears like the turbulent song of a 
 cascade. 
 
 "And you have the impudence to speak to me of divorce," 
 he continued, brutally savage. "You pretend to think that 
 I want a divorce. Well, I don t. You say we cannot go
 
 CHILDHOOD 53 
 
 on in the old way. I thought we couldn t. But we can 
 and we shall and we will." 
 
 She had a quick temper and it flared up violently now. 
 Knowing that her attitude had been one of conciliation 
 and that at the end of a day which he had made a par 
 ticularly trying one, she had a sense of having been re 
 jected. She knew that it was preposterously unfair to 
 nurture that sense, for she had rebuffed him so often that, 
 without a very definite and candid advance on her part he 
 could hardly be expected to envisage her change of sen 
 timent. 
 
 She controlled her anger. It hardened and turned cold, 
 and from its congealed midst divorce now really shone and 
 glittered like a desirable jewel, like a bauble gleaming from 
 the center of a huge cake of transparent ice. 
 
 "Why are you so opposed to a divorce?" she inquired, 
 frigidly polite. "We have both profited by our bargain," 
 she did not trip over the word as she had done before 
 "you have made a small fortune of your own, I have ac 
 climatized myself. Well?" 
 
 "Your effrontery, Ursula, is sublime." He regarded her 
 as if she were a new mechanism, something entirely un- 
 apprehended before. "You ask for an explanation of my 
 unwillingness to divorce you. You shall have it. I ll con 
 sent to no divorce as a matter of pride." He flung her 
 the scrap of truth for which she had begged as he might 
 have flung a bone to a dog. "As a matter of pride," he 
 repeated, defiantly. 
 
 "Pride is a low motive," she remarked, casually. 
 
 "Who are you to speak of low motives?" he answered. 
 "Was it a high motive made you marry me?" 
 
 Frau Ursula held her pretty head very high. Her manner 
 indicated that there yawned between them not mere earthly 
 ravines and chasms but interstellar spaces. 
 
 "You absolutely refuse a divorce?" her voice was bland 
 and chill, and it sent his temper to seething-point in a 
 moment s time. 
 
 "Positively," he snorted. 
 
 Frau Ursula rose. 
 
 "Good-night," she said, sweetly. 
 
 Neither slept that night. 
 
 A message received the next morning advised Frau
 
 54 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Ursula that Frau Schuster was too ill to go out. Frau 
 Ursula sighed, and sought out old Kaetchen, the maid of 
 all work, in her stronghold the kitchen. 
 
 Old Kaetchen belonged to a type which would be a source 
 of unadulterated joy to a Dickensonian dramatist, if the 
 type were not debarred, by the very substance of its nature, 
 from making its debut upon any stage not polyglot, or 
 rather duoglot, for old Kaetchen spoke a jargon com 
 pounded of English and German so subtly and fearfully 
 intermixed as to render her speech unintelligible excepting 
 to persons who had a perfect command of both languages. 
 It was a speech as amorphous and monstrous as Penn 
 sylvania Dutch. From old Kaetchen s speech the patient 
 observer would have deduced that the German language 
 was deficient in such simple verbs as moving, sweeping, 
 jumping; for, moved by some subtle instinct for assimila 
 tion, she had expelled these German verbs from her vo- 
 cabularly and had substituted the English verbs instead, 
 subjecting them, however, to the German method of in 
 flection suffixes, participles, prefixes and all. Some Ger 
 man sounds had suffered a similar expulsion, and certain 
 English sounds, such as carpet, towel, sweeper, pitcher were 
 transplanted bodily into sentences German in idiom, in 
 grammatical construction and otherwise composed of Ger 
 man words. The hodge-podge resulting from this rape 
 upon the maiden virtue of two tongues was indescribable, 
 was as grotesque as a gargoyle and as repulsive as original 
 sin. It was funny, too, funny with a Micawber-like, 
 Falstaffian funniness. Guido, who had the ear of a purist, 
 went into fits of ungovernable laughter when poor old 
 Kaetchen, who in addition was* as ponderous as Hebe and 
 as solemn as a moping owl, narrated some of her adven 
 tures in this vernacular of her own. For Kaetchen, aged 
 three score and three, had adventures. All her minor 
 adventures revolved about her husband, who had also been 
 the major adventure of her life. He was a longshoreman, 
 and every morning at five-thirty ate a bowl of pea-soup 
 and bacon for breakfast, which Kaetchen had cooked for 
 him the fireless overnight. She had to cook it every 
 night, for he would not eat warmed-over food. How she 
 had managed to have pea-soup, which requires three hours 
 cooking, ready for him as a matutinal repast before the
 
 CHILDHOOD 55 
 
 invasion of fireless cookers, no one knew. Frau Ursula 
 had variously tried to probe into the secret, but Kaetchen 
 resolutely refused to divulge it, and pea-soup, at 5.30 A.M., 
 was destined to remain a mystery as great as the Man in 
 the Iron Mask. The secret of it would descend into the 
 grave with herself. 
 
 Frau Ursula, in lieu of Frau Schuster, requested this 
 human Tower of Babel to wait on Guido should he require 
 anything before her return. It was necessary for her to 
 look in at the store, as she had not been there at all the 
 previous day, and she was going to stop at Dr. Koenig s 
 office. She expected to be home for lunch, not before. 
 
 Old Kaetchen, who was good-nature personified, and 
 loved Guido dearly, although he teased her so outrageously, 
 promised to attend to everything. Her speech was even 
 more hieroglyphic than usual, and Frau Ursula did not 
 bother to unpuzzle all of it. Guido would be looked after 
 that was all that mattered.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 "TT7ELL," said Dr. Koenig, coming forward to meet 
 
 VV Frau Ursula with outstretched hand, "Wie geht 
 es, Frau Hauser?" He spoke German, of course, as did 
 the entire German contingent of Anasquoit. "Did Guido 
 enjoy his outing?" 
 
 Too much so, Herr Doktor, entirely too much so," Frau 
 Ursula replied, and acquainted him with the experiences of 
 the night so far as they concerned his patient. 
 
 "Now, why," she concluded, "should Guido go off at a 
 tangent like that whenever anything happens to strike his 
 fancy particularly?" 
 
 "Meine Hebe Frau Hauser!" The portly old gentleman 
 leaned far back in his comfortable swivel-chair. "You 
 have every reason for gratitude that the boy s emotional 
 excess is caused only by pleasurable excitement. If it were 
 otherwise, considering the pain the unfortunate little chap 
 had endured in his brief life, we would have a lunatic on 
 our hands. His keen zest for life, his joy in beauty where 
 soever found, is probably the fountain-head of the astonish 
 ing resilience he has shown in combating his disease." 
 
 "Ach!" said Frau Ursula, "I never thought of it in that 
 light." 
 
 "(I coniess," Dr. Koenig continued, "Guido is a sort of 
 human puzzle. I mean the child, not his disease. The 
 child has in him so very much less of the clodhopper than 
 most children have, at his age ; so much less than I had, so 
 much less, I venture to assert, than his father had. 
 Heredity and environment! Those, Frau Hauser, are the 
 two magic keys which will some day unriddle us the Science 
 of Humanity. Ethnologists tell us that the skulls of chil 
 dren born of alien parents on this soil differ radically from 
 the skulls of their parents. What causes this ? A different 
 soil? A different climate? A different atmosphere?" 
 Dr. Koenig made a rhetorical pause. He seemed strangely 
 
 56
 
 CHILDHOOD 57 
 
 excited. "We stand here on the threshold of a great 
 mystery perhaps the mystery of racial divergencies." 
 
 Frau Ursula was nonplused. There was about her 
 nothing of the bluestocking, and she had no very clear 
 perception of what the old physician was driving at. 
 
 "Now," the old man continued, "Guido differs so mark 
 edly in every salient characteristic physical as well as 
 mental from you and from Mr. Hauser, that I am sorely 
 perplexed to explain the phenomenon, unless I fall back 
 upon a theory a pet theory which I framed some years 
 ago." 
 
 Frau Ursula turned pale. Was she never to be allowed 
 to forget the Synthesis? Here it was, wriggling its hated 
 form into sight when she least expected it. 
 
 "Why," continued Dr. Koenig, "why, I ask, should this 
 differentiation appear between parents and offspring born 
 on the same soil? As your boy was. Hitherto I always 
 believed that nativity on a new soil was an important factor. 
 I believed that some subtle virtue inhered in American 
 soil. I did indeed. But your boy upsets that theory. He 
 upsets it, completely. It is shattered, and I must recon 
 struct it. Of course, transplantation " 
 
 Frau Ursula heard no more, she was too intent on the 
 Synthesis, which had crawled out into the full glare of 
 consciousness. She could endure that clandestine presence 
 no longer. 
 
 "Guido was born in America," she said, tentatively. 
 
 "Impossible!" Frau Ursula assumed that the doctor s 
 ejaculation had been caused by certain discrepencies in 
 chronology which must inevitably occur to him. But he 
 was still engrossed by his theory. He could not im 
 mediately drag his attention away from it. "Impossible," 
 he repeated, and she perceived that he was thinking aloud. 
 "Nativity or transplantation, whatever it is, I believe, Frau 
 Hauser, that there is some medicinal quality in American 
 air, or in American soil, which changes men and women 
 for the better. By that I do not mean a physical tonic, 
 but a spiritual one. Yes," he exclaimed vehemently, as if 
 bearing down a disputatious opponent, "I still believe it, 
 I shall always believe it, but I ve not been able to prove 
 it." Suddenly he recollected himself. "Forgive me my 
 little homily," he said, "but I m a fanatic in my passion
 
 58 THE HYPHEN 
 
 for our country. There s not another like it. It s unique, 
 supreme, unmatchable. It is everything to everybody. 
 And it s my religion." 
 
 "And part of mine," said Frau Ursula fervently. 
 
 "No," said the doctor, smiling, "I think it has no share 
 in yours. Guido is your religion. But dear lady! How 
 can the child have been born here? He was two years old 
 when you arrived in America you called me in the very 
 first night after coming to Anasquoit. I remember it per 
 fectly. And you told me that evening that you had never 
 been in America before." 
 
 "That is quite true," Frau Ursula assented, "Guido was 
 born in America and I had never been here before. You 
 see Guido is not my child." 
 
 Dr. Koenig was stunned. He sat well forward in his 
 chair, clutching the arms, staring hard and saying nothing. 
 Frau Ursula regarded him, smiling broadly. Suddenly he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "That leaves my theory just where it was before ! But, 
 am I to hear about Guido? Is there anything to tell?" 
 
 "There is." And she related the entire story of Guido s 
 parentage and birth and rescue, suppressing only the cir 
 cumstances of her love for the boy s father. Last of all 
 she told him about the Synthesis. She told the tale spas 
 modically, almost explosively. The story seemed to burst 
 from her simultaneously at all points, like a disrupting 
 shell. Dr. Koenig listened attentively. He seemed tre 
 mendously interested. 
 
 "A eugenic baby!" he exclaimed, finally. 
 
 "His father had consumption," said Frau Ursula, dryly. 
 
 "A spiritually eugenic baby," the Doctor amended. "To 
 unify different and opposing currents of thought in one 
 person. Kollossal!" he exclaimed, fervently, and added, 
 "I hope I shall live long enough to see what it comes to. 
 Weissmann, Madame, what did Weissmann say about it!" 
 
 Frau Ursula mistook the exclamation for a question. 
 She had never heard of Weissmann, and said so. He had 
 nothing to do with Guido. 
 
 "He has everything to do with Guido!" shouted Dr. 
 Koenig. "Acquired traits cannot be transmitted ! Ha ! 
 Can t they? H m. H m. I suppose political tendencies 
 are innate after all germ cells, not soma H m. Most
 
 CHILDHOOD 59 
 
 remarkable." Suddenly he ceased his ruminations. "You 
 have not told me who the parents of the boy were!" 
 
 "His mother s name was Varvara Alexandrovna Vasalov ; 
 his father s Guido von Estritz." 
 
 The old physician struck his fist resoundingly upon the 
 arm of his chair. "Fool!" he cried, apostrophizing himself. 
 "Idiot! Were my eyes smitten with blindness? And the 
 name Guido ! Madame, I knew the lad s grandfather well. 
 He made his escape from Berlin the same day I did. We 
 met in Switzerland and we shipped for America in the 
 same vessel. Guido von Estritz, myself, Kunb von der 
 Linde, Hasbacher, Dr. Erbach and others whose names I 
 have forgotten." 
 
 "Dr. Erbach, too?" Frau Ursula showed amazement. 
 Dr. Erbach was a famous specialist in juvenile diseases, 
 and at Dr. Koenig s suggestion, she had consulted him 
 several years earlier about Gudio. 
 
 "Yes, Erbach, too, of course!" And he plunged into 
 reminiscences of the Year Forty-Eight. "We belonged 
 to the some organization in Berlin the Social-Democratic 
 Club, but we were not socialists in the sense that socialism 
 carries to-day. What we believed in was Democracy 
 at least in a constitutional government, in a responsible 
 ministry, in universal manhood suffrage. That was really 
 all we were fighting for. And how we fought. How 
 we struggled to disseminate the ideas which were to unite 
 all the German states, which were to make them free. Ah, 
 Madame ! You and I spring from a great race, none can 
 gainsay it, but there is lacking in that race something I 
 do not know just what which keeps them enslaved." 
 
 "Enslaved!" Frau Ursula echoed, in surprise. "But 
 Germany has a constitution to-day, has she not?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." Dr. Koenig laughed sardonically. "But 
 Germany has neither a government representative of all 
 of the people on a numerical basis, as we have, nor a 
 ministry responsible to the people, as England has. Ger 
 many is not merely enslaved. She is content to remain 
 enslaved. Her ancient idealism has turned to a meretri 
 cious, unwholesome reverence for caste, for power as 
 power, and she has grown so fat-headed through material 
 prosperity, that she has all but lost the power of inde 
 pendent thought. God pity Germany when the day of
 
 60 THE HYPHEN 
 
 reckoning somes the reckoning, I mean, which comes to 
 all who sell their birthright for a mess of red pottage." 
 
 Frau Ursula did not comprehend a word of all this. 
 She was, as has been said before, not a clever woman 
 excepting in purely feminine avocations, and in those she 
 excelled. In a vague way she understood that Germany 
 was being unfavorably criticised. She cared not one jot 
 for Germany, and knew far less about the functions of the 
 German government than she did about American institu 
 tions. But Guido von Estritz had thought the German 
 government sacrosanct. She felt uncomfortable and un 
 happy. 
 
 "Von Estritz my von Estritz for many years nurtured 
 the hope that he might return to Germany," Dr. Koenig 
 continued. 
 
 "His son returned and loved Germany and the German 
 government," said Frau Ursula, mildly. 
 
 "Loved the German government! Incredible. My dear 
 madame, do you know what you are saying?" the old man 
 fairly blazed with indignation. 
 
 Doggedly she repeated her statement to show that she 
 did. 
 
 "Guido von Estritz s son loved the Germany of to-day!" 
 the old physician repeated. He seemed outraged and hurt. 
 "I never heard anything so shocking in my life. It s 
 why, it s a sacrilege !" he cried. 
 
 Frau Ursula stared in bewilderment. 
 
 "Yet," she interposed, weakly, "you say his father wished 
 to return!" 
 
 "Yes, to fight!" the old man shouted. "To fight and 
 to rouse others to fight. He did not return because he 
 realized the uselessness of it all, because he realized that 
 the German people were becoming drunk with conceit and 
 greed and vaingloriousness." 
 
 "But what what did he want to fight for ?" Frau Ursula 
 demanded. This artless question, asked in good faith, had 
 a remarkable effect upon the old physician. He shot from 
 his seat, walked wildly about the room for a minute, and 
 then, returning to his desk, began tossing paper-weights, 
 scissors, penholders and other small articles about like an 
 angry child. With a pen-knife he slashed vigorously at 
 his desk-blotter.
 
 CHILDHOOD 61 
 
 "Madame," he said, "is your husband an American 
 citizen ?" 
 
 "He is," she replied, "and I was not content to be an 
 American citizen by proxy as my husband s wife; so I 
 went to the trouble of taking out citizen papers of my own." 
 
 "Good," he cried, "and now tell me, why did you become 
 an American citizen?" 
 
 Frau Ursula smiled at his adoption of the Socratic 
 method of suasion. She replied: 
 
 "I became an American citizen because I love America. 
 I love America because I am happy here. I am happy here 
 because my individuality has had an opportunity to de 
 velop such as it would never have had abroad. She paused. 
 Her mind glanced sharply at the past the Mecklenburg 
 days, the trip to Russia, the unholy bargain with Hauser. 
 How she pitied and despised the poor weakling, who had 
 made that bargain, welcomed it, embraced it. To-day, had 
 she been free of the hated yoke, she would have feared no 
 adventure and no enterprise. This much had America 
 done for her. 
 
 "You have laid your finger on the vital point," Dr. Koenig 
 retorted, almost ceremoniously. "America develops individ 
 uality because she allows the greatest personal freedom to 
 the individual that comports with the personal freedom and 
 the security of all other individuals. She tolerates neither 
 the tyranny of monarchical nor the tyranny of socialistic 
 ideas. And admitting all this, how can you say you admire 
 Germany." 
 
 "I never said so !" Frau Ursula repudiated the charge in 
 dignantly. "I spoke of Guide s father. Because he loved 
 Germany it does not follow by any means that I do. Ger 
 many means nothing to me to-day less than nothing. I 
 love America more than I can say. And it was the silliest, 
 most trivial little episode imaginable that first opened my 
 eyes to the sterling democracy that permeates and invigor 
 ates American life." She talked glibly enough now, and she 
 understood thoroughly what she was talking about. But 
 all this concerned America not Germany. That also Amer 
 ica had done for her. 
 
 Dr. Koenig asked to be told about the "silliest episode." 
 
 She had, shortly after taking up her sojourn in Aras- 
 quoit, met her washerwoman in the street. The womao
 
 62 THE HYPHEN 
 
 stopped her to inquire after Guido s health. Frau Ursula, 
 who at this time was still permeated with the spirit of caste, 
 was surprised and annoyed by the woman s audacity. For 
 a moment she had been tempted to walk around the woman, 
 who had blocked her progress, and ignoring her, leave her 
 unanswered. Her sound common sense, perhaps her kind- 
 heartedness triumphed over these atavistic prejudices. She 
 saw from the woman s manner that no disrespect was in 
 tended. She was neither servile nor insolent. She was 
 just one human being feeling human interest and compas 
 sion in another human being and inquiring about him of a 
 third human being. 
 
 In Germany, not only would the woman not have dared to 
 address her mistress on the street, but the mistress would 
 not have dared to address her help. 
 
 And so, through a haphazard meeting in the street with a 
 woman in a menial position, there was visualized for Frau 
 Ursula the humanizing democracy of America. She felt 
 that the gods sometimes choose strange instruments and sin 
 gular avenues of approach for our conversion and spiritual 
 consecration. 
 
 "But, now," she continued, "perceive the predicament in 
 which I find myself. Although I made no definite promise 
 to Guido s mother concerning his education, I feel a deli 
 cacy, a haunting sense of obligation that I must carry out 
 her wishes. That means, of course, that if the Synthetic 
 Experiment is to have a fair trial, Guido must not be sub 
 jected to direct or indirect influence in any way, not in poli 
 tics and not in religion. The question is how far am I to 
 carry this policy of No-Bias? If I teach him to love this 
 country, OUR country, as I would like to do, and as I feel 
 it incumbent to do, am I then untrue to the spirit of the 
 Synthesis by breeding in him a preferential attitude toward 
 Democratic institutions ?" 
 
 "Nonsense!" the honest old practitioner exclaimed. 
 "Nonsense ! You just go ahead and teach him to love 
 America as much as ever he can. If you don t, I will." 
 
 "But you haven t answered my question you have 
 evaded it," Frau Ursula reminded him. "Will not the 
 value of the experiment in spiritual eugenics, in the Political 
 Synthesis, be very materially impaired thereby?" 
 
 "Ha," laughed Dr. Koenig. "You think you ve tripped me.
 
 CHILDHOOD 63 
 
 I m not sure that you haven t. I m not sure you have. I m 
 not sure there isn t a connection between the two between 
 the Political Synthesis and American democracy. The 
 thought is vapory, delicate as a dew-drop, I would need a 
 spider s web as a seine in which to drag it carefully into my 
 laboratory. 
 
 "Of course," said Frau Ursula, "I am going to instill in 
 Guide s mind a wholesome respect for American law, all the 
 more so as religious instruction is prohibited." 
 
 "How is that?" Dr. Koenig inquired. "I myself am a 
 freethinker, but there are temperaments for whom a pro 
 nouncedly teleological conception of the Why and Where 
 fore of Things is necessary. Why then no religion ?" 
 
 "Religion colors the mind, and Guide s mind is to retain 
 its virgin hue of white," said Frau Ursula, a little sarcas 
 tically. "In all things. He is to judge for himself in 
 everything." 
 
 Dr. Koenig was aghast. 
 
 "The boy is exceptional, of course," he said, "but he will 
 have to be quite prodigiously exceptional, you know, if this 
 experiment is to work out at all. I confess well, it s stag 
 gering. I m tremendously intrigued. I m fascinated. 
 There are so many religions if his mind is so fashioned 
 that he requires a religion as a working theory of the Uni 
 verse, there is no saying what will happen. There s Con 
 fucius; there s Toaism; there s Shinto; there are the Ad- 
 ventists ; there what s the use of enumerating. There s no 
 saying which will arrest the attention of our young Anda- 
 lusian cockerel at the psychological moment. For the reli 
 gious impulse, like the sexual, has its nadir and its zenith. 
 It all depends. It all depends. Madame, you have a task 
 before you." 
 
 Frau Ursula sighed. She was sufficiently aware of the 
 fact without being reminded of it. 
 
 "To educate a child without any definite bias in ethics, 
 religion, politics !" Dr. Koenig laughed, immoderately. It 
 occurred to him for the first time that Thalia, as well as 
 Melpomene, was to have a hand in the rearing of the syn 
 thetic child. He was still laughing, when he resumed. 
 
 "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps he will synthesize religions 
 and ethics as well as politics. He may reconcile the Real 
 Presence with the theory of Commemorative Communion.
 
 64 THE HYPHEN 
 
 He may jumble together Salvation by Grace and Good 
 Deeds. He may perceive a dual nature in God and declare 
 that Jesus and Beelzebub are merely Christian cognomens 
 for Ahriman and Ormuzd. He may see in Theosophy a 
 Christianizing and vindication of the Egyptian belief in 
 transmigration. He laughed again, grimly. "A synthetized 
 religion ! The outcome might be cannibalism linked to pro 
 hibition." 
 
 "You seem amused," said Frau Ursula, a little curtly. 
 
 "Amused! Aber Hebe, Frau Hauser! I am entertained. 
 More entertained than I have been in years. And I am very 
 much concerned. It s a dangerous experiment, terribly dan 
 gerous, if you intend fulfilling it to the letter." 
 
 "I m going to play fair," said Frau Ursula. "It is detest 
 able nonsense, I suppose. Still, she was his mother. And I 
 have faith in the boy s nature. I do not agree with you in 
 thinking the experiment dangerous." 
 
 "Well, I don t see I say it frankly how you are going 
 to bring up a child without giving some direction to his 
 mental and moral bent," the old physician said, oracularly. 
 "It cannot be done. Unless you bring him up on a desert is 
 land. Man juxtaposed to man evolves a social scheme and 
 a religion, however crude. And the desert island has its 
 drawbacks, too. The philosopher, like the artist requires 
 a medium. To give the experiment a fair test, the issue 
 should be fairly presented to the child. Yes " the old man 
 was warming to the theme, "Yes, that will be the only way." 
 
 "But that is precisely what his mother did not wish," said 
 Frau Ursula, crossly. "He is to know nothing about the 
 Political Synthesis and his Destiny and that he is not my 
 child before he is twenty-one." 
 
 "H m," grunted the old physician. 
 
 "I am determined, however," said Frau Ursula, "to teach 
 him the difference between right and wrong in no uncertain 
 way. As to right conduct, at least, there can be no differ 
 ence of opinion." 
 
 "The conception of what is right and wrong depends 
 largely on geographical location," said the Doctor slyly. "So 
 you can t do that, either, if there is really to be no bias. In 
 India, they marry their girls off at eleven and twelve. The 
 Book of Mormon makes polygamy obligatory, and the advo 
 cates of that religion submit very plausible reasons for the
 
 CHILDHOOD 65 
 
 practice physiologically plausible, I mean." Frau Ursula 
 arched her eye-brows and averted her eyes. Dr. Koenig 
 hemmed and hawed a moment, realizing that he had slightly 
 offended, and continued, "And the Germans, dear lady, men 
 and women of the New Empire whose veins bound the self 
 same blood as yours and mine, consider war an ennobling 
 pursuit, a sacred occupation, the only one suitable to a man 
 of birth." 
 
 "Alas, yes," Frau Ursula assented. She thought of the 
 Rittergutsbesitzer and sighed. "I dare say you are right, 
 Herr Doktor. I m in a worse quandary than before. I 
 really do not know what to do. I shall have to reconsider 
 the entire problem. I don t suppose," she added, abruptly, 
 "that Guido has inherited his mother s homicidal mania. 
 Well, at any rate, he s beyond reach of her influence. I 
 imagine she is dead." 
 
 "Not necessarily," said Dr. Koenig, "if they have retaken 
 her as they doubtless did, ultimately she is probably still 
 alive. Russia does not execute, she tortures, and exiles and 
 imprisons. And she escaped from Siberia before." 
 
 Frau Ursula rose. 
 
 "I am sure she is dead," she said, with an air of fmnality. 
 
 "I believe you wish it?" 
 
 "I do indeed, with all my heart," Frau Ursula replied, 
 composedly. 
 
 The talk with Dr. Koenig had consumed considerable 
 time, and Frau Ursula, on consulting her watch, was 
 startled to see that the better part of the morning was gone. 
 And she had not yet been to the store. Well, she would have 
 to attend to that in the afternoon. 
 
 She hurried home. 
 
 Guido was greatly distressed on learning, after lunch, 
 that his mother was going out again. He begged, pleaded, 
 cajoled, used all the innocent wiles even flattery of child 
 hood to prevent her departure. As a last desperate en 
 deavor he entreated her to tell him a tale of her childhood. 
 
 "Tell me about the big white Kachelofen in which you 
 baked the apples and potatoes to hold in your muff when 
 you went sleigh-riding!" 
 
 "You ve heard all about that at least a dozen times." 
 
 "Tell me about the horrid Finnish governess you had, 
 who made you catch spiders for her sandwiches !"
 
 66 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "You know that story by rote." 
 
 "Tell me," his face was pitifully white and drawn after 
 his bad night, "Tell me about your great-grandparents, who 
 were not allowed to call their parents "Du I" 
 
 "Guido, those old storeis " 
 
 "Mother, I know, I know ! I m only begging you to tell 
 me a story to keep you here, near me. I don t care a rap 
 about the story. , I don t care a rap whether you talk to me 
 or not. Only, stay home " 
 
 Guido, darling, I cannot. Don t you think, dearest, I 
 would rather stay home with my little lad than rummage 
 through a restaurant kitchen?" 
 
 "Can I get up at least?" 
 
 "Darling son, no. After yesterday your back is very 
 tired, you told me." 
 
 "I know. Mother, I think it must have been horrid to 
 call your parents at least your mother Sie. I couldn t 
 call you Sie I d just have to call you Du Mother, that s 
 one thing I do not like about English, calling everybody 
 strangers and one s mother you/ : 
 
 "The Quakers use thee in addressing each other." 
 
 "Yes, but they say thee to everybody. So it comes to 
 the same thing. I don t like that about English." 
 
 "If you knew English only you would never think about 
 it. Lots of mothers and little children say you to each 
 other and love each other as much as can be. And now " 
 she disengaged herself casually from the boy s convulsive 
 clasp, for he had encircled her neck with his thin arms, and 
 was lying against her heart, "now, my pet, I must go." 
 
 The child fell back limply among the pillows. 
 
 "The English-speaking mothers may love their little boys 
 as much as can be, as much as you love," he said truc 
 ulently, "but I am convinced that no little English-speaking 
 boy loves his mother quite as much as I love you." 
 
 He said it without anger, without heat, without bitterness. 
 He had not meant to be unkind or to hurt. The very uncon 
 sciousness of the comparison indicating the measure of her 
 love for him and his love for her was what made his state 
 ment so damning. The woman gave a sharp gasp of pain. 
 Two bright red spots appeared on either cheek. Almost 
 she yielded now, but her sense of duty and fear of further 
 irritating her husband stiffened her purpose and her will.
 
 CHILDHOOD 67 
 
 Mechanically she began to gather up the books which lay 
 scattered about the bed. 
 
 "Mother, can t I keep the books?" 
 
 "You ve read all morning." 
 
 "Just one as company I ll be so lonely without anyone, 
 without even a book." 
 
 "Which?" she asked quietly. 
 
 He wavered. 
 
 "Perhaps I d better not keep any," he said, with down 
 right honesty. "I might forget and read." 
 
 "I think," she said gently, that you are going to take a 
 Nachmittagsschlacfchen. You will feel so much better 
 after a nap. Then, when Otto comes, you will be bright and 
 fresh. And perhaps you can sit up a little after I get home." 
 
 "All right, Mother. I ll try to sleep. I will, honest. But, 
 in case I wake before half past three just one book?" 
 
 "Which?" 
 
 His answer startled her as his answer had a habit of 
 doing. 
 
 "The dictionary, Mother." 
 
 "The dictionary! Do you want to read that?" 
 
 "Just dip into it, if you don t mind." 
 
 "You may read the dictionary all night and all day. 
 Nothing in that to excite you." 
 
 Rich in wisdom and in love as she was, she did not real 
 ize that she was leaving the child the most inebriating book 
 of all. 
 
 "Did you want the German or the English dictionary, 
 Guido ?" she asked, standing at the opening book-case. 
 
 "The English, of course." 
 
 She fetched it for him, asking, curiously, 
 
 "Why of course?" 
 
 "What sense would there be in reading the German Dik- 
 tionaer," the child replied sharply. "I know the meaning 
 of pretty nearly every German word I hear or read. When 
 I don t know what it means it s a French word not a Ger 
 man word at all or a technical word." 
 
 "1 see," said his mother, meekly. "I am glad that you 
 wish to enlarge your English vocabulary, Guido. I was 
 really afraid, before, from what you said, that you had taken 
 a dislike to English, and that would never do. For although 
 we speak German among ourselves, because it comes more
 
 68 THE HYPHEN 
 
 easily to us, you must always remember that English is the 
 language of our own country. More than that. It is a 
 rarely beautiful and rich language. It boasts of the greatest 
 modern literature in the world. It has the most comprehen 
 sive vocabulary of any language, ancient or modern. If I 
 could do as I pleased, I would have an English governess 
 for you then you would acquire a pure English as well as 
 a pure German." 
 
 The child had listened in apparent amazement. 
 
 "You misunderstood me, Mother," he said. "There s just 
 the one single, solitary thing I do not like about the Eng 
 lish, and nothing that you or anyone else can say can change 
 that." The small thin face had become terribly set and de 
 termined. He had, it was easy to see, quite irrevocably 
 made up his mind, and perhaps, in spite of her voluble ad 
 monishment, since German was her native tongue and the 
 only language which she spoke with perfect fluency, it 
 pleased her that this was so. 
 
 Guido continued: 
 
 "But English ! Why I love it, I adore it ! I can t exactly 
 explain how I feel off-hand. It s like this. English is Sun 
 day clothes and patent leather pumps; German is comfort 
 able corduroy and sneakers." 
 
 She was taken aback by the unusual metaphor. Under 
 cover of it, for Guido was still pondering the subject, she 
 made her escape. 
 
 He did not take the cat-nap which his mother had rec 
 ommended, although he tried very hard. But the urgent 
 business which he had in hand kept him awake. 
 
 His mother s words had raised a very serious question in 
 his mind. 
 
 Which was dearer to him, German or English? 
 
 Which? 
 
 There was, first of all, German. Until he was five years 
 old he had spoken no English whatever, excepting the one 
 sentence, taught him parrot fashion, "George Washington 
 was the Father of his Country." And because German was 
 the first language which he had spoken, it came naturally 
 both to tongue and ear. His German compositions were al 
 ways virtually letter-perfect, frequently showing no ves 
 tige of the blasting red ink in which corrections were made. 
 And they were written without effort, without any straining
 
 CHILDHOOD 69 
 
 after effect. His English compositions, on the other hand, 
 though he labored over them valiantly, were honeycombed 
 and burrowed by the blighting crimson. And always, quite 
 inevitably, whether in speech or in print, English seemed a 
 little unnatural, a little stilted. Yet it held at the same time 
 an elusive, tantalizing charm like the fragrance from a 
 flower hidden behind a stone wall. 
 
 One consolation only remained. Otto had informed him 
 that he, Guido, used more polysyllables in his English prose 
 work than any other boy or girl in the class. Otto knew, 
 because he and Eddie Erdman during recess had one day 
 taken the pains to read through the compositions of the 
 handful of pupils who counted, for the sole purpose of not 
 ing elephantine words, and had unanimously, although 
 grudgingly, awarded Guido the palm. As there was in the 
 class a boy by the name of Bob Hastings, who was a "real" 
 American, not a spurious American, like themselves, Guido 
 felt that his pride in wielding the Polysyllabic Sceptre of his 
 class was thrice justified. , 
 
 For he would dearly have loved to excel in the use of 
 English, but the truth is, he was a little afraid of it it 
 abounded in such an overwhelming number of words which 
 no one ever seemed to use. How, then, did these words 
 maintain their places in the Dictionary? Or were there in 
 England, perhaps, or in Boston, which was literary, or in 
 Philadelphia, which was old, men and women who spoke 
 really and truly dictionary English? He didn t believe it. 
 Neither did Otto. And both were at loss to explain the 
 legion of splendid idlers with which the Dictionary was ten 
 anted. 
 
 On the whole, Guido was unfeignedly glad that, instead 
 of being dispossessed, they were still comfortably housed. 
 Like human idlers, they were so attractive and so fascinat 
 ing that merely to look occasionally at these Beau Brummels 
 of the world of print, was an undeniable privilege and 
 pleasure. 
 
 So that, in asking for the dictionary, he had been im 
 pelled not so much by a desire to benefit his mind, as by a 
 wish for facile entertainment. 
 
 The truth of the matter is this youngster of eleven was 
 in love with words. He loved them not so much for the 
 delicate shades of meaning achievable by their means, as for
 
 70 THE HYPHEN 
 
 their sound, and for their appearance their appearance, in 
 fact, even more than their sound, for in his silent pronun 
 ciation at this early stage of his career he was often utterly 
 at sea. 
 
 Words there were which steeped his linguistic sense in 
 such delight that he would repeat them over and over to 
 himself, deriving as much pleasure from the exercise as he 
 would have derived from stroking a pet dog or cat. Some 
 old English names, likes Tewksbury, Marlborough, Claren 
 don, made his heart burn and his temples throb in much the 
 same way as did the sonorous roar of the organ on the few 
 occasions when he had been taken to church. Gloucester 
 looked beautiful; it was a disillusionment to learn, as he did 
 from the German spelling of the word in Schiller s "Mary 
 Stuart" that it was pronounced plain "Gloster." And there 
 was one English word which set him frantic with delight 
 whenever he pronounced it to himself, which, indeed, had 
 the identical effect upon him that one of Schumann s Lieder 
 had when his mother played them for him. The word was 
 "Canterbury." And as long as he lived, long after child 
 hood and youth were passed, long after English had be 
 come the every-day habit and German unfamiliar from dis 
 use, that word, especially when associated with "pilgrims," 
 or "cathedral," or "bells," never failed to intone in his soul 
 one of those silent anthems from which the pure-minded 
 derive such a mystic, religious exaltation. 
 
 Humbler denizens of the world of words filled him with 
 a pleasure almost as keen. There was "poignant" for in 
 stance, which was exactly what it seemed to be ; and "phan 
 tom" so delightfully thrilling and elusive; and "marjoram," 
 which was so gentle and delicately aromatic that the rose 
 should have been renamed by it. For hours he could amuse 
 himself with words which pleased him, letting his tongue 
 play with them, his eye caress them. 
 
 German words also there were, which he loved, but, being 
 more familiar with them, they failed to exert the same 
 glamour and fascination. Yet his familiarity did not blind 
 him into their relative merit. Thus, he thought "Floete" a 
 much finer word than "flute" ; "Harfe" seemed more evan- 
 escently suggestive than "harp" ; "Herzog" was more mag 
 nificent, more feudal and princely than "duke." 
 
 He had heard someone speak of the universal tongues of
 
 CHILDHOOD 71 
 
 Esperanto and Volapiik. He thought it would be a fine 
 thing to extract from each language the most appropriate 
 words, and with this building material to construct an ideal 
 tongue for all mankind. He desired to be the Luther Bur- 
 bank of languages. 
 
 Suddenly a passion for authorship seized him. He 
 scribbled busily for a while, writing intently, correcting, re 
 writing, a juvenile Balzac in his frenzied effort for style. 
 The room was very quiet. Presently he became drowsy. 
 He flung pencil and paper away, and fixed his attention on 
 the dream-language that was to be, to which, temporarily, 
 he had given the name of "Perfecto." Then, with gentle 
 suddenness, he fell asleep. 
 
 He was awakened by the ringing of the door-bell once, 
 twice, thrice! 
 
 Old Kaetchen s creaking step, accompanied by a gentle 
 grumbling rumble which was chronic with her when sum 
 moned from the kitchen, was heard in the hall. There was 
 the sound of a door swinging open, and immediately the 
 apartment was filled with wild tumult. A tempest seemed 
 to roll along the hall, scattering stone and iron on its way. 
 There were tremendous sounds, stupendous reverberations. 
 Then the door to Guide s bedroom was flung open and 
 Otto, Otto who was responsible for all this noise, pounded 
 into the room, wildly swinging strapped books and pencil- 
 case, which thwacked where they listed, a habit which to 
 gether with the thumping bumps with which he lumbered 
 along, accounted for the furore which had heralded his 
 appearance. 
 
 "Hullo," he cried bluffly. Among themselves the boys 
 spoke English. The door banged shut. 
 
 Guido, freshly awakened, his nerves horribly rasped, 
 said: 
 
 "How do you do, Otto. I wonder how you manage to 
 make so much noise." Then, enviously, "I couldn t do it in 
 a hundred years." Noise seemed to him a concomitant of 
 health, seemed to stand for so many of the things he hadn t 
 had, and which, occasionally, he wished he had not missed. 
 
 " Of course you couldn t, you poor kid," said Otto. "How 
 d ye feel to-day?" 
 
 He himself was the picture of health, a shock-headed,
 
 72 THE HYPHEN 
 
 rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed and fair-haired rough-and-tumble 
 boy. 
 
 "I m fine," said Guido, shortly. 
 
 "That s good," said Otto, indifferently. "Wish you d been 
 in school to-day. We had a grand time. In the history class 
 we had all about Sedan." 
 
 "Sedan what s that?" 
 
 "Huh much you know, don t you?" Otto taunted his 
 friend. 
 
 "Well, I bet you didn t know before to-day, either," re 
 torted Guido. 
 
 "I didn t ? Didn t I, though. My father s a good patriot. 
 We ve got Bismarck s picture right alongside of Lincoln s 
 in the dining-room. I m named for Bismarck. So there." 
 
 A dull anger stirred in Guido. Otto, usually the most 
 good-humored of companions, became insufferably over 
 bearing whenever he began to talk Bismarck, which he did 
 quite frequently. Otto s father, Herr Baumgarten, was one 
 of those Germans who are Bismarck-fanatics, and through 
 him his little son had acquired a goodly lot of information, 
 all of it flattering, of course, about the German Machiavelli. 
 
 "My, ain t you dumb," said Otto, using a solecism greatly 
 in vogue in Anasquoit where it was the fashion to use the 
 word "dumb" not in its true significance but as an equiv 
 alent of the German "dumm," meaning stupid. 
 
 "Well, anyhow, I m not so silly as to say dumb when I 
 mean stupid," Guido retorted, hotly. 
 
 "Oh, you with your fine English," Otto jeered, thinking 
 that such affectation needed taking down. "Say, haven t 
 you been told anything a-tall about Bismarck?" And he 
 plunged into an explanation of a sort concerning Bis 
 marck s place in history. It was not very coherent, and it 
 bristled with eulogies of military glory. 
 
 "Bismarck doesn t interest me in the least," Guido spoke 
 up suddenly. 
 
 "But it s your lesson for to-morrow," said Otto, grinning. 
 
 "I don t care. I hate hearing about war. They do an aw 
 ful lot of fighting in Europe." 
 
 "Well, don t we?" Otto flung back. "We had the Revo 
 lution, and the Civil War, didn t we? And the War with 
 Spain."
 
 CHILDHOOD 73 
 
 "Well, when we fight, we always have some bully good 
 reason for it," Guido retorted, with rising bellicoseness. 
 
 "So do they at least the Germans have." 
 
 "I m not sure. I don t like Germany much. Seems to 
 me Germany alone has got enough kings and dukes and 
 things to stock a menagerie with. Why don t they get rid of 
 all that junk and start right the way we did?" 
 
 Otto appeared crestfallen. 
 
 "Well, to say the truth, I haven t got much use for em 
 perors and kings myself," he admitted. "But my farder, 
 and the Herr Direktor to-day, they don t seem to think of 
 that a-tall. And my farder says Bismarck was the greatest 
 statesman that ever lived." 
 
 "Huh!" said Guido, sitting bolt upright in bed, and 
 waving his hands dramatically. "How about Washington? 
 How about Lincoln? Huh!" 
 
 "My farder says," Otto responded, "that Lincoln was the 
 greatest man that ever lived." 
 
 But Guido was not entirely appeased. 
 
 "And Washington?" he asked, suspiciously. 
 
 "My farder says Washington was the finest man that ever 
 lived." 
 
 Guido pondered these delicate distinctions for a moment. 
 Then he demanded with that alert, searching eagerness for 
 uncomprehended things which was one of the basic traits 
 of his character : 
 
 "Otto, do you understand just what your father meant by 
 all that?" 
 
 "I never thought about it," honest Otto replied. He was 
 quite ready, evidently, to accept his father s opinions ready- 
 made, and to infuse them bodily, without question or parley, 
 into the fabric of his own mind. 
 
 "Well, you d better think about it, once," said Guido, 
 blissfully unaware that he was guilty of a barbarism which 
 was close kith and kin to the one with which he had taunted 
 his friend a moment before. 
 
 "My farder says," Otto launched forth again, "that the 
 Germans are the greatest race on earth." 
 
 "That s silly/; said Guido. 
 
 "The Herr Direktor said so, too." 
 
 "It s silly all the same." 
 
 "Oooooh !" Otto pretended to be scandalized.
 
 74 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "My mother says all races all white races are pretty 
 nearly equally good," Guido triumphantly delivered himself. 
 
 "Women don t know as much as men," remarked the irre 
 pressible Otto. At this Guido flew into a Berserker rage. 
 
 "That may be so in your home," he cried, "but not in 
 ours. My mother knows as much as any man." 
 
 Poor Otto became frightened. His own mother never 
 tired of enjoining him not to quarrel with Guido, not to hit 
 him, not to irritate him, not to tease him. He had lurid 
 visions of Guido lying stark and still in his coffin as the up 
 shot of their wrangle. Chills of apprehension traversed his 
 boyish spine. 
 
 "Don t get so mad, Guido," he said, soothingly. "I m not 
 so dumb as not to know that your mother s a wonder. Sure 
 thing. She does know as much as most men. My father 
 says she s an emancipated woman." 
 
 "Emancipated !" Here was a poser. Guido liked the tang 
 of the word. But he had not the remotest conception of 
 its meaning, though, since its flavor was so agreeable both 
 to the ear and to the tongue, it was inconceivable that it con 
 veyed either censure or contempt. Nevertheless, his morti 
 fication was great. Here was Otto, who habitually and de 
 liberately offended by using such monstrosities as "dumb" 
 and "gummi-shoes" and "going on a party" and a lot of 
 other amorphous expressions unclassifiable as German or 
 English or Perfecto, springing a long word on him, Guido, 
 which Guido had never heard of before. 
 
 Guido felt aggrieved, shocked and outraged. In his 
 mind s eye he saw his throne as Polysyllabic King tottering, 
 and to fall from that proud eminence would be calamity of 
 the first magnitude. He was aware of a sudden feeling of 
 good-fellowship, of neighborliness, of comprehending com 
 passion for the crowned heads of Europe. Humanly, if not 
 politically, there was some excuse for not chopping off all 
 their heads at one fell blow, as he had suggested a few mo 
 ments ago. He felt that his new self-knowledge, involving 
 his abysmal ignorance, had had a chastening effect on his 
 ethics, a broadening effect upon his character. He rejoiced 
 in this and felt virtuous. 
 
 By no means must he let Otto perceive how matters really 
 stood, and he wrapped himself in an air of lofty frigidity. 
 Such dissemblers are the best of us.
 
 CHILDHOOD 75 
 
 "Otto," he said, impressively, "my mother is a very ex 
 traordinary woman." He gave each syllable of "extraor 
 dinary" its full value, as if it had been a hyphenated word. 
 
 "Sure thing," said Otto. "My mother says your mother 
 was a princess or something on the other side. Was she?" 
 
 "Of course not," Guido retorted, indignantly. His an 
 cient prejudice against royalty had revived. It was scanda 
 lous of Otto to suggest such a taint in his blood. 
 
 Huh!" said Otto. "If she wasn t a princess, she was a 
 countess or a baroness, and that s almost as fine." 
 
 "Fine!" Guido echoed, weakly. 
 
 "Sure," said Otto. "Why did your mother ever come 
 here, anyhow, Guido?" 
 
 "I suppose because she loved this country," Guido replied. 
 But he spoke without conviction. He was not sure never 
 having been told why his mother had come to America. 
 
 "Huh !" Otto retorted, "you re just making that up. No 
 body comes to America because they love this country. If 
 they re poor in Germany they come because they think they 
 are going to get rich here. Silly simps! And if they are 
 rich in Germany they don t come here unless they lose their 
 money, or because they ve killed someone or robbed some 
 one and have to clear out." 
 
 "Well, I m quite sure that my mother didn t kill anyone or 
 rob anyone," Guido retorted, with scathing disdain. 
 
 "No, of course not," Otto cheerfully assented. "She 
 might have if she d been a man, but German ladies don t do 
 such things. My farder says American ladies have too 
 much liberty, and that makes them do such foolish things. 
 My farder says Americans make believe that they are 
 better than other people, but they re not. My farder says 
 it s a good thing so many Germans come to this country, 
 otherwise it would come on the dog." The last phrase, need 
 less to point out, was yet another specimen from Otto s 
 Jekyll and Hyde collection of words and phrases. "My 
 farder says " and he droned on interminably. Accord 
 ing to Otto s father, if his scion was to be believed, Ameri 
 cans and Englishmen were the possessors of all the black 
 guardly qualities in the calendar, while all noble, sterling 
 qualities of heart and mind were the property of the Ger 
 man race. 
 
 A dull irritation stirred in Guido. Something of the sort
 
 76 THE HYPHEN 
 
 he had heard his own father expound, but only sporadically, 
 when things went wrong in business. As a rule it was 
 "America is good enough for me" with Hauser. And why 
 not? Since America had been so overwhelmingly good to 
 him at least in a financial way. But Otto and Otto s father 
 continually harped on the same string. There was linked to 
 the irritation against Otto another emotion which Guido 
 could not name because it was new to him. He had never 
 experienced it before. It warmed his heart and his blood 
 and, unfortunately, his brain. He felt very very angry, but 
 his anger seemed merely to overlap and enfold the other, 
 deeper, more subtle emotion. It was elemental, went down 
 to the roots of his being, was part of himself, was perhaps 
 himself. He could not tell. And he was far too angry and 
 too deeply moved to waste time or energy in self -analysis. 
 His introspective powers were for the moment paralyzed. 
 
 And all this pent-up magnificence could find to say was : 
 
 "It s rotten to talk like that." 
 
 "It s my farder that talks like that !" Otto s round, boyish 
 face turned a deep brick-red. His blue eyes shone like blue 
 bells from that surrounding redness. 
 
 "Can t help it, it s rotten all the same." 
 
 Guido repeated the offensive words, knowing as certainly 
 as any potentate who signs a provocative ultimatum, that it 
 meant war war with Otto. He had forgotten all about 
 his professed dislike for that ancient avocation of mankind. 
 He was willing to fight not merely his beloved Otto, but ten 
 boys, a hundred boys, a thousand boys if they would dare 
 to repeat in his hearing the sentiments he had so uneuphem- 
 istically pronounced "rotten." 
 
 His youthful pacifism had gone to pieces upon the rock 
 of principle. 
 
 But of the deeper significance of what was transpiring in 
 his soul he, of course, glimpsed nothing. 
 
 As the proscribed words were repeated, Otto scrambled 
 to his feet. To him it was a personal quarrel tribal, pos 
 sibly, since his father s words had been stigmatized as "rot 
 ten." Of the deeper significance of the quarrel, he, too, 
 opined nought. 
 
 He ran his brown fingers through his fair hair, as he had 
 a habit of doing before resorting to the use of his compe-
 
 CHILDHOOD 77 
 
 tent fists. His fighting blood was up. He had forgotten his 
 mother s admonishments and Guido s weak back. 
 
 Guido, bristling, regarded his belligerent over the foot 
 board of the bed. 
 
 "I m too weak to get out of bed alone," he said, "but if 
 you ll just step around here, where I can reach you, I ll fight 
 you in bed." 
 
 The superb absurdity of it! The Spirit of 76 did not 
 throw down the gauntlet more blithely. 
 
 Slowly, but not unwillingly, Otto came around to the side 
 of the bed. He had fully mobilized. His head was 
 lowered, as for a charge, his fists were clenched and vil 
 lainous-looking. Guido faced him, also with clenched fists. 
 The flush which tinged his face had not communicated it 
 self to his hands. They were, as always, the color of wax, 
 and seemed as frail and as brittle as that commodity, and 
 the knuckles showed an unhealthy blue-white. At sight of 
 those pitifully fragile hands, all of Otto s wrath was extin 
 guished. He was, in spite of his silly braggadocio a genu 
 inely kind-hearted lad, and he loved Guido with a sincerity 
 and a devotion which never wavered. He unclenched his 
 fists, and, throwing back his head, laughed heartily. 
 
 "You silly boob," he said, "you poor simp, did you really 
 think I d fight you ! Why, if I struck you I d break you to 
 pieces, to little tiny bits." 
 
 Tears of humiliation stood in Guido s eyes. 
 
 "You shan t make fun of me because I m sick," he cried, 
 "you shall fight me, you shall!" 
 
 "Aw, forget it," said Otto, composedly. "I wasn t laugh 
 ing at you. Honest Injun. But just imagine what ud hap 
 pen if my big paw landed on your little lady-like hands." 
 
 This though kindly meant, did not assuage the wound it 
 was intended to heal. It had, in fact, a contrary effect. 
 Guido uttered a sound, which, since he had spent two entire 
 years in bed, far from the madding world of fights and 
 brawls, was really a very fair imitation of the Indian yell 
 with which school boys give battle. 
 
 "Oh, shut your face, will you ?" Otto exclaimed. He was 
 becoming alarmed by the storm he had raised but could not 
 quell. 
 
 Then something happened which amazed Guido as much 
 as it amazed Otto perhaps more. Guido s alabaster-white
 
 78 THE HYPHEN 
 
 hand shot out, and aiming true crashed resonantly upon 
 Otto s nose, causing a profuse inundation. 
 
 "Well, I never !" Otto ejaculated, spitting the blood out of 
 his mouth and fumbling for his handkerchief. He was over 
 whelmed with amazement. It never occurred to him to 
 strike back. Now that he again envisaged the invalidism of 
 his friend, he would as soon have thought of striking back 
 at his baby sister if she, in a spurt of infant fury, had at 
 tempted a similar outrage and had, by a similar miracle, 
 drawn blood. 
 
 "Well, I never," he blurted out again, still blowing and 
 puffing, to avoid swallowing the blood which was streaming 
 from his nose. He had found his handkerchief at last, the 
 typical school-boy s handkerchief, much smirched by too 
 close an association with keys, pencils, sticky candies and 
 general griminess. 
 
 "Well, I never," he repeated once more, when, at last, his 
 blood was staunched. 
 
 It did not occur to him that the blow was a foul blow, 
 but this aspect of the assault had presented itself with light 
 ning-like rapidity to Guide s quicker intelligence. 
 
 His anger had given way to shame, his indignation to a 
 sense of burning self-loathing. He had struck Otto, Otto, 
 so kind, so true, so staunch; Otto, who had lowered his 
 hands and had tried to make up. 
 
 "Otto," he cried, "I m a beast. Oh, forgive me. Please, 
 please forgive me." 
 
 "Don t be a goose," said Otto, unmindful of genders, and 
 flecking away the last driblets of blood from his abused nose 
 and jowl. "It didn t hurt. You were fearf ly quick. A 
 quick blow like that don t hurt no more n a quick cut. You 
 oughter know that much." 
 
 "But you weren t expecting it," Guido murmured, still 
 wallowing in shame. 
 
 "That s why it didn t hurt, I m telling you, you duffer," 
 Otto rejoined. "Stop your yowling, won t you ?" For un 
 ashamedly, Guido had broken into sobs. 
 
 "I can t help it," sobbed Guido, "you re always so go-go- 
 go-good to me, and I m such a little beast !" 
 
 Stoically Otto sat down near the bed, resolved to see the 
 affair through, since, apparently, there was nothing else to 
 do.
 
 CHILDHOOD 79 
 
 Guido, still sobbing, and determined upon the amende 
 honorable, said: 
 
 "Otto, I don t know what emancipated means." 
 
 Self-abasement, for a Polysyllabic King, could go no 
 further. 
 
 Otto, regarding his friend reflectively, rejoined, appar- 
 enty quite unmoved by the latter s magnanimity: 
 
 "Neither do I." 
 
 Then, through some secret, unfathomable channel of the 
 soul Guido s self-respect came oozing back. But his sobbing 
 continued. He was almost hysterical. 
 
 "For heaven sake," quoth Otto sternly, "quit that yelping. 
 Will you now? I tell you I don t care a hang about your 
 making my nose bleed. But if you are going to howl your 
 self sick, like a sissy, my mudder ll tell my farder, and he ll 
 lick me within an inch of my life. Now, will you stop ?" 
 
 Guido stopped. But, although he was now entirely over 
 whelmed by Otto s generosity, he could not help saying, a 
 moment later: 
 
 "But don t you go running Americans down again, like 
 you did before." 
 
 "I should worry," rejoined Otto. "We ain t Americans. 
 We re Germans." 
 
 "Yes," Guido assented in good faith. "We re Germans. 
 But America is our country. At least it s mine. So there." 
 
 That evening Guido confided to his mother the secret of 
 his incipient authorship. He produced the magic document 
 upon which he had labored in the afternoon, and handed it 
 to her. 
 
 This is what Frau Ursula read: 
 
 "An antiquated man with a face like a pilkin lived on a 
 pippin farm where roans also were grown in a covert near 
 a causeway swung from a halyard across a weir and do 
 mesticated with him " 
 
 Frau Ursula gulped convulsively and broke into a spasm 
 of coughing. 
 
 "Did you take cold yesterday, Mother?" Guido inquired. 
 Truth to tell he spoke a little impatiently. For how dared a 
 mere cough interrupt his mother s enjoyment of her son s 
 first independent excursion into English prose? 
 
 Frau Ursula presented a serious face to the youngster
 
 8o THE HYPHEN 
 
 when she spoke. The heroism of motherhood, even vicari 
 ous motherhood such as hers, knows no bounds. 
 
 "Guido," she said, "I do not doubt it is very beautiful. 
 But you know, my son, I am but an indifferent English 
 scholar, and my vocabulary is entirely inadequate for the 
 comprehension of your remarkable diction. My pet, will 
 you do this for me ? To-morrow write me out a definition 
 copied from the dictionary, of each of the words which I 
 am going to underline." 
 
 Guido, not very well pleased with a task which smacked 
 of being-kept-in-after-school procedure, consented with 
 poor grace. Years elapsed before the true reason of his 
 mother s strange request became clear to him. His com 
 pliance with it, however, bore immediate fruit as she had 
 meant it should do. It taught him not to use words the 
 meaning of which was hazy and obscure.
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 FRAU SCHUSTER returned the next day, looking 
 dingier and more dilapidated and less palatable than 
 ever. By no stretch of the imagination could one fancy 
 her as ever having been a light-hearted, light-footed young 
 girl, who went to picnics and danced at weddings and de 
 prived daisies ruthlessly of their petals to see whether her 
 love was errant or true. None, that is, excepting a warm 
 hearted child. 
 
 For Guido loved her. When she told him wonderful 
 stories of her childhood in far-away Germany, stories 
 almost as entrancing as those which his mother told him 
 of her young days, he thought of her in terms of a con 
 temporary. There was, of course, a marked difference 
 between the tales of Frau Schuster s youth and his 
 mother s juvenile recollections. His mother s childhood had 
 been spent in the lap of luxury, about which hovered 
 nursery governesses and maids, and coachmen and foot 
 men and gardeners galore. Frau Schuster, on the other 
 hand, had been the youngest of thirteen children, born to 
 a poor country vicar. On the children s birthdays, as a 
 great treat, they had chocolate soup for supper, and on 
 her father s birthday the merry little tribe had been re 
 galed with Karpfen mit Rosinen, and Weissbiersuppe, and 
 Zwetschgenkuchen, delicacies whose charm, as Frau 
 Schuster willingly admitted, were greatly impaired when 
 translated into an English-speaking world as carp with 
 raisins, beer soup and plum cake. But they had tasted 
 excellently well in Germany, she asseverated, and plum- 
 cake, as Guido knew for himself, was just as tasty in 
 America as in Germany, or would have been, if American 
 plums had been as good as German plums. At this point 
 of her yarn, overcome by the pathos of her reminiscences, 
 the poor old soul would sadly shake her head. There was 
 no doubt, she would say with the utmost gravity, and was 
 as sincere in this as in all things, that the soil about the 
 
 81
 
 82 THE HYPHEN 
 
 vicarage of the Herr Pastor Blase winkel in Herrgottsau, 
 Thueringen, was peculiarly well adapted to the growing 
 of plums. There never were and never would be the 
 world over plums with such a flavor. 
 
 The simple-hearted old woman did not suspect that the 
 especial flavor of those plums was due to the simple, hearty 
 kindness which had surrounded her childhood and the life 
 of her parents, and which had made of the Blasewinkel 
 vicarage, in spite of the energetic frugality which thirteen 
 mouths to feed made imperative, a little paradise. 
 
 Nor did the little lad to whom she told these tales of 
 gastronomic enjoyment suspect it. He would lean back 
 in his pillows with a sigh of vast content, and vow that 
 when he was a man and had lots of money as grown-ups 
 always had, he would go back to Germany with Frau 
 Schuster and they would seek out the vicarage at Herr 
 gottsau, and if necessary buy it, and then they would eat 
 Weissbiersuppe, and Karpfen mit Rosinen and Zwetchgen- 
 kuchen not once a year but every day while carp were in 
 season and the plum preserves on the long, wide shelves 
 in the dark cool cellar of the vicarage lasted. 
 
 Frau Schuster had been quite ill the day before, she said, 
 and upon looking at her, Frau Ursula hazarded the re 
 mark that Frau Schuster was understating the truth she 
 looked so very ill. And Frau Ursula added another to 
 her already innumerable attempts to persuade the faded 
 old gentlewoman to enter a home. Frau Schuster resisted, 
 as usual. 
 
 "I haven t the money," she said, finally. 
 
 "I have told you half a dozen times that the money will 
 be forthcoming," said Frau Ursula, kindly. 
 
 "I have never accepted charity in all my life," replied 
 the poor old woman, sniffing lugubriously. Her tone be 
 came moist and flabby. Tears were imminent. 
 
 "You should not regard the gift of a sum which would 
 enable you to enter a home as charity," said Frau Ursula, 
 soothingly. "Your life has been a useful one. You have 
 been kind, efficient, unselfish. Always you have given more 
 than you have received. If that were not so you would 
 have enough now to buy yourself into a home. Society 
 owes virtuous old age, when that old age is childless, the
 
 CHILDHOOD 83 
 
 security and the decency of a comfortable home. Can 
 you not bring yourself to look at it in this light?" 
 
 "Ach, nein," Frau Schuster replied, "it really cannot be, 
 Frau Kommerzienrat!" 
 
 Frau Shuster, who was afflicted with the Teuton s in 
 curable love for titles, had bestowed this fortuitous one 
 upon Frau Ursula. She had a profound conviction that fate 
 would have bestowed at least that much of a title upon 
 Mr. Hauser, if he had elected to remain at home in Ger 
 many. In what country, excepting plebeian America, 
 would this badge of commercial distinction have been 
 churlishly withheld from so patrician a daughter of the 
 human race? Frau Schuster regarded all things American 
 with a pitying contempt. Her own emigration had been 
 the result of her marriage the marriage had been en 
 forced by her father, the emigration by her husband, upon 
 whom, in turn, it had been enforced by circumstances of 
 which he was not the victim. Women were the toys of 
 men, men the playthings of life, and America the self- 
 inflicted Siberia of misguided or erring Germans. Such 
 was Frau Schuster s philosophy. 
 
 Frau Ursula perceived the futility of endeavoring to 
 change a viewpoint so ingrained, but she decided to make 
 an effort to persuade the old woman to come and live 
 with them. She was not given to procrastination. But she 
 procrastinated now because she had an urgent call to pay. 
 
 Frau Schuster s chief ailment was asthma. Attendant 
 upon that ill, and augmented by and augmenting it, was 
 arterioscleriosis, the disease of old age. The doctor had 
 furthermore discovered that she was rheumatic, and ac 
 cordingly she was equipped with an entirely new outfit of 
 panaceas medicated cigarettes for the asthma and lithia 
 tablets for the rheumatism. 
 
 Guido watched with the utmost interest the entertaining 
 spectacle of a staid old lady of seventy-eight smoking, or 
 trying to smoke, her first cigarette. Truth to tell she did 
 not succeed very well, nor did she try very hard. She 
 seemed to have a feeling that the proprieties required her 
 to fail, lest in succeeding doubt be cast upon her erstwhile 
 continence. She had a horror of being suspected of secret 
 vices. It was the poor woman s last vanity.
 
 84 THE HYPHEN 
 
 So, instead of placing an end of the cigarette in her 
 mouth, as an orthodox cigarette required, she fussed and 
 blew and whistled at its lighted end, as if it could be made 
 to yield its virtue in such wise, like a punk. 
 
 The cigarette was a failure. Guido thought he could 
 do better himself, and offered to smoke one for her. But, 
 after due cogitation, she decided that even a medicated 
 cigarette might engender the habit of smoking in her charge, 
 and Guide s ambitions came to nought. 
 
 The lithia tablets, on the other hand, were a source of 
 satisfaction both to the patient and to the observer. 
 Dropped into a tumbler of water, the tablets spurted joy 
 ously heavenward, as if challenging the laws of gravita 
 tion. Each tablet was a tiny witch s cauldron, upsetting 
 Newton s Law. It exhilarated Guido merely to watch that 
 tempestuously bubbling miniature geyser. He enjoyed the 
 frothing hubbub so much that he hoped Frau Schuster 
 would require a tablet every hour. But hers was not a 
 desperate case, and the intervals prescribed were three 
 hours. They had a little argument about it, and for once 
 she did not yield to his entreaties. Guido, for the world 
 of him, could not rejoice that matters as far at least as 
 her rheumatism was concerned were not so very bad with 
 her after all. He was avid to watch another tumbler of 
 water in chemical commotion. He was almost sorry that 
 Frau Schuster was not more ill than she was. 
 
 In all he had the pleasure of watching only four of Frau 
 Schuster s tablets gush themselves away into nothingness 
 that day, and it was written in the book of fate that he 
 was to see no more. For the poor creature fell ill that 
 very night after reaching home, and had to be removed 
 to the hospital. A week later Frau Ursula told Guido that 
 his old companion-nurse had decided, after all, to go to 
 the Home. Several weeks elapsed before he learned the 
 truth. She had died three days after reaching the hos 
 pital. They would not have told Guido of her death even 
 then, but Frau Schuster had enjoined upon the hospital 
 nurse not to forget to see that little Guido Hauser received 
 a small box made of rosewood and inlaid with mother-of- 
 pearl, which she had treasured very highly. It was locked, 
 and the key had been lost and it was necessary to call in 
 a locksmith to open it, a circumstance which vastly stimu-
 
 CHILDHOOD 85 
 
 lated Guide s imagination. He expected to find in it at 
 the least a chart revealing where hidden treasure had been 
 sunk or buried, in the vicarage garden at Herrgottsau. 
 
 But when they opened the box there was in it nothing 
 but a string of jade beads, very beautifully carved, and an 
 exquisitely embroidered cambric handkerchief, yellow with 
 age, in which something was wrapped. 
 
 Guido allowed the jade beads to glide through his ringers 
 with a feeling of mingled delight and regret. 
 
 "The Schlossherr, Baron Von Arndt, brought it to her 
 from China, when she was eight years old. He brought 
 one for her and for Schulmeister s Kaetchen because once 
 a week they spent an afternoon at the Schloss with his 
 youngest daughter." And immediately his imagination car 
 ried him back to the vicarage at Herrgottsau. The picture 
 conjured was as clean-cut as if he had lived there himself. 
 
 Frau Ursula did not allow him to drift too far away. 
 
 "See, Guido, here is something else," she said, handing 
 him the saffron-odored handkerchief. 
 
 The child received it, and carefully unwrapped it. There 
 appeared a bottle, a stout, squat, bull-necked bottle, of 
 modern, American manufacture, which Guido recognized at 
 a glance. It contained Frau Schuster s lithia tablets. 
 
 If Frau Ursula perceived anything ludicrous in this 
 legacy, she gave no sign, and any secret sense of the ridicu 
 lous which she may have entertained was speedily eclipsed 
 by the look of horror which came to the boy s face. 
 
 "Guido, mein Herz, what is the matter? Shall I take 
 it away?" 
 
 "By no means." The boy s fingers clasped themselves 
 feverishly about the lithia tablet bottle, suggesting un- 
 guessed strength in the feeble-appearing fingers. 
 
 Frau Ursula was a respecter of the veils and draperies 
 which swathe the soul. She did not seek to pry into the 
 matter which was tormenting her boy. She knew him well 
 enough to know that the fever of excitement, by whatsoever 
 caused, must run its course. Very quietly she rose and 
 left him alone. 
 
 His imagination was always a Pegasus ; with conscience 
 as the jockey, there was no checking it midway in its 
 wild careening. And wildly careen it did. He was filled 
 with bitter self-reproach, and self-reproach was followed
 
 86 THE HYPHEN 
 
 by self-execration. For the sake of a momentary, sensual 
 pleasure (he had no conception, of course, of the coarser 
 meaning of sensual!) he had wished a fellow-creature 
 to be more ill than she was. And he had wished it at a 
 time when death had already stretched out for her his 
 fleshless arms. And this although, since he was always 
 sick himself, he knew just what discomfort illness and 
 pain impose. And in dying, the victim of his lawless 
 thoughts had bequeathed to him the very thing that had 
 caused him such an unholy joy and such unholy desires. 
 He was a beast. Nay, more. He was a devil. Probably 
 if he had lived at an earlier period and had had the power, 
 he would have been a second Nero. Perhaps he had been 
 Nero. Perhaps he had burned Rome for the pleasure of 
 seeing it in flames. Perhaps he had been Caligula. And 
 the more he thought about it, the more probable it seemed 
 to him that in some previous life he had been one of these 
 monsters. He had, as we know, received virtually no 
 religious instruction whatever, but he had read of the 
 Egyptian belief of transmigration of souls. And his re 
 ligious fantasy, reaching out, appropriated the convenient 
 doctrine in the hour of his spiritual downfall. 
 
 For a little while he was very miserable. Then, in turn 
 ing over the pages of the Dictionary, he discovered the 
 word "tumulosity," and was forthwith plunged into such 
 an ecstasy of joy that he forgot all about his secret guilt. 
 
 About ten days later he was told by his mother that his 
 new companion-nurse would arrive in a few days and that 
 she was to make her home with them. 
 
 "Is she just like Frau Schuster?" the child asked, eagerly. 
 
 From the quickness with which he shot the question at 
 her, his mother perceived that he had taken it for granted 
 that the delay in providing a new companion for him had 
 been occasioned by the natural difficulties which beset the 
 quest for an exact counterpart of Frau Schuster. How 
 confused, after all, was even a clever child s ratiocination. 
 Frau Ursula smiled oddly, wryly. 
 
 "She is like Frau Schuster in that she is a widow. 
 Otherwise, she is entirely different." 
 
 "But, Mother, then will she do ?" 
 
 The unconscious tribute to the dead woman implied by 
 this adorable simplicity touched Frau Ursula to the quick.
 
 CHILDHOOD 87 
 
 She wished, fully conscious of the futility of such wishing, 
 that the poor old woman might have had the comfort of 
 knowing on what sublime heights dwelt the lad s esteem 
 of herself. 
 
 "I think she will do very well, indeed, Guido, if you 
 will like her and if she will like you." 
 
 "And in what way is she different, Mother?" 
 
 "In the first place, dear, she is not a German." 
 
 "Not a German? But, Mother, how then will I be able 
 to talk to her?" 
 
 "I think," said Frau Ursula, smiling broadly, "that you 
 are quite capable of making yourself understood in 
 English." 
 
 "Yes, of course only that is Mother!" He wound 
 up weakly, fully aware that his feeble tongue was not able 
 to cope in the least with the multitude of objections which 
 accrued to an American in the capacity of companion- 
 nurse. 
 
 He had in all his little life met only three or four real 
 Americans, as he and friend Otto invariably designated 
 Americans of Anglo-Saxon extraction to distinguish them 
 from themselves. There was, for instance, an old Mr. 
 Furlong, who kept a stationery store near the school. His 
 manner and accent, although there was nothing ominous 
 in either, awed Guido, almost frightened him. It seemed 
 mysterious, as if coming from some higher region of the 
 world or the throat. The fact that he understood Mr. 
 Furlong perfectly, knew the meaning of every word spoken 
 by him, while on the other hand his own tongue was in 
 capable of breathing that subtle enchantment upon the same 
 work-a-day words, made the thing so baffling. 
 
 He would never feel at home with an American, he 
 thought. They awed him too mightily. 
 
 Then, too, constant contact with an American would rob 
 that semi-luminous, semi-nebulous fairyland inhabited by 
 difficult English words of its glamour and fragrance. 
 Dozens of words there were, which he loved in appearance 
 and sound, while having only a hazy idea of their meaning. 
 He v/as almost afraid to inquire too narrowly into their 
 meaning. He studiously avoided scanning the definitions 
 in the dictionary printed alongside of these gorgeous
 
 88 THE HYPHEN 
 
 charmers. He was content to be fascinated by them with 
 out troubling closely to scrutinize their characters. 
 
 Worst of all, perhaps, with an American in the house, 
 his mother would be forced to speak English, a practice 
 which he abhorred. Frau Ursula s English had no curious 
 twists and turns, her accent was not bad, was, in fact, 
 deemed pretty by the Americans with whom she had 
 speech, being an intonation rather than a crude distortion. 
 But Guido, who had the ear of a purist, and who gloried 
 in the meticulousness of her German, thought her English 
 insufferable. His admiration and love for her dwelt on 
 so high a plane that he could not bear to think of her as 
 less than perfect in any way. 
 
 Furthermore, he was the victim of an unhappy feeling 
 which dated back to a day when his mother had pointed 
 out to him, then a tiny boy of five, the first real Americans 
 he had ever consciously beheld. They were so well dressed 
 and so well groomed, so free from noisy gestures and ex 
 aggerated speech, that, from that day on a vivid portrait 
 of that American family had been clearly limned in his 
 mind, and he had come to regard his early model as a sort 
 of composite portrait of all American families. 
 
 Henceforth Americans had appeared to him to constitute 
 a superior race. 
 
 And right here he was forced into a cruel, a hazardous 
 predicament. To confess this emotion to his mother, who 
 was German-born, was to stigmatize her as having sprung 
 from an inferior race. His love forbade the infliction of 
 such a hurt upon her who was dearer to him than all the 
 world beside. He took himself very seriously, and like all 
 persons, childrens or grown-ups, who have a taste for that 
 form of entertainment, he became intensely miserable. 
 
 Of one thing he was sure. He must keep his objections 
 and his despondency to himself, and submit to having this 
 wondrous creature from another realm invade his own 
 humble sphere. Henceforth he must go cold in winter, 
 hot in summer, uncomfortable at all seasons. For never, 
 never, NEVER would he be able to ask an American to 
 fetch him a glass of water, to put an extra blanket on his 
 bed, to thwack his pillows, to open the window or to per 
 form any of the hundred and one ministrations of the 
 sick-room.
 
 CHILDHOOD 89 
 
 Princesses and fairies were all very well between story 
 book covers, but why should they wish to step out of the 
 golden frame into the drab dank world of commonplace? 
 
 He perceived with bitterness inexpressible that it was im 
 possible to magnify the disaster which loomed ahead. 
 
 The name of the Disaster was Mrs. Donald Thornton. 
 The name, which satisfied both Guido s sense of romance 
 and love of euphony, under other circumstances, would 
 have been a mine of delight. As matters stood, it only 
 put a keener edge upon his misery. Mrs. Donald Thornton, 
 as one could tell by the name, would not fit in with Anas- 
 quoit society. Among the Schumachers, the Herrlichs, the 
 Ladenhoffs and Dieseldoeffers. He imagined her as a sort 
 of Dowager Duchess, with a long black veil, heavily edged 
 with crepe, a haughty mien, cuffs and collars of real 
 Brussels lace and an accent so distinguished and English 
 that he would never be able to utter a single, silly word 
 in her presence. It did not occur to him to think of Frau 
 Schuster s successor as other than old. 
 
 It was high noon of a blustery April day when the 
 Disaster arrived. Little wind flurries had stirred the dust 
 in the street and had left it lying in tiny heaps against 
 fences and stoops and in area-ways, as if it had been snow. 
 But the sky was gloriously blue, the clouds virginally white 
 and the air a thing to drink in as greedily as apple cider 
 at Thanskgiving. 
 
 Guido, straining every nerve to hear, listened anxiously 
 to the greetings which were being exchanged in the parlor 
 by his mother and the Calamity. The sounds which reached 
 him were not formidable. Nevertheless he was terribly 
 agitated. He expected, he knew not what. His hands 
 were cold and clammy. His brow was feverish with ex 
 citement. 
 
 Finally, after an interminabfe conversation, of which 
 Guido did not understand a word because his mother and 
 the stranger had lowered their voices, his mother ushered 
 in Mrs. Thornton. And then poor Guido had the surprise 
 of his life. The Disaster was not old and haughty and 
 crisp and Duchess-like. She was young, so very young 
 that it was hard to believe that she had ever been married 
 and was now a widow. For Guido had the average child s
 
 90 THE HYPHEN 
 
 notion that all married folk always excepting its own 
 mother are old and staid, or at least well on in middle 
 age. In spite of her widowhood, which was recent, she 
 was not dressed in mourning. She wore a dark-blue 
 mannish suit with a shirtwaist of pink crepe de chine and 
 a trimmed, high-crowned sailor hat. 
 
 And she was pretty, quite preposterously pretty. Her 
 brown hair seemed to have snared some of the glory of 
 the April sun, and, as she entered, the room seemed filled 
 with a sudden bright effulgence. Guido, who had in a 
 superlative degree the passive power of being charmed, 
 fell desperately in love with her in a moment. He was 
 so delighted with Mrs. Thornton s winning, sweet person 
 ality that he forgot to be frightened. Instantly he enthroned 
 her in the inner shrine of his heart, very near the holy of 
 holies where his mother s image dwelt. 
 
 "So this is the little man I am to sit with," said Mrs. 
 Thornton, and, as if divining that he hated to have grown 
 ups stand near his bed and loom down upon him like the 
 Pyramids or the leaning Tower of Pisa, immediately 
 seated herself in a chair quite near his bed. Very slowly 
 she drew her soft suede gloves from her hands. The action 
 entranced him. 
 
 "I hope we are going to be good friends, Guido," she 
 said, in a voice as winning as her personality. 
 
 In the fantastic loneliness in which his life was lapped, 
 he had rehearsed this meeting with Mrs. Thornton not 
 once but a dozen times, just as he had tried to draw a 
 mental portrait of her. Each rehearsal had suggested a 
 new modification. None of them had tallied with the 
 reality. Now, in view of the simple directness of her 
 greeting, all his efforts at a forecast seemed labored and 
 crude. But, because he had bungled in imagination, was 
 no reason why he should bungle now. He wanted des 
 perately to put his best foot forward, to charm as he had 
 been charmed. 
 
 "I m sure we are going to be good friends," he said, 
 shyly. "We will be, if it depends upon me." 
 
 "You dear little lad!" Mrs. Thornton exclaimed, placing 
 soft, pink fingers on his white, cold little hand. "Why, I 
 love you already." 
 
 He looked at her pleadingly with his soft, dark eyes.
 
 CHILDHOOD 91 
 
 He wanted to tell her that he was her abject slave. But 
 he was afraid she might laugh at him if he employed so 
 energetic a mode of describing his attachment. So he said, 
 quite simply: 
 
 "I think you are wonderful. I like you more than any 
 one I ve ever met, excepting, of course, my mother." 
 
 "You adorable little boy!" Impulsively she flung her 
 arms about him, and straining him to her heart, kissed him 
 softly on brow and neck. 
 
 When she released him he perceived that her eyes were 
 moist. She was struggling to overcome some supreme 
 emotion. Suddenly she broke into sobs. She rose, and 
 walked away from his bed to the farthest corner of the 
 room, his mother following. 
 
 "I m afraid," said Frau Ursula, "it is going to be too 
 hard for you." 
 
 "Oh, no," Mrs. Thornton retorted. "I m not crying be 
 cause it is going to be hard, but because it is going to be 
 so sweet. He s perfect oh, quite perfect! If you knew 
 how empty my arms have been it s a God-send, dear Mrs. 
 Hauser. It s going to help me lots. The double cross was 
 almost more than I could bear. I m ashamed of my weak 
 ness." 
 
 "My dear, my dear," Guido heard his mother say, 
 tenderly. 
 
 He reflected on the queerness of women. They must 
 both think him very obtuse if they flattered themselves that 
 he did not know what they were speaking about. From 
 Mrs. Thornton s disjointed ejaculations he knew as plainly 
 as if he had been told that she had recently lost a little 
 child as well as her husband. And he understood his 
 mother s mode of reasoning perfectly. Because he himself 
 was ill she did not wish to have anyone tell him of the 
 death of a child, as if he didn t know from his story books 
 that children died as readily as adults. And he was not 
 afraid of death. Not in the least. He had never been 
 present at a funeral, had never looked upon the face of a 
 corpse, and in spite of the passionate seriousness with 
 which his imagination worked upon any subject to which 
 it fastened itself, there were strange gaps in his flights of 
 fancy which corresponded to the gaps in his knowledge of 
 the outside world chasms which imagination could not
 
 92 THE HYPHEN 
 
 bridge without some suggestion of reality from which to 
 swing its cables. 
 
 He knew nothing of the theories of heaven and hell, 
 nothing of atheism. When he thought of death he thought 
 of it not as an extinction but an enlargement of life. That 
 he had no concept whatever as to the nature of the Great 
 Beyond, added to the zest of the adventure involved in 
 that final expedition. Death was a tremendous excursion, 
 a tremendous augmentation of one s powers. Of that he 
 felt certain. 
 
 He was a little irritated by the secrecy in which his 
 mother and Mrs. Thornton were trying to hide the bald 
 fact that Mrs. Thornton had lost a child. He was tempted 
 to tell them that he knew. Then he reflected it would be 
 unkind to spoil their illusion of mystery. 
 
 "I am going to leave you alone with Guide so that you 
 may become acquainted with each other," said Frau Ursula. 
 "I must not speak much to you in his presence," she added, 
 mischievously. 
 
 Mrs. Thornton expressed a perfectly natural astonish 
 ment. 
 
 "You see," Frau Ursula continued, still mischievous, 
 "Guido objects to my English." 
 
 "Mother!" Poor Guido s face was crimson. Now 
 Mrs. Thornton would think him a very horrid little boy. 
 "It s like this," he murmured, "Mother s German is so 
 beautiful, and, well, her English isn t." 
 
 "I understand perfectly," said Mrs. Thornton, smiling, 
 and patting his hand. "You see, it s just the reverse with 
 me. My English is well, not beautiful, exactly, but 
 tolerable while my German is a thing to shudder at." 
 
 Mother and son expressed their surprise at the un 
 suspected accomplishment of German. 
 
 "Ich sprechen ein klein Bischen, aber ich verstehen 
 alles" said Mrs. Thornton, screwing her mouth into a 
 comical caricature of itself, and speaking in a queer, 
 strained voice that chopped the words into stiff, hard syl 
 lables spiked with corners and bristles. Almost it seemed 
 as if she wished to ridicule the German language which, 
 as she was a gentlewoman, was, of course, unthinkable. 
 Also, she had, in one brief little sentence, made two bad 
 breaks. One thing was certain. Mrs. Thornton s German
 
 CHILDHOOD 93 
 
 was quite as excruciating as his mother s English. Guido 
 was rather glad to have discovered this imperfection in 
 Mrs. Thornton. It did not cheapen her in his eyes. It 
 merely restored his self-esteem which had lain sick and 
 wounded for so long a time owing to his mother s disa 
 bility. Probably, he reflected, each would address the other 
 in her own tongue; and he was glad of it. 
 
 Mrs. Thornton was a revelation to Guido. He drank 
 in greedily every peculiarity of speech and manner. Be 
 cause she was an American, she had for him, who was 
 American-born himself, the charm of the exotic. She 
 affected him as did the alpine violets which Dr. Koenig 
 sent to his mother every Christmas, flowers which, by no 
 stretch of the imagination, could he fancy as growing in 
 anything so familiar as his own garden. 
 
 She used a good many expressions which, because they 
 were new to him, delighted him inordinately. He loved 
 to hear her say, "Really?" and "Just fancy such a thing." 
 He thought "I presume" a great improvement on "I 
 think," as he himself would have said, and on "I guess," 
 which was Otto s non-committal way of expressing an 
 opinion. He was a little puzzled by Mrs. Thornton s habit 
 of using unexpectedly the word "right." She said "right 
 pretty" and "right cold," instead of "very pretty" and "very 
 cold." He had, at this period of his life, not the faintest 
 notion that there were colloquialisms in English as well 
 as in German. Frau Heinrichs, the washerwoman, spoke 
 plattdeutsch (low German) and Frau Schuster, to amuse 
 him had sometimes broken into the dialect of Baden, where 
 she had lived for some years after her marriage, and he 
 knew that there were dozens of other German dialects in 
 addition to these two. But he did not know at this time 
 that the English of Scotland and the English of Ireland 
 not only differ from each other, but differ from the English 
 of Wales, of Lancashire, of Soho and Mayfair. 
 
 It was therefore a very wise move on his mother s part 
 that she had brought America, in the person of Mrs. 
 Thornton, into her boy s ken as an antidote to the unes- 
 capable German and German-American atmosphere in 
 which the lad lived, since his schoolmates, and his teachers, 
 and his friends, and the servants inevitably provided it. 
 
 He would have loved dearly to copy some of Mrs.
 
 94 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Thornton s more conspicuous expressions, but ordinarily he 
 lacked the courage to do so. One day, to overawe Otto, 
 he essayed Mrs. Thornton s style, but instead of overawing 
 Otto, he merely excited his scorn. 
 
 "You think you re real smart, don t you?" taunted Otto. 
 "Oh, I beg pardon, I meant to say right smart. If you 
 don t look out, you ll be a regular American," he concluded, 
 warningly. 
 
 "But that s what I want to be," said Guido, hotly. 
 
 "Well, if you d rather be an American than a German 
 you re a boob," continued Otto. "Americans don t know 
 much. My farder says so. They re not thorough the way 
 Germans are thorough. Anyhow, you ll be nothing but a 
 copy-cat. You say Right-O, and What a lark, and 
 How absurd, just the way Mrs. Thornton says it. Next 
 thing you ll be wearing your hair fluffed up over your 
 temples and be begging your mother for girl s dresses." 
 
 Guido was white with rage, but he was just enough to 
 realize that, in a measure, he had deserved Otto s ridicule. 
 So, instead of retaliating, he fenced. 
 
 "You like Mrs. Thornton yourself," he said, in his top- 
 loftiest manner. 
 
 "Sure thing, why not?" conceded Otto. "That marble 
 cake she baked was fine. And that pudding of hers with 
 custard jelly and beaten cream and whipped white of eggs 
 was just grand." 
 
 "Whipped cream and beaten white of eggs," corrected 
 Guido, gently, feeling that he was scoring a dozen points. 
 
 "Well, it tastes just as good no matter what you call 
 it," said Otto, wholly unabashed. "My mother said," he 
 continued, "she wouldn t mind having the recipe for that 
 pudding." 
 
 "Indeed!" Guido had been within an ace of saying 
 "Really," but had caught himself in time. "Can an Ameri 
 can teach a German anything? I thought Americans didn t 
 know anything and Germans knew it all." 
 
 "You are very sarkastisch at times," said Otto, looking 
 hot and red. 
 
 After that Otto s braggadocio was a litte less offensive 
 than before, while Guido refrained from deliberately pilfer 
 ing from another person s terminology, no matter how 
 tempting the outlay.
 
 CHILDHOOD 95 
 
 Mrs. Thornton s stories for of course Guido requisi 
 tioned stories from her as from, all other adults were 
 replete with the atmosphere of America. Her girlhood 
 had been spent on a farm in the Middle West, and the 
 tales she told Guido reflected the homely charm and, it 
 must be confessed, the somewhat narrow life of the Ameri 
 can farmer. Her tales were of sewing bees, quilting 
 parties, prayer-meetings and revivals; of the daily round 
 of chores, plowing and sowing and driving the cattle to 
 pasture and home again; of butter-churning, of bread and 
 pie-baking, of preserving and canning and rag-carpet 
 weaving. From her stories the child gleaned his first in 
 sight into the typical life of American America, which is not 
 found in the cities or even in the suburbs as much as in the 
 broad expanses of fertile acres in the sparsely populated 
 country in which all the States, even the Eastern States, 
 abound. These stories broadened his horizon and enlarged 
 his vocabulary. He learned the English names of many 
 simple household utensils and implements which, incredible 
 as it seems, he had heretofore been able to name in German 
 only. Such simple words as newel-post, gridiron, crane, 
 threshold and eaves were new to him, and as his vocabu- 
 larly became enriched, his diction became more flexible, 
 his locutions simpler. He himself was unaware of the 
 change, but he was falling more and more into the English 
 idiom in speaking English. Perversions which he had 
 formerly used, as "leave a little over for me," and "that s 
 for the cat," were expurgated forever from his vocabulary. 
 
 Mrs. Thornton had another accomplishment which he 
 coveted. She was an indefatigable knitter. He begged 
 long and hard to be taught this feminine art before she 
 would allow him to ask his mother s consent. 
 
 Frau Ursula laughed when questioned. 
 
 "Why not?" she said. "Why should he not learn to 
 knit if he wishes to? There was an officer in a crack 
 German regiment whom we knew very well who was an 
 expert knitter," she added, reminiscently. 
 
 Mrs. Thornton had been reading the Sermon on the 
 Mount to Guido and she now took up the Bible and re 
 sumed reading where she had left off. She had not read 
 more than a few sentences when she became aware of
 
 96 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Frau Ursula standing beside her, very white and a little 
 peremptory. 
 
 "Verzeihung," she said, "is it the Bible you are reading 
 to Guido ?" 
 
 "Why, yes," Mrs. Thornton replied, a little surprised. 
 "There is no objection, is there?" 
 
 "Oh, Mother," Guido cried, "please don t forbid me to 
 read the Scriptures. I love them. And it s the loveliest 
 Bible you ever saw. It s so old it contains the Maccabees. 
 Just look at it, Mutterchen!" 
 
 Mrs. Thornton handed it to Frau Ursula, smiling, ana 
 Frau Ursula, annoyed with herself for having shown her 
 concern, received the book and turned over the pages care 
 lessly. After all, it was impossible never to allow the child 
 to see a Bible. She herself had permitted him to accom 
 pany her to church a few times. What a puzzle it was 
 that confronted her? How was No-Bias possible? How? 
 
 As she nervously continued to turn over the pages of 
 Mrs. Thornton s well-thumbed Bible, it fell open at the 
 fly-leaf, which was almost entirely covered with names in 
 various handwritings, which, very evidently, were the sig 
 natures of the various Thorntons who had owned the 
 volume. Alongside of each name was a date the date 
 on which possession had been acquired. 
 
 Mrs. Thornton leaned over toward Frau Ursula, and 
 ran her fingers down the column of names. She found the 
 name which she was seeking. Indicating it, she said: 
 
 "He was one of the Signers." 
 
 "One of the Signers?" Frau Ursula inquired politely, 
 non-comprehension in her eyes. 
 
 But Guido, who was younger, more alert, more Ameri 
 canized, divined the meaning of the word thus used. 
 
 "One of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence !" 
 he cried, almost boisterously. 
 
 "Yes," Mrs. Thornton nodded, smiling at his enthusiasm. 
 
 "Oh, Mother, isn t it wonderful?" 
 
 He was lost in exuberant delight. At the moment Mrs. 
 Thornton seemed to him almost sacrosanct, a personage so 
 exalted that she should be surrounded with the circum 
 stances of pomp. It seemed incredible to him that she 
 should be sitting there at his bedside, playing with him and
 
 CHILDHOOD 97 
 
 taking care of him as if she had been just an ordinary 
 every-day person like himself. 
 
 "My husband," Mrs. Thornton was saying, "was not a 
 lineal descendant, and the Bible came to him in a round 
 about way through a distant kinsman. I myself am a 
 Daughter of the Revolution." 
 
 Guide s sense of awe increased. It was the first time 
 that he had come into flesh-and-blood contact with his 
 toric America, and the effect was exhilarating. Of historic 
 Germany Frau Ursula had told him so much; of the Free 
 Cities, of the Hansastaedte, of the Zuenfte of old Nurem 
 berg, of the Fuggers, the Roths those merchant princes 
 of Augsburg who burned sandalwood instead of logs in 
 the hearth at which they welcomed Charles V; of Martin 
 Luther; of Weimar and all it stood for; of Wagner and 
 the Mad King of Bavaria and his Schwanenschloss. 
 These were the traditions in which his mother had been 
 bred, and which she was able to impart to him by word 
 of mouth. He had found them enchanting excursions into 
 a real, not a make-believe, fairyland. 
 
 But to come into intimate contact with the historic life 
 of America, the life whose sinews were interbound with 
 those intellectual giants who had made America, was even 
 more delightful. It was more than delightful. It was 
 intoxicating. There were times when the Revolution had 
 seemed to him unreal when juxtaposed to the historic 
 events of Germany of which his mother had told him. 
 That was so, of course, because the impressionable mind 
 of a child derives an almost tangible sustenance from the 
 gestures, the inflections of the voice, the mere physical 
 presence of the story-teller. He had hungered often and 
 often for personal glimpses, for a personal point of con 
 tact with his own country. And although he had been 
 born on American soil, and had lived in his native land 
 almost all his life, he had, until now, been virtually in 
 sulated from American life by the thick strata of German 
 life and German thought and German speech which sur 
 rounded him on all sides. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that Mrs. Thornton s brief 
 mention of her husband s antecedents did more to visualize 
 America for Guido as an actuality than all the books he 
 had read and all the lessons he had learned "in American
 
 98 THE HYPHEN 
 
 history" put together. Heretofore he had been an exile 
 in the heart of his own country; now, abruptly, he knew 
 that he belonged to America and America to him. He 
 had lived through a spiritual experience of great pith and 
 moment. 
 
 Frau Ursula returned the Bible to Mrs. Thornton. She 
 sighed deeply. Then she said, speaking German: 
 
 "You are a fortunate woman, Mrs. Thornton. Your 
 forbears, for generations, have lived on free soil. You 
 accept this wonderful heritage quiescently, indifferently, as 
 a matter of course, and consequently you have no obliga 
 tions excepting those which bind you more closely to your 
 own country. You have no conception it is impossible 
 that you should have how very fortunate you are." 
 
 And, as she did not prohibit the Bible readings, Mrs. 
 Thornton felt herself at liberty to continue them.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FRAU URSULA paid another visit to Dr. Koenig s office 
 the following morning. 
 
 "I am beginning to look upon you as my spiritual as 
 well as my medical adviser," she said. "Somehow I can 
 speak more freely to you than to Pastor Marlow. Do you 
 mind?" 
 
 "I am immensely flattered, dear lady," said Dr. Koenig. 
 "More than that, I am interested." He opened a drawer 
 and drew forth a daguerreotype which he handed to her. 
 
 "Guide s grandfather at twenty-five," he said. "Some 
 day the boy shall have it." 
 
 Frau Ursula exclaimed in astonishment. 
 
 "Why," she cried, "the boy looks like him! I always 
 thought that his dark eyes and his dark hair were a legacy 
 from his mother. His father, you know, was blue-eyed 
 and had fair hair. Ah! How happy this makes me. I 
 had feared, I had feared " she broke off abruptly. 
 
 "As your spiritual adviser I feel at liberty to tell you 
 what you feared," said Dr. Koenig, smiling. "You feared 
 that Guide s dark hair and dark eyes outwardly symbolized 
 the darkness coming to him through the mother and ; 
 mayhap, lurking somewhere in his soul." 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, "you think me very unfair." 
 
 "I think you are very much a woman," he said, gravely, 
 leaving her to wonder whether he considered her or 
 generic woman the incarnation of unfairness, or whether 
 he had merely guessed the emotional tie that bound her 
 so strongly to the boy. 
 
 She felt a little pained, she could hardly have said why, 
 but she was too much of a utilitarian to nurse a minor 
 wound when matters of greater moment required her un 
 divided attention and his counsel. 
 
 "Yesterday," she said, coming to the point abruptly, "I 
 found Mrs. Thornton reading to Guido from the New 
 Testament. My difficulties are multiplying. How can I 
 
 99
 
 ioo THE HYPHEN 
 
 maintain an attitude of No-Bias? Both in religion and 
 politics. He loves the Bible, he tells me, and last night 
 at eleven, when I thought him sound asleep, he suddenly 
 sat bolt upright in bed and in a whisper repeated the Lord s 
 Prayer thrice over. Then he lay down and slept." 
 
 "Prayer," mused Dr. Koenig, "is an excellent disciplin 
 arian. In Guide s case last night I have no doubt that 
 he would have required a sedative if, following an uner 
 ring instinct, he had not helped himself to a dose of 
 spiritual asafcetida." 
 
 "You are trifling!" said Frau Ursula. She was a little 
 shocked at what seemed to her levity in sacred matters. 
 
 "I assure you I am not. But, if that viewpoint dis 
 pleases you, here is another. Guido may regard the Lord s 
 Prayer in the light of a literary, not a religious exercise." 
 
 "Ah," she cried, "you are humorous this morning." 
 
 "Meine Hebe Frau Hauser !" The old physician had be 
 come very grave. "You know how deeply the German 
 language is indebted to Luther s translation of the Bible, 
 because, happening at a critical period, it helped to form 
 the German vernacular and to stabilize it. Similarly, the 
 King James version of the English Bible, together with 
 Shakespeare, stabilized and vitalized the English language. 
 The German Bible is much more archaic in expression than 
 the English Bible. Indeed, the English Bible is a remark 
 able production, one of those translations which vie in 
 literary quality, vigor and polish with the original. It 
 deserves the high place accorded it by cultured Americans 
 and cultured Englishmen, irrespective of creed. Guido, 
 with his passion for books, was bound to discover it some 
 time or other. Let him read it and rejoice in it. English 
 and American culture are so inseparably interbound with 
 the Bible and with Shakespeare that I see no possibility 
 of eliding either from his life." 
 
 "You see," Frau Ursula responded, "I am trying des 
 perately to be fair to his mother. Personally nothing 
 would make me happier than to see Guido turn to some 
 church some Protestant church, of course of his own 
 accord. But his mother was very insistent on this point. 
 His education was to be non-sectarian." 
 
 Dr. Koenig smiled. 
 
 "The Bible is non-sectarian," he said. "And unless ex-
 
 CHILDHOOD 101 
 
 traneous influence of some sort is brought to bear upon 
 the boy, I am certain that he is far too intelligent to accept 
 either the New or Old Testament as being literally true." 
 
 "Ah !" exclaimed Frau Ursula. As a sound church- 
 woman she was not wholly pleased by Dr. Koenig s 
 glancing criticism. Dr. Koenig continued: 
 
 "He will see in the Scriptures an enchanting treasure- 
 trove of stirring tales, and the New Testament, with its 
 miracles of birth and transfiguration, will appeal to him 
 as an apotheosized fairy-tale. As to Christ s ethical teach 
 ings, there are none finer the world over. On that point 
 we are all agreed." 
 
 Frau Ursula sat with wrinkled brow. 
 
 "The trouble is," she said, "I do not have a very clear 
 recollection of what his mother said touching ethical in 
 struction. Ah !" she cried petulantly, "what a quagmire 
 of irresolution I am in. There are times when I pray 
 for strength to abandon the entire lunatic scheme of No- 
 Bias ! What good can come of it? And if good does 
 come SHE will not be there to see it." 
 
 Frau Ursula s method of uttering the third person singu 
 lar, feminine neuter, evades description. The unfortunate 
 pronoun was much too feeble a vehicle for the burden of 
 contempt, disdain, disgust and it must be confessed 
 anger which it was meant to convey. 
 
 "I think," the old physician responded, "that you are 
 exaggerating the difficulties which beset you at least in 
 this particular. If you think it necessary to offset and 
 neutralize what is denominational and particular in the 
 teachings of Christ, all you need do is to place in Guide s 
 hands copies of the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the 
 Mohammedans, of the Jews. Note, if you please, that I 
 said if. Personally, I do not think it necessary. Chris 
 tianity, in many respects, is the finest of all religions. It 
 had been a tremendous factor in building up Western 
 civilization, and only a fanatic could object to its teach 
 ings." 
 
 "And I thought you a free-thinker!" Frau Ursula ex 
 claimed. "I confess, I did not expect to find in you an 
 eulogist of Christianity." 
 
 "An apologist rather than an eulogist!" Dr. Koenig cor 
 rected Frau Ursula, with a smile. "Even a free-thinker
 
 102 THE HYPHEN 
 
 is not free from bias. Is it not wonderful, verehrte Fran, 
 that the ethical teachings of Christ, of Buddha, of Moses, 
 the three finest religions of the world, are identical ? Moses 
 gave us the Ten Commandments Christ invested them 
 with the prestige of His authority. Buddha enunciated 
 the Eightfold Path of Virtue, giving a less compact setting 
 to the same teachings. Even the Golden Rule appears in 
 different garb in no less than three religions. Judaism, in 
 spite of the awful vision of a wrathful and vindictive 
 Jehovah an-eye-for-an-eye and a-tooth-for-a-tooth- Jeho 
 vah, paved the way for it. The Golden Rule is contained 
 in an indirect form in Leviticus xix. 34. Christ gave 
 it to the world in a clarified and purified form, and Con- 
 fucious taught it in a reversed form, Do not unto others 
 what you would not have others do unto you. And as 
 most of us suffer more from active unkindness than from 
 kindness withheld, we must perforce admit the superior 
 practicability of the version of Confucius, although 
 Christ s version is superior ethically in demanding an active 
 assertion of good-will, not merely an abstention from ill- 
 will." 
 
 Frau Ursula had given an imperfect attention to Dr. 
 Koenig s words. While he meandered on, she was turning 
 over in her mind the feasibility of his suggestion to pro 
 vide Guido with the teachings, of Judaism and Buddhism. 
 She now reverted to this. 
 
 "As you know," she said, "I am, a Lutheran, and I 
 confess that I would rather see my boy a Mohammedan 
 than a Roman Catholic." 
 
 "Pure woman !" Dr. Koenig laughingly commented. 
 
 Frau Ursula pouted prettily. He was so very very old 
 that he seemed to her a sort of generic father. His age 
 made her keenly a Ware of the youth that was still in her, 
 with its partially arrested, partially diverted currents. 
 
 "It is the second time to-day that you have called me 
 that, or something like it," she said. "Is it intended as 
 a rebuke or not?" 
 
 "It was meant to convey that, like all women, you can 
 not be fair because you are a partisan. 1 
 
 "Ah ! Are we as bad as that ? So much less than men ?" 
 
 "You are less than men in being less cold. Your affec-
 
 CHILDHOOD 103 
 
 tions range themselves on one side or the other, and your 
 emotional impetus makes you terrible adversaries." 
 
 She felt that if the sting of censure was not absent from 
 this retort, that censure was at least so delicately modu 
 lated and overlaid as to remove its sting. She smiled. 
 
 "All you said just now about Christianity, Buddhism and 
 Judaism seems to disprove what you said the other day. 
 These religions, at least, are synthetizable." 
 
 "Not in dogma, merely in ethics, and the term, I think, 
 when so applied, is meretricious. I chose rather to see 
 in the identity of ethics the cumulative sociological experi 
 ence of different races, and, as the outcome is practically 
 the same, the world thus obtains a code of morals more 
 dependable than a code divinely inspired, as the Command 
 ments of Moses and of Christ purport to be. And that 
 brings us back to my contention that in allowing Guido 
 to permeate himself with Christian ethics, you are allow 
 ing him to get the best at first-hand." 
 
 "For a free-thinker!" Frau Ursula ejaculated. 
 
 "A free-thinker is not necessarily an atheist, or a pagan, 
 or a heathen, as you seem to think," Dr. Koenig rejoined, 
 with some heat. "A pagan has no belief worthy of being 
 termed a religious faith or a metaphysical system. He 
 has no knowledge, even of the existence of religion as 
 such ; a free-thinker is the very reverse ; he has a thorough 
 knowledge not of one but of many religious beliefs, and 
 his reasons for rejecting them and the dogmas for which 
 they stand are manifold. But it is by no means precluded 
 that the free-thinker, while rejecting dogma and doctrine, 
 may not retain the kernel about which these dogmas gravi 
 tate, and which appears to him a precious guide for human 
 conduct, for reasons which I have indicated before. There 
 are those who call me an atheist. I myself term myself 
 Monist. I am a disciple of Haeckel, with strong Spencerian 
 proclivities." 
 
 Frau Ursula s attention had wandered again. She had 
 no taste for metaphysics or religious speculation. She 
 said, vaguely: 
 
 "I wish my conscience were not so troublesome." 
 
 Dr. Koenig looked hard at her. Then he said: 
 
 "If you feel th at in allowing Guido to come in close 
 contact with the Bible you would be betraying your trust,
 
 io 4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 
 
 why not do what I suggested to you before? If I had 
 my way, I would have them read *in school at assembly 
 alternately from the Old Testament, the New Testament, 
 the Koran, the Vedas and from Confucius. Such a pro 
 cedure would make for tolerance, for breadth of view, 
 and for an unshakable .conviction in the necessity for 
 ethical living. For what the great religious teachers taught 
 was evolved out of the consciousness of racial tradition 
 and experience which had preceded them, if we accept the 
 rational explanation as I do ; or from a direct and de 
 liberate revelation of the Divine Essence of the Godhead, 
 if we accept the ecclesiastical belief in an inspired and 
 supernatural religion, as you do. In either case, the neces 
 sity for acting in consonance with conscience, is very 
 plain." 
 
 "I think," said Frau Ursula, "that I will follow your 
 advice." 
 
 "If you do," said Dr. Koenig, "I beg of you not to 
 interfere overmuch with Guido s interpretation of what 
 he reads. Remember that the doctrines and literature of 
 the various religious systems are the primers and spelling 
 exercises of the fundamental principles guiding human 
 conduct." He paused, and then resumed: 
 
 "Give a child no religious training whatever, as you 
 proposed to do at first, and, if his inclinations are gross, 
 you will make of him a pagan who sees in the appetites 
 not the means of life, but its raison d etre. If his proclivi 
 ties are vicious, you will make of him a heathen, who 
 sees in honesty nothing but an exigency, and who consents 
 to conform to law and order merely because he is an op 
 portunist, not because he recognizes the existence and the 
 necessity of moral law. If he inclines to idealism, in the 
 absence of a profound conviction that moral law exists 
 and that conscience is not a mere handicap in the struggle 
 for existence, the futility of life is bound either to enrage 
 or to crush him and to make of him either a misanthrope or 
 a cynic. For cynicism is the unlovely fruit of idealism 
 that has curdled, misanthropy the result of idealism con 
 demned to sterility. In any event, he will be profoundly 
 miserable and profoundly helpless." 
 
 "I cannot imagine Guido either as a sensualist or as 
 an oppressor," said Frau Ursula, dryly.
 
 CHILDHOOD 105 
 
 "No! Although one can never tell. Boyhood is an in 
 choate, semi-fluid -state I conceive Guido to be an out- 
 and-out idealist. Fear of seeing him unhappy should be 
 as strong an incentive as the fear of seeing him vicious." 
 
 "Yes, of course! I will take your advice. Will you 
 help me select the books which he is to read ?" 
 
 "I will loan them to you," said Dr. Koenig. "It will 
 be a wonderfully interesting experience to watch Guido 
 to watch the evolution in him of the ethical idea. Is he 
 one of those humble souls who are so bewildered and 
 oppressed by the fathomless magnitude of the spiritual 
 and physical universe that they cling all their lives to the 
 religious primer, or " 
 
 Frau Usurla interrupted him. 
 
 "I," she remarked, slyly, but without resentment, "am 
 one of those humble souls. I would I were free to make 
 him a staunch Lutheran." 
 
 "Pure woman again," Dr. Koenig declared. "It is barely 
 possible that he is not of the stuff of which Lutherans 
 are made." 
 
 "At any rate," said Frau Ursula, "I am going to follow 
 your advice, for the simple reason that I can see no other 
 way out of my dilemma." 
 
 Thus was the Boy with a Political Destiny indentured 
 to a Religious Synthesis as well. The one was the in 
 evitable outcome of the other, as we have seen. The sav 
 ing grace in allowing the lad to essay these fearsome 
 theological and political paths was that he himself was 
 unconscious of the venture. It was to him, therefore, not 
 a. venture but an adventure, and an adventure, to deserve 
 its name, is always worth its while.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 EARLY in March Guido began to improve rapidly. The 
 waters of life ran smoothly and pleasantly for him 
 these days. Always he had with him either his idolized 
 mother or Mrs. Thornton, now firmly entrenched in his af 
 fections. Hauser, for the time being, was virtually elimi 
 nated from Guide s life. 
 
 For Hauser had decided that the time was ripe once more 
 to enlarge the Anasquoit Department Store. Having at 
 tracted the bulk of the middle-class trade of Anasquoit, it 
 was now his ambition to attract as well what in Anasquoit 
 parlance was tersely designated as "the Bismarck Street 
 people." 
 
 Bismarck Street was the Fifth Avenue of Anasquoit. The 
 Hausers might long since have enjoyed the comfort of an 
 entire house on one of the other streets, some of which were 
 quite as shady and quiet as Bismarck Street, but Hauser 
 resolutely opposed any such change. The tiniest apartment 
 and the Hauser apartment was anything but tiny on 
 Bismarck Street, where all the wealthy and near-wealthy 
 German-Americans lived, was preferable to the finest man 
 sion on one of the other streets where Germans were 
 thrown in contact with a mixed population Irish, Nor 
 wegian, Italian and American! Frau Ursula had long since 
 ceased to argue the point. She ground her teeth more than 
 once in impotent rage at Hauser s impossible narrowness 
 and snobbishness and his Philistine contempt for unmon- 
 eyed people. 
 
 Hauser had many enthusiasms, for he was by no means 
 lacking in education and taste, but his great enthusiasm was 
 his business, and he threw himself heart and soul into his 
 new enterprise. The two small stores, connecting with each 
 other on the ground floor only, which were literally packed 
 with goods of every description, had been a veritable gold 
 mine. They were to be discarded in May. 
 
 There had been considerable conjecture in Anasquoit as 
 
 106
 
 CHILDHOOD 107 
 
 to the nature of a handsome eight-story building on Main 
 Street, the main business thoroughfare of the town, which 
 ran parallel with Bismarck Street. This large building was 
 growing up rapidly, and its origin, ownership and purpose 
 were wrapped in mystery. An apartment house of such 
 dimensions was unheard of in Anasquoit. A store of such 
 mammoth size seemed equally incredible. But, as the levia 
 than assumed shape and form, it became apparent that the 
 building was indeed intended for a store. Wild rumors be 
 gan to circulate through the town. One of the large de 
 partment store owners of New York Stern or Wana- 
 maker belike was going to invade Anasquoit, and the store 
 was building for them. So said rumor, and rumor stiffened 
 into excitement when huge poster-like advertisements began 
 to appear simultaneously in the local papers and street cars 
 and on sign-boards, which offered a thousand dollars in cash 
 to the first person sending in the name of the owner of the 
 large store. 
 
 No correct answer was received. A later advertisement 
 announced the identity of the owner of the Leviathan. 
 Hauser s vanity was cruelly punctured, by this miscarriage 
 of public opinion. He was horribly chagrined. Frau Ur 
 sula, who had been as much in the dark as the general pub 
 lic, was both hurt and frightened. 
 
 "Women cannot keep a secret unless it is disreputably 
 their own," he said sharply, answering the query in her 
 eyes. She put his sharp insolence down to his mortification 
 and forgave him. But she could not resist the temptation 
 of saying that he had never yet failed to consult her when 
 embarking on a new enterprise. This was the first time he 
 had not done so. 
 
 "In the early days I needed your financial support," he 
 replied. "I could then not afford the luxury of surprising 
 you." The answer was anomalous. The kindness of the 
 second sentence was calculated, deliberately she thought, to 
 wipe away the unkindness of the first. An angry retort 
 surged to her lips, calling for utterance. The Bismarck 
 Street clique were snobs, like himself, and being snobs 
 would never deign to purchase their garments in Anasquoit. 
 Middle-priced garments, appealing to men and women who 
 appreciated honest value, had made his small stores a suc 
 cess. High-priced garments, ranging in price from fifty to
 
 io8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 4. 
 
 five hundred dollars, would ruin him. This she wanted to 
 say to him, but she restrained herself from voicing the 
 prophecy. After all, she told herself bitterly, Mauser s af 
 fairs were none of hers. Guido was her one affair, her 
 one concern and interest. And Guido was convalescent and 
 Hauser was too busy to take any notice of the child or to 
 harass him. 
 
 Guido sat up thrice a day now. Sitting up necessitated 
 mild exercise in the form of walking, a few steps at a time. 
 Guido was wild with delight the day he was told that he 
 might take the long journey into the parlor. Of the dining 
 room he had had glimpses while in bed, but he had all but 
 forgotten how the parlor looked, and to be able at last to 
 make his way into its refinements on a tour conducted in 
 person was for more thrilling than a vicarious expedition 
 into darkest Africa by route of a book. 
 
 That trip into the parlor was not merely an adventure, it 
 was a ceremony. He was swathed in a loose wrapper, so 
 ample that he could wind it twice about his torso and 
 limbs. This wrapper was known familiarly as the "Polter," 
 a word which had no individual significance, and whose 
 origin as a proper noun in this connection was obscure. It 
 was made of a soft, fine woolen material, very gay, almost 
 garish in coloring. The most fantastic of Persian designs, 
 veritable Hasheesh dreams, was indicated by its purple 
 scrolls and orange panels and crimson ringlets, and it was 
 lined with brocaded silk of a delicated lavender. Guido 
 loved the "Polter" Whenever it reappeared from the cedar 
 chest, his health was engaged in ascending toward the nor 
 mal point. So he had come to look upon it as a token of 
 rejuvenation, of a renewed lease upon life and health. 
 
 Then, too, raiment so Orientally luxuriant in color and 
 in design was a prodigious aid to the imagination. When 
 he wore it with the woolen side turned out, he could play 
 at being anything from Mustapha, the Sultan s favorite 
 son, to Sinbad the Sailor. When he wore the lavender silk 
 lining turned out, he could imagine himself to be Don Car 
 los, the unhappy son of Philip the Second, of whom Guido 
 had read in Schiller s tragedy, or a turbaned Indian prince, 
 wearing about his neck a rope of a thousand pearls, each 
 worth a king s ransom. 
 
 One afternoon, at his request, his mother and Mrs.
 
 CHILDHOOD 109 
 
 Thornton piloted him to the book-case, that vast, unex 
 plored territory for which he was yearning and repining. 
 His mother pulled down for him some volumes which he 
 was anxious to inspect, Lessing and Herder. Goethe and 
 Heine were passed over. They were ground which must 
 not be trespassed upon for the present. A large volume of 
 Shakespeare was extricated and laid on a table. The pic 
 tures might afford him amusement, his mother said. Then 
 Mrs. Thornton said something to his mother in an under 
 tone regarding the text. 
 
 Guido, suspecting the nature of Mrs. Thornton s remark, 
 demanded to be told whether Shakespeare also was for 
 bidden fruit. 
 
 "Why no, you may read Shakespeare, if you wish," Frau 
 Ursula replied. She knew, none better, that English had 
 not yet become second nature to him. He might delve into 
 the unexpurgated Shakespearian text with impunity. He 
 would comprehend its salacities as little as its beauties. 
 
 Having settled Guido comfortably on the couch, with 
 pillows at his back and a cover over his feet, Mrs. Thornton 
 and his mother left him. Both had errands to attend to. 
 
 Guido, full of the joy of a long-coveted book open before 
 him, began turning over the pages of the huge Shakespeare. 
 It did not take him very long to discover that while he 
 understood some of the individual words, it was utterly im 
 possible for him to comprehend their group-meanings. 
 
 He sat very still and for at least ten minutes turned this 
 over in his mind. He wondered whether his intelligence 
 or his vocabulary was at fault. He could not conceive him 
 self to be an imbecile since he had read and understood 
 some of the great German classics. If merely his imper 
 fect knowledge of English was at fault, there was some 
 hope. Or, perhaps the English classics were less readily 
 assimilable than the German. 
 
 A sudden inspiration came to him. He would question 
 Otto concerning literary tastes of Bob Hastings, the only 
 "real" American boy of whom he had knowledge. If Bob 
 Hastings read Shakespeare or some other English classic 
 as he read Schiller, then, undoubtedly, it was merely his 
 meager English vocabulary that disqualified him. 
 
 The poor child took it for granted that all little boys of 
 eleven read the classics of their native tongue. Otto was
 
 i io THE HYPHEN 
 
 an exception. But then, as Guido clearly perceived in spite 
 of his affection for his friend, Otto was a young savage. 
 Guido, with the curious faith of childhood in the Unseen 
 and the Unknown, was certain that "American" boys were 
 different. He had no very lucid notion as the precise nature 
 of this difference, but he felt certain that it embraced an in 
 timate knowledge of and love for the English classics. 
 
 He was so unhappy at his lack of mastery of English, that 
 instead of reading, or dreaming, he began to knit. Otto had 
 never seen Guido knit. Some instinct warned him that his 
 proficiency in this domestic art would not raise the tempera 
 ture of Otto s esteem for himself. Therefore, discreetly, 
 his knitting had always been tucked out of sight before half 
 past three. 
 
 To-day Guido forgot, simply forgot, to obliterate the evi 
 dences of his contemptible activity. Otto, roaring like a 
 young bull, entered the room, and perceiving his friend s 
 occupation, fell into a deadly and for him unearthly, silence. 
 
 "By Jinks," he exclaimed, when the power of speech and 
 of noise had returned to him, "you look like the Sultan of 
 Sulu and you re knitting, like an old woman! You re a 
 sissy. That s what. Knitting. Pfui! You make me sick !" 
 
 Ordinarily Guido s impulse would have been to make the 
 obvious retort that Otto made him quite as sick as he made 
 Otto but, as he desired to obtain certain information from 
 Otto, he chose diplomacy rather than vigor as the instru 
 ment of chastisement. 
 
 "What s good enough for an officer in a crack German 
 regiment is good enough for me," he rejoined. 
 
 "Ah g wan, what d you take me for? D you think I ll 
 believe that?" Otto demanded. But he spoke without 
 conviction. A crack German regiment was not to be men 
 tioned lightly, even by such a renegade as Guido. Besides 
 Guido s tranquillity was disconcerting. It argued that he 
 was speaking the truth. 
 
 "It is true, nevertheless," said Guido, purling the last 
 stitch on the needle with great deliberation. 
 
 "I don t believe it," Otto repeated, his unbelief no greater 
 than before. 
 
 "My mother told me so," said Guido with a gentleness 
 that, in view of the upheaval which Otto s most sanctified 
 beliefs were undergoing, with little short of cruel.
 
 CHILDHOOD in 
 
 "I don t believe it," said Otto, with utmost feebleness. 
 
 Guido raised his eye-brows, a habit he had of expressing 
 disdain or disapproval. It was a gesture which never failed 
 to infuriate Otto. To-day it acted upon him like a barb. 
 
 "I tell you what," he said, "you ll be wearing a muff next." 
 
 "One carries a muff, one doesn t wear it," Guido com 
 mented, dispassionately. "And if I did, I should only be 
 following the most illustrious example in the world." His 
 tongue stumbled a little against the string of soft syllables 
 in "illustrious," but he managed to flounder through them 
 without coming perceptibly to grief. 
 
 "Whom d you mean?" Otto growled. 
 
 "I mean the Kaiser." 
 
 "Huh? What d you take me for? A poor simp?" 
 
 Guido s eye-brows again shifted upward. 
 
 "Since when d you consider the Kaiser such a big gun?" 
 sneered Otto. "I thought you had no use for kings and 
 queens." 
 
 It was a clever feint, and for a moment Guido was stag 
 gered. 
 
 "I called him that to please you," he said, finally, deftly 
 covering his political inconsistency. "Besides, I don t mind 
 the Kaiser. I rather like him." 
 
 "Oh, you do, do you? Well, I bet you a ride in the 
 carrousel at the next school picnic that the Kaiser doesn t 
 wear carry a muff." 
 
 Guido smiled superiorly. 
 
 "If you please, Otto," he said, politely, "hand me that 
 post-card album from the what-not, will you?" 
 
 Otto knew from Guido s maddening smile that refutation 
 of his denial lurked between the covers of Guido s album. 
 How he hated Guido at the moment ! How he hated the al 
 bum ! How he hated the Kaiser ! How he hated muffs and 
 the skins they were made of! How he would have liked 
 to pummel that superior serenity out of Guido, sore spine 
 or no sore spine. Otto reflected, for the hundredth time, 
 that a sore spine was a horrible unsportsmanlike thing to 
 possess. It was almost as bad as a secreted weapon, or a 
 blow below the solar plexus. Fuming inwardly, he handed 
 Guido the album. 
 
 Guido, still supremely aloof and detached, opened the 
 book and indicating a certain card, handed the album back
 
 H2 THE HYPHEN 
 
 to Otto, who, without as much as glancing at the card, with 
 out as much as troubling to close the album, flung it wildly 
 at Guide s head. Guido s head, at least, thank heaven for 
 it, had nothing the matter with it. Guido ducked. The al 
 bum shot over his head into the book-case, shattering to 
 atoms the glass door. 
 
 "There !" said Guido in a tone of superb satisfaction and 
 laughed. Otto, sad to relate, used an unprintable word, and 
 then, caught in the backwater of his unreasonable temper, 
 his fury spent, giggled. 
 
 The unprintable word, Guido s laugh and Otto s giggle 
 tripped so closely upon each other s heels as to be almost 
 indistinguishable. The trio was still in process of disin 
 tegration when the door opened and Dr. Koenig stood be 
 fore the gaping boys. He took in the situation at a glance. 
 
 "And what have you been quarreling about, my fine 
 lads?" he inquired. 
 
 "About the Kaiser s muff, Herr Doktor," Guido said, re 
 gaining his composure. 
 
 "The Kaiser s muff !" the old physician burst into a roar 
 of laughter. "Well, upon my word often, often have I 
 heard people quarrel about the Kaiser s beard, but about his 
 muff never !" 
 
 Dr. Koenig alluded not to the Kaiser s mustache, the hir 
 sute adornment destined within a decade to be the mark of 
 so much ridicule and vituperation, but to the German idiom 
 which counts a quarrel about the Kaiser s beard to be a 
 quarrel about less than nothing. 
 
 The boys sat in silence, with tingling ears, while the Doc 
 tor s laughter gradually subsided. A grave, almost a solemn 
 mood succeeded his merriment. 
 
 "My lads," he said, "take an old man s advice. Quarrel 
 with kings and emperors all you wish; but never, never 
 quarrel about them or for them. They are mischief-makers. 
 Avoid them and everything pertaining to them and to their 
 brood as fervently as you avoid the devil." 
 
 "But," Otto spoke up resolutely, "my farder says this 
 Kaiser is as fine a man as ever sat on a throne." 
 
 "High praise, indeed!" snorted Dr. Koenig. "Guido, how 
 do you feel about this?" 
 
 "This this Kaiser? Or kings and queens in general?" 
 quoth Guido, calmly analytical. "I have no use for kings
 
 CHILDHOOD 113 
 
 and queens ich mag sie nicht leiden but this Kaiser, he 
 seems very kind and just and honest, and truly, Herr 
 Doktor, I think I like him so well, sir, that I wish he d been 
 a commoner in a country like ours, where he might have 
 proven his mettle instead of having folks take him on faith." 
 
 Dr. Koenig stared at Guido in astonishment. Mentally 
 he ejaculated, "Eleven years! Synthetic heritage or syn 
 thetic development or both? Where would this lead to? 
 A mere hodge-podge? Rank mugwumpism? Or was the 
 boy a synthetizer in embryo ? His democracy seemed safe 
 enough "wish he had been born in a country like ours" 
 nothing equivocable or uncertain in that, surely. And as 
 there was nothing to teach the lad in that particular, the 
 excellent man set himself the task of disrobing William 
 whose sobriquet of "The Damned" had not yet been earned 
 of the glory in which this one small boy had enmeshed 
 him. 
 
 "The Kaiser, when he came to the throne, was known 
 throughout Europe and the United States as the war-lord," 
 he began. 
 
 "Yes," Otto eagerly interrupted him, "but no one calls 
 him that now. My farder says he s made good. My 
 farder says he s a prince of peace ein Friedensfuerst . 
 My farder says he is finishing the great work that Bismarck 
 began. My farder " 
 
 "Never mind your father," the old physician cried, testily. 
 Otto s mouth opened wide in amazement. "Think for your 
 self, boy !" 
 
 He turned to Guido. 
 
 "Let me tell you a little about this great man whom you 
 would generously make a native-born American so that he 
 might prove his sterling worth. Among the educated classes 
 of the Fatherland he is not held in high esteem. The 
 glamour and the glitter of his title may impose upon German- 
 Americans, but in Germany they do not take him very seri 
 ously. Some scorn him as an amateur statesman ; some de 
 spise him as an amateur painter; some dislike him because 
 his verses are so bad though truth to tell, they are infinitely 
 better than those of his ancestor, Frederick the Great!" 
 
 Here the incorrigible Otto made a sound preparatory to 
 sidling into the conversation again with a new variation of 
 his everlasting "my farder" theme.
 
 ii4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Keep still, Otto," said Guido, sharply. "I don t see, Herr 
 Doktor, why a man should be held cheap because he can do 
 many things even if he is a Kaiser." 
 
 "He does them so badly !" cried Dr. Koenig. "Let a man 
 stick to one thing and do it well." 
 
 "It seems, though, as if he had done the one thing which 
 is his business very well, indeed, doesn t it, sir?" the boy 
 inquired. 
 
 "And what particular thing is his business, can you tell 
 me?" Dr. Koenig inquired, curiously. 
 
 "To rule, of course," Guido replied. 
 
 "You are mistaken," Dr. Koenig replied. "His particular 
 business is the Army and Navy, but to that he has attended 
 very well indeed much, much too well, I am afraid." 
 
 "My farder says," Otto launched forth again, only to be 
 silenced by a joint exclamation from the Doctor and from 
 Guido. From the fray of voices Otto s hurtling forth of 
 "Friedensfuerst" rose triumphant and clear. 
 
 Dr. Koenig eyed Otto angrily. Herr Baumgarten, Otto s 
 father, and the old physician had quarreled violently some 
 years before in the card room of the Deutsche Verein. The 
 quarrel was a political one, and being political, was bitter, 
 and the two gentlemen had become so incensed that if others 
 had not intervened the affair might have eventualized in 
 blows. The affair was one of the historical episodes of 
 the town. Everybody knew of the ancient enmity between 
 Herr Baumgarten and Dr. Koenig. Otto had heard of it, of 
 course. So had Guido. Hence Otto s truculence and Dr. 
 Koenig s resentment of Otto s juvenile impudence in push 
 ing his father into the debate so persistently. 
 
 "It is true," said Dr. Koenig, "that the world at present 
 unites in acclaiming him as a peace lord. But what does 
 that signify? It signifies a sinister power to be the oppo 
 site to be a war-lord and Guido, do you remember the 
 story of Little Red Riding Hood?" 
 
 "Of course," Guido replied, shortly, disgusted at the sud 
 den decline of the conversation into childish channels. 
 
 "And do you remember how the Wolf finally contrived to 
 catch and eat Little Red Riding Hood ?" 
 
 "By disguising himself as her grandmother," Guido re 
 plied, vaguely aware that the topic was not as juvenile as 
 he had supposed.
 
 CHILDHOOD 115 
 
 "Exactly; and Grandmother Friedensfuerst will go on 
 flattering and cozening the world until she holds the Red 
 Riding Hood gullibles well within reach of her hand ! Bah ! 
 Enough of this." Dr. Koenig rose abruptly, unwilling to be 
 dragged into a new argument with a scion of the house of 
 Baumgarten. 
 
 "Guido, your mother is worrying about your blood 
 pressure. I cannot take it now. It is bound to be above 
 normal," said Dr. Koenig. His own certainly was, for his 
 irritation produced by Otto s raw insistence was savage. 
 "I ll look in to-morrow morning. Good-afternoon, boys, and 
 thank heaven fasting on your knees that you re American- 
 born." 
 
 Guido, it will be remembered, had curbed his temper in 
 the argument with Otto about the Kaiser s muff from no 
 high ethical motive but because he desired to obtain certain 
 information from his friend. Thus does diplomacy wait on 
 morality. 
 
 "Say, Otto," he said, abruptly, after the Doctor was gone, 
 "you never say anything about Bob Hastings any more." 
 
 Otto giggled. Otto s giggle was as easily produced as 
 any little girl s. So were his tears. A strange compound 
 was Otto of kindness and surliness, of coarseness and 
 fineness, of roughness and delicacy. Both of the boys had 
 entirely forgotten their quarrel. Now that they had had 
 their little daily fracas they were excellent friends again. 
 They were like a couple of puppies, who, on meeting, yap 
 and snarl and bite at each other merely from exuberance of 
 youthful animal spirits. 
 
 Otto concluded his giggle, and announced: 
 
 "There ain t nothing to tell. Bob Hastings left school 
 three weeks ago. His farder was sent out West to Mis 
 souri." 
 
 A strange sense of anger welled up in Guido s heart. Had 
 he quelled his temper only to be thus disappointed ? He felt 
 quite indignant with Otto, who, after all, was as innocent 
 as himself in regard to Bob Hastings removal. 
 
 "He was a queer kid," Otto volunteered after a moment. 
 "There is some excuse for you, readin and readin and 
 readin , cause you gotta sore spine and can t be a real boy 
 on that account." Here Guido choked back a quick flurry 
 of temper. "But him," Otto continued, oblivious of the
 
 n6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 tempest he had aroused, "him s a husky. Why, he can beat 
 all of us, even me, at wrestling and skatin and things. And 
 him forever readin like you. Teacher took away a book 
 he was readin under the desk one day." 
 
 "What was the book ?" Guido inquired, eagerly. 
 
 "A vollum of Dickens. Teacher wouldn t give it back to 
 Bob. Bob carried on something awful. Next day Bob s 
 farder came in and explained to teacher how the vollum was 
 one of a set. An got it back." 
 
 "That was oretty fine of Bob to tell his father," Guido 
 remarked. 
 
 "Well, I guess Bob figgered it out this way. Sooner or 
 later his farder was bound to find out the vollum was gone, 
 and then he d get a licking. So I guess Bob thought he d 
 rather take the licking right off and get it off his chest." 
 
 "Did his father lick him?" Guido inquired, in an awe 
 struck voice. Lickings were one of the experiences of life 
 which he had missed. 
 
 "Nope. At least he said not. Said his farder never 
 licked him. Said his farder wasn t a brute. We kids didn t 
 believe him." 
 
 "Was he caught again reading under the desk?" 
 
 "Sure. Most every week. Sometimes twiced a week. 
 The boy what sat next to him said he read that way all 
 the time." 
 
 "What did he read?" 
 
 "Oh, crazy stuff stuff you d read if you were an Ameri 
 can. Walter Scott, and Cooper and Tales from Shake 
 speare." 
 
 Guido drew a deep breath, a breath so deep that it 
 whistled. He was bitten with black despair, because this 
 American boy who read Dickens and Scott and Lamb s 
 Tales had passed beyond his ken. There burned in him a 
 deep resentment against fate for treating him so scurvily. 
 Was it always to be like this ? Was he, like Tantalus, to be 
 condemned always to be within hailing distance of Ameri 
 cans, that interesting and superior species, and never to 
 come into contact with them? Then he remembered Mrs. 
 Thornton and her Bible and his resentment fell away. 
 
 And although he never knew it, and never crossed our
 
 CHILDHOOD 117 
 
 hero s path again, the little American boy who had read 
 Dickens under his desk because one of the traditions and 
 standards of Guido s amazing childhood. He was one of 
 the missed opportunities of Guido s life. And as such he 
 was never forgotten.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ONE day, perhaps a fortnight later, Frau Ursula called 
 again at Dr. Koenig s office. 
 
 "Well," she said, entering with her usual brisk air, "it has 
 happened." 
 
 "What has happened ? My dear lady, you alarm me, your 
 look is so fateful." 
 
 "Guido has asked to go to Sunday school as soon as he 
 is up and about." 
 
 "Oh is that all!" Dr. Koenig heaved a sigh of relief. 
 "Well, if his spiritual blood requires the iron of religion, it 
 is well that he should have it. Or is it the gold of religion ? 
 Gold, let us say, for with no other mineral are so many 
 alloys used as with gold ; also, no other mineral is counter 
 feited so often. With what particular alloy does he chose 
 to take the mineral ?" 
 
 "With the Lutheran alloy," said Frau Ursula, speaking 
 with great satisfaction. "You see, after all, he may be of 
 the stuff of which Lutherans are made." 
 
 Dr. Koenig laughed : 
 
 "Not so fast, not so fast," he said. "Because we are 
 down with measles at eleven, it does not follow that we will 
 escape the scarlet fever at eighteen." 
 
 Frau Ursula smiled wryly. The suggestion of a possible 
 change displeased her. Suddenly she perceived Dr. Koe 
 nig s allusion, which, in her preoccupation, had at first es 
 caped her. She smiled amusedly, for a long time, without, 
 however, laughing aloud. She seemed to taste the flavor of 
 that allusion lingeringly, as if it were a material thing. She 
 accused Dr. Koenig of secretly sharing her aversion for the 
 Catholic church. He disavowed this, feigned astonishment 
 and pretended there had been no ulterior or hidden mean 
 ing in his allusion. They bantered each other for a little 
 while. Then he inquired to which church Guido would 
 wish to go for his Sunday school. 
 
 tit
 
 CHILDHOOD 119 
 
 "To Pastor Marlow s church Otto goes there, top." 
 
 "It s a German church," said Dr. Koenig, frowning. 
 And then, vehemently: "It s a mistake. German school, 
 German newspaper, German church." 
 
 "You read a German newspaper yourself," said Frau 
 Ursula. 
 
 "So I do. But I read an English newspaper as well. 
 Anyhow, it s a mistake this herding together on American 
 soil of persons of one nationality. The Germans do it, 
 the Italians do it, the Irish do it, the Norwegians do it. 
 Everybody does it. How are we to be a truly unified 
 nation if all these separate alien complexes exist in our 
 midst?" 
 
 "If these complexes, as you call them, are not political 
 complexes, where is the harm?" 
 
 "The harm is potential," Dr. Koenig replied, with the 
 quick emphasis of a man who is full of his subject. "In 
 normal times they work no mischief. But allow a matter 
 of vital moment to arise say, a war with Germany, and 
 you ll see quickly enough where the harm is." 
 
 "But why should we go to war with Germany?" Frau 
 Ursula inquired, smiling incredulously. 
 
 Dr. Koenig gently wagged his head from one side to the 
 other a few times, a habit he had when interrupted in a 
 subject which to him was of paramount interest. 
 
 "I am, of course, taking a purely hypothetical case," he 
 said, rebukingly. "In such a case the German complex, 
 because of its strong adhesive qualities, would probably 
 stand as one. So, probably, would the Norwegian, the 
 Irish, the Italian complexes, because the individual mem 
 bers are imperfectly Americanized." 
 
 "I think you are taking a severe view," said Frau 
 Ursula. "The first generation on this soil, the generation 
 that emigrated, cannot become entirely assimilated, if by 
 assimilation you mean a complete discarding of inherited 
 national traits and of the mother tongue. But you and 
 I, Dr. Koenig, are excellent Americans at heart, although 
 the first sentence we utter in English betrays our nation 
 ality." 
 
 "That," the old* man growled, "is precisely why I say 
 that this flocking together of aliens is a mistake. If you 
 and I had lived among native-born Americans ever since
 
 120 THE HYPHEN 
 
 coming to this country, our English would be not perfect, 
 perhaps, but more fluent and ready." 
 
 "Then why didn t you do it?" Frau Ursula demanded, 
 with a smile which was almost flippant. 
 
 "Because, like yourself, and like other weak and foolish 
 people, I followed the line of least resistance," the old 
 man roared, scowling. 
 
 His visitor laughed. 
 
 "Weak and foolish !" she said. "I wonder, Herr Doktor, 
 if we really deserve that! You know, this business of 
 leaving one s own country and breaking with one s cus 
 toms, race, language, everything familiar, is a tremendous 
 upheaval, a fearful uprooting. It s the difference in lan 
 guage that comes hardest, and you know it. Not all men 
 and women are born linguists. I think, on the whole, you 
 and I and many others like us have become Americanized 
 in all the vital matters." 
 
 "What do you call vital matters?" the old physician 
 aked, curiously. 
 
 "You mean, do you not? what does a woman call vital 
 matters ? " Frau Ursula demanded, roguishly. 
 
 "My dear lady," he expostulated, flushing. 
 
 "I will tell you," she said, coolly, ignoring his exclama 
 tion. "I think what men value most are the obvious things, 
 universal and equal manhood suffrage, our legislative sys 
 tem, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech and of 
 the press, separation of church and state." 
 
 "I did not know," Dr. Koenig said, admiringly, "that 
 you had so clear a comprehension of what America stands 
 for, or, having it, valued it so highly." 
 
 "I don t know that I do value it so highly," said Frau 
 Ursula, with a grave smile. "I was reciting a man s point 
 of view. Now for the woman s." 
 
 "Ah!" Dr. Koenig exclaimed, impetuously, "you are a 
 very wonderful woman, and your husband is a fortunate 
 man." 
 
 "I wish you would tell him so," said Frau Ursula. She 
 regretted her words immediately, and flushed furiously. 
 
 Dr. Koenig glanced at her sharply, wondering whether 
 she had spoken in jest or in earnest. If not in jest, then 
 what construction was he to put upon her words ? He was 
 perplexed, and he waited a moment to give her a chance
 
 CHILDHOOD 121 
 
 to retract with some slight phrase, as "I was joking, of 
 course !" but she said nothing, and looked so uncomfortable 
 and ill at ease that, to help her along, he finally said : 
 
 "You were going to favor me with the woman s valua 
 tion of America." 
 
 "So I was," she said, and recovered her composure sur 
 prisingly. "The little things of life, the delicate shades, 
 the fine nuances, mean more to a woman than to a man. 
 That is why one great writer has said that all women are 
 aristocrats. By that token Europe and not America would 
 be the ideal homing-place for women. But I conceive 
 aristocracy to mean not snobbishness and exclusiveness so 
 much as high standards and the ability to live up to them ; 
 and judged by that, the women of America have the 
 immeasurable advantage over the women of Europe." 
 
 "What sort of standards are you speaking of," Dr. 
 Koenig inquired, "material, mental, moral?" 
 
 "All three. They merge. It is ridiculous to speak of 
 one standard as existing independently of the other two." 
 
 "Usually," said Dr. Koenig, tossing forward and back 
 ward in his swivel-chair, "usually high material standards 
 are supposed to be subversive of high spiritual standards, 
 the latter embracing the moral and mental elements." 
 
 "I was not speaking of love of luxury in eating and in 
 dress," she replied. "I was speaking of decency in living, 
 in good, palatable food, in pretty clothes, and of the aston 
 ishing love of personal cleanliness amounting almost to a 
 mania which exists among Americans and in American 
 homes. That love of cleanliness, you know, has become 
 second nature in America. It has become instinctive, or, 
 perhaps, was instinctive to begin with, and it extends to 
 and merges with the American single standard of per 
 sonal morality." 
 
 "That is true, that is very true," Dr. Koenig exclaimed, 
 in a tone of hearty appreciation. 
 
 "And then freedom! And courtesy! A week before 
 we left Berlin I went out one morning to do my marketing. 
 It was a rainy morning, and I was very plainly dressed. 
 As I returned from market, my basket upon my arm, I was 
 elbowed off the sidewalk by a young officer who was in a 
 hurry to pass me. Without exaggeration, he forced me 
 to step into the gutter in which at least an inch of water
 
 122 THE HYPHEN 
 
 was standing. You know as well as I do what would have 
 occurred if my husband had happened to be with me and 
 had dared to resent the young officer s insolence." 
 
 Dr. Koenig nodded. 
 
 "Zabern," he said, laconically. "No, decidedly, I shall 
 never return to Germany, not even for a visit. Never." 
 
 Frau Ursula s interview with Dr. Koenig had produced 
 in her a strange medley of emotions and sentiments. She 
 was intensely grateful to him for his sincere interest in 
 Guido. She thought it providential that the old physician 
 had known the lad s grandfather. It was her conviction 
 that a boy, to develop properly, needed a man s hand. She 
 had a horror that Guido, with a woman-built character, 
 might become an undesirable. A boy s mentality needs to 
 be man-tailored, and Dr. Koenig, both for the sake of his 
 former fellow-revolutionist and from interest in the Syn 
 thetic Experiment could now be relied upon to keep an eye 
 on Guido, humanly as well as medically, and, if necessary, 
 to take a hand in curbing, moderating or stimulating the 
 lad in a thousand and one ways. 
 
 The relief afforded her by this division of responsibility 
 was enormous. She was essentially a feminine woman 
 and tended to turn for support and guidance to the allegedly 
 superior acumen and strength of man. She had often 
 suspected that the strength of mind she had developed in 
 dealing with the tremendous problems involved in the up 
 bringing of Guido in every imaginable way was a purely 
 factitious strength. She mistrusted it. She even despised 
 it. She told herself often and often, after taking some 
 momentous step touching Guido, that she was merely acting 
 a part. Nor was the element of fear absent in this curious 
 assemblage of feelings. She wondered how long she would 
 be able to keep up the sublime farce. 
 
 It was part of the sublime farce that Dr. Koenig s help 
 fulness merely whetted her appetite for the protective so 
 ciety of the male. Dr. Koenig s rambling old house stood 
 at the junction of Tamarack and Bismarck Street, a 
 neighborhood which a quarter of a century ago had been 
 the last word of fashion, but which was fast losing its 
 character of Quality Square. As Frau Ursula walked 
 rapidly up Bismarck Street, she reflected upon her mar 
 riage. Why had Hauser failed her so lamentably? She
 
 CHILDHOOD 123 
 
 asked the question bitterly, without applying the pains 
 taking, honest analysis which might have afforded her an 
 illuminating reply. She would have been infinitely better 
 off if she had never married him. Fate, hitherto, had saved 
 her the final pang. What, if she were one day to meet a 
 man who would love her, and whom she would love in 
 return ? 
 
 The first time that this phase of her problem had oc 
 curred to her, she had warded it off angrily. Did she not 
 belong to Guide s father spiritually? A spiritual widow 
 hood, however, is an anomalous condition and twelve years 
 is a long time to maintain so spurious and ghostly a senti 
 ment. As the memory of the second Guido became blurred, 
 her healthy youth reasserted itself and cried imperiously 
 for love and for the sweet intimacy and companionship 
 procurable in no other way. 
 
 There were other things as well for which it cried out 
 clamorously, and it was written in the Book of Fate that 
 at least one other of these clandestine yearnings was to 
 be aggravated and mortified that morning. 
 
 Playing in the narrow strip of garden which separated 
 Pastor Marlow s church from the parsonage, Frau Ursula, 
 in passing, espied little Elschen Marlow, the Pastor s only 
 child and the little girl espied her. 
 
 Elschen s mother had died in giving birth to her little 
 daughter, and her father s housekeeper, an old Silesian 
 peasant woman, who in the ten years of her American 
 career had learned not a word of English and was proud 
 of it, dressed Elschen in a style which was deemed to be 
 particularly German throughout Anasquoit. The plain 
 little frocks in which the child was arrayed were invariably 
 made of stout German linen and were low-necked and 
 short-sleeved both in winter and summer. From the scal 
 loped edge in red or blue peeped Elschen s plump little 
 arms which, all through the cold season, were woefully 
 chapped. The style in which these plain little smocks were 
 made never varied. Her coats, jackets and stockings were 
 all domestic products, and her queer little hats showed the 
 clumsy makeshifts of the amateur and unimaginative 
 milliner. But the charm of the golden-haired, blue-eyed 
 child was so great that her ungainly garments, instead of 
 giving her the appearance of being out-of-date, made her
 
 124 THE HYPHEN 
 
 seem the survival of an earlier, less sophisticated genera 
 tion. The little one s manner, in which a painstaking pre 
 cision was coupled with an artless desire to please, furthered 
 this impression. The child had a quaint charm which was 
 all her own. In her way she was exquisite and unmatchable. 
 
 She ran quickly to the fence to greet Frau Ursula, ad 
 dressing her in German. Elschen s style in speech was as 
 distinctive as her style in address and her manner. She 
 used quaint, slightly stilted, old-fashioned expressions 
 which, falling from the lips of a child lost their aridness 
 and seemed instead ingratiating and dear. 
 
 "Are you having a holiday to-day, Elschen ?" Frau Ursula 
 inquired. 
 
 "Ach," the adorable child replied. "You are no doubt 
 surprised that I am not in school. But I have been quite 
 ill and Dr. Koenig says that I must romp and play out 
 doors another week. Otherwise, assuredly, my papa and 
 Frau Vogler would not allow me to play truant." 
 
 "I am sorry you have been ill, Elschen," said Frau Ursula, 
 but your cheeks are as pink as ever." 
 
 "My cheeks are always pink," the child retorted, seri 
 ously. "I hope," she added, "they will not be quite so 
 pink when I am a young lady. Do you think they will ?" 
 
 "There is no telling, of course," Frau Ursula replied, 
 suppressing a smile. "But why do you dislike pink cheeks 
 in young ladies?" 
 
 "I dislike them only because so often the color is not 
 natural," the child replied with the utmost gravity. "Frau 
 Vogler says we may dye our dresses and paint our houses 
 and stain our floors, but we must never dye our hair, or 
 paint our cheeks, or stain our eye-lashes." 
 
 "That is excellent advice, I am sure," said Frau Ursula. 
 Her smile refused to be suppressed any longer. But Elschen 
 was in no way disconcerted by her visitor s amusement. 
 
 "Some day," she said, "when I have recovered entirely 
 and can carry no contagion, I am coming to see your little 
 boy. I am so sorry for him because he is always ill. While 
 I was ill myself, it came to me as never before that his 
 fate is a very pathetic one." 
 
 Elschen s unconscious assumption of the manner of a 
 grown-up, and her simple child s phrasing commingled with
 
 CHILDHOOD 125 
 
 an adult vocabulary broadened Frau Ursula s smile. She 
 bit her inner lip to restrain her amusement. 
 
 "I am afraid, Elschen," she said, "that it will sadden 
 you to see Guido." 
 
 "Ach ja, verehrte Frau, it will make me very sad to see 
 him ill and suffering. But it would make me much more 
 sad to neglect going to see him." 
 
 "He is pretty well just now," said Frau Ursula , "so you 
 must make haste, or he will have recovered entirely and 
 be back at school before you know it." 
 
 Little Elschen Marlow turned around abruptly and 
 critically regarded the strip of garden, sodden with moisture 
 from the last thaw, and looking raw and rasped and un 
 promising. 
 
 "I hope Guido will not have recovered entirely before 
 our garden has had a chance to bloom," she said. "I have 
 set my heart on bringing him a bouquet. We are going 
 to have an old-fashioned garden this year hyacinths and 
 tulips, gardenias, hollyhock, zenias and sweet williams." 
 
 "But you wouldn t wish Guido to be ill until the holly 
 hocks bloom it s an autumn flower, you know," said Frau 
 Ursula. 
 
 "I would not have him ill at all," said Elschen, entirely 
 unembarrassed. "I am afraid I did say something of the 
 sort. Didn t I? il meant, of course, that I hoped to give 
 him a little pleasure while he is still ill. If you think he 
 is going to get well quickly, I will make him some paper 
 roses, if my father permits me to. My father was very 
 much opposed at first to my visiting Guido at all, because 
 Guido is a little boy and I am a little girl, but he finally 
 consented when I explained to him that Guido is entirely 
 different from other boys." 
 
 Parenthetically Frau Ursula wondered how that appraisal 
 would strike her boy. 
 
 She said : 
 
 "It was very kind of your father to give his consent." 
 
 "My father is kindness itself," the little girl retorted, 
 proudly. 
 
 "And in what way do you think Guido different from 
 other boys ?" Frau Ursula pursued. 
 
 Elschen wrinkled her childish brow. 
 
 "I have only seen him once," she said, "but the impres-
 
 126 THE HYPHEN 
 
 sion he made upon me was excellent. I am sure he would 
 not fib, or put sticky things like chewing-gum or taffy under 
 the teacher s chair, or pins in the benches where we girls 
 sit, or pepper in the singing-books." 
 
 "But how can you be sure of all this?" 
 
 With . enchanting innocence the child pointed to her 
 heart, as she replied: 
 
 "I have a feeling here which tells me it is as I say, Ach, 
 verehrte Frau! Guido looks just like the English poet 
 Byron when he was a little boy. My father has a print 
 of him in his study. No, I am quite certain that Guido 
 is never horrid and naughty." 
 
 The child s ingenuousness was delicious. Frau Ursula 
 stooped and kissed Elschen. She kissed Elschen delicately, 
 as if fearing that the child s flesh might be susceptible to 
 injury if more robustly saluted. In Frau Ursula s eyes 
 there was a curious yearning the look of the daughterless 
 woman. Covetousness entered her heart. This this she 
 had missed and was missing because her marriage to Hauser 
 had been a failure. She felt the unfairness of blaming 
 Hauser, and yet she did blame him. The passion which 
 he had not disguised in the early days of their marriage 
 had offended her, but his diffidence offended her just as 
 much now. She told herself that if he had not been such 
 a wretched psychologist, he would have intuitively reversed 
 those emotions and ensured his happiness as well as her 
 own. 
 
 Her attention reverted to Elschen. She dipped into the 
 future. Covetousness pursued a different lane, and at the 
 end of it Frau Ursula with eyes of augury beheld blazoned 
 an epithalamium. 
 
 She bade the lovely little creature farewell, inviting her 
 to come and see Guido at once and not to wait either for 
 spring or autumn flowers. Then she walked rapidly away, 
 determined to indulge in no useless repining. But the 
 elemental instinct which the little girl had aroused in her 
 harassed her cruelly. In the early days of her marriage 
 to the Rittergustbesitzer whenever she had considered the 
 possibility of maternity, she had always longed for a 
 daughter. That, perhaps, was not so strange, for she did 
 not love her husband and a daughter would have belonged 
 more intimately to herself than to him. But and this was
 
 CHILDHOOD 127 
 
 strange in the dreams which she had woven about Guido 
 von Estritz when their friendship was young, her dimly 
 perceived and yet articulate maternal longings had always 
 gravitated about the image of a female child. That image 
 had been very much like Elschen in lineament and spirit, 
 and she had, in consequence, taken Elschen to her heart 
 the first time she had seen her. 
 
 Frau Ursula was now thirty-three years old. Abroad, 
 in the older countries, that age might place a woman in 
 the Methusalah class. Not so in the United States. Over 
 and above her passionate adoration for Guido, her heart 
 cried out for the love of other children and above all, with 
 an insistence which was at times ruthless, for the affection 
 and devotion and moral support of a mate. 
 
 She was within several blocks of their apartment when 
 she caught sight of a man walking rapidly down Maple 
 Street, which traversed Bismarck Street at right angles. 
 The corner lot was vacant, and she had an unimpeded view 
 of the pedestrian. He and she were equi-distant from 
 the point of intersection of the streets, and thus were 
 destined to meet. The man swung along easily. She liked 
 the cut of his fashionable overcoat. As the distance be 
 tween him and herself diminished, she gave a sudden gasp 
 of surprise. The man whose appearance had pleased her 
 so greatly was Hauser. 
 
 A sudden feeling of intimacy, of good-fellowship, of 
 liking invaded her. For once she did not stem the tide of 
 her friendliness. It amused her to think that she had not 
 recognized him. She recalled his appearance at the time 
 of their marriage. How vulgar and cheap and cringing he 
 had appeared to her at that time ! How dignified and 
 self-respecting he seemed now ! Surely, the outward change 
 for the better must be accompanied by an inner change. 
 America must have transformed not merely the outer husk 
 of the man, but the inner man as well. 
 
 Suddenly, she could not have said why, she felt culpable, 
 dishonest, mean and base. 
 
 They were now within ten paces of each other, and still 
 he did not see her. He would have passed her, if following 
 a generous impulse, she had not pronounced his name. 
 
 "Erich," she cried, in a low voice. 
 
 Frau Ursula never forgot the look that came into her
 
 128 THE HYPHEN 
 
 husband s face when he saw her. It was a look of radiant 
 joy, a look so intense and penetrating that it touched her 
 as the prick of a white-hot needle might have done. It 
 abashed her. She regretted having spoken to him. She 
 felt that she had taken an unfair advantage. In his sur 
 prise he was allowing her to look into the very depths of 
 his soul. As he stood looking at her without speaking, 
 he seemed to her a different man from the Hauser she 
 had known and despised. The strange sense of intimacy 
 which she had experienced was wiped away. He now 
 seemed to her an utter stranger and she had committed an 
 indiscretion in hailing him. 
 
 With a closer approach to coquetry than her manner to 
 him had ever shown, she said : 
 
 "And do you never look at any woman whom you pass 
 in the street?" 
 
 "Never," he replied, soberly. "I have eyes for one woman 
 only, yourself; and you know it. " 
 
 "To-day not even for me," she retorted, a little confused 
 by an almost tragic note in his voice. "And do you know," 
 she continued, hurriedly, "I did not know you in that 
 overcoat." 
 
 "I am wearing it for the first time," he said. 
 
 "Were you going home?" she inquired. 
 
 "No, I m on my way to the store," he retorted. "But, 
 if you don t mind, I should like to walk with you as far 
 as the house." 
 
 "The street," she said, with an attempt at humor, "is a 
 public thoroughfare and belongs equally to all." 
 
 "Yes, but the gift of your companionship lies with you, 
 and, in my eyes, it is the most precious thing in the world." 
 
 Frau Ursula s heart began to beat wildly. His diffidence, 
 then, had merely been assumed. Was this chance meeting 
 in the street to mark a turning point in their lives? And 
 suddenly, in an access of generosity, she blamed herself, 
 herself wholly and solely, for the intolerable situation 
 which had subsisted between them so long. 
 
 In her excitement she began to walk very rapidly, Hauser 
 keeping pace with her. 
 
 "Ursula !" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Are you angry with me for saying that ?"
 
 CHILDHOOD 129 
 
 "On the contrary I am inclined to be a little angry 
 with myself." She was thinking of the wasted years that 
 yawned between them and which might still prove a more 
 formidable barrier than coral reef or granite wall. 
 
 He misunderstood her words, of course. That con 
 tinuously misunderstanding each other was one of the 
 penalties which the wasted years exacted from both of 
 them. 
 
 "Why angry with yourself, Ursula? Because you were 
 sweet and kind to me? Ursula, if you did not mean it, 
 why were you so kind to me just now?" 
 
 False modesty held her silent for a moment. She became 
 embarrassed, and because she was embarrassed, she laughed. 
 Instantly his eyes became hard and cruel. He looked at 
 her menacingly. Quickly, barely realizing what she was 
 doing, she slipped her hand through his arm. 
 
 "I like your overcoat," she said. "You asked me why 
 I was kind to you. If you require an explanation, let us 
 blame the overcoat. You seem like a different man to 
 me in it." 
 
 "Ursula," Hauser said, gravely, "that is the first time 
 I have ever heard you say anything puerile." 
 
 Some imp of mischief prompted her to go on teasing 
 him. There are moments when the most serious-minded 
 of women seeks refuge in seeming frivolity. If her life 
 had depended upon it, Frau Ursula could not have been 
 serious at the moment. 
 
 "Probably you have overestimated me in the past," she 
 said, lightly. 
 
 "No, I have not overestimated you," Hauser replied. 
 "You may have underestimated me, but I have not over 
 estimated you. You are very fine. You well, you are 
 you, Ursula." 
 
 Frau Ursula blushed furiously. She tried to check both 
 the color and the look of pleasure which had come to her 
 eyes, but failed. She said, rather fatuously, as she was 
 aware : 
 
 "Let s try and be better friends in future, Erich." 
 
 "I m willing," he retorted, grimly. 
 
 They had reached their own gate by this time. 
 
 "Will you be home for lunch ?" she inquired. 
 
 "No, not to-day." He raised his hat, and giving her a
 
 130 THE HYPHEN 
 
 sad, wan smile, left her. She watched him fascinatedly 
 as he walked away. 
 
 Frau Ursula found Mrs. Thornton reading to Guido, and 
 she was thankful for leisure to pursue her own thoughts. 
 She asked herself whether it was possible that she had 
 really come to care for Erich. Assuredly, his treatment 
 of Guido was atrocious, but the veriest tyro in psychology 
 would set that down to jealousy. She realized that, with 
 the rectified impression of Hauser in her heart and mind, 
 she was disposed to deal leniently with him. She wished 
 to be lenient. It was no longer a question of expediency 
 for Guide s sake, she wished to break with the irrevocable 
 past and to begin a new life with her husband. 
 
 Nevertheless she was determined to speak to him very 
 plainly regarding his treatment of Guido in the event that 
 he should renew his wooing, which she felt fairly certain 
 he would do. 
 
 Old Kaetchen was ill and she busied herself in the 
 kitchen. The butcher had made a mistake in filling the 
 order, and there were only enough chops for two. She 
 decided, therefore, to get her own luncheon at the store. 
 
 To her dismay, just as she was carrying the tray for 
 Mrs. Thornton and Guido to Guide s room, she heard her 
 husband let himself in with his key. Hurriedly she set 
 the tray down, and, having asked Mrs. Thornton to serve 
 the meal, she ran back to the dining-room, nervously re 
 viewing, as women will at such moments, the contents 
 of her larder. There were eggs, of course, but Hauser 
 never touched eggs excepting at breakfast. And there was 
 a slice of cold roast beef, which he loathed, and some 
 tinned cornbeef, of which he disapproved. She wondered 
 whether she could cajole the butcher into sending her 
 some more chops at once, or whether she should ask Mrs. 
 Thornton to run down to Main Street for her. This, un 
 doubtedly, would the best plan. She was about to turn 
 back from the dining-room, thinking herself unperceived 
 by Hauser. But he had heard her and called to her to 
 come in. 
 
 He stood at the table undoing a large package. 
 
 "We received a new line of toys at the store this morn 
 ing," he said, without looking up, "and I brought home
 
 CHILDHOOD 131 
 
 a miniature race-course for Guido. D you think he ll 
 like it?" 
 
 Frau Ursula uttered an exclamation of surprise. The 
 toy race-course was a very elaborate affair. There were 
 six horses. Each horse was controlled by a target, and 
 it was necessary to hit the bull s eye of the respective 
 target in order to advance each horse six paces. The outer 
 circles counted for less. It was a very handsome as well 
 as a cleverly devised toy, for each miniature horse was 
 covered with real hair white, black, dappled, roan, gray 
 and brown and each jockey was perfectly equipped not 
 only with an individual costume but with an individualized 
 face, was, in fact, a tiny, beautifully conceived and beauti 
 fully executed natural doll. Frau Ursula thought the toy 
 far too expensive and too handsome to be presented on 
 any but a gala day, and said so, but her husband replied: 
 
 "Oh, let the poor little beggar have it now. Give it to 
 him some time to-day." 
 
 "Won t you give it to him yourself?" she asked, plead 
 ingly. 
 
 "If you wish it, certainly." 
 
 She did not follow her husband to Guide s room. She 
 did not wish to divert attention to herself. She stood 
 with her hands pressed to her bosom while she listened to 
 Guido giving vent to rapturous exclamations of delight. 
 Mauser s voice, pitched in an explanatory key, filled in the 
 pauses. The face of the world was being transformed for 
 her. 
 
 From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. With 
 a jolt her mind came back to the deficiencies of the cup 
 board. She flew to the telephone. As Hauser was in 
 Guide s room, she could not, unperceived, ask Mrs. Thorn 
 ton to go to the butcher s for her. Nothing remained but 
 to ask the butcher to shanghai some boy and send him up 
 with the meat. Then, when she was through entreating 
 the butcher to make an exception this once and send her 
 the chops on the instant, she became aware that her hus 
 band was standing at her elbow. 
 
 "What made you do that?" he demanded. 
 
 "There s not a thing to eat in the house," she began, 
 apologetically. She felt the disgrace involved in that 
 confession.
 
 ,132 
 
 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Hauser laughed. 
 
 "What of it?" he said. "We are going out for our 
 lunch. Surely, Ursula, you are not going to refuse me?" 
 
 She had not the slightest intention of refusing. She 
 ran to her room blithely. Her pulses were stirred with 
 the soft, eager excitement which fills a young girl on the 
 evening of her first ball. She even hesitated over her 
 dress, choosing first one and then another. Finally she 
 decided to wear a gown of dark blue poplin trimmed with 
 panne velvet and rich lace, which she had never worn. 
 She had not worn it because dark blue was her husband s 
 favorite color, a circumstance which she had totally for 
 gotten until the finished dress was actually in her posses 
 sion. And because she did not wish him to think she 
 had chosen the dress to please him, she had refrained from 
 wearing it. Now, reversing this psychology, she decided 
 to wear the dress. It seemed fortuitious that she should 
 have in her wardrobe a new gown which was certain to 
 please her husband. 
 
 Suddenly, while she was dressing, a strange thing hap 
 pened. There passed before her mind s eye the face of 
 Guido von Estritz the second Guido. It was one of those 
 flashes of memory which spring from no known source 
 of emotion, and which, unless some subsequent event gives 
 them point, seem wholly inexplicable. The vision had 
 power over her for a moment only. She was not a capri 
 cious woman, and she continued to dress herself as 
 calmly as if Guido von Estritz had never existed. 
 
 Hauser had a taxicab at the door which brought them 
 in less than five minutes to the Anasquoit Hofbrauhaus, 
 noted for its excellent cuisine and its fine orchestra. 
 Hauser s hand trembled as he helped his wife to alight. 
 It was the first time in the twelve years of their married 
 life that these two had sought any place of entertainment 
 together. 
 
 She was a little surprised by his manner in ordering the 
 repast. It was good, perhaps a trifle too peremptory, too 
 patronizingly authoritative. But she was not in the mood 
 to find fault with him. She wanted to gloss over his faults 
 because she wanted desperately to be happy. 
 
 During the meal their conversation was conventional, 
 and Frau Ursula began to wonder why he had brought her.
 
 CHILDHOOD 133 
 
 But when the last dishes had been removed, and the bill 
 paid, Hauser came and sat beside his wife on the cushioned 
 seat under the window which ran all around the spacious 
 room. The murmur of the orchestra, distant from their 
 table, made their words inaudible to all but themselves. 
 Conversationally they were as isolated as if they had been 
 stranded in the heart of the primeval forest. 
 
 "Ursula," said Hauser, "I have a good deal to say to 
 you. May I say it now?" 
 
 She nodded assent. 
 
 "I want to tell you first of all about my plans for the 
 immediate future." 
 
 "About the store?" 
 
 "No, I ve told you all there is to tell about the Leviathan: 
 I want to tell you about a house I intend to build." 
 
 "A house?" she demanded, in amazement. 
 
 "Yes, Ursula. In the olden days, abroad, before you 
 came to Berlin, you were accustomed to live in luxury and 
 in splendor. It has been the great ambition of my life 
 to provide you with all you were formerly accustomed to. 
 Before I met you my sole endeavor was to advance myself 
 in the hope of some day becoming a Kommerzienrat or 
 receiving a title. From the day I met you all my ambi 
 tions began to cluster about you. Oh, I know, of course, 
 that if you had wished to use the interest of your boy s 
 money, you could have lived quite splendidly. But that 
 wasn t the point as far as I was concerned. I wanted 
 to provide for you, and I meant to give you as good as 
 you were used to abroad. It s been a long, hard fight, 
 but I am winning out. I thank you for not using the 
 interest of Guide s money to set up a fine menage for 
 yourself. I regret that I have not been able to persuade 
 you to refrain from paying for the boy s upkeep out of 
 his own money. It was, perhaps, natural, that you should 
 wish to do so. After all, that s neither here nor there. 
 I m going to repay you the money you loaned me in 
 another half-year. I ve made good with my small store. 
 I made a small fortune. Then I speculated. I made more 
 money, and the Leviathan will place us on a different 
 social footing than before. I m no longer in the pin and 
 needle store category. I m headed for the Macy and 
 Wanamaker class."
 
 134 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Ah," cried Frau Ursula, anxiously, "be careful. You ve 
 being doing things on such a tremendous scale. The ex 
 penses which you must be incurring terrify me." 
 
 "They need not. I ve done nothing unadvisedly. I ve 
 a very comfortable bank account. All is going to go well. 
 
 That is if " he broke off suddenly. "Ursula," he 
 
 said, "I love you. I made you very angry when we were 
 first married by making love to you. So I desisted. But 
 I ve loved you right along. And I ve labored and striven 
 slaved, as the Americans say to make good in a big way 
 because I realized that therein lay my one chance of win 
 ning you." 
 
 "You hoped to buy me?" Frau Ursula inquired, gently 
 reproachful. 
 
 "You know very well that was not what I meant. By 
 arousing your pride in me and in my success I hoped that 
 you would come to care for me." 
 
 "Ah!" she exclaimed, wondering at his unexpected in 
 sight into the feminine soul. 
 
 "Perceive," he said, speaking with a gentleness of which 
 she had not thought him capable, "that I am paying you 
 the very great compliment of supposing that you might 
 feel pride in a self-made man. We ve both changed im 
 measurably since coming to America." 
 
 "Have I changed also ?" she asked. 
 
 Hauser laughed, but did not reply. Frau Ursula colored 
 lightly. Although she criticised him incessantly, it irritated 
 her to think that he criticised her. 
 
 "I know I ve changed," she conceded. "I was a good deal 
 of a snob abroad." 
 
 "How could you have escaped the taint!" he exclaimed. 
 "I confess, I am still fond of titles. Have you outgrown the 
 weakness completely?" 
 
 "I ve never thought about it," she replied. 
 
 "Then you have," he said, with decision. "But at any 
 rate, you haven t outgrown your fondness for a mansion 
 at least I hope you haven t. For I want you to have the 
 finest house in all Anasquoit." 
 
 "I don t want you to do anything rash," she said. "I am 
 contented where I am." 
 
 "But I m not. I want to see you in a proper setting at 
 last rich hangings and draperies, marble statuary and
 
 CHILDHOOD 135 
 
 palms, hand-carved mahogany, rare etchings, a few oils and 
 water-colors, perhaps a dry-point or two. And nothing but 
 sterling silver, cut-glass and crystal chandeliers." 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, a little amused by his boyish enthusiasm, 
 "is it a home or a museum you intend building?" 
 
 "Forgive me," he said, smiling gravely, "but that blessed 
 house has been my favorite relaxation for years. Often, 
 when I lay awake at night, I pictured you surrounded by 
 beautiful and costly things, by the homage of admiring 
 friends, by everything that makes life worth while. Your 
 life there has been so meager, so inadequate, so poor in 
 everything that dignifies life and ennobles it and raises it 
 above the level of mere animal existence." 
 
 Frau Ursula was genuinely touched at last. She laid her 
 hand upon his and pressed it gently. He started, then, very 
 quickly, before she could hinder him, he raised her hand to 
 his lips and kissed it. 
 
 For a few minutes after that they both employed them 
 selves assiduously in scanning the room to perceive if they 
 had been observed. Reassured that no one had perceived 
 them, Hauser resumed. 
 
 He had, he said, first thought of building the house and 
 presenting it to her as a surprise. But he had thought better 
 of that scheme. He thought that in all probability his wife 
 would prefer to select her own house site, plans and all. 
 He had in view two sites, both on Bismarck Street. The 
 site corner of Rhododendron Street was the larger of the 
 two, but he feared that the neighborhood was being disin 
 tegrated as a residential section. Dr. Koenig s house, near 
 Tamarack Street, had already depreciated in value, and 
 Hauser feared that the process of commercializing the 
 lower part of Bismarck Street would take place so rapidly 
 as to extend to Rhodendron and even to Papaw Street 
 within another decade or two. Therefore he considered 
 the other site preferable. It was located on Bismarck 
 corner off Hemlock, ran all the way down to Main and 
 extended back half a block along Bismarck toward Iron- 
 wood Street. Frau Ursula knew the block well. It was 
 one of the most desirable blocks in Anasquoit and com 
 manded a view of the river. She could not suppress an 
 exclamation of pleasure. 
 
 Hauser continued:
 
 136 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "The frost will be out of the ground in another fort 
 night," he said. "If we begin building in April, we will be 
 able to move into the house next autumn. I will have the 
 furnace going full blast for a week before we move in. 
 That will make you feel safe in taking Guido into a new 
 house." 
 
 "Ah," Frau Ursula exclaimed, "that is kind of you, 
 Erich." 
 
 "And of course," he went on hurriedly, as if ashamed of 
 his generous thought, "as soon as we have moved into the 
 Leviathan you are not going to come to the store any more. 
 The restaurant will be in charge of a chef. You re going 
 to stay at home and enjoy your leisure and your friends." 
 
 "I haven t many," she remarked, a little sadly. 
 
 "But you will have," he assured her, hopefully. "I m 
 getting Baumgarten to put me up at the Deutsche Verein. 
 I couldn t have asked it of him before a pin and needle 
 vender. But now things are different. You ll find yourself 
 with plenty of friends presently." 
 
 A look of comic dismay spread over Frau Ursula s face. 
 Like Dr. Koenig, though in less degree, she mistrusted racial 
 clannishness, and the particular brand of tribal snobbishness 
 bred by the Deutsche Verein she had always held in par 
 ticular detestation. Was the old Strebernatur going to re- 
 emerge just when she had begun to think it laid away for 
 ever? She checked her annoyance. She passionately de 
 sired not to be unjust to him again. 
 
 "I do not know that I will care very much for the 
 Deutsche Vere m and its set," she said mildly. 
 
 "Won t you?" he seemed disappointed. "I thought 
 you d like the idea. The best people belong to it, you know." 
 
 "Yes, of course," she forced herself to concede, "but you 
 see, Guido takes up all of my leisure time," she stopped 
 abruptly, fearing that her mention of the boy s name would 
 evoke one of his quick rages. But all he said was: 
 
 "Guido is getting better rapidly, and Mrs. Thornton is 
 both competent and kind. You should try and get some en 
 joyment out of life." 
 
 "Oh, I get a good deal of enjoyment, though not as much 
 as I would like," she replied, the vision of a little girl like 
 Elschen Marlow trembling uncertainly before her mind s 
 eye.
 
 CHILDHOOD 137 
 
 "The good deal I suppose is supplied by Guido, and 
 the not as much by myself," said Hauser, sarcastic for the 
 first time. 
 
 "Don t you think that s a little unfair?" she asked. 
 
 "Unfair? To you or to me or to Guido?" 
 
 She smarted under his change of manner, but she was 
 determined not to lose her temper. 
 
 "If anything," she replied, calmly, "it is too generous to 
 Guido." 
 
 "You surprise me !" There was no sarcasm in Mauser s 
 voice now, merely astonishment. 
 
 "Guido," she continued, "has of course been a source of 
 great joy to me, but he has also been a grievous anxiety and 
 responsibility." 
 
 "When we speak of a responsibility," said Hauser, "we 
 usually allow it to be inferred that we are responsible to 
 someone as well as for someone. Pray, to whom are you 
 answerable for Guido?" 
 
 "I am answerable for him to my conscience," his wife re 
 plied, with unresentful dignity. 
 
 The answer seemed subtly to displease Hauser. Without 
 replying, he dropped his eyes. 
 
 "Hauser," said Frau Ursula, quickly, "a moment ago you 
 were so kind about Guido in regard to the new house, I 
 mean. And yet you dislike him. Why do you dislike the 
 child so much?" 
 
 "Do I dislike him? I ll not admit that," said Hauser. 
 "To admit that were to throw away my last chance of win 
 ning your love." 
 
 "Ah," she exclaimed, "you must not side-track me. I 
 must intercede with you for Guido. Can I not prevail upon 
 you to treat him with some degree of kindness ?" 
 
 "You are accusing me of unkindness in the past," he 
 said, an undercurrent of anger in his voice. 
 
 Frau Ursula broke into an impassioned plea. 
 
 "I know it cannot be pleasant for you to have a strange 
 child in your house. But you know that the boy was the 
 reason of our marriage. Without Guido our marriage 
 would not have taken place. If you love me, as you say you 
 do, do not harbor this unnatural resentment against the boy. 
 He brought us together, and forgive me if I appear indeli 
 cate it is his money, you know, or rather the money which
 
 138 THE HYPHEN 
 
 I received from his mother, to which you owe your present 
 prosperity." 
 
 "I do not like to be reminded of that," said Hauser, 
 frowning. "It makes me feel savage. It makes me feel as 
 if my prosperity were doomed to terminate abruptly, as if 
 I had done something base and low in accepting the loan. 
 Perhaps I did. Yet, God knows, my reasons for marrying 
 you were not wholly sordid and mercenary." 
 
 "I know that," she hastened to assure him. "I know that. 
 Hence my candor. I have longed in the past to feel that 
 I might carry my worries about Guido to you, I have longed 
 to feel that I could come to you for advice. I have longed 
 
 to feel " she stopped abruptly, and then concluded 
 
 rather lamely, " just that." This, however, was not 
 
 what she had intended to say. She was a woman of infinite 
 pride, of exaggerated modesty, and although fully assured 
 that her husband still loved her, she hesitated to tell him that 
 she yearned for his love even as he yearned for hers." 
 
 "I ll try to be decent in the future," he said. "If I fail 
 you must ascribe my failure to the plea which is as old as 
 Adam, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. " 
 
 "Just what does that mean in this connection ?" his wife 
 inquired. 
 
 "Ursula!" his voice vibrated with sudden white-hot pas 
 sion. "Put yourself in my place, if you can. Woman s 
 passions are so much milder than man s, so much softer, less 
 violent that I doubt whether you can fully understand. I 
 love you. I have loved you passionately, and reverently as 
 as well, for twelve years. If the element of reverence in 
 my love were not very strong, if it did not predominate over 
 every other feeling, would I, could I have suffered all I did 
 for your sake ? For twelve years we two have lived, eaten, 
 slept in the same house. For twelve years I have daily seen 
 you lavish love, kisses, caresses upon a child not mine. Can 
 you comprehend that my heart has become a seething mass 
 of conflicting passions? Often, often I have thought that 
 jealousy and despair would drive me mad. I felt like a beg 
 gar condemned to look on at a perpetual banquet and going 
 hungry himself. I am not minimizing what you did for me 
 in many ways. You kept my house in order. My dinner 
 was always well cooked, my clothes were mended, my socks 
 were darned. But all the physical comfort with which you
 
 CHILDHOOD 139 
 
 surrounded me was a sham and a hollow pretext because 
 love was lacking. Why, there is more love in the word of 
 rebuke which you occasionally address to the boy than in the 
 kindest thing you have ever said to me. And, Ursula, there 
 
 is the earthly tie of marriage . I do not wish to dwell 
 
 overmuch on that. Yet here I am, a married man, married 
 to the woman whom I adore and idolize, yet I am con 
 demned to live as a celibate in immediate proximity to her. 
 Surely, Ursula, surely, you must vaguely comprehend the 
 torture-chamber in which I have lived all this time." 
 
 Hauser s wife was conscience-stricken. She was also a 
 little outraged, as women are prone to be when brought face 
 to face with the elemental passions and facts of life. 
 
 "If it is not too late," she began, feebly. 
 
 "If " he said, reproachfully. 
 
 "It is not too late," she said, firmly, blushing at her own 
 courage. 
 
 "Ursula !" he cried. He was deeply touched as she could 
 see. For a few moments he did not trust himself to speak. 
 Then he said : 
 
 "Come, dear wife, let us go." 
 
 It was half past three and Ursula supposed that Hauser 
 would proceed to the store after dropping her at their home. 
 He, however, dismissed the taxi, and after helping her to 
 alight, followed her in silence to their apartment. She di 
 vested herself of her coat and gloves while he stood watch 
 ing her, a smile on his lips, admiration and love in his eyes. 
 
 "Ursula!" 
 
 His arms were outstretched, on his face a look of mute 
 appeal. Very quietly she went to him and flung herself 
 with a sob upon his breast. Once more the vision of Guido 
 von Estritz flashed upon her consciousness. As if to escape 
 it, she lifted her face to Hauser and received his kiss. 
 
 "Now I am his wife, indeed," she thought, "and no other 
 man, dead or alive, has part in me." 
 
 The sound of approaching footsteps sent her away from 
 his arms and from his side, so new was their sense of pos 
 session. Old Kaetchen, risen from her bed of illness, was 
 at the door, clamoring to be told the menu for the evening 
 meal. 
 
 Hauser, with a smile, bade his wife adieu and effaced 
 himself.
 
 140 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Alone at last, Frau Ursula bowed her head in silent 
 prayer upon her hands. Guido was going to get well. 
 
 Hauser had promised to be kind and so had she ! The 
 
 shadows were clearing at last, and, as was her habit when 
 deeply moved, she murmured a verse, from Schiller, which 
 was apposite to her mood : 
 
 "O Koenigin, O Koenigin, das Leben ist dock schoen." 
 
 She had the sensation that her life heretofore had been 
 a desert, that she was out of it at last and that her path 
 henceforth must run alongside of shining and happily mur 
 muring waters. 
 
 Poor Ursula! Perhaps every life is more or less of a 
 desert, and if so no final escape is possible from it. Oases 
 punctuate it here and there and most of us must be satisfied 
 if we at times hit upon a spacious, kindly, fragrance-laden 
 one where we may linger for a while. 
 
 She had reached not even an oasis. She had merely 
 glimpsed a mirage. The sands of bitterness and gloom still 
 lay stretched before her.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A LITTLE later Frau Ursula went to the store, but she 
 was not in a mood for work and after a quarter of 
 an hour of perfunctory inspection, she returned to her 
 home. Mrs. Thornton had gone off for an afternoon in 
 New York, with some friends, and Frau Ursula expected 
 to find Guido alone. 
 
 On entering the apartment she heard voices in the parlor, 
 and concluded that Otto was still with Guido, but she be 
 came aware, almost immediately that it was not Otto s boy 
 ish treble, roughened by the miscellaneous uses of boyhood, 
 that overlapped and impinged on Guide s clear bell-like 
 voice. It was a man s barytone that was speaking; it was, 
 moreover, a foreign, not an American voice, and the German 
 which the stranger spoke was broken, although fluent 
 enough. 
 
 Frau Ursula, curiosity alert, went to the parlor. No in 
 stinct warned her against the shock which awaited her. 
 
 As she entered, Guido flew to the door to meet her. 
 
 "Oh, Mutterchen! I ve had a wonderful time. This gen 
 tleman told me all about Russia and a lady with a name like 
 a princess in a fairy tale. And she is a princess and they 
 threw her into prison because she was so kind to the poor. 
 And he is a prince, too. Isn t it wonderful? I cannot re 
 member the names, but the prince says it doesn t matter no 
 one can, unless they re Russians themselves." 
 
 Frau Ursula stood frozen to the spot. For one moment 
 her heart seemed to stop beating. Then it hammered so 
 furiously that her ears were filled with a strange buzzing 
 sound. It was with a very white face that she confronted 
 her visitor. 
 
 He had risen and was bowing to her with the stately 
 punctilio of the educated European. 
 
 "Permit me to introduce myself," he said. "I am Dmitri 
 Stepanovich. I am the cousin of Varvara Alexandrovna." 
 
 Guido clapped his hands. 
 
 141
 
 142 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Aren t those names perfectly beautiful, Mother?" he de 
 manded, ecstatically. 
 
 Frau Ursula turned faint. 
 
 "Guido," she said, "I think Kaetchen kas your Vesper- 
 brod ready for you in the kitchen." 
 
 "I do not want any Vesperbrod," cried the excited child, 
 
 "If you please, Guido," said Frau Ursula in a voice which 
 brooked no opposition. Reluctantly, with dragging feet, the 
 boy went from the room. 
 
 At the door he turned. 
 
 "You won t go away before I have seen you again, will 
 you?" he called from the threshold to his new friend, in 
 his most ingratiating way. 
 
 "I think not," Prince Vasalov called back. 
 
 Thereupon Guido bowed to the Prince, and the Prince, 
 with the utmost gravity, bowed to the boy. 
 
 While this little by-play was going on, F/au Ursula scru 
 tinized Prince Vasalov closely. He was tall, thin to ema 
 ciation, with a clear pallid skin and a mass of black hair 
 which he wore somewhat longer than prescribed by custom. 
 His features were very fine. He bore a striking likeness to 
 his cousin. They might have been twins, so like they were. 
 
 Perhaps, for that reason, Frau Ursula felt an immediate 
 acrid dislike for him. She was, as a rule, the most self- 
 controlled of women, but now she gave full rein to her 
 animosity. Who observes ceremony of manners at a ship 
 wreck or an earthquake? The rights of others, of course, 
 must be respected at times of general upheaval. But Vasa 
 lov had no rights. So Frau Ursula told herself. Her 
 thoughts were turbulent. "Whatever happens, he cannot 
 take Guido from me," she assured herself. "He simply can 
 not." Nevertheless she quailed in spirit. 
 
 "Why have you come here?" she demanded, as soon as 
 they were alone, and she had closed the door to the hall. 
 She spoke as a person destitute of compassion might speak 
 to a beggar. "What do you want ?" 
 
 Dmitri Stepanovich gave no sign of surprise further than 
 that he threw her a sharp look. 
 
 "If by here you mean this country," he said, aloofly, "I 
 can satisfy your curiosity in a few words. I am a political 
 refugee." 
 
 At these words all the disdain, the scorn, the contempt,
 
 CHILDHOOD 143 
 
 the black fury which had been allowed to smoulder in Frau 
 Ursula s heart came to the surface. What an unmitigated 
 nuisance Guide s Russian kin were, anyhow! 
 
 "I suppose that means that you have murdered someone, 
 doesn t it?" Frau Ursula questioned in the same insolent 
 tone in which she had spoken before. 
 
 Vasalov smiled detachedly. 
 
 "I have rid the fair earth of two outrageous tyrants," he 
 replied, calmly. "Beasts of prey both of them, in more 
 ways than one. The human race is better off for being rid 
 of them." 
 
 "You should write a treatise justifying crime," said Frau 
 Ursula, disdainfully. 
 
 Dmitri Stepanovich gave her a searching look. 
 
 "You are very angry," he said, coolly, "otherwise you 
 would not treat a guest with such deliberate discourtesy. 
 Will you permit me to state my errand to you ?" 
 
 "I asked for it before." 
 
 "I have a message for you from Varvara Alexandrovna." 
 
 "Then they did not recapture her? She is not dead?" 
 
 "I am sorry to disappoint you. They recaptured her 
 yes ; but she is alive." 
 
 "Ah !" cried Frau Ursula, her wild alarm getting the bet 
 ter of her prudence. "She cannot claim the boy now. He 
 belongs to me. I ve brought him up. He has been ill all 
 his little life and he is far from strong even now. It would 
 kill him to be taken away from me. It might kill him even 
 to be told that I am not his mother. For he loves me 
 
 loves me " she began to sob and the tears ran down her 
 
 cheeks. 
 
 "Compose yourself," Vasalov replied, gently. "I assure 
 you the boy is not to be taken away from you. There has 
 been no such thought in Varvara Alexandra vna s mind. She 
 would not wish to separate the child from you even if she 
 were to regain her liberty, a contingency which is virtually 
 beyond the pale of the possible." 
 
 These words, hinting as they did that an irrevocable fate 
 held in its cast-iron meshes the woman for whom Frau 
 Ursula had felt such a bitter abhorrence, had a strange ef 
 fect upon Frau Ursula. She ceased hating Guido s mother, 
 now feeling for her a compassion which approximated in 
 strength the anger which had previously filled her.
 
 144 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Varvara Alexandrovna escaped from Siberia years ago," 
 said Frau Ursula. "She may do so again." 
 
 "She is not in Siberia now," said Prince Vasalov, som 
 berly. 
 
 "Then, where?" 
 
 "In the fortress at Schlusselburg, in solitary confinement. 
 She has been there for over a decade." 
 
 Frau Ursula clasped her hands to her bosom in dismay. 
 She was not a highly imaginative woman, but no great 
 reaches of fantasy are required to apprehend the horrors of 
 solitary confinement. She had wished Madame von Estritz 
 dead scores of times, she had contemplated the possibility of 
 a Siberian sentence with the greatest equanimity; but, even 
 if she had hated Varvara Alexandrovna a thousand times 
 more than she had hated her in her most bitter moments, she 
 would not have wished to think of Guide s mother as a cap 
 tive in a lonely cell. 
 
 "Oh!" she exclaimed, involuntarily, and with such genu 
 ine feeling that Vasalov softened perceptibly. "I am sorry !" 
 she said. 
 
 "Yes, it is a harsh fate," he responded, dismally. "But 
 she has borne it bravely, proudly, nobly as becomes a daugh 
 ter of the Vasalovs." 
 
 Frau Ursula stared. She said nothing. 
 
 "She has been fortunate in one thing," Vasalov continued ; 
 "she has been able to communicate with the outside world. 
 She has been able to send us secret messages, and to re 
 ceive secret messages in return. She has dictated editorials 
 for our propaganda leaflets and she keeps in close touch 
 with the Cause." 
 
 "I do not follow you. How is that possible?" 
 
 "I am not at liberty to explain," Vasalov said, smiling. 
 The method in which she communicates with us is a jeal 
 ously guarded secret, and not more than four persons are in 
 the secret. Suffice it to say that we receive these messages 
 from her, and her last message, sent after she had learned 
 that I had fled to America, is the message which I have 
 come here to deliver in person, and which concerns her 
 son." 
 
 Frau Ursula steeled herself against a resurgence of 
 hatred for the woman who was suffering so cruelly. 
 
 "May I give you the message now?" Vasalov inquired.
 
 CHILDHOOD 145 
 
 Frau Ursula inclined her head. 
 
 "First of all Varvara Alexandrovna bids me thank you 
 for all you have done for her son. She bids me say also 
 that she is certain that you have been faithful to your trust, 
 generously faithful she termed it. I believe she expressed 
 some wishes concerning the boy s education. " 
 
 "Yes, and they are being closely observed." 
 
 "She is certain of that. Her faith in you is sublime. It 
 is because of her supreme belief in your goodness and nobil 
 ity that she ventures to trouble you once more in relation to 
 the further education of her son." 
 
 Truculence came back to Frau Ursula s heart, but she 
 did not allow her anger to usurp the sway of mind and heart 
 as before. 
 
 "Please continue," she said, quietly. 
 
 "It occurred to her, it seems, that there was one item of 
 her boy s education for which she had not provided in her 
 talk with you, probably because it was so self-evident a 
 phase. It is possible that you have thought of it by yourself. 
 She desires particularly that I should stress this point she 
 is convinced that if you have thought of it you have also 
 provided for it. The point is this. If the boy is to be of 
 any use to Russia when he has grown to manhood, he will 
 have to be able to speak and read and write Russian." 
 
 "Ah!" Frau Ursula exclaimed, her resentment again at 
 hightide. Did these people think she was rearing the boy 
 in the expectation of seeing him turn nihilist? Was the 
 Synthesis only a blind? Through her talks with Dr. Koe- 
 nig she had come to have some little faith in the Synthetic 
 Experiment. It might be more of a success than the Vasa- 
 lovs wished or expected. 
 
 Wisdom counseled her to be prudent. She did not en 
 tirely believe Vasalov s asseveration that there was no inten 
 tion of removing the boy from her charge. Her notion of 
 the Vasalov morality was very low, as we know, and she 
 did not doubt that men and women who did not stick at 
 murder, would not hesitate to lie, to deceive, to rob and 
 to kidnap, if any of these amiable diversions fell in with 
 their plans. 
 
 Dmitri Stepanovich misunderstood her exclamation. 
 
 "I see you have already thought of it," he exclaimed, al 
 most joyously.
 
 i 4 6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 His exclamation, and the unconscious homage which it 
 tendered Frau Ursula, revealed a tacit assumption on his 
 part that she was not as violently out of sympathy with the 
 Cause as she had at first given him to understand. Pru 
 dence again counseled her to be cautious. 
 
 "No," she replied, carelessly, "I did not think of it. It is, 
 however, an oversight which can easily be remedied." 
 
 "You are willing then, that Guido shall be taught Rus 
 sian?" 
 
 "Why not ?" she parried, with an indifference which was 
 not wholly assumed. She had the love of languages and of 
 lingual accomplishment possessed by every cultivated 
 European. 
 
 "That is very fine of you," Vasalov exclaimed, heartily. 
 "And you say you are observing Varvara Alexandrovna s 
 wishes in other respects, also ?" 
 
 "I am," said Frau Ursula frostily. "You understand, 
 however, that Guido is very young. With the assistance of 
 an old friend, a man of exceptional culture and intelligence, 
 I have mapped out a definite plan of No-Bias which I am 
 going to practice actively in the boy s upbringing." 
 
 "Ah!" Vasalov exclaimed. "You are indeed a noble 
 woman. Russia, the entire world may some day stand your 
 debtor for what you are doing. Observe, if you please, 
 that I ask no questions, demand no information excepting 
 such as you may wish to give me. Now that I have met 
 you I completely share my kinswoman s faith in you. I 
 ask one thing only may I be permitted to select Guido s 
 Russian teacher?" 
 
 Their eyes met in a prolonged, intense gaze. Frau Ursula 
 was tingling in every nerve with excitement. A flashing, 
 blinding suspicion had taken possession of her. She did not 
 doubt that Prince Vasalov would select a political refugee, 
 like himself, to instruct the boy not only in Russian but in 
 all the odious commonplace of the "Cause." Her impotence 
 to cope with the situation maddened her. She made an al 
 most physical effort to restrain the words of defiance which 
 were rising to her lips. She must be crafty and shrewd and 
 meet deception with deceit. How opportunely she had 
 made her peace with Hauser? He would protect her and 
 the boy and send about his business this gentlemanly ruffian, 
 who, without a doubt, wished to have her beautiful boy in-
 
 CHILDHOOD 147 
 
 strutted in crime systematically, for she was certain, now 
 that she had had a moment s time to reflect, that the study 
 of Russian was merely a subterfuge. 
 
 She might, of course, refuse to allow him to select 
 Guide s teacher. But what would she gain? She enter 
 tained a profound mistrust for all Russians. The spirit of 
 mistrust, of contempt, of hatred and vindictiveness and 
 fear for and of other races and other peoples which is rife 
 in every European country, which is the moral pabulum of 
 the European grown-up, and the spiritual pap on which the 
 European child is nurtured, and has been nurtured for cen 
 turies, had not been entirely eliminated from Frau Ursula s 
 mental make-up. She no longer regarded Italians, Span 
 iards, the French, the Irish with any particular degree of 
 scorn or alarm They were human, like Germans and 
 Americans, as she had gleaned from her intercourse with 
 them while in America. But it so happened that she had en 
 countered no Russians in America. Her experience with 
 Russians was limited to her excursion into Russia to succor 
 Varvara Alexandrovna s babe. She can hardly be blamed 
 if the experiences which befell her on that expedition did 
 not raise her opinion of Russians in general. 
 
 So she had gone on mistrusting all Russians on general 
 principles. She didn t believe there was a really "nice" Rus 
 sian in all America or anywhere else, for that matter. No, 
 decidedly, nothing was to be gained by denying Vasalov the 
 privilege of selecting Guide s teacher. She supposed he 
 might be trusted to find someone whose personal character, 
 at least, was good. It would be unpleasant to lock away all 
 the silver plate and jewelry every time Guide s teacher came 
 to the house ! 
 
 She said, hypocritically: 
 
 "If you had not suggested finding Guido a Russian 
 teacher, I would have asked you to do so." 
 
 "Oh, thank you ! Thank you !" To her intense amaze 
 ment the deceitful, murderous Russian became quite discur 
 sive. "You understand, of course, that I will try to find a 
 Russian who is thoroughly familiar with the aspirations and 
 the work of the Intelligentsia. Varvara Alexandrovna sees 
 no way of initiating her son in the devious ways of Russian 
 Life and Russian Politics and of familiarizing him with the 
 rudimentary problems which confront Russians to-day ex-
 
 i 4 8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 cepting in this way through close companionship with a 
 man who is Russian to the very backbone." 
 
 The effrontery of it! Frau Ursula caught he breath. 
 She could contain her indignation no longer. 
 
 "In brief," she said, "under guise of teaching Guido Rus 
 sian, you intend to warp his moral sense. I ll never consent 
 to it, never!" 
 
 Vasalov looked at her in surprise. Suddenly he compre 
 hended. His pale face flushed angrily, but he regained his 
 self-control in a moment. 
 
 "Permit me to ask," he said with the greatest urbanity, 
 "how do you expect to inculcate in Guido an unbiased atti 
 tude of mind when you yourself are so lamentably biased?" 
 
 "Biased!" Frau Ursula s face grew dark with anger. 
 She threw prudence to the winds. She no longer endeav- 
 erod to maintain a tranquil appearance. "Biased!" she re 
 peated, furiously. "You call an honest aversion to crime 
 being biased !" She made many bitter and unjustifiable ac 
 cusations in the fierce torrent of chaotic anger with which 
 her lips overflowed. She said some detestable things. She 
 had lost complete control of her tongue. 
 
 Once or twice Vasalov bit his lips, but long before Frau 
 Ursula had finished, he was as tranquil and composed as 
 ever. His composure seemed as impervious to windy anger 
 as a raincoat is to rain. 
 
 "You misunderstand us myself entirely," he said, 
 when Frau Ursula finally stopped. "Varvara Alexan- 
 drovna made the proviso that although the Russian teacher 
 must be well acquainted with the aims of the Intelligentsia, 
 he must not be a political refugee, must not be what is com 
 monly called a nihilist although we in Russia do not use 
 the term must not have dabbled in any political plots in 
 Russia. She made this proviso for reasons which I do not 
 think you are capable of comprehending." 
 
 Vasalov s insolence stung Frau Ursula cruelly, but she 
 determined, on the spur of the moment, to ignore it as com 
 pletely as he had ignored the accusations leveled against 
 himself. 
 
 "I will raise no objections to any one who is not a profes 
 sional in crime," she said, contemptuously. 
 
 This time she had the satisfaction of seeing Vasalov catch 
 his breath.
 
 CHILDHOOD 149 
 
 "You realize, of course," she continued, speaking with a 
 magnificent assurance which she was far from feeling, "that 
 it lies well within my rights and my power to refuse Var- 
 vara Alexandrovna s request. I promised her nothing, save 
 only that I would care well for the boy and that I would take 
 him to America. I listened respectfully to her wishes. I 
 am observing them, as a matter of courtesy. But there is no 
 reason under the sun why I should further burden myself 
 by observing requests brought by an emissary without any 
 credentials whatsoever. Nor did Varvara Alexandrovna 
 stipulate for codicils to the scheme of education which she 
 outlined to me, and which, Heaven knows, was complicated 
 enough. 
 
 "This request can hardly be termed a codicil," Vasalov 
 said, speaking quietly. "A codicil alters, changes or modifies 
 an existing status, while this suggestion is absolutely in line 
 with previously expressed wishes." 
 
 "I do not concede that. It gives you people an undue pre 
 ponderance." 
 
 "I think not. As Guido is living in America it is unavoid 
 able that he is freely imbibing the American view-point. He 
 lives among Germans, therefore the German viewpoint is 
 not foreign to him " 
 
 "I protest against being called a German. Both my hus 
 band and myself are American citizens." 
 
 "I spoke of race, of course. Obviously the Russian view 
 point is being neglected, through no fault of yours. We 
 wish to present it to the lad, without unduly influencing 
 him. I give you my sacred promise on that score. You 
 must see for yourself that if the experiment is to be a fair 
 one, and is to be made under test conditions, the boy must 
 have a chance to become intimately acquainted with as 
 many different nationalities as possible and with the politi 
 cal systems which they have evolved or are in process of 
 evolving. Varvara Alexandrovna s faith in the Synthesis 
 is phenomenal." 
 
 "And have you faith in it also ?" 
 
 Prince Vasalov considered this for a moment before re 
 plying. 
 
 "I confess," he said, finally, "my faith was as a mustard 
 seed until I saw the boy."
 
 ISO THE HYPHEN 
 
 "And do you think I am asking without malice that 
 the boy will be a partisan of your Cause?" 
 
 "I am by no means certain of that. The boy has enthu 
 siasm, certainly, but his enthusiasm seems to run riot. It 
 is ubiquitous and undiscriminating. It fastens upon every 
 subject that is broached. His appetite for life is tremen 
 dous. Quite tremendous. As yet his enthusiasm lacks 
 focus completely. This may due to his extreme youth, to 
 lack of direction, or again, it may be a temperamental pecu 
 liarity, reaching back to some forgotten Russian forbear, 
 for enthusiasm running wild is a distinctly Russian trait. 
 However, it does not follow from all this that his enthusiasm 
 is not capable of being focused. I believe it is for the 
 boy has rare intelligence. But even if this should be so, 
 it does not mean that he will embrace our views." Vasalov 
 came to a dead stop, but Frau Ursula perceived that he had 
 something more to say and waited patiently for him to re 
 sume. Her respect for his mentality had grown apace with 
 his words. His analysis of Guide s salient characteristic 
 was eerily true; she herself could not have bettered it in 
 substance; she herself, she was generous enough to admit, 
 could not have presented it so pithily. 
 
 "You realize, of course," Vasalov continued presently, 
 "that both Varvara Alexandrovna and Guido von Estritz 
 were violent partisans. But because they were honest and 
 well-meaning and respected each other very thoroughly, 
 both hoped that their offspring should effect a Synthesis 
 rather than become a votary of any one existing culture. 
 And I need not add, I hope, that Guide s mother was as sin 
 cere in this desire as his father was. So you perceive, v er- 
 ehrte Frau, that if I were to endeavor to make a Russophile 
 of the lad, I would be faithless to my mission. I trust, after 
 all I have said, that you will abandon your very evident mis 
 trust of myself." 
 
 He rose to go. As he stood there, she noted the comeliness 
 of his person, the fine distinction of his beautifully modeled 
 face. And again she was struck by the strong resemblance 
 which he bore to his cousin. 
 
 "I hope to find a Russian tutor within a week or so," he 
 said. "May I see the boy before I go?" 
 
 "He has had enough excitement for one day," said Frau 
 Ursula evasively.
 
 CHILDHOOD 151 
 
 "Just as you say," said Vasalov politely. 
 
 She regretted her petty display of power over the child s 
 person immediately, but Vasalov did not remonstrate with 
 her as she had expected he would do. He took his leave 
 with out offering any comment. 
 
 Guido came storming into the room, crammed with ques 
 tions and with disappointment. 
 
 "You must not tease me to-night, Guido," Frau Ursula 
 said, petulantly, "I am very tired. I will send Mrs. Thorn 
 ton to you as soon as she gets home. Now go to your room 
 and don t bother me." 
 
 Guido looked at his mother in amazement. Never had 
 she spoken to him so summarily before. He obeyed her 
 instantly, however, and Frau Ursula was free to seek the 
 seclusion of her own room. 
 
 Her rasped nerves cried imperiously for solitude. Her 
 heart was a battle-field, her mind tempest-tossed. All her 
 native poise was turned awry by the unexpected advent of 
 Dmitri Stepanovich. Had ever a woman been tried as 
 sorely as herself? For a few minutes she indulged in the 
 luxury of self-pity and hatred for the Vasalovs, mischievous 
 associates that vitiated her morality to the extent of per 
 mitting her to entertain the idea of proclaiming Dmitri 
 Stepanovich an impostor and handing him over to the police 
 for attempted intimidation. 
 
 Then, through the unlovely maze of sinister thoughts 
 there struggled the vision of a woman who, when Frau Ur 
 sula had last seen her, had been young and as attractive as 
 herself, with a babe at her breast, terror-stricken for her 
 babe s sake, strangely composed and courageous as to any 
 fate that awaited herself. She tried to picture Varvara 
 Alexandrovna now, twelve years later, immured in a dim 
 and probably foul dungeon, living on coarse, insufficient 
 food, clad in hideous, inadequate garments, destitute of 
 every comfort and every decency of life, yet preserving 
 throughout the harrowing ordeal an unshaken faith in the 
 cause for which she was suffering, and a mind so alert and 
 luminous that from her tiny cell she sent out messages and 
 instructions which re-echoed throughout Russia perhaps 
 throughout the world. 
 
 Her anger was quenched. She could not, she dared not 
 disregard a wish expressed by a woman suffering such a
 
 152 THE HYPHEN 
 
 martyrdom. And for that martyred woman s sake, for the 
 sake of herself and of Guide s father as well, she would see 
 to it that there was fair play. For she did not trust Vasalov 
 in spite of his professions of good faith. She would watch 
 the Russian tutor selected by Vasalov carefully and review 
 Guido s lessons, a task easy of accomplishment, for the lad 
 was in the habit of telling her in detail every occurrence of 
 his uneventfully important day. 
 
 She changed to a housedress and went to the dining-room 
 to inquire after the progress dinner was making. To her 
 surprise she found her husband sitting at his own place at 
 the table, his folded hands before him crushing down the 
 unread evening paper. 
 
 "Who was your visitor?" he asked, sharply. 
 
 "Prince Vasalov," she said. "How did you know some 
 one was here?" 
 
 "I came home early heard your voice and a man s you 
 seemed terribly stirred. I kept out of the room purposely." 
 
 The excitement which had stirred Frau Ursula earlier in 
 the afternoon, returned. 
 
 "I hate him," she said, bitterly. "I think he is as wicked 
 and as unscrupulous as a man can be. It is fortunate that 
 you did not come into the room. I should have been 
 tempted to ask you to throw him out." 
 
 "Beastly impudence to come here at all now. How did 
 he find out your whereabouts ?" 
 
 "I don t know," she replied, blankly. "I never thought 
 to ask him. Probably he traced me through the bank in 
 which Varvara Alexandrovna s money was deposited." 
 
 "What did he want?" 
 
 "Guido is to learn Russian," she replied, gloomily. "I 
 hate the idea of it not of his studying Russian, of course, 
 but of the leverage which the Vasalovs thus obtain for 
 launching their ideas into the impressionable mind of the 
 boy. I hate this interference. I hate him. I hate his 
 claiming the privilege of selecting the tutor." 
 
 "Claiming!" Hauser exclaimed, with an oath. "The 
 fellow has no right to claim anything whatever. I hope 
 you told him so." 
 
 "How could I? After all, he represents Guido s 
 mother." 
 
 Hauser, unaccountably, was here seized with a spasm
 
 CHILDHOOD 153 
 
 of such black fury that Frau Ursula shrank back abashed. 
 
 "If the scoundrel dares to come here again I ll break 
 his neck for him," he shouted, "and spare the Russian 
 police the trouble." He sprang from his chair, and pushed 
 it away angrily. 
 
 "Nothing would please me better," Frau Ursula ex 
 claimed, with great earnestness. "But, of course, that would 
 never do." They were standing close together, near the 
 mantle. "Oh, Erich," said Frau Ursula, with sudden 
 abandon, "I am so miserable." 
 
 Without a word he drew her protectively into the circle 
 of his arm and she rested her head against his shoulder, 
 deriving from that position a sense of support and comfort 
 which filled her with amazement. Did she care for him 
 so much as all that? How blind, how willfully blind and 
 unkind she had been both to him and to herself. 
 
 "Why did he have to come to-day of all days ?" Hauser s 
 wife pursued, presently. "We were so happy at last, you 
 and I. Never mind, we will be happy anyhow. And if 
 he is inclined to molest me, I will leave you to deal with 
 him. You will, won t you, Erich dear?" 
 
 She felt his clasp upon her waist tighten convulsively. 
 
 "I thank God you take that view of it, Ursula," he said 
 with a solemnity which seemed to her exaggerated. 
 "Try not to worry about him. His rascality seems to 
 know no bounds. If hecomes again I ll settle him once 
 for all." 
 
 Frau Ursula did not reply. But she lifted her head 
 from her husband s shoulder, and gently drew away from 
 his arms. A strange inflection in his voice, certain phrases 
 which he used, certain words as well, pierced through her 
 self-centeredness at last. Hauser s attitude was that of 
 a man who has suffered a personal affront. Why should 
 he feel thus toward Dmitri Stepanovich? He had not the 
 motive which she had. He had no motive whatever ex 
 cepting vicarious interest, for her sake, in Guide s wel 
 fare, and until now his interest in the boy had not been 
 very keen. Why then should he indulge in such caustic 
 language ? 
 
 "How long since you saw Vasalov last?" Hauser in 
 quired. 
 
 "Why, I ve never seen him before."
 
 154 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Ursula!" Hauser s tone was the one of a man to 
 whom the final outrage has been offered. "Never seen 
 him before! Oh, well, never mind. Let s talk of some 
 thing else." 
 
 Frau Ursula was sorely perplexed. Hauser s friendship 
 and affection which but a minute earlier had lapped her 
 about like a warm breath of air, like the fragrance of 
 violets in a warm room, strengthening and heartening her, 
 now, owing to some occult reason, was in abeyance. A 
 strange fear took hold of her. She did not desire to probe 
 to the root of this change. She desired to restore their 
 former status. 
 
 "Erich," she said, appealingly, "I am so terribly afraid. 
 I am afraid this man is going to try and kidnap Guido." 
 
 "Why should he wish to do that?" 
 
 "You see what value they attach to the child and to 
 his education." 
 
 Hauser, instead of replying, strode up and down the 
 room looking distraught and angry. 
 
 "Let s talk of something else," he said, suddenly, in a 
 thick, strained voice. 
 
 "Erich!" She approached him, and placed her hand 
 upon his sleeve. Instantly he became calmer, and so it 
 seemed to her, more kindly disposed. 
 
 "Erich, I am so sorry this has happened. Be patient with 
 me. I am terribly frightened. The Russians are such 
 daredevils." 
 
 "If this particular Russian daredevil comes here again I 
 will thrash him within an inch of his life, and, believe 
 me, my dear, that will settle it." 
 
 "I wish I felt as sure as you do that there will be no 
 attempt to steal the boy from me " 
 
 "Of course there won t be," Hauser cried. He was 
 terribly wrought upon. He seemed like a man from whom 
 the last vestige of self-control had suddenly dropped away. 
 "You exaggerate the boy s importance because you love 
 him. I do not blame you for that. Every mother does it. 
 It is nature s way of making sure that the babies will be 
 properly cared for. If Vasalov really thought the boy so 
 important, he would never have deserted you and the child. 
 He is making of the boy s mythical importance a subter 
 fuge to get near you again. But you re my wife. And you
 
 CHILDHOOD 155 
 
 love me. You told me to-day, within the hour, within the 
 minute that you love me. Let him try just let him try!" 
 
 The sensation which swept over Frau Ursula as the 
 full meaning of Hauser s unintentional innuendo, wrung 
 from him by excess of emotion, dawned upon her, can 
 better be imagined than described. For a moment she 
 was completely dazed. Then, when her vision cleared, 
 and she found herself standing in the familiar dining- 
 room, with Hauser at her side, she felt as if she had re 
 turned from a long journey through uncharted space. 
 
 "You think Guido is my child?" she forced herself to 
 stammer out. The thing seemed so preposterous, so 
 asinine, that she expected a vehement denial from him. 
 But he did not reply. The expression on his face was 
 the expression of a man in extreme pain. "You thought 
 Vasalov was my lover? You thought I had invented 
 Varvara Alexandrovna and Guido von Estritz and the 
 Synthesis just to save my reputation?" 
 
 From a pasty white Hauser s face turned a dull brick- 
 red. 
 
 "I didn t want you to know that I suspected the truth," 
 he said, in a low voice of entreaty. "I understood thor 
 oughly what a horrible thing it was for a woman reared 
 as you had been to find herself in such a predicament. I 
 did not blame you. My word for it. I pitied you im 
 measurably. I admired you, too, for your cleverness and 
 shrewdness in inventing the story of the Synthesis. Be 
 cause I did not wish to humiliate or mortify you, I pre 
 tended to believe your story. Sometimes, when I realized 
 that the fellow whoever he was still possessed your 
 love, I could have committed murder. But I was never 
 angry with you, Ursula, never. All I felt for you was a 
 pity deeper than I can find words to express." 
 
 He had spoken with a noble simplicity, a sort of homely 
 grandeur. Of this Hauser s wife was aware, even while 
 she answered, breathing convulsively: 
 
 "And thinking me that sort of a woman you married 
 me? Thinking that of me you accepted money from me? 
 Where did you think the money came from? My lover? 
 Oh! Erich, were you as base as that?" 
 
 "Don t!" he cried, pleadingly. "Don t!" He put up 
 his hands as if to ward off a blow.
 
 I S 6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Oh," she cried in an agonized voice, "this is all so 
 sordid and so low ! To think that less than five minutes 
 ago I clung to you, I kissed the lips that now insult me 
 so grossly." 
 
 "Ursula," cried the man, "for heaven s sake, stop. Don t 
 say any more now. You are angry. You ll say things you 
 you do not mean." 
 
 "I ll say things I do mean. I ll say things I am too 
 kind to say unless anger wrenches them from me. I de 
 spise you. I have always despised you. You re a climber, 
 a sordid, mercenary climber. And I hate you. I hate 
 you," she concluded. 
 
 She had worked herself into such a state of hysterical 
 irresponsibility that for the moment she actually believed 
 the folly she was uttering. And yet she did not hate 
 Hauser. She had not hated him for months, and she 
 would never hate him again. She had looked too deep 
 into his heart. She had glimpsed there such unbounded 
 kindness and illimitable love for herself that she would 
 have been less than human if she had given him hatred 
 in return. But it is by no means incompatible with woman s 
 psychology to feel love and to feign hatred. 
 
 "Oh, no," he said, very quietly, "you do not hate me. 
 You do not even despise me. You know that I have told 
 you the truth just now that I esteem you as highly as 
 if this thing had never happened as if Vasalov and 
 Guido had never existed." 
 
 "You forgive me, I suppose " she demanded, with superb 
 irony. 
 
 "Oh, come now," he said, kindly. "I have never, not 
 even in thought, used that expression. And you know it." 
 
 "Apparently you still believe that Guido is my child and 
 
 that consequently, I was a ." She concluded her 
 
 sentence with a word that brought the blood to Hauser s 
 cheek. Saintly women, in their handling of vicious affairs 
 often lapse into indecorum of language. It is with them 
 a token of crowning contempt to use no fair and seemly 
 words in speaking of the seamy side of life. 
 
 Hauser winced. 
 
 "You ve said nothing to disprove my suspicion," he re 
 minded her, tolerantly.
 
 CHILDHOOD 157 
 
 "No. Nor shall I lower myself to your level by dis 
 proving it, as I could do, if I wished to." 
 
 "Ursula!" There was a new note in his voice. Was 
 it hope? Or retaliation? Or rancor? "I have been very 
 patient with you throughout a good many years, and I 
 have been very patient with you now. If you can disprove 
 this if Guido is not your child and if Vasalov has never 
 been your lover, I think you owe it to me to submit me the 
 proofs." 
 
 She flared up anew. 
 
 "Proofs!" she cried. "Proofs! Believe what you wish. 
 What you think matters nothing to me. The contempt of 
 the contemptible cannot touch me." 
 
 "Have a care!" He was angered at last. "You are 
 my wife. You bear my name. You enjoy my protection. 
 I repeat, I have the right to demand the proofs to which 
 you refer and I do demand them now." 
 
 He realized, as soon as he had spoken, that he could 
 not have chosen more unfortunate words. By continued 
 pleading and kindness he might have swayed her, might 
 have touched her heart and forced her to concede the 
 nobility of his conduct in spite of the surface ripples of 
 sordidness and self-interest which he could not gainsay. 
 But he had made the fatal mistake of showing masterful 
 ness at the wrong moment. He had domineered when he 
 should have entreated and argued. He went white with 
 apprehension of what was coming. 
 
 "You demand them!" she sneered. She laughed cruelly, 
 hideously. He barely recognized his sweet and gentle Ur 
 sula. " You have a right to nothing. You were paid well 
 paid for deigning to rehabilitate a fallen woman. Witness 
 your present prosperity! No, Erich, you have a right to 
 nothing excepting to the shekels which your wife s shame 
 has brought you." 
 
 Her voice broke into a sob. Hauser stared at her, bewil 
 dered, non-plused, perplexed. For a moment he had enter 
 tained the tremendous hope that she would clear herself. 
 Now she had thrust him back into utter darkness. The 
 gloom of his uncertainty was more cruel than before. It 
 merged suddenly into the still more sinister gloom of cer 
 tainty. 
 
 She was guilty, of course she was guilty! As if it mat-
 
 158 THE HYPHEN 
 
 tered! It had never really mattered to him, since he loved 
 her with a true and an honest love. Why couldn t she com 
 prehend that? Why were women so unreasonable? Why, 
 being so unreasonable, were men condemned to love these 
 frail ajid emotionally shifting creatures? 
 
 He came to with a start. He was crumpling the news 
 paper in his hands, rolling it up into an enormous, con 
 torted ball. And he was alone. The door was just closing 
 behind his wife.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE proof of her innocence which Frau Ursula had al 
 luded to was a proof so slenderly proportioned that 
 Hauser, more likely, than not, would have rejected it as in 
 sufficient. What Frau Ursula had referred to was the da 
 guerreotype of the first Guido given her by Dr. Koenig and 
 to Dr. Koenig s procurable testimony that the founder of 
 the American branch of the von Estritz family had not been 
 a mythical character. 
 
 False pride forbade any endeavor at vindication. Her 
 love for Hauser was again overlaid with hatred, strangest 
 platina of all for the gentlest passion that can move the hu 
 man heart. How can hatred fasten itself to love ? Can the 
 paradox be explained by saying that the impurities of love 
 are drawn to the surface where they can do the least harm, 
 corroding and disfiguring only that which is visible to all, 
 and leaving the inner shrine unvexed and intact ? 
 
 Days of misery followed both for Frau Ursula and for 
 Hauser. Hauser effaced himself as much as possible, eat 
 ing an early breakfast, which he insisted on preparing him 
 self, as old Kaetchen did not appear before seven, and often 
 returning to his home long after midnight. On Sundays he 
 made much ado over business engagements in the city. 
 There was, as yet, no change in his manner toward his wife 
 and Guido upon the few occasions when he had come in 
 contact with his family. 
 
 Frau Ursula lived in hourly terror lest Vasalov reappear 
 on the scene. ,She feared that Hauser might carry out his 
 threat and, inadvertently, kill the Russian. She feared, al 
 most as much, or more, that Vasalov might make a success 
 ful effort to abduct Guido. She did not dare broach either 
 subject to Hauser. And yet she had never longed for his 
 support and guidance as she longed for them in these bitter 
 days. She suffered sudden accesses of softness in the pri 
 vacy of her own room ; then she would hold long imaginary 
 conversations with her husband, gently persuading him to 
 
 159
 
 160 THE HYPHEN 
 
 realize the injustice he had done her. At the end of such 
 an interview she would weep unrestrainedly but silently 
 upon her pillow. The ghostly session over, she lapsed either 
 into diffidence or into hardness, chiefly the latter. She could 
 not forgive Hauser for suspecting her of the unforgivable 
 sin. 
 
 Vasalov appeared about ten days later with a very fair, 
 emaciated, gentle-eyed and soft-voiced youth of about three- 
 and-twenty in tow, whom he introduced as Sergius Ivano- 
 vich Dobronov. 
 
 Young Dobronov conveyed an impression of general 
 grayness which was somewhat disconcerting. His eyes fluc 
 tuated between gray and slate, his hair was so very fair as 
 to appear blond or grayish, according to the angle at which 
 the light fell upon it, and his complexion partook of the 
 general color scheme or lack-of-color scheme which na 
 ture seemed to have mapped out for him. His manners were 
 irreproachable and he spoke German perfectly, very much 
 better than Vasalov. 
 
 Frau Ursula eyed him suspiciously. She tried to per 
 suade herself that she thought him capable of any villiany. 
 Assassination might be the least and the sweetest of his evil 
 practices. She remembered reading about the strange re 
 ligious sects which flourish in Russia, the communicants of 
 which pollute the conception of religion by following ob 
 scene and abominable rites ostensibly in its observance. 
 What, after all, did she know of Vasalov ? He might be an 
 impostor, although she did not think so. He might be con 
 niving with this man to secure him access to Guido s person 
 for heaven only knows what baleful purposes. 
 
 She decided to be so rude to him that he would refuse to 
 teach Guido Russian. 
 
 "I suppose Prince Vasalov has initiated you into the com 
 plex system with which Guido s education is hedged about." 
 
 "Jawohl, verehrte Frau," the young man replied in his al 
 most metallically clear German. 
 
 "There is one thing I want to say to you m the presence 
 of his mother s cousin," she continued. "I l;ave sedulously 
 avoided introducing into his life any influence that would 
 create a strong bias in favor of any theological creed or any 
 political faith. I am equally determined that no influence 
 shall impinge upon his life tending to create a homicidal
 
 CHILDHOOD 161 
 
 mania such as possessed his mother and the Prince and 
 no doubt possesses yourself." 
 
 The young man, to Frau Ursula s surprise, instead of 
 being affronted, burst out laughing. It was a frank, 
 honest, wholesome laugh, and from the moment she heard 
 it, Frau Ursula s heart went out to the young fellow. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," Dobronov said. "It was very rude, 
 indeed, of me to laugh. But your misconception of my 
 character is so flagrant, verehrte Frau." He stopped, smiled 
 broadly and relapsed into silence. 
 
 "I will not attempt to defend myself against your charge, 
 Frau Hauser," said Vasalov, good-naturedly. "Were I to 
 do so, Sergius Ivanovich would outrival yourself in con 
 demning the violent measures espoused by Varvara Alex- 
 androvna and myself in our fight for Russian freedom." 
 
 "Then " Partially concilated, Frau Ursula glanced 
 
 questioningly at Dobronov. She liked this lad he was 
 little more liked him immensely. 
 
 "Sergius Ivanovich is a Dukhobor," said Vasalov. 
 
 "And what may that be ?" she demanded. 
 
 But before Vasalov could explain the meaning of the 
 formidable word, Dobronov exclaimed, with great energy: 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Dmitri Stepanovich, I am not a 
 Dukhobor." 
 
 "You are certainly not behaving like one now," Vasalov 
 rejoined, smiling broadly. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said the pale youth, with sudden 
 meekness. It was Frau Ursula s turn to smile. Apparently 
 Dobronov prefaced every remark with a request for for 
 giveness. There certainly was nothing formidable about 
 him. She felt entirely reassured. 
 
 "And what may a Dukhobor be?" she inquired again. 
 
 "I refused to be classified," Dobronov sang out, wildly 
 excited again. "I absolutely refuse to be labeled." 
 
 Vasalov smiled subtly. 
 
 "The Dukhobors would certainly object if they ever do 
 so strenuous a thing as that to having you ranked with 
 them, if you continue in this fashion." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Dobronov, meek once more. 
 "I am not living up to my principles just now, it is true." 
 
 "But what is a Dukhobor?" Frau Ursula inquired for 
 the third time, her interest now thoroughly aroused.
 
 162 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "The Dukhobors are a religious sect of Russia," Vasalov 
 repoined, "whose chief tenet is the doctrine of non-resist 
 ance, a doctrine which our friend Dobronov subscribes to 
 with all his heart. They will suffer imprisonment, stripes 
 and banishment sooner than carry arms or submit to con 
 scription. They never oppose force to force. They bow 
 to cruelty, harshness, persecution, but they do not strike 
 back. They will suffer a thousand deaths sooner than 
 dream of killing anyone. And they carry the principle into 
 every-day life. Thus, for instance, if you were to take 
 it into your head to be rude to Sergius Ivanovich, a pos 
 sibility which, since you are a woman of breeding, could 
 not arise, he would smile and bow and thank you, but 
 never be rude in return." 
 
 Frau Ursula put her tongue against her teeth. Vasalov s 
 adroitness in rebuking her showed him to be more of man 
 of the world than she had suspected. She had been at no 
 pains to disguise the low regard in which she held his 
 morality, perhaps his mentality as well. He had taken these 
 means of correcting her perspective. 
 
 "I imagine you are taking too flattering a view of my 
 incapacity for rudeness," she replied. "I am going to ask 
 a question now which may offend you. If so, I beg of you 
 to excuse my rudeness on the ground that I am seriously 
 seeking enlightenment." 
 
 Vasalov bowed to indicate that he was at her service. 
 
 "You," she began, "are not a Dukhobor, I take it?" 
 
 "Hardly," Vasalov replied. "The Dukhobors are Chris 
 tians. I am an atheist." 
 
 Frau Ursula shivered. A self-confessed assassin and 
 atheist ! And he smiled and talked and walked and doubt 
 less ate and slept and loved like other men. 
 
 "How then can you two, who hold such divergent views, 
 be friends?" she inquired. 
 
 "Our views are not as divergent as they seem at first 
 glance," Vasalov replied. "We both believe in the Uni 
 versal Brotherhood of Man. We differ in the methods we 
 pursue to achieve that Universal Brotherhood." 
 
 "Can an atheist believe in the Brotherhood of Man?" she 
 inquired. 
 
 "Why not? Ah, I see. You think that a belief in 
 Brotherhood presupposes a belief in Fatherhood. Some
 
 CHILDHOOD 163 
 
 of us go so far as to believe that even the earthly father 
 may dispensed with. Madame, I meant nothing frivolous 
 or light!" Vasalov appended, hastily, on perceiving Frau 
 Ursula s scandalized face. "What I meant was, of course, 
 that there are those who believe that in the simple com 
 munistic societies, which would take the place of the present 
 complex state, all children should be reared and educated 
 together, enjoying the same advantages, the same privileges, 
 the same rights irrespective of parenthood. This, we be 
 lieve, would be the safest guarantee devisable against a 
 renascence of the present corrupt, reprehensible civilization 
 with which the entire world is afflicted to-day." 
 
 All this was Greek to Frau Ursula. To deflect the con 
 versation into simpler channels, she inquired: 
 
 "Do I understand .that the Dukhobors are socialists ?" 
 
 "Something very much like it," said Vasalov. But Do- 
 bronov again became intensely excited. 
 
 "I am not a socialist," shouted the apostle of non-re 
 sistance. "I refuse to be classified. This mania for label 
 ing human beings as if they were geological specimens is 
 at the root of most of the trouble in the world." 
 
 Frau Ursula was struck by this remark. These Russians, 
 although a little unhinged ein bischen uebergeschnappt 
 possessed thinking apparatuses not to be despised. 
 
 Vasalov smiled indulgently. 
 
 "If Sergius Ivanovich did not object to being classified," 
 he said, "I might be tempted to describe him as an 
 anarchist." 
 
 "I am an anarchist in a way, of course," grumbled the 
 Condemner of Dissent, "though I hate to be called so. I 
 detest all labels. Labeling human beings as this or that 
 makes them unfree. Immediately a man has proclaimed 
 himself a socialist or an anarchist, he feels himself obli 
 gated to maintain the opinions to which he has subscribed 
 in the face of all opposition. If anyone differs with him, 
 the devil of obstinacy is roused in him. He may see that 
 there is truth and soundness of reasoning in what the 
 other chap says, but self-love and vanity silence reason and 
 conscience, and he may find himself defending principles 
 in which he no longer believes simply because he is too 
 proud or too vain to recant." 
 
 "There s a good deal of truth in what you say, Prince
 
 164 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Dobronov," said Vasalov. "Do you not think so?" he 
 inquired of Frau Ursula. 
 
 "Prince Dobronov!" Frau Ursula exclaimed, amazed at 
 the sudden cropping up of the unexpected title. Were all 
 Russians princes or dukes or counts? 
 
 "Dmitri Stepanovich, it s too bad of you to give me away 
 like that," wailed the advocate of supine submission. "You 
 know I detest titles. Titles are as bad as labels. They 
 are labels of the most pernicious character, labels that are 
 foisted upon us at birth whether we have earned them 
 or not. Can a man be born a thief? Or a doctor? Or a 
 jurist? I appeal to your common-sense, Madame. Then 
 how can a man be born a prince? It s manifestly absurd. 
 A civilization that decks itself out in such tinsel and paste 
 is a bedizened Jezebel. I will none of it. If men loved 
 one another as He commanded them to do, the civilization 
 reared by the human race would know no restraints ex 
 cepting those imposed by Christ s will and attained through 
 Him. And if men respected one another s rights, as reason 
 as well as love bids us do, the civilization evolved by the 
 human race would need no restraints at all." 
 
 He paused a moment, and then concluded, with impas 
 sioned earnestness: 
 
 "Some day Holy Russia s message of the Divine Mystery 
 and Presence shall save all the world." 
 
 "Some day Holy Russia s message of equality and reason 
 shall make all the world free," said Vasalov. 
 
 "You cannot make the world free excepting through love 
 of Christ," said Dobronov, gently. 
 
 "You cannot make the world free if you bind it up in 
 all the unhealthy and crippling dogmas of the church," 
 said Vasalov. 
 
 "How dare you call any church found on Christ s words 
 unhealthy and crippling?" shouted the advocate of universal 
 peace. "How dare you, Prince Vasalov?" 
 
 Vasalov flushed angrily, and it became evident to Frau 
 Ursula that Dobronov had given Vasalov his title as a token 
 of crowning disdain, just as Vasalov, probably, had given 
 Dobronos his title a little earlier for the same reason. 
 She suppressed a smile. These Russians were like children 
 as direct, as quarrelsome and as sincere. 
 
 "I call every dogma, and not only every dogma, but
 
 CHILDHOOD 165 
 
 every religion unhealthy, because the object in every in 
 stance is to betray man into an inglorious acquiescence in 
 his earthly fate by holding out glowing rewards in the 
 hereafter." 
 
 "We must rise superior to our earthly fate," Dobronov 
 said, stoutly. "If our earthly state had power to chafe 
 the spirit, the spirit is weak and needs hardening. What 
 does dogma or doctrine matter? My sole doctrine is to 
 obey Christ implicitly. And it was He who commanded 
 and practiced poverty, and non-resistance. Hence my re 
 ligion is the only true religion." 
 
 "Ah," cried Vasalov, "they all say that." 
 
 Frau Ursula thought it time to put an end to this futile 
 argumentation. 
 
 "Prince Dobronov," she began, but was silenced by a 
 roar of indignation from the universal pacifist. 
 
 "Madame," he shouted, "what have I done to deserve 
 this insult from you? From you?" 
 
 "What insult?" stammered Frau Ursula, half-aware 
 wherein she had blundered. 
 
 "To give me my title ! To call me Prince. " 
 
 "But what else am I to call you ?" she demanded, boldly. 
 
 "Sergius Ivanovich," he replied, "of course." 
 
 "I am afraid I cannot remember all that," she said, 
 petulantly. And now, strange to say, that she had spoken 
 to him without the restraint customary among well-bred 
 strangers, she felt as if they were very old friends. She 
 found that she liked this pale, impetuous, gray lad, whose 
 fiery spirit was at such variance with the principles which 
 he professed. V 
 
 "Then call me plain Dobronov. No, stop! That s too 
 much like the Intelligentsia. Call me plain Sergius." 
 
 Frau Ursula was a little taken aback by this suggested 
 familiarity. 
 
 "Do, please," said Dobronov, smiling at her so charm 
 ingly that she consented forthwith. 
 
 "Very well," she said, "but in presenting you to others, 
 I must call you either Prince or Mr. Dobronov." 
 
 "Why must you?" demanded the scorner of titles. 
 
 "If I had known you were a prince, I should have given 
 you your title at once," she said, smiling a little fatuously. 
 "After all, there is convention."
 
 i66 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Convention!" exclaimed Dobronov. 
 
 "I thought, of course, you knew," said Vasalov, address 
 ing Frau Ursula. "The Vasalovs are beggars and upstarts 
 compared to the Dobronovs. Our family rose to prominence 
 only in the seventeenth century under Philaret, the father 
 of Peter the Great, the Romanov to whom our ancestor 
 was related. But the Dobronovs trace their descent back 
 to the time of the Muscovite dynasty to one of the boyars 
 who helped end Tartar oppression." 
 
 Dobronov scowled horribly at this recital of his family s 
 antiquity and grandeur. Vasalov, ignoring the danger 
 signal, continued: 
 
 "As to worldly goods, Dobronov s grandfather, before 
 the proclamation was issued abolishing serfs, owned some 
 thing like fifteen hundred souls." 
 
 Dobronov flared up like a volcano. 
 
 "Why speak of these shameful things !" he cried. "I 
 have lain awake nights lamenting the sinfulness of my 
 long line of forebears who hopelessly polluted their souls 
 by owning serfs. Heaven knows, those same sin-laden 
 souls by this time may be suffering painful expiation by 
 habitation in the bodies of monkeys, chicken or swine. Do 
 not laugh, Dmitri Stepanovich. I assure you, when I tread 
 on a caterpillar, or scotch a snake, or when I eat bacon 
 or duck, I tremble with dread lest I am hurting or eating" 
 he shuddered "one of my ancestors." 
 
 Frau Ursula was transfixed with surprise. 
 
 "You do not seriously believe in the transmigration of 
 souls," she demanded, "do you?" 
 
 "Of course, I do," said Dobronov, with some show of 
 impatience. "What else should I believe?" 
 
 "It seems to me," said Vasalov, "that you are taking a 
 contorted view of the matter. "If your forebears laid up 
 guilt in owning serfs, and the serfs acquired merit through 
 offering no resistance in their own behalf, then, surely, part 
 of your forefathers sins must be remitted them because 
 they were the humble instruments of Providence in allowing 
 their bondsmen to lay up treasure in heaven." 
 
 Dobronov grew a shade paler. 
 
 "What an idea!" he exclaimed. "What dreadful things 
 you do think of, Dmitri Stepanovich. I believe there is 
 something in it, though. What made you put such a notion
 
 CHILDHOOD 167 
 
 in my head? Still another idea to fit in with my beliefs. 
 Some day my poor mind will succumb to the strain of this 
 continual conflict of ideas." 
 
 Frau Ursula had not yet entirely recovered from her 
 surprise in Dobronov s amazing belief in transmigration. 
 
 With as little ceremony as Vasalov or Dobronov ob 
 served, she asked, abruptly: 
 
 "But how can you be a Christian, Sergius, if you really 
 believe in the old religion of Egypt ?" 
 
 Dobronov s face glowed with pleasure because Frau 
 Ursula had addressed him by his first name. He was, she 
 saw, as unsophisticated as a child. Then, with a quiet in- 
 tentness which contrasted favorably with the febrile ex 
 citement which had marked his behavior to Vasalov through 
 out, he said: 
 
 "There are a great number of religious sects in Russia 
 which are justified in describing themselves as Christians, 
 because they unqualifiedly accept the teachings of Christ 
 as set forth in the New Testament, deriving guidance for 
 their conduct from that source and that only. Further 
 more, they refuse to worship ikons, will not tolerate 
 Church Slavonic in their divine services, conducting .them 
 instead in the vernacular, and, in brief, repudiate the vast 
 web of falsehood, of ridiculous doctrine, of corruption, of 
 license which accumulates about every church maintaining 
 a highly specialized sacerdotal caste. These various sects 
 believe that dogma has very little to do with salvation, and 
 concentrate rather in following the precepts of clean living 
 enunciated by Jesus. But a religious belief, quite apart 
 from the ethics of religion, is indigenous to the primitive 
 human heart, and the Russians are still a primitive people. 
 Hence they insist on classifying themselves, driven thereto 
 probably by an animal instinct for companionship quite 
 as much as by the religious instinct. Indeed, there are 
 times when the two instincts seem to me identical." 
 
 "Well," Vasalov exclaimed, "I confess, I did not expect 
 such a keen and searching analysis of the religious psy 
 chology from a religious enthusiast like yourself." 
 
 The flush of anger leaped to Dobronov s cheek. 
 Vasalov, quiet, disdainful, his restraint slightly tinged with 
 malice, seemed to act like an irritant upon the younger man s 
 nerves whenever he chose to address him.
 
 168 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Because you are a materialist and an atheist, Dmitri 
 Stepanovich, you cannot perceive the difference between 
 an ethical follower of Christ, like myself, and religious 
 bigots who pin their faith in salvation upon some silly 
 dogma of their own fabrication. 
 
 "It is because I am an ethical follower of Christ," he 
 continued, with gathering emphasis, "and believe that right 
 living is everything and dogma of not the least consequence 
 in this world or the next, that I refuse resolutely to allow 
 myself to be classified. I do not even care to be identified 
 with the Dukhobors who, in my estimation, more than any 
 other religious body, embody divine truth in their teach 
 ings." 
 
 "You are a Dukhobor, even if you deny it," said Vasalov. 
 
 Dobronov made a horrible grimace, but did not reply. 
 With a shrug of the shoulder he continued his elucidation, 
 pointedly addressing Frau Ursula. 
 
 "Being in the flesh, I am only human, and being human 
 I cannot help formulating some beliefs, nor can I help 
 examining every new phase of religious thought or re 
 ligion that comes my way. Many strange religions have 
 left their impress on the Russian character by infiltration 
 from other races and other lands. I could name you a 
 parallel religion for every belief I hold. That does not 
 deter me from holding it. My beliefs and for a Christian 
 they will seem odd beliefs to a German Lutheran like 
 yourself may have come to me by seepage; on the other 
 hand, they may have sprung spontaneously out of my own 
 spiritual soil. I do not know which. And I do not care." 
 
 "I thought you were going to tell Frau Hauser just 
 what you do believe," Vasalov suggested. 
 
 "Yes, yes. That is so. Verehrte Frau, I am a Du 
 khobor in that I accept Christ s precept of non-resistance. 
 I am a Molokan in that I reverence the Bible. I am a 
 Bezpopovtoky in that I do not believe in a priesthood of 
 any sort; I am a Bieguny in that I believe the safest 
 guaranty for not transgressing against the law of poverty 
 practiced and taught by Christ is to be found in a nomadic 
 life; I am a Skoptsky, in that I believe the perfect man 
 should be a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven s sake, 
 although, contrary to the Skopskys, I believe that this per 
 fection must be attained by purely spiritual means, by a
 
 CHILDHOOD 169 
 
 spiritual conquest of the flesh. And lastly, I am a Khlytsy 
 in that I believe in the transmigration of the soul after 
 death; but I abhor the religious orgies practiced by this 
 sect. So you see the dilemma I am in. One doctrine of 
 one religion suits me, other doctrines of other religions 
 appeal to me. That is one reason why I refuse to label 
 myself. Also I am an individualist. I am entirely free 
 from the herding instinct. What I will come to in the 
 future I cannot, of course, say. One reason for my coming 
 to America was the desire to learn more of the beliefs 
 of your numerous Protestant sects." 
 
 Frau Ursula had listened with growing bewilderment. 
 Surely, never was there so curious a confession of faith. 
 It seemed to her that a man who, as far as she could gather, 
 seemed to be the direct antithesis of Vasalov in thought and 
 habit of life in spite of the single point upon which they 
 averred that they agreed would have been the very last 
 person whom Vasalov would have wished to select as a 
 tutor for Guido. She was greatly disturbed. Much as 
 she disliked Vasalov and mistrusted him, she was loth to 
 suspect Dobronov of duplicity. His evident sincerity, the 
 childlike simplicity with which he spread out his spiritual 
 beliefs and his mentality for her inspection, had won her 
 liking and her esteem. 
 
 Vasalov, that sinister genius for so she conceived him 
 must have read something of her misgivings in her face. 
 
 "I see you are wondering why I selected Sergius Ivano- 
 vich as a tutor for Guido," he said, a slightly contemptuous 
 smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "I will tell 
 you my reasons. I selected him for the high honor of 
 tutoring the lad in whom our greatest hopes center be 
 cause in spite of Dobronov s youth he represents Russian 
 thought in its overpowering variety more than any man 
 I know. There is no phase of Russian life from the 
 Intelligentsia to the Imperial Ballet with which he is not 
 conversant. He is a veritable magnet for current thought. 
 No-Bias is safe in his hands, because Sergius Ivanovich 
 changes his ideas and beliefs more frequently than many 
 Russians change their clothes. He never retains any one 
 idea long enough to become saturated with it, or to con 
 vince anyone else of its correctness. I myself have too 
 narrow, too restricted a view, as the specialist in any one
 
 170 THE HYPHEN 
 
 field must necessarily have. But Varvara Alexandrovna 
 desired the most ingrainedly Russian Russian available to 
 instruct her son. You behold him in Sergius Ivanovich. 
 He is not merely the most Russian Russian I know, he 
 not merely reflects Russian throught with admirable com 
 pleteness and admirable complexity; he is Russia itself, 
 Russia in miniature." 
 
 Dobronov had listened with the utmost composure to 
 this analysis of his spiritual self. He did not seem to 
 resent it. Speaking with calm aloofness, he remarked: 
 
 "I don t think you do me justice, Dmitri Stepanovich, 
 in speaking of me as a magnet of ideas. The freakish 
 things attracted by a magnet pile up confusedly all over 
 its surface. But my ideas are in orderly arrangement. 
 My mind is a titanic kaleidoscope, in which the many- 
 pointed star which carries out the kaleidoscope s principal 
 design indicates my major beliefs, all my minor thoughts 
 and emotions being arranged so as to fill in the intervening 
 themes. They intersect, intermingle, interlace. I admit 
 that I change my beliefs and doctrines very frequently. 
 What does it matter? They are really of no particular 
 consequence. All excepting the belief in non-resistance. 
 To that I adhere rigidly, and will adhere so long as there 
 is life in my body." 
 
 "From the stress you lay upon the Russian element in 
 Guido s education," said Frau Ursula, addressing Vasalov, 
 "one would think the Synthesis had the salvation of Russia 
 particularly in view. But that isn t so. The Synthesis 
 concerns the world. And Guido is a German-American 
 quite as much as a Russo-American." 
 
 "A German- American a German!" shouted Dobronov. 
 "Do not speak of that infamous race." 
 
 "The hypocrite among peoples," Vasalov threw in. 
 
 "The bully among nations," said Dobronov. 
 
 "The blond beast of the world!" Vasalov contributed. 
 His deep mellow baritone made the lines ring like the 
 chant of a priest. 
 
 "Vainglorious, conceited materialists," Dobronov con 
 tinued. "Oppressors of the poor and weak. Cringing 
 toadies to the powerful." 
 
 "Apparently, gentlemen," Frau Ursula contrived to in 
 terpose at this point, "in your estimation, the Universal
 
 CHILDHOOD 171 
 
 Brotherhood of man does not embrace the German race. 
 Antipathy, I perceive, has as great a power to unite you 
 as predilection." 
 
 Dobronov hung his head, like a reproved child, and even 
 Vasalov seemed a trifle abashed. 
 
 "The country which you are abusing is the country in 
 which I was born," Frau Ursula continued, pleasantly. 
 "Of course, as an American citizen it matters little to me 
 so long as your diatribes confine themselves to the country. 
 But when you extend them to embrace the entire race of 
 Germans, I feel myself included, for, as you pointed out 
 to me on a previous occasion, Prince Vasalov, we can 
 change our political allegiance but not our race." 
 
 Dobronov seemed crushed as much by the new per 
 spective presented by Frau Ursula as by pain at having 
 given his hostess offense. 
 
 "What things people do say," he exclaimed. "Ah, to 
 escape from this perpetual conflict of ideas!" 
 
 Vasalov waited with an exaggerated patience for Do 
 bronov to finish. Then, with his usual urbanity, he said: 
 
 "Verehrte Frau, I humbly beg your pardon. We have 
 both been unforgivably rude. I did not think of you as 
 a German. From what you said the other day I thought 
 that you had completely identified yourself with America." 
 
 Before Frau Ursula could reply, Dobronov sprang from 
 his chair spasmodically. 
 
 "Chere madame," he cried, "will you forgive me if I 
 leave on the instant?" He had, it seems, an engagement 
 to speak at a dinner given by a Society for Advanced 
 Thinking. Frau Ursula smilingly bade him wave ceremony. 
 He made his adieus, kissing her hand as he bade her good 
 bye, an action for which he apologized immediately, ex 
 plaining that in his youth the observances of polite society 
 had been so rammed into him that in moments of abstrac 
 tion he reverted to them although they were expressly 
 prohibited both by his religious and his political views. 
 
 Then he ran off as joyously as a boy to garner in more 
 ideas for his mental kaleidoscope. 
 
 A dullness seemed to have fallen upon the room now 
 that Dobronov s mercurial presence was removed. Neither 
 Vasalov nor Frau Ursula felt any inclination to prolong 
 the conversation.
 
 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Vasalov requested his hostess to supply Guiclo with some 
 plausible reason for the study of Russian. She suggested 
 that he place at her disposal one or two Russian books. 
 He had a small volume of verse in his pocket and handed 
 it to her. Then he left her, assuring her, his half-amused, 
 half-malicious smile still faintly perceptible, that she would 
 not be troubled by himself overmuch in future. 
 
 On the whole Frau Ursula felt that she had reason to 
 congratulate herself that the Vasalov episode had moved 
 along such equable lines. The devastating blow it had 
 dealt her own happiness she tried not to think about. 
 Blind fury possessed her at times at thought of Hauser s 
 suspicion. She forced her thoughts to flow as much as 
 possible in other channels. 
 
 True to her promise she laid the Russian book which 
 Vasalov had placed in her hands on the parlor table, certain 
 that her book-worm would rise to the bait. The expected 
 happened. Guido discovered the book one evening, and, 
 always hungry for printed matter, seized avidly upon the 
 volume with the unaccustomed characters. He demanded 
 to be told what language it might be that employed signs 
 so confusing and arbitrary. Chinese, mayhap? 
 
 "Russian," said Frau Ursula. 
 
 "Russian ? Then Prince Vasalov was here to-day ?" 
 
 "No day before yesterday." 
 
 "While I was out?" 
 
 "While you were out." 
 
 "Mutterchen, are there many books printed in Russian?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Have they any great writers, like Schiller and Goethe ?" 
 
 "Some critics consider the Russian novelists the greatest 
 in the world." 
 
 "Mother, I should love to study Russian." 
 
 "You may, if you wish." 
 
 The curriculum of studies allowed Guido, owing to the 
 ever-present fear that he would outdo his meager strength, 
 had been deleted as much as possible. Frau Ursula had, 
 as it were, weeded the necessities of learning from the 
 luxuries. Arithmetic was comprised in the schedule, and 
 so were History and Geography. But Spelling, Reading, 
 Music, Drawing and Botany were barred. Thus his work 
 had been frugally pared down to embrace only the most
 
 CHILDHOOD 173 
 
 needful. Guido, alert and keen-witted though he was, per 
 ceived nothing strange in the fact that he was not per 
 mitted to study a language as popular as French, while 
 encouraged in his desire to master so unusual a tongue as 
 Russian. 
 
 And so Russian was added to Guido s linguistic tribula 
 tions. He was enchanted with Dobronov, and Dobronov 
 was equally charmed with the child. It was evident from 
 the first that they were going to be excellent friends, and 
 once more Frau Ursula was filled with alarm. 
 
 Poor Frau Ursula! In spite of her very decided liking 
 for Dobronov, all her fears and all her qualms of conscience 
 were intermittently recurrent. She could not have re 
 proached herself more bitterly if she had apprenticed Guido 
 to Fagan himself. 
 
 Dobronov, in spite of his seeming honesty and trans 
 parent candor might, just possibly might, be a blind pur- 
 posively designed and engineered by the malignant Vasalov. 
 If so, Frau Ursula was bound to admit, Dobronov was 
 an actor of supreme genius. Sometimes she sat in the 
 room while the Russian lesson was proceeding; sometimes 
 she subjected Guido to a grilling third degree after the 
 lesson was over. Certainly nothing took place during these 
 lessons which might remotely be construed as inciting 
 Guido to homicidal mania. A few times, on evenings 
 when she knew that her husband would not be at home, 
 Frau Ursula invited Dobronov to stay for tea. If Frau 
 Ursula had expected to glean some insight into the nefarious 
 Vasalov methods or nefarious Vasalov intentions from 
 Dobronov, she was doomed to disappointment. Dobronov 
 touched on nothing more heinous than his contemplated 
 conversion to the Baptist faith. His aversion for being 
 labeled seemed to be undergoing disintegration. He was 
 very enthusiastic about the Baptists and was receiving in 
 struction in their beliefs. Baptism of adults by immersion 
 struck him as the most commendably exculpatory rite he 
 had yet heard of. He burned with ardor to have it per 
 formed upon himself, but some instinct made him insist 
 upon preliminary instruction. He trembled with appre 
 hension lest he stumble upon some obstacle. For the first 
 time in his life he was not only willing but eager to be 
 classified and labeled.
 
 174 THE HYPHEN 
 
 And yet, in spite of Dobronov s reassuring manner and 
 speech, Frau Ursula s uneasiness continued. She had long 
 talks with Dr. Koenig, and thanked heaven for the boon 
 of the old physician s friendship. To Mrs. Thornton also 
 Frau Ursula unbosomed herself. Mrs. Thornton was an 
 uncompromising optimist and chid Frau Ursula gently for 
 her lack of faith in Dobronov. She, too, had taken Sergius 
 Ivanovich to her heart, and his efforts at conversation 
 with her in English were more sucessful than Frau Ursula 
 had supposed possible. 
 
 The Experiment Mrs. Thornton thought extraordinary 
 and delightful. She seemed to look upon it as a sort 
 of sublimated joke. Frau Ursula was a little hurt by 
 this attitude. In Frau Ursula s eyes Mrs. Thornton s un 
 quenchable optimism sometimes savored of levity. It was, 
 in fact, the only thing about Mrs. Thornton which Frau 
 Ursula did not quite like. Because Mrs. Thornton was 
 so charming and lovable, Frau Ursula chose to overlook 
 her airy sprightliness in disposing of the most serious 
 topics in life, taking considerable credit to herself for being 
 thus broad-gauged, and never suspecting that what she 
 considered a failing in the pretty little widow was in truth 
 one of her finest attributes. 
 
 But of the matter which was the source of a continual, 
 grueling agitation, she could speak neither to Mrs. Thorn 
 ton nor to the kind old physician. Her break with Hauser 
 preyed upon her mind. In vain she tried to wrap herself 
 in proud disdain, in vain tried to tell herself that he was 
 as much of a clinging vulgarian, Streber, opportunist, time- 
 server and plebeian as he had ever been. He was so 
 impossible that mere contact with him spelled degrada 
 tion. If that were not so, how had she happened to forget 
 her dignity so far as to say the things to him which un 
 deniably she had said? She knew that she had acted very 
 badly, and her anger and disgust with herself increased her 
 anger and disgust with him who had evoked these senti 
 ments of self -depreciation. 
 
 She still had her soft moments, but she tried to harden 
 herself against them. There was no excuse possible for 
 considering her one of the unspeakable sisterhood. The 
 recollection of that burned like caustic. Like many another 
 virtuous woman, Frau Ursula ail-unconsciously, whenever
 
 CHILDHOOD 175 
 
 occasion offered, asserted her virtue by viciously proclaim 
 ing her contempt for those of her sex who had strayed 
 from the narrow path. She deliberately blinded herself 
 to the recurrence of the salad-day disease from which she 
 was suffering. Perhaps she really was blind to it. But a 
 patient down with bronchial pneumonia suffers quite as 
 much or more if in ignorance of the nature of the disease 
 than if it has been properly diagnosed. 
 
 Matters came to a head between herself and Hauser 
 when one day he came home shortly after dinner with a 
 roll of blue prints under his arm. He seemed pleasantly 
 excited, and in addressing his wife gave no sign that all 
 was not well between them. 
 
 "I have the architect s plans here for the new house," 
 he said. -"At my request he has made rough sketches and 
 plans for four different styles. If none of these I have 
 here suit you, I told him he would have to come here some 
 day and have a talk with you so that you would be sure 
 to get just the sort of house you have in mind." 
 
 Frau Ursula resented strongly that Hauser should take 
 it for granted that she would allow herself to be obligated 
 to him to such an extent. After what had happened be 
 tween them, she considered it a piece of audacity on his 
 part to broach the subject of the new house at all. The 
 still inner voice which is present in every human soul 
 whispered to her that he was striving desperately to place 
 himself on the same footing with her as before, that he 
 was clumsy, perhaps, in his choice of an avenue of ap 
 proach, but that his intentions were good. 
 
 But she would not hearken to the small still voice. She 
 said coldly: 
 
 "I have no sort of house in mind at all." 
 
 "Oh, come now, surely you must have," Hauser said, 
 persuasively. "Even I, who am not particularly imaginative, 
 have an ideal of pretty nearly everything under the sun 
 from a horse to a house." 
 
 "Supposing, then, you suit yourself as to the house," 
 Frau Ursula said, coldly. 
 
 "I d like to suit you, instead," said the man, pleadingly. 
 "I m sure your taste is better than mine and besides per 
 haps I should have put that reason first I want so much 
 that you should be thoroughly pleased. When you have
 
 i;6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 time, please, Ursula, look over these blue prints. Would 
 you like me to explain them to you?" 
 
 "I would not," said Frau Ursula. 
 
 Probably half of the quarrels in the world are caused 
 by the inability of one person to get the other person s 
 viewpoint. Hauser could not honestly could not com 
 prehend why his wife should continue to show such an 
 implacable resentment because he had clumsily referred 
 to her early indiscretion. He had not animadverted, he had 
 merely adverted. In marrying her, had he not wiped that 
 indiscretion off the slate? His was the continental code 
 of ethics, and, for that matter, the world over it is con 
 sidered that the man who forgives his wife a pre-marital 
 imprudence is doing rather a fine thing. So he could 
 not comprehend why she was so very angry. If, as she 
 claimed, Guido was not her child and Vasalov s, why had 
 she withheld the proofs of which she spoke? She was not 
 a hysterical woman, not one of your unwholesome, capri 
 cious creatures who take pride in being nervous wrecks 
 at thirty. She was clean, and well-poised and as honest 
 as the day. He could, therefore, only conclude that his 
 supposition was entirely correct, and that Guido was her 
 child. Why, then, this show of continued contempt for 
 himself? 
 
 Frau Ursula on the other hand dwelt only on his ill 
 opinion of her in one particular, not on the general high 
 esteem in which she knew very well that he held her. 
 Nothing less than a frank apology and downright repudia 
 tion of his apocalyptic beliefs would satisfy her; and even 
 these, spontaneously rendered, would not erase her anger 
 and dismay completely. It would take years to abrade 
 those emotions. 
 
 Both Hauser and Frau Ursula, like the majority of their 
 sisters and brothers, had a fair modicum of self love and 
 vanity, which they dignified by the pretty name of self- 
 respect. 
 
 This sort of conversation, conciliatory and ingratiating 
 on his side, resistive and disagreeable on hers, continued 
 a little longer. She would not look at the blue prints; she 
 would express no preference for one style of architecture 
 over another ; she would not decide on the site ; she wasn t 
 the least bit interested; she resolutely refused to take cog-
 
 CHILDHOOD 177 
 
 nizance of the fact that her husband was trying with all his 
 might and main to make up. 
 
 Finally he lost his patience. 
 
 "Very well," he said, "if you won t be friends, you 
 won t." 
 
 After that he went back to the manner which had so 
 cowed Guido and hurt her during the bitter months which 
 had preceded the day that had begun so auspiciously only 
 to end in complete disaster. He came home for meals, 
 hung about the house after hours, was everywhere and no 
 where and was always distinctly and deliberately unpleas 
 ant, ironic, mocking and brutal. 
 
 Guido, who was getting stronger every day, took all his 
 meals at the table now. Not a meal passed without some 
 outburst on Hauser s part. 
 
 "What, the heir-apparent is not eating lamb-stew but has 
 a lamp-chop instead !" he exclaimed one day. "Why a 
 lamb-chop? Why not a quail on toast, or a frog s leg, or 
 goose s liver? I am afraid the prince is not being treated 
 well. Madame, I must insist that royalty, when under my 
 roof, receives the proper service." 
 
 "Why do you call me a prince, father?" the boy inquired. 
 "We have no royal blood. Prince Vasalov has, though. 
 He is distantly related to the Czar." 
 
 "If Vasalov is related to the Czar so are you ; if Vasalov 
 has the title of prince so should you have it," said Hauser, 
 with horrible appropriateness. 
 
 "Erich !" Frau Ursula cried imploringly. She was white 
 with terror and rage. 
 
 "Well, my dear, what is it? What did you wish to say? 
 Nothing? Just called out my name for the joy of the 
 thing ? There s a loving wife for you ; eh, Guido ?" 
 
 "My mother is the sweetest mother in the world," the 
 boy replied, a weepy quaver in his voice. 
 
 "Of course! But I was speaking of wives, not of 
 mothers. Sweet wives are not necessarily good mothers, 
 sweet mothers not necessarily good wives. Women, my 
 lad, have a great knack of what is it, my dear? The 
 boy is too young for instruction of this sort? Why, so 
 he is, of course. I wonder what I was thinking of." 
 
 "I don t like you to make my mother ridiculous," said 
 Guido, stoutly.
 
 178 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Hush, Guido," said Frau Ursula, in anguish. 
 
 "Why hush, Ursula? The boy s remarks are illuminat 
 ing. He is something above you and me, I ve been given to 
 understand. Why? Because he s so delicate, of course, 
 and has such a brilliant mind." 
 
 A flush of anger spotted the boy s pale cheeks. The in 
 visible lash which for a little time had ceased cruelly to 
 exercise itself upon him, was again at work, falling every 
 where. He could not see it, or smell it, or hear it or touch 
 it. Neither could he escape it. But he could feel it most 
 abundantly. 
 
 How he hated his father! 
 
 "I don t care if you make fun of me," he said, his heart 
 pounding heavily against his ribs. "But I won t have my 
 mother ridiculed!" 
 
 "Guido, be silent," said Frau Ursula. 
 
 Hauser laughed. It was a low, cruel laugh and the 
 woman s blood ran cold with apprehension. What more 
 was to come? 
 
 "Let the boy talk," said Hauser. "Here s a gracious 
 young prince willing himself to play the role of court fool, 
 but unwilling to have a breath of ridicule or reproach 
 accrue to his mother." 
 
 "Oh, Hauser," almost sobbed Frau Ursula, and Mrs. 
 Thornton bent eyes strangely fearful for a confirmed op 
 timist upon the master of the house. Guido glared sullenly 
 across the table at the man whom he called "father." 
 
 "Well, my lad, has your tongue given out?" Hauser in 
 quired in his mock-solicitous way. 
 
 "I hate you," said Guido, unexpectedly. "I hate you. 
 I HATE you." 
 
 Hauser laughed offensively, odiously. 
 
 "The trouble with you, my boy," he sneered, "is described 
 admirably by an old proverb. Spare the rod and spoil the 
 child. You need a good thrashing, my lad." 
 
 Mrs. Thornton and Frau Ursula exchanged terrified 
 looks, and then turned eyes of anger and indignation upon 
 Hauser. 
 
 "I m a brute, of course." He smiled comprehensively, 
 so as to include both his wife and Mrs. Thornton in the 
 grimace. Then, addressing Guido, he continued, "A sore 
 back is a splendid thing to have, my lad. Don t stop culti-
 
 CHILDHOOD 179 
 
 vating it. Why, I suppose you d faint with fright at sight 
 of a whip?" 
 
 There fell an ominous pause. Then the unexpected hap 
 pened. Guido vaulted from his chair and sprang to Hau- 
 ser s side. 
 
 "I m not a coward," he cried, "and I won t let you call 
 me one. You can beat me all you like, you big bully, but 
 you shan t call me a coward!" 
 
 Hauser did not reply. There was upon his face a ter 
 rible leer. Frau Ursula s feelings for him were at the mo 
 ment compact of hatred. It seemed impossible that the 
 man who could be so gentle and thoughtful as she had seen 
 him in the past, could, at will, turn himself into a fiend 
 incarnate. 
 
 "Well," the boy cried again, "why don t you beat me?" 
 
 "Perhaps, perhaps I will!" 
 
 Frau Ursula sprang from her chair, but before she could 
 reach Guido, Mrs. Thornton, who was nearer to him, had 
 grasped the boy about the waist and was dragging him 
 toward her. Guido began struggling, clawing desperately 
 at the air in a vain endeavor to seize Hauser, and crying 
 out excitedly again and again that he was not a coward and 
 did not fear the whip. For the longest time the combined 
 efforts of Frau Ursula and Mrs. Thornton failed to quell 
 the boy s hysterical outbreak. 
 
 Hauser s face underwent a subtle change. The muscles 
 of his jowl and mouth seemed to working painfully in ad 
 justing themselves to this new expression. Almost it 
 seemed from his look as if he were sorry for the commo 
 tion of which he was the inexcusable cause. 
 
 "Don t be foolish, Guido," he said shortly, but not un 
 kindly. "Can t you take a joke? Even if you were strong 
 like other boys, I would not chastise you, as I threatened 
 to do just now in fun, because both your mother and my 
 self disapprove of corporal punishment." 
 
 He rose abruptly from the table and as abruptly left the 
 room. It was, under the circumstances, the best thing he 
 could do. 
 
 Guido was quite ill for several days following the un- 
 beautiful scene, and this gave his mother the needful ex 
 cuse for again having his meals served in his room, a
 
 i8o THE HYPHEN 
 
 measure which she was determined to adhere to indefinitely 
 in order to avoid friction in the future. 
 
 Hauser, when incidentally apprized of the change, which 
 Frau Ursula assured him she was inaugurating for his 
 sake, said, ironically: 
 
 "Quite sure it isn t for Guide s sake ? Well, I don t 
 blame you. And I m quite sure he is as glad to be rid of 
 me as I am to be rid of him !" 
 
 Frau Ursula took renewed counsel with herself. Again 
 she contemplated leaving Hauser. After all, she was not 
 chained to him. But the sinister specter which Vasalov 
 had raised shattered her quasi-resolution. She could not 
 rid herself of the unreasoning and unreasonable fear that 
 Dmitri Stepanovich might yet attempt to kidnap Guido, and 
 in spite of Hauser s brutality to the boy she was filled with 
 an unshakable faith that he would not fail her if she ever 
 found herself in dire straits. 
 
 Nor was that all. Circumstances arise in life when, in 
 facing motives, the honesty of the most honest becomes im 
 paired. Frau Ursula was not as coldly calculating as she 
 would have had herself believe. She regarded Hauser not 
 wholly from the utilitarian view-point, although, at this 
 period, she would have violently repudiated any statement 
 to this effect. Had she not every reason to hate and to 
 despise him? His asinine and insulting suspicion of her 
 self? His treatment of Guido? Yet, when the last is said 
 the fact remains that she trusted him implicitly as she 
 trusted no one else. She had married him because she be 
 lieved that after night-fall, Indians ran around the streets 
 of American towns scalping pedestrians and raiding 
 houses. And she remained married to him because she 
 feared that Vasalov would spirit away her boy. 
 
 She was unaware that in trusting him as she did she was 
 paying him the highest compliment which a woman can pay 
 a man. 
 
 She was a well-balanced, wholesome, throbbingly alive 
 woman. To such as she the unfortunate termination of 
 any affair is unthinkable. Subconsciously this had much 
 to do with the fact that she remained under Hauser s roof. 
 
 It is, perhaps, this aversion for an unhappy ending that 
 makes men and women look beyond the grave and establish 
 immortality as the sole rational solution of all the dishar 
 monious and frayed ends which make up earthly existence.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 GUIDO S indisposition was not sloughed off as rapidly 
 as Frau Ursula had hoped. She told him of her deci 
 sion that he should henceforth eat his meals in the pri 
 vacy of his own room, with either herself or Mrs. Thornton 
 at his side to entertain him and wait upon him. Her com 
 munication did not have the expected effect The child 
 languished; desired to lie abed until noon; barely touched 
 his food and, what alarmed Frau Ursula most of all, barely 
 glanced at a book. 
 
 A tremendous resolution was hardening in him, if she 
 had only known it. He had lain awake the better part of 
 the night following his violent outbreak against his "father." 
 At other times insomnia caused him to appeal for relief to 
 his mother. Not so that night. He welcomed his sleepless 
 ness because it enabled him to think out the matter he had 
 in hand, without suffering the inevitable interruptions of 
 daytime. At first the hatred of his father, which hammered 
 in temple and pulse and heart, inhibited thought. As he 
 became calmer, he began to think around and about the 
 subject. Several points stood out. One was that it was 
 base to accept shelter and food from a man whom he hated 
 as bitterly and despised as thoroughly as he hated and de 
 spised his father. The second point was that there must 
 be some avenue of escape from the insufferable situation. 
 Other little boys he had read of had run away from home for 
 smaller provocation. Some had prospered amazingly. But 
 he lacked even the frail strength of a Dick Whittington. 
 For him, then, there was open only one avenue of escape 
 death. 
 
 Some philosopher has pointed out that the would-be sui 
 cide is in reality not a misanthrope but a person a-hunger 
 and a-thirst for a wider scope of life than lies within his 
 reach. Our unfortunate little hero exemplified this con 
 tention. The tears coursed silently but abundantly down 
 
 181
 
 182 THE HYPHEN 
 
 his cheeks during that bitter all-night vigil, as he reflected 
 that the broad highway of life was not for him. 
 
 The thought of suicide was repulsive to him in the ex 
 treme, not because it envisaged extinction, of which he had 
 only the feeblest of notions, but because it involved a con 
 siderable expenditure of initiative and violence. The lad s 
 abnormal condition of living had inhibited in him to a 
 great extent the impulse of natural boyhood toward un 
 thinking, subconscious activity. He was almost entirely de 
 ficient in those healthy animal reflexes in which a normal 
 childhood abounds. His over-stimulated brain bore the 
 brunt of this unnatural condition. It trespassed into by 
 paths of whose very existence childhood should be ig 
 norant. 
 
 He had read somewheres that the Hindus possess the 
 questionable art of extinguishing life by the simple expe 
 dient of holding their breath. He decided to try this ex 
 periment at once. Eons seemed to elapse while his respir 
 atory organs remained in a state of voluntary paralysis 
 without causing him any physical discomfort. He grew 
 hot with fright. He almost regretted having embarked 
 summarily upon this great adventure. Physical discomfort 
 began and put an end to these cogitations. A strange full 
 ness became noticable in pharynx and throat and ears. 
 This fullness presently expanded, encroaching upon chest 
 and heart. It grew, waxed, throve, extending itself to ears, 
 eyes, abdomen. It reached out for his limbs. It became in 
 sufferable and then with an expectant sob the unholy 
 spell was broken, and without any conscious effort on his 
 own part the blessed air again filled nose and throat and 
 lungs. 
 
 He was, truth to tell, enormously relieved to find him 
 self still alive. To die so quickly, so unceremoniously, was 
 to curtail the drama of life unduly. He desired a slowly 
 descending curtain. He was quite certain that his decision 
 to throw away the boon of life was the only means within 
 his power to end his dependence upon his father for food 
 and drink. He was quite certain that his decision was irre 
 vocable. But he wished to procrastinate. His zest in the 
 adventure of life was so keen that he desired to enjoy even 
 the savor of oncoming death. 
 
 A marvelous thought came to him. He would abstain
 
 CHILDHOOD 183 
 
 from food, eating only a little at each meal, so as to avoid 
 arousing suspicion. Also it would be necessary to leave 
 some paper some document making it plain to his 
 mother why he had done the thing he contemplated doing. 
 He cast about for a suitable form. He hit upon it quickly. 
 He would model his Declaration of Death upon the Declar 
 ation of Independence. He immediately began exercising 
 his faculties upon the phraseology which he would employ. 
 The joy of the artistic paraphraser was upon him, tranquil 
 lizing and soothing him. And in the midst of his silent 
 rhetoric he fell asleep. 
 
 To carry out his plan was not easy. His mother s and 
 Mrs. Thornton s vigilance were incessant. He was forced 
 to make elaborate excuses and pleas at each meal to explain 
 the sudden cessation of his appetite, which had been re 
 markably good for months. The two women finally con 
 cluded that something had disagreed with him. A sardine, 
 partaken of a week ago, was fastened upon as the origin of 
 the trouble, and the specific of childhood was administered. 
 The unfortunate child in consequence endured tortures, for 
 the vile medicine increased the gripings of his hunger. 
 
 But his will-power held. His appetite remaining in abey 
 ance, Dr. Koenig was summoned and prescribed a tonic, 
 warranted to improve the appetite, which contained quinine 
 and Calasaya bark. He suggested that dainties be prepared 
 to tempt Guido. Accordingly Frau Ursula baked him a 
 chocolate layer cake, of which he was particularly fond. 
 But his will-power, or obstinacy, was equal to the situation. 
 He refused to eat the generous slice of deliciously smelling 
 cake which his mother brought him. She did not remove 
 it, but placed it on a small table within reach. He desired 
 ardently that she would remove it, but he lacked the impu 
 dence to pretend that the delicious morsel revolted him, 
 and he could think of no other reason for asking that the 
 cake be taken away. So he resigned himself to bear this 
 additional torture. The appetite-creating medicine arrived, 
 and he had to swallow a huge dose of that, and his appetite 
 and his sufferings throve accordingly. But he would not 
 allow himself to be deflected from the path which he had 
 mapped out for himself. He was the champion of a prin 
 ciple and he would adhere to it. 
 
 By the end of that afternoon he was in acute torment.
 
 184 THE HYPHEN 
 
 The layer-cake, in all its tempting exquisiteness, remained 
 where he could and must see it. He was on the rack. Lit 
 erally, not figuratively, his mouth watered so plentifully 
 that he was forced to swallow continuously, and the ptya- 
 lin, in lieu of normal food, seemed to be exercising its 
 digestive arts upon his stomach. He could not read. He 
 could not knit. He could not play solitaire. He could not 
 talk to his mother. He could not even play the dictionary 
 game. 
 
 Once or twice he reached out his hand toward the cake 
 merely to enjoy a closer view of its beauty, so he told him 
 self. But he withdrew his hand every time without touch 
 ing the plate. He knew that he was cheating himself. He 
 knew that if he touched the plate he would succumb to the 
 charms of the cake and that he would eat not only the cake 
 but the delicious luncheon which his mother had set before 
 him, and the most tempting dishes of which had also been 
 left on his bureau. 
 
 He suffered profoundly. He had endured much in the 
 eleven years of his life, but all the other miseries of his 
 childhood, cauterization of the back, the discomfort and pain 
 following an operation, the probing for pus with the cruel 
 little syringe that worked like a tiny suction pump, paled 
 into insignificance before the self-inflicted immolation of 
 this day. The physical and mental anguish of it lived with 
 him all through life with a harsh, unrelenting vividness 
 which nothing could extinguish or dim. 
 
 When his mother brought his supper he made as if to 
 eat a little, this being part of his program. But a curious 
 thing happened. The first mouthful nauseated him com 
 pletely. All desire for food left him. He even loathed it. 
 A complete revulsion had set in. 
 
 "I cannot eat, Mutterchen, I really cannot." 
 
 There was no mistaking the genuineness of his words. 
 His mother, with a smothered sigh, removed the tray, her 
 anxiety increased a hundredfold. 
 
 Guido felt so light-headed and faint that he was sure he 
 was going to die at once. He became frightened. He had 
 done all in his power to invoke the end which he now be 
 lieved imminent, and yet so tremendous is the love of life 
 which dwells in all of us he was plunged into cold terror. 
 He did not want to die, he found. Most passionately he
 
 CHILDHOOD 185 
 
 did not want to die. He wanted to live. All the feeble 
 strength in his blood called out for life and activity. 
 
 For the first time since reaching the great decision he 
 began to temporize. Was a compromise not possible? 
 After all, was it not perhaps merely the duty of his father 
 to support him while he was a minor? That seemed to be 
 the custom everywhere. When he was older just a little 
 older he would do something wonderful, something start 
 ling. He would write a book which would pour wealth un 
 imaginable into his lap. Then we would be able to repay 
 his father. He would prove himself a profitable invest 
 ment. 
 
 What to write? Something like Schiller s Don Carlos. 
 No, he was an American, not a German. Something like 
 the novels of Dickens, perhaps, which Mrs. Thornton, like 
 the unforgettable Hugh Hastings, was forever reading. Or 
 that greater novelist whom his mother was so fond of 
 Thackeray. Finally, however, he rejected these minor celeb 
 rities and fastened upon Milton. He would do something 
 really big something like Paradise Lost. It did not 
 trouble him that, at present, he was not even able to read 
 that marvelous epic comprehendingly. He intended writ 
 ing its counterpart when a little older. And he was 
 sweetly oblivious of the cogent fact that golden shekels are 
 earned by popular, not by great literary productions. 
 
 His mother, meanwhile, more alarmed than she had been 
 in a long time, had telephoned Dr. Koenig, asking him to 
 come at once. 
 
 The old physician did not examine Guido that evening, 
 as Frau Ursula had hoped he would do. He contented 
 himself with sitting at the boy s bedside, and chatting with 
 him. In the hall, to which he motioned Frau Ursula before 
 leaving, because Guido could not hear what was passing 
 there, he said: 
 
 "The boy has had some nervous shock. It s not that he 
 can t eat, but that he won t. He has every sympton of a 
 patient suffering from acute hunger. He is ravenous. If 
 we cannot persuade him to eat to-morrow, we will have to 
 resort to forced feeding." 
 
 Frau Ursula looked very grave. 
 
 Dr. Koenig resumed: 
 
 "How about Vasalov?" he asked. "Dobronov? Could
 
 i86 THE HYPHEN 
 
 either of them have been indiscreet enough to reveal to the 
 boy that you are not his mother?" 
 
 "No, I think not." Frau Ursula hesitated a moment and 
 then told Dr. Koenig of the malevolence with which Hauser 
 had treated the boy, and of the violent quarrel in which 
 Hauser s outrageous treatment of the boy had culminated. 
 
 "H m," said Dr. Koenig, meditatively, "the two are the 
 very antitheses of human types. Their antagonism rests 
 upon some basic law of nature which some Darwin or Wal 
 lace of the future must yet formulate for us. There s a 
 difference in albumen, verehrte Frau. Guinea-pigs have 
 been poisoned with an injection of serum procured from 
 the eyes of their own species. There s a mystery for you. 
 Rhythm, too, plays a subtle part in the human economy. 
 This is demonstrated in the handwritings of various indi 
 viduals. The handwriting expert of the future, by compar 
 ing the handwritings of different individuals, will be able 
 to tell whether they are inimically or friendlily disposed. 
 Then, too, there may be an astral body. The N rays shed 
 by one personality may blend amicably or conflict disas 
 trously with the N rays emanating from another person!" 
 
 Frau Ursula listened with some impatience to the Doc 
 tor s ruminations. She did not want to hear about serum, 
 or guinea-pigs, or rhythm, or albumen or astral bodies. All 
 she wanted to be told was what was ailing her boy. 
 
 "I ll be in the first thing to-morrow morning. Then we ll 
 see what s to be done. But I m sure his abstention from 
 food is due to a mental, not a physical cause." 
 
 In a wholly unexpected way, Dr. Koenig s theory re 
 ceived confirmation within the hour. Frau Ursula, in re 
 turning to Guide s room, found him asleep. As usual, 
 books littered his bed, and she removed them cautiously. 
 In doing so, one of the books opened and a sheet of paper, 
 twice folded, fluttered to the floor. The superscription 
 startled her. Hastily depositing the books on a chair, she 
 carried her find to her own room. 
 
 The superscription which had caused her such concern 
 read : "To be opened after my death by my mother. Guido 
 Hauser." 
 
 With trembling hands Frau Ursula unfolded the paper 
 and read the following remarkable epistle:
 
 CHILDHOOD 187 
 
 When in the cawse of humen life it becomes neces- 
 arry for won individjule to disolve the human bands 
 that connect him with another, and to asoom among 
 the spirrits of the dead the equel and sepperret station 
 to which the laws of natjure entitel him, a desent re- 
 speckt for the opinnions of his mother requires that he 
 should declair the cawses which impell him to this 
 step. 
 
 We hold these trooths to be self-evident that all 
 boys are creayted equel, that they are endoud by there 
 creaytor with serten inalyenable rites, that among 
 these are life, libberty and the pursoot of happiness. 
 That to secgure these rites, parents are institooted, 
 deriving their just powers from the Creaytor, that 
 when any father abyuses these powers, it is the rite of 
 his son to escape from his tiranny. The histry of my 
 father is a histry of repeeted injuries to prove this let 
 facts be submitted to my candid mother. 
 
 He has at times entirely ignored me. 
 
 He has been brutal to me. 
 
 He has tonted me becaws I am weak and sick. 
 
 He has tonted me becaws the doctor has forbidden 
 that I must not be whipped. 
 
 He has ridicyuled my mother. 
 
 He has pretended things about me which are not troo 
 and wot is not troo is a lie. 
 
 He has shone he hates me. 
 
 And I hate him and will no longer etc wot he pais 
 for nor be beholden to him for my medesinnes and for 
 the support of this declaration, with a firm relians 
 on the Creaytor, I commend my sole to him when I 
 have successfully starved myself to death. 
 
 (Signed) Guido Hauser (gezeichnet) 
 
 Frau Ursula was stunned. She had not believed Dr. 
 Koenig s diagnosis, but this funnily pathetic little docu 
 ment proved it correct. The deliberation with which the 
 child had proceeded to carry out his project of self-de 
 struction left her faint with panic and nausea. 
 
 On returning to Guide s room she found that he had 
 wakened. He had missed the books from his bed, and had 
 reached them from the chair, and now sat up in bed hastily
 
 i88 THE HYPHEN 
 
 turning over the leaves of the book from which Frau Ur 
 sula had taken his Declaration of Death. His gestures 
 were feverishly urgent, his face flushed. 
 
 "There was a paper in this book," he said, "and it is 
 gone." 
 
 "I have it," Frau Ursula replied, showing it to him, 
 "and I have read it." 
 
 The boy s lip began to tremble. 
 
 "Guido, when you wrote this, dear, didn t you think at 
 all of the pain you were going to cause me?" she asked, 
 with the utmost gentleness. She had seated herself on the 
 side of his bed, and had taken his hand in hers. 
 
 "Ach, Mutterchen!" he turned white to the very lips. 
 
 Frau Ursula shivered a little. Was hatred so much more 
 potent than love? Or was there present in the child s soul 
 a homicidal instinct, inherited from his fanatic mother? 
 Or, again, had the child s fine sensibilities simply been tor 
 tured beyond endurance? 
 
 "Answer me, mein Liebling," she said. 
 
 "Mother, do not look at me like that I can t stand it." 
 He flung his arms about his mother, and clung to her con 
 vulsively. 
 
 "Guido, darling, I thought I enjoyed your entire confi 
 dence. It seems I was mistaken. If my little lad had come 
 to me with his trouble I might have helped him and saved 
 him and myself a very painful experience." 
 
 The child began to sob. 
 
 "Guido, mein lieber Junge, you must not cry. I have 
 several things of importance to tell you, but I cannot tell 
 them if you cry like that. So, that s better. First of all, 
 dear, you are not indebted to your father for your upkeep. 
 I have independent means, and you have quite a little for 
 tune of your own waiting for you when you come of age. 
 Meanwhile out of my own income, I have always defrayed 
 all expenses for you and myself your food, clothes, part- 
 rent, the salary for your nurse, your medicines and doctor s 
 bills." 
 
 "Mutterchen! Wirklich?" There was a note in the 
 child s voice that smote her cruelly. How he must have 
 suffered that his relief should be so great ! 
 "Wirklich, mein Herz, and what is more, if your father
 
 CHILDHOOD 189 
 
 continues to badger you, we you and I will go away and 
 live by ourselves." 
 
 Guido again began to cry. 
 
 "My father would not like that at all," he sobbed. "I 
 think he hates me so because you love me so much." 
 
 "Come dear, stop crying," said Frau Ursula. "Will you 
 be a good boy and eat something now ?" 
 
 "Yes, Mother." 
 
 "Some nice warm milk-toast, with lots of butter and 
 sugar and cream?" 
 
 "Yes, Mother." 
 
 "And there ll be no more nonsense ?" 
 
 "No, Mother." 
 
 Frau Ursula called Mrs. Thornton and asked her to at 
 tend to Guido. She herself must speak to Hauser. She 
 had no very definite idea of what she was going to say, but 
 speak to him she must and that at once. For one thing 
 she was now willing to humble herself to the extent of pro 
 ducing proofs of Guide s identity. She felt that there must 
 be truth between herself and her husband truth absolute 
 and unequivocal. She found that she blamed herself subtly 
 for the tragedy which Guido had been preparing. She was, 
 strange to say, not as angry and as indignant with Hauser 
 as might have been expected. 
 
 Equipped with the daguerreotype of the first Guido which 
 Dr. Koenig had given her, she entered the dining room 
 where Hauser was sitting over his accounts. So white was 
 her face that Hauser, on glancing up as she entered, in 
 voluntarily started to his feet. 
 
 "Ursula, are you ill ?" he asked. 
 
 She shook her head in negation and handed him Guide s 
 mortuary proclamation. 
 
 "Read that," she commanded. 
 
 He scanned the paper hastily. His face darkened. 
 
 "Twaddle," he commented, but when he came to the ar 
 raignment of himself, his hand trembled visibly. 
 
 "Guide s been trying to starve himself for a week," she 
 said, when he had finished reading. "I had Dr. Koenig in 
 this evening thinking some new ailment was developing. 
 But he assured me there was a mental not a physical cause 
 for the boy s persistent refusal to eat. Afterwards, by 
 chance, I found this paper. I was forced to tell him that
 
 190 THE HYPHEN 
 
 your money did not pay for his board and medical care. 
 But I cannot keep him confined to his room indefinitely, 
 and if you persist in treating him as you did a week ago 
 I am afraid I shall have to leave you." 
 
 Frau Ursula stopped speaking abruptly. She was 
 frightened. She could not have said why. 
 
 "You are NOT going to leave me," said Hauser. "I 
 absolutely refuse a divorce." 
 
 "There is, however, nothing to prevent me from leaving 
 your house and never coming back." 
 
 "No," said Hauser, very quietly, "there is nothing to pre 
 vent that." 
 
 Frau Ursula became overwhelmingly aware that she had 
 no desire and no intention to carry into effect this tacit 
 threat. She said: 
 
 "I am going to be perfectly candid with you. I would 
 rather not leave you. I am horribly afraid of Vasalov, al 
 though you persist in pooh-poohing the idea that he will 
 try to abduct Guido. And well the fact is, I feel safer 
 with you to protect me than I would if I lived alone with 
 Guido. All this, of course, is very selfish of me, but it is 
 the truth." 
 
 A strange look of pleasure, kindly and refined, passed 
 over Hauser s face. 
 
 "Thank you for trusting me to that extent," he said, 
 gently. 
 
 "There s another thing," she said, and now she was 
 speaking in a forced unnatural voice which made Hauser 
 glance at her sharply. "I told you I had proofs concern 
 ing Guido s parentage. I am going to show them to you 
 now. I think it will make a change in our relations." 
 
 Her heart was beating so violently that she was forced 
 to pause for a moment. 
 
 "I shall be glad to see them," said Hauser, convention 
 ally civil. 
 
 Frau Ursula pushed the small daguerreotype across the 
 table toward Hauser. 
 
 "Dr. Koenig gave it to me. He was a friend of Guido s 
 grandfather, the von Estritz who emigrated to this country 
 in 48. You can see the resemblance for yourself." 
 
 Hauser picked up the shabby little case, with its flourish 
 of scroll-work, and closely scrutinized the faded daguerreo-
 
 CHILDHOOD 191 
 
 type which looked up at him from its frame of faded rose 
 velvet. After a long time he closed the little folding case 
 very gently, and handed it back to his wife. 
 
 "Thank you for letting me see this, Ursula," he said. 
 
 "And haven t you a word of apology for so shamefully 
 suspecting me all these years?" 
 
 "I am very sorry, Ursula. Very. You must forgive 
 me." 
 
 This was not as submissive a submission as she had hoped 
 for and as she felt she was entitled to expect. But it 
 sufficed. 
 
 Truth to tell he was no more convinced of Guido s nativ 
 ity than he had even been. Good-nature, compassion, love 
 made him seem persuaded. The proof which to his wife 
 seemed so irrefutable seemed to him no proof at all. Her 
 motive for loving the child as passionately as she did re 
 mained unexplained and it was this passionate attachment 
 of hers for the boy which perplexed him, and tried him so 
 sorely, and was the corner-stone and foundation of his sus 
 picion. 
 
 Even if Frau Ursula had been cognizant of the inevitable 
 effect on Mauser s mind of her failure to supply this omis 
 sion, it is doubtful whether an explanation would have 
 been forthcoming. To avow herself unloved by the man 
 to whom she had given the most delicately distilled bloom 
 of her love and worship is an act of heroism to which few 
 women can rise. In spite of her contempt for the unnam- 
 able sisterhood with which Hauser had identified her, Frau 
 Ursula would sooner have proclaimed herself guilty of an 
 imprudence than admit that her love had not been recip 
 rocated. Wherein lies still another of the subtle differ 
 ences which build up the barrier of sex psychology; for 
 what man, loving but unloved, would see in his state of 
 being unloved a thing to be ashamed of? 
 
 Moreover, as no two landscape painters will paint the 
 same presentment of the same bit of hedge and meadow- 
 land, so no two sets of eyes see a human face from the 
 same angle and in the same focus. In other words, one 
 eye sees a resemblance to this relative, another eye detects 
 a likeness to a different kinsman. 
 
 Vavara Alexandrovna and Dmitri Stepanovich bore a 
 striking likeness to each other. Guido resembled both his
 
 i 9 2 THE HYPHEN 
 
 paternal grandfather and his own mother. Hauser, with 
 his mind perversely filled with the conviction that Vasalov 
 had been his wife s lover, saw Guide s resemblance to Vasa 
 lov; Frau Ursula, her mind as inalienably fixed on the 
 glories of the house of von Estritz saw only the von Estritz 
 resemblance. 
 
 And so Hauser and Mauser s wife were further apart 
 than ever, but Hauser s wife did not know it. As the 
 days slipped by she saw in her husband s continued gentle 
 ness to herself and renewed kindness to the boy an earnest 
 of a new dawn. He showed a very lovable and human 
 side of his character in these days. She, with very good 
 grace, selected the plans for the house and the site on which 
 it was to be built. That pleased him enormously, and in 
 consequence, he put his best foot forward. The convic 
 tion was born in Frau Ursula that they would yet be happy. 
 
 She tried forcibly to stifle the memory of Guido s pitiful 
 document, she tried to forget the agony of the days through 
 which both Guido and herself had lived during the weeks 
 preceding the discovery of that document. 
 
 Once or twice she essayed trifling overtures. Hauser 
 ignored them or did not perceive them. Vasalov s re- 
 emergence had evoked Hauser s jealousy in triple extract, 
 and jealousy, like all passions, clouds the reasoning facul 
 ties. 
 
 One evening Hauser forgot his promise and began to 
 heckle Guido at the dinner-table. The lad behaved admir 
 ably. He did not answer Hauser at all, and as soon as he 
 had finished his meat-course, he excused himself and left 
 the table. 
 
 "Erich," said Frau Ursula, following a sudden impulse, 
 "don t let us go back to that, please don t! We ve been 
 going along so pleasantly." 
 
 "Pleasantly," said Hauser, sardonically. 
 
 "Pleasantly enough," she modified her statement. "Per 
 haps not as pleasantly as you might wish." She threw this 
 out jerkily, as an afterthought. To escape the lashings of 
 her conscience, if for no other reason, she desired a com 
 plete reconciliation which would place their mock marriage 
 upon an honest and unequivocal footing. 
 
 He looked at her sharply. She blushed, and said tremu 
 lously :
 
 CHILDHOOD 193 
 
 "Hauser, I am perfectly willing to take up our romance 
 where we dropped it on the dreadful day when Vasalov 
 appeared." 
 
 It was unfortunate that she mentioned Vasalov s name. 
 Hauser tingled in every nerve with impotent rancor and 
 resentment. Reddening, he said, indignantly: 
 
 "What a sensualist you must think me." 
 
 It was crass, it was crude, it was banal. Frau Ursula 
 almost wept with shame. Why, she demanded of herself, 
 why was he so willfully blind? 
 
 All the mortification and shame of a woman who feels 
 herself rejected swept over her. But pride, or modesty 
 and what, in matters such as these is pride but a barricade 
 for modesty forbade that she espouse the straightforward 
 course with him. She lacked the hardihood to tell her hus 
 band frankly that she loved him, that she had forgiven him 
 for his unkindness in the past and that the pretended barter 
 of her love had been a silly, clumsy subterfuge to draw 
 from him renewed protestations of his regard. 
 
 After this they drifted further apart than ever.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 EARLY in May Guido began to improve rapidly. His at 
 tempt to starve himself had thrown him back cruelly. 
 But now he suddenly blossomed out into something like 
 boyish wiriness and strength. He took long walks without 
 being fatigued. His flesh became firm and healthy to the 
 touch, his complexion lost its spectral whiteness. And yet, 
 with all this show of returning health, he lost none of his 
 slim, native elegance nor the sense of spirituality which im 
 pressed strangers so strongly upon first seeing the child. 
 His dark, liquidly luminous eyes, the black hair which 
 curled ever so lightly at the temples and above the brow, 
 made his white skin seem more dazzlingly white by con 
 trast. He was a very beautiful little boy in these days of 
 returning health. Women turned to look at him on the 
 street with half-smothered ejaculations of pleasure in the 
 pretty child. Mrs. Thornton, speaking to Frau Ursula, pro 
 nounced him too comely for an age of corduroy and Nor 
 folk jackets. He would have adorned an earlier era when 
 dark blue velvet and Van Dyck lace collars and cuffs, and 
 sashes of tasseled silk were thought appropriate for little 
 lads as well as for little damsels. 
 
 Mrs. Thornton, her employment gone, entered the Anas- 
 quoit Hospital to take a course in nursing. The new house 
 was begun and the builder promised to have it ready by 
 the end of August. Hauser rarely came home for supper 
 these days. The new store, the Leviathan, with the enor 
 mously extended responsibilities which it entailed, was a 
 severe taskmaster. 
 
 But the great event of the spring of 1910 as far as the 
 Hauser household was concerned was Guide s return to 
 school. 
 
 That return was in the nature of a transplantation after 
 the lad s two years exile in bed. School was bound to be 
 a tremendous adventure by virtue both of the commonest 
 commonplace and the stirringly exciting. 
 
 194
 
 CHILDHOOD 195 
 
 The commonplace was comprised in the deadly routine. 
 Excitement was supplied by the bewildering variety of 
 characters unrolled before Guide s dazzled eyes. He had 
 assumed that all boys were patterned after Otto s fashion, 
 or his own, but principally after Otto s. In some ways he 
 knew Otto better than he knew himself, Otto, who was con 
 sistently rough, brutal sometimes, unmannerly as a matter 
 of conviction, kind-hearted generally, and first, last and 
 all the time, with the emphasis which is carried only by the 
 traits of which we are all unconscious genuine. 
 
 He found that boys instead of being as like as peas are 
 as different as different varieties of dogs. 
 
 To begin with there was Henry Foerster, a queer, shy, 
 reticent boy. Guido thought from Henry s manner that 
 Henry had taken an insuperable dislike to himself. But 
 one day when Guide s pencil-box had met with an accident 
 and all his pencils in consequence were reduced to point- 
 lessness, Henry, without a word, slipped Guido one of 
 his own impeccable pencils. Later, at recess, when Guido 
 thanked him for saving him from a "bad" mark, Henry 
 flushed and walked away. He was neither a very clever 
 nor a very studious boy, yet somehow he never flunked his 
 exams. He was never known to speak when he could help 
 himself, and the boys had nicknamed him "the Dummy." 
 
 Then there was Eddie Erdman. Eddie was hopelessly, 
 grimy always. 
 
 "It s because he s so fat," Otto elucidated, within hearing 
 of the grimy one, "the dirt sticks to him like it was greased 
 on. See?"" 
 
 Guido smothered a laugh. He was a very polite little 
 boy, and he felt that to laugh at Otto s sally would have 
 been to disgrace himself. He fully expected a first-class 
 fight to ensue between Otto and Eddie, but Fatty, instead 
 of resenting the insult, laughed along with the rest. 
 
 "We re going to change his name to Rhino, " said 
 naughty-tongued Otto, "because he has a hide like a rhino 
 ceros." 
 
 This caused a new roar of laughter, Rhino again joining 
 in with the others. 
 
 "I think it s just grand to have two nick-names," he 
 said, "some of you ain t popular enough to have even one." 
 And as a test of his popularity, he stuck out his tongue
 
 196 THE HYPHEN 
 
 and made a "long nose." Then, to cap the climax, he 
 kicked up his heels in imitation of a ballet dancer. Guido 
 could see that in spite of his fleshiness he was very grace 
 ful, but he was trying to make himself appear clumsy and 
 ungainly. 
 
 All this happened at recess. The children were out on 
 the street, and two little girls of their class passed them 
 at this moment. 
 
 Eddie danced up to them and in a high falsetto voice in 
 vited them to dance. 
 
 "Nayther of you will honor may," he squealed. "Oh, 
 dare, oh dare, I shall weep. I should so lo-o-o-o-ve to have 
 ye languish in me arms, me darlints." 
 
 Erna Friedman and Lieschen Schlick, highly affronted, 
 walked away, noses high in air, the picture of pigtailed dig 
 nity. 
 
 "My farder says Eddie is a born comedian," Otto con 
 fided to Guido. "My farder says he ll do something big on 
 the vaudeville stage one of these days." 
 
 Then there was a boy who was the happy possessor of 
 the syllable "von" magic insignia of rank as a prefix to 
 his surname. Egon von Dammer was a curious lad. In 
 some respects he did not seem like a boy at all but like a 
 little old man. 
 
 Face and figure were youthful enough. He was, in fact, 
 in wonderful physical trim and always immaculately neat. 
 Besides Guido he was the only neat boy in the class, and 
 Egon and Elschen Marlow were unique among the chil 
 dren of the entire school in that they had been born in Ger 
 many, a circumstance which earned Egon the sobriquet 
 of "Dutch." 
 
 And yet no strict constructionist would have called the 
 boy typically German, excepting perhaps for the arrogance 
 which peered from every feature of the boyish face and 
 for the never-ceasing diligence with which he applied him 
 self to his tasks. He had been to school in Germany for 
 two years ; spent a year in Paris in a boy s school and one 
 in England. He was a born linguist and had a well-nigh 
 perfect command of the three great modern tongues. He 
 spoke English not with the German accent which marred 
 the speech of the other boys but with an accent which was 
 decidedly English. He pronounced "either" and "neither"
 
 CHILDHOOD 197 
 
 in the English way, and said "nevyou" instead of nephew, 
 pointing out to the Language teacher who corrected him 
 that his parents desired him to speak English, not United 
 States. The teacher, a young woman, flushed and without 
 further comment continued the lesson. For some reason 
 Egon s impertinence to the teacher fell flat. His class 
 mates did not approve of it. Instinctively they felt that 
 Egon s brand of sauciness was rooted in something omi 
 nous and sinister. They themselves the others might 
 "answer back" upon occasion, but deep in their hearts they 
 had a wholesome respect for their teachers, and there was 
 moreover, a dead-line which their boyish impudence never 
 essayed to pass. Also, they resented Egon s contempt be 
 cause it glanced at themselves. The boy with the "von" 
 before his name was not popular among his class-mates. 
 
 On the second morning during recess Egon von Dammer 
 came up to Guido. 
 
 "You re different from the other boys," he said, with 
 quiet effrontery, by way of introduction. "You look differ 
 ent and you speak differently, too. Your name also is 
 different. Guido is a very aristocratic name. It s as good 
 as mine. Where did you get it?" 
 
 "I suppose my parents gave it to me same as your par 
 ents gave you yours," Guido replied. Egon s insolence had 
 set his brittle temper to crackling, and Egon perceived this. 
 He laughed, lightly. 
 
 "You re jolly well mistaken," he said. "My parents 
 didn t give me my name. My name was given to me cen 
 turies ago before I was born. The eldest son of the von 
 Dammers, juengere Linie, for twenty generations has al 
 ways been named Egon." 
 
 In spite of himself Guido was impressed. He was too 
 inexperienced to cover his defeat by a quick parry. He 
 felt and looked foolish. 
 
 "What s your last name?" the ruthless Egon continued. 
 
 "Hauser." 
 
 "H m. Doesn t fit with Guido. Must have gotten Guido 
 from your mother s side. What was your mother s maiden 
 name ?" 
 
 "I don t know. And if I did, I wouldn t tell you," 
 said Guido. He was furious.
 
 198 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Oh, yes, you would," Egon retorted, significantly, "be 
 cause it would be sure to be something good." 
 
 Guido s wrath was appeased. After all, it was a rather 
 fine thing to be singled out by the prince of the class as 
 his sole peer. 
 
 "You ask her to-night," Egon continued. "You ll see I m 
 right." 
 
 "I won t ask her," Guido retorted, viciously. "If she d 
 wanted to tell me she d have told me without being asked. 
 So there." 
 
 "I say," said Egon admiringly, "you re a gentleman, 
 you are." 
 
 "Well, if that s being a gentleman, what s the boy who 
 told me to ask her?" 
 
 Egon laughed uproariously. 
 
 "Believe me," he said, in his delight lapsing into Ameri 
 can slang, which, as a rule, he eschewed, "you re some kid. 
 I m going to like you tremendously." 
 
 "Well, I m not at all sure that I m going to like you," 
 our young hero retorted, with a crudeness of manner which 
 Otto could not have bettered. 
 
 "Oh, yes, you are," Egon assured him, calmly. "Folks 
 always like me when I m half-ways decent to them." 
 
 "Well, why aren t you half-ways decent to everybody, 
 then?" 
 
 "Because I do not care for the friendship of everybody. 
 It would bore me to death to have all the rag-tag of this 
 second-hand school fawning on me." 
 
 "Fawning!" gasped Guido. 
 
 "That s what I said. Take it from me, Guido, the 
 friendship of the inferior for the superior amounts to noth 
 ing else," continued the amiable scion of the von Dammers. 
 "When boys are on the same plane, they bear with each 
 other s faults because as a class they have the same aims and 
 amusements." 
 
 Guido gasped again. All this was far beyond him. It 
 took him several years to discover that whereas Otto 
 frankly quoted his "farder" on every possible occasion, 
 Egon von Dammer grafted the parental scraps of wisdom 
 upon his own juvenile stock and dispensed the result as 
 vintage of his own distilling. 
 
 "My mother s name was Baroness von Dortitz," Egon
 
 CHILDHOOD 199 
 
 continued. "The von Dortitzes rank among the oldest feu 
 dal nobility of Prussia, as the syllable titz shows. All 
 names ending with titz or tritz are among Prussia s best. 
 And I had a brother named Ludolf. He was a year 
 younger than myself. He killed himself when he was nine 
 years old." 
 
 Guide s blood receded from his heart. He remembered 
 his own abortive attempt at suicide. 
 
 "Why did your brother kill himself?" he contrived to 
 ask. 
 
 "Because he couldn t learn how to construe Latin or 
 Greek." 
 
 Guido was so amazed at the inadequacy of this motive 
 for so momentous an enterprise as suicide that he said 
 nothing. 
 
 "It was very unfortunate," said Egon. 
 
 "It was dreadful," said Guido. He knew, even if Lu- 
 dolf s brother didn t, what Ludolf had suffered before he 
 had screwed his courage to the suicide point. 
 
 "He was a stupid boy," Egon continued. "He had a bad 
 fall when he was a small baby. He never would have 
 amounted to anything. It was a good thing that his sense 
 of honor was keen enough to make him do away with him 
 self." 
 
 "Oh!" Guido ejaculated: he was too shocked for words. 
 
 "My father was very proud of him after he had killed 
 himself," Egon continued. "When people of our class 
 come a cropper, as the English say, well, there s nothing 
 left to do but to end it all." 
 
 Guido was reduced to utter speechlessness. He con 
 ceived the boy at his side to be a sort of monster. But the 
 disconcerting son of one of Prussia s noblest houses upset 
 this latest of Guide s latest conclusions with his next sen 
 tence. 
 
 "I was very fond of him," said the young Stoic or was 
 he merely a Spartan? "I miss him very much. I miss 
 him at night. We slept together. He was not a clever boy 
 but he was kind. He was always trying to give our mother 
 some pleasure. Now I I m clever, but I m not kind. If 
 I allowed myself to be kind I d turn to breakfast food." 
 
 He laughed, uneasily. From the sound of his voice 
 Guido knew that Egon s throat was rigid.
 
 >20o THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Sometimes, when I don t look out, I turn weak," Egon 
 continued, "and then I wish the honor of the von Dammers 
 hadn t required little Ludolf s death. He was such a win 
 some little chap." 
 
 He gulped hard. Guido, with an awkward gesture, 
 placed his hand on Egon s arm. Instantly Egon s face and 
 form stiffened. 
 
 "How old was your brother when he began to study 
 Latin?" Guido asked. 
 
 "He began to study Latin at six and Greek at eight," 
 Egon replied. "I began a year younger, because I was 
 brighter. Here in this country " the old scorn was ram 
 pant again in his voice, "they teach you Latin when you re 
 twelve, or not at all. Ridiculous. The educational system 
 of Germany is so much better than the American." 
 
 "In what way?" Guido demanded. He could not help 
 but be impressed by the general superiority which Egon ex 
 uded. 
 
 "Oh, the discipline is better. Do you think I would have 
 dared to answer a German teacher in class the way I an 
 swered Miss Dawson this morning? But then, no German 
 Jeacher would have made the break she did." 
 
 "It seems to me," said Guido, "that you are just as fresh 
 to Mr. Helsingrath and Mr. Toenner as you are to the 
 American teachers." 
 
 Egon laughed contemptuously. 
 
 "Those two pills," he said. "Why, we wouldn t tol 
 erate them as teachers of the lowest Dorfschule in Ger 
 many. Boys of our class and station wouldn t put up with 
 them as valets or footmen. Ever see Helsingrath eat ? He 
 sucks his soup schluerft seine Suppe and he eats all 
 his solid food with his knife. I wonder he doesn t turn the 
 spoon around when he eats his pudding. As to Toenner, 
 why, that boob, if you showed him a tooth-brush, he 
 wouldn t know what it was for." 
 
 Guido caught his breath. Some instinct checked his de 
 sire to quarrel outright. He wanted to hear all this boy had 
 to say. But the bell which ended the recess rang just then 
 and terminated their conversation. 
 
 Guido usually knew his own mind as well as any other 
 normal boy, but for a long time he gravitated between like 
 and dislike for Egon von Dammer, or more accurately, he
 
 CHILDHOOD 201 
 
 was unable to break up into its primary ingredients the 
 emotional compound which held both admiration and dis 
 like in solution. One of the two feelings must outweigh 
 the other. At first he could not tell which was the stronger. 
 Admiration won out. Egon s mind, like Guide s, was keenly 
 alert. Like Guido, also, he was an omnivorous reader, and 
 the two boys, acting as guide one for the other, amplified 
 and complemented their respective scopes. Moreover, Egon 
 at first had shown his worst traits. When he placed a 
 quietus upon his superciliousness, as he invariably did when 
 alone with Guido, a more charming companion could not 
 be imagined. 
 
 Guido had been placed upon a bench intended for two 
 boys, but the other seat was unoccupied during the first 
 week of Guide s incumbency. Various battered articles 
 which lay in the trough under the desk when Guido took 
 possession, led him to observe that he was not the sole 
 tenant. 
 
 He questioned Otto. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Otto, "Stan Finlay sits there with you, 
 of course." 
 
 The American name made Guido prick up his ears. 
 Egon, with his distinctly foreign personality, had been a 
 great find. "Stan Finley," promising to present a pure 
 specimen of the American type, sounded just as fascinat 
 ing to our young hybrid as Egon s magic ensemble. 
 
 "Is Stan Finley sick?" he asked. 
 
 "Nope. Father and mother went on a trip to Niagara 
 Falls and took him along. He ll be back next week." 
 
 "What does Stan stand for?" 
 
 "Standish." 
 
 "But that s a last name. " 
 
 "Yes, of course. Crazy American way of giving last 
 names as first names." 
 
 Guido did not think the custom "crazy" at all. He 
 thought it charming. He was wild to make the acquaint 
 ance of Standish Finlay. Bob Hastings had been filched 
 away from his ken by a jealous and pilfering fate, and he 
 dreaded to think what accidents might befall Stan before 
 he got back to Anasquoit. The train might be derailed, or 
 there might be a collision, or he might slide down over the
 
 202 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Falls. Guido was very selfishly concerned all that week 
 about Standish Finlay s safety. 
 
 Monday came and the wanderer returned safely to the 
 fold. 
 
 Stan was a remarkably handsome boy, tall, lithe, active, 
 with features almost classically perfect. He was the type 
 of boy that is father to the Gibson man. He was very well 
 dressed in a leisurely, off-hand, careless sort of way which 
 contrasted sharply with the painstaking neatness of Egon s 
 and Guide s attire. Ever since his tenth year he had been 
 permitted to select his own clothes, his father believing that 
 a child s individuality should be fostered and not sup 
 pressed, and his manner of dressing accurately mirrored his 
 character. He secerned incapable of making an effort that 
 seemed like an effort. He was continually going off jun 
 keting with his parents, yet he acquitted himself admirably 
 at the examinations, and his reports always came off with 
 flying colors. Only his imperfect knowledge of German 
 kept him from outstripping Otto and Egon and now that 
 he had returned to school Guido as well. 
 
 He came in late during the morning session. Guido re 
 garded him curiously, and was curiously regarded in turn. 
 Recess was almost over when Stan, having escaped from 
 half a dozen boys who had literally engulfed him, made up 
 to Guido. 
 
 "Say," he said, in his off-hand, careless way, "you re the 
 kid with the sore spine, aren t you?" 
 
 Guido blushed. This was not the first indication that 
 his "sore spine" had become one of the traditions of the 
 school. But there was not the least cause for offense. 
 Stan had labeled him for identification, not to poke fun 
 at him. 
 
 "Yep," said Guido. 
 
 "Awfully glad you re better. I thought of you often. 
 Would have come in to see you with Otto some time, but 
 my Ma said your Ma mightn t like it. Beastly shame to 
 have been laid up for years." 
 
 "Oh, I didn t really mind," said Guido, a little vainglor- 
 iously, and feeling wonderfully heroic. 
 
 "Why didn t you mind?" Stan inquired, curiously. 
 Should I have minded?" Guido flung back.
 
 CHILDHOOD 203 
 
 "You re a regular Yankee, aren t you," he said. "An 
 swer a question with a question." 
 
 Stan laughed. 
 
 "Usually," said Guido, "I m called a German-American." 
 
 "That s rank nonsence," said Stan, with decision. "My 
 father says there is no such animal as a German-Ameri 
 can." 
 
 Here Guido made mental note of the fact that American 
 boys have the habit of quoting their fathers just as Otto 
 did. 
 
 "Well, what do you call us who have German parents?" 
 
 "Just plain Americans, like myself. The only genuine 
 American is the American Indian. Father says if we re all 
 going to claim attention for the country we originally 
 hailed from Germany, England, France, Italy, Spain by 
 sticking the name of a foreign country in front of the 
 American, we ll be a sorry lot of natives and not fit to 
 live on American soil. That s what my dad says. And 
 my dad is pretty nearly always right. Dad s great." 
 
 Guido wished he might have said the same. 
 
 He saw he was going to like Stan Finlay immensely. No 
 complicated chemical retort was required to decide that for 
 him. With his usual impulsiveness he felt impelled to 
 speak his mind, though obliquely. 
 
 "I m awf lly glad I m in the same seat with you," he 
 said. 
 
 Stan looked surprised. He seemed taken aback. 
 
 "Are you though?" he asked, his voice less hearty than 
 before. 
 
 "Yes," Guido continued, bravely. "You see, I ve known 
 no real American boys until now only German-Ameri 
 cans like myself." 
 
 "There you go again," said Stan, laughing, and hearty 
 again. "You re a queer kid, you are. I can tell you, though, 
 I m real glad you turned up. Otto s all right, and Eddie 
 Erdman is all right, too, but the rest of this class well, 
 they re a junk lot of kids, look as if they did mother s 
 chores before breakfast and forgot to tidy up ever after. 
 Gee, there s the bell." 
 
 Guido and Stan became fast friends. The Finlays were 
 well-to-do people and Standish was an only child. They 
 lived in a four story brownstone house on Bismarck near
 
 204 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Juniper street which was furnished throughout in old 
 Colonial style. In the bedrooms rag carpets lay upon the 
 parquetry floors, and prints showing Colonial interiors and 
 exteriors hung upon the walls. The dining-room furniture 
 was genuine Sheraton, which had been handed down from 
 generation to generation in the family of Stan s mother, 
 and Guido was hugely amused by the tremendous fork and 
 knife urns, strongly resembling mortuary urns, which orna 
 mented the enormous sideboard. Guido had never seen 
 anything like it before. Nor had he seen anything like the 
 collapsible card tables of mahogany inlaid with borders of 
 satin-wood, which were arranged against the walls of the 
 parlor; nor like the wonderful Heppelwhite chairs, also 
 genuine, which seemed much too frail for use ; nor like the 
 enormous wing-chair in which Stan s grandmother sat and 
 knitted; nor like the old broken- voiced spinet, nor like the 
 four-yard-long divan with arms like lyres; nor like the 
 library table with ball and claw feet ; nor like the long mir 
 ror which peeped out from between fluted columns of gilt 
 in the hall. 
 
 It was the first time that he had visited a "real" Ameri 
 can home, and he felt that at last he was treading the 
 simon-pure soil of America. 
 
 Before a week had gone by the two boys had visited each 
 other. A glamour and enchantment accrued to Stan for 
 Guido which was never eclipsed. He loved the clear, pene 
 trating Anglo-Saxon voice, the pure profile, the mass of 
 waving, dark-brown hair. He loved, most of all the scant, 
 close-clipped Anglo-Saxon words which Stan used. They 
 appealed to him like a neatly trimmed box of hedge. 
 
 In his eyes Stan was quite perfect. He should have liked 
 to be just like him. 
 
 June came, bringing examinations which frightened 
 everybody, even the teachers, and a school-picnic which 
 was supposed to be a fountain of pure joy. 
 
 Poor Guido ! The weeks that preceded that first school- 
 picnic of his were destined to harrow him cruelly. There 
 were various reasons for this. The chief reason was that 
 Guido had discovered the girls, or rather, to speak truth, 
 the girls had discovered him. There had been thrust upon 
 him suddenly the preposterous fact of sex. It happened 
 in this way.
 
 CHILDHOOD 205 
 
 One day, on entering the class-room, he heard the Rhino 
 exclaim : 
 
 "Here comes the lady-killer." 
 
 "What d ye mean, Fatty?" Guido inquired, innocently. 
 
 "What do I mean? Ask Otto." 
 
 Guido looked questioningly at Otto who, disgruntled for 
 reasons of his own, looked away without replying. 
 
 "Dear me, dear me," the Rhino wailed, "how attractive 
 we are. What pretty, black eyes we have. What lovely, 
 lovely black hair we have. What nice, nice hands we have. 
 And they are always clean. And our pretty, pretty hair 
 is always well combed and brushed. And our pretty little 
 fingers are always manicured. And how the pretty, lovely, 
 little innocent dears love us !" 
 
 Guido understood at last. He turned purple, first with 
 embarrassment, then with rage. 
 
 "Steady, boy," whispered Stan. He gripped Guide s 
 coat firmly and pulled Guido down into his seat. "Keep 
 your temper," he whispered. "Don t make a fool of your 
 self, now, will you? Look at the girls." 
 
 Thus admonished, Guido looked across to the girl s aisle. 
 Some were giggling, some were indignant, some were un 
 comfortable, some were brazening it out. 
 
 "Tell you after school," whispered Stan. 
 
 For the past fortnight, it seems, some of the little girls 
 had been speculating as to the object of Guido s affection, 
 for with juvenile sophistication it seemed incredible to 
 these little ladies that Guido was as different to the at 
 tractions of their sex as he seemed. He never spoke to 
 a girl. He sharpened no pencils for any youthful charmer; 
 presented no one with penny candies or bananas. He stole 
 neither hair ribbon nor kisses. The latter omissions, par 
 ticularly the last, constituted the offense hardest to con 
 done. Erna Friedman and Lieschen Schlick, the two most 
 aggressive of these youthful daughters of Eve, decided 
 that such indifference and impartiality must be punished. 
 They determined, when occasion offered, to hazard the 
 bestowal of a kiss upon this coy Joseph. They had an idea 
 that they might entrap him into one of the kissing games 
 which were countenanced by the parents of some of the 
 children at birthday parties. 
 
 One of the boys, kept in during recess, overheard the
 
 206 THE HYPHEN 
 
 conspiracy which was hatching in the courtyard directly 
 below the window at which he sat. The news spread like 
 wildfire through the class. The children were ungovern 
 able during the session that followed. Bad marks for im 
 proper deportment rained hard and fast without any cor 
 rective effect. The whispering, the giggling, the explosions 
 of uncontrollable laughter continued. The entire class, as 
 a result, was kept in. 
 
 Guido had been absent from school on the afternoon 
 when all this happened. When he appeared the next morn 
 ing, Fatty Erdman the Rhino gibed at him with the 
 result above outlined. 
 
 From that day on Guido lived in constant terror that 
 he might be kissed. He feared, not without reason, that 
 the school picnic would be the occasion upon which the 
 plot which centered about him might be consummated. He 
 fought desperately against going. His mother insisted. He 
 was ashamed to take her into his confidence. At last he 
 yielded to her wishes because there was nothing else to do. 
 
 Guide s last remnant of hope was torn to tatters when, 
 instead of raining, as conceivably it might have done, the 
 morning of the picnic dawned bright and cool and clear 
 no prospects even of a shower which might have sent him 
 home before the blighting hand of love s game could be 
 laid upon him. 
 
 All morning, and at luncheon set in a rectangular 
 pavilion at tables so long that the features of the children 
 at the extreme end were indistinguishable all went merry 
 as a wedding bell. The little girls, in white dresses and 
 pink and blue ribbons, looked charming, and behaved them 
 selves like little ladies. It was hard to believe that those 
 airy little creatures might be harboring sinister designs 
 against any one in their dainty little heads. Guido was a 
 gallant little lad. He decided suddenly, with simon-pure 
 masculine logic, that such a suspicion was as insulting as 
 it was absurd. He began to breathe freely, and set about 
 to enjoy the afternoon with Stan and Otto and Egon. 
 
 They were on their way to the lake shortly after dinner 
 Stan was excellent at the oars when their way was 
 suddenly barred by a bevy of little girls. There were Erna 
 Friedman and Lieschen Schlick, always the ring-leaders 
 in all mischief, and half a dozen others, laughter in their
 
 CHILDHOOD 207 
 
 eyes and scorn on their lips. There also, a little apart, 
 stood dear little Elschen Marlow. 
 
 Elschen had not been able to carry out her intention of 
 presenting Guido with a large bouquet of flowers from 
 her garden, because he had, after all, become well so sud 
 denly, and she had given no sign of her admiration for 
 him now that he was well and strong. She was the only 
 little girl in the class upon whom Guido s eyes occasion 
 ally lingered. He thought that he would have liked to 
 have a little sister like her. She seemed so sweet and 
 bright and clean, like the blue sky or violets or the silver 
 waters of a brook. Frau Ursula, of course, had not told 
 Guido of the conversation that had taken place between 
 herself and Elschen, and Elschen, therefore, was to Guido 
 nothing more than a name. 
 
 The precise, dainty little creature looked very charming 
 this June day in a little smock of dimity, much more 
 elaborately and modishly trimmed than the dresses she 
 usually wore. The warm weather had whitened and 
 smoothed her arms and her short sleeves were festooned 
 with tiny rosettes made of pink and light blue silk which 
 gave her a festive appearance. She looked very dear and 
 sweet. 
 
 Erna Friedman stepped forward. When she spoke she 
 addressed Guido pointedly. 
 
 "There is going to be dancing," she said, "will you 
 come ?" 
 
 She spoke German, as usual. She spent her summer 
 vacations in Germany, with her grandparents, on a "Gut," 
 and she spoke English only when it became unavoidable 
 that she should do so. Then, when unavoidable, she treated 
 the language of Great Britain and the United States as if 
 it were a huge joke, purposely misspeaking and using in 
 correct grammar and preposterous idioms. 
 
 "Thanks, no," said Guido. "We re going boating." 
 
 "Better come," Lieschen put in, boldly. "There are going 
 to be games, too. And the forfeits will be kisses." 
 
 Now this was a palpable untruth. Guido knew, and 
 Egon, Otto and Stan knew, and so did all the girls, that 
 the Herr Direktor was violently opposed to kissing games 
 of every description and would not allow any games of the 
 sort to be played in the pavilion.
 
 208 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Guido did not reply at once, and Erna and Lieschen re 
 garded him with sly, heckling looks. Suddenly something 
 stirred in Guido. A strange change came over him. He 
 had feared the moment when the little vixens would begin 
 to torment him more than he had ever feared anything 
 in all his life. More even, than he had feared death. 
 Much more. He had feared it with the hot, uncomfortable, 
 prickling fear with which human-kind fears being made 
 ridiculous. But now that he was actually spread-eagled 
 for the barbecue, his fear left him. He felt heroic, ad 
 venturesome, aggressive. 
 
 "I m afraid," he said with deadly composure, "that you 
 girls are going to be disappointed if you expect kisses from 
 me or the other fellers. The Herr Direktor won t stand 
 for it, you know." 
 
 "It s not we girls who ll be disappointed, Guido," said 
 Erna Friedman, smiling coquettishly. 
 
 "You re a very rude little boy to say something like that," 
 said little Elschen Marlow in her intent, old-fashioned way 
 and with a heat which showed that her hero was in danger 
 of toppling from his pedestal. 
 
 As Guido looked at her his face softened. 
 
 "You must not call me rude, Elschen," he said, gently. 
 
 "But you are rude!" the child stamped her foot indig 
 nantly. "It s horrid of you to pretend that the girls want 
 to kiss you." The child spoke in good faith and young 
 as the boys were they understood this thoroughly. 
 
 Guido laughed. Indignation became the golden-haired, 
 blue-eyed child. She was as modest in her demeanor with 
 boys as he was shy with girls. And she was the only one 
 of the group of little girls about whom there was nothing 
 brazen. She was Eve before the Fall. The others presented 
 a composite picture of the first mother after the catas 
 trophe. She was Eve defensive, they were examples of 
 Eve aggressive, coquettish, wantonly seductive. 
 
 "You know, Guido," bold-mouthed Erna Friedman 
 said, "you are not a bit like other boys. Other boys aren t 
 affraid to kiss the girls." She was a pretty girl, very pretty 
 with self-conscious and bold but not coarse beauty. The 
 well-developed physique, the expressive mouth, the poise 
 and carriage of her comely head foreshadowed maturity. 
 
 "Oh ! I m afraid to kiss the girls, am I ?" Guido laughed
 
 CHILDHOOD 209 
 
 outright. The situation was really droll. He felt a de 
 lightful sensation of superiority, a new sort of superiority 
 which had nothing to do with his scepter of Polysyllabic 
 King. The sense of easy mastery which was its con 
 comitant was exquisite, delicious. These girls, silly, berib- 
 bonned, beruffled things, thought they were playing with 
 him. Wondrous delusion 1 It was almost a pity to shatter 
 it. Yet, since it was a matter of choice between the 
 pleasure which the shattering would involve for himself, or 
 the joy which the maintenance would afford them there 
 was no more to be said. He was as unaltruistic as a 
 Katydid which swallows a fly, and as impartial regarding 
 the choice of his victim. 
 
 While he stood there smiling happily sheepishly as they 
 thought he was coldly calculating whether it would be 
 easier to catch Erna or Lieschen. He was not a very 
 quick runner, and he hated to run right after eating, any 
 how. But apparently the thing had to be done. 
 
 Erna, he ruminated, was swifter of foot than Lieschen, 
 but became winded more quickly. He decided that strategy 
 might stand him in better stead with Erna than with 
 Lieschen. He decided to scotch Erna. Just then his eyes 
 happened to alight on short-sleeved Elschen Marlow 
 Elschen of the sky-blue eyes and moonlight hair. 
 
 Who shall say at what age that compound fracture of 
 the human organism which involves heart, soul, senses 
 all, in brief, that the poor human calls his own and which 
 we euphemistically call love, begins. As easy to fix the 
 precise historical date when the first tadpole changed into 
 a fish, or the first fish became an amphibian, or the first 
 amphibian evolved itself into the intermediate link from 
 which the lord and flower of creation is derived. 
 
 Certain it is that our hero s sense of strategic niceties 
 was wiped away more quickly than words can tell as he 
 gazed upon Elschen s sparkling blue eyes, and her golden 
 hair and her soft, dimpled arms. Since he must kiss, he 
 would kiss Elschen, and no one else. 
 
 "I ll show you whether I m afraid to kiss the girls," he 
 cried, suddenly resolute. "I can t very well kiss all of 
 you but I m going to kiss one of you I m going to kiss 
 Elschen Marlow." 
 
 Erna and Lieschen stared, incredulous, chagrined, morti-
 
 210 THE HYPHEN 
 
 fied. Elschen stared, bewildered, frightened, not compre 
 hending. Her blue eyes dilated. Her intent little face, 
 red with indignation a minute ago, became quite pale with 
 a much subtler emotion. 
 
 "But I don t want you to kiss me," the child cried, 
 stamping her foot. 
 
 "I know you don t, and that s why I am going to do it," 
 Guido cried, and sportsmanship, or kindness, or some more 
 secret stirring of the soul, prompted him to add: 
 
 "I m going to give you a chance to run away." 
 
 The little girl was paralyzed with bewilderment and 
 Guido made another remarkable discovery. He did not 
 wish her to be too easy a prey. He wanted her to run 
 and to run hard. He didn t want to kiss her here in the 
 presence of all those gaping girls and boys. 
 
 "One two three!" he sang out, with generous inter 
 vals between counts. 
 
 Elschen suddenly became galvanized into life, into un 
 believably active, rapid life. Guido, although greater height 
 gave him the advantage of slightly longer legs, was, because 
 of his inability to run very fast, left behind her at a 
 quickly widening distance. 
 
 The girls laughed. The boys scowled. They were furi 
 ous with Guido for not executing sentence on the spot 
 for so manifestly allowing Elschen to escape. 
 
 Too quick a start makes for bad momentum. After 
 they had left the beaten track and penetrated into the 
 spacious lap of a narrow-lipped snow and sun-dappled 
 daisy field, Elschen s pace slackened perceptibly. Sud 
 denly she began to lag. Guido, who had been running 
 slowly, saw that he would overtake her in another minute. 
 
 They were now out of sight of the others. No merry 
 makers disturbed the lazy contentment of the scene. Guido 
 followed at his slow, ambling run. The little girl stumbled 
 over a tree stump, hidden from view by the daisies which 
 waved around it, and fell. Guido reached her and helped 
 her to her feet and brushed her pretty dress for her and 
 assured her it was not torn. Only then he looked at the 
 hot, flushed little face so bewitchingly near his own, and 
 allowed his smile to proclaim his victory. Little Elschen 
 looked so frightened and so hot and uncomfortable that 
 Guido was almost tempted to forego the spoils of the
 
 CHILDHOOD 211 
 
 victor. The others would never know whether he had 
 kissed her or not. And he was really sorry for Elschen. 
 The June day, sweet and balmy though it was in the shade, 
 had mounted a ruthless sun. He decided to let her go 
 unkissed. 
 
 Then a curious thing happened. Wisdom beyond his 
 years came to him. Her eyes were shining with the emo 
 tion of fear, it is true, but Guido perceived with the nicest 
 lucidity that if she was afraid that he might kiss her, she 
 was much more afraid that he might not. Mixed emo 
 tions of the feminine heart! Tangled wires of the human 
 soul ! He had glimpsed the Gordian knot before, but this 
 was a new, more fascinating, more tantalizing version. 
 
 He cut it neatly by planting a kiss as delicate as a 
 moonbeam and no more substantial than a spider s web 
 upon the flushed cheek of the little maid. 
 
 The fright died out of the starry blue eyes. The heav 
 ing of her bosom subsided. Her plump little hands un 
 clenched themselves. She was her dignified, controlled, 
 intent little self once more, but her primness had changed 
 its complexion. It had been sweetened, and it was he who 
 had sweetened it! 
 
 Divine moment! Self-evidently the novelty of a first 
 experience can never be enjoyed twice. The memory of 
 Elschen s cheek, soft and velvety as the impalpable down of 
 a chick, was destined to linger in his memory. He thought 
 of it at the most improbable and unexpected moments. 
 After hours of hard and concentrated study, or barely less 
 laborious play, in a jasmine-scented dusk or at daybreak 
 sweet with the call of the robin or the song of the thrush, 
 the memory of Elschen s soft little cheek would suddenly 
 flash upon him and fill him with a haunting, teasing unrest. 
 
 The severed Gordian knot has an unfair habit of putting 
 itself together again, and borrowing Hydra s power, multi 
 plying its snarls and tangles a hundredfold. 
 
 "I say, Guido," said Otto, as they were walking home 
 from school on all but the last day, "isn t it great that 
 you re all right now?" 
 
 "Yes," said Guido, indifferently. Already his long illness 
 seemed remote, improbable, hazy. The keen, vigorous, 
 healthy every-day life which lapped him around had forced
 
 212 THE HYPHEN 
 
 the abnormal, unwholesome life which he had led for two 
 years to recede into the background of his thoughts. 
 
 "I never told you," Otto continued, "but I used to lie 
 awake nights, just thinking about you and your sore back. 
 Once I got to crying so hard I woke my farder." 
 
 Guido received this in stolid silence. It was not that 
 he was not moved. On the contrary, he was deeply touched. 
 Besides, Otto s words had made vivid and distinct the recol 
 lections which had seemed so dim and so distant only a 
 minute before. 
 
 For a moment he could not speak. He wanted to tell 
 Otto that he was an awfully good sort, but his voice 
 wouldn t come. But Otto did not take his friend s silence 
 amiss. He was unaware that lying awake nights and cry 
 ing over a sick friend might be construed as a doughty 
 deed. 
 
 Otto was playing with a hard rubber ball, which he threw 
 up into the air and then caught again as it fell back. 
 
 Egon von Dammer and Stan were waiting for them at 
 the next corner. Stan did not like Egon. "You ll find 
 him out some day, you mark my word," he was in the 
 habit of preaching to Guido. He avoided Egon whenever 
 he could. Chancing to leave the class-room together with 
 Egon that afternoon, he was too manly "to give him the 
 slip," in his own phrase. But he looked annoyed and dour, 
 and Guido hurried forward and paired off with Egon. 
 
 Stan loitered behind, caught Otto s ball as it descended 
 and pitched it back to him. Thus the boys walked along 
 the street, Guido and Egon leading, Stan and Otto pitch 
 ing the ball to and fro as they walked. 
 
 To hit a bird on the wing is no feat at all compared to 
 catching a ball traveling at high speed while walking back 
 wards. Unconsciously both boys were putting more and 
 more muscle back of the pitch. Their hands ached with 
 the impact of the ball, but they liked the hot soreness of 
 their palms. It relieved the mental strain of the day s 
 work. 
 
 Once Otto missed his catch. He lagged behind, found 
 the ball and without waiting to estimate the lengthened 
 trajectory for Stan had gone right on pitched the ball 
 at Stan full force. Stan strained every muscle to catch 
 the ball, but the ball sped on, curved downward, narrowly
 
 CHILDHOOD 213 
 
 missed Stan s hand and struck Guido a resounding blow 
 in the back. Guido, without a sound, dropped his books 
 and pitched forward, ashen-gray. Egon caught him or he 
 would have fallen prone to the ground. 
 
 Otto s dismay exceeded the humanly bearable. What 
 ever Guide s suffering was at the moment and it was great 
 it was as nought compared to the naming pit of misery 
 which had opened and swallowed Otto earthquake-like at 
 one hideous gulp. Big boy as he was, he began crying 
 aloud, his mouth wide open, the tears streaming down his 
 face in an unbelievably thick curtain. 
 
 "I ve hurt Guido! I ve hurt him!" he screamed. His 
 words were barely intelligible, for they proceeded from the 
 depth of a panting chest past a rigid throat and taut vocal 
 chords and out through a gaping, unenunciating mouth. 
 
 "Stop bawling for God s sake and help me home," said 
 Guido, between clenched teeth. 
 
 But Otto could not be prevailed upon to touch Guido. 
 He seemed in that dreadful moment of realization to have 
 conceived himself as a human sledge-hammer, a Caliban, 
 a contaminating pariah. 
 
 Guido screwed a smile a ghastly smile into his face, 
 drawn from some unsuspected reservoir of courage. 
 
 "It s not as bad as you think, Otto," he said, but for 
 heaven s sake stop your howling." 
 
 But poor Otto lacked the power to stop the strange 
 noises which he was making. He was demoralized by the 
 catastrophe which he had brought upon his friend. 
 
 A crowd was gathering. From the four corners of the 
 earth came the idlers, the curious, the sympathetic and 
 the bored. Blowsy women, their attention attracted by 
 Otto s horrid hubbub, leaned far out of their windows to 
 see what was happening. Some, realizing that something 
 surpassing in horror the ordinary tragedies of childhood 
 was occurring, began shouting, "Oh, my God, Oh, my 
 God !" thereby adding to the tumult. Others, realizing 
 nothing but that the picture-book of life was presenting a 
 somewhat unusual pageant, brought cushions for the win 
 dow-sills, and leaned their bare, work-coarsened arms upon 
 them to enjoy the procession in comfort. 
 
 Meanwhile Egon and Stan, with Guido leaning heavily 
 upon them, were slowly making their way through the
 
 2i 4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 moving frame of humanity which surrounded them. Guido 
 could hardly move his legs, much less would his legs sup 
 port his weight. His two friends almost carried him. 
 But all the while, during that agonized homeward march, 
 the courageous smile which he had stuck upon his face, 
 remained upon it. Perhaps he lacked the strength to re 
 move it and throw it away. It was like a yesterday s rose 
 remaining in the buttonhole which it had once graced 
 with unwithered loveliness. 
 
 All during his martyrdom he did not once cry out or 
 moan. His under-lip bled he had bitten into it in his 
 desperate need for an outlet of his agony but he did not 
 cry out. But when Stan and Egon, assisted by Otto, whose 
 cries had ceased at last, had gotten Guido safely up the 
 stoop, where Frau Ursula stood, summoned by some other 
 child, with terror in her eyes, he fell forward into his 
 mother s arms in a dead faint.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 DR. KOENIG was not in town, a circumstance which 
 caused Frau Ursula to reflect that it never rains but 
 it pours. With considerable misgivings she summoned his 
 understudy. 
 
 Dr. Erdman was a brother of the Rhino, but he and 
 Fatty were as different as it is possible for two human 
 beings to be. Dr. Koenig s assistant was tall and slender, 
 and very, very gentle. His gentleness was not assumed. 
 It was the outward token of an unusually tender char 
 acter. The man s sweetness and charm were to become 
 proverbial in the Anasquoit of his generation. 
 
 He speedily captivated Frau Ursula. He made Guido 
 comfortable very quickly. He smiled cheerfully yet sym 
 pathetically. He promised to find a nurse that would 
 please. His manner was as soothing to the harassed 
 woman as a bread-and-milk poultice. 
 
 "How badly is Guido hurt?" Frau Ursula demanded of 
 him at the door. 
 
 The young physician became very grave. 
 
 "I cannot say," he said. "It may be a matter .of weeks." 
 
 "Weeks!" 
 
 "No longer I hope." 
 
 Then Frau Ursula understood that the kind voice wished 
 to say no more at the present. 
 
 Within an hour after he left the house Mrs. Thornton 
 appeared with bag and baggage, smiling an aggressively 
 cheerful smile. She announced that she had come to stay 
 until Guido was better. A miracle? Ah, no. It was so 
 simple. Dr. Erdman had been house surgeon until re 
 cently at the Anasquoit Hospital. He was a prime favorite 
 with everybody, and SO sympathetic. Frau Ursula had 
 seen that for herself. And he had only to say the word, 
 and presto ! the management fell all over itself to oblige 
 him. 
 
 "But how did he know about you and us?" Guido de- 
 
 215
 
 216 THE HYPHEN 
 
 manded, a loosely constructed sentence whose import was 
 entirely intelligible to Mrs. Thornton. 
 
 "Oh, I happened to tell him all about your case one 
 day," said Mrs. Thornton lightly, with a blush. Later in 
 the evening she admitted that "there was something be 
 tween them." Frau Ursula already knew that her married 
 life had not been happy. Her little lad, her only ray of 
 hope and happiness, had died three months after she had 
 obtained her divorce. Frau Ursula guessed that for de 
 cency s sake she would allow a year to elapse her husband 
 had died a month after the divorce had gone into effect 
 and that Mrs. Thornton would then become Mrs. Erdman. 
 
 This last fact she allowed to percolate into Guide s mind 
 during the evening. He wondered a little at the unblushing 
 hardihood which could find the heart to change the name 
 of a Signer for that of Erdman. But he did not wonder 
 long. His appetite for the romantic in history had suffered 
 a retrogression. His introduction to the romantic in love 
 had eclipsed it. He thought of Elschen and kissed Mrs. 
 Thornton s cheek with a new appreciation, picturing to 
 himself the evaluation which slim, handsome Dr. Erdman 
 must place upon it. 
 
 Herr Baumgarten called with Otto shortly after supper. 
 Poor Otto ! He had lain sleepless on other nights, think 
 ing of his friend s suffering, while innocent of that suffer 
 ing, what pangs would he endure now with conscience 
 holding a somber vigil at the bedside, whispering: "But 
 for you your friend would be well !" 
 
 Otto s face was swollen and red from weeping. His 
 father said he had cried incessantly since returning home. 
 He had eaten no supper. It was the first time in the 
 memory of his parents that he the lad had refused food. 
 
 "You had better go right to Guide s room, Otto," said 
 Frau Ursula, kindly. She had felt inclined to blame Otto 
 earlier in the day, but the sight of those inflamed eyes 
 with their beseeching look of dumb misery, made her forget 
 her own misery in his. 
 
 "Will he see me?" Otto inquired from a dry throat. 
 "Doesn t he hate me? Liebe, Hebe Frau Hauser, I would 
 give my life to make this thing undone. Does he not hate 
 me?" the poor wretch demanded again. "If he hates me 
 I shall die. But what good will that do him?"
 
 CHILDHOOD 217 
 
 "He does not hate you, Otto," Frau Ursula assured the 
 unhappy boy. "How could he? His best friend. And 
 such a friend as you ve been." Tears stood in her eyes. 
 She caressed the tousled hair, and smoothed it back from 
 the boy s throbbing temples and feverishly hot brow. "It 
 might have happened to any of the other boys just as 
 well as to you." 
 
 "Why didn t it, then?" Otto cried wildly. "Why should 
 it have happened to me? To ME? Does Egon care for 
 him as I do? Does Stan? Does Eddie? You know they 
 don t. Why should my hand have been singled out to 
 hurt Guido?" 
 
 Frau Ursula had not suspected the phlegmatic-seeming 
 boy of such emotion. The black despair and self-loathing 
 which looked from his eyes frightened her. 
 
 "Otto," she said, speaking sternly to check his hysteria, 
 "if you talk like this I will not be able to allow you to 
 see Guido. And he wants to see you badly." 
 
 "Does he? Does he, really?" There came a rift in the 
 dark cloud of his misery. At a sign from Frau Ursula, 
 he rushed wildly out of the room. At Guido s door he 
 stopped, overcome by a dread for which he had no words. 
 Thus might a murderer feel in approaching sanctuary. 
 
 Guido had heard Otto s footstep. Even grief could not 
 moderate the heavy thump-thump with which Otto lum 
 bered along. 
 
 "Otto, is it you? At last! Come in." 
 
 Otto, plucking up courage, charged the door and stood 
 at the threshold trembling. Then, suddenly, he made a wild 
 rush for Guido s bedside, and dropping upon his knees, 
 began to cry as if his heart were breaking. 
 
 Guido, lying flat on his back and unable to stir, allowed 
 his ringers to fumble blindly for his friend s hair. They 
 encountered an ear instead. Guido s hand flattened itself 
 against that carressingly. 
 
 "Don t you feel so bad, Otto. I know how you feel." 
 
 "You think you do but you don t," sobbed the malefactor. 
 
 "Well, perhaps I don t. I can tell you, though, at the 
 present moment I d rather be myself than you and I m 
 not overcomfortable." 
 
 Sympathy so delicate and precious could not fail of its 
 effect. Otto s sobs subsided.
 
 2i8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Oh, Guido," breathed Guide s slave abjectly, "I wouldn t 
 have done it for worlds." 
 
 Guido, whose sense of humor could not be impaired 
 even by a writhing back, smiled at the childish literality 
 of this asseveration. 
 
 "Wouldn t you, though, Otto?" he said. "Now I thought 
 you did it on purpose and just were sorry afterwards." 
 
 "Oh, Guido !" Otto s tear-stained, horrified face lifted 
 itself from the snowy counterpane leaving a smudge behind 
 it. "Oh, Guido, you didn t really think that?" 
 
 Guido laughed. 
 
 "You can laugh!" Otto was scandalized. What had 
 laughter to do in the midst of tragedy. 
 
 "Why not? Do you intend never to laugh again?" 
 Guido teased. 
 
 Otto collapsed upon the floor. He sat staring at Guido 
 and saying nothing. 
 
 "Don t you?" Guido urged. 
 
 "I don t believe I shall," said Otto. 
 
 "Don t be a chump," said Guido. "I sha n t like you a 
 bit if you re going to be as solemn as a funeral." 
 
 This threat had its desired effect. 
 
 "I ll do anything in the wide world to please you, Guido," 
 said Otto, with a new meekness. "Only not to-night. To 
 night I cannot laugh." 
 
 And to that reservation he held. The age-old instinct 
 for penance had awakened in him, and like all untried 
 elemental instincts it exacted obedience. 
 
 Mr. Baumgarten, after his Otto s precipitate flight from 
 the room, came forward out of the corner from which he 
 had watched his son s abandonment to remorse. 
 
 "You are more than kind, verehrte Frau," he said. "I 
 came here expecting to find justifiable resentment. I find 
 forgiveness, humane and absolute." 
 
 "It would be signally unfair to blame a child for such 
 an accident," Frau Ursula replied, a little magniloquently. 
 She forgot that she had been guilty of the "signal unfair 
 ness" until there had been thrust upon her vision Otto, 
 with his desperate, tear-smeared visage. 
 
 "How badly was Guido hurt?" Mr. Baumgarten 
 pursued. 
 
 "I do not know. Dr. Erdman would not commit him-
 
 CHILDHOOD 219 
 
 self. I imagine we may have the specialist over in a day or 
 two. We will decide to-morrow." 
 
 "Weeks in bed?" 
 
 "I think I am afraid months." 
 
 "That is bad." Mr. Baumgarten paused. "Otto you 
 have seen for yourself is disconsolate." 
 
 "His condition alarms me," said Frau Ursula. "You 
 will have to be kind to him, Herr Baumgarten," she added, 
 a little uncertainly. She thought Mr. Baumgarten quite 
 capable of flogging Otto into the bargain. 
 
 "He rejoices me," said Mr. Baumgarten, with a snap 
 of his ominous jaw. "I sometimes feared that the boy 
 might be deficient in moral responsibility. I find he has a 
 moral sense, after all. I regret that your boy was the 
 unhappy means of bringing to light this gratifying dis 
 covery." 
 
 "Otto is a very fine boy, Mr. Baumgarten," said Frau 
 Ursula, with a curious mixture of sincerity and insincerity. 
 She was sincere because she meant what she said. Her 
 insincerity consisted in the fact that Otto s fineness had 
 dawned on her fully four hours later than on his father, 
 while she spoke as if she had been in possession of this 
 item of knowledge for years. 
 
 "From you, verehrte Frau, that is a compliment, in 
 deed. But he is not as fine as your son." 
 
 "Each character has its own points," rejoined Frau 
 Ursula. "Guido had his, Otto has others." 
 
 "I should really like to know what good qualities my boy 
 possesses that yours lacks," said Mr. Baumgarten. He 
 was a small, squat man, with a heavy, homely face. He 
 always spoke a little didactically, a little dictatorially. He 
 was something of a martinet at home. It was difficult for 
 him, when away from home, to maintain for any length 
 of time the deferential attitude toward women required 
 by social usage. He believed that Frau Ursula had spoken 
 without conviction, and as he abhorred the polite small 
 talk which corrupts and emasculates society, he thought it 
 his bounden duty as a man and as the father of a family 
 to make her acknowledge the untruth she had uttered. 
 
 She was a little amazed, a little amused by what she 
 conceived to be cloaked impertinence.
 
 220 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Ah," she said, lightly, "it is tolerably easy to tell them 
 apart." 
 
 "That, I imagine, is due to their physical differences." 
 
 "Is it?" she smiled mysteriously. "Infuse Otto s soul 
 in Guido s body, Guide s soul in Otto s, and I m quite 
 certain that neither you nor I nor any one of us will recog 
 nize either of the boys." 
 
 "I never speculate on vagaries," he replied. His heavi 
 ness had deepened into ponderosity. As an afterthought, 
 he added: 
 
 "Perhaps this is a new-fangled religion. I am a Chris 
 tian, madam." 
 
 She perceived that he was temperamentally incapable of 
 understanding that anyone least of all a woman should 
 dare to poke fun at him. She pitied him. 
 
 "No," she said, quietly, "it is not a religion." 
 
 Now that her voice was as soberly unphosphorescent as 
 his own, he became satisfied and tranquil. He reverted 
 to their original topic. 
 
 "You have not yet told me in which virtue my son 
 excels yours," he said. 
 
 She marveled at the tactlessness of his persistence. 
 
 "For one thing," she said, "Otto is more single-minded 
 than Guido." 
 
 Otto s father swelled with pride, then very properly 
 looked regretful because of the implied dispraise of her 
 own son. Apparently it did not occur to him that single- 
 mindedness might be due quite as much to a dearth of 
 versatility and humor as to a superior degree of sincerity. 
 Frau Ursula was vastly and as she felt, naughtily enter 
 tained. 
 
 "We intend to leave for our modest little cottage in 
 Pike County next week," he said. "Otto refuses to go." 
 
 "He will change his mind in a few days." 
 
 "Not so. I know my son. He is disobedient because he 
 is forgetful, not because he is self-willed. Once in a 
 great while he tells me point-blank that he will not do 
 a thing. And then he is like a mule, and I have learned 
 from bitter experience not to try to force him to do as 
 I wish." 
 
 "Ah!" murmured Frau Ursula. So the ponderous one
 
 CHILDHOOD 221 
 
 had moments in which he realized the limitation of his 
 powers. 
 
 "So there we are. We are leaving for the country next 
 week, as I ve said. And Otto won t come with us." 
 
 "He could, of course, stay with us." 
 
 "I was hoping you would suggest it. He will be no 
 trouble, I think. He s good about helping. He sweeps 
 the sidewalk and cleans all the windows for his mother 
 every week, and he does all her errands and marketing." 
 
 "My maid does the cleaning and I do the marketing," 
 said Frau Ursula, prosily kind. "But I shall, nevertheless, 
 be very glad to have Otto with us for the summer. It 
 will be wonderful for Guido." 
 
 "There s the matter of his board," said Mr. Baumgarten, 
 heavily. 
 
 "As to that, Otto, of course, stays with us as a dear 
 friend," said Frau Ursula, quickly. 
 
 "Not to be thought of," said Otto s father. 
 
 She saw the pugnacious jowl flattening itself into a 
 formidable square and as she had no stomach for further 
 argument with this sublime egoist, she said, with a smile 
 that was bland enough although her eyes were chill and 
 distant : 
 
 "As you wish." 
 
 Mr. Baumgarten anathematized her in secret. That was 
 the trouble with these highbrow women. His Crete would 
 never have dared to smile at him or any other male 
 creature with such a superior air. The equality of Frau 
 Ursula s manner teased and harrowed him for days. It 
 irritated him because he believed that she had meant to 
 irritate him. Possibly his irritation would have been still 
 more profound if some malicious imp had apprised him 
 of the truth that she had taken not the least thoughts of 
 his emotions in answering him. 
 
 On examining Guido the next day Dr. Erdman expressed 
 the belief that Guido had not sustained any serious physical 
 injury, and that shock more than injury was causing his 
 manifest discomfort. He was not quite certain, however, 
 and he suggested that Frau Ursula have the specialist, 
 who had treated Guido before, come over from New York. 
 
 Dr. Erbach, after giving Guido a thorough examination,
 
 222 THE HYPHEN 
 
 spoke of putting the back in plaster, but reserved final 
 judgment until a week should have elapsed. He came 
 thrice that week. Twice the back was cauterized in sec 
 tions. Two weeks were allowed for the back to heal 
 thoroughly after the cauterization. Then Guido was 
 sheathed in plaster. 
 
 Guide s behavior was angelic. No revilement of torture 
 or torturer passed his lips. He bore the torments which 
 nature and science alike inflicted upon him with equal 
 patience. His fortitude, his cheerfulness wore so saintly 
 an air that all who attended to him felt themselves to be 
 brutes thrice over. Their own health seemed indecent in 
 the face of his martyrdom, and the occasional pleasures 
 which they snatched surreptitiously, such as pleasant walks 
 and moonlight evenings and in Mrs. Thornton s case 
 the finer phases of love, appeared even more piratical and 
 indecorous. 
 
 Frau Ursula was heartbroken. And yet and yet 
 pitiful, incomprehensible perversity of the human heart ! 
 She was not wholly sorry to see her own frail, self-absorbed, 
 and almost morbidly delicate and delicate-minded Guido 
 emerging from the hard, brown, worldly-minded, happy- 
 go-lucky chrysalis in which he had been swathed for 
 months. This Guido she understood. The other Guido, 
 delightful and winsome as he had been, had been a 
 stranger. Now she knew for a certainty that within the 
 husk of the strange Guido lurked her own imaginative, 
 magnetic, tender-hearted joy. 
 
 She reproached herself for not having gloried sufficiently 
 in his health while it lasted, but the truth is, it had at 
 times offended her. She had, during his interregnum of 
 health, seen him tramp heavy-footed across a field of 
 clover and she had recalled on that occasion how, while 
 he was ill, he had called out one day with every symptom 
 of physical anguish upon seeing a picture which portrayed 
 children at play in a field of daisies. 
 
 "Oh, Mutterchen, Mutter chen," he cried. "Their backs, 
 their poor, poor backs. See how the children have broken 
 them." And he had pointed to some flowers at the edge 
 of the meadow which lay supine and wilted with crushed 
 and broken stems. 
 
 This refinement of feeling was coming back to him. One
 
 CHILDHOOD 223 
 
 day, when she removed some withered roses from a vase, 
 he begged her to wrap the roses in tissue-paper before 
 consigning them to the garbage pail. 
 
 And the weak, foolish, adoring woman could have wept 
 with joy. She reflected that since Epictetus was all- wise 
 witness Guido s ruthless march across the wild flowers 
 while in health and security this relapse, demonstrating 
 human vulnerability and the instability of even the most 
 ordinary of life s blessings, such as health, must arrest 
 forever the coarsening process of his spiritual life. When 
 he regained his health, health would stiffen his stamina. 
 That was well. But strength can be fine as well as brutal 
 or indifferent, and she who had known Guido as the most 
 exquisite of mortals could not bear to think of him as 
 becoming coarsened in fiber. 
 
 Besides, imperfect health has its compensations. It may 
 impede one s destiny, if one happens to have one. She 
 was not certain how his spiritual organism would react 
 when the clarion-call of life sounded in his ears. None 
 too robust health may act as a brake upon natural inclina 
 tions, nor was this casting a slur on his proclivities. What 
 she feared was not sordid selfishness, but an altruism, all 
 too heedless of self. 
 
 In brief, she desired her boy to possess every fineness 
 of instinct, and every desire to carry this fineness into 
 execution. But she did not desire that execution to be 
 accomplished to his own material detriment. She wished 
 him to be a negative Sir Galahad. There was the rub! 
 In her love for the boy she was the incarnation of selfish 
 ness. 
 
 Frau Ursula hoped that the compensatory silver lining 
 of this new cloud which had descended upon them would 
 be the cessation of Guido s Russian lessons. But when she 
 suggested this, Guido became so agitated, and entreated her 
 so earnestly not to deprive him of the entertainment which 
 he derived from Dobronov s lessons, that she had not the 
 heart to deny him. 
 
 A great friendship had grown up between Dobrpnov and 
 Guido. Sergius Ivanovich treated Guido as if they were 
 of exactly the same age. He initiated the lad into his 
 religious difficulties, and the condition of Dobronov s soul 
 became an intensely interesting subject to Guido. He took
 
 224 THE HYPHEN 
 
 it quite as seriously as Dobronov did himself. He under 
 stood thoroughly that the soul of Sergius Ivanovich was 
 somewhat different in fiber and in mechanism from other 
 people s souls. 
 
 Dobronov, after all, had rejected classification as a 
 Baptist. His ancient prejudice against an ordained min 
 istry had been too much for him. Moreover, he disapproved 
 of baptism in a tank in a church. A true imitation of 
 the methods of Jesus called for immersion in a stream. 
 It was pointed out to him that the climate of the Northern 
 States was prohibitive of such a practice. Whereat Do 
 bronov exploded like a torpedo. Time-servers, climatic 
 epicureans, selfish conservers of physical health! What if 
 folks did catch their death of cold through being immersed 
 in the icy waters of midwinter? The more happy they 
 to be translated to heaven so speedily after being washed 
 in the waters of belief. Decidedly, he would not be hall 
 marked a Baptist! 
 
 Otto remained with the Hausers all summer. He had, 
 perhaps, in the penance which his contrition sought to 
 impose, gone a little beyond his own or any normal boy s 
 spiritual depth. Being thoroughly healthy both in body 
 and mind, he could hardly be expected to keep his resolu 
 tion never to laugh again, even if Guido had not absolved 
 him from that foolish vow as soon as it was made. It 
 was hard at first to get him to go outdoors to play with 
 other boys. Guido finally cajoled him into it by telling 
 him, in boy s jargon, that his mind was running stale from 
 lack of friction with other juvenile mentalities, allowing 
 him to infer that his companionship was not as stimulating 
 as it had been of yore. After that the obedient Otto went 
 out to play with other boys every day, but faithfully every 
 morning, every evening and every afternoon, he sat with 
 Guido for an hour at a time. 
 
 "Damon and Pythias," said Hauser to his wife, one day, 
 after watching the two boys together. He was behaving 
 very well to Guido. He remembered to bring him home 
 his favorite newspaper every evening and every Saturday 
 night brought each of the boys a box of candy and a new 
 book for Guido. But when his wife attempted to thank 
 him, he rebuffed her and went out of the room. 
 
 It is hard to say what would have become of Guido
 
 CHILDHOOD 225 
 
 without Otto staunch friendship, for Guido was worse 
 off than in any previous round of illness. For no pro 
 tracted period, not even after an operation, had he been 
 unable to stir in bed. But now his body, confined in the 
 rigid inflexible plaster, was forced to remain in an im 
 movable position day after day and night after night. The 
 summer was exceptionally warm. Through one agonizing 
 week mercury never fell below ninety in Guide s room. 
 After the sun was down, his mother and Mrs. Thornton 
 carried him out upon the small porch, where he might get 
 at least a breath of air. 
 
 "The doctor is coming from New York next week to 
 take off the plaster," Frau Ursula told Guido one day late 
 in August. 
 
 "Then I suppose he ll begin burning my back again," 
 said Guido. "Never mind, Mother. I d rather have him 
 burn my back every day in the week than be compressed 
 in this glove-fitting harness of earthenware." 
 
 The glove-fitting harness was removed the following 
 week. The Doctor refused to hazard a judgment on 
 Guido s condition until another ten days should have 
 elapsed. The suspense of these last days, when the boy s 
 fate hung in the balance, wore a cruelly jagged edge which 
 slashed and cut at the mother s heart-strings as nothing had 
 done before. 
 
 "Dear Madam," said Dr. Erbach, after the final ex 
 amination, "do not look so doleful. The boy can walk, 
 as you saw for yourself. But but " 
 
 "Tell me quickly," quavered the tortured woman. 
 
 "Things might be infinitely worse. He is going to be 
 able to go about his business like the rest of us. But he 
 will have to be very, very careful for many years to come. 
 He must not skip rope. He must not jerk himself about. 
 He must not ride in any but the smoothest-running 
 vehicles. He must not run. He must not dance. Calis 
 thenics, excepting such exercises as I will explain to you, 
 are, of course, out the question. In half a year I want 
 to see him again." 
 
 Frau Ursula continued to question Dr. Erbach. He 
 answered evasively. Finally, frowning, he said: 
 
 "I have told you all I know. Even a doctor is not 
 omniscient. After his adolescence is passed he may become
 
 226 THE HYPHEN 
 
 quite strong and well. But I do not predict that he will 
 become strong. To do so might be to raise false hopes. 
 But he will not be deformed. And he is able to walk. Be 
 satisfied with that." 
 
 She could get him to say no more. 
 
 His bill came with amazing celerity. Frau Ursula was 
 not a poor woman and she was accustomed to heavy dis 
 bursements for doctors and nurses and medicines. But 
 the bill which Dr. Erbach sent staggered her. It was so 
 vast that it made her feel retrospectively that she had not 
 paid sufficient homage to a man capable of and justified 
 in sending a bill of such heroic dimensions. 
 
 She was still gazing at the bill in fascinated astonishment 
 when Hauser came into the room and, looking over her 
 shoulder, glimpsed the bill. What he saw made him 
 whistle. 
 
 "Whew," he said, "but that s steep. Look here, you d 
 better let me take care of that for you." 
 
 "Indeed not," Frau Ursula replied. "You ve returned 
 my original loan I can pay the bill out of that and invest 
 the rest, or I can use some of the interest of Guide s 
 money." 
 
 Frau Ursula had never told Hauser the exact extent 
 of Guide s fortune. In the early days of her marriage 
 some defensive instinct had held her silent. Later, when 
 convinced of his financial dependability, she had been 
 ashamed to let him know that she had mistrusted him 
 or not trusted him entirely at first. 
 
 He misinterpreted her refusal to allow him to shoulder 
 the bill. 
 
 "You don t wish me to pay a bill incurred for Guido, 
 is that it?" he demanded, angrily. His quick transitions 
 from mildness to anger, from amiability to irony or 
 brutality, remained a mystery to her. 
 
 Her surprise at his sudden change of tone was so great 
 that she did not reply. 
 
 "So that s it," he said, bitterly. Then, abruptly, hate 
 fully: "I won t be home until late. Perhaps not at all." 
 
 "Not at all?" Frau Ursula questioned, stupid with aston 
 ishment. He never remained away from home unless he 
 went on a business trip. 
 
 "Have you a right to object?"
 
 CHILDHOOD 227 
 
 "No, I suppose not," said Frau Ursula, calmly, not wish 
 ing to excite him further. 
 
 "Ah! If you d said you had the right, perhaps you d 
 have it," he snarled. "Good-night. I ll be home. I had 
 no intention in the world of staying out late." 
 
 The door slammed behind him with an impact that shook 
 the house. 
 
 Frau Ursula, a little shaken by the suddenness of this 
 domestic earthquake, dropped the bill on the floor of the 
 dining-room, where the eruption had taken place. There 
 Guido found it, and stood staring in fright at the heart 
 breaking sum. He, too, had a very inadequate notion of 
 the fortune owned by himself and by his mother. 
 
 It seemed to the little lad that annihilation threatened 
 the house of Hauser in view of such a catastrophic bill. 
 He was so absorbed in it that he did not hear his mother 
 enter the room. 
 
 "Guido, what have you there?" 
 
 "Mutterchen, this is terrible. And all on my account. 
 How ever will you pay it?" 
 
 "Guido, there is lots of money in the bank. Don t worry, 
 dear. Besides, it need not be paid all at once." 
 
 But the cud of anxiety which he had been chewing was 
 not so easily relinquished. His supple mind was harking 
 back to the tales of her childhood with which she had been 
 wont to enliven his bed-ridden days. Memory, vicariously, 
 was conjuring visions of splendor, of luxury militant, of 
 wealth fabulous and inexhaustible. Juxtaposed to this was 
 the financial disaster which had now descended upon the 
 Hauser household according to his notion. 
 
 "Ach, Mutterchen," he said, absorbed entirely in the 
 financial quicksands in which he fancied his mother strug 
 gling, "Ach, Mutterchen, why did you ever leave Germany? 
 There you were rich " 
 
 A change, terrible in its swift intensity, convulsed Frau 
 Ursula s face. For a moment she seemed like a woman 
 frozen by supermundane blasts of frost. When she 
 breathed again stark horror was written in her eyes and 
 painted on her face. Between the horror rippled indigna 
 tion and courage implacable. 
 
 She had, for the nonce, forgotten all about the Syn- 
 .thetic Experiment, and the Attitude of No-Bias.
 
 228 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Guido," she said in a voice of ferrous gentleness, "do 
 not make me regret that .1 told you those stories of a 
 childhood happily passed in Germany. Every contented 
 childhood, in retrospection, seems a fairyland if for no 
 other reason than that it has become as unattainable as the 
 real fairyland in which exists the Fountain of Youth or 
 King Midas. 
 
 "Never, dear boy, let me hear you utter so wicked a 
 wish again." 
 
 Guido opened his eyes wide in astonishment. Why was 
 his Mutterchen thus offended? Wicked! A hard word 
 to apply to his benevolent desire to see her relieved of all 
 her financial worries. 
 
 "Once before, Guido," she continued, "I entreated you 
 always to remember that you are a native-born Ameri 
 can. It seems I did not speak with sufficient emphasis. 
 Try and comprehend, Guido, all that this country your 
 country stands for. I say try advisedly, Guido, for you 
 are too young to understand just how vastly superior 
 our country is to every other country in the world. At 
 present you must take my word for it. You must take 
 my word for it also when I tell you that I who enjoyed 
 the highest social position abroad have never, not in the 
 hour of darkest trouble, regretted that I cast aside all 
 the advantages which my birth gave me, for in exchanging 
 them for American citizenship I became a free woman. 
 You, mem kleiner Guido, who were born free and bred 
 free, have not the remotest idea of what it means to be 
 unfree, to lead a narrow, cramped, confined inner life. No 
 material well-being, no appanage of rank can assuage the 
 pain that accrues to that bitter knowledge. 
 
 "There are so many things I have not told you about the 
 life I left behind me," she continued. "Perhaps I was 
 wrong to dwell on the pleasant aspect of my childhood, 
 and to repress the tragic aspect of my maturity. But you 
 were too young, Guido, you still are too young to be told 
 of certain things. They must wait a little longer before 
 I tell you of them. 
 
 "But there is one thing, Guido, which I can say to you 
 now and which you are not too young to understand. 
 You have read American history both in school and while 
 in bed. You adore Washington, you idolize Lincoln.
 
 CHILDHOOD 229 
 
 Besides those names all the insignia of rank with which 
 the potentates of Europe bedeck themselves, seem petty, 
 seem cheap and tawdry, seem like the trappings of a panto 
 mime or a comic opera. 
 
 "Have you ever asked yourself what made those men 
 so great ? Washington was an aristocrat, one of the landed 
 gentry. Lincoln was a son of the soil, a man of the com 
 mon people. They differed in many qualities. Wherein 
 did they meet? What attributes did they share?" 
 
 She came to a full stop, indicating thereby that the 
 question was not a rhetorical one. Guido remained silent, 
 feeling ashamed and culpable. He knew not what to reply. 
 She adjured him to resort to analysis and not to be afraid 
 to let his wits go off on an unusual tack. The unblazed 
 trail, she said, was the trail most tenderly cherished by 
 free men the world over. Forest primeval and jungle 
 might be darkling and forbidding, but men whose souls were 
 the souls of free men feared nought but God alone. Such 
 was the Creed of Democracy. 
 
 At that the child cried out that he would give her the 
 desired answer. Then he paused, overcome with fright 
 at having charted so momentous a sea alone. 
 
 "Well?" Frau Ursula demanded, expectantly. 
 
 "It s because of what they thought was right," Guido 
 said. "It s because both Washington and Lincoln thought 
 that everybody has rights, not only those who are born 
 rich and with titles." 
 
 "That s it, Guido. They loved humanity, they and many 
 others who helped them in their great work. Justice and 
 kindness, kindness and justice those are the watchwords 
 of America, and all who confess to these ideals are true 
 Americans whether they were born in America or in 
 Europe. My little boy has the great privilege of being 
 American-born. He must never be less than a true Ameri 
 can. Better than that he can never be. And every day 
 of his life he must be thankful that he is what he is." 
 
 "I will never forget, Mother, never." 
 
 The child was in a state of almost religious exaltation. 
 
 And suddenly Frau Ursula remembered the Synthesis 
 and the Experiment, and Guide s Destiny, and the Spirit of 
 No-Bias. 
 
 "I don t care," she said defiantly to herself. "I don t
 
 2 3 o THE HYPHEN 
 
 care. If there is a bias in being a good American, then 
 the Experiment will have to take its chances." 
 
 Of all the heterogeneous lessons in which Guide s child 
 hood abounded, this was the lesson which became most 
 closely intertwined with his personality. It became part 
 of himself, so closely did he hug it to his heart. The 
 sense of it abode with him always. As he grew older, 
 through all his other loves his joy in nature, his en 
 thusiasm for the English language and for English litera 
 ture, his delight in American customs, habits, breeding ran 
 his sober love of country. 
 
 His mother s fervent plea resulted in his thoroughgoing 
 Americanization. 
 
 And the effect of this upon the Synthetic Experiment? 
 
 We shall see.
 
 Part II 
 YOUTH
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SPRING, the bride of Phoenix, entered upon her nine 
 teen hundred and fourteen incarnation garbed in her 
 customary tender splendor. Her daintiness of attire gave 
 no sign that the sad distinction would attach to her of 
 being the last spring which some half a million young men 
 would see a half -million young men constituting the flower 
 of France s, England s, Belgium s and Germany s youth. 
 
 Spring, ninteen hundred and fourteen, was of particular 
 interest to Guido, for it was the season which, if all went 
 well, would witness his school education nicely rounded off 
 by a public presentation of a diploma. After that there 
 would follow four years at college. 
 
 Guido and Stan were engineers-elect. Close at hand 
 was the Anasquoit College of Technology, quite the finest 
 institution of its kind in the United States, in spite of the 
 fact that it reared its battlemented front it was built to 
 resemble a medieval castle in the lazy, hazy atmosphere 
 of Anasquoit. 
 
 The Deutsch-Amerikanische Realschule dispensed a 
 scholarship to the graduate obtaining the highest average 
 percentage. The scholarship provided for the entire four 
 years course at the Anasquoit College. 
 
 Guido, all through the academic classes, which afforded 
 the equivalent of a public high school training, had ranked 
 first, with Otto as a close second. During one term only 
 had Otto outstripped him. Guido had been in bad health 
 during that term and had not been able to keep abreast of 
 the laboratory work in chemistry. 
 
 "Of course," said Egon von Dammer one day as Guido, 
 Otto, Stan and Egon were walking home together, "one of 
 you two fellows is going to get the scholarship. The rest 
 of us are out of the running. You, Guido, or Otto. So 
 long, boys!" 
 
 Guido and Otto stole guilty glances at each other. 
 
 233
 
 234 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Neither relished the idea of wresting the scholarship from 
 his best friend. 
 
 "What the devil made von Dammer say that ?" said Stan, 
 after Egon had left them. 
 
 "Well, why shouldn t he say it?" said Otto. "It s the 
 truth. No, it s not the entire truth. Guido is going to 
 win out as a matter of course." 
 
 Guido went home in an unhappy frame of mind. Egon s 
 words forced him to face an issue which he was most 
 unwilling to face. Otto s father had failed in business 
 some five years ago and the Baumgartens were having a 
 hard time of it. They had sold their cottage in the moun 
 tains and their modest little home in Bismarck Street in 
 order to meet Mr. Baumgarten s business obligations. 
 Ponderous he was, and egoistic and dictatorial, but honest 
 withal. 
 
 For Guido, who had a fortune of his own, as he was 
 now aware, the scholarship spelled glory. For Otto, in 
 addition to glory, it held the substantial benefit of an edu 
 cation, and failing to win the shadow he would in all 
 probability be forced to forego the substance as well. 
 
 Otto who, as a rule, did not know the complexion of 
 reticence concerning his own affairs where Guido was con 
 cerned, had, since his father s failure and particularly 
 during the past year, maintained , a curious silence concern 
 ing his plans following graduation from the Realschule. 
 
 Guido went home and shut himself in his own room to 
 thrash out the situation. He wished that he might have 
 confided in his mother, but, how could he? without ap 
 pearing an insufferable prig. There were, he observed, 
 conditions and occurrences in life which could not be 
 handled in conversation with decency. This was one of 
 them. After the Sacrifice, perhaps, to assuage his mother s 
 wounded pride, he might tell her. He might. He was 
 not at all sure that he would. 
 
 As to the Sacrifice itself, what else in heaven s name 
 was there to do? Otto, if conditions had been reversed, 
 would have done the same for him. 
 
 Four hours were devoted to each study at the final ex 
 aminations. The pupils were furnished with pencil, pen 
 and ink, with yellow and white pads. The rough working 
 out of the problems or answers was done upon the yellow
 
 YOUTH 235 
 
 pads, as upon a loose-leaf diary, and the work was then 
 copied from this Kladde upon the white pad. No erasures 
 were permitted either upon the yellow or the white paper. 
 
 Guido had no intention of depreciating his standing more 
 than was necessary to secure Otto the scholarship. It de 
 volved upon him, therefore, after working out the An 
 swers to the Question Sheet upon the yellow paper, to 
 introduce a sufficient number of errors in transferring the 
 work to the white paper to lower his usual standing by 
 from four to five per cent. It was a delicate operation, 
 and Guido, after mature reflection, decided that the ampu 
 tation of percentages must be performed upon History and 
 Literature, studies in which he was particularly strong and 
 in which, therefore, he ran no risk whatever of falling 
 below the percentage required in each individual study. 
 
 He felt very heroic in more ways than one as, on the 
 days of the History and Literature Test, he performed the 
 singular task he had set himself. He was blissfully un 
 aware of the fact that he was engaged in perpetrating a 
 piece of knavery. Self-interest plays so great a part in 
 the struggle for existence that the heroism of acting in 
 contradiction to its dictates is usually considered tanta 
 mount to wiping all minor offenses off the slate, which is 
 only a different way of saying that the Golden Rule either 
 embraces or supersedes all subsidiary branches of the 
 ethical code. 
 
 Guido worked cannily and figured that he had brought 
 his rating down from ninety-seven, his last average, to 
 ninety-two. So he had. But he grew pale with sudden 
 emotion when, a week later, the Herr Direktor read the 
 report of the graduating class s work. The first name to 
 be read was Egon s, who had passed with ninety-four per 
 cent. Why had not Otto s name preceded Egon s? Guido 
 had a horrid premonition of what had happened. 
 
 "Guido von Estritz," again announced the principal s 
 voice, ninety-three and a half. Otto Baumgarten ninety- 
 two." 
 
 Otto below Egon! Otto below himself! For one 
 moment everything went black before Guido s eyes, then 
 he found himself staring stupidly at Otto, but Otto was 
 as white and as stupid-looking as himself.
 
 236 THE HYPHEN 
 
 As soon as discipline was relaxed, Otto left his seat and 
 came over to Guido. 
 
 "What happened, Guido?" he asked. "You never fell 
 below ninety-seven before. How did it happen?" 
 
 Otto s trembling underlip was more illuminating than 
 words. Guido saw a great light. He accused Otto out 
 right of having committed the juggling of which he himself 
 had been guilty. Otto grew red, stuttered, mumbled and 
 finally confessed. He had been afraid, he said, that 
 Chemistry, which was Guido s Achilles Heel, would lose 
 him the scholarship, to which, Otto felt, Guido was over 
 whelmingly entitled in view of his brilliant work through 
 out the year. He had, therefore, as his give-away underlip 
 had already informed Guido, played Damon to Guido s 
 Pythias. 
 
 Guido burst into Homeric laughter while Otto, his con 
 fession made, wept unashamedly. Later Guido would see 
 the pity and the beauty of the Sacrifice which, through 
 being mutual, had neutralized itself, and Otto would see 
 the humor. But for the moment Guido laughed and Otto 
 wept. 
 
 About a week later Egon von Dammer called to see 
 Guido. After a sojourn of eight years in America, Egon s 
 father found that his business recalled him to Germany. 
 Egon was genuinely sorry to leave the United States at 
 least he said so but his father brooked no opposition. 
 An old bachelor uncle had died, and a fortune of some 
 magnitude was involved. In brief, Egon would be unable 
 to avail himself of the scholarship into which he had fallen 
 so unexpectedly. He had, therefore, made a pilgrimage 
 to the house of the Herr Direktor, and had asked him 
 whether the scholarship might not be transferred to a 
 friend of his own choice. The Herr Direktor had been 
 very diffident. Such a thing had never been done before. 
 Egon had pressed his suit, naming Guido as the beneficiary. 
 Still the Herr Direktor remained obdurate. Thereupon 
 Egon confided to him a suspicion which had graually been 
 shaping itself in his mind. The Herr Direktor became 
 more tractable, the suspicion seemed so very plausible. 
 
 Then the examination papers of Guido and Otto were 
 produced, and the comparison of the yellow and white 
 sheets had shown that Egon s suspicions had been well
 
 YOUTH 237 
 
 founded. Guido had relied upon it that the Kladde would 
 not be compared with the clean work upon the white sheets. 
 It was generally understood that the handing in of the 
 yellow sheets along with the white was a mere matter of 
 form. Otto had argued in similar fashion. Guido, judged 
 by the work on the Kladde, had passed at 98^2, an un 
 precedented average in the annals of the Realschule. Otto 
 had fallen only one-half of one per cent below his friend s 
 ratio. The Herr Direktor was delighted. He rubbed his 
 hands and cackled joyfully. The inexplicable backsliding 
 of the two prize pupils of his school had irked him not 
 a little. He said kind things about boys capable of so dis 
 interested a friendship, and indulged in anything but kind 
 comments on the teachers who had allowed themselves to 
 be imposed upon in so bare-faced a way. He congratulated 
 Egon upon his perspicacity, and delegated him to inform 
 Guido officially that he had come into his own. 
 
 Guido was both pleased and displeased. He thanked 
 Egon warmly, said he had acted nobly, but there was 
 Otto in as bad a plight as before. He, Otto, had spoken 
 of taking a stenographic position for the summer, or for 
 a full year, in order to pay his way through college for 
 the same period. It would be a shame to make him lose a 
 year s time at hack work. 
 
 The two boys took counsel together and together ven 
 tured to lay their difficulty or Otto s before the Herr 
 Direktor. But the Herr Direktor was not to be trifled with 
 a second time. What were they asking him to do ? Juggle 
 percentages as they had juggled answers? He became 
 floridly indignant and told them to go to their several homes 
 and repent of their dishonest ways. 
 
 Otto took the news magnificently. He congratulated 
 Guido upon his good luck in being found out and felicitated 
 Egon upon his generosity, and wrung the hands of his 
 friends so forcibly that both Guido and Egon were almost 
 prostrated with pain, for Otto had developed the stature 
 and the strength of a giant. He entreated his friends not 
 to worry on his score. What? Allow either of them to 
 help him with money? Not to be thought of. He had 
 the offer of two positions for the summer. One was a 
 stenographic job at twenty per; the other a job as helper
 
 238 THE HYPHEN 
 
 in a machine shop at ten per. He expected to start the 
 following Monday in the clerical position. 
 
 Stan, when the boys told him the story, made no com 
 ment whatever. He stretched out his handsome self at 
 full length, leisurely lighted his pipe, and very spectacularly 
 said nothing. 
 
 "Wasn t it fine of Egon?" Guido demanded, determined 
 to wring a word of praise from Stan. 
 
 "The question before the house is this," said Stan, 
 somberly. "If Egon s father had not decided upon this 
 mysterious European trip, would Egon or would he not 
 have handed back what wasn t his n ? " 
 
 "You re never fair to Egon?" said Guido, disgustedly. 
 
 "Well," said Stan, lazily, "I don t want you to feel, 
 Guy, that you re under obligations to Dutch because he 
 disgorged what he d no right to anyhow. Hope he ll never 
 come back from the other side of the big pond, I m sure." 
 
 The conversation was cut short by Eddie Erdman s 
 arrival. The boys were celebrating the happy outcome of 
 the Egon-Guido-Otto imbroglio in Guido s rooms. Henry 
 Foerster slipped in as silently as always in the wake of 
 Eddie s broad shadow. 
 
 "Well, Son of Laconia," said Stan, how are you going 
 to earn your livelihood now you are out of the woods?" 
 
 "Law," said the laconic one, and all stared in amaze 
 ment. Law was the -\ery last profession they would have 
 suspected Henry of embracing. No one ever ventured to 
 tease Henry, however, and they all turned to Eddie. 
 
 "Well, Rhino, it s the vaudeville stage for yours, I m 
 thinking?" Stan interrogated. 
 
 "Nix on the vaudeville stage," said Eddie. "Me wants 
 to live and die and be buried in this sleepy old burg. For 
 why ? Because I don t like traveling, for one thing. For 
 another, my brilliant career was all mapped out for me 
 over a year ago." 
 
 The boys clamored noisily to be let into the secret. 
 
 "Going to be a second Pierpont Morgan ? Perhaps you re 
 a relative of the Astorbilts? Is John D. going to let you 
 in on the ground floor?" They besieged him with ques 
 tions, teasing him unmercifully, as usual. 
 
 "Look here," said Eddie, "I haven t an uncle in Wall 
 Street, but I have an aunt who has the smartest millinery
 
 YOUTH 239 
 
 shop on Bismarck Street, corner of Walnut. She put my 
 grosser Bruder through his medical course, you know." 
 
 Don t tell me you re going to be a saw-bones, too?" 
 yelled Stan. 
 
 "Not on your tintype, son. One saw-bones in the fambly 
 is enough. Thanks awfully for nothing. I love the ladies. 
 God bless em. I d never have the heart to put the dear 
 pretty things on the table and slice away at their poor 
 ailing innards. I d rather sit the cunnin little critters in 
 front of a table, and see em try on pretty hats." 
 
 "Eddie!" the boys roared in unison. They thought it 
 one of the Rhino s jokes. 
 
 "Sure as my name is Fatty the Rhino. I m going into 
 the millinery business with my old Tante. For over a year 
 I ve been trimming her best bonnets for her, and she tells 
 me they ve sold like hot cakes." 
 
 An uproar arose. It was Bedlam let loose. They clapped 
 their hands, they stamped upon the floor, they caterwauled. 
 Suddenly something in Eddie s face informed them that 
 he was not stringing them, and their hilarity subsided 
 spasmodically. 
 
 "Now, boys," said Eddie, "I m a good sport. I ve served 
 as a butt for you fellows all my life and I didn t mind 
 and I don t mind, but there is one thing you must not 
 tease me about. You to your work, I to mine. A pretty 
 hat on a plain face may do as much to make history or 
 more for man is born of woman than the finest railroad 
 bridge or cantilever which one of you chaps may devise. 
 So ware. Do not bay me or I ll bite." 
 
 This sobered the others. They were considerably amazed 
 by this defiant unfurling of Eddie s philosophy they had 
 been so used to seeing in him only the good-natured clown. 
 They had always liked Eddie; now, when they had been 
 about to steep their liking for him in contempt because 
 he had shamelessly announced his intention of embracing 
 a business both effeminate and sumptuary, he had pulled 
 them up sharply, and lo ! they respected him. 
 
 Several minutes elapsed before they returned to their 
 former hilarity. Coming manhood had cast its shadow 
 before, and the adumbration had sobered them.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 and Otto lay in the long, tangled grass of a 
 meadow deliciously sheltered by weeping willows and 
 fanned by breezes cooled by a tiny, brawling brook which, 
 like a small dog, racketed along with an effusion wholly 
 incommensurate with its size. 
 
 They lay in a position which no self-respecting sculptor 
 would have cared to perpetuate. They lay not gently 
 recumbent, with an elbow for a prop or resting gracefully 
 upon one hand, but prone upon their stomachs. An open 
 book lay within the angle of vision of each. Otto was 
 assiduously applying himself to a German translation of 
 "The Taming of the Shrew." 
 
 Guido was not reading. He was pursuing the most 
 pleasant of all occupations he was day-dreaming. He 
 was lapped in that drowsy content which comes from dally 
 ing in the borderland that lies between thought and emo 
 tion. He was ruminating if the unformulated ghosts of 
 thought which flitted like butterflies in and out of his 
 consciousness may be designated by so specific a term 
 upon the great mystery of race. 
 
 He had awakened that morning teased and yet pleased 
 by the dictum, read he could not remember where, that 
 he who commands more than one language possesses more 
 than one soul. 
 
 He felt that that was true. Days there were when, on 
 awakening, dreamy, inchoate and mysterious splendors 
 seemed to beckon him on into a wilderness which had neither 
 a material beginning nor an end, which was populated by 
 weird phantoms that took no thought of material things, 
 that cared not whether they ate or drank or slept, that 
 sacrificed everything for an idea and were happy in making 
 the sacrifice. On such mornings he was not content until 
 he had read a page in some Russian book, Pushkin or 
 Tolstoy preferably, and called that part of his ego his 
 Russian dream-self, communicated to him, as he thought, 
 
 340
 
 YOUTH 241 
 
 by all the fantastic sense and nonsense with which it was 
 Dobronov s habit to regale him. He had no notion that 
 his dream-self was not an acquisition but a heritage. 
 
 Then, again, there were days when he fluctuated between 
 fatuous sentimentality and intensely utilitarian purpose, 
 when he felt that to possess those attributes was to possess 
 superlative virtue. On such days he felt that his German 
 blood was rampant in his veins, and a page of Goethe 
 or Schiller or Fulda were required to shake him back into 
 everyday life. 
 
 Then there were days when he awoke normally, hap 
 pily, sunnily without any of these strange, self-conscious 
 yearnings, when he was humbly content to be alive, eager 
 to perform his tasks for the day, and when morbid self- 
 analysis had no part in him. On such days he could no 
 more have read Russian or German to advantage than he 
 could have swum across the Hudson. On these, his natural 
 days, he would steal an hour from school-work before 
 going to bed, and read an act or two of Shakespeare, or 
 an essay by Emerson, or a few pages from Macaulay. 
 
 Guido, at sixteen, was a Shakespeare devotee as he had 
 been a Schiller enthusiast at eleven. On some such days, 
 balmy spring days, when the breath of rejuvenation 
 passed through the air like a hallelujah, or soft mellow 
 autumn days which seemed prophetic of immortality in 
 their delicious prolongation of summer, the majestic 
 rhythm of the Shakespearian blank verse or Marlowe s 
 seemed to move through his body and soul like a song with 
 out words, for detached from the words in which it 
 moved, which veiled it but failed to obscure its sublimity, 
 it seemed a corporeal thing, a thing holy and beautiful 
 like a sanctuary or a shrine; and it seemed to enter his 
 blood, and to make that move in unison with it and sing 
 such songs as mortal ear never heard. 
 
 Guido was happiest on these days, which, rightly or 
 wrongly, he called his American days. The self which 
 came to the surface then was real, his true self, he felt 
 certain. And yet he would not have discarded either of 
 his subsidiary selves if it had lain in his power to do so. 
 Such is the cohesive force that binds us to every current 
 inhering in us. 
 
 Otto, untroubled by any leanings toward the mystic,
 
 242 THE HYPHEN 
 
 wholly unimaginative and knowing nothing of a multiple 
 personality, was completely immersed in his German trans 
 lation of Shakespeare. 
 "Otto," said Guido. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Otto, why in heaven s name don t you read Shakespeare 
 in English?" 
 
 "Why should I ?" 
 
 "For one thing because the German version, though ex 
 cellent, is inaccurate. Wilderspenstige is a rotten equiva 
 lent of Shrew. 
 
 Otto scowled. 
 
 "It suits me," he said. "I like Wilderspenstige better 
 than Shrew. The fault is with the original, not with the 
 translation." 
 
 Guido roared out his delight in Otto s unconscious racial 
 and individual egoism. He was much too contented at the 
 moment to quarrel with anyone. 
 
 "What would you say if I read Schiller in English?" 
 Guido resumed. 
 
 "I d say it was none of my confounded business if you 
 choose to make a silly ass of yourself." 
 
 Guido chuckled gleefully. 
 
 "You would," he said, "like fun. You d read me a 
 lecture on the necessity of not neglecting the Mutter- 
 sprache. " 
 
 Otto grinned. 
 
 "If you know just what I d do why do you ask me?" 
 he inquired. "And now shut up. I want to read." 
 
 "I d like you to try and get my point of view," said 
 Guido. 
 
 "Why don t you have a try at mine?" Otto rejoined. 
 
 "See how much nicer I am than you," said Guido, teas- 
 ingly. "Here is a book I would not have read in English 
 for worlds." And he lightly tossed a small volume in a 
 typically neat German binding across to Otto. 
 
 Otto picked it up and whistled. 
 
 "Bei Kaiser s," he read. "Where did you get it? Any 
 good?" 
 
 "Egon. Yep. Fine." 
 
 "Well," said Otto, "that at least is a point on which we 
 agree. We both admire the Kaiser."
 
 YOUTH 243 
 
 "I sure do," said Guide, contentedly. He rolled over 
 on his back and, hands clasped under his head, regarded 
 the fragments of sky visible through the heavy leafage of 
 the maple under which they were lying. Otto went back 
 to his reading, but in a few moments he announced: 
 
 "I m tired of reading. Let s go and see if the dancing 
 has begun." 
 
 Guide laughed clandestinely. He had not desired to go to 
 this their last school-picnic, which, since he durst neither 
 row, nor dance, nor jump hurdles nor in any way exert 
 himself, was a continuous mortification of the flesh. But 
 Otto had plead so eloquently, adducing so many plausible 
 reasons why Guido should selfishly desire to go, that Guido, 
 a little in the dark as to Otto s true motives, had finally 
 consented. 
 
 The next day Guido had seen a great light. Otto was in 
 love. Otto, walking at Elschen Marlow s side, was blind to 
 all beside. Any other boy Guido would have chaffed about 
 his infatuation, but not Otto. Guido divined Otto s psy 
 chology as clearly as if it had been his own, more so, 
 perhaps; for Guido was an unusually keen observer and 
 Otto, rough, sensitive, good-hearted, opinionated, honest, 
 loyal Otto was simplicity itself. 
 
 Otto was that rarity, a man or a boy with a monogamic 
 soul. He would make the gift of his love once and once 
 only. In making it there would be no temporizing, no 
 compromising, no half-way measures. For Otto love 
 meant a complete surrender of affection and loyalty. Thus 
 royally, also, had he given his friendship. He worshiped 
 Guido with a sort of fierce devotion, a devotion which 
 exhausted itself upon Guido, leaving nothing for other 
 friends. Guido often wondered at the strange diffidence 
 which Otto manifested toward their mutual friends. He 
 was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, but Guido ab 
 sorbed his entire capacity for friendship. Guido might 
 have done for any other needy friend what he did for 
 Otto try to underpass him but Otto would have made 
 that sacrifice for none but for Guido. Otto, German to 
 the backbone, required a strong personal motive for any 
 sacrifice. Guido, in whom Russian mysticism was inter- 
 bound with the more masculine and masterful idealism 
 which had informed the Achtundvierziger in their gallant
 
 244 THE HYPHEN 
 
 but hopeless fight for liberty, had slipped into an entirely 
 unconscious alignment with the higher altruism of which 
 America is the most uncompromising and sincerest ex 
 ponent. But every virtue, like every medal, has an obverse 
 side. Guido, with a mania for types which was partly 
 human and partly literary, desired many friends and made 
 friends easily and kept them too many friends, let it be 
 understood, of both sexes. That he loved Otto and 
 Elschen best did not keep him from being excellertt friends 
 with half a dozen other boys and girls, nor did his affec 
 tion for Otto and Elschen blind him to their peculiarities 
 of character. And, lastly, Guido was not a born monogamist 
 like Otto. He was too sensitive to beauty, too impression 
 able, too greatly fascinated by types. 
 
 The boys, on reaching the dancing pavilion, found that 
 the orchestra had just arrived. Amid the cacaphony en 
 gendered by instruments in process of attunement, the 
 young people were pairing off. 
 
 Elschen Marlow was seated quite alone, near her father. 
 
 Herr Pastor Marlow was a man of giant stature, with a 
 fine head cast in a mold reminiscent of feudal Germany 
 and of the age of Albrecht Duerer. It was, perhaps, a 
 trifle too massive to be considered beautiful when judged 
 by modern standards. But its impressiveness was lost on 
 none. He was an intensely warm-hearted, human, lovable 
 man and his parishioners, young and old alike, idolized 
 him. 
 
 The Jderr Pastor was engaged in entertaining two of the 
 pillars of his church, and merely nodded to the boys, with 
 a hearty, interpolated "Guten Tag, Jungens," as they 
 passed him. 
 
 Otto was a communicant of his church. Guido, for a 
 short time had gone with Otto to Sunday school, but he 
 had tired of it and had asked his mother to be allowed 
 to stop going. It had been a severe blow to Frau Ursula. 
 Dr. Koenig had chuckled over her a little, but mindful of 
 her disappointment, had not chuckled overmuch. 
 
 Elschen, the picture of virginal sweetness and purity, 
 hands clasped in lap, greeted the boys with demure shy 
 ness. She retained all the old-world, cloistral charm 
 which in her childhood had set her apart as a creature 
 unique and undescribably precious. Hers was the charm
 
 YOUTH 245 
 
 of a flower which had blossomed in a walled-in, brick- 
 walked garden, secure from vulgar eyes, but flooded with 
 sunlight and open to the blue sky. She was the incarna 
 tion of a past generation s conception or maidenlikeness 
 sincere, demure, too innocent for coquetry and as direct 
 and as simple as a child or a savage. 
 
 "Well, Elschen," Otto said in German, "I hope you have 
 saved us one or two dances." 
 
 Otto s opening sentences in addressing Elschen always 
 included Guido. He seemed to derive an intense comfort 
 from this inclusion of Guido, just as in approaching 
 Elschen he always required his friend s supporting pres 
 ence. A little later, when conversation was well under 
 way, Guido was expected to eliminate himself, which, 
 Guido, with the greatest complacency, invariably did. 
 
 "I have not disposed of any of my dances," Elschen 
 replied, in her sweet, girlish staccato. "I do not like to 
 dance with a lot of different boys the way some girls do." 
 
 "But you won t mind dancing with me, will you, 
 Elschen?" Otto inquired, anxiously. 
 
 "Oh, no. Do you not see? I saved all my dances, all 
 of them, for you and for Guido." 
 
 As the young girl pronounced Guide s name, she lifted 
 her eyes to his face. The beautiful blue eyes were swim 
 ming in a humid mist, but not knowing that there was 
 anything to hide, she made no effort to conceal their 
 message. 
 
 Guido caught sight of Otto s face and the pain mir 
 rored there, and said, hastily: 
 
 "Elschen, it s awfully sweet of you. But you know I 
 cannot dance doctor s orders I do not even know how." 
 
 Elschen, innocent, direct, artless child, replied : 
 
 "Sometimes a boy and a girl sit out a dance and talk." 
 
 "Ah !" Poor Guido was hard set to. But another glance 
 at Otto s face made him marshal his wits for a supreme 
 effort. He said, quickly: 
 
 "Yes, of course. But you are so fond of dancing, 
 Elschen, and so is Otto, that it would be very selfish of 
 me to let you sit out a dance with me. I couldn t think 
 of it." He rattled on, fearful lest Elschen compromise 
 herself further. "So I m going to leave you two together
 
 246 THE HYPHEN 
 
 to have a good time by yourself, and I ll go walk off my 
 disgust so as not to play dog in the manger." 
 
 Lifting his hat, he hastily walked away. 
 
 A little further on he stopped to chat with Mrs. Thorn 
 ton, now Mrs. Erdman, who to Guido s mind, had lost 
 none of her exotic unhyphenated charm through her 
 change in name. He adored her and her slim and sprightly 
 elegance and tender soft ways as much as ever. 
 
 She saw him first and called to him: 
 
 "Foster-son! Are you trying to cut me? You sha n t 
 succeed." 
 
 "Mrs. Thornton, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Erdman I 
 render a double apology for the double break. How s my 
 foster brother?" 
 
 He bent toward the two-year-old scion of the house of 
 Erdman and made as to lift the child. Mrs. Erdman gently 
 resisted him. 
 
 "He s much too heavy," she said, in an undertone. 
 "Your back!" 
 
 "Bother my back," said Guido crossly. "You have no 
 idea what nuisance it is to forever think about it." 
 
 "I m afraid it would be more of a nuisance if you 
 didn t," Mrs. Erdman replied, succinctly. 
 
 "Oh, I suppose so." 
 
 Guido played a few minutes with the baby, which was 
 the prodigy of infant charm and intelligence that first 
 born children always are; then, as other friends claimed 
 Mrs. Erdman, he bowed and left her. 
 
 He found a bench by the side of the stream and sat 
 there the balance of the afternoon reading Macaulay s 
 "Machiavelli." Macaulay s style exerted a tremendous 
 fascination upon Guido, and he read on unmindful of 
 the shadows which finally began to creep up from the 
 banks of the stream. Suddenly he realized that it was 
 getting late, very late. He closed the book with a sigh, 
 and starting to his feet chose a circuitious route back to 
 the pavilion the better to -enjoy the glorious twilight which 
 was succeeding a perfect day. 
 
 This roundabout way led past an old building usually 
 referred to as the Castle. It had, in its day, been a very 
 splendid mansion indeed. But now its gargoyles were 
 crumbling, its cornices falling, its stones slipping, its roof
 
 YOUTH 247 
 
 sagging, its coping dragging. The large terrace which ran 
 along its front was still tolerably intact, although the 
 fountain which stood in the center of its tesselated pave 
 ment had long since run dry. 
 
 The mansion was not occupied. The lower floor had been 
 closed off long ago and was entirely out of repair, but the 
 main room in the second story was still open to the public. 
 It had constituted the ancient glory of the building and 
 was, indeed, the reason why the mansion had not been 
 pulled down long ago. 
 
 This room, which occupied virtually the entire length and 
 breadth of the building, since only the stairway and a small 
 hat and cloak-room encroached upon its area, was the 
 library. 
 
 It was a room that suggested high ideals, fine and 
 splendid thinking and heroic deeds. All the woodwork in 
 the room and the furniture as well consisted of hand- 
 carved black walnut, the wood which had its heydey in 
 the Victorian era and which has fallen into disuse among 
 furniture makers for no other reason than that it is not 
 obtainable at the present time. The chair and divans were 
 upholstered in cream-colored brocade and the hangings 
 matched the chairs. 
 
 But the really noteworthy feature of the room, the 
 feature which had made the Castle famous throughout the 
 country, was the arrangement of all it contained books, 
 furniture, paintings, statuary and old tapestries. The book 
 cases were surmounted by the busts of the authors whose 
 works reposed in the shelves beneath, and these effigies 
 were marble copies in miniature of portrait busts made by 
 famous sculptors. This collection of statuary was said 
 to be unique. A gallery ran above the first tier of book 
 cases and statuary, commanding acess to a second relay 
 of authors, and above the second tier beautiful old tapes 
 tries, Persian rugs, banners and flags, alternating with 
 enormous canvases were outspread against the walls. 
 
 Guido loved the beautiful old room with its faded hang 
 ings and wonderful old furniture and he chid himself now 
 for having neglected to visit it to-day. 
 
 He leaned against the enormous trunk of a three- 
 century-old English elm, and regarded the old mansion, 
 glorying in its elusive charm and its haunting loveliness.
 
 248 THE HYPHEN 
 
 There was to him something infinitely pathetic in all this 
 decaying splendor. He thought of the lives that had been 
 spent under the now senile roof, of the children who had 
 played on the spacious terrace and about the fountain 
 which had now run dry. He thought of those same 
 children, grown to man and womanhood, and how they 
 had danced and made merry in the Library, turned into 
 a ball-room on such occasions. He thought of the births 
 and the marriages and the deaths which had taken place 
 in those rooms, and he was seized with a species of 
 vicarious nostalgia in which all the sorrows, joys, hopes, 
 disappointments and anxieties of those alien lives, of which 
 he knew nothing, seemed to merge and cry for utterance. 
 
 He changed from one foot to the other, and then all 
 his faculties congealed into the one sense of hearing. 
 
 He thought that he had heard a voice, a young, agree 
 able, feminine voice, calling. For a minute he thought 
 that he had been deceived and that some aural specter of 
 the past had come to mock him. Then, clearly, poignantly 
 and yet without a note of shrillness, the voice called once 
 more out of the gathering dusk which enmeshed the Castle. 
 
 "If there is anyone under those trees, I wish he or she 
 would come up on the terrace. I m locked in and I can t 
 oret out." 
 
 There is something subtly stirring about an invisible 
 
 "ce, and this voice held the promise of youth, of refine 
 ment, of femininity; and, coming as it did out of the 
 shadowed recesses of the huge pile of crumbling stone, 
 it stimulated our hero s imagination quite uncommonly. 
 
 Repressing a hysterical desire to laugh, Guido obeyed 
 the voice with alacrity. From the terrace he could glimpse 
 the owner of the voice. She was standing at one of the 
 tall, broad windows of the library. The cream-colored 
 hangings had closed behind her, and drew upon themselves 
 the sun s last fitful burst of glory, so that the girl was 
 silhouetted as against a shining panel. She was radiant 
 with youth and with health and such beauty as he had 
 never looked upon before. Her image smote upon the 
 boy s sense like a chord in the major key triumphantly, 
 exquisitely, brilliantly. Her vision had come to him like 
 a bolt of lightning, like the rush of a cascade, like a burst 
 of song from an unseen bird s throat. He saw presently,
 
 YOUTH 249 
 
 when his vision cleared, that her hair was dark and her 
 eyes were dark. She wore her hair parted above a low 
 forehead, a mode which gave her narrow but exquisitely 
 modeled face a madonna-like appearance. Her delicately 
 coral-pink lips were arched, Cupid-fashion. Her skin was 
 very white, her cheeks tinted like a blush-rose. It was a 
 complexion most unusual to be paired with eyes and hair 
 as dark as hers for both were almost black speaking of 
 pure northern ancestry. 
 
 All these facts concerning the young lady who had sum 
 moned him to her assistance so unceremoniously roman 
 tically, our hero termed it Guido had absorbed as quickly 
 and as unconsciously as the pores absorb moisture in 
 bathing. 
 
 "What s up?" he demanded, employing words which, as 
 he was painfully aware, were horribly inadequate to the 
 occasion. He was burning to recite Romeo s farewell, 
 though, of course, a farewell speech would neither be 
 appropriate to the occasion nor desired by himself. 
 
 "I can t get out," said the girl, plaintively. "They ve 
 locked the door to the stairway and I m afraid to risk 
 jumping out of the window. It must be twenty feet at 
 least, and the terrace looks hard." 
 
 "I am afraid," said Guido, "that, like Prince Arthur, you 
 might have regretted that twenty-foot leap if you had 
 risked it." 
 
 The girl looked startled, almost frightened, but nothing 
 could stop him now. The Shakespeare mood was upon 
 him. He might die for it, but for sheer joy in the lines 
 he must spout at least a few words from the "Great Im 
 mortal" : 
 
 "Ah me! My uncle s spirit is in these stones, 
 Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones." 
 
 The girl s amazement had given way to perplexity and 
 uncertainty. For one moment Guido thought that she was 
 a stranger to those lines, but her next words shattered 
 that misconception. 
 
 "I think we d better not have a Shakespeare recitation 
 just now," she said, nervously.
 
 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "No, of course not. Didn t you hear the five o clock 
 bell?" 
 
 "Of course I heard it. I m not deaf. But I paid no 
 attention to it. Of course I should have. Bells at five 
 o clock in a place like this are always an invitation to efface 
 oneself as speedily as possible. The truth is well I was 
 completely fascinated " 
 
 She stopped, embarrassment visible in every feature. 
 
 "Fascinated by what?" 
 
 "Look here, I ll answer all questions later on. All you 
 care to ask. But won t you please try and get me out 
 of this fortress now?" 
 
 "Fortress !" Guido laughed in appreciation of the word. 
 
 "Please hurry," said the girl. "A family of mice is 
 playing tag right back of me and one skittish member of 
 the family has twice mistaken my foot for a hurdle or 
 a stile. I beg of you to make haste." 
 
 "I ll have you out of here in a jiffy," said Guido, and 
 did not move. The magic that dwelt in that lovely face 
 held him rooted to the spot. He felt that if he removed 
 his eyes from the girl for one moment she would vanish 
 away into nothing. 
 
 "There s a ladder at the side of the terrace," said the 
 girl. "I think it s tall enough to reach this window. Per 
 haps you can carry it up here, and stand it up against 
 the wall. I m a gym girl, and I ll be able to manage 
 nicely." 
 
 Guido went in search of the ladder and found it. It 
 was an ordinary rung ladder which had been used by 
 workmen during the day. Otto or Stan, or even Egon, 
 could easily have lifted it and dragged it onto the terrace. 
 He, however, could barely lift it three feet from the 
 ground. A severe twinge in his back warned him against 
 an imprudent exertion. He let the end of the ladder he 
 had lifted drop with a sharp crack. 
 
 Crestfallen he returned to the terrace. 
 
 "I m afraid I won t be able to manage it alone," he said. 
 
 The girl frowned. Twilight was deepening, but he 
 could discern the expression of the lovely face and it was 
 compact of disdain and disapproval. 
 
 "Perhaps, then," she said, and her voice was chill and 
 distant, "if not asking too much, you could manage to go
 
 YOUTH 251 
 
 to the pavilion and find my father. His name is Geddes, 
 Professor Edward Geddes. Have him paged if neces 
 sary." 
 
 Guido blushed hotly. To be visited undeservedly with 
 the contempt of this divine creature was a sort tribula 
 tion. His accursed back, of course, had won him her con 
 tempt. He controlled his emotion with difficulty, and said: 
 
 "I can do as you suggest, of course. But it will take 
 me at least half an hour to go to the Pavilion, and find 
 Professor Geddes and bring him back here. And it may 
 take longer. It will take me only ten minutes to fetch 
 the watchman from the Lodge. Will you not trust me 
 to do that?" 
 
 The girl seemed considerably placated. 
 
 "I ll be very grateful to you for doing that," she said. 
 
 In less than ten minutes Guido had returned with the 
 watchman, and prison doors had swung wide for Miss 
 Geddes. Guido, in one corner of the terrace, had peeled 
 a two-dollar bill, the smallest he had, from a comfortable 
 roll of bills. As the watchman emerged from the door 
 of the building and locked it, Guido deftly slipped it to 
 him. The man touched his cap to him and thanked him. 
 The girl had seen this by-play and again her manner and 
 expression changed. She seemed to contract within her 
 self, as if self -contraction would widen the distance be 
 tween them as they walked silently through the dark woods 
 into which shafts of moonlight were beginning to filter. 
 
 As they walked along she was saying to herself: 
 "Wouldn t soil his delicate fingers with a smeary, smelly 
 workingman s ladder. Or, perhaps he wanted me to know 
 that he s well supplied with funds. As if I cared!" She 
 was saying these unamiable things about Guido to herself, 
 not because she believed them but because she was enraged 
 with herself for not disliking him as much as she felt she 
 should have disliked him in view of his sissified refusal 
 to get her the ladder. 
 
 The silence in which they trudged along, he touching 
 her elbow now and then with nervous fingers to prevent 
 her from falling, became insufferable to the girl. She 
 began to speak literally in ignorance of what she was going 
 to say, knowing only that she desired to say nothing 
 pleasant, realizing that she must say nothing unpleasant.
 
 252 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "It was fortunate for me that you fancy solitary strolls 
 in the dark," she said. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know that I m awfully fond of traipsing 
 about alone in the dark," Guido replied, "but my friend 
 is dancing in the pavilion and so I was thrown upon my 
 own resources." 
 
 A few words spoken at random may have cataclysmic 
 effects. Guide s innocent reply produced an extraordinary 
 effect on Miss Geddes. Usually a very self-controlled girl, 
 she had been considerably ruffled by Guido s behavior 
 from the very start. She chose to justify her agitation, 
 which it pleased her to regard as unpleasant, by assuring 
 herself with a degree of violence foreign to her nature 
 that her rescuer was everything that a rescuer should not 
 be. His last remark she subjected to a cruel analysis. 
 Guido, of course, had referred to Otto in speaking of his 
 friend, unconsciously ignoring the fact that through usage 
 a definite significance not platonic accrues to this word 
 of all work, when preceded by the personal pronoun, first 
 person, singular. Miss Geddes can scarcely be blamed for 
 attaching this meaning to Guido s pronominal phrase. 
 
 "He needn t have dragged that in," she thought. "Even 
 if he is the handsomest thing that ever happened, he 
 needn t think that every girl he meets is going to fall in 
 love with him right off. But then, how can he help being 
 conceited, poor thing? No male creature has any business 
 to be as good-looking as he is. It s not fair. He ought 
 to be put in a cage and not allowed at large." 
 
 Thus communed Miss Geddes with herself. She was, 
 it will be observed, a somewhat precocious young lady 
 for her years, for she was just about the same age as 
 Guido. Her fury might have seemed somewhat forced, 
 somewhat assumed, to the trained psychologist. At any 
 rate, as she half -walked, half -stumbled along over some 
 gnarled roots and was saved from an imminent fall by 
 the despised rescuer s timely aid, a different viewpoint 
 presented itself for her inspection. Possibly her shaking-up 
 had jounced it from out her finer perceptions ; possibly, 
 also, the touch of the boy s fingers against her arm, so 
 delicate, so nervously proper, so swiftly, almost auto 
 matically self -releasing, called a halt to her unjust thoughts. 
 It seemed to her now nobly magnanimous that he did not
 
 YOUTH 253 
 
 object to his "friend s" dancing when for some reason 
 he was not participating. 
 
 Miss Geddes had a fair share of the healthy curiosity 
 which inheres in all daughters of Eve. 
 
 "It s rather nice of you not to object to your friend s 
 having a good time without you," she said. 
 
 Guido thought the remark odd, but was untouched by 
 the remotest of suspicions touching its cause. 
 
 "Why not?" he remarked. "He s awfully fond of it, 
 and I well, I don t dance, you see." 
 
 The anticlimax of that "he" almost caused the young 
 lady to laugh aloud. The darkness hid the smile that 
 broadened the high-bred, narrow face. Dejection had sud 
 denly changed to hopefulness hopefulness or what she 
 did not inquire of herself and she suspected the possi 
 bility of a still higher rise in the barometer of her moods 
 if only his unwillingness to handle the ladder could be 
 satisfactorily explained. With such rapid strides had her 
 faith in him progressed, she took it for granted now that 
 a satisfactory explanation was possible. The truth is this 
 low-browed, madonna-visaged Diana was very eager to 
 have no reason for entertaining disapproval of her Romeo 
 to like where she did not respect was such a novel 
 sensation. 
 
 "I m afraid it was thoughtless of me to ask you to 
 bring that heavy ladder up onto the terrace," she said, 
 with crafty intent. 
 
 "It wasn t so very heavy," Guido replied. "Any of my 
 friends could easily have managed it. You see, I 
 
 well " his voice blundered as well as his words, and 
 
 she knew, although she could not see, that he was flushing. 
 "You see, my back isn t very strong and that s why I 
 couldn t lift the ladder and that s why I cannot dance. 
 I d rather have you know this about me than think me 
 well, I don t know what." 
 
 Miss Geddes was deeply moved. Hers was a generous 
 nature and might be relied upon to do abundant penance. 
 
 "I m glad you told me," she said. This she felt to be 
 insufficient, and she added, after a moment : "I confess 
 I was surprised at your inability to fetch the ladder." 
 
 "Then why," said downright Guido, "did you not ask
 
 254 THE HYPHEN 
 
 me right out? Why did you profess thoughtlessness in 
 asking me to fetch it?" 
 
 Miss Geddes laughed. She laughed long and happily. 
 It was a delicious, infectious, throaty sort of laugh. She 
 could not imagine any other boy of her acquaintance trip 
 ping her up like that; they would have lacked the wit or 
 the courage or both. Oh, he was deliciously straight 
 forward and honest ! 
 
 "I was coming to that," she said. "If you d given me 
 time. I suppose I ll just have to fess up now. I d been 
 unjust to you in thought, so I you know what s called 
 pumping well, I just pumped you." 
 
 It was Guide s turn to laugh. He laughed not as she 
 had done in a long, joyous, contented stretch, but inter 
 mittently, amusedly, almost spasmodically as various 
 aspects of their brief acquaintanceship struck him. He 
 had never met anyone who had so tittilating an effect upon 
 his mind, who so garnered in all his admiration. He was 
 unaware that his heart as well as his mind was undergoing 
 stimulation. 
 
 Miss Geddes, however, did not capitulate entirely. She 
 reserved final abasement of spirit until the interview with 
 her father should have taken place. For she insisted that 
 her father must thank her rescuer. There was also the 
 matter of the money which he had disbursed, and which 
 troubled her because she hardly knew how to approach it. 
 
 They had some difficulty in making their way through 
 the dancers and along the line of tables arranged along 
 the edge of the hall. 
 
 "There," she said, suddenly, "there s my dad. All alone. 
 If that isn t just like him! But having a glorious time." 
 
 Guido followed the direction of the girl s eyes. It 
 seemed hardly possible that the gentleman whom she thus 
 indicated should be her father, he was so very young, so 
 very, very boyish-looking. He was tall and slender, with the 
 figure of a man of thirty. His brown hair was remarkably 
 heavy, a perennial smile hovered in the corners of his 
 mouth, and his eyes were hazel. 
 
 "Daddy," the girl flew to him like a child, "Daddy, I 
 was locked up." 
 
 "Locked up!" exclaimed Professor Geddes. "Good
 
 YOUTH 255 
 
 heavens, a daughter of mine! Locked up. You surprise 
 me, my dear. And what had you done?" 
 
 For a moment Guido was considerably taken aback by 
 this swift exchange of words. Then, as father and 
 daughter burst out laughing simultaneously, he compre 
 hended. They were first-rate friends, these two. They 
 were such good pals and felt such a wealth of affection 
 and trust for each other that they teased each other out 
 rageously when occasion offered, hiding the gentler emo 
 tions under a whimsical mask which, to the casual on 
 looker, at first might prove a little disconcerting. 
 
 "Of my offense later. Meanwhile, Daddy, seriously, 
 quite, quite seriously, I don t know what I would have 
 done if Mr. Mr. oh, would you mind awf lly telling me 
 your name?" 
 
 Guido gave his name. 
 
 "That," thought the girl as she heard the German name, 
 "explains the my friend and the slurring of some syllables 
 and the over-pronunciation of others." She said, forget 
 ting that she had said "quite, quite seriously" only a 
 moment before, "Mr. Hauser bailed me out, Daddy. So 
 please thank him properly." 
 
 "I m sure I m infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Hauser," 
 said Professor Geddes, "although, to be perfectly candid, 
 I haven t i:he least notion what I am thanking you for." 
 
 "For nothing," said Guido, audaciously falling in with 
 their spirit, "for less than nothing, sir, and yet for more." 
 
 " Lysander riddles very prettily/ " Professor Geddes re 
 marked, eyes twinkling. 
 
 "Then must Lysander unriddle," said Guido, laughing. 
 "You are thanking me for less than nothing because what 
 I accomplished required neither wit, brawn nor courage. 
 You are thanking me for more than nothing, because the 
 little which it was my privilege to do gave me great 
 pleasure." 
 
 "Bravo," cried Professor Geddes. "If you don t mind 
 my saying so, I predict that you will be either a writer 
 of stories or a seller of gold-bricks. And now, will you 
 not tell me from what dreadful fate you preserved my 
 daughter ?" 
 
 Guido related what had occurred as briefly as possible, 
 omitting his abortive attempt to procure the ladder. Pro-
 
 256 THE HYPHEN 
 
 fessor Geddes listened attentively and with growing 
 gravity. 
 
 "That was an awkward situation for Janet to find her 
 self in," he said. "It might have been very awkward, 
 indeed, if you hadn t turned up. She left the building 
 with me. I should never have thought of looking for her 
 there." 
 
 "I went back, Daddy, but you didn t notice," said Janet, 
 quite meekly. 
 
 "If I hadn t turned up, some one else would have," 
 said Guido, airily. 
 
 Was there ever a sweeter, cleaner, saner name than 
 Janet? To the lad s intoxicated vision it seemed like the 
 murmur of a brook, with all a brook s suggested whole- 
 someness and purity. 
 
 "And why, pray, did you return to the Castle?" the 
 Professor asked. 
 
 "To the Library," Janet corrected him gently. "I was 
 fascinated." 
 
 "Fascinated?" Humorously lifting his eyebrows, Pro 
 fessor Geddes pronounced the word with a whimsical slow 
 ness that dragged it out to thrice its length. 
 
 "What fascinated you?" Guido asked. 
 
 "I cannot tell." 
 
 "But you promised to, you know." 
 
 "Did I ? So I did. Well then, I shall have to tell." 
 
 Guido perceived that she was not merely making a great 
 mystery over nothing, after the tantalizing fashion of girls, 
 but that she had a reason, real enough to herself, for not 
 wishing to divulge the nature of the magnet that had drawn 
 her back to the beautiful old room. She was hesitating 
 over her reply. Too honest to lie, she was nerving herself 
 to redeem her promise. 
 
 "You needn t tell if you don t like," said Guido, quickly, 
 wishing to be chivalrous. But the girl flung back, a chal 
 lenge in her voice: 
 
 "Of course I am going to tell. I went back because 
 there was a beautiful old volume of Shakespeare which 
 I wanted to look at carefully. And I began to read, fool 
 ishly. And became engrossed, more foolishly still. And 
 the play I read was King John." 
 
 What a coincidence! So that was why she had been
 
 YOUTH 257 
 
 so reluctant to speak of her reading. It really was dis 
 concerting. It made one feel afraid. Panic came to his 
 eyes, and a deep, scorching, burning red mounted slowly, 
 heavily to his cheeks. Simultaneously the girl s face turned 
 scarlet. Confusion worse confounded Professor Geddes 
 had never seen. The excellent man was both amused and 
 dismayed. What scrupulous parent would not be dis 
 mayed to see his daughter, carefully reared and guarded, 
 hoist the crimson badge of shame to her cheek , thereby 
 convicting herself of being the fellow galley-slave of a 
 strange young man concerning whom he had no knowledge 
 save that he was comely of person, very evidently well-to- 
 do, quick at repartee and obliging to beauty in distress 
 all traits which the notorious Lotharios of history and 
 fiction have possessed in a preeminent degree? 
 
 Convention, meanwhile, required that the two galley- 
 slaves be rescued from their embarrassment, which seemed 
 to be eating into their very marrow. 
 
 " All s well that ends well/ " said Professor Geddes. 
 "How fond we all are of plagiarizing from the Great Bard. 
 That is so, no doubt, because Shakesperian scholars find that 
 every contingency of life, of thought, of feeling can be 
 better described by quoting from the Folio pages than by 
 original comments. Mr. Hauser, you ll join us in a salad 
 and ice-cream, won t you?" 
 
 Guido glanced guiltily at Janet. The crimson tide was 
 slowly receding from her cheek. Perceiving that his 
 glance was one of interrogation, Miss Geddes said: 
 
 "Do." 
 
 As the monosyllable expressed no very acute desire for 
 his society, he felt constrained to say, dubiously: 
 
 "I should like to awf lly." 
 
 "Good," said Professor Geddes, heartily, "that s settled. 
 Take a chair, won t you?" 
 
 Guido took a chair, and immediately regretted the act, 
 for a subtle but distinct change immediately came over Miss 
 Geddes. It was not that she was chilly, or distant, or 
 inattentive to the conversation, in which she bore quite 
 an animated part at times, but she appeared to be full of 
 unrest, nervous, ill at ease, even, as if something un 
 pleasant was troubling her. 
 
 And so there was. For she had suddenly remembered
 
 258 THE HYPHEN 
 
 the money which Guido had tipped the night watchman. 
 She had no idea whether the bill had been a one or a 
 five-dollar bill or a bill of intermediate denomination. Also 
 she did not wish to offend this handsome boy by asking 
 her father to refund what he had disbursed; on the other 
 hand, since the expense had been incurred in her behalf, 
 common honesty required that he should be reimbursed. 
 
 She was well-bred and tactful, but she was young and 
 her resources were sorely taxed to think of some avenue 
 of approaching the sordid subject. 
 
 Her father, meanwhile, was telling Guido that he was 
 the new Professor of History at the Anasquoit College. 
 Janet heard the conversation as in a dream. She was still 
 busy with her little problem. When Guido finally rose to 
 go, she plucked up courage, and said: 
 
 "Daddy!" 
 
 "Well, daughter?" 
 
 "Daddy, Mr. Hauser bailed me out." 
 
 "Bailed? I do not " 
 
 "Oh yes, you do. He had to fetch a man, you know, 
 and get him to let down the drawbridge across the moat." 
 
 To Janet s infinite relief, the Professor understood at 
 last. 
 
 "Mr. Hauser, that part of our debt at least I can cancel." 
 
 "Oh, sir, I beg of you!" cried Guido, crimson again. 
 
 "You must tell me how much I owe you," said the Pro 
 fessor, quietly. 
 
 "Oh, sir, really, really! If you insist, sir, I shall feel 
 that you regret not being able to cancel the balance of 
 your debt if debt it be as well." 
 
 This was more than mere repartee, more than surface 
 manners, more than angling for a lady s favor. Professor 
 Geddes gravely slipped the purse back into his pocket. All 
 three of the actors in this little comedy were glad to be 
 rid of its sight. It had looked very big and very ostenta 
 tious and disgustingly vulgar to all of them. 
 
 "I would not cancel the balance of our debt if I could, 
 Mr. Hauser," said Professor Geddes, with a sweetness 
 which seemed strange in a man. "There are debts which 
 enrich both the debtor and the creditor. I hope you will 
 come and see us. My wife will be happy to meet you." 
 
 Guido left the pavilion treading on air. He ran blindly
 
 YOUTH 259 
 
 into Otto, who had waited for his friend for a full half- 
 hour. He, too, was full of his own affairs, that is, of 
 Elschen. Was there another girl so sweet, so innocent, 
 so amiable as Elschen Marlow? Guido thought there was, 
 but wisely did not say so. Otto was enjoying his hyper 
 boles so thoroughly that Guido had not the heart to intrude 
 upon them with his own thoughts. 
 
 All the way home Otto indulged in his monologue. 
 Guido did not really mind. He was thinking a monologue 
 of his own. 
 
 Professor Geddes and Janet started for home soon after 
 Guido left them. The moon had risen, the June night 
 was balmy and sweet with the scent of a thousand and one 
 herbs, grasses, weeds, flowers and trees sweet also with 
 the voice of oven-bird and Baltimore oriole, of cat-bird 
 and Bob White, all busy with their evening songs. 
 
 Father and daughter were woodland devotees. The 
 crowded trolley, swirling through dusty and unbeautiful 
 thoroughfares, did not attract them. Janet suggested that 
 they walk home skirting along the brow of the Palisades 
 and descending to sea-level by a flight of stairs which 
 abutted upon a forsaken corner of Anasquoit. From whence 
 they could easily jitney home. Professor Geddes agreed. 
 
 Janet -slipped her arm through her father s, an action 
 which he knew to be a prelude to confidences. 
 
 "Daddy !" 
 
 "Daughter." 
 
 "Daddy, do you like him?" 
 
 "Him? Who s him?" 
 
 "Daddy, now don t be silly. You do like him, don t 
 you ?" 
 
 "You do, evidently." 
 
 "I want to know if you do. I want your opinion, your 
 definite opinion. In words. Oh, my serene and whimsical 
 father, I knew by your manner right along that you do 
 not disapprove." 
 
 "Are you sure?" 
 
 "Daddy, you violently admired." 
 
 "Go to, go to," cried Professor Geddes, playfully. 
 "Forsooth, fond girl, what was there to admire about the 
 stripling, to violently admire?" 
 
 "Daddy, you are so foolish. You liked the way he
 
 2 6o THE HYPHEN 
 
 stood up to you. Daddy, you re my dearest chum and pal, 
 and I ll tell you this in confidence. Though you are not 
 even as old as myself and the twinkle in your eye makes 
 you seem only half that age, I should hate to encounter 
 your gaze if my conscience were not clear. You liked the 
 way that boy stood up to you, you moral Samson." 
 
 Professor Geddes laughed. 
 
 "The blush remains to be explained, my lady," he said. 
 
 "Why, Daddy, how very tactless to mention that. Daddy, 
 I almost perished. There I d been reading the very lines 
 he threw at me the first thing he saw me : 
 
 "Ah me! My uncle s spirit is in these stones, 
 Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones." 
 
 What do you make of that, Daddy? Don t be silly and 
 tell me it was a coincidence. You know it wasn t. It was 
 a telepathic occurrence, or something of the sort. You 
 know it was." 
 
 "I m beginning to think the little blind boy has thrust 
 an arrow into my girl s heart." 
 
 "How pedantic you are, Daddykins. I m plumb crazy 
 about him of course." 
 
 "Haven t I heard that before? How often?" 
 
 "Never. I never said plumb before, Daddy." 
 
 "H m." 
 
 "If I did, I didn t mean it." 
 
 "If you meant it now, child, would you say it?" 
 
 "Why not, to you? To no one else, Daddy. Would 
 you have me make confidants of girls I ve met twice or 
 thrice instead of you, you dear old Daddy?" 
 
 Professor Geddes patted Janet s hand affectionately. 
 
 "Daddy, say you like him if you do." 
 
 "My girl, I ought to know boys; I ve taught them all 
 my life. This one has the making of a fine man in him. 
 But " 
 
 ^No buts, Daddy, surely." 
 
 "But he is congenitally and acquiredly " 
 
 "Not weak, Daddy, oh, surely not weak." 
 
 "Sensitive, daughter. And the unthinking call sensitive 
 ness weakness because they judge of causes by the effects
 
 YOUTH 261 
 
 and the effects of these two widely differing qualities are 
 only too often identical." 
 
 "Sensitive to what, Daddy?" 
 
 "To everything. Beauty." 
 
 "Father! In women?" 
 
 "Child! In everything everywhere sensitiveness to 
 goodness, sensitiveness to evil, they lie in the same chalice." 
 
 "To evil? Now, I wonder, just what that can mean?" 
 
 "To be sensitive to something does not presuppose a liking 
 for that something. It may mean abhorrence." 
 
 "Ah ! Go on." 
 
 "That boy is sensitive to every current of life, thought, 
 action. He may at times will find himself in troubled 
 waters." 
 
 "But unmuddied, Daddy." 
 
 "I hope so. I think so." 
 
 "Daddy, you like him heaps." 
 
 "Heaps, child? I like him mountains." 
 
 "Daddykins, you are the only and original dear. You 
 have no idea how fine he was coming home through the 
 woods. I didn t want to like him at first I think I felt 
 I was going to like him so very much so I invented 
 reasons for disliking him. But he was so fine never 
 once pressed my hand or squeezed my elbow." 
 
 "I hope my daughter never allows young men to press 
 her hand or squeeze her elbow?" 
 
 The Professor s enunciation of the word "squeeze" was 
 a homily in sex morality. 
 
 Janet laughed. 
 
 "Daddy," she protested, "I ve heard it said, though, that 
 the habit is not out of the fashion. And he was so solemn. 
 So serious, all the way back. I thought he had no fun 
 in him. Now I know better. The atmosphere he wove 
 about me was due to courtierliness is that a really and 
 truly dictionary word, Daddy? And I think him quite 
 perfect." 
 
 "Not perfect, Janet. No one is perfect. Perfection is 
 an attribute of divinity, not of humanity." 
 
 "Humanly perfect." 
 
 "You are qualifying a superlative with an adverb postu 
 lating limitations." 
 
 "Daddy, don t be didactic. See the moonlight! Who
 
 262 THE HYPHEN 
 
 wants to talk adverbs and limitations with that light shining 
 down on you, on me, on him. HE wouldn t." 
 
 "He d be guilty of the same barbarism as yourself, 
 probably. He d talk feminine perfection." 
 
 "Daddy, are you laughing at me?" 
 
 "Child, you are so young a mere baby." 
 
 "I m sixteen. You were only twelve when you saw my 
 mother the first time, and you know you boast of it that 
 you never even thought of any girl after that." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Professor Geddes. "How unwise of 
 a parent to confide his own past folly to his offspring! I 
 shall have to write an essay warning other fathers and 
 mothers." 
 
 Janet laughed. 
 
 "And I don t want you to say a word to mother. 
 Promise." 
 
 "Promise nothing of the sort. Why?" 
 
 "Because I overheard mother say one day that no mother 
 thought any man good enough for her girl to love. And 
 I don t want mother to hate him." 
 
 "Well," said her father, "we ll see." To any definite 
 promise he would not commit himself. He was the most 
 loyal of men, loyal to wife, daughter, relatives, pupils and 
 friends, and Janet was not unacquainted with this trait of 
 her father s. She thought that he would have to settle to 
 his own satisfaction whether loyalty to his wife forbade 
 silence as to the condition of his daughter s heart, or 
 whether loyalty to his daughter would prohibit him from 
 communicating the intelligence to his wife. Janet had no 
 idea that the question involved presented itself in a some 
 what different form to her father. Was Janet s heart 
 seriously involved or would he needlessly alarm his wife 
 by taking her into his confidence? 
 
 While he was still turning this over in his mind, Janet 
 said, abruptly: 
 
 "You know, Daddy, it s not as if you d found all this 
 out by yourself then it would be your property to discuss. 
 But a priest never betrays the confessional." 
 
 "You little vixen," said the Professor, laughing heartily, 
 "I believe that s why you told me it all." 
 
 "Shame on you," said Janet, pouting. 
 
 "But you ve got me," her father continued. "I cannot
 
 YOUTH 263 
 
 tell your mother, I perceive, without offending against the 
 unwritten code. However, if I deem wise, there is nothing 
 to prevent me from contriving to let her find out for 
 herself." 
 
 "She ll probably do so after a while without your con 
 trivance," said Janet, coolly. 
 
 "Then, what do you gain?" 
 
 "Time. Mother s bound to like him after a while. But 
 you know, she s less impulsive than you and I- -we re a 
 couple of willful children compared to her we judge with 
 our hearts, she judges with her head." 
 
 "Your confidence in this young man is very great," said 
 her father, reflectively. 
 
 Janet became very serious. The lovely face wore a look 
 of dignified composure, as she replied: 
 
 "It is as great as my confidence in you, Daddy. That 
 comparison must not hurt you. You have a faculty for 
 making the real character of those who come in contact 
 with you stand out sharply. Mother once called you a 
 catalytic agent where moral qualities are concerned. You 
 act peculiarly on people, they show themselves as they 
 really are. And for all your lovely simplicity of manner, 
 Daddy, there are folks I know who are simply never at 
 ease with you because, well never mind why. I dare say 
 they know. Now, I ve never seen any of my friends so 
 perfectly at ease with you as he was. And so, with 
 apologies to Kipling: 
 
 "And my dear young Papa and Mister Hausah, 
 They are brothers under the skin." 
 
 Professor Geddes mouth relaxed with a smile. 
 "You little witch," he said, but his eyes were grave.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FOLLOWING the general custom of the Anasquoit 
 shops, the Leviathan did not close its doors on Satur 
 day night until eleven o clock, and the owner of the monster 
 store was the last to leave at night as he was the first to 
 come in the morning. He allowed himself as much time 
 as he granted his employees, no more. Frau Ursula won 
 dered often and often so often that the reflection became 
 a sort of reflex action which occurred at every meal 
 whether, if things had fallen out differently between them, 
 he would not have shown greater leniency to himself, 
 whether he would not have lingered after his meals to 
 press her hand or to kiss her lips. 
 
 For the pendulum of her mind had swung back to the 
 early days of her marriage. She maintained or tried to 
 maintain a fiction that Hauser had never loved her and 
 that she never loved him. Otherwise, would he not have 
 made some attempt at a reconciliation? She had given 
 him openings enough. But year after year went by, bring 
 ing no change in their status. He was always reasonable 
 now, always kind, always generous, always thoughtful. 
 Since the opening of the Leviathan and their removal to 
 the new home which he had built expressly for her, he 
 had insisted on defraying all household expenses. She 
 had opposed this at first, but had yielded finally because 
 she hoped that in paying him the compliment of thus 
 obligating her, he would realize that she was willing to 
 yield him infinitely more than the moiety for which he 
 asked if only he would ask of her this greater yielding. 
 For the longest time she indulged in the most pathetic 
 hopes. She would stand at the parlor window of her 
 large, beautiful home, watching its master run alertly down 
 the stoop and hoping that he might turn back and observe 
 her watching his departure. But he never turned. And 
 she finally ceased to stand at the window. And the years 
 
 264
 
 YOUTH 265 
 
 went by, arid, wasted years which as she felt might have 
 been filled with throbbing happiness for them both. 
 
 Not that she was unhappy. Guido was in perfect health, 
 and that was happiness in itself. And she loved her home. 
 It was, as Hauser had wished it to be, by far the most 
 palatial residence of which the town boasted. The garden 
 surrounding it would have been large for the suburbs. 
 Within city limits it constituted almost a park. What with 
 her independent means and the allowance her husband made 
 her, she had more money at her disposal than she knew 
 how to spend, so that the greater part of her income flowed 
 into the coffers of the hospitals and public institutions of 
 the county. 
 
 Vasalov had returned to Russia. She rarely thought 
 about him or Varvara Alexandrovna. The Synthetic Ex 
 periment seemed almost a dead letter. Dr. Koenig, it is 
 true, helped to keep the remembrance of it alive. But it 
 seemed fantastic, chimerical and unreal. She had come 
 to think of it as something with no real significance. 
 
 Dobronov was a frequent visitor at their home, and 
 week-ended with them at least once a month. Longer than 
 two days he would not stay, however. The flesh-pots of 
 Egypt were delightful, he said, but enervating. To keep 
 his morality in tip-top order up he must dwell in poverty. 
 He cited St. Francis of Assisi, who refused to accept as 
 an outright gift the tiny hospice in which himself and 
 his followers found shelter, fearing that so valuable a 
 possession would work corruption of some sort in their 
 midst. It was the example of that saintly man, Dobronov 
 appended, that had weaned him from the Bieguny doctrine 
 that the nomadic life is the only one possible to virtue and 
 poverty. For Dobronov had fallen prey to the charms of 
 New York. He loved the vast city and was happier in his 
 poor room in the tenement, where he chose to live, than 
 he had been as the curled darling of St. Petersburg 
 Society. 
 
 Guido, on returning home from the picnic on that par 
 ticular Saturday night, came blithely into the dining-room. 
 Hauser was just rising from table. He showed the wear 
 and tear of life. His hair was now iron-gray and his 
 features had undergone the singular chastening process of 
 which the secret is known to time alone. He had never
 
 266 THE HYPHEN 
 
 been a handsome man and he was not a handsome man 
 now. But he was that which is prized infinitely more by 
 women, he was distinguished looking, and he wielded an 
 air of silent authority and masterfulness habitual to the 
 successful man of affairs. The eyes of other women ap 
 prised Frau Ursula of the value of her nominal possession. 
 
 Hauser nodded to Guido, and said : 
 
 "Had a good time?" 
 
 "Glorious, Father. Thank you." 
 
 Long discipline had made these two decently civil to 
 each other, but the woman divined that the old antagonism 
 merely slumbered and was not slain. 
 
 "Good-night, Ursula." 
 
 "Good-night, Erich." 
 
 He paused a moment on the threshold to light a cigar. 
 Then his firm, elastic step was heard rapidly traversing 
 the hall. The front door opened and closed silently behind 
 him. 
 
 Guido came around to his mother s side of the table and 
 kissed her. 
 
 "Well," he said, "I bet you re glad this day is over." 
 
 "I am," she said, soberly. 
 
 Frau Ursula had entertained that afternoon. She had 
 given a "coffee," a form of relaxation very dear to the 
 feminine Teutonic heart. To accommodate all her guests, 
 the dining-room table had been extended to an abnormal, 
 unshapely length. Enough time had not intervened be 
 tween the departure of the last guest and the arrival of the 
 master of the house to perform amputation upon the un 
 natural length of the monstrosity. 
 
 Hauser and his wife had supped at one end of the 
 table, but the other end was by no means unfurnished. 
 It was adorned with the remainder of the afternoon s 
 repast, cakes of every description, cakes large and cakes 
 small, layer-cakes and cakes with cream-filling and cakes 
 that were stuck together with jelly, cakes frosted with pink, 
 and cakes frosted with brown and cakes frosted with white ; 
 cakes plain at the top and cakes strewn with chopped nuts 
 and raisins; high-domed cakes from whose lacerated sides 
 bits of citron protruded ; high-domed cakes whose interiors 
 were graced with apples and marmalades and which smelled 
 suggestively of something stronger than fruit or cider; fist
 
 YOUTH 267 
 
 wholesome-looking cakes, surmounted with peaches or 
 cherries or apples or Streussel beautifully crisped and 
 brown. 
 
 Toward this latter cake, the plainest of all that splendid 
 variety, Guido directed his attention. 
 
 "I m awfully glad you saved me some of that, Mutter- 
 chen" he said. 
 
 "Yes, of course, but you must eat something warm first" 
 
 "I couldn t. I ve had supper." 
 
 "With whom?" 
 
 "Oh, at the grounds," he answered evasively, wondering 
 why he evaded. Frankness was a habit between himself 
 and his mother. But the mere thought of speaking of 
 Janet made his heart beat so furiously that he was quite 
 incapable of attempting to discuss or describe or praise her. 
 
 "Was it as bad as usual?" he inquired, indicating the 
 long table. He knew that his mother hated these coffees. 
 She gave them only to please her husband. He believed that 
 it helped his business. 
 
 "Hateful." She paused a moment and then went on. 
 
 "It s detestable to discuss one s guests and it s unkind 
 to say unpleasant things about my own race and my own 
 sex, but really, Guido, really " 
 
 "Well, Mother, tell me all about and get it out of your 
 system. Shoot." 
 
 He had answered her in English as he sometimes did 
 to display his slang. In her disgust with the afternoon, 
 she allowed his slang to pass unreprimanded. 
 
 "Nun " he said, in German. 
 
 "Oh, the usual thing. Everything German is fine and 
 good, and all other races are undesirable and inefficient." 
 
 Guido laughed. 
 
 "I heard em once," he said. 
 
 "How can you laugh, Guido ?" She was quite indignant. 
 "Revolting, I call it. Every one of our guests, it seems, 
 had a pet antipathy for some race. Don t laugh, Guido, 
 it s really it s wicked." 
 
 "I wonder, Mother, if other races feel the same way 
 about the Germans." 
 
 "I don t know. I don t think so. Perhaps they do." 
 
 "Americans ?"
 
 268 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "I know so few. But I think not. Race prejudice is so 
 stupid, so narrow." 
 
 "Especially stupid and narrow in this country," said 
 Guido. He was now quite serious. "If men are equal, 
 then races are equal, assuredly. Never mind those silly 
 old women, Mother. There s a moon. You need air. 
 Let s go for a walk." 
 
 "It s so late," she objected. "Your father never came 
 home until nine o clock." 
 
 "He s foolish to work so hard," said Guido. "Never 
 mind if it is late, Mother. Let s go sit in the park." 
 
 "I m too tired to walk. We ll sit on the porch." 
 
 "No, the porch won t do. You need the air of the 
 river. I ll phone for the car. We can drive down to the 
 river and you won t have to walk a step." 
 
 "Guido, you know your father likes the chauffeur to have 
 the use of the car for his family on Saturday night. He s 
 probably out in it now." 
 
 "Right-O, Mutter chen." 
 
 Nevertheless, he ran into the hall to the telephone. 
 
 "Your father will be SO displeased," she said once 
 more, feebly. 
 
 The obstinacy which seized him periodically every four 
 or five months was upon him. Thus, she reflected, did 
 he vindicate his sex. Incomprehensible creatures men. 
 She resigned herself to going with him for the drive. 
 She would not disappoint him, of course. But she would 
 scold him a little, just to let him know that his graduation 
 had not unfettered him entirely from her authority. 
 
 "Mutterchen!" Having finished his telephoning, he 
 came upon her radiant, breathless, flushed. "I ve ordered 
 a taxi." Here he paused and kissed her. "How he 
 cajoles me," she thought and wondered how her show of 
 authority over him would fall out. He laid another soft 
 kiss on his mother s cheek. "It s my treat," he said. The 
 third kiss fell athwart her face somewheres between eyes 
 and mouth. "It s fine and dandy to have such a princely 
 allowance as you let me have, Mother." Kiss Number 
 Four alighted on her hair. "Fifty dollars a month if 
 Otto would only let me hand it over to him for the next 
 few years." Kiss Number Five, owing to a rapid move 
 ment on Frau Ursula s part, landed on her nose, a cir-
 
 YOUTH 269 
 
 cumstance which set young Mr. Hauser to laughing up 
 roariously and unrestrainedly, as if he had been a child 
 instead of a young man. Frau Ursula loved to hear him 
 laugh like that. The child that had been seemed to peer 
 through the folds of the man that was in the making. 
 
 She tried to appear vexed with him for his extravagance 
 in ordering the taxi. Secretly, she was enormously pleased. 
 Few lads, she thought, would spend their money so lavishly 
 upon their mothers. A pang went through her heart. 
 Some day he would have to know. But this assurance 
 had suffered such frequent iteration as to have lost its 
 pristine horror. A question, comfortable and soothing, 
 rebounded from it immediately. Why should he have to 
 know? There was no one to tell him, excepting herself. 
 Dr. Koenig and Dobronov were in the secret, but they 
 would never divulge it. And she had made no definite 
 promise to Varvara Alexandrovna, although, as she had 
 faithfully carried out all the lunatic instructions of the 
 "murderess" regarding Guide s education, the only logical 
 conclusion would be to apprise him of his parentage and 
 all it involved upon his coming of age. 
 
 But she shrank back from making this ultimate sacrifice. 
 To stigmatize herself as an interloper and as an impostor, 
 to brand her motherhood as spurious, was something which 
 should not be required of her. She balked at mere thought 
 of the thing. It was so preposterous. 
 
 Guido was kneeling at her side. 
 
 "Mutterchen, I love you so very much. There s not 
 another Mutterchen like you in the whole world. My sweet 
 and pretty little mother. My charming and lovely little 
 mother. My good, kind, saintly mother." 
 
 He kissed her hands and her cheeks and her hair. She 
 knew that something had occurred to make him happy. 
 Always, when he was superlatively happy and contented, 
 it was his habit to pour out these libations at her feet, 
 to treat her with an added gentleness or tenderness, to 
 allow the fires of his filial passion to burn more brightly. 
 When he was unhappy he crept away by himself. He 
 never troubled her to comfort him. Later, to-morrow or 
 the day after, he would tell her what had stirred him so. 
 But she knew him well enough not to expect a confidence 
 to-night.
 
 270 THE HYPHEN 
 
 The moon was glorious indeed. A drive of five minutes 
 brought them to the banks of the Hudson. They com 
 manded an unimpeded view of the stately sky-line of the 
 metropolis, scintillating goldenly with a phalanx of signs 
 that made bright the darkest night. The majestic sight 
 never failed to move these two. They sat hand in hand, 
 in silence watching the marvelous spectacle with its sug 
 gestion of illimitable grandeur, wealth and energy pal 
 pitating behind and away from the visible line of river-front 
 buildings. Above all shone the moon, splendid in its high 
 isolation, mysterious, eternal, young and yet old. Now 
 and then a ferry-boat, bright like a monster firefly, swam 
 into the pathway shed by the moon, swam through it and 
 away, splashing through the fairy ribbon, dappling itself 
 with gold, yet leaving that golden sheen unbroken and in 
 tact as before. Now and then the uncouth bulk of a 
 hoisting float or pile-driving engine drove roughshod over 
 that strip of gold, leaving no smudge nor speck upon its 
 glistening surface. 
 
 "Beautiful, oh, beautiful," Guido breathed in his mother s 
 ear. 
 
 "Yes, but, alas! Since the Titanic went down I cannot 
 look upon the water without thinking of the hideous 
 
 tragedy of all those lives " her voice trailed off. She 
 
 was overcome by the pathos of the recollection. 
 
 "Yes, Mother, dreadful, dreadful." 
 
 For a fleeting moment Guido modulated his voice to the 
 accents of compassion. But is former mood was strong 
 upon him and he rebounded to it immediately. Never had 
 Frau Ursula known his resilience to carry him away from 
 a compassionate mood so quickly. Prescience warned her 
 whence this resilience might draw its vigor. Her heart 
 contracted. She chid the foolish organ. A girl? At his 
 age? Preposterous. Yet such things had been. Well, 
 better to lose him thus than to the Synthesis; for, in case 
 of the re-emergence of Vasalov or the "murderess" what 
 better antidote could she wish for to the baleful fascina 
 tion which professional assassination might possibly exert 
 upon Guido, than a sweetheart or a wife. Besides, it 
 might be Elschen! 
 
 "Did you see Elschen to-day?" she asked abruptly. 
 
 "Yes, of course. Otto danced with her all afternoon."
 
 YOUTH 271 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I I read Macaulay, Mother." 
 
 She noted the slight huskiness in his voice and knew 
 that he was struggling to tell her of whatever had befallen 
 during the afternoon. He was always more impulsive in 
 deed than in speech. His very impetuosity seemed at 
 times to render him inarticulate, for it made it more diffi 
 cult for him to choose his words and his phrases carefully, 
 prudently, in order to convey his precise meaning. And 
 always must he digest and turn over and examine from 
 all sides any adventure that befell him before bringing the 
 tale to her. 
 
 Therefore she was content to wait, knowing that his 
 silence was due not to secretiveness or to secretiveness 
 uglier sister, deceit, but merely to his passion for an 
 orderly, systematic presentation. 
 
 Days elapsed before he nerved himself to tell his mother 
 about Janet. How could he find words to speak suitably 
 of the starry, incomparable creature who was as far above 
 all other girls of his acquaintance as the sky was above 
 the earth? Janet s image never left him. He looked for 
 her in every black-eyed girl whom he cnanced across in the 
 street, and then amused himself by noting the points of 
 difference between these other dark-haired maidens and 
 his nonpareil. He had, in a flash, found his taste in 
 women. As he judged all other mothers by the standard 
 of Frau Ursula, so, henceforth would he apply to all girls 
 the criterion with which Janet had furnished him. Nor 
 did he judge blindly. Undeniable as was Janet s beauty, 
 her exquisite fineness was the paramount recollection that 
 lingered in his memory. 
 
 Within a week he called. He dreaded intensely calling, 
 and it is doubtful whether he would have been able to 
 overcome the active fear of doing so, if the negative fear 
 of encountering Professor Geddes in class with the burden 
 of discourtesy weighing him down, had not been the 
 stronger incentive. 
 
 His dread was both a general and a specific dread. The 
 Geddeses were Americans very, very different from the 
 German- Americans of easy, off-hand manners, with whom 
 he had been accustomed to associate all his life. His 
 acquaintance with them was cursorily brief. He had no
 
 272 THE HYPHEN 
 
 idea of the size of the family. There might be a dozen 
 girls. There was a Mrs. Geddes, so much he knew and 
 his fancy painted in lively colors the picture of a gilt- 
 edged, inaccessible lady who would frown upon him from 
 toplofty heights and utterly crush him. He suffered from 
 a relapse of the cowardice which had made him so miser 
 able in his childhood during the days which preceded Mrs. 
 Thornton s coming. He tried to buoy and brace himself 
 by reminding himself of the happiness that friendship had 
 brought him. But he hardly dared hope for so happy a 
 repetition, and the residue of his reflections was a painful 
 conception of Mrs. Geddes as a lady of superfine breeding 
 and merciless superciliousness. He overlooked the cir 
 cumstance that the two attributes are not compatible. 
 
 On his way to the Geddes home he encountered Otto, 
 sunk in black gloom, and loping along with enormous 
 strides of his long legs. Otto had left his position that 
 day, his stenographic position at twenty-five per which, 
 lasting through the summer, was to have supplied him 
 with funds to defray his tuition and his books for*the first 
 year at college. 
 
 "Why, what happened?" Guido demanded, seriously con 
 cerned, 
 
 The man I worked for dictated things I didn t like," 
 Otto replied, sourly. 
 
 "Things?" 
 
 "Words. Words a gentleman wouldn t use." 
 
 "What do you mean, Otto?" 
 
 "Curse words. Downright bad words. I refused to type 
 worcfs of such description." 
 
 "Words merely profane, or foul words?" 
 
 "Merely profane! Well, yes, they were not foul, I 
 suppose." 
 
 "Couldn t you have stuck it?" 
 
 Otto regarded Guido with horror in his eyes. 
 
 "You don t seriously mean that, do you?" he demanded. 
 
 "Well, I don t know," said Guido. "I ve always under 
 stood that a stenographer was just a sort of animated pen. 
 I don t know that I could look upon myself in just that 
 light, either, so I mustn t blame you." 
 
 "Of course you couldn t," said Otto. He seemed to 
 breathe more freely. "I m going to work in the machine
 
 YOUTH 273 
 
 shop to-morrow," he said. "But, of course, I can t earn 
 enough there in summer to tide me over the entire winter." 
 
 "I say, Otto, why don t you let mother or me loan you 
 the money? It s all poppy-cock, this going to work for 
 a year in order to study a year. Why, if you go to college, 
 you can in your first year after you re through repay almost 
 half of your debt if you really insist on making it a 
 loan instead of a well a little gift." 
 
 "It s awfully decent of you to offer it again," said Otto. 
 "I think, perhaps, a loan " 
 
 "Why not a gift, Otto? If you were rich and I not 
 well-to-do, do you think I d hesitate to let you finance me ?" 
 
 "Like fun you would," said Otto. "You ve been rich 
 all your life, Guido. You don t know what it feels like 
 to be the other thing." 
 
 "Well, at any rate, you ll let us finance you ?" 
 
 "I suppose so," said Otto, reluctantly. "If you ll take 
 my note." 
 
 They shook hands on it and then Guido turned down 
 Chestnut Street to proceed to the Geddes home. 
 
 The house which Professor Geddes and his wife had 
 rented was situated only a few doors from Bismarck 
 Street but it was not on Bismarck Street, a fact upon 
 which Anasquoit might be trusted to remark. It was a 
 house which stood far back from the street in a garden, 
 and it had always seemed a shabby, slouchy sort of a place 
 to Guido. He was surprised to see the improvement in 
 its appearance. It had suddenly assumed dignity, and char 
 acter, and self-respect. 
 
 The garden had been weeded, and cleaned of the ac 
 cumulation of old leaves and papers which had habitually 
 littered it. The house had formerly been painted a dingy 
 brown. Now it lay glimmeringly white in its patch of 
 garden. Upon the front door shone a brightly polished 
 brass stag-head-and-ring knocker, the diamond pane win 
 dows were neatly curtained and green window boxes, filled 
 with pink geraniums in full bloom, graced the window-sills. 
 
 Guido lingered a moment at the gate. The old place, 
 thus metamorphosed, had not merely character, it had 
 atmosphere. It seemed to him a fitting abode for Janet. 
 
 The door was opened by a colored maid in white cap 
 and apron and a black close-fitting dress. Servants in
 
 274 THE HYPHEN 
 
 uniform were also an innovation for Anasquoit, and Guide s 
 fear of Mrs. Geddes and sense of oppression returned. 
 
 Guido asked to see Miss Geddes, and had a silver salver 
 thrust under his nose. 
 
 "I have no card with me," he stammered, furious with 
 himself for being thus derelict. 
 
 The girl smiled good-naturedly. 
 
 "Whaht s the name?" she asked. 
 
 "Mr. Hauser." 
 
 "Whaht?" 
 
 "Hauser," said Guido, more loudly. 
 
 "Wha-a-a-a-aht ?" demanded the girl again. 
 
 Guido repeated his name once more. Suddenly a great 
 light seemed to dawn upon the girl. The light of com 
 prehension which dawned in her eyes carried with it the 
 flattering sense that the name was not new to her, was, 
 perhaps, a name traditional in the household. 
 
 His pleasurable excitement, consequently, was very great 
 as he waited in the drawing-room which was a real draw 
 ing-room and not a parlor. The furniture he had known 
 that that would be so, of course was Colonial mahogany, 
 and wonderful faded-looking velvets and hangings and 
 cushions in blues and wine-color and greens gave a soft, 
 rich, lived-in appearance to the room. Guido had the wit 
 to guess that the hangings and cushion tops were not really 
 faded but that their subdued effect was an intentional 
 sublety accruing to the new pastel shades of which he had 
 heard so much. 
 
 His pleasurable excitement abated. The colored maid 
 would have heard his name while Janet or her father told 
 Mrs. Geddes of the adventure of her rescue from which 
 he, Guido, could not very well be expunged. The balloon 
 in which his vanity had been soaring sky-high, thus pricked, 
 collapsed and left him stranded in deepest gloom. 
 
 He loved the room, but its perfection frightened him 
 and he was feeling very small and ill at ease when the 
 door finally opened and he became aware that someone 
 had entered. He started to his feet and saw not Janet 
 but a lady whom by the strong resemblance to Janet 
 the narrow, high-bred, handsome face he would have 
 known as Janet s mother anywhere. 
 
 For a moment they gazed at each other in mutual aston-
 
 YOUTH 275 
 
 ishment, then the lady said, speaking in a high-pitched, 
 pleasant voice: 
 
 "Did you wish to see me?" 
 
 Reflect upon the lad s dilemna. The question was awk 
 wardly phrased, very awkwardly for so fine a lady. Could 
 he say "no"? To do so might be to affront her mortally. 
 "Yes" would be a palpable falsehood, for he had not asked 
 for her, had not been introduced to her and had no official 
 knowledge of her identity. 
 
 He said, looking very confused and distressingly red: 
 
 "I that is I asked for Miss Geddes." 
 
 "Miss Geddes ! I see." The lady smiled discreetly. Her 
 smile was delicious, a sort of porcelain smile, very refined, 
 very gentle, very reticent. Never, never would it broaden 
 into anything so vulgar as a grin, so bold as a laugh. 
 
 "Our maid blundered. She is almost deaf and names 
 bother her horribly. I was expecting a Mr. Towzer. Towzer 
 and Hauser that IS your name, isn t it? are somewhat 
 alike in sound. Conceivably they might be mistaken but 
 Mr. Towzer is a paper-hanger whom I was expecting 
 and, of course, the moment I saw you I knew there was a 
 mistake " 
 
 Mrs. Geddes spoke in a swift, cool, breathless sort of a 
 way, as if she were eager to get through with what she 
 had to say and be done with it. She never lowered her 
 voice to put a period to her words, but strung them along 
 like festoons or an endless chain. She wolfed the spoken 
 word as some good people wolf their food, which latter, 
 as Guido was to learn, she disposed of most daintily. But 
 she bolted her words, as if recognizing their utility while 
 refusing them recognition as things of beauty. 
 
 "I am so sorry to have disturbed you," said Guido. 
 
 Mrs. Geddes gave the boy a swift, sharp look. Her 
 manner changed imperceptibly from perfunctory civility 
 to a courtesy in which a sort of self-contained, deliberate 
 warmth was delicately observable. 
 
 "You did not disturb me," she said, in her quick, rattling 
 way. "I should have wished at any rate to thank the 
 young man who helped Janet the other evening you must 
 wait for Janet she ll be in presently." 
 
 "She s here now," Janet s clear young voice cried from the
 
 276 THE HYPHEN 
 
 hall. A moment later the girl came walking quickly into 
 the room. She shook hands warmly with Guido. 
 
 "I see you ve made friends with Mother," she said, a 
 mischievous glint in her black eyes. 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Geddes, in her rapid, breathless way, 
 "Mother has made friends with him." She turned to 
 Guido. "You ll excuse me now won t you? I hope to 
 see you here often. Janet frequently has her young friends 
 in informally we re barely settled yet the rooms are still 
 topsy-turvy." 
 
 Her glance strayed about the room, from spotlessly oiled 
 floors to spotlessly swept rugs, from immaculate ceiling 
 to polished furniture, from well-hung portieres to well- 
 arranged curtains. Unconsciously Guido followed the path 
 of her eyes. 
 
 "Terribly topsy-turvy, this room, isn t it, Mr. Hauser?" 
 naughty Janet demanded. 
 
 "I thought it perfect," the boy said, simply. "I think 
 it the prettiest room I have ever seen." 
 
 "Rude boy," exclaimed Janet, mischievously. "Do you 
 not know it is the height of discourtesy to praise other 
 people s possessions? For in doing so, you admit the 
 possibility of lapses in their taste. And that to my 
 mother !" 
 
 The facile color came to Guide s cheek, but his voice 
 was steady, his speech fluent, as he replied: 
 
 "The taste that is responsible for this room is quite 
 incapable of any lapses, I should say. I hope, Mrs. Geddes, 
 you will overlook my fault in admiring it." 
 
 "This room is the pride of my heart and I love to have 
 folks tell me they like it," Mrs. Geddes replied, adding: 
 "Don t let Janet tease you. Tease back it s the only way 
 to hold your own with her. I ve known her for seventeen 
 years and I m not used to her yet." 
 
 Janet exclaimed : "Hear, oh, hear !" 
 
 Mrs. Geddes extended her hand. 
 
 "Good-bye, Mr. Towzer," she said. 
 
 "Hauser! Mother. Hauser!" 
 
 "Ah;" said Mrs. Geddes, in her usual hasty way which 
 seemed to involve the mere commonplaces of existence 
 and none of the humorously embroidered themes, "that is 
 our joke, and if Mr. Hauser is wise, he will keep you
 
 YOUTH 277 
 
 guessing a while as to its nature!" From which Guido 
 gathered that Janet s sense of mischief was not inherited 
 solely from her father. 
 
 Janet was in a merry mood. Guido thought she looked 
 younger than on the day of the picnic quite a child 
 and even more beautiful. He thought her to-day not only 
 more beautiful than any creature he had ever seen but 
 far lovelier than he had imagined flesh and blood might 
 be. It seemed to him the most wonderful thing that had 
 ever happened to him that he should be sitting alongside 
 of so divine a creature, spending an hour all alone with 
 her. That possibility also had exceeded the boldest flights 
 of his imagination. Adolescence had him in its grip and 
 painted a reality which in sooth was barely beautiful in 
 hues which made it seem super-real and super-wonderful. 
 He compared her again to the other girls of his acquaintance 
 a fruitful subject. Even Elschen paled into insignificance 
 before the royal magnificence of this girl s beauty and wit. 
 
 He felt as if her mere presence shed a luster upon him. 
 She stimulated his mind. In serious conversation, as with 
 Dobronov, he had always been able to hold his own. Of 
 small talk he had hitherto fought shy, pretending to despise 
 its frivolity but secretly appalled by the demands it made 
 upon one s alertness and sense of timeliness. Now small 
 talk seemed the most natural thing in the world. More 
 than that; Janet injected into it wit and shrewdness. 
 Guido was unaware that he was contributing as his share 
 of the conversation a fund of repartee and point which 
 the girl had not been accustomed to from one of her own 
 generation. 
 
 As he was leaving, Janet inquired, abruptly : 
 
 "Are you coming to see us at our country home in 
 Sullivan County?" 
 
 "Of course, I ll come," said Guido, "if your mother will 
 invite me." 
 
 "Oh, Mother ll invite you all right. You ve made a hit 
 with Mother, Mr. Towzer. You knew it, didn t you? 
 Well, you will the first time you see her manner toward 
 any friend of mine or father s she doesn t like. It makes 
 a refrigerator look like a sizzling July day." 
 
 A few days later Frau Ursula threw open the spacious 
 grounds of her handsome home for the annual fete of the
 
 278 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Woman s Suffrage Club. She had done so for years, partly 
 out of deference for Hauser s wishes, who let no oppor 
 tunity for the social advancement of the owner of the 
 Leviathan escape unimproved, partly as a matter of friend 
 ship for Mrs. Erdman, whose incumbency of the chair 
 manship of the Club continued unopposed from year to 
 year. 
 
 "If you continue like this, you will some day, like Caesar, 
 be accused of aspiring to the crown," Hauser had said 
 to Mrs. Erdman at last year s fete, a speech which pleased 
 his wife inordinately. She retained the European s taste 
 for classical allusions. 
 
 To the garden fete this year came Mrs. Geddes and 
 Janet, presenting cards which proclaimed them to be the 
 guests of Mrs. Horatio Frazin, the wife of the President 
 of the Faculty. Guido, chatting with Elschen, was leaning 
 against one of the columns of the pergola, which at this 
 season was latticed with a profusion of pink ramblers. He 
 was transfixed with amazement upon seeing Mrs. Geddes 
 and Janet enter the garden. Elschen was narrating at 
 length some experience of her uneventful girlhood in her 
 precise, unimaginative, correct way. Without giving 
 offense he could not interrupt her to greet the stranger 
 newcomers. Janet caught sight of him and gave him a 
 brilliant smile. The girl s beauty and manner were such 
 that a perceptible lull fell upon the company and every 
 body clandestinely studied the fair unknown. Elschen, 
 subtly warned as girls will will be on such occasions, stole 
 a glance at Guide s face and stopped her narrative. 
 Guido, though he had not been listening to her words, 
 noticed that Elschen had stopped speaking and said: 
 
 "Why don t you go on with your story, Elschen?" 
 
 "Because I do not think that it interests either of us 
 very much," Elschen replied. There was something under 
 the surface innocence of this reply, a hidden barb, that 
 amazed Guido intensely. He politely entreated her to 
 resume her story, vowing that he at least, was interested 
 in it. He gave some attention to it now. But Janet s 
 presence had so sharpened his perceptions that his thoughts 
 radiated in three or four directions at one and the same 
 time, and while Elschen continued her painstaking account 
 he reflected how horrified Otto would have been by the
 
 YOUTH 279 
 
 polite fib which he had just foisted upon Elschen. But, 
 what was worse, to tell a white lite or be a social boor? 
 Apparently man cannot always control- the channel of his 
 thoughts and inclinations, and the choice between fibbing 
 or being rude becomes inevitable at times. He must dis 
 cuss this with Dobronov. But not to-day. Dobronov 
 would be quite capable of perching himself upon a pillar 
 of the pergola and preaching the gospel of unequivocal 
 honesty in speech; and Otto would be quite capable of 
 applauding him and inviting all secret liars to step forward 
 and publicly repent of their sins like poor old Dr. John 
 son in the market-place, or the Reverend Arthur Dimmes- 
 dale in "The Scarlet Letter." 
 
 Otto appeared at this moment, cast a blighting look of 
 stormy disapproval upon Mrs. Geddes and Janet and strode 
 forward toward Elschen with the air of a conqueror. 
 
 "Elschen," he said, "I want to tell you what Guido is 
 doing for me. He is going to loan me " 
 
 "Oh, please, Otto " Guido implored his friend with 
 
 a gesture to be silent. 
 
 "I want Elschen to know," said Otto doggedly. "I m 
 not ashamed to be under obligations to you, Guido. And 
 I want Elschen " 
 
 Guido saw his chance to escape. 
 
 "All right, old fellow, if you must tell you must," he 
 said, "but excuse me, will you?" 
 
 And he rushed away before either Otto or Elschen could 
 stop him. 
 
 The intensified powers of observation which Janet s 
 presence had engendered in him had enabled Guido, while 
 listening to Elschen and defending himself against Otto, 
 to observe that his mother had gone forward to greet Mrs. 
 Geddes and Janet. She had not yet met them, but Guido 
 had by this time told her about Janet, and he was certain, 
 from the smile that came to her eyes as well as to her 
 lips, that she guessed who the strangers were. 
 
 Guido reveled in the greeting that took place between 
 his mother and Janet s. Two women of the world, wisely 
 worldly, but not worldly wise, were taking each other s 
 measure and the measure was not found to be wanting. 
 He broke easily into the charmed circle, and was rewarded
 
 2 8o THE HYPHEN 
 
 by a smile from Janet, sweet and shy this time, not brightly 
 dazzling as before. 
 
 Professor Geddes arrived a few minutes later. Mrs. 
 Geddes presented her husband and then asked Hauser to 
 show her the honeysuckle at the south end of the pergola. 
 She seemed to attach a high valuation to Hauser, a fact 
 which Frau Ursula did not fail to note. It pleased her 
 that Mrs. Geddes should like Hauser. And she thought 
 it understandable that it should be so. Hauser, fault 
 lessly clad in pearl-gray, with his iron-gray hair and his 
 portliness and his grave air of personal importance looked 
 more like a minister plenipotentiary than a man of com 
 merce. 
 
 Frau Ursula and Professor Geddes were left alone. He 
 said a few conventional words of appreciation of the 
 service Guido had rendered Janet, and then added, with 
 the soft peremptoriness of an instructor: 
 
 "Mrs. Hauser, I want very much to borrow your boy 
 for the summer as my secretary, I mean. The salary will 
 not be large " he glanced about the beautifully appointed 
 grounds and the prententious gray stone house "it is 
 almost an impertinence, I fancy, to speak of a salary for 
 your boy. The only actual advantage I can offer him is 
 a congenial occupation. I am taking it for granted that 
 you and your husband are of the same mind as myself, 
 that a young man of your son s age is better employed 
 than unemployed all summer. I have in my summer home 
 a library, or rather a large assortment of books which will 
 evolve into a library once my secretary and myself have 
 catalogued it. I hope you will not frustrate my plans." 
 
 Frau Ursula was anything but obtuse. The Professor s 
 manner was as transparent as daylight. Nevertheless, she 
 could not but fail to perceive that he had left much unsaid. 
 Delicacy forbade that he should dwell upon the most 
 salient advantage which Frau Ursula had apprehended 
 fully before he ceased speaking the close companionship 
 into which Guido would be thrown with himself. 
 
 "No plan for Guide s summer would please me better," 
 she said. 
 
 "Then " 
 
 Her eye traveled down the broad garden-path, stumbled 
 over an obstacle and was arrested by it. The obstruction
 
 YOUTH 281 
 
 consisted of Janet and Guido, who stood facing each other. 
 The smile on her lips and on his was almost one smile, 
 so strong a sense of unity did it convey. In their eyes 
 was the innocent, untroubled comprehension of youth for 
 youth. 
 
 Frau Ursula turned and faced the Professor. A look, 
 almost as penetratingly comprehending as that which in 
 terlocked the eyes of Janet and Guido passed between 
 Janet s father and Guide s mother. She was a little per 
 plexed. But of one thing she was sure. Professor Geddes 
 and his wife were the most desirable acquaintances she 
 had made in years, placing upon the word "desirable" not 
 the crushing load of shekels and position but the frailer 
 yet more precious burden of spiritual profit and gain. She 
 might safely trust Guido to them. And Janet? As com 
 pared with Elschen? Frau Ursula prided herself upon 
 her Americanism with justice, but the sense of race is 
 never entirely dormant in any human being, and Frau 
 Ursula s showed itself in her allegiance to the Germanic 
 type of beauty, of which Elschen was such a rarely ex 
 quisite exponent. Frau Ursula was, indeed, so greatly 
 under Elschen s spell that she did not believe any black- 
 haired, black-eyed girl might eclipse golden-haired, blue- 
 eyed Elschen. Moreover, Frau Ursula carried her aristo- 
 democracy into the emotional and philosophic spheres. She 
 believed in freedom of choice and was prepared to bow 
 to the inevitable. Had not Hauser s cyclonic wooing fol 
 lowed by his unaccountable indifference, real or assumed, 
 broken her to a complete acceptance of the inevitable? 
 
 Guido, approached a little later by Professor Geddes in 
 his mother s hearing, accepted the Professor s proposition 
 with eager alacrity. Frau Ursula, seeing him thus willing, 
 nay eager, to leave her, experienced a pang. And yet, why 
 should she? She was quite as willing and eager to have 
 him go as he was to go. In other years Guido and she 
 had spent the summers together at some mountain or sea 
 shore resort. She hoped, she knew not what, from a sum 
 mer alone with Hauser. 
 
 Otto, when apprised that evening of Guide s plan for 
 the summer, said curtly: 
 
 "Of course. Americans. Naturally you d fall for 
 them."
 
 282 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "What do you mean?" Guido demanded, with mounting 
 indignation. 
 
 "I don t like these Americans," said Otto, stolidly. His 
 manner was vague. Whether he referred especially to 
 the Geddes family or included all Americans in his re 
 mark, Guido could not tell. "They re too sweet. So much 
 sweetness isn t natural. It can t be sincere." 
 
 "I don t know what you mean," said Guido, curtly. "The 
 German manner, I think, is quite as sweet as you term it." 
 
 "Well, anyhow," Otto continued, "you can t see, of 
 course, what everybody else can see the reason why you re 
 being asked to accept such a snap of a job." 
 
 "Well, who is everybody else?" Guido asked. "You 
 cannot have talked me over with anyone else, because I 
 told you only just now." 
 
 "I meant myself," said Otto, surlily. 
 
 "Well, what s the reason?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "You re a rich young fellow. They have a marriageable 
 daught " 
 
 "You " Guido cried, springing furiously from his 
 
 chair. He stopped short. He had been about to class his 
 bosom friend with the quadruped which, highly esteemed 
 as food, is with justice utterly condemned for its dearth 
 of cleanliness. 
 
 Guido recollected in time that he was both Otto s host 
 and prospective benefactor. Later he selfishly congratu 
 lated himself that benevolence had made him forego the 
 pleasure of bringing into concussion his fist and Otto s 
 nose. He remembered the lesson of his childhood and 
 knew only too well what would have happened. Otto, 
 healthy young savage, strong and lithe of limb and clean- 
 lived and fearless as those forebears who, followers of 
 Arminius, gave battle to the Roman legions and vanquished 
 them in defense of their hearths and homes Otto would 
 have caught his Guido s hands and held them in his iron 
 grip as easily as if they had been a child s, and holding 
 Guido s thus, would have read him a lecture on the abomina 
 tion of foul language. 
 
 There was a person of considerable importance in this 
 history who was as greatly puzzled touching the Professor s 
 motives in offering Guido the secretaryship as Otto was 
 cock-sure of them. This was Janet.
 
 YOUTH 283 
 
 "Daddy, why did you ask Guido to be your secretary?" 
 
 "Why do you think?" the Professor parried, gazing at 
 his daughter over his book, for this conversation took place 
 after supper in the Professor s study. 
 
 "If I knew I wouldn t ask," Janet replied, pouting. 
 
 "Perhaps I don t know myself." 
 
 "Daddy, you don t expect your little daughter to believe 
 that, do you ?" 
 
 "Urn." 
 
 "Daddy, you do know." 
 
 "Well, possibly I do." 
 
 "You re a terrible tease, Daddy." 
 
 "Tease? I? Why, daughter, I thought it was you who 
 were teasing me." 
 
 The professor continued dallying with his book through 
 out this talk, thus giving a fine air of abstraction to his 
 answers. Janet sat in silence for a minute, watching him 
 pretend to read a line or two. Suddenly she cried: 
 
 "I have it." 
 
 "What have you?" 
 
 "The reason you ve asked Guido Hauser to be your 
 secretary. You think I am seriously in love, which I am 
 not, and you want to test this young man see how he 
 stands scrutiny at close range." 
 
 "That," said the Professor, "is a plausible reason. At any 
 rate you ve given me an idea." 
 
 Janet again fell silent for a moment. Then, she cried: 
 
 "Daddy, perhaps you ve asked Guido because you think 
 my cousin Cecil, whom Mother has asked to spend his 
 vacation with us, would be lonesome without another boy, 
 seeing there are nothing but women on top of that blessed 
 mountain." 
 
 "That," said the Professor, gravely, "is also an excellent 
 reason." 
 
 Janet again taxed her powers of conjecture. 
 
 "Perhaps," she said, "you asked him because he s a 
 book-worm like yourself. It s a case of like seeking like." 
 
 "Do you know," said the Professor, laying down his 
 book, "I think I like that reason best of all." 
 
 "Daddy," said Janet, with the utmost gravity, "when you 
 were engaged, did you tease my mother as you tease me, 
 and if you did, how did she stand it?"
 
 284 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Well, that s your mother s secret, not mine. I divulge 
 only my own secrets." 
 
 "Oh, yes you do," Janet laughed. "Daddy, please, please 
 tell me." 
 
 "It s not good for you to get everything you want." 
 
 "It s so little I want just now just a little informa 
 tion." 
 
 "Sometimes a little information is the most precious 
 thing in the world." 
 
 "Well, this little bit of information is not the most 
 precious thing in the world as far as I am concerned." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "No; you are, you dear, naughty old Daddykins." 
 
 "Ha," cried the Professor. "Flattery. Bribery of the 
 worst sort. A kiss. I shall never tell you now no, 
 never." 
 
 "Daddy!" 
 
 "Well, it s really not worth making such a fuss over. 
 I ll tell." 
 
 "Ah, Daddy!" 
 
 "I asked Guido Hauser to be my secretary because I 
 want him to catalogue my books." 
 
 Without a word Janet rose and made for the door. 
 
 "You re incorrigible, Professor Geddes," she said. "I 
 go to sympathize with my mother." 
 
 "Ned," said Mrs. Geddes that evening, "I wonder if it 
 was wise of you to ask that German-American boy up 
 to Three Corners for the summer." Mrs. Geddes manner 
 showed that she was slightly displeased, if so harsh a 
 term may be applied to any criticism of the Professor in 
 which the Professor s wife might choose to indulge. Her 
 displeasure, if displeasure it was, arose from the fact that 
 her nephew, an English boy, was in the habit of spending 
 his summers with them. Mrs. Geddes shared certain pro 
 pensities of her sex, and she had a project in mind in 
 volving Janet and Cecil the nature of which will be clear 
 without further specification. 
 
 "I believe," she continued, "that Janet is in love with 
 him. And she s met him just twice. Do such things 
 happen ?" 
 
 "They do," said the Professor, adding contritely: 
 
 "I am afraid you are right, Jane. I didn t think she
 
 YOUTH 285 
 
 was seriously in love with the lad when I made him the 
 offer she was so frank in admitting her infatuation. To 
 day she denied it." 
 
 "That s bad." 
 
 "Very," the Professor assented, still more humbly. "She 
 is entirely too young to even think of a serious love 
 affair." 
 
 "I would rather have her involved in a serious love affair 
 than in a frivolous one," said Mrs. Geddes. "She s not 
 so young, either. She s sixteen. I was eighteen when 
 I married you. At nineteen I was a mother." 
 
 "Girls keep young so much longer now-a-days," said 
 the Professor. His words might have been construed as 
 unflattering, but although Mrs. Geddes perceived this 
 possibility, the words did not sting her not in the least. 
 
 She bit her inner lip to check the smile that would 
 rise. Drooped eyelids hid the twinkle in her eyes, as she 
 asked : 
 
 "Ned, if that sentence had been addressed to a woman 
 not your wife, would it have been a compliment?" 
 
 "That I cannot say," the Professor rejoined with some 
 heat, "because I would not have addressed that sentence 
 to any woman not my wife. Addressed to my wife it 
 was a compliment. Ah, Jane," the Professor cried, with 
 sudden tenderness, "there never was and never will be a 
 girl quite as beautiful as you were at seventeen." 
 
 "Janet is far more beautiful than I was," said Janet s 
 mother. 
 
 "Is she, really? Well, perhaps she is. But she hasn t 
 the dignity you had. That is what I meant by saying 
 girls keep younger now-a-days." 
 
 "She will be developing all the dignity she needs over 
 night," said Mrs. Geddes, "and then you will go about 
 lamenting that your little girl has vanished." 
 
 "I would not have you think I found fault with our 
 daughter," said the Professor, quite seriously. "I think 
 the child perfect as she is." 
 
 Mrs. Geddes fluttering eyelids dropped again. Guido 
 had guessed correctly as to the joint origin of Janet s love 
 of mischief. 
 
 "If Janet is perfect," she said, "since perfection is an
 
 286 THE HYPHEN 
 
 extreme state, will you not have to revise your former 
 asseveration about myself ?" 
 
 "Ah, my dear," expostulated the Professor, "the per 
 fection of the Marechal Niel rose does not in the least 
 infringe upon the perfection of the American Beauty." 
 
 Mrs. Geddes rose and kissed her husband on the brow. 
 
 "It s wicked to tease you, Ned," she said, "you tease so 
 easily." 
 
 "That may be so when you tease me, Jane," said the 
 Professor. "Janet is not quite so successful." 
 
 "And now," said Mrs. Geddes, " fess up. Why did you 
 ask that German- American lad to be your secretary?" 
 
 "My dear I asked your permission." 
 
 "My permission to engage a secretary, Professor? Pray, 
 Ned, never say such things in the presence of others unless 
 you wish to be thought a henpecked husband." 
 
 "Well, dear, I consulted you." 
 
 "Yes, you did. But I had the feeling, Ned, that you 
 were not quite frank with me. Since seeing the lad he 
 is really an exceptionally charming boy the impression is 
 strengthened. So, come now, fess up." 
 
 "Well," said the Professor, uneasily, "I ll be entirely 
 candid with you. I was afraid Janet might fall in love 
 with Cecil." 
 
 "What s the objection to Cecil?" 
 
 "Nothing but that he s her cousin." 
 
 "Her first cousin once removed. The consanguinity is 
 sufficiently remote, I should think, not to make a marriage 
 undesirable." 
 
 "I do not agree with you, Jane," the Professor con 
 tinued, warming to his subject. "In fact, I feel very 
 strongly in the matter. I know the project is very dear 
 to you " 
 
 "It is. Cecil is well, Cecil is Cecil." 
 
 "Yes. Quite as much so as Janet is Janet. Perfection 
 each. What does Shakespeare say? 
 
 "And she again wants nothing, to name want, 
 If want it be not that she is not he; 
 He is the half part of a blessed man, 
 Left to be finished by such as she; 
 And she a fair divided excellence."
 
 YOUTH 287 
 
 "Professor," said Mrs. Geddes, "I always mistrust you 
 when you quote Shakespeare. As you know. If you like 
 Cecil so well " 
 
 "I like him so well that I fear Janet may like him so 
 well also." 
 
 "And you like Guido Hauser so well that you hope 
 Janet may like him so well also." 
 
 "No, no," cried the Professor, "that is not so ! Upon 
 my word, that is not so. I would use Guido to neutralize 
 Cecil, and Cecil to neutralize Guido." 
 
 "Are you quite forgive me truthful?" 
 
 "Cross my heart, honest Injun," said the Professor in 
 such an injured little boy s tone that his wife laughed. 
 
 "Nevertheless, Professor, I do not entirely believe you. 
 I think you are very much smitten with this protege of 
 yours." 
 
 "Well," said the Professor, brazenly, "do you blame 
 me?" 
 
 The Professor s lady sighed. 
 
 "I like a more athletic boy like Cecil," she said. And 
 then added, with fine abnegation: "It s all on the knees 
 of the gods."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE summer that ensued marked for Guido not so 
 much a turning-point of life as a period of expansion, 
 of amplification. It was a season of simple physical 
 episodes and complex spiritual adventures, of material 
 comfort and great mental stress; a season of paradoxes; 
 of strange unrest, of ungentle awakening to the swift, 
 terrible verities which ruthlessly inhere in life. 
 
 He left Anasquoit and arrived at Three Corners on 
 July 5th, the most fateful date in modern history. But 
 not a soul in Anasquoit, nor in Three Corners, nor in all 
 America, nor in all the world for that matter, suspected 
 the sinister import of that date; not a soul, save the 
 handful of royal gangsters who, upon that day at Potsdam 
 perfected their nefarious scheme to loot and pillage the 
 world, a scheme to be launched when opportunity beck 
 oned or, as some who place no period to the turpitude 
 of the Potsdam marauders believe, when the opportunity 
 had been created. The world has yet to learn whether 
 the tragedy at Sarajevo was indeed merely the deed of 
 a poor, deluded fanatic in patriotism, or whether it was the 
 tail-end of a fuse lighted in Berlin before Potsdam and 
 intended to dynamite the world. 
 
 Guido had paid as much and no more heed to the 
 Sarajevo murders as the average American. It was, of 
 course, a very shocking, very detestable episode of the 
 sort abounding in Continental history. True, three 
 American presidents had in the past met death by assas 
 sination, but it was felt that those tragedies had nothing 
 in common with the Serajevo affair. That the victims in 
 this instance had been in the Crowned Head class, de 
 graded Serajevo to a lower a sort of melodramatic and 
 subhuman milieu. The mistrust for foreign potentates 
 bred in the American marrow inhibited America s habitual 
 sympathy from flowing as abundantly as usual, sympathy 
 for kings and heirs of kings being a kind of sentimental 
 
 288
 
 YOUTH 289 
 
 rubbish with which Americans felt little patience excepting 
 in the pages of a novel or on the screen. 
 
 On the whole the average American had felt inclined 
 to pat himself patronizingly on the back and to take credit 
 to himself for what, after all, was an accident of birth, 
 namely that he was not of royal lineage. 
 
 The possibility of Europe s drifting into war as a venge 
 ful upshot of the lamentable episode, seemed to occur to 
 no one not even to the newspaper editors, who are sup 
 posed to know everything. 
 
 On the heels of the Serajevo murder which, when the 
 last is said, was so crudely palpable and unmysterious as 
 to miss even the poor merit of possessing a detective story 
 value, came the Carman murder. Here then, was a murder 
 after the heart of the great American reading public, and 
 its slave, the newspaper editor. Here was mystery and 
 the romance sordid, perhaps, but still romance of an 
 unhappy marriage, and two fair women involved in the 
 plot. Decidedly, with such overwhelming odds against it, 
 Serajevo could not hold its own in the American mind. 
 
 A surprise was in store for our hero upon his arrival 
 at the Geddes home on Mountaintop, off Three Corners. 
 The Geddes homestead was quite a mansion, spreading 
 itself comfortably in mid- Victorian style to either side of 
 the broad door, as if acreage were of no consequence 
 whatever. The graveled walk, broad enough to accom 
 modate a vehicle, was shaded with trees, not as large and 
 as fine as those found in lower altitudes, but far better than 
 most of the homes on that sparse Mountaintop settlement 
 could boast of. The entrance to the grounds was marked 
 by two pillars of rough stone, over which nasturtiums 
 trailed their variegated bloom, and across these two pillars 
 a sign was slung, bearing the inscription: "Waldheim." 
 
 Guido expressed his astonishment on glimpsing the 
 German name. 
 
 "It s the name of the home in Hanover where Grossvater 
 Geddes was born," said Janet, quite simply. 
 
 Guido, reduced to gaucherie by amazement, blurted out: 
 
 "Grossvater Geddes! Is your father a German? I 
 thought your name was English." 
 
 Janet laughed. 
 
 "One would think it was a crime to be of German ex-
 
 290 THE HYPHEN 
 
 traction," she said. "How horrified you seem! Daddy 
 is very proud of his German blood. And the name is one 
 of those names which are both English and German. As 
 the two languages have many roots in common there is 
 really nothing so very surprising in that." 
 
 "Well, I admit I am surprised," said Guido. "You all 
 seemed so very American to me." 
 
 "We are American, of course we are," said Janet, a 
 little indignantly. "But one s got to have European blood 
 of some description, hasn t one? The Mayflower could 
 not possibly have brought over the ancestors of all Ameri 
 cans of the present day." 
 
 "True," Guido assented. 
 
 "Mother s ancestry is partly Scotch, partly Southern," 
 Janet continued. "Father s is German on the father s side, 
 Yankee on the mother s. You will love Grossvater Geddes. 
 Everybody does. Why, I wouldn t exchange Grossvater 
 Geddes for any other granddad in the wide world." 
 
 Guido comprehended Janet s enthusiasm for her grand 
 father the moment he saw the octogenarian. Grossvater 
 Geddes was slight of stature and frailly built, but the 
 slender frame told of resilience and stamina. He was a 
 very dainty old gentleman. He carried handkerchiefs of 
 the sheerest linen, beautifully initialed in hand embroidery 
 and delicately scented with Eau de Cologne. His waist 
 coats, too, were hand-embroidered. His shirts were deli 
 cately fluted. Indoors, for warmth, he wore short, quaint 
 little coats exclusively tailored in golden brown, navy-blue, 
 bottle green and taupe velvet. On coming indoors, he 
 changed immediately from walking boots to slippers of 
 buff suede, and in the evening he invariably wore pointed 
 patent-leather pumps and silk hose. His complexion was 
 as delicately white and pink as a girl s, and was set off 
 to best advantage by his thick growth of curling, snow- 
 white hair. His face was smooth-shaven, and one could 
 tell at a glance that his vocation had been that of a 
 musician. He had, in his day, enjoyed quite a reputation 
 as a pianist and it was his custom, as Guido was to learn, 
 to sit down at the piano at twilight and play Chopin and 
 Beethoven and Bach. 
 
 In spite of these super-refinements of appearance and
 
 YOUTH 291 
 
 toilet, there was about him nothing of the dandy, nothing 
 effeminate. 
 
 His elegance in manner was as great as his elegance 
 of person. It brought to mind the habitual and inborn 
 elegance of a French courtier of a generation long dead 
 and gone. And to complete the portrait, it was his habit 
 to play continually with a small gold snuff-box, studded 
 with rubies and emeralds. He played with it as some 
 women play with a fan. Guido was tormented throughout 
 an entire afternoon wondering what the jeweled trifle was. 
 
 Now the taking of snuff, like the eating of food, may 
 be the coarsest or the most luxuriously delicate of opera 
 tions ; it may be a mere gorging, stuffing, cramming, or 
 a ceremonious rite. The dear old man, we may be sure, 
 took his snuff as daintily as the most finished of actors 
 in a romantic play, and he partook of tobacco in no other 
 form. 
 
 His English was heavy and clumsy, and he spoke German 
 exclusively to his son and Janet, and more frequently than 
 not to his daughter-in-law, who understood but could not 
 reply in German. He addressed Guido in English, but 
 Guido, recognizing the old man s foible, and influenced 
 unconsciously perhaps by his dislike for imperfect diction, 
 drifted naturally enough into the tongue of the Fatherland 
 in replying. 
 
 "Ach!" Grossvater Geddes was delighted and compli 
 mented the lad upon the purity and flexibility of his 
 German. 
 
 "Do you know, Mother," Janet said privately to her 
 mother, "I believe that that is the real reason Daddy asked 
 Guido up here to please Granddaddy." 
 
 "Possibly," said Mrs. Geddes, evasively. 
 
 "He might have admitted it, then," said Janet, adding: 
 "Do you know, Mother, I think even the best of men, like 
 my father, are terribly stubborn at times." 
 
 To Guido she said: 
 
 "You made a hit with Grossvater Geddes, too. I 
 shouldn t wonder if he d invite you to his room before 
 the week is up." 
 
 "He s invited me to come to his room this evening, after 
 supper," said Guido. 
 
 "What, after just twenty-four hours! It s never hap-
 
 292 THE HYPHEN 
 
 pened before. There are folks Grossvater has known for 
 twenty years, and they ve never once crossed the threshold 
 of his room." 
 
 "Why, what s the matter with his room?" Guido asked, 
 curiously. 
 
 "What s the matter with his ? It s a great honor 
 that s being paid you. What s the ? Oh, dear! I hope 
 you ll appreciate all his treasures." 
 
 "Of course I shall," said the boy. 
 
 "It seems," said Janet, "that you ve made a frightful 
 hit with the entire Geddes family." After a moment, 
 fearing that this avowal, which included herself, might 
 seem forward and bold, she added : "Excepting, of course, 
 myself." 
 
 She said it so seriously, little vixen as she was, that 
 Guido was taken back. Considerably perturbed, he in 
 quired : 
 
 "Do you really dislike me?" His native modesty made 
 it seem quite likely that the most wonderful girl he had 
 ever met shouldn t care a rap about him. "If you don t 
 want me here, I ll go home to-morrow." 
 
 "Oh, no, I wouldn t have you do that," said mischievous 
 Janet. "You may stay, of course, now you ve come." 
 
 "I wouldn t spoil your summer for anything," said 
 Guido. 
 
 "Who said you were going to spoil my summer?" Janet 
 demanded. "If you go home to-morrow, Daddy will know 
 I ve done something to you." 
 
 "Then what shall I do?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "Stay, of course." 
 
 "Feeling you dislike me?" 
 
 "Silly, I never said so. Oh, Guido, are we quarreling? 
 And what are we quarreling about?" 
 
 "I don t know, I m sure," said Guido, miserably, but 
 he did know, and Janet knew that he knew. He looked 
 so utterly woe-begone that she decided never, never, never 
 to tease him again. 
 
 She was tormented by a horrid, shapeless fear when, 
 having previously gone to his room to dress for supper, 
 he came downstairs at six o clock and, without looking to 
 right or left of him, dashed from the house and walked 
 rapidly away, taking the narrow foot-path that followed the
 
 YOUTH 293 
 
 old Indian trail down the mountain past chasms and ravines 
 which, especially at twilight, were treacherous as well as 
 deep. 
 
 ; Janet saw all this through the half-open slits of her 
 shutter. They had all been late in dressing that day, and 
 she had just slipped out of her morning dress and taken 
 down her hair. Without waiting to pin up the latter, she 
 flung herself back into the morning gingham. Then, like 
 a desperate wild thing, she tore down the stairs and out 
 of the house and down the dangerous path after Guido. 
 She could not see his figure ahead of her, and she slack 
 ened her pace to observe the underbrush which consisted 
 of mountain laurel, ragweed, huckleberry growth and 
 witch-hazel shrubs, that lined either side of the path. Some 
 ten paces ahead of her was an accumulation of fallen and 
 decaying tree trunks and rocks which commanded a view 
 of the dry bed of a mountain rill. Here, on a boulder, 
 desolately staring at the arid scene, sat Guido. 
 
 She stole up behind him and placed her soft hands over 
 his eyes. He did not shrink or cry out, but sat still and 
 mute for another moment. Then he gently loosened her 
 hand, saying: 
 
 "Janet." 
 
 "Guido. I did not mean what I said. I was teasing 
 you. Honest. You won t be silly and go home, will you ? 
 Or have your mother send you a telegram recalling you, 
 the way people do in books? Guido, you ll stay, won t 
 you?" 
 
 The sweet girlish face looked very bewitching as she 
 entreated Guido. She was a little frightened and subdued, 
 and her eyes looked softer than was their wont, her lips 
 were more tremulous. 
 
 One of Guido s inspirations came to him. 
 
 "I d hate like the mischief to go away," he said, "because 
 you see the entire family has made a tremendous hit with 
 me including yourself." 
 
 "Oh, Guido." 
 
 "Oh, Janet." 
 
 They laughed, and their laughter brought back the color 
 to the boy s cheek and the mischief to Janet s eyes. 
 
 "We must go at once," she said, "it s almost supper- 
 time and I m not dressed. *
 
 294 THE HYPHEN 
 
 She shook her black mane of hair as she spoke, and a 
 strange sensation crept over the boy. The romantic trend in 
 his nature was strong. The spot where they stood never saw 
 daylight, for primeval pines stood all about them like hoary 
 sentinels commissioned to keep out the tawdry light of 
 day. At noon it was twilight here, at twilight it was dusk. 
 
 The illusory thought came to him that this was not 
 Janet at all, not a creature of blood and flesh like himself, 
 but some mountain elf, some water-sprite come to lure 
 him further into the darkling woods to some mysterious 
 and untoward fate. The spell of illusion was strong. He 
 could not throw it off at once. 
 
 "Come," said Janet, nervous under his romancing eyes. 
 "Come." And she plucked timidly at his sleeve. 
 
 Clasped hands swinging between them, they started up 
 the path. 
 
 "Let s sing," said Janet. "It s so lonely in these woods 
 after dark. Let s sing some German song it will please 
 Grossvater Geddes." She caught sight of a wonderful old 
 conifer growing at the extreme brink of a deep gully, its 
 downstretching roots more than half -revealed, and looking 
 in its gnarled magnificence, like the eerie lair of some 
 gnome of the woods. 
 
 To slay the uncanny feeling that was plucking at her 
 throat, Janet burst rapturously into the song which every 
 little German-speaking child is taught to sing standing 
 under the Christmas Tree: 
 
 "O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, 
 Wie treu sind Deine Blaetter. 
 Du gruenst nich nur zur Sommerzeit, 
 Nein, auch im Winter wenn as schneit. 
 O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, 
 Wie treu sind Deine Blaetter." 
 
 Her grandfather had taught her the song when she was 
 a little girl, and she sang it in her clear young voice, 
 enunciating with her pretty stilted accent which made the 
 sonorous German words seem quaintly thin and emaciated. 
 Guido thought her accent adorable, and joined in the song 
 reluctantly because his correct, fuller pronunciation robbed 
 her words of their elusive, waxen charm.
 
 YOUTH 295 
 
 Thus they reached home, hands swinging, fresh young 
 voices raised in song. Janet s predictions concerning her 
 grandfather were correct. The old man stood near the 
 nasturtium-covered stone pillar waiting for them. He wore 
 a black velvet skull-cap, soberly embroidered and tasseled 
 with gold. His lips smiled, but a pathetic look of sorrow 
 for griefs long dead, for recollections half -forgotten and 
 associations only half-remembered, looked from his kindly 
 old eyes. He took Janet s soft young face between his 
 thin, deeply veined hands, and looked at her long and 
 tenderly. Then, gently inclining the girl s head, he kissed 
 her brow. 
 
 It was a simple, homely picture, entirely lacking in 
 dramatic values, entirely lyric in essence, but it pleased 
 the lad more than a more highly colored picture might 
 have done. It made a lasting impression on him. He 
 never forgot it. 
 
 That evening after supper when Grossvater Geddes rose 
 to lead the way to his roof, Guido looked questioningly at 
 Janet. 
 
 "Oh, no," she whispered, "Grossvater Geddes wants his 
 guests all to himself." 
 
 The room into which Guido was ceremoniously ushered 
 by the old man was a room as quaint and mysterious of 
 atmosphere as its occupant. And the atmosphere was dis 
 tinctly Teutonic. There were beakers of all sizes made of 
 pewter, handsomely decorated with German landscapes 
 and castles in which Lohengrin and Tannhaeuser might 
 have dwelt. There were figurines of porcelain, showing 
 German peasant types and courtiers of the age of Frederick 
 the Great. There were bookcases filled with German lexi 
 cons and classics, wood-cut reproductions of Albrecht 
 Duerer and steel engravings after Kaulbach perpetuating 
 scenes from Schiller, Goethe and Shakespeare. There were 
 wonderful old pipes with beautifully painted porcelain 
 bowls; old pastel paintings of ancestors so remote that 
 they wore peruques and cascades of lace and coats of 
 salmon-colored or coral-pink brocade. There was an ink 
 stand of Dresden china, dating back to a period when all 
 educated Germany was under French influence, a marvel 
 ous affair, very ornate, with sand-box and quill-holders. 
 There were silver candelabra and beautiful old salvers
 
 296 THE HYPHEN 
 
 heavy old plate which had been in the Geddes family for 
 centuries. 
 
 The old man, having displayed his treasures, poured out 
 some good old port for his young guest, and bade him be 
 seated. 
 
 Then, from the drawer of a marvelously carved writing 
 desk at which Guido was sitting, he took a brace of old 
 pistols, handsomely mounted with silver. 
 
 "I fought with these in 48," he said, simply. 
 
 Guido examined the old-fashioned weapons almost 
 reverently. 
 
 "Many a good man whom Germany could ill spare sought 
 refuge in America after that fateful year," the old man 
 continued. 
 
 "I know one of them," said Guido, proud to be able 
 to contribute actively to the conversation, "our old family 
 physician and friend, Dr. Koenig, is an Achtundvierziger." 
 
 "Not Dr. Robert Koenig, from Frankfurt-on-der-Oder ?" 
 
 "That s he," said Guido, nodding. 
 
 "I knew him well. We went to school together," said 
 Grossvater Geddes. The two men had corresponded for 
 years after reaching their mutual asylum of safety. At 
 the time of the Civil War, when politics absorbed every 
 thinking man, they had quarreled. The quarrel had been 
 patched up, but the friendship had remained weak-kneed 
 and white-corpuscled. The intervening years had now 
 erased all impressions from Grossvater Geddes memory 
 save only those early ones which touched the heroic fight 
 which he and Dr. Koenig and others had made for German 
 freedom. 
 
 Nothing would do but Grossvater Geddes must write 
 his old friend that very night, inviting him urgently to 
 spend a week or a fortnight at "Waldheim." Dr. Koenig 
 accepted and announced his visit for the following Satur 
 day. 
 
 It was an affecting sight to see the two old men greet 
 each other. They shook hands for about five minutes, 
 so it seemed to the onlookers, and their emotions seemed 
 to fluctuate between tears and laughter. They made an 
 admirable foil one for the other. Beside dainty Gross 
 vater Geddes, with his well-tailored, distinctive raiment, 
 and his shell-pink and white complexion, Dr. Koenig, in
 
 YOUTH 297 
 
 his ready-made clothes and heavy boots, iQoked like a 
 weatherbeaten and rugged veteran, as he was. 
 
 "You are so strong and hale," said Grossvater Geddes 
 to Dr. Koenig, "that you remind me of a well-seasoned 
 old German oak." 
 
 "Why a German oak?" Dr. Koenig demanded, in 
 stantly chagrined. "English oaks are quite as strong and 
 quite as fine. And so are American oaks. And so, I do 
 not doubt, are Japanese oaks, if they happen to have oaks 
 in Japan." 
 
 "And do you like Japan?" Grossvater Geddes inquired, 
 in a tone of mild disapproval. 
 
 "I have never been there," said Dr. Koenig, curtly, "and 
 as I am not of the same kidney as the critic who never 
 read the books he reviewed for fear of becoming biased, 
 I am incapable of forming an opinion." 
 
 "I should have asked whether you like the Japanese?" 
 
 "I have never even spoken to one," retorted Dr. Koenig. 
 "How then can I say whether I like them or do not like 
 them?" His tone was not entirely that of a man on the 
 defensive. 
 
 "As a race?" persisted Grossvater Geddes. 
 
 "I argue from the particular to the general, from the 
 individual to the race," replied Dr. Koenig. "Do you re 
 verse that method?" 
 
 "Like the average man," Grossvater Geddes replied, "I 
 form my opinion largely on what I read." 
 
 "Well, I don t," Dr. Koenig replied, bluntly. "I form 
 my opinions on what I hear and see. If I have no first 
 hand data, I trust my heart and conscience and common 
 sense rather than the only too often faulty judgment of 
 others." 
 
 "And may I inquire what your heart and your conscience 
 and your common sense tell you about the Japanese?" 
 Grossvater Geddes inquired. 
 
 "They tell me," Dr. Koenig replied, sturdily, "that the 
 Japanese and every other race as well is quite as good 
 as the German race." 
 
 The energy of this reply was slightly overdone and 
 Professor Geddes and his wife exchanged glances of 
 alarm. The conversation was taking place at the supper- 
 table, and it might lead none could say whither.
 
 298 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "May I venture to inquire do you, when you speak of 
 every other race include the negro race?" Gross vater 
 Geddes inquired in the meekest of tones. 
 
 "Why not?" said Dr. Koenig. "Have the negroes had 
 a fair chance here or elsewhere? England is the only 
 country where they are not systematically regarded as an 
 inferior race, as a race intended by the Almighty to be a 
 race of servitors, as a race to be badgered and despised 
 and exploited. I am a staunch American, none stauncher, 
 I trust, but I tell you, alter Freund, in its treatment of 
 the negro this country has fallen far below its principles." 
 
 The alarm which the Professor and his wife had previ 
 ously manifested became more acute. A discussion on the 
 issues of the Civil War had brought about the rupture be 
 tween the two old friends. Was a similar discussion to 
 antagonize them anew? But before Professor Geddes 
 could plunge into the troubled waters of the conversational 
 stream, to stem the tide of discord, Grossvater Geddes 
 inquired : 
 
 "May I inquire, Dr. Koenig, do you believe in the in 
 termarriage of the white and the negro race?" 
 
 "I believe, with Lincoln, that because I am in favor of 
 treating the negro fairly it does not follow that I want 
 to take a negress to wife." 
 
 "Apparently," said Grossvater Geddes, sweetly, "since 
 you are a bachelor, you did not want to take any woman 
 to wife." 
 
 All laughed, laughed more heartily than the jest deserved 
 in their belief that the quarrel which had seemed imminent 
 had been averted. 
 
 Dr. Koenig said, good-humoredly : 
 
 "You have no right to assume that. The fact that I 
 am not married is not a valid reason for supposing that 
 I did not wish to get married. Miss Right may have re 
 fused me, or I may never have met her, or, like Barkis, 
 she may have been willing but died before the nuptials 
 were celebrated. Or she may have been a Mrs. Right. 
 There are a dozen contingencies which can exculpate me 
 from the charge of being willfully blind to the charms of 
 the sex of which we have two such fair exemplars present." 
 
 He bowed with stately punctilio of a bygone age to 
 Mrs. Geddes and to Janet.
 
 YOUTH 299 
 
 "And do you really believe in the equality of all races?" 
 Grossvater Geddes came back to the main topic abruptly. 
 
 "Well, I do and I don t," Dr. Koenig rejoined. "Politi 
 cally I mean as regards their political rights they are 
 equal, of course. Socially, mentally, culturally there is as 
 wide a divergence between different races as there is be 
 tween individuals of the same race." 
 
 "The mental and cultural qualifications are the points at 
 issue, of course," said Grossvater Geddes. "I contend that 
 the white races are superior not only to the black race, 
 which is self-evident, but to the yellow races : especially 
 the English, German and French are the Kulturtraeger." 
 
 "Strictly speaking, English, German and French are 
 names of nations, not of races, but let it go at that. You 
 will find, however, that each of the peoples you mention 
 believe themselves to be the elect. You will find that each 
 people or race or nation believes firmly in its own 
 destiny. You yourself believe in the destiny of the German 
 people." 
 
 "Yes, I do," Grossvater Geddes assented, gravely, "I be 
 lieve that our race is a very great, a very noble race. I 
 believe with Goethe, that it is destined to achieve great 
 things. I believe, furthermore, that every people that de 
 serves being called great believs in its own destiny, in its 
 mission to humanity, in the great part it is to play on the 
 stage of the world." 
 
 Guido who, like the rest, had listened atentively but in 
 silence so far, here broke into the conversation. 
 
 "Dostoievski says the same thing," he exclaimed. 
 "Neither Dr. Koenig nor Herr Geddes have mentioned the 
 Russian people. Yet they, too, are a very great people." 
 
 "They are little better than barbarians," said Grossvater 
 Geddes. "What little culture they possess they received 
 from Germany. Peter the Great, barbarian though he was 
 himself, had enough foresight and wisdom to appreciate 
 what German influence would do for Russia." 
 
 "But the Russians themselves dislike and despise German 
 influence," said Guido. "Their bureaucratic system is the 
 worst in the world the most corrupt and the most dis 
 honest. And the nomenclature by which their officials are 
 known H of rat, Geheimrat, etc., show the German origin 
 of the Russian system."
 
 300 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "But German officials are notoriously honest," said Gross- 
 vater Geddes, calmly, while Dr. Koenig, hugely contented, 
 listened smilingly to this testing of the lad who was to 
 be the political redeemer of the world. 
 
 "Yes, that is so, of course," Guido assented, and then 
 suddenly stopped short. He had of a sudden become con 
 scious that all eyes were fixed upon him. It occurred to 
 him that his entry into the dialogue between the two 
 octogenarians might justifiably be construed as impertinent. 
 He flushed painfully, and was about to subside into shamed 
 silence, but a reassuring smile from Professor Geddes 
 braced him and sent him back into the arena, armed, as he 
 felt, cap-a-pie. The Professor, like the Doctor, though in 
 ignorance of the great Political Synthesis, was anxious to 
 see the lad acquit himself creditably. 
 
 "I think, sir," said Guido, addressing Grossvater Geddes, 
 "if you don t mind my saying so, this merely proves that 
 no system of government or form of administration can 
 be deliberately imported from one country and imposed 
 upon an alien race without their consent. The Germans 
 evolved their own system, or it was evolved for them ; but 
 it was evolved by Germans and acquiesced in by Germans. 
 But the Russian character is different. It is multitudinous. 
 It is a little of everything. It is everything. It is terribly 
 intense and terribly sincere. It is capable of the most ex 
 traordinary sacrifices." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes seemed somewhat vexed. 
 
 "Do you think the German character less sincere, less 
 capable of great devotion than the Russian?" he inquired. 
 
 "Ah, sir, I should hate to put it that way," Guido cried. 
 "Each race, each people, has a genius of its own excels 
 in one way or another, and the ready-made product of one 
 people will not do for another. A race, like an individual, 
 must learn certain lessons for itself. Certain lessons we 
 cannot learn vicariously. Each race has its destiny. The 
 trouble begins when one race thinks that its destiny is also 
 the destiny of another race." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes had listened in growing amazement 
 to the polemics of this mere youngster. 
 
 "And what do you mean by that?" he inquired. 
 
 "I mean well, as France did under Napoleon ; or 
 Napoleon for France."
 
 YOUTH 301 
 
 It was evident that the boy had chosen this example so 
 as to avoid giving further umbrage. Grossvater Geddes 
 said: 
 
 "And as Peter the Great did?" 
 
 "Well, yes." 
 
 "And you believe that Russia s destiny is greater than 
 Germany s ?" 
 
 "It is different. The Germans excel in method, system, 
 co-ordination, co-operation. Their ideals are I don t mean 
 to be offensive, sir utilitarian and materialistic." 
 
 "Germany has always been considered the idealist among 
 nations," Grossvater Geddes exclaimed, in an aggrieved 
 voice. 
 
 "By themselves." Guido smiled. "Perhaps they were 
 once. But now they pride themselves upon quite a different 
 quality, do they not? Now they claim to be the most 
 economically efficient in the family of nations. That pre 
 supposes a material, not a spiritual ideal." 
 
 "It presupposes a high evaluation of spiritual attributes 
 such as dependability, honesty, industry, frugality." The 
 aggrievedness of the old man had deepened. Guido was 
 silent, but his eloquent eyes showed that he was practicing 
 chivalry, not nursing defeat. 
 
 "Guido !" Dr. Koenig leaned forward, tense with in 
 terest. "You have not yet told us what do you conceive 
 to be Russia s destiny?" 
 
 "I cannot say," Guido replied, slowly. "I dare say it 
 would be difficult even for a Russian to answer that. I 
 think, sir, the Russian ideal is freedom." 
 
 "The same as ours?" Dr. Koenig exclaimed. 
 
 "I meant not freedom as we understand it, which is 
 freedom from interference by others, liberty, in brief but 
 freedom from one s self." 
 
 "Go on," said Dr. Koenig and the Professor simultane 
 ously, as Guido hesitated. 
 
 "I have a Russian friend," Guido resumed. "Sergius 
 Ivanovich is a nobleman and very rich. Yet he lives here 
 in abject poverty, refusing to touch one rouble of his vast 
 income. He allows the peasants on his estate to profit by 
 that income, unused by himself because unearned by him 
 self. But his thought was not so much to help others as 
 to divest himself of his riches, thus to strike the shackles
 
 302 THE HYPHEN 
 
 of the flesh from his soul, in order to give his soul a fair 
 chance to find itself. He is the finest Christian I know. 
 Yet he holds beliefs that would be very distasteful to the 
 average American follower of Christianity. He is partially 
 under Buddhistic influence, partly under the influence of 
 religions still older and to the American mind more in 
 credible. He never seems to consider his comfort and well- 
 being. He does not think about this world. He lives in 
 thought of the eternal. All he asks is that his soul be in 
 unison with the Divine Principle, be of service to it, and 
 fulfill the purpose of its being. That is happiness as he 
 sees it. I think, but I am not sure, that he approaches the 
 passive Buddhist ideal of Nirvana more closely than the 
 Christian ideal of active salvation." 
 
 Dr. Koenig regarded Guido from between narrowed eye 
 lids, a sign that he was deeply moved. He could have 
 intoned a hallelujah. The boy with a destiny, the boy with 
 No-Bias, the boy with a Political Synthesis to perform, 
 was showing his mettle. The Trying out of the Experi 
 ment in Spiritual Eugenics was to be the most interesting 
 and moving spectacle which he had ever witnessed. 
 
 Grossvater Geddes was subtly troubled. It was easy to 
 see that Guido had opened up an entirely new vista of 
 thought for the old man. 
 
 "All that sounds very vague," he said, feebly. 
 
 "It is vague," Guido assented, generously. "Sergius 
 Ivanovich is vague. He is in a state of constant flux. He 
 is the most variable person I know and the most sincere." 
 
 "But," Grossvater Geddes objected, "from what you have 
 said I really cannot form an idea of Russia s destiny." 
 
 "Perhaps she hasn t any," said Guido, "perhaps she omy 
 thinks she has. Perhaps, again, the very fluidity which is 
 Russia is destined to act as a leaven, a spiritualizing ferment 
 for other nations. And " he spoke with great gentleness, 
 "who shall say but that the German Martha will not in 
 the end be one of greater benefit to humanity than the 
 Russian IVJary." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes smiled. The compliment was neatly 
 turned. He was pleased. Still the thought which Dr. 
 Koenig and Guido had jointly planted in his heart, rankled. 
 
 "Personally," he said, "I believe that Germany has a 
 great destiny."
 
 YOUTH 303 
 
 "Personally," said Dr. Koenig, "I don t. I have no 
 faith in Germany and the Germans. After 1848! After 
 the fiasco! Alter Freund, how can you pin your faith to 
 Germany after what you and I and hundreds of others 
 went through in that dreadful, splendid, harrowing, glori 
 ous year? You are an American citizen, be an American 
 in heart as well." 
 
 "I am, I am!" the old musician cried, excitedly. 
 "Politically, my ideals are identified with America. I would 
 never wish to return to Germany, or to live there, or to 
 become a German subject again. If I had fifty more years 
 to live, as I have barely five, I would wish to spend all of 
 them in America. But this need not preclude my belief 
 that the German race is the finest on earth. Americans 
 aren t a race at all, they are merely a people." 
 
 "And you call yourself an American!" Dr. Koenig ex 
 ploded, wrath fully, and Guido said, speaking with intent 
 eagerness : 
 
 "But, sir, we are a race, a composite race, of course, but 
 a race for all that." 
 
 The three men laughed, and Professor Geddes said, 
 speaking for the first time: 
 
 "Well, young man, you are no better than the Germans, 
 the French, the English or the Russians. You, too, believe 
 in the destiny of your nation." 
 
 Guido was considerably taken aback. He tried to brazen 
 it out, but a spasmodic "Well!" was the most eloquent 
 retort he could produce. 
 
 Come, now, the truth. If you could, would you not 
 impose our form of government upon all other peoples?" 
 Professor Geddes continued. 
 
 "No," said Guido, stoutly, "why should I? The French 
 have established a republic which suits them quite as well 
 as our republic suits us. England, they say, is a democracy 
 in all but name. Then why should we think that our form 
 of government would be better for them than their own?" 
 
 "Very good," said Professor Geddes. "And tell me, 
 Guido, do you perfectly understand the difference between 
 a republic and a democracy? What are we? And which is 
 the better form, and why? You used the terms loosely 
 just now." 
 
 Guido squirmed uneasily. To have a volley of precisely
 
 304 THE HYPHEN 
 
 frameu questions requiring precisely worded answers flung 
 at him in the presence of almost half a dozen people gave 
 him the sense of an examination in presence of the school- 
 board. 
 
 Dr. Koenig leaned back contentedly in his chair. He 
 was satisfied by this time that the boy s judgment was 
 sound; which, of course, is only another way of saying 
 that Dr. Koenig was certain Guido would agree with Dr. 
 Koenig on all salient points. Had Dr. Koenig biased him? 
 The excellent man s ear tingled as the suspicion occurred 
 to him. He acquitted himself almost instantly of the 
 charge. Guido had spoken of matters upon which he had 
 never touched with the boy in conversation, deeming him 
 much too young. Well, at any rate, the boy s judgment 
 had proper foundation and root. 
 
 Quoth Guido in reply to Professor Geddes : 
 
 "We began life as a republic, sir, but we are now a 
 democracy. I think a republic would be the ideal form 
 of government if one might be sure that the men of greatest 
 ability were also men of probity. But in a republic there 
 is a constant danger that a hereditary aristocracy may 
 ensue. In theory a democracy is not as good as a republic, 
 but it is infinitely safer. And it is fairer and more honest 
 more humanly honest, I mean." 
 
 "Very good," said the Professor approvingly. He sought 
 his wife s eye, then looked at Janet. The girl s eyes were 
 bent upon Guido in mute, self-forgetful adoration. The 
 professor experienced a pang. For a while he would have 
 wished his little girl to reserve such looks exclusively for 
 her parents. 
 
 Janet s expression did not escape her mother. Later, in 
 the privacy of her apartment, she said to her husband: 
 
 "Well, Professor, your neutralizing agent seems to have 
 a very powerful action." 
 
 "My dear!" expostulated the Professor, who had ex 
 pected something of this sort from his spouse. 
 
 "Aren t you pleased?" the lady continued. "I confess, 
 I am not nearly as much displeased as I expected to be." 
 
 "From you, Jane, that is a great deal." 
 
 "Of course, Professor, no parent considers the choice of 
 her son or daughter just right, unless it happens to coincide 
 with its own. Doubtless Mrs. Hauser will have a dozen
 
 YOUTH 305 
 
 and one objections to Janet. But we live in a civilized 
 era, and so we shall swallow our disappointment and our 
 discontent and accept congratulations as if the match were 
 the consummation of our most ardent desires." 
 
 "You speak as if the thing were an accomplished fact," 
 said Professor Geddes. 
 
 "It is as far as our daughter is concerned." 
 
 "Jane are you tormenting me ?" 
 
 "No, Professor. Now my principal fear is that the boy 
 will not reciprocate Janet s love. There is that possibility, 
 of course, and it is a tragic one. Janet has something of 
 each of her parents in her make-up. We are both senti 
 mental fools, so that she has inherited a double portion of 
 constancy in love." 
 
 "My dear!" 
 
 "Yes, Ned. I am not ashamed to admit that if you had 
 not loved me it should have broken my heart." 
 
 "Jane, I adored you the moment I saw you! Surely, 
 this boy has eyes as well as heart. How could any boy 
 help falling in love with our little girl?" 
 
 "Ah love goeth where it listeth. The boy is fine 
 very. That will make it the harder for Janet if he does 
 not love her." 
 
 "But he will he must!" the Professor cried, quite in 
 dignantly. 
 
 His wife smiled indulgently. 
 
 "Coercion in love? How?" she inquired, ironically. 
 "Poor Janet. She is myself at that age. The average girl 
 is content to reflect the emotions of the man if she pleases 
 him well and good, if she doesn t, well and good also. But 
 Janet s heart has initiative. Well, we will see." 
 
 "My dear, I ll ship the boy home to-morrow," cried the 
 Professor. 
 
 "You ll do nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Geddes with 
 determination. "You ll kindly be as nice as nice can be to 
 him. Would you lock the stable after the colt has 
 escaped ?" 
 
 The Professor said no more. He lapsed into profound 
 gloom. A half-hour later his wife found him sitting in 
 the same position in which she had left him, his right boot 
 in one hand, its mate on the left foot. 
 
 The Professor was not the only victim of overstimulated
 
 306 THE HYPHEN 
 
 * 
 
 cerebration at "Waldheim" that night. Pleasurable emo 
 tion, quite as much as abject misery, desires fellowship. 
 Dr. Koenig had felt considerable hesitation as to his wisdom 
 in accepting the invitation of Grossvater Geddes because 
 he seriously doubted his own ability to observe silence 
 concerning the Experiment. The evening s debate had 
 strengthened his desire to take Grossvater Geddes into his 
 confidence a hundredfold. Old Herr Geddes had known 
 Guido the First, and would be as interested as Dr. Koenig 
 himself as to the outcome of Guide s education. The in 
 terest which Dr. Koenig felt was as far removed from 
 vulgar curiosity as can be; it was a superlatively refined 
 emotion possible only to one who like himself had an 
 unappeasable hunger for everything pertaining to the evo 
 lution of the race. Most persons were sciolists or vul 
 garians or both. It would be casting pearls before swine 
 to apprise such as these of the Great Experiment. But 
 his alter Freund was not merely a connoisseur in music 
 and art, he was a connoisseur in human nature as well, 
 though, according to Dr. Koenig s opinion, he was not a 
 judge. 
 
 In brief, the honest old physician found himself that 
 evening in the unenviable position of a man seated before 
 a bottle of rare old wine, with no one to bear him company. 
 Until midnight he tossed uneasily on his pillow. Then 
 he rose to prepare himself a sleeping powder. His room 
 adjoined that of Grossvater Geddes. The two old friends 
 were in a wing by themselves, a broad hall dividing their 
 rooms from the other sleeping apartments. 
 
 Dr. Koenig heard something scratch at his door. He 
 thought it a mouse and reached for his boot. Just then 
 the scratching was augmented by a whisper. 
 
 "I cannot sleep," whispered the voice of Grossvater 
 Geddes. "Can you?" 
 
 Dr. Koenig cautiously opened his door and was invited 
 into the adjoining apartment by means of opulent signs. 
 The two old men, wrapped in their bathrobes, tiptoed into 
 the larger of the two apartments. 
 
 "Let us talk a little more," said Grossvater Geddes, "it 
 is so long since we have seen each other." And he pro 
 duced his historic port. 
 
 There is a limit to human endurance. The wine of rare
 
 YOUTH 307 
 
 vintage undermined what remained of Dr. Koenig s vir 
 tuous resolution to say nothing about the Experiment. He 
 unbosomed himself conce/ning the Synthesis to his old 
 friend, who listened as attentively as Dr. Koenig could 
 have wished. Dawn streaked the horizon with pallid lines 
 of light before the two old friends finally separated. 
 
 Their new secret helped to bridge the wide gulf of years 
 which had separated them. They thoroughly enjoyed their 
 holiday. They bickered a good deal, it is true, but life 
 had taught both moderation, and although there was much 
 spirited debate, there was no anger. They enjoyed bicker 
 ing; they enjoyed even more their mutual and individual 
 recollections of the Year Forty-eight. That, after all, had 
 been the pivotal point of their existence. 
 
 Guido loved to sit with the two old men and listen to 
 their reminiscences. He learned from them by word of 
 mouth more of the import of modern German history than 
 he had learned at school. Some facts were merely glanced 
 at, hinted at. But Guido was shrewd. Names fell from 
 the lips of the two old men uttered with reverence and 
 admiration which had been deemed of such trivial im 
 portance in school that Guido had not even memorized 
 them. Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Stein, Hardenburgh, An 
 dreas Hofer were referred to again and again. Guido 
 gleaned from what he heard that these had been men of 
 exalted virtue, true world patriots, men of whom any race 
 and any country might have been proud, men who touched 
 the summit of courage and civic unselfishness. Why had 
 so little been made of them by teacher and text-book ? Why 
 so much of the monotonous procession of Kurfuersts, 
 Princes and Kings? He heard for the first time of Lieu 
 tenant Klatt, the friend of Frederick the Great, at whose 
 execution Frederick, then Crown Prince, had been forced 
 to be present by his father, a piece of revolting barbarity 
 rendered the more odious by the fact that the crime for 
 which Klatt was condemned to suffer death consisted in 
 helping the Crown Prince in his attempt to escape from 
 the parental roof. His home had been rendered insuffer 
 able to Frederick owing to the vulgarities and brutalities 
 of his woefully under-educated and tyrannical father, 
 whose sole relaxation consisted in orgies of smoking, and 
 who beat the Prince unmercifully with his own flute, an
 
 r 3 o8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 instrument which, since it presupposed refinement of taste, 
 was disapproved of by the king. 
 
 Guido, it must be remembered, had been taught German 
 history very thoroughly. But he had been taught it in a 
 German school, calling itself German- American, by German 
 teachers and from German text-books. He became so far 
 interested in checking up the disparities of German history 
 as he had learned it and as these two old men diagnosed 
 it and partly had lived it that he wrote home, asking his 
 mother to send him his old German history. He re-read it 
 one night. It dawned upon him then, during that night s 
 vigil, that the woof of history quite as much as the woof 
 of a tangible fabric, can be colored. The complexion of 
 the history of Germany so it seemed to him now had 
 always appeared odd when the deadly moral parallel of 
 American history was applied to it. It now seemed not 
 merely odd but reprehensible. The day was near at hand 
 when its enormity, its preposterousness was to burst upon 
 the boy in a blaze of unholy light. 
 
 Dr. Koenig had been invited for a week or a fortnight 
 or for as long as he would stay. He loitered on at "Wald- 
 heim," prolonging his visit from day to day, from week to 
 week. 
 
 Cecil Lewes, the English boy whom Guido had been 
 invited to neutralize, arrived a week after Dr. Koenig. 
 He was a fair, shy boy, with a face like a girl s. Guido 
 had never met an English boy before, and in thinking of 
 the English, had made the mistake which the average 
 German-American makes he thought the Englishman an 
 accentuated variety of the Anglo-American. He was sur 
 prised to find Cecil s savor distinctly different from that 
 of the American boys whom he had known. He was for 
 one thing less sophisticated and less slangy. He showed 
 an innocent zest in life and a sensitiveness to fine shades 
 that delighted Guido. With it all Cecil was the least em 
 phatic person Guido had ever come in contact with. His 
 manner of saying things, even things in which his own 
 interest was keen, was diffident. Yet somehow he never 
 failed of his effect. His manner was so very diffuse and 
 inconsequential that at times it seemed light, even flippant. 
 Yet Cecil was neither light nor flippant. He was flippant 
 as little as he was emphatic.
 
 YOUTH 3 o 9 
 
 Guido liked Cecil s way of doing- things his way of 
 speaking, of walking, of moving about. He was a very 
 well-bred lad, and Guido thought Cecil s manner toward 
 his elders and toward Mrs. Geddes and Janet the last word 
 in perfection although his own, if he had only known it, 
 was quite as good. 
 
 The enzyme of No-Bias was in serious jeopardy those 
 days. 
 
 Cecil, being English and athletic, was an indefatigable 
 walker. He suggested a day s walking-tour one morning 
 after breakfast. Guido had been the merest amateur at 
 pedestrianism, but, Dr. Koenig being out of ear-shot, he 
 threw prudence to the winds and went off with Janet and 
 Cecil for a day s tramp. 
 
 He was desperately tired the next day, but not ill. Dr. 
 Koenig, however, who had been terribly exercised on 
 learning that Guido had gone off for a day s hike, insisted 
 upon his resting in bed the better part of the next day, 
 explaining to Cecil that the day s tramp, with an hour at 
 the oars thrown in for good measure, might have proved 
 disastrous for Guido. Cecil showed little concern. Dr. 
 Koenig thought him callous whereas he was merely prac 
 ticing the Anglo-Saxon s shibboleth of showing no emotion 
 when most profoundly moved. 
 
 A few days later he asked Guido : 
 
 "I say, what made you go for that long tramp when 
 you knew it might make you most aw fly ill?" 
 
 "I really haven t bothered to analyze my motive in going," 
 Guido replied, lazily sucking at a sassafrass root. They 
 were sitting in the gully under the lofty conifers near 
 the tiny rill, which, since there had now been plenty of 
 rain, leaped gayly from stone to stone, flashing like 
 mercury. 
 
 "Well, if you don t mind, I wish you would analyze 
 them," Cecil rejoined. "I m awf ly interested." 
 
 "Why should I mind?" Guido asked. "But I m dis 
 gustingly lazy just now. So continue your prodding. It 
 may help me to think." 
 
 Cecil laughed his shy, noiseless laugh. 
 
 "Were you I hope you don t mind my suggesting it 
 were you too proud to let me know about your trouble ?"
 
 3 io THE HYPHEN 
 
 "No. I hope I m not disappointing you but I never 
 thought about being ashamed of it at all." 
 
 "Were you mind you, I m questioning you with your 
 express permission were you in a defiant mood, Guy?" 
 
 Guido pondered this. 
 
 "I believe," he said, finally, "that mentally as well as 
 physically I am too flaccid for defiance. I m afraid there 
 isn t a grain of defiance in me." 
 
 "I don t think that s a deficiency you need regret," said 
 Cecil. "I detest defiant persons. They are forever ferret 
 ing about for something to vex them. Perhaps you mis 
 trusted your physician s judgment." 
 
 "Never thought of old saw-bones," said Guido. "I don t 
 mean dear old Doc Koenig by that, but the New York 
 chap who painted my future in such funereal colors." 
 
 "I m afraid my ingenuity is exhausted," said Cecil. "I 
 have no more suggestions to make." 
 
 "It was like this," said Guido, suddenly alert. "It 
 wasn t a matter of thought at all just pure feeling. There 
 are many things I ve wanted to do all my life and didn t 
 do because I was told it would be suicidal to do them. 
 Hurts horribly, a physical disability like that. I think I 
 went for that hike, though I knew it was bound to make 
 me uncomfortable even if it did not seriously injure me, 
 because I was so sick and tired of the pain of holding 
 back." 
 
 Cecil listened with an abstracted air. 
 
 "That s rather a good reason," he said. "I ve got to 
 think that over. Do you know?" he demanded suddenly, 
 "you aren t the least bit like other Americans I ve met." 
 
 Guide s pleasure in being termed an American was marred 
 by Cecil s comparison. 
 
 "I m sorry you do not think me a real, thorough Ameri 
 can," he said. 
 
 "I didn t mean that," said Cecil, quickly. "Of course, 
 you re a good American all that sort of thing, but the 
 American boys I met were mostly interested in football 
 and things like that. I like cricket and golf myself. But 
 there are other things, too. Americans don t seem inter 
 ested in getting at the bottom of things the way Europeans 
 are. I think it s because the States is such a jolly good 
 country to live in folks are so busy just living and getting
 
 YOUTH 311 
 
 all the fun they can out of life that they don t care a fig 
 for analyzing life and talking it over the way Europeans 
 do. They think it s a little morbid to do that." 
 
 "I am afraid you do not entirely approve of America," 
 said Guido, feeling a sickish sensation in the pit of his 
 stomach. He liked this English boy immensely, but he 
 was ready to withdraw his esteem at the first intimation 
 of hostile censure of America and Americans. 
 
 "I approve of them thoroughly, and I like them thor 
 oughly," Cecil replied, "but it is with them as I say. I 
 think they are the most warm-hearted and the kindliest 
 people in the world. Indeed, I do not know what would 
 have become of me when my poor parents died if my 
 American cousins hadn t taken me in." 
 
 "American or Canadian?" 
 
 "American though they are livirig in Canada. They ve 
 been so awfully generous with me, quite incredibly gener 
 ous in every way. Much as they love their own country 
 they ve never once urged me to become an American 
 citizen when I come of age. And they gave me the choice 
 between an English university and an American college. 
 I chose Anasquoit College because it s quite the best of 
 its kind and it would cost infinitely more to send me abroad 
 to study." 
 
 "And if you don t mind my asking are you going to 
 become an American citizen?" 
 
 "I don t know," said Cecil, uncertainly. "I m tremen 
 dously in doubt. I love England. I love America. This 
 is the way I put it to myself : If, in case of war between 
 the two countries, I should not care to fight for America, 
 and against England, then I have no right to ask for ad 
 mission to American citizenship." 
 
 "Why imagine such a horrible thing?" Guido asked, 
 frowning. 
 
 "Well, you ought to be able to sympathize with me," 
 Cecil answered. "I imagine you d have a few bad moments 
 if America and Germany ever went to war." 
 
 Guido stared. 
 
 "Why," he stammered, "what s Germany to me?" He 
 was almost too amazed for speech. "You have no notion 
 how I love my own country," he said, a little indignantly,
 
 312 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "if you can suppose that I would waver in my allegiance 
 for the hundredth part of a second." 
 
 "The feeling of race is strong in all of us," said Cecil. 
 
 "I don t believe in race prejudice," said Guido. He was 
 now launched on his favorite topic. "Why, that s just 
 why America is to wonderful because all races unite to 
 make her great. Think of the number of races repre 
 sented in the United States!" 
 
 "We have as many or more in the British Empire," said 
 Cecil. 
 
 "With this difference," said Guido, proudly. "The 
 British Empire accepted them where they found them. To 
 us, however, to America, these different races send their, 
 best elements, and they are absorbed willingly into our 
 national life, glad of finding here a haven." 
 
 "Well, a good many Europeans think you are absorbing 
 not the best of Europe but her scum." Cecil s thoughtful- 
 ness robbed his words of all offensivenes. 
 
 "Do the English think so ?" 
 
 "I think not at least not the more intelligent English. 
 The man in the street, him, I mean, who is little better 
 than the scum he despises, may think so. But on the Con 
 tinent I m sorry, but it s true the educated classes do 
 more or less take this view." 
 
 "But why in heaven s name should they?" 
 
 "Well, frankly, Guy, this conglommeration of races in 
 the States is the one thing I don t like. In the British 
 Empire the different races are more or less segregated in 
 distinct geographical areas. I think that s safer. I hope 
 I m not offending you by my frankness." 
 
 "I m intensely interested," said Guido, leaning on his 
 elbow. 
 
 "I believe in race not race prejudice, but race culture." 
 
 "I don t understand," said Guido. 
 
 "It s like this," said Cecil. "Some races are more highly 
 gifted than others one cannot get around that. Too 
 great an influx of inferior elements m^y in time undermine 
 racial health. The best can only be achieved if a great 
 race is not handicapped too far, isn t impeded beyond a 
 certain point. There must be a certain unity of thought 
 and a harmony of feeling if the best results are to be 
 achieved."
 
 YOUTH 313 
 
 "Results in what?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "In everything in whatever the particular race excels 
 in." 
 
 "I really do not see what handicap can arise from differ 
 ent races foregathering here as they do," Guido exclaimed. 
 
 "Well, in the first place," Cecil began, slowly, "the dif 
 ferent races do not entirely amalgamate even in America. 
 You have Italian colonies and Greek colonies and French 
 colonies right in the heart of New York City. And the 
 Germans are notoriously clannish. The Chinese keep to 
 themselves, and so the Armenians, the Japs and the 
 negroes." 
 
 "That may be true of the first generation," said Guido, 
 "but I think the second generation is partly absorbed and 
 the third generation is not only absorbed but actually 
 assimilated." 
 
 "Possibly," Guido conceded, "but I do not see what you 
 gain. I don t see how many different elements can be 
 fused." 
 
 "They inject new blood," suggested Guido. 
 
 "New blood is not necessarily an advantage, providing 
 the old blood was good," said Cecil, doggedly determined 
 to defend his point. 
 
 "Ah," cried Guido, "then you, too, think that the scum 
 of Europe comes to our shores?" 
 
 "By no means," said Cecil, "but I do believe, in fact I 
 think it is an incontrovertible truth, that the emigrants are 
 as a rule not highly educated representatives of their re 
 spective races." 
 
 "Well " Guido flung out. 
 
 "Now," said Cecil, "I m too English, you know, too 
 democratic, you understand, to believe that the most highly 
 educated folks are necessarily the most desirable. My 
 dear mother, who died when I was only twelve, never tired 
 of teaching me to respect the rights of others, however 
 humble their walk of life, and to esteem their latent possi 
 bilities. She taught me that the pauper s child may possess 
 qualities of heart and mind which place him higher in the 
 human scale than the babe in the royal cradle or myself. 
 I am grateful to her for teaching me that." The English 
 boy fell silent for a moment. Then he continued: 
 
 "You spoke of America as a haven for aliens. If they
 
 3H THE HYPHEN 
 
 really look upon America as that if only the courage of 
 despair sends them to your shores, then I m afraid you 
 are getting the scum of Europe all nicely spotted and 
 streaked with yellow." 
 
 "And what may you be driving at?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "But if the spirit of adventure sends them across the 
 seas, or if they come because they think your political 
 principles are right, then, by all means, you are getting 
 if not the best yet at least very desirable blood." 
 
 "And why do you rate the spirit of adventure as high 
 as all that?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "Because," Cecil rejoined, "it has made the British Em 
 pire what it is to-day. It has made America what it is. 
 The Puritans of New England " 
 
 "Came here to worship as their conscience dictated," 
 Guido interrupted his friend, almost violently. "Didn t 
 they?" 
 
 "I ve often wondered," said Cecil, thoughtfully. "I ve 
 often wondered if there was not some undercurrent 
 stronger than the ostensible reason. I mean the uncon 
 scious yearning after new experiences, after adventure, in 
 brief." 
 
 Guido did not reply. The thought was startlingly new 
 and left him bewildered. His mind often recurred to it. 
 
 This is a fair sample of the conversations that took 
 place almost daily between these two young men. There 
 is not a choicer emotion, if emotion it may be termed, than 
 the pleasure derived from intellectual companionship. Be 
 fore the first week had passed the two boys had become 
 fast friends. 
 
 Professor Geddes and his wife were hospitality in 
 carnate. The house was spacious, the servants dependable, 
 the Professor s purse more than comfortably lined. 
 
 So when Janet, whose imagination had been fired by 
 Guide s references to Dobronov, suggested that the Russian 
 be invited, Mrs. Geddes willingly consented. Perhaps she 
 was seeking to neutralize the only too obvious effect of 
 Guido. 
 
 "Guido," said Janet, seating herself on the couch in her 
 father s library, where Guido, comfortably snuggled in a 
 morris chair, sat reading his beloved Macaulay, "Mother
 
 YOUTH 315 
 
 would like you to invite your Russian friend for a week 
 end, if you care to." 
 
 Guido did not at once reply. He had a keen sense of 
 the fitness of things and of human beings, and he did not 
 think that Sergius Ivanovich would fit in at all with the 
 Geddes family. He was sensitive for Dobronov and he 
 feared that Janet might find him ridiculous or even con 
 temptible. 
 
 "Well," said Janet, "you don t seem to take kindly to 
 the plan. Fine sort of a friend you are. I should think 
 you d be glad to have Mr. Sergius What s-His-Name up 
 here for a few days." 
 
 "I think I had better not ask him," said Guido, rousing 
 himself. "Your father and mother might think him, well, 
 queer." 
 
 "And would I think him queer also?" Janet demanded. 
 
 "I think so." 
 
 "Then it s on my account you won t ask him," said 
 Janet. "That s not very flattering for *we. Daddy says 
 you are one of the rarely endowed creatures Daddy s 
 words and thought, not mine, if you please who think 
 a spiritual sin worse than the other kind. He said you d 
 sooner forgive always quoting Daddy, you comprehend 
 a weakling s gross indulgence in his appetites, whatever 
 that may mean, than a woman who laughed when she 
 hadn t orter." 
 
 "And are those Daddy s words also, hadn t orter ? " 
 Guido inquired, ironically. 
 
 "Don t attempt to sidetrack me, sir," said Janet, sternly. 
 "That s what my Daddy said, in substance. Now, answer 
 me! Do you think I d be so ill-natured and so ill-bred 
 and so unkind and so well, ill-natured and ill-bred and 
 unkind as to laugh at any friend of yours? Or at anybody, 
 for that matter?" 
 
 "No, of course not," said Guido weakly, telling one of 
 the white lies which the subject of this discussion, and Otto 
 as well, held in such detestation. "Of course not," he 
 repeated, more vigorously. 
 
 Janet flounced up from the coucli. 
 
 "I ve hit the nail on the head," she cried. "You ought 
 to be ashamed of yourself, Guido Hauser !" And she flung
 
 3 i6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 from the room, whether in real or simulated anger, Guido 
 could not tell. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Janet had hit the nail on the head. 
 He had not felt certain of how she would treat Dobronov. 
 Janet, under the glass of daily observation, had been a 
 daily revelation. She changed her moods with disconcert 
 ing frequency. She perplexed Guido. He had never met 
 so mercurial and volatile a creature. He felt dimly that 
 the term changeable must not be applied to her, for her 
 variability was due not to capriciousness, which is the muta 
 bility of the frivolous and the shallow, who bend like reeds 
 to every gust of fashion or passion, but was the upshot 
 of a singularly rich and splendid character in process of 
 evolution and growth, a character in which divergent but 
 not conflicting elements had not yet been harmonized into 
 a well-poised entirety. 
 
 Guido, after deliberating a moment, laid aside his book 
 and went in search of Janet. He found her in the orchard, 
 embroidering under a wide-spreading apple-tree. 
 
 "Well," she demanded, "have you come to ask my for 
 giveness ?" 
 
 "Why should I?" he inquired, sitting down at her feet 
 in the sweet-smelling clover which spread a luxurious pink 
 and white carpet under the gnarled and knotted old tree. 
 "What have I done? I have not injured you." 
 
 "In thought can you deny it?" Janet inquired, holding 
 her embroidery at arm s length, to admire the effect. 
 
 "If you chose to consider it an affront that I preferred 
 to keep my friend at a distance because I feared he would 
 be distasteful to you, I cannot help it," said Guido, feeling 
 that, after all, that was the truth or one angle of it. 
 
 "Ah," said Janet, "you are clever. Very." 
 
 "Clever?" Guido echoed. "Is that another way of telling 
 me that I am insincere?" 
 
 Janet smiled ravishingly. 
 
 "It was my intention to offend you as little as it was 
 yours to offend me," she said, a sweet smile on her lips. 
 But her eyes looked hot and angry and pained. 
 
 Guido bit his lip. Nothing was to be gained by this 
 sort of charge and counter-charge. He admired Janet s 
 shrewdness, but he was by no means persuaded that she
 
 YOUTH 317 
 
 would not think Dobronov a sort of animated joke. Finally 
 he felt a brute at thought of having offended her. 
 
 "Janet!" 
 
 "Guido?" 
 
 "Janet, I humbly beg your pardon for hurting you. I 
 would not hurt your feelings for worlds." 
 
 "Not for worlds, but for the truth." 
 
 "I ask you to forgive me." 
 
 "I forgive you because you ask forgiveness." 
 
 "That is generous of you. If you still wish it, I will 
 invite Dobronov." 
 
 "It is, of course, a matter of indifference to me whether 
 you do or not. My mother, in suggesting the invitation, 
 merely desired to let you know that your friends were as 
 welcome at "Waldheim" as yourself. It was a compliment 
 to you. Supposing we drop the subject. Did you ever 
 see clouds so white or a sky so blue? An Italian sky, 
 Grossvater Geddes calls it. It s a perfect day." 
 
 Guido turned pale with the turbulence of his emotions. 
 Why did his pulses leap so, his temples beat so furiously? 
 Why did he feel so pitifully small and young and silly? 
 Janet s manner was magnificent. The boy realized from 
 the soft gentleness and dignity with which she spoke how 
 deep was the smart which he had inflicted. 
 
 "Janet!" 
 
 "Guido?" 
 
 "Janet, you haven t forgiven me. No, I don t mean that. 
 You say you have and your word is your bond. But, 
 please forgive me!" he floundered about hopelessly. He 
 was generations younger than she at the moment though 
 their ages were identical. Never had he seen her so 
 superbly womanly, so divinely self-controlled, so flawlessly 
 beautiful. Perhaps, since he was in the bondage of 
 adolescence, her beauty, even more than her spiritual worth, 
 tied a knot in his throat and sent his mental thermometer 
 down to zero. 
 
 And suddenly, overwhelmingly he felt that he owed her 
 the truth and not mere fragments of it. 
 
 "Janet, I ll confess I was afraid you might poke fun 
 at Dobronov. It was horrid of me. Forgive me." 
 
 Janet did not reply at once, and he thought that he had 
 made her angry anew. Then she looked up at him and
 
 3 i8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 saw that although her mouth was still grave and dignified, 
 her eyes were dancing with merriment and amusement. 
 There was a strange light in her eyes, too, a light which 
 Guido had never seen in any human eye before, for as 
 yet he knew nothing of the light which love sets to burning 
 and to flaming in a woman s eyes. 
 
 "Guido," said Janet, "you foolish boy, can we never 
 enjoy the luxury of a little tiff without your making your 
 self sick over it? I wanted to punish you a wee bit and I ve 
 all but annihilated you. There now, it s all right." 
 
 The girl s voice did not match her bantering words. It 
 was tender, not merry. 
 
 "I m not a wee bit hurt now, Guido," she added, giving 
 him another glimpse of the heaven that was mirrored in 
 her eyes. 
 
 Guido sat very still. A wonderful something had hap 
 pened to him, an ineffable, unnamable, unimagined experi 
 ence had befallen. His heart felt strained and queer with 
 sheer joy. 
 
 He wrote Dobronov that very night, who, since his 
 Bieguny views did not preclude visits to well-to-do estab 
 lishments, accepted the invitation for the following week 
 end. 
 
 When Friday morning arrived, Janet announced that 
 she intended taking the chauffeur s place in going to the 
 station. Early in the afternoon she came out to her father, 
 who was sitting on the porch, with a childishly woe-begone 
 face. / 
 
 "Mother s bought five crates of tomatoes at thirty-five 
 cents each," said Janet, "and she wants me to stay home 
 and help with the preserving instead of going down for 
 Mr. Dobronov." 
 
 "Then notify Charlie to go in your place. The weeding 
 can wait." 
 
 "I was hoping you would say it couldn t," said Janet, in 
 a very small voice. "Mother has Maggie to help her, you 
 know, and I never did any preserving in my life." 
 
 Professor Geddes regarded his daughter with humor 
 ously shrewd eyes. 
 
 "Are you by any chance trying to convey to me your 
 desire to be relieved from kitchen duty?" 
 
 "Yes, Daddykins."
 
 YOUTH 319 
 
 Professor Geddes removed his glasses and polished them 
 with great gusto. 
 
 "Daughter," he said, "I think there are two valid reasons 
 why you should stay. Five crates of tomatoes represent 
 considerable work your presence in the kitchen is there 
 fore not as ornamental as you may think. Besides, your 
 mother wishes you to remain. Am I right?" 
 
 "Yes, Daddy," Janet replied after a moment s hesitation, 
 and vanished to the kitchen. 
 
 Guido, who had pretended to hear nothing of this con 
 versation, thought : 
 
 "Is it possible this little girl and the fine lady who made 
 me so miserable the other day are one and the same human 
 being?" 
 
 When, late that afternoon, the automobile which had 
 been sent to the station for Dobronov hove in sight, Janet, 
 spotlessly attired in white, the five crates of tomatoes 
 having meanwhile found their way into Mason jars, was 
 concerned to see only Charlie, the chauffeur, and Guido 
 in the big touring car. Some sort of outfit Janet could 
 not tell of what nature the gear was was packed in the 
 body of the car. 
 
 She ran down to meet the car, as it drove into the wide 
 circle of their private road. 
 
 "Didn t he come?" she demanded. 
 
 Guido, a smile on his face, jumped from his seat and 
 removed the gear from the car. 
 
 "He came all right," he replied, working as he talked, 
 and explained that Dobronov had insisted on walking the 
 three miles up the mountain because to ride in a high- 
 power car was against his principles. 
 
 "It s a pity we didn t think to borrow an antediluvian 
 one-horse shay for the occasion," said Professor Geddes. 
 
 "Let s go down the road and meet him," Janet sug 
 gested. Cecil declined to go, so Guido and Janet went 
 off alone. 
 
 They discovered Dobronov quarter of a mile down the 
 road. He had stopped at a brook to wash the dust from 
 his face and hands, and was drying the latter in a large 
 clean handkerchief, evidently carried for the purpose, just 
 as Janet and Guido came upon him. 
 
 "I intended that you should see me after my toilet was
 
 320 THE HYPHEN 
 
 made, not during it," Dobronov said, with more gallantry 
 than Guido had thought him capable of. 
 
 "I wouldn t have missed the scene for worlds," Janet 
 assured him. "It was like a sunset scene in a rural play. 
 I hope you don t mind the comparison, Mr. Dobronov." 
 
 "Why should I? Life is full of dramatic and pictorial 
 values," Dobronov replied, calmly, and proceeded to de 
 scribe an incident of Russian peasant life which he had 
 witnessed years ago by chance, and which had lingered 
 in his memory because of the dramatic possibilities sug 
 gested by it. 
 
 Guido heaved a sigh of relief. Things were going in 
 finitely much better than he had dared anticipate. 
 
 At supper Dobronov explained that he had brought a 
 magic lantern belonging to a friend, with slides showing 
 Russian scenes which he thought might be of interest to 
 his hostess and her family. 
 
 "I have thought to bring everything I need," he said, 
 addressing Mrs. Geddes; "sheet, oil for the lantern and 
 the frame for the sheet. All I must ask of you is the 
 space in which to erect my outfit." 
 
 Mrs. Geddes assured him that he was welcome to as much 
 space as he needed, adding: 
 
 "If you make yourself indispensable to us by entertain 
 ing us, Mr. Dobronov, I threaten we will not allow you to 
 escape us on Monday." 
 
 "Ah, Madame, my religious beliefs prohibit my accept 
 ing your hospitality for longer than three or four days." 
 
 "Do you then think it wrong to remain in one place for 
 more than a few days?" Janet inquired. 
 
 "Not that but " Dobronov glanced uneasily at the 
 
 well-appointed table, with its immaculate napery, its fine 
 porcelain, its beautiful silver and its abundance of whole 
 some, well-prepared food. "It is very pleasant very to 
 eat amply of a variety of good food. In my home in 
 Russia, we, of course, lived well also. But I ran away 
 from my home and its material pleasures to become ac 
 quainted with my soul. Yet, so overlaid was my spirit 
 with the material and the mundane that, although I have 
 been away from home now for almost twelve years, I 
 have not yet found my soul s place in the universe. That 
 will come in time. In the meantime, I must do nothing
 
 YOUTH 321 
 
 to hazard what little progress I have made on the road 
 of spirituality." 
 
 "But, surely," Janet exclaimed, "you must eat wherever 
 you are !" She was horrified as only the young who have 
 known opulence all their lives can be horrified at the 
 thought of insufficient nourishment. 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course ! But I do not eat such food as 
 you do. I live one day on oatmeal, a second day on 
 potatoes, a third day on turnips, a fourth on cabbage, a 
 fifth on fried liver. All cheap foods, you see, and to me 
 not over-palatable." 
 
 The table stared, and Guido became vaguely uneasy. 
 Professor Geddes remarked after a moment of tense 
 silence : 
 
 "Well, if that is the only reason why you cannot stay 
 longer than three days, Mr. Dobronov, I dare say my 
 wife can so arrange things that you have rice one day, 
 and hominy the next, and baked tomatoes the third. Or, 
 if those foods are too luxurious, there are a lot of edible 
 weeds in the meadow beyond, as I discovered from a 
 botany the other day, which are warranted to taste bad 
 and cost nothing." 
 
 Janet perceived the droll drift of her father s reply and 
 glanced apprehensively at Guido. But Guido smiled at 
 her reassuringly. The Professor possessed the secret of 
 injecting an indefinable sweetness into his whimsicality 
 which enabled him to "poke fun" at others without fear 
 of giving offense. 
 
 Sergius Ivanovich was entirely deficient in the sense of 
 humor. He accepted the Professor s statement at face 
 value. 
 
 "In that case," he said, "I shall, of course, be happy to 
 remain longer." 
 
 "Still," said Janet, quite seriously, "I do not understand 
 in the least why your soul should be affected by the food 
 you eat." 
 
 "Ah," said Dobronov, "you do not know what poverty 
 really means or you would not say that. In the first place, 
 abstention from pleasure and gustatory enjoyment is a 
 very keen pleasure means mortification of the flesh. 
 Which is good for all of us. Then, too, I refrain from 
 eating rich, agreeable food because there are so many poor
 
 322 THE HYPHEN 
 
 people in Russia who have not enough to eat. Formerly 
 I thought of those people incessantly. And the misery 
 which I knew they were enduring kept me from thinking 
 about my soul. I then decided to become poor myself, 
 and now I live as the poor do and their miseries have 
 ceased to trouble me. I am free at last to ponder about 
 the Infinite." 
 
 Again silence fell upon the table. 
 
 Mrs. Geddes thought: "How morbid these foreigners 
 are." 
 
 Janet thought: "I believe Guide s Sergius is right. I m 
 going to try it some day." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes thought: "Religious imbecility! 
 These Russians are either voluptuaries or mystics." 
 
 Dr. Koenig thought: "With Dobronov as a friend, 
 Guido has surely had enough religious nonsense offered 
 for his inspection to comply with the most rigorous demands 
 of No-Bias. Heavenly Synthesis! How will it all work 
 out?" 
 
 Cecil thought : "If this is a sample of the human mate 
 rial offered to America for digestion, I ll not forego my 
 birthright as a Britisher." 
 
 Guido thought: "Now they are thinking old Dob and 
 his religious scruples a joke. And I don t blame them. 
 I wish to goodness he d keep his conscience to himself." 
 
 Professor Geddes, after quite a long pause, remarked, 
 judicially : 
 
 "You will forgive a man who is a good deal older than 
 yourself, I hope, for venturing a criticism. If your absten 
 tion from material pleasures is merely the purchase price 
 of religious exaltation, aren t you laying yourself open to 
 the charge of being a spiritual sensualist? You know, Mr. 
 Dobronov, I have always thought that the unkempt, un 
 shaven, unwashed man who sleeps on the park bench and 
 takes no thought of the morrow is your true Hedonist. 
 He has achieved the lowest rung of the ladder, so that 
 fear of a further declension cannot trouble him. And, 
 having nothing in the world to worry about, he can enjoy 
 the Paradise of his own thoughts to the uttermost. It s 
 in our mind, you know, that our true existence takes 
 place." 
 
 "Heavens," Dobronov cried, "what things people do
 
 YOUTH 323 
 
 say." He seemed frightfully startled. "Why, sir, do you 
 propound such a terrific problem to me? Oh, I shall be 
 crushed by my religious doubts. Am I indeed nothing but 
 a spiritual voluptuary? It may be. It may be." 
 
 Mrs. Geddes threw a look of mingled alarm and ad 
 monition at her husband. 
 
 "Don t mind the Professor, Mr. Dobronov," she said, 
 kindly. "He doesn t mean half he says. He frequently 
 talks nonsense." 
 
 "My dear!" mildly expostulated the Professor. 
 
 "Well, Daddy, don t you?" Janet inquired, composedly. 
 "You know you wouldn t have said a thing like that in 
 class. Now, would you? That s the acid test," she ex 
 plained to Dobronov. 
 
 "In class," said the Professor composedly, "I teach his 
 tory, not philosophy. Mr. Dobronov, you have it on the 
 best authority my wife and my daughter that my state 
 ments are untrustworthy. Pray dismiss what I said from 
 your mind." 
 
 Guido wondered a little at Dobronov s forethought in 
 bringing the magic lantern. It did not seem like Sergius 
 Ivanovich to think of anything so frivolous as mere amuse 
 ment. The subjects on the slides, however, explained 
 Dobronov s lapse into levity. They represented scenes from 
 Russian peasant life, showing the unbelievable poverty in 
 which an enormous number of Russians live. There were 
 slides showing large holes dug into the earth in which the 
 peasants of some villages live all the year round. There 
 were scenes showing the interior of prisons, the condition 
 of prisoners, chastisement with the knout. All of the slides 
 perpetuated scenes difficult and expensive to procure. 
 Guido guessed the truth before Dobronov told it him. A 
 friend of Dobronov s, Vasalov, had brought these scenes 
 to New York with him from Russia. He intended to tour 
 the country during fall and winter, and to use these slides 
 for propaganda purposes among the Russians in America. 
 The name Vasalov conveyed little to Guido. Dobronov 
 had spoken of Vasalov occasionally. Frau Ursula never. 
 In no way did he connect Vasalov with himself. He had 
 totally forgotten his meeting with Vasalov when a child. 
 
 Among the slides were quite a number showing 
 "politicals" en route for Siberia. One projection showed
 
 3 2 4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 a forbidding-looking building, a castle or a fortress, which 
 Dobronov attempted to withdraw without his usual pains 
 taking eludication. Professor Geddes challenged his haste. 
 
 "It is the fortress at Schlusselburg, which is now used 
 as a prison," Dobronov replied in answer to the Professor s 
 inquiry. 
 
 "Of any special significance?" inquired the Professor. 
 
 "The Princess Vasalov has been imprisoned here, in this 
 cell," he indicated the spot with his pointer, "for fifteen 
 years." 
 
 "And who is the lady?" inquired the insatiable Professor, 
 causing Dobronov to curse the malignity of fate that, 
 through some chance, had spirited this slide back into his 
 case, for he had been under the impression that he had 
 removed it. 
 
 "She is a cousin of Prince Vasalov, an intimate friend 
 of mine, and like him, a famous revolutionist, a woman of 
 high principle, of transcendent ability and energy, and quite 
 famous among revolutionists." 
 
 "Why famous?" The Professor s thirst for knowledge 
 threw Dobronov almost into despair. 
 
 "Because she is or was a very successful bomb- 
 thrower. She has to her credit the assassination of five 
 high functionaries." 
 
 "And do you approve of that?" inquired Professor 
 Geddes. "I thought you were a disciple of Non-Re- 
 sistance." 
 
 "I am. I detest violent measures. But you see, she is 
 as sincere in her beliefs as I am in mine," said Dobronov, 
 simply. 
 
 "It seems to me that is carrying tolerance too far," said 
 Guide, his young face was stern and set. "Murder is 
 murder. How can you speak of high principles in this 
 connection, Sergius Ivanovich? The man or woman who 
 commits murder is simply a " 
 
 "You must not call Varvara Alexandrovna that " 
 
 Dobronov, very pale, spoke with unwonted haste. 
 
 "Varvara Alexandrovna," said Guido, more mildly. The 
 beauty of sound had caught his ear and for the moment 
 he gave no thought to the iniquity of the woman owning 
 so lovely and so regal a name. "What a beautiful name," 
 he said.
 
 YOUTH 325 
 
 "Yes," Dobronov assented, "and you must believe me 
 when I tell you that her nature is as splendid as her name. 
 She sincerely believes that she and the party she represents 
 have chosen the only method for freeing the Russian 
 people from the insufferable yoke which the bureaucrats 
 have fastened upon them. And think, Guido Guidovich, 
 what, she has suffered all these years in solitary confine 
 ment in this cell!" 
 
 Guido frowned. He said no more. Was he touched 
 by Dobronov s plea and merely ashamed to admit it? Or 
 did he still condemn Varvara Alexandrovna ? 
 
 Later, when good-night was being said, Janet said to 
 Guido : 
 
 "I really do not know why you were so afraid to in 
 troduce your friend to us. He is the most entertaining 
 man I have ever met." 
 
 "Entertaining or amusing?" 
 
 "I said entertaining. I came near saying fascinating. 
 If I didn t, it s because you might have resented it." 
 
 Guido, usually not obtuse, hardly dared to pluck the 
 obvious meaning from Janet s words. Her color confirmed 
 that meaning. She said, the mood of the hoyden as usually 
 following a spontaneous outbreak of innocent coquetry: 
 
 "Now don t imagine that I meant that as a compliment 
 to you, because I didn t. It was nothing but well my 
 usual flipness." 
 
 "Flipness!" The home-coined word amused Guido and 
 he laughed. 
 
 Janet, her disarranged self-control restored by Guido s 
 hilarity, said: 
 
 "I supposed him to be old and ugly and generally 
 impossible. And I find him excellent company, young and 
 nice-looking almost as pretty in his way as Grossvater 
 Geddes is in his." 
 
 "Pretty! What a word to apply to a man." 
 
 "Your friend or Grossvater Geddes ? Why should Gross- 
 vate Geddes object? At his age men are usually plain 
 horrors." 
 
 "Still " 
 
 "I m sorry you object to the word," said Janet with the 
 coy demureness which promised mischief. "You know, 
 in your way, you are pretty, too."
 
 326 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Well, if Grossvater Geddes age removes the sting from 
 the word, so must my youth. I trust I may outgrow the 
 outrage in time." 
 
 "And grow into it again at Grossvater Geddes age," 
 said Janet. Looking up, she laughed deliciously. 
 
 Guido did not reply but stood regarding her with 
 piercingly eloquent eyes. Her own grew soft and humid 
 under his gaze. They stood thus for a minute, their 
 glances interlocked, intertwined, embracing. The intimacy, 
 at this moment, which existed between them was as strong 
 but far more delicate than if they had indulged in the 
 osculatory exercises in which the highest felicity of young 
 people is supposed to consist. The diffidence, the shyness, 
 the modesty of youth bound them about and held them cap 
 tive to the disembodied blandishment. With a mutual sigh 
 one of those unconscious sighs which seem to cleave the 
 heart their eyes released each other. They became aware 
 again of finite things time : ten-thirty ; place : the lower 
 hall; environment: half a dozen persons in the room 
 beyond. 
 
 "Good-night," said Janet, softly. 
 
 "Good-night, Janet," the boy responded. 
 
 She said "Good-night" once more, without speaking his 
 name. It sounded to him like a consecration or a benedic 
 tion. Then she went upstairs to her room. 
 
 Guido could not sleep. Brain and blood were both 
 hammering furiously, he knew not why. He sought the 
 solitude of the library there to embark upon his first 
 venture into the wilds of literature. 
 
 The library was a large, square room, situated in an 
 extension which had been built to accommodate it. It was 
 quite pretentiously furnished, being, as Mrs. Geddes said, 
 the handsomest room in the house, with the exception of 
 Grossvater Geddes museum-sleeping-sitting-room. Guido 
 had spent far less time here than he anticipated. On the 
 morning after his arrival he had asked Professor Geddes 
 to instruct him in his tasks. 
 
 "Tasks?" The professor had inquired with a mildly 
 innocent air which he affected at times. "Did you say 
 tasks ? My dear lad, rest up for a week, get acclimated, 
 before you speak to me of tasks again." 
 
 A week later Guido had accordingly repeated his request.
 
 YOUTH 327 
 
 "My dear lad, I m not in the mood for work to-day. 
 Are you? If you are, you ll have to go into yonder ad 
 jacent field and dig up tree-stumps. In the country I 
 never work unless I feel like it. We ll start tasks on a 
 rainy day." 
 
 On the first rainy day, which happened along in the 
 second week, Guido again presented himself at the library 
 door. 
 
 "Come in, come in," Professor Geddes cried, as if greet 
 ing a visitor. "What, you came here to work? Work at 
 what? Oh, for me? My dear lad, what a glutton for 
 work you are. This is the first rainy day we ve had, and 
 that s always an event. Do you play chess ? Good ! Let s 
 have a game." 
 
 They played chess until dinner. Then it cleared and 
 the entire family went for a drive. After supper the Pro 
 fessor and Guido again played chess until bedtime. 
 
 Finally, by dint of much diplomacy and tact, Guido had 
 wormed out of the Professor the system in which he 
 wanted his books catalogued. After that Guido put in 
 a couple of hours every day, clandestinely for the greater 
 part, for it was quite impossible to work when the Pro 
 fessor was in the library. He wanted to talk, or to play 
 chess, or to ask questions; sometimes, too, he wanted the 
 library to himself. Morning after morning he bundled 
 Guido off and morning after morning, while Janet was 
 busy about the house helping her mother, Guido and Cecil 
 went strolling through the woods or down the broad high 
 way. They did not always talk on these excursions. 
 There was time for cogitation. It was to further elaborate 
 one of these cogitations that Guido sought the library on 
 the night of Dobronov s arrival. 
 
 It was his first serious effort at a short story. At home 
 he had from time to time covered acres of paper, repre 
 senting literary exercises rather than a concerted effort. 
 To-night a story, complete, rounded, balanced, presented 
 itself to his mind s eye, and he wrote easily, quickly, al 
 most feverishly, whipped on by a subconscious fear that 
 his pen might not keep pace with his thoughts, that his 
 thoughts, impatient of his pen s slow gait, might race ahead 
 and be lost beyond hope of recapture. 
 
 He was in the flush and furore which creative work
 
 328 THE HYPHEN 
 
 imparts. He wrote steadily for three hours, unconscious 
 of time, unconscious of the chill in the room, unconscious 
 of himself. He had almost finished his first story when 
 an apparition at the door challenged his attention. Pro 
 fessor Geddes, clad in a fanciful bathrobe of delft blue 
 and white, regarded the young man sleepily with blinking 
 eyes. 
 
 "If you ve been sitting over those infernal cards until 
 this hour," said Professor Geddes in a voice husky with 
 sleep, "I ve a great mind, sir, to pack you off for home 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Guido passed his hand over his brow and sighed deeply. 
 He could not at once adjust himself to the reality of 
 things. 
 
 "I ve been writing," he stammered, "a short story." 
 
 "Oh, that s all right, then," said the Professor, com 
 pletely mollified. He disappeared through the door to the 
 hall. 
 
 Guido, to his surprise, found himself unable to continue. 
 He was like a patient long ill with a fever after the fever 
 is gone. He felt weak, cold, with a curious sensation of 
 unyielding rigidity at the temples and the base of the 
 brain. He jotted down a sequence of memoranda to guide 
 him in the conclusion of his tale on the morrow. It was 
 all he could do. A feebleness, as of old age, he thought, 
 invaded him and seemed to eat into his very marrow. 
 He was about to rise when the door opened again; the 
 Professor entered carrying a tray. He closed the door 
 softly behind him, and said : 
 
 "I ve made some cocoa and sandwiches. Dobronov s 
 word-pictures of starvation kept me awake and it s hate 
 ful, I know have given me an unusual appetite. Come, 
 let s eat and drink and talk. I m glad you have a taste 
 for writing." 
 
 "I have the taste all right, but I m in doubt as to the 
 talent," said Guido, modestly. "You are more than kind 
 to me, sir/ he added, and he received the cup of cocoa 
 which the Professor handed him. 
 
 "I think," said the Professor, settling himself com 
 fortably in his own particular chair, as for a long talk, 
 "every thinking person has some talent for writing. The 
 great point, in my estimation, is to have the taste for
 
 YOUTH 329 
 
 writing. You are very young to try your hand at the 
 art which is the most complex of all and the most difficult 
 as well, because its medium is not canvas, nor marble, 
 nor bronze, nor harmonics, but the entire gamut of life 
 and humanity." 
 
 "You frighten me, sir," said Guido. 
 
 "I hope not. It is true, I wish to discourage you a 
 little," the Professor continued, smoothly, "so that you 
 may not be too bitterly disappointed if your first story is 
 rejected. You are too young to know life, too young to 
 have formed a theory of life." 
 
 "I think I know life fairly well," Guido replied, with 
 the insouciant assurance of extreme youth. "But, of 
 course, as yet I have no style." 
 
 "Never you mind your style," said the Professor, with 
 unwonted energy. "Don t try to achieve a style. If you 
 do, you ll achieve mannerisms instead. Herbert Spencer s 
 comments on style are the most telling and the soundest 
 I remember. He says that he never gave thought to the 
 matter of style, but concentrated all his efforts upon pro 
 ducing as clear and emphatic a presentation of his thoughts 
 as possible." 
 
 "You spoke of a theory of life," said Guido. "Did you 
 mean, sir, adherence to the idealistic or the realistic con 
 ception of life?" 
 
 "And what may you know about idealism and realism?" 
 Professor Geddes demanded. 
 
 Guido hesitated a moment before replying. 
 
 "You know, sir," he said, "if it s not presumptuous of 
 me to judge, it seems to me that the writers who are 
 realists have set out with the avowed intention of un 
 earthing everything unlovely in human nature. They see 
 the springs of action solely in greed, passion, selfishness, 
 sordidness. When they paint a fine character, like Pere 
 Goriot, they make him out to be something of a fool." 
 
 "And the idealists?" 
 
 "They see motives exclusively as we would like to see 
 them in others and in ourselves, and their characters 
 haven t a selfish thought between them. Excepting the 
 villains, and they are deep-dyed, indeed. But human nature 
 is a blend, is it not?" 
 
 "It undoubtedly is," said the Professor. "Do I under-
 
 330 THE HYPHEN 
 
 stand that you intend to steer a middle course between 
 idealism and realism? To combine them, as it were? If 
 you succeed, you would indeed be doing something worth 
 while. I don t believe it s been done excepting by the 
 greatest of the great Homer, Shakespeare, Meredith." 
 
 "I think others have done it as well," said Guido, speak 
 ing with sudden eagerness. "I mean the Russians, sir. 
 The Russian novelists. They are giants. At first glance 
 their characters all seem a little mad, but I think that is 
 due to the Russian disinclination to comment much upon 
 their characters, as the better English writers do. I ve 
 read a few of Meredith s novels, sir, although I do not 
 pretend to entirely understand them, and Meredith is cer 
 tainly an essayist as well as a novelist. And so are other 
 English novelists George Eliot and Bulwer Lytton, and, 
 oh, all of them. The running commentaries which illumi 
 nate their characters constitute essays in minature. 
 Something like this. Something like the way the Japanese 
 call any one line in which a beautiful thought is couched 
 a poem. I don t know whether I make myself clear." 
 
 "Quite clear," said Professor Geddes. "Pray, con 
 tinue." 
 
 "The Russians rarely do that. You ve got to find out 
 about their characters for yourself. And at first, as I 
 said before they seem a little mad. The truth is they 
 are all intensely human. It s only because their inward 
 ness is so clearly externalized that they seem mad. And 
 there is one quality in the Russian novelists which I have 
 found nowheres else though I confess I get far more 
 enjoyment out of the English writers." 
 
 "And what is that one quality?" Professor Geddes in 
 quired, curiously. 
 
 "I don t think I can explain it." 
 
 "Try." 
 
 "Well, they have such faith in humanity, such a love 
 for humanity. They make you feel that a man who does 
 a bad thing is not necessarily bad. He may be weak, or 
 carried away by anger, or passion, or driven into a corner 
 by circumstances. But you feel there is something good 
 somewheres in his heart. All he needs is another chance 
 to bring it out. It s the same kindliness in withholding 
 judgment that Dobronov showed to-night when he would
 
 YOUTH 331 
 
 not condemn the woman from whose notions of right and 
 wrong his own differ so fundamentally." Guido paused 
 and then softly pronounced "the woman s" name, "Var- 
 vara Alexandrovna." 
 
 "Go on," said Professor Geddes, feeling as he were 
 driving a thoroughbred horse somewhat ruthlessly. 
 
 "And even the characters who are ridiculous or thor 
 oughly depraved well, there s a breath of idealism to 
 soften even them. You feel if the circumstances of their 
 lives had been different, they would have turned out dif 
 ferently, because they are human beings, flesh and blood 
 human beings, and therefore they cannot be utterly bad. 
 I think, sir, that s all." 
 
 "Well," said Professor Geddes, "I can tell you this 
 much, my boy. Your idealism will take care of itself. 
 You will have to meet evil at first hand, face to face, in 
 order that you may believe it. That is just as well. How 
 is it " a new thought had apparently struck the Pro 
 fessor, "that, since you applaud the leniency of the Russian 
 writers, and Dobronov s, too, you do not practice it? You 
 have Dobronov s word for it that the lady, Varvara 
 Alexandrovna, did what we consider wrong actuated solely 
 by the highest possible motives." 
 
 Guido smiled subtly. 
 
 "In the first place," he said, "I m not a Russian. So 
 I cannot be expected to take the Russian view of things, 
 even if I think it very fine." 
 
 "You mean that you take the American view?" 
 
 "I hope so," Guido replied a little unsteadily. He was 
 not quite certain to what he was committing himself. 
 
 "And what may the American view be?" The question 
 which Guido had feared stared him in the face. He pos 
 sessed too much self-reliance, however, to turn tail and fly. 
 
 "It, first of all, stands for self-restraint and poise and 
 tolerance and good-nature. Also the safe-guarding of the 
 rights of the individual." He was now safely launched 
 and found no difficulty in embroidering this theme. "That 
 means, of course, that the individual must respect the 
 rights of other individuals. And we practice a good deal 
 of idealism in many ways but Americans are not fond 
 of the word. Perhaps it is because the idealistic trend 
 in America I think I ought to call it the American habit
 
 332 THE HYPHEN 
 
 of right living and kind thinking makes it comparatively 
 easy for all to lead the right sort of life, that good motives 
 run amuck do not commend themselves to Americans as 
 they do to Russians." 
 
 "I see," said the Professor, "that you have thought to 
 some purpose. And now, do you know what time it is? 
 It is half-past two. You had better go to bed." 
 
 "I want to make a few more notes," Guido begged. 
 
 "Oh, very well. I ll see you re not called in the morn 
 ing." 
 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 Alone once more, Guido returned to his manuscript. 
 But he had now completely lost the thread of his story. 
 He was wretchedly fagged and tired. The broad, leather- 
 covered couch beckoned invitingly. 
 
 "For two minutes only," he thought, pressing chill 
 fingers to a fever-hot brow. He flung himself upon the 
 couch, drawing the cover up over his feet. 
 
 "For two minutes only," he repeated, and fell sound 
 asleep. 
 
 When the Professor entered the library the next morn 
 ing he found that the lamp had gone out in a smother of 
 smoke. But Guido was still sleeping the sleep of the just. 
 
 The Professor tiptoed to the table. The pages of 
 Guide s story lay spread broadcast over the desk and 
 blotter. Carefully gathering them together, the Professor 
 carried them to the window. 
 
 He laid down the manuscript a half -hour later with a 
 startled look in his eyes. He had expected to find the 
 usual strained effervescence of a first effort. Instead he 
 had found a little gem, pitched in the lyric key, and pulsing 
 throughout with a virility of thought and tenderness of 
 sentiment which would have done credit to a veteran 
 litterateur. 
 
 Oddly enough his thoughts assumed a personal tinge. 
 
 "I hope," he thought, "I hope this boy will love Janet. 
 Yes, I hope it. He is worthy of her." 
 
 Guido stirred. The Professor turned toward the couch 
 and saw fluttering eyelids, stretching arms and hands 
 fumbling blindly in midair. 
 
 "What time is it?" Guido demanded, sitting bolt up 
 right. "I believe I ve slept here all night."
 
 YOUTH 333 
 
 "I m sure you have," said the Professor. "It s long 
 past ten o clock." 
 
 "I must change my clothes and have a bath," said Guido, 
 stifling a yawn. "Heavens, how tired I am! Oh, sir, 
 have you read my story?" 
 
 "Yes, I ve read it." 
 
 "And you think it rot? You do. I see it in your face." 
 
 "My dear boy, you see nothing of the sort. I do not 
 think it rot. It rather took my breath away. It s really 
 superlatively good. I withdraw my words of last night. 
 By all means, write, and begin at once, and expect to do 
 well. You have genius, my young friend." 
 
 Guido grew red and white in quick succession. 
 
 "Oh, Professor Geddes," he cried, "oh, sir, you are 
 partial to me." And he staggered off to his bath. 
 
 The Professor s praise had a curious effect on Guido. 
 He had a fair modicum of both the overweening conceit 
 and the shattering diffidence of youth and the two passions 
 waged continual conflict in his heart. To silence conceit, 
 which was inclined to become obstreperous after the glow 
 ing tribute which Professor Geddes had paid him, Guido 
 requisitioned diffidence, a trick by which he hoped to 
 maintain his spiritual balance of power. But he played 
 up his diffidence too strongly and became its prey. His 
 ambition experienced a horrid slump. Mere chance, no 
 doubt, had made him acquit himself "superlatively" well 
 the previous evening. Since he had done well once, he 
 would odd logic never put pen to paper again for fear 
 of making a consummate ass of himself the next time. It 
 was doubtful even whether he would be able to complete 
 the miserable little story which he had begun the previous 
 evening.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE newspaper cart from Three Corners passed "Wald- 
 "heim" at eleven o clock on Sunday mornings. When 
 Guido descended to the porch a little after eleven, re 
 freshed and invigorated by his bath, he found Dr. Koenig 
 and Grossvater Geddes reading different sections of a 
 German paper; Cecil was immersed in "The Times"; Pro 
 fessor Geddes was browsing over the book reviews of the 
 same journal. Janet and Dobronov sat on the steps of 
 the porch, talking. 
 
 Janet, when she saw Guido, sprang to her feet. 
 
 "Play tennis?" she asked. 
 
 "No thanks, not on an empty stomach." 
 
 "Wouldn t Maggie give you something to eat?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. But I didn t wish to spoil my appetite for 
 your mother s Sunday dinner. I m not like Dobronov." 
 
 Dobronov smiled good-naturedly. 
 
 "Father says you were up all night writing. What did 
 you do that for?" Janet continued. 
 
 "I did it for the reason most people do most things. 
 Because I could not help myself." 
 
 "I do not think that a very good reason," said Janet. 
 "I call it a lazy reason." 
 
 "Why lazy?" 1 
 
 "Because it required no thinking to produce." 
 
 "But if it is the real reason?" 
 
 "Then it s a weak reason instead of a lazy one." 
 
 "Well, I ll agree to let it go at that. It s the true reason. 
 Therefore a weak reason. Weak reasons befit weak 
 persons. And I m very weak just now from hunger." 
 
 From which it will be seen that Guido had learned to 
 accommodate himself to Janet s half-mischievous, half- 
 whimsical manner of give and take conversation. Dobronov, 
 entirely destitute of humor as he was, looked amazed at 
 this sort of rough and tumble pleasantry. 
 
 334
 
 YOUTH 335 
 
 Mrs. Geddes appeared at the threshold just then, and 
 Janet exclaimed: 
 
 "Well, Guido, here s mother come to tell us dinner is 
 ready and to save your life. Mother, is dinner ready?" 
 
 "It is. And Guido shall have the first helping of every 
 thing because he had no breakfast. Come, my lad." 
 
 Guido sprang to Mrs. Geddes side with exaggerated 
 alacrity, made her a magnificent bow and offered her his 
 arm. Falling in with the boy s humor, she accepted his 
 arm, after dropping him an old-fashioned curtsey. They 
 walked off together laughing and talking. The rest fol 
 lowed more slowly. 
 
 Janet s eyes followed Guide s adoringly. This young 
 lady had many curious little ways with her. She had been 
 candor itself in avowing her infatuation for Guido to her 
 father. Later, seized with excoriating qualms of maiden 
 modesty, she had recanted. Now, becoming aware sud 
 denly that the plain truth of the situation as far as she 
 was concerned was writ upon every lineament of her 
 adorable little face, she essayed to outface things in her 
 usual gallant-curtle-ax-upon-my-thigh manner. So, when 
 they reached the dining-room, she cried, gayly, mockingly: 
 
 "Guido, did you know that the plumes of your hat 
 swept the ground when you bowed to mother?" 
 
 Guido laughed. Cecil appeared bored. Dobronov looked 
 bewildered and the Professor was frankly amused. 
 
 "You must not take Miss Geddes words literally, Do 
 bronov," said Guido, and added, thereby augmenting 
 Dobronov s confusion: 
 
 "She did not mean a real hat or real plumes, but re 
 ferred to the shadow plumes of the dream hat about which 
 I was writing last night." 
 
 Janet was slightly disconcerted. She could not always 
 put Guido at a disadvantage. But I think she did not 
 very much care, for our young lady was so many fathoms 
 deep in love that she gloried in each and every victory of 
 our hero, even when it was won at her own expense. 
 
 "Guido," she asked, presently, a little less fortissimo, 
 "did you really write that sort of a story?" 
 
 "What sort of a story?" Guido asked, with a very fair 
 imitation of the Professor s manner when under fire of 
 Janet s inquisitorial guns.
 
 336 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "About plumed hats, and lace ruffles and all the frills 
 and fancies men used to wear in King Charles day?" 
 
 "No," said Guido, quite seriously, "I did not sit up 
 half the night to write a tract on the millinery which the 
 Cavaliers of King Charles court used to parade. That s 
 more in Eddie Erdman s line." 
 
 "I must tell you, sir," Janet blazed out, "that it is very 
 horrid of you to answer me like that. You are laughing 
 at me." 
 
 "Am I though?" Guido retorted. "Truly now, I thought 
 I was merely keeping you from laughing at me." 
 
 "You ve met your match, Janet," Cecil sang out, and 
 Janet gave Cecil a look of superb disdain. Then she said : 
 
 "Look here, Guido, you really might be decent and tell 
 what you were writing about." 
 
 "Men and women, chiefly." 
 
 "That s obvious." 
 
 "Why then the question ?" 
 
 "Is the story humorous? Pathetic? Witty? Adven 
 turesome ?" 
 
 "Perhaps it s like the players in Hamlet tragical- 
 comical-historical-pastoral." 
 
 "Ah!" Janet s exclamation was replete with disgust. 
 
 They bandied words a little longer. Would he let her 
 see the story? What? Not good enough? Absurd. If 
 it wasn t good enough to read, how could he hope to sell 
 it? He didn t intend to sell it? Well, all she could say 
 was that a writer who thought himself above healthy criti 
 cism and normal competition was a a a a 
 
 "A what?" Guido inquired. He was intensely amused. 
 But his amusement faded away quite suddently, for there 
 was a look of blind pain in the girl s eyes that wrung his 
 soul into swift contrition. 
 
 "Of course I ll be glad to have you read the story if 
 you really think it worth your time," he said, gallantly. 
 
 "It was worth your time, wasn t it?" Janet demanded, 
 sharply. But she was now entirely appeased, as he could 
 see. 
 
 "It was well worth his time, Janet," said the Professor, 
 "well worth his time." 
 
 Janet and Guido looked at each other. In their eyes was 
 the candid admiration of two opposing knights after a
 
 YOUTH 337 
 
 gallantly fought tilting match. The pain had completely 
 died out of her eyes. Quite a different emotion was mir 
 rored there now. What he saw made Guido catch his 
 breath. His own eyes responded to hers and then, unac 
 countably, a swift, engulfing shyness of each other and the 
 subject smote them into silence. Nor did Janet ask Guido 
 for the story again nor did he offer it to her. Guide s 
 first-born was not referred to again. He completed it and 
 then suffered it to languish in the dusty gloom of the 
 string-and-nail drawer of the Professor s desk. 
 
 "Uncle Ned," said Cecil, "did you see that the papers 
 are renewing the European War specter this morning? 
 They buried it in an inside page among a lot of local news 
 items of no consequence whatever." 
 
 "I didn t happen to notice the item you speak of," said 
 Professor Geddes, "but I did see that Germany is trying 
 to lay down the law to us. She has notified us that ex 
 clusive American control of the Haitian customs will not 
 be agreeable to the Imperial German government. An 
 American warship, with seven hundred marines on board, 
 has been ordered down to Port au Prince." 
 
 "Then," said Cecil decisively, "that may drag you into 
 the European War." 
 
 "The European War?" Guido demanded, in surprise. 
 "What are you talking about, Cecil?" 
 
 "The General War which is coming," Cecil replied, 
 briefly. 
 
 "How do you know that a war is coming?" 
 
 "Oh, everybody in Europe knows it is coming," Cecil 
 replied. "I remember as a little chap of ten hearing my 
 father and uncle argue about it by the hour." 
 
 "I also heard it discussed when I was abroad," Pro 
 fessor Geddes remarked, thoughtfully. 
 
 "But why should there be a war at this time?" Guido 
 inquired. 
 
 "Because of the Serajevo murder," said Cecil. "Any 
 old thing is good enough to serve as a pretext, you know." 
 
 "I don t understand at all," said Guido. "Nations don t 
 go to war now-a-days, do they, unless they have a good 
 reason ?" 
 
 "You mustn t judge European affairs and the European
 
 338 THE HYPHEN 
 
 way of doing things by the American viewpoint," said 
 Cecil, evasively. 
 
 "Yes but you speak of a pretext, and everybody know 
 ing that a war is coming, and what does it all mean?" 
 
 "Well, because, I beg your pardon, sir !" The apology 
 was anticipatory and was addressed to Grossvater Geddes 
 and to Dr. Koenig. "We in England think that Germany 
 has got it in for us at least that s what some people in 
 England think." 
 
 "But why should Germany wish to harm England?" 
 Grossvater Geddes asked, genuinely surprised. "Germany 
 has become so rich and strong in the last two decades." 
 
 "Sometimes a man who becomes rich and strong over 
 night develops an insatiable greed and a hatred of everyone 
 who stands in his way," Cecil said, a little reluctantly. It 
 was plain that he feared to give offense to the old Ger- 
 manophile. "Germany would have gone to war at the 
 time of the Morocco incident, I have heard my English 
 cousins say, if there had not been so much money owing 
 Germany from England. Germany was loth to forfeit that 
 money, and she backed down. But now the situation is 
 reversed. Germany owes England money, not England 
 Germany." 
 
 "What a lot Cecil knows about European affairs," Guido 
 thought a little enviously. 
 
 "But that was a long time ago," said Grossvater Geddes 
 amiably, "and there has been no quarrel since." 
 
 Cecil did not reply, and Professor Geddes said: 
 
 "Speak up, Cecil. This is Liberty Hall. Each man has 
 a right to his own opinion." 
 
 "Well, Uncle Ned, it s this way. You know England 
 has offered time and again not to increase her fleet if 
 Germany will only promise to do the same. Germany 
 invariably declines to bind herself by a promise." 
 
 "Why should she?" Grossvater Geddes remarked. "The 
 German fleet is still much smaller than the English?" 
 
 "Nor need it be as large," Cecil rejoined. "The British 
 Empire is distributed over the face of the earth. The high 
 seas are the arteries of commerce, our merchantmen are 
 the blood that gives them life, and our fleet protects that 
 life." 
 
 "Germany has colonies, too."
 
 YOUTH 339 
 
 "Not to compare with England s, sir ! Not at the present 
 time. What her intentions may be in the future no honest 
 man cares to think about. Why, sir, it s like this. The 
 German army is much finer and larger and better than 
 the English. Germany needs an army, she says. Does it 
 worry us? Not tuppence, sir. Why should it? It s none 
 of our business. It s none of our business any more than 
 the superiority of our fleet is Germany s. But Germany, 
 sir, would have cause for concern and the right to ask 
 questions if we in England suddenly aimed to build up 
 an army as big and as fine as the German, or bigger and 
 finer. And you must not forget, sir, that the German 
 Emperor, upon one historic occasion said that Germany s 
 future lies upon the water. What does that mean, sir?" 
 
 "Then England hates Germany?" 
 
 "By no means. We admire many of her institutions. 
 We are willing, nay, eager to be friends. If we hated 
 Germany, sir, would we have ceded the northern Gibraltar, 
 Heligoland, I mean, to her little over a decade ago in return 
 for an African island of commercial importance but of 
 strategic insignificance ?" 
 
 "But what good would Heligoland have done England?" 
 Grossvater Geddes fenced. "Any attempt on Britain s part 
 to fortify it would have aroused Germany s instant hos 
 tility." 
 
 "Of course. But British ownership would have precluded 
 German fortifications ; would have given us, you know, a 
 sort of geographical hostage for Germany s good behavior." 
 
 "I think you British are imagining things," said Gross 
 vater Geddes, placidly. "My dear," this to his daughter- 
 in-law, "how delicious this chicken is." 
 
 Dobronov sat staring at his plate, heaped high with 
 chicken, creamed potatoes, rich brown gravy, spinach and 
 apple jelly in something like consternation. Mrs. Geddes 
 who had been aware of his quandary for some time, said 
 in the most matter-of-fact tone: 
 
 "Mr. Dobronov I am so sorry it was quite impossible 
 at dinner-time to prepare you a special dish of cereal 
 we ll be glad to do so to-night, if you really object to our 
 way of living, although I assure you, since we keep 
 chickens and have a vegetable garden, this dinner costs us 
 next to nothing. Cereals, of course, we must buy."
 
 340 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Dobronov colored furiously. It was the first time Guido 
 had seem him show signs of being a social human being 
 and not merely an embodied human soul. It amused Guido 
 vastly to see how the breeding of the man of birth triumphed 
 over the snobbery of the religious fanatic. 
 
 "I beg of you not to inconvenience yourself, Mrs. 
 Geddes," Dobronov said. "I shall enjoy this dinner enor 
 mously, I know, and future dinners and suppers as well." 
 
 Guido, regarding Mrs. Geddes, reflected that much as he 
 had admired that lady s social tact and manner in the 
 past, he had woefully underrated her psychological re 
 sources. 
 
 The papers the next morning contained the astonishing 
 news that Austria was ready to invade Serbia. 
 
 "But don t they serve notice on each other in Europe 
 before they go to war?" Guido inquired. 
 
 Cecil and Professor Geddes laughed. 
 
 "Oh, of course, they declare war formally some time 
 or other," Cecil replied, "but not necessarily before striking 
 the first blow." 
 
 "But " said Guido, and relapsed into silence. He 
 
 was unable to formulate his objection. It was diffuse, 
 general, unspecific, and it was directed against the crown 
 ing idiocy of the European scheme of things. 
 
 By the following Saturday the papers had emerged so 
 far from their lethargy of indifference as to play up big 
 the news that a general European war seemed imminent, 
 although the papers still expressed the hope that the Czar 
 would avert the disaster by keeping out of the mix-up 
 between Austria and Serbia. 
 
 On Sunday there was no delivery of mail, and the news 
 paper cart was not due before eleven. When the house 
 assembled for nine-o clock breakfast consisting of inch-deep 
 omelette souffle with home-made jam, and biscuits with 
 sweet butter, and flap-jacks with maple syrup and cracked 
 wheat with double cream, Cecil was missing. Maggie, on 
 being interrogated, explained that Master Cecil had taken 
 the car and gone down to the village to meet the newspaper 
 train. 
 
 "On an empty stomach?" inquired the Professor. 
 
 "Oh, no, sir !" Maggie was quite offended. "Of course
 
 YOUTH 341 
 
 I made him some coffee and toast, and I fried him a 
 rasher of bacon and some potatoes." 
 
 "He ll be ready for more breakfast when he gets back," 
 said Mrs. Geddes. 
 
 "Yes, mum," said Maggie. "It s what meself has been 
 thinking. I ve kept him some biscuit dough, mum, and I ll 
 have some hot flapjacks for him, too." 
 
 Cecil came in just as the family was beginning on the 
 third pan of biscuits and the fourth glass of apple-jelly. 
 He waved the "Times" tragically. 
 
 "It s come, Uncle Ned," he said, "the War has arrived." 
 
 "Not " Professor Geddes ejaculated. He laid down 
 
 the morsel of biscuit and jelly which had been in transit 
 from plate to mouth and looked concerned or tried 
 to. The charge of gluttony could not be laid to his door, 
 but he shared the amiable failing inhering in most gentle 
 men of sedentary pursuits he thoroughly enjoyed the 
 pleasures of the table. So that it was not an entirely easy 
 matter in the midst of Sunday morning s gustatory ex 
 ercises, with gastronomic pleasure before and after, to look 
 terribly upset and startled, particularly as, to the American 
 mind, the prospect of a general war did not seem in the 
 least plausible. 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Cecil, "Austria s gone and done it. She s 
 broken off diplomatic relations with Serbia." 
 
 "Ah, if that is all !" Professor Geddes salvaged the 
 neglected morsel of buscuit from his plate and conveyed 
 it to his mouth with a semi-guilty air. 
 
 "Of course," Cecil continued, seating himself and help 
 ing himself to three biscuits, "of course, Austria meant to 
 do this from the start. That forty-eight-hour ultimatum 
 to Serbia made Austria s intentions clear, I should think." 
 
 "What I cannot understand," said Guido, "is why all 
 this should happen now. The Serbian crime happened at 
 least three weeks ago, didn t it?" 
 
 "On June 28th," said Cecil, briefly, again exciting Guido s 
 admiration and envy by his precise knowledge. 
 
 "Then, why didn t Austria act at once ?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "That s just it, of course!" Cecil exclaimed, excitedly, 
 in his preoccupation talking with a full mouth. "She s 
 been hatching mischief betwixt times." 
 
 "Wouldn t it be more charitable to suppose that she s been
 
 342 THE HYPHEN 
 
 investigating matters in the meantime," Grossvater Geddes 
 suggested, blandly, and Dr. Koenig grunted assent in this 
 view. 
 
 "But," said Guido, beginning with his favorite con 
 nective of protest, "but if it took Austria a full month 
 to investigate matters, and to think them over, why didn t 
 she give Serbia more time than one-fifteenth of a month 
 to do her investigating and thinking over." 
 
 "Well," said Professor Geddes, "let s forget about 
 Europe for a while and thank Heaven we are in America, 
 where the murder of one or two or a dozen persons, no 
 matter how high they stand in the public esteem, cannot 
 plunge a nation into war." 
 
 After that Europe very quickly became incomprehensible 
 and unintelligible to American ideas. Everybody seemed 
 to be threatening everybody else with war, and everybody s 
 business had become everybody else s. Germany threatened 
 Russia and Russia threatened Germany. Austria invaded 
 Serbian territory; London continued to work strenuously 
 for peace. It was an imbroglio utterly beyond the com 
 prehension of the normal American mind, uninitiated in 
 and uncontaminated by European political aspirations, 
 conventions and suspicions. Finally, by end of the week, 
 the situation had become so far clarified that one circum 
 stance stood old boldly. THE PEACE OF EUROPE 
 WAS IN THE KAISER S HANDS ! 
 
 Guide s heart pulsed more quickly, and, truth to tell, 
 pulsed more proudly. From a boy he had, as we know, 
 entertained a profound admiration for the Kaiser. This 
 Hohenzollern, he thought, was different from those early 
 predecessors, the Grand Elector, Frederick the Great, 
 Frederick s brutish and brutal father, even William the 
 First, who had declined into a mere tool in the able but 
 evil hands of Bismarck. This Hohenzollern, Guido thought, 
 was much like his father, that noble scion of an evil stock 
 who, had he lived, would have introduced parliamentary 
 reforms in Germany and made Germans a politically free 
 people with the privileges and responsibilities of freemen. 
 
 Guido was proud quite inordinately, ridiculously proud 
 of his Kaiser for just two days. Then, on August ist, 
 came the final thunderclap: 
 
 "A fateful hour has fallen. Envious peoples everywhere
 
 YOUTH 343 
 
 are compelling us to our just defense. The sword is forced 
 into our hands " 
 
 So said William, so soon to brand himself as "The 
 Damned" by his ruthlessness, his hypocrisy, his general 
 policy of sustained and deliberate cruelty. 
 
 Thus read the astonished boy thus read an astonished 
 world. Cecil grunted comprehendingly. 
 
 "I say, Guy," he said, "don t ask me any questions at 
 the table now, will you? I don t want to hurt Grossvater 
 Geddes feelings, but that Kaiser, you know, he s a rotter." 
 
 Cecil then thrust his hands into his pockets and whistling 
 merrily went off for one of his long hikes without asking 
 Guido to come with him. 
 
 That was well. For Guido was angry, very, very angry 
 and indignant with his beloved Cecil. Hero-worship is as 
 indispensable to the adolescent mind as walking is to the 
 growing body. Guido had been unfortunate in his choice 
 of a living hero for defunct heroes must be supplemented 
 by those who still draw breath that was all. 
 
 But, although angry, Guido was not nearly as angry as 
 he was trying to make himself believe at least not with 
 Cecil. 
 
 For there had come over him during the last days a 
 great and salient change. He had been assailed by grave 
 doubts. Discrepancies, overlooked in the first flush of 
 amazement which enwrapped a world that had suddenly 
 committed itself to insanity, had grilled and harrowed him. 
 Slowly, gradually, there was beginning to dawn upon him 
 the truth. William, whom he would fain have absolved, 
 was unabsolvable whether he was the chief instigator of 
 this Crime of Crimes; as Cecil seemed to think or, like 
 the grandfather whose name he bore, merely the catspaw 
 of men far more clever, more ambitious and more un 
 scrupulous than himself. 
 
 The anger and indignation directed against Cecil, there 
 fore, was the last feeble barricade behind which his ancient 
 faith was entrenching itself. But the crumbling process 
 had begun. Guido would make a few more defensive state 
 ments, half -believing them, half-expecting them to be con 
 troverted, and avid all the while for valid information that 
 would shed light on the motives, the origin, the inception 
 of the Ghoulish Crime. Then, quite suddently, it was writ-
 
 344 THE HYPHEN 
 
 ten that his faith in William should be splintered into mere 
 slivers and he should be harrowed by the wormwood 
 anguish which befalls those who have given faith the 
 holiest and most generous gift which lies within the juris 
 diction of the human heart where faith is not due. 
 
 Guido was still fuming and spluttering about the veranda 
 in his futile efforts to underprop and save his decaying 
 faith when Dr. Koenig appeared with a face like a thunder 
 cloud. 
 
 "I m going home on the early afternoon train," he said. 
 "I don t want to quarrel with my old friend again. I 
 almost quarrelled with him just now. And don t ask fool 
 questions at dinner." 
 
 "And do you, too, blame the Kaiser?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "Blame him? Good Lord. I admit I was taken in by 
 his superb pose for a few days. Bah! Why doesn t all 
 Europe follow our example? A bad lot. Curse em all. 
 May their heads topple off with their crowns!" 
 
 Still Guido clung to the last vestige of his tottering faith. 
 
 "Didn t the Kaiser try to maintain peace?" he asked, 
 feebly. 
 
 This was the last straw for Dr. Koenig. He began tramp 
 ing wildly up and down the veranda, roaring out disjointed 
 sentences as he tramped. 
 
 "The Kaiser tried to maintain peace, did he?" he 
 shouted. "Tried ! Hear him, ye powers that reign above, 
 hear him ! Oh, oracular Synthesis ! Is this then the goal ? 
 Ha, only the Great Potter, if Potter there be and not 
 merely Pot, may experiment in human clay. Pan pipes, 
 Bias reigns supreme and Error stalks the earth. Troy 
 was sacked for lesser sacrilege than this." 
 
 Guido had never seen the old physician in such a state 
 of wild abandon. He could not guess what had excited 
 him so terribly. The lad knew his Greek mythology very 
 well, but he had never heard of a god or goddess by 
 the name of Bias nor of an oracle called Synthesis. He 
 was seized with a horrid fear that Dr. Koenig had gone 
 suddenly insane. He said, soothingly: 
 
 "I dare say he didn t try hard enough." 
 
 This concession, far from calming Dr. Koenig, seemed 
 to vex him still more. He made as if to speak, then shut his
 
 YOUTH 345 
 
 mouth with a snap, and finally, after vociferating a furious 
 "Bah!" strode into the house. 
 
 A few minutes later Dobronov appeared, grip in hand. 
 
 "I thought you had accepted Mrs. Geddes invitation to 
 stay another week?" Guido questioned him in surprise. 
 
 "So I did," Dobronov replied. There was a wild look 
 in his eyes and his face was haggard, "but the War, of 
 course, was not to be foreseen. Important business takes 
 me back to New York." 
 
 "Sergius Ivanovich," said Guido, "you are a European 
 and you must understand European affairs better than I 
 do. Tell me, explain to me, what is it all about? Surely, 
 all the great powers, England, France, Russia, Austria, 
 Germany aren t going to war because one poor crazed fool 
 threw a bomb and killed an archduke and his morganatic 
 wife!" 
 
 Guido spoke with desperate intensity. He spoke to give 
 vent to his indignant bewilderment rather than because 
 he hoped to elicit any illuminating information from 
 Dobronov, who, he believed, had strayed too far from the 
 beaten tracks of human action and thought to take a con 
 ventional view of any purely worldly matter. 
 
 "I will tell you what is at the bottom of the whole 
 thing," Dobronov replied. "I can explain the entire situa 
 tion to you in a monosyllable. Fear! Everybody in 
 Europe is afraid of everybody else and that is the truth. 
 Russia is afraid that Austria will subjugate and annex 
 Serbia. She is afraid also that Germany will help Austria 
 and become the dominant factor in Europe. Germany 
 suffers from chronic Russophobia, which of course is in 
 tensified a hundredfold at the moment. And Germany is 
 always in mortal terror of England. France she fears as 
 a matter of habit and France fears Germany because Ger 
 many is her historical foe. Now it is a psychological 
 truism that when a man is badly frightened he will keep 
 quiet for a certain length of time only. If his fear is 
 prolonged beyond a given point of time, his nervous ten 
 sion Becomes so great that, automatically, it translates it 
 self into action. There, in a nutshell, you have the Euro 
 pean situation, for what is true of fear in the individual 
 is also true of national fear, and, when fear is held in 
 common by a large number of human units, it assumes
 
 346 THE HYPHEN 
 
 proportions and acquires a momentum which the fear of 
 one individual can of course never achieve." 
 
 Guido stared in astonishment at Dobronov. At last 
 Sergius Ivanovich had said something eminently sensible. 
 
 Dobronov continued : 
 
 "I do not wish you to believe," he said, "that I have 
 arrived at this solution of the European problem unaided. 
 I have been prepared to understand these events during 
 the past six months. I might as well tell you I have all 
 but decided to embrace Christian Science." 
 
 "What?" Guido exclaimed. "The last time I saw you 
 you were going to join the Unitarian or the Universalist 
 Church I forget which." 
 
 "Either or both," the amazing Dobronov replied. "I ve 
 changed my mind since. Neither faith satisfies me. Both 
 cramp the spirit. The Universalists build their schedule 
 of belief about a commonplace, a self-evident phase of 
 Christianity. I don t believe there is anywheres to-day 
 an intelligent Christian who believes in perpetual damna 
 tion. Then why use the obvious as a nucleus for a faith? 
 The Unitarians go to the other extreme. They affirm 
 something which cannot be affirmed any more than its re 
 verse can be affirmed. Who so presumptuous as to decide 
 whether or not Jesus was divine? Say he wasn t, using 
 the word in the usual sense. Still, human perfection 
 carried to his point spells divinity. It is undignified to 
 cavil about this point. It is worse than that it is ir 
 reverent." 
 
 "In time," said Guido, "you will discover something to 
 make you disavow your faith in Christian Science." 
 
 "Never! They are unequivocally right in their belief 
 that God. is Truth, that nothing exists but Truth, that sick 
 ness and sin and sorrow are carnal thought objectified 
 evil imaginings as they were. They are absolutely right in 
 proscribing fear it is at the bottom of all earthly ills. 
 Their teachings have made me understand the reason why 
 I like and respect Dmitri Stepanovich, although I disagree 
 entirely with his teachings and with his activity. But both 
 he and his cousin, Varvara Alexandrovna, do not know the 
 meaning of fear. And that brings me to the matter which 
 forces me to leave so abruptly. Can I trust you?" 
 
 Guido assured him that he could, realizing, with a sink-
 
 YOUTH 347 
 
 ing of the heart that Dobronov was about to forsake the 
 high road of sanity for one of those devious blind alleys 
 into which, sooner or later, he seemed always to stray. 
 
 Dobronov invited Guido to follow him to the hat and 
 coat room, probably because it was the only room on the 
 lower floor which boasted of doors. Having closed these, 
 he seated himself on a settee and motioned to Guido to 
 do likewise. Guido had a fascinated sense of being en 
 gaged in some dark conspiracy. 
 
 Having taken these precautions to obtain privacy, Do 
 bronov told his story in a hushed voice. 
 
 "You know," he said, "that I am a believer in the Doc 
 trine of Non-Resistance. Dmitri Stepanovich, while a man 
 of peace and a detestor of war, believes that force, at 
 times, is justifiable. All this you of course comprehend. 
 What follows? As a Non-Resister, self-evidently, I believe 
 that all men should do as they please. I do not believe 
 in punishment or in imprisonment. If Vasalov s conscience 
 tells him he must resist evil, that is no reason why I should 
 change my mind and say that Evil should resist him for 
 resisting itself by imprisoning or exiling him. Do you 
 follow me?" 
 
 "Yes," said Guido. He thought: "Poor old Dob has 
 gone stark raving mad. If the War does this to us, who 
 are safe on this side of the Atlantic, what spiritual and 
 mental havoc must it bring to the poor humans in Europe !" 
 
 Dobronov continued: 
 
 "Now, since Evil does not really exist, Vasalov, in 
 throwing his bombs, really does nothing wrong. Ap 
 parently, however, he does. It is plain, moreover, that of 
 the War really comes off, a terrible amount of wrong 
 thinking will be objectified and cross the wires of truth and 
 obscure divine mind. Do you follow me?" 
 
 "I do," said Guido, weakly. 
 
 "Well, then, if Vasalov, by throwing half a dozen of his 
 death-dealing bombs, which, in truth, do not exist at all, 
 can prevent all this mass of carnal thought from being 
 unloaded upon the world, is it right that he should go 
 ahead and do it, or should he not? Because I who am a 
 Non-Resister, happen to have thought the matter out, is it 
 for me to keep the light from poor Vasalov who, since 
 he believes that he does right in throwing bombs, does
 
 34 8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 no wrong, and wouldn t do wrong even if the bombs were 
 actual things, which, of course, they are not, being mere 
 figments of carnal imagination? In brief, if a small dosage 
 of evil belief can prevent an enormous flood of carnal 
 mind from engulfing the world, who am I to stay the hand 
 Vasalov s hand which can guide the evil which is to act 
 medicinally upon the world?" 
 
 Guido sat back and stared. Just stared. 
 
 Dobronov, with a look toward door and windows, con 
 tinued : 
 
 "I will be brief. Vasalov s organization has branches 
 everywhere. Now, Russia, England and France are Allies. 
 If Russia fights, defensively, England and France will 
 fight, being bound by treaty to do so. What are they fighting 
 about? Ostensibly because a Serbian lunatic murdered an 
 Austrian fool. Now if only I can get Vasalov to see 
 my point if he arranegs to have an Englishman blow off 
 the head of the French President, to have a Frenchman 
 blow off the head of the Russian Czar, to have a Russian 
 do the same for King George, leaving the Kaiser to be 
 dispatched by an Austrian don t you see what is bound 
 to happen? Russia, England and France would have to 
 fight each other, and so would Austria and Germany. But, 
 as the powers on both sides are bound by treaty to help 
 each other against a common foe, you will perceive what 
 a hopeless situation would arise. Armageddon would 
 checkmate itself and come to nought. Well, what do you 
 think of my plan?" 
 
 "I think," said Guido, faintly, "you had better see 
 Vasalov about it." Arguments, as he knew, were of no 
 avail when Dobrnov was in the grip of a new, self-evolved 
 idea. The idea, like a sickness, must run its course. 
 
 Dinner was a gloomy affair that day. Dobronov and 
 Dr. Koenig ate their meal hurriedly, the Professor, who 
 had promised to drive them down to Three Corners him 
 self, assuring them repeatedly that there was not the least 
 necessity for haste. Dobronov had so far succumbed to 
 the usages of polite society, that sooner than put his 
 hostess to the inconvenience of having an early dinner pre 
 pared for him, he had consented to travel by car down the 
 mountain which he had laboriously ascended on foot a 
 week earlier.
 
 YOUTH 349 
 
 Dr. Koenig refused to shake hands with Guido. He 
 fairly bristled when the boy approached him. 
 
 "I am disappointed in you," he said, coldly. 
 
 Grossvater Geddes made an unfortunate remark. 
 
 "By and by you will see, Koenig," he said, "that Ger 
 many is not so much to blame as you now think. I have 
 been looking over the papers of the last week and the 
 Kaiser expressly says that the sword was forced upon 
 him, that the war, as far as Germany is concerned, is a 
 purely defensive war." 
 
 Dr. Koenig already had one foot on the step of the 
 automobile. He withdrew it. He faced Grossvater Geddes 
 and tried to speak, but succeeded in producing no sound. 
 His face was terrible to behold. Livid at first, it suddenly 
 turned purple, and his eyes bulged angrily from his head. 
 Finally he regained his power of speech. 
 
 "I m ashamed of you, Geddes," he cried. "You, you, 
 of all men! To quote a Hohenzollern. To quote this 
 Kaiser with the blighted arm and the withered heart as 
 if he were worth quoting!" Like an avalanche the old 
 physician s angry oration rolled on. Had Grossvater 
 Geddes forgotten the Year Forty-eight? Had he forgotten 
 his lovely young sister who died from the effects of her 
 dreadful midwinter flight from Berlin? Had he forgotten 
 how this wretch s grandfather had robbed him and his 
 under the polite term of confiscation of all his personal 
 effects, of all the wonderful old plate and jewelry and 
 porcelains and paintings and laces which had been the 
 treasured heirlooms of centuries? And he pointed with 
 scorn unutterable to the pride which his old friend took 
 in his room and in what it contained. What did those 
 possessions amount to? They were merest shard, saved 
 for him by friends who had secretly removed these much- 
 prized relics from his mansion after the King had thrust 
 the Geddes family into the street, but before the royal 
 robber could send his hirelings to gather in his plunder. 
 
 "Have you forgotten all this?" the old physician cried. 
 "I have not. Ah, I never thought to see any Achtund- 
 vierziger play the turn-coat and admire and believe in one 
 of that accursed litter, that breed of leeches and parasites, 
 and branded, all of them in some way, like Cain, like
 
 350 THE HYPHEN 
 
 mavericks, and reigning not by right divine God! the 
 impious impudence of that but by abetment of the Devil !" 
 
 The old man s denunciatory powers, of which he had 
 given such a pyrotechnical display, left his listeners mute 
 and shaken. Dr. Koenig himself, now his passion had 
 spent itself, looked crumpled and old. 
 
 "I am not a vindictive man," Grossvater Geddes replied, 
 in his mild, meek way. "Far be it from me to hate or 
 mistrust this man because his forebear persecuted me." 
 
 "It s in the blood, it s in the blood," Dr. Koenig cried. 
 "They re a venomous brood. The Hohenzollern record 
 for plunder, pillage, and robbery is quite without parallel." 
 
 "Germany has flourished very nicely under the three last 
 representatives of this line of plunderers, pillagers and 
 robbers," Grossvater Geddes resorted, smiling syly. 
 
 "Good Lord !" Dr. Koenig exclaimed. "Ah, you are hope 
 less, Geddes, you are hopeless." 
 
 Mrs. Geddes and the Professor exchanged a quick look. 
 The Professor, watch in hand, was becoming restive. 
 
 "Grossvater," said Mrs. Geddes, laying her hand on the 
 old man s sleeve, "if you persist in quarreling with our 
 guest, you will make him miss his train." 
 
 "God forbid," said Grossvater Geddes. "Good-bye, 
 Koenig. When we meet again, may we be of one mind." 
 
 Dr. Koenig grunted an unintelligible something and got 
 into the car where Dobronov was already ensconced. All 
 the paraphernalia of Vasalov s magic lantern was stowed 
 at their feet. The Professor climbed in and started the 
 car. Everybody cried, "Good-bye," and the Kaiser-hater 
 and the Non-Resister of Evil were gone to no uneventful 
 afternoon, thought those who remained behind. 
 
 Janet said, wickedly: 
 
 "Mother, do you think Sergius Ivanovich will be a Non- 
 Resister after four hours of Dr. Koenig? If so, his powers 
 of Non-Resistance must be very great." 
 
 Mrs. Geddes frowned at Janet for thus slightingly allud 
 ing to a departing guest, but the corners of her mouth 
 quivered. 
 
 As they walked back to the house, Janet slipped her 
 arm through Guide s. 
 
 "Guido," she said, "why is Dr. Koenig so down on you ?"
 
 YOUTH 351 
 
 "Because I would not say that I think the Kaiser the 
 worst criminal on earth." 
 
 "I think," said Janet, "you rather like the Kaiser." 
 
 "I have liked him until now," said Guido, a little un 
 steadily. "I admit, my faith in him is considerably shaken. 
 While, of course, I do not approve of the institution of 
 monarchy, I ve always thought William the Second a very 
 fine, manly fellow. There s something about him that 
 strikes the imagination. He makes one think of those 
 heroic figures of the Renaissance men who combined an 
 enormous self-esteem with an enormous sense of personal 
 responsibility men who made history, founded dynasties 
 and welded together empires." 
 
 Janet looked at him shyly with adoring eyes. 
 
 "He may not be as bad as everybody now thinks him," 
 said Guido. "He may merely be backing up Austria to 
 frighten Russia and France into keeping out of the fray." 
 
 But his words did not ring true, and for once Janet did 
 not tease him. There was a look of pain in his face which 
 silenced the mischievous words which had risen to her lips. 
 
 On returning from the village, Professor Geddes brought 
 with him the latest New York papers, which contained 
 the startling news that the New York Stock Exchange 
 had closed. 
 
 "Goodness," said Janet, "how then can we go on? I 
 thought the New York Stock Exchange ran the United 
 States !" 
 
 "It does according to the yellow journals," her father 
 replied, dryly. 
 
 "Does it signify anything serious?" Cecil demanded. "Is 
 there going to be a panic?" 
 
 "No, the Stock Exchange closed to avert a panic. It 
 closed to prevent worthless European stocks from depre 
 ciating our market. It s an eminently sane, safe and con 
 servative measure." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes had clipped an editorial from the 
 "Times" and, with the querulous firmness of old age, in 
 sisted upon Guide s reading it aloud for the edification of 
 the entire family. Even Maggie was summoned from the 
 kitchen to make part of the audience. The editorial, 
 Grossvater Geddes said, was educational.
 
 352 THE HYPHEN 
 
 After giving the rules of modern warfare, the writer 
 said: 
 
 "All these rules were ruthlessly violated in the conduct 
 of the Balkan wars. The Balkan States are not fully 
 civilized. War provokes savagery, but a war involving 
 the Great Powers would be fought with due restraint." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes seemed to derive the utmost satis 
 faction from hearing Guido read this editorial aloud. He 
 looked from face to face, smiling contentedly. The joy of 
 old age in critical discovery is as great as the joy of youth 
 in creation. 
 
 "You see," he said, reassuringly, "even if there is a 
 general war, it will be fought decently, in an honest, above- 
 board, sane way." 
 
 The past week had been an amazing week, but the week 
 that followed outshone and outdistanced it. That, which 
 in the face of all signs and portents had still seemed in 
 credible, happened. Germany declared war on Russia; 
 Russia reciprocated the compliment; Germany declared 
 war on France, and France on Germany; Austria on 
 Russia, Russia on Austria; even England, which through 
 the person of Sir Edward Grey had worked so sedulously, 
 for peace, after Belgium s pitiful appeal for help, and 
 since her honor was involved, was dragged into the whirl 
 pool. Armageddon had come. The thing was unbelievable 
 and impossible, but the unbelievable and the impossible had 
 happened. All Europe was at war and no one, at least 
 no one in America, could understand what the entire pother 
 was about. 
 
 Janet, scanning the list of declarations of war, gave a 
 giggle reminiscent of school-girl days. 
 
 "Looks like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, doesn t it?" 
 she asked. "Pirates of Penzance or the Mikado, I don t 
 remember which." 
 
 "Really, Janet, I fail to discover any cause for merri 
 ment," said her father. 
 
 Father and daughter and Guido were sitting on the 
 porch at the time. One of the instantaneous changes came 
 over Janet which so baffled Guido. She was now quite 
 serious. Guido had never seen such lightning transforma 
 tions in anyone else, and yet each mood was genuine and 
 natural and sincere.
 
 YOUTH 353 
 
 "This war is going to be the biggest war that ever hap 
 pened," said Professor Geddes. "To use a slang phrase, 
 it is going to make all other wars look sick. Hundreds of 
 thousands, perhaps millions of men are bound to be killed, 
 and not only men, but women and children will lose their 
 lives." 
 
 "Why women and children, Daddy?" Janet inquired, 
 who was now all tenderness and compassion. "You know 
 that clipping of Grossvater s !" 
 
 "Let us hope the writer of that editorial drew a reliable 
 forecast. Guido !" 
 
 "Sir." 
 
 "I will not require your services this afternoon. I have 
 work to do in the library." 
 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 "I admire Daddy s way of inviting people out of his 
 library even more than his manner of asking them in," 
 said Janet, when they were alone. "Don t look at me in 
 that tone of voice, Mr. Morality. Oh, I see. I laughed 
 in the wrong place. Have I fallen out of your good 
 
 graces 
 
 Guido flushed. 
 
 "You know that I think the world and all of you, 
 Janet," he said, with quiet enthusiasm. "You didn t realize 
 when you laughed what you were laughing at." 
 
 "Think so?" 
 
 "I mean, to borrow one of Dobronov s Christian Science 
 expressions, you didn t objectify your thought. If you had, 
 you wouldn t have laughed." 
 
 "I love to hear you exonerate me, Guido," said Janet, 
 smiling softly at him. "It s dear of you. But I think I 
 do understand the meaning of war. Oh, Guido !" she 
 was all womanly sweetness and gentleness now, "I am 
 sick at heart when I think of what this may mean. I 
 don t want to realize it. I don t, indeed. Come, let us 
 forget all about it for a while." Her mood veered again. 
 "After all, Europe is no concern of ours. Sensible Euro 
 peans come to America. Let s go to the orchard and eat 
 worms and read poetry. I d like you to read to me aloud. 
 Will you? Do you know that you read very well? Yes, 
 Mr. Modesty, you do. Let s have something that s real 
 poetry. No, not Tennyson. Nothing European. Some-
 
 354 THE HYPHEN 
 
 thing strictly American, something big and strong and kind, 
 like Hiawatha or Evangelme or the Vision of Sir Launfal. 
 
 "I want to forget all about Europe," she rattled on. 
 "You ve never been abroad, Guido dear, so you don t know. 
 They are all alike. Yes, they are. Think Americans a 
 sort of joke. The English, too. Watch Cecil. He a 
 perfect dear, of course, but he does think his own race 
 is just a wee bit better than other races. Never mind, 
 we ll forgive old England, she s acting so decently in com 
 ing to Belgium s aid. Guido, you don t still care for the 
 Kaiser, do you?" 
 
 Guido shook his head. 
 
 "No," he said. "The idol has toppled from its pedestal 
 and is broken to bits. Oh, Janet, how I admired that 
 man !" 
 
 For a moment both sat in silence, Guido engrossed in 
 his thoughts, Janet engrossed in Guido. Presently her soft 
 little hand crept silently into his. 
 
 "Come, Guido, dear," she said. "Let s go read poetry. 
 What s Hecuba to us, or we to Hecuba that we should 
 weep for her? The orchard and Longfellow for you and 
 me." 
 
 It was of course impossible for anyone possessed of 
 intelligence and emotions to maintain this fine Hecuba 
 aloofness in the face of the events that followed hard 
 and fast. The arrival of the morning newspapers became 
 the event of the day. Mere letters now must wait until at 
 least the headlines of the first page had been scanned and 
 commented upon. Cecil or Guido drove to the village every 
 afternoon to secure the latest evening editions and they 
 brought home a variegated posy of papers, yellow, gray 
 and white, not only for "Waldheim," but for every other 
 cottage in the Mountaintop Colony. 
 
 Guido suffered all the disgust and indignation which 
 attend upon misplaced devotion and outraged respect. The 
 breathless speed with which city after city in Belgium fell 
 into the hands of the Germans bewildered and staggered 
 him. Brussels, Namur, Louvain, Longwy, Liege in less 
 than a week this string of historical old cities had changed 
 ownership. The Germans! The expression assumed a 
 new significance. It had been Guide s habit to class him 
 self as a German; he had felt that he was an American
 
 YOUTH 355 
 
 by courtesy only. Now every drop of blood in his body 
 rose in hot revolt against such a designation. German? 
 Not he. He harked back to the day when his mother in 
 an impassioned plea had besought him never to forget that 
 he was American-born. German! He felt a gratitude 
 which exceeded words that that badge could not be fastened 
 upon him. 
 
 The badge of German nationality. 
 
 But how about the badge of German blood? 
 
 Some tenacious, kindly instinct of race, of which he was 
 wholly oblivious, whispered to him that he must commit 
 the egregious folly of attempting to repudiate his German 
 blood. It behooved him, and others like him, through pas 
 sionate condemnation of the modern German heresy, to 
 demonstrate to the world at large that the ancient German 
 tradition of unassuming decency and spontaneous, warm 
 hearted kindness was not entirely defunct, was not irre 
 trievably obsolete; that living veins, bounding living blood, 
 still responded to the rhythm of its beat. 
 
 He felt no misgivings, no doubt that German-Americans 
 all over the country shared his feelings. And upon these 
 kindred spirits, upon all who loved the ancient German 
 spirit, because they loved the ancient German spirit, there 
 must some day devolve the task of helping to rehabitate the 
 fallen German race. 
 
 For of the fact that the German race was fallen, was 
 fallen to quite an incredible degree, there should no longer 
 be any doubt. 
 
 Horrible tales began to percolate through the columns of 
 the papers. These, at first, no one would believe because 
 no one wanted to believe them. Things so unspeakable, 
 so hideous and shameful were related that Americans 
 shook their heads dubiously and spoke of the exaggera 
 tions of hysteria and the psychology of war-fright and the 
 odd phenomenon of the war-lie. Americans knew Germans 
 far too well to give credence to such wild tales. Why, the 
 German contingent in America ranked as high or higher 
 than any other alien contingent as regards thrift, sobriety, 
 truthfulness, cleanliness and honesty. Those were fine 
 virtues, and a race in whom they were ingrained would 
 hardly indulge in such loathsome excesses as the news-
 
 356 THE HYPHEN 
 
 papers, in their mistaken zeal to print dime detective story 
 thrillers of real life, were foisting upon the public. 
 
 Then, Germany had never been our enemy. England 
 had been our hereditary foe. True, almost a hundred 
 years had elapsed since our last quarrel with her. Still, 
 there had been that quarrel, and the other, greater quarrel 
 which had antedated it. It was surprising how many 
 Americans, real Americans, to use Guide s school-boy 
 phrase, gave the preference to Germany and the Germans 
 over England and the English. 
 
 True, there was the undeniable, uncircumventable fact 
 of Belgium. 
 
 Belgium loomed big, bigger than Germany or England, 
 bigger than Austria or even amorphous Russia ; she loomed 
 big because she opposed heroism to bullyism, because, 
 small and defenseless, she had kept faith while Germany, 
 bursting with wealth and man-power, had broken faith. 
 
 Belgium had been a stumbling block in Germany s way 
 and she was being tortured and traduced in chastisement. 
 Belgium s plight, her courage, her fine sense of honor 
 appealed to the American imagination, to the American 
 love of spiritual values and most of all to the American 
 habit of heart. 
 
 The nation which more than any other had, as a matter 
 of daily routine, given unstintingly to victims of earth 
 quake and tidal wave and volcanic eruption, to sufferers 
 from famine and to those smitten with disease, to who 
 soever was in sorrow the world over; that nation was 
 predestined to play the Lady Bountiful to Belgium, to 
 sustain and support her, to bind up her wounds, to dress 
 and feed and console her as far as it was possible to 
 assuage such suffering as hers. 
 
 Disemboweled Belgium! A Frenchman with the French 
 genius in the creation of a phrase, thus painted Belgium s 
 unnumbered miseries in one vivid word. Disemboweled 
 Belgium! The phrase stuck in Guide s memory as if glued 
 there. He shuddered when he remembered it, which was 
 often. 
 
 There was not only Belgium, there was France as well, 
 not to speak of the smaller nations of Eastern Europe 
 which was being thwacked and thumped and beaten into 
 bloody pulp by the mailed fist.
 
 YOUTH 357 
 
 And whereas violated Belgium, which had been a mere 
 name to most Americans before the War, kindled in us 
 the flame of compassionate indignation, invaded France, 
 which was so much more than a mere name, roused in 
 us a burning frenzy of resentment. If lack of generosity 
 there was in blaming all England of a by-gone age for 
 the signal stupidity of a pig-headed king, there was excess 
 of generosity in lavishing upon all France of the same 
 period a wealth of gratitude for the doings of one gallant, 
 great-souled and big-hearted French gentleman, belonging 
 to that class of French society which another, entirely dif 
 ferent class of French society had done its best to ex 
 terminate a few years later. 
 
 At any rate, France clinched the case against Germany. 
 So much evil of Germany was now known to be true that 
 it gradually became to be believed that the worst charges 
 might be true also charges which at first seemed too 
 exaggeratedly lurid to have any foundation in fact. The 
 statesman who called a treaty with another power a "scrap 
 of paper" might be trusted to instigate heaven-only-knows- 
 what outrages. And all this in spite of the editorial from 
 the "Times" which Grossvater Geddes carried about with 
 him, and read at least thrice a day. 
 
 We of America thank God for it! think first with 
 our hearts and then with our heads. Germany, replete, 
 with sophistry of such skilled workmanship that, miserable 
 fraud and counterfeit though it was, it might have passed 
 muster elsewhere as honest coin of argument, would never 
 be able to unload that sophistry upon America because 
 of that queer little American trick. It would have been 
 well for Germany if she, too, had owned that same little 
 trick, or, not possessing it, had allowed her heart some 
 little freedom of speech in the councils of the head. 
 
 And so, overnight, the sympathy of America aligned 
 itself. A relief expedition for Belgium was promptly fitted 
 out. Belgium was starving, Belgium was suffering. Bel 
 gium must be succored! No one had ever knocked in 
 vaim against the portals of our compassion and Belgium 
 was to receive royal largess at the hands of the mightiest 
 democracy on earth. 
 
 Sympathy having bestowed itself, America settled down 
 once more to the treadmill of normal life. The newspapers,
 
 358 THE HYPHEN 
 
 like a four-day old rose, had lost the first freshness of 
 their bloom. The headlines which had terrified at first 
 now revolted rather than startled. Herod outherodod, 
 William outwilliamed ; the unusual had become usual, and 
 but for the stark, fiendish, detestable, driveling barbarity 
 of the whole thing, America would have been bored. As 
 it was she was disgusted. The offenses which had by 
 this time become common talk were so unheard of, so 
 very, very abominable that they made you want to close 
 your nostrils as well as your ears. And because America 
 was healthy-minded, she tried not to think overmuch about 
 the whole shocking business. She valiantly plunged her 
 hand in her pockets for coin and more coin and still more 
 coin whenever she was told that coin was needed; and 
 let it go at that. 
 
 Germany, meanwhile, still maintaining her pose of 
 idealism incarnate, had perceived that the sympathy which 
 the nation of money-grubbers was bestowing elsewhere 
 was worth something in Pfennigs and Marks. She per 
 ceived also that ultimately that sympathy might have a 
 strategic as well as a commercial value. So, to corral 
 what American sentiment might still be available, she 
 played up extraordinary tales of woe concerning the 
 atrocities committed by the bad wicked Belgians upon 
 innocent, unsuspecting German soldiers, who were merely 
 doing their duty for the Fatherland and for humanity, 
 too, by furthering German Kultur. Hair-curdling tales 
 also they told of the work done by Russian soldiers in 
 East Prussia, tales which excited considerable sympathy 
 for of darkest Russia all tales might gain credence, the 
 average American, like the average German-American con 
 founding Russian with Cossack and Cossack with Russian, 
 thinking them ethnographic and moral equivalents. A 
 grievous mistake this, for the Russian peasant is described 
 by those who know him as the most long-suffering and good- 
 natured human imaginable. 
 
 On the last day of August there returned to the little 
 colony at Mountaintop a lady whose cottage had been 
 closed all season, as she had gone abroad in May. She 
 brought with her one child. She had had three children 
 when she started for Europe. She had been caught in 
 a Russian village when the war began, and hearing that
 
 YOUTH 359 
 
 a battle was to be waged in the immediately proximity of 
 this village, had decided to get away with her children 
 while there was yet time. Perverse fate led her steps 
 into the thick of the battle instead of away from it. She 
 was unable to tell how this had happened. 
 
 "Suddenly," she said, "where there had been rolling 
 meadow-land only a moment before, men in uniform sprang 
 up all around us." 
 
 The men carried rifles and little spurts of smoke and 
 flame issued from them and from innumerable points 
 several hundred yards away which seemed suspended in 
 midair. This she guessed to be the fire of the enemy. 
 Suddenly a terrific noise burst all around her. Men came 
 running up to her. She was terribly frightened for she 
 thought they meant to kill her and her children, but instead 
 of this they dragged her behind an earthwork, bidding 
 her, by signs, huddle in back of that for protection. The can 
 nonading continued all afternoon and evening and through 
 the night. As long as there was light enough to see she 
 saw men suddenly throw up their arms and fall down on 
 their faces, or their back, or simply crumple up. 
 
 The night fell cold and damp. Soldiers came and threw 
 blankets to her and the children. Other soldiers gave her 
 black bread and water and bade her, again by signs, re 
 main where she was. The older children ate the bread 
 and drank the water and fell asleep. The youngest child 
 was a little over a year old. It was too young to eat the 
 soggy Russian bread and it cried with cold and hunger 
 until midnight. Then as she thought it slept. 
 
 All night the dreadful noise of the heavy guns continued. 
 There came momentary lulls in the cannonading, and then 
 she heard the moaning of the wounded and the dying. 
 When day broke she saw that there were many dead, and 
 the infant at her breast was dead also. It had succumbed 
 to hunger and to exposure. 
 
 The men came and buried the baby for her. Officers 
 came and deliberated upon her plight. Finally she and 
 the two surviving children were put into an army auto 
 mobile and driven to the nearest large town, some twenty 
 miles away. Here she sought out the American consul, 
 who took her home with him to his wife. The excellent 
 couple cared for her and made all arrangements for her
 
 360 THE HYPHEN 
 
 home journey. This, however, was delayed unexpectedly. 
 Her second son had contracted a heavy cold during the 
 night on which her baby had died, which developed into 
 pneumonia. He died within a few days. 
 
 She returned to America via Germany, Belgium and 
 Holland. At the Dutch frontier she met an American 
 family of wealth who were utterly destitute because the 
 letters of credit which they carried had become worthless, 
 gold being demanded everywhere in payment for every 
 thing board, commodities and transportation. She had 
 enough money left to loan the wife, daughters and son 
 of a Kansas millionaire the price of steerage transporta 
 tion. She herself came steerage also because no more 
 cabin berths were available and she was loth to delay her 
 departure for home by another day. The man of the 
 party whom she had succored seemed to have gone out 
 of his mind. All he seemed able to think about was the 
 loss of his pink silk pajamas. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the story of Mrs. Vanbrugh. 
 
 She and her husband and their sole surviving child, a 
 handsome alert lad of twelve, called at the Geddes home 
 the Sunday after their arrival at Three Corners, and told 
 their story. 
 
 "Did you see anything of the devastation in Belgium?" 
 Mrs. Geddes asked. 
 
 "Nothing but smiling fields and acre upon acre of rich 
 farm lands." 
 
 "You may be sure," little Tom Vanbrugh spoke up, "that 
 the Germans didn t send us along the route that covers 
 Liege, Brussels and Louvain. You may be sure of that." 
 
 "Tom," said his mother, "the German soldiers with whom 
 we traveled were very kind to us." 
 
 "Well, why wouldn t they?" said little Tom. "We re 
 Americans. We re neutrals. We re feeding Belgium or 
 are going to. Think what that is going to save Germany. 
 She couldn t let the entire population of Belgium starve. 
 Now could she?" 
 
 "I m afraid she could and she would, Tom," said his 
 father, somberly. 
 
 "Anyhow," said the son, "they didn t come and offer 
 us bread the way those Russian soldiers did. It was bum 
 bread, sour and heavy and it had a perfectly horrid taste,
 
 YOUTH 361 
 
 but it was the best thing they had, and not too much of, 
 either, and they gave it to us." 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Vanbrugh, "when I think of the kind 
 ness of those Russians, who took thought of us at a time 
 when every moment might be their last, the tears come to 
 my eyes. Indeed, one of the men who had thrown us a 
 blanket at sundown, lay dead only a few yards away from 
 us when morning came. In the past, before this horrible 
 thing descended upon the world, I used to think that if 
 I lost one of my children I would become stark, raving 
 mad. And here I am, having lost my two youngest boys 
 under most harrowing conditions, and I am quite calm, 
 even cheerful. 
 
 "You have been marvelously brave, my dear," said her 
 husband. 
 
 "It s not bravery or courage at all," said Mrs. Vanbrugh, 
 "it s something I simply cannot give a name to. When 
 ever I begin to sorrow for my little ones, the thought of 
 all the mothers the world over, who are sending their 
 sons out to do battle for what they think right, sweeps 
 over me. Some women, I have read, have as many as 
 five or six sons in the field. Both of my babies died in 
 my arms. I know where they are laid away in their 
 eternal sleep. Their souls, I trust, have come safe to 
 harbor. They were innocent children when they died, who 
 had given pain to no one, who had given nothing but 
 pleasure to their father and myself. But how about those 
 mothers who have four or five or six sons in the field? 
 Some of them must have become smirched with life. 
 Their souls are not as white as a child s. Does bravery 
 in battle wipe away other stains? Or does the killing 
 and maiming of fellow-beings, though they are our coun 
 try s foes, place a new stain there? I lie awake nights 
 asking myself these questions, asking myself how those 
 other mothers feel who, like myself, are lying awake ask 
 ing themselves the same questions, who, unlike myself 
 have not a vicarious but a direct interest in their solution. 
 And then then my own sorrow is as nought." 
 
 "My dear, my dear," said Mr. Vanbrugh, gently touch 
 ing his wife s hand. She began to sob, harsh, dry sobs 
 without the alleviation of tears. Her husband, with a 
 look of apology to Mrs. Geddes, placed his arm about
 
 362 THE HYPHEN 
 
 his wife s shoulder, while little Tom Vanbrugh knelt down 
 at his mother s knee. 
 
 "Mother," he said, "I will never do anything bad or 
 wicked like those men you speak of. I promise, mother. 
 Nothing that will ever make you feel it would have been 
 better for me to have died with the others." 
 
 Mrs. Vanbrugh caught her son tempestuously to her 
 breast. Her sobs stopped and tears flowed silently down 
 her cheeks. In spite of her heroic protestations she was 
 weeping for the little ones whom she had buried in far 
 away Russia. 
 
 "Just what do you think the real issue is?" Professor 
 Geddes inquired of Mr. Vanbrugh. "Is it Slav against 
 Teuton ?" 
 
 "I do not think it is anything as simple as that," said 
 Mrs. Vanbrugh. 
 
 "One civilization pitted against another do you call that 
 simple?" Professor Geddes inquired, smiling. 
 
 "It might conceivably be simple compared to other 
 issues," Mr. Vanbrugh replied, thoughtfully. "Of course, 
 the Germans have done dreadful things I beg your 
 pardon," he concluded lamely, addressing Grossvater 
 Geddes. 
 
 "Not at all !" Grossvater Geddes waved the apology 
 aside. "I shall have to accustom myself to hearing people 
 say that. But I know it is not true. I know the so- 
 called atrocities are a myth." He produced the editorial 
 from the "Times." "Read for yourself," he said. 
 
 Mr. Vanbrugh had read the editorial on the day it 
 appeared. He commented upon the fine irony of events 
 since then. 
 
 "But," said Grossvater Geddes, "your good wife says she 
 saw no devastated fields as they passed through Belgium. 
 Well?" 
 
 Mr. Vanbrugh bit his lip. 
 
 "In Amsterdam she met some American refugees," he 
 said, finally, with evident reluctance, "and they told grisly 
 tales. They had come from the part of Belgium occupied 
 by German troops." 
 
 Little Tom Vanbrugh rose abruptly and strode from the 
 room, whistling. 
 
 "Tom overheard some of those stories," said his father,
 
 YOUTH 363 
 
 in explanation, "and whenever we get near the subject he 
 simply leaves the room." 
 
 "Surely," said Grossvater Geddes, "you do not believe 
 everything you are told by strangers." 
 
 "Father," said Professor Geddes, "those people were 
 Americans." 
 
 "And because Americans say it is true must it be be 
 lieved?" The old man was terribly stirred. "Yet you 
 ask me to put no faith in my own race to believe all these 
 slanders against it! War is terrible, always. But Ger 
 mans, I trust, are as humane toward the conquered as 
 other races." 
 
 Professor Geddes and Mr. Vanbrugh exchanged looks. 
 
 "Father," said Professor Geddes, with a mildness par 
 ticularly exasperating to his already exasperated father, 
 "you speak of your own race. Americans, you know, have 
 no own race " 
 
 "Ah!" his father broke in excitedly, "the Anglo-Ameri 
 cans consider themselves the only true Americans. I 
 suppose, Mr. Vanbrugh, you also believe those stories 
 about the German Uhlan officers eating Belgian babies?" 
 
 "No," said Mr. Vanbrugh, "I do not believe that." 
 
 "Well, in time you will believe that, too," said Gross 
 vater Geddes, and walked statelily from the room. 
 
 "Poor father," said Professor Geddes. "When he 
 realizes what things the Germans are doing in Belgium 
 it will go hard with him." 
 
 Meanwhile it was going hard with Guido, for to him 
 by this time, a complete realization had been vouchsafed. 
 
 "I am filled with shame," he said to Professor Geddes 
 one day, "when I realize that the race I sprang from is 
 doing these shocking things." 
 
 "Get rid of that feeling," Professor Geddes said per 
 emptorily. "In giving way to it you are tacitly admitting 
 that you are insufficiently Americanized. Germany should 
 be no more to you than any other alien state." 
 
 "She isn t," said Guido, stoutly. 
 
 "Then why should she have the power to fill you either 
 with shame or with pride?" Professor Geddes pursued. 
 "No, my dear boy, Germany is nothing and never was 
 anything to Americans. If there is such a thing as a
 
 364 THE HYPHEN 
 
 close bond between ourselves and any European country 
 it unites us not with Germany but with " 
 
 "England," Guido said, quickly. 
 
 "Exactly," said Professor Geddes. "I admit the claims 
 of race there." 
 
 "Do you not mean the claims of spiritual kinship ?" Guido 
 inquired. 
 
 "Exactly," Professor Geddes replied, with a smile so 
 subtle that Guido wondered whether he had not purposely 
 used the lax expression. 
 
 Nevertheless the sensation of shame of which Guido 
 had complained, persisted. He longed to unbosom himself 
 of this feeling to someone who would understand, some 
 one who, like Otto or Elschen, were in the identical plight 
 as himself. So strong was this feeling that he left for 
 home a week earlier than he had expected to. 
 
 Almost the first person whom he encountered on leav 
 ing the railroad station was Dr. Koenig. Guido hailed 
 him and received a scowl in return. The old physician 
 had been in a most unenviable frame of mind since part 
 ing with Guido at Waldheim. The Great Experiment, the 
 Political Synthesis, had for years been his favorite toy. 
 What were mere books on political economy and religion 
 compared to the human treatise, the speculation in blood 
 and flesh which was being fashioned before his very eyes? 
 No parent ever watched his offspring more eagerly for 
 signs of a specific talent than Dr. Koenig, throughout a 
 decade, had watched Guido for symptoms of the budding 
 Synthesis. That he could not posit, or even remotely 
 imagine, in what way the Synthesis was to come about, 
 or in what way the symptoms would break out, had made 
 the decade-long vigil the more fascinating. He had, more 
 over, a tremendous faith in the boy. Then, too, he had 
 confided the theory of the Political Synthesis, in which 
 by this time he felt almost a possessive sense, to his old 
 friend Geddes. To discover on the top of all this that the 
 boy was a mere backslider, a miserable apostate to the 
 doctrines for which his illustrious ancestor, the first Guido, 
 had bled and suffered, was a disappointment and a humilia 
 tion not to be endured with patience. 
 
 He regarded Guido stonily as the boy stood beside him, 
 smiling, flushed, cap in hand.
 
 YOUTH 365 
 
 "Dr. Koenig, I was coming to see you this very evening. 
 I wanted you to know I ve come around entirely it s 
 heinous what Germany had done and is doing!" 
 
 Both of Dr. Koenig s strong hands shot out and grasped 
 Guido s. He ejaculated: 
 
 "Ah, so blood does tell, after all." 
 
 And before Guido could demand an explanation of this 
 strange remark, Dr. Koenig said: 
 
 "You are going to find this town a mighty interesting 
 place to live in, my lad. Come and see me some evening 
 this week. It s too warm and too noisy to stand and talk 
 in the street." 
 
 Guido discovered within the next ten minutes that dull, 
 quiet Anasquoit had indeed become an exciting place to 
 live in. Bismarck Street was a thoroughfare on which 
 no ingrained Anasquoitian might walk a block without 
 encountering a familiar face. The first friend Guido 
 stumbled upon as he walked home from the station was 
 Eddie Erdman, the facetious boy-milliner. The talk of 
 course drifted to the War. 
 
 "I ve never been so proud of being German in all my 
 life as now," said Eddi e. 
 
 "Proud !" gasped the amazed Guido. 
 
 "Think what they ve accomplished ! And so quickly ! 
 All those impregnable cities. Why, Guido, it brings back 
 the time of the alte Frits Frederick the Great would 
 have every reason to be proud of his great-great-grandson, 
 eh? I can tell you, I wish I had been born on the other 
 side. I ve always had a sneaking thought that this emigra 
 tion business was all wrong. German is German, English 
 is English and French is French. How can any man 
 really and truly expatriate himself? It s signing away 
 the birthright of unborn generations which no man has a 
 right to do. I tell you what. After the war is over, I m 
 going back to Germany. S long, Guido. Come and see 
 me some evening and we ll toast the greatest Hohenzollern 
 of all." 
 
 Guido stared after the vanishing figure of his ample 
 friend in blank amazement. He was dumbfounded. And 
 yet he, too, within the year, had thought William the 
 greatest of the Hohenzollerns !
 
 3 66 THE HYPHEN 
 
 At the next corner he ran into Henry Foerster, the 
 silent boy. 
 
 "Well, how about the War, Henry?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "Great," Henry replied. "Magnificent, unheard of." 
 
 "Surely, Henry, you re not serious," said Guido. "I 
 think the War, and Germany s part in it, damnable." 
 
 "I think Germany is doing the most wonderful thing 
 that has ever been done in all history." This, for Henry, 
 was downright eloquence. 
 
 "Do you call it wonderful to violate solemn treaties 
 and invade neutral countries?" 
 
 "But Belgium was not a neutral country. The Belgians 
 are a bad lot anyway, so what s the use of making such a 
 fuss over them." 
 
 Guido stared. 
 
 "It s all England s doing anyhow," said the Laconian, 
 who was laconic no more. "England s so frantically jealous 
 of Germany. The British have hogged everything in sight 
 so long and now they are afraid of Germany. So they 
 plotted to dismember her." 
 
 Still Guido merely stared. 
 
 "A cousin of mine," Henry continued, "who was an 
 officer in the German army until two years ago, explained 
 the whole thing to me. You come around some evening 
 and I ll ask my cousin around, too, so he can explain it to 
 you the way he did to me." 
 
 "Thanks awfully," said Guido, who at last had found 
 his tongue, "but I prefer to do my own thinking." 
 
 "But without a German s explanation of the situation 
 you are bound to think wrong," Henry replied, calmly. 
 
 Guido ignored this. 
 
 "What did you mean by saying Belgium hadn t been 
 neutral?" he asked. 
 
 "If Belgium had been truly neutral she would not have 
 refused to allow the Germans to march through," Henry 
 replied. "If she had been neutral she would not have 
 cared which of the Powers were successful, would she? 
 She wouldn t have objected to Germany s stealing a march 
 on the others. By objecting, she showed her animosity. 
 So much the worse for her. Germany is going to be suc 
 cessful anyway. My cousin told me all about it. The 
 German army is the greatest and the finest and the best
 
 YOUTH 367 
 
 disciplined fighting machine which the world has ever 
 seen." 
 
 "Everybody knows that," said Guido. 
 
 "Well," Henry continued, "if everybody knows it why 
 does anybody have the audacity to try and stop Germany, 
 or attempt to fight her, or to keep her down? Germany 
 is going to beat all the others to a frazzle. Just you wait 
 and see." 
 
 Guido was appalled. He was paralyzed by the shock 
 of seeing unfolded before his eyes, without any appear 
 ance of shame, a psychology so twisted and perverted and 
 unsound as this. 
 
 "The stupidity of the other powers is incredible," Henry 
 continued. "If they had any sense at all they would ask 
 for peace right now and accept Germany s terms." 
 
 "But when a country is invaded like Belgium, and like 
 France, its men will fight, fight, fight to the last man in 
 order to throw the invaders out." 
 
 "Germany should worry," Henry replied, calmly. "If 
 England, France and Belgium want to commit suicide, 
 it s their affair, not Germany s. I should not have said 
 England. She will let other people do her fighting for 
 her, as she has done in all previous wars. Those that 
 are stupid enough, that is. India, of course, will rebel 
 against the oppressive rule of the English invader. 
 Australia will probably declare for independence. Shouldn t 
 wonder if Canada made a move in the same direction. 
 Egypt will rise. The Boer Republic has an old score 
 still to settle. Oh, you are going to see things happen, 
 my boy. Germany s heroic move will liberate all the 
 peoples who have suffered from British misrule so long." 
 
 "And do you really wish that all these things should 
 come to pass?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "Why not? Serve England good and right." 
 
 "But why do you hate England so?" 
 
 "Oh, the Revolution and all that." 
 
 "But we were successful in the Revolution, so why should 
 we nourish a grudge against England on that account? 
 Besides, you know as well as I do that the best men in 
 England were opposed to the Stamp Act. I speak of Pitt, 
 of Burke, of Wilkes, of Fox and others." 
 
 "Well, all the same England deserves to get it in the
 
 368 THE HYPHEN 
 
 neck, and, don t worry! Germany will see to it that Eng 
 land gets all that is coming to her. For in war might 
 makes right. If the Americans had not been successful 
 in 76, the Revolution and not the Civil War would have 
 gone down in history as the Great Rebellion." 
 
 "I think," said Guido, "if you could forget your ante 
 cedents for a while, if you could bring yourself to think 
 as an American and not as a German-American, you would 
 admit that Germany is all wrong." 
 
 "Oh, if it were a case of Germany against the United 
 States that, of course, would be an entirely different 
 matter," said Henry. "Naturally I would then side with 
 the U. S. A." 
 
 "Whether we were right or wrong?" Guido asked, with 
 growing wonder. 
 
 "One sides with one s own as a matter of course," replied 
 Henry. "But when the quarrel is between England and 
 Germany, naturally I side with Germany." And he began 
 to enumerate the undesirable traits of the British. The 
 English were stiff, "poky," insincere, inefficient, greedy, 
 rude, conceited and opinionated. Guido thought of Cecil 
 and smiled. He had known Henry almost all his life and 
 Cecil a few months only; Henry was of the same race 
 as himself, and Cecil was of a different race. Yet he 
 felt a stronger sense of kinship for Cecil than he felt for 
 Henry or for Eddie. 
 
 Guido parted from Henry feeling sick at heart. He felt 
 an inordinate yearning to see Otto. He longed to see 
 someone who would understand his emotions someone 
 who shared the detestable feeling of shame which seemed 
 to be gnawing itself into his very heart. To Guide s 
 initial and primary sense of shame was now added the 
 secondary shame of seeing his former schoolmates ap 
 plauding a cause which to him seemed unspeakably base. 
 In Otto, who was honesty personified, he felt certain he 
 would find the sympathy he craved. Otto would share 
 his sense of shame. He longed to hear Oto enlarge upon 
 the situation in the terse and vigorous German, which he 
 spoke so much more easily than English. To hear Germany 
 denounced in racy, idiomatic German nothing less would 
 quench the fires of indignation which Henry and Eddie 
 had fed anew.
 
 YOUTH 369 
 
 It never occurred to Guido that Otto might have com 
 mitted himself to the orthodox German cause. 
 
 "Why," thought Guido, "if I hadn t been anti-German 
 before, I d have turned pro-Ally after hearing those two 
 mouth it." 
 
 He turned down Juniper Street, on which the Baum- 
 gartens now lived in an unpretentious house, and five min 
 utes later was closeted with Otto. 
 
 "I m awfully glad to see you, Otto," Guido began. "I ve 
 missed our talks. And so much has happened." 
 
 "The War? Well, it s not going to last long," Otto re 
 joined, cheerfully. "The Germans are sweeping every 
 thing before them. It will all be over soon, thanks to 
 German military genius." 
 
 Guido s blood congealed. Otto s defection was to him 
 a disaster of the first magnitude. 
 
 "Surely," he stammered, "you are not pro-German, too ! 
 Not you, Otto, nicht Du!" 
 
 "Ja, was soil ich denn sonst sein," Otto retorted. "You 
 didn t expect to find me pro-British, did you?" 
 
 "Don t let s drag England in," Guido said, quickly. 
 Otto, so honest, so upright could surely not be an apologist 
 for Germany s crimes. "England has nothing to do with 
 it at all." 
 
 "England has everything to do with it," Otto cried, and 
 repeated the charge which Henry had already made. 
 "England is at the bottom of the plot to dismember 
 Germany." 
 
 "But how do you know such a plot exists?" Guido de 
 manded. 
 
 "Why, every German knows it," Otto retorted. "That s 
 why Germany went to war. That s why Germany will 
 succeed, because she is right, and fortunately had the fore 
 sight to prepare for this day !" 
 
 "But all this is only hearsay and supposition," said 
 Guido. 
 
 "Beg pardon, Guido. It is a matter of common knowl 
 edge that England, Russia and France formed a secret 
 alliance." 
 
 "For defensive purposes only like England s treaty 
 with Japan," Guido replied, quickly. 
 
 "If you are simple enough to believe that I am sorry for
 
 370 THE HYPHEN 
 
 you," Otto said. "England s scheme was to trump up some 
 sort of a case against Germany and then get France and 
 Russia to help her dismember Germany. The British 
 Empire was built up through systematic land-grabbing 
 Gibraltar " 
 
 "Schleswig-Holstein," Guido countered. "I ll wager 
 Prussia did quite as much land-grabbing, or more, as Great 
 Britain." 
 
 "It was right that Schleswig-Holstein should be turned 
 over to Germany," said Otto, doggedly. "We were taught 
 in school " 
 
 Again Guido interrupted his friend. 
 
 "Otto," he said, with great earnestness, "I have learned 
 more real German history this summer from men who lived 
 it than we were ever taught in school. There s the case 
 of Alsace-Lorraine " 
 
 "Alsace-Lorraine is German in language, in spirit, in 
 nationality, and desires to remain German," said Otto. 
 
 "You are mistaken," Guido cried. "I read an article 
 this summer written by a German and published in a 
 German magazine in which the writer deplores the fact that 
 after forty years under German rule the inhabitants of 
 Alsace-Lorraine remain as French in spirit as they were 
 in 1870." 
 
 "If any German wrote that, he lied," said Otto, with 
 finality. 
 
 Guido became intensely agitated. 
 
 "One cannot argue with you," he cried, angrily. "The 
 moment an argument goes against you, you cry A lie ! " 
 
 "Well," said Otto, tranquilly, "it is a lie. Every German 
 knows that Alsace-Lorraine is German in spirit. Besides, 
 it was deutsches Reichland for centuries. France stole it 
 from Germany two hundred and fifty years ago." 
 
 Guido gritted his teeth. He was getting his first taste 
 of the unflattering and offensive language in which it was 
 the habit of the German sympathizers to cry down every 
 remark inimical to the Fatherland. 
 
 "There is such a thing as a statute of limitations," he 
 said. "The laws of every country recognize that after a 
 certain period a legal right to any parcel of land is estab 
 lished by occupation unless claim is made and upheld in
 
 YOUTH 371 
 
 the meantime by the previous owner. Here in Jersey, I 
 believe, the statute allows twenty years." 
 
 "Well," said Otto, "twice twenty is forty. If twenty 
 years applies to an individual, I imagine forty years is 
 good enough for a country to establish a legal right to 
 occupied land, according to your own logic. Therefore 
 Germany is entitled to Alsace-Lorraine." 
 
 Until this moment, in spite of his abusive language and 
 insolent tone, Otto had shown a tendency to employ the 
 white magic of honorable argument, not the black magic 
 of sophistry. Guido s heart sank within him. 
 
 "Otto," he said, in a sort of frenzy of earnestness, "you 
 cannot, you simply cannot believe that the violation of 
 Belgium is right." 
 
 "Of course the violation of Belgium is not right," Otto 
 said, adding significantly, "if it was a violation. The 
 Germans seem to be very certain that French officers were 
 in Belgium before war was declared. There must have 
 been some definite understanding perhaps the Belgians 
 had given France permission to march through her terri 
 tory. That being so you will admit that Germany was 
 right to take time by the forelock and get ahead of 
 France." 
 
 "But Germany merely supposes all these awful things," 
 Guido objected. "She can prove nothing." 
 
 "Germany believes these things to be true, therefore was 
 justified in doing what she did," said Otto, dogmatically. 
 
 "But believing a man to be a robber doesn t make him 
 a robber." 
 
 "No, but it gives me the right to arm myself against 
 him." 
 
 "And to shoot him at sight ?" 
 
 "Certainly," Otto replied, calmly, "if I am morally cer 
 tain of my grounds." 
 
 And this from the boy who had thrown up a job which 
 he desperately needed because it was against his principles 
 to type profanities! 
 
 Guido took up his hat and went to the door. 
 
 "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Otto. 
 
 "I am," said Guido, "I am more ashamed of my German 
 blood than I can say." 
 
 "Shame on you for that!" Otto cried. "Every other
 
 372 THE HYPHEN 
 
 German is proud of his blood ! Think what they ve accom 
 plished! Why, Guido, it s glorious, glorious! Oh, shame 
 on you, shame on you not to stand by your own race." 
 
 Guido quivered with anger in every nerve. 
 
 "I am an American, not a German, though my parents 
 were German-born," he said, quietly. 
 
 "Americans are a mixed race," said Otto, disdainfully. 
 "There is no harm in being proud of one s pure racial 
 strain, if one happens to have it. And German blood is 
 the best in the world." 
 
 "Good-bye," said Guido abruptly. 
 
 A species of spiritual nausea invaded him. His faith 
 in human nature had been struck at. The mantle of 
 righteousness which Guido had fancied as accruing uncon 
 ditionally to Otto, had been sullied and rent. Why, he 
 asked himself bitterly, should race prejudice possess this 
 sinister power to warp men s sense of right and wrong, to 
 vitiate their conscience and undermine their honesty? 
 
 Suddenly a terrifying thought occurred to him, leaving 
 him panic-stricken and shaken. 
 
 What if his mother were pro-German, too? 
 
 "It s not possible," he said, speaking a loud in his agita 
 tion, "it is simply not possible." 
 
 But in spite of this passionate denial, fear held him by 
 the hand, and he had a palpitating sense of apprehension 
 as he mounted the stoop to his house. 
 
 Frau Ursula had seen him from the sitting-room window, 
 and had run to the door and had it open and her boy in 
 her arms before Guido had time to touch the door-bell. 
 In the joy of the meeting Guido for the moment forgot 
 the fear which had tortured him so cruelly. 
 
 "Mutterchen!" he held her at arm s length. "You are 
 more beautiful than I have ever seen you! Mutterchen! 
 Dear, silly little Mutterchen, you are blushing at your boy s 
 compliment like a young girl!" And he fell to hugging 
 her anew, wondering at the quickened brightness of her 
 eyes, at the indescribable sweetness that seemed to hover 
 about her like an impalpable cloud, at the tender smile that 
 seemed to have become part and parcel of the corners of her 
 mouth. 
 
 "Mother, you are as lovely as a youn g girl in love," 
 he assured her. She pretended to be indignant with him,
 
 YOUTH 373 
 
 but she did not succeed very well. Her happiness wore 
 too bright a halo. It would not be quenched. 
 
 "Really, Guido," she said, smiling and dimpling, "this 
 language to your mother is unseemly. Besides, what do 
 you know about a young girl in love?" 
 
 "I ve read about them. As to my language, it s the 
 penalty you pay for being so sweet and so young and so 
 lovely. Mother, I ve had a wonderful summer." And he 
 fell to telling her trivialities of which persons who are near 
 and dear to each other speak after a long separation, as 
 if feeling their way back to the old familiar intimacy. 
 
 Finally he went to his room without having asked her 
 where she stood on the War.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 GUIDO S instinct had prompted him aright when he 
 said to Frau Ursula, "You are as lovely as a young 
 girl in love." To make the statement complete he should 
 have added: "and whose love is reciprocated." 
 
 Frau Ursula, for the first time left alone with her hus 
 band after Guide s departure for "Waldheim" had set her 
 self the simple task of making the household, including 
 herself, revolve solely about Hauser, and the secondary 
 task, infinitely more difficult of achievement, of making him 
 realize that the household traveled in an orbit of which 
 he himself was the unchallenged center. 
 
 She was a woman both proud and modest. The two 
 qualities were inseparable in her, and she sometimes made 
 her modesty the excuse for her pride. If she had not 
 felt confident, with a confidence so complete that she did 
 not even trouble to voice it, that she still possessed the 
 undivided love of her husband, she could not have set out 
 deliberately to woo him. 
 
 She laid out her campaign with the utmost care. She 
 dressed every evening for dinner as carefully as if she 
 were going to the theater or a reception, and she had an 
 unusually large number of new dresses made dresses of 
 foulard, of crepe de chine, of voile, of white filmy stuffs 
 classed as "novelties." She had Hauser s favorite dishes 
 served; tried out fanciful new desserts, to which he was 
 partial, and had the table laid with the best china and 
 silver, decorating it with flowers from their own garden. 
 She herself was gracious, witty, bright. Her expectant 
 mood, and her sincere effort to please, threw her white 
 and golden loveliness into bold relief. 
 
 Hauser basked gratefully, as a tired, jaded man of affairs 
 will, in the smiles and laughter and wit which his wife 
 shed about him. He did not at first attribute any especial 
 cause or reason to them. At breakfast she was more sub 
 dued, subservient, gentler than at dinner, for she knew his 
 
 374
 
 YOUTH 375 
 
 dislike to sustained conversation in the morning. But she 
 was never absent from the breakfast table these days, and 
 she always went to the door with him, and bade him adieu 
 at the very threshold. 
 
 One morning, happening to glance back from the corner, 
 he saw her still standing there. She smiled, a little sadly, 
 as he lifted his hat to her. Momentum of mind as well 
 as physical momentum carried him several steps further. 
 Then he turned and came back. 
 
 He had understood at last. 
 
 His wife was still standing on the steps, as if expecting 
 his return. The smile faded from her face, the color from 
 her cheeks as she saw him turn. 
 
 "Ursula," he said, when he stood beside her, "I want to 
 speak to you. Let us go into the house." 
 
 Indoors, alone with her, in a privacy which for the 
 first time in years seemed to him exciting and romantic, 
 he said: 
 
 "If you mean nothing by all this, by everything you have 
 been doing and saying and looking since you and I are 
 alone, then say so frankly and stop it. For God s sake, 
 then stop it! But if you do mean that well that mutual 
 happiness is still within our reach, then be equally frank 
 with me." 
 
 "Mutual happiness !" she said. "Erich, I ve dreamed 
 of it." 
 
 He caught her roughly by the wrist. 
 
 "Ursula, there s no nonsense in this attitude of yours 
 nothing about making amends, or paying me for being 
 decent I trust I have been half- ways decent to the boy 
 or any tommyrot like that, is there?" 
 
 "No," she said, with downcast eyes. "No." 
 
 "Does that mean that you really care for me? Has the 
 miracle happened? Ursula, has it?" 
 
 "Can you not tell me first that you still care for me?" 
 she asked, her voice cool and repressed. 
 
 "You know I do," he said, with sudden passion. "You 
 know that you are the only woman in the world for me. 
 Love seizes some men like that. They lose all sense of 
 other women, all feeling for them, all desire for them. It s 
 true. I swear it s true. Ursula, I love you more than 
 words can say. Do you care for me a little? Love me?"
 
 376 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Yes," she said, her voice vibrant with the love which 
 she had suppressed so long. "I do love you, I do, indeed. 
 Like yourself, I have waited for this moment for years. 
 Unlike yourself, I have worked to bring it about." 
 
 "Ursula!" he cried, his face flushing with joy. 
 
 "Oh," she said, with a radiant, smile. "I am not ashamed 
 to admit that I planned and schemed that I was glad to 
 have Guido away for the summer " 
 
 "Ursula!" She never forgot the jubilation with which 
 he greeted that remark. It was the most sincere earnest 
 of her love which she could have given him. If Guide s 
 absence had been welcome to her because it facilitated a 
 reconciliation between herself and her husband, she must 
 love him, indeed. Thus argued Hauser. 
 
 Her face had become very pink, her voice husky. She 
 flung herself impulsively into his arms, and her face on 
 his shoulder and clung to him convulsively. Finally she 
 lifted her face and her lips to his. 
 
 "Ursula we have waited a long time for a perfect un 
 derstanding there has been one false dawn. There must 
 not be another. Are you quite, quite sure that you will 
 not regret " 
 
 "Quite, quite sure," she replied. 
 
 "Then, when shall we start on our honeymoon? We ll 
 have to get acquainted again all over, won t we? Can you 
 be ready in say twenty-four hours?" 
 
 "I can be ready in six hours," she replied. 
 
 "Then," said Hauser, "we ll start to-night. The store 
 will have to run itself for a fortnight. I ll be home around 
 two o clock. We can start about four and motor down to 
 to wherever you say." 
 
 He took her soft, flushed face between his trembling 
 hands and kissed her twice, thrice on tremulous, half-open 
 lips. 
 
 That had been the beginning of the happiest summer 
 Frau Ursula had ever known. She was amazed to find 
 how well-informed and how well-read her husband was. 
 He had read authors of whose works she had merely read 
 reviews. He had from time to time bought expensive sets 
 of books for the library. She had, a little maliciously 
 since there were times when she assuaged the pain which 
 his seeming diffidence caused her, and underpropped her
 
 YOUTH 377 
 
 stoical exterior as well, by painting him to herself as simply 
 ridiculous represented him as purchasing those books as 
 furniture necessary to a millionaire s establishment, just 
 as he purchased davenport and library table and elastic 
 book-cases. In more charitable moments she had attributed 
 the purchase of those books to compassion on his part for 
 itinerant book agents. At best she had never supposed that 
 he really read Fiske and Bergson and Haeckel. She was 
 surprised, therefore, in the two weeks during which they 
 were thrown on each other s resources and during which 
 he talked much, that he had read many, if not all of the 
 books which his well-stocked library contained. 
 
 If there was one flaw in her happiness it was the thought 
 of Guido. Hauser saw her receive letters from the boy 
 and answer them. Yet never throughout the entire sum 
 mer did he refer to Guido a single time. When she spoke 
 of Guido, as she sometimes did, Hauser listened with an 
 air of indulgent kindness. Their altered relations barred 
 the suspicion that he was assuming this attitude of silence 
 with the express intention of wounding her. There was 
 only one other tenable supposition: he felt, in all proba 
 bility, utter indifference for Guido such a complete, 
 thorough-going indifference that, when Guido was absent, 
 Guido was for him in total eclipse. 
 
 Frau Ursula had learned wisdom at the cost of happi 
 ness. She prized her new-found happiness too highly to 
 allow this shadow, deep and grave as it was, which lay 
 athwart her path, to trouble her. She knew that she was 
 making Hauser superlatively happy; he was bestowing 
 upon her the same felicitude. Guide s civility to Hauser, 
 Hauser s to Guido, had left nothing to be desired in the 
 past. There was no reason to fear that it would suffer 
 a breach in the future. 
 
 All during that summer he had dwelt, gently meditative, 
 on the curious versatility of the human heart in thus pas 
 sionately loving two creatures so inimical to each other. 
 
 She had not realized that happiness had wrought so 
 extraordinary a change in her appearance. Guido, having 
 washed and freshened up, returned to her and commented 
 upon it anew. And now she noticed that there was a 
 nervousness in his manner which it had lacked before.
 
 378 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Suddenly, without warning, he shot the all-important ques 
 tion at her. 
 
 "Mutterchen, now do you feel about the War? Pro- 
 German ?" 
 
 Frau Ursula dropped the stocking she was darning into 
 her lap and regarded Guido with mild amusement. 
 
 "My son," she said, gently, "how would you feel if anyone 
 asked you that question ?" 
 
 "I should resent it," said Guido. 
 
 "And so do I," quoth Frau Ursula. 
 
 Guido gasped, laughed and jubilated. 
 
 But his mother had suddenly fallen silent. She was very 
 grave as she bade him listen attentively to what she was 
 about to say. Hauser, it seems, was taking the typical 
 German view. Why he should do so Frau Ursula did not 
 attempt to explain or to discover. It was, to her, inex 
 plicable. But, as it was, it was. She implored Guido to 
 observe discretion and tact and to refrain from willfully 
 angering his father. Guido, in the immensity of his relief 
 at finding his mother orthodox, was entirely willing to 
 cheerfully gloss over his father s heterodoxy. After all, 
 what did his father signify? It was his mother who 
 mattered. 
 
 For a long time it seemed that the gods were with Frau 
 Ursula. Guido was much engrossed with the opening of 
 the college, his matriculation, the return of Professor 
 Geddes and his family, the comparing of Janet and Elschen, 
 point for point, and with getting acquainted with the 
 young men in his class. He was much engrossed also, in 
 quarreling about the War with Otto, who, having accepted 
 Guide s substantial loan, had embarked on the four-years 
 course at the "Tech" along with Guido and Stanley. 
 
 For Otto had plunged headlong into the frenzied orgy of 
 hatred for all things not German, and more particularly 
 for all things British, which was the sinister flower of the 
 early days of the War. There was neither rhyme nor 
 reason to this hatred. It had sprung, no one could tell 
 from what polluted soil. 
 
 "A forced bloom from some hot-bed in hell," said Guido 
 to Professor Geddes in a spasm of reactionary anger after 
 one of Otto s intemperate discourses.
 
 YOUTH 379 
 
 Professor Geddes removed his glasses and bent them 
 gently against his knuckles. 
 
 "An excellent phrase," he said, "but, although I am 
 not your professor in English, I would like to point out to 
 you that profanity, semi-occasionally injected into one s 
 talk, produces the same effect upon the sensory nerves as 
 the sharp, explosive sound of fire-works; but this gal 
 vanizing effect fails, becoming tawdry and vulgar, when 
 profanity changes from the exceptional to the customary." 
 
 Having delivered himself of which impromptu lecture, 
 the Professor calmly restored his glasses to his nose. 
 
 Guido smiled. 
 
 "Really, sir," he said, "it s enough to try the patience 
 of Job to hear Otto go on. Otto, now Otto is really a 
 fine character." 
 
 "A splendid boy, none finer," the Professor generously 
 interpolated. 
 
 "But here he has turned his notions of right and wrong 
 topsy-turvy " 
 
 "Has he really?" Professor Geddes interrupted Guido. 
 "I think you are misjudging the German- American, and 
 for that matter the German attitude. I think the country 
 at large, the entire world, is misjudging it. I am not speak 
 ing of the powers that be, of the Hohenzollerns and their 
 minions. I m speaking of the average German man and 
 woman." 
 
 "But, sir, they are very, very unfair so blindly partisan 
 where they themselves are concerned, so blindly unjust to 
 their foe." 
 
 "True. But I would like you to answer me one question 
 before we continue, Guido. Why are we justified in 
 censuring the faults of others and commenting upon them ?" 
 
 "Because they deserve to be criticised, of course," Guido 
 replied, with some warmth. 
 
 "Well, I may be wrong, of course," said Professor 
 Geddes, "but I take a slightly different view. I think the 
 only excuse we have for censuring the faults of others is 
 the expectation that, in clearly apprehending these faults, 
 we may hope to avoid falling into similar bad habits." 
 
 Guido was considerably abashed by this reproof. 
 
 "Of course, sir," he assented, weakly.
 
 3 8o THE HYPHEN 
 
 "And now," said the Professor, tell me in what way 
 Otto and your other German friends have reversed their 
 sense of right and wrong." 
 
 "Well, they seem just plain drunk with the military suc 
 cess of the Germans," said Guido. 
 
 "True. If their cause were just, as you and I know 
 it to be unjust, they would be justified in being thus in 
 ebriated. They, however, believe their cause to be a just 
 one." 
 
 "How can they?" Guido cried, excitedly. "Germany s 
 guilt is plain as way to parish church, isn t it? Every 
 argument which tells against them they brush aside as 
 English lies. Every kind deed done by America they 
 ascribe to American hypocrisy or American subserviency 
 to Britain. It s disgusting. I wish the thing had actually 
 happened which they pretend would have happened if 
 Germany had not violated Belgium and invaded France. 
 I mean, that France and England would have invaded 
 Germany. It would have served them good and right to 
 have their houses burned over their heads, their farms 
 ruined, their aged made homeless." 
 
 "In other words, you would have punished Germany for 
 the intended offense, as she, according to her lights, is 
 chastising Belgium and France ! For you understand, of 
 course, what is not generally understood, that the spirit 
 which animates the German soldier is a punitive, a de 
 fensive spirit. The Junkers and the Potsdam gang may 
 have been toasting The Day for decades, for all we know. 
 But the peasant in the fields, the man in the street, the 
 clerk in the Bureau, all these knew nothing of The Day. 
 What they do know or rather think they know is that 
 Russia, England and France wanted to dismember Ger 
 many, wanted to plunder the Fatherland and to enslave 
 her millions." 
 
 "They can t really believe such rot," Guido exclaimed, 
 disgustedly. 
 
 "They do. Read this." 
 
 Professor Geddes handed Guido the original German 
 version of Lissauer s famous or infamous "Chant of 
 Hate." 
 
 Guido read it in silence.
 
 YOUTH 381 
 
 "You we will hate with a lasting hate; 
 We will never forego our hate 
 Hate by water and hate by land, 
 Hate of the head and hate of the hand, 
 Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, 
 Hate of seventy millions, choking down; 
 We love as one, we hate as one, 
 We have one foe and one alone 
 ENGLAND !" 
 
 "Well?" Professor Geddes inquired as Guido, having 
 finished reading the outrageous fustian, sat staring stupidly 
 at the table. 
 
 "Why, it s it s taken my breath away," said Guido. "It s 
 vitriolic. It s infamous. It s madness. It s scurrilous and 
 noisome. It s obscene." 
 
 "You are right," Professor Geddes rejoined. "It is ob 
 scene. Hatred is obscenity, for hatred means a prostituting 
 of the spiritual energies and functions to base purposes. 
 And therein lies the crime of the German people. They 
 are not conquest-mad but hate-mad. As a race, Germans 
 possess the power of idealization in a pre-eminent degree. 
 It is a precious gift, but, like every other gift, contains 
 in itself the germ of a corresponding fault. There was a 
 time when Germany was completely under French in 
 fluence. Frederick the Great disdained his native German 
 as a vehicle of poetry and wrote poor French in preference. 
 Then came a time when Germany saw in England the Alpha 
 and Omego of virtue and wisdom and initiative. This 
 attitude, no doubt, was due largely to the fact that without 
 England s aid, Germany would have continued indefinitely, 
 perhaps eternally, under French rule following the Na 
 poleonic invasions. Now Germany has gone to the op 
 posite extreme. She either defies or anathematizes. She 
 idealizes or execrates. She knows nothing of the golden 
 mean which is the pleasant habit of races practicing mental 
 temperance. The German phlegm, of which we have heard 
 so much in the past, is merely an outer accouterment. The 
 German mind is much too enthusiastic to be well poised. 
 Enthusiasm, another exquisite grace charged with a fatal 
 germ, makes the German self-assertive, dogmatic, seem 
 ingly ill-bred, tactless and unfair. It is prone, also, to
 
 382 THE HYPHEN 
 
 make him appear a trifle grotesque. At any rate, in allow 
 ing hatred completely to usurp his reason, the German has 
 opened the gates of his mind to the most preposterous 
 and heinous heresies which the modern world has yet 
 seen." 
 
 "Many Americans seem to think that the German people 
 are simply being forced to fight," Guido suggested. 
 
 "You cannot force several million men to fight. Not 
 now-a-days. We are only on the threshold of the mightiest 
 drama which has ever taken place, and as the play pro 
 ceeds, and scene after scene is enacted, many things which 
 now are dark and incomprehensible, may become plain. 
 But one thing is perfectly plain now. Whether of spon 
 taneous growth, or artificially fostered for obvious reasons 
 by the military clique, hatred of England, based on fear 
 of England, is the dominant motive actuating the average 
 German to-day. Hate of England is the cohesive agent 
 which is binding all Germany together as one man. It is 
 the force that is energizing Germany s millions to-day." 
 
 "Fear ?" Guido caught at the one word. "The 
 
 Germans would resent that charge more than any other. 
 Fear means cowardice !" His thoughts flew back to 
 Dobronov. Dobronov s diagnosis tallied with the Profes 
 sor s, a fact so startling that Guido said nothing more. 
 
 "Not necessarily," the Professor retorted. "Cowardice 
 is fear of fearing a thing, fear of fear, in other words. 
 Courage, if not fearless in encountering the thing feared, 
 is at least fearless of fear." 
 
 "Well," said Guido, "all this does not disprove my state 
 ment that Otto is turning himself topsy-turvy in order to 
 play the apologist for Germany. Why, sir," he continued, 
 warming to his subject, "I have seen Otto as a boy pick 
 up a dog that had been run down by an auto, and, on 
 finding that nothing could be done for the poor brute, use 
 the money which he had saved up for a pure to pur 
 chase chloroform with which to end the mongrel s agony. 
 And when we were children Otto told me that he used 
 to lie awake nights crying because I was ill and in pain. 
 And this soft, tender-hearted boy thinks the violation of 
 Belgium regrettable but natural and proper." 
 
 "Does he think the atrocities natural and proper?"
 
 YOUTH 383 
 
 "He denies them, of course. English lies to befuddle 
 America !" 
 
 "Just you wait until he finds out that they are not 
 English lies. Just you wait until all the German sym 
 pathizers find out that Germany, and not England, has been 
 doing all the befuddling." 
 
 "But will they find out? And if they do, will it really 
 make any difference? You know, Professor Geddes, there 
 are folks who say that this Schrecklichkeit is not merely 
 the sum total of individual excesses, such as happen in 
 every war, but is part of a premeditated game." 
 
 "I have heard the same charge made," Professor Geddes 
 replied. "Of course, in every war a certain amount of 
 that sort of thing is bound to occur, is, in fact, considered 
 indispensable. During the Boer War, Lord Kitchener laid 
 waste huge tracts of land. Sherman, in his March to 
 the Sea, destroyed the crops in the fields and drove the 
 cattle before him so that no other army coming after 
 his might find food or provender." 
 
 "Yes, but neither had his men shoot the aged and the 
 infirm and bayonet children and drive old women before 
 them to protect themselves against the enemy fire, or gouge 
 out the eyes of the wounded, and cut off the hands of 
 civilians " 
 
 Professor Geddes rose and began striding up and down 
 the apartment. His agitation was intense. He did not 
 speak until he had regained his self-control. 
 
 "I refuse to believe those stories until we have absolute 
 proof that they are true," he said. "Some of them can 
 not be true. When I spoke of atrocities I meant the 
 shooting of innocent civilians as a punitive measure for 
 sniping. The other outrages I cannot, I will not, believe 
 them." 
 
 "Then you think, too, that those stories are deliberately 
 manufactured for circulation in America?" 
 
 "No ! A thousand times, No ! But there is such a 
 thing as the war lie an unconscious exaggeration at first 
 hand ; at second hand, exaggeration for artistic purposes ; 
 at third hand, exaggeration for moral purposes; all falsi 
 fications being performed subconsciously as it were, and 
 strangest of all, accepted as soon as uttered as truth by
 
 384 THE HYPHEN 
 
 the falsifier himself. The psychology of the war lie awaits 
 explanation at the hands of a future Freud." 
 
 "Still," Guido persisted, "anyone telling or repeating 
 such a lie must have some sense of his turpitude." 
 
 "Yes, of course, if they were deliberate liars, which they 
 are not. In case of isolated atrocities, which, no doubt, 
 have occurred, the same temporary inhibition of the moral 
 sense and moral judgment must be cited not in extenuation 
 but in explanation. Ordinarily, only the most hardened 
 criminals and moral perverts would be capable of such 
 outrages. You see my point, don t you?" 
 
 "My mind sees it but my heart doesn t," said Guido. 
 "Why, sir, would you believe it? After a very stormy 
 session with Otto last night, before I could sleep, I had 
 a little evening hate of my own as a nightcap. I killed 
 off half a dozen Germans with my own hands. I bayoneted 
 them. I shot them. I stabbed them. I bombed them. I 
 committed assassination as cold-blooded as that at Sera- 
 jevo. I tried to picture what these fiendish German 
 officers are like, what sort of werewolf fluid flows in their 
 veins in place of blood. I concocted unheard-of tortures 
 for them and discarded them as quickly as invented as 
 far too mild and gentle. And I hated and detested as 
 I never hated and detested before in all my life. And I ve 
 indulged in some pretty little hates on my account in the 
 past, believe me!" 
 
 "Have a care," said Professor Geddes. Ware of 
 hatred. You see the pass to which it s brought the Ger 
 mans. Consider, if indulged in, to what pass it might 
 bring you." 
 
 "I suppose I am making a fool of myself," said Guido, 
 but without contrition. 
 
 Professor Geddes laid his hand on the boy s shoulder. 
 
 "Your making a fool of yourself has done me a world 
 of good," he said. "I ll fess up. A few minutes ago I 
 was on the point of making a fool of myself. That s the 
 worst of hatred like begets like and it s a villainous 
 progeny to unloose upon the world. Let s keep our hearts 
 clean of hatred, Guido. Let us condemn, and be indignant, 
 and fight for the right if we can and may, but don t let 
 us lower ourselves to the level to which the Germans have 
 sunk."
 
 YOUTH 385 
 
 Janet had come into the room while her father was 
 speaking. 
 
 "Oh, Daddykins," she said. "Apropos of the War. 
 Guido has not yet met Herr Casimir Wesendonck. Some 
 name, Guido. What?" 
 
 "Some name," Guido assented. "He ought to have a 
 succulent title to set it off properly." 
 
 "Well, he hasn t. Not even a miserable little von and 
 that is no fun for him, poor thing, for he almost doubles 
 up with reverence when speaks of the hohe Adel of 
 Allemania." 
 
 "Janet," said her father with severity, "how often have 
 I told you that puns " 
 
 "Millions of times, Daddy. If not millions, then as many 
 as we each have ancestors in the twentieth generation 
 plus." 
 
 "Plus what?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "Plus the ancestors who, being connecting links, are 
 wedged in between. Daddy, did you ever figure it out? 
 If each ancestor could count once only, we never would 
 have been achieved, for there weren t enough people living 
 at one time twenty generations back to go round as an 
 cestors for even a single one us. So we must have shared 
 ancestors. Perhaps, Daddykins, Dr. Koenig and the 
 Kaiser had the same ancestor or ancestress. Wouldn t that 
 be funny?" 
 
 "Janet, we were discussing the War," said the Professor, 
 mildly reproving. 
 
 "How can you without Herr Casimir Wesendonck s 
 able assistance? Daddy, we ll ask mother to have him 
 over for dinner next Sunday and then Guido can see the 
 creature disport himself." 
 
 Our stern young moralist did not approve of levity in 
 connection with the War. But Janet irrepressible was Janet 
 irresistible. Guido laughed. 
 
 "Just what s the matter with Casimir?" he inquired. 
 
 "Oh, he suffers from a complication of ailments. Ail 
 ment number one common as a cold-in-the-head a swelled 
 head." 
 
 Professor Geddes threw up his hands in mock despair 
 and retreated to his desk.
 
 386 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Guido," he said, feebly, "take Janet to the drawing- 
 room." 
 
 "Not before you hear whether my diagnosis of Casimir 
 is correct," said Janet. "Ailment number two, very, very 
 serious. No absolute cure recorded as yet. Anglophobia! 
 Ailment number three almost always fatal, especially when 
 occurring in malignant form, and our poor friend, I am 
 so sorry to say, has contracted the disease in the most 
 virulent form known. Furor Teutonicus!" 
 
 "Janet, will you " 
 
 "I will. Oh, my august father. Obedient to your most 
 honorable wishes, I efface my most humble and miserable 
 self, taking with me our honorific visitor." 
 
 From Janet s nonsensical talk Guido was prepared for 
 a middle-aged German of the futile, boorish type. 
 
 He was considerably surprised, therefore, on meeting 
 Herr Wesendonck a few Sundays later, to see a singularly 
 handsome, tall, well-set-up young man of about twenty- 
 five, who carried with him an air of mingled bon camaraderie 
 and courtesy which inevitably invited the description of 
 "gallant." He seemed out of place in the faultless civilian 
 clothes which he wore. Guido had a quick vision of him 
 as he might appear in the white and golden uniform of 
 the Cuirassiers in which the Kaiser had been so fond of 
 presenting himself in ante-bellum days. He was very fair. 
 His hair was a deep, soft gold and his eyes were blue, as 
 became a true Teuton. His skin was rosy with health. 
 He was, all in all, a very attractive young fellow and, truth 
 to tell, Guido became woefully, hopelessly, desperately 
 jealous of him the moment he saw him. The splendor of 
 young Wesendonck s personality shed a new light on 
 Janet s ridicule of him. Doubtless she was in love with 
 him why shouldn t she be? and was employing ridicule 
 to disguise her real feelings. 
 
 Dinner passed off very pleasantly indeed. Wesendonck 
 represented a type of German that Guido had never met. 
 He had manner as well as manners, conversation as well 
 as small talk, and knew perfectly when and where each 
 was in place. He was an excellent raconteur and filled 
 conversational gaps at table with lively anecdotes quickly 
 and fluently told. Even Cecil seemed crude and awkward 
 beside him. By the time dinner was over and before ever
 
 YOUTH 387 
 
 a word had been said about the War, Guido hated him 
 valiantly with a hatred in which there was no desire to 
 make a beastly vulgarian of himself by using bayonet or 
 bomb. The hatred with which he was filled was just a 
 polite, drawing-room sort of hatred in which annihilation 
 is envisaged but not actively desired; for you see, Wesen- 
 donck had been very attentive to Janet during the meal, 
 and the girl had seemed more shy and gentle under his 
 attentions than was her wont. 
 
 Cecil effaced himself immediately after dinner. He said 
 he had planned to attend Vespers at St. John the Divine, 
 a church sufficiently far removed to necessitate his im 
 mediate departure. As Guido learned subsequently from 
 Janet, Cecil, whenever Wesendonck was in evidence on a 
 Sunday, was seized with an unquenchable desire to attend 
 four-o clock service at the Cathedral. The racial antipathy 
 between these two was strong; the dashing, brilliant, 
 quick-witted German, whose national and individual ego 
 were developed almost to the point of blatancy; the sub 
 stantial, reticent, slow-tongued, high-bred English boy to 
 whom self-emphasis was the most insufferable of social 
 sins. 
 
 Cecil having expunged himself, Janet gave Guido a kill 
 ing look, which said as plainly as words : 
 
 "You may look for the performance to begin." 
 
 And a performance it was and begin it did at a deftly 
 turned phrase of Janet s. Wesendonck changed abruptly 
 from an innocuous and pleasing Apollo Belvidere to a 
 business-like and thoroughly efficient disciple of Mars. 
 Niceties of discrimination between conversation and small 
 talk and their application vanished. Henceforth Wesen- 
 donsk was almost a monologuist. 
 
 "Why," he exclaimed, "you Americans are being duped 
 by England. Incomprehensible to us, after your experi 
 ence with her in the past." 
 
 "It was a German, not an English king, who lost Eng 
 land her Thirteen Colonies," said Guido, contemptuously, 
 glad of his chance in the ring at last. 
 
 "You don t suppose I was referring to the Revolution, 
 do you?" Wesendonck inquired, politely, "or even 1812? 
 Oh, no. I refer to England s part in the Civil War." 
 
 Guido bit his inner lip. From the tail-end of his eye
 
 3 88 THE HYPHEN 
 
 he caught th. appreciative smile on the Professor s lips. 
 He had also a strong sense of Janet, intense and watchful 
 near his elbow. Was she wearing his colors or Wesen- 
 donck s? His since he spoke for America and the Allies. 
 Guido gritted his teeth. This German was no mean ad 
 versary. Apparently he knew American history as well 
 as Guido did perhaps he knew it better. Well, it was 
 also possible that Guido knew a little more of German 
 history than Wesendonck might find agreeable. Guido 
 would give the German a run for his money. 
 
 "England s part in the Civil War was not as reprehensible 
 as is usually believed," Guido retorted. "Once Lincoln 
 issued the Emancipation Act, England was guilty of no 
 further unfriendly acts." 
 
 "Of course if you choose to believe the English apolo 
 gists!" Mr. Wesendonck smiled fatuously. 
 
 "I believe that that was the true cause of England s 
 change of front in the Civil War," Guido replied pleasantly, 
 "because it is strictly in line with England s inimical atti 
 tude toward slavery during the half-century preceding the 
 Civil War. Remember, if you please, at the end of the 
 Napoleonic Wars, after England had saved Germany from 
 France s further aggressions, it was England, through the 
 person of Lord Castlereagh, that insisted on the abolition 
 of slavery throughout the countries involved in the peace 
 negotiations." 
 
 "Permit me to correct a misstatement," said Mr. Wesen 
 donck, with a civility which would have been servile but 
 for an undertone of arrogance, insinuated Guido knew not 
 how, into his words. 
 
 "Bitte," said Guido, with the same exaggerated punctilio. 
 
 "Not Wellington, but Bluecher, saved Germany from 
 Napoleon. Bluecher also saved England from Napoleon. 
 Wellington, it is true, gave Bluecher a little help of no 
 particular significance. The English, with their habit of 
 braggadocio, pretended that the glory of the day went to 
 English arms. Every German school-boy knows better." 
 
 "Apparently," said Guido, "Germany is re-writing history 
 as well as biography to suit her needs. I see that in Leipzig 
 the other day Shakespeare was formally adopted by your 
 compatriots." 
 
 "And very properly so," Wesendonck flung black. "Eng-
 
 YOUTH 389 
 
 gland never appreciated Shakespeare. If it were not for 
 Germany s efforts Shakespeare would have been forgotten 
 long ago in England. It is only envy of the magnificent 
 German Shakespearian productions that make second-rate 
 English actors like Irving and Beerbohm Tree attempt 
 Shakespearian roles. It is a noteworthy fact that England, 
 during the last century, has not produced a single Shake 
 spearian actor of the first water, like Possart or Sonnen- 
 thal. Shakespeare, if he were alive to-day, and if it were 
 possible to chose one s own nationality, would self-evi- 
 dently have elected to be a German. The English, eaten 
 up with envy of Germany s general superiority, cannot see 
 this, cannot, of course, be expected to see it, since mag 
 nanimity is a dead letter in Britain. But Germans, who 
 understand Shakespeare so well, so much better than any 
 mere superficial Englishman is capable of understanding 
 him, comprehend this perfectly. That is why we were 
 right in formally adopting the great poet as a German. 
 He himself would have wished it. It was our way of 
 showing him respect, of indicating that we hold no grudge 
 against him because he happens to have been born on 
 English soil. It was the highest honor with which we could 
 crown him." 
 
 Janet, who had literally sat open-mouthed with amaze 
 ment, at this point, sad to relate, clapped her hands over 
 her mouth and giggled. Neither of her parents rebuked 
 her with as much as a look, but Wesendonck, of the perfect 
 manner and manners, looked astonished and grieved. 
 
 Guido came to the rescue. 
 
 "Janet," he said, not without a glimmer of sardonic 
 humor, "apparently thinks that Beerbohm-Tree was a 
 German, too. Birnbaum you know." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Wesendonck, his aggressiveness restored 
 by this happy explanation of the giggle which had dis 
 concerted him. "Oh, no ! Tree is a very indifferent actor. 
 If he had one drop of German blood in his veins, he would 
 do very much better." 
 
 Janet giggled again. Professor Geddes said hastily: 
 
 "How about Forbes-Robertson? His Hamlet, you 
 know " 
 
 "Forbes-Robertson ? I have never heard of him," Wesen- 
 donk replied in a tone which said as plainly as words that
 
 39 o THE HYPHEN 
 
 any actor unknown to Casimir Wesendonck was an actor 
 unworthy of the name. 
 
 "Then there are some American actors English-speak 
 ing if not English who should be mentioned," Professor 
 Geddes continued. "We are rather fond of Sothern and 
 Marlowe, you know. And of Booth we were proud." 
 
 "My dear sir!" Wesendonck s tone was confidential. 
 "As an educated man you cannot expect a German to take 
 any American actor, any American novel or play or so- 
 called work of art seriously." 
 
 Again a ripple of half -smothered hilarity burst from 
 Janet, and Mrs. Geddes said: 
 
 "Child, whatever started you coughing like that? Find 
 yourself a coughdrop." And Janet bolted from the room. 
 
 Guido was not smiling. Nor was Professor Geddes. 
 And neither was angry or indignant. Both were telling 
 themselves that there was being offered for their inspection 
 a most interesting psychological study. Was Wesendonck 
 mad? Was he a fair exemplar of German thought and 
 opinion and conviction? Guido did not believe it. Such 
 pachydermic obtuseness surely could be found in isolated 
 instances only, and happy chance had thrown that isolated 
 instance his way. Bad as the Germans were, surely, they 
 were not entirely mad. 
 
 "You spoke of Bluecher s saving England," Guido said, 
 reverting to the earlier theme. "I think Germany, rather 
 than England, was endangered by Napoleon." 
 
 "It was Napoleon who said that Antwerp, in the pos 
 session of a strong armed force, was a pistol pointed at 
 the heart of England." 
 
 Was there malevolence or merely allusiveness in the 
 reply? Only a few days since Antwerp had fallen into 
 the hands of the Germans. Guido, coming up the subway 
 stairs at Times Square, had seen the headline of the 
 Courier des Etats-Unis staring him in the face: "Anvers 
 est tombe ce matin!" And for some reason that headline, 
 telling in French of a great city s fall had impressed him as 
 no English or German or Russian headline had ever im 
 pressed him. It had made him feel queer and sick. There 
 are spiritual experiences in every life which defy analysis. 
 Guido could formulate no explanation for this one. 
 
 Answering Wesendonck, he said, quietly:
 
 YOUTH 391 
 
 "The pistol is now in German hands." 
 
 "Yes, and let England beware, let her beware!" Wesen- 
 donck cried. "She has held us down long enough. This 
 is the German War of Independence. Ah, we will make 
 England suffer for her perfidy in the past." 
 
 "But what in heaven s name has England done?" 
 
 "Surely you are merely feigning ignorance of her un 
 believable greed and hypocrisy." 
 
 "No, I am not," Guido said bluntly. "I am asking for 
 information and I would appreciate getting it. I would, 
 really. You pro-Germans always generalize and never come 
 down to hard facts." 
 
 Wesendonck stared at Guido in amazement which very 
 evidently was entirely unfeigned. 
 
 "Why," he said, "the history of England is a history of 
 robbery and piracy. Great Britain is the robber nation, 
 the hypocrite, the arch-liar, the prince of oppressors." 
 
 Generalization," said Guido, contemptuously. "I asked 
 for facts." 
 
 "Facts! Like Gradgrind. I see. I refer you to any 
 text-book on English history. Witness all her colonies, 
 the theft of Gibraltar, her Indian Empire, her outraging 
 of the Boer Republics. Perfidious Albion has much to 
 answer for. She shall suffer yet." 
 
 "As far as I can judge," Guido remarked, calmly, "it s 
 envy that is biting you." 
 
 "Envy? Say rather moral indignation, a profound con 
 viction that we, the Germans, the most ethical, religious, 
 cultured and moral people on earth have been chosen by 
 Providence to chasten the unspeakable Gorgon-headed, 
 Octopus-tentacled monster which is called the British 
 Empire." 
 
 Guido thought: 
 
 "This is sheer lunacy." 
 
 He said: 
 
 "And how do you propose to chasten this monster? By 
 throwing bombs from your Zeppelins upon insignificant 
 civilians in England as you did a week ago at Bethune?" 
 
 The contempt and irony in Guide s voice escaped Wesen 
 donck. He cried in a voice of triumphant exultation: 
 
 "That miserable little affair was just a prelude, just an 
 earnest and a promise of what is to come. Just watch
 
 392 THE HYPHEN 
 
 and see what is going to happen to London in a very short 
 time. We have a large fleet of Zeppelins and one fine 
 night all London will go up in a blaze of glory. We have 
 other little surprises up our sleeve. Shall I play the prophet 
 and foretell some of the events of the coming season ? By 
 Thanksgiving we will be in Paris. By Christmas we will 
 be in command of Calais and Dunkirk. New Year s Eve 
 we will celebrate in London or rather in what is left of 
 London after our Zeps and our big Berthas have finished 
 with it." 
 
 Grossvater Geddes, who had given his undivided attention 
 to the discussion, spoke for the first time. 
 
 "Herr Wesendonck," he said, "when the Germans 
 wrought such cruel havoc in Belgium, they explained it on 
 the ground of military necessity. This projected onslaught 
 upon England cannot be thus explained. Why, then ?" 
 
 Wesendonck seemed greatly astonished by this question. 
 
 "I thought I had made that plain," he said. "To punish 
 England, of course. She has not been invaded since the 
 days of William the Conqueror. Through suffering she 
 will be chastened for past misdeeds, for the atrocious tricks 
 she employed in starting this terrible war, for that crowning 
 act of barbarism of which she was guilty when she forced 
 into the world conflict all the savage races under her own 
 and France s dominion the Gurkhas, the Turcos, the 
 native Indian regiments." 
 
 "Why," Guido cried, "when the War started you Germans 
 foretold that all England s oppressed races would rise 
 against her as a man ! You posed as their liberator ! You 
 did not call them savages then." 
 
 Wesendonck went livid with rage. 
 
 "England is making them fight for her," he almost 
 shouted. "She is making them !" 
 
 "That is what some folks think of Germany that the 
 German soldiers are being forced to fight" 
 
 Wesendonck appeared to think this vastly amusing. 
 
 "Yes," Guido assented, "I agree with you. So does 
 Professor Geddes. We realize no people can be made to 
 fight as the Germans are fighting if they do not want to 
 fight. The same belief, however, applies to other races 
 and other nationalities, Turcos and Hindus included. It is 
 your rage at having failed to bring about uprisings through-
 
 YOUTH 393 
 
 out the British Empire that is now making you shout your 
 selves hoarse with indignation over England s latest 
 perfidy. " 
 
 . For a moment Wesendonck threatened literally to ex 
 plode. The danger of self-annihilation by spontaneous com 
 bustion passed. He said: 
 
 "It is not our fault if all those oppressed races failed 
 to take advantage of their golden opportunity. At any 
 rate, England will be made to suffer for her Rassenverrat!" 
 He fairly hissed the last word. 
 
 "Rassenverrat!" Guido repeated, thoughtfully. It seemed 
 to him that that one word was the equivalent of a volume 
 of commentaries on the Teutonic attitude toward every 
 thing and everybody not German, and on their sincere 
 conviction, stupendously asinine though it was, that the 
 Germans were a specially endowed and generally superior 
 race. 
 
 "At any rate," Wesendonck continued, "all this talk on 
 England s part of going into the war to save Belgium is 
 buncombe. England is fighting for England. Or rather, 
 England is letting others fight for England. Ah ! England 
 is clever. England is wily. But by New Year s Eve we 
 Germans will have brought her to her knees and then you 
 shall see what you shall see." 
 
 "I m almost sorry," said Guido, "that we did not declare 
 war the moment Belgium was invaded, as of course we 
 might have done. You could not possibly have laid all 
 the abominations at our door which you charge against 
 England." 
 
 "Oh," said Wesendonck easily, "America will not go 
 into the War. She is making money far too abundantly 
 in the ammunition traffic. And she will make more still 
 unless we stop her." 
 
 "Unless you stop us!" Guido caught his breath. "May 
 I inquire," he asked, "why so patriotic a German as your 
 self remains in neutral America instead of rushing to the 
 defense of the Fatherland?" 
 
 "My dear fellow ! I m an American citizen. I came 
 here immediately after having served my year in the Army 
 as Freiwilliger." 
 
 A queer sound escaped the Professor s throat. His eyes 
 were cold and hard as he asked:
 
 394 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "I would be interested to learn how your tender Teutonic 
 conscience reconciles your American citizenship with these 
 strictures on America." 
 
 "My dear sir !" Wesendonck seemed genuinely surprised. 
 "America is not in the least concerned in this War! The 
 conflict is primarily between Germany and England. The 
 War is none of America s business. Why is she inter 
 fering?" 
 
 Guido breathed audibly with anger. His hatred for this 
 glittering, handsome man was no longer of the drawing- 
 room variety. He now would cheerfully have made a 
 vulgarian of himself by using upon Wesendonck bayonet 
 or hand grenade. He understood what it means to be 
 "fighting mad." 
 
 Quoth Professor Geddes: 
 
 "In the first place, my dear Wesendonck, the conflict is 
 not primarily between Germany and England. It is be 
 tween Germany and the entire world. This suspicion has 
 come to me before and I have beaten it back as savoring 
 of hysteria. But you have settled the point for me beyond 
 peradventure of a doubt. And now I will tell you the 
 real reason why Germans rail at England the way they do. 
 While Sir Edward Grey was still making superhuman ef 
 forts to stay the mad impulse of the Continental Powers 
 toward war, he was approached by the Imperial German 
 government with the request to make a promise that Great 
 Britain would not go into the war, even if France were 
 attacked! The perfidy which Germany charges against 
 England was committed by herself. The object of the 
 Triple Alliance was precisely to guard against an uncalled- 
 for attack by Germany. Naturally, as England s statesmen 
 are not imbeciles, they recognize the strategic importance, 
 and the importance in the Balance of Power, of Belgium 
 and of an intact France. That does not minimize England s 
 decency in scornfully rejecting Germany s overtures. She 
 might, you know, have rejected them, lulled Germany to 
 false security, allowed France to grapple single-handedly 
 with her treacherous neighbor while she prepared for 
 eventual war. For England was unprepared! And that 
 one fact alone, compared with the marvelous perfection of 
 Germany s preparedness, vindicates England s honor and 
 hopelessly damns Germany."
 
 YOUTH 395 
 
 Professor Geddes had spoken with an incisive vigor and 
 earnestness, but Wesendonck was silenced for a moment 
 only. Then he calmly retorted : 
 
 "Professor Geddes, you are misinformed! The trouble 
 is that you Americans believe all these English lies, instead 
 of trusting Germany, who would have been your staunch 
 friend in the future if you had treated her decently now !" 
 
 For a moment this reply, with all it implied, left even 
 Professor Geddes speechless. Then he resumed, completely 
 ignoring the retort, which in itself was indicative of the 
 clandestine hopes and aspirations of Germany and the 
 Germans. 
 
 "You say this war does not concern America," the Pro 
 fessor said. "As America is embraced in the world, it 
 does concern America. Even if America were geographic 
 ally situated outside the earth, she would, if accessible to 
 the earth, be very much concerned in this conflict. That 
 is so because America is the ideal exponent of humane 
 ness. In her all races mingle and blend and live side by 
 side. The very pith of marrow of our being for upon it 
 depends not only our welfare but the possibility to exist 
 at all is absence of race prejudice, while Germany is 
 the most extraordinary exponent of the glorification of race 
 prejudice which the world has ever been harrowed with." 
 
 "America and absence of race prejudice," Wesendonck 
 sneered. "Why, then, do you burn your negroes at the 
 stake?" 
 
 "Those are sectional outbursts, not even sectional, com 
 munal within sectional, I should say. The entire country 
 condemns and deplores these outbursts. In Germany the 
 entire nation seems to uphold and glory in race prejudice 
 and to think it a very fine virtue. 
 
 "This thing which you have done," Professor Geddes 
 continued with gathering heat, "is so monstrous that we 
 in America with our spiritual ideals " 
 
 Wesendonck interrupted him with a burst of laughter. 
 
 "Do please forgive me, Herr Professor," he said, "but, 
 really, I see now that you are joking. America and 
 spiritual ideals! Spiritual ideals in the land of the dollar- 
 chasers! Spiritual ideals! You want me to make the 
 obvious retort, do you not? Spiritual ideals are not pos 
 sible to a nation without a culture of its own. And you
 
 396 THE HYPHEN 
 
 have no indigenous culture. You ll admit that. You plead 
 your youth in extenuation. Wasn t it Oscar Wilde who 
 said that America s youth is her oldest tradition? What 
 little culture you possess is English therefore steeped in 
 cant and hypocrisy. Just wait till we drink our Neu- 
 Jahrs-Bowle in London after that England s downfall 
 achieved, German culture will dominate the world. And 
 it will penetrate as far as America. Then, the United 
 States will become steeped in a culture that is culture. For 
 your silly Indian traditions, which really do not concern a 
 white race at all, you will substitute those beautiful old 
 legends which cluster about the ancient German mythology, 
 the legends of Thor and Frigga, the Nibelungenlied, the 
 Gudrunsage. Then will your poets have better material 
 to work with than now. Yes, yes, Professor Geddes, let 
 all men and women of German origin rejoice. Within ten 
 years German will be taught in the Public Schools of 
 America in place of English. Our splendid, memory-aid 
 ing, logical, sensible German tongue will supplant the 
 irrational, illogical, barbarous English tongue." 
 
 On and on he raved. There was no stopping him. Like 
 the wheels of Juggernaut he rushed on. Neither Professor 
 Geddes nor Guido made any further attempt to gainsay 
 or to argue with him. Finally, a little after four o clock, 
 he remembered that he had a supper engagement, and 
 having made sweeping bows, and sent his excuses to the 
 ladies Mrs. Geddes had made her escape from the room 
 early in the afternoon he hurried away. 
 
 Grossvater Geddes began walking the floor, his hands on 
 his back. 
 
 "Nun, Eduard" he said presently, addressing his son, 
 "show me two more German chauvinists like Wesendonck, 
 and I ll be as rabidly anti-German as any of you." 
 
 With his head bowed upon his breast the old man walked 
 from the room. 
 
 Guido also was cerebrating. This, then, was the real, 
 orthodox German, the German of pure, unadulterated, un- 
 contaminated breed. The difference between this product 
 of modern Germany and German-American boys like Otto, 
 or Henry, struck Guido as glaring and strange. There 
 was, on the part of German-Americans, a harking back 
 to origins, a yearning for racial affiliation, a sort of honest,
 
 YOUTH 397 
 
 childlike faith that your own racial kith and kin could 
 not do anything really bad and that the other fellow, who 
 ever he might be, must be the real villain. Their hatred 
 for England, even, was based on an honest belief that 
 England was all that the German newspapers, and speakers, 
 and preachers, and magazines represented her to be. 
 German-Americans were notoriously docile and amenable 
 to authority, and they were as potters clay in the hands 
 of their crafty and shrewd brethren from over the sea. 
 In the simon-pure, "made-in-Germany" human article 
 there was a vein of malevolence, of evil satisfaction in the 
 ability to cause suffering, which the German-American 
 lacked. The average German-American was a kindly 
 creature, swift and efficient in the alleviation of pain and 
 painstakingly observing the decencies of life. Guido now 
 saw in the German- American a sublimated dupe of the 
 German. He thought that he had stumbled upon a won 
 derful discovery and hugged it close. It enabled him to 
 transfer all his anger from the one to the other. He even 
 felt a boundless compassion for the German-Americans 
 who allowed themselves to be inoculated with the crass 
 stupidity, the sublime conceit, the obtuse tactlessness, the 
 overweening racial arrogance of his transatlantic brother. 
 As a result of this cogitation Guido felt inclined to be more 
 kindlily disposed toward his former school-mates than he 
 had been since the War started. For his great discovery 
 let them out so beautifully. 
 
 "It s an obsession," Professor Geddes remarked, pres 
 ently, "it s an obsession. You cannot argue with a loco 
 motive running wild. You have got to stop it, that s all. 
 God pity bleeding Europe." 
 
 As Guido was leaving, he met Cecil at the door. Cecil 
 had just signed for a telegram and was reading it. 
 
 "I ll walk to the corner with you, Guy," he said, thrusting 
 the telegram into his pocket "Is that fellow gone?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I m glad I went to Vespers at the Cathedral. They 
 had a minister from Brooklyn, a very fine fellow with 
 strong socialistic tendencies. I do not approve of social 
 ism at all. In fact, I disapprove. But this chap was just 
 a humanitarian the brotherhood idea had gotten hold of 
 him I could see that. But what struck me hard was
 
 39 8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 this. I cannot imagine an Episcopalian minister in Eng 
 land with socialistic tendencies preaching from a pulpit 
 of the Established Church. In fact, I cannot very well 
 imagine an Episcopalian minister being a socialist. Here, 
 in America, in your greatest and most authoritative 
 Protestant cathedral, the thing is done. And it was done 
 soberly, decently. The fellow was a sort of Fabian, a 
 parlor socialist. I was more impressed than I can say. 
 Tolerance, forbearance, freedom to have your views and 
 to air your views that s America. That s what s making 
 America so great. You people aren t afraid of anything. 
 You re not afraid of socialism, Christian Science, Methodist 
 Revivals, Catholic missions, Billy Sundays, prize-fights. 
 The melting pot is big enough for it all, and you are quite 
 incredibly certain that nothing but pure metal is going to 
 be smelted out of the miscellaneous ore that is dumped in. 
 I ve decided, Guido, to become an American citizen when 
 I m of age. Thought you d like to know. If I live." 
 
 "If you live?" Guido demanded, struck by a new note 
 in Cecil s voice. 
 
 "Yes, I m leaving for home to-morrow morning. I m 
 going to enlist in a Canadian regiment." 
 
 "Cecil ! You re not old enough." 
 
 "I m a year older than you and I m ten years more fit 
 for war. I m wiry men of the Bantam class usually 
 are." 
 
 "But why if you intend becoming an American citizen 
 why do you want to enlist now for England?" 
 
 "I ve thrashed the thing out thoroughly. You first of 
 all have something to do with it. When you took that 
 long tramp up in the mountains and were laid up after 
 wards for twenty-four hours, the reason you gave me 
 for doing it was that while you knew it would hurt you 
 to do it you knew also that it would hurt you not to go. 
 Something like that. Well, your grit put grit into me. 
 For one thing I want to know what it s like." 
 
 "Cecil !" 
 
 "Then there s Belgium. One can t get away from Bel 
 gium. It s all about one it s unavoidable, it s everywhere. 
 So, for another thing, I m going over there to escape Bel 
 gium. And then, last of all, principally, perhaps, it s because 
 England has been slandered so basely, so maliciously. That
 
 YOUTH 399 
 
 fellow to-day he did his bit, I warrant, at maligning 
 Britain." 
 
 "Yes, and America, too." 
 
 "Naturally. I tell you, I ve got to get back at them for 
 that for all those foul slanders." 
 
 "How will your aunt take it?" 
 
 "Aunty is a brick. I wrote her for her permission. She 
 wired me in reply. Read for yourself." 
 
 Guido unfolded the telegram which Cecil handed him, 
 and read: 
 
 "Your parents would be proud of you and so am I." 
 
 Guido handed the telegram back to Cecil. Then he said : 
 
 "Cecil, it s bully fine of you. It makes me more ashamed 
 than ever." 
 
 "Why? They wouldn t take you at any rate, you re 
 underweight, too frail. And it s not America s quarrel 
 yet. In a few years perhaps. There is nothing to be 
 ashamed of. 
 
 "I know you are thinking that it s easy enough for me 
 to say that," Cecil continued, "and I know I d feel as you 
 do in your place. It s the sense of race operating in you. 
 I told you we could never get wholly away from race, 
 didn t I? But then it s easy enough to swim with the 
 stream, but you re swimming against it, and that s fine, 
 that s splendid. And then, Guy, though the Germans have 
 gone stark, raving, tearing mad at present, they are a very 
 great race. Never doubt that. Be ashamed of their 
 present lunacy it s a sort of moral insanity, you know 
 but don t be ashamed of them. They are a very great 
 race in spite of it all. My father was quite a German 
 scholar and never tired of expatiating on German great 
 ness. He was as fond of Goethe as of Shakespeare. I 
 can repeat some of his favorite quotations now, without 
 knowing their meaning: 
 
 "Ich bin ein Tell von jener Kraft, 
 Das stets das Boese will, and stets das Cute schafft." 
 
 Guido was struck by the appositeness of the quotation. 
 "How odd," he said, "that you should have quoted just 
 that," he said.
 
 400 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "What does it mean?" Cecil inquired. 
 Guido, after thinking a moment, translated: 
 
 "I am a part of yon dread power, 
 Which, seeking evil, good brings as its dower." 
 
 "Perhaps," Guido concluded, "Germany s seeking of evil 
 will nevertheless accomolish good. What do vou say? Is 
 it possible?" 
 
 Cecil did not reply at once. After a pause, he said, ab 
 ruptly : 
 
 "I think, Guy, your premise is incorrect. Germany is 
 not seeking to do an evil thing not, according to her 
 lights. She is acting up to her standards. To us they 
 seem detestable. To her they seem right and just. Of 
 course we are not yet quite clear as to why she has pre 
 cipitated this war, but say she did it because she thought 
 that England s W eltherrschaft had lasted too long, because 
 she thought that England was entirely inadequate and in 
 competent and much too futile for the part for which she 
 had been cast on the world s stage. If Germany sincerely 
 believes all this and thought that, what with her old age 
 pensions and workingmen s sick benefits and compulsory 
 military training and unrepresentative government she 
 could do better for herself and the world at large than 
 England, she had a perfect right to make a dab at ousting 
 England and stepping into her shoes. But she had no 
 right to slander England as she has done and as she is 
 doing, and to try to ascribe to England the identical de 
 signs upon herself which she had upon Britain. That s 
 abominable. And she is going to suffer for it." 
 
 Guido had listened to Cecil with growing astonishment. 
 
 "Then you do not quarrel with Germany because of all 
 this talk about her Hour of Destiny?" 
 
 "No, why should I?" Cecil responded. "I believe in 
 Britain s destiny. And in America s. Why shouldn t the 
 Germans believe in Germany s destiny? If German culture 
 is really as superior to English culture as Germans claim, 
 why, then Germany deserves to win out. It s a case of 
 proving who is the better man. But Germany will not 
 win out. This web of falsehood and malignancy and cant, 
 this vitriolic hatred, this slandering of England, this pent-up,
 
 YOUTH 401 
 
 viperish, tigerish exasperation speak plainly of envy envy 
 of England s greatness and power, envy of her methods, 
 her mental endowments, her prowess in the past. And 
 a nation that is envious to such a degree lacks the final 
 elements of greatness poise and judgment." 
 
 "In a German magazine article which I read recently," 
 Guido responded thoughtfully, "the writer compared 
 Britain to an old-established, aristocratic firm which, secure 
 in the permanence of its clientage, does business in a happy- 
 go-lucky way, lacking initiative and innovation, sedulously 
 celebrating holidays and half-holidays, with week-ends in 
 summer and Christmas and Easter vacations thrown in 
 for good measure. Germany, on the other hand, was com 
 pared to a frugal, alert, business-like new firm, anxious to 
 please, willing to work overtime and possessing business 
 imagination and tact. The writer cited the case of an 
 English manufacturer of pocket-knives who refused to 
 make a change in the style of handle desired by the South 
 American trade. The salesman of a German house on 
 his own responsibility promised to have his firm make the 
 sort of handle that was wanted and secured the order." 
 
 "Yes," said Cecil bitterly, "and he might have added 
 that in order to secure the order, a small town in Germany 
 was renamed Sheffield so that the South American customer 
 believed he was purchasing English steel when, in truth, 
 as he later discovered to his sorrow, he had secured the 
 style of handle he desired at the cost of very inferior blades." 
 
 "Really?" Guido demanded. "Are you sure? It sounds 
 well, it sounds, you know, like the sort of trick of which 
 Germans are continually accusing Americans " 
 
 Cecil became quite excited. 
 
 "You ve stumbled upon an odd twist in the German 
 character," he said. "They are forever accusing others of 
 the very things they are doing themselves. Part of their 
 policy of putting the other fellow on the defensive, I sup 
 pose. 
 
 "As for the comparison drawn between the business men 
 of Germany and England," Cecil continued, "why is it 
 that America bars Chinese and Japanese labor? White 
 men want to enjoy leisure time and the fruits of Occidental 
 civilization. The Chinaman lives on rice boiled in salt 
 water and labors eighteen hours a day. The Polish Jews
 
 02 THE HYPHEN 
 
 are objected to by some people on the same score. They 
 live on fried onions and are satisfied to slave for a pittance 
 twelve and fifteen hours a day. Does an American want 
 to do that? Or an Englishman? If incessant work is 
 part of the German concept of the scheme of things, it s 
 worth fighting to save the world from becoming a place 
 in which the scramble for a livelihood would be intensified 
 a hundred times. The world wants more leisure, not 
 less." 
 
 "If you believe in England s destiny, why do you want 
 to become an American citizen?" Guido asked with the 
 irrelevance and directness which characterized the talk of 
 these two young men. 
 
 "I m going to answer you candidly, and I hope you will 
 not resent my frankness," Cecil replied. "I believe in 
 England s destiny and I also believe in America s destiny. 
 I believe that the destiny of these two great peoples is 
 irrevocably bound up together. America, in a way, is a 
 continuation or rather an extension, of Britain. You ve 
 developed along different lines. On the whole I think they 
 are better than Britain s. You have a largeness of view 
 really, you cannot, you simply cannot imagine how your 
 outlook upon life in general strikes the European. Then, 
 too, you are so beautifully unhampered by tradition." 
 
 Both boys fell silent. After a little while Cecil said : 
 
 "There is another curious twist in the German character. 
 You ll never catch them dwelling on England s real mis 
 demeanors. Germany helped partition Poland, she wrested 
 Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark and divided the spoils 
 with Austria, then fought Austria because she wanted to 
 hog it all; then she picked a quarrel with France and 
 helped herself to Alsace-Lorraine. And yet she has the 
 face to howl continually about England s aggrandizements 
 Gibraltar, which came to us in the course of an honorable 
 war, and India, which, Heaven knows, we have done our 
 best to civilize, and the Boer Republic now you know, 
 we were right in the matter of the Boer War." 
 
 Guido nodded assent, and Cecil continued: 
 
 "But there are a few items in English history which the 
 average right-minded Briton would rather not be re 
 minded of." 
 
 "Ireland?"
 
 YOUTH 403 
 
 "No, I wasn t thinking of Ireland. I would rather not 
 discuss Ireland. Superficially England is wrong in the 
 Irish question, but I m not certain that we are not right 
 intrinsically. The problem of Ireland is tremendous. What 
 I meant was forcing the opium trade on China. To my 
 mind that was England s blackest crime. But I ve never 
 heard a German complain about that. You see, it did not 
 interfere with the growth of the German Empire. 
 
 "But I have not yet told you," Cecil continued, "just 
 why I intend to transpose myself from a British subject 
 to an American citizen. It s because I think you in the 
 States need all the Anglo-Saxon blood you can get to 
 offset the influx of other nationalities. The English were 
 the earliest American settlers, and the original settlers of 
 the Thirteen Colonies and their descendants have impressed 
 most of their essentials upon later settlers. But the breed 
 is now in jeopardy. It is in danger of being absorbed 
 and dissipated by the tremendous tide of emigration with 
 which you are deluged year after year. The Germans boast 
 of their strength in the United States. If they continue to 
 increase in the same arithmetical progression throughout 
 another half -century, remaining as staunchly true to the 
 interests of the Fatherland then as now, what will happen 
 to America? The entire complexion of American civiliza 
 tion will be changed. I believe that in serving America 
 I am serving England, in serving England I am serving 
 America. I believe in the joint political destiny of the 
 Anglo-Saxon countries. Paraphrasing Benjamin Frank 
 lin, I would like to say. that unless England and America 
 hang together, they will surely hang singly. No one has 
 yet fathomed the entire significance of the conflict in 
 Europe." 
 
 Guido was struck by the parallel line of thought evinced 
 by Cecil s forecast and by Wesendonck s prophecy that 
 within ten years after England s downfall German would 
 have usurped the place of English in the American public 
 schools. Wesendonck s words had seemed to Guido the 
 miasmic phantasmagoria of a war-excited brain. But Cecil 
 was anything but war-excited. He was as little stirred by 
 the thought of going off to war as if war were part of 
 the daily routine mapped out for him for the coming year. 
 Guido said:
 
 404 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Needless to say, I prefer English influence to German, 
 but you will forgive my candor, Cecil, if I say that my 
 idea is that all races which meet here must contribute 
 equally to our national life. In no other way can our 
 ultimate destiny be accomplished." 
 
 "It is a point on which we will never agree," Cecil re 
 joined. "You persist in confounding race prejudice and 
 race consciousness. We in England are conscious of race, 
 but we show less race prejudice than you do. The average 
 American citizen on meeting a negro at a dinner given 
 by a friend, would betray some sign of surprise or amaze 
 ment or disapprobation. The average Englishman would 
 accept the situation, although unusual, as entirely meet and 
 proper." 
 
 I believe in the joint, co-equal influence of all races," 
 said Guido, doggedly, yet feeling that perhaps he did not 
 understand his own position, and all he was committing 
 himself to, any more than he understood Cecil s. He was 
 thankful that Cecil did not pursue the issue. 
 
 The two friends parted a little later. Guido was greatly 
 moved. Cecil showed his usual toplofty composure. Guido 
 watched Cecil stalk away, hands in pockets, and whistling 
 gayly. Guido did not guess the emotion hidden under that 
 seeming indifference. 
 
 A block further down Guido encountered Otto, who in 
 vited him home for supper. 
 
 "We ll have the house all to ourselves," said Otto, but 
 this inducement was no inducement to Guido, for "having 
 the house to ourselves" signified that Otto would be able 
 to bellow out his pro-German sentiment as lustily as he 
 pleased without fear of disturbing the Sunday evening 
 game of whist which Otto s married sister and her husband 
 played every week with his parents. 
 
 "No, thank you," said Guido, "not to-night." And he 
 told Otto that he had just left Cecil, and that Cecil was 
 off for the war. 
 
 "A fine fellow, Cecil," said Otto, heartily. "It s splendid 
 of him to go even if he does fight on the wrong side. But, 
 of course, everybody sticks to their own." 
 
 To Guido, whose thoughts were always spinning along 
 the grooves of Right above Race and No Race Prejudice, 
 this argument sounded hollow and false. And yet he per-
 
 YOUTH 405 
 
 ceived the analogy of thought which existed between Otto s 
 terse, off-hand way of putting the thing, and Cecil s 
 elaborate, more carefully wrought out plea for race. 
 
 He was still smarting from his long session with Wesen- 
 donck and he had no desire to turn on the sluice of vitupera 
 tion which was inevitable to a discussion of the war by 
 Otto. So he vented his irritation by saying : 
 
 "It s a wonder you like Cecil, seeing he is English." 
 
 "Oh," said Otto, "Cecil is so fine he ought to have been 
 a German." 
 
 Guido stared but made no comment. 
 
 "It s natural that Cecil believes all those English lies," 
 Otto continued, "but I don t see how you, a German, can 
 take any stock in them." 
 
 "You are forever talking about English lies/ " Guido 
 rejoined. "What do you mean by that phrase? It is the 
 Germans who are doing all the arguing and explaining and 
 palavering about fine motives. England s attitude is as 
 plain as plain qan be." 
 
 "When you talk like that," said Otto, "I can no longer 
 regard you as a dupe of the English. I must look upon 
 you as practicing connivance in their lies." 
 
 "Take care," said Guido, "you are going too far." 
 
 "Well," said Otto, "I can believe anything of a chap 
 who turns traitor to his race." 
 
 A sensation as of physical nausea swept over Guido. 
 His gorge rose. Without a word he turned and walked 
 rapidly away. A little further on he thought that he 
 should have showed his resentment in a different, more 
 forceful way. The more he thought about it, the more 
 vexed he became, not only with Otto and Wesendonck 
 and all German sympathizers, but with himself. To be 
 vexed with ourselves is the most cruelly bitter of all vexa 
 tions. His wrath waxed, throve and grew. By the time 
 he reached home he was in a gale of fury. There was 
 murder in his heart. 
 
 Through the window, as he stopped to pull out his latch 
 key, he saw that which fanned his fury into a final stage 
 of stark blackness. Frau Ursula and Hauser were seated 
 at the supper-table. His mother s hand lay in his father s. 
 She was speaking, and upon her lips was a smile of rare 
 tenderness. Presently his father lifted his mother s hand
 
 4 o6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 to his lips and kissed it. It was a simple and homely 
 and innocent enough scene as passing between husband 
 and wife, but to Guido it was the ultimate drop that 
 made his cup of bitterness overflow. He had, on returning 
 from Waldheim, perceived the difference in the atmosphere 
 of his home. Formerly, at best, the relations between the 
 master of the house and his wife had approximated an 
 amicable truce. Now mutual affection, confidence, esteem 
 prevailed. To find oneself, without any fault of one s 
 own, suddenly deposed from the lofty pinnacle of being 
 all in all to another person, and to see someone else en 
 throned in one s place, and that someone else one s an 
 cient enemy, is enough, surely, to curdle the milk of 
 human kindness of even an earthly saint. And Guido was 
 no saint. Not by any means. His detestation of the man 
 he called father and believed to be his father assumed a 
 new virulence and was suppressed only because his father s 
 new manner toward himself made overt hostility a well- 
 nigh impossible breach of the decencies. 
 
 Guido found his latchkey and let himself in as silently 
 as he might. He tiptoed across the hall, past the half- 
 open door, intending to go to his own room until his rage 
 had spent itself. He was by this time in one of those 
 blind, insensate, desperate rages which cannot be con 
 trolled or checked but must, like a tornado, blast and 
 blight and run their destructive course. 
 
 He felt vaguely that to meet his father at this moment 
 was to invite disaster. Unfortunately Frau Ursula heard 
 Guido and called to him to come in for supper. Guido 
 thanked her, standing on the threshold of the dining-room 
 door, saying he desired no supper: Then Hauser called 
 to him and urged him to come and eat. Hauser was in 
 his usual Sunday evening mood. The contentment which 
 comes with rest, and good food, and happiness in love 
 lapped him about, and the conglomerate, bovine satisfac 
 tion which he exuded rasped Guide s nerves like a file. 
 He thanked Hauser and said he would go to his room. 
 He was not hungry. 
 
 What? Not hungry? At Guido s age, Hauser could 
 have eaten a five-course dinner every two hours. As to 
 doing without supper because he had had a heavy dinner 
 was absurd. "And you need not fear for your figure.
 
 YOUTH 407 
 
 You ll be slender at forty. Your mother has saved some 
 delicious cold chicken for you, so you d better change your 
 mind." 
 
 Hauser had risen and had retreated to the open fire 
 place, where he lit a cigar with every symptom of succulent 
 comfort. Guide s wrath and disgust wrenched him 
 agonizingly. He was angry with his mother, too. He 
 almost hated her for having called to him, for allowing his 
 father s caress, for saving him dainty slices of cold chicken 
 and expecting him to eat them. Into such excesses of 
 emotion does hatred betray the best of us. Guido forgot 
 his own virtuous strictures on the hate-inspired, hate-beset, 
 hate-nurtured Germans; forgot his own classically calm 
 julgment that hatred carried to an extreme, is obscene. 
 He contrived to say with ordinary civility : 
 "Thanks, I really want nothing to eat." 
 Frau Ursula would have let him go she saw unmis 
 takable danger signs in his eyes. Twice or thrice only had 
 she seen her boy in a black rage. She did not desire to 
 see him plunged into fury now, least of all before her 
 husband. But Hauser obtusely persisted. He enlarged 
 upon the merits of his wife s supper. Praised her genius 
 as a cook and at planning a meal, paid her clumsily jocular 
 compliments. It was evident that he was pitting his powers 
 to please against the boy s sullenness, which was fast com 
 ing to a head. Frau Ursula nervously clasped and un 
 clasped her hands. 
 
 "I do not want anything to eat," Guido repeated for 
 the dozenth time. "I could not eat anything, if I wanted 
 to. I m sick and disgusted. I m sick and disgusted with 
 the pro-Germans. I ve tried to think of them as fools. 
 But they are not fools. They are knaves all of them." 
 He glanced challengingly at Hauser. He no longer de 
 sired to avoid an altercation. On the contrary, he now 
 ardently desired a quarrel, was willing to court it, to go 
 out of his way to meet it or provoke it. 
 Hauser said, good-naturedly: 
 
 "Well, I m a pro-German and I am neither a fool nor 
 a knave. So I think you will have to amend your opinion 
 to embrace my case." 
 
 "I ll not amend it," said Guido, sharply. "I mean what
 
 408 THE HYPHEN 
 
 I said." This, of course, was rank insolence. Hauser 
 flushed angrily, and his wife said, speaking quickly: 
 
 "Guido, you had better go to your room." 
 
 "That s what I wanted to do when I came in," Guido 
 flung back, grumblingly. "Why wasn t I allowed to do so 
 then?" 
 
 "Don t speak to your mother like that," said Hauser, in 
 a tone of authority. 
 
 Guido did not answer in intelligible words, but con 
 tinued to grumble, and Hauser said, less harshly for to 
 hear his wife rebuke her beloved Guido had been balsam 
 to him as it been wormwood to the boy: 
 
 "Learn to respect the opinions of others, my boy, even 
 when you do not share them." 
 
 "I respect the opinions of honest men," said Guido, "but 
 the Germans are no longer honest men, they are liars and 
 robbers and murderers. And those who sympathize with 
 them are quite as bad." 
 
 "Guido!" Frau Ursula exclaimed in a tone of shocked 
 amazement. What had come over the boy? 
 
 Hauser, still good-naturedly, said: 
 
 "I think, Guido, we will not discuss the war just now." 
 
 "If I feel like discussing the war, I ll discuss it," said 
 Guido. "And I ll say what I please. I m ashamed of my 
 German blood and of my German name." 
 
 In an instant all Hauser s beautiful self-control went to 
 pieces. In an instant, too, he was on his feet, very near 
 the boy, confronting him angrily, with purpling face. 
 Thus the two stood staring at each other, truculently, 
 cruelly, brutally. 
 
 Frau Ursula s heart almost ceased to beat with horror. 
 What was going to happen? She could see that all the 
 latent, pent-up animosity of years vibrated between them, 
 strengthened and buttressed by the compound interest 
 which it had drawn but had not expended during the de 
 cade of its dormancy. 
 
 The unexpected happened. Hauser said heavily, angrily: 
 
 "I m glad to be able to relieve you of part of the shame 
 you feel by relieving you of your German name. My 
 name is not yours. You are not my son. I hope your 
 own name will suit you better." 
 
 The room went black before Frau Ursula s eyes.
 
 YOUTH 409 
 
 The shock was almost as great for Guido as for herself. 
 He stared stupidly at Hauser stupidly and helplessly. 
 
 "What did you say?" he demanded. 
 
 "You heard me. You did not misunderstand me. You 
 are not my son. Better ask your mother to tell you your 
 real name." 
 
 Hauser spoke quietly. His anger seemed to have col 
 lapsed. Frau Ursula could see that now he was frightened, 
 not angry. 
 
 "But what does it mean?" Guido stammered. "What 
 in heaven s name " 
 
 Hauser, as white now as Guido, perked his thumb in 
 his wife s direction, and called back, as he left the room: 
 
 "Your mother will explain." 
 
 Left alone with Guido, Frau Ursula experienced the 
 sense of futility which comes with the drop of the last 
 curtain of a tragedy. She had not had time to readjust 
 herself. Her mind was in a haze. Confused and be 
 wildered, she stared at Guido in a perplexity almost as 
 great as his own. 
 
 "Mutterchen? What did my father mean?" 
 
 Frau Ursula felt a violent desire to laugh. But she 
 did not slide into the emotional relief afforded by hysteria. 
 The habits of a lifetime are not easily broken; but it may 
 be said without exaggeration, that in the few moments which 
 elapsed before she spoke, she had suffered torments so 
 violent as to equal the summation of mental anguish of an 
 average life- time. 
 
 She was very angry with Guido. But she was far, far 
 angrier with Hauser. She did not allow herself the luxury 
 of introspective analysis of Hauser s words at this mo 
 ment. She felt a legion of emotions which she would later 
 dissect. At the moment she must give her undivided 
 attention to the task of telling Guido the truth about his 
 parentage in such a fashion as to retain his love. To lose 
 that Guide s love would be the crowning misfortune of 
 all. She had lain awake nights planning, scheming how 
 ultimately to tell him; plotting, in her weaker moments, 
 not to tell him at all. And now, at a most inauspicious 
 moment, she was confronted with the imminent task of 
 revealing to the boy that she was not his mother, for she 
 could not, she dared not, in justice to herself, withhold
 
 4 io THE HYPHEN 
 
 that fact from him now. She ground her teeth in impotent 
 rage at Hauser s renewed insinuation. She envisaged the 
 terrible possibility that Guido might despise and abhor her 
 for the deception, humane and benevolent though it had 
 been, which she had practiced in allowing him to believe 
 that she was his mother. 
 
 In a low, constrained, pitiful voice she essayed to tell 
 Guido the salient points of the story of his parentage. The 
 boy listened in silence, asking a leading question now and 
 then. Hour after hour slipped by while Frau Ursula, 
 after first telling him the bare outline, embroidered the 
 story with all the pre-natal theorizing which had sur 
 rounded his birth and which was to eventualize in the 
 achievement on his part of the Political Synthesis that 
 was to bring happiness and freedom to all the world and 
 to all the peoples thereof. She dwelt briefly on his 
 mother s pre-marital career. She observed an almost ex 
 aggerated kindness and chivalry in her recital of those 
 to her dark chapters of Varvara Alexandrovna s life. 
 She saw him flush painfully as she reluctantly narrated 
 those episodes of his mother s life which had earned her 
 the sorry distinction of solitary confinement. He remem 
 bered Dobronov s slides showing the fortress at Schlussel- 
 burg and went into a glow of shame. Frau Ursula s com 
 passion for her boy drove from her heart all resentment 
 against him for his share in the catastrophe which was 
 engulfing herself. 
 
 When she had at last finished her story, Guido exclaimed, 
 passionately : 
 
 "I will never think of that Russian woman as my mother 
 never. You you are my own, my true, my real 
 mother." And he flung himself at her feet. 
 
 The emotional triumph of the moment compensated her 
 for what she had suffered in the past for the lad s sake 
 and for what, for his sake, she would suffer in the future. 
 So she told herself. So she believed. So, partly and 
 transiently, was true. For her past suffering she had 
 already been compensated in part by her recent happiness. 
 But to liquidate future suffering anticipatorily with present 
 joy is a dubious enterprise, since none can judge of pain 
 that is to come by pain that is past. All emotional ex 
 periences are in a state of constant flux. Pain and
 
 YOUTH 411 
 
 pleasure resist every effort to balance them as credits and 
 debits on the ledger of life. As Frau Ursula was to dis 
 cover 
 
 Guido, for the nonce, seemed to have no thought ex 
 cepting to repeat over and over again the same passionate 
 affirmation that to Frau Ursula, and to no one else, accrued 
 the sacred title of "Mother." What had that other woman, 
 that Russian woman, done to earn it ? Nothing. He would 
 never render the name to her. To do so would be tanta 
 mount to stealing a hallowed, highly-prized treasure from 
 Frau Ursula, would be the equivalent to stealing from 
 himself a possession as pure and sweet as any talisman. 
 The poor lad spoke wildly. Tears choked his voice. What 
 he said was hardly understandable; he babbled unintelli- 
 gently now of this and now of that. Love for Frau Ursula, 
 scorn and contempt for the Russian woman who had had 
 the heart to desert her babe for a political cause, was the 
 burden of his strange medley of words. 
 
 "No, dear Guido, not that, not that," said Frau Ursula, 
 gently. "I must have told my story very badly indeed if 
 you received that impression." 
 
 "I received the only impression possible," cried Guido, 
 "although you tried in every way to disguise the disgrace 
 ful truth! You were more than lenient in your telling of 
 wicked and unlovely actions. But all the clemency in the 
 world cannot make black white, all the benevolence in the 
 world cannot wipe away the wrong-doing which it con 
 dones. You are too good, too pure, too noble, to have any 
 real sympathy for assassins." 
 
 "Hush, hush, my dear, dear boy, you must not call her 
 that. After all she is your mother. And she is suffering 
 cruelly for what wrong she may have done." 
 
 But the boy again vehemently denied the right of Var- 
 vara Alexandrovna to be called by that name. In the 
 swift rush of wild emotions that were sweeping through 
 him, the agonizing blow to his pride, his disgust and shame 
 and horror at being thus mothered, his contempt for the 
 methods employed by the "Russian woman," and his almost 
 violent outpouring of love and admiration for Frau Ursula, 
 he seemed at moments like one demented. 
 
 Suddenly he fell upon his knees and buried his face in 
 her lap, as if he had been a small child and not a young
 
 4 i2 THE HYPHEN 
 
 man. Frau Ursula put her arms around him, and lifted 
 his face to hers and gathered him to her heart. 
 
 "My son," she said, "my beloved son, my more than 
 son." 
 
 But Guido could not reply ; he was crying bitterly.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IT was long after eleven o clock when Frau Ursula went 
 to her room. The light was burning in Hauser s 
 apartment and she heard him pacing the floor. Apparently 
 he had waited for her. She had hardly entered her room 
 when he rapped at her door. Most particularly she did 
 not wish to speak to him now ; she wished to have time 
 to think before seeing him. She paid no attention to his 
 rapping, but a second, more imperious summons brought 
 the perfunctory "Herein" to her lips which gave him per 
 mission to enter. 
 
 A glance at his face told her that he had spent a miserable 
 evening. But this did not soften her toward him. What 
 he had done, the insinuation which he had revived, was 
 unforgivable. 
 
 "Ursula," he cried, "I do not know what you are going 
 to say to me, but whatever you say or think or do, you 
 cannot despise me as heartily as I despise myself." 
 
 She raised her eyes to him for a moment, but did not 
 reply. Very composedly, as if he were not present, as if 
 she were quite alone, she began laying away her hat, her 
 scarf, her veil. 
 
 "Ursula!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I ve made you unhappy. If cutting off my hand or 
 my offending tongue could make the thing unsaid, why, 
 it would be made unsaid." 
 
 Again Frau Ursula lifted her eyes to her husband s face. 
 The fine irony in her eyes, the incredulous smile it was 
 barely more than a shadow of a smile subtly tinged with 
 disdain that hovered about her lips stung him as no words 
 could have done. 
 
 "Ursula!" 
 
 She did not reply this time, not even with an ejaculatory 
 monosyllable, but sat down at her dressing table and touch-
 
 4 i4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 ing the chain of the electric lamp, busied herself with 
 mending a tiny rent in the lining of her coat. 
 
 "Ursula!" 
 
 She might have been alone in the room for all the at 
 tention she gave him. Her silent contempt frenzied him. 
 
 "Ursula, you have never treated me like this before. 
 I deserve it, I know. But I am asking you to forgive me. 
 I am throwing myself on your mercy. What can I say 
 to soften you?" Poor Hauser, with an eloquent gesture 
 of the hands, and with a look so pitiful that it would have 
 softened his wife at any other time, indicated that he was 
 willing to suffer any abasement, or punishment, if only 
 she would take him back into grace. He begged, plead, 
 entreated, implored. He was ready to make any atone 
 ment. 
 
 But his desperate rhetoric aggravated instead of dis 
 sipating his wife s thinly veiled contempt and nourished 
 the anger which she was nursing. For from all he was 
 saying, it was apparent that he was conscious of no offense 
 save only that of telling Guido that he was not his 
 Hauser s son. The luckless man by his pleading widened 
 and deepened the chasm which his rash words with their 
 insulting allusion had opened between himself and his 
 wife. 
 
 Having exhausted himself in moral prostrations, he 
 lapsed into a frightened silence. 
 
 For the third time Frau Ursula raised her eyes to her 
 husband s face. Genuine amazement was mirrored in them. 
 But the silence that was maddening the man remained 
 unbroken. 
 
 It has been said that every man s and every woman s 
 virtue has its Achilles Heel. Individual pride, also, has 
 its vulnerable spot, which, when pricked, reacts with a 
 force entirely out of proportion to the stimulus applied. 
 Frau Ursula had a charitable disposition. She would have 
 forgiven her husband occasional lapses from conjugal 
 fidelity, holding that men are men and must not be judged 
 by the feminine rule of two ; she would have forgiven 
 him intemperance, seeing in that manly vice the human 
 variation of tidal wave or earthquake. She would even 
 have stood by him if he had turned defaulter or forger,
 
 YOUTH 415 
 
 since man, being the weaker ethical vessel, is more liable 
 to moral aberration than woman. 
 
 Fate is whimsical and sports with human predelictions 
 as with human destiny. The one thing which Frau Ursula 
 deemed unforgivable was the thing Hauser had been 
 guilty in the past, and was guilty of again in the present. 
 She had never entirely forgiven him for his former be 
 lief in her pre-marital lapse from virtue, but, being both 
 kindly and wise, she had compromised with her pride in 
 order to embrace happiness. And is not compromise nec 
 essary in every marriage? Frau Ursula thought it was. 
 She believed, however, that Hauser had been sincerely 
 convinced of her innocence when he recanted. To have 
 that heretical belief involving herself crop up again after 
 all these years, at a time when mutual confidence and 
 affection were the established order of the day, was a morti 
 fication and a humiliation which exceeded the bearable. 
 
 She felt it incumbent to say: 
 
 "Do you still believe that Vasalov was my lover?" 
 
 "My dear, I have never blamed you, never held it against 
 you." 
 
 "I see you still do believe it." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 "Ursula !" 
 
 "Well ?" 
 
 "Say something for heaven s sake say something." 
 
 "What shall I say? Years ago, when happiness was 
 within our reach, when I was ready to give you affection 
 and esteem and love, you spoiled our dream by this same 
 infamous charge. You repudiated the belief a few weeks 
 later when I so far did violence to my primal sense of honor 
 as to produce proofs of Guide s identity. It seems now 
 that you were insincere in your repudiation, and that you 
 continued to believe your wife a woman with a past." 
 
 "What language!" Hauser strained his declamatory 
 powers in his effort to convince his wife that never, no, 
 never, had he thought of her in that light. 
 
 "You mean do you not? that you did think of me in 
 that light, but that because you happened to be fond of 
 me you did not apply the customary terms to me," said 
 Frau Ursula, feathery contempt in her voice. The man s 
 futility as a psychologist was really amazing.
 
 416 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Hauser felt the despair of a man who is being carried 
 out to sea on a raft within sight of those who could save 
 him if they only would. He redoubled his efforts to pro 
 pitiate his wife. He not merely humbled himself, he 
 groveled, he not merely groveled, he cringed. But Frau 
 Ursula was obdurate. He had excoriated her. That she 
 was excoriating him did not enter into her head. She said, 
 finally : 
 
 "You are protesting too much. Let there be an end 
 to this farce. I definitely made up my mind an hour ago. 
 I am going to leave you." 
 
 Hauser did not believe that she really meant what she 
 said, but he did not dare say so. He realized that she 
 was in a dangerous mood and that he must not cross her. 
 He resumed his pleading. He pointed out to her that he 
 had waited her pleasure and served for her twice the 
 period of Jacob, prototype of faithful lovers, had waited 
 and served for Rachel. He had, he said, in all that time, 
 observed fidelity to his marriage vow. He loved her her 
 alone. 
 
 Frau Ursula laughed bitterly. 
 
 "Love!" she said, contemptuously, "is love love without 
 respect ?" 
 
 "In your heart of hearts you know that I respect as 
 well as love you," said the man. "You know very well 
 that only supreme love, real love, not passion or desire, 
 can make a man overlook a fault like that in his wife." 
 
 It was a telling point, but it did not find its way to her 
 heart at the moment. It lay, lightly tossed upon some 
 superficial brain, whence, unexpectedly some day, it would 
 penetrate the thinking level and emotional depth. 
 
 She said: 
 
 "A woman who has been culpable may be and probably 
 is grateful for such an extremity of love. An innocent 
 woman resents it." 
 
 "Ursula !" She knew from his tone that he was changing 
 his mode of attack. "Ursula, in justice you must admit 
 that the proofs of Guide s identity which you submitted 
 were not proofs at all. You showed me neither birth 
 certificate nor any other legal document. You showed 
 me an old daguerreotype of a friend of Dr. Koenig s, and 
 asked me to see a resemblance between the face of the
 
 YOUTH 417 
 
 portrait and Guide s face. I saw none. But I pitied you 
 immeasurably. I realized that you were making a last 
 desperate effort to save your self-respect, I realized that 
 if I rudely shattered the fiction of Guide s birth and ante 
 cedents, which you wanted me to believe in, I would irre 
 parably damage your self-esteem. I therefore committed 
 a pious fraud. I pretended to believe your yarn. Why, 
 why do you blame me for all this, since my deception 
 was actuated by the purest dictates of love?" 
 
 "Your effrontery is sublime," said Frau Ursula. "In 
 the same breath you implore my forgiveness and repeat 
 your fault. I refuse to continue the conversation." 
 
 "You will have to hear me out." Hauser s manner 
 changed. He was no longer a supplicant. His habitual 
 air of authority and finality had come back to him. "You 
 must listen to the rest of what I have to say. There was 
 Vasalov, and the resemblance between him and your son 
 was too palpable to admit of quibbling." 
 
 Frau Ursula laughed bitterly. She saw no resemblance 
 between Vasalov and Guido, and she failed to apprehend 
 that another eye might perceive what she failed to see. 
 
 "What then," Hauser continued, "could I suppose but 
 that you were the boy s mother? I have never seen any 
 woman so pathetically enamored of her offspring as your 
 self. An adopted child, indeed! Would you, could you 
 have loved a strange child as you loved Guido? I leave 
 your common sense to supply the answer." 
 
 Frau Ursula, when not blinded by anger, had a fine 
 perception of justice, which means that she had a lively 
 sense of relation between cause and effect. She was now 
 somewhat abashed by the crudeness of her own past 
 psychological processes which had allowed her to overlook 
 a matter of such pith and moment as motive. Truth to 
 tell, she had all but forgotten the original motive that had 
 prompted her to essay the role of Guide s mother, would 
 perhaps have forgotten it with even greater completeness 
 and greater speed if it had not been for Dobronov and 
 Vasalov and the all-pervading, interpenetrating Synthesis. 
 In brief, Guide s father had been completely eclipsed by 
 Guido and by Hauser. Guide s personality had won its 
 own supreme place in her heart. He was hers as surely 
 as if he had been flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood.
 
 418 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Yet she was shrewd enough to realize that that nearness, 
 that spiritual closeness, that sense of inviolable intimacy 
 would never have been achieved by the son of a different 
 father. 
 
 So, to herself, she grudgingly admitted Hauser s per 
 spicacity even while she was furious with him for evincing 
 it. She no longer loved the second Guido. He was to 
 her now nothing but a memory and the joint author of the 
 wretched Synthesis. Nevertheless, Frau Ursula preferred 
 to have Hauser continue to think her unchaste, hideous as 
 that condition appeared to her, to disclosing to him that 
 she had given love where love had not been returned. 
 
 She decided to let the case against her go by default. 
 
 "I could supply the answer but I shall not do so," she 
 said, coldly. "I am leaving your home to-morrow morning 
 with Guido." 
 
 "Surely not!" Hauser spoke with determination. As a 
 penitent petitioner he had seemed to her contemptible. 
 Now, imperious, masterful, almost overbearing, he com 
 pelled her admiration. But she held out against him. She 
 did violence to every softer emotion. She steeled herself 
 against his charm. It is not too much to say that she 
 loved Hauser as she had never loved him before at the 
 moment when she was preparing to leave his home. Only 
 one thing on earth could have made her reverse her de 
 cision: if he had said to her, conviction in his voice and 
 eyes and manner: "I ve been a brute to think you capable 
 of that sort of thing. Appearances were against you. The 
 evidence of my senses was against you ; the evidence of 
 my judgment was against you. Nevertheless it was un 
 forgivable that I did not cast aside this cumulative evidence 
 in favor of the higher tribunal of the soul! I should 
 have known that you were quite incapable of that that 
 passion could never have moved you to a point passing 
 decorum. I am culpable. I have steeped myself in evil 
 in thinking evil of you. My sins have made me a pariah 
 and on outcast. But forgive me." 
 
 The miracle for which Frau Ursula hoped did not hap 
 pen. Hauser, at her request, finally left the room un- 
 shriven. 
 
 Early the next morning Frau Ursula and Guido left 
 the Hauser mansion and went to the Anasquoit Hotel to
 
 YOUTH 419 
 
 live. Guido assumed his real name, his satisfaction in the 
 change being greatly augmented by the presence of the 
 precious little word "von," that silver-decked herald of 
 his patronymic. He remembered what Egon von Dammer 
 had said about names ending in "itz", and about the name 
 "Guido" and that it comported ill with "Hauser." He 
 almost forgot his shame in his German blood and in the 
 vampirish performances of Germany in his excitement and 
 joy that Hauser was not his father. 
 
 He remembered the War and his disgust in it and Cecil 
 as he walked home to the hotel from college for lunch, 
 and fell immediately into a black fit of self-disgust. He 
 had heard enough about the first Guido von Estritz from 
 Dr. Koenig and Grossvater Geddes to know that the name 
 was instinct with honorable traditions, but he realized that 
 he failed to grasp its entire significance and all it had 
 stood for. Presently it seemed to him that the honor of 
 owning so fine a name was too great for his own untested 
 honor. Then he remembered "The Russian woman" and 
 an entirely different set of feelings were aroused. His 
 facile emotions were in a state of geyser-like turbulence 
 and variability. 
 
 He was in the singular position of being proud of his 
 racial affinity to Russia but ashamed of his Russian 
 mother; on the other hand, he fairly palpitated with de 
 light in his von Estritz heritage, while detesting the thongs 
 which, by virtue of the von Estritz blood, bound him to 
 Germany. 
 
 Frau Ursula apprehended and sorrowed. Great as was 
 the boy s love for her, he had not uttered one word in 
 commiseration of her plight for the plight which he was 
 directly responsible. She had not been able to bring her 
 self to tell Guido her true reason for leaving Hauser, and 
 it irked her horribly that Guido accepted as verities the 
 platitudes with which she had explained her separation 
 from Hauser. 
 
 "You and I will be happier alone," she had told him, 
 and he had acquiesced in the statement without question 
 or parley. She did not wish him to suspect the true reason 
 and yet, self -contradictorily, she desired that he should 
 surmise that there was an ulterior motive.
 
 420 THE HYPHEN 
 
 But Guide surmised nothing of the sort. He fell in 
 quite unquestioningly with the suggestion that the Hauser 
 household had been disrupted for the express purpose of 
 making life happier for Guido von Estritz. He saw nothing 
 preposterous in that. Frau Ursula wondered and wept in 
 secret. She, who had allowed her selfish pride full sway 
 in taking the important step, was revolted by the healthy 
 egoism of normal youth which sees in every agreeable 
 occurrence a propitious interference of Providence, and 
 reduces all actors on the stage of life, save only self, to 
 the condition of satellites. 
 
 Frau Ursula was to pay dearly for her immoderate in 
 dulgence in pride. She understood this before her first 
 day of freedom was half over, and was filled with wild 
 regrets. She hoped desperately, tremendously that Hauser 
 would come to the hotel to renew his plea. But Hauser 
 did not come. 
 
 Meanwhile the news that Mrs. Hauser and Guido, the 
 latter under a new name, were living at a hotel, blazed 
 through the town like a fire and brought Dr. Koenig 
 and Mrs. Erdman and Tante Baumgarten hot-haste to the 
 side of Frau Ursula. She saw them and none else, telling 
 them, for circulation, that her husband and she had agreed 
 that a separation was desirable. Guide s story was known 
 both to Mrs. Erdman and to Dr. Koenig, and she author 
 ized them to tell it to anyone who asked, with the necessary 
 elision of Guide s Synthetic Destiny. 
 
 Dr. Koenig was consumed with curiosity as to the effect 
 " upon Guido of his new knowledge concerning his destiny, 
 and questioned him regarding his attitude. 
 
 "It s a pretty tall order to wish on a fellow, isn t it?" 
 Guido rejoined, a reply which, couched as it was in Ameri 
 can slang, scandalized the old physician. In spite of his 
 almost ferocious love for his adopted country, Dr. Koenig 
 violently disapproved of that trait of Young America 
 which Janet had once described as "flipness." He brought 
 the conversation around to the same point again, only to 
 encounter a silent, stolid resistance very unusual in Guido. 
 The plain truth is the boy was suffering from a species 
 of stage- fright, the same sort of stage- fright which had 
 almost paralyzed his creative powers after the Professor s
 
 YOUTH 421 
 
 superlative praise of his short story. A similar, but much 
 stronger sense of panic oppressed him whenever he thought 
 of his "destiny." The ridiculously exaggerated value 
 placed upon his pre-destined and fore-ordained career he 
 felt would neutralize anything he might have achieved un 
 hampered by such a string of nonsense. That "The Rus 
 sian woman" was partly responsible for the plan dis 
 credited it entirely in his eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Geddes sent up her card on Tuesday, but did not 
 ask to see Frau Ursula. On her card was penciled, "If 
 I can be of service, command me," an unobtrusive way 
 of extending sympathy which Frau Ursula appreciated. 
 
 Frau Ursula experienced an odd reluctance to show her 
 self in the familiar streets of the town. The truth is that 
 she was ashamed. There was no reason under the sun 
 for being ashamed, but ashamed she was. Some hidden 
 spring of the heart had been touched and was sending 
 forth an unsuspected freshet of contrition. 
 
 Day after day went by without bringing Hauser to her 
 side. Hope died at last, leaving her bewildered, fright 
 ened and pained beyond words. She missed his hearty, 
 slightly domineering way, his jocularity with dependents, 
 the aroma of his inevitable cigar. 
 
 One evening, in a spasm of insufferable nostalgia, she 
 donned her hat and coat and walked to the door of the 
 house in which she had ruled as mistress so long. From 
 the stoop, through the window, she saw Hauser sitting at 
 the table, quietly reading his evening paper. Something 
 amused him. He smiled. That smile, the natural expres 
 sion of a transitory amusement, hurt her, shocked her in 
 expressibly, outraged her sense of decency. She tried to 
 argue with herself. She reminded herself that only that 
 afternoon she had not merely smiled but laughed quite 
 heartily at something Guido had told her. But somehow 
 Hauser s smile did not seem in character. She had pic 
 tured him as spending his evening in supine, woe-begone, 
 idle desolation. Instead she found him reading his paper 
 and smiling. 
 
 Like a whirlwind there rushed over her the recollection 
 of his accusation or insinuation or whatever the cruel thing 
 deserved to be named that had brought about their rupture.
 
 422 THE HYPHEN 
 
 She withdrew her hand from the door-bell and walked 
 away furtively, fearful lest some passing acquaintance 
 recognize her. 
 
 "If I loved him less I might forgive him," she told herself. 
 
 The next day she began her quest for an apartment.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AND, since Vasalov had not availed himself of Dobronov s 
 brilliant idea of cross-assassination, the War went 
 on. Vasalov had rejected Dobronov s suggestion not be 
 cause he thought the scheme hare-brained or ineffectual, 
 but because he believed that the war was the harbinger of 
 a new era in Russia and must therefore not be interfered 
 with, a ruling which elicited no comment whatever from 
 Dobronov save an expression of personal relief, because, 
 since his plan was rejected, he was absolved from the 
 grim responsibility of having consigned to death a dozen 
 or more of his fellow-beings; for, as he said naively to 
 Guido, "After all kings and queens are human beings." 
 
 There had appeared by this time a large crop of books 
 dealing with the causes and origins of the War, which 
 everybody was reading Cramb, Bernhardi, Fernau; and 
 there was a secondary crop of authors from which every 
 body was quoting without having read them, such as 
 Treitschke, Nietzsche and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. 
 The pro-Germans employed their usual tempestuous fury in 
 combating, or trying to combat, the arguments provided 
 by these authors which were hostile to their cause, and in 
 doing so showed the same lack of restraint, of decorum, 
 of propriety which was marking their military exploits, 
 making of their argumentation an orgy of linguistic in 
 temperance, a banquet of unreason, an outrage upon the 
 body of logic and truth. 
 
 Life had become a continual round of bickering, dissen 
 sion and nervous strain. There was no escaping from the 
 War. It lapped one round. It fascinated, hounded and 
 obsessed. Stan, it is true, when Guido tried to talk to 
 him about the War, said, easily: "You ought to read less 
 of that war stuff, Guy. It s getting on your nerves. After 
 all it s a European mix-up and no affair of ours. Ameri 
 cans aren t bothering much about the War." 
 
 423
 
 424 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Lots of them are, I think," Guido retorted. "Seems to 
 me I have heard about America- fed Belgium and our 
 ambulance trains and " 
 
 "Sure you have," Stan interrupted him, smiling. "When 
 ever anything happens anywhere it s always up to the 
 U. S. A. to shell out, isn t it?" He grinned facetiously. 
 "But because we are losing our money is no reason why 
 we should lose our sanity as well. Nix on the War, Guy. 
 Forget it." 
 
 Guido did not forget it. He longed for Cecil. He missed 
 Cecil out of all proportion to the short time he had known 
 him. One brief note he had from the English lad from 
 a training-camp in Canada an unsatisfactory note from 
 the human point of view, but replete with the vernacular 
 of the soldier and with details of the grim business of 
 soldiering. Truth to tell these details did not interest Guido 
 very much. He was too much preoccupied with the 
 casuistry of the War to give heed to mere military ex 
 ploits. He had a feeling, shared, in the early stages of the 
 War, by many other excellent folks older than himself, 
 that if only the Germans of America could be persuaded 
 of the rottenness of their cause, and experience a change 
 of heart, the German armies would be outmaneuvered and 
 outmarshaled as a sort of corollary to the moral victory 
 of suasion. 
 
 One curious phase of the German-American psychology 
 was their deplorable lack of logic and their utter incon 
 sistency. They slew reason to serve German partisanship 
 and prostituted heart the much-prattled of, greatly lauded 
 German heart to uses incredibly base. 
 
 Their favorite method of meeting and refuting the hair- 
 raising news from Belgium and France continued to be 
 the old calumny: English lies. When news came so pal 
 pably, indeliby true and direct that this fashion of dealing 
 with it was of no avail, as, for instance, the shelling by 
 German battleships of the three unimportant English coast- 
 towns, Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough, of which no 
 one, at least no one in America had ever heard, no means 
 were shunned to supply a plausible justification. "The 
 English would do the same if they could," was one sneer 
 ing comment on this flagrant violation of international law, 
 implying that the wrecking of unfortified towns was a
 
 YOUTH 425 
 
 military exploit requiring the superior efficiency of the 
 German navy! "The English violate international law in 
 blockading Germany," was another popular rejoinder. "Why 
 does America always find fault with Germany and not with 
 England?" 
 
 The only inference to be drawn from the latter plea was, 
 of course, that cold-blooded murder in German eyes was no 
 more reprehensible than a technical illegality. Guido told 
 Otto as much one day and, for a full ten minutes, turned 
 his friend into a maniac. 
 
 They were quarreling continually now-a-days these two 
 old friends. Time and again Guido vowed that he would 
 never set foot in Otto s house again. But Otto was Otto. 
 His personality remained and the mysterious vital current 
 that reaches out from one personality to grasp at another 
 remained unimpaired as of yore. Guido might quarrel with 
 Otto, might hate him, might objurgate him, might fight him 
 even, but Otto, nevertheless, was Otto, and, being Otto, had 
 a place in Guide s scheme of things which no other friend 
 might ever fill or usurp. 
 
 Besides, Otto was as avid of war discussion as Guido, 
 and Guido relished nothing these days excepting a good 
 long talk on the War. The War with its issues and causes 
 had become Guide s chief pastime. It filled Iseiure mo 
 ments, it sat with him at meals, it went to bed with him 
 and dominated his dreams as it inhabited his waking his 
 hours. His mind was like the newspapers one wondered 
 what had formerly occupied the space now given over to 
 the exigencies of the War. 
 
 Frau Ursula, meanwhile, was trying to find an apartment 
 for herself and Guido. She was somewhat undecided as 
 between an apartment or a house. But to furnish and 
 equip a house was an undertaking from which she shrank 
 in view of the scarcity and universal undependability of 
 servants. The four excellent servants of the Hauser estab 
 lishment had been persuaded by her to remain with her 
 husband. There was the Bohemian cook, a true genius 
 of the kitchen, worthy of the cordon bleu, and the house 
 maid or second girl, as the Anasquoitians term this variety 
 of maid, the laundress who also waited on table and washed 
 dishes and silver, and the man of all work, who cleaned 
 the windows and trimmed the hedge in summer and shoveled
 
 426 THE HYPHEN 
 
 the snow in winter. In addition there was the chauffeur, 
 a well-bred fellow, whom neither Hauser nor herself re 
 garded precisely as a servant. There had been a Grand 
 Council of War in the Hauser kitchen on the fateful 
 Monday when Frau Ursula had left her husband s bed and 
 board. Opinion was hopelessly divided. The cook was 
 for staying with the master, since the mistress desired it, 
 adding that she was sure the Herrin would be back before 
 long and would like to find the household intact. The 
 housemaid, a pert, grasping Berlin girl, with coarse red 
 arms, said she didn t believe in staying in the house with a 
 divorced or a "separated" man. She feared for her good 
 name. The laundress, an Irish-American girl, who was a 
 widow with a child to support, said she d risk her reputa 
 tion all right, but she was afraid the job would leave her. 
 The man of all work, a poor derelict whom Hauser had 
 picked off the street one bitter cold night, was for staying 
 with the master. The majority finally prevailed, and the 
 four servants remained in the handsome big mansion to 
 wait upon the sole remaining member of the family. 
 
 Frau Ursula filed her name with the two principal real 
 estate agencies of Anasquoit and waited. She was neither 
 comfortable nor uncomfortable at the hotel. She was not 
 in a frame of mind to be either. Her sensory system was 
 in a state approximating suspended animation. During the 
 first fortnight after leaving Hauser she was harrowed by 
 a fear which was half a hope. If that uncertainty should 
 transform itself into an expectancy, there was, she told 
 herself, only one course to pursue. She would write 
 Hauser, asking him to come to her, and she would then 
 show him all the available documents concerning Guide s 
 birth, and acquaint him with her true motive in assuming 
 charge of the boy. 
 
 The expectation, however, which would have achieved 
 a reconciliation, did not eventualize. Frau Ursula wept 
 for a day and a night, and then set definitely about the 
 task of finding a home for herself and her son. 
 
 She was ably seconded by Mrs. Erdman. The erstwhile 
 widow of a relative of a Signer had a very much more 
 definite idea of what Frau Ursula wanted than Frau Ursula 
 had herself. She located a very charming apartment in 
 a two-story house on upper Bismarck Street, near Fern-
 
 YOUTH 427 
 
 wood Street, which was to fall vacant on the first of the 
 year. Frau Ursula demurred. Since she, Mrs. Erdman, 
 had her heart set on an apartment for Frau Ursula, she, 
 Frau Ursula, must at least insist on a real apartment in 
 stead of the upper floor of a two-story house. Thus quoth 
 the usually urbane Ursula. Mrs. Erdman ignored her 
 friend s little outburst of temper, and urged the advantages 
 of the apartment she had in mind. Frau Ursula, with 
 considerable acerbity, repeated that she would never con 
 sider a flat in a two-story house. If a flat it was to be 
 what earthly sense in dignifying a miserable fifty or sixty- 
 dollar flat by the name of apartment she must at least have 
 a real flat with pulleys and pulley-pole and a dumb-waiter 
 and a janitor to take off the garbage and look after the 
 steam-heat and hot-water plant. Most particularly was a 
 pulley indispensable. Without a pulley, the clothes had 
 to be dried in the yard. That meant that the clothes-lines 
 were at your disposal only one day a week. Say it rained 
 on Monday. You couldn t shift your day s washing to 
 Tuesday because the other family was entitled to the use 
 of the yard on Tuesday. Say it rained again on Wednes 
 day. You would be reduced to the ignominious strait of 
 washing on a Thursday, leaving the ironing for Friday. 
 And Friday was cleaning day so that the ironing would 
 have to be left over for Saturday. No, thank you. A 
 flat in a two- family house without a pulley-pole was not 
 to be thought of. 
 
 Mrs. Erdman had never seen Frau Ursula so crochety 
 before. She listened indulgently and registered Frau 
 Ursula s objections on the fingers of her left hand, and 
 then eliminated them. There was no pulley, it was true, 
 but there was a lovely patent clothes-dryer in the yard 
 one of the circular ones like an inverted umbrella and as 
 the occupant of the first floor, who was also the landlord, 
 sent his laundry out, the circular dryer in the yard was 
 at Frau Ursula s disposal every day in the week. There 
 was a dumb-waiter. There was a garbage shoot. There 
 was an ash-shoot, and the landlord, on hearing for whom 
 Mrs. Erdman was inspecting the rooms, had gallantly 
 offered to attend to Frau Ursula s furnace along with his 
 own.
 
 428 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Why should he offer to do such a thing?" Frau Ursula 
 demanded, hostile and suspicious. 
 
 "He said he had always admired you immensely," said 
 Mrs. Erdman, "or, rather, he allowed me to infer that he 
 admires you from the way he talked about you." 
 
 The compliment did its subtle work, as Mrs. Erdman had 
 intended it should. A woman must be very far gone indeed 
 in health and spirits before losing her feminine zest in 
 a compliment. 
 
 "I might look at the flat," said Frau Ursula, tentatively. 
 
 Guide s entrance put a stop to the discussion. He came 
 forward, beaming with pleasure at seeing "Mrs. Thorn 
 ton," and bending, kissed her cheek as if he were still a 
 child. Mrs. Erdman patted his cheek affectionately in 
 return. The little demonstration was never omitted be 
 tween these two excepting when they met in public. 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Erdman, "I hear you have a new 
 first name as well as a new surname Guy von Estritz 
 no longer Guide Hauser." 
 
 "Stan started that Guy business over a year ago," Guido 
 said. "And now the boys think it great sport that I should 
 have a double set of names." 
 
 "And you also have a destiny, I hear," said Mrs. Erd 
 man, a little wickedly, for she knew from Frau Ursula 
 that he hated to have mention made of it. 
 
 Guide s face darkened. 
 
 "Well, the boys don t know anything about that, thank 
 goodness," he said, fervently. "Lordy Lord, how they 
 would guy me !" 
 
 "And what do you intend to do with your destiny?" 
 Mrs. Erdman pursued. 
 
 "Lose it," said Guido, succinctly. 
 
 Frau Ursula was annoyed and showed it. As we know 
 she had looked upon the Synthesis for a long time as a sort 
 of black charm, but her maternal pride, ably stimulated 
 by Dr. Koenig, had been so flattered by the thought of 
 an especially waiting destiny for her boy that she had 
 gradually been weaned away from her dislike and fear of 
 the Experiment. 
 
 Besides, the Synthesis had been a cause of fruitful suf 
 fering to her. To have Guido treat it with such scant 
 courtesy wounded her.
 
 YOUTH 429 
 
 She said nothing, but her looks spoke volumes. 
 
 "You see," said Guido, "if the Vasalovs think I am going 
 to follow in their footsteps and go about scattering bombs 
 in the vicinity of folks I don t like, they are making the 
 mistake of their lives." 
 
 Frau Ursula became indignantly excited. 
 
 "Guido," she said, "I desire, I honestly desire that you 
 employ a certain decency of language in referring to your 
 mother, even if you are not able to feel a little kindness 
 for her. I hope I will not have to speak of this again." 
 
 Guido laughed bitterly. 
 
 "You are wasting your breath," he said. "I ll have 
 nothing to do with the Russian woman or her pursuits." 
 
 "What has Dobronov been about!" Frau Ursula ex 
 claimed. "Has he given you no insight at all into the 
 conditions of Russian life?" Frau Ursula prided herself 
 upon her generosity in referring, with such signal mag 
 nanimity, to a cause and a woman which were alike anathema 
 to her. 
 
 "Dobronov ? All Dob cares about is his soul and Russia s 
 holy mission. Mrs. Erdman, you should hear Dob on the 
 War. By the way, how does the Doc feel about the War ?" 
 
 Mrs. Erdman assumed a gloomy look or was assailed 
 by it. 
 
 "Dr. Erdman is of course a hopeless pro," she said. 
 
 "Apparently you are not," said Guido. 
 
 "Of course not," said Frau Ursula. "Guido, what a thing 
 to say." 
 
 "My dear friend," said Mrs. Erdman, a little senten- 
 tiously, "I am not as ardently pro-Ally as might be sup 
 posed. The truth is since coming to live here among you 
 I have made so many dear friends, all of them German, 
 that it is hard to credit these Belgian atrocity stories." 
 
 "How about dropping bombs from Zeps on sleepy little 
 towns, or bombarding them with long-range guns from 
 cruisers and men of war?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "I have heard Germans claim that an exhibition of their 
 capacity for inflicting injury might bring about a speedy 
 termination of the War," Mrs. Erdman replied, after a 
 moment s hesitation. 
 
 "In brief Schrecklichkeit," said Guido. "A desire to
 
 430 THE HYPHEN 
 
 terrorize, to intimidate, to paralyze with fear that s the 
 charge that is being made, you know." 
 
 "There are so many charges being made," said Mrs. 
 Erdman. "The very causes of the War remain obscure 
 and unexplained." 
 
 "Personally," said Frau Ursula, "I do not comprehend 
 how anyone, having lived in Germany and America, can 
 prefer the Fatherland. But if they do, why do they re 
 main here?" 
 
 "Because they make a better living here," said Guido, 
 contemptuously. 
 
 "I should hate to think as ill as all that of my com 
 patriots," said Frau Ursula, gently. 
 
 "I dare say Guido is right," said Mrs. Erdman. "And, 
 after all, it s not as if the Germans who come here found 
 in America a homogeneous population into which they 
 refuse to be absorbed. They find, on coming here, com 
 munity within community of French, Irish, Walloons, 
 Spaniards. Each of these nationalities foregathers, is 
 clannish, exclusive, and resists amalgamation. Why, then, 
 should the Germans alone divest themselves of all feelings 
 of race, legitimate as well as prejudicial ? It s asking rather 
 much of human nature, isn t it?" 
 
 "The Germans have an able apologist in you," said Guido. 
 
 "I m trying to be fair," said Mrs. Erdman, with her 
 sweet smile. "I am trying to get their viewpoint." 
 
 "Their viewpoint," said Guido, "is race prejudice. It s 
 race prejudice and envy that have made this war. Every 
 thing German is good. Everything not German is abomin 
 able and there is no health in it." 
 
 "Not so," said Mrs. Erdman. "They do not think every 
 thing German is right because it is German, but, because, 
 being German, they think it is right. There is a vast dif 
 ference." 
 
 Frau Ursula looked a little startled. Guido lolled back 
 more comfortably in his chair and stretched out his hand 
 some legs to aid mental travail. 
 
 "I think I understand," he said, "it s not race prejudice 
 the world is dealing with so much as unconscious race 
 unanimity ?" 
 
 Mrs. Erdman nodded. 
 
 "That s it," she said.
 
 YOUTH 431 
 
 "It would make the whole business infinitely more for 
 midable," Guido hazarded. 
 
 "Infinitely." 
 
 "And infinitely more of a menace." 
 
 "Infinitely." 
 
 "You know, that s rather a deep thought of yours." 
 
 "I ve arrived at it in the simplest way imaginable. By 
 observation sympathetic observation," said Mrs. Erdman. 
 "Morning after morning I heard my husband comment 
 on the news while reading it. Day after day, when I 
 went out to do my marketing, I heard practically the same 
 comments made by other German-Americans. The com 
 ments were made simultaneously, so that a conspiracy for 
 the circulation of orthodox German comment was excluded. 
 It s the same with Americans. Let any two Americans, 
 real Americans, Guido, read the war news and their com 
 ments will agree in fundamentals. No one needs to furnish 
 them with ready-made condemnation of Germany. It 
 springs spontaneously to the lips." 
 
 "The Germans claim that is so because our American 
 newspapers color the news," Guido remarked. 
 
 "And do not the German newspapers color their news? 
 At any rate, I do not think that that proves anything. I 
 know it doesn t as far as Doctor Erdman is concerned. 
 He reads The Sun. He cannot read German, you know. 
 He was brought up in the Middle West, where Deutsch- 
 Amerikanische Realschulen are an unknown quantity. 
 Nor has he ever been in Germany. Nor does he belong 
 to any German-American society, club, association or 
 Verein. He is, to all intents, as thoroughly an American 
 as myself." 
 
 "And yet " said Guido. 
 
 "And yet " Mrs. Erdman agreed. "So you see, 
 
 Guido, I dare not allow my indignation against Germany 
 to mount too high. I do not wish to quarrel with Frank. 
 A self-respecting woman cannot quarrel with her husband 
 and remain with him. I love Frank more than my own 
 life. I know him to be the soul of honor. I have never 
 known him to do an unkind thing. So I content my soul 
 in patience, hoping that the evil obsession will pass when, 
 at some not too distant day, the Germans do some par 
 ticularly wicked thing."
 
 432 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Seems to me they have gone the limit even now," said 
 Guido. 
 
 Mrs. Erdman sighed deeply. 
 
 "I suppose they have," she said. "Good-bye, my dear 
 friend." She kissed Frau Ursula. "I must go. To cook 
 dinner for my pro-German husband." 
 
 Mrs. Erdman began collecting her parcels and packages. 
 There were a good many of them, for she had been shop 
 ping at the Five and Ten and at several all-package stores, 
 and Guido offered to help her carry her belongings home. 
 
 He slipped downstairs ahead of her and ordered a taxi, 
 an act prompted not entirely by unselfish thoughts of the 
 lady s comfort. Guido was at the age when the carrying 
 of paper bags and parcels, of anything, in fact, excepting 
 a handsome leather bag, represents a lamentable lowering 
 of human dignity something like going to live in the 
 slums, from necessity, not from humanitarian benevolence, 
 which latter cause, of course, would surround even the 
 slums with the pink halo of romance. 
 
 Guido, at seventeen, was not a saint. 
 
 He wondered vaguely that Dr. Erdman, with his growing 
 practice, should allow his wife to practice such petty and 
 degrading economies, as were represented by the bakers 
 dozen of parcels and bags with which he, Guido, was now 
 loaded down. Dr. Erdman s wife might have furnished 
 the key to the riddle. Half of Dr. Erdman s patients were 
 free patients, in fact, he showed a marked preference for 
 poor patients whom he not only treated free of charge but, 
 more often than not, supplied with medicine for which he 
 paid the druggist out of his own pocket. He was, as his 
 wife had said, the soul of honor and kindness. 
 
 Ensconced in the taxi, Mrs. Erdman said: 
 
 "Guido, I am glad of this opportunity to speak to you 
 alone. I ve tried to get my bearings from your mother, 
 but have failed. Doesn t she regret having left Mr. 
 Hauser? She strikes me as not happy." 
 
 "Why should she be unhappy?" Guido inquired, with 
 the callousness of youth. 
 
 "My dear boy, she loved your father I mean, Mr. 
 Hauser. She loved him dearly. I feel that something 
 more occurred than she told me. I do not want to know 
 what. I do want to know whether a reconciliation is out
 
 YOUTH 433 
 
 of the question. I m an old friend. I could approach 
 Mr. Hauser tactfully." 
 
 "I should hate to see my mother reconciled to that man," 
 Guido retorted. 
 
 Mrs. Erdman suppressed the obvious retort. She 
 schooled herself to gentleness before saying: 
 
 "Guido, I am going to presume on our old and intimate 
 friendship to say some very personal things to you." 
 
 "Say what you like!" Guido accorded the desired per 
 mission with sultan-like assurance that whatever was to 
 say, since it involved himself, could not possibly be of 
 an unpleasant nature. 
 
 "I think," said Mrs. Erdman, "that in this matter of 
 a reconciliation you should consider your mother only, 
 and not yourself." 
 
 This seemed rather a tame beginning to the young man 
 after Mrs. Erdman s moving preamble. Suddenly, how 
 ever, the implication struck him, and he said, a little un 
 certainly : 
 
 "If my mother desires a reconciliation, I would not in 
 fluence her against it, of course. But I d hate to see her 
 and Mr. Hauser make it up. I know it sounds beastly, 
 seeing I believed him to be my father until a month ago, 
 but my mother always seemed to me very far above him." 
 
 "That is not the question," said Mrs. Erdman. "The 
 average woman is superior to her husband for the simple 
 reason that the spiritual standard is higher among women 
 than among men. Besides, Mr. Hauser is by no means an 
 inferior man. He treated you very badly when you were 
 a child, and you bear him a., grudge accordingly, as is 
 natural. When you are a little older you will understand 
 what I mean when I say that he is not really a bad sort. 
 The point is is a reconciliation feasible, and, does your 
 mother desire it?" 
 
 "Supposing it were and supposing she did," Guido re 
 sponded with considerable animation, "you would hardly 
 expect my mother to suggest it to him, would you ?" 
 
 Mrs. Erdman did not reply, and Guido, after studying 
 her expressive face for a moment, said, contritely: 
 
 "I suppose you think me abominably selfish." 
 
 "If you are, it s a fault you share with the majority of 
 your fellow-creatures."
 
 434 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Guide reddened. 
 
 "But you would like to see me free from the common 
 
 fault?" 
 
 "Naturally. I have been so awfully fond of you/ 
 
 " Have been? " 
 
 "Am still, of course, silly boy. You came into my life 
 when well, we won t go into that now. Suffice it to 
 say I love you, my dear lad, as if you were a younger 
 brother. And because I do, I venture to speak to you as 
 I am doing. You must never do anything to hurt your 
 mother." 
 
 "I never intend to," said Guido, a little nettled. 
 
 "What I am trying to get at," Mrs. Erdman continued, 
 "is this : Did your mother leave Mr. Hauser only because, 
 in a burst of rage, he told you prematurely that your mother 
 is not your real mother?" 
 
 "But he did not tell me that," Guido retorted in surprise. 
 "He told me that I was not his son. So if my mother 
 had not wished to tell me about the Russian woman and 
 all that farrago of nonsense about the Synthesis and my 
 destiny, she need not have done so. She might have in 
 vented a first marriage to account for me. As a matter of 
 fact, she was married before she met Mr. Hauser." 
 
 Mrs. Erdman sat as if transfixed. A great light had 
 burst on her. She had witnessed some bitterly cruel 
 scenes between husband and wife in the days when she 
 had made one of the Hauser household. She had enjoyed 
 the partial confidence of the wife. She knew that a new 
 and violent estrangement had occurred after Vasalov s 
 first visit to the Hauser home. She more than suspected 
 at the time just what had happened between Hauser and 
 Frau Ursula. All women are shrewd in reading between 
 the lines in matters of love. 
 
 She comprehended suddenly what had put the stricken 
 doe look into Frau Ursula s sweet eyes. 
 
 "The scoundrel," she murmured, "the scoundrel." 
 
 Guido caught the word above the rattling of the taxi, 
 but it seemed much too violent a word for the context of 
 fact. He thought that he had misunderstood Mrs. Erd 
 man, and asked her to repeat what she had said. Instead 
 of doing so, she said, coldly: 
 
 "I realize there is nothing to be done. I confess I was
 
 YOUTH 435 
 
 hankering to play the role of peace-maker. But it s of 
 no use " 
 
 "You see," said Guido, with the Jove-like insouciance of 
 youth, "Mother left our old home just because she wanted 
 to. He gave her an excuse and she was glad of it, I sup 
 pose. They really did not pull very well together." 
 
 So soon had the boy forgotten the pangs of jealousy 
 which Frau Ursula s preoccupation with her husband had 
 caused him throughout the autumn months. 
 
 The taxi stopped in front of the Erdman apartment. 
 Guido paid the chauffeur, and then possessed himself of 
 such bundles as Mrs. Erdman had not yet gathered together. 
 
 As he turned to carry them into the house, he saw Erna 
 Friedman and Lieschen Schlick approaching. They 
 smiled the malicious, sly, amused smile which he remem 
 bered as one of the chief exasperations and trials of his 
 school-days. He tried to shift his parcels so as to dis 
 engage one hand. Several parcels slipped through his 
 fingers during the process of transfer. He tried to catch 
 them, but his fingers had all turned to thumbs, and instead 
 of salvaging the runaways he increased their number by 
 spilling some clothes-pins from an improperly fastened bag. 
 The clothes-pins played a tattoo upon the sidewalk and 
 increased his agony. He had not succeeded in lifting his 
 hat before the two girls had passed him. Erna looked 
 back over her shoulder, laughed and said maliciously: 
 
 "Has Guy von Estritz turned errand boy for the Hauser 
 establishment ?" 
 
 Guido was furious. He blushed to the roots of his hair. 
 Mortified beyond endurance he dumped the parcels, none 
 too gallantly, into Mrs. Erdman s arms and made off after 
 a rapidly muttered "Good-bye." Mrs. Erdman thought that 
 he intended to follow the two girls and smiled as adults 
 smile at the eccentricities of calf love. 
 
 Guido, needless to say, walked off in a direction opposite 
 from that taken by his former class-mates. His wrath 
 abated speedily. It was skin-deep only. 
 
 He wanted to reflect on all that Mrs. Erdman had said 
 about the war and about the pro-German attitude. He was 
 not nearly as much interested in the case of Hauser versus 
 Hauser as in the case of Humanity versus Germany. Yet 
 her remarks touching his mother lingered in his mind.
 
 436 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Women were so odd, even the best of them! With all 
 due respect for Mrs. Erdman, whom he genuinely loved, 
 she certainly had enjoyed talking over the separation. Now 
 his mother was different. She did a thing and she was 
 done with it. He didn t believe that there was any ulterior 
 reason at all for leaving Hauser. He remembered fre 
 quently wondering as a child why in heaven s name his 
 mother had married her husband. The old wonder re 
 turned, and added to it was a new wonder that she had stood 
 him so long 1 . It appears from this that there had been 
 more than one hiatus in the story which Frau Ursula had 
 told Guide. 
 
 Anyhow, he didn t want to think about his mother s 
 husband. He wanted to think about the War. But, in 
 obedience to Mrs. Erdman s suggestion, his thoughts 
 snapped back to his mother and to Hauser. He felt it 
 incumbent to dwell upon his family affairs instead of upon 
 the War for a little while. He compromised with his 
 conscience. He would think about the Hauser affair a 
 quarter of an hour daily so that he might devote the rest 
 of his leisure time to the thing which was absorbing him 
 body and soul. 
 
 Elschen Marlow, standing at the Parsonage gate, made 
 a welcome diversion. The two young people had not seen 
 much of each other recently, and she commented upon the 
 great change. 
 
 "So you have changed your name," she said, in her 
 straightforward, prim, demure way. 
 
 "Yes," he cried, gayly, for Elschen always made him 
 feel light-hearted and irresponsible. "I ve done what is 
 usually considered a woman s prerogative. I ve stolen a 
 march on the girls." 
 
 Elschen blushed. It was a very delicate blush, gentle 
 and refined as she whose cheeks it graced. She blushed 
 rarely, and Guido looked at her in surprise. To cover 
 his surprise, he said, thoughtlessly: 
 
 "Some day, Elschen, you will be changing yours." 
 
 Light words, lightly spoken. The girl hugged them to 
 her heart, and read into them hidden meanings, clandestine 
 hopes, tentative promises and a golden future. 
 
 Such is the stuff that heart-aches and heart-breaks are 
 made of.
 
 YOUTH 437 
 
 Guido, having unconsciously implanted the seed of dis 
 appointment in love in the young girl s heart, walked 
 rapidly home to the hotel, blissfully unaware of the mis 
 chief he had wrought. In speaking to Elschen he in 
 variably assumed a different tone than he employed toward 
 any of the other girls of his acquaintance. He was gentler, 
 more playful and more gallant. There was something in 
 her, some daintiness, some aloofness from life that ap 
 pealed to his tenderness. And always she aroused a wish 
 in him to carry her off home with him as a sister. He 
 felt that it would have been pleasant to see her at his 
 mother s side, employed on one of the interminable pieces 
 of embroidery with which she was forever busy. It is 
 to be feared that he considered her purely in a decorative, 
 not a human light. It never occurred to him that Elschen 
 might misconstrue his sallies of gentle raillery, or that she 
 might care for him. Also he was entirely innocent of a 
 selfish desire for easy conquest. Conceit was not among 
 the faults which were depriving him of a place in the 
 Hall of Saints. 
 
 He was very attentive and dear to his mother all through 
 supper. He always waited upon her hand and foot, and 
 usually smothered her in kisses at least thrice a day. But 
 to-day, in addition to his usual blandishments, he drew 
 her out, spoke on subjects other than the War, subjects 
 dear to the feminine heart such as the price of breadboxes 
 and curtain poles. And, what was more, he really listened 
 to what Ms mother had to say. He remembered that 
 Hauser had always evinced a genuine interest in all these 
 household innovations, and this had left himself blissfully 
 at liberty to be preoccupied with his own affairs and 
 uninterested in the affairs of others. He suddenly con 
 ceived a better opinion of Hauser, and saw himself in a 
 sorry light, a light really much more unflattering than 
 he deserved. For youth is both gauche and callow. Both 
 tendencies inhere in youth, and it is only when these trends 
 harden into habits as youth passes on to maturity, that 
 they may be said to have graduated as full-fledged faults. 
 Guido was not obtuse, nor selfish, nor shallow. He had 
 the necessary kindness, intelligence and breadth to correct 
 his own moral angularities. 
 
 He perceived that his mother was going to derive a good
 
 438 THE HYPHEN 
 
 deal of satisfaction from purchasing furniture and carpets 
 and linen and planning the entire equipment of their new 
 home. But what after the excitement had died away ? 
 Would her new home seem an empty shell to her? To 
 such reflections had he been quickened by Mrs. Erdman s 
 intervention. While his mother was telling him of a host 
 of little inconsequential details, he was rehearsing all she 
 had done for him in the past, the marvelously tender love 
 and forbearance he had had from her always. An enor 
 mous wave of tenderness swept over him. 
 
 "Mother!" He touched her hand surreptitiously while 
 the waiter s back was turned, as if they had been sweet 
 hearts instead of mother and son. 
 
 "What is it, mein Herz?" 
 
 "Mother, you re the saintliest woman ! When I remember 
 all you have done for me! Mutterchen, liebes, einziges 
 Mutterchen, I can never hope to make it up to you, but 
 I love you, I love you a hundred times more than if you 
 were my own mother. If one could pick one s mother 
 the way one choses one s wife I would have picked you." 
 
 The spontaneity with which the lad spoke, his high sin 
 cerity brought a glow of ineffable joy to her eyes. The 
 stricken doe look faded from it. He saw that he had made 
 her superlatively happy, and was abashed and humbled and 
 proud all in one that such power should reside in him. 
 
 Later that evening, after he had prepared his home-work 
 for the next day, the War claimed him. It tugged at his 
 heart-strings, it plucked greedily at his mind, it cried 
 loudly for a hearing, for utterance, for discussion, for a 
 brace of tongues. 
 
 "I m going for a walk," he announced, buttoning himself 
 into a long coat. "My head is on fire." 
 
 "Are you going anywhere in particular?" 
 
 "No, it s too late for calls. It s past bed-time. Besides, 
 I want the exercise and the air." 
 
 They kissed. 
 
 "Guido." 
 
 A look of tender regard in her eyes made him unbutton 
 his coat as a preliminary to dropping upon his knees. 
 
 "Mutterchen, what is it?" 
 
 "My son, I am expecting great things of you do not 
 disappoint me."
 
 YOUTH 439 
 
 Was she thinking of the wretched Synthesis? He re 
 membered Mrs. Erdman s expostulation, and choked back 
 his angry retort. 
 
 Alone at last, outdoors, he cut quickly away from the 
 smug respectability of Bismarck Street and the more fre 
 quented thoroughfares of the town. He had latterly taken 
 to walking at night in the poorer streets, where his martial 
 meditations were fairly secure from interruptions. He 
 did not wish to meet anyone he knew. He did not wish 
 to talk or to argue. Least of all about the War. He 
 wanted to walk and to think about the War as faithfully 
 and as efficiently as he might. 
 
 The night was murky and bleak, the town shrouded itl 
 one of the semi-translucent mists which linger in the 
 streets of New York and vicinity on some nights in Novem 
 ber and December. Guido was very sensitive to at 
 mospheric conditions. He gloried in fog and mist and 
 rain. He loved the sunshine too, but the sunshiny day 
 was like a major scale, its smiling contentment and boister 
 ous good-nature excited without satisfying, stimulated 
 without probing beneath the surface. But these slate- 
 colored, low-toned, low-pitched days and nights when the 
 streets were filled with a mist so tangible that it brushed 
 the face and left it wet as with dew, smote upon chords 
 in his soul which he had not yet learned to analyze and to 
 classify. 
 
 He did not at once begin his long-deferred meditation 
 upon the War. He thought first of Guido von Estritz and 
 the strange destiny which his parents had desired to thrust 
 upon him. A curious feeling of guilt beset him at times 
 because he could not bring himself to think of his Russian 
 mother save with anger and contempt. Frau Ursula had 
 plead with him not once but dozens of time. Without 
 avail. He could not picture Varvara Alexandrovna ex 
 cepting with the assassin s bomb. He could not think of 
 her as his father s wife, as a mother who had desired to 
 dower her babe as no babe had ever been dowered before. 
 He could not even think of her as an exile from home 
 and friends, as a prisoner in an unclean, ill-ventilated, 
 ill-heated cell. He could not pity her. He could have 
 pitied any other criminal, enduring so relentless a sentence,
 
 440 THE HYPHEN 
 
 but the humiliating, outrageous fact that this woman was 
 his mother placed her beyond the pale of his pity. 
 
 He even refused to receive or to look at a miniature 
 portraying her as a bride, which Frau Ursula had in her 
 possession. 
 
 He was not as has been said before a saint, and 
 certain currents of life bearing an educational impress had 
 barely touched him as yet. 
 
 His mind, with a snap, came back to the War. 
 
 He had a feeling sometimes that this War was an ele 
 mental thing, something like a fire, or a cyclone, something 
 caused by tremendous forces of nature in cataclysmal con- 
 flict. Or, like an epidemic. The War was a disease, 
 perhaps, a terrible scourge, the like of which had never 
 been known, although there had been lesser outbreaks 
 before. To find the cause of this War then was like find 
 ing the germ causing an exceptional disease, like cancer, 
 or infantile paralysis. Were there different germs foi 
 different wars? Or, was the germ always the same, and 
 differing in virulence and malignancy only because of a 
 divergence in local conditions? 
 
 The thought fascinated him. It was to him not a 
 metaphor, pointing an analogy, but a profound truth. It 
 was a physical law transplanted into the spiritual world, 
 for the cause of the War, of course, must have been due 
 to spiritual causes. Here his thoughts began to falter and 
 become uncertain. If, as Germany claimed, the War had 
 been caused by England s desire to annihilate a formidable 
 commercial rival, the underlying cause would have been 
 greed. Well, greed was a disease of the soul, a detestable 
 and fatal spiritual disease. And so was envy, and from 
 all the furious onslaughts against England in which the 
 pro-Germans indulged, he was inclined to ascribe to envy 
 on Germany s part, and not to greed on England s, the 
 true cause of the War. 
 
 But he felt he could not be certain. 
 
 He felt that he was at the threshold of invisible things, 
 upon flaccid, yielding, treacherous, quicksand-like ground. 
 
 The War was barely four months old and already the 
 one cry: Slav against Teuton! had been relegated to the 
 limbo of forgotten things.
 
 YOUTH 441 
 
 Yet it was possible that there had been a grain of truth 
 in that slogan. 
 
 Slav against Teuton. Teuton against Slav. No, not 
 that. Teuton against all other races. And that meant 
 America, too. In time. 
 
 Guido was terribly stirred. An intense excitement had 
 taken possession of him. He was racing along through 
 the moist embraces of the mist-laden air like a madman, 
 unconscious of hour, goal or mileage. The motion of his 
 legs seemed to be energizing his brain. 
 
 A myriad thoughts pressed about him, clamoring for 
 utterance. They reached out toward him like hands, like 
 fingers. Like faces they peered at him through the mist. 
 
 Teuton against no, not Slav but all races. 
 
 What was it Cecil had said about race-consciousness? 
 And Mrs. Erdman? She, too, had glanced at race- feeling 
 as a legitimate, not an illicit passion and possession. 
 
 He became bewildered. His sense of values seemed to 
 shift and lose itself. A word, a phrase had power to pro 
 duce in him gigantic upheavals. His sensitiveness to all 
 impressions, particularly to the spoken word, was extreme. 
 It was, perhaps, his pre-natal heritage. 
 
 He clung desperately to the thought of America and 
 America s message and America s mission. 
 
 Yet if race-feeling was a legitimate function of a people, 
 if its exercise was capable of producing such miracles of 
 focused, concerted expression, of national genius and will 
 as Notre Dame, and Westminster Abbey, and the Cathedral 
 at Rheims God! The Germans had wrecked that, too! 
 and the Kremlin, and St. Sophia, and yes, Shakespeare, 
 Shakespeare unexpatriated and unadopted by the Germans, 
 what, then, was going to happen to America, America, the 
 tramping ground of all races? Where did America come 
 in? Was anything wrong with America? 
 
 At this juncture he recalled Arnold Bennett s eulogy of 
 the Pennsylvania Terminal Building with its attendant 
 tribute to the imagination of a people which had made such 
 a triumph of architectural grandeur possible. 
 
 But, beautiful as the passage was, and flattering as it 
 was to America, and ungracious as it was therefore for 
 an American to quarrel with it, Guido felt that the passage
 
 442 THE HYPHEN 
 
 missed its mark. He felt that the superlative key, in which 
 it was pitched, should be applied to superlatives only. 
 
 And he did not consider the Terminal Building a 
 superlative of national expression because it was frankly 
 Egyptian in character. It might have been suggested by 
 the model of the Temple of Karnak in the Metropolitan 
 Museum of Art. 
 
 Just as the astonishingly beautiful facade of the Sub- 
 Station of the Postoffice opposite the Terminal Building 
 was not American in character, but Greek. 
 
 Was Wesendonck right? Did America have no in 
 digenous literature, art, music, architecture? 
 
 He tingled with resentment. 
 
 At any rate, humanitarianism was indigenous to the soil 
 of the New World. No mistake about that. 
 
 He wondered whether not entirely too much importance 
 was being attached to racial traits, shortcomings, habits 
 and cults. 
 
 For the Doors of the Baptistery, St. Paul s, the Pantheon, 
 and last but not least Shakespeare were, after all 
 whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote Shakespeare the 
 work of one man. Could so huge a collective body of 
 human beings as a nation be actuated by so indivisible an 
 accord as to merit co-credit for individual works of art? 
 To think so seemed balderdash. Yet, incontrovertibly, 
 there were eras in art, literature, music and architecture 
 in which a nation s entire genius seemed to effloresce in 
 one direction. Perhaps telepathy furnished the explana 
 tion. Perhaps the human mind, or the human soul, or 
 whatever the particular organ was whence the impetus 
 originated, were mere subdivisions of a spiritual species, 
 differing slightly in savor, as individual apples of a single 
 species have some a finer, some a grosser flavor, than 
 their fellows. 
 
 Suddenly there reverberated through the chambers of 
 his soul the line: 
 
 "We love as one, we hate as one." 
 
 The mighty malevolence of that shook him as never before. 
 He had his answer. 
 There was such a thing as a collective soul of race.
 
 YOUTH 443 
 
 And America? 
 
 With all races represented? 
 
 He felt cowed, frightened, distraught. He felt like a 
 traitor. But his faith in the destiny of his own country 
 was superb. 
 
 Whatever was true or not true with regard to race, 
 America was safe. America was on the right track. 
 America would accomplish the impossible. America would 
 amalgamate and fuse where other countries would sever 
 and disjoin. 
 
 America had a mission. It was the one thing of which 
 he felt overwhelmingly certain. 
 
 He recollected that the Germans also thought that they 
 had a mission. And the Russians; and the English; and 
 the French. He seemed to be running around in a circle. 
 And suddenly light dawned on him in profusion. 
 
 If that was so, and apparently every nation did believe 
 in its own destiny, then, of course, America was Tightest 
 of all, since in her were merged all races. 
 
 For a moment he thought he had gone off at a tangent 
 from the ring in which he had been circling like some 
 circus creature. 
 
 Then he perceived that he had merely slipped from the 
 inside to the outside of the ring, and that the center about 
 which he was curveting was the same. 
 
 What was going to happen to America? Amalgama 
 tion of races? Predominance of one race? There was no 
 third possibility that he could think of. Which, then, was 
 is to be? 
 
 Suddenly some subterranean impetus caused his thoughts 
 to turn to Cecil. A violent longing to speak once more 
 to the English lad seized him. For all he knew Cecil was 
 now in a troop-ship, bound for Britain. For a few minutes 
 nostalgia for his friend wrenched him. Cecil was the one 
 person in all the world whose company he desired and 
 had desired before during these strange midnight wander 
 ings. Cecil might have helped him. Cecil and he would 
 have differed. Cecil would have suggested view-points 
 strange to him as the antipodes, but the suggestion of 
 view-points alien to his nature, by forcing him to argue, 
 would have made plain to him where he himself stood, 
 what he himself believed and desired.
 
 444 THE HYPHEN 
 
 The clock on the church steeple tolled the hour. The 
 sound came to him through the fog muffled and indistinct 
 as the gleam of the street lights. He awakened rudely 
 to the fact that it was one o clock and that he was in a 
 part of the town which abounded in resorts of ill-repute. 
 
 He felt chill and tired. Not a soul was in sight. This 
 somewhat reassured him, since the only characters whom 
 he might reasonably expect to meet in this section of 
 Anasquoit at night were tramps and worse. 
 
 He stepped to the curb and strained his eyes and ears 
 for any indication of a trolley or a taxi-cab. Finally he 
 heard the whizzing of an automobile coming in his direc 
 tion. Owing to the dense mist he could not make out 
 whether the automobile was a taxi-cab or a private car. 
 So he stepped into the street, lifting his hand to the 
 chauffeur. The car flew past him, and was swallowed 
 up by the mist. But Guido heard it slowing down, and 
 knew that it had stopped not far away. So he ran after it. 
 
 The driver was waiting for him. 
 
 "I have a fare now," he said, "but the gent says you 
 can jump in. He has only ten more blocks to go." 
 
 Guido accordingly scrambled into the car, and seated 
 himself, an action which was accelerated by the sudden 
 starting of the car. Having shut the door, Guido began 
 to thank the passenger for his hospitality to a stranger. 
 He had barely concluded his brief acknowledgment, when 
 a sonorous, well-trained voice, which he recognized as be 
 longing to Pastor Marlow, said: 
 
 "Well, well, so it was you? And what may Guido von 
 Estritz be doing in this part of the town at one o clock 
 in the morning?" 
 
 Guido flushed with annoyance. It is a churlish thing to 
 pick a quarrel with a benefactor, and a quarrel, he felt, 
 would be inevitable if he employed candor untempered by 
 subtlest displomacy in replying to the Pastor s question. 
 
 In his preoccupation the inwardness of the question 
 escaped him entirely. There was considerable excuse for 
 a minister of the gospel who, picking up a lad in his teens 
 at one in the morning in a part of the town fairly peppered 
 with disreputable resorts of every description, felt it in 
 cumbent to demand an explanation.
 
 YOUTH 445 
 
 "To be perfectly candid," said Guido, essaying the light 
 tone of social repartee, "I was settling the War." 
 
 If it had been Guide s intention to divert the Pastor s 
 homily upon the strait and narrow path, which the good 
 man was preparing to deliver, he could not have hit upon 
 a better expedient than by telling him the truth. He 
 forgot all about the delinquency of which he had suspected 
 Guido a moment before. The aberrations of youth may 
 be pardoned, but an aberration away from race is a much 
 more serious offense! 
 
 "In favor of England, eh?" the Pastor demanded. 
 
 Guido did not reply. 
 
 "I have heard of your apostasy," the Herr Pastor con 
 tinued, "and I am sorry for it. I am sorry you should 
 hearken to the tongues of our enemies who blacken and 
 smirch and defame us. 
 
 "You are not a communicant of my church," Pastor 
 Marlow continued, "and I am somewhat in the dark as 
 to your religious belief. But I assume I am addressing 
 a Christian. I want you to recall the words of St. Paul: 
 Now abide these three, hope, faith and charity, but the 
 greatest of these is Charity/ 
 
 "Of charity so much has been written that its enormous 
 importance in the life of the soul has become almost self- 
 evident. Even to non-Christians. Hope, too, is self-ex 
 planatory, for, lacking the hope for eternal life, who would 
 have the courage to face all the tribulations which beset 
 us on earth? But of faith too little far, far too little 
 has been said. For without faith hope could not exist. 
 Hope is more or less vague, uncertain, faltering. Faith 
 focuses hope, supplies its foundation and gives it point. 
 Faith is the adamantine bed-rock upon which hope, the airy 
 and agreeable superstructure, is reared. Without faith, 
 love itself would assume a haphazard, vagrant, shambling 
 nature, for without faith, in practicing charity, we divest 
 charity of its divine mantle and transform it into a thing 
 earthly and of the earth. We cannot dispense with faith. 
 It is a quintessential ingredient of the love we feel for God. 
 
 "And it is not enough that we have faith in God, the 
 Father, we must have faith in men, our brethren, more 
 particularly must we have faith in our kindred. The bonds 
 of consanguinity are based on faith. The mother loves
 
 446 THE HYPHEN 
 
 her babe because she has faith in its unrevealed character 
 and natural endowments. The husband loves his wife, 
 the wife her husband because they have faith in each 
 other s righteousness and honor. It is right and natural 
 that we should feel this faith in those of our blood and 
 of our own race. Why, then, my boy, have you done this 
 unnatural thing espoused the cause of our enemies?" 
 
 Such was the man s eloquence, his sincerity so evident, 
 that Guido felt profoundly shaken. He felt culpable at 
 the moment, culpable and ashamed. 
 
 The car stopped with smooth suddenness before the 
 rectory. Pastor Marlow opened the door and called to 
 the chauffeur that he and the young gentleman were not 
 ready to leave the car and that he should be paid for 
 his wait. Then, shutting the door, he leaned back com 
 fortably in the well-cushioned seat and repeated his ques 
 tion. 
 
 "Why, my son, why, I ask, are you, who are honorable 
 and upright from all I hear of you, doing this unnatural 
 thing?" 
 
 The boy struggled to free himself from the lethargy into 
 which his intelligence had been lulled by the Pastor s 
 words. He told himself twice, thrice that he didn t be 
 lieve a word of what Pastor Marlow had said. To begin 
 with, he was not a Christian at all, and all this talk of 
 being Children of God and Brethren in Christ was mere 
 fine rhetoric. He could not believe in all that, of course. 
 His destiny did not permit. Nevertheless, it was all very 
 beautiful and helpful and kind and good. 
 
 "Well ?" the Pastor inquired again. 
 
 The boy shook himself free from the spell which the 
 silver tongue of Pastor Marlow had fastened upon him. 
 
 "All you said about faith and love was very beautiful," 
 he began. "But I am not a Christian. Consequently, 
 I have neither hope nor faith in the Christian s acceptance 
 of those words. I do believe, however, in a Divine Activity 
 or Will lying back of the Universe." Guido paused, a 
 little frightened by his boldness in thus setting forth his 
 belief. Until this moment he had been unaware of hold 
 ing that belief, but, he argued, sub-consciously, uncon 
 sciously he must have held it or it would not have sprung 
 ready formulated to his lips.
 
 YOUTH 447 
 
 "And I have a faith, a quite incredible faith in hu 
 manity. It is because of this faith in humanity that I 
 condemn the Germans." 
 
 "The Germans ! You speak as if you yourself were not 
 a German." 
 
 "I am an American." 
 
 "Politically, geographically. Racially you are a Ger 
 man." 
 
 "You are aware, of course, that I have Russian as well 
 as German blood." 
 
 "To all intents that signifies nothing. Your father was 
 a German. Your name is German." 
 
 "My grandfather left Germany because he disapproved 
 of the German form of government." 
 
 "No, no, my lad. Your grandfather left Germany be 
 cause there was a price on his head as he had been one 
 of the leaders in the insurrection of 1848." 
 
 "Insurrection!" Guido was now thoroughly aroused. 
 "My grandfather believed in democratic ideals. He wanted 
 to help establish constitutional government in Germany. 
 Say he had gone back to fight for that issue, if it had 
 been possible to do so, would he have been a worse Ameri 
 can because he desired to propagate the principles upon 
 which the American commonwealth was founded? In 
 surrection !" the boy exclaimed again. "I know two old 
 Achtundvierziger, and they call it a Revolution." 
 
 "Well, well, we will not quarrel about terms," said the 
 Pastor, soothingly. 
 
 "At any rate," Guido continued, "if all the blood in 
 my veins were German, as only half is German, I would 
 still be anti-German because as I said before, my faith 
 in manliness and honor embraces all humanity and not 
 merely one branch of it." 
 
 Pastor Marlow hesitated a moment before he said: 
 
 "I, too, have faith in all humanity, ultimately. But at 
 present we must have faith in one section of humanity 
 as opposed to another section. Why, then, have you with 
 drawn your faith from that part of humanity of which 
 you yourself are a part?" 
 
 Guido became violently excited. 
 
 "I had faith a quite prodigious, colossal, iron-cast faith 
 until the very moment that the Kaiser declared war," he
 
 448 THE HYPHEN 
 
 cried. "Now in view of all the outrages committed I 
 speak only of those which the Germans do not deny my 
 faith has crumbled away. How any honest man can con 
 tinue to be pro-German after Belgium, after Scarborough 
 and Whitby, after the bombing by aircraft of unfortified 
 towns, I cannot comprehend. And I do not want to com 
 prehend." 
 
 Pastor Marlow showed neither resentment nor anger. 
 After a brief pause, he said: 
 
 "German unfortified towns, like Nuremberg, were bombed 
 by French flyers before Germany ever thought of bombing 
 English towns. As to .the battleship raids there are, I 
 think, reasons for that which we cannot comprehend. You 
 see, my lad, although appearances are against Germany, I 
 have faith in her." 
 
 "Faith !" snorted Guido. "International law and " he 
 
 stumbled over the connective in a vain effort to find a 
 German equivalent for chivalry. He did not succeed, and 
 made mental note of what was either his own inadequate 
 vocabulary or a deficiency in the German language. "In 
 ternational law forbids the slaughter of non-combatants," 
 he began anew, but was gently interrupted at once by the 
 Pastor. 
 
 "And are the lives of non-combatants really so much 
 more precious than the lives of our soldiers?" he asked. 
 "We Germans think very highly of our soldiers. Our army 
 does not consist of mercenaries, of paid hirelings like the 
 British and American Armies." 
 
 Guide s blood beat tempestuously in his temples. 
 
 "You have hit the bull s-eye by chance, Herr Pastor," 
 he said. "You Germans think highly of your soldiers be 
 cause you think highly of war. It is in your estimation 
 an honorable profession, the noblest profession, in fact, of 
 all. Americans, I think, regard war as something hateful 
 and wicked. We admire the soldier and his courage, but 
 decicedly we do not regard soldiering as a sort of sacro 
 sanct profession. We do not deify it. That s because we 
 see in war a dirty job that has got to be gotten through 
 with. And what s more, America never goes to war unless 
 she has just got to. And that s not cowardice, either. It^s 
 just the feeling that war is a last resort, and not to be 
 entered upon lightly."
 
 YOUTH 449 
 
 "I m afraid," said Pastor Marlow, "your views have be 
 come hopelessly contaminated." 
 
 "If to be hopelessly contaminated means to place right 
 above race, then, by all means, I am hopelessly con 
 taminated," Guido replied. "If I were of French extrac 
 tion, and had lived in the Napoleonic era, I would have 
 been as violently anti-French as I am anti-German living 
 in the days of William Hohenzollern. The hegemony of 
 Europe has been the dream of more than one despot. 
 William the Second is not the first to cherish that dream." 
 
 "I see," the Pastor said, still more mildly, "that you have 
 allowed yourself to become completely saturated with 
 English lies." 
 
 "And Belgium is the violation of Belgium an English 
 lie, also?" the boy cried. 
 
 "Also ! If you knew anything about German discipline 
 you would know that German atrocities are an impossi 
 bility." 
 
 "But they occur in every war," said Guido. "They oc 
 curred in the Boer War, in our own Civil War, they were 
 reported to have occurred during the American occupation 
 of Vera Cruz. But all these instances were cases of in 
 dividual outrage, not concerted outrage ordered by the 
 military authorities for the purpose of intimidation." 
 
 "I am quite willing to believe that the British and the 
 American soldiers are capable of atrocities," Pastor Marlow 
 replied, "you see, the rag-end of humanity enters those 
 armies. With the Germans, all that is different." 
 
 Guido vaulted from his seat and was about to jump out 
 of the car, but the Pastor restrained him. 
 
 "I must to bed," he said mildly. "I come from a dying 
 man." He climbed from the car, a little heavily. From 
 the curb he recited Geibel s verse, so popular with Germans 
 throughout the world: 
 
 "Und es wird am deutschen Wesen 
 Einmal noch die Welt genesen."* 
 
 Now Guido loved Geibel s poems, and thought his 
 "Osterlied" as perfect a lyric as Shelley s "Ode to a Sky- 
 
 * And German culture, German truth, 
 Shall one day save the world in sooth."
 
 450 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Lark." It so happened that the verse which the Pastor 
 had quoted had not recurred to him. He could have wept 
 when he heard it. Were all things German to turn to 
 dross in his hands? Were all things German to assume 
 either an insolent or a base aspect? 
 
 He was so shaken that he did not reply. 
 
 After reaching his hotel, Guido sat in his room without 
 undressing, his face in his cupped hands, until long after 
 three o clock. His talk with the Pastor had quickened in 
 him the fierce blaze of shame which he had been at such 
 pains to beat down. It had another, a contrary effect. 
 Guido was, as we know, extremely susceptible to the charm 
 of language. He was as sensitive to beauty of words and 
 of diction as a musician is sensitive to purity of tone and 
 a painter to the value of color and line. And German 
 was the language which he invariably spoke at home with 
 his mother, the language earliest in his recollection, the 
 comfortable, easy language of love and intimacy, the 
 language which, when the last is said, still came to his 
 lips with slighter effort, with a more liquid fluency and 
 geater spontaneity than English or Russian. Pastor Mar- 
 low s German was very beautiful, and his words had 
 clamorously touched certain inflammable chords of heart 
 and soul. But his intelligence they could not vitiate. 
 Heart and soul, deeply stirred as they were, plead with all 
 the fiery eloquence of emotional direction before the 
 tribunal of the mind. His mind weighed fact against senti 
 ment, truth against habit, honor against tradition, and re 
 fused to be corrupted, saying sternly to heart and soul: 
 "To you I will render the things which are yours; to 
 honesty and honor the things which are theirs." 
 
 He suffered cruelly. The boy, in that dark hour, had 
 a glimpse of the real bias which underlay the unaccount 
 able wrong-headedness of his German- American friends. 
 His shame died away. His judgment seemed to sway and 
 to falter. Emotion arose like a tidal wave and encom 
 passed him. His spiritual struggle was terrible. He felt 
 dimly that if he abandoned himself to this wave of un 
 reasoning feeling he might, like Otto and Eddie and Henry, 
 allow his reason to be usurped by the money-sweet voice of 
 racial kinship and pride. 
 
 He looked now with eyes that saw clearly upon the
 
 YOUTH 451 
 
 stark, uncompromising, naked truth that he, too, was not 
 immune against the clarion call of race. Cecil, then, was 
 right. You might love your own race or hate it, as Heine 
 had done, as he sometimes suspected himself of doing, 
 but whatever the feeling is that inspires you there is in 
 it a frightful, grappling closeness which you will feel for 
 no race but your own. Like the ties of blood. No matter 
 how divergent you may be in aspiration, character and 
 tastes from your brother, that brother s glory must be 
 your glory, that brother s shame must be your shame. 
 
 Such then was the immutable fact which must be reck 
 oned with in the final adjustment of self to country and 
 honor. His race called to him not through convention 
 and custom and habits as it did to his friends, but through 
 the no less potent channel of language. 
 
 He felt that he durst not allow himself to be engulfed. 
 It was only the cursed charm of the Pastor s diction that 
 had wrought such havoc in his feelings. As toward a 
 talisman he reached toward his shelf of books for a volume 
 in English with which to exercise the baneful spell. He 
 had been thinking in German. He knew that he must apply 
 a stimulus to those convolutions of his brain whereon was 
 engraved his English vocabulary English, which was the 
 language of his maturity, of his reasoning and reflective 
 powers as German was the language of sentiment and 
 affection. 
 
 The book which his hand happened to secure was the 
 Bible. Guido smiled. The Christian would have seen in 
 that more than mere chance. He opened it. Any book 
 and any passage thereof, so it was writ in fair English, 
 would answer his purpose. 
 
 The passage upon which his eye alighted was the thirty- 
 seventh verse of the Tenth Chapter of St. Matthew: 
 
 "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not 
 worthy of me ; and he that loveth son and daughter more 
 than me is not worthy of me. 
 
 "And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after 
 me is not worthy of me." 
 
 Guido read the passage thrice over and then, with a 
 gasp, closed the Bible and gently replaced it upon the book- 
 rack.
 
 452 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Was there in this more than chance after all? 
 
 Father and mother typified home, the homing instinct, 
 the desire to run along easily in the time-worn rut of 
 custom and language. Language above all. And love of 
 Christ, what was that but love of truth! 
 
 Simultaneously his thoughts darted in half a dozen direc 
 tions. 
 
 It was, of course, merest coincidence that his hand, 
 groping blindly, should have fetched him the Bible ; merest 
 chance that he had opened it at precisely that page, and 
 that his eye had plucked precisely that passage from among 
 its fellows. 
 
 Yet henceforth must the Bible be more to him than a 
 mere book. 
 
 He had always loved and reverenced it. Now it was 
 more than a book. It had proved itself a friend, a friend 
 in the hour of supreme need. 
 
 The spell which the German of Pastor Marlow had 
 thrown over him was effectually disrupted. 
 
 He wished that he had never heard a word of German 
 and revoked the wish immediately. To be deprived of the 
 joy of reading "Don Carlos," "Faust," "Nathan the Wise," 
 in the original German would be a loss only second to the 
 loss of not reading Shakespeare and Meredith in English, 
 or Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Russian. 
 
 Besides, he was not such a weakling that mere love of 
 a language could lure him from the path of honor. 
 
 Also, he loved English quite as much as German. In a 
 different way. What was the use of splitting hairs? One 
 loved one friend for one quality, another friend for another 
 trait. One loved an Otto for his gruff loyalty and warmth 
 of devotion, the very qualities which had brought him to 
 his sorry pass in relation to the War. One loved a Cecil 
 for his breadth and poise; one loved a Dobronov for his 
 sincerity and unmercinariness, for his well, soulfulness, 
 although the word was detestable. 
 
 Thank Heaven, he was thinking in English now. 
 
 That accursed German tongue! Yet, heavens! how he 
 loved it. 
 
 Still, if the German language had the sinister power 
 thus to affect him, he would not read it or speak it while 
 the War was on.
 
 YOUTH 453 
 
 Yes, he would. He would rise superior to its blandish 
 ments. He would read it and speak it and love it as much 
 as heretofore, realizing fully that much as he might ap 
 prove of the delicate bloom of sentiment of which the 
 German tongue is capable, America embodied his spiritual 
 and his political ideals, and quite apart from his pas 
 sionate love of the English language so long as a man 
 subscribed to the spiritual ideals for which America stood, 
 it mattered not whether he expressed himself in English, 
 in German or in Hindustani. 
 
 Although, of course, the English language must pre 
 dominate. He remembered Wesendonck s prophecy that 
 German would be taught in the public schools of America 
 in place of English ten years after cessation of the War. 
 
 That, of course, was preposterous. Was insufferable. 
 He became quite excited. He strode angrily up and down 
 the room until he remembered that the small hours of the 
 morning were hardly the time for a protracted promenade 
 in walking boots in a hotel room, with someone asleep in 
 the room beneath. So he sat down hastily, removing his 
 footwear against a recurrence of insuppressible excite 
 ment, which, as like as not, would again affect his feet. 
 
 His mental equipment rendered him incapable of ac 
 cepting any fact as a fact without inquiring into its why 
 and wherefore. 
 
 Why was it preposterous that German, or any other 
 tongue, should supplant English in the United States? 
 
 In the first place, of course, because English was the 
 language of the vast majority of Americans. 
 
 In the second place, because it had been the first language 
 spoken in the Thirteen Colonies. 
 
 In the third place but he could not think at once of a 
 third reason, and yet he knew that a third reason existed 
 and that it was much subtler and in a way more important 
 than the first two reasons. This reason seemed to loiter 
 somewheres just beneath the surface of his conscious 
 thought. But he could not bring it across the threshold of 
 his consciousness. It tantalized him, teased him, eluded 
 him. 
 
 He was desperately tired, but he felt that he could not 
 sleep before he had unearthed that third reason.
 
 454 THE HYPHEN 
 
 And suddenly it came to him, lightning-wise, electrically, 
 magnificently. 
 
 The Germans Wesendonck among others were boast 
 ful of the memory-helping quality of the German tongue, 
 and of the peculiar fluidity which lent its roots to easy 
 manipulation by suffixes and prefixes. It was this quality 
 of the German language that had made him boast as a 
 little chap of eleven that he was able to understand every 
 German word unless it had a technical use. Opposed to 
 this well-oiled smoothness of German, with its rubber- 
 stamp effect, was the sharp irresponsibility of the English 
 tongue, with its unsuspected angularities, its amazing rich 
 ness and variety, its briar-rose quality of wayward . but 
 heavenly initiative. 
 
 Here, then, was the third reason why English and no 
 other language, no other language, must be the language 
 of America. Political imagination and daring and demo 
 cratic ideals might stand in closer relation to these adven 
 ture-breathing, invention-promising traits of the English 
 language than was commonly imagined. And the political 
 phlegm of the German might be due in large part to the 
 very accessibility and easy familiarity of the "memory- 
 aiding qualities" of his language. 
 
 Another thing. Guido understood now the mechanism 
 of the spell exerted upon him by German. He had taken 
 his toy apart and seen the engine that animated it. He 
 would enjoy his toy as much as before but it would not 
 hold him bound in supine awe as it had hitherto done. 
 
 He was desperately tired. He began to undress. He was 
 so tired that he could not perform the simple functions 
 of undressing automatically. He must give them his un 
 divided attention. 
 
 And yet, in spite of his fatigue, he was profoundly ex 
 cited. His third reason had furnished him with an entire 
 new train of thought bearing upon the destiny of America. 
 And England, too, perhaps. He recalled what Cecil had 
 said about the conjoined destiny of England and America. 
 Pan-Anglo-Saxonism. Why not ? Pan- Anglo-Saxo- Ameri 
 canism ! That was better still. 
 
 The other races undoubtedly must also play their part. 
 America was big enough for all. Here all must have an 
 equal opportunity. Simply must. He was thankful that
 
 YOUTH 455 
 
 he understood at last what Cecil had meant by race con 
 sciousness. 
 
 But was it not strange? in the very hour that race 
 consciousness had been awakened in him he had again 
 turned away from his own race and clung to the race to 
 which America owed her political greatness. 
 
 There was, perhaps, operating in him something in 
 finitely more powerful than a sense of race. He did -not 
 suspect it. He did not suspect that he had an extraordinary 
 gift of separating the wheat from the chaff. He would 
 have spurned with indignation the suggestion that his 
 destiny was beginning to operate in him. But truth is 
 truth. And so it was.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 GROSSVATER GEDDES took a less complacent view 
 than Pastor Mario w of the battleship raids upon 
 the English coast towns. Guido, calling at the Geddes 
 home a few days after his midnight encounter with the 
 Pastor, was told by Janet that her grandfather had been 
 greatly affected by that particular bit of German deviltry. 
 His appetite had been poor ever since, his sleep interrupted 
 and uncertain. Moreover, he had been greatly dissatisfied 
 with the editorial attitude of the German paper which he 
 read regularly. 
 
 "Not a word of disapproval or censure," he had an 
 nounced after a brief glance at the news column and 
 editorial page, and had then spent the better part of the 
 morning reading the other German papers in quest of a 
 saving phrase of disapproval. He had not found such 
 a phrase. Thereupon he had told his son at the dinner- 
 table that he would discontinue his German paper. But 
 the dear old man had always read a German paper in 
 addition to an English paper, and besides he was plagued 
 by an odd compound of curiosity and faith which, after 
 all, held him to the reading of Teutonic papers, in the 
 vagrant hope that they would yet recant. 
 
 Wesendonck had happened to drop in for supper, and 
 there had been a violent quarrel, or would have been if 
 Wesendonck s breeding had not at the last moment as 
 serted itself and inhibited a quarrel with a man old enough 
 to be his grandfather at a table where he himself was a 
 guest. 
 
 "Well, and what did Casimir have to say this time?" 
 Guido inquired. 
 
 "You know of course that the Germans won the Civil 
 War for the North," Janet threw out, with scathing irony. 
 
 "I ve been told so," said Guido. 
 
 "But I had yet to learn," Janet continued, "and Casimir 
 
 456
 
 YOUTH 457 
 
 completed that part of my neglected education, that to 
 the Germans was due our success in the Revolution." 
 
 "What! Why it was German George who made the 
 Revolution and fought it with German troops." 
 
 "So we were taught in school. But it seems that the 
 Hessians deserted wholesale from the British ranks, and, 
 not content to escape from the British army, joined the 
 American forces." 
 
 "Impelled by what motive?" 
 
 "In my amazement I forgot to ask that," Janet retorted. 
 "Probably abstract love of liberty. Moreover, if De Kalb 
 and Steuben had not been our drill-masters, our troops 
 would never have been properly trained." 
 
 Guido stared stupidly at Janet. 
 
 "And Washington?" he demanded. 
 
 "Pray what did a mere surveyor and Colonial colonel 
 know about the training of troops compared with German 
 generals who had had the advantage of being trained in 
 Frederick the Great s army?" 
 
 "Heavens and earth," Guido ejaculated. "Gneisenau, a 
 greater soldier than either Steuben or De Kalb, fought 
 with the British." 
 
 "Ah," said Janet, "I did not know that. I wish my 
 father or you had been there at the moment." 
 
 "And did Casimir condescend to explain what De Kalb 
 and Steuben knew of ambushing and all that sort of thing 
 that Washington had learned in the French and Indian 
 War, and which stood him and his generals in such good 
 stead throughout the Revolution?" 
 
 "Ah," said Janet again, "you should nave oeen there." 
 
 Professor Geddes came into the room just then, and 
 Janet said: 
 
 "I wonder you don t throw him out crop and neck, 
 Daddy." 
 
 "Whom? Guido? " 
 
 "Daddy! Casimir, of course." 
 
 "Not for worlds." Professor Geddes smiled his twink 
 ling, whimsical smile. "He served a dual purpose. It 
 is interesting, in the first place, to watch the enemy mind 
 at work. In the second place, my child, he is a source 
 of inspiration for my patriotism."
 
 458 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Does your patriotism need inspiring?" naughty Janet 
 demanded. 
 
 "Patriotism, unless hard jostled by events, is always in 
 danger of turning stale." 
 
 "But," said Janet, "this is not our war." 
 
 "Not yet," said the Professor. 
 
 Grossvater Geddes came into the room, newspaper open 
 in hand. 
 
 "There has been another air-raid upon London," he said. 
 "Some twenty school-children were killed." His hand 
 trembled as he pointed to the deep head-lines on the first 
 page. 
 
 Janet slipped her hand under her grandfather s arm. 
 
 "Don t read about it, Grossvater," she said. "Come, let 
 me throw away the horrid old paper and sit in mother s 
 window among her geraniums." 
 
 The old man gently resisted Janet, who was trying to 
 lead him to the window-seat. 
 
 "Since when do Germans make war upon women and 
 children?" he demanded of his son. "It was not so in 
 my day. And I had such faith in the German race." 
 
 "Let us hope, Father," said the Professor, "that the 
 German people will some day very soon awaken to the 
 infamy of it all, and will then refuse to allow themselves 
 to be made the agents of civilized barbarism, if the term 
 is permissible." 
 
 "Revolution, Eduard?" his father demanded. 
 
 "I hope so. I think so. I, too, have great faith in the 
 German people. They will stand for all this a little while 
 longer. Then, suddenly, they ll turn against the leaders of 
 the military octopus and slay them." 
 
 "I will have faith in the German race a little longer," 
 the old man said. Pathos indescribable rang from his 
 voice. Slowly he went out of the room. 
 
 The vision of that little figure, which had become 
 strangely frail during the last months, haunted Guido as 
 he* walked home, a stack of German magazines under his 
 arm, which the Professor was sending to Frau Ursula. 
 
 These magazines were very splendidly gotten up. The 
 press-work was beautiful, the paper fine and strong, the 
 illustrations exquisite both in conception and execution. 
 How was it possible that a people which had attained such
 
 YOUTH 459 
 
 transcedent heights in art, in literature, in music, in applied 
 art, in science, in medicine and philosophy should suddenly 
 decline to the level of moral obliquity to which Germany 
 had sunk? German- Americans might be mere dupes. But 
 the German themselves were they dupes also ? How could 
 they be? Dupes of what? Of whom? 
 
 How could such things as indubitably were being done 
 in Belgium and Northern France be done by the nation 
 which had brought forth Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Klop- 
 stock? Guido loved both Klopstock and Lessing. Lessing, 
 with his serene, pellucid, philosophical mind, a mind at 
 once critical and reverent, had, it seemed to Guido, never 
 been justly appraised by his countrymen. He grudged 
 German literature the possession of "Nathan the Wise." 
 There was, he thought, no loftier poem in any language, 
 not even in English. Of all the German poets he loved 
 Lessing the best. 
 
 His thoughts turned to Schiller, more particularly to 
 "Don Carlos," in which a passage occurs which seemed to 
 him cruelly fortuitious. Marquis Posa beseeches Don 
 Carlos, the unfortunate son of Philip II, to make an effort 
 to save Flanders from the brutalities of the notorious Alva 
 and from the Holy Inquisition. The unforgettably beautiful 
 words rang feverishly in his mind: 
 
 "Gethan ist s um ihr teures Land, wenn Alba, 
 Des Fanatismus rauher Henkersknecht, 
 Vor Bruessel rueckt mit spanischen Gesetzen. 
 Auf Kaiser Karls glorwuerd gem Enkel ruht, 
 Die letr.te Hoffnung dieser edeln Lande. 
 Sie stuerzt dahin, wenn sein erhabenes Hers 
 Vergessen hat, fuer Menschlichkeit zu schlagen." 
 
 And now Germany, the same Germany that uses the name 
 of "Marquis Posa" as a generic name for embodied ideal 
 ism, in the identical way that the English-speaking world 
 applies the name "Sherlock Holmes" as a generic name to 
 all detectives, was, in the name of culture, pillaging, mas- 
 sacering, raping the same Flanders whose plight in an 
 earlier century had evoked Posa s or Schiller s fiery 
 eloquence. The Holy Inquisition then now, German 
 culture I
 
 460 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Guido felt sick and cold. 
 
 Shades of Schiller and Goethe, of Herder, Lessing, 
 Klopstock, Novalis, and phantasm of Ludwig Fulda who 
 alone among living authors upholds the ancient German 
 idealism what had come over Germany? Could the devil 
 enter into an entire nation? Was there a devil? Small 
 wonder that in ancient times the belief in devils and witches 
 had been resorted to to explain the otherwise inexplicable. 
 How else could one 
 
 Guido did not conclude his meditation. Blocking his 
 path, hand outstretched, stood Egon von Dammer. Egon 
 had added several inches to his stature in the brief interim 
 in which Guido had not seen him. Slender he had always 
 been, and the aristocratic air which from a child he had 
 worn like a garment had lost none of its potent charm by 
 the change in his height. His delicately white hands, well- 
 manicured as those of a lady of fashion, his peach-blow 
 complexion, eye-brows that were no enemy to the pencil s 
 art, the mustache which was sending out its first tender, 
 blond shoots, the insolent expression of the boyish face, 
 squared shoulders and tapering waist, all seemed to pro 
 claim, "Behold, I am not one of the common people. I 
 belong to the ruling class. I am Egon von Dammer." 
 
 "Hauser," he cried, "in the name of all that is wonder 
 ful, where have you been keeping yourself?" His manner 
 was one of exaggerated cordiality. Guido smiled. Race 
 again. Cecil, on meeting him unexpectedly after a long 
 absence, would have pretended to frostiness. "I went up 
 to the house," Egon continued, "and was told that Frau 
 Hauser and der junge Herr were at present at the Anas- 
 quoit Hotel. There I was told that a Mrs. Hauser and 
 a Mr. von Estritz were living there, but no Mr. Hauser. 
 Where in heaven s name do you keep yourself? Why 
 aren t you living at home? Or with your mother?" 
 
 Guido laughed. He could not suppress a feeling of 
 satisfaction. He knew with precisely what exclamations 
 Egon would greet the news. And Egon did not disappoint 
 him. 
 
 "Well," he said, after Guido had briefly told him of his 
 change in name, "all I can say is that I told you years 
 ago that a fellow by the name of Guido had no business 
 to have Hauser hitched on as a surname, or that it was
 
 YOUTH 461 
 
 an impertinence for a Hauser* to have helped himself to 
 the name Guido. Glad you came into your own, old 
 chap." 
 
 "And how do you happen to come back to these United 
 States at a time when the Fatherland is impressing her 
 entire man-power?" 
 
 "My father is an American citizen, as you will recall." 
 
 One cannot recall something one has never known, and 
 so Guido told Egon. 
 
 Egon laughed. 
 
 "I m afraid I disapproved of my father s change from 
 a German subject to an American citizen in the olden days," 
 he said, lightly. "I know better now. Heavens, Guido, 
 I ve been away only half a year. It seems six years, not 
 six months." 
 
 "You do not seem very enthusiastic in the German 
 cause." 
 
 "Enthusiastic! My dear chap, one feels for one s own. 
 But, frankly, I d rather be on American soil to-day than 
 on German. And most emphatically, I do not join the 
 chorus of indignant voices who chide America for being 
 pro-British and pro-French. Most natural thing in the 
 world that. So I told Otto when he informed me in 
 tears of your most unnatural attitude. " 
 
 Guido flushed. Egon s words did not ring entirely true. 
 Nevertheless Guido generously accepted them at face 
 value. 
 
 "I am glad you realize that this is humanity s war and 
 that our country self -evidently must take the stand she 
 does," he said. 
 
 Egon laughed his old supercilious, arrogant laugh. 
 
 "Don t jump at conclusions, von Estritz," he said. "I 
 said nothing about humanity s war. Poppycock. Tom- 
 myrot. It s a commercial war. C est tout, mon ami." 
 Egon s manner as he addressed Guido by his new name was 
 indescribable. Thus might a king have addressed a confrere 
 but recently risen from the ranks of commoner. It con 
 veyed distinction. It was replete with delicate homage, 
 the homage which equal extend to equal, and in extending 
 flatters himself and his own rank as well as his friend s. 
 Guido was amused. But his amusement was tinctured with
 
 462 THE HYPHEN 
 
 a subtle satisfaction. He would not have been young and 
 human if it had been otherwise. 
 
 "Spare me the rest, von Dammer," said Guido. 
 
 "England " 
 
 "Don t!" 
 
 "England is America s mother-country. America and 
 England quarreled. You beat England. The daughter 
 established her independence. The old feud is forgotten. 
 Your language, your traditions, your preliminary history 
 are the same as England s. In the South old English ex 
 pressions, such as gallery for veranda and penstafF 
 for penholder, still persist." 
 
 "And how do you know all that?" Guido demanded, in 
 surprise. 
 
 "I have heard my honored parent discourse," said Egon, 
 laughing, "and he, as you know, led a nomadic existence 
 before we came to Anasquoit. So much for England. As 
 for France, your sister- republic, it is natural your sympathy 
 should go to her." 
 
 "Our sympathy goes to France and England because they 
 are right," said Guido. 
 
 "My dear fellow, you re impossible, you really are. A 
 chap with a name like von Estritz ought not to play the 
 simpleton. He really ought not. You don t want to in 
 dulge in all the cheap sentiment which delights the 
 plebeian." 
 
 "Do you consider a regard for right and wrong a plebeian 
 attribute?" Guido demanded, hotly. Try as he would, he 
 could not resist a flutter of pride in Egon s new manner 
 to him, in Egon s implication that his birth raised him to 
 a higher level than his compeers. He crushed back the 
 feeling ruthlessly. But its existence opened new vistas of 
 speculation to him. He perceived that in the absence of 
 a strong democratic brake, such as after all was his inalien 
 able birthright and priceless heritage, this feeling of caste- 
 pride must become invincibly strong. This sense of pride, 
 involuntary as it was and remorselessly as he dealt with it, 
 troubled his conscience not a little. In a moment of self- 
 abasement he had gone so far as to suggest to Dr. Koenig 
 that he would drop the "von," an act, which Dr. Koenig 
 declared, if put into practice, would be a bit of patronymic 
 vandalism as bad as dropping the last syllable of Wash-
 
 YOUTH 463 
 
 ington; an example which was unfortunate, as the trun 
 cated name of the Father of his Country was suggestive 
 of a homely housewifely occupation, and thus excited young 
 Mr. von Estritz s risibilities. 
 
 "I really don t know what you mean," Egon retorted. 
 "Patricians look at life as it is. The rabble want to be 
 fooled with fine words, want to be supplied with motives 
 which rival the moral equipment of the hero in a melo 
 drama." 
 
 "And the War as it is " 
 
 "Nothing but commercial rivalry between Germany and 
 England," said Egon, lighting a cigarette. "Germany, of 
 course, is going to win out. It s good-night for England. 
 I m rather sorry for that. I don t mind about Russia and 
 France; but England I rather like old England. I like 
 the English way of doing things." Here Egon smiled 
 smiled, Guido thought, as if certain particular reminiscences 
 of the pleasant English way of doing things lingered in 
 his mind. There was a quality in Egon s smile which Guido 
 did not comprehend. It was both subtle and suggestive. 
 
 "Oh, by the way, do you play pinochle ?" Egon demanded. 
 
 "No. I don t care for cards." 
 
 "Sorry, we are looking for a fourth man. Come and 
 look on, anyhow. We don t play all evening. Only an 
 hour or so. Every Saturday night. We re at the McAvoy 
 at present. We ll be back in Anasquoit as soon as we 
 find a suitable house." 
 
 "There s a vacant house corner of Maple and Main," 
 said Guido. 
 
 "Maple and Main! My dear fellow, what can you be 
 thinking of? Do you think the Mater would consider any 
 thing but Bismarck Street ?" Egon burst out laughing. He 
 laughed jerkily, uncouthly. Almost it seemed as if he 
 desired to impart the same angularity which characterized 
 his figure to his manner of speaking and laughing. 
 
 "My dear von Estritz I m so glad it s Von Estritz/ 
 now, you know. Hauser was such a shabby name for a 
 chap like yourself to travel under. Come and see me at 
 the McAvoy. I don t believe I will come along with my 
 parents if they move back to Anasquoit. I m not the 
 least homesick for this wretched little burg with all its 
 spiessbuergerliche pretentiousness. But my estimable father
 
 464 THE HYPHEN 
 
 longs for the fleshpots of the Deutsche Verein. I don t and 
 I shall continue to live at a hotel or take bachelor apart 
 ments. My father consents. My mother objects. Mother, 
 at times, indulges in spiessbuergerliche prejudices. I m 
 quite ashamed of her." 
 
 "And what may your mother s spiessbuergerliche preju 
 dices be?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "Some day I will tell you, Miss Innocent," Egon re 
 torted, laughing. "I have a horrid suspicion that you, too, 
 laddie of the sentimental black eyes, cling to those self 
 same ridiculous prejudices. If so, I intend to cure you of 
 them." 
 
 "I really don t know what you re gabbing about," said 
 Guido, stiffly. For a boy whose mind was supposed to be 
 free from all bias, it was particularly hard to be accused 
 of so primitive a possession as prejudices. 
 
 Egon von Dammer laughed at his own wit. He laughed. 
 He guffawed. He chuckled. He slapped Guido on the 
 back and then chucked him under the chin, saying, "What 
 a good little boy it is." 
 
 Guido reddened with fury. 
 
 "You re behaving like a fool," he spurted out. 
 
 Egon burst into a new roar of laughter. 
 
 "Prejudices!" he cried. "I ll name you one of yours. 
 Trying to give away a scholarship that represents good 
 money to that idiot of an Otto." 
 
 "I don t see how you can call Otto an idiot," Guido 
 retorted, indignantly. "He has a very fine brain. Besides, 
 you did the same you handed the blame thing back to me." 
 
 "Exactly, I handed back what was not mine. What you 
 tried to do was quixotic. What I did was mere honesty." 
 
 "Well, Otto needed free tuition and I didn t." 
 
 "You needed money, my son, and you gave away its 
 equivalent." 
 
 "I have more money than I need," said Guido, still in 
 dignant. 
 
 A new ripple of laughter burst from Egon. 
 
 "My son," he said, "listen to the words of the Sage. 
 No man, especially no young man, has more money than 
 he needs. No, that s too particular. Neither young nor 
 old men can possibly have more money than they need. 
 For why? Ah, laddie of the honest black eyes, thank your
 
 YOUTH 465 
 
 stars I ve arrived in time to save you from the Slough of 
 Spiessenbuergerliche Respectability. For I am going to 
 save you, in spite of yourself. I must go. I really must. 
 Remember, son, the McAvoy. So long." 
 
 Guido parted from Egon in a state of subtle dissatis 
 faction and annoyance. Egon s manner and words hinted 
 at some extended experience which to Guido was a sealed 
 book. Inexperience in affairs of the heart is particularly 
 galling to the young, and to have his monumental inex 
 perience thrust at him in so insolent a fashion was morti 
 fying in the extreme. Guido tried to wrap himself in a 
 proud air of moral disdain, but curiosity, that attribute 
 which expunged the human race from Paradise, had been 
 aroused and was assiduously employing itself in the vain 
 endeavor to fathom just what sort of experiences Egon 
 had garnered. He could not help but think them dis 
 creditable. Witness Egon s comments upon the value of 
 money. Guide s better nature awoke. His disgust became 
 real. He dismissed that portion of his friend s talk from 
 his mind. 
 
 Egon s seeming indifference to the War was a more 
 perplexing and inviting problem. Guido did not entirely 
 trust Egon s show of indifference. Guido knew what Stan 
 would say to him on hearing of Egon s reappearance: 
 "Steer clear of that fellow, Guy. He s n. g. You ll come to 
 grief through him yet, just you mark my word." 
 
 He decided not to tell Stan that he had seen Egon and 
 in the same breath resolved to avoid Egon. The first 
 resolution he kept for a while. The second he broke 
 after a while. 
 
 On reaching home, he found his mother vexed and cross. 
 This was the rarest of moods for her. Guido thought at 
 first that it was caused by his tardiness for supper, but 
 during the course of the meal he learned the truth. Since 
 leaving her husband, Frau Ursula had studiously avoided 
 the coffee-parties which she had formerly attended and 
 given to please Hauser. Shortly after Guido had left the 
 hotel with Mrs. Erdman, Tante Baumgarten, her kind face 
 shining with the simple-hearted eagerness of a child, had 
 called, and had informed Frau Ursula that her coffee-circle 
 friends had decided to give her a coffee, here in her own 
 rooms. Frau Ursula had not had the heart to refuse.
 
 466 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Tante Baumgarten had been so pleased at the prospect of 
 a party. Tante Baumgarten was single-mindedness itself. 
 One could see where Otto had gotten that trait from. But, 
 somehow, Frau Ursula could not help thinking at times that 
 single-mindedness was not the unqualified virtue it was 
 thought to be. Lacking it, Tante Baumgarten might have 
 understood the subtler shades of Frau Ursula s ordeal. 
 
 "A sort of surprise party with the surprise left out," 
 said Guido, laughing. 
 
 Frau Ursula frowned. 
 
 "What else did Tante Baumgarten have to say?" 
 
 "Oh, they hope to be back on Bismarck Street by the 
 first of May. Poor thing. I believe she lies awake nights 
 worrying about their fall from the exalted heights of Bis 
 marck Street." 
 
 Guido, remembering Egon s comments, burst out laugh 
 ing. He related his meeting with Egon, his narrative, of 
 course, being duly edited by the blue pencil of nicety. 
 
 The coffee-party came off the following week. Guido 
 announced his intention repeatedly of not coming home that 
 afternoon before six-thirty, the dinner-hour. Frau Ursula, 
 a little maliciously, refrained from reminding him on 
 Wednesday morning that the day of the coffee had arrived, 
 and the luckless boy on returning from college at four 
 o clock, walked into a phalanx of two dozen buxom dames, 
 all of them, with the exception of Tante Baumgarten, of 
 Bismarck Street, and sedulous disciples of Teuton ortho 
 doxy. A perfect gale of flattering expletives sang about 
 his ears as he entered the room, inwardly cursing the 
 trick his memory had played him. Such a fine young 
 man ! And so tall ! And how did it feel to be a von 
 Estritz instead of a Hauser? So romantic! Where would 
 he sit? Oh, he must sit. They all made room for him, 
 or tried to. Two corpulent dowagers telescoped their 
 chairs in the endeavor to do so, and violently abraded their 
 backs, a humorous accident which caused explosive ejacu 
 lations of blended sympathy and laughter. 
 
 Guido threw his mother a vicious look and received in 
 return a mischievous glance which said as plainly as words : 
 "You can t run away, you know. You have simply got 
 to go through with it." 
 
 In despair, since his mother would not connive at his
 
 YOUTH 467 
 
 escape, he collapsed upon a chair between Frau Pfennigwert 
 and Frau Dinkellager, and submitted to the further humilia 
 tion of seeing his plate piled high by the two ladies as if 
 he had been a very little boy. Although he was very fond 
 of cake, he feigned a stoical indifference to the pastries 
 and jam-tarts and mocha-cakes which graced his plate, 
 contenting himself with eating one small piece of Konfekt. 
 The ice-cream there was no shame in eating. Why shame 
 should have attached to the eating of cake and not to the 
 eating of ice-cream, he could not have said, excepting that 
 ice-cream was supposed to quench thirst rather than ap 
 pease hunger, and thirst was a legitimate attribute of the 
 adult while hunger was not. 
 
 The majority of the ladies were me proud possessors of 
 titles. Frau Pfennigwert was the wife of a doctor. She 
 was therefore addressed as Frau Doktor. Frau Dinkel 
 lager was the wife of a Professor of Chemistry. She was 
 therefore addressed as Frau Professor. Frau Kuehneman 
 was the wife of the new Direktor of the Deutsch-Ameri- 
 kanische Real-Schule. She consequently was equipped with 
 the title of Frau Schuldirektor. And so on and so on. 
 There was a Frau Oberlehrer and a Frau Pfarrer and a 
 Frau Apotheker. The German love of titles was in full 
 swing in the little town of Anasquoit. 
 
 All the ladies had donated either their services or money 
 or both to the German Red Cross Bazaar, and all had 
 visited it and driven nails into the Hindenburg statue and 
 watched their husbands practice in the rifle-gallery, where 
 the movable targets were dummies dressed in the uniforms 
 of French, English and Belgian soldiers. Frau Dinkel 
 lager related with great glee that her husband had thrice 
 hit an Englishman "dreimal einem verfluchten Englaender 
 ein s hingehauen," her husband had said. Frau Trojan- 
 schmidt thereupon expressed the pious wish that Herr 
 Dinkellager instead of shooting mere dummies, had killed 
 as many real Englishmen. Frau Pfennigwert contributed 
 the brilliant remark that she supposed everybody present 
 wished the same. 
 
 "Well," said Guido, electrifying the four and twenty 
 dames and his mother as well, "I don t." Some of the ladies 
 began to titter. Others exchanged significant glances. A 
 few looked uneasy.
 
 468 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "You know," Guido continued, "my mother and myself 
 are pro-Ally." 
 
 "Impossible!" "Unbelievable!" "You are jesting!" 
 "Why, your mother is a German!" "And you are a 
 German !" 
 
 "German or not, we are pro-Ally," said Guido. He no 
 longer bothered to set Germans right as to his nationality. 
 
 "Is that the reason, Hebe Frau Hauser, why you refused 
 to help in my booth at the Bazaar?" Frau Dinkellager in 
 quired. 
 
 "Not entirely," said Frau Ursula. "My own affairs 
 were so unsettled at the time that I was unable to help 
 you. Otherwise, inasmuch as our own country is neutral, 
 I would have seen no impropriety in helping to provide for 
 the German widows and orphans." 
 
 "Our own country a neutral? Germany a neutral?" 
 Tante Baumgarten exclaimed in comic bewilderment. 
 
 "Sssss!" said her neighbor. "Frau Hauser means the 
 United States, of course." 
 
 "And how do you and your dear mother happen to be 
 pro- Ally, Herr von Estritz?" Frau Pfennigwert inquired. 
 
 "We happen to be pro-Ally because the Allies happen to 
 be right," Guido retorted with such an air of sublime aloof 
 ness that Frau Pfennigwert, in discussing the incident later 
 on with Frau Dinkellager, designated Guido an "em frecher 
 Bengel" a phrase untranslatable into English unreinforced 
 by Billingsgate. 
 
 "You have been misinformed, I see," Frau Pfennigwert 
 rejoined, coldly. 
 
 "Perhaps others, and not we, have been misinformed," 
 Guido suggested, glancing furtively at his mother. She 
 avoided his eye, and he took this as a happy omen. Sweet 
 contrariety of human nature! All his chagrin at having 
 blundered into this array of jabbering females the phrase 
 is Guide s own disappeared. He became quite contented 
 to be where he was, and in his contentment he forgot his 
 resolution not to touch the pyramid of cake on his plate. 
 He not merely ate thereof but finished the entire pile, all 
 of which further demonstrates the truth of the statement 
 made once or twice before in the course of this history: 
 Guido was no saint. 
 
 Tante Baumgarten, peace-loving soul as she was, to
 
 YOUTH 469 
 
 break the glacial silence that had fallen, cast about for 
 something to say. 
 
 "Do you know, Frau Doktor," she addressed Frau 
 Pfennigwert, "that we have in view a house of suitable 
 dimensions on Bismarck Street?" 
 
 The Baumgarten house of suitable dimensions on Bis 
 marck Street had been the standing joke of Anasquoit 
 for the last half -decade. Several ladies began to talk 
 simultaneously, but not in unison. It was Bedlam let 
 loose. Guido contrived to follow the conversation of the two 
 ladies between whom he was sitting, and who talked across 
 him quite unceremoniously. They were showing each other 
 their iron rings, obtained from the German Red Cross in 
 return for their jewelry. All the ladies, almost, had an 
 iron ring and now displayed it with justifiable pride. When 
 Frau Theaterdirektor Reinhardt, however, displayed hers, 
 a cry of mingled astonishment and dismay arose. 
 
 Frau Reinhardt was the youngest woman present as she 
 was by far the prettiest. She was very smartly gowned. 
 She had been an actress before she married, a fact which 
 stirred a variety of emotions in the breasts of the fair 
 Anasquoitians. There had been a tendency on the part 
 of some of the ladies to make an attempt to debar her 
 from Anasquoit Society, and to close to her the sacred 
 portals of the Deutsche Verein, but Frau Theaterdirektor 
 owned a pair of beautiful heliotrope-colored eyes and knew 
 how to use them. And use them she did, with the result 
 that the gentlemen of Anasquoit allowed themselves to be 
 fettered and gagged long before their amiable spouses had 
 decided that guerrilla warfare would be more effectual than 
 an open campaign in waging war against so insidious an 
 enemy. A few fair Anasquoitans attempted to cut her 
 at the opening ball of the season, and had the same ex 
 perience that befell the Prince of Wales upon one memorable 
 occasion they found themselves cut instead. Thereupon 
 they bowed to the inevitable, and found compensation for 
 their defeat in the fruitful subjects for gossip furnished 
 them continually by the pretty young wife of the Theater 
 direktor. 
 
 The jewelry of which she had apparently disposed for 
 "patriotic" reasons had constituted an exceedingly fruitful 
 source of gossip in Anasquoit. Who had given it to her?
 
 470 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Her husband? Surely not. Dear, kind, lovable Herr 
 Theaterdirektor was a genius, positively a genius, and 
 quite without a peer at stage management and repertory 
 work and in the selection of Kraefte. But, heavens and 
 earth! Everybody knew that Herr Hauser, and Herr 
 Schuldirektor (who had married a rich wife) and Herr 
 Fabrikant Schulze and Herr Duden and Herr Boelke, were 
 continually making donations to the Universal Theater, 
 which alone saved the Herr Theaterdirektkor from going 
 into insolvency. Whence, then, the jewelry? The diamond 
 tiara? The wonderful rope of pearls? The amethysts 
 and emeralds? The ruby and seed pearl necklace and ear 
 rings? And was all this marvelous jewelry actually cast 
 into the melting pot of the German Red Cross ? Had Frau 
 Theaterdirektor mayhap made the sacrifice believing that 
 so laudible and exalted a destination might wipe away 
 whatever stains accrued to the jewelry and to her honor? 
 
 Several of the ladies were so touched by the thought 
 which obviously suggested itself to all that they almost 
 wept. 
 
 And meanwhile they bewailed the loss of the beautiful 
 stones and lauded the patriotism which had given so 
 lavishly, and hailed Germany as thrice-happy that, on 
 foreign shores and in distant climes, she might command 
 such sacrificial devotion. 
 
 Guido sat with downcast eyes. Presently Frau Theater 
 direktor rose, and, as if embarrassed by the enthusiasm of 
 which she was the storm-center, wandered away to the 
 window to admire some begonias which were lasting through 
 the winter. On her lips was a peculiar, obscure smile. 
 Guido noiselessly slid back his chair and joined her. Im 
 mediately the noisy chatter behind them poured itself into 
 different channels. 
 
 "Frau Th eater dire ktor !" 
 
 "Herr von Estritz!" 
 
 "I would like to relate an incident of my extreme 
 youth." 
 
 "I am consumed with curiosity." 
 
 "One day, at one of my mother s coffees, I noticed a 
 wonderful amethyst necklace of one of the guests. I also 
 noticed the lady s beauty." 
 
 "Flatterer!"
 
 YOUTH 471 
 
 "To tell truth is not to flatter. Do not blame me if 
 truth, in this instance, is flattering. I am relating a story 
 a true story. After the ladies were gone, in walking 
 across the floor, I felt my heel grind into something hard, 
 and I was horrified to perceive that I had stepped heavily 
 upon a very large, beautiful amethyst, which, apparently, 
 had dropped from a loose setting." 
 
 "Delightful !" cried the young woman. "I am more than 
 curious to hear the end of your story. Why did you not 
 return the stone to me, like an honest little boy?" 
 
 "That, of course, was my first impulse. But the heel 
 of my heavy boy s boot seemed to have injured the stone 
 in some way. It had become dull. So I decided to take 
 it to a jeweler s in New York, who knew me and to whom 
 I could explain my predicament. I did this, asking him 
 to procure me a stone just like the one which I had in 
 advertently stepped upon, promising to pay half the sum 
 in cash at once and the balance in instalments out of my 
 generous quarterly allowance." 
 
 "What happened?" Frau Theaterdirektor demanded, 
 breathlessly. 
 
 "Do you really wish me to go on?" 
 
 "I do, I do, indeed." 
 
 "The jeweler, after examining the stone, informed me 
 that it was paste." 
 
 "And then " 
 
 "I was very miserable. You may laugh" the lady, how 
 ever, was not laughing now "I spent two miserable 
 nights before I was able to make up my mind what to do. 
 I was in a desperate plight. That paste amethyst repre 
 sents one of the tragedies of my childhood." 
 
 "How old were you?" 
 
 "Fourteen." 
 
 "Pray, go on." 
 
 "I thought of buying a new paste amethyst, and return 
 ing that to you. And then I thought I would buy a genuine 
 stone and send you that. Finally I decided that the safest 
 way to spare you embarrassment was to do nothing and to 
 say nothing." 
 
 "And you took no one into your confidence? Not even 
 your mother?" 
 
 "Not even my mother."
 
 472 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "I applaud your tact. But I m enormously interested 
 in learning why you told me all this now." 
 
 "Pure unselfishness. I wanted to increase your pleasure 
 in the innocent trick you have played upon these ladies by 
 letting you know that someone shares your secret. It was 
 really too good to keep, now wasn t it?" 
 
 The lady laughed. She laughed so heartily that she half- 
 closed her eyes and threw back her head to facilitate 
 cachination. She had been famous for her stage laughter 
 and it had lost none of its ancient charm. She was very 
 pretty when she laughed it was rumored that she had 
 practiced her laughter for hours before a mirror and Guido 
 found himself wondering whether her throat was as soft 
 to the touch as to the eye. 
 
 The chatter at the table almost ceased. Sentences were 
 ruthlessly torn in two, their frayed ends remorselessly left 
 hanging in mid-air. Lips fumbled for words with which 
 to complete phrases to which no one was listening. Guido 
 and the wife of the Theaterdirektor held the center of the 
 stage. 
 
 The boy had begun to laugh, also, for laughter is con- 
 tageous. 
 
 Finally the lady regained her composure. Sly, envious, 
 malicious glances darted her way. Conversation at the 
 table was resumed without haste and without zest. 
 
 "Mein junger Herr von Estritz," Frau Theaterdirektor 
 said at last, "allow me to tell you that you are the most 
 impertinent, adorable, utterly delicious boy I have ever met. 
 And that is saying a good deal." 
 
 "I am overwhelmed!" our hero murmured, and bowed. 
 Mischievousness prompted him to imitate the Wesendonck 
 and von Dammer bow. He wondered how the unwonted 
 genuflection would succeed. It came off beautifully. 
 
 "Thus," he quoth, "hath one tragedy of life turned itself 
 into a comedy. Is that the fate of all tragedies, schoene 
 Dame? I was very much in love with you, then." 
 
 "You were let me see how old did you say you were ?" 
 
 "Fourteen." 
 
 "And now?" 
 
 "I am seventeen." 
 
 "I wish you were fourteen still and had retained some 
 of your moods."
 
 YOUTH 473 
 
 "Perhaps I have." 
 
 "Which?" 
 
 Guido laughed and the lady laughed. Their glances in 
 terlocked pleasurably. 
 
 "That would be telling," he said. 
 
 "I ll talk to you no longer," said the lady. "If I do I 
 shall succumb to the temptation which I felt once before 
 when you rode rough-shod over the sensibilites of all 
 those dreadful old women I shall kiss you." 
 
 "I have not the least objection." 
 
 "Here?" 
 
 "You suggested it," said Guido, adding, "I doubledare 
 you." 
 
 "Upon my word," said the lady, "I have never taken a 
 dare in my life. And a double dare. And from a mere 
 infant. You are a very, very naughty boy, mein junger 
 Herr." 
 
 "You like naughty boys, don t you?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "I am going." The lady flounced away from the window, 
 and, going back to the table, thrust a tempestuous general 
 adieu into the midst of the assemblage, shaking hands with 
 Frau Ursula, and tapping one or two other ladies lightly 
 on the back as she passed them. At the end of the table 
 she turned quickly and faced Guido. 
 
 "Verehrte, Hebe Frau Hauser," she called out, and not 
 only Frau Ursula but every other woman in the room 
 gave her an undivided attention, "I hope you will pardon 
 me. I really must kiss this dear little lad of yours. He 
 is such a baby still." And taking Guide s face between 
 her hands she implanted upon his mouth a kiss, a manner 
 of kiss the boy had never received before, a manner of 
 kiss the very existence of which he had never dreamed of. 
 Then, totally unmoved by the consternation, indignation 
 and amazement mirrored in the faces that surrounded her, 
 she tripped airily from the room. 
 
 Guido felt shaken, queer, frightened and faint, all in 
 one. Odd sensations traversed body and soul. To his 
 surprise he had not reddened. On the contrary, he had a 
 curious sense of having turned very white and that a new, 
 hitherto unknown expression had invaded his eyes. He 
 could not have pictured the expression and yet he knew it 
 was there and that an entirely new feeling underlay it. He
 
 474 THE HYPHEN 
 
 felt as if his eyes had become larger, and still larger 
 as large as saucers. He walked the length of the room 
 on limbs that seemed strangely unsteady, as if he had been 
 ill for a long time. He had come around to his mother, 
 and as he sat down he noticed that his hands trembled. 
 Then, because he thought that the trembling of his hand 
 must be apparent to all, he flushed furiously. To add to 
 his discomfiture, he perceived that his mother was angry, 
 very, very angry. 
 
 Not until the last of the guests was gone, and the waiters 
 had removed the dishes and the cloth, did Frau Ursula 
 give rein to her anger. 
 
 "I am ashamed of you," she said. "If that is the way 
 you are going to behave when you begin going into society, 
 you are going to disgrace me." 
 
 "Why, Mother, what did I do?" 
 
 Frau Ursula glared at him. Then, without answering, 
 she pushed a chair into place. Anger had translated itself 
 into excess muscular energy, and the chair lurched forward 
 within two inches of the blazing grate fire. Guido drew 
 it back quickly and repeated the question. 
 
 "Mother, what did I do ? I did not kiss her. She kissed 
 me." 
 
 "You said things that led up to the situation. Don t 
 deny it. It takes two to make a quarrel and it takes two 
 to kiss. Heaven knows what you said to her all the while 
 you were talking to her alone. You did almost all the 
 talking. The brazen hussy!" And Frau Ursula, gentle, 
 refined, well-bred, low-voiced Frau Ursula continued to 
 uncork the spill of such vials of wrath upon Guide s head 
 that the boy, his very sensibility outraged and shocked, 
 could only murmur: 
 
 "Oh, Mutterchen, Mutterchen, please!" 
 
 He was at loss to understand why his mother was so 
 frantically angry. He did not for one moment suppose 
 that his mother knew anything at all about the sort of 
 kiss with which Frau Theater direktor had regaled him. To 
 think so would be to insult her. He was really a very 
 innocent boy. 
 
 The man that was to be was a little amused at her 
 wrath. The boy that had been was a little frightened. 
 Wedged in between the two, the youth that was regarded
 
 YOUTH 475 
 
 the spectacle wonderingly. Suddenly, out of the vortex 
 of conflicting emotions arose a strange sensation of pride. 
 Pride in what ? He could not have said. In having gained 
 an experience? When next he met Egon von Dammer 
 in the flush of the moment he forgot his virtuous resolu 
 tion to see nothing of his former school-mate there would 
 be two who could play at the game of pretending unutter 
 able things. 
 
 Frau Ursula s wrath was abating. That gentle soul 
 could never nurse anger for any length of time. Least of 
 all against Guido. Guido, perceiving that low-tide had 
 set in, stationed himself behind her chair and bent down 
 to kiss her. 
 
 "No, don t kiss me. If you allow women like that to 
 kiss you I must decline to share the honor with them." 
 
 Guido had an inspiration. 
 
 "Mother, be reasonable. What would you have had me 
 do? Draw back? Resist her? Say, No, no, my mamma 
 wouldn t like to have you to kiss me? And stick my 
 finger in my mouth?" 
 
 Frau Ursula wanted to laugh but she didn t. 
 
 "I really don t know what has come over you, Guido," 
 she said. 
 
 "Oh, I suppose when I heard all that jawing and jazz 
 ing " 
 
 "Jawing and jazzing!" Frau Ursula repeated the Eng 
 lish slang which Guido had so brutally dragged into his 
 correct German sentence gingerly, as if she feared that 
 it might injure her tongue. 
 
 "I suppose the devil got into me. Mother, do you be 
 lieve in a devil, a real, live devil?" 
 
 "I decline to discuss religion with you while you are 
 in this flippant mood." 
 
 "As far as I know religion has never been discussed 
 with me," said Guido. "Perhaps, if it had, and if I hadn t 
 been brought up on the milk and pap of No-Bias, I would 
 have known better than to misbehave to-day. I say, 
 Mother, let s drop the subject." 
 
 "Have you thought what all those women are going to 
 say about you? The yarns they will tell? Tante Baum- 
 garten? I shouldn t be surprised if Otto were to inform
 
 476 THE HYPHEN 
 
 you to-night or to-morrow that his father insists upon his 
 not associating with you any more." 
 
 "Bother the Baumgartens." 
 
 "Have you thought what Elschen Marlow would say if 
 she knew?" 
 
 "I don t care a rap what Elschen Marlow thinks of me," 
 he asserted stoutly. But his cheeks crimsoned, as Frau 
 Ursula perceived with satisfaction. She felt assured that 
 she had touched his conscience at last. 
 
 She was mistaken. Guido did not care what Elschen 
 thought of him. But the mention of her name, by one 
 of the unexplained, esoteric laws of the soul, had conjured 
 up a vision of Janet. And immediately pride and defiance 
 and amusement shriveled away into merest nothingness. 
 And in their place came shame and mortification. 
 
 Was he in love with Janet? The boy was so uncon 
 scious of his own mental processes that the thought never 
 occurred to him. 
 
 He was completely submerged in shame. He drank of 
 it, bathed in it, was steeped in it. It permeated every tissue 
 of his body and every fragment of his soul. 
 
 Janet! He told himself that a rascal like himself was 
 not fit to breathe the same air as she who bore that name, 
 or to speak that name. He was, doubtless, what Cecil, 
 employing old English script, would have termed a rotter; 
 what Stan, using the vernacular, would call a piker; what 
 Otto, rude, honest, loyal Otto, expressing himself in bold 
 faced German text, would call "ein Schuft." 
 
 He was crushed by the sense of his own moral obliquity. 
 The color receded from his face. It now became un 
 naturally white and looked pinched and drawn. So stricken 
 did he look, so still and silent had he become that Frau 
 Ursula became frightened. 
 
 "Guido, mein lieber Junge, was ist Dir?" 
 
 "Don t call me your lieber Junge," he retorted, desper 
 ately. "I m a brute-beast. I m not fit for decent society. 
 I m going to live like Dobronov, in poverty. Hardship 
 will reform me ; hardship, and no one to love me." 
 
 Frau Ursula became alarmed. 
 
 "Guido, you don t mean seriously that you want to go 
 and live on the East Side and risk tuberculosis and vermin 
 and everything?" the poor woman cried.
 
 YOUTH 477 
 
 "East Side? Who said anything about living on the 
 East Side?" the boy demanded, and Frau Ursula breathed 
 a sigh of relief. He had the habit of blind words when 
 greatly moved. 
 
 "Mother," he said, suddenly, "why can t we move to 
 New York?" 
 
 "Impossible." 
 
 "Why? 
 
 Frau Ursula looked at him in amazement. Had she not 
 leased the upper flat in the two-family house? Had she 
 not bought carpets, curtains, furniture? What had put 
 such a notion into her dearest boy s head. 
 
 "Sublet the flat and sell all the junk and buy other 
 stuff," said Guido. 
 
 "Junk!" said Frau Ursula in a terrible voice. Were 
 hundred-dollar Axminster rugs and eight-dollar net curtains 
 "junk"? 
 
 "I know I m hopeless to-day," said Guido, real contri 
 tion in his voice. And renewed his plea that they move 
 to New York. 
 
 Frau Ursula became subtly excited. She said she had 
 not the requisite energy to begin flat-hunting all over again. 
 And living in New York would come twice as high as 
 living in Anasquoit. And they knew no one in New York. 
 They would be bored to death. No, manifestly, New York 
 was impossible. She wondered her boy should suggest such 
 a thing. 
 
 He perceived that she did not wish to leave Anasquoit 
 and suspected the reason. 
 
 "Mutterchen," he demanded, bluntly, "do you still love 
 that man?" 
 
 Instantly a tremendous change came over Frau Ursula. 
 She was no longer a woman twice Guide s age whom he 
 looked to as a guide and guardian. It was pathetic to see 
 all the dignity of her years, all her fine manner and 
 presence disappear. There remained a woman of uncertain 
 age, who was so sick at heart that she took no pains to 
 disguise her hurt. And suddenly, with unbelievable abrupt 
 ness, she began to weep unrestrainedly. 
 
 "Mutterchen, I am so sorry ! I never told you, Mother, 
 that I saw him the other day."
 
 478 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Frau Ursula s tears ceased to flow instantly. Grief 
 waited on curiosity. 
 
 Guido, returning from the theater one night, had seen 
 Hauser on the ferryboat. Hauser had not seen him. He 
 was carrying an umbrella the one with the inlaid gun- 
 metal top which Frau Ursula had given him for his last 
 birthday. He was reading a magazine, and when he left 
 the cabin he forgot his umbrella. Guido secured it and with 
 it ran after Hauser. 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "Mutterchen, it was curious. I always thought I hated 
 him, but when I stood close behind him and saw how gray 
 his hair had turned, and how he had aged, why I couldn t 
 address him as Mr. Hauser or as Sir ; so I said, Father, 
 you forgot your umbrella. " 
 
 "What did he say?" Frau Ursula demanded, eagerly. 
 
 "He started violently and changed color. Then his face 
 hardened, but when I handed him the umbrella he said in 
 his natural voice : Thank you, Guido. " 
 
 "And was that all? Did he say nothing else?" Frau 
 Ursula asked as many questions as a love-sick miss in 
 her teens might have marshaled. Was Guido sure Hauser 
 had not asked for her? Or meant to ask for her, if Guido 
 had given him time ? Or had Guido given him time to 
 ask? And in what way had Hauser aged? Had he grown 
 thin as well as gray? Had be become careless in his 
 dress, or what ? And what magazine had he been reading ? 
 And did he seem unhappy or merely forlorn? How had 
 his voice sounded? How had his eyes looked? Was he 
 smoking? Cigar or cigarette? 
 
 Guido answered these questions as best he could. 
 Finally, when Frau Ursula had quite exhausted her stock 
 of questions, though Guido could see that her appetite for 
 hearing Hauser spoken of was still unappeased, Guido 
 said: 
 
 "Mother, if you desire a reconciliation, why let false 
 pride stand in the way? Allow me to go to him for you. 
 The rupture was really my fault. I am afraid I was very 
 selfish at first and never thought of the heart-ache which 
 my shocking outburst of temper entailed upon you. It is 
 only fair that I should try and bring you together again." 
 
 At that, to Guide s consternation, Frau Ursula began to
 
 YOUTH 479 
 
 weep again. She declared that never never NEVER would 
 she allow Guido to do such a thing. If Hauser desired to 
 be reconciled, there was one way and one way only to 
 obtain her forgiveness. And he knew it. And if he did 
 not know it she would sooner perish by fire, flood or halter 
 than teach him that way. 
 
 Guido was greatly surprised at this outburst. His mother 
 was so soft and pliant and gentle as a rule, that the harsh 
 energy which she infused into her indignation gave the 
 boy to think. He remembered .Mrs. Erdman s obscure re 
 marks and exclamations. Probably she had been right 
 after all. There was something more to the quarrel be 
 tween his mother and her husband than appeared at the 
 surface. He set himself the task of eliciting the truth. 
 
 "Mother, you are keeping something from me." 
 
 She neither denied nor affirmed this charge, but sat 
 mopping her eyes with her handkerchief, which by this 
 time was soaked through and through. 
 
 Guido took the disgusting square of linen from her and 
 flung it onto the bed. Then he went to her bureau and 
 fetched her a clean handkerchief. Their normal relations 
 were entirely reversed. 
 
 "So," he said, drying her eyes, and then pressing the 
 clean kerchief into her hands, "why not confide in me? 
 Just what did Hauser do to anger you so terribly? He 
 must have said something else later in the evening. No? 
 
 Well, I cannot imagine Mother, look here, he may not 
 
 know that he has offended you so deeply. Why not be 
 frank with him and have it out and then make up?" 
 
 "And would you like me to make up with him?" 
 
 "What I would like is beside the question." Guido felt 
 that he was behaving handsomely. So did Frau Ursula. 
 She patted his cheek, and called him her own dear, true, 
 kind, noble boy. 
 
 "Come, mother, you taught me to be reasonable and 
 fair. And in the past you have always been reasonable 
 and fair yourself " 
 
 "Am I unreasonable now?" 
 
 "I think you should consider the happiness of your hus 
 band and your own happiness more than you are doing." 
 
 "Happiness," said Frau Ursula, with sentimental sen-
 
 4 8o THE HYPHEN 
 
 tentiousness, "is of less consequence to a woman of honor 
 than self-respect." 
 
 "You are talking in riddles," said Guido, curtly. His 
 pride was hurt because his well-meant efforts apparently 
 were not advancing the reconciliation in the least. 
 
 "I believe you think I am treating Hauser badly," Fran 
 Ursula said, suddenly. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Guido politely. 
 
 The loss of Guide s blind partisanship was more than 
 the poor woman could bear. 
 
 "I will tell you the humiliating truth," she said, bound 
 to retrieve her stronghold in the boy s heart. And in 
 words as modest as her womanliness and the life-long 
 habit of clean thinking would make them, she told Guido 
 of the unjust suspicion which Hauser had harbored against 
 her all the years of their married life; how their marriage 
 had been no marriage at all until last summer; how their 
 marriage vows would never have been consummated if 
 she had not believed that Hauser s shameful and ridiculous 
 suspicion was dead; how suddenly, on the memorable 
 evening of the quarrel, Hauser, by the way in which he 
 had told Guido that he was not his son, had revived a 
 seemingly dead issue, making of it a cryingly, burningly 
 alive problem. 
 
 "And that," she concluded, "is my real reason for leaving 
 him." 
 
 "The scoundrel," said Guido, unconsciously using the 
 same word which Mrs. Erdman had used. And presently 
 a curious thing happened. Hauser s suspicion placed the 
 behavior of the Frau Theaterdirektor in still another light. 
 He understood poignantly how bitterly it must hurt his 
 mother to be thought "that sort of a woman." He thought 
 in broad swathes of thought only, not in fine shadings. He 
 saw red. If Hauser had been at hand, Guido would have 
 done murder. He hated Hauser more bitterly than he had 
 ever hated him before.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CHRISTMAS passed without bringing the letter or mes 
 sage from Hauser for which Frau Ursula longed so 
 fervently. She had confidently expected that he would 
 make an overture of some sort before the holidays. She 
 entertained romantic hopes of Hauser coming to the hotel 
 on Christmas Eve, and saying the sweet soft words of 
 which she^knew him capable. It was incredible that he 
 should not make one final effort to win her back. He 
 should, she thought, have divined that she was very willing 
 to be friends. She wept all Christmas Night in the privacy 
 of her bed-room. After that she told herself that she was 
 through with tears and repining and grief. But, though 
 sBe smiled and was bright and cheerful, the brilliance was 
 gone from her cheek, the resilience from her step. 
 
 Shortly after the first of the year they moved into their 
 new apartment. It was a charming little home, and should 
 have made for happiness. Guido thrust the War sufficiently 
 to one side these days to observe his mother keenly, and 
 he saw that she was listless and indifferent. 
 
 Frau Ursula entertained a good deal during the first 
 months in their new home. She seemed to dread being 
 left alone. She would have entertained even more than 
 she did, but the servant-girl problem was a serious one. 
 The maids whom she engaged were inefficient, and when 
 she attempted to teach them they became insolent and 
 left. Wages were ridiculously high. Thirty-five dollars 
 was being asked by servants whose experience or lack of 
 experience six months earlier would have entitled them 
 to a bare twenty dollars. 
 
 The pro-Germans, under guise of righteous indignation, 
 aired their grievances and their sympathies. Formerly the 
 Anasquoitians had attributed the shortage of servants to the 
 factories which were invading Anasquoit and had showered 
 all the scorn of which their restricted but emphatic vocabu- 
 larly was capable upon the foolish girls who, for the sake 
 
 481
 
 482 THE HYPHEN 
 
 of free evenings and free Sundays, preferred to work in 
 a factory among people of their own sort, to the manifold 
 advantages which accrue to "living out" with a nice 
 family, where, in return for working hard fourteen hours 
 a day, a girl enjoys the privilege of seeing how really 
 "nice" people conduct themselves and their homes. 
 
 This song of wrath was now varied. The ammunition 
 works which had sprung up in and around Anasquoit as 
 elsewhere, where bullets and shells were made with which 
 to shoot the good, kind, honest Germans, were absorbing 
 the female labor which should have been scrubbing floors 
 and washing clothes and cleaning windows for the benefit 
 and comfort of its betters. 
 
 Frau Ursula did not swell this chorus of oblique censure 
 on the American traffic in ammunition, although she was 
 one of the chief sufferers from the prevalent servantgitis. 
 She decided to send the laundry out in spite of the 
 circular clothes-dryer, like an inverted umbrella, which 
 waited her pleasure in the backyard every day of the week 
 and to have her cleaning woman in thrice a week or 
 as many days as she would consent to come. This left her 
 with only the meals to get, enough labor, in sooth, for a 
 woman who had not pared a potato or scraped a carrot 
 since the days when she had been taught how to cook in 
 a fashionable cooking school. 
 
 They had Dobronov over for as many week-ends as he 
 would come. Frau Ursula was quite as fond uf the ec 
 centric Russian as Guido, and she bribed him to come 
 often and stay long by serving him with plain, cheap dishes 
 such as lentils and rice. The honest fellow did not suspect 
 that he ate doctored food. The lentils contained finely 
 chopped bacon and chicken so cleverly insinuated that 
 Dobronov thought, in all innocence and sincerity, that the 
 red pottage derived its excellent flavor merely from the 
 molasses and vinegar to which Frau Ursula willingly con 
 fessed. The rice was baked. Grated cheese and sugar 
 and cream enriched it, and made it a delectable dainty. 
 Frau Ursula blamed the excellent milk for the rich taste 
 of the dish. He knew did he not? that "Jersey" cows 
 were famed the world over? Was it her fault if Jersey 
 farmers fed their cows some mixture of grain which gave 
 the milk, when baked, such a delicious flavor? Thus it
 
 YOUTH 483 
 
 happened that Sergius Ivanovitch, while indulging his 
 quarrelsome soul, indulged his long-suffering stomach as 
 well without knowing it. 
 
 He had, by this time, divorced himself from Christian 
 Science, to which as Guido reminded him he had vowed 
 everlasting allegiance the previous summer. 
 
 "I discovered in time," he explained, "that the Christian 
 Scientists do nothing but talk about disease. Now it s all 
 very well to believe God is Truth so He is, of course 
 but I do not believe that the sole use of truth resides in 
 application to bodily ills. I believe in rendering to Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar s and to God the things that 
 are God s. In other words, render to the body medicines 
 and physical care, and to the spirit spiritual advice and 
 support. Besides, they are all so prosperous, so indecently 
 prosperous. Their idea of religion is to better their 
 worldly condition. A pernicious doctrine! A detestable 
 doctrine! The soul finds itself in hardship, in poverty, 
 in sickness and in sorrow. All experience has shown that 
 a certain amount of individual grief and pain are indis 
 pensable if soul and heart are to be disciplined and edu 
 cated. What queer things people do believe." 
 
 During one of his visits Dobronov slipped on the side 
 walk and sprained his ankle and was forced to remain 
 under Frau Ursula s roof for a full week. Guido was 
 surprised upon this occasion to see his friend reveal a 
 new and unsuspected side of his character. He welcomed 
 Guido s suggestion to play chess; discussed literature and 
 art, rejected nothing that was comfortable and agreeable, 
 and told tales of his Russian home and childhood which 
 gave Guido a vivid insight into the life and traditions of 
 his maternal forebears. Sergius Ivanovich told of the 
 strange custom of the Easter Kiss ; of the curious sweet 
 meats, as strange and unpalatable to the uninitiated as 
 Chinese candy, which are made especially for Easter; of 
 the butter-week; of the great fair at Nijni-Novgorod ; of 
 the strange Tartar costumes which are still seen in some 
 parts of Russia; of the wonderful ikons, set with precious 
 gems which ornament the exterior of the Russian Orthodox 
 Churches ; of the demand for popes with deep baritones 
 to read the services in Church Slavonik ; of the Russian 
 crucifix which has an extra cross-bar near the lower ex-
 
 484 THE HYPHEN 
 
 tremity of the center beam, probably as a foot-rest; of 
 the influence of the Germans, who are hated and feared 
 by patriotic Russians; of the simple faith, the kindliness, 
 the heart-breaking poverty of the peasants ; of the marvel 
 ous mental receptivity of the Russian mind, and unques 
 tioning, uncritical receptivity which inevitably makes the 
 last argument appear the best. 
 
 He spoke of the unbelievable graft rampant among 
 Russian officials, and on the other hand, of the equally in 
 credible spectacle afforded by high officials of state and 
 officers of the army assisting political exiles to escape. 
 
 "Do not ask me why," he said. "There are a hundred 
 and one possible motives. Such an official may be touched 
 by the sufferings of a political, or he may be a Revolu 
 tionist at heart, and have worked to achieve a powerful 
 office for the express purpose of using it to aid politicals. " 
 
 "But if that is so, why should such an official not use 
 his influence in a direct way?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "What methods would the direct way employ ?" Dobronov 
 inquired. 
 
 "I do not know, Sergius Ivanovich, I am not a Russian." 
 
 "And I," Dobronov rejoined, "do not know and I am 
 a Russian." 
 
 Guido knew Dobronov too well to suspect him of cheap 
 repartee. His friend s reply gave him an insight into 
 the strange strands of well-meaning futility which is so 
 salient a feature of the Russian character. 
 
 Frequently, after a long talk with Dobronov, Guido 
 would sit for hours thinking or feeling, he could not have 
 said which. A conversation with Cecil had invariably 
 brought his thoughts into focus, organized and classified 
 and consolidated them. A talk with Dobronov had the 
 reverse effect. It seemed to disperse his thoughts, to 
 stimulate them into radiation in all directions, so that it 
 was impossible to gather them in and set them in order 
 to profit by them. Cecil had facts and figures at his 
 finger-tips. Dobronov cared nothing for facts and figures 
 and his theories were mere vagaries, as unsubstantial as 
 a spider-web and as elusive as moonlight on water. 
 
 "Just what use is being made of your vast income, 
 Sergius Ivanovich?" Guido asked him one day. 
 
 "My instructions were to divide half of it among the
 
 YOUTH 485 
 
 peasants of my estate," said Dobrondv, "in proportion to 
 the number of persons in each family." 
 
 "And are you not afraid that an augmented, unearned 
 income will corrupt them and ruin their hope of salva 
 tion?" 
 
 "What things you do say, Guido Guidovich," Dobronov 
 exclaimed. Then, quite seriously, he added : "The thought 
 has troubled me lately. I think, however, that they have 
 been so desperately poor for so long, and they all have 
 such big families that the individual share of my income 
 cannot be sufficiently large to seriously disturb their chances 
 of salvation." 
 
 "There is another possibility," Guido exclaimed. "Six 
 years have elapsed since you came here. For six years you 
 have left everything in the hands of your agent. If the 
 man is dishonest, there may be nothing left of your estate 
 and fortune by this time." 
 
 "What things you do think of, Guido Guidovich," 
 Dobronov exclaimed, and then added: "Honesty compels 
 me to admit that the same thought has already occurred 
 to me, and it has worried me not a little. The man whom 
 I selected as my agent was virtually a stranger to me. He 
 may be a man who is easily tempted. Being entrusted 
 with my vast interests may have been his ruin. I should 
 have thought of that in advance. If he has stolen my 
 property, the sin be upon my head, not his." 
 
 Was there no limit to the number of iridescent facets 
 of Dobronov s character ? Guido stared in amazement. He 
 was abashed. Dobronov was more than man or less. 
 
 Dobronov showed still another wholly unsuspected side. 
 He was fond of children. While confined to the house, 
 he indulged in a great flirtation with a young lady of five 
 who occupied a window in the neighboring house, op 
 posite to his own. Apparently she had the mumps, for 
 her little face was swathed around with flannel. Dobronov 
 and she had great conversations by play of hands, and 
 nodding of heads, and smiles, and twisting of mouths, and 
 screwing about of eyes. 
 
 Guido, coming upon his friend unawares one day, caught 
 him at the game, and tiptoed out of the room to summon 
 Frau Ursula. Together mother and son watched the odd 
 proceeding the grave, blonde, dignified young man, all
 
 4 86 THE HYPHEN 
 
 gravity and reserve gone, making the most remarkable 
 grimaces at the little girl in the neighboring house. Sud 
 denly Dobronov became aware that he was being watched 
 and looked up. 
 
 "Guido Guidovitch," he called, smiling broadly, "will you 
 do me a favor ? Have you a toy-shop in this town ? Good. 
 Go and buy me a doll the little miss wants a small one, 
 six inches long, with movable joints, blue eyes and fair 
 hair. Go at once, will you?" 
 
 "Apparently," said Guido, "the state of the little girl s 
 soul does not trouble you." 
 
 "Little girls and boys have no souls," the amazing 
 Dobronov replied. "How can a mere baby have a moral 
 sense? Ridiculous. That comes later in life. That s why 
 we all love small children, we can indulge their every whim 
 to our heart s content." 
 
 Guido went to purchase the doll and Frau Ursula in 
 quired : 
 
 "Sergius Ivanovich, how did you know what the child 
 wanted?" 
 
 "She told me by motions and si-gns." 
 
 "Surely you did not understand all she wanted to say 
 to you?" 
 
 "No more than she understood all I wanted to say to 
 her." 
 
 "And what did you want to say to her?" 
 
 "Oh, I cannot put it into words. It s like music. Some 
 thing fine and splendid and delightful, but quite too deli 
 cate in meaning to be subjected to the heavy touch of 
 language." 
 
 "How gentle Dobronov is," Guido said that evening to 
 his mother, after having delivered the doll to the house 
 next door with a note from Dobronov which he would 
 not allow Guido to read. 
 
 "No gentler than your mother," justice forced Frau 
 Ursula to say. 
 
 "My mother !" said Guido bitterly. "My mother !" The 
 concentrated bitterness in his voice made Frau Ursula look 
 up swiftly. 
 
 "Mutterchen, I often wonder, did Vasalov, in selecting 
 Dobronov as my teacher, hope that in the course of his 
 soul s perambulations he would take to bomb-throwing?"
 
 YOUTH 487 
 
 "With a Russian all things are possible," said Frau 
 Ursula with a sigh. 
 
 "How long, Mother, since Vasalov paid you that visit?" 
 
 "You were eleven years old." 
 
 "I wish I might see him," said Guido, "and yet I do 
 not wish ever to meet him face to face. You say I was 
 enchanted with him as a child. And now I hate him. Ah, 
 how I hate him! How I loathe the very thought of him!" 
 
 Frau Ursula did not demur. She hated Vasalov quite 
 as bitterly as Guido did, perhaps more, for imbedded in her 
 hatred was the element of fear. She had no specific notion 
 of the nature of the menace which he might yet introduce 
 into her life, but the vapory indistinctness in which her fears 
 were shrouded added to rather than diminished her un 
 easiness. 
 
 "Don t let us think about him and her," said Guido, 
 suddenly. 
 
 "Guido speak respectfully of your mother!" Frau 
 Ursula entreated. 
 
 "Don t call her my mother," the boy said angrily. "That 
 Russian woman is nothing to me, less than nothing." Frau 
 Ursula felt it her duty to expostulate with him, but in 
 the middle of her sentence Guido rose and walked quietly 
 from the room, an incivility of which he had never been 
 guiltv before. 
 
 Was Frau Ursula displeased or pleased? Who shall 
 say? Guido had given her fresh proof that "the Russian 
 woman" would never usurp her place in his heart. Egoism 
 thus was pampered and fed. But altruism held back egoism 
 and declared it was a shame, a crying shame that the boy 
 would not try to overcome his aversion for his real mother. 
 
 But Frau Ursula smiled as she sat over her embroidery.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 EVEN supreme and unselfish love cannot wholly com 
 prehend the needs, the pains, the joys of a fellow- 
 creature. Frau Ursula, great as was her love for Guido, 
 did not comprehend in the least what tortures he endured 
 whenever Varvara Alexandrovna was mentioned. 
 
 Guido, after leaving his mother with such scant courtesy, 
 donned hat and coat and sallied forth. 
 
 He walked rapidly up the street, bound for nowheres 
 in particular. As he approached Elm Street, he perceived 
 that the door of Pastor Marlow s church stood wide open. 
 The light streamed pleasantly from the vestibule onto the 
 flagged path. Guido hesitated a moment. He was heart 
 sick and longed for comfort. He longed, truth to tell, 
 to have that comfort spoken in German. It was the 
 Pastor s habit, as he knew, to deliver a short address at 
 his prayer-meetings. Guido, hoping to hear he knew not 
 what, entered the church. 
 
 The church was well-filled. The front pews were all 
 solidly occupied, and Guido perceived that the occupants 
 were all men. Someone whispered to him that the Herr 
 Pastor was holding an especial service for the Germans 
 who had been stranded in Anasquoit for the duration of the 
 War. 
 
 Guide s spirits, which had been at low ebb before, suf 
 fered an additional decline. He wished himself a hundred 
 miles away. Prescience told him that the Pastor, in ad 
 dressing his Teutonic guests, would give unrestricted vent 
 to his German sympathies. He thought of leaving the 
 church while there was yet time, but he lacked the courage 
 to pass the ushers at the door, all of whom he knew. 
 
 Pastor Marlow had chosen the text: 
 
 "And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out 
 all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew 
 
 488
 
 YOUTH 489 
 
 the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of them that 
 had sold doves." 
 
 A strange excitement seemed to pervade him as he began 
 his sermon, which seemed to communicate itself to the 
 congregation. It was a sermon that bristled with tactless 
 ness and cant. Guido, who in spite of the Pastor s German 
 sympathies, entertained a profound reverence for the 
 dominie s sterling worth of character, was appalled by the 
 egregious folly which could lead a minister of the gospel 
 to make such utterances from the pulpit. 
 
 The Pastor declared first of all that, using the text as a 
 parable, it was subject to the following exposition: The 
 money-changers in the temple were the English, whose 
 commercial greed had brought about the World- War. 
 Germany, of course, was likened to Christ in her divinely 
 appointed task of chastising and scourging the profaners 
 of the Lord s Edifice. By the grace of God, he said, 
 Germany, a solitary but divinely girt crusader, would suc 
 ceed in fulfilling her holy mission, and would punish and 
 purge the Allied Nations of the manifold sins which they 
 were committing at England s behest. England should 
 never rule all the world, as she was aspiring to do. 
 
 Pastor Marlow continued: 
 
 "In a wonderful volume of poems which have recently 
 come into my hands, and which were written by Pastor 
 Vorwerk, I found a paraphrase of the Lord s Prayer which 
 I am going to recite to you, for I am sure that better than 
 any prayer that I could frame it voices the sentiments and 
 convictions of all who are present: 
 
 "Though the warrior s bread is scanty, do thou work 
 daily death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive 
 in merciful long-suffering each bullet and each blow which 
 miss their mark. Lead us not into the temptation of 
 letting our wrath be too tame in carrying out thy divine 
 judgment. Deliver us and our Ally from the infernal 
 enemy and his servants on earth. Thine is the kingdom, 
 the German land; may we, by thy steel-clad hand, achieve 
 the power and the glory. Amen."* 
 
 *For the English version of this "prayer" the author is indebted 
 to J. P. Bang s "Hurrah and Hallellujah."
 
 490 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Too revolted for words, Guido rose, and, excusing him 
 self to the other occupants of the pew, walked quickly out 
 of the church. He passed Elschen on his way down the 
 aisle, who looked at him anxiously, thinking him suddenly 
 unwell, so white and strained was his face. He contrived 
 to smile at her and passed on. Apparently she was the 
 only person in the church who had noted his departure. 
 The rest of the congregation sat attentive and intent, mir 
 roring exultant beatitude. 
 
 Guido dashed wildly through the baize swinging door 
 of the vestibule into the fresh, clean night-air. 
 
 "God!" he exclaimed. "God in heaven! Can such 
 things be! In a Christian church!" 
 
 He had entered the church, hoping that words of spiritual 
 cheer would help him to overcome the misery that was 
 gnawing at his heart-strings and the shame which was 
 eating into his marrow. 
 
 And he came forth a thousand times more ashamed than 
 he had gone in. 
 
 He walked rapidly down the street. He thought he would 
 drop in at the Geddes home, and extract comfort from 
 any member of the family at leisure to entertain him. But 
 it was almost nine o clock, and in spite of the royal wel 
 come which always awaited him at the Professor s, he 
 felt some hesitation in presenting himself there at so un 
 conventional an hour. 
 
 He thought of Stan. But Stan, lucky dog of pure 
 Anglo-Saxon breed, would deal him a resounding slap on 
 the shoulder and tell him to chuck all his German ac 
 quaintances indiscriminately, and dismiss the War from 
 his mind and forget he had any foreign blood in his veins. 
 
 He thought of Cecil. The English boy, with his ever- 
 ready willingness to talk and to analyze, was never far 
 from Guide s thoughts these days. Was Cecil in danger? 
 Would he come through all right? The thought of Cecil 
 quieted him. The thoughts that disturbed and harrowed 
 him suddenly seemed petty, unreasonable, selfish when 
 compared to the discomforts and dangers which Cecil was 
 undergoing. 
 
 He turned to go home, turned abruptly and ran violently 
 into a small, slender man with his Derby low on his brow. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Guido, drawing back.
 
 YOUTH 491 
 
 "I beg yours," said the other in accents so delicate and 
 shadowy that the harsh monosyllables were unbelievably 
 softened. 
 
 Then the two young men stood and smiled at each other 
 sheepishly. They were class-mates and they had spoken 
 once or twice in class, and once or twice had walked a 
 block or two together. Guido had taken what Stan called 
 "a terrific shine" to the young man, and was a little 
 ashamed of the reasons which had held him back from 
 eagerly cultivating his acquaintance. 
 
 For the slender young man was a Japanese and his name 
 was Tada Yomanato. Guido, priding himself as he did 
 upon his absence of race prejudice would, if left to him 
 self, have made friends with Yomanato long before. But 
 Otto and Stan were forever at him. Stan, whose parents 
 came from the Coast, had the Calif ornian s ingrained dis 
 like for the yellow races. "The Japs are mere copy-cats," 
 he was in the habit of saying, "and we don t want them 
 in this country." Otto expressed his dislike, the typical 
 German dislike for the Japanese, in terms far more em 
 phatic. Between the two Guido had had a hard time in 
 being decently civil to Yomanato. He argued by the hour 
 both with Stan and Otto, but did not care to risk an open 
 quarrel by inviting Yomanato to his house when the others 
 were there. 
 
 Guido broke the embarrassed silence. In after life he 
 often wondered whether chance or destiny much-hated 
 word had thrown Yomanato and himself together that 
 evening. 
 
 "I have just come out of a church, a Christian church, 
 a German Christian church," said Guido, "and I am 
 ashamed." 
 
 The Japanese received this burst of confidence with 
 Oriental immobility. 
 
 "Was it the War ?" he asked, after a moment. 
 
 "Yes," said Guido. "To carry it into the pulpit !" Then, 
 feeling that his indignation had placed him in an oblique 
 position, he added hastily, honestly: 
 
 "I am not a Christian. Nevertheless, what I heard to 
 night was blasphemy, sacrilege I do not know what to 
 call it." 
 
 Tada Yomanato said slowly:
 
 492 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "One does not need to be a Christian to perceive blas 
 phemy." The Japanese spoke slowly, as if speed in speech 
 were impeded by caution in the selection of words. "In 
 my country, at Kamukura, there is a statue of Buddha, 
 Dai Butsu, and on the entrance to the shrine are inscribed 
 words which, to my mind, make plain the nature of blas 
 phemy and sacrilege." 
 
 "What are the words?" Guido demanded. 
 
 "Pardon," said the Japanese, "but is it well that we 
 should speak of sacred things in this haphazard fashion? 
 Will you not honor me and come to my rooms?" 
 
 "Gladly," said Guido. 
 
 Yomanato occupied rooms in an old-fashioned mansion 
 on Maple Street, a secluded, quiet avenue amply provided 
 with the tree for which it was named. Yomanato let him 
 self and Guido in with latch-key, and led the way to a 
 very large front room on the second floor, furnished 
 pleasantly enough with a bed-couch, a morris chair, a 
 wicker rocking chair, a table with an old-fashioned student 
 lamp and other purely Occidental furniture. Yomanato 
 invited Guido to sit, and then, going to the book-case, he 
 pulled out a book. 
 
 "I happen to have the words here in English," he ex 
 plained. "Were I to translate, the language would not 
 be so good." Opening the book he proceeded to read the 
 words of the inscription which he had referred to before: 
 
 "O Stranger, whosoever thou art and whatsoever thy 
 creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary, remember that 
 thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of 
 ages. This is the Temple of Buddha and the Gate of the 
 Eternal, and should therefore be entered with reverence."* 
 
 Having finished reading the passage, the Japanese gently 
 closed the book and then came and sat down on a chair 
 near Guido. 
 
 "If I were to enter a Christian church," he said, "and 
 were to indudge in irreverent or licentious or contemptuous 
 thoughts while there, I should, according to my belief, be 
 guilty of sacrilige. What is sacred to the followers of 
 
 *The book referred to from which the translation is taken, is 
 James A. B. Scherer s "Japan of To-day."
 
 YOUTH 493 
 
 one faith should at least command the respect of all be 
 lievers in whatsover creeds." 
 
 "It should command respect of all men, whether they 
 have a faith or not," said Guido. 
 
 "Atheists?" the Japanese inquired, mildly. 
 
 "Atheists?" Guido perceived the drift of the question, 
 and admired the shrewdness of the Japanese. He colored 
 and laughed. 
 
 "Is an atheist any more honest than a gnostic or a 
 gnostic than an atheist?" 
 
 The Japanese regarded Guido with an utterly immobile 
 face. It occurred to Guido that Yomanato might not know 
 the meaning of "gnostic." It further occurred to him that 
 he might comprehend the word, since his English was 
 marvelously good, and that he might be a gnostic himself. 
 Guido had read much about Buddhism, but he was un 
 certain as to the manner in which Buddhists classify them 
 selves. 
 
 "I hope I haven t dropped a brick," said Guido. "I m 
 not sure whether Buddhists are gnostics or agnostics." 
 
 "Neither am I," said Yomanato, smiling blandly. "Un 
 doubtedly, Buddhism as popularly taught, like certain 
 popular brands of Christianity, is intrinsically a gnostic 
 faith. But the higher Buddhism, to which I aspire, which 
 I hope to understand some day, offers no information as 
 to the beginning of things, as your Scriptures do." 
 
 "Then you are a Buddhist?" Guido inquired, unaware 
 that according to his host s standards, he was being un 
 warrantably rude in asking so leading a question. 
 
 Yomanato replied pleasantly: 
 
 "My father was a Buddhist. My mother was a follower 
 of Shinto. I myself observe both religions." 
 
 "Both?" Guido echoed. "Both?" This was worse than 
 Dobronov, who in his desire to avoid improper classifica 
 tion, at least discarded one faith before embarking on the 
 troubled waters of another. 
 
 "Both," Yomanato assured him, smiling so broadly this 
 time that his even, ivory-white teeth showed like two rows 
 of pearls. "I am aware," he said, "that here it is the 
 custom of one religion, or one creed, to discredit other 
 religions and other creeds. Why not combine instead ? The 
 essentials of all religions are the same."
 
 494 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "What are the essentials of religion?" Guido inquired, 
 feeling very green and young. 
 
 "A pure life, reverence for the Unseen World, honesty 
 toward ourselves and others, avoidance of unclean and 
 lascivious thoughts, kindness to all living creatures. These, 
 I think, are the essentials of religion. Yours, I am sure, 
 contains them as well as does my compound faith." 
 
 "I have no faith!" It caused Guido a tremendous 
 effort to heave these words from his lips. He felt humili 
 ated, he could not have said why. "My education was 
 peculiar," he said. "I was supposed to be brought up 
 without a bias. In religion. In everything. I verily be 
 lieve it was a mere concession to expediency, to the tem 
 poral powers vested in government, that I was taught it 
 was wrong to lie and to steal. Come to think of it, I 
 don t believe I was taught even that much. I absorbed 
 by example. I comprehended that nice people didn t do 
 such things. I was given many books to read, books on 
 Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, when I was 
 quite a child. Possibly I learned my moral code from 
 those source-books. I was told that all religions were 
 good and true. I wasn t supposed to be brought up with 
 a bias for any form of government, either. I suppose I 
 couldn t help learning to prefer the democratic form to 
 the monarchial form. At any rate, my love for democ 
 racy was bred in the bone. It must have been, for our 
 German teachers were quke as patriotic teutonically as 
 our American teachers were patriotic in their love for 
 America. It was a queer way to bring up a youngster. 
 The only definite lesson I remember receiving at home," 
 Guido concluded, "was to love and revere Washington and 
 Lincoln above all other men." 
 
 "Washington ! Lincoln !" For one moment the Oriental s 
 terrible immobility vanished. He regained it immediately. 
 "Washington and Lincoln," he said, "were two of the 
 greatest men that ever lived. They teach Japanese chil 
 dren about them. Like Gautama, like Jesus the Christ, 
 like Moses and Confucius they were men who helped 
 make all humanity better and stronger and saner. They 
 were world-saviours. Covetousness is forbidden us, but 
 I transgress when I think of those two men."
 
 YOUTH 495 
 
 "You make me proud to be an American," said Guido, 
 from a desire to be polite to his host s eloquence. 
 
 "You may well be proud of your nationality," Yomanato 
 replied, pleasantly. "America has done much for us. She 
 has opened Japan to the benefits of Western civilization. 
 You forced those benefits upon us at the cannon s mouth. 
 We were afraid to admit strangers to Nippon because of 
 an earlier experience with a Christian power. We were 
 the hermit among nations, more secluded and unapproach 
 able than China. You came, and with your big ships and 
 big guns frightened us out of our former fright. And 
 now, less than half a century later, we stand in the fore 
 front of nations. We fight hand to hand with the white 
 race to save the white race s civilization from a white race 
 which is barbarian at heart." 
 
 What man can say what hidden springs lie dormant 
 within him? Guido, champion of the belief in the equality 
 of all races, felt an unaccountable stirring of race prejudice, 
 a strange, primordal, elemental feeling that it behooved 
 him to defend the Germans, because they were a white 
 race, in spite of the infamies which they were perpetrating, 
 against the charge of barbarism made by an Oriental. 
 There was at play within him another, a more subtle and 
 more far-reaching instinct. The Germans were a Chris 
 tian nation. The Japanese were not. He was not a 
 Christian himself, at least so he declared, with painstaking 
 honesty, whenever opportunity offered. Yet, uncon 
 sciously, he aligned himself in defense of the nation that 
 claimed to be Christian, although her hands were red with 
 innocent blood, her heart black with perfidy; although, 
 within the hour he had heard that in a German Christian 
 church .which had sent him running out of God s house 
 with unseemly haste. 
 
 "I don t want you to think I am defending Germany," 
 he said. "She s acted very badly. But truth is truth. 
 The Germans are not barbarians. They are a highly 
 civilized race." 
 
 "Pardon," said Yomanato smoothly, "it was not my in 
 tention to offend. I thought you an American." 
 
 "I am an American," Guido rejoined, "of German ex 
 traction. And I think Germany has acted despicably.
 
 496 THE HYPHEN 
 
 But, as I said before, Germany has attained a very high 
 degree of civilization." 
 
 An enigmatic smile appeared on Yomanato s face. 
 
 "It is barely possible," he said, "that we differ in the 
 meaning we attach to the word civilization. 
 
 "You of the West," Yomanato continued, "attach much 
 importance to the evolution of mechanics, medicine, archi 
 tecture, electricity, chemistry and astronomy. We of the 
 East have profited greatly by the inventions and the 
 progress made by the white race. We should be ungrate 
 ful to minimize the advantages which this material knowl 
 edge bestows. I myself am here in this country to gain 
 material knowledge. But civilization does not consist of 
 these things. They are the exponents, the interpretations 
 of civilization. Civilization is the indwelling- what shall 
 I call it? the indwelling something, the spiritual essence, 
 the contiguous and indivisible force underlying all these 
 pleasant and agreeable things." 
 
 "I think," said Guido, "that is what the Germans mean 
 by Kultur. " 
 
 "The great boast of the Germans is their efficiency," 
 Yomanato continued. "Now, efficiency concerns the 
 purely material world, means excellence in the handling 
 of material things. But civilization delves further than 
 that. Civilization, because of its indwelling force, may 
 and does make for outward perfection. But when that 
 outward perfection becomes an end in itself, when it is 
 worshiped for its own sake regardless of the finer, spiritual 
 tendencies to which it is due, and which, en bloc, con 
 stitute civilization proper, then civilization is endangered. 
 And the greater the externalized perfection, the greater 
 the danger which menaces civilization. For the vulgar 
 confound the two, lose sight of the impalpable spiritual 
 in their delight in the tangible physical." 
 
 Guido listened with growing astonishment. He thought 
 of Stan and Otto, of their disdainful estimate of the 
 Japanese. How callow and crude all that seemed now 
 the touchstone of Yomanato s thoughts and conversation 
 were applied to Stan s and Otto s theory of racial in 
 feriority. Also his own belief in the general infallibility 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race was slightly shaken. He was 
 by no means dull, yet he experienced some difficulty in
 
 YOUTH 497 
 
 following Yomanato s philosophic excursion. He had 
 spoken English from childhood, if not from the cradle, 
 but he could not have clothed his thoughts in language as 
 fluent and lucid as that of Yomanato, who had begun to 
 study English barely five years ago. 
 
 "I am afraid I am very superficial," Guido said, thought 
 fully. "I ve never thought of things in that way before." 
 
 "You are far from being a sciolist," said Yomanato, 
 and again Guido started. The fellow s vocabulary was 
 staggering. "I have observed you closely. You are dif 
 ferent from the rest. But you are of the West. Pardon. 
 I do not wish to offend. But the genius of the white 
 races and the genius of the yellow races differ. The 
 tendencies which they perpetuate and carry on diverge 
 greatly." 
 
 Guido stared. He said nothing. He was entirely at sea. 
 
 "You said before," Yomanato continued, "that you had 
 no belief. You are mistaken. You have a belief, but you 
 are unaware of it. It underlies all your doubt and 
 agnosticism. Some great upheaval will bring it across the 
 threshold to you." 
 
 "And what," Guido demanded, "will my belief be when 
 it steps across the threshold?" 
 
 "Christianity." 
 
 "Why not your faith Buddhism ? The Eightfold Path 
 of Virtue is as fine a code as that laid down by the Ten 
 Commandments." 
 
 "Ethics do not constitute a religion. Every religion 
 propounds a philosophy. It is in their philosophy that 
 Buddhism and Christianity differ so profoundly. It is 
 because you are of the Occident that I predict you will 
 ultimately embrace Christianity and not Buddhism. Even 
 if you had been educated in Japan, or in India, in a Bud 
 dhist household, you would probably turn to Christianity 
 the moment you became acquainted with it. A gosling 
 takes to water you know, a chick to land." 
 
 "I ll be blessed if I know what you are talking about," 
 said Guido. 
 
 "Which further proves my contention," said Yomanato, 
 with a smile. 
 
 Guido felt subtly annoyed. It was exasperating to have 
 Yomanato dispose of him with this philosophic, dispas-
 
 498 THE HYPHEN 
 
 sionate, godlike calm. Yet in no way had Yomanato in 
 sinuated that Christianity was inferior to Buddhism, or 
 that the white races were inferior to the yellow. The very 
 distinct impression he did make, by what subtle channels 
 Guido could not have said, was that of an adult addressing 
 a little child, and humoring it, and teasing it ever so little. 
 Asia, cradle of the human race, mother of Europe, grand 
 mother of America, was smilingly admitting her offspring s 
 progressiveness, conquest of the material world, general 
 abreastness of the times. To please her offspring she was 
 falling in with its ways. Yet all the while she wore a 
 smile the strange, calm, benignant, baffling smile of 
 Buddha, proclaiming anew the age-old truth that knowl 
 edge is not wisdom, that accomplishment is not achieve 
 ment, that mastery is not comprehension, that science is 
 not civilization. 
 
 "Won t you deign to explain what you mean?" Guido 
 said. 
 
 "With pleasure. I think you will embrace Christianity 
 because, being of the Occident, you are highly individual 
 ized. Christianity is an individualized religion, the religion 
 of individuals and of individualization." 
 
 Guido stared. He did not comprehend. Was Japan not 
 highly individualized as a people? 
 
 "Not in your sense." 
 
 "My sense? Our sense? I m dreadfully stupid, I m 
 afraid." 
 
 "I fear I can explain no further," said Yomanato. 
 
 Something in his manner inhibited Guido from pressing 
 his request. The youngest scion had been humored long 
 enough by its granddame. "So far," said the granddame, 
 "and no further. When you have lived as long as I have, 
 you may hope to begin to comprehend the things that are 
 worth while. Meanwhile you are young, almost infantile, 
 and you have a young, almost an infantile religion adapted 
 to your needs. Be content and wait. Youth has many 
 gifts. It should not grudge old age its one inalienable pos 
 session wisdom." 
 
 After a few moments of silence, Yomanato said: 
 
 "I am sorry I cannot be more explicit. Perhaps it will 
 help you if I say that one s particular faith is merely a 
 matter of temperament. The ethics of virtually all real
 
 YOUTH 499 
 
 religions are the same; thus the individual turns naturally 
 to the religion capable of affording him the greatest 
 spiritual support and solace. That, in part, was what I 
 meant when I said you would ultimately embrace Chris 
 tianity." 
 
 "That s rather an utilitarian view of religion, isn t it?" 
 Guido said rather than asked. 
 
 A strange gleam, as of intense pleasure, came into the 
 Japanese s eyes. 
 
 "Is the Christian faith not wholly utilitarian?" he de 
 manded. "The salvation of the individual soul is, as I 
 understand, Christianity s avowed purpose." 
 
 These simple words made a very remarkable impression 
 upon Guido. His thoughts seemed to reach out in a myriad 
 directions at one time. Uncognizable thoughts seemed to 
 hover on the brink of consciousness and draw back when 
 finite thought sprang forward to meet them. It was a 
 moment such as he had never experienced before, a mo 
 ment, which, had the Japanese not been unwilling to pursue 
 the subject, might have initiated Guido into a spiritual 
 realm of which, as yet, he had no conception. But 
 Yomanato very evidently was unwilling to say more, and 
 the legion of reflections suggested to Guido by Yomanato s 
 words slipped back into the chasm of unconscious thought 
 until a new stimulus should revivify them. 
 
 Guido asked, after a considerable pause: 
 
 "At the risk of giving offense, I would like to ask you 
 why you are withholding that which you are withholding?" 
 
 Yomanato regarded Guido, a crystallized smile on his 
 lips. Guido had yet to learn that this particular smile 
 masked emotions as turbulent and as eager as any which 
 stirred the heart of the most high-strung Occidental. He 
 had also to learn that that smiling mask was the outcome 
 of Japanese etiquette and prescribed by it. 
 
 When the Japanese finally answered, it was in smooth, 
 flute-like tone. 
 
 "I will tell why I am withholding that which I am with 
 holding," he said. "If my words seem vague and shadowy, 
 I beg you not to press me to be definite. My father, as 
 a young man, worked for a Japanese firm in New York 
 for a period of eight years. Through him I learned much 
 of Occidental life, religions, traditions and thought. Since
 
 5oo THE HYPHEN 
 
 I was fourteen years old I have cherished a hope, a won 
 derful hope, which embraces the East and West. It con 
 cerns them conjointly. 
 
 "I must not tell you more about that hope excepting only 
 this: that it will be given to some Occidental to see things 
 as I see them. That I shall take as a sign. More than 
 that I cannot say." 
 
 Guido bent forward eagerly. 
 
 "You wish me to divine what this secret wish of yours 
 is so that I may share it?" he asked. 
 
 "I would like to put it a little differently. I would like 
 you to arrive at the same conclusions as myself unaided by 
 anything I may say. The facts are open to all. But if 
 there is truth in my idea, if it is something more than the 
 dream of an Oriental visionary, it will, it must occur to 
 an" Occidental as well as to myself. Therefore my lips 
 are sealed. You must arrive at the same goal as myself 
 uninfluenced, and without bias." 
 
 Guido rose abruptly and began walking the floor with 
 ferocious strides. Were all the powers of darkness leagued 
 against him? Always the same cry no bias. Apparently 
 every sentient being in the world was permitted a bias 
 save only himself. 
 
 "The peculiar education which you have enjoyed and of 
 which you told me just now," Yomanato continued, "should 
 be an admirable preparation for " 
 
 Guido interrupted him furiously. 
 
 "No bias," he cried, "no bias! You were brought up 
 with a bias, weren t you? Why was I alone among men 
 denied the privilege of a religious faith? The privilege 
 of being furnished with a ready-made staff and support?" 
 
 Yomanato s smile broadened, became more human. 
 
 "When you have found the particular staff that suits 
 your temperament," he said, "you will think differently. 
 You will realize that much is to be said in favor of no 
 bias. Meanwhile," Guido was still marching up and down 
 the room "I beg your pardon in advance, but would you 
 mind very much reseating yourself? The mother of my 
 landlady occupies the apartment under us and she is ill." 
 
 Guido plumped himself back in his chair. Would he 
 never learn to overcome the habit of promenading about 
 noisily late at night?
 
 YOUTH 501 
 
 "I beg your pardon a thousand times," he said. 
 
 "In a way," Yomanato continued, "my education was 
 similar to yours. My father, if he had lived, I think would 
 have embraced Christianity. I heard as much about Jesus 
 in my home as about Buddha." 
 
 "You told me before that you followed both Shinto and 
 Buddhism," Guido said, a little ironically. "It is not im 
 possible, I suppose, that you will some day embrace Chris 
 tianity as well." 
 
 "It is not impossible," said Yomanato with his inscrutable 
 smile. 
 
 The two young men talked until midnight. They talked 
 of many things besides religion. Yomanato, who seemed 
 remarkably well informed, spoke of the literature and art 
 of Japan, of her social customs, home-life, traditions. 
 Guido, when he finally put out his hand to bid his host 
 good-night, felt not only that he had made a friend but 
 that he had paid a flying visit to Nippon and that it had 
 been well worth while. 
 
 Stan and Otto notwithstanding. 
 
 And Stan, we may be sure, baited and plagued and teased 
 Guido upon his new acquisition. Were the Japs included 
 in the great Race Equality Theory? Didn t they, self- 
 confessedly, owe everything they knew to the Occident? 
 Literature? Art? Surely no one could take Japanese 
 painting seriously. Their wood-carving and all that was 
 well enough, but art alone neither made nor advanced 
 civilization. 
 
 At this point Guido said savagely: 
 
 "Stan, you are a barbarian. A vandal. The Japs had 
 a civilization of their own, a highly developed civilization 
 when Europe, not to speak of America, was in its swaddling 
 clothes." 
 
 "Whew," Stan laughed, "upon my word, you really like 
 the fellow." 
 
 "I really do." 
 
 "Niggers will be next, I suppose, to enter your family 
 of Equal Races." 
 
 Guido bit his lip. 
 
 "Pity there isn t a nigger in our class to fraternize 
 with," Al Dalton, a boy from Alabama, threw in. "You d 
 make friends with him, too, wouldn t you, Guy?"
 
 502 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "Perhaps I would and perhaps I wouldn t," said Guido, 
 shortly. 
 
 "Well, if there was a nigger in our class, I wouldn t sit 
 down with him, I d quit," Dalton remarked, composedly. 
 "Hanged if I d sit down in the same room with a nigger." 
 
 "I m not going to fight the Civil War all over with you 
 again, Al," said Guido. "I do think, though, that the race 
 prejudice you and Stan show is rotten. It may jar you 
 a little to learn that the negroes consider themselves 
 superior, as a race, to the white." 
 
 "Where did you get that from?" Stan demanded. 
 
 "The waiter in a restaurant where I sometimes eat told 
 me the other day that the negro race was descended from 
 King Solomon referred me to the Bible for the corrobora- 
 tion that Solomon was a negro." 
 
 The boys roared with laughter. 
 
 "There are, of course," Guido continued, "natural in 
 equalities among races as among individuals of the same 
 race which no law decreed by man can obliterate. But that 
 does not invalidate the Declaration of Independence. It 
 merely points to the fact that it behooves the men and 
 women at the top to practice chivalry in the form of kind 
 ness to human beings less fortunately circumstanced in the 
 way of mental equipment than themselves. That is a form 
 of loyalty which is almost extinct. The modern employer 
 exacts loyalty from his employee. Until recently no em 
 ployer thought that he owed loyalty to his employee. The 
 feeling seems to be coming into the fashion now with some 
 big concerns. The South before the Civil War understood 
 that perfectly. The better class of planters showed in 
 every way that they felt the moral obligation of caring for 
 their slaves spiritually. So you needn t pretend, Dalton, 
 that I m talking bosh. Incidentally, the religion of Japan 
 insists upon loyalty being shown in both directions, top and 
 bottom, not merely from the bottom up. And that to me 
 sounds quite civilized." 
 
 "Oh, gee," said Dalton, "if I listen to more of this 
 highbrow stuff, I ll be as soggy as a sinker." 
 
 They had reached Dalton s boarding-place and he was 
 about to leave them when a shrill whistle brought him and 
 the other boys to attention. Otto was coming up the street,
 
 YOUTH 503 
 
 hatless, coatless, a young giant in stature, books tucked 
 under his arm, whistling lustily. 
 
 "There comes my German tutor," said Dalton, "just look 
 at him, look at him. Wouldn t it turn you green with 
 envy? The muscle that fellow has is tremenjous." 
 
 Otto, unfortunately, was in one of his most iniquitous 
 war-moods. He began lauding the marvelous prowess of 
 the Germans, declaimed violently against England and con 
 cluded with a bitter arraignment of President Wilson. 
 
 "Issues a Prayer-for-Peace-Proclamation and allows am 
 munition to be sent abroad," he cried. "If he were sincere 
 in his desire for peace, wouldn t he help bring it about 
 by placing an embargo on the shipment of ammunition? 
 He s an arch-hypocrite. He and Grey are the prototypes 
 of all hypocries he has it in his face anyhow." 
 
 "Anyhow has he?" Stan s eyes were not good to look 
 at. "Look here, Baumgarten, I don t quite like that last 
 remark of yours. It was too personal. Supposing you 
 modify it." 
 
 "Modify nothing," said Otto, stoutly. "He s got it in his 
 face. Lying, canting hypocrite." 
 
 "I advise you once more to retract that statement," Stan 
 repeated. "Much as I disapprove of Billy Hohenzollern, 
 I would never call him the names I think he deserves in 
 your presence because I d hate to hurt your feelings. You 
 are an American and you are living in this country and so 
 am I. And if you don t retract there ll be trouble." 
 
 "Well, I won t retract," said Otto, doggedly. "That fakir 
 in the White House is just what I said he was. Anyhow, 
 you can t expect the same consideration to be shown a 
 President as an Emperor." 
 
 "Say, you don t belong here," said Stan. 
 
 "Oh, cut it out," said Otto gruffly. "I didn t know you 
 were a Democrat." 
 
 "I m not," said Stan. "Our family has been black Re 
 publican since the year one. But that doesn t affect my 
 position in the least. In times like these I do not choose to 
 hear the President spoken of in language as scurrilous as 
 that employed by yourself. Even if he were not the great 
 statesman he is." 
 
 "Well, I won t eat my own words," said Otto. "I ll be 
 hanged if I do."
 
 S 04 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "You ll be drubbed if you don t," said Stan. 
 
 "Drubbed? Oh, my stars. By whom? You?" Otto s 
 stalwart form towered a good half-foot above Stan s 
 Gibson-like figure, which seemed to betoken elegance rather 
 than strength. He laughed easily, almost good-naturedly. 
 
 "It s only fair," said Stan, "to tell you I ve been learning 
 how to box and how to wrestle." 
 
 "Are you threatening me?" 
 
 "Yum-yum," said Stan, which syllables of obscure mean 
 ing seemed to infuriate Otto incredibly. 
 
 "We ll fight it out on the football grounds," said Otto, 
 shortly. 
 
 "Oh, gee," said Dalton, "if you knock out my German 
 tutor, Stan, I ll flunk again as sure as God made little 
 apples. That beastly German Accusative." 
 
 "Don t worry," said Otto grimly, "he won t knock me 
 out." 
 
 And yet, after all, Stan did knock Otto out. Otto had 
 the superior weight but Stan had science. Otto rushed 
 again and again upon Stan s slim-looking fist, and again 
 and again came away, bruised, smarting with pain and with 
 the sense of impending defeat. Then, a quick wrench, a 
 quick twist of the wrist on Stan s part, and Otto s hercu 
 lean form swung violently through the air and with a 
 resounding thud thwacked down upon the frozen earth. 
 For a moment he lay stunned, and Guido experienced a 
 horrid sensation in the lower region of the abdomen, 
 and, in spite of the stress of the moment he found time to 
 reflect that this extraordinary sense of physical nausea ex 
 plained the old English expression "to have no bowels," 
 which until that moment he had considered an inelegant 
 survival from days when human beings quartered other 
 human beings and brutality of language ran parallel with 
 brutality of conduct. 
 
 Otto came to in time and was set on his feet by Stan 
 and Al Dalton, who, all the while bitterly lamented that 
 there would be no lesson in German that day. Stan and 
 Otto shook hands warmly. The hatchet between them was 
 buried. Otto was badly bruised and his nose was bleeding 
 profusely. Stan supplied him with an extra handkerchief, 
 and the faithful Dalton helped his tutor and his hero home. 
 Otto declined the proffer of Guido s arm. Guido, while the
 
 YOUTH 505 
 
 others were trying to get Otto his feet, had been mopping 
 the sweat and the blood from his face. His face was quite 
 as white as Otto s, and Otto said, briefly: 
 
 "I m all right, Guido. Don t worry. Look after your 
 self." 
 
 Guido winced. The kindliness, the lack of resentment 
 which Otto was showing made him vow that never again, 
 War or no War, would he quarrel with Otto. 
 
 "You know," Stan said, after Dalton and Otto were 
 gone, "I hated to do it. Baumgarten is such an awfully 
 decent sort. And he certainly took his punishment like a 
 man." 
 
 "Otto s fine," Guido said briefly. "What gets me and 
 I can t get over it is how he can be a pro." 
 
 "That s what makes war," said Stan. 
 
 "By the way, I thought you didn t care a fig about the 
 War," Guido commented, dispassionately. 
 
 "Oh, h 1," Stan rejoined, "I m a raving lunatic about 
 this little old War. What s the use of mouthing it if one 
 cannot go and fight? I ve plagued the life out of the folks 
 at home, I want to go so badly. The Guv nor is set against 
 it on principle. So long as we are not in it he thinks 
 Americans ought to keep away, excepting for Red Cross 
 work. He says my life is not my own to offer another 
 country at so critical a time. It belongs to Uncle Sam. 
 I ve got the Guv nor s promise, though, not to oppose my 
 enlisting as soon as we re in the War. Darned little I d 
 care for his permission if I were of age. If for nothing 
 else, I d like to see the boches at close range. One can t 
 help wondering just what has struck em all to make em 
 cut the capers they re going through." 
 
 "Cecil said," Guido rejoined, "that the Germans have 
 gone morally insane." 
 
 "The Guv nor says they re in a state of moral under- 
 development. As a nation not individuals, of course. 
 Like the South at the time of the Civil War. I suppose 
 you know that Dalton still thinks slavery was a divine 
 institution." 
 
 "How can he?" 
 
 "Thinks the negro rather than the South was wronged 
 by the abolition of Slavery." 
 
 "Ye gods!" Then, after a pause Guido added:
 
 5 o6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "I suppose, as you remarked before, it s that that makes 
 modern wars when two sovereign people or large national 
 units disagree as to the morality of a thing." 
 
 "Sounds good to me," said Stan in his offhand way. 
 
 "You know," said Guido, "the South, in some ways, 
 misbehaved in much the same way that Germany is mis 
 behaving now. Germany feels no compunction in shooting 
 down innocent civilians by the hundreds because some poor 
 crazed devil gets to sniping at a German soldier. I told 
 Otto the other day that all our famous minute men were 
 nothing but a lot of snipers." 
 
 "Proceed," said Stan. He was grinning broadly. 
 
 "The South refused to treat negro soldiers as captives. 
 They were treated as animals who had attacked their 
 owners. At Fort Pillow three hundred Union soldiers 
 were butchered in cold blood because they were colored 
 men. The Confederacy went so far as to threaten that 
 commissioned officers of the North employed in drilling 
 and instructing negroes as soldiers, would, if captured, not 
 be treated as prisoners of war, but as ordinary felons." 
 
 "How do you manage to remember all that?" Stan in 
 quired. 
 
 "You know," said Guido, "remembering that sort of 
 thing makes one hopeful for the future. At present one s 
 so apt to think that Germans have placed themselves out 
 side the pale of civilization for good. Parallels of that 
 sort make one feel there is hope even for Germany. 
 There s one point and one only which I think the Germans 
 are partially justified in making against us. Though I 
 wouldn t admit it for worlds in speaking to Otto. Am 
 munition." 
 
 "We are right according to international law," said Stan. 
 
 "Yes, but are we right ethically, humanly?" 
 
 "There are lots of people who haven t a drop of German 
 blood who feel the way you do," said Stan. The mater 
 does. But, look here. Our sympathy is all with the Allies. 
 It would be unnatural, wouldn t it, that being so, if we 
 were not to avail ourselves of the right to send them am 
 munition allowed us by international law ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Guido. "Nevertheless, I can t help worry 
 ing about that ammunition business. I m not questioning 
 our legal right. I suppose there is some deeper reason for
 
 YOUTH 507 
 
 it which we fail to apprehend. But, are we right morally? 
 Humanly? Ethically? I m even willing to concede that we 
 are right humanly. But ethically?" 
 
 "Isn t humanly and ethically the same?" 
 
 "I think not. If I give a murderer who is dying shelter 
 and hide him from the police, I am humanly right. I am 
 ethically wrong because in allowing compassion to super 
 sede justice I am helping to let justice miscarry." 
 
 "What in heaven s name are you trying to do?" Stan 
 demanded. "Are you squaring the circle?" 
 
 "No, I m sticking to Euclid closer than that. I m trying 
 to find out whether the three angles of an equilateral triangle 
 are really equal. My dilemna arises from the fact that I 
 don t know which angle is to serve as the standard." 
 
 "Well," said Stan, as they parted at his door, "I don t 
 mind telling you, Guy, that you have a head on your 
 shoulders. I d trade my physique against yours any day 
 if I could get your strong memory along with your weak 
 back." 
 
 Guido flushed a dull brick-red. 
 
 "Are you stringing me ?" he demanded. 
 
 "Stringing!" Stan laughed. "My dear chap, s long!"
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 GUIDO S sorrows, it will be observed, were multiply 
 ing. The U-boats, Caesar Borgias of the sea, were 
 outvying each other in wanton brutal destructiveness, and 
 thus a new and so far as America was concerned greater 
 issue of the War was broached. Tales were being told 
 of incredible barbarity both at sea and on land. The 
 murdering of civilians, the burning of villages, the bomb 
 ing of unfortified towns continued; and added to all these 
 horrors was the new sea-terror. 
 
 Guido, like many an unhyphenated American, still clung 
 to the fantastic hope that these tales were grimly exag 
 gerated. Germany was wrong, dead wrong politically, but 
 that was no reason why every German should have turned 
 himself into a robber and pirate. But this hope, flimsy 
 from the start, soon became as tenuous as air. 
 
 The Bryce report placed Germany in so damnable a light 
 that the continued efforts to whitewash her on the part of 
 her sworn partisans would have been laughable if the issues 
 involved had been less tragic and far-reaching. 
 
 There was, moreover, a detail which eloquently pro 
 claimed Germany s guilt and the guilt of Germans as 
 well as of Germany, a detail which corresponded to the 
 internal evidence which is so highly esteemed by seekers 
 after truth in literary fields. The Germans in the United 
 States not merely remained pro-German in face of the 
 uncontrovertible evidence of the Bryce report, not merely 
 continued their irrational, insensate tirades against Eng 
 land, not merely continued to berate all who condemned 
 Germany, calling them knaves, idiots and liars, not merely 
 tried to turn the sword of truth aside with the ancient 
 slogan "English lies" ; but, lulled into security by America s 
 strange tolerance of their intolerance, their hypocrisy and 
 their blood-guilt, they now began to boast and brag of 
 Germany s exploits, to hold up for emulation her detest 
 able, soulless, machine-like, overdisciplined efficiency. 
 
 508
 
 YOUTH 509 
 
 Women as well as men gloated over the vision of towns 
 sacked and pillaged and looted, and licked their chops 
 greedily in ghoulish anticipation of the thirty-five million 
 Marks which the Germans intended to wring out of ex- 
 sanguined and eviscerated Belgium blood-money as ghast- 
 lily sinister as Judas Iscariot s thirty pieces of silver. 
 They smiled wickedly on hearing that Belgians were being 
 deported to Germany. Belgians were notoriously lazy 
 the lesson of enforced labor would do them good. One 
 German woman a lady she termed herself and would have 
 been termed by others by every token of habiliment, speech 
 and appearance was heard to remark that there wasn t 
 a virtuous woman in all Belgium, and the raping of Bel 
 gium women, therefore, was not a crime. 
 
 The pro-Germans of America, in brief, were following 
 the lead given them by the German government which, to 
 check the outbreak of American indignation on Belgium s 
 behalf, was circulating a wild story of documents found 
 in the Belgian archives which, they claimed, were detri 
 mental to German security. This tale, a German fabrica 
 tion, of course, was intended to undermine Belgian honor 
 and to corroborate Germany s preposterous accusation that 
 the Triple Alliance had entered into a conspiracy to dis 
 member Germany. Belgium, this story further affirmed, 
 when the time was ripe, had promised to allow the British 
 and the French to walk through Belgium into Germany. 
 
 Having disemboweled Belgium first, Germany then de 
 famed her, thus placing herself in the identical position 
 of a man who, having raped a woman, assails her good 
 name to minimize his own crime. 
 
 The pro-Germans avidly seized upon this wild yarn. It 
 did not trouble them in the least that Germany, being a 
 bankrupt in truthfulness, could not gain credence for so 
 grotesque a tale unsupported by the word of a veracious 
 power. 
 
 The evidence against Germany, in brief, was now so 
 plain as to be unmistakable to all excepting the willfully 
 blind. But the number of those German-Americans who 
 refused to believe the sworn statements of reliable wit 
 nesses, and to listen to the voice of conscience, remained 
 appallingly large. Bound by the strongest and the most 
 ignoble fetters conceivable race prejudice, tribal arrogance
 
 5 io THE HYPHEN 
 
 and a wicked pride they persisted in their hatred and 
 mercilessness for all peoples not German. 
 
 It was no longer possible, Guido thought unjustly per 
 haps to discriminate narrowly between conscious knaves 
 and unconscious dupes. The two classes of pro-Germans 
 seemed now to overlap, to intermingle and to intertwine. 
 
 The perverted ethical sense of the Germans now stood 
 out with startling distinctness. 
 
 Eddie Erdman, on hearing of the enormous sum ex 
 pended by England in fitting out a castle in the north of 
 England for German officers taken as prisoners of war, 
 laughed contemptuously. 
 
 "English hypocrisy, of course," he said. "England pub 
 lishes the story of her magnanimity in order to blind silly 
 fools like the Americans to her part in the making of the 
 War." And when his attention was called to the stories 
 of German cruelty to their prisoners of war, he exclaimed : 
 "Intelligent Germans do not believe every slander they 
 hear, especially as the story comes through enemy channels. 
 The German cables were cut for a reason, you know." 
 
 It was precisely this dishonest, covert way of meeting 
 accusation which seemed to offer indubitable proof that 
 the amazing obtuseness of the average German-American 
 was largely an assumed and not a natural disability. 
 
 But the German- American methods of argument did not 
 always partake of indirection. They were at times quite 
 childishly, marvelously direct and unashamed. 
 
 It was an old lady famed throughout the county for 
 her benevolence and integrity who exclaimed, on hearing 
 of the sinking by U-boats of three merchantmen in one 
 day at a time when the horror of the scientific piracy in 
 augurated by the Germans was still wearing all its young 
 verdure: "Amazing! What other nation could do the 
 same?" A delicious bit of unconscious irony which could 
 not have been bettered by Swift. 
 
 It was a youngish man, a man not merely of probity, 
 of honor but of splendid, red-corpuscled kindness in every 
 private relation of life who, on hearing of the German ill- 
 treatment of prisoners, said: 
 
 "All this fuss is ridiculous. War is inhuman. Every 
 body knows that. But why the life of a man whom it was 
 the duty of Germans to kill or injure while at large should,
 
 YOUTH 511 
 
 through the mere condition of his being taken captive, be 
 came sacred, I cannot see." 
 
 This sort of thing was not merely incomprehensible, it 
 was baffling. Guido, on hearing of these sayings, was 
 struck by their intrinsic unmorality. It brought home to 
 him anew the charge which was beginning to be made by 
 intelligent people: the German mind was not as other 
 minds. It was in a class by itself. Its conclusions, log 
 ically and correctly deduced were false and unmoral be 
 cause deduced from false and unmoral premises. Their 
 entire argumentation savored of what Macaulay, in a preg 
 nant phrase, termed "the legerdemain of sophistry." 
 
 The pro-Germans seemed bent upon exterminating all 
 saner emotions in themselves as ruthlessly as they advo 
 cated the extermination of their enemies. 
 
 Envy, too, masquerading as justice, underlay much of the 
 pro-German sympathy. 
 
 "Germany should have an empire as great as England s," 
 said Dr. Erdman. "She is entitled to it." 
 
 "Is that why Germany went to war?" Guido inquired. 
 
 "Not at all. Of course Germany wants her place in 
 the sun. But principally Germany wants the freedom of 
 the seas." 
 
 "But the seas are free, or were, until the submarines 
 began to ply their nefarious trade," Guido rejoined. 
 
 "Were they? I think not. England, with her enormous 
 fleet can at any time blockade any part of the world she 
 choses to blockade." 
 
 "But England has never made arbitrary use of this 
 power," Guido demurred, "any more than we would think 
 of barring vessels from the Panama Canal without cause." 
 
 "But England s power exists and this is sufficient to make 
 the seas unfree," Dr. Erdman persisted. "It is intoler 
 able." 
 
 "Look here, Doc," said Guido, "American Common Law, 
 like English Common Law, assumes a man to be innocent 
 until he is proven guilty. The Germans and Austrians, I 
 understand, reverse that and assume that a suspect is guilty 
 until he has proven himself innocent. Now, that answers 
 your argument, I think. And that also is one of the in 
 visible bends which unite England and the U. S. A. 
 one of the bonds which Germans deliberately ignore."
 
 5i2 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Dr. Erdman laughed. He and Guido had met in front 
 of his home, where they were still standing while this 
 conversation took place. Otto, passing on some errand, 
 joined them. 
 
 "Well, don t feel so bad, Guido," Dr. Erdman said. "If 
 the quarrel were between our country and Germany, or 
 were to shift around to include us, we would, of course, 
 side with the U. S. A. and fight under the Stars and 
 Stripes." 
 
 It was the same old imbecile asseveration which Guido 
 had heard so often before. And this from a man of ex 
 ceptional mental endowments and blameless integrity. 
 
 Otto, for the first time, put in his oar. 
 
 "And all this hollering about the hospital ship which 
 the Germans sunk the other day !" he exclaimed. 
 
 "They sunk it, of course, because they suspected that 
 the English had been using it as a transport," said Dr. 
 Erdman. 
 
 "But not on that particular trip," Guido exclaimed. "It 
 was homeward bound from France." 
 
 "Well," said Otto, "they probably had been using it as 
 a transport and would have done so again. So where s 
 the odds?" 
 
 "There were wounded men on board, Otto," said Dr. 
 Erdman. "It was in spite of the fact that the Germans 
 were technically right a despicable thing to do." 
 
 Otto shrugged his shoulders. He, too, evidently did not 
 see that captivity or being wounded should assure a former 
 enemy certain humane privileges. 
 
 Dr. Erdman smiled subtly. 
 
 "Perhaps," he said, "if you were a physician, Otto, you 
 would understand." 
 
 All Guide s anger against Dr. Erdman vanished in a 
 moment. Surely, there was still hope of his conversion. 
 
 "Well," Otto grumbled, "I may be very inhumane, but I 
 cannot see that it s any less inhumane to sink a ship with 
 say five hundred men, not damaged, who are going to war, 
 than to sink a ship with five hundred men, injured, but 
 not beyond hope of recovery, men, who once they are back 
 on the battlefield may kill off a thousand of your own men. 
 All this mawkish sentimentality, it seems to me, is incom 
 patible with the spirit of war."
 
 YOUTH 513 
 
 "You are not aware, it seems," said Guido, "that Fred 
 erick the Great, unscrupulous as he was in breaking treaties 
 and helping himself to other people s territory, admonished 
 his soldiers to show clemency to the vanquished enemy." 
 
 Otto looked uncomfortable. 
 
 "You re not a bit chivalrous, Otto, said Dr. Erdman. 
 
 "By the way, there is no word in German for chivalry/ " 
 said Guido. "Sociologists point out that the conception of 
 a moral or mental attribute must precede its name in the 
 national consciousness. So, from the fact that the German 
 language is destitute of the word chivalry/ we can draw 
 our own conclusions." 
 
 Otto became violently angry, and, as usual when angry, 
 the hobble-de-hoy, childishly futile Otto came to the fore. 
 
 "You think you re real smart with all that highbrow 
 stuff you are forever reeling off," he said. "You make me 
 sick. You ought to be ashamed." 
 
 "Guide s right, though," Dr. Erdman interrupted, in his 
 gentle way. "At least as far as his sociological comments 
 are concerned. I m no German scholar. Is there really no 
 word in German for chivalry ? " 
 
 "Of course there is," Otto grumbled, indignantly. "It s 
 it s I don t seem remember. But I m sure " 
 
 "If you will take the trouble to consult the dictionary, 
 Otto," Guido said, pleasantly, "you will find that Ritter- 
 lichkeit is given as the German equivalent of chivalry. 
 But, if you have a fine sense for delicate shades of mean 
 ing, you will know that it is not just the same." 
 
 "But if the dictionary says so, it s so," said Otto, dog 
 matically. 
 
 Dr. Erdman and Guido exchanged glances, and both 
 laughed. This further infuriated Otto. To avoid further 
 argument, Guido said: 
 
 "I must be going." 
 
 "Wait," said Otto, "I ll go with you." 
 
 "I m not going in your direction," said Guido, quickly. 
 
 "And which is my direction ?" Otto inquired, suspiciously. 
 
 "Opposite to mine," said Guido. Guido and Dr. Erd 
 man were both laughing again, and after a moment, Otto 
 laughed also. 
 
 "Oh, well," he said, "I suppose we would only go on 
 bickering."
 
 5 i4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 As has been pointed out before, Bismarck Street pos 
 sessed the peculiarity, pleasant or otherwise that, on a 
 bright afternoon, no Anasquoitian might traverse it with 
 out encountering at least half a dozen acquaintances. 
 Guido, a block further down, encountered the Theater- 
 direktorin, whom he had not seen since the day of the 
 coffee and the kiss. 
 
 He blushed. 
 
 The lady, eyes alight with mischief, halted him. 
 
 "Ei, schau, mein junger Herr von Estritz! Where have 
 you been keeping yourself, Little One? Why did you not 
 come to see me?" 
 
 "Did you expect me to come?" Guido questioned. 
 
 "To admit that would be to admit disappointment in 
 your not coming." 
 
 "You didn t invite me," said the lad, for lack of some 
 thing to say. 
 
 "Schau, schau, did you need to be invited?" the lady 
 smiled roguishly, coquettishly. "Let me tell you some 
 thing, my dear little lad. A kiss would have been construed 
 as an invitation as an invitation by most young men. 
 This much more I ll whisper to you. You are of the stuff 
 that heart-breakers are made of, suesser, kleiner Bub. 
 You have the beaux yeux. One shouldn t use the enemy s 
 language, I know, but French is so delicious, so naughty, 
 so suggestive, nich wahrf Also, liebes Zuckerbuebchen, 
 come and see me soon. Not afraid, are you?" 
 
 "What should I be afraid of?" Guido inquired. He had 
 changed color half a dozen times during the lady s perora 
 tion. Her use of the familiar "thou" had all but under 
 mined his self-possession. He was half-pleased, half- 
 angry. 
 
 "Of what should you be afraid? Of what? Du lieber 
 Gott im Hinimel? Of what do you suppose?" 
 
 "I m afraid of nothing," said Guido, feeling that he was 
 making an utter fool of himself. 
 
 "That s right, Little One. A valiant heart for so hand 
 some a lad. Some men fear the sword, others the bullet, 
 some the bayonet, and some fear ghosts. And some, in 
 credible as it may seem, fear kisses. Kisses ! ! Such gentle 
 and soft things. Mein kleiner Zuckerbub is valorous, I m
 
 YOUTH 515 
 
 sure, as he declares himself to be. Come and see me 
 soon, Kleiner." 
 
 Curious emotions flooded Guido. He lifted his hat to 
 the lady and passed on. All she had said, of course, was 
 horribly improper and bold. But the cursed charm of 
 the language! He did not stop to reflect that English, 
 manipulated by an unscrupulous woman, might develop a 
 similar demoniacal magic. He blamed the poor German 
 tongue. He was oppressed by the sense that, after all, 
 witchcraft was not as defunct as it was supposed to be. 
 He longed for things clean, buoyant and yes American. 
 
 Stan was not at home. So he trudged back to Chestnut 
 Street, and dropped the gilt knocker clamorously against 
 the white door of the Geddes home. 
 
 Janet answered the bell. 
 
 "Hello," she said. 
 
 "Hello," said the boy. 
 
 "It s a glorious day." 
 
 He assented, but his eyes told her that he knew of some 
 thing far more glorious than the day. 
 
 "Guido!" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Guido, it s too nice to stay indoors. Let s go for a 
 walk, a long walk. It s not yet four. Let s go to New 
 York." 
 
 The idea of going to New York without any particular 
 errand to take one there was new to him, but he welcomed 
 it. It was distinctly not Anasquoitian. 
 
 On their way to the ferry Janet amused him with com 
 ments on the town which were as shrewd as they were 
 humorous. She had, it seemed, discovered the social cult 
 in which all Anasquoitians, rich or poor, young or old, 
 sick or well, joined. She had discovered the oppressive 
 shibboleth which lay like a heavy hand upon the town 
 and its inhabitants and its merchants and its publicans 
 and the stranger within its gates. She had discovered the 
 significance of Bismarck Street. Her mother, on remon 
 strating with the coal-dealer upon the quality of the coal, 
 had been told that he had a larger Bismarck Street custom 
 than any other dealer. And the Italian vegetable vender, 
 when Janet had objected to the quality of some fruit 
 which he showed her, assured her that only that morning
 
 5i6 THE HYPHEN 
 
 had he sent the same quality of fruit to folks living on 
 Bismarck Street. And the paper-hanger, when Mrs. 
 Geddes objected to a garish design, expressed his amaze 
 ment that anyone should find fault with a paper which 
 he had used for at least four Bismarck Street houses. 
 The venders who supplied the Fauburg St. Germain, or 
 Mayfair, or our own Fifth Avenue, could not possibly 
 take a greater pride in their custom than did the baker, 
 the butcher and candlestick-maker who supplied Bismarck 
 Street. 
 
 They had reached the ferry by this time, and had sta 
 tioned themselves in the foremost corner of the boat 
 formed by the railing and the balustrade, securing thus 
 a privacy similar to that of the ostrich, which, plunging 
 its head into the sand, believes that it has solved the 
 mystery of invisibility. 
 
 "And so," said Guido, "I suppose you will be wanting 
 to move to Bismarck Street?" 
 
 Janet punished him with a look. 
 
 "I ll never be wanting to move to a street named for 
 the man who, Daddy thinks, made this War or laid the 
 foundations for it," she said. "Besides, I ll be wanting 
 to move to New York. I say it frankly, I do not like 
 Anasquoit." 
 
 Guido felt proud of sharing a desire with Janet. He, 
 too, longed to live in New York. 
 
 "What other objection to Anasquoit?" he inquired. 
 
 "It s a German town. As German as if it belonged to 
 Germany. I feel I may wake up some morning and see 
 the German flag floating from flagstaff s and windows. It s 
 hateful of me, I know, but I do not like Germans as much 
 as I used to." 
 
 "Neither do I," said Guido, feelingly. They looked at 
 each other, filled with a sort of rapture at discovering this 
 new spiritual bond. 
 
 "I cannot quite explain the feeling," said Guido, and 
 then, with the inconsistency of youth, he proceeded to 
 do so. 
 
 "When I like a German now-a-days, I feel as if I were 
 doing something unethical." 
 
 "So do I," said Janet
 
 YOUTH 517 
 
 "And when I don t like a German just because he is a 
 German, I feel unethical, too." 
 
 "So do I," said the girl. 
 
 "And I don t want to quarrel about the War. But when 
 I refrain from quarreling, I feel as if, in some way, I 
 were conniving in their crimes." 
 
 "So do I, so do I." 
 
 "And so I ve come to the conclusion that I ll avoid them 
 as much as possible." 
 
 "Pre-zactly, pre-zactly," cried Guide s chorus, and was 
 on the point of clapping her hands, but recollected in time 
 that she was in a public conveyance. 
 
 And so, in the most amiable and harmonious frame of 
 mind possible, Guido and Janet, after leaving the Cross- 
 town car at Fifth Avenue, started upon their ramble. 
 They were radiantly, ridiculously happy. Their walk up 
 Fifth Avenue constituted a magnificent adventure. Guido 
 had walked up and down the great artery of the city 
 more than once, but, under the guidance of Janet s alert 
 eyes, he developed powers of observation which surprised 
 himself. Everything seemed dewily new. The smartly- 
 gowned women, the rich-looking automobiles, the foot 
 men and doormen standing under the awninged and 
 carpeted aisles leading to the doors of the great shops 
 for the mild, opaline skies of March had shed a few wanton 
 tears a little earlier in the day as if a wedding or a re 
 ception instead of a mere flux of customers were in 
 progress. 
 
 The shops, perhaps, were the most wonderful phenomena 
 of all. The window displays, conveying that sense of the 
 inevitable which is the highest reach of art, seemed like 
 creations of nature rather than of man. Whether hung 
 with carpets, or set with Chippendale furniture or occu 
 pied by waxen ladies in evening gowns or bathing suits 
 which seemed fit only for stage wear, these window dis 
 plays seemed indeed, to be the stage-setting for some 
 society play, awaiting the rise of the curtain. 
 
 Guido s imagination took fire. He began to people the 
 drawing-rooms and the dining-rooms and the libraries with 
 figures of men and women, knaves, clergymen, artists, 
 servants, children. One of the waxen beauties suddenly 
 became endowed with factitious life and her image lingered
 
 5i8 THE HYPHEN 
 
 on the retina of Guido s memory long after he had passed 
 her, lingered, resisting effacement by other images which 
 beat upon his eye, clamoring, like Galatea, for the gift of 
 real life with its investiture of pain and sorrow and joy. 
 
 Never had Guido felt so exhilarated. He glanced at 
 Janet. She, too, he could see, was in a state of repressed 
 excitement, as if the prodigious complexity of the life 
 which ebbed and flowed about them, beating against the 
 portals within which was comprised her own sentiency, 
 were flooding her with a new vigor and an additional 
 sense. 
 
 Guido felt as if something mysteriously magnificent had 
 happened to him, as if life had been transmuted into a 
 gift transcending in wonder all dreams of poets and visions 
 of seers. 
 
 Love trembled and quivered between them, touched now 
 this chord in her heart, now that chord in his soul, fore 
 shadowing the glory and the marvel that was to be. But 
 it did not strike the entire gamut of chords that make of 
 life an enchanted garden and of the heart a shining jewel 
 beautiful beyond compare. They were both too young 
 for that tremendous, that all-embracing, all-pervading ex 
 perience. 
 
 They walked as far as the Public Library, silently ad 
 miring its heroic stature so admirably proportioned to the 
 space which it occuped. Like an exquisite, huge casket 
 it lay there in the mellow, mother-or-pearl-tinted light of 
 that balmy March afternoon, a casket shrewdly fashioned 
 and beautifully tooled to hold gems of exceeding worth. 
 
 Suddenly Guido became aware of a slender young man 
 walking leisurely down the broad flight of shallow steps 
 with an indescribable air of consciously enriching the stair 
 way by traversing it. The young man was Egon von 
 Dammer, and he had seen Guido. Having reached street 
 level, he strolled forward casually to meet them. 
 
 Egon stood and talked with Guido and Janet for ten 
 minutes or more. All this time he stood with his hat deli 
 cately poised between forefinger and thumb, wearing the 
 air of the thoroughbred who desires that all men shall 
 know him as suc.i. 
 
 Guido s feelings ran riot in watching Egon. He ad 
 mired him and he envied him. It was not so much what
 
 YOUTH 519 
 
 he said but the way in which he said it, the deferential 
 air with which he listened to Janet, the peculiar effect he 
 obtained by gently inclining his head whenever Janet spoke 
 as if fearful of losing a syllable of her words. And Janet 
 was impressed by Egon s manner. There was no denying 
 it. Guido was not yet aware that he loved Janet. But 
 the possessive instincts of the male responded inevitably to 
 the strain that was being put upon them. He wanted 
 to extirpate this other masculine creature who had eclipsed 
 him as he thought in the eyes of the girl at his side. 
 It was the old, elemental, primordal instinct of the male 
 to fight every other male not for the sake of the woman, 
 but for the sake of Woman. 
 
 Guido s bad moment passed, passed because he saw that 
 Janet s bedazzlement was passing. Accustomed to observe 
 delicate shades, Guido perceived that Janet was now quietly 
 taking Egon s measure even while she bandied conven 
 tional phrases with him about the weather, the Library, 
 about futile nothings. Presently, however, Egon s words 
 assumed point and direction. It became evident that he 
 wanted Janet to invite him to call. It became just as 
 evident that Janet had no intention of asking him to call. 
 They sparred, parried, dodged and fenced. Janet half a 
 dozen times approached the very verge of rudeness in 
 withholding the invitation, but somehow, with a laugh or 
 a jest, she contrived to brush away the offense as quickly 
 as it was given. 
 
 To be game is the first requisite of the thoroughbred. 
 Egon possessed this attribute. He showed no ill-temper 
 at having failed to extract the invitation from Janet, when 
 he finally turned away to ask Guido to spend the evening 
 at his hotel the following Saturday. 
 
 "No cards," he added, "unless by unanimous consent." 
 
 Guido did not want to go, but he was less dexterous 
 than Janet in his efforts to resist Egon. He finally suc 
 cumbed to Egon s persistence and accepted. 
 
 "Why did you accept when you don t want to go?" Janet 
 demanded, with characteristic directness, when they were 
 alone once more. 
 
 "How do you know I don t want to go?" 
 
 "Yankee. By your manner, of course. You are very 
 easy to read."
 
 520 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "I am, am I? Well, I couldn t get out of it, could I?" 
 
 "Well, if he ever asks you to bring him along to our 
 house, please get out of it." 
 
 "Why, Janet," Guido spoke in a shocked voice, "I d 
 never think of bringing a friend to your house without 
 your or your mother s express invitation." 
 
 "That s very silly. Your friend is my friend, and there 
 fore is welcome. Excepting him. How annoyed you look, 
 Guido. Does no one ever come to your house without 
 a formal invitation, just brought by a friend?" 
 
 "Why, no." 
 
 "Well, then, you re insufficiently americanized. Live 
 and^ learn. Excepting to a formal dinner, you are at liberty 
 any time to come unannounced and to take pot luck and 
 bring along with you any friend whom you have happened 
 to pick up en route. Always excepting the friend with the 
 semi-profane name." 
 
 "You and your father are forever telling me I m in 
 sufficiently americanized," Guido retorted, showing con 
 siderable annoyance. "Am I really as bad as all that?" 
 
 "Well, Guido, at times you are not like an American at 
 all. You are stiff and poky, like a European. And that s 
 the truth." 
 
 "Like a German, I suppose you mean," said Guido 
 miserably. "Now you won t like me any more." 
 
 Janet, out of deference for Fifth Avenue, checked the 
 laughter which was threatening to inundate her. 
 
 "I like you so well," she said, "that I am going to give 
 you a sound piece of advice, whether you like my doing 
 so or not." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "In your place, I d have as little to do with Mr. Profanity 
 as possible." 
 
 "But I thought you were impressed by him," Guido said, 
 tactlessly. 
 
 "I was, for just five minutes," Janet replied, without 
 flinching. "And then I perceived the shrewd, hard crafti 
 ness of his eyes, the curious, hard lines about his mouth. 
 He can t be any older than you, but he looks as if he 
 knew a lot about well, a lot about the things you and I 
 don t want to know anything about. And I felt, all of a 
 sudden, that he is unscrupulous, insincere and forgive me
 
 YOUTH 521 
 
 not nice." "Not nice," as Guido knew, was in Janet s 
 phraseology the equivalent of "immoral." "I know he s 
 the chap to whom you consider yourself indebted for the 
 scholarship nevertheless, in your place, I would have as 
 little to do with him as possible." 
 
 "Stan feels the same way about him," said Guido. 
 
 "Stan is a nice boy and a sincere friend," Janet rejoined, 
 with a little air of superior wisdom which she sometimes 
 assumed, and which never failed to amuse Guido intensely. 
 He asked, after a pause: 
 
 "It s not because Egon is German, is it?" 
 
 "Goodness, no," said Janet, with decision. "Wesen- 
 donck is a German and such a pro that he ought to be taken 
 out at sunrise and shot. Still, personally, I do not mis 
 trust him. Then there s Otto. Otto is German if anyone 
 is. I hate him like sixty for a week at a time, but I 
 always trust him. Now I don t think I would ever hate 
 your Mr. Naughtyword, he s so very, very charming, but 
 neither would I trust him." 
 
 Guido was so busy turning all this over in his mind 
 that he forgot to answer Janet. Suddenly, under cover of 
 a street crossing, Janet plucked lightly at Guide s sleeve. 
 
 "You re not angry with me, are you?" she demanded, 
 with a gentleness so intense that it verged on tenderness. 
 "Now are you, Guido Guidovich?" 
 
 Never before had she employed Dobronov s mode of 
 addressing him. Coming from her lips, the quaint Russian 
 suffix addended to his aggressively Teutonic name assumed 
 the grace of a caress. 
 
 Their eyes met, interlocked. Neither spoke. They were 
 content to gaze at each other, unashamedly because in 
 nocently, and to drink deep at the bourne of each other s 
 souls. 
 
 After a long time Guido said with grave sweetness: 
 
 "Janet I am not angry with you. Nothing you could do 
 or say could make me angry." 
 
 And they went home feeling fabulously rich. 
 
 Janet s adverse criticism of Egon, linked to Stan s con 
 temptuous estimate of their former classmate, carried con 
 siderable weight with Guido, not quite enough, however, 
 to destroy the fascination which Egon exerted upon Guido. 
 Egon belonged to a different genus, just as Cecil be-
 
 522 THE HYPHEN 
 
 longed to a different genus, than the boys with whom 
 Guido usually foregathered. In both cases racial inbreed 
 ing for centuries had produced a homogeneous personality 
 which unconsciously mirrored the summation of traditions, 
 customs, idioms and cultural aspirations of the race from 
 which it sprang. 
 
 Guido, with his exquisite sensibility to fine shades, felt 
 keenly the similarities as well as the differences which 
 linked him to and separated him from Egon. It had been 
 the same with Cecil. It was, in less degree, the same with 
 Dobronov. Guido felt a keen zest in the intellectual and 
 emotional pleasure provided by the continual perception 
 of these variations or consonances, and derived a curious 
 mental stimulation from this perception even at such times 
 when the pleasure which it gave turned to pain. As it 
 did, not infrequently. 
 
 He had forgotten his resolution to see nothing of Egon 
 on moral grounds. One objection he had to presenting 
 himself at Egon s rooms. He feared that he might be 
 enticed into a serious quarrel touching the War. 
 
 His fears were without foundation. The young men 
 whom he had been invited to meet belonged, with one ex 
 ception, to the same type as Egon. Leutnant zur See Hor- 
 witz, who had been incapacitated in antebellum days by an 
 explosion which had torn away his left leg, and Herr 
 Baron Trommer, a delicate youth with a blonde mustache 
 and watery blue eyes who, as Egon explained in the course 
 of the evening, was also a Militaerkrueppel, both wore the 
 same half -bored, half -insolent expression which appeared 
 on the boyish face of Egon. Both were considerably older 
 than their host. Horwitz was a man of at least thirty, 
 Trommer was twenty-four or twenty-five. 
 
 They spoke very rapidly, and their intonation and accent, 
 their very phraseology and diction were quite different 
 from those employed by German-Americans. They were 
 the finished, highly polished product of their own civiliza 
 tion. 
 
 They were playing pinochle when Guido arrived, and 
 the game was continued after Egon had introduced his 
 friends to Guido, Egon saying that they would finish the 
 game and then stop. 
 
 The remaining guest, whom Egon introduced as plain
 
 YOUTH 523 
 
 Herr Redlich, and who seemed to be engaged by some 
 silk house as salesman, differed widely from his host 
 and the other two guests. He was quite as German as 
 they, spoke in the same quick, restless way as the others, 
 and like them used superlatives in preference to plain 
 adjectives. Everything was kollosal, riesig, enorm or 
 winzig, rasend, wuetend. Guido wondered parenthetically 
 whether this habit of lingual exaggeration had led to the 
 tremendous overestimation of the German nation by itself, 
 or whether lack of sobriety in appraising themselves had 
 led to this inebriety of language. In some respects Red 
 lich reminded him of Wesendonck, but he lacked Wesen- 
 donck s offensive and ubiquitous egoism. Wherein he 
 differed saliently from host and his host s other German 
 guests was in a certain wholesomeness which he radiated. 
 There was about him something clean and direct and 
 honest which reminded Guido of Otto. 
 
 The young men talked while they finished their game. 
 They talked well. They talked authoritatively. They 
 talked like men of the world. The substance of their 
 talk embraced many subjects. Finally it alighted on horses 
 and women. The incapacited Leutnant zur See, if his 
 reports were true, had had innumerable pikante Abendteuer 
 zu Land, and he related these with such delicacy of allu 
 sion and such humorous touches that Guido joined in the 
 convulsive laughter of the others, even though he was 
 shocked by the immorality of the "adventures" which Hor- 
 witz narrated so dispassionately. When Horwitz finished, the 
 blonde young Baron began relating spicy reminiscences of 
 his misspent youth. He was not as good a raconteur as 
 the lieutenant, and he lacked the lieutenant s polished wit 
 and humor and art of allusion. Very quickly he lapsed 
 into vulgarity of language and indecency of thought. His 
 immoralities appeared shameless and repulsive. He con 
 cluded with the announcement of a smoker to which he 
 had been so fortunate as to procure six tickets, and he 
 asked the four young men present to acept four of the 
 six tickets at his disposal. 
 
 Egon and Horwitz accepted, a strange gleam in their 
 eyes. Redlich refused, not very courteously. A taciturn 
 look of. disapproval in Redlich s eyes decided Guido to 
 follow his example and to decline the invitation. The
 
 S2 4 THE HYPHEN 
 
 Baron pressed him to accept. Unexpectedly Egon put in 
 his oar. 
 
 "Von Estritz is right in declining your ticket," he said. 
 "Your naughty smokers are no place for an American. 
 We Germans are such unregenerate, godless miscreants 
 that we can stand that sort of entertainment. But von 
 Estritz, to expiate the sin of having attended such a 
 pandemomium, would shave his head and wander barefoot 
 from house to house with a begging bowl in his hand. 
 Leave the prudish little American alone." 
 
 Guido tingled with resentment. Strange vanities to 
 which the human heart offers a refuge ! He was genuinely 
 disgusted and distressed. He had not the least desire in 
 the world to attend this smoker, which, he could not doubt, 
 offered some objectionable sort of entertainment. But 
 Egon s words conveyed a challenge. Vanity was being 
 scraped on the raw. He felt as if his honor, that vapory, 
 squeamish thing of European make, required him to accept 
 the challange and the ticket. And yet, desperately, he did 
 not want to go. 
 
 Something curious happened. His memory flew back 
 to the kiss which Frau Theaterdirektor had placed upon 
 his lips. He felt no pride in it, as in an unrepentent 
 moment, he had thought he might feel upon just such an 
 occasion. But he thought of it. He tried to dismiss the 
 thought of it, but it pursued him, enmeshed him, per 
 meated him. And it whipped at something within him 
 that was lethargic and dormant, whipped and lashed and 
 bashed at it until he felt a sudden violent, wicked desire 
 to accept the invitation, and go with these young men and 
 live the life they lived. 
 
 And all the while the kiss which an unscrupulous woman 
 had placed upon the boy s lips seemed to hover there, like 
 a very real and palpable thing, like a thing which might 
 become strong and permanent, as if the moral atmosphere 
 which surrounded him was particularly favorable to a 
 flower of such sinister bloom. 
 
 Redlich s face had turned very red during Egon s per 
 oration. 
 
 "I really do not see why you should smirch your own 
 nation," he said, quite angrily. "Our enemies are saying 
 enough bad things about us, You chaps may be proud
 
 YOUTH 525 
 
 of your immorality, but my parents brought up myself 
 and my eight brothers and sisters to do right, to fear God 
 and obey the commandments." 
 
 "Hear! Hear!" shouted Horwitz. 
 
 "My dear Redlich," the Baron drawled. "Your family 
 is in a class by itself. Don t pay any attention to him, 
 Herr von Estritz. He s the most disgusting snob on earth. 
 Listen to us and enjoy life. Listen to him and what is it 
 your countrymen say ? Be good and you ll be lonely. " 
 
 "Leave von Estritz alone, I tell you," Egon said again, 
 and again Guido tingled with resentment and wounded 
 self-love. 
 
 "Well," Horwitz remarked, "I thank God my father was 
 a man of the world. On my sixteenth birthday, he called 
 me to his room in the evening, and we had a long talk. 
 In that talk he did not enjoin me to observe the Seventh 
 Commandment. On the contrary. He apprised me that 
 in all civilized communities the Seventh Commandment is 
 more honored in the breach than the observance. At least 
 by men. It was framed for women, not for the stronger 
 sex. And he furnished me with quite a liberal allowance 
 wherewith to honor the breach." 
 
 Egon and von Trommer roared with laughter, but Red 
 lich angrily pushed his chair away from the table. 
 
 "This sort of talk, Herr Leutnant," he said, furiously, 
 "is unseemly. Most unseemly for a Christian." 
 
 "But not for a gentleman, my dear fellow," said the 
 Leutnant, with imperturbable good humor. 
 
 "Is that a reflection " 
 
 "On your family? Heavens, no." Horwitz laughed 
 easily, insolently. "My dear von Estritz, Redlich here, if 
 he wished, or rather if his forbears had wished, might be 
 a Count and rank us all. That s what he is aching to 
 tell you. That s what I meant before when I called him 
 a disgusting snob. For five generations past his grand 
 fathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers 
 have refused a patent of nobility. And the entire Red 
 lich family is so damnably proud of it that there is no 
 living with them. You, however, being adelig, ought to 
 have more sense and be free from middle-class scruples." 
 
 "I imagine," Guido retorted, quietly, "that I understand 
 Herr Redlich and his middle-class scruples far better than
 
 S 26 THE HYPHEN 
 
 I do your noble elevation above middle-class scruples and 
 morality. Also it may interest you to know that, because 
 I am an American, I have in the past experienced con 
 siderable scruples as to my right to retain the "von" before 
 my name. But the name, as it stands, was born so honor 
 ably by my father and my grandfather that I hesitate 
 to shed the "von" because I fear to destroy the identity 
 of my name. My grandfather was an Achtundvierziger. 
 I am proud of that but not because I am adelig." 
 
 For a moment dead silence reigned. Then Egon, the 
 Baron and Horwitz burst out laughing. 
 
 "My dear fellow," Horwitz cried at last, "you are not 
 really proud of having a grandfather who was a revo 
 lutionist ?" 
 
 Guido bowed stiffly, coldly. 
 
 "My son," Horwitz said, with a sort of bloated ar 
 rogance, "attend and learn. If the revolution of Forty- 
 Eight had been successful, it would have been a mighty 
 catastrophe for Germany. Germany was then not ready 
 for constitutional government. Germany is not ready for 
 it to-day. The German people are the most immature 
 people on earth politically. Bismarck understood this when 
 he predicted that the new Germany must be forged to 
 gether with blood and iron. See what Germany is to-day 
 the mightiest empire on earth, and please God, that 
 empire shall be mightier and greater still when the War 
 is over." 
 
 There was no levity in his voice now. Egon and the 
 Baron also had sobered down. They and men of their 
 kidney might ridicule morality and Christianity and the 
 traditions of the home. But the Fatherland was immune; 
 the Fatherland was sacred; the Fatherland must be rever 
 enced and honored. The curious condition of mind thus 
 revealed came as a shock to Guido. 
 
 "It seems to me," Guido replied, "that you are maligning 
 your country and your race in taking that position, because 
 in taking it you assume that hatred and greed of conquest 
 unworthy motives alone were able to accomplish the 
 task of unifying the continually bickering German states, 
 while worthier motives, such as an honest desire for na 
 tional freedom and racial unity would have been incapable 
 of achieving the same end. That, gentlemen, sounds very
 
 YOUTH 527 
 
 odd to American ears. Territorial aggrandizement, as a 
 reason for going to war, is taboo in my country." 
 
 Guido expected an outbreak on the Wesendonck style. 
 Nothing of the sort, however, occurred. Egon laughed and 
 the Baron said, in comically compressed English, "Now 
 will we be good?" Redlich looked startled and pained. 
 The crippled Leutnant zur See, upon whom the defense 
 thus evolved, said, after a moment s lingering over his 
 cigar : 
 
 "My dear chap, you Americans are incorrigible idealists." 
 
 "Idealists !" Guido exclaimed in astonishment. "We are 
 accustomed to be called dollar-chasers by the Germans and 
 by the German press." 
 
 "Germans? German- Americans I presume you mean. 
 Mere mongrels. Mongrels, my dear sir, who have thrown 
 away their birthright as Teutons for the sake of their 
 bread and butter. Do you really think that Germany cares 
 a rap about German- American opinion? I refer you to 
 von BernstorfFs reply to Senator Phelan, of California, at 
 the time of the California Exposition. Phelan urged von 
 Bernstorff, then the incumbent of some imperial office in 
 Berlin, to consider the desirability of Germany s being 
 represented on a large scale at the Exposition. This/ 
 said the Senator, would mightily please the German- 
 Americans. Von Bernstorff replied that Germans despised 
 German-Americans and regarded them as outlaws and 
 pariahs. I have it from von Bernstorff himself." 
 
 "And does the loyalty to the Fatherland which the Ger 
 man-Americans are evincing throughout the country count 
 for nothing in German eyes? Guido demanded. 
 
 "It remains to be seen whether it is loyalty or pseudo- 
 loyalty," Horwitz replied significantly. Guido did not com 
 prehend the words. He asked for an elucidation. Hor 
 witz and Egon exchanged rapid glances. Redlich s eyes 
 had dropped to his hands. He was frowning quite furi 
 ously. 
 
 Horwitz leaned forward toward Guido. 
 
 "Lieber von Estritz," he said, "lip-service is the easiest 
 service in the world to render. In case of war between 
 the United States and Germany would the German- 
 Americans be loyal to their blood or to their country?" 
 
 Guifto stared, too bewildered for speech.
 
 528 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "I will answer my own question," Horwitz continued. 
 "They will in the end be loyal to their blood. War be 
 tween the two countries will regenerate the Germans on 
 American soil. It cannot be otherwise. They will regain 
 the birthright which they have sold for a mess of pottage. 
 You, too, von Estritz. You, too." 
 
 "Sir!" Guido was on his feet, indignant, red, hot, 
 amazed, yet, for some occult reason, not angry. Curiosity 
 held anger in leash. 
 
 "It does not follow, you know," said Horwitz, "that 
 because Germany was wrong in the Sixties and in Seventy- 
 one she is wrong now. She is right. Americans refuse 
 to believe that we found conclusive proofs in the archives 
 at Brussels that England was planning to invade Germany. 
 It is true nevertheless. My brother is in Brussels now. 
 I have it direct from him. Do not misunderstand me. I 
 do not blame England. No educated German blames 
 England. Why should we? England is trying to hold 
 her own we are trying to obtain our own. Where is the 
 difference? If there is a difference, it is too subtle for 
 comprehension by myself. 
 
 "The entire question, mein lieber von Estritz," Horwitz 
 continued with ever-increasing fervor, "is which culture 
 do you prefer, German or English? You are American- 
 born. Yet you speak German like a native. The tradi 
 tions which your parents brought from beyond the seas 
 must be dearer to you, having come to you as your heritage, 
 than the superficial sheath of acquired Anglo-Saxon cul 
 ture with which America is veneered. It is unthinkable 
 that it should be otherwise." 
 
 Guido said nothing. What he was hearing was too 
 preposterous to be dealt with at a moment s notice. 
 
 "You blamed Germany a moment ago," Horwitz continued, 
 "for allowing herself to be swayed by material motives 
 instead of by idealistic ones. Germany was once a nation 
 of idealists and dreamers. What happened to us during 
 the Napoleonic wars? That era was the hey-dey of 
 German idealism. To what pass did it bring us ? Degrada 
 tion and shame unutterable. No, my friend, we leave 
 idealism to America. You are thriving upon it now. 
 Why shouldn t you? You are rich in land beyond the 
 dreams of empire, rich in money beyond the dreams of
 
 YOUTH 529 
 
 avarice. Is it fair to blame us, who are desperately in 
 need of land, for not allowing our prosperous neighbor, 
 Albion, to monopolize the entire world? You wouldn t do 
 it yourselves, if you were situated as we are. Why, then, 
 blame us? The millionaire, owning a large park and a 
 fine mansion, may despise the grubby upstart who plans 
 to procure a little of the world s wealth while he, the 
 millionaire, peruses Emerson and Thoreau and Ruskin. 
 But the day may come when the idealist shall rue him 
 his idealism, and the man possessing a healthy ego may 
 yet sit at table in the mansion that erstwhile belonged to 
 the millionaire idealist." 
 
 Horwitz s voice had assumed a sinister ring. Guido did 
 not misunderstand it. 
 
 "If you come into conflict with us," he said, "believe 
 me it is you who will do the ruing not we. We have 
 never been beaten yet. We never shall be beaten. And 
 I will tell you why. Because we never go to war unless 
 we are morally right. And that is more than can be said 
 of Germany." 
 
 Horwitz laughed grimly, insolently. 
 
 "And was Germany beaten in 1864? or in 1866? or in 
 1871 ?" he inquired, sardonically. 
 
 Guido was aghast. 
 
 "You do not even pretend to have been right in those 
 wars ?" 
 
 "My dear fellow among ourselves?" Horwitz laughed 
 amusedly. "Is the pickerel or the mackerel or the carp 
 morally right when he opens his mouth and swallows half 
 a dozen minnows for his breakfast? Survival of the 
 fittest. That slogan originated in England, the home of 
 many good things, but it remains for us Germans to show 
 the world the true meaning of the phrase. Germany is 
 invincible because she is fittest. And therefore, von 
 Estritz, think well over all I have told you." 
 
 "I wonder," said Guido with fine irony, "that having 
 dispensed with the moral necessity of proving yourselves 
 right in previous wars, you take the trouble to prove your 
 selves right in this one." 
 
 Horwitz smiled with the utmost good-nature. 
 
 "We didn t take the trouble," he said. "Destiny, fate 
 took the trouble for us. If she hadn t, do you think I
 
 530 THE HYPHEN 
 
 would care? We are not liars, we Germans. We do not 
 wrap ourselves around with hypocritical idealism and cant. 
 That is why you may trust and believe us when we tell 
 you our culture is superior to that produced by any other 
 race. And thereupon rests the fundamental justice of our 
 military excursions in this War. Even if we had been 
 as wrong as we happen to be right in prosecuting the 
 War as we are doing, and as we have done, and as we 
 shall do, that one inalterable, indubitable fact would wipe 
 away minor wrongs and breaches of faith our culture is 
 the best and the greatest in the world, and it behooves us 
 to spread it peaceably if we can, by the sword if he must. 
 Some day price of race will awaken in you, and you will 
 understand in a flash things that now seem dark and 
 incomprehensible. It is inevitable. As you grow older, 
 the cheap claptrap of democratic ideals will cease to appeal 
 to you, and you will realize that the Anglo-Saxon cry for 
 majority rule is essentially immoral because the majority 
 represents the mob, and the men returned at your elec 
 tions by the majority can therefore impossibly represent 
 the best brains and the best blood of the nation, especially 
 a nation of mongrels, like the United States." 
 
 Guido breathed hard and fast. The insult to his country 
 stung like a lash. He did not trust himself to speak. He 
 was bewildered, too. He glanced at Redlich, but Red- 
 lich, greatly as he disapproved of Horwitz s private morality, 
 was evidently in entire accord with his political convictions. 
 
 "I would not have you think," Horwitz continued, "that 
 we Germans believe it is right to disregard the necessities 
 of the lower classes. It is safe to say that in no country 
 of the world does the workingman enjoy such security 
 such an assurance that he will be taken care of in his old 
 age or in case of disablement." 
 
 Guido had pulled himself together by this time. In a 
 flash, as Horwitz had predicted, "things that seemed dark 
 and incomprehensible had been made clear to him," but 
 not in the way in which Horwitz had hoped. 
 
 "I know nothing about Germany s working classes," he 
 said. "I do know that the American working man is pretty 
 well to do. He earns living wages, has his savings account 
 and his small investments and frequently owns his own 
 home."
 
 YOUTH 531 
 
 "And I want to protest," Guido continued, quickly, with 
 out giving Horwitz a chance to say something, "against 
 your expression A nation of mongrels. We are a hybrid 
 nation that is true. But Americans believe that therein 
 lies our strength and the security of our future. We 
 believe that for reasons which you, Herr Leutnant, imagine, 
 are incapable of comprehending though I argued from 
 now until doomsday, for the simple reason that, being a 
 modern German you, according to your own account, 
 worship the Golden Calf of Material Prosperity." 
 
 Guido had purposely allowed a note of insolence to creep 
 into his voice and had the satisfaction of seeing Horwitz 
 ruffled for the first time. He flushed, but at a half-smoth 
 ered ejaculation from Egon, checked an angry retort. 
 
 "We believe in idealism, of course, Herr von Estritz," 
 said the Baron, "but we do not believe in the fatuous 
 methods of the impracticable dreamer in furthering that 
 idealism." 
 
 Guido s lips curled disdainfully. He ignored the Baron 
 entirely. He had something more to say in reply to Hor- 
 witz s tirade against Anglo-Saxon methods, and he had no 
 intention of allowing himself to be side-tracked. 
 
 "I would like to correct another misapprehension of 
 yours, Herr Leutnant," he continued. "Intelligent Ameri 
 cans in every age have of course not been unmindful of 
 the danger of which you speak that the mob spirit may 
 inject itself into our government to a pernicious degree. 
 
 "This was particularly true of those men who were the 
 founders of our nation. And I should like to quote a few 
 of their sayings in English to illustrate my point. If you 
 will permit " 
 
 Horwitz bowed stiffly. A formidable look came into his 
 eyes. 
 
 "I am aware, of course," he said, acidly, "that this 
 country was exceptionally fortunate in the men who 
 flourished in the era immediately preceding and following 
 the Revolutionary War. I am willing to admit that in no 
 era of the world s history has so great a number of men 
 of undoubted political genius been gathered together as in 
 that age in America. I will go even further than that. 
 The fathers of your country were inspired. In no other
 
 532 THE HYPHEN 
 
 way can the wisdom which they displayed in the framing 
 of your Constitution be explained." 
 
 Guido smiled. 
 
 "They were Anglo-Saxons, every one of them," he said, 
 a little maliciously. "And I deny emphatically that they 
 were inspired." 
 
 A murmur of amazement sprang to the lips of Guido s 
 small audience. 
 
 "They were remarkably intelligent men, no doubt," 
 Guido continued, pleasantly. "When I went to school I, like 
 yourselves, believed that they must have been inspired. 
 Since leaving school I have read a detailed account of 
 the four months which preceded the adoption of our 
 present Constitution. May I ask are you familiar with 
 the history of those four months?" 
 
 Horwitz replied, looking somewhat blank, that he was 
 not. 
 
 "It taught me two things," said Guido. "It taught me 
 that those men were not inspired, as I had once believed. 
 It taught me also the tremendous importance of the ap 
 parently mediocre mind in checking the more headlong, 
 brilliant mind. In brief, gentlemen, the history of those 
 months and the achievements of those four months com 
 pletely vindicates the cheap clap-trap of democratic ideals. " 
 
 Guido had the satisfaction of seeing Horwitz look per 
 plexed. 
 
 "Are you not slightly inconsistent?" he asked. "A 
 moment ago you admitted that leaders of American thought 
 recognized the dangers of mob rule." 
 
 "Well, I didn t put it just that way," said Guido, laugh 
 ing, "but let it pass. It was Hamilton, gentlemen, who one 
 day in an after-dinner bout with Jefferson exclaimed 
 angrily, Your people, sir, your people is a great beast ! " 
 
 "Good for Hamilton," Horwitz said, heartily. 
 
 "But then," said Guido, "Hamilton was so ingrained a 
 patrician that he would have made the father of Frederick 
 the Great look like a green grocer." 
 
 "I consider it quite unnecessary to animadvert upon the 
 earlier Hohenzollern. No one denies that they were 
 lamentably lacking in breeding and education," Horwitz 
 retorted, almost angrily, and Guido had the satisfaction of 
 feeling that at last he had drawn blood.
 
 YOUTH 533 
 
 Guido continued: 
 
 "It was John Adams, gentlemen, who said : All men are 
 men, and not angels men, and not lions men, and not 
 whales men, and not eagles that is, they are all of the 
 same species and this is the most that the equality of men 
 amounts to. A physical inequality, an intellectual inequality 
 of the most serious kind is established by the Author of 
 all nature; and society has a right to establish any other 
 inequality it may judge necessary for its good. The pre 
 cept, however, implies an equality which is the real equality 
 of nature and of Christianity." 
 
 "That is good common sense," Horwitz assented, heartily, 
 "and in Germany, more than in any other country of the 
 world, including your own, both the difference and the 
 equality existing between men is well provided for." 
 
 "Yet you deprive the German people of the privilege 
 of equal representations. You disapprove of parliamentary 
 government. You provide old-age pensions and working- 
 men s associations, and in return for those and similar 
 benefits you keep the people in political bondage. And are 
 the German people really sunk so deep in materialism and 
 love of physical comfort that they reck as nought their 
 heritage as freemen, as nought their privilege and duty 
 as freemen to help shape the destinies of their nation? 
 Are they really willing to barter the heritage of freemen 
 in return for widows pensions and cheap servants and in 
 expensive fiacres and opera tickets?" 
 
 "Upon my word," Horwitz retorted, with a frown, "you 
 have a remarkable way of putting things, my American 
 friend." 
 
 "At the risk of boring you," Guido continued, "I would 
 like to quote from yet another founder of the Republic. 
 John Cabot, one of the highbrow Federalists of Massa 
 chusetts, in the first year of the nineteenth century re 
 marked : There is no security for good government with 
 out some popular mixture in it, but there will be neither 
 justice nor stability in any system if some material parts 
 of it are not independent of popular control. " 
 
 "Why," Horwitz cried, applaudingly, "a German might 
 have said that ! You know the socialists have quite a good 
 deal to say in the German Empire, and they are nothing 
 if not popular."
 
 534 THE HYPHEN 
 
 "But the Kaiser has the sole right to decide upon matters 
 pertaining to the army and navy through Prussia s domina 
 tion," Guido commented. 
 
 Horwitz shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "We, on the other hand, leave those matters to Congress 
 and the President. That means that when the last is said 
 the people have a voice in deciding." 
 
 "I don t see how," Horwitz demanded. 
 
 "In this way," Guido replied. "A president who keeps 
 his finger unerringly on the pulse of the public may be 
 in danger of being called a politician. But he s really doing 
 what he ought to do. He s focussing the popular will and 
 acting in accordance with it to the best of his knowledge 
 and ability. That s what Mr. Wilson is doing. Personally, 
 I wish he had declared war when Belgium was invaded, 
 but the country didn t want war. People at large didn t 
 see it that way. They thought it was just another one of 
 your unending European wars." 
 
 "Well, and isn t it?" Egon demanded. 
 
 "Is it?" Guido flung back. "Until this evening I did not 
 believe that the German people at large in going to war 
 were motivated by the militaristic spirit. I thought they 
 were willing to follow their leaders into war because they 
 were in a blue funk about that ridiculous yarn concerning 
 a conspiracy instigated by England to dismember Germany. 
 But" from what I have heard to-night well, I m wondering, 
 that s all." 
 
 "I am anxious to hear what part of your government 
 is not subject to mob rule, beg pardon, popular control," 
 Horwitz remarked. 
 
 "Our judiciary," Guido replied. "Our Supreme Bench. 
 Our Federal Courts. It would be intolerable to American 
 ideas to link the legislative or administrative powers and 
 the judicial functions of government together as you do 
 in some instances." 
 
 Horwitz and Egon exchanged rapid glances. 
 
 "You are very well informed, von Estritz," Horwitz 
 said. "At present you are completely dominated by the 
 glittering tinsel of the Anglo-Saxon s gift of brilliant 
 hypocrisy. But we hope to save you. You are worth 
 saving." 
 
 "Saving?"
 
 YOUTH 535 
 
 "Saving. You are no shallow thinker. But your thoughts 
 have been directed into pernicious channels by the super 
 ficial education of the American public school. I repeat 
 my prophecy, some day you will come over to us, bag and 
 baggage and scrip and scrippage." 
 
 Needless to say, Guido repeated this conversation ver 
 batim as nearly as memory permitted to Otto. Otto, having 
 heard Guido out, coolly commented: 
 
 "He s right, of course. I mean about Anglo-Saxon 
 culture. The people do not rule here any more than in 
 Germany." 
 
 "And about German-Americans being pariahs and out 
 laws?" 
 
 "I don t believe von Bernstorff ever said it," said Otto, 
 in his most magnificently dogmatic manner. 
 
 Guido gave it up. Honest arguments lost their virtue 
 when presented to a mind which believed what it chose 
 to believe but relegated whatever did not happen to fall 
 in with its own viewpoint to the realm of "lies." 
 
 The unsatisfactory conclusion of this talk with Otto was 
 a thorn in Guide s memory, and there is small doubt that 
 he would have come back to the subject, and probably 
 quarreled violently with Otto, if something had not oc 
 curred which was destined to reduce everything even the 
 war excepting only itself to utterly negligible propor 
 tions. Life was preparing to harrow Guido to tease, to 
 torment, to castigate, to browbeat, to flaunt and to exalt 
 him ; to make a plaything of him and to give him the 
 onerous choice of turning himself into a rascal or a hero. 
 It was preparing for the lad the most significantly intimate 
 ordeal of which it is capable. Guido stood upon the 
 threshold of the most inexorable experience of life, the 
 experience which in some form or other is spared none, 
 and which, by an immutable and somewhat baffling law 
 since its wide diffusion tends at first glance to rob it of 
 most of its value as a formative factor in the individual 
 life is charged with a sinister power to make or to mar, 
 to act upon the character which it assails either construc 
 tively or destructively, to finely temper, or to grossly deface. 
 
 It was not upon love s threshold that our hero stood, for 
 in love is always hedged about with something of divinity, 
 which some quality of delicate inevitableness, with a rich
 
 536 THE HYPHEN 
 
 sense of supermundane authority. It was upon the 
 threshold of love s pernicious counterfeit that he stood, a 
 counterfeit sparklingly bejeweled, ornately embellished, 
 splendidly caparisoned, full of gracious accents, and boast 
 ing of the investiture of many aromatic seductions and 
 plausible delights. Yet, for all that, a counterfeit and a 
 cheat, and its name if this were an enigma might be 
 described as being similar to the name of the holy prototype 
 of which it is a tawdry travesty in that it is a monosyllable 
 and has the same initial ; dissimilar in that harsh sybilant 
 and unlovely guttural take the place of the sweet dove 
 sounds which inhabit the sacred thing it would profane by 
 its brazen masquerade.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 1964 
 
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