THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 INEZ HAYNES IRWIN
 
 FROM THE XLVII CHAPTER OF ISAIAH 
 
 5. Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O 
 daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more 
 be called, The lady of kingdoms. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 8. Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to 
 pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, th. lf sayest in 
 thine heart, I am, and none else beside mf ; I shall 
 not sit as a widow, neither shall I know th^ loss of 
 children : 
 
 9. But these two things shall come to thee in a" 
 moment in one day, the loss of children, and ividow- 
 hood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection 
 for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great 
 abundance of thine enchantments. 
 
 10. For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou 
 hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy 
 knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou has said 
 in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. 
 
 11. Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou 
 shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief 
 shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put 
 it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, 
 which thou shalt not know. 
 
 12. Stand now with thine enchantments, and icith 
 the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast 
 laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able 
 to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. 
 
 13. Thou art ivearied in the multitude of thy 
 counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, 
 the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save 
 thee from these things that shall come upon thee. 
 
 14. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall 
 burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from 
 the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to 
 warm at, nor fire to sit before it.
 
 THE 
 
 LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 BY 
 
 INEZ HAYNES IRWIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ANGEL ISLAND." ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 GEORGE H DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 TO MY BROTHERS 
 
 HARRY, GID, WALTER 
 
 2136522
 
 BOOK ONE
 
 THE 
 LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " WELL, you can t get a word out of her," Mrs. Wallis said in an 
 accent compounded equally of virtuous disgust and balked curi 
 osity. " No matter what you say to her. She says the child s hers, 
 and who the father is ain t nobody else s business. And if anybody 
 thinks they can go do any better, they ve got my permission to try." 
 
 Mrs. Wallis s hard sharp black eyes, set high in her flat toad-like 
 head, snapped a challenge to the three women who sat about the 
 bed. With a double motion that was habitual to her, she fluffed 
 up with one hand her mat of thickly-curled artificial hair and 
 pushed down with the other a perpetually obtrusive corset-steel. 
 " There ain t a drop of shame in her anywhere as far as I can 
 see," she added irritably, turning to the woman who lay on the bed. 
 
 Mrs. Drake, to whom Mrs. Wallis addressed this last remark, 
 emitted nothing beyond a nonplussed, " You don t! " 
 
 " Who d have thought Gert Beebee would ever come to this 
 pass ? " Mrs. Tubman took it up. Mrs. Tubman was a pasty, 
 bulging, fatly-shapeless woman with one fixed dull eye and one 
 roving bright one. " Why, I used to think she was a real clever 
 little girl." 
 
 " She was," Mrs. Drake answered. " Smart as a whip, and 
 bright as a dollar." She added after a pause, " Southward always 
 said she liked her better n most any girl cept Hester when they 
 was in school together." 
 
 No one replied for a moment. And in that instant, the same 
 expression dropped a non-committal curtain over the features of 
 Mrs. Drake s guests. 
 
 " Well, all I ve got to say," Mrs. Peters decided trenchantly, " is 
 
 9
 
 10 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 that her smartness didn t do her a mite of good when she got into 
 trouble. Smartness don t seem to be much help then, as others in 
 this town may find out before it is too late." 
 
 Her words produced a little shocked flurry. Mrs. Drake alone 
 listened placidly, seemed to see in them no esoteric meaning. 
 
 Mrs. Peters was a long, lean, lank woman with sandy hair. 
 Her watery, undecided blue eye, her blue-white undecided skin, her 
 irregular, undecided contour, could not prepare the observer for 
 her strident roice and its accent of vinegar. She had a way of 
 turning her eyes towards the object of vision but not her face. 
 Half her solemn watery gaze had in that case to scale the high 
 bony structure of her nose. 
 
 "Well, I m awfully sorry for her for one," said Sue-Salome 
 Hatch. " Libbie and I have always liked Gertie." 
 
 Sue-Salome was a spinster, middle-aged and girlish at the same 
 time. Her method of arranging her hair it was parted in the 
 middle and drawn sleekly back to a hard round knot at the back 
 added to her years ; but the slim trimness of her figure subtracted 
 from them. There was something spaniel-like about her. Her 
 broad-browed, narrow-jawed head was shaped like a spaniel s. Her 
 brown eyes caught on things with the quick intelligence, half- 
 mischief, half-interest, of the spaniel s glance. Her instinctire 
 activity flowed at every move into the spaniel s wriggling swift 
 ness. She was different from the other women in that her air 
 suggested an unappeasable joy in life. 
 
 "Libbie still with her?" Mrs. Wallis asked. 
 
 (< ".k> yes she U be there a week lon ger," Sue-Salome replied. 
 "Libbie says Gertie s as easy to take care of and she loves the 
 baby to death. Well, it is a lovely baby so healthy and good." 
 
 " Well, now, I suppose," Mrs. Drake said regretfully, " Gertie ll 
 go the way Josie Caldwell did." 
 
 Mrs. Drake lay in the compelled quiet of a partial paralysis on 
 a big bed that filled one corner of the chamber. Her invalid 
 presence explained the odour in the air, the unanalysable, intangi 
 ble, inevitable odour of sickness made up of many components- 
 innumerable medicines, perpetual hot water, the staleness of rooms 
 too little aired and carpets too seldom swept. That odour seemed 
 an appropriate emanation of the musty mid-Victorianism which 
 surrounded^her; it was accented by the heat of the August day. 
 The room in which she lay, though a later annex to the colonial 
 main house, had duplicated carefully its fine colonial lines. But 
 its ceiling was stained, its paper discoloured. A faded carpet, 
 over which sprawled Brobdignagian roses, covered the good, wide-
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 11 
 
 boarded, old floor. The black walnut set, painted a glaring blue, 
 concealed with its mammoth massive bulks the airy elegance of 
 the wood-work. The wide old mirror over the mantel would have 
 offered the eye an escape from ugliness if a row of medicine 
 bottles on the high narrow shelf had not balked it. In two 
 directions only lay beauty at the window where the phlox filed, 
 white, pink, lavender, and purple, and through the door where 
 nasturtiums and dahlias herded, orange and gold and crimson. 
 Beyond lay trees massed to a dense greenness; above a stretch of 
 blue sky. 
 
 After many years during which she had lain abed, Mrs. Drake 
 was big and shapeless; hut she was handsomely coloured for a sick 
 woman. Curiously enough, she contrasted to her advantage with 
 the women who sat ?.bout her. Her head supported great coils of 
 hair, the colour of hemp. Her cheeks retained twin-blooms of 
 such a patchy vividness that they stood out like paint. Her eyes, 
 set under dark lashes and brows, were as clear and unwinking 
 as blue glass. Whatever the change in her mood, her colour 
 neither deepened nor lessened, her eyes neither dimmed nor 
 brightened, her brows neither lifted nor folded. When she spoke, 
 only her lips moved. That was why, perhaps, her skin showed 
 a wrinkle nowhere. 
 
 " I must confess it was the greatest surprise to me when Josie 
 Caldwell went wrong," said Sue-Salome. " She was such an 
 independent piece, so top-lofty. I d never have thought it was 
 in her to be bad. Why, when she used to come back from 
 New York with all those beautiful clothes and jewelry, I 
 
 swallowed her stories down as easy as It never entered my 
 
 mind." 
 
 " Well, it entered mine," said Mrs. Wallis with a stinging 
 emphasis. u Sue-Salome, you uster say to me, I can t explain 
 it. I don t understand it. And I uster say to you, Well, I can 
 explain it, s l, perfectly easy, s l, in words of one syllable 
 and all the nouns beginning with capital letters/ s l. It s as 
 plain to me as the nose on your face, s l." 
 
 " Gert says she s going to stay right along in this town," Mrs. 
 Tubman put in, " although she does say it all depends on how 
 they treat her here. If they ain t decent to her and the child, 
 she ll get out. She says she can earn her keep and the baby s 
 keep anywhere." 
 
 " I guess she can too," Mrs. Peters admitted reluctantly. " She s 
 as strong as an ox. She got up yesterday, you know. They tried 
 to keep her in bed but they couldn t. When Dr. Allen came, he
 
 12 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 just laughed. He told me that she and the child were the healthiest 
 specimens he d handled in this town for one while." 
 
 " I d hate to have her leave," Mrs. Tubman said dubiously. 
 " She s the only woman you can get in this town to work. She s 
 neat as wax and you don t have to keep after her. She don t 
 charge all creation either." 
 
 " Yes, she often does up shirt-waists for Southward," Mrs. 
 Drake said placidly. " They look handsome, I tell you." 
 
 Mrs. Wallis bristled. " Well, she won t do anything for me," 
 she declared. 
 
 " She does for Flora sometimes," Mrs. Tubman remarked. 
 
 " Why, Pearl s almost got down on her bended knees to her," 
 Mrs. Wallis went on indignantly. 
 
 " How is Flora ? " Mrs. Drake interposed, turning her head 
 and the conversation in Mrs. Tubman s direction. 
 
 " Oh, very well," Mrs. Tubman returned. " Pretty busy, 
 though." 
 
 " I s pose so," Mrs. Drake commented approvingly. " Sewing 
 all the time, ain t she ? " 
 
 " Pretty much," Mrs. Tubman admitted. " She s awful par 
 ticular. If I didn t watch her, she d hemstitch her dish- 
 towels." 
 
 " The Curtises tickled to death over it, I suppose," Mrs. Drake 
 went on. 
 
 " They seem to be," Mrs. Tubman answered, a subtle suggestion 
 of antagonism in her manner. 
 
 " Well, Esther ll soon be coming along to have beaux," Mrs. 
 Drake said, " and then the twins. Ain t it queer you never had 
 nothing but girls? But I guess you ain t had no time to miss 
 the boys." 
 
 " I guess I ain t," Mrs. Tubman said with conviction. 
 
 " How s Pearl? " Mrs. Drake now directed her unwinking blue- 
 marble gaze at Mrs. Wallis. 
 
 " Oh, very well," Mrs. Wallis answered. 
 
 " She and Lysander going to make a match of it some day ? " 
 Mrs. Drake suggested. 
 
 Mrs. Wallis s hard, malicious mask froze. " I don t know as 
 Pearl would have Lysander," she said smoothly. 
 
 " Well, she could go a long way and not do better," Mrs. Drake 
 said judicially. " Lysander is a likely young feller. I wish 
 Southward had taken a shine to him." 
 
 Mrs. Wallis bit her lips perhaps to prevent words from snapping 
 out of them.
 
 THE LADY -0$ KINGDOMS 13 
 
 "Pearl s an all-fired smart girl," Mrs. Drake went on, "but, 
 land, all your children are smart six of them. Lord, what a 
 tableful ! " 
 
 " You d think so if you had to do the cooking," Mrs. Wallis 
 said with an appearance of impersonal indignation. 
 
 " I suppose Pinkie and Thode Snow are still keeping company." 
 Mrs. Drake turned to Mrs. Peters. 
 
 " Well, he s there every night if that s what you mean," Mrs. 
 Peters answered, looking over her nose at her interlocutor. 
 
 " Pinkie s a nice pretty girl," Mrs. Drake said heartily. " They re 
 all pretty girls. I d admire some night to go to the Library and 
 see them dancing those new dances. I guess 
 
 " Excuse me, Mis Drake," interrupted Mrs. Wallis, " but there s 
 a carriage just stopped outside drove up the South Lane. Was 
 you expecting any company ? " 
 
 At once conversation ceased. The four visitors turned in their 
 seats and craned towards the window. 
 
 " No," Mrs. Drake said placidly. " I wasn t. It s probably 
 Southward." 
 
 "Oh," exclaimed Mrs. Wallis in surprised tone. "That so? I 
 didn t think she was coming until next week. Yes, it s- Southward 
 gitting out." 
 
 " I m glad she s come," Mrs. Drake said in a relieved tone. " I 
 certainly do miss Southward when she goes anywhere." 
 
 The other women did not speak, but a wave of uneasiness rolled 
 through the room. They straightened themselves in their chairs, 
 rearranged the folds of their skirts, patted their hair into place, 
 stole surreptitious glances into near-by reflecting surfaces. Warn 
 ings shot from eye to eye. 
 
 The sound of footsteps, rapid and light on the stones outside, 
 came through the open door. In an instant there started the 
 joyous barking of a pair of dogs. The footsteps stopped an 
 instant. A voice clear, decided, boyish in effect called, " Hullo, 
 Buff! Hullo, Maida ! Down, boy! Down, girl! Down, I say! 
 Yes, I know you re glad to see me. What did I say? I said 
 DOWN ! " The voice went on. 
 
 " You never saw how crazy those dogs are about Southward ! " 
 Mrs. Drake commented admiringly. " They love her just the way 
 they love a man. Gen ally they re fonder of men-folks. But land, 
 I don t wonder they take to her so. She loves them and they 
 sense it. There ain t nothing so knowing as a critter. Southward 
 washes them and feeds them when they re sick. I ve known her 
 to sit up all night with a dying dog. All the critters take to her.
 
 14 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 I tell her sometimes she s a critter herself. My sister Sabry was 
 clever with animals too she was allus making of them." 
 
 No one of her four guests made answer. Obviously they did 
 not hear. Obviously they were watching, waiting, though furtively. 
 Outside the voice went on, talking to the dogs. Inside Mrs. Drake 
 took up her comment again. 
 
 " But then again, Southward s just like a man in a lot of ways. 
 When old Bess came to git so old and helpless that we had to help 
 lift her onto her feet when she d laid down, and crying all the 
 time, Nathaniel wouldn t kill her well, Southward, she took 
 her out in the woods and shot her and buried her. Didn t come 
 home for hours though. Land, she ain t no more afraid of a 
 gun! Used to practise out behind the house with a pistol until 
 she could shoot just as good as a man." 
 
 Again nobody spoke. Mrs. Drake s monologue tapered to silence. 
 Outside the barking had stopped. The voice stopped. The quick 
 light footsteps started again, came nearer. A girl s form, ath 
 letically slim, outlined itself against the screen. A girl s hand, 
 slimly brown, came to the knob. The door opened quickly, letting 
 in a wave of hot air, loaded with the smell, acrid and penetrating, 
 of box with other odours, spicy and sweet, of mid-summer flowers. 
 The door shut hard; the phlox at the window nodded with the 
 concussion. 
 
 The girl, carrying a suit-case, stepped into the room. She was 
 dark, vivid, handsome, at that instant brilliantly smiling. She 
 stopped short. 
 
 " Well, hullo ! " Her voice rang, but with surprise rather than 
 pleasure. " Good afternoon, ladies." She set the suit-case down. 
 Her brilliant smile faded to a composed impassivity. " This is a 
 regular party, isn t it ? Hullo, grandmother 1 " she darted to the 
 bed and kissed Mrs. Drake. " Hullo, Sue-Salome." She drew 
 off a loose pongee coat, threw it over the chair, drew a pin from 
 her trim Panama hat, swept off the hat, stabbed it with a quick, 
 clean stroke of the pin, tossed it on a table half-way across the 
 room ; drew off her long chamois gloves, tossed them with absolute 
 accuracy after the hat; all this seemed one motion. Then she 
 turned to the mirror and, admirably quiet, stood tucking stray 
 locks into a main mass of sleek, straight, blue-black hair that, 
 confined by a net, followed the outline of her head as close as 
 a helmet. She talked busily all the time. 
 
 " My eye but it s hot ! And the dust ! Knee-deep on the road 
 to the station. I ve eaten my pint of dirt to-day." 
 
 Her grandmother s guests responded with subdued murmurs of
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 15 
 
 greeting which were immediately evaporated into silence by her 
 own airy monologue. " Lysander bring you, Southward?" Mrs. 
 Wallis managed to drag out of the confusion. 
 
 " Yes," Southward answered, in a tone whose casual languor 
 was more non-committal than a direct snub. " Everything been 
 all right, grandmother?" She darted to the bed again and leaned 
 over Mrs. Drake, smiling affectionately down on her. 
 
 " Yes cept I missed you dreadfully," Mrs. Drake answered. 
 
 Southward patted her cheek, turned away. 
 
 In repose, she was like a leashed dog; her slim body seemed to 
 thrill and vibrate. In motion, she was quicksilver; she accom 
 plished everything with the minimum of effort and the maximum 
 of speed and noise. At all times, energy and vitality seemed to 
 pour from her. And now, gradually, she flooded the whole room 
 with the tingling emanation of her spirit. The dull, dead air 
 became high-coloured, illuminate, electrified. 
 
 The four guests, hostile but fascinated, followed every move. 
 
 " How are the Oldtown folks, Southward ? " Mrs. Tubman asked. 
 
 " All right. Same as usual," Southward answered carelessly. 
 
 "Hear about Gert Beebee before you left, Southward?" Mrs. 
 Peters questioned. 
 
 " Oh, yes." Southward paused in a dash to the dining-room. 
 " Boy, was it? Or was it a girl? " 
 
 " Boy," Mrs. Peters responded. 
 
 " How is Gert ? " Southward inquired. 
 
 " All right/ Mrs. Peters answered. " Not a word out of her 
 yet though about the father. And nobody can make her tell. 
 Why don t you see if you can get her to talk, Southward ? " 
 
 " Because I don t think it s any of my business," Southward 
 replied coolly. " If Gert wants to tell us, why it s all right. If not, 
 it s none of our affair. It s all up to her." 
 
 " Why, Southward, I don t agree with you at all," Mrs. Wallis 
 said with quiet renom. " It ain t proper that such things should 
 be going on in this town, and us not knowing about it and not 
 doing anything about it." 
 
 " Well, they seem to have been going on for many years," South 
 ward answered with composure, " considering the illegitimate brats 
 here. How are you to prevent it? Chaperone every girl in 
 Shaynef ord or ask Shaynef ord people to live in glass house- ? " 
 
 " You know that ain t what I mean, Southward," Mrs. Wallis 
 said. " If we knew who the man was, we could make i t hot for 
 him. We might even prevail on him to marry her." 
 
 " Perhaps Gert doesn t want him to marry her," Southward said,
 
 16 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 a glimmer of mirth in her dark eyes. " If it s one of those men 
 we d be most likely to suspect, perhaps she d rather sidestep it. 
 I m sure I would. As it is now, Gert ll only have the baby and 
 herself to support. If she married any of the Shayneford loafers, 
 why she d have him to support in addition. No, I think you can 
 depend on Gert to run her own affairs. She s no fool. For my 
 part, I don t think it was a Shayneford man. I give Gert credit 
 for better taste." 
 
 There was an interval of tense silence. Mrs. Drake, placidly 
 oblivious of the social crisis, awaited the next remark. Southward, 
 moving swiftly about, putting her things away, straightening the 
 room here and there, whistled through her teeth as though she 
 were alone. 
 
 " You going to the bazaar, Southward ? " Mrs. Peters asked 
 finally. 
 
 " Yes. Libbie asked me to take a table and I said I would. 
 No, it s the fishing-pond come to think of it." 
 
 " Well, girls," Mrs. Wallis said. " I ve got to be going. It 
 must be after five. What train d you get, Southward? The 
 three?" 
 
 " Yes." Southward consulted a little wrist-watch. " It s half- 
 past five," she said. 
 
 " Mercy me," Mrs. Tubman exclaimed. Her roving eye sent a 
 scuttling glance about the room and her dull eye grew opaque. " 7 
 hope Flora s remembered to put some water on to boil. Well, 
 I must be going." 
 
 This sentiment was promptly re-echoed by the other four. They 
 collected hats and wraps. They said cordial good-byes to Mrs. 
 Drake and reserved ones to Southward. Southward held the 
 screen-door open for them. They retreated down the path between 
 the dahlias and the nasturtiums, emitting a cautious comment 
 now and then. As they turned into South Lane and disappeared 
 under the tunnel of its trees, conversation broke with a gush. 
 
 " Cats ! " Southward commented cheerfully, turning to her grand 
 mother. 
 
 " Southward," Mrs. Drake said seriously, " sometimes I don t 
 think Mis Wallis likes you." 
 
 Southward laughed. " LiJces t me, grandmother. She hates me. 
 They all do. Any one of them would boil me alive. They re 
 having the time of their life now, ripping me up the back all 
 except Sue-Salome of course. I m so glad I happened to have my 
 new waist on. It will give them something to start with." 
 
 Mrs. Drake s eyes moved appraisingly over Southward s slim
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 17 
 
 figure. Her gaze dwelt on the new waist with appreciation of the 
 workmanship, with dissatisfaction as she noted the elaboration of 
 tucks and insertion. 
 
 " Get that in Oldtown ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes," Southward answered, " they had a sale at the hotel a 
 New York firm. How do you like it ? " 
 
 " It ll be hard to do up," Mrs. Drake commented. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it will," Southward agreed indifferently, " but 
 you know, grandmother, I never object to ironing my own waists." 
 
 " Hullo, Southward ! " a voice interrupted from the other room. 
 It was a man s voice. Steadily advancing, it continued : " I saw 
 you drive up but I wouldn t come in as long as the women-folks 
 were having their pow-wow. Such a cackling! I couldn t 
 hear myself think ! I too c the noospapers and went into the 
 parlour." 
 
 The owner of the voice appeared in the doorway and stood there 
 smiling sardonically. He was old. He was striking. Once he 
 must have been tall. Once he must have been enormous. Now 
 his figure was bent almost double with continual cramp. Yet 
 broken as he was, he seemed a gorilla for strength and he was 
 still handsome. He looked Southward s kin. 
 
 Southward ran to meet him, kissed him affectionately. " It was 
 a specially successful session, Cap n, as far as I could gather. 
 They were pulling poor Gert Beebee to pieces." 
 
 Mr. Drake emitted a short ironic laugh. " It ll kill Sarah Wallis 
 if she don t find out who the man is soon. She never came up 
 against such a proposition as this. Why, I remember " 
 
 " Hullo, Southward ! " another voice interrupted from the other 
 room. 
 
 " Hullo, Charlotte ! " Southward answered. 
 
 " Dinner s ready ! " the voice went on. It was a woman s voice 
 and it was retreating. 
 
 Still talking busily with her grandfather, Southward followed 
 the voice into the dining-room, sat down with him at a table 
 laid for three. " I thought I d get you in here," the voice con 
 tinued, " and then I d dish out the corn, so s to be sure to have 
 it served hot. Got hot biscuits," it added. 
 
 " You re a darling, Charlotte," Southward answered, in a voice 
 uncharacteristically warm and tender. " I hope you calculated on 
 my appetite, coming from Oldtown. Six ears of corn and a dozen 
 hot biscuits at least, I should say." 
 
 " Oh, I callulated," the voice replied. " Here we be ! " it added 
 in another instant. Its owner appeared in the kitchen doorway,
 
 18 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 a dish of hot corn steaming in one hand and a dish of hot biscuits 
 steaming in the other. 
 
 She was a tall, flat woman blackly dark. It was apparent that 
 she was blind or nearly so; the stigmata of her malady made 
 smoky blurs over her bulging, black, beetle-like eyes. 
 
 She walked with extraordinary straightness and precision con 
 sidering her blindness. Now, with the same accuracy, she put 
 down the two dishes, pulled the third chair from the table, and 
 seated herself. Southward kissed her cheek. 
 
 Mr. Drake reached across the table and helped himself to an 
 ear of corn. He slapped a square of butter on it, salted it, and 
 began to gnaw. " There are two young fellows come down here 
 since you went away, Southward," he said. " Camping other 
 side of Long Pond." 
 
 " Are there ? " Southward asked languidly. She helped herself 
 to the corn, but although she ate from the cob, she handed it 
 delicately, as though it were blown glass. 
 
 " Yes got here Saturday night using the Snow camp put up 
 two tents expecting two more fellows later don t know what they 
 need so many places for, though." Mr. Drake s chawings made 
 dashes between his phrases. " One big tent and one small one 
 Lysander helped them get settled pretty ship-shape over there 
 now Lysander was saying. Going to stay a month." 
 
 " A month," Southward repeated languidly. " Curious Lysander 
 didn t mention it to me. Come to think of it though, I talked 
 all the time." In spite of her boast of an appetite, her move 
 ments were uninterested. Occasionally she buttered and salted 
 her corn with her characteristic clean precision of movement. 
 But every time she glanced at her grandfather, who chewed audibly 
 and visibly, a vertical frown drew her brows to level black lines. 
 Immediately she would straighten, would adjust her corn-cob to 
 even greater delicacy of position. Her fingers spread over its end 
 like the pink-tipped tendrils of a vine, but they held it tight. 
 She nibbled prettily. 
 
 It was extraordinary how much alike they were as they sat 
 there Southward and her grandfather despite the difference in 
 their ages. Southward s clean-cut, hawk-like profile was not more 
 regular than her grandfather s, although she was twenty-five and 
 he seventy-five; nor was his more vigorous than hers, although 
 he was a man and she a woman. His profile sank soon into the 
 volume of his long, white, cleanly-flowing beard. The boldly- 
 chiselled nose predicated in his case a masculine translation of 
 the delicious squareness of Southward s lower lip, the virile square-
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 19 
 
 ness of her chin. And Southward s brow, from which the thick 
 black hair swept cleanly away, seemed to promise a duplicate under 
 the long white locks that covered Mr. Drake s temples. The 
 fire of a youthful enthusiasm glowed in both pairs of eyes; and 
 although his were blue and hers black, they had the same straight- 
 lashed directness of gaze, the same wide-open clarity. Mr. Drake 
 was an arresting old man and Southward was a compelling young 
 woman. But Southward s figure was comely. In addition she 
 was brilliantly-coloured in the tints of youth and summer. 
 
 It was an hour when, to the most sensitive perception, Long 
 Lanes must seem charged with a tragic melancholy. The sun was 
 rolling rapidly down the sky into the woods in front. Its light 
 flooded through the windows and doors. But it was not bright, 
 it was light that would soon become shadow. It gathered in 
 blood-coloured pools under the furniture, fell in blood-coloured 
 spots on the table, spattered in blood-coloured splotches upon the 
 wall. It set ruby patches in Nathaniel Drake s white hair and 
 beard. It burnished Southward s jet-coloured hair; it seemed to 
 bring out in it underlying ripples of red. It added to the 
 melancholy that in this fiery glow the rooms showed all the 
 ravages of careless housekeeping. 
 
 " Bring in some more corn, Charlotte." Mr. Drake took 
 the last ear on the plate. " Yes, Lysander was saying one of 
 them fellers is named Cameron and the other Smith. Lysander 
 didn t know their first names. I ll find out in the Post Office 
 to-night. But of course you ll get to know them. Then I s pose 
 they ll all be orer here, underfoot from morning till night." 
 
 Southward did not reply. But an amused smile rippled her 
 brilliant lips, glimmered in the depths of her blue-and-black eyes. 
 
 " Sue-Salome was saying to-day that they d come from New 
 York City." Charlotte emerged from the kitchen with another 
 dish of corn, steaming between her hands. 
 
 "New York!" Southward repeated electrically. She dropped 
 her corn, put down her napkin, and pushed away from the table, 
 all in one movement. She stared off into the distance. The other 
 two went on audibly gnawing. 
 
 After a moment, Mr. Drake answered the question in her voice. 
 " Yes, they re all from New York, Lysander said. Sort of high 
 brows too." Southward made no comment. He went on talking 
 with Charlotte, rehearsing other Shayneford gossip and making 
 his own shrewd comments thereupon. From time to time, Char 
 lotte inserted a remark or asked a question. Southward answered 
 at random the queries they put to her.
 
 20 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Presently she arose from the table and went to the window. 
 She leaned her head against one hand and drummed on the glass 
 with the other. Charlotte s face puckered sensitively under the 
 nervous irritation of this noise. But it was evident that South 
 ward herself did not hear it. Her eyes looked straight ahead to 
 the point where the sun blared in a sheet of red flame through 
 the pines. And it was evident that she did not see that. The 
 glare hurt her eyes as little as the noise her ears. Her face 
 had changed. Under its cool boyish insouciance, something 
 stirred an emotion stronger than mere interest something more 
 intense, alert, almost predatory. 
 
 " Come in and talk with grandmother," she said when Mr. Drake 
 had finished his supper. 
 
 " Oh, that reminds me," said Charlotte. " Sue-Salome wanted 
 I should tell you that Hester Crowell was coming over to-night. 
 How d she know you d be at home ? " 
 
 " I wrote her," Southward answered over her shoulder. With 
 a return of her characteristic buoyant air, she followed her grand 
 father s painful hobble through the parlour into the chamber. 
 
 " How d the corn taste, mother?" Mr. Drake inquired. 
 
 " It tasted moreish, Nathaniel," Mrs. Drake replied. " What s 
 Hester coming over for? " she asked Southward. 
 
 " Oh, nothing in particular," Southward asserted indifferently. 
 " Just to talk." 
 
 " Mis Crowell busy as usual, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I suppose so, grandmother," Southward responded, a little im 
 patience in her voice now. " Of course I haven t seen anybody in 
 Shayneford for a week." 
 
 " Of course," Mrs. Drake agreed with her customary placidity. 
 " She s a smart woman, Mis Crowell," she said admiringly. 
 
 " Yes, and a terrible one," Southward added with a sudden 
 fierceness. " I hate her. She makes Hester s life a hell, I tell 
 you." 
 
 Charlotte came into the room at this moment, carrying a lamp. 
 She made a straight line for the table, placed it accurately in 
 the centre, turned the wick slowly up. For an instant the strong 
 glare changed her face to a putty mask with holes for shadows. 
 Then as though by instinct, she turned it down to a steady glow. 
 Her face became human again. The grotesque shadows in the 
 corners of the big room scurried up the walls to the ceiling, 
 vanished in the final flood of steady light. 
 
 The three elders engaged in a conversation from which Mr. 
 Drake gradually retreated to his paper. Southward remained
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 21 
 
 silent. Her eyes wandered. From where she sat she could get 
 a glimpse of half of the lower floor of the big house. 
 
 First came the chamber where lingered always the semi-fetid 
 odour of sickness lapsing by imperceptible degrees to death. Beyond 
 and at one side stretched the parlour, frigid as a tomb even in 
 that hot August weather. Furnished in the taste of the present 
 Mrs. Drake, it displayed a set of black walnut and haircloth as 
 shiny as the day on which it was bought, mortuary wreaths of 
 waxed flowers or hair, stuffed birds under glass bells, crocheted 
 tidies. The fire-place, which would have given even that tomb-like 
 cube a soul, had been sealed with a sheet of iron painted black 
 on which had been pasted many gay-coloured embossed pictures. 
 From the wall, two engravings, " Kock of Ages " and " From 
 Shore to Shore," breathed, by their cruel and untimely warning, 
 an extra element of melancholy into the sepulchral atmosphere. 
 A centre-table, covered with a red woollen cloth, ornamented with 
 stamped figures, bore a huge Bible surrounded by other books of 
 a religious character. Even the type of its literature added to 
 the gloom. 
 
 The mantel, noble in itself, many tables of a depressing modern 
 tawdriness, a what-not, quaintly mid-Victorian, were laden with 
 objects that were the accumulation of Mrs. Drake s lifetime a 
 collection from which nothing had ever been rejected and in which 
 anything that had ever been broken had been carefully mended 
 and the cracked side concealed; vases filled with pampas-grass 
 and cat-o -nine-tails ; faded sea-fans, huge shells, prettily pink- 
 lipped or pearly or iridescent, or hideously horned or spiked or 
 spotted; the trophies in globes and bottles from glass-blowers 
 exhibitions; the apple stuck with clove; the melancholy gift-books 
 of which the gilt lettering was fading, the worn photograph albums 
 of which no clasp clutched and all the backs were breaking; the 
 piles of daguerreotypes; the faded photographs; the stark tin 
 types ; the futile litter of " hand-painted " things. Immeasurably 
 that welter of uncorrelated ugly detail increased the unlivable 
 quality of the room. 
 
 Next came the dining-room with its jig-sawed oak set, the 
 spindly joggly slant-top desk, the high, ungainly over-decorated 
 and over-mirrored sideboard, the oak table and chairs tortured 
 with unnecessary ornament, the bad modern china, pale and 
 anaemic in colouring, the cabinet of meagre cut glass, the supper 
 growing cold on the blue and red cloth; and on each wall, placed 
 in a centre mathematically accurate, a picture of a ship com 
 manded by one of Southward s sea-going ancestry.
 
 22 
 
 Southward s eyes went from the things to the people; a trio 
 quite as depressingly battered; her grandmother s moveless bulk, 
 her grandfather s crippled age, Charlotte s blank melancholy. The 
 alert keen look still slightly predatory died in her face. The 
 blue and black shimmer went out of her eyes, the ripple vanished 
 from her brilliant lips. Her foot began to tap the floor slowly, 
 quickly, quicker and even more quick. Suddenly she jumped to 
 her feet, lighted a candle. 
 
 " Tell Hester to come right up into the garret, grandmother," 
 she said and she seemed by main force to be holding some savage 
 emotion out of her voice. 
 
 Seizing her suit-case, she hurried out into the hall, turned and 
 went racing up the stairs. One long broad flight, bounded by a 
 balustrade with white banisters and a mahogany rail, brought her 
 into a square hall from whose walls the painted eyes of many 
 Drakes stared down at her. Another flight, perceptibly narrower 
 but like the other, marked by a colonial beauty, brought her to a 
 small hall. A third flight, boxed in by walls and plainly utilitarian, 
 led indisputably to the garret.
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 IN the light that came from the windows, the outlines of the 
 garret showed clear. It covered the entire square of the original 
 house, the railed opening breaking through the floor at one end. 
 At a height of a few feet, the walls merged with the roof, ran 
 at a gentle angle up to the peak. The windows looking out under 
 heavy eaves were broad and low; they came nearly to the floor. 
 
 Southward dropped the suit-case. She moved over to the table, 
 fumbled there an instant until she found a match. Shielding the 
 flame with one hand and constantly renewing it, she lighted an 
 astral lamp on the table, crystal lamps at opposite ends of the 
 table, brass candles at intervals between. It was strange, coming 
 from the stiffness and dinginess and mustiness of downstairs, 
 that she did not gasp. For in the light of the first lamp, the 
 room began to bloom with soft colour; at each extra illumination, 
 it unfolded petals of a deeper tinting until, in the united blaze, 
 it flared like a monstrous exotic flower. About her, in background 
 and furnishings, lay a wild vivid melange of Orient and Occident, 
 antiquity and modernity, subtle perturbing colour, classic, tran- 
 quillising form. 
 
 The walls and roof it gave a curious parilion-like aspect to 
 the place were draped in a thin, crepy, lustreless material. 
 Shaded in tint, it must originally have run all the changes from 
 a dim pink through luminous yellows and glowing oranges ; now it 
 was faded and blurred and sheened to a blend of all these hues. 
 Superimposed on this background everywhere was more colour 
 pure colour deep colour and deeper Chinese stuffs coats, 
 skirts, formless pieces of drapery. Over the arms of the graceful 
 Sheraton couch which filled one corner they lay; over the chaise- 
 longue which protruded at right angles from the wall; over the 
 backs of chairs of bamboo intricately braided, of mahogany deli 
 cately inlaid, of teak boldly carved. Torn and old, they still 
 rioted in unbelievable discords of contrasted colour, they still 
 united in incredible harmonies of toned shades, they still preserved 
 the high lights of gold embroideries. Above, wherever jutting 
 joists or protruding beams offered a resting-place dead white 
 against the faded rose of their background stood nude Greek 
 
 23
 
 24 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 figures, statuette-size in plaster. On the top of the slant-topped 
 maple desk dead white against a panel of black velvet marched 
 a procession of Tanagra figurines. And on the walls between, 
 pinned up everywhere with thumb-tacks, were pictures of the 
 nude in colour, in black and white, in photogravure, cut from the 
 magazines. 
 
 A strong breeze was coming in the east window; it rattled the 
 papers on the big central table. Southward shut the windows. 
 She drew on one of the Chinese robes. It was a prince s coat of 
 tomato-coloured satin, the seven-toed dragon brilliantly outlined 
 over the breast, the bottom deeply edged with the rainbow-wave 
 pattern. It fitted perfectly the long-lined hiplessness, the low- 
 busted flatness of her boyish figure. The dark sleeves, although 
 they flared at the wrists, clung tightly to her slim arms. 
 
 Sitting on the couch for an interval of unaccustomed stillness, 
 Southward s eyes wandered vacantly about the garret. They fell 
 finally on the suit-case in the middle of the room. Leaping up 
 immediately, she pounced on it, snapped it open. On the top 
 were her clothes; these she threw ruthlessly about, rummaging. 
 Underneath came bundles, writing-paper, a magazine, a book 
 last of all a revolver. These she placed on the table. Then walking 
 back and forth the width of the garret she put the other things 
 away. Some went into the drawers of an old sideboard of 
 mahogany, gracefully inlaid, studded with gleaming, lambent 
 brasses. Others disappeared in a high secretary in Chinese Chip 
 pendale, coloured scarlet and covered with painted scenes. Over 
 the sideboard stretched a long wide mirror, divided into three 
 parts by a frame of gold. Beside the secretary hung a high narrow 
 mirror divided into two parts by a frame of mahogany. Their 
 dimmed surfaces kept passing Southward s reflection from one to 
 the other until there stretched into an infinity of distance count 
 less duplications of the brilliant red-and-gold figure. The empty 
 garret seemed to be besieged by files of Chinese princes. 
 
 The centre-table supported a staggering weight of books, maga 
 zines, papers On it an old writing-box of inlaid maple lay open, 
 paper, envelopes, blotters tossing out. To this confusion one 
 corner of which she cleared with a single ruthless sweep of her 
 arm Southward added a slim glass decanter, half-filled with 
 wine, two slim glasses of old cut which she brought from the 
 sideboard. From an old card-table which stood, one leaf up, against 
 the wall, she transferred to the table a big box of cigarettes. 
 
 This done, she returned to the couch, settled herself to another 
 period of stillness. Her eyes, roving from spot to spot in the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 25 
 
 garret, gradually grew intense, preoccupied, predatory. With an 
 other sudden movement, swift and direct as an eagle winging from 
 peak to peak, she darted to the east window. She had to kneel to 
 look out. 
 
 Just below sprawled a big-stemmed vine. Beyond, surged star- 
 pricked distance and darkness impenetrable. Southward arose, 
 sighed impatiently. She walked back and forth the length of 
 the garret a dozen times. Stopping half-way across the room, she 
 turned abruptly to the secretary, took out Jules Verne s A Journey 
 to the Centre of the Earth. She threw herself down on the day- 
 couch. Moving a candle close to her head, she opened the book 
 at random and began to read. At first the leaves turned quickly, 
 but after a while they moved slower and slower until they ceased 
 to turn at all. The book fell from her hands to the cushions. 
 Her hands went up to the back of her head, clasped there. Her 
 eyes set themselves on space; the keen alert look returned to them. 
 She meditated without stirring. 
 
 Suddenly she jumped to her feet, listened. Something was hap 
 pening downstairs. That faint indescribable stir which heralds 
 arrival came soundlessly wafted to the garret. Another moment 
 brought the noise of footsteps on the stairs. Another and a head 
 appeared in the stair-opening a head piled with great braided 
 masses of vivid golden hair a long white neck shoulders that 
 sloped and stooped. 
 
 The head lifted turned
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 
 " Ave, lady of kingdoms!" the girl exclaimed, coming forward. 
 The light caught her, made a glory of her hair, revealed a face 
 disappointingly colourless and characterless. 
 
 " Ave, lady of kingdoms ! " Southward answered, falling back 
 against the cushions, " I m glad to see you. There s nobody like 
 you anywhere, Hetter." 
 
 " You re the only one that feels that way, Southward," said 
 Hester Crowell. She stopped suddenly and gazed about her. 
 " Candles ! " she exclaimed melodramatically. " Tear down the 
 walls for What does this mean ? " 
 
 " Only celebration of reunion." Southward s hands clasped be 
 hind her head again; a glimmer of mirth came into her eyes. 
 " And perhaps a little a very little anticipation of conquest." 
 
 " Oh, the New York men," Hester said. " I might have gath 
 ered." 
 
 " Yes. Tell me about them. I ve been asleep at the switch. 
 I didn t even know they were here." 
 
 Before replying, Hester pulled from her hair a half a dozen 
 hairpins, long, curved, heavy of silver. A thick braid of hair 
 that covered the entire back of her head slid down over her shoulder 
 past her waist until it touched the hem of her gown. Before she 
 seated herself, she drew over her faded, shapeless muslin dress the 
 Chinese coat that lay over the chaise-longue. It was a soft thin 
 silk; originally an acid lemon in colour, it had toned to a pearly 
 softness. Bands of embroidery in peacock blues and greens 
 trimmed the edges; and these were set with a decoration of tiny 
 mirrors. The mirrors winked in the candle-light. 
 
 "It s a long story." Hester seated herself at the centre-table. 
 Her elbow parted the papers there. She started, suppressed a 
 scream, jumped to her feet. "Is that thing loaded, Southward?" 
 she demanded. 
 
 " Oh, you coward ! " Southward answered with amused disdain. 
 " Of course it is. What good is it not loaded ? " 
 
 She arose languidly and put the revolver into one of the 
 drawers of the secretary. 
 
 " I don t see why you keep it round," Hester protested, " espe 
 cially loaded." 
 
 26
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 27 
 
 " There s no danger, Hetter," Southward reassured her. " No 
 body s ever been in this garret since we fixed it up but you. And 
 I repeat that s what I want a gun for to be ready when I need 
 it." Eeturning to the table, she poured the slim glasses half-full 
 of wine. She handed one to Hester, took one herself. They lifted 
 them. And suddenly they broke into a rhythmic chant: 
 
 To see the world! 
 To live our lives! 
 
 Not to submit to the tyranny of things. 
 
 To be friends, yet never to ask questions and to leave each other 
 free. 
 
 It was as though they had performed this ritual a thousand 
 times. They made no comment on it; only drank. 
 
 Southward handed the cigarettes to Hester, lighted a match, 
 held that out to Hester, lighted her own cigarette, shook out the 
 match in four vigorous movements. Then she returned to the 
 chaise-longue. Seating herself cross-legged upon it, she began 
 to send volleys of smoke-rings across the room. She smoked with 
 the insouciante efficiency that marked all her movements, inhaling 
 deeply and without effort. But Hester seemed more an amateur. 
 She drew on her cigarette too frequently and before she could have 
 tasted it, emitted the smoke in hurried gasps. She talked but it 
 was evident all the time that she was conscious of the firebrand 
 that hung between her slender forefinger and thumb. 
 
 " Did you have a good time in Oldtown ? " Hester asked. 
 
 Southward makes an impatient gesture. " So-so, Hetter. I ll 
 talk about that later. Tell me about the New York men." 
 
 " There are four of them," Hester began promptly as though 
 primed for this question. " At least there were. Two of them 
 have gone for a tramp. I ll begin with those still here. Number 
 one, Dwight Cameron. I haven t seen him, but they say he s very 
 handsome, very athletic, very gay, very charming. How does that 
 sound?" , 
 
 " Sounds pretty good to me," Southward answered. " Go on ! " 
 
 " Number two believe it or not John Smith," continued 
 Hester. 
 
 Southward laughed. " I ve always thought I would like to 
 meet John Smith. Take it from me, he s an average kind of 
 person." 
 
 " They say not in this case," Hester went on. " He s quieter 
 than Mr. Cameron but exceedingly interesting and courteous.
 
 28 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Number three is or was he s one of the two that went off on 
 the walking-trip Morena O Keilly, half Irish and half Spanish 
 war-correspondent globe-trotter so handsome that it hurts, and 
 an awful flirt. What do you say to that? " 
 
 " Embarras de richesse is wot I say," responded Southward. She 
 picked out another cigarette, lighted it at the stub of the first, 
 poked out the stub, leaned back on the couch whirling smoke-rings. 
 " Lead me to it. Who s he been flirting with ? " 
 
 " Oh, all the girls they don t know him yet but they say that 
 Pearl, Pinkie, Flora, Lydia, Mercy." 
 
 " I ll have to put a stop to that at once," said Southward, a 
 glimmer coming between her eye-lashes. 
 
 " I knew you would." Hester laughed. 
 
 " Any dope on number four? " Southward asked. 
 
 " A reformer," Hester answered. 
 
 "Doesn t interest me at all," Southward remarked with convic 
 tion and emphasis. 
 
 Hester laughed again. "I guessed that. After all, Southward, 
 you re not very eclectic." 
 
 "Well, I do draw some lines. What s his name?" 
 
 " Ripley Fearing. They call him Kip." 
 
 " Grand name for a reformer," Southward commented. " Almost 
 prejudices me in his favour. Now I wonder which one of the 
 other three it will be?" 
 
 Hester smiled an indulgent smile. " It will probably be all 
 three or four. Mr. Fearing s reformer inclinations won t protect 
 him." 
 
 " Not if I like him," Southward admitted with a ghost of a 
 glimmer. " Four is a very awkward number though. Go on." 
 
 " That s positively all I know," said Hester. " I haven t seen 
 one of them yet." 
 
 "Oh, I d know that!" Southward contemplated her with an 
 amused smile. 
 
 " Now tell me about Oldtown." 
 
 " Oh, it was what it always is. After the first few days, I nearly 
 smothered. Bad as it is here, at least I have this secret place. 
 I can smoke if I want." She looked approvingly about the garret. 
 " I really longed to get back. But when I arrived, all the old 
 cats of Shayneford were here, discussing Gert Beebee. Hester, 
 I give you my word, listening to them made me almost sick. I 
 developed such a grouch combination of discontent and disgust 
 those old women, the illness in the house and the general gone-to- 
 seedness of the whole proposition. I felt ripe for anything. Hester,
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 29 
 
 it s the truth. I can t stand another year of it. I can t. I won t. 
 Something s got to break. Just let s get together and beat it." 
 
 Hester shook her head. " I can t," she said soberly, " al 
 though " She did not finish but she raised her long arms over 
 
 her head in what was unmistakably a passionate gesture of revolt. 
 She dropped them at once. " What did they say about Gert ? " 
 she asked in an even tone. 
 
 " Oh, the regular thing. Tried to set me on to her to find out 
 who the father is. I made short work of that proposition." South 
 ward s eyes glowed with a reminiscent enjoyment of her own 
 causticity. " I told them that if I were Gert, I wouldn t marry 
 any of the crowd who would be likely to want to marry me. Such 
 a shambling, shiftless, degenerate crowd! But then look at the 
 other Shayneford men the men we know King Curtis, Thode 
 Snow, Zoeth Crafts all of them except Lysander. Now could 
 you see one of them as a husband even if he were the best man 
 on earth?" 
 
 Hester shook her head. " It might seem a case of sour grapes 
 for me to say that, although I do say it. But you could have 
 married any one of them." 
 
 " Lysander s the only real man in town," concluded Southward, 
 " and he conies pretty close to filling the bill. But then the girls 
 aren t much better. Pinkie s a fox, Pearl s a cat, and Flora s a 
 cow. How I despise them all ! " She said this with impatience 
 but she added with a distinct sense of enjoyment, " And how they 
 all hate me ! " 
 
 " Well," said Hester, " they ought to. I don t blame them a bit. 
 They want to marry and you ve kept most of them out of matri 
 mony by making a conquest of the only eligible men in town. 
 Then you know, Southward, if one of the men ever makes a move 
 towards one of them, you always yank him back." She surveyed 
 her companion severely. 
 
 Southward laughed. She looked a little shamefaced. 
 
 " Now Pearl, for instance," Hester went on. " She s crazy about 
 Lysander. And I don t suppose Lysander ll ever get over being 
 in love with you. You won t let him." 
 
 " They get over everything sooner or later," Southward remarked 
 cynically. " However, you re wrong there, Hetter. I ve always 
 played square with Lysander. I like him too much. I m perfectly 
 square with other men, for that matter. Only sometimes when 
 they start developing a crush, I m not quite so harsh as I might 
 be." 
 
 " You re a devil," Hester remarked. Then as one who has said
 
 30 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 it many times before, " Therefore, hear now this, O Lady of 
 Kingdoms, thou that are given to pleasures, that dwellest care 
 lessly, that sayest in thine own heart, I am and none else beside 
 me. For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, thou hast said 
 None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted 
 thee. " 
 
 " Well," said Southward, her eyes shining with mischief, " at 
 least I get things done, Hetter. And believe me, I shall yet be the 
 one to pull you out of this here Shayneford land of Canaan into 
 that there New York land of Israel. If it weren t for me, you d sit 
 here and mope and moon for the rest of your life, drugging your 
 self with all that dope Plato, Thomas a Kempis, St. Augustine, 
 Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus Emerson. That old-time philosophy 
 isn t getting you anywhere. As for that, I can pull some Lady-of- 
 Kingdoms stuff myself. I read that chapter in Isaiah while I was 
 in Oldtown and I decided that if half of it applies to me, the 
 other half applies to you." She too began to quote : " Thou art 
 wearied in the multitude of thy counsels, O Lady of Kingdoms. 
 Let not the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosti- 
 
 cators " She paused to cast an oblique liquid glance in the 
 
 direction of the book on the table, " Stand up and save thee from 
 these things that shall come upon thee. Behold they shall be as 
 stubble ; the fire shall burn them ; they shall not deliver themselves 
 from the power of the flame ; there shall not be a coal to warm nor 
 fire to stir before it. " 
 
 Hester smiled. " Your prophecies sound good to me, Southward. 
 After all, anything is better than this killing monotony." 
 
 " How is Matt, by the way ? " Southward asked. 
 
 " All right, I guess." 
 
 "I bought him an old book in Oldtown," Southward remarked. 
 " I wish Matt were young. He must have been some man and 
 as he is, at seventy, I like him better than any other man in 
 Shayneford except Lysander." 
 
 " He s a darling," Hester agreed warmly. Then in a meditative 
 tone : " It would be queer if you married Lysander sometime, 
 Southward, wouldn t it ? " 
 
 " Yes. But I won t. Oh, say how is the Bazaar going ? " 
 
 " Like all the rest of them. You re to have the fish-pond and 
 I m to have the cake-counter. All the other girls have agreed to 
 go in costume." 
 
 Southward laughed. " I might have known they would espe 
 cially with the town full-up with New York men." She laughed 
 again a laugh of pure enjoyment with an edge of malice on it.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 31 
 
 "I wouldn t have missed it for a farm down-east. It ll be a 
 scream." 
 
 " Well, they are pretty girls, Southward," Hester interposed. 
 " You must admit that." 
 
 " They would be if they knew how to dress," Southward decided 
 judicially. "But Pearl s got too big a beak; Pink s eyelids are 
 too red. Flora s underlip hangs. There isn t one of them as good 
 looking as Gert Beebee used to be or as smart as Josie Caldwell is 
 now. Josie really has style." 
 
 " It s queer, isn t it," Hester said in a meditative tone, " that 
 the two girls who ve turned out so bad were our favorites? 
 You ve always stood up for Gert and I for Josie. It s very curious 
 about Gert. I didn t expect anything like this of her. She was 
 certainly one of the most promising of the girls we went to 
 grammar-school with. She could beat anybody in the class at 
 mental arithmetic do you remember? Her mind worked like a 
 flash." 
 
 " Oh sure ! " Southward agreed. " But outside of that I 
 mean in play it was always nip and tuck between her and me 
 as to which could climb the highest, run, swim, or skate the 
 fastest. And she was so pretty then ! " 
 
 " Do you remember what a little gipsy she was when we used 
 to go bathing together? She always wore some ragged old dress. 
 Yet how white her skin was and how picturesque she d look! 
 I m sorry for Gert. I m making the baby some little bonnets 
 you know, those handkerchief arrangements." 
 
 " I m sorry too," said Southward. " I bought the baby two 
 little dresses in Oldtown. Of course Gert s lost some of that wild 
 beauty. She s grown big and a little blowsy. But she s a pippin 
 compared with any of the girls of our age who ve been married 
 for five years. Take Aline Allen I saw her in Oldtown you 
 remember what a lovely thing she was ! " 
 
 "Perfectly. When I was a little girl, she was my idea of an 
 angel." 
 
 " I wish you could see her now. She s had five children, and 
 she s had them just as fast as they could come. She looks like 
 a string-bean. All that lovely colour s gone. Her hair is thin 
 and dull. She stoops oh, she s a shipwreck. That s another of 
 my objections to matrimony. See what it does to women. They 
 all get either scrawny and round-shouldered or fat and tubby, lose 
 their hair, teeth, and complexions. Now on the other hand, take 
 Josie Caldwell. They say dreadful things about her and I guess 
 they re true. Yet the last time she came here, she certainly put
 
 32 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 it all over the girls who graduated with her for looks and style. 
 And she used to be such a quiet, colourless, unassertive thing." 
 
 " The other girls have had children too often and have worked 
 too hard between times," Hester said. " That s what marriage 
 must mean for the majority of women, I suppose." 
 
 " Not for mine then," Southward declared flippantly. " Why, 
 Hetter, I can t endure even the thought of marriage ! " 
 
 " Southward," Hester asked suddenly, " how many proposals of 
 marriage have you had?" 
 
 Southward meditated. "I don t know exactly. Let me see. 
 Six or seven I should say. I suppose perhaps I could have had 
 more. But you see, Hetter, I m not really a flirt." And at 
 Hester s smile. " No, I m not. I like conquest and I look upon 
 men as legitimate prey; but I don t let it go as far as a proposal 
 if I can possibly help it. I m too good a sport for that. When 
 it gets down to cases, I make a declaration of independence. And 
 I slip it in just as soon as I can. I m not a marrying woman, 
 I say. I don t want to marry, but I like to flirt. You take care 
 of yourself and I ll take care of myself. A man doesn t interest 
 me at all after I ve got him going. Now we re off. " 
 
 " And what effect does that have on them ? " asked Hester with 
 interest. 
 
 " It s a shame to take the money. But if after that they burn 
 their wings, I don t consider that it s my fault. They do though, 
 and frequently. And the letters they write. That thing, by the 
 way," she waved her hand towards the writing-box on the table, 
 " is full of them. Help yourself." 
 
 Hester pulled the box towards her, lifted the cover. It was 
 filled with packages of letters. "Do you mean to tell me that 
 I can read these if I want? " 
 
 " You can," said Southward. " I ve had no scruples ever since 
 I discovered that one drummer person was in the habit of reading 
 my letters aloud to his friends. Not that there was anything in 
 them that I was ashamed of " 
 
 " Well," said Hester in a hesitating voice, " if you don t care, 
 I don t see why I shouldn t." Her hand went out slowly, withdrew, 
 became a white flutter inside the box. She slipped off the elastic 
 band from a packet of letters. 
 
 For an interval the garret was silent. Southward smoked tran 
 quilly, now and then blowing a volley of rings. 
 
 Suddenly Hester burst into laughter. " Oh, Southward," she 
 exclaimed, " how could you ! " She read on. " Oh, you you 
 you!" she concluded impotently.
 
 THE K&)Y OF KINGDOMS 33 
 
 " Sounds fairly exciting to listen to you," Southward said. 
 " They bored me enough, Heaven knows. When a man takes his 
 pen in hand all except one who never punctuated from beginning 
 to end. That was so entertaining that I was strongly tempted not 
 to throw him down." 
 
 Hester paid no attention. She read on, absorbed. Suddenly she 
 laughed again. " Oh, you wicked " 
 
 " No lady-of -kingdoms stuff ! " Southward ordered. 
 
 Hester was only half listening. There came another interval 
 of reading. " Oh, the idiot ! " 
 
 "Now you re talking!" Southward interpolated lazily. "Who 
 could blame me ? " 
 
 "Would you think that " Hester ejaculated. "What a 
 
 ridiculous A man s an awful fool to " A long pause. 
 
 "Isn t it?" This absently. 
 
 " Guess so," agreed Southward. 
 
 There came another interval of reading. Southward still 
 smoked. 
 
 " Good gracious, Southward ! " Hester said suddenly. She sat 
 bolt upright. " This man is threatening to kill you." 
 
 "Gee!" Southward exclaimed/ For an instant a faint em 
 barrassment filmed the chiselled incisiveness of her look. " I 
 thought I d destroyed that. He was 
 
 " I know that was why you got the revolver." 
 
 " Correct ! " assented Southward. She too sat bolt upright. The 
 embarrassed look went out of her face it became keen, humorous. 
 " Yes, he told me if I wouldn t marry him he d shoot me." 
 
 "What did you say to him?" Hester asked breathlessly. 
 
 " I said, Shoot and be damned ! " 
 
 " Were you afraid ? " 
 
 "Well, I bought the revolver. Lysander got it for me and 
 taught me how to use it. I practised with it every minute that 
 I could until I was a dead shot. Hester, for one year I went 
 everywhere in this town armed." 
 
 " Good Lord! You How d you carry it? " 
 
 " I fixed up a holster inside my shirt-waist. You know how 
 they used to pouch just above the waist. I never went anywhere 
 without it." 
 
 " My goodness, Southward ! " Hester said, " if I d suspected 
 
 that It is rather thrilling, though. Weren t you frightened 
 
 to death?" 
 
 " Well, at first. I had always believed that most people didn t 
 mean it when they threatened to kill but he was a different kind
 
 34 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 of person. He d have done it as quick as a flash, I think, if he 
 could have made up his mind. But he couldn t make up his 
 mind. The queer part of it was that, although he hated me, he 
 still loved me. He couldn t pull the trigger. Then again, another 
 thing helped me. After my first fear died down and I was 
 frightened to death at first, I ll admit that and after the thrill 
 died down and it was thrilling in a way, I ll admit that also 
 the situation actually bored me. I told him that once, and I 
 expected he d shoot me, but he didn t. Sometimes I think that 
 
 was what cured him. But " Southward added a little incon- 
 
 sequently, " I ve always kept the gun. I never go anywhere without 
 it. I took it to Oldtown." 
 
 Hester went back to the letters. But her interest obviously 
 began to diminish. Finally she dropped a long scrawled sheet. 
 " I guess," she concluded, " the flavour soon dies out of a cor 
 respondence addressed to another woman." With a decided move 
 ment, she stacked the letters, snapped the elastic bands about 
 them, replaced them in the box. " Life is a curious thing, isn t 
 it?" she said thoughtfully. "Here we are, you and I, two girls 
 of the same generation, brought up in the same environment, 
 meeting the same people, subject to the same influences 
 and with more than the usual congeniality of temperament. 
 No man ever meets you without being immediately attracted 
 to you not always of course with the feeling of a lover 
 but always with interest. Men see you the moment you come on 
 the scene. You leap out of the landscape into their vision. At 
 twenty-five you ve had half a dozen proposals of marriage and 
 many flirtations which might have run into marriage. At twenty- 
 eight, I not only have never had a proposal, but I have never had 
 a flirtation or anything remotely resembling it. Not only that, 
 but men actually don t see me when they look at me. It is as 
 though I were walking through life without a face. It isn t a 
 matter that s breaking my heart of course. For you know I ve 
 never been crazy about men. They frighten me. But it does 
 interest me to find out the reason why. How do you account for 
 it, Southward?" 
 
 Southward lighted a third cigarette. " Your mother s been 
 quarrelling with you," was all she said. 
 
 Hester did not speak. 
 
 "Was it very bad?" Southward went on. 
 
 Hester suddenly drew her hands from the back of her neck 
 forward over her face. She talked in a muffled tone through them. 
 "It was pretty bad," she admitted.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 35 
 
 " Who started it ? " 
 
 " I don t know exactly. I think probably Flora stirred her up 
 yesterday not intentionally of course. Flora has always fas 
 cinated her. You know Flora s soft placidity." 
 
 " Sure ! " Southward answered. " I know. Cow ! Go on I " 
 
 " Flora s a nice girl," Hester said stanchly. " I m not knocking 
 Flora. She s not original, perhaps, but all there. Well, she talked 
 about her engagement of course, and all the gifts King Curtis s 
 people had sent her. And it maddened mother. Mother was 
 handsome when she was a girl, you know. She s handsome now 
 
 for that matter. And then Bee Mother always had plenty of 
 
 attention. She looks upon attention from men as a sort of sterling 
 mark that proves ladyhood. She seems to think the fact that 
 I ve never had any attention not only reflects on me but in some 
 
 unaccountable way on her. Now in point of fact " Here 
 
 Hester smiled with a real mirth. " I honestly don t mind a bit 
 myself. I don t miss the attentions of men. Men. or at least 
 young men, don t interest me particularly. And so when mother 
 tells me that the reason men don t like me is that I m homely and 
 no style and uninteresting a bump on a log is her favourite 
 expression it really doesn t hurt me as much as she thinks. But 
 last night, she got on a new strain; she reproached me because 
 she was never going to have any grandchildren. Now she never 
 gets a rise out of me on the question of lovers, although I would 
 like to think that for her sake I had refused one or two. But 
 when she struck the maternity question, she hit the raw end of 
 a nerve." 
 
 " What do you mean? " Southward asked directly. 
 
 " Well, I ll tell you." Hester s long slim hands were now clasped 
 on the top of her head. Her eyes fixed themselves on a distance 
 that stretched leagues beyond the walls of the garret. " I guess I m 
 the maternal type. I m a breeder instinctively. I do love children. 
 I would love to have a family a big one. That s the only purpose 
 matrimony serves in my eyes." She paused. " I know you hate 
 the thought of marriage, yourself, Southward, but don t you want 
 to have children sometime? " 
 
 Southward answered immediately and emphatically "No! No, 
 again and again no. You see I look on that proposition this way. 
 Any old female can be a mother and almost any old female is. 
 I think I can do something better. I don t know what it is yet. 
 I haven t had a chance to find out. But I consider that I d be 
 wasted at the maternity job. I m too good for it. And besides 
 look what it does to women, look at the Shayneford girls of our
 
 36 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 age who ve married and had a family. Then, although children 
 amuse me, I don t care for them particularly. And I hate babies. 
 Don t you, Hester?" 
 
 " I adore babies," Hester answered simply. " I worship them. 
 I cannot hear of the birth of a baby to any woman, even Bert 
 Beebee, without a pang of envy. I cannot take a baby into my 
 arms without experiencing a sensation that s positively heavenly, 
 a gush of love and tenderness and protection you know what I 
 mean." She paused and looked inquiringly at Southward. 
 
 No answering gleam lighted Southward s face. She shook her 
 head finally. " No, there s no use pretending. I don t get you." 
 
 " I love children," Hester went on. " I love all children. I 
 don t recognise any artificial differences. Of course I m susceptible 
 at times to the irritations of having them about but not so 
 susceptible, it seems to me, as most mothers that I know." 
 
 " That s because you don t have to have them about," South 
 ward conjectured shrewdly. 
 
 " That s what some mothers tell me," Hester admitted. tf I d 
 like to have the chance to prove it though. But it doesn t make 
 any difference to me whether they re clean or dirty, sick or well, 
 pretty or homely, good or bad. I love them that s all there is to 
 it. And yet I suppose I shall never have a child." Hester said 
 this last in a musing tone as though she had forgotten Southward s 
 presence. " I don t suppose I shall ever get a chance to marry, 
 even if it were one that I could accept." She paused. 
 
 " Pretty tough ! " dropped from Southward involuntarily. 
 
 " I suppose numberless women have married just anybody," 
 Hester mused further, " and put up with loathsome companionship 
 for the sake of maternity. It seems so strange that the birth of 
 children should depend on so many accidental things. It seems 
 that wanting children should be, after health, the first qualification 
 for motherhood. But I suppose that nature has a purpose, that 
 she planned it out ages ago, that everything that seems fortuitous 
 is really the result of a wonderful deep-lying, far-reaching system. 
 But it is a puzzle. Take me for instance. I m as good 
 a human being surely as Flora Tubman. Certainly I am as 
 healthy, more intelligent, though certainly not so pretty and per 
 haps not so good. Yet nature selects her to carry on the race. 
 I wonder in what way that I myself don t realise that I m unfit." 
 
 " Oh, rot ! " Southward interposed vigorously. " The answer 
 is that you re too fine and too lovely and too clever for the gang 
 of bone-heads that you ve always known. If you could meet your 
 kind of man, he d be crazy about you."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 37 
 
 Hester smiled indulgently, as though at the outburst of 
 a child. " Southward," she asked, sobering abruptly, " do you 
 really despise men? You re always saying you do. But do 
 you?" 
 
 Southward s frown drew her straight brows into a perplexed 
 tangle. 
 
 " I do and I don t," she said. " I like their companionship for 
 out-of-door things and I like their talk if they don t get mushy. 
 I like the masculine point of view. Sometimes I feel that 
 intellectually the masculine point of view is necessary to me. And 
 
 yet It s queer when I think of it. Everybody says I m 
 
 heartless. I don t believe I am so dreadfully heartless. 
 I m awfully tender of old people and animals and some women 
 and almost anybody that s sick or in trouble, but I have 
 no mercy whatever as far as men are concerned. I like some of 
 them Lysander for instance but as for men in general, yes, I 
 guess I do despise them." The perplexed frown disappeared in 
 the predatory look which, increased by some sinister emotion, sud 
 denly made a volcano of her smooth young face. " When I think 
 of Charlotte " 
 
 " Yes, I hate them too when I think of Charlotte." Hester s 
 face changed too but it grew tragic, not fierce. 
 
 " When I consider what a price she s paid for You know, 
 
 Hester, I was sixteen when I first heard Charlotte s story. It 
 made a terrible impression on me. I did really hate men for a 
 long time. I made a vow to myself to break as many hearts as I 
 could. Of course I outgrew that idea, but the feeling has never 
 died down that sense of injustice. I suppose that s one reason 
 why I justified myself in flirting the way I do. I feel that no 
 matter what I do, they ve done much worse and done it as a 
 matter of course and never questioned their right. Yes, Char 
 lotte s experience certainly made a difference in my life. For 
 one thing I feel that she s my responsibility as long as I live. 
 For a long time that revelation made the thought of marriage 
 utterly impossible. But of course that isn t my objection to mar 
 riage now. It is that it s such a confining institution for women 
 and " 
 
 " Southward," Hester interrupted suddenly, " I d like to ask 
 you something. Do you ever look the facts of nature in the face? 
 When you think of a future husband, do you see a definite figure 
 what people call an ideal ? I mean do you think of him primarily 
 as a person you have chosen for companionship, or do you think 
 of him primarily only in reference to the marriage relation, or
 
 38 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 do you think of him primarily as a fitting person to beget your 
 children? I mean " 
 
 Abruptly she stopped; for flame, flickering from pink to scarlet, 
 was beating in successive waves over Southward s face. Suddenly 
 Hester blushed too, a thick deep unbecoming flood of crimson. 
 For an instant the two girls stared at each other aghast. For an 
 instant, half-terrified, half-fascinated, they hung over that mys 
 terious abyss which in conversation they had never crossed. Then 
 as, with one accord, they drew back. 
 
 " I never think of marriage except as the basis for a pleasant 
 companionship, Hester," Southward said. " I never consider the 
 matter of children. I never consider the matter of the married 
 relation. To me marriage means merely the provision of a good 
 comrade for the game of life. But even then it isn t necessary 
 to my scheme of things. I m just as well off without it. What 
 ever it is that feeling with which men inflame women so that 
 they must marry whatever it is, I never have it. I m immune. 
 And I m glad of it. You see," she smiled a little, " I m always 
 too interested in the next man to think of marriage. Men appeal 
 to me only on the score of novelty." 
 
 " Marriage to me," Hester explained, " means only a family. 
 I d want to respect my husband; but I can live without love, 
 romance, companionship. I do want a family though. I cannot 
 
 bear to think " She smiled, though palpably with an effort. 
 
 " But I wish I could go to a beauty-doctor and be made lovely for 
 mother s sake. And then if I could gather in one little scalp, 
 not for my belt but for hers, it would make for considerable 
 domestic felicity in our wigwam. I pity mother so much when 
 she deplores my lack of looks that I find myself wondering if 
 something couldn t be done about it." 
 
 Hester arose as she spoke and moved over to the mirror. South 
 ward left the couch and joined her. The two girls stood surveying 
 their reflections there, Hester soberly, Southward as though from 
 a new point of view. 
 
 Hester was taller than Southward, and she was more slender. 
 But her slenderness was not really slimness; it was thinness, 
 gauntness. She was blondish. Her face was without colour 
 sallow and freckled. Neither life nor light sparkled in her ex 
 pression. Frequently her gaze lost itself in apathy. She hesitated 
 when she talked, and her walk showed a certain ungraceful 
 unsteadiness. In every possible way she lacked authority. She 
 was not without her good points. Her features were the kind on 
 which personal charm could have written much. Her teeth were
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 39 
 
 white and regular, her hands slim and shapely. And her hair gave 
 her a definite point of beauty. It was not so much hair as flame, 
 not so much flame as blaze. It arose from her head with a singular 
 virility, every hair in rebellion against every other hair, swept 
 like a conflagration from brow to neck. 
 
 Yet these points palliated little. You could not look at Hester 
 without a feeling of dissatisfaction as with an incomplete thing. 
 Physically, she made a few promises, but her personality redeemed 
 none of them. She was blank. 
 
 In contrast, Southward s crisp slimness seemed to take on 
 another element of completeness and compactness; her chiselled 
 clean-cutness another degree of regularity and virility; her 
 brunette colouring to run more emphasisingly to high lights and 
 definite tints. Almost every quality of her figure was boyish. 
 It had a boy s slimness of height, a boy s flatness of width. Its 
 lines were all straight, though springing with life. The breasts 
 alone stirred her waist into faint soft curves. Almost every 
 quality of her face was boyish. It had a boy s squareness of 
 shape, a boy s frankness of expression. Her hair, thick, straight, 
 sleek, ran down into a peak of her forehead and then turning 
 into flat massive bands at her ears, clung so close that it seemed 
 short. It made her head look like a boy s head. Her eyes, melted 
 jet poured into silver, showed through underlying blue gleams 
 a boy s calmness and clarity of gaze. When she thought hard, 
 her brows that were ordinarily arches of perfect beauty drew 
 straight and merged with a vertical frown that held a boy s irri 
 tated perplexity. In any consideration of Southward s face, you 
 must come again and again to her lips. For just as the faint 
 curve of her breasts gave her figure its only air of the maiden, 
 her lips gave her face its single touch of the woman; they were 
 softly turned but full, the colour of raspberries and the texture 
 of pearl. 
 
 Hard Southward was with the hardness of youth, and proud 
 with the pride of personality. And yet you could not look at her 
 without that faint inward stir which leads to a delicious sadness. 
 In the directness of her eyes was the eternal enigma of virginity. 
 An accidental combination a quality of piquancy plus some sub 
 tlety of irregularity united with it to make poignancy. It was 
 a beaute du diable raised to the nth power. 
 
 Hester, her eyes going swiftly from her own face to South 
 ward s, voiced that. Her expression of weariness died; a look of 
 intense admiration warmed in its place. " Oh, Southward ! " she 
 exclaimed, " how I do love to look at you ! There has never been
 
 40 , THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 a moment since I ve known you that I haven t enjoyed your face." 
 Southward examined her own reflection critically. " I m lop- 
 eyed," she said dispassionately. " And one side of my nose isn t 
 like the other. If I could get those two things fixed up, I d 
 qualify. But Hester about you I I well, I don t know how 
 to say it exactly. I m not trying to make out that you re a beauty. 
 But I do say that there are times when you re talking and you re 
 awfully interested in what you re saying that I lore to look at 
 you. I have a feeling that you re the kind of person that it makes 
 all the difference in the world in her looks whether she s happy 
 or not. Not that," she suddenly became ferocious, " you couldn t 
 improve yourself a whale of a lot by taking some interest in your 
 personal appearance. You never get the right clothes as I ve 
 a million times told you. And your hair always looks like the 
 
 devil. But when you re happy " 
 
 " Oh, I m happy all the time," Hester insisted, " except when I 
 worry mother. Now let s talk about something else."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 " I LL walk a piece with you," Southward said as Hester started 
 to go. " Wait till I get my torch." 
 
 " I guess I ll wear this coat home, Southward," Hester asserted 
 absently, it s come up so cool." 
 
 " All right," answered Southward. She did not remove her own 
 coat, and thus habited the girls crept down the stairs. 
 
 " Where be you-two a-going ? " Mrs. Drake called from the ell 
 as they tiptoed through the house. 
 
 " I m going just a little way with Hester, grandmother," South 
 ward replied. And, " Good night, Mrs. Drake," Hester called. 
 
 " Good night, Hester," Mrs. Drake answered. " Remember me 
 to your mother. Hadn t you better put something on over your 
 shoulders ? " 
 
 " We ve got something, grandmother," Southward assured her. 
 
 The girls passed out through the front door. Hester pressed 
 the button of her electric torch. They walked between shoulder- 
 high box-hedges over a sloping broad flagged walk until they 
 came to a wide wooden gate, dividing, exactly in the middle, a 
 white wooden fence. 
 
 It was a moonlight night, still and a little cool. A few big 
 clouds clung to the sky. As the girls emerged, the moon dropped 
 in behind one of them. The sky immediately became a deep sea 
 covered with islands. Shoals of stars littered the black currents 
 between these islands; the sky seemed to sag with their weight, to 
 flatten from its high arch. But somewhere near was a real sea. 
 In the air lay its smell, a faint reverberance of its roar. 
 
 " Southward," Hester said, holding the gate open and peering 
 back into the gloom, " do you ever stop to think what a beautiful 
 place Long Lanes is and what a romantic place? Every time I 
 come here nowadays especially at night I am more strongly 
 impressed with it." 
 
 Southward turned too. 
 
 The big house existed in that light only as a faint glimmer. 
 The white gate patched the darkness with a definite rectangle 
 of silver, and the white fence, which surrounded the formal garden, 
 seemed to put parallel streaks of phosphorescence across the sur- 
 
 41
 
 42 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 rounding blackness. Within the enclosure, everything was sharply 
 defined, black the round thick cushions of the high box-hedges, 
 the symmetrical triangles of the low trees. At one side, beyond 
 the fence, stretched an orchard a bank of eoft, unshaped gloom. 
 At the other side, also outside the enclosure, lay a garden. There, 
 irregular splashes of white competed with the starlight; but 
 mainly its colour was lost; the garden existed only by means of 
 its perfume. All these however were but assisting detail; the 
 house dominated the scene. It maintained a presence, unseen but 
 majestic, unprofaned by the woods that swept up to it on all four 
 sides. Indeed, it was more as though the serried trees were care 
 fully guarding, were jealously concealing, this product of race and 
 caste. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it s beautiful enough on the outside, I suppose," 
 Southward said. " The trouble with me is I can t see it. I was 
 brought up with it, and then of course so many of these beautiful 
 old houses are the tombs of so much youth and ambition, as this 
 is of mine, that sometimes I wish they could all be burned." 
 Her voice was fierce for an instant. " Of course," she veered, 
 " if I could clear out all grandmother s truck and restore the old 
 furniture to its place, it would be wonderful. Why, Hester, let 
 me take you sometime into the upstairs rooms. They re jammed 
 full of old stuff; high-boys, low-boys, couches, secretaries, chairs 
 God only knows what. I could make that house a marvel if I 
 only had a chance and provided I was interested enough to 
 do it." 
 
 " Well, of course you ll have the chance sometime," Hester said 
 comfortingly. " It s a lovely night to-night, isn t it ? " she con 
 tinued, a faint note of exhilaration in her voice. " I do love a 
 starry night. Everybody else prefers the moonlight, but I don t. 
 I never have." 
 
 " Oh, I think a moon is great," Southward protested. 
 
 " I don t. It seems tawdry to me. And the theatre imitates 
 it so well. There s a quality about the starlight that you can t 
 imitate. But then I love the stars. You remember, in High, 
 astronomy was always my favourite science." 
 
 " I liked astronomy," Southward said, " but only because it was 
 a snap. I guess I liked physics and chemistry and mathematics 
 much better. Astronomy doesn t get you anywhere. There s 
 nothing into it. And as for the stars they re always the 
 same." 
 
 " I don t think so," Hester disagreed emphatically. " It seems 
 to me that the quality of the starlight varies not only with the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 43 
 
 weather but with the season. Winter starlight is certainly dif 
 ferent from summer starlight and fall from spring." 
 
 " Well, of course," Southward agreed indifferently, " I suppose 
 atmospheric conditions would make a difference. Only I never 
 noticed it." 
 
 " Miss Avery told me," Hester went on dreamily, " that a person 
 didn t know what stars were like until he d lived in the desert. 
 I think it would be wonderful too, as you sail around the world, 
 to watch the procession of the constellations. I am so fond of 
 the stars that I should want to sleep on deck on an ocean voyage. 
 I hope I ll see the Southern Cross sometime." 
 
 "Well, Better," Southward suggested briskly, "let s beat it 
 round the world as soon as our responsibilities are over. I think 
 we could rake and scrape enough between us in ten years to do 
 that. Then on our way through the Mediterranean, we ll go down 
 into the Sahara desert and camp out." 
 
 Hester laughed. " All right. Southward, if you were perfectly 
 free what would you do? What do you consider the ideal 
 life?" 
 
 " Travel," Southward answered promptly. " Travel all the time. 
 I want to see the top and bottom and both sides of this old world. 
 Besides I like the kind of social contact you get in travel. You 
 meet people one day and lose them the next there are no ties 
 of any description. My idea of perfect happiness would be to 
 join an exploring expedition. I don t care whether it s into the 
 Tropics or the Arctics. I m so strong and practical and athletic. 
 I stand the extremes of weather so well. I m pretty sure I d be 
 as game as most men. Lady Burton s life is just the kind of 
 life I d like to lead. Or, perhaps sometime after I m old and all 
 the ginger s gone out of me, I might settle down and even marry. 
 But not until there s nothing left. And I d like to go not only 
 to all the big show-places but to a lot of little hole-in-the-corner 
 places. Wouldn t you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Hester answered immediately. " Of course I would. 
 Who wouldn t for that matter? And who could have lived the 
 life that you and I live in Shayneford without wanting to go? 
 That s the great bond between you and me our discontent with 
 our environment. And yet, travelling wouldn t entirely satisfy 
 me. I don t know exactly what it is I want. I haven t found 
 out yet. It s more " She did not finish. 
 
 The two girls had in the meantime turned into one of the two 
 long lanes that gave the Drake place its name. They led in 
 opposite directions, the one to the main-travelled road, the other
 
 44 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 to the " lower road." The lane was of uniform width but deeply- 
 rutted. And although they walked in the hemisphere of light 
 cast by Hester s torch, they stumbled at times. For long spaces, 
 the road spanned by bushes was open to the sky. These were 
 succeeded by tunnels made by arching and intertwining trees. 
 After ten minutes or more, they turned into the " lower road." 
 Walking was easier now; for there were sidewalks although they 
 were but grass-bordered continuations of the street. At intervals 
 the dim white bulks or the dimmer black bulks of houses, 
 cut by golden window-lights, began to loom out of the dark. These 
 phantom cubes were preceded always by the smell of flowers and 
 of box. 
 
 " There s a light in Gert s room," Southward said. " Let s go 
 in." 
 
 " I d love to," Hester answered. " But what time was it when 
 we left?" 
 
 " A little before nine." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 They crossed the street, turned into a path that led to a low, 
 dark, gambrel-roofed house. Southward knocked with a vigorous 
 rat-a-tat-tat. 
 
 A woman opened the door, peered near-sightedly up at them. 
 
 " Hullo, Libbie. It s only us," Southward explained. 
 
 " Oh, it s you, Southward," the woman answered in a quick 
 brisk tone. " Come right in. Oh, hullo, Hester. Gertie ll be 
 tickled to death." 
 
 " We saw a light in Gert s window," Southward explained, " and 
 we thought perhaps we could see her for a while. Is she sit 
 ting up?" 
 
 "Land, yes," Libbie said with delight. "Wait till I git the 
 lamp. Mind that top step. The baby s nursing. Stronger nor 
 a little ox and hungrier nor a little bear. I never see anything 
 like it." 
 
 " I saw Sue-Salome, this afternoon," Southward remarked. 
 " Don t you miss her ? " 
 
 " I should say I did," answered Sue-Salome s sister. " But I 
 see her once every day and sometimes -twice. She most gen ally 
 drops in here in the afternoon and sometimes I go home for a spell 
 in the evening soon s Mr. Beebee s had his supper." 
 
 The girls followed her up a narrow flight which led directly 
 from the little box-like hall. In the front room, a big girl in 
 a long pink kimono sat in a Boston rocker near the window. 
 Two long thick braids of hair pulled forward over her shoulders,
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 45 
 
 and between their ends a baby tugged as though famished at a 
 round white, milk-swelled breast. 
 
 " Hullo, Southward ! " the girl called, craning vigorously round 
 at them. "Hullo, Hester! Sit down! Glad to see you!" Un 
 abashed, she looked her callers straight in the eye. 
 
 " Gracious ! what a big brat, Gert ! " Southward commented 
 serenely. "Greedy s his middle name, isn t it?" 
 
 " Eats like a I-don t-know-what," Gert Beebee said proudly. 
 
 " Ain t he a handsome child ? " Libbie Hatch demanded ex 
 ultantly. 
 
 Libbie Hatch was very like her sister Sue-Salome. Only while 
 Sue-Salome was little and slim and brisk, she was little and fat 
 and brisk. She had a round butter-ball of a face, lighted 
 by quick, dark, brilliant eyes. What in Sue-Salome seemed an 
 unappeasable joy in life took the form in Libbie of an unappeasa 
 ble curiosity about it. Libbie always wore earrings, hanging 
 arrangements of minute diamonds. She wore them now with her 
 neat print gown. 
 
 The twinkling drops seemed to point the sparkle in her face. 
 
 Now she bent over the child and whispered baby-talk. He 
 dropped the nipple and seemed to stare an instant at the glitter 
 on her ear-lobe. 
 
 " See that ? " Gert asked serenely, " ain t much gets by him ! " 
 
 Except for a slight refining pallor, Gert Beebee showed no 
 traces of her recent maternity. She was pretty, a rustic, almost 
 a peasant type blonde. Her yellow hair had a beautiful natural 
 roll. Her eyes showed a clear child-like blue. Her face was very 
 irregular. When she smiled her lids came together; her mirth 
 seemed to take tiny wrinkly tucks in her skin. She would have 
 been a little simian if an occasional piquancy of contour had 
 not redeemed her. And there was a frank, clean fleshliness about 
 her that her good-humoured look made pleasing. 
 
 " I bought two little dresses for the baby in Oldtown, Gert," 
 Southward said. "I would have brought them along if I had 
 had any idea we were going to stop in. It was seeing the light 
 in your window put the idea into our heads." 
 
 " And I ve made two little bonnets," Hester murmured. " I ll 
 bring them round to-morrow." 
 
 Gertie looked delighted. She murmured enthusiastic thanks. 
 
 " Look at that place on the top of his head beating up and down," 
 Southward interrupted them. " Makes me nervous to watch it 
 it always does. You seem to know just how to hold him, 
 Gert."
 
 46 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Sure ! " Gert said in a superior tone. " It comes to you. 
 There! See! He s had enough. And about time." The little 
 bundle of flesh, apparently gorged, dropped from feeding to imme 
 diate sleep. 
 
 " You remember that little kitty the one those old maids the 
 Emertons left here ? " Hester asked suddenly, " Tabby, they called 
 her?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, I remember," Gertie answered. " Awful little black 
 with white spots under her chin. She was Mis Wallis cat 
 Bunchy s kitten. Bunchy always had nice kittens." 
 
 " Well, she came into our house this morning," Hester went on, 
 " acting the queerest way so troubled and unhappy and uncer 
 tain why her face was almost human in its expression of worry. 
 She went all over the house from cellar to attic and all the time 
 making the strangest little noises. I kept taking her up and 
 petting her. Mother kept telling me that she d have her kittens 
 in the house if I didn t take care. But I couldn t turn her out 
 and finally I made a little box for her and put it in my closet. 
 Then I forgot all about her. When I went up to my room after 
 supper, there were four little kittens in the box beside her the 
 cunningest little things. She looked so different. You never saw 
 a greater change in a human countenance. She was so serene and 
 quiet. It was really wonderful, as though she hadn t a care for 
 the future. She even purred when I took her kittens up." 
 
 " You don t," Gertie said, as though involuntarily. " It s won 
 derful though what you feel like. Why, the first three days after 
 that baby was born, I didn t want to do a thing but just lay and 
 look at it. I didn t mind what happened. It seemed as if every 
 thing was coming out all right. It seemed as if nothing could ever 
 
 be wrong again. It seemed it seemed " she stopped as though 
 
 she had reached the limit of her articulateness. 
 
 Hester looked at her intently. "Well, that s the way Tabby 
 felt." 
 
 "Are you going to keep the kittens?" Gert asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes that is, all that I can t give away. I couldn t drown 
 them after the way Tabby trusted me." 
 
 " Save one for me, Hester," Gert said. " I ll be glad to have it." 
 
 Then as though the conversation had gone long enough from 
 her offspring, she turned the little purple wrinkled face up to her 
 visitors. " What do you think of that for a baby ? " she demanded 
 proudly. 
 
 " Don t ask me, Gert ! " Southward made prompt reply. " I m 
 just like a man. They all look alike to me. I ve never seen one
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 47 
 
 that I could call pretty yet. I will admit he looks husky though." 
 
 " Want to hold him ? " Gertie asked hospitably. 
 
 " Land, no," Southward protested. " I m scared to death of 
 them." 
 
 " It s a beautiful baby, Gert," Hester said. Involuntarily her 
 long arms reached over. Gertie lifted the child into them. Hester 
 pulled him close. 
 
 " Look at her ! " Gert smiled broadly. " Takes to it like a duck 
 to water. I d have thought she d brought up a family." 
 
 " What are you going to christen him, Gert ? " Southward asked 
 idly. 
 
 " Maurice," Gertie answered. Her manner changed, became a 
 little menacing. Then with emphasis. "Maurice Beebee!" 
 
 " Swell tag all right," Southward commented, still idly. 
 
 Gert did not answer. But her clear eyes had turned to pools 
 of frost. She scowled. " Go on," she said contemptuously. " Take 
 your turn. I s pose that s what you came for. Try to get it out 
 of me." 
 
 Southward came upright from the rocking-chair in which she 
 had sprawled. Hester stopped her gentle rocking for a frozen 
 instant; then she resumed it, her face crimson, her eyes on the 
 baby s face. 
 
 " Gee, Gert," Southward made an explanation for both. " I 
 thought you knew me better than that. Whatever I am, I m not 
 a sneak. And I ve always played fair. I don t care who the 
 kid s father is. It isn t any of my business. Hester feels the 
 same way. We think it s up to you to tell or not to tell, just as 
 you please. We called because we like you. We want to show 
 you that we re not interfering or leaping to conclusions." 
 
 The scowl rolled off Gertie s forehead. A lush smile revealed 
 a broad streak of white between her pink lips. " Well, excuse 
 me!" she said heartily. "I hadn t d oughter mistrusted you the 
 
 way I did. But if^ you could hear what folks have said to me 
 
 I nearly told Sarah Wallis to get out of this house the other day. 
 And I ll do it yet if she gives me any more lip. As if it was any 
 of her funeral. I ve had the child and I ain t shamed of it and 
 I m going to bring it up myself and, I ain t asking a bit of 
 charity from anybody. Pa says I won t have to as long as he 
 lives. He s crazy about the baby already." 
 
 " Good for you, Gert ! " It was as though this came involun 
 tarily from Southward and she smiled as though in temperamental 
 sympathy with this declaration of independence. " That s just 
 the attitude I d take. But, Gert, don t misunderstand me. I m
 
 48 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 not judging you but I think you were an awful fool just the 
 same." 
 
 " Well, in a way I suppose I was," Gertie said with an unex 
 pected reasonableness. " And then again Say, I m going to 
 
 tell you girls something. And you can put it under your hat 
 and keep it there but it s on the level. The father of that baby 
 doesn t live here thank the Lord! He s big and strong and 
 elegant-looking not much like any of these pindling Shayneford 
 men. He could lick three of them with one hand tied. If he 
 should come into this room now, you d envy me. This is 
 what I want to say to you. I ain t pretending he was the first 
 one, although I ain t so bad as a lot of folks in this town try to 
 make out. 
 
 " But it was the first time I ever got this way. And I could 
 have got out of it. Oh, I m over seven all right and I know what 
 
 girls do. And he said and he offered But I wouldn t. I 
 
 couldn t. I waited and waited and Oh, I went through 
 
 enough. And a good many times I said to myself, I can t bring 
 
 a baby that ain t got no father into the world. I ve got to 
 
 But after a while that child just seemed to be calling for his life 
 inside me and I couldn t any more refuse it than I could have 
 committed murder. I didn t find it so easy, believe me, but I m 
 glad now that I went through with it. It s a fine baby. The 
 doctor says so. Everybody says so. There won t be any babies 
 like it in this town for one while. Why I could have the pick 
 of twenty men to be father to my kid." Her voice took a sudden 
 turn, swelled from a broken dry emotional assurance to excite 
 ment and triumph. " You jess think how Flora Tubman looks 
 down on me. And yet she s going to marry that mutt of a King 
 
 Curtis. King Curtis! Why, I could have I ll tell you this; 
 
 there s more than one girl in this town has taken my leavings. 
 You can t make me think a pretty girl like Flora would have 
 chosen him if she could have got somebody else. No, she took 
 him because he s all there was. She ll have a family of children 
 all right as fast as she can have them. And what will they look 
 like? Thin, homely, white-livered kids! I ll match my baby with 
 any two of them. Flora probably thinks all the other girls in 
 this town probably think that I feel cheap and ashamed. Well, 
 I don t. Not one bit of it. Especially when I heft my baby and 
 see what a corker he is! I feel like somebody that s the way I 
 feel. And I ain t going to take any back talk from nobody. I 
 don t have to."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 49 
 
 For a long time the two girls walked in silence. 
 
 " Goodness, what a strange confession ! " Southward said at last. 
 Her tone was almost awed. 
 
 " I should say it was," Hester agreed tremulously. " I feel 
 I feel as if I d been through something." 
 
 " But it s such an extraordinary state of mind," Southward 
 went on. " One thing she said kept coming back to my mind all 
 during that harangue : I feel as though I d picked the father of 
 my child. I took what I wanted. Of all the girls in this town, 
 
 Gert Beebee alone can pick the father of Southward burst 
 
 into laughter. She shook convulsively. In the end she had to 
 lean up against a fence. " Isn t that a scream when you think 
 of it?" 
 
 " Don t let us think of it any more." Hester did not laugh. 
 She still trembled. " I can t describe to you how it s upset me. 
 To be so close to a thing like that. And then her pride in it. It 
 seemed wicked; it seemed terrible horrible " 
 
 " All right," said Southward in her briskest and most business 
 like tone. " I won t say anything more about it. I d like to see 
 Gert s idea of an elegant-looking man though. Brace up, Hetter. 
 Oh, here we are at Matt s. Want to come in while I get a book? " 
 
 " I d love to," Hester breathed in the tone of one with whom 
 mental tension is relaxing. 
 
 They turned towards a white house, a little band-box of a 
 building, set on a grassy terrace a small place, bordered with 
 a lilac-hedge. Up stone steps and over square stepping-stones 
 sunk in the grass, they approached a vine-covered piazza. The 
 windows were all long. Two of them gleamed softly. Southward 
 tapped on the pane. In an instant, the white curtain flew up; 
 a volume of golden light poured onto the piazza, outlining the 
 figure of a man between the lace curtains. Immediately he 
 swung open half the window, moved back. Southward and Hester 
 stepped into the room. 
 
 " Good evening, Matthew," Southward said. 
 
 " Good evening," the man answered in a chirping voice. " Who 
 is it? Oh, Southward and Hester." 
 
 " Are you at home ? " Southward asked. 
 
 "It seems so. When did you get back, Southward? To what 
 am I indebted? " 
 
 " This afternoon. I want another book." Southward answered 
 both questions. "I feel as though I weren t going to sleep well 
 to-night. Can I explore in the book-cases and see what I can 
 get?"
 
 50 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Certainly ! Certainly ! " Mr. Hallowell chirped. " Help your 
 self ! " He seated himself at the table and took up his pen. But 
 his eyes went from one girl to the other; he followed them each 
 in turn with an amused speculative gaze. When he looked at 
 Southward, his eyes filled with a half-fascinated, half-irritated 
 admiration. When he looked at Hester, they were all pity. 
 
 He was an old man, little and chubby, age-bitten and frost 
 bitten, like a winter-bogle. His long hair might have been made 
 of the stuff of winter clouds, it was, in fibre, so smooth and downy 
 and yet, in mass, so solid and glittering. His eyes were as blue 
 and clear as winter skies, his cheeks as rosy and shining as winter 
 apples. He had a long upper lip and above it a nubbin of a nose 
 lifted upright, presenting nostrils straightforward like the muzzle 
 of a revolver. His look, even in old age, retained a quality of 
 gaiety that was a part the result of the happy irregularity of 
 his features and half a touch of real glee in his smile. He smiled 
 now at intervals. 
 
 Southward moved along the line of book-cases on one side, 
 Hester on the other. 
 
 It was a large room full of the character given by a cleanly, 
 systematic disorder. Book-cases lined the walls three-quarters of 
 the way up. They were crowded so tightly that extracting a book 
 was a difficult proceeding. Even then, they had begun to overrun 
 the shelves into the room to pile in tottering columns in the 
 corner, under the table, beside the couch. Italian, Spanish, French, 
 all about lay magazines highly-coloured, cheaply-printed, every 
 one with a scene of violence on the covers. Above the line of 
 the book-shelves were pictures and bric-a-brac, the endearing hap 
 hazard memorabilia of the European trips of two generations ago; 
 steel-engravings of foreign scenes framed in faded gold ; decorative 
 litter in alabaster and Italian marble, wood-carvings, mosaics, 
 a pair of Eoman lamps. The big central-table foamed with 
 papers; these had burst over onto a small colony of tables that 
 surrounded it. Indeed, when he wrote, Mr. Hallowell sat in the 
 midst of an archipelago of tables. The investigations of the two 
 girls finally brought them back to the table. The light of the 
 green-shaded reading-lamp enveloped them. 
 
 Mr. Hallowell s eyebrows flew up suddenly. 
 
 " What have we here? " he chirped. " Two Chinese princes? " 
 
 " Oh, I d forgotten." Southward looked down on her exotic 
 attire. " I guess I ve never told you about these Chinese coats. 
 I found oodles of them when I cleaned the attic up. Say, Matt, 
 why haven t you ever come to call on us? Don t you realise that
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 51 
 
 this invitation is an honour? Nobody s ever seen this garret since 
 we fixed it up, but Hester and me." 
 
 " Perhaps I ll come sometime," Mr. Hallowell said, " when I m 
 not BO busy." 
 
 " See that you do ! " Southward ordered. " How s The Rebellions 
 of the Nineteenth Century getting on?" 
 
 " Pretty well," Mr. Hallowell answered. " But it s slow work 
 at best. How d you like Herrick? " 
 
 " Oh, great ! " Southward replied with enthusiasm. " That s 
 something for me to say too, for as a rule I don t like love-songs. I 
 must say though he gets away with it in great style. There s 
 nothing sweetie about him. I suppose one reason is that there 
 are so many Julias and Altheas that he never gets the chance to 
 grow really mushy. Perhaps that s why I liked him fellow- 
 feeling." 
 
 Mr. Hallowell smiled appreciatively. " What do you want next? " 
 he asked. " Why don t you-girls read something serious together, 
 Karl Marx for instance? I ll give you a whole list of books when 
 you ve finished with him." 
 
 Southward shook her head. " Not for mine," she said. " Too 
 much like work. Hester might." 
 
 Hallowell turned to Hester. " Why don t you, Hester ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " I will," Hester answered. " I don t think that sort of stuff 
 does me any good though. I m always interested," she went on 
 vaguely, "and yet it doesn t get me anywhere. It s so faraway; 
 it doesn t touch me at any point. I m not the person for it. I 
 can t connect it with living. I d like to make things better in 
 the world if I could. But I can t see how it s to be done. And 
 I m too scared. Now Southward isn t scared at all, but she doesn t 
 care." 
 
 " No," said Southwell, " I don t. Like Marjorie Fleming not a 
 single damn. Matt. I confess I m interested only to make things 
 better for S. Drake, meaning me. I ve wasted twenty-five years 
 of my life already but I intend to get all that s coming to me 
 from now on." 
 
 Mr. Hallowell had been looking from one to the other of the 
 two girls. 
 
 " Waste women ! " he commented suddenly. Then after a pause. 
 " Well, you ll explode sometime." 
 
 " I shan t," Hester said in an intense tone. " I haven t the 
 courage of a fly. But I m always thrilled by rebellion in others." 
 
 Mr. Hallowell smiled gleefully. He rubbed his hands together.
 
 52 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Then this is the best period in the world s history for you to 
 live, Hester. For everybody s rebelling. We re had almost every 
 kind of trouble. The workers of the world, both men and women, 
 are rebelling as workers; men are rebelling as men; women are 
 rebelling as women. We haven t had a children s rebellion yet, 
 to be sure; but I wouldn t be surprised if it came. There was 
 a Children s Crusade once, you know. You ll explode into rebellion 
 some day, both of you." 
 
 " If Southward and I could be boiled down and concentrated into 
 one woman, we d make a splendid rebel," Hester explained, " for 
 Southward s all action without theory and I m all theory without 
 action. But as we are now, Southward s action has nothing 
 altruistic about it and my altruism has nothing practical." 
 
 " Waste women," Mr. Hallowell commented again. This time 
 his clear eyes turned sombre. He rubbed his hands together, but 
 slowly. 
 
 " Well," Southward yawned, " this bores me. Any new books, 
 Matt ? I mean travel or expedition ? " 
 
 " No, but I m expecting some this week." 
 
 " I guess I ll have to take Dickens then," Southward decided. 
 " It s about time I read him all over again. Don t bother, Matt. 
 I know where he is." She walked to one of the book-cases, ran 
 her finger along a line of old-fashioned, dingy-looking novels, 
 pulled one out with a decided jerk. She opened it, ruffled the 
 pages. " Oh, how I do adore Sairy Gamp ! " she commented. " I 
 eat her up." She sped rapidly through a paragraph. Then with 
 her hand clutching the book, she fell into revery. 
 
 Mr. Hallowell craned his neck to look after her. His eyes held 
 many expressions wonder, interest, perplexity irritation even 
 but they were all fused by fascination. Southward stood still, 
 her eyes fixed on the distance. But now she was humming lightly. 
 A shimmer as of melted silrer had come into her eyes. Between 
 the raspberry-red of her lips appared just a blue-pearl suggestion 
 of her teeth. 
 
 Mr. Hallowell s perplexity broke into frank amusement. " What 
 are you up to, Southward ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," Southward answered. But now she was defi 
 nitely smiling. Her look was that of one who is decidedly " up " 
 to something. " I ve only got to make a conquest of four men 
 that s all, Matt new ones to boot just arrived." 
 
 Mr. Hallowell smiled appreciatively. " Poor devils ! " 
 
 " But remember, Matt," Southward said, " you re the one I really 
 lore."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 53 
 
 Mr. Hallowell smiled again. 
 
 " Well, I must be going," said Hester. 
 
 " And I," echoed Southward. " I expect I ll be in every night 
 to see you until those books arrive, Matt." 
 
 " All right," said Mr. Hallowell. " Come as often as you want." 
 He took up his pen. Before the girls had disappeared through 
 the window, he had gone deep into his work. 
 
 " Come over to-morrow night, Hetter," Southward said, outside. 
 
 " Yes about seven as usual." 
 
 " And don t worry about what your mother says. It s not worth 
 worrying about." 
 
 " No, I won t worry. It doesn t bother me really. I had for 
 gotten it." 
 
 " To-morrow, then ? " 
 
 11 To-morrow." 
 
 Partway up the road, Southward turned suddenly, flashed her 
 light back of her. A thickening bulk drew from out of the 
 shadow, became human, and hurried to her side. 
 
 " I thought it was you, Lysander," Southward said. 
 
 The young man who struck into the radius of her torch was 
 a typical rural product; but he was none the less a vigorous and 
 picturesque specimen. His blue flannel shirt set off a splendid 
 pair of shoulders, his long tight-fitting black-leather boots a fine 
 pair of legs. A well-shaped head topped his tall erect strong- 
 looking figure. The innocuous regularity of his features broke 
 in a peculiarly winning smile. He was blond and profusely 
 freckled; the blue of his eyes as clear, the pink of his cheeks 
 as pure, the white of his teeth as milky as country air and fare 
 could make them. His thick-curling hair, parted at one side, 
 carefully reached, and imprinting a perfect arc of gold on his 
 shaven neck, must have been the pride of the Shayneford barber. 
 
 "Where are you going, Southward?" he asked. 
 
 " Home. Hester came over to-night. Then I walked a piece 
 with her. What time is it?" 
 
 " Not so very late. A little after ten. Heard about those city 
 folks over to Long Pond ? " 
 
 " Yes, grandfather told me about them to-night. Who are they 
 and what do they do ? Do you like them ? " 
 
 "Yes first-class. They seem like regular guys. Joshing all 
 day long. Half the time you can t tell what they do mean from 
 what they don t mean. Cameron, he s a newspaper-man. O Eeilly 
 travels and writes books. Fearing is a sort of sky-pilot lectures.
 
 54 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 That other fellow, Smith I don t exactly know what he does 
 works for a living, I guess." 
 
 Southward smiled her appreciation of this sarcasm. " Well, I 
 suppose I ll meet them all in the course of time." 
 
 " Oh, yes, by another week they ll all be running after you." A 
 sullen note forced itself into Lysander s voice. 
 
 Southward ignored it. " How long are they going to be here ? " 
 
 " Oh, a month or six weeks. They didn t seem quite sure them 
 selves." 
 
 A silence fell. Southward walked along, swinging her light 
 absently, cutting strange geometric patterns on the road and on 
 the bushes. Lysander watched her. 
 
 " Southward," Lysander said after a while, " I ve made up my 
 mind to one thing to-night. I m going to ask you to marry me 
 and when you give me your answer, it s final. See? I m not 
 going to ask you again." 
 
 " All my answers have been final, Lysander," Southward said 
 with an uncharacteristic gentleness but her usual directness. " So 
 don t ask me now. You know I like you, Ly. I like you better 
 than any man in Shayneford. I d rather go off with you for a 
 ride, or a tramp or swimming or fishing than anybody I can 
 think of. But I don t love you. And I can t marry you." 
 
 They had come to the point where the road turned into the 
 North Lane. 
 
 Southward halted. 
 
 " That s final," Lysander said. " Eemember, I ll never ask you 
 again." 
 
 " Yes, it s final," Southward reiterated firmly. 
 
 " I ll walk to the house with you," Lysander remarked. 
 
 " No, thanks. I prefer to be alone. Good night." 
 
 " Night," Lysander echoed. He did not move, but he spat medi 
 tatively. He stood there until Southward s quick retreating foot 
 steps died in the distance.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LONG LANES presented a front of an unameliorated gloom as 
 Southward approached. But when she opened the door, a gleam 
 of light shot from the left. Simultaneously, " That you, South 
 ward ? " came her grandmother s voice. 
 
 " Yes, grandmother." 
 
 " Did you go way home with Hester ? " 
 
 " No, only as far as Mr. Hallowell a. I stopped in there and 
 got a book." 
 
 " What d he have to offer? " 
 
 " Nothing much, grandmother." 
 
 " Be you going to read all night long ? You ll git awful homely 
 if you lose all your beauty sleep every night the way you do." 
 
 " No, I won t read long. In fact, I think I ll go in swimming 
 instead. That breeze has died down and it s awfully hot and 
 sticky. I don t feel like going to bed." 
 
 " Nor me. There ain t a drop of sleep in my body." 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, grandmother ? " 
 
 "No." Mrs. Drake admitted it reluctantly. "Charlotte, she 
 jess give me a good rubbing. Mis Ellis came this evening while 
 you was out. She brought the Westbury Citizen over. I ve been 
 a-reading it." Mrs. Drake went on at a galloping rate, as though 
 she had been waiting for just this opportunity for mental exercise. 
 " Old Mis Bassett of Westbury Centre is dead and them Cahoons, 
 you know that awful shiftless lot, lost their youngest child. Mumps 
 warn t that terrible? Caught cold my sister Sabry allus said it 
 was terrible to ketch cold if you had the mumps. Mis Ellis told 
 me about it head swelled up like a bucket. She said it was the 
 worse-looking corpse for a child she ever see. And that Nye 
 fellow that peakid-looking, light-complected one, he s dead. I 
 ain t read so much news in a year and I ain t got through all 
 the paper yet. I allus reads the deaths first. I enjoy them the 
 most." 
 
 Southward leaned against the door and shook silently. " Yes, 
 grandmother," she said in muffled tones. 
 
 " I m going to read the rest of it to-morrow night. I presume 
 I can go to sleep now. You be keerful about swimming too far 
 out won t you, Southward ? " 
 
 66
 
 56 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 "Yes, grandmother." 
 
 " I declare I don t understand how you can go into the water at 
 night. I d be scared half out of my senses." 
 
 " If you could swim the way I can, you wouldn t mind," South 
 ward explained. 
 
 " My sister Sabry told me of a case of a man who went in 
 bathing one night just back of their house. They all sat on the 
 back porch and watched him. He was swimming all right but 
 suddenly up went his hands and down went his head. Well, sir, 
 before they could get to him, he was dead whether it was heart- 
 disease or cramp nobody never knew. But they rolled him over 
 a barrel for hours. It don t take long to drown." 
 
 " I know, grandmother, but I m always very careful and I never 
 had cramp in my life. Good night." 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 But Southward did not go in swimming immediately. She 
 moved about the garret, removing the wine-glasses and cigarettes, 
 putting books back, straightening the magazines and piling up 
 papers. She worked more as one under the urge of action than 
 the necessity of neatness, and her eyes were preoccupied. But 
 her reflections were obviously pleasurable; she hummed without 
 cessation; and occasionally, she made a little dancing pas seuL 
 After a while, she undressed, drew on her bathing-suit. One piece 
 and virtually sleeveless, it was black, close-fitting, cut round and 
 low in the neck, ending in knee tights and a short, scant black 
 skirt. She pulled a rubber-cap close over her head, tucked all her 
 hair under it. Then she stole quietly downstairs. 
 
 There was no light now in her grandmother s room. From 
 three directions came soporific murmurings. Southward crept 
 silently into the kitchen and out the back way. A little path ran 
 straight from the door, through the grape-arbour, past the orchard 
 to the pond. There the water lapped and rippled on a tiny sandy 
 beech. 
 
 The moon had come out. But a surge of cloud had swept over 
 it, veiling it in heavy muffling folds; stars, sprinkled thickly, 
 floated over the rest of the sky. Except for a long smeared 
 reflection here and there, the pond lay dim, vague, mysterious. 
 Near, the pines seemed to be crowding close down to the water s 
 edge, as though jealously preserving its mystery; some had waded 
 in, were standing knee-deep. Far away, the outlines of the pond 
 were lost; it stretched on illimitably, apparently bounded only by 
 the confines of space. 
 
 Southward stood a moment looking about her. She still hummed,
 
 57 
 
 and her eyes still smiled. Then she ran down the frail, slanting, 
 wooden platform that projected into the water, and with a sudden 
 lithe fling of her supple body, went overboard. Her dire made 
 so clean a hole in the pond that it was accompanied by almost 
 no splash; it was more as though the surface opened for her. 
 She swam for an interval under water, came up gasping. She 
 made back rapidly to the pier, held herself there with one arm. 
 With the other she pulled the rubber-cap off and tossed it onto 
 the boards. The mass of her hair had survived the plunge unwet ; 
 about her brow it glittered dimly. The rest had been plastered to 
 her head in an odd boyish flatness. 
 
 With long leisurely strokes, she made toward the centre of the 
 pond. The moon was still fighting its way over the rampart of 
 cloud. Beyond lay a sea of sky, clear, black, loaded with stars. 
 Suddenly the moon emerged, dragging wisps of vapour torn away 
 in its struggle with the clouds, plunged serenely into this jet- 
 black sea. It was as though the moon exploded. Many of the 
 stars went out like blown candles. That jet-black sea became a blue 
 ocean, brilliantly illuminate. The moon came to the surface. 
 One by one the wefts of cloud dropped away. It sailed stately, 
 unimpeded like a ship in full sail. After a while it dropped 
 a silver propeller which swept the surface of the water like a 
 blade. The effect was magic. That propeller whipped away the 
 gloom that enveloped the pond, drove it in a thick murky tide 
 under the trees. The circle of the shore pricked through, com 
 pleted itself. The pond lay smooth as a plane of polished agate, 
 frank as a mirror. 
 
 Southward swam on and on. 
 
 When she employed the breast-stroke, she went forward with 
 swift driving jerks. She carried her head high, well out of water. 
 A line of white throat was always visible, swelling faintly as 
 though bridled. Occasionally she turned over on one side. Then 
 her head ducked, sank into the hollow of her shoulder. Nothing 
 was visible but a long lithe line of body and one slim white 
 muscular arm, pulling her forward. At intervals, she floated; 
 supine or prone; it was apparently equally easy. Or turning on 
 her back, she propelled herself forward, sitting almost upright. 
 She progressed without unnecessary movement and with no waste 
 of energy, with the steady sinuous movement of a water-creature. 
 It was that way with every movement Southward made; she 
 accomplished it in the briefest possible time and with the minimum 
 of effort. To watch her was to get an impression not only of over 
 brimming vitality, of high reservoirs of energy that had never
 
 58 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 been touched, but of an extraordinary instinctive physical 
 efficiency. 
 
 That ocean of light on which it had now embarked seemed to 
 polish the moon to a greater brilliance. It dropped onto the pond 
 a trail of silver scales that lay glittering and flittering half in 
 and half out of the water. It picked out spots in the wooded 
 shores for special illumination; here the bole of a virgin birch, 
 swaying nude among the pines; there a thread of brook stealing 
 with silver footsteps under the trees ; yonder a glossy parasite vine 
 that turned to a cascade of tangible light. 
 
 Southward still swam on. 
 
 Suddenly she suspended all movement. She held herself still. 
 She gazed about her. She seemed to sit upright in the water 
 that instant in which she craned to survey the scene. Her ex 
 pression was a listening one. Apparently she heard nothing, saw 
 nothing. She settled back into the water, sank her head on her 
 shoulder, swam. But after another interval it was as though 
 an electric signal had been flashed under the surface she stopped 
 again, rose half-way out of the water, craned. Paddling gently, 
 she raked the pond in every direction with her keen gaze. 
 
 Her eyes fastened in an instant on something that stirred the 
 water just ahead a black object that came steadily forward. 
 Suddenly this object raised above the level of the pond, turned, 
 and disclosed a face. " Hi, John I " a man s voice hailed her. 
 
 Southward did not move. " It isn t John," she called promptly 
 in her clear boyish voice. 
 
 " It isn t," the voice answered, palpably disappointed. " Then 
 who the devil is it ? " The head continued to draw nearer, pro 
 pelled by a magnificent vigour. 
 
 Southward did not answer. But she turned, sank her head into 
 the curve of her shoulder, made in leisurely perhaps a shade 
 more leisurely fashion homewards. 
 
 The moon drew under an ice-floe on the further shore of the 
 blue ocean. The blue ocean turned again to an agate sea. The 
 shore of the pond lost itself in an impenetrable murk. The pond 
 turned to jet. The stars came out by ones, by twos, pricked through 
 the agate, dropped long smeared pear-shaped reflections on the jet ; 
 came out by scores, by myriads, covered the agate sea with a silver 
 stencilling; dropped to the jetty pond a clear-cut silver pattern. 
 
 The head came nearer and nearer, drew alongside. Southward 
 turned and looked at the invader of her solitude. His hair 
 glimmered sleekly, his face was for an instant so deep in shadow 
 that it was non-existent.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 59 
 
 Then two triangular flashes set eyes in that shadow. A jag of 
 phosphorescence made a smile. A big white splash, cut by a 
 jersey strap, became a shoulder. A smaller patch, equally luminous, 
 that clawed the water, turned into a hand. 
 
 " Well, my lad," the man said, " you re a good swimmer." 
 There was a touch of patronage in the tone, but the voice 
 was a pleasant one. It was young and decisive and it held 
 a swinging element of command, even when it made this simple 
 statement. " How do you happen to be in the water at this 
 hour?" 
 
 Southward s face was equally shadowy. It would have been 
 impossible, because of her obscuring shoulder, to get more than 
 the flick of her smile and the gleam of her eyes. " Well, it s the 
 only chance I get," she answered with the undertone of surliness 
 of one whose right is being questioned. " I work in the grocery- 
 store all day, and at night I feel like taking a swim." 
 
 They were now on a level, Southward on her right side, her head 
 turned towards the stranger; he on his left side, his head turned 
 towards her. 
 
 " I should think you would," the stranger agreed. " I only 
 asked because as far as I could gather, we were the only ones 
 who ever went swimming in this pond." 
 
 " You one of those fellows camping on the other side ? " South 
 ward asked. 
 
 " Yes, my name s Cameron Dwight Cameron." 
 
 " Mine s Uriah Snow," offered Southward. Uriah Snow was the 
 village idiot. The darkness received and obscured the rich smile 
 which Southward shot into it. 
 
 " One of our men, Smith the only one who is here at present 
 disappeared from camp an hour ago. He said something about 
 going in bathing before he went. I got so warm I thought I d come 
 out and join him. I never thought to look to see if his bathing- 
 suit was there. Haven t seen any other fellow swimming, have 
 you ? " 
 
 " Nope," answered Southward. 
 
 " He went for a walk then," Cameron commented to himself. 
 " The short-sport." 
 
 " Why I ve swum in this pond pretty nigh every night in 
 summer for five years," Southward went on, " and this is the 
 first time I ever met anybody here. Pretty nigh skeered me to 
 death when I saw you coming. First I thought it was a dog, 
 then I thought it was a deer. We get them sometimes in the 
 fall."
 
 60 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Her companion made no comment. He turned now on his other 
 side, his face away from her. He was swimming slowly; South 
 ward had no difficulty in keeping up with him. 
 
 " Nice little town you ve got here," he said finally. 
 
 "Think so?" Southward drawled. "Glad you like it." 
 
 " I suppose you have pretty good times in the winter ? " 
 
 " Great Scott, I should say we did." Southward pumped a great 
 deal of rustic fervour into her voice. "In the winter, it s great. 
 The church has sociables every two weeks. And sometimes we 
 have a lecture. And when there s snow, we allus have sleigh- 
 parties." 
 
 " Sociables," the young man quoted. " What a quaint word ! 
 I ve heard my mother use it. She was a New Englander 
 Plymouth woman." 
 
 " Where you from ? " Uriah Snow asked. 
 
 " God s country," Cameron said with emphasis. " The West ! 
 Vermont originally Colorado since, New York now. But you 
 were telling me what you did winters here." 
 
 " Sometimes we have lectures. And sometimes travelling- 
 shows come here. We have a movie-house. Last winter they gave 
 two performances a week. Next year they re going to try to run 
 three." 
 
 " My God, what a whirl ! " Cameron commented. And now for 
 an obvious instant he was making game of his rustic companion. 
 " Good place for a fellow to be quiet in if he wanted to write," 
 he said more seriously, half to himself. 
 
 " Oh, no, mister," Southward commented with simplicity, " he 
 couldn t be quiet here in the winter-time. Why, there s times 
 when a fellow s up until eleven o clock three or four nights a 
 week." 
 
 Cameron spluttered violently. But Southward did not exude 
 a breath of the mirth which, in spite of herself, rippled over 
 her face. " Sometimes," she continued recklessly, " I think if 
 I ever marry and settle down I m going to a quieter place. 
 I wouldn t like to bring up a family where there s so much excite 
 ment." 
 
 At this, Cameron laughed frankly. And, " Very commendable 
 idea," he managed to say after a while. 
 
 They swam for another interval of silence. 
 
 " Say, Snow," Cameron began again briskly, " who s that girl 
 who lives in the big white-and-yellow house down beyond the Post 
 Office?" 
 
 " Dark? " Southward queried, " and skinny? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 61 
 
 " Not skinny exactly slim brunette yes, wears a pink 
 sweater." 
 
 " Oh," Southward drawled, " that s Pearl Wallis." 
 
 " Mighty pretty girl ! " Cameron commented carelessly. " Pearl 
 Wallis. All right! Well now who s the tall one with the red 
 hair? I don t know where she lives but I ve seen her turning into 
 the big weather-beaten house next to the church the one with 
 the gambrel roof and the trumpet vine." 
 
 " I get you," Southward answered. " Pinkie Peters. Wears a 
 green and white blazer ? " 
 
 " That s the one ! Peters ! Peters ! Pinkie Peters ! Pearl 
 Wallis and Pinkie Peters. I re got them. Now who s the plump 
 one? Runs with Miss Peters quite a bit laughs all the time." 
 
 " Flora Tubman. Lots of pretty girls in this town, ain t there? " 
 
 " I should say. Now let me get that. Tubman Flora Tubman. 
 Who s the little dark one glasses two braids of hair looks like 
 an Indian? " 
 
 " Mercy Brewster. Say, I can give you a knock-down to any 
 one of those girls if you want I should." 
 
 " Sure ! I m for that ! When will you pull it off ? " 
 
 " Any evening. I tell you what. They all go to the Post Office 
 every night to the last mail. I ll be there to-morrow night. Get 
 along about half-past five." 
 
 " All right. How ll we know each other ? I couldn t tell you 
 in this light from Adam." 
 
 " You pick out the man with the biggest crop of freckles in 
 the place and that s me. Say, know anything that ll take freckles 
 off? I ve tried everything I ever heard of." 
 
 " No, I don t," Cameron answered with a becoming gravity. 
 " I m sorry." 
 
 There came another long silence. 
 
 " Where do you get off, Snow ? " Cameron broke it finally. 
 
 " The little jetty ahead, Cameron," Southward replied. " You 
 can t see it but I can because I know it s there. My house sets 
 jess back among the trees. Guess I ll turn in now. Good night ! " 
 
 " Hold on ! I ll go as far as your station," Cameron offered. 
 " How long a swim is it across this pond ? " 
 
 " About half a mile." 
 
 " Just a tidy little hike here and back," Cameron commented, 
 " I guess I ll have to do this every night after this. We ll 
 probably meet quite often, Snow." 
 
 " Shouldn t wonder," Southward agreed. " Hope we do, 
 Cameron."
 
 62 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 They made the rest of the way in silence. Southward pulled 
 herself out of the water and onto the boards with a single athletic 
 heave of her body. " Good night," she called. 
 
 " Good night," said Cameron. He started to paddle backwards, 
 his face towards her. 
 
 At that moment the moon emerged from its polar floe. Clean 
 as snow, clear as glass, it washed the scene with white fire. The 
 light ran over Southward s sleek head, over her slim figure with 
 its budding salience of curve to the narrow skirt which barely 
 touched her knees. 
 
 Cameron emitted a shrill whistle, a muttered, " My " that 
 
 cut itself off half-way, and then a clear though embarrassed, " I 
 say! I beg your pardon. But you fooled me complete." 
 
 Southward s only answer was a jet of mischievous laughter. 
 She laughed all the way up to the house. She laughed all the 
 way up to the garret. She was still laughing when she sank into 
 bed. She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ALONE, Hester Crowell began to slacken the pace which South 
 ward had set for her. The hand that held the electric torch 
 dropped listlessly to her side. Her gait took on the lassitude and 
 uncertainty that always marked it when she was the guide of her 
 own locomotion. Her head drooped. Occasionally, she stopped 
 and surveyed the scene. Here her eye caught on a tree shape, 
 thick enough to cut off the sky as with an enormous opaque wing 
 or thin enough to spread across it a delicate intricate tracery of 
 limb and leaf; there it dwelt on some cloud-shape, mountainous 
 and inky-black, or stretching into thin strands and wefts that 
 tangled and smothered the stars. 
 
 She was getting towards the middle of the town. Houses began 
 to draw closer arid closer, to come nearer to the road; big square 
 bulks; smaller ones, slanting or gambrel-roof ed ; white and trim; 
 vague and weather-coloured. Fences here and there placed parallel 
 streaks of white between her and the gardens which, however 
 they varied in regard to flower-smells, always emitted the odour 
 of box. Here, rows of round beach-stones, painted white, marked 
 out paths; there the jaws of a whale, also painted white, indi 
 cated entrances. Yonder the figurehead of a ship glimmered 
 phantom-like in the gloom. Longer spaces came between the 
 trees now, and the trees themselves looked bigger and older. 
 Even at night, they seemed more cared-for than the wild 
 growths she had just left. Everywhere the wine-glass elm drew 
 its exquisite shape upon the sky. Hester passed the huge rectangle 
 of white that was the Unitarian Church, and which shot a gleaming 
 graceful spire among the stars; a little cluster of stores. A sign 
 showed black lettering here and there; a tattered circus poster 
 waved from a shed; more houses, closer and closer together. 
 Presently the houses began to separate again, to retreat from the 
 road. The smell of box and of late August flowers came only 
 on a convenient breeze. The trees by the side of the road huddled 
 together; not so big, so plethoric, or so pendulous. After a while 
 woods began to line both sides of the road. The road itself 
 roughened. Hester stumbled now and then. 
 
 At last she stopped at an opening on her right a narrow path 
 
 63
 
 64 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 \vhich apparently led into dense woods. She paused a moment, 
 idly squirting the light into the bushy areas about her. After 
 a while, she turned in. At first the path was smooth, though 
 narrow; then it grew rougher. Hester still walked with her eyes 
 down. 
 
 Suddenly she stopped, and lifted her head like a deer snuffing 
 the air. She stood stock-still an instant; then raising her light 
 high, stood, looking keenly ahead. There was nothing in sight, 
 but Hester did not move. She listened intently. 
 
 " Hullo, there ! " a man s voice called presently. A shape it 
 seemed only a degree less black than the surrounding shadow 
 detached itself from the sooty background and bore slowly down 
 upon her. Hester waited. 
 
 " Hullo there ! " the shape called again. " Wait a moment, 
 please." Its tone was peremptory, but pleasant. 
 
 Hester did not answer. But she waited. She directed her light 
 over the path. The stranger came forward briskly now. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon," he called from a little distance. His 
 voice lost its peremptory ring. " I thought you were a man I 
 
 had no idea it was a " He stopped short. His words dried 
 
 on his lips. He was now within vision of the yellow mandarin 
 coat, the peacock embroidery, the little mirrors winking feebly 
 in the diluted light, the long braid of hair that curled over Hester s 
 shoulder and hung to her very ankles, the silver hairpins in her 
 hand. " a Chinese princess," he concluded. 
 
 Hester did not speak. She looked inquiringly at him. By 
 degrees, the dim light brought out the details of his appearance. 
 He was tall, he was dark; he wore trousers of white duck, a sack- 
 coat of navy-blue, a Panama hat. A single vigorous gesture had 
 swept his hat from his head and, in passing, a pipe from his 
 mouth. Now he stood holding these two objects, leaning at the 
 hip against his stick. His pose was extraordinarily easy; he was 
 no more encumbered with these things than with the air itself. 
 
 " I m lost," he explained. " I m a stranger in Shayneford.- We re 
 camping on the other side of Long Pond. I started out in the 
 early evening. I ve had a delightful walk but I can t get any 
 where. Does this lead to the main road, please ? " 
 
 There was something baffling about him. He had a long hand 
 some regularity of feature that seemed to match the long graceful 
 muscularity of his figure. And just as his pose was easy, his smile 
 was easy. Again just as an underlying strength and capacity for 
 speed seemed ready to burst through the ease of his attitude, some 
 inner turbulence seemed threatening always to flame through the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 65 
 
 quiet of his pleasant smile. Already that interior fire had scorched 
 his hair white at the temples, had burned lines at the corners of his 
 eyes, hollows under them. 
 
 " Yes," Hester answered him. " Not more than three minutes 
 walk. Would you like me to take you to the turning ? This light 
 helps a little." 
 
 " No, I won t trouble you." The stranger said this slowly, a little 
 hesitatingly. His smile had gone out. Without its light, his eyes 
 became sombre, his lips enigmatic. " At least I can t justify 
 myself in troubling you. It s very good of you though." His 
 smile flashed again; his face was all light and life. 
 
 " Oh, not at all," Hester said formally. " Good night." 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 , Hester moved briskly in her direction. The stranger moved 
 briskly in his. But after an interval, his head turned over his 
 shoulder and he followed the circle of light until it disappeared 
 around a bend, carrying with it the tall, swaying, stooping figure, 
 the yellow mandarin coat and the winking mirrors. 
 
 Hester came out presently on another road, turned into a gate 
 at a little distance. Big trees concealed the outlines of the house, 
 but Hester s light revealed a path between these trees. The 
 blinds were closed in front. Hester proceeded through a small front 
 hall, dark, a living-room, dark, a dining-room, dimly-lighted, into 
 a larger room, half living-room, half-kitchen, well-lighted. The 
 place was quaintly floored and doored in the style of old houses, 
 but it showed the systematic orderliness, the hygienic cleanliness 
 of a hospital. The walls were painted a brilliant cobalt blue, the 
 doors and wood-work a heavy durable grey. The stove shone as 
 though it had been silvered, the faucets, boiler, and water-pipes 
 as though they had been gilded. 
 
 Close up to a central-table, hexagonal in shape and duck-footed, 
 sat a woman darning. 
 
 It was evident that she was Hester s mother; though where the 
 likeness lay was a puzzle. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell s skin was a fine powdery, pearly-white just begin 
 ning to show the mothiness of agt It lay lineless and glistening 
 across her lips ; two upper teeth had begun to press them open : 
 it pulled so taut over the bones of her face that on the bridge 
 of her nose was a thin, shining, diamond-shaped patch. This 
 linelessness was not lingering youth; it was advancing age. Age 
 had ironed, not seamed her face; it was almost without change 
 of expression; her eyes held an unwinking steadiness. And under 
 her chin, the skin sagged into a full wrinkled pouch of flesh.
 
 66 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 However youth had left its marks ; her yellow-white hair was thick 
 and heavy, her lips a high scarlet; her eyes, over which long 
 lashes still dropped an adumbrating shadow, a clear grey. She 
 had a tall, noble figure, high busted and held in; every line of 
 her simple home-made gown improved it. Her hands were big 
 but slender, and, in spite of definite marks of house-keeping, 
 aristocratic. She wore her nails long. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell flung over her darning a single quiet look at her 
 daughter. Then as though that look met something unexpected, 
 " Well, what s happened to you ? " she demanded. 
 
 Hester had a different air. A faint colour stirred in her cheek, 
 a gleam flickered in her eye. " Nothing," she said. " I spent the 
 evening with Southward. She walked home a piece with me." 
 
 " What you got that thing on for? " 
 
 Vaguely, Hester looked down on the mandarin coat. " I felt 
 a little cool at Southward s; so I borrowed this." 
 
 Her mother emitted a low purring, contemptuous laugh. " Well, 
 it isn t your style you know. If there s anything I hate, it is to 
 see an old maid rigging herself up to look picturesque." 
 
 Hester made no comment. 
 
 " Lucky for you it was night," her mother went on with com 
 posure. " Shayneford would have a great laugh at your expense 
 if it saw you getting kittenish in your old age. I expect you ll 
 take to those breakfast-caps next something tasty in white lace 
 with blue ribbons and pink roses on it." 
 
 Hester blushed furiously. She bit her lip. But she did not 
 speak. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell darned silently for a while. 
 
 " What was Sarah Wallis and that crowd doing up to Mis 
 Drake s ? " she demanded suddenly. 
 
 " I don t know, mother talking, I suppose." 
 
 " Four of them went Mis Smart told me. What were they 
 talking about and why d they go to-day?" 
 
 " I don t know what they were talking about, mother. But I 
 fancy they went because they thought Southward wouldn t be 
 there. They don t like Southward, you know." 
 
 " No wonder ! The way she treats them. I like to hear her 
 go at them though. It s the first time in her life Sarah Wallis 
 ever met her match." 
 
 There came another pause of silence. 
 
 " Do you ever hear from Josie Caldwell now ? " Mrs. Crowell 
 had the air of one spearing in her mind for floating queries. 
 
 " No. What makes you ask ? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 67 
 
 " I wanted to know." 
 
 " I should like to hear from her," Hester said simply. 
 
 Silence fell again. 
 
 Suddenly Mrs. Crowell arose, lifted her basket, moved like a 
 stately ship through the door, disappeared into the bedroom 
 leading out of the dining-room. 
 
 Hester waited a while, then she lighted a lamp, went up the 
 back-stairs. 
 
 Her room was large and low. Sloping roof and dormer win 
 dows introduced pleasing irregularities into the squareness of its 
 shape. It was hung wherever cloth was appropriate with white 
 muslin. Along one side ran a low book-case, painted white and 
 crowded with books. A little white desk with the lid down occupied 
 another wall; a white dressing-table bearing a white celluloid 
 toilet-set occupied a third. There was a plaster bust of a baby s 
 head on the desk and another of a baby s hand above it. Here 
 and there pinned to the walls were unframed pictures, cut evi 
 dently from magazines, always of children. On the dresser lay 
 many photographs snap-shots of a baby or of a woman with 
 a baby; it was always the same baby and always the same woman. 
 
 Hester did not look about her. She jerked open the lower 
 drawer of her bureau with such force that the whole piece tot 
 tered. She reached in under the piled mass of underwear and 
 pulled something out. 
 
 It was a boudoir-cap of lace, trimmed with pale-blue ribbons 
 and a bunch of pink-silk roses. For a moment, she held it off 
 and looked at it an object deliciously feminine with the pink 
 flesh of her slim hand showing through the meshes. Then, 
 suddenly, it was as though something welled up in her that 
 brought mania, her face contorted, she tore and twisted and 
 ripped it, tossed it into the waste-basket. 
 
 She turned to the bureau and picked up one of the pictures 
 there, studied it with a look that was an equal mixture of love 
 and anguish. It was the picture of a baby, head and shoulders, 
 in profile. Curls ran up from the back of the neck, over the 
 top of the head, and hung down over the forehead. The face 
 smiled and like the face of all healthy babies in mirth everything 
 about it seemed to smile, eyes, lips, raised brows, and dimply 
 contours. Hester s brow contracted; her features writhed. She 
 dropped the picture, covered her face with her hands. When 
 she withdrew them her look was quiet again. 
 
 She undressed slowly. 
 
 With her night-gown on, she bent over the lamp as though
 
 68 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 to blow it out. But even as her lips parted, another impulse 
 seized her. She lifted the lamp and held it close to the mirror. 
 Her face was as expressionless as her mother s for an instant. 
 She searched the tired dull eyes, the sallow freckled skin, the 
 neutral-coloured mouth with its drooping corners. Then she 
 put the lamp back on the bureau, pulled her huge braid forward 
 over her shoulders, began in a mad fury of haste to unplait it. 
 She shook the strands out until they sheathed her. Seizing her 
 hand-mirror she surveyed herself again. She stood in a cone 
 of gold. Pivoting slowly, she caught every point of view of the 
 light on that strange garment; it ran down its length in cataracts 
 of sparkles. Hester sighed and put the mirror down. Gathering 
 her hair into a sheaf again she re-plaited it. She went out into 
 the hall and returned carrying a small black cat tucked under 
 one arm and a quartette of complaining kittens under the other. 
 She put them all on the floor, sat down with them. Tabby 
 moved fastidiously away, curled her trim tail as neatly as a whip 
 lash about her feet; surveyed her offspring with an air of detach 
 ment. The kittens, divorced so suddenly from the warm maternal 
 bosom, crawled unsteadily about, mewing bitterly. Hester took 
 them up one at a time, examined their closed eyes, smoothed 
 their tiny backs. Finally she put them back into the basket in 
 the hall. 
 
 She brought the lamp to the little table by her bedside. Moving 
 over to the book-shelf, she selected a book. 
 
 Crawling into bed, she read until daylight.
 
 BOOK TWO
 
 BOOK TWO 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE sun poured down on the well-kept lawn and shot its 
 emerald with gold. Back, the tiny Parsonage, huddling under 
 a mantle of clematis and honeysuckle, offered a single cool spot. 
 Directly in front, the state road, baked hard and yellow, cut like 
 a brass tape into the distance. Beyond the road clustered the 
 General Store, the Post Office; then came an oval, elm- 
 encircled, of village green ; then the white Unitarian Church. 
 On the lawn, a score of tables, draped in white cheese-cloth and 
 loaded with the litter common to bazaars, made a Stonehenge 
 circle. Decorations, flowers, vines, boughs had begun to crisp 
 and shrivel in the white-hot sunshine. Outside clustered bug 
 gies, carryalls, a motor or two. Inside, groups of people were 
 moving from table to table. Some from their simple motor- 
 clothes obviously city-people made swift rounds, accomplished 
 their quick, decisive purchases, and departed or engaged in social 
 commerce. But the majority of the women of the vicinity, in 
 their starched and ill-fitting summer best with hats bearing 
 no apparent relation either to the heads or the coiffures that 
 supported them, their brown faces smiling and relaxed, pro 
 ceeded in more leisurely fashion, gossiping much, buying little 
 and only after long thought. 
 
 The Keverend Nehemiah Dodge, puffy as to shape, fatly-regular 
 as to feature, smilingly-unctuous as to manner, navigated from 
 group to group, talking largely and flowingly wherever he an 
 chored and effectually blanketing sociability until he sailed away. 
 
 " So just naturally," Southward was saying to Hester, con 
 cluding an account of her adventure, "I ve got to go out after 
 him first star indicates the heart to be broken." Her eyes glim 
 mered with a delight purely boyish and frankly cruel. 
 
 " Lady of Kingdoms ! " Hester commented. 
 
 " Lady of Kingdoms, yourself ! " retorted Southward. " But 
 let s not waste any time in personalities. They ll be here before 
 I know it. I have my plan of campaign all worked out. I m 
 
 71
 
 72 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 watching the entrance now to see when they come in. I ve 
 instructed Libbie to introduce them to all the other girls first. 
 Of course it s not so much fun to get them unless you take them 
 away from somebody. And all the girls are armed to kill. Just 
 look at them. Get Pearl being a gipsy." 
 
 A little beyond the fish-pond at which Southward presided 
 and the candy-table at which Hester stood, an entrance opened 
 into the Stonehenge circle. Between this entrance and the gate 
 peaked a little white tent and within the tent, cross-legged on 
 a cushion, sat a girl in an oriental costume of green and yellow 
 calico. A little Zouave jacket of black velvet trimmed with coins 
 confined the yellow blouse; a little velvet cap, also of black 
 velvet and also trimmed with coins, covered her head. Before 
 her lay another cushion on which, carelessly set out, was a pack 
 of cards. Her dark hair, obviously crimped for the occasion, 
 hung unconfined from her cap to the ground. She was a slender 
 girl with features frailly pretty that time would inevitably pinch, 
 and a bloom evanescently pink that time would inevitably 
 fade. Somewhere, flashing between the big black eyes and the 
 thin red lips, lay an expression that must, unless experience 
 interfered, harden to her mother s look of cold malice; now 
 it was only inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness, spirited by 
 youth. 
 
 " Pearl hates herself bitterly to-day, doesn t she ? " Southward 
 went on with an obvious enjoyment of this picture. " There s 
 only one thing that girl does to exercise her mind, and that is 
 trying to think up costumes that will let her wear her hair 
 loose. Most girls believe that they can charm any man if they 
 can only parade before him with their hair down." 
 
 Southward s own hair clung tighter than usual to her round 
 head. More tautly than ever, it rolled back from her forehead 
 over her ears, changing in the process to a metal of burnished 
 purple. She wore one of the slim, close-fitting linen gowns which 
 were typical of her so plain that, but for a faint drawing in at 
 the waist, they were like a shift. 
 
 " Lysander hasn t taken any notice of her to-day. She s beckon 
 ing to him now. Lysander has a splendid figure! Doesn t he 
 look stunning leaning against the tent-pole? She ll flirt with 
 one of the new men so as to get him jealous. I ve half a mind 
 to keep Lysander here with me the whole afternoon. Would if 
 it were anybody but Lysander and I didn t have other fish to 
 fry. Oh, my goodness, Hetter," she went on with another access 
 of humorous appreciation, "get Flora Cow-Tubman as a fairy!
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 73 
 
 Wouldn t you know that that would be the part Flora would pick 
 for herself?" 
 
 The girl whom she indicated was tripping up the path from 
 the gate. Plump buxom indeed blonde with a heavy high bust 
 and a chin that was already beginning to double, she wore a full 
 trailing robe of tarlatan, trimmed with Christmas-tree silver 
 and a wreath of flowers at her neck and on her head. Her hair, 
 long and ash-blonde, was also hanging. It had obviously been 
 put up in rags the night before; it divided mathematically into 
 soft woolly curls. Flora was pretty. And her prettiness was 
 real if a little meaningless. Her colourings of grey eye, of pink 
 lip, and of white skin were all stable; her features softly turned. 
 Her expression was as unthinkingly gay as a child s that expres 
 sion was stable too. She would undoubtedly develop, whether 
 married or single, into a pleasing, deep-tinted maternal stoutness. 
 At sixty, she would still be sweet-looking, lovely if she chose. 
 
 " I d give a fortune for camera privileges," Southward went 
 on. " But Flora isn t the worst. Oh, Hetter oh, my goodness ! 
 Don t turn too quick! It s a scream! It s a riot! Pinkie Peters 
 as Folly." 
 
 Pinkie was a tall slim girl, a little stoop-shouldered, with 
 eyes surprisingly blue, a skin surprisingly pink, and hair sur 
 prisingly red. That hair was hanging a long, thick coarse 
 mane that rippled of its own volition and broke near the ends 
 into a natural crisp wave. Her colours were so vivid that they 
 deadened the disappointing effect of her features. Hers was a 
 fox-face, running down from high cheek-bones, narrower and nar 
 rower, until there was scarcely room in the meagre mouse-like 
 jaw for the strip of scarlet mouth. Her costume, palpably home 
 made like the others, consisted of many over-lapping points of 
 blue and white, each one ending in a little bell. 
 
 " It takes a girl a mile high to want to show her legs," South 
 ward commented. " And I suppose Pinkie probably has the 
 worst legs in town. But her hair is gorgeous. I love that colour. 
 If Pinkie only knew enough to pencil her brows and lashes, and 
 if somebody would only show her how to dress, she d be won 
 derful-looking." 
 
 " Yes," Hester agreed, " she s pretty." 
 
 "You know, Hester, I respect Pinkie the most of the three 
 girls. She s hard as nails, of course, as I am. Perhaps that s why 
 I like her." 
 
 " But when you come to that," Hester went on following the 
 line of Southward s previous remark, "Pearl and Flora are aw-
 
 74 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 fully pretty girls too. And I really don t think they look so bad 
 in those costumes." 
 
 Hester herself looked almost as bad as she could look. Her 
 tight-fitting over-trimmed country muslin accented her gaunt- 
 ness, and at the same time suppressed her colouring. Her hair 
 was piled haphazard on her head. She looked hollow-eyed, tired, 
 hot. 
 
 " Well, perhaps if you say it quick," Southward admitted 
 grudgingly. " People are beginning to come," she added after 
 a pause. " This is going to be a successful day." 
 
 About the gate, the vehicles were gathering in a huge con> 
 fused mass. Hay-ricks and excursion-barges from neighbouring 
 towns kept dumping their dusty perspiring loads; motors arriving 
 in greater and greater frequency set down fresh trim city-groups. 
 The Reverend Nehemiah, increasingly bland, increasingly unc 
 tuous, was navigating more and more swiftly, putting a conversa 
 tional pall on every group he approached. Sue-Salome, a big 
 doll on one arm, a little book in her hand, was trotting briskly 
 from man to man, enticing nickels from horny hands. Libbie, 
 her earrings twinkling in the brilliant sunlight, made an equally 
 successful progress with a rag-rug. From time to time, the 
 sisters met for a brief interval in which they exchanged breath 
 less comments. Mrs. Tubman s shapeless bulk was rooted on one 
 spot at the fancy-articles table, but her scuttling eye roved 
 ceaselessly, picking up stray morsels of observation as though 
 it were a beak. Mrs. Wallis, making change, constantly fluffed 
 her mat of artificial hair, constantly pushed down her corset- 
 steel, darted her quick, bright-eyed glances from spot to spot. 
 For long appraising intervals, Mrs. Peters surveyed the whole 
 scene over her nose. 
 
 " Ah," Southward said suddenly. " Here they are Dwight 
 Cameron and John Smith Cameron s the blonde." 
 
 Two men had come in through the Parsonage gate. They stood 
 for an unembarrassed second frankly looking about them, the 
 most conspicuous figures on the lawn. 
 
 They were tall and good-looking, but those were their only 
 points in common. John Smith was slender and thinly-muscular; 
 even at a distance it looked as though there were packed onto 
 the bony structure of his body much muscle but no flesh. The 
 regularity of his features gave him a look of caste. He was 
 brown-skinned, brown-haired, brown-eyed; but his face was lined 
 and there was a fleck of grey at his temples. He stood now in 
 an attitude noticeably easy, leaning at the hip on his stick. His
 
 75 
 
 face bore a smile which even at that distance was bafflingly 
 pleasant. 
 
 Dwight Cameron, though quite as tall, seemed shorter because 
 he was stockier. His light brown hair had already faded in 
 streaks of yellow and flaxen; his fair skin had first burned, then 
 browned. Against this tanned background, his eyes took a deeper 
 blue than was natural to them, his teeth a white that was almost 
 luminous. His face had none of his companion s high-bred regu 
 larity of line; it had a marked but agreeable irregularity. His 
 expression was that of a good-humoured arrogance which broke 
 at the eyes into a look of incipient laughter. 
 
 Having surveyed the scene at their leisure, the two men started 
 briskly forward. 
 
 " Will you have your fortune told ? " Pearl Wallis called as 
 they passed her tent. " I read the future in your palm or in 
 the cards." She dropped her eyes coquettishly. 
 
 The men stopped and parleyed with her. In the end, Dwight 
 Cameron disappeared inside the tent. The flap fell half forward, 
 but not before it was to be seen that sitting Turk-fashion on 
 the floor in front of the fair fortune-teller he had given her 
 his palm to read. His companion continued at a leisurely pace, 
 his gloves in one hand, his stick hooked on the other arm, in the 
 direction of the Stonehenge circle. 
 
 Flora Tubman met him at the entrance. She presented a book 
 to him and stood explaining her mission. He gravely put his 
 name down on half a dozen pages picked at random. He con 
 tinued to talk with her after he had signed for the last time. In 
 a few minutes, Pinkie Peters broke into their tete-a-tete. Flora 
 introduced Mr. Smith to Pinkie. Pinkie presented her book. 
 Mr. Smith again put his name on half a dozen pages chosen at 
 random. He listened with a quizzical deferentiality to their 
 observations. He made numerous observations of his own. He 
 laughed. But at intervals, his glance went beyond their faces," 
 searched that section of the Stonehenge circle which it faced. 
 
 After a while, Dwight Cameron emerged from the tent and 
 joined the group. John Smith introduced Cameron to the girls. 
 A shift in their position brought Smith s gaze to the other half 
 of the Stonehenge circle. And as before, his gaze went past the 
 two girls at quicker intervals now, for Cameron was monop 
 olising their attention to the new semi-circle. The sun was 
 in his face here; again and again its strong glare proved too 
 much for him. After a while, he walked back towards Pearl s 
 tent. Again the flap fell part-way over the entrance but not
 
 76 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 before it was evident that he had chosen the cards in preference 
 to palmistry. 
 
 " Pearl s got first shot at both of them," Southward said, drop 
 ping her lids over the brilliant blue and black glimmer in her 
 eyes. " Foxy little Pearl ! " 
 
 " Be careful, Southward," Hester breathed. 
 
 Dwight Cameron still stood talking with the girls. He had 
 none of his friend s air, quietly deferential, quizzically humorous, 
 of attention. He dominated the situation. It was he who asked 
 the questions. It was the girls who answered them. He laughed 
 often, but they laughed oftener; for his laugh was full of an 
 arrogant infection. Quite frankly and even while -openly he 
 harried his companions, his gaze shot in and out of the tables 
 in what was obviously search. Presently his companion joined 
 them. The four stood talking and laughing. Mr. Dodge bore 
 down on the group with the slow bumpy precision of a ferry-boat 
 making the slip. 
 
 " Puts a spoke in Pinkie s wheel," said Southward with entire 
 content. 
 
 " Southward don t," was Hester s only comment. She went 
 on all the time conscientiously selling her goods and making her 
 accurate change. 
 
 The Reverend Nehemiah inundated the strangers with a Ni 
 agara of bromidic comment. Two men joined the group; Thode 
 Snow a grown-up fat-boy, blond and a mouth-breather; King 
 Curtis, thin and brown with teeth conspicuously false and shoul 
 ders monstrously padded. The Reverend Nehemiah introduced 
 them to the strangers. Now the seven stood talking in what was 
 obviously the surface civilities of group conversation. Suddenly 
 the crowd split. A delegation of women, who had just entered 
 the gate, surrounded the pastor, tugged him off to shoal waters. 
 King Curtis cut Flora Tubman from what remained of the group. 
 Thode Snow engaged Pinkie. The strangers started with 
 alacrity to make the round of the tables. Sue-Salome came 
 bustling and twinkling across their path. They stopped her. 
 They put a question to her. She nodded an assent. She led them 
 in a diagonal course that exactly bisected Stonehenge and ended 
 between the candy counter and the fish-pond. 
 
 " It s coming, Hester," Southward announced, her casual gaze 
 on the sky apparently reviewing the weather, " they ve asked to 
 be introduced and they re making a bee-line for us. Flora and 
 Pinkie are ready to chew barbed-wire and Pearl could bite the 
 banisters. But let nobody say I didn t give them a fair chance."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 77 
 
 "Southward," Hester remonstrated wildly, "they ll hear you." 
 
 " Oh, no, they won t," Southward said without lowering her 
 voice. " Kemember, me for the blonde ! Yes, of course," she went 
 on in a cool clear voice, " I prefer H. G. Wells. Not that Henry 
 James hasn t his attractions for me. I mean in the matter of 
 style " 
 
 " Southward," Sue-Salome interrupted briskly, " and Hester, 
 I ll make you acquainted with Mr. Cameron and Mr. Smith. 
 Miss Drake and Miss Crowell. If Libbie and I ain t had the 
 worst time! We was depending on May Howes and she not only 
 
 don t show up but she ain t so much as sent us a word There ! 
 
 If that ain t she coming in now. You ll excuse me for I ve got 
 to see her at once." 
 
 The girls had in the meantime bowed, Hester speechlessly, 
 Southward with a conventional murmur. " I m Miss Drake and 
 my friend is Miss Crowell," Southward explained with a gravity 
 that even put out her blue and black shimmer. " You couldn t 
 tell which was which from the introductions." She presented 
 a business-like impassivity to Mr. Cameron s keen gaze. " Could 
 I tempt either of you or both of you to try your fortunes in the 
 fish-pond? I ll guarantee that you ll hate anything you get." 
 
 " I ll take six chances at once," Mr. Cameron decided promptly. 
 " Lead me to it." They drew away from the other two and 
 leaned over the hogshead draped with cheese-cloth that was the 
 fish-pond. Southward handed her victim a pole. He dropped it 
 inside, made a skilful pretence of not being able to catch the 
 loops of string, arranged obviously for easy hooking. 
 
 " Are aquatic sports your speciality ? " he queried carelessly. 
 He fixed his arrogant gaze on Southward; the look of incipient 
 laughter in his eyes became real mirth. 
 
 " No," said Southward in a musing tone, " not especially." 
 
 " Meaning for instance," Cameron went on, " do you swim ? " 
 
 A glimmer came stealing into the depths of Southward s eyes. 
 But she dropped her lashes at once and studied his undirected 
 efforts with the fishing-pole. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " she answered coolly, as one remembering. " I do 
 swim a little. How remarkably inexpert you are ! " 
 
 " Yes, it s an art in itself," Cameron admitted with a coolness 
 that was the fellow of hers. " Do you ever swim at night ? " he 
 went on in a casual tone. 
 
 " Oh, yes," Southward answered with an appearance of artless 
 enthusiasm. " I ve just returned from Oldtown where we went 
 into the ocean every night."
 
 78 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Really ! " Cameron commented. For an instant, he lost some 
 of his poise. He looked unsettled and perplexed. Then, " When 
 did you come from Oldtown ? " he demanded suddenly. 
 
 " Let me see," Southward replied lazily, " I ll have to think. 
 A week ago? No. Two or three days ago. What day is this? 
 Monday, isn t it ? " Then at her companion s impatient nod, 
 " I got home Friday." 
 
 Cameron s face flashed its big smile. " Friday! " he ejaculated. 
 Then "Eureka!" Then, "Oh, you mermaid!" 
 
 Southward only laughed. 
 
 " I went swimming last night," he said reproachfully. " I swam 
 until I was nearly parboiled. Why didn t you come again ? " 
 
 " You speak as though it were a hundred years ago," South 
 ward commented. 
 
 " It was a thousand." 
 
 " One night," Southward corrected him. 
 
 " Will you come to-night ? " Cameron asked eagerly. " It was 
 the most remarkable thing that ever happened to me. It was so 
 confoundedly unexpected and romantic; it s just obsessed me." 
 
 " Well," Southward had the appearance now of candid logic, 
 " it can t ever be romantic again if romance depends on unex 
 pectedness." 
 
 " But it doesn t exactly. Oh, please come. Come again to 
 night. Say, you ll come, please, please!" Cameron had used the 
 word please twice, but he did not entreat at all; he commanded. 
 
 Southward, in an instant of cool and calculated observation, 
 seemed to take account of this. " I really don t know," she 
 answered indifferently, " whether I shall feel like swimming 
 to-night." 
 
 " Oh, please come ! " Cameron said again. And now some of 
 the arrogance had gone out of him. His voice employed a note 
 of entreaty. 
 
 " There ! " Southward s voice was full of a delight, purely 
 benevolent, " you ve hooked a fish." 
 
 Purely by accident he had. " Damn ! " he muttered. 
 
 " I beg pardon," Southward murmured. 
 
 " I said I had ! " he explained. He drew out his package, 
 opened it. " Pen-wiper ! " he commented. " You deceived me. 
 I don t hate that. I need a pen-wiper. I always use the por 
 tieres. Please promise me that you ll come to-night." 
 
 " Well, you see," Southward said in a disinterested tone, " it 
 all depends on how I feel at eleven o clock. By the way, you ve 
 got five other chances, you know."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 79 
 
 He bit his lip. And he began to fish rapidly as though to get 
 an unpleasant business over. He drew in succession a moustache- 
 cup, a pin-cushion, a pin-tray. " Hand-painted ! " was his com 
 ment on this. " That s valuable." A sheaf of shaving-paper 
 under an embroidered cover came next, a satin handkerchief -case. 
 " Please say you ll come," he begged, when the last fish had been 
 revealed. And now his tone was actually humble. 
 
 " All right," Southward agreed, " I ll start from my side of the 
 pond at eleven." 
 
 " I ll meet you just beyond," Cameron promised. " Oh, here 
 are some more customers." He dropped into the background. 
 
 More and more people were arriving. Carriages were coming 
 in steady lines; motors were constantly whirring, churning, 
 exploding as they stopped at the entrance or started off from it; 
 at train-time station-barges drew up, depositing their loads. 
 There was a file, almost continuous, from the gate past the for 
 tune-teller s tent, to the arch of flags. The tables were beginning 
 to show bare places. The fish-pond sold out once and had to be 
 replenished from stores under a neighbouring counter. Hester s 
 home-made candies and cakes moved in steady files from her 
 table; her helpers were constantly diving into boxes at the rear 
 for fresh goods. The Eeverend Nehemiah floated blandly from 
 group to group. On Mrs. Wallis s cheeks lay two hard bright 
 patches of colour the result of unwonted arithmetic. Mrs. Tub- 
 man s dull eye had gone absolutely blank and cold; and the live 
 one scuttled less feverishly from point to point. Mrs. Peters 
 looked over her nose less frequently but with more concentration. 
 In the fortune-teller s tent, business was brisk; the flap was never 
 up for longer than a second. Folly with the clock in her arms 
 tinkled from spot to spot, Thode Snow always at her elbow. 
 Flora had put her foot through her tarlatan skirt twice. Her 
 crown of flowers had faded; but exertion had brought a deeper 
 bloom to her smooth cheeks. King Curtis did not leave her side. 
 Lysander still stood on the outskirts of the crowd, coolly watching 
 everybody. 
 
 " I hope I didn t frighten you the other night," Mr. Smith 
 had in the meantime opened conversation with Hester. " You 
 see, I thought at that hour it would be a man. I had forgotten 
 how fearlessly country-girls go about. It did occur to me after 
 wards though that I might have offered to take you home. I was 
 too afraid at the time; you seemed awfully competent at that 
 moment." 
 
 " Nobody has ever called me competent before," Hester said.
 
 80 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " It s pleasant to hear it. I wasn t frightened a bit of course. 
 I wondered afterwards if you got home all right. I m afraid I 
 didn t give you very explicit directions." 
 
 " Oh, I had no difficulty whatever. I found that Cameron had 
 come to the conclusion that I was drowned. He was starting to 
 drag the pond. Then it occurred to him to see if my bathing-suit 
 was there. It was; so he gave it up." 
 
 There came a brief pause. Mechanically, Hester straightened 
 out the squares of cake, the dishes of candy. 
 
 " You were rather startling in that yellow Chinese coat," Smith 
 went on after a while. His pleasant voice had a slight touch of 
 diffidence. " It was like seeing a ghost I shall always feel as 
 though I had seen a Chinese ghost." 
 
 " It s a very wonderful coat, I think." In Hester s soft voice 
 there was a touch of diffidence also. She went on eagerly to talk 
 of Southward as though she could transfer the onus of her em 
 barrassment to other shoulders. " It belongs to Miss Drake. You 
 ought to see her in it. She has dozens of them though. One of 
 her ancestors brought a lot back from China. I don t know why, 
 I m sure. Of course many of the old houses here are full of 
 Chinese stuff, but hers is the only one that has any Chinese 
 clothes." 
 
 "Perhaps he took unto himself a Chinese wife and brought 
 home her wardrobe. Miss Drake ought to give that yellow one 
 to you, though. That s yours by every rule of ownership." 
 
 " Southward s always trying to give it to me and two or three 
 others that she thinks are becoming to me. But I can t take 
 them. I hate to destroy the collection. I think some of them 
 must be precious; they re undoubtedly very old." 
 
 " I should like to see them," said Smith. " I like Chinese 
 things." 
 
 " I m very sure that Southward would gladly show them to 
 you," Hester answered simply. 
 
 " Well, now," Smith changed the subject suddenly, " it s up to 
 me to spend some hard-earned gold. That cake looks good. Good, 
 is what I say in several languages and every degree of emphasis. 
 I say, Dwight " 
 
 He raised his voice a little. 
 
 Cameron turned about. It was extraordinary what a thunder 
 ous frown his blond face could produce. " What is it ? " he 
 demanded impatiently. 
 
 " Look at this cake," Smith ordered. " Never in your life hare 
 you seen anything like it! We haven t had any cake since we
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 81 
 
 got down here. I m thinking of buying the entire crop. How 
 can we get it home?" 
 
 " Take a taxi ! " Cameron snapped and turned a shoulder on his 
 friend. 
 
 " No enthusiasm in that quarter," Smith commented, " although 
 I give you my word, Miss Crowell, to-night he ll murder me 
 for not having lugged the whole lot back to camp on my back. 
 I guess I ll have to content myself with vicarious enjoyment. 
 Hullo, kids." He turned suddenly on the group of children who, 
 arriving the instant before, had made a bee-line for Hester s 
 counter. " What ll you have, cake or candy ? " 
 
 There were half a dozen of them, boys and girls, slim, sun 
 burned, freckled, forced into unaccustomed shoes and their lank 
 country best. The boys announced their preferences with dum- 
 founding clearness and speed, but the girls were inclined to be 
 non-committal. Smith was sufficiently adroit with them, how 
 ever; he teased and coaxed until the last shy maid had lisped her 
 choice. Then he proceeded to satisfy a later and smaller group 
 who, sensing loot across the field, came trooping over, displaying 
 even to the smallest girl no shame whatever. Cameron, catching 
 the spirit of the occasion, interrupted his talk with South 
 ward, insisted on doing what he called, " blowing them to a 
 fish." 
 
 The dozen children surrounded the fish-pond, each clamouring 
 to be first. Cameron ended by dividing his spoils among them; 
 all except the moustache-cup which he vowed to cherish as long 
 as life was " to " him. 
 
 Increasing crowds made it impossible for the men to hold their 
 positions longer. They withdrew for an interval, in which they 
 made the rounds of the other tables, submitting to spoliation at 
 the hands of various types of rustic beauty and rustic enterprise. 
 Occasionally they doubled back on their tracks to snatch a tete-a- 
 tete, but the increasing crowds made impossible more than a 
 remark or two. 
 
 Gradually, however, the crowds began to thin. Empty yellow 
 busses drew up to the door and departed packed with people and 
 bundles. Buggies and carryalls drove off over-loaded. Motors 
 carried passengers on the running-boards. Those who were left 
 walked staidly up the dusty country-roads. The three girls, 
 Pearl and Flora and Pinkie, were changing their clothes in the 
 Parsonage. Their three swains waited outside. Lysander had 
 disappeared. 
 
 " Seventy-five dollars and thirty-seven cents," Mrs. Wallis an-
 
 82 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 nounced triumphantly, adding up the last handful of coins. 
 "Lord, I m just about ready to drop!" chirped Libbie Hatch. 
 " Sue says she hates the sight of money." " Land, don t this 
 place look ready to ride out," sighed Mrs. Peters. " We ll all 
 hare to come over to-morrow morning and clean up." 
 
 The lawn did indeed look draggled wherever the litter of paper 
 permitted it to be seen. The vines and boughs hung ragged and 
 shrivelled from the dismantled tables. 
 
 " Will you let me walk home with you, Miss Drake ? " Dwight 
 Cameron had taken the precaution to ask early in the afternoon, 
 forestalling Lysander who immediately afterwards came forward 
 with the offer of a lift. 
 
 " And I ll carry these things for you, Miss Crowell," John 
 Smith said, as he helped stow away alien belongings in the Par 
 sonage barn. " That is, if you don t mind." 
 
 " Thank you. I shall enjoy it very much," Hester answered 
 with her quaint rustic formality. 
 
 " Do you like Shaynef ord, Mr. Smith ? " Hester began as they 
 emerged from the Parsonage lawn to the dusty road. 
 
 " Oh, immensely ! It s charming absolutely unspoiled, simple, 
 quaint, and all that sort of thing. It has a flavour of its own 
 too. I don t wonder painters like it. It isn t quite like any 
 place I ve ever seen. We re all strong for it." 
 
 " How did you happen to come here ? " 
 
 " Shut my eyes and stuck a pin in the map, haphazard," Smith 
 explained. "How do you like it?" he asked unexpectedly. 
 
 Hester did not speak for a moment. " I see in it and feel 
 in it all that you see and feel, I suppose," she began after a 
 while in a tone measured and even. " It is as you say quaint, 
 full of a flavour of its own with a quality that artists very much 
 admire. But " Her voice changed. 
 
 " But," her companion prodded her, " please go on ! " 
 
 Hester did not however speak. 
 
 " Please go on," he entreated. 
 
 " Well," Hester took it up again, " I realize that all you 
 say is true." Her voice accelerated in speed; it grew hotter, 
 keener; her breath came between her words, a sharp quick pull 
 inward and then a spurt outward. " I also realise that it is 
 gone-to-seed bleak, blank, stark, dead, a mere empty shell of 
 what was once a lively and energetic little town a place that 
 saps and taps and cuts and bleeds and strangles the young and 
 suffocates and dulls and deadens and paralyses and ossifies
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 83 
 
 the old. If I had my way, I d leave it this instant and not see 
 it again for years. It s a grave-yard." 
 
 Hester s whole aspect had changed. Suppressed fire now 
 sent out a flame from every point of her personality. Her 
 colour had risen; her eyes glittered; her sultry hair quivered and 
 sparkled. 
 
 Smith listened, composed. 
 
 " Yes, of course," he said in an amused tone. " I see all that, 
 but it wouldn t occur to me that you could. After all, you re 
 a kind of rebel, aren t you? Comrade Hester Crowell, in the 
 spirit of revolt, I salute you." 
 
 " Are you a Socialist? " Hester asked. 
 
 " In a way. I think I haven t been expelled from the party 
 recently." 
 
 " You re the only one I ve ever seen," Hester said, " except 
 Mr. Hallowell." 
 
 v " On the contrary," Smith contradicted, " the man who runs 
 the garage Doten is a Socialist. Your grocer is a Socialist, 
 and the little girl who presides over the candy-shop is a Socialist. 
 I ve had long talks with all three of them." 
 
 " Myra Barry ! " Hester exclaimed. " I can t believe it." 
 
 " Go down some day and talk with her," Smith suggested. 
 "You re one yourself of course, although you may not know it 
 yet." 
 
 Hester shook her head. " No, I m afraid of such things. 
 Socialism, anarchism the very names frighten me even equal 
 suffrage some. Don t they frighten you ? " 
 
 " Not at all. I ll whisper a deadly terrible secret to you if you 
 promise not to tell though they bore me like the dickens some 
 times. All modern warfare is a bore anyway even a battle." 
 Before Hester could speak, he turned the subject. " Have you 
 lived here long ? " 
 
 " All my life," Hester answered, " and I ve never really been 
 away." 
 
 "And has Miss Drake always lived here?" 
 
 " Yes, but she s gone away occasionally to New York once 
 and we ve both been to Boston many times. But she s tied here 
 too." 
 
 " She s an amazing type," Smith said meditatively. 
 
 "Isn t she lovely?" Hester demanded fervently. "Or would 
 you call her beautiful ? " 
 
 " I would call her neither," Smith answered. " But she s 
 pretty unbearably, mercilessly, unfairly, pretty. She s got the
 
 84 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 air that in women most terrifies me of being absolutely sure of 
 herself." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she s sure of herself," Hester agreed. " It s the 
 thing about her that most fascinates me. That s a curious thing," 
 she went on, smiling. "Your friend Mr. Cameron has the same 
 air and as it happens, although it enchants me in Southward, it s 
 the quality that most frightens me in men. It would be a long 
 time before I should be at my ease with Mr. Cameron. South 
 ward may be sure but he s cocksure. For instance," she went 
 on analytically, " he s not really good-looking when you examine 
 him. But that cocksureness of his hypnotises you into thinking 
 he is." 
 
 " Oh, yes, he gets away with that in fine style," Smith agreed. 
 " It s sheer beaute du diable with him as, in a way it is with Miss 
 Drake. You re quite right. It s the arrogance of the young 
 brute." 
 
 Hester did not speak. She had that quality of intense listening 
 that at times seems to concentrate into a wordless question or 
 a soundless exclamative. 
 
 " It s done him good coming here," Smith went on. " He s on 
 the Planet in New York star-reporter. He came from Vermont 
 originally; then he went West. He s been in New York five 
 years now. He s done and is still doing the most brilliant 
 reportorial work but he s got enough out of that, and besides 
 he s doing it with his left hand. I want him to break away now 
 and free-lance for a while. By the way, he s the author of one 
 novel a short novel that had made considerable success three 
 or four years ago Ginger." 
 
 " Did he write Ginger? " Hester asked in an interested voice. 
 "I loved that." 
 
 " So did everybody," Smith averred. " He s been intending 
 during the five years he s been in New York to write its suc 
 cessor. But he hasn t done it yet. You see New York s got hold 
 of him a little. He s a well-known figure there and he s reaping 
 all the rewards and penalties of charm of personality. Oh, I 
 don t mean that he s definitely hurt by it. His ability is all 
 there of course bursting with suppression. But you can form 
 no idea of what in the way of temptation New York has to 
 offer such a good-looking, healthy, virile young beggar as Dwight. 
 I take him apart regularly every two months and show him how 
 all the works are going bad. It s surprising what he stands from 
 me. But in fact, I abducted him to get him down here. He was, 
 between ourselves, quite noticeably and unmistakenly drunk when
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 85 
 
 I took possession of him. When he woke up, he was fighting 
 mad. But he s so crazy about the place now that I m going to 
 have difficulty in getting him back on the job. He s been exer 
 cising really exercising for the first time since he came to New 
 York, swimming, running, boxing with me and Morena. The 
 best part of it is that he s bubbling over with ideas for stories. 
 He ll do something some day I don t know what it will be and 
 sometimes I think it may not be writing at all but he ll do it." 
 
 " Say, this is a great little burg," Cameron was in the mean 
 time saying to Southward. " You Cape Codders are different 
 from what I thought. Seem to render up the keys of the city 
 to the stranger on a velvet cushion." 
 
 " Glad you like it," Southward remarked politely. " I hate it 
 like poison myself." 
 
 "Keally?" 
 
 " Keally." 
 
 " Oh, I say I can t believe that." 
 
 " You don t have to live here, you know." 
 
 " Sure ! You re right. I d hate it like the dickens if I had to 
 stay here," Dwight agreed. " Why don t you go away ? " 
 
 " Can t," Southward answered laconically. " Responsibilities ! " 
 she added, as though definitely turning the subject. " Tell me 
 about your friend John Smith." 
 
 " I would rather talk about you." 
 
 " Oh, I m coming to that," Southward promised. 
 
 " Or me." 
 
 " Well, I may even get to that much later though." 
 
 " All right," Cameron said, " I ll admit that next to myself 
 and the girl I happen to be with, I talk with more enthusiasm 
 about J. Smith, Esquire, than any other human being on this 
 terrestrial ball. Old John is a person. He s good Indian, an old 
 scout, a regular fellow, and all those things people say. He s the 
 whitest human being I ever knew. I d give the last drop of my 
 blood for him. He s a queer cuss though. He s a red-hot Socialist 
 although he s always fighting with the party. But he s really 
 got a sense of humour. He gave up a good job with a handsome 
 salary on The Moment, a growing weekly, to go over and fight 
 on Progress, a lone dog of a Socialist sheet that puts up a fierce 
 Socialist howl once a week on the East Side. He s put some 
 punch into it, let me tell you. It s so full of red corpuscles that 
 people actually read it." He paused and flashed his good- 
 humoured arrogant grin, " I don t mean Socialists I mean people.
 
 86 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Let me tell you my favourite story about John. He was living 
 down in the slums. There was an Irish couple had a room on 
 the same floor. The husband was a good enough young fellow 
 but when he got any booze in him, he always wanted to fight. 
 He got into the way of beating his wife up. She was all broken 
 up about it and confided in John. She wouldn t have her hus 
 band arrested of course they never do and yet she wanted to 
 stop it. Well, what do you think John did ? " 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 " She was a great husky she-Dogan a pippin too I saw her 
 once. Well, John gives her boxing lessons. And the next time 
 her husband started to rough-house, she licked him good and 
 proper. Somebody told his friends and they joshed him so he 
 signed the pledge out of sheer shame. But that isn t all about 
 John he s got more courage than any man I know I mean 
 real courage, regular hit-a-man-twice-as-big-as-yourself courage. 
 He s naturally the sweetest and most peaceable citizen on earth. 
 
 And yet Say, if he sees a fight going on at the foot of the 
 
 street, he runs down and plunges into it up to his neck. Doesn t 
 make any difference who it is or what it s about just so it s a 
 fight. John needs a guardian. He s crazy. He s got the strength 
 of ten thousand gorillas. And if there s a risk of life he can 
 possibly take, he takes it. I used to have a fair degree of the 
 spirit of the adventurer myself. But travelling with John has 
 turned me into the most quiet, mild-mannered, peaceable gink 
 you ever saw. A man really has to kick me in the face now 
 before I realise I m insulted I ve had to smooth down so many 
 fights that John gets into." 
 
 " Now I wouldn t think he was that kind at all," Southward 
 remarked thoughtfully. 
 
 " Well, who would ? " Cameron demanded. " Now let s talk 
 about ourselves."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 "WHAT do you think of my set?" Southward asked Hester. 
 " Observe ( set, " she added parenthetically. " I would have said 
 setting before I met Dwight Cameron." 
 
 " It s charming," Hester answered, " except the flowers. South 
 ward, you can make flowers grow, but you can t arrange them 
 prettily you re too ruthless." 
 
 The table was laid in the orchard to the left of the Drake 
 house and in its deepest shade. The heavy August air was so 
 coloured by the green that the grass threw up and the leaves 
 threw down that it seemed translucent, almost opaque. It might 
 have floated away like a huge emerald bubble but that it was 
 held in by the closeness of the ancient, bent, sagging, umbrella- 
 like trees that stood straight or sagged listlessly or leaned drunk- 
 enly or knelt outright, opening crazy vistas in every direction 
 through the lush, orchard-grass. The old brass of the samovar, 
 the old blue of the cups, the old silver of the spoons, made high 
 lights in this soft gloom. Southward watched Hester as she 
 rearranged the flowers in the big Canton bowl on the table. 
 With strong pulls and twists her slim long hands forced the 
 dahlias into a beautiful composition. 
 
 " Swell is the word," said Southward. " It looks to me like 
 a magazine-cover. I wish I had a greyhound and a peacock to 
 make it really ancestral." 
 
 She said this with that blue-and-black glimmer which, with 
 her, always betokened humorous appreciation. That gleam rarely 
 left her eyes nowadays and as though life were one long enjoy 
 ment, her soft lips parted constantly in their boy s smile. The 
 open V of her middy-blouse displayed a triangle of tanned flesh, 
 in which rose warred with bronze. This same colour lay on her 
 smooth cheeks and on her bared forearms. 
 
 Change had come into Hester s face too. It had lighted in 
 some indescribable way. A torch burned constantly behind her 
 eyes. She was looking particularly well; for the white linen- 
 skirt and middy-blouse were too simple to hurt her appearance. 
 And the triangle of blond flesh at the neck was in her case just 
 touched with the velvety pink of perpetual burn. 
 
 87
 
 88 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Well, Casanova ll have to do," Hester suggested. She turned 
 to a monstrous black cat who sunned himself luxuriously in a 
 patch of sunlight that had floated down through the tree-openings. 
 " He s ten years old, isn t he ? That s ancestral enough for a 
 cat." 
 
 " Quite ! " agreed Southward. " Say, they won t have any idea 
 from this lay-out that we haven t been serving tea every afternoon 
 since we were born, will they? Ancestral mahogany, china, 
 silver, and bamboo. I don t know what more they can ask in 
 the way of scenery. Little they ll guess that, inside, the lower 
 rooms are one refined orgy of haircloth, jig-sawed oak, and cut 
 glass." 
 
 " They probably won t notice anything," Hester said. " Men 
 don t." 
 
 " Don t you fool yourself, Hetter," Southward disagreed. 
 " These men do. They re different from any men we ve ever 
 known. They notice everything everything the least little 
 thing! Of course Mr. Cameron s a reporter it s his job. But 
 sometimes it startles me, I must confess, especially when I m 
 trying to slip something over on him." 
 
 " They re the most interesting men that I ever met in my life," 
 Hester said. " I m enjoying them so much that I can t believe 
 it s true. I m so afraid I ll wake up. Why it seems to me I ve 
 lived a century this last week." 
 
 " Yes, they re interesting," Southward admitted. " At first I 
 wondered what their game was. I ll admit it. You know I m 
 suspicious of men." 
 
 " I know it, Southward," Hester commented in a baffled tone. 
 " And I can t see why." 
 
 "Well," Southward laughed a little uneasily. "Perhaps I ll 
 tell you sometime. But they re regular fellows all right," she 
 ended evasively. 
 
 " Did you go in swimming last night ? " Hester asked. 
 
 " I did ! " said Southward, her eyes all glimmer, " and the 
 night before and the night before that and the night before that. 
 It s a regular engagement. And nobody s discovered it yet. Of 
 course this house is a tomb by ten o clock and nobody ever goes 
 near the pond. That s part of the lark of it the secrecy." 
 
 Hester did not say anything. For an instant she looked 
 troubled. But ultimately she burst into laughter, though palpably 
 in spite of herself. " I love it ! " she confessed. 
 
 " The thing I like most about them," Southward went on, 
 reverting to a former theme, " is that they re as fond of each other
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 89 
 
 as you and I. You ought to hear Dwight Cameron talk about 
 John Smith. He says that of all the men he knows, he d pick 
 John soonest as a husband for his sister. He says John s as able 
 as the deuce, the finest, straightest, cleanest man morally and 
 a perfect specimen physically." 
 
 Hester s brow gathered into folds. " Now what does that make 
 
 me think of " she meditated aloud. " Oh, yes, I know. That 
 
 night we stepped in to see Gert Beebee and the baby. Heavens, 
 doesn t that seem a long time ago? Do you remember that what 
 she said that she d picked the best-looking man she ever saw 
 for the father of her child ? " 
 
 " Yes and Hetter I stopped in to see Gert the other day. 
 She s as happy as the day is long with that kid. She says she 
 realises that she s always wanted a baby and now she s got it, 
 it doesn t make any particular difference to her how it came. 
 I regretted bitterly that Mrs. Wallis wasn t there to hear 
 that." 
 
 " It s wonderful, isn t it ? " Hester said. " I could almost find 
 it in my heart to envy Gert." 
 
 " Here they come," Southward exclaimed, darting an oblique 
 glance up the North Lane. " Let us sit down and be dis 
 covered conversing with a languid elegance." She slid into one 
 of the Indian chairs, leaned back, lolled. " Do you like opera, 
 Miss Crowell ? " she asked in a bored tone. 
 
 Hester, sitting stiffly upright, laughed and in the laughing, 
 relaxed a little. " Not so well as the drama," she came back. 
 
 " Good for you, Hester ! " Southward encouraged her. " I 
 simply dote on Wagner myself. Oh, good afternoon ! " she raised 
 her voice. " Hester and I are giving an imitation of two ladies 
 sustaining a vivid conversation on art and letters while they lan 
 guish for the men to arrive." 
 
 The two men stopped. " You ve nothing on us," Dwight Cameron 
 said. " We ve been trying to plan an entrance like a leading-man." 
 
 " I had hoped for a rustic gate," added Smith. " It was my 
 intention to vault lightly over." He stopped an instant. " Miss 
 Drake," he announced, " I ve simply got to stand here until I get 
 all this." 
 
 " Stand there for an hour," Southward said. She walked slowly 
 over to their side. Hester followed her. The two men stood silent, 
 staring about them. The two girls stood, looking alternately from 
 the men to the scene. 
 
 The Drake house was really a mansion, perfectly preserved, left 
 over from high-coloured, post-colonial days. The front and back
 
 90 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 were of wood, the sides of brick; the latter bore each the iron S 
 typical of the epoch. It had been a big square bulk at first, but 
 later an ell had been joined to it at a right angle. By means of 
 many additions a barn first, then shed after shed this ell ran a 
 long way off to the side. The paint, originally white, had softened 
 to a grey that was like silver velvet and the barn-doors, originally 
 green, had faded to a blue that was like peacock silk. The main 
 house still stood on a high terrace. In front, sloping down from 
 the beautiful, carved, fan-lighted door-way through gigantic box- 
 hedges, ran a flagged path. The path stopped at an elaborate 
 wooden gate which was part of a fence as exquisitely designed and 
 executed as a piece of carved ivory; a combination of posts which 
 sustained urns and of palings which supported garlands. On the 
 white of this fence also, time had laid a grey plushy softness. 
 And within the enclosure there was not a flash of alien colour, not 
 a hint of irregularity of shape. Everything was green and of 
 formal cut; it might have been Italy. The bosomy box-hedges, 
 from which not a leaf was missing, struck the highest note of 
 colour a clear, vivid, piercing, sacred green. And matching the 
 hedges with shapes as exact and geometric, pines, cypresses, pow 
 dered spruces ran through all the lower shades of green. The 
 Drake mansion mouldered. It had a look the woods sweeping 
 close around it almost of decay. But it was the exquisite decay 
 of a gentlewoman who, in spite of blighting poverty, faces the 
 world with all the family traditions in her bearing. 
 
 " Good Lord! " Cameron said at last. " Isn t it ? " He did 
 
 not complete his question. 
 
 " It s " John Smith did not complete his answer. " And this 
 
 orchard here and the flowers beyond. And then the trees 
 
 Wow!" 
 
 Southward stared towards the table; the others followed, the 
 men still foaming exclamatory adjectives and broken phrases. 
 
 " Isn t this orchard a pippin? " Smith went on. " There are no 
 orchards like the New England orchards." 
 
 " It s a novel," Cameron answered. " Plenty of spirit of place 
 here." He looked about like a man under a spell. For an instant 
 the others were silent, as though they might all have fallen under 
 that spell. 
 
 It was one of those moments between breezes when nature seems 
 to sink into a trance. The quiet air was like a greenish crystal. 
 The still trees were almost stiff. The orchard looked like a gigantic 
 replica of one of those carvings that the Japanese make from jade. 
 Verd antique, tourmaline, malachite, the tint varied, but it was
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 91 
 
 always green. Translucent where the sun caught it, it thickened 
 below. Olive shadows lay sombre and solid under the bushes. 
 
 " It s the prettiest orchard in Shayneford," Hester said, smiling 
 her sympathy, " I ve always said that." 
 
 " Who takes care of the garden? " Smith went on, still standing. 
 
 " I do," Southward answered promptly, " with these fair hands, 
 do I do it." 
 
 " She s a perfect marvel with flowers," Hester interpolated. " She 
 can make anything grow." 
 
 Dwight Cameron had already seated himself. His gaze drifted 
 gradually to Southward, dipped an instant, darted away, came back, 
 stayed. John Smith s look went to her also for an instant of 
 appraisement. " May I smoke, Miss Drake? " he asked. 
 
 Southward nodded. Smith pulled from his pocket a pipe and 
 a rubber crescent of tobacco. He filled the bowl, thumbed it down 
 hard, lighted it, began to puff. He seated himself where he could 
 look at the velvety f agade of the house. " I should think she 
 could," he was all the time saying, " I should think anything 
 would grow for Miss Drake. I would. I m frightened to death 
 of her. I wouldn t dare disobey her." 
 
 " Well, see that you remember that," Southward warned him. 
 It was obvious that this pleased her. She laughed. " You know 
 
 I ve an awful temper the Drake Have you heard of the 
 
 Drake temper yet? " 
 
 She spoke banteringly but underneath her badinage peered the 
 pride with which people always mention idiosyncratic family faults. 
 
 "No," said John Smith, "I haven t. But I d like to." He 
 seated himself at the table, still puffing comfortably. " Go on ! " 
 
 " You ll hear of it sooner or later. So you might as well hear 
 it from me. The Drakes are famous for their tempers and, if I 
 
 do say it as shouldn t, their courage. My grandfather She 
 
 lifted the cover of the samovar and peered in. * killed 
 
 Tea ll be ready when this samovar gets good and ready and not 
 an instant before a man once." She put the cover back on the 
 samovar. 
 
 " Well, if he did it in the degage way in which you relate it," 
 Dwight Cameron commented, " it must have been a very elegant 
 event." 
 
 Southward showed the edge of her little teeth below the raspberry 
 of her upper lip. " No, he was a little excited at the time. It 
 came about this way. Grandfather was passing Nate Warner s 
 house one day. He heard a woman screaming. Nate Warner, I 
 should say, was the village bully, a member of a degenerate family
 
 92 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 living down Pumpkin Hollow way. Grandfather ran round the 
 back of the house and found Nate beating his mother. Grand 
 father rushed straight towards them, yelling to Nate to stop. Nate s 
 answer came from a revolver. And he shot grandfather twice, once 
 in the leg and once in the thigh. But grandfather kept right on 
 coming. He seized Warner before he could shoot him again, 
 yanked the revolver from him and they struggled back and forth, 
 grandfather bleeding from his two wounds and of course the old 
 woman by this time beating grandfather from the rear." South 
 ward glimmered her appreciation of this picture. " Well, sud 
 denly the struggle ended. Nate dropped grandfather had shot 
 him." 
 
 " Pretty play," Dwight Cameron remarked. John Smith puffed 
 tranquilly on, his gaze going from Southward s face to Hester s 
 and back by way of the gloom-filled orchard. " What happened 
 next ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, grandfather was arrested for murder, but the coroner s 
 jury acquitted him next day. He took care of old Mrs. 
 Warner until she died. And of course she lived in a comfort she 
 had never known. The curious part of it was that she realised 
 this and grew very fond of grandfather. She was always sending 
 up to the house dishes of things she d cooked for him. I remember 
 particularly because he always gave them to me. Oh, grandfather," 
 she called without stirring. " Here he comes out, up from the 
 pond. I want you to meet him." 
 
 Mr. Drake s crooked, squat, powerful figure had emerged from 
 the grape-arbour at the back. Limping through the high grass 
 in the crouch of his perpetual cramp, he had more than ever 
 the look of a crushed gorilla. The men arose. " Grandfather, 
 this is Mr. Smith and Mr. Cameron my grandfather, Mr. Drake." 
 
 The men shook hands. 
 
 "Well, how be ye enjoying camping out?" Mr. Drake asked. 
 
 " Very much," John Smith answered. " Will you have a cigar, 
 Mr. Drake?" 
 
 " Don t mind if I do," Mr. Drake admitted. " Them fellers that 
 went out tramping come back yit ? " 
 
 " No," said Cameron, " but we expect them any day now." 
 
 " I walked from Provincetown to Boston when I was a boy 
 once," Mr. Drake confided. " But I must confess, I ain t much 
 on walking. Sea-faring men most gen ally ain t. Still I remem 
 ber " He plunged into reminiscences. 
 
 " Tea s ready," Southward said as he concluded. " Won t you 
 wait and have a cup of tea with us, grandfather? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 93 
 
 " Not in them little cups," replied Mr. Drake with some of 
 Southward s forthright scorn, " I d jess as soon drink out of 
 thimbles." 
 
 Southward laughed. " Well, go in the house and get a bowl," 
 she defied him. 
 
 " No, I got some work in the barn I want to do," Mr. Drake 
 put her off. " Besides I don t ever eat between meals." He limped 
 off. It was extraordinary how much strength there was in his 
 animal-like shamble. 
 
 Perhaps the two city-men thought of that. At any rate, they 
 paid him the involuntary tribute of watching him out of 
 sight. 
 
 "He s the man that did the killing?" Cameron questioned. 
 
 "Yes, and five years ago, he almost did another," said South 
 ward. " Oh, he s got the Drake temper, all right," she added 
 proudly. " You ve got to handle him with gloves." 
 
 Dwight Cameron looked at her with all his temperamental 
 arrogance flaring in his face as though she had challenged him. 
 " Have you got it ? " he asked. 
 
 " You betchu ! " Southward answered with fervour. 
 
 " You haven t got any such thing, Southward," Hester asserted 
 indignantly, " you re the sweetest-tempered person I ever knew." 
 
 " You ve never seen it, Hester, that s all," Southward explained. 
 
 " I d love to see it," Cameron interpolated. 
 
 " Easiest exhibition I give," Southward laughed. " Oh, thank 
 you, Charlotte." 
 
 Charlotte had come padding slowly across the grass, a plate of 
 cookies, done up in a napkin, in her hand. She made no sound. 
 The men turned. They stared for a paralysed instant before 
 they arose. 
 
 The sun had come out white; clear and gold, it poured down 
 upon her. Charlotte was big. She was powerful. Her eyes 
 showed their blindness; yet they were fathomless, rutilant. They 
 were sunk above greyish ruts that years of sleeplessness had 
 seared half-way down her cheeks and below splay eyebrows that 
 locked over her nose in a double arch. Her hair was a black 
 jungle. Thick coarse locks beat down over her forehead and 
 caught their claws in her neck. A brown mole on one cheek 
 seemed to accent this hairiness. Her skin was dead; her figure 
 was set. 
 
 Southward s face softened. " My cousin, Miss Howes," she said 
 tenderly and proudly. " Mr. Cameron and Mr. Smith, Charlotte." 
 Charlotte produced two awkward bows, but apparently words were
 
 94 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 beyond the scope of her embarrassment. " If you need more 
 cookies, Southward, I m keeping them hot. I ll bring them out 
 to you." She departed. 
 
 " Your aunt is not stone blind ? " Smith inquired. 
 
 " No. She sees the outlines of things." 
 
 " How long has this been ? " 
 
 " Since she was about twenty-eight." 
 
 " Poor soul ! " Smith said compassionately. " Poor creature ! " 
 The pleasant look that filmed his eyes melted; the sombreness 
 underneath blazed up to the surface. Then, " How did you 
 happen to be called Southward ? " He was obviously changing the 
 subject. 
 
 " It s been a family-name for three generations/ Southward 
 explained. " My grandmother was Southward and her mother. 
 My great, great, great-grandfather gave his first daughter that 
 name. Sentiment was mixed up with it. It had something to do 
 with an early love-affair. For some reason or other, he always 
 preferred to sail southward. That s very different from grand 
 father " She nodded her head in the direction Mr. Drake had 
 
 taken. " When he was a boy, he went into the Arctic Circle and 
 he s crazy to go again says he will too sometime before he dies. 
 Most girls hate their names but I ve always liked mine." She 
 paused, pushed the cups one at a time, under the faucet of the 
 samovar, filled them, served her guests to sugar, cream, cookies, 
 all with deft efficient motions that took the least possible time. 
 Her hands moved so quickly that they seemed positively to flutter 
 and yet they always achieved their errands with movements that, 
 analysed, consisted only of direct advance and retreat. " Hester 
 hates her name." 
 
 " Who wouldn t hate Hester Etta ? " Hester asked. 
 
 " I like Hester very much," John Smith put in. 
 
 " When anybody says Southward Drake," Southward continued, 
 " I always see a ship with all sails set beating against a storm." 
 There rippled into her voice a sudden thrill. " I take it as an 
 omen that I m going to travel sometime." 
 
 John Smith put down his pipe and drank his tea in one or two 
 decisive movements. He pulled out a cigarette-case of tortoise- 
 shell. He offered it dumbly to Cameron; the latter dumbly 
 spurned it. Smith picked out a cigarette for himself, lighted it. 
 He sat there meditatively listening to the conversation. 
 
 Meanwhile the sun came out of the cloud; the day boiled white. 
 The light ran down the boughs of the old trees; it streamed down 
 the tree-trunks. It dripped from the ends of the leaves to the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 95 
 
 grass; it trickled between stems along the ground. It fused with 
 the shadows until the depths faded out of things. The leaves 
 grew transparent; they melted to a green, more soft, more deli 
 cate. The lush grass turned pale as beryl. The under sides of 
 the foliage showed glaucous. Near, there lay the faint green of 
 early apples. Far stretched bands of shining aqua-marine. The 
 light beat into the atmosphere, flattened it, thinned it. It grew 
 luminous. It was no longer like an emerald; it was a bubble, 
 sun-shot. More and more tenuous, the bubble grew. It burst 
 floating in filmy strips. Stabbing through leaf-interstices, the 
 sun laid the floor of the orchard with flakes of glittering gold. 
 And ever back of this, the old house glimmered silver white and 
 grey, velvety; peacock blue and green, lustrous. 
 
 Smith s eyes went at intervals into the globular depths of the 
 old trees, but these forays were infrequent and brief. Often his 
 gaze, luminous under a perpendicular frown, went from South 
 ward s vivid face to Hester s dreamy one. Cameron had scarcely 
 removed his eyes from Southward since he sat down. 
 
 " I like your name too, Miss Drake," Smith said as Southward 
 concluded. " May I call you Southward ? " 
 
 " Certainly." Southward gave him an amused, oblique glance. 
 
 " And may I call you Hester ? " John Smith turned. 
 
 "If you wish," Hester faltered. And she blushed. Her blush 
 was cataclysm. A thick murky colour flooded her skin, ran under 
 it, ran over it. It hung there a while like a cloud; it actually 
 obscured her expression. 
 
 " This country must be full of wonderful stories, Southward," 
 Dwight Cameron said easily. " It s always been a sea-captain s 
 country." 
 
 " It is full of them," Southward agreed. " We can tell Hester 
 and I more stories than you can shake a stick at. That s our 
 quarrel with it that once it was so exciting and splendid and 
 romantic. And now so dull and dead. Hester and I can remem 
 ber only the tail-end of the wonderful period, but we ve heard 
 people talk about it all our lives. Why, when our mothers were 
 little girls, sea-captains were as thick as blueberries. They said 
 that when the ships came home, the village parties would be the 
 most wonderful things. And picturesque ! The women would all 
 blossom out in the most extraordinary clothes, such beautiful em 
 broidered crepe shawls, such pongees and penas, such necklaces 
 and fans! And then the furniture in the houses; bamboo and 
 teak. And china oh, the china. Tell them about your china, 
 Hotter."
 
 96 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Oh, it isn t anything special," Hester said. " Only we have 
 one closet, piled high with Canton Medallion three sets two 
 hundred pieces to the set. It hasn t been disturbed in my life 
 time. But, that isn t anything. When Southward cleaned out 
 her garret, two or three years ago, we found three barrels of 
 Lowestoft that had never been unpacked." 
 
 " And as for vases and boxes and queer Oriental truck of all 
 descriptions, you ought to see what I dug out," Southward con 
 tinued. 
 
 " But after all, these are only things," Hester burst in. " You 
 should hear some of the tales of mutiny and torture and death 
 on the high seas the legends of the whaling days. Why, in my 
 great-grandfather s time, the men of Shayneford knew the ports 
 of the Orient and the Mediterranean as they knew their pockets. 
 They could not get about in Boston, and New York was absolutely 
 unknown territory. But they carried the entire map of the other 
 side of the world in their minds." 
 
 The blush of Hester s embarrassment had died down and now 
 a different emotion put another blush in its place. This was 
 delicate; a slow filmy pink tide in her cheek. With it came a 
 deep, soft gleam to her eyes. 
 
 Cameron s look kindled too. Suddenly he jumped up and began 
 pacing up and down the orchard. " Good Lord ! what material ! " 
 he ejaculated. " Promise me, Southward, and you too, Hester " 
 He reeled off their names glibly as though he had always said 
 them. " that you ll tell me everything you can remember of it. 
 By George, I m going to start a note-book." 
 
 " Better s better than I am," Southward said. " She remembers 
 a great deal more she s always been more interested. But still 
 I m interested too. We ve remembered it because all our lives 
 we ve cursed the fate that made us members of this generation. 
 You see the travel-instinct is in our blood. Dozens of sea-going 
 ancestry have left us that inheritance. Hester and I vowed last 
 night we d go round the world together just as soon as we could 
 pull loose from this hole." 
 
 " What keeps you here ? " John Smith demanded. 
 
 " Responsibilities," Southward answered evasively. 
 
 " I see." John Smith threw aside his cigarette-end, pulled a 
 tortoise-shell cigar-case from his pocket, offered it dumbly to 
 Cameron who dumbly spurned it, extracted a cigar, lighted it, 
 proceeded to give the situation luminous attention. 
 
 He was calm, but Cameron, striding violently up and down the 
 orchard and pulling violently at his expired pipe, was still wide-
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 97 
 
 eyed and fiery-eyed. u Start now and tell us some yarns," he 
 begged. " I ll eat up every word of them." 
 
 The sun went into retirement behind a cloud that ultimately 
 merged with oncoming twilight. The light ran into the earth; 
 shadow took its place, crepuscular, vitreous. The orchard seemed 
 to turn into some strange under-sea country, the people in it to 
 dimly-seen mer-creatures. The house retreated into the shadow. 
 
 With the help of Hester s reinforcing detail, Southward told 
 stories of Shayneford. 
 
 u Well," Dwight Cameron said to John Smith as they walked 
 back from Long Lanes to their camp. " Perhaps you don t realise 
 it, John. If not, I m telling you. This is the star-romance of 
 my life. Wasn t that situation a wonder the beautiful old house, 
 decaying on its terraces like a gentlewoman who prefers to starve 
 in solitude rather than mingle with the canaille? And that pippin 
 of a girl so wise, so straight from the shoulder, so dead onto 
 anything." 
 
 " Yes. I get all that," John Smith agreed. " And more. For, 
 apparently, it s a house of the dead the crippled grandfather, 
 the blind aunt, and then you must remember that there s an 
 invisible paralytic concealed somewhere on the premises remem 
 ber, Manning told us about her ? " 
 
 " Sure ! " Cameron answered absently. " I remember. And 
 then," he went on eagerly, " in contrast with that dead-house 
 atmosphere, that girl s energy, initiative, audacity, and dash. It 
 certainly has set the wheels going round for me. By God, I d like 
 to write a novel to-night! " 
 
 "Why don t you start it?" Smith queried. 
 
 " I believe I will. And I m going to keep a note-book. South 
 ward s talk is full of dope. She s one of those women there are 
 so few of them whose talk stirs the creative machinery." 
 
 " See here, Dwight," Smith remonstrated, " remember she s a 
 country-girl. And you re not a marrying man." 
 
 " Don t get scared, John," Dwight said. " If you don t know 
 it and haven t guessed it I ll tell you now. I always play fair 
 with women. By the way, what do you think of Miss Crowell 
 Hester?" 
 
 " I think she s the more interesting of the two because " 
 
 Smith hesitated. 
 
 " Because she s so much to be pitied." Dwight finished it for 
 him. " John, you re a scream. You can be depended on inevitably 
 to pick the wall-flower." He threw his arm affectionately over 
 Smith s shoulder. " You damned old fool, if I didn t like you
 
 98 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 so much, I d tell you what I think of that yellow Christian 
 Endeavour streak that s in you. Now don t hit me," he ended 
 in a note of burlesque entreaty. " Even if you haven t licked 
 anybody for nearly & week, I m not strong enough to take you on 
 yet."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IN the garret all the lamps and candles were going. Southward, 
 arrayed in her prince s coat, sat on the couch, a book in her hand. 
 But although she turned the pages at regular intervals, her eye 
 kept skidding over their tops, kept fixing on space. At those 
 moments, her expression was so concentrated that her very eye 
 seemed an ear. Suddenly a sound broke, the bass th-th-thrump 
 th-th-thrump th-th-thrump of a frog. Southward dropped her 
 book, seized her electric torch, stole silently into the ell. She 
 stood in the parlour an instant, her head bent, the torch pouring 
 a circle of watery light onto the carpet. Came all the accustomed 
 sounds of sleep, Charlotte s hoarse breathing, Mrs. Drake s falsetto 
 whistling, Mr. Drake s bass rumble. Southward tiptoed back to 
 the entrance of the main house, opened the door gently, stepped in. 
 
 When she returned, Dwight Cameron accompanied her. 
 
 She moved silently up the three flights of stairs. Silently he 
 followed her. Once in the garret, " You can make all the noise 
 you want now," she assured him. " It s impossible for them to 
 hear anything below, with two stories between us." 
 
 But Dwight made sound of no kind at first. He stood in the 
 centre of the room, staring. " Why, this is a regular place," he 
 commented finally in a df.zed voice. " May I look at everything? " 
 he asked after another interval. 
 
 " That s what I brought you here for." Southward stretched 
 herself on the chaise-longue in her favourite attitude, upright, her 
 feet stretched straight before her, her hands clasped back of her 
 head. 
 
 " I don t know where to begin," Dwight admitted. " The whole 
 effect is and then my eyes keep catching it s like the set in one 
 of those it makes me think of the Arabian Nights. Lord, I have 
 
 friends in New York who d like to see It s awful and it s 
 
 wonderful. Where cl .l you .^et that stuff?" He pointed to the 
 crepe that covered the walls. 
 
 " I found a bale of it wher I cleaned up the garret. I suppose 
 somebody brought it from India. I saw some East Indian stuff 
 something like it in Boston once. What for it was brought here 
 I dunno. It was faded and moth-eaten in spots and mildewed 
 apparently it has been mined on at some time." 
 
 99
 
 100 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " It s a wonderful colour," Cameron commented. " Amazing ! 
 It turns this place into a rajah s quarters. It makes me think of 
 Salome and Salambo and, oh Lord, the Bible and Kipling and 
 Conrad. All this Chinese stuff is sailor-loot, isn t it?" 
 
 Southward nodded. 
 
 Cameron s reporter-gaze was going everywhere in quick, sharp- 
 glanced dashes. He stopped before a shoal of magazine-cuts, 
 pinned with thumb-tacks on the wall. " Rodin ! " he exclaimed, 
 " and post-impressionism ! " He surveyed the desk. " Tanagras 
 too ! " He began to move about. " Of course you know that all 
 this old furniture is exceptionally good." 
 
 " Yes, Hester and I got interested in antiques a while ago. We 
 got some books out of the Library and studied up." 
 
 Cameron turned on her a look from which all the sharpness 
 had gone ; observation had changed to analysis. " And do you like 
 old stuff yourself ? " he asked. 
 
 " You ought to have been brought up on haircloth and white 
 marble and jig-sawed oak," Southward answered, " to know how 
 much. You ought to see our downstairs rooms; they re filled with 
 grandmother s stuff. The house looks as though it had been fur 
 nished with cigar-coupons." She knitted her brows an instant. 
 " But to be perfectly honest with you and with myself, which is 
 a great deal more important to me I don t care the way Hester 
 does. Hester really loves old furniture. She feels towards a good 
 old piece as towards a good old person. I don t. I like it because 
 it s simple and in the long run, more fitting and useful. In point 
 of fact, things don t make much of a hit with me, I guess." 
 
 " I see," said Cameron ; but apparently he did not see. He 
 said this in a baffled tone and he moved over to the sideboard 
 and stood staring at it. Obviously his gaze did not focus on the 
 wonder of age-blackened and time-polished surface combined with 
 feathery inlay that met it. For he suddenly whirled on her. 
 
 "Do you know how wonderful this all is?" he demanded in a 
 stern voice. " This magnificent old house, this glorious old fur 
 niture, that gorgeous Chinese truck and you ? " 
 
 " I know perfectly well how wonderful I am," Southward an 
 swered equably, " if that helps any." 
 
 " Well, you re a new one on me," Dwight almost sighed. " I 
 don t mind confessing that." 
 
 " That s flattering from a gentleman of so profound a metro 
 politan experience," Southward admitted. " Very flattering ! I 
 thought New York was just chockful of women who were inter 
 esting and different."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 101 
 
 " It is," Cameron answered promptly. " It s loaded to the 
 gunwales with them all original and different in exactly the same 
 way all imported at a terrific expense from Oshkosh, Canandaigua, 
 Scituate, Oklahoma, and The Needles, every one of them guar 
 anteed to be a Good Sport, a Good Indian, and a Regular Fellow. 
 Why I had forgotten there were girls like you and Miss Crowell; 
 and after all you re the best kind." 
 
 " I don t believe that s a conviction," Southward said shrewdly, 
 " it s just a passing state of mind. I could tell better though by 
 seeing you for a minute or two with those Good Indians." 
 
 Cameron laughed ; there was a little embarrassment in his mirth. 
 " Perhaps you re right," he admitted. 
 
 Southward made no further comment. She smiled as with a 
 secret sense of triumph. She sat up, removed her feet from the 
 chaise-longue to a footstool, folded her arms by a process of 
 clutching an elbow with each hand. She watched him intently 
 while he studied the names of the books in the secretary. 
 
 " Now I m going to get your number," he announced, in a tri 
 umphant tone. He read across one shelf. " In the Forbidden 
 Land, Farthest North, In Darkest Africa, The Life-Story of 
 Isabel, Lady Burton, Verne s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 
 Gulliver, Conrad, Wells, Henley. Good stuff but old stuff! All 
 except Conrad and Wells. And not much variety! What do you 
 like best?" 
 
 " Travels of course," she answered. " Even if I hadn t come 
 from sailor-stock, I think I d like travels best. For you see, I 
 can t get out of this hole myself; so I go by proxy. I ve read 
 every book of discovery, exploration, or travel in the Shayneford 
 Library and we have a pretty good little Library as country 
 libraries go. Then after that well, it depends. I like some 
 fiction if it has action enough. For years when I was a child 
 I read almost nothing but boys books dime novels. I liked 
 them because they had so much doing in them. I still read Jules 
 Verne over and over again and H. G. Wells those early fairy 
 tales of his. I like history sometimes or rather I like some 
 history." 
 
 Cameron clapped his hand to his pocket, pulled out a small 
 brown book. " I brought you over a sample of the world s best 
 literature." He threw Ginger on the table. " Read it ! " 
 
 " All right," said Southward. But her voice was unenthusiastic. 
 
 " And tell me exactly what you think," he pleaded. 
 
 " Oh, I ll do that, all right," Southward promised with her 
 mischievous smile.
 
 102 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I really want the truth." 
 
 " Oh, you ll get it," Southward assured him. " I don t promise 
 you it; I threaten you with it. That s my specialty, telling the 
 truth to men. It ll probably bore me. Most fiction does. That s 
 the worst thing I ve discovered about you that you want to 
 write. I don t believe you re a real writer though." 
 
 "You don t!" exclaimed Cameron. A note of chagrin lay under 
 the mock indignation of his emphasis. Then he laughed. " Gee, 
 
 you re a Well, you beggar description. Of course you think 
 
 writing is a high-brow occupation. Go on though you were 
 saying you liked history sometimes or some history always I 
 forget your subtle distinctions." 
 
 " I meant I liked a course in history that I took in college. It 
 was the only course that interested me enough 
 
 Cameron whirled on her again from his survey of the books. 
 " I didn t know that you were a college-girl," he said in a disap 
 pointed tone. 
 
 " I m not," Southward promptly reassured him. " Or not en 
 tirely one. It s the only blot on an otherwise unblemished career. 
 I thought I was going to be a regular college-girl. And I did go 
 to college for part of one year. But well, I couldn t stand it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Oh, it was so proper and correct and dull. The dormitory life 
 nearly killed me. And then the girls themselves were so silly 
 and giggly and girly. As for the instructors well, we freshmen 
 were taught mainly by boys. I knew more about practical things 
 than any of them and I think I could have licked one or two. 
 They had thin voices with English accents. One of them wore 
 a monocle. That got on my nerves and Heaven only knows how 
 much I must have shocked them. I couldn t stand it. I quit half 
 way through the second term of the first year. You see, here I m 
 free. I m my own boss. I ride and drive all I want to. And 
 work in the garden. Perhaps it s just as well that I beat it when 
 I did. I d have had to come home anyway. Grandmother was 
 taken ill immediately afterwards, a stroke of paralysis. There 
 was nobody else but me." 
 
 Southward came to an end. There was a little pause of silence. 
 Obviously her mind s eye was on the past; just as obviously but 
 with an odd sense of perplexity, Cameron s was on the present. 
 " You were saying you liked history," he interpolated hastily, as 
 though it were an improvisation to cover thoughts that were 
 taking another tangent. 
 
 " Yes some of it war, conquest, bloodshed. I like J. Caesar
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 103 
 
 pretty well he was quite all my idea of a man and N. Bonaparte. 
 I can t make up my mind though which was the bigger crook." 
 
 She arose as she spoke and came over to the table. Her quick, 
 efficient hands tossed the paper, magazines, and letters this way 
 and that until she found the cigarettes and ash-trays. 
 
 Cameron s tangential thoughts had evidently focused and then 
 broken to greater confusion. " You extraordinary creature ! " he 
 said. Then, " I say ! where did you get that thing on your head ? " 
 
 Southward was standing in the light. In addition to her 
 tomato-coloured prince s coat, she wore a high Chinese head-dress 
 a conglomeration of many coloured silk pompoms, feathers, 
 flowers, streamers of silk trimmed with mirrors. Fringes of pearl 
 hung from her forehead to her very brows. 
 
 " Oh, out of the trunk with the other stuff," Southward said 
 indifferently. " I put it on for your benefit. Have a cigarette ? " 
 She held out the open box. 
 
 " Thanks." Cameron lifted the candle over to her. Southward 
 lighted her cigarette. He lighted his. He put the candle down. 
 His movement swept the papers aside. " Lor-amighty ! " he ex 
 claimed lazily. " Where d that article come from? Is it loaded?" 
 
 The " article " was Southward s revolver. " From the West 
 originally," Southward answered lazily, " Lysander Manning gave 
 it to me. Yes, it s loaded." She sent a file of smoke-rings 
 twirling through the space that lay between them. 
 
 " Well, it won t be any longer." Cameron broke the revolver, 
 dumped the cartridges onto the table. " Double action ! " he com 
 mented, " that isn t horse-sense, you ve no business to do that." 
 
 " Well, you see," Southward explained, " I m really not quite 
 so rash as it seems. Nobody ever gets up here but Hester. Grand 
 mother can t she s bedridden. Grandfather can t it s too stiff 
 a climb for him. And Charlotte can t she s blind. Come to think 
 of it, there hasn t been a soul in this garret since I fixed it up 
 except you and Hester. And every time Hester comes, she makes 
 me lock the gun up." 
 
 " I see," said Cameron. " So nobody s ever been here but you 
 girls. It s a secret place. That s lovely. It adds to the con 
 notation enormously." His mind reverted. " How d you ever 
 happen to want a revolver? You surely don t need one in this 
 dopy little town." 
 
 " No, not generally. But once a man threatened to kill me. I 
 got the revolver then. I carried it wherever I went for six 
 months. Then the embargo lifted." 
 
 "What lifted it?"
 
 104 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " He married another girl," Southward said with her blue-and- 
 black glimmer. 
 
 " I see. Desperate, wasn t he ? " 
 
 " I had always thought it would be very exciting to be in peril 
 
 of your life," Southward remarked. " On the contrary One 
 
 of the things that cured him was that occasionally I used to ask 
 him to shoot me rather than bore me to death. My eye, I was 
 glad when he fell in love with that girl." 
 
 " Did it surprise you ? Wasn t it a sort of shock ? " 
 
 " No," Southward answered promptly. " I imported her for the 
 purpose." 
 
 Cameron laughed immoderately. " Poor devil ! " he said. But 
 there was no pity in his voice, only contemptuous patronage. " It 
 must be pretty tough for these country bumpkins to fall in love 
 with you, it s the moth-and-the-flame proposition all right. And 
 they can t help it of course. You re simply too pretty for any 
 use. By Jove, it s unfair." The banter went out of his voice; 
 his tone became business-like. " Oh, say one thing did you 
 ever have to use the gun on that fellow ? " 
 
 Southward s expression changed. She hesitated. 
 
 Cameron s look turned keen the look of the hunter who has 
 found his prey. 
 
 " No." Southward became impassive again. " He was the 
 kind who didn t mean it. You know probably that people who 
 threaten are divided into two classes the people who mean it and 
 the people who think they do. He wouldn t he couldn t go 
 through with it. I realised that. But it was some time after I d 
 bought the revolver before I realised it, and I continued to carry 
 it. I liked it." 
 
 The hunter s look melted from Cameron s eyes as he listened. 
 The banter came back. " This ought to be a lesson to me," he 
 said. " Eemember I told you the other night that whatever you 
 do, you were not to let me fall in love with you." 
 
 "Didn t I give you my word of honour that I wouldn t do a 
 thing in that direction ? " Southward s eyes emitted another blue- 
 and-black gleam at her slangy double entendre. " I thought I was 
 taking the best of care of you." 
 
 " You are damn you ! " Cameron laughed a little. He sat 
 down, crossed his knees, clasped his hands over them. " But 
 suppose I do fall in love with you in spite of yourself and 
 myself?" 
 
 " I m afraid that s your look-out," Southward said placidly. 
 " I m not a marrying young woman at all. . I don t want
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 105 
 
 to marry, but I like to flirt. You take care of yourself and I ll 
 take care of myself. A man doesn t interest me at all after I ve 
 got him going. Now we re off." 
 
 " You say that as though you d said it many times before. You 
 know there s nothing on earth that would so enchant a man," 
 Cameron commented. " You man-eater ! " 
 
 Southward s eyes filled with her mischievous smile. " Well, 
 please remember no man could possibly loathe and dread the 
 thought of matrimony as much as I do. For no matter how bad 
 it is for a man, it is infinitely worse for a woman. Marriage is 
 my idea of solitary confinement for life. But then again," and 
 now Southward s lids fell over the mirth in her eyes; the light 
 of that mirth seemed almost to shine through them. " If you 
 must fall in love with somebody, you could hardly do better than 
 to fall in love with me. For I wouldn t marry you or any other 
 man I ve ever heard of with the exception of royalty. And I ll 
 put that in writing if you require it." 
 
 Cameron smiled but not with his former enthusiasm. " Why 
 this prejudice in favour of royalty?" he queried. 
 
 " I rather think I d like a queen s job," Southward said. " I 
 like power. I like to run things." 
 
 " How about an American multi-millionaire. Wouldn t he offer 
 you power enough ? " 
 
 " Not unless he bought me a kingdom somewhere. No, matri 
 mony is not for me." 
 
 " Nor lovers," Cameron suggested. He was serious now. The 
 analytic look had returned to his eyes. 
 
 " Ah, that s different altogether," Southward said. " No, I don t 
 care how many lovers I have. I don t mind confessing to you 
 as one as equally intent on evading matrimony as I that I like 
 lovers. I feel a little uncomfortable if there isn t something of 
 the sort. It keeps me jollied up. It gives a sort of excitement 
 to life. I suppose the root of it is that, although I don t want 
 to marry, I like to think that I can. That s rather cheap, isn t 
 it?" She turned on him suddenly with one of her engaging self- 
 accusals. " And so, although I m perfectly fair with men, I don t 
 drive them from my presence or anything like it. Have an 
 other?" 
 
 " Thanks, I will." Cameron came over to her side on the chaise- 
 longue. He accepted the cigarette which she offered but he 
 rejected the match which she lighted with a rasp of her finger-nail 
 across the phosphorus. He leaned coolly over and secured a light 
 from her own cigarette. It was a sudden movement and brought
 
 106 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 their faces close. Southward did not stir; she did not even wink. 
 And when, the end glowing, he withdrew his cigarette, she emitted 
 a tranquil flood of smoke-rings. 
 
 " Would you like to come to New York ? " he asked suddenly. 
 
 "Would a duck swim?" was Southward s answer. 
 
 " What really keeps you here ? " 
 
 " Well, in a manner of speaking nothing. But in another 
 manner of speaking everything. They re all so helpless grand 
 mother, grandfather, and even Charlotte, who s my especial re 
 sponsibility. I d feel like an awful mucker to go off and leave 
 them." 
 
 " Couldn t you put some responsible person in charge ? " 
 
 " Nothing short of a trained nurse," Southward answered. " And 
 even that would be hardly fair besides being too expensive. My 
 conscience I have plenty of conscience as far as they are con 
 cerned would bother me. 
 
 Cameron considered the end of his cigarette, scowling. " But 
 you could come in the winter for an occasional few days visit, 
 couldn t you ? " 
 
 " I could manage that," Southward said. " In fact I did once." 
 
 " All right," Cameron concluded. " Then you re coming to New 
 York next winter. I ll rip the town open from Grant s Tomb to 
 the Battery. I promise to show you what makes it tick." 
 
 Southward s eyes flared but her voice was calm enough. " My 
 answer is yes." 
 
 " New York really is a wonderful city," Cameron went on. " I d 
 like to show you some places that He came to the end of his 
 cigarette and lighted another, at the candle this time. And sud 
 denly his mood changed. The reporter-look, swift, deep, acute, 
 left his eyes. With it disappeared his air of analytic examination. 
 Eather slowly at first and a little dreamily, he began to talk about 
 New York. He gave her his first impression, the sneering, 
 jeering article that, on the very day of his arrival, he had written 
 and sold all in one day to a magazine. Then he described the 
 change in his attitude, the growth of a fascinated interest, a 
 real affection. He had the reporter s conciseness of narrative, 
 crispness of phrase, articulateness. Southward made no com 
 ment. She did not speak. She scarcely seemed to breathe. Then 
 lapsing by an imperceptible hiatus from general statements to 
 concrete facts, he began to retail rarious adventures. He had 
 brake-beamed his way across the continent; he had worked his 
 passage on a cattle-ship across the ocean. He had lived in Mexico. 
 There tumbled from his lips a jumble of wild experiences San
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 107 
 
 Francisco, Chicago, New York, Paris, all shot with side-lights 
 from his assignments. 
 
 Southward made no comment. 
 
 Then suddenly he appeared to run down. " I seem to have 
 spilled it all out," he commented, smiling in rather a shamefaced 
 way. 
 
 Southward s only answer was a sigh. She sat staring ahead, lost 
 to the present. Cameron stared ahead too but it was as though he 
 was trying to remember something. Suddenly the look of the 
 hunter came back to his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, tell me," he demanded. " I asked you before but you 
 switched off onto something. Have you ever used the gun on 
 anybody ? " 
 
 Southward hesitated. 
 
 " Oh, tell me about it," he wheedled, " I know it wasn t that 
 idiot." 
 
 " No," Southward said. " It wasn t." She meditated coolly for 
 a moment. " I will tell you about it, I think. You ll be the only 
 person who knows. And I d like to have an outside opinion. 
 Especially if it was worth something. It happened that time 
 the only time I went over to New York." 
 
 " Go on," Cameron encouraged her. 
 
 " I had been carrying the gun about with me for a year and 
 so I took it with me." 
 
 " How d you carry it ? " 
 
 " They were wearing waists and skirts then. I made an amateur 
 holster where my waist hung full in front. I don t realise to this 
 day how nobody ever saw it, but apparently nobody ever did. I 
 had no idea I d use it in New York, of course. Still I was going 
 to be alone there. The family didn t know where I was. They 
 thought I was in Boston. The only person I told was Lysander 
 Manning. Well, I stayed at a place that had been recommended 
 to me a semi-charitable institution which charges women who 
 are strangers in the city a merely nominal price for rooms the 
 Susannah Retreat." 
 
 Cameron nodded. " I know all about that. Go on ! " 
 
 " They had only one bed left when I got there. That was in 
 the room with another woman. I didn t mind that. She was a 
 Mrs. Reynolds. I didn t pay any attention to her at first she 
 made no impression on me. But inevitably of course you get to 
 know the woman who s your room-mate. And she made so many 
 advances and such kind ones that it would have been hard to 
 ignore them. She dressed well. She seemed to have a lot of money
 
 106 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 and she knew all about New York. She offered to take me about 
 the shops and she said she could get free tickets at some of the 
 theatres. I wanted to go and we went to see Forbes-Kobertson 
 in Hamlet. She paid for those tickets, it happened two dollars 
 and a half apiece. And in view of subsequent developments," 
 Southward s eyes glimmered, " it has always been a matter of 
 satisfaction to me that I made her sit through Hamlet. I realised 
 afterwards how, in the cleverest way in the world, she had learned 
 all about me. Her system was to pretend timidity she was as 
 timid as a mouse about everything. So naturally, to prove what 
 my courage was like, I told her that I was all alone in New York 
 and with no friends in the city and that my people I threw 
 this out one day in the spirit of bravado did not know where 
 I was. I even lied a little, I said nobody knew where I was. She 
 affected to be much concerned about that; urged me to write my 
 family; threatened to write them herself. Of course she didn t 
 do that. Nor did I. All the time, she was complimenting me on 
 my courage, my wonderful, my amazing, my extraordinary courage. 
 Did I fall for it? You should have seen me. I ate it up. And I 
 continued to brag. She told me a good deal about herself. She 
 had been away for July and was now getting her house ready 
 to live in a house in the forties somewhere. She telephoned 
 constantly from our room to the servants who were putting it 
 in order and gave the most convincing directions to them. She 
 was so easily frightened that she did not like to go to a hotel. 
 That was why she came to the Susannah. She felt perfectly safe 
 there." 
 
 " What did she look like ? " Cameron asked. 
 
 " Tall exceedingly thin not striking-looking at all yellow 
 hair a natural colour blue eyes rather strange eyes they re 
 minded me of the eyes of the only spiritualistic medium I ve ever 
 seen in my life. She had a good deal of style, but she dressed 
 quietly no make-up of any description." 
 
 "Did you like her?" 
 
 " Yes and no. I liked the way she had of seeming to mind her 
 own business. Then she was a good fellow. And all that sort of 
 thing. She could talk about anything. She d travelled quite a 
 bit apparently. And she knew New York every hole and corner 
 of it especially about the stage actors and actresses the society 
 people whose pictures you see in the paper she told me reams 
 of gossip about them. She pointed some of them out on the 
 street and of course that interested me a lot. Still afterwards I 
 realised that back in my mind there was always a question. I didn t
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 109 
 
 entirely like her. I didn t wholly trust her. But it was so vague 
 and weak that feeling that I really was not conscious of it. I 
 don t know what it was exactly as if there was a wall I had never 
 scaled. But I was enormously entertained and exceedingly flat 
 tered. She took no notice of anybody else at the Susannah 
 
 Still that feeling " 
 
 Southward stopped and knit her brows. With eyes downcast 
 and one hand rumpling her hair, she considered this psychological 
 problem. " I m not very intuitive," she remarked. 
 
 " Please go on," Cameron urged her. 
 
 " Well, one day she said that her house was all ready and 
 suggested that I go up and see it. I said I would. It was the 
 day I was leaving. I had my suit-case, all packed, intending to 
 go from her house to the train. I was delighted to do this; for 
 of course I hadn t seen the inside of a New York house. It was 
 an awful day. You know that wilting New York heat " 
 
 Cameron nodded. 
 
 " After we d walked a bit, she began to get faint and suggested 
 a taxi. I signalled to one ; we got in. She leaned back, closed 
 her eyes. She had smelling-salts and things and I had to fuss 
 over her so long that I didn t notice how we went or where we 
 went. In fact I paid no attention to anything but her. When 
 we got out, I didn t even know what street it was or whether it was 
 east or west. All I got was a long block of brownstone houses, 
 as alike as peas in a pod, and exactly like another long block 
 opposite. It never occurred to me of course to look at the number. 
 All I can recall is that the curtains were down all over the house. 
 I had to help her up the front steps. There were two doors, a 
 vestibule between. She gave me her keys and I opened both doors. 
 I stepped into the hall, helping her all the time. She shut the 
 door and recovered from her faintness," Southward emitted a 
 quick crisp snap from between her thumb and middle finger, " like 
 that! It came to me where I was in an instant." 
 
 " God ! " Cameron whispered this. And then in a normal tone. 
 " What put you wise ? " 
 
 "I don t know," Southward answered directly. "I didn t know 
 then and I don t know now. I saw only the hall and part of one 
 big long room red and gold. It all looked very gorgeous to a 
 country-girl like me. No, I don t know how I knew. But I did. 
 Perhaps it was the pictures. They were far from restrained in 
 character and rather vulgarly executed. I turned to her. Her 
 hand was still on the knob. She looked at me and I looked at 
 her and we understood each other in an instant. I guess I ll
 
 110 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 go/ I said. I guess you won t, she answered. And oh, Lord, 
 the difference in her! Those vague dull eyes of hers were like 
 stones. And her face had changed so. It wasn t human really 
 not excited, you understand, but just hard like a rock. The 
 strange thing about it was that we talked in whispers, although 
 the house seemed as quiet as a tomb. It was all over in a moment 
 though. I can remember every word. Next I said, Open the 
 door or I ll make you. Then she said, The hell you will ! How 
 are you going to make me ? Just then I heard footsteps. I 
 turned. A man was coming up the stairs from the basement, 
 just turning into the hall. He was little and thin and dark and 
 he had a look well, as if he d been put in an oven and baked. 
 I noticed that his hair was very smooth oiled that his tie and 
 handkerchief and stockings were all the same shade of lavender. 
 His eyes glittered and yet they were as hard as hers. I don t 
 know how to express it but he had a kind of attractiveness. He 
 looked strong too; he had the quality of steel that I like in people. 
 He came straight towards me as though he was expecting me. 
 She s a peach all right, he said in the most business-like way as 
 though I was a horse. I ll manage her, Myrtle. You hold the 
 door. I put my hand into my waist and pulled out the gun. 
 Stand where you are, I said. I have to hand it to him; he had 
 his courage with him. He kept right on coming. She won t 
 shoot, he said in a perfectly calm voice to Myrtle. And in fact, 
 for an instant, I almost didn t. That absolute assurance of his 
 hypnotised me. I respect that man when I think of him. I hate 
 him, but I respect him. Perhaps I wouldn t have shot if Myrtle 
 hadn t reached over my shoulder and tried to grab the gun. Then 
 something inside me exploded the Drake temper all right. I felt 
 on fire with rage. I pulled the trigger. He dropped in the queerest 
 kind of way. You know how they do it in the moving-pictures, 
 face forward, arms outstretched, after a melodramatic spasm. He 
 didn t do it that way. He didn t fall at all. He just crumpled 
 in a leisurely sort of way, twisted and sank in a huddle that 
 looked more like a bundle of clothes than anything. Then I 
 turned the gun on her ! Open the door, Myrtle ! I said. You 
 damned boob ! she answered we still talked in whispers and 
 that pistol-shot hadn t produced a sound in the house if you ve 
 killed him, I ll cut your heart out. But she opened the door and 
 I went out. I searched the papers for days and days but I never 
 saw one word about it. To this day, I don t know whether I 
 killed him or not." Her face changed as she contemplated a 
 mental picture. " Sometimes I m awfully afraid I didn t."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 111 
 
 Cameron sighed. " What a story ! " he said. " What a story ! " 
 Then in a purely professional tone : " What did you do immediately 
 afterwards ? " 
 
 " I walked over to Broadway and bought a comb and a tooth 
 brush. Everything I had was in my suit-case. And that was in 
 the taxi and the taxi had disappeared when I got out. I went 
 right over to the Grand Central, and came over to 
 Boston on the ten o clock limited. Shayneford looked pretty good 
 to me for nearly three months. It s the only time it ever has 
 looked good to me." 
 
 " Didn t it leave any other trace that experience ? " Cameron 
 asked. 
 
 " I had dreams for a while," Southward answered briefly. 
 " Every night hundreds of them they were pretty bad." 
 
 " Love of Mike ! " Cameron sighed again, " what a story ! If 
 you read it in a book say," his look became analytic again. " Do 
 you know when you said you were afraid you hadn t killed him, 
 you had a fighting face just like a pug? It made a different 
 person of you." 
 
 " Well, you see," Southward said tranquilly, " that I tell you 
 the truth when I inform you that I have the Drake temper. 
 And now, my dear young friend, it s eleven o clock. I ll have to 
 turn you out." 
 
 " All right." Cameron agreed. " What a story ! " 
 
 Southward lighted him down the stairs, accompanied him to the 
 jetty where his boat lay.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE tea-table was set under the big horse-chestnut tree. Hester 
 stood off a little way and studied the effect of the old white 
 hexagonal china with the prim bunches of purple-lustre flowers, 
 the big, low pewter bowl massed deep with nasturtiums, the thin, 
 shining, dented spoons. A pleased look came into her face as 
 though she saw these commonplaces of her home in a new aspect; 
 and her pleasure brought a little colour to her cheeks, a gleam in 
 her eyes. She stood for an instant contemplating them. 
 
 " I never saw anything so foolish in my life." 
 
 Hester started violently. Her mother had come noiselessly across 
 the grass, was standing by her side. 
 
 " Having teas out here with all the flies and mosquitoes," Mrs. 
 Crowell continued in a caustic voice. " It would be much nicer 
 in the dining-room, with the table all set up pretty." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell spoke, in spite of her causticity, in what was for 
 her a preoccupied manner. There was an abnormal air of excite 
 ment about her. Something smouldered behind the apathetic grey 
 of her eyes. Her lips, pulling more tautly than usual over her 
 glistening white teeth, were a brilliant scarlet. 
 
 " But it s so much prettier out of doors, mother. And both 
 Mr. Smith and Mr. Cameron enjoy it so much. You see they 
 live in the city most of the time. The reason they re camping 
 out is because they want to be in the open as much as possible." 
 
 "Is that Mr. Smith waiting on you?" 
 
 "Mother! Of course not." 
 
 "I just asked. Mary Meade said yesterday that Sarah Wallis 
 told her she wondered if you d get him." 
 
 "Well you can tell Mary that I that I m not trying to get 
 him. But there, don t say anything; they won t believe that." 
 
 " No," her mother repeated softly, " they won t believe that." 
 
 She looked at her daughter critically. Then she sighed with 
 impatience. " For goodness sake, do go and do your hair over 
 again. It looks as though you d combed it with a pitchfork. I 
 never did see anybody so careless as you are, Hester, about your 
 personal appearance. If you were a beauty, you could afford to 
 be that way. But seeing you re far from that, I d try to look 
 neat at least." 
 
 112
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 113 
 
 Hester bit her lips. " All right, mother. I ll do it again." She 
 went slowly to her room, stood for an instant, looking at herself 
 in the glass. Apparently she had made some effort to soften her 
 hair about her face; it waved in loose tendrils on her forehead. 
 But one by one, she pulled out her long silver hairpins, plastered 
 her hair down flat with her comb, rewound her braid. 
 
 " How does it look now, mother ? " she asked when she came 
 downstairs. 
 
 Her mother s glance just grazed her. " Well, it ll do," she 
 admitted. " But that s about all. It s curious how unlucky you 
 are, Hester. The only thing you have got that s pretty, you re 
 got altogether too much of. Now all that hair doesn t do you 
 a bit of good, especially as you haven t the slightest knack in 
 putting it up. Beyond a certain amount, hair isn t pretty it s 
 homely. I wish you d watch how other women do their hair and 
 copy them." 
 
 " I ll try to remember, mother." Hester s eyes had slowly 
 emptied of their light; as slowly her cheeks had drained of 
 their colour. All the hollows and shadows in her contours 
 seemed to start into prominence; her profile showed bleak. 
 " Somehow," she added listlessly, " I almost wish they weren t 
 coming." 
 
 " Well, you would have them," Mrs. Crowell said. " I told you 
 you didn t know how to entertain folks. Perhaps the next time, 
 you ll be guided by my advice. You never talk, you know. Well, 
 thank heavens, Southward can. You can be sure she ll wear the 
 
 right clothes and do her hair the most becoming way. She s 
 
 There! Here they are now! Lord, doesn t Southward look 
 pretty?" 
 
 Southward did, it happened, present every possible contrast to 
 Hester as, laughing and talking, she came through the orchard 
 between the two men. The sun was pouring through the trees 
 .onto them; but it brought with it, like drift on a current, the 
 shadows of the leaves. It was as though she walked under a 
 perpetual cataract which moved with her a cataract in which 
 golden light, honey-thick, joined with steely shadow sharply- 
 edged. The shadow could not dim the brilliant blue gleams in 
 her dark eyes; nor could the sunshine find a flaw in the metallic 
 lustre of her brown skin. 
 
 " How do you do, Mrs. Crowell," she said pleasantly, and while 
 Hester greeted the two men, she stood laughing and talking. Mrs. 
 Crowell looked at her with that reluctant enjoyment with which 
 middle-aged women often viewed Southward s beauty an enjoy-
 
 114 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 ment subconsciously fought against, but almost pagan in its 
 intensity. 
 
 Hester introduced Cameron and Smith to her mother. They 
 sat down at the little table and Hester served tea. As an after 
 thought, apparently, she went into the house and returned, Tabby 
 trailing her, with the basket of kittens. She set the four woolly 
 puffs of down on the grass. For a while, the party entertained 
 themselves by watching the little half-blind, squeaking creatures 
 drag their straight-pointed tails over the grass in a futile effort 
 to find their mother. Tabby took herself off for a little distance 
 and lay luxuriously unencumbered, stretching her long lean body 
 and sharpening her claws on a tree-trunk. After an interval, she 
 consented to rejoin her offspring and settled philosophically down 
 to their frantic pulling at her nipples. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell went into the house and returned with the afghan 
 that she was knitting. Silent, heavy, her eyelids down, she might 
 have been a wax figure but for the constant interweaving of her 
 fingers. Occasionally her glance came up, surveyed the group 
 playing with the kittens; it stayed longest on Smith. He turned 
 to her after a while. 
 
 " I m quite in love with Shaynef ord, Mrs. Crowell," he remarked. 
 " Have you always lived here ? " 
 
 " You might almost say I had," Mrs. Crowell replied. " I was 
 brought up in Boston, but I used to come here every summer 
 when I was a child. I was twenty when I married Mr. Crowell. 
 He d always lived here and I ve lived here ever since." 
 
 " I suppose you love Shaynef ord then," Smith ventured. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell did not raise her voice or her eyes. " I hate it," 
 she said. 
 
 Smith made no comment for an instant. And in that instant 
 his eyes went to Hester, listening dully to a spirited contest of 
 wits between Southward and Cameron, came back to her mother s 
 stony mask. " Is it Shaynef ord," he said, " or because you don t 
 like the country ? " 
 
 " Both," Mrs. Crowell answered evenly. " I despise Shayneford. 
 But I don t like the country and I don t like country-life. And 
 I don t like country-folks. They don t like me. Everybody in 
 this town hates me and I m sure I return their feeling with 
 interest. I love the city and city-life noise, folks passing, some 
 thing to do any time you want to do it, music and the theatre. 
 At least, I used to care once. I don t think much of it now. I m 
 too old to care for anything." 
 
 " What a life ! " Smith commented. " How many years ? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 115 
 
 " Thirty ! " Mrs. Crowell answered. 
 
 " Gee whiz ! " Smith murmured, " why don t you go to the 
 city ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Oh, I don t care any more," Mrs. Crowell reiterated, " I want 
 to die here. I m too old to care." 
 
 " We re never too old to care," Smith said. " In fact, I think 
 the older we get, the more we care." His quick glance went to her 
 moveless, sphynx-like face as though for sympathy. None came; 
 she did not lift her eyelids. " Do you like to meet city-people, 
 Mrs. Crowell?" 
 
 " I don t know that I care particularly one way or the other," 
 Mrs. Crowell replied in her dead tone. 
 
 " I was going to say that if you did, we could offer you some." 
 He turned to include Southward and Hester in his announcement. 
 " Our party is going to be increased by five to-morrow three 
 women and two men." 
 
 For an instant, nobody spoke. And in that instant, Southward, 
 who was facing the road, bowed and smiled. Involuntarily, the 
 others turned. Pearl Wallis very slim and pretty, in a pink 
 muslin was walking towards the beach with Lysander Manning. 
 Manning s impersonal glance, following his bow, ran through the 
 group on the lawn without a change of expression, but Pearl s 
 gaze, obviously curious, seemed to catch on every detail. Under 
 cover of this diversion, Mrs. Crowell shot two quick looks across 
 the table, one at her daughter, another at Smith. " Tell us about 
 them," Southward commanded idly. 
 
 " The men are Morena O Eeilly and Ripley Fearing who are 
 returning from their tramp down the Cape. The women are New 
 York friends of ours, one Mrs. Boardman, two, her daughter, Mrs. 
 Morrow, three, Miss Edith Hale. Mrs. Boardman is elderly, 
 she deals in antiques, and every year she goes to Europe on a 
 collecting tour rather handsome. Her daughter we often call 
 her The Princess is a picturesque person, running over with 
 life, clever, diabolically clever. She s a widow. Her husband 
 was a great traveller and she s lived all over the world. Miss 
 Hale is young, too, not so full of vitality as Mrs. Morrow, quiet, 
 rery attractive though. I think you ll like them all." 
 
 Over Southward s brilliant eyes there had dropped a curtain 
 of reserve. Now her lids fell over that wary film. " Tell us about 
 the men," she said lazily to Dwight. 
 
 " Morena O Reilly is almost as picturesque as Mrs. Morrow," 
 Dwight answered. " Half Dogan and half Spanish. War-corre 
 spondent. We call him the Mick some of the time and the
 
 116 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Bull-fighter the rest. He s lived everywhere and written about 
 it. Mrs. Morrow picked him up somewhere in her travels, got 
 him to come to New York. Handsome beggar! Not too hand 
 some though. Some athlete, believe me. Fearing s the best fellow 
 on earth." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I remember," Southward interpolated, " a reformer." 
 
 " That s the way I felt about it at first," Dwight reassured her. 
 " But he s a Eegular Fellow in every sense of the word keeps 
 his deadly occupation a dark secret. I m strong for Kip. You ll 
 like him." 
 
 " Rip s a big person," John struck in vigorously. " New Eng 
 land old family Harvard. After he came out of college he 
 began to paint and he painted darn well. I ve seen some of his 
 things. Suddenly something happened I don t know what 
 nobody knows what for that matter. He started a magazine called 
 The Negro Woman. It s an obscure publication. Nobody sees it. 
 But in it for fifteen years, Rip s fought the black woman s fight. 
 Somebody asked him once why he did that and he said the negro- 
 woman was the under-dog of the world. On the whole," John 
 finished slowly, " he s the best person I know." 
 
 Nobody spoke for a moment. Then, " Lord! " Southward ex 
 claimed, " I should say he was." 
 
 Southward who had come to spend the evening with Hester 
 chattered on indifferent subjects until the two men disappeared 
 tip the road. Then, " Two New York women I " she interrupted 
 herself suddenly. " Hester, we re up against it." 
 
 Hester laughed a laugh that had no mirth in it. "I m always 
 up against it. I don t mind of course, except that I m scared to 
 death. People of that kind who ve been everywhere and seen 
 everything frighten me almost out of my senses. But you don t 
 mind them, Southward. I ve yet to see the girl who can compete 
 with you." 
 
 " Well, just between ourselves," Southward admitted, " so have 
 I. But my Waterloo s got to come sometime, Hester. Maybe it s 
 now." She paused and her boyish smile flickered brilliantly across 
 her lips. It was obvious that she herself did not believe that that 
 time had come. " Anyhow, I ll give them a run for their money."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SOUTHWARD had gone home long ago. Mrs. Crowell sat on one 
 side of the hexagonal table, knitting her afghan. Hester sat on 
 the other side reading. There had not been a word spoken for 
 an hour. 
 
 " Too bad about those New York women coming," Mrs. Crowell 
 broke the silence suddenly. Her voice was toneless as ever, her 
 handsome face set. 
 
 Hester raised unsuspicious inquiring eyes. " Too bad ! " she 
 repeated. "Well, I thought so at first. I m always so scared of 
 new people. But I got over that as I talked with Southward. 
 It seems rather interesting to me now." She closed the book over 
 her forefinger, looked up at her mother with the air of one who 
 anticipates pleasant talk. 
 
 " Well, I suppose you realise," Mrs. Crowell s voice had a meas 
 ured quality as of one saying something mentally rehearsed. She 
 stopped to unknot her worsted, " that it won t be any further use 
 for you to set your cap for John Smith. I could see by the way 
 he talked of Edith Hale that he was dead in love with her." 
 
 " Mother ! " Hester leaped to her feet. The book slapped on 
 
 the floor. " What do you mean setting my cap You ought 
 
 to know me better than to think that I I m ashamed to 
 
 ,discuss it." 
 
 " Well, I ain t," her mother said tranquilly, not bothering to 
 look at her, " and don t try to pretend with me. I know what 
 you are, root and branch. I ve seen what you ve been up to. So 
 has everybody else in Shayneford that ain t blind. You and 
 Southward are both trying to get those two men. Sarah Wallis 
 asked me yesterday if he was waiting on you. Southward ll 
 probably succeed. She s smart enough to do anything, besides being 
 pretty and knowing how to dress. But of course you d pick out 
 a man that was crazy about another woman. You re bound to 
 do that." 
 
 " Well, you are mistaken." By an effort Hester quieted the 
 excitement in her voice. " And all Shayneford is mistaken. It 
 has never entered my head to think of Mr. Smith from that 
 point of view. I don t consider any man from that point of 
 
 117
 
 118 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 view. I never have. I don t think well enough of myself. 
 Whether he s engaged or married to any other woman makes no 
 difference to me." 
 
 " Yes, it looks like that ! " Mrs. Crowell sneered, but it was still 
 in a voice of dead steel. " Then what s all this fussing before the 
 glass for? What does all this pulling your hair away soft on 
 your forehead mean and dressing up with the neck of your waist 
 turned away? Why you do it with such a thin neck is beyond 
 me. Why are you dragging out all the old lace in the house 
 and fixing it on your dresses if you aren t setting your cap for 
 him? I see a good deal more, miss, than you give me credit for." 
 
 "Mother!" An emotion fairly maniacal burst through Hester s 
 
 expression. She looked wildly about her. " Mother, if you " 
 
 But in the midst of her fury, a sudden resolution caught her. 
 She strode out of the house. 
 
 She walked at a furious rate straight up the quiet star-lit road, 
 on and on past houses until they came at rare intervals and 
 then not at all ; on and on until the road grew narrow, grew wild, 
 grew black with interarching boughs; and still on and on. Then 
 her stride relaxed. She stopped suddenly, leaned against a tree- 
 trunk. She sobbed and her sobs shook her like a sirocco. Gradu 
 ally they died down, the long breathy catches in her breathing 
 smoothed out. She sank on the moss at the foot of the pine and 
 lay there quiescent for a long time. 
 
 " Well," a voice exclaimed suddenly, " I ve caught up with you 
 at last. I ve been five minutes at it. I saw you pass the Twombly 
 road." It was Smith s voice and the clear light of his electric 
 torch beat relentlessly on her swollen bloated face. " Oh, I beg 
 your pardon ! " He turned the light away. " What is it ? What 
 can I do?" 
 
 For an instant, Hester shook with a fresh and fiercer paroxysm. 
 Her voice strangled in her throat. Then with a tremendous effort, 
 she stiffened and quieted. " Thank you, Mr. Smith. There is 
 nothing that you can I m a little upset over something." 
 
 " Are you going anywhere in particular ? " he asked. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then suppose we walk. Unless you d rather sit and be quiet. 
 Perhaps you d rather be alone. Shall I go ? " 
 
 " I I I don t know," Hester answered wanly. " Yes, I think 
 I ll walk. No don t go." 
 
 "We won t talk if you don t want to talk," Smith went on. 
 " Or I ll do all the talking. Or I ll listen to you." 
 
 Hester did not reply and they walked for a long while in silence.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 119 
 
 It was a still night, moonless but full of stars. Nothing moved 
 near, except a firefly vibrating through the dark or a moth-miller 
 thudding noiselessly against them. Afar, a star occasionally 
 broke away from the vast piles that lay everywhere in the sky, 
 and shot with a long silent silvery hiss to the horizon. Nothing 
 sounded near or far but their feet, padding the dusty road. Smith 
 lighted his pipe, puffed quietly. His left hand threw the light 
 of the torch before them. 
 
 " I guess I ll tell you about it," Hester said at last, in a spent 
 voice. " Nobody knows it all. Southward has guessed a little. 
 I can t tell her everything. She s too close to it. It seems a dis 
 loyalty to talk it over with her. But you re so far away you re 
 like a passing ship. Somehow I can tell you." 
 
 " It s your mother," Smith declared as she paused. 
 
 " Yes, it s my mother." 
 
 " I got that this afternoon," Smith volunteered. 
 
 " I felt that you did," Hester said simply. " You see I m a 
 disappointment to her. I ve always been a disappointment. She 
 was a great beauty when she was young. Very charming and 
 vivacious, everybody says. She had many admirers." 
 
 " She s handsome enough now," Smith interjected. " Remarkably 
 so." 
 
 " Isn t she ? I love to look at her. There s something aris 
 tocratic I love all her lines and curves. And don t make any 
 mistake about it I love her. I love her dearly. But sometimes 
 I think she has never loved me. It sounds unnatural, but I m 
 
 afraid it s true. My father loved me but she And then you 
 
 see I had a younger sister Beatrice. And Beatrice was every 
 thing my mother s daughter should be. She was beautiful and 
 graceful and charming and accomplished. She was sweet people 
 always took to her. Mother worshipped her. I always realised 
 that; there was a difference in mother s treatment of us. I didn t 
 mind though. It seemed natural. I adored Bee as much as mother 
 did. I took a peculiar delight in her beauty. She was a black- 
 haired, blue-eyed type. I ll show you her picture sometime." 
 
 " I d like to see it," Smith said. 
 
 " Beatrice married five years ago at twenty. She had a little 
 girl another Bee. Mother was very happy when Bee came 
 happier than I have ever known her. And so was I. I loved little 
 Bee beyond words. I know that men aren t much interested in 
 children, and I don t want to bore you. But I must tell you 
 about Bee. She was oh, I am very sure an exceptional child. 
 She was beautiful and, even as a baby, had personality. And she
 
 120 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 loved me. My single triumph was that she would come to me 
 any time from her mother or her grandmother. There is a period 
 between three and four when a baby is most engaging. It s just 
 after she s learned how to talk and walk. Little Bee died just 
 before her fourth birthday, and my sister died two days later 
 diphtheria." 
 
 Smith drew a sharp breath. 
 
 "It nearly killed my mother. As for me well, I had mother 
 
 x -to take care of. She all but went insane. And the effect of this 
 
 " shock and grief was to turn her indifference to me to what was 
 
 temporarily a real mania of hatred. For weeks she reproached 
 
 me incessantly for being alive when they were dead. God knows 
 
 I would gladly have changed places with Bee. I don t think that 
 
 temperamentally I have a strong desire to live, although I don t 
 
 bother much about it one way or the other. After a while, that 
 
 period passed. Mother settled back into her life again. We never 
 
 mention Beatrice or Bee but " She paused with a strangled 
 
 abruptness. 
 
 " But your life is a hell," Smith finished for her. 
 
 "Yes a hell." Hester admitted this as though to herself and 
 as though for the first time. " You see her main criticism of me 
 is that I don t have lovers like other girls." Hester laughed 
 suddenly and there was real mirth in her laugh. " But I don t 
 know what I can do about that." 
 
 " Why don t you leave her for a while 1 " Smith asked after a 
 moment, when puffing vigorously and exuding long streamers of 
 smoke, he seemed silently to consider the situation. 
 
 " She won t let me. By a curious contradiction she clings to 
 me even while she despises me. Last year I was offered a really 
 good position in Metchford. I am a teacher you know here in 
 the High School. She told me that if I accepted it, she would 
 kill herself. This is what we had to fight immediately after 
 Beatrice s death suicidal mania. Of course I declined it al 
 though we two could have boarded on her little income and my 
 
 salary. Sometimes I feel as if I were at the end of my rope 
 
 Sometimes " Hester s voice grew deep as another woman s 
 voice might have grown thin with hysteria. But as though this 
 new note had resolved her emotions, her tone immediately changed 
 to a clear quietness. " Please don t let it bother you. To-morrow 
 I shall be all right. Only remember I shan t regret telling you. 
 Already I feel better for it." 
 
 Smith smiled his charming smile. "I hope so. For perhaps 
 I can help you if not now, sometime. I mean get you out of it."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 121 
 
 His smile vanished abruptly and that inner turbulence suddenly 
 made his eyes sombre, brought out concealed lines in a network 
 all over his face. He broke into a harsh laugh. " I understand, 
 Hester. God, how I understand. But there s always a way out 
 and I m going to find it for you." 
 
 " I thank you very much," Hester said with timid gratitude. 
 
 They walked without talking for another interval. The spacious 
 night pressed hard on them. Stars, furred with silver, continued 
 to shoot in straight lines into space. Fireflies, furred with gold, 
 continued to draw eccentric arcs about them. Huge white moth- 
 millers continued to beat silently against them. Trees webbed 
 them in allees of a frail sooty-dark lace. Not a sound broke the 
 stillness but the pad of their feet on the road. Smith had put his 
 pipe away. He was negotiating a cigar now. 
 
 "You see, Hester," he broke the silence abruptly. "I under 
 stand because well, I m in prison too. I want to tell you about 
 it. And I have never been tempted to tell anybody about it before 
 never." His voice sank a little on that second never. Immedi 
 ately he resumed his pleasant quizzical tone. " I d like to give 
 confidence for confidence. But I can t be a mucker and that would 
 be a mucker trick. I m tied hand and foot just as you are. 
 Your imprisonment may end sometime. Mine never will. 
 That s why I understand. That s why I m going to get you 
 out." 
 
 " Oh, I m sorry," Hester said. " I m sorry. Somehow it seems 
 more terrible for a man. Somehow it seems as though a man 
 could not possibly know how to stand waiting and enduring." 
 
 Smith laughed. " Most of them do it very badly, I ll admit." 
 He volunteered nothing further. They walked in silence. 
 
 " I ve made a curious discovery," Hester said suddenly in a calm 
 tone of discussion. " I ve come to the conclusion that the instinct 
 for grandmotherhood is almost as strong in some women as the 
 instinct for motherhood. It is a terrible disappointment to my 
 mother that I haven t married. In reality her quarrel is with 
 life that she will not be a grandmother again. That s one of 
 her constant reproaches. And of course I m helpless in the 
 matter." 
 
 " Has it never occurred to you to adopt a child ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, but she s adamant on that point. I have discussed 
 it with her a thousand times. She has that foolish pride in her 
 own flesh and blood that so many people have. The child must 
 be ours she ll take no risks with alien strains. But then I m not 
 going to pay any attention to that. I shall adopt a child
 
 122 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 sometime, maybe two. When I earn enough to take care of it. 
 I ve told her that." 
 
 " Oh, it s all wrong," Smith exclaimed, " this business of 
 parenthood. Somehow it seems as though all the wrong people 
 had children and none of the right ones. Have you ever read 
 Wells Tono Bungay? Do you remember that talk between Ewart 
 and Ponderevo? That vision they have of a new arrangement of 
 the world the sexes to have their separate worlds that City of 
 the Women, beautiful with gardens, flowers, trees, fountains, and 
 lakes, the men s world where they can fight and invent and hunt 
 and sail? And when the women want the men, they let them 
 come to visit them they have a little ladder that they let down 
 do you remember ? " 
 
 " Oh, perfectly," said Hester. " Only Ewart and Ponderevo 
 agreed that there were objections to that plan. And there are. 
 But of course there are objections to all plans." 
 
 " Yes, it seems so. However if there s one thing that I m more 
 convinced of than any other thing it is that there is one right 
 of healthy normal women the right to motherhood." 
 
 " The right to motherhood ! " Hester repeated after him. " The 
 right to motherhood! What an extraordinary idea! And what an 
 appalling one! It frightens me." 
 
 " But, Hester, there s something more I want to say to you," 
 Smith went on, not apparently interested in the abstract trend of 
 their talk. " I feel a little foolish in saying it and I m sure I 
 shan t do it with much finesse. But I m going to say it neverthe 
 less. There s one point on which your mother is much mistaken 
 a misapprehension that you too share apparently. That is in the 
 
 matter of personal pulchritude " He smiled at his own phrase. 
 
 " You know or apparently you don t know that there are two 
 kinds of beauty. There s the obvious beauty that hits you straight 
 in the face and knocks you over in the first round. Then there s 
 the other kind that you don t get the first time you look at it. 
 It s not so much a matter of line arid colouring as of character 
 and soul. Artists are the only ones ordinarily who see that kind 
 of beauty. And even they don t always find it immediately. It s 
 a fluid, changeable, imponderable, subtle thing, evasive, elusive, 
 evanescent. It depends on mood and light and health and 
 oh, a lot of things. You have that kind of beauty. Artists for 
 instance would find you at your best paintable. I mean by that 
 they would want to paint you." 
 
 " Paint me! " Hester echoed stupidly. " What for? " 
 
 "For what your face suggests; not what it is. What s finest
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 123 
 
 in you isn t on the surface. It isn t curve or colour. It never 
 appears in an unsympathetic atmosphere. But it sifts out when 
 you re excited or interested in the play of hundreds of expres 
 sions, in the constant change of light to shade and shade back to 
 light again. Some people would call you a Burne-Jones or a 
 Rosetti. Southward is beautiful at least she will be. She has 
 that other more obvious kind of beauty and in addition of course 
 beaute du diable. But she s not really lived or suffered in the big 
 sense. She s as hard as nails, though a fine creature. That hard 
 ness still lies on her features. You haven t in any sense lived 
 yet and that s missing from your face. Nor have you really suf 
 fered in the big sense. You ve suffered all the minor agonies, 
 and that s made you only apathetic. But when you re with us and 
 that apathy breaks well, from my point of view, you re paintable." 
 
 " Paintable ! " Hester dully repeated the new word. " Are you 
 crazy? Me?" 
 
 ," No. I m sane. You ll find it s true when you come to New 
 York and our painter-friends tell you so." 
 
 " Paintable ! " Hester said. 
 
 " Paintable ! " Smith iterated. 
 
 " Paintable ! " Hester whispered. " Please say it again." 
 
 Smith smiled. " Paintable ! " he reiterated with his pleasant 
 smile. 
 
 " Paintable ! " Hester breathed. 
 
 " But," Smith went on, " if you ll pardon me, I think you could 
 improve your appearance if you did your hair differently. I don t 
 know how you should do it of course. I m as stupid as most men 
 when it comes to such things. I m quite sure though that your 
 present system isn t the right one. You don t show it off to advan 
 tage, and it isn t correlated with your head." 
 
 " Paintable ! " Hester breathed again. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell s needles were still clicking when Hester returned. 
 
 " Well, I hope you ve got over your temper," she said without 
 looking up at her daughter. " Where have you been it s twelve 
 now ? " 
 
 " Yes, I ve got over it," Hester answered crisply both her 
 mother s questions, " I ve been walking with Mr. Smith." 
 
 " Oh," Mrs. Crowell sneered. " Still after him? " 
 
 Hester burst into a ringing laugh. " So it would seem." 
 
 Startled, Mrs. Crowell looked at her. 
 
 An inner light had burned through every surface of Hester a 
 light so strong that it tore away her sallowness and dulness. Her
 
 124 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 eyes shone, her teeth glittered, her hair sparkled. " Guess I ll go 
 to bed," she said buoyantly. " Good night, mother." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell did not reply. She stared at the spot where Hester 
 had stood. She listened attentively to Hester s new gait that 
 swift incisive tread on the stairs. 
 
 But Hester did not go to bed at once. She tore her clothes 
 off, took her place before the mirror. She pulled her braid 
 forward, unplaited it with fingers that fairly spun, pulled the 
 strands out until it flowed in twin rivers of gold over each 
 shoulder, across each breast. She leaned down suddenly and 
 picked up Tabby who had followed her upstairs and now stood 
 purring and curving against her bare legs. Then she stood move 
 less looking at herself in the glass. 
 
 That inner glow had deepened her eyes to wells, star-lighted at 
 the bottom; it had changed her skin to porcelain, rose-tinted in 
 the cheek. And her hair billowed up from her face like flame. 
 
 "Paintable!" Hester said. "Paintable! Paintable! Paint- 
 able ! " She stood there a long time, murmuring the word in 
 Tabby s ear.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 "I M dreading it," Hester said without preliminary greeting, 
 when the next day she met Southward at the cross-roads. And in 
 fact, her face was dull. Deep circles lay under her eyes. 
 
 " I m not," Southward boasted. " It would take more than two 
 New York women to frighten me," she added contemptuously. 
 
 " I wouldn t be frightened if I were you," declared Hester. 
 " You look lovely you slim thing ! " 
 
 Southward was all in white, a freshly laundered linen-gown, 
 white Panama hat, white silk stockings, low white shoes. She was 
 not smart, nor elegant, but she showed all her own natural trim- 
 ness. Hester wore a gown that demonstrated perfectly her lack 
 of sartorial authority, a navy-blue foulard, a typical country 
 product, over-fitted and over-trimmed. An over-burdened country 
 hat sat too high on her heavy braids. 
 
 " It s the queerest thing," Hester went on, " about five minutes 
 before I go anywhere, I d give the world to get out of it. In fact, 
 now oh, Southward can t you go without me ? " 
 
 Southward laughed heartlessly. " Can," she admitted in an 
 amused tone, " but won t," she added in an inflexible one. " Buck 
 up, Hester! Pull yourself together. Nothing s ever so bad as it 
 seems. They won t eat you, and after it s over you ll find you ve 
 had an interesting experience. Remember I ve said all along that 
 this is the beginning of something wonderful." 
 
 " Yes, I know. It was all right when it was only men. They re 
 not so critical, but when women come into it I m so afraid of 
 strange women." 
 
 " Yes, but you can t go anywhere," Southward said impatiently, 
 " without running into women. And you can t get anywhere 
 without their help." She went on, perhaps with deliberate inten 
 tion, to talk of other things. Hester listened obediently. At first 
 she answered Southward s questions only with perturbed monosyl 
 lables. But before they had walked far, she had responded in 
 whole to the fascination that Southward s quick, decisive, dogmatic 
 personality always exercised on her. 
 
 " And there s the camp," Southward ended. " Looks pretty, 
 doesn t it? Three tents. The men sleep in the big tent. Mrs. 
 
 125
 
 126 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Boardman and Mrs. Morrow have one of the small ones and Miss 
 Hale the other. They do their cooking in the cabin and they eat 
 out-of-doors on that big table under that big Chinese umbrella in 
 the centre." 
 
 " How in the world do you know all this ? " Hester laughed in 
 spite of a palpable recrudescence of her perturbation. 
 
 " Lysander," Southward admitted calmly. " Looks as though 
 there wasn t a soul there. They haven t seen us yet. Oh, there 
 they are ! " 
 
 Just ahead the country lane broke and merged with a big cleared 
 grassy semi-circle that ended at a pond. On three sides, forests 
 of pine and fir cushioned it with soft shadow; on the other side 
 a pond seemed to set an enormous half bubble in the green earth. 
 That bubble was lined with a blue that had dripped from the sky. 
 And over this blue floated ghost-clouds, sun-shot to a silver fragility. 
 The little camp that had seemed so quiet suddenly exploded with 
 activity. From tents and cabins emerged summery figures. 
 
 " The woman in white is Mrs. Morrow," Southward explained. 
 " The one in pink is Miss Hale. The grey-haired one is Mrs. 
 Boardman." 
 
 Cameron and Smith disengaged themselves from the group, hur 
 ried forward to meet the girls. 
 
 " We were just about to organise a search party," Smith called. 
 And " we ve had our faces pressed against the window for the last 
 half-hour," Cameron said reproachfully. 
 
 " Are we late ? " Southward asked without apparent guile. " Did 
 your guests come ? " 
 
 " Yes last night," Smith answered. 
 
 " I wish you could see how we ve worked for two days to make 
 this place ship-shape for you and them," Cameron exclaimed. 
 
 " You needn t have worked for me," Southward interjected, " I 
 don t care how it looks." 
 
 " It was Miss Crowell we were really afraid of," Smith an 
 nounced. 
 
 Hester smiled, still struggling with embarrassment. " It will 
 please Hester to think anybody s scared of her," Southward came 
 to her rescue. 
 
 They were drawing near to the camp. The three women were 
 sitting now in the little cleared circle. " I ve got to do the intro 
 ducing," Smith declared. " It s the worst job I know. Mrs. Board 
 man," he said in a stern tone of command, addressing the elderly 
 woman, " I m going to put you through first." 
 
 Mrs. Boardman lifted a head of grey hair, carefully coiled, and
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 127 
 
 studded with hairpins of a silvery shell, a neat-featured, small 
 face, a little grey too, and grey eyes- of a shoe-button roundness. 
 
 " Let me introduce Miss Drake and Miss Crowell. And Mrs. 
 Morrow and Miss Hale, Miss Drake and Miss Crowell. Morena, 
 let me present you to Miss Drake and Miss Crowell his hind 
 name s O Reilly by the way. And Rip Mr. Fearing let me 
 introduce you to Miss Drake and Miss Crowell. Thank heavens, 
 that s out of my system." 
 
 The flurry of names died away in a general murmur. Out of it 
 came Mrs. Morrow s flute-like voice. " John is the only man I 
 know who never mixes himself up in introductions. He always 
 introduces the young to the old, the male to the female, the un 
 married to the married, the obscure to the famous. It s because 
 he likes mathematics." Mrs. Morrow laughed gaily at her own 
 cryptic explanation. " Now," she added, " as Miss Drake and 
 Miss Crowell have not seen the camp, I propose to show it to 
 them. Especially as we re all bursting with pride over an un 
 natural condition of neatness. Don t bother to come, mother." 
 She turned to Mrs. Boardman. 
 
 " I was going to ask to be excused," said Mrs. Boardman. Her 
 head, of which not a hair had seceded from an elaborate coiffure, 
 bent over the delicate lace she was working. " I think I ve walked 
 enough for one day." 
 
 Mrs. Morrow placed herself on one side of Southward. Cameron 
 darted to the other side. Morena O Reilly took a position at Mrs. 
 Morrow s right. Hester followed with the others. 
 
 " Have you ever camped out, Miss Drake ? " Mrs. Morrow asked. 
 
 " Often," Southward answered, turning her eyes straight on her 
 interlocutor, " in this very camp." A glimmer appeared suddenly 
 between her eyelashes. She turned her gaze away; it met Morena 
 O Reilly s glance fixed intently on her. For an instant, they 
 stared at each other. In that instant, a spark flashed from eye 
 to eye. 
 
 " I suppose you ve been proposed to all over the place," Morena 
 O Reilly accused her suddenly. 
 
 Southward blushed the blush of one whose secret thought has 
 been exposed. But it was a beautiful blush, more a glow really; 
 as though some flame-coloured liquid fountaining up into her face 
 had been transmuted by her bronzed skin to gold. She kept her 
 straight-lashed gaze directly on Morena, however. " Shayneford 
 is an Adamless Eden almost, Mr. O Reilly." In another instant 
 the blush had evaporated. " You do look comfortable here," she 
 said with a renewed coolness.
 
 128 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Mrs. Morrow s oblique gaze had stayed on her during this little 
 interval. " There s always one kind of comfort where men are," 
 she said. " Of course we re very lucky to have a cabin with a 
 stove in it. Ling cooks us the most wonderful food. Here s the 
 kitchen." 
 
 Southward glanced into the hut with an appraising eye. " You d 
 better mend that chimney before it rains," she advised practically, 
 " or you ll have trouble. That stove is a beast in rainy weather. 
 I ve had my own troubles with it." 
 
 " All right," said John Smith, " I ll see to that." 
 
 " Here s where the men sleep." Cameron pulled back the flaps 
 of the big army-tent and the group stood for an instant gazing in. 
 In each corner was a cot, covered with grey army-blankets. Four 
 chairs, set with mathematical accuracy about a big deal table, 
 made the rest of the furnishings. Clothes suspended on hangers 
 dangled from a square frame-work. Everything was orderly. 
 
 " I wish you could have seen it three hours ago when John 
 cleaned it up," Mrs. Morrow commented, laughing. " John is 
 really neat. He has the military idea of cleanliness. He s more 
 than military he s ascetic. No, he s worse than ascetic he s 
 conventual." She turned so that she flung this word straight into 
 Smith s face. He acknowledged it, bowing. " The rest are far 
 from conventual." She transferred her dazzling smile to Cam 
 eron, " especially Dwight." 
 
 " Personally," Mr. O Keilly protested, " I can t see the use of 
 hanging things up or of putting them away ; you re always needing 
 them, so why not leave them where you can find them ? " He 
 turned to Southward as though for support. 
 
 " I quite agree," Southward had begun. 
 
 " There s a great deal in what you say, Morena," Mrs. Morrow 
 interrupted. She smiled at him. " I m a little that way, my 
 self." By a slight indicatory movement, she set them all moving 
 forward. 
 
 Earely pretty, certainly not lovely and in no circumstances 
 beautiful, Mrs. Morrow would always be interesting, picturesque, a 
 little exotic. Any beauty that regularity could give was missing 
 from her face; it did not in shape even approach the oval, con 
 ventionally demanded for beauty; it was round; it had a per 
 turbing concavity of contour. Her colouring was unusual, pale 
 blond, not so much a northern blondness as a sea-blondness. She 
 would have made an admirable mermaid. Her eyes were grey, pale 
 and baleful pale because lashes thickly dark made contrast with 
 them; and baleful because the broad white lids drooped half over
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 129 
 
 the pupils. White and smooth, her skin had a faint natural gloss 
 which she did not entirely dull with powder. Her soft fine hair, 
 silvery-gold with a hint of green, grew in a beautiful curving line 
 about her brow, her ears, the round of her neck. Her lips were 
 the purple-red of ripe cherries. Her figure was saved from 
 voluptuousness by a suggestion of the underlying muscularity of 
 a big frame. She was extraordinarily supple. 
 
 Beyond, Morena O Reilly presented a marked contrast to Mrs. 
 Morrow s sea-blondness. So dark that he was almost swarthy, 
 rings in his ears and a blood-red handkerchief on his head would 
 have seemed appropriate decoration. His hair was cut close, but 
 it broke into thick jetty black waves, so stiff that they might have 
 been carved from coal. His jetty eyebrows were thick, his jetty 
 eyelashes long. He wore above lips red and as beautifully shaped 
 as a woman s, a crisp jetty moustache, thick but short. The blend 
 of two races was apparent in his face but it was a perplexed study 
 to disentangle them. For although his hair was Spanish in colour, 
 it was Irish in curl. And although his deep blue eyes were Irish 
 in expression they were Spanish in shape. The whiteness of his 
 skin on the other hand was all Celt, the fulness of his lips all 
 Spanish. There was nothing girlish about him, although he es 
 caped only by a miracle being too good-looking. He was wiry 
 and tensely-drawn as to figure, twinklingly humorous as to ex 
 pression. 
 
 Beyond these two walked Southward, slim and straight with her 
 quick alert boy s gait, her head ground to a boyish roundness by 
 the heavy sleek hair, her eyes, straight-lashed and straight-gazing, 
 jet poured into silver, her raspberry lips parted showing the blue- 
 white edge of her little teeth. Beside Hester, the city-women 
 looked like hot-house plants exquisitely trained and cared-for. 
 Beside Southward, they looked like sunless cellar-products almost 
 under-nourished. Southward s skin might have been satin but for 
 its hardness, bronze but for its flexibility, glass but for its fluidity. 
 Something moved under it, constantly giving it light, shadow, 
 colour. Yet, if you tapped it, you would expect it to ring faintly 
 like metal. 
 
 Behind, Hester walked with Miss Hale and John Smith. Ripley 
 Fearing had taken Miss Hale s parasol. He tried to hold it over 
 both women. Obviously, Hester still suffered from the embarrass 
 ment of so much new acquaintance. Perhaps Miss Hale was 
 equally embarrassed or perhaps she was naturally quiet. At any 
 rate, Smith kept up a running fire of small-talk, humorous com 
 ment, impertinent question, full of a harmless male-antagonism
 
 130 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 that gradually drew the women together as allies and brought all 
 four into the sunny whimsicality of his mood. From under the 
 parasol, Ripley Fearing aided and abetted him. 
 
 " You and Miss Hale have a great many points in common, 
 Hester," John said once, " I prophesy fearlessly that you re going 
 to like each other." 
 
 " Oh, I m sure of that," came from under the parasol. 
 
 Hester murmured something utterly inarticulate but cor 
 roborative. 
 
 " Of course I know," Smith went on, " that to make a remark 
 like that is the signal for the people involved to hate each other. 
 But in this case, you can t hate each other. I forbid it." 
 
 " Oh, we won t do that. We promise, don t we, Miss Crowell ? " 
 
 Again Hester murmured in assent something that nobody could 
 possibly have caught. 
 
 " But what have we in common, John ? " Miss Hale continued. 
 Her voice was low, languid, singularly expressionless. It was a 
 little like the voice of a deaf woman. Only its natural music 
 prevented it from being monotonous. 
 
 " Well, to begin with you re both lazy," Smith answered 
 promptly. 
 
 " Dear me," said Edith Hale with an enlivening touch of arch 
 ness, " I had hoped that he was going to say beautiful. Didn t 
 you, Miss Crowell ? " 
 
 " I looked for charming at the very least." Hester had at 
 last got her shyness under control. 
 
 " And in addition," John struck on vigorously, " you re both 
 unenterprising, lackadaisical, lymphatic, dead-and-alive." 
 
 " What would you prescribe for us, John ? " came the sweet, dead 
 voice from under the parasol. 
 
 " Get into a revolutionary movement of some description," Smith 
 said. " Throw a few bricks, set a few buildings on fire break all 
 the laws you can." 
 
 " There s plenty of that sort of stuff to be done," Fearing sug 
 gested, " without breaking any laws. I can get you both a job 
 picketing in the next woman s strike that conies up in New York. 
 Have you ever knocked a man down, Miss Crowell ? " 
 
 " Only one," Hester answered apologetically. 
 
 The effect of this simple statement was extraordinary. Miss 
 Hale emitted a ripple of laughter that had real mirth in it. But 
 the men burst into roars so loud and prolonged that the quartette 
 in front turned back. 
 
 " It s only Miss Crowell who s going to tell us how she knocked
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 131 
 
 a man down once," John explained. " I aimed at a sparrow and 
 brought down a seraph," he added in an aside to Miss Hale. 
 
 " It wasn t anything to tell," Hester faltered. And she blushed 
 one of her terrific, unbecoming blushes. u It happened one night 
 in Oldtown. A party of us were out walking. There was a little 
 young girl with us. As we passed a group of men, one of them 
 spoke to her and put his hand on her shoulder. And I I never 
 could remember exactly what happened. I didn t stop to think. 
 I hit out at him. He was balancing on the edge of the sidewalk. 
 Anyway he went right over sideways. Mercy how it scared me ! " 
 
 " What did he do ? " Fearing asked with interest. 
 
 "I don t know," Hester answered. "We all ran away, 
 screaming." 
 
 Everybody laughed. The forward four turned and went on. 
 Hester relapsed into silence. 
 
 " I think," Mr. Fearing commented, emerging from the parasol, 
 " there s good stuff here. Edith s almost a hopeless case. I m 
 afraid we never can make a militant of her. But I don t see why 
 we should train Miss Crowell to beat up policemen." 
 
 " Here we come to the boudoirs," Mrs. Morrow called from the 
 front. " We can dispense with the company of the men-people." 
 
 Protesting, the men returned to the cabin. Mrs. Morrow pulled 
 back the flap of her tent. " I ll take Miss Crowell to my place," 
 Edith Hale said suddenly. 
 
 " All right," Mrs. Morrow agreed. " That may save time. 
 They re to ring the bell when tea s ready." 
 
 Mrs. Morrow s tent was almost as big as the men s. 
 
 For a non-committal instant Southward s gaze went first to the 
 trunk that stood open on end in a corner. One half was filled 
 with clothes suspended on hangers as neatly ordered as a closet. 
 The other half was filled with drawers, half-opened. On the two 
 beds lay linen cases embroidered with initials. Over one bed-end 
 hung a negligee of pale-green silk, profusely trimmed with a 
 delicate butter-coloured lace, a boudoir-cap of the same lace 
 trimmed with narrow ribbons of the same green. On a painted 
 bureau stood a mirror in carved and gilded wood. About this 
 in puzzling variety lay toilet-articles in gold and green 
 enamel, little boxes and big, small brushes and large, thin bottles 
 and fat, many golden instruments so tiny and slim, so pointed 
 and sharp that, but for the coquettish decoration on their handles, 
 they would have been surgical in effect. Southward s gaze slashed 
 over these things; it lingered for the longest interval on an old 
 bureau of mahogany, standing across a corner.
 
 132 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Why, that s Gert Beebee s bureau," she exclaimed suddenly. 
 
 " Yes, isn t it a wonder ! " Mrs. Morrow said. " A real Sheraton. 
 Mother bought it of her this morning. For a song too. This 
 town must be full of old stuff. Mother deals in it, you know. 
 Would you like some powder? Or a comb? Or a hairpin?" 
 She rapidly flipped off the covers of one or two of the enamelled 
 boxes. 
 
 Southward declined these conveniences. She never powdered. 
 Her skin always kept its faint metallic lustre. And her hair, by 
 means of its own cohesion, always clung close to her head. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow seated herself cross-legged on the bed, the tips 
 of her shining black shoes protruding from under the hem of her 
 pearly skirt. 
 
 " I don t suppose you ve seen enough of Shaynef ord to know 
 what it s like yet," Southward began. 
 
 " No, but we went about a little this morning. And Dwight s 
 driving me over to Wingate to-morrow. That will give me some 
 idea of the country. I think Shayneford is a duck of a place. I 
 feel so exhilarated here somehow. I was awfully tired when I came 
 down. It just happened that mother and I had to be in New York 
 part of the summer not quite in but out and in you know 
 what I mean week-ending. It seems so jolly to have two weeks 
 of uninterrupted country quiet. Oh, by the way," Mrs. Morrow 
 interrupted herself as though her fluent flow of talk had come on 
 a cross-current of interruption, " who is the young person who 
 drove us from the station tall, strong-looking, blond ? " 
 
 " Oh, you mean Lysander, I guess. Lysander Manning." 
 
 "He s awfully handsome, isn t he? " 
 
 " Yes. Lysander s the best-looking man in Shayneford." 
 
 "What does he do?" 
 
 " Everything. He s a rolling-stone. He generally takes some 
 sort of travelling job for the winter farms here summers." 
 
 " I thought he was a darling too ducky for words." 
 
 Mrs. Morrow spoke in a quick, abrupt way and constant emphasis 
 lent a staccato accent to her speech. She was restless. Her 
 hands were always going to her brow to push back the encroaching 
 ripples of hair, or they pulled at the fine gold chain which held 
 a lorgnette, or they adjusted the folds of her skirt. Southward 
 sat absolutely still. Utterly non-committal in expression, motion 
 less, except when the sweep of her lashes accompanied her gaze, 
 she might have been a carved figure. 
 
 " By the way," Mrs. Morrow s conversation jumped suddenly in 
 another direction. " What do you think of Dwight s novel ? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 133 
 
 " His novel his novel ! " Southward repeated. " Oh, you mean 
 Ginger. Oh, I " 
 
 " No. I don t mean Ginger. Everybody likes that of course. 
 I mean the new one the one he s begun down here. You all have 
 seen it of course." 
 
 " I haven t," Southward answered with composure and with 
 indifference. 
 
 "I haven t either," Mrs. Morrow admitted with a pretty vexa 
 tion. " He s spoken of it several times in his letters. But I can t 
 get him to show it to me. He s become self-conscious all of a 
 sudden. He s always been awfully nice about his stuff. I m really 
 vexed with him now. He comes up to our place a good deal to 
 work in the winter. He says it s the only spot in New York 
 in which he can be quiet. I always read everything as fast as he 
 turns it out. I ll tell you what we ll do. Perhaps we can get 
 him to read a chapter or two to-night." 
 
 Southward made no comment beyond, " That would be inter 
 esting." 
 
 " You know I am very much worried about Dwight," Mrs. 
 Morrow went on. She turned for a moment to gaze absent- 
 mindedly into the glass and to fluff with two vicious dabs the hair 
 which lay on her forehead. " He s really got great ability. Ginger 
 made a sensation and had a very good sale for a first book. He 
 should have written another immediately to follow up that success. 
 But he s been in New York for five years now without turning 
 out a word of fiction. I scold him dreadfully about it. I think this 
 place has been awfully good for him. It s apparently started some 
 thing. When he gets back to New York I shall shut him in the 
 study every night when he s off duty, lock the door and throw away 
 the key. I shan t let him out until he s produced something." 
 She smiled at this picture of feminine tyranny. Her teeth were 
 big, set a little apart from each other. Somehow they increased 
 by an infinitesimal quantity that baleful quality of her look. 
 
 As before, Southward made only one comment. " That would 
 be a good system, I should say." But she did not once take her 
 straight-lashed gaze, fuller than usual of its enigmatic directness, 
 from Mrs. Morrow s face. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow drew her skirt aside and absently examined the 
 big steel buckles on her patent leather shoes. " New York is no 
 place for work however. It s too noisy, too brilliant, too full of 
 colour, light, sounds, smells, drinks, and eats," she continued 
 fluently. " I m trying my best to get Dwight out of the 
 newspaper business for good, to induce him to buck the free-lance
 
 134 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 game. It s just a matter of his saying enough to carry him for 
 six months. Of course he s wild to do it but he thinks it s too 
 much of a risk. It isn t really. But you can t make him see that. 
 I m sure that going abroad would do wonders for him. I m dying 
 to have him go with us. We can put everything positively every 
 thing in his way. Do help me to get him to go, Miss Drake." 
 
 " I can t think I hare much influence with Mr. Cameron," South 
 ward answered with composure. " I ll do all I can of course." 
 She spoke with great seriousness and she dropped her long-lashed 
 look to her lap. It was just in time, that sweep of the lids, to 
 cover the blue-and-black glimmer in her eyes. 
 
 Hester had accompanied Miss Hale to her tent. She sat in a 
 crepuscular atmosphere that was faintly rosy in tint, gazing in 
 bewilderment about her. The inside of the tent had been hung 
 with a rose-garlanded chintz, that pulled the walls together and 
 gave the air its colour. It seemed to be spilling over with things 
 two trunks, one of them for hats, carved ivory toilet articles, a 
 bag of chintz, another of brocade, a third of lace, photographs 
 framed in silver or leather, standing on bureau and table. 
 
 "Do you like Shayneford, Miss Hale?" Hester asked timidly, 
 after a preliminary patter of general question and answer. 
 
 " I think it is very beautiful," Miss Hale responded, " but very 
 sad." 
 
 Expression had crept for the first time into Miss Hale s voice. 
 When she said beautiful it was as though beauty were a sadness; 
 and when she said sad, it was as though sadness were also a beauty. 
 
 " It is sad," Hester agreed, " although most people don t see 
 that. I think almost all old New England towns are sad they 
 belong so much to the past. I m glad you like Shayneford. 
 I m very tired of it myself. But I think it is a beautiful place 
 and I am always pleased when people admire it. You see I have 
 lived here all my life." 
 
 " How strange to have lived always in one place," Miss Hale 
 commented. Her voice became dreamy. " It must give you such 
 a feeling of belonging somewhere. I ve lived in so many places. 
 I belong everywhere, or nowhere." 
 
 " Oh, that must be a wonderful feeling," exclaimed Hester. " A 
 citizen of the world. I should like that." 
 
 "It s not quite that, after all," Edith Hale confessed. "It s 
 not so fine or splendid. I m not in any sense a citizen of the 
 world. It s more that I feel disembodied, that I m a citizen of 
 space. Sometimes I think it s worse than that. It s as though 
 I d wandered onto the wrong planet, as though I really belonged
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 135 
 
 in Jupiter or Venus or Mars and got here by mistake." She 
 stopped. 
 
 " I think," Hester said, giving this statement the thoughtful 
 consideration that, in conversation, was typical of her, " I would 
 not like that." 
 
 " I assure you I don t like it." Miss Hale smiled for the first 
 time. Just as her voice held music without emotion, her smile 
 held illumination without mirth. " I would like more than any 
 thing," she went on, " to think that there was somewhere an old 
 house that belonged to me and always had belonged to me or mine 
 an old, old house with an old, old flower-garden, old, old fur 
 niture, old, old pictures, and perhaps a ghost a very gentle ghost 
 oh, I think I would always be going away for the sake of coming 
 back to it." 
 
 "I think I understand that," Hester said earnestly, "notwith 
 standing most of the time I wish I could leave Shayneford and 
 never see it again." 
 
 " Really," Miss Hale commented doubtfully. " Really," she said 
 again. Suddenly her voice grew full and vibrant with emotion. 
 " Of course you do. Nobody wants to stay where he must. 
 
 Oh " Her voice took another leap deeper into emotion. It 
 
 vibrated with a full swing. " Oh, the souls that are in prison ! " 
 
 Hester did not reply for a moment. And plainly she was a 
 little startled by this emotional rending of the veil. She looked 
 at Miss Hale with all her sympathy and interest working vividly 
 in her face. And suddenly she came into possession of an unex 
 pected articulateness. 
 
 " Yes," she answered quietly. " I think most souls are in prison. 
 And sometimes I wonder if prison isn t synonymous with life. 
 I mean if it isn t a crucible of character. To be put into solitary 
 confinement and to see no way out, to know that the sun and moon 
 and trees and flowers and birds are just a little way off and yet 
 not be able to get to them, to know that one s sentence will never 
 be commuted after all, that s the final test of the stuff that s in 
 you." She stopped abruptly and with a recurrence of her tem 
 peramental shyness, stared pleadingly at her companion. 
 
 Of all four women, Miss Hale was obviously the oldest; she 
 could have been either side of forty. Strictly speaking, she was 
 the most feminine type among them, notwithstanding features as 
 coldly regular as those of a Greek head and notwithstanding a 
 certain unanalysable quality of unhealthiness. Everything about 
 her pointed to a brave fight against the despoilments of maturity. 
 Her skin, in spite of a waxy whiteness, looked cared-for; her
 
 136 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 shining hair arranged, with a careful carelessness, softened and 
 shadowed it. Her very brows and lashes in some mysterious way 
 bespoke training. They could not conceal, however, that the hazel 
 eyes under them were sad and that little whitish wrinkles had 
 drawn faint gossamers at their corners. Her features had begun 
 to sharpen. She was like a flower on the first day of fading; as 
 though the live, warm, breathing, palpitating texture, without loss 
 of tint or shape, had suddenly turned to a transparent porcelain. 
 
 This worn womanliness was pointed by clothes that contrasted 
 in every possible way with Mrs. Morrow s piquant smartness. She 
 was dressed exactly as though the tent were a drawing-room. Her 
 short gown was a soft rose-coloured silk. As far as possible, 
 it receded from close-fitting lines in favour of a delicate 
 reactionary fulness. Everything about her was fine in quality, 
 fragile in fabric, clinging or floating; she was soignee to the last 
 detail. A triangular shawl of an old white point d Alen^on hung 
 about her shoulders. Under her chin was a chou of white malines, 
 fastened with bar-pins of pearl. Thin, close high-heeled slippers 
 of white suede showed every outline of her pretty feet. 
 
 Miss Hale s expression had responded with flitting light and 
 shade, with involuntary sensitive movements of the lips to Hester s 
 speech. " Yes," she agreed, " I am sure you are right. I think " 
 
 But what Miss Hale thought never manifested itself. For, 
 " There s the phonograph," Mrs. Morrow s clear voice announced 
 from the next tent. " Tea s ready."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SMITH was unpacking a tea-basket on the big table in the 
 centre of the camp platform. Cameron was watching the flame 
 of a little silver tea-kettle whose nose emitted a thin coil of 
 steam. The other two men were flying back and forth from 
 table to kitchen, fetching crackers and cheese, opening tins of 
 sardines and bottles of olives. Mrs. Boardman, still placidly 
 crocheting, occasionally offered a suggestion. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow seated herself at the table indicated to everybody 
 where he was to sit, arranged the tea-cups, asked and received 
 instructions as to milk, cream, sugar, and lemon. All the time, 
 the phonograph continued to play and, all the time, in spite of her 
 preoccupation, Mrs. Morrow s trim feet, her supple waist, her 
 square strong-looking shoulders were moving with it. 
 
 She drank her tea almost in a gulp. Then she put the cup 
 down with a decisive gesture. " I can t stand it a moment longer," 
 she confided to them all. " Come and dance with me, Dwight, 
 or I shall explode." 
 
 Cameron was at that moment talking with Southward. He 
 arose after a pause that was barely perceptible, put down his 
 untasted tea and moved over to Mrs. Morrow s chair. She arose. 
 His arm went about her waist. She rested her hands, palms 
 upward, on his forearms ; they floated off. 
 
 " Mrs. Morrow is a wonderful dancer," Southward said at the 
 end of a minute to Morena O Reilly, who had immediately moved 
 into Cameron s place. 
 
 " Yes," O Reilly agreed without removing his eyes from South 
 ward s face. " Wonderful ! She s a born dancer. She d rather 
 dance than eat." 
 
 " They re perfectly matched," Southward went on, " Mr. 
 Cameron is a good dancer too." 
 
 " Possibly," O Reilly answered and still his eyes clung to 
 Southward s face. " I m not looking at them." He paused. 
 Southward s gaze followed the dancers. " Perhaps because I ve 
 got something better to look at." His voice dropped a little. 
 
 At this, Southward turned. Her eyes met his. Coolly and 
 speculatively she looked at him. And again, begotten of nothing, 
 
 187
 
 138 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 that spark flashed through the air between them. But Southward 
 continued to study him coolly and speculatively. Then, " I 
 congratulate you," Southward said, "I haven t anything better 
 to look at." 
 
 However she said this with a smile and after another keen-eyed 
 interval of consideration, she turned away from the dancers and 
 gave Morena her full attention. Everybody else watched Mrs. 
 Morrow and Cameron; occasionally they applauded. 
 
 They were indeed well matched. Mrs. Morrow had the dancer s 
 build, the dancer s gift, the dancer s delight in dancing. Cameron 
 had the poised, perfected body of the born athlete. He moved 
 with authority and grace. They wove through a variety of figures 
 that must have been improvised; yet it was as though they had 
 been rehearsed. Mrs. Morrow s supple body responded to the 
 faintest hint from her partner. And always her shoulders curved 
 and palpitated, her waist swayed and spiralled, her hands, turned 
 palm upward, cupped and fluttered. 
 
 Cameron guided her deftly to a chair just as the record 
 threatened to run down. He bowed low. "Put in another disc, 
 John," he called. Then he made directly to Southward who, deep 
 in tete-a-tete with Morena O Reilly, apparently did not see him. 
 " May I have this ? " Cameron interrupted. 
 
 Southward looked up at him, smiled, appeared to hesitate, com 
 plied finally. She danced well too but with the clean, rhythmic, 
 unsexed quality of a young boy joying in exercise. Any dancing 
 must, however, seem commonplace in comparison with Mrs. 
 Morrow s. After an interested interval, their audience fell again 
 into conversation. John asked Hester to dance, then Miss Hale. 
 Both women declined, Miss Hale because she was too tired, 
 Hester because she could not dance. 
 
 Dwight and Southward continued, Cameron signalling to Smith 
 from time to time to renew the records. Mrs. Morrow watched 
 them, her feet twinkling back and forth under her skirt, her whole 
 body swaying in sympathy. " Come, Morena," she called finally. 
 " I can t stand this any longer. I ll dance with you even if I am 
 mad with you." Morena leaped gallantly to her side. He was a 
 better dancer even than Dwight. He had a Latin fluidity of 
 physique; they moved as one person. Nobody looked at the other 
 two. 
 
 Smith continued to feed the phonograph. He dropped com 
 ments from time to time to Miss Hale. She reclined in her 
 steamer-chair, her statuesque arms extended, her beautiful hands 
 folded in her lap. She listened attentively to whatever Smith
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 139 
 
 said but she herself was silent. Sometimes apparently the .im 
 pulse to speak would seize her. Her lips would part, a faint colour 
 would flood her face. But just as her mouth settled on the first 
 word, she would mentally sink back into herself; her remark would 
 melt into a sigh. 
 
 " What do you think of her, Edith ? " Smith said finally in an 
 undertone. 
 
 " Oh, she s sweet ! " Miss Hale replied with a little drift of 
 animation. " But pathetic." 
 
 " Lord, yes pathetic horribly so," Smith agreed. " Thank 
 you for getting that awful hat off. Hasn t her face interesting 
 possibilities ? " 
 
 " Wonderful. Miron would paint her to-night if he were here." 
 
 " Did you ever see such extraordinary hair ? " 
 
 " No. Except that there s really too much for beauty. She 
 ought to cut half of it off." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " Smith ejaculated. " Cut that hair ! That ought 
 to be a State Prison offence." 
 
 Miss Hale laughed her low sad laugh. " That s so like a man." 
 she commented. " A woman s crowning glory is her hair. We 
 women haven t so much respect for mere quantity you know. 
 But that seems to be all that appeals to men. You don t know 
 what quality is. Azile s hair for instance, is simply wonderful. 
 I wonder if that deification of mere quantity is a relic of the days 
 when a long thick braid of hair was so convenient to drag a 
 woman round by." 
 
 Smith smiled. " Perhaps. I think you re going to like her 
 more and more, Edith. I don t know of anybody I d rather have 
 for your friend. And God knows, she needs a friend. You do 
 too," he added as an afterthought. 
 
 Kipley Fearing had in the meantime moved over to Hester s 
 side. 
 
 " Don t you dance, Miss Crowell ? " he inquired. 
 
 "N o," Hester said. 
 
 " Don t you like it or perhaps you don t approve." 
 
 " Oh, I don t disapprove," Hester protested. " It isn t that at 
 all. It s only I guess, that I never tried." 
 
 " Why not ? " Mr. Fearing asked. 
 
 " I was too shy and self-conscious until I was grown up," 
 Hester explained, " and after that, I was ashamed to learn. And 
 yet " She paused. 
 
 " And yet," Mr. Fearing urged her. 
 
 "I ve a sort of feeling that I would enjoy dancing very much
 
 140 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 if I only learned. Oh, I know I d be crazy about it. You see 
 when I was a very little girl, I used to compose dances." 
 
 " Compose dances," Fearing repeated. " That s very interest 
 ing. You anticipated a new art. Dances are created nowadays 
 just as much as music or poetry or pictures or sculpture. Tell 
 me about it." 
 
 " I I I don t think there s really anything to tell." Hester s 
 embarrassment floundered finally to a full stop. She stared 
 helplessly into Fearing s face. 
 
 It was a strange face, ugly but kind. The perceptible droop 
 of the lower lids of his brown eyes gave to his long slim rectan 
 gular countenance a hound-like quality. His eyes had the hound s 
 steadiness and quiet, a little of the hound s melancholy. In con 
 versation, those eyes glowed; when he listened, they blurred, grew 
 vague. They dulled now; it seemed to give Hester courage. 
 
 She swung suddenly into one of those intervals of ease and 
 inarticulateness that occasionally broke her constitutional shy 
 ness. 
 
 " My mother used to play the piano a great deal when I was a 
 little girl. She wasn t a finished musician by any means but she 
 loved to play and she had a very soft touch. Many a time, I ve 
 waked in the morning to her playing and many a time I ve fallen 
 asleep to it. And sometimes at twilight, she d sit for hours at the 
 piano. As I grew older, I d shut myself in my room and dance 
 to her music. She did not know it. Nobody knew it. I would 
 
 have died rather than I say dance and yet " Hester s 
 
 brow roughened with perplexity, " it wasn t exactly what you d call 
 dancing. It was whatever movement the music suggested to me. 
 At any rate, it always seemed to me that each piece of music re 
 quired a different dance. I used to love it really. I felt well, I 
 can t, tell you exactly how I felt but I had a sensation of great 
 delight. I was always rested afterwards, although I ve danced for 
 an hour at a time." 
 
 " And don t you ever dance any more ? " Fearing asked after a 
 pause. 
 
 " Oh, no mother never plays any more. And then I suppose I 
 would not have kept it up anyway. I was awfully shy about it. 
 I couldn t have danced before people for anything. And of course 
 it was harder to conceal as I grew older. And so I just naturally 
 outgrew the impulse. And the fact that mother played less and 
 less must have made a difference. She never touches the piano 
 now. Why I can t remember when there s been any music in the 
 house."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 141 
 
 " And why is that ? " Fearing continued. 
 
 " I don t know," Hester said slowly. " Or at least I guess it s 
 part growing old and part the sadness of life." 
 
 "It s a pity that either of you should have stopped," Fearing 
 commented. "It would undoubtedly do you good to dance and 
 your mother good to play. I m going to teach you to dance." 
 
 " Oh, I couldn t, I m afraid," Hester protested. 
 
 "You can and must," Fearing asserted with his kind decisive 
 ness. " Now. Come ! " 
 
 He drew her away from the others, back into the shadow of the 
 trees, put his arm about her. " Now do exactly as I tell you," he 
 ordered kindly. He gave her some brief succinct directions. 
 
 Obviously limp with fright, obviously half-blind and half-deaf 
 with embarrassment, Hester tried to follow his directions. But 
 her efforts were more struggle than dance. 
 
 "You re not doing what I tell you," Fearing said calmly re 
 leasing her. " Listen, I ll tell you once more." He repeated his 
 instructions with the same limpid conciseness. " Try again ! " 
 
 " I can t," Hester breathed. 
 
 " Yes you can if you ll listen. Now I ll tell you once more. 
 Now we re off." 
 
 " I can t," Hester faltered. But even as she said it, she began 
 to respond to his determination, to sway in time to the music. 
 He held her there dancing without a rest while record after record 
 ran its course. " You re doing beautifully," he encouraged her. 
 " And you re a natural dancer just as I suspected. That s right. 
 What did I tell you? I m proud of you." 
 
 "I say," Mrs. Morrow called suddenly. "Let s all go in swim 
 ming now and have dinner later." She dropped into her chair at 
 the head of the tea-table. She picked up a fan and fanned herself 
 violently. The tendrils of her floss-fine hair flew in every direc 
 tion in the violent breeze she evoked. Wherever Mrs. Morrow 
 alighted there was always disturbance. Everybody stopped talking 
 to look at her now ; for everybody, except Southward and Dwight 
 perhaps was drawn into the suction of her centripetal personality. 
 
 " Sure, I m for that," exclaimed Dwight. " How about the 
 others ? " His eye swept the group but it stopped at Southward. 
 
 " I can t go in swimming," said Southward, " I brought no suit." 
 
 "And I don t swim anyway," Hester interposed hastily. 
 
 "Please take my suit, Miss Drake," offered Edith Hale. "I 
 never enjoy bathing so late in the day. It takes too long to get 
 warm afterwards. I think it will fit you very nicely." 
 
 " Thank you. I shall be very glad to wear it."
 
 142 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 "I ve brought quantities of books down here, Miss Crowell," 
 Edith Hale said, " I m one of those people who have to read them 
 selves to sleep every night. And I think I have all the newest 
 magazines. Wouldn t you like to borrow some of them ? " 
 
 " Oh, I would ! " Hester exclaimed. " And my mother is always 
 so glad of a new book. Our Library doesn t give us much of a 
 choice you know." 
 
 "Let s come back to my tent for a moment. There are some 
 nice new English novels and the latest volume of Masefield." 
 
 The group broke up. The bathers departed swiftly in the direc 
 tion of the tents. Mrs. Boardman retired for her afternoon nap. 
 Hester and Edith strolled more slowly in her wake. 
 
 The bathers returned after a while, the men in gymnasium 
 suits, Mrs. Morrow in a one-piece arrangement of a brilliant red 
 silk, Southward in a more conventional two-piece suit also of 
 silk a piquant combination of black with white. They lined up 
 on the bank and at a signal ran to the water s edge and plunged in. 
 
 If Mrs. Morrow had been the centre of attraction while they 
 danced, Southward usurped that place when they swam. And 
 just as obviously as Mrs. Morrow danced for the joy of dancing, 
 Southward swam for the joy of swimming. Her slim body cut 
 the water like a knife-blade; yet she had the buoyancy of a cork. 
 The water controlled the others. Southward controlled the water. 
 She could move through it like a motor-boat, tearing it to a mov 
 ing whirlpool of foam or, seeming to float hands and feet under 
 the surface, she would skim along as though propelled by an 
 invisible force. She held her head and shoulders high, or she 
 dropped her chin into the hollow of her crooked elbow, or she 
 hid her face in the water; it seemed to make no difference in 
 her speed. She swam under water for incredible intervals. Her 
 vitality was proof against cold ; the colour staid in her cheeks and 
 lips. After diving, her sleek head became more sleek with the 
 jetty mass of her hair clinging wet to it. It began to grow dark. 
 Mrs. Morrow, protesting that she was cold, emerged and disap 
 peared into her tent. One by one, the men deserted the water. 
 Finally Southward and Dwight, left alone, headed towards the 
 centre of the lake, all but disappeared in the twilight. 
 
 " How do you like them ? " Dwight asked as they pulled beyond 
 earshot. 
 
 "Very much," Southward replied with a tempered enthusiasm. 
 
 "I m awfully interested in your first impressions," Cameron 
 went on. " What do you think of Rip ? " 
 
 " I haven t had much to say to him yet," Southward answered
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 143 
 
 instantly. " And of course he s not exactly the sort of man that 
 I find myself most at home with " 
 
 " What sort of man is that ? " Dwight interrupted. 
 
 " Well I don t know exactly how to describe the kind of man 
 I like he can t be too practical and out-of-doorsy. You re more 
 my type of course, and Lysander Manning. I feel as if I might 
 find it hard to talk with your Mr. Fearing. And yet I like him 
 too." 
 
 " He s a dandy," Cameron said enthusiastically. " Now, what 
 do you think of Morena ? " 
 
 Southward smiled a little. And for a moment, she did not 
 answer. " I think he s awfully handsome," she said after a while, 
 as though she were not saying all she thought. 
 
 " I suppose he is," Cameron commented. " I d forgotten all 
 about that though. I remember when I first met him, I didn t 
 think he could be a Regular Fellow and yet be such a Handsome 
 Hank." 
 
 " Where did you meet him ? " Southward asked. 
 
 "Mrs. Morrow picked him up somewhere in Europe Paris I 
 think. He s part Irish, part Spanish but a lot American. She 
 persuaded him to come back to America he d got a little ex 
 patriate. He ran with a crowd of fellows whose main business 
 in life is drinking cocktails at the American bar there. Azile just 
 reached out and clawed him out of that set, made a new man 
 of him. She s great on that seeing what s in people and making 
 them develop it." 
 
 Southward made no comment. 
 
 " What do you think of the women, Miss Hale for instance ? " 
 Cameron went on categorically. 
 
 " I don t see how anybody could help liking her," Southward 
 said, " although she s not my particular kind of woman." 
 
 " What is your particular kind of woman ? " Dwight demanded 
 again. 
 
 " No kind," Southward declared instantly. " As a rule I hate 
 women all except Hester of course I m strong for Hester. And 
 Charlotte. I suppose Miss Hale is probably more Hester s sort 
 than mine not that anybody could help liking her, she s so gentle 
 and sweet. She seems sad somehow. She s beautiful though 
 almost like a Greek head, isn t she ? " 
 
 " Yes sculptors always go crazy over her. Her type is a little 
 cold and regular for my taste. But I see all that you see and 
 she s a fine woman of course. What do you think of Mrs. Mor 
 row ? " There was an offhand quality to Cameron s inflection.
 
 144 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " She s very fascinating," Southward said with emphasis. " And 
 a wonderful dancer. Quite picturesque too." She paused an 
 instant. " Is she a widow ? " she asked casually. 
 
 " Yes. She was a Mrs. Henry Morrow. Mrs. Azile Morrow 
 now." 
 
 " Azile ! " Southward repeated. " Azile ! What a queer name ! 
 Is that her own name ? " 
 
 "Yes oh, yes." 
 
 " Azile," Southward reiterated musingly in the tone of one 
 who is visualising the word, " Azile ! " Suddenly in the depths of 
 her eyes appeared the blue-and-black glimmer of her mirth. 
 " Azile Morrow," she repeated carelessly. " It s a pretty name. 
 She s very different-looking, if you know what I mean." 
 
 " Artists always go wild about her," Cameron went on. " Every 
 body does for that matter. She s the greatest sport in New York. 
 Always ready for a good time. She s as strong as an ox. She 
 doesn t know what it means to be tired. She loves the theatre, 
 gives successful box-parties, is mad about dancing, has dancing 
 parties at her house two or three times a week, knows everybody 
 and entertains all the time when she isn t being entertained. 
 You ll like her. You two were just built for each other." 
 
 Southward smiled cryptically. " She interests me very much. 
 What was Mr. Morrow like ? " 
 
 " I never saw but one picture of him severe-looking old guy 
 with military moustaches. She rarely mentions him. He had a 
 little money when he married her, but she had expectations from 
 an old aunt an Aunt Eliza who was a great character. And I ll 
 be blowed if the old girl she was over seventy didn t suddenly 
 up and marry a man thirty years younger than herself. She died 
 inside a year, leaving it all to her husband." 
 
 Southward smiled cryptically again. "Don t you think we d 
 better turn back now ? " 
 
 " All right. Just as you say." They turned and swam a while 
 in silence. " By the way," Cameron said carelessly, " I m taking 
 Mrs. Morrow to drive to-morrow. She wants to see something of 
 the country. I thought we d go over in the North Shayneford 
 direction. It s pretty there I think you said." 
 
 " Oh, yes, awfully pretty," Southward answered. 
 
 Another silence came. " What are you doing to-morrow even 
 ing? " Cameron asked. " I thought if you d let me, I d call in the 
 usual way and by the usual method I mean the garret." 
 
 " Oh to-morrow evening," Southward exclaimed in a tone of 
 polite regret. " Mr. O Reilly s coming over. He asked me if he
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 145 
 
 might see the house. I told him about the garret and then 
 he asked if he might see that. I said yes, of course. Will the 
 house really interest him ? " 
 
 " Without doubt," Cameron answered crisply, " it would interest 
 anybody and Morena s no fool." 
 
 " So I gathered." 
 
 There came another silence. 
 
 " Hester s going home with you to-night, isn t she ? " Cameron 
 asked abruptly. 
 
 " Yes," Southward replied in her most casual manner. 
 
 " Then I can t come to the garret this evening," Cameron medi 
 tated in an irritated voice. " Deuce take it ! When can I see you 
 now? May I come late, after Morena s gone?" 
 
 Southward s lashes dropped; the blue-and-black shimmer, had 
 become permanent. I don t see how you can leave your 
 guests." 
 
 " Oh, damn my guests ! " Cameron exclaimed with real im 
 patience. " I ll wait until they ve gone to bed." 
 
 " But I m afraid that won t do," Southward objected. " Mrs. 
 Morrow evidently sits up late." 
 
 " She does worse luck ! " Cameron agreed with an increased 
 exasperation. He stopped with the effect of waiting for some 
 thing. 
 
 No sound came from Southward but the liquid sweep of her arms. 
 
 " Can t I come after they ve all gone to bed? " Cameron asked at 
 last. 
 
 " I m afraid that will be too late," Southward answered 
 languidly. 
 
 " Well, I ll tell you," Cameron said, " if they haven t gone to 
 bed by eleven, I ll make an excuse to walk to the village. I ll 
 say I ve got a headache. That means that I ought to get to your 
 place by half-past eleven. I ll hoot as usual. You say yourself 
 that you never get to bed before twelve. Or one. Please! 
 Please ! " His tone wheedled. 
 
 " Sure you re not falling in love with me ? " Southward asked, 
 turning the glimmer full upon him. 
 
 " Sure," Cameron replied promptly and with conviction. 
 " Though I m perfectly willing to admit that I m only one jump 
 this side of it. You see," he became suddenly serious, " I m crazy 
 to read the first few chapters of that novel to you." 
 
 " All right," Southward shot a triumphant smile into the dark. 
 " If I don t hear your whistle at half -past, I ll know that you re 
 not coming."
 
 146 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " You ll hear it all right," Cameron promised. " Praises be 
 they ve started a fire," he added after a long silence. 
 
 Southward stopped swimming for a moment and lifted herself 
 half out of the water. A faint under-surface flutter of hands 
 served to sustain her. 
 
 Floating, his hands clasped under his head, Cameron contem 
 plated her. " By George, I never saw anything like you," he said 
 in a baffled tone. " You re like a duck. You re better than a duck 
 you re a fish." 
 
 The spark of light in the centre of the grassy camp-circle had 
 become a flash, a huge high sheaf of flame. A succession of sil 
 houettes, sharply-cut, circled about it. Their shadows, vague but 
 monstrous, were thrown against the trees. " Some fire ! " South 
 ward commented, " what s more to the point, they re beginning to 
 set the table. Dinner will taste pretty good after this long swim." 
 
 They gathered about the big deal table and ate everything that 
 Ling brought them. The dinner was a noisy and successful affair. 
 Afterwards they drew the steamer-chairs close about the fire, 
 smoked and talked until a distant red glimmer predicated a moon. 
 Southward sat on the ground, her back to the fire drying her hair. 
 Conversation flew briskly all the time. At moments it pulled away 
 from, the present and made little dashing forays into the past. 
 There were allusions to people and places that Southward and 
 Hester did not know. These excursions were only momentary, 
 but Southward listened to them with a keen interest, Hester with 
 her shy politeness. At times they glanced off in a consideration 
 of events to indulge in personalities. Then nicknames came out. 
 Invidious comparisons were made, uncomplimentary adjectives 
 applied. Smith it appeared was " the I. W. W.," Fearing " the 
 Reformer," O Reilly " the Bull-Fighter," and Cameron " the Cow 
 Boy." 
 
 " I say," Morena O Reilly burst out, " let s give a costume- 
 dance here before we leave invite everybody." 
 
 " You re on," agreed Dwight. " We can hire that hall in the 
 Library." 
 
 " Let s get up one of our deservedly famous groups," Mrs. 
 Morrow suggested. 
 
 " No," John Smith said decisively. " That s too complicated 
 down here where it s so hard to get materials. And then it puts 
 it up to everybody so. Let s all go on our own. In New York," 
 he went on to explain to Hester, "there are a succession of cos 
 tume-parties every winter. We always go in a group in uniform
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 147 
 
 costumes. One year we went to the Quatre-Arts as Norsemen 
 who had captured a Baccante. We entered, the four of us, in 
 bearskins, winged helmets, and bare legs, carrying Azile on a 
 shield. She wore a leopard skin with grapes in her hair. She 
 looked wonderful. It really was an extraordinary picture. And 
 then again we went as a band of circus performers, another time 
 as a group of Pierrots and Pierrettes." 
 
 " That was in the spring," Fearing interpolated, " and the ball 
 was held in a hotel in lower Fifth Avenue. We all dressed at a 
 house on South Washington Square. It was a beautiful soft night 
 and the trees were about half-leafed. The electric lights were 
 shining through them. We went across the Square running and 
 leaping, playing snap the whip all those white costumes, picked 
 with black in the midst of that luminous green well, it was one 
 of the things you want to paint." 
 
 " It must have been wonderful," Hester said. " We have had 
 fancy-dress parties here occasionally; but they are not interesting. 
 How I would like to see a really beautiful masked ball." 
 
 " Come to New York and we ll show you one," Fearing offered. 
 
 John looked at Hester for an instant as for a new point of view. 
 
 "You ought to go as " He jumped to his feet suddenly. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make." He 
 paused and smiled the whimsical smile that was so typical of him 
 in moments of complete relaxation. " And that is that we have 
 with us to-night the original princess of all the fairy-tales you 
 read when you were children. I m going to ask Miss Crowell 
 purely in the interests of authenticity to take down her hair." 
 
 Hester started. She stared at Smith in the extreme of social 
 terror. She turned pale. 
 
 " She won t do it ! " Smith s tone continued to maintain its 
 light note. But he turned his eyes from Hester s frightened face 
 and that lightness was now obviously a little forced. " Unless her 
 boss commands her. I appeal to Miss to Southward for help." 
 
 Southward s face broke into its most mischievous smile. " Sure, 
 I ll make her ! " she asserted. " Stand up, Hester ! " 
 
 " Southward! " Hester said. " You know I couldn t." 
 
 " Yes, you can," Southward urged, inflexible but smiling. " My 
 hair s down, isn t it ? Stand up ! " 
 
 And Hester, a cowed, bowed, trembling figure, stood up. South 
 ward placed herself on one side and Smith on the other. Smith 
 reached towards one of the big silrer hairpins; but before he 
 touched it, he withdrew his hand. " You take it down, South 
 ward."
 
 148 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Southward removed the hairpins. The long serpent of Hester s 
 braid slipped to the ground. " I guess we ll loosen it, John," 
 Southward said. Hester made an inarticulate protest but South 
 ward s hurrying fingers fairly flew, tearing the strands apart. 
 Suddenly she released the whole mass, stepped away. Hester stood 
 in the firelight, sheathed in a glittering golden mail. 
 
 Coos of admiration came from the two women. 
 
 " Good Lord, that is wonderful ! " O Reilly exclaimed admiringly. 
 He had apparently all the Latin s love of blond hair. He arose 
 and walked around Hester. Hester s downcast face was blushing 
 now but she smiled. 
 
 " Now may I put it up ? " she appealed not to Southward but to 
 John Smith. 
 
 " Certainly not," that gentleman denied emphatically. " You re 
 to keep it down all the rest of the evening." 
 
 Hester sank into her chair. Southward reached over her, tied 
 together at the back the strands that would have fallen into her 
 eyes. 
 
 " I have it," Mrs. Morrow said in a tone of triumph. " Boadicea 
 whoever she was ! " 
 
 " No," differed Morena, " Undine." 
 
 "Should you ask me?" announced Ripley Fearing, "Cordelia." 
 
 " Cordelia, it is," decided John Smith. 
 
 " I wanted to get that awful dress covered up," he murmured 
 under cover of this friendly controversy, to Edith Hale. " You re 
 member I wrote you about meeting her in the woods that first night. 
 She wore a yellow mandarin s coat set with little mirrors and her 
 braid all but dragged on the ground. It was marvellous with the 
 background of trees and grass. I didn t think she was human. The 
 next time I saw her, she was in a terrible country-dress. I never 
 was so disappointed in my life. You could do some missionary 
 work there, Edith, just telling her what to wear." 
 
 " Well, what do you think of them ? " Southward asked 
 the instant they gained the big square room which she had decided 
 to share with Hester. 
 
 " Oh, of course," Hester said, starting to unhook her dress, 
 " they re the most interesting people I ever met in my life. It s 
 awfully hard to say what you think when you re thinking so many 
 things at once. I m almost dazed with all I ve listened to. What is 
 most wonderful to me is the ease with which they talk to each 
 other it made me talk too. Why, I told that Mr. Fearing some 
 thing I d never told anybody. And you know how quiet I always
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 149 
 
 am in company. They all seem to understand each other so and 
 to love each other. There was such a frankness they joke so 
 much." 
 
 " Yes," Southward agreed. But it was evident that she was not 
 interested in these abstract aspects of the group. " What do you 
 think of Mrs. Morrow ? " she demanded abruptly. She seated her 
 self on the bed and with swift strong jerks began to pull at the 
 lacings of her shoes. 
 
 Hester did not reply for a moment. She had finished unhooking. 
 Absently she met her own absent gaze in the glass. Then she 
 pulled the dress off over her head, talking through its folds all 
 the time. " I don t know," she admitted in a baffled tone. 
 " She puzzles me as much as any human being I ever met. 
 She fascinates me. I can t take my eyes off her, especially 
 when she s dancing. In a way I like her. But I found myself 
 sort of doubting her sincerity. One moment, she seemed all 
 surface and the next she was deep as the bottomless pond in 
 Wenett." 
 
 " She s deep all right," Southward agreed. " I think you ve got 
 her number there. But she is fascinating. And a pippin. And 
 the most wonderful dancer I ever saw in my life." Southward 
 slipped off the high canopied bed where she had been sitting and in 
 one vigorous pull that ripped the snappers open, and in another 
 vigorous fling that threw it off on to the floor, rid herself of her 
 long, slim gown. " I hate her though," she added, proceeding at 
 the same pace. 
 
 "Hate her!" Hester echoed, stopping to stare. "What do you 
 mean ? What did she do ? " 
 
 " Nothing," Southward answered. Corsetless, her disrobing 
 seemed to take but three more swift movements. Over shoulders 
 and back as slim and warmly brown as a young boy s, she slipped 
 her simple square-necked nightgown. Her bronzed body showed 
 gold through its filmy folds. 
 
 " That s the funny part of it. She didn t do anything. And she 
 was awfully nice to me. For that matter, I was nice to her. But 
 I hate her just the same. And she hates me all right." A faint 
 glimmer came into Southward s eyes. Moving over to the glass, 
 she pulled the pins out of her hair. Released, the two flat wads 
 at the side turned slowly over and fell onto her bare shoulders like 
 the flow of some glistening melted metal. 
 
 " Oh, you lady of kingdoms," Hester smiled faintly, " how it 
 delights you to have a female hate you ! " 
 
 " And you lady of kingdoms yourself how it delights you to
 
 150 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 have one love you ! " Southward retorted. " You liked Miss Hale. 
 I could see that." 
 
 "I thought she was sweet," Hester answered with enthusiasm. 
 "And I felt that she liked me. Anyway she was awfully kind. 
 She s very beautiful, don t you think ? " 
 
 " Yes," Southward said, tearing the comb through her unbrushed 
 hair until it hung straight and satiny to her waist. " And yet 
 not exactly beautiful either. She s wonderfully regular as far as 
 her features go and all that. But there s something unhealthy 
 about her." 
 
 " She doesn t seem robust," Hester coincided. " Still she must 
 have what is beauty for me; for I love to look at her." 
 
 " Oh, by the way," Southward burst out, braiding her hair with 
 lightning swift twists of her efficient fingers, " did you guess the 
 secret of Mrs. Morrow s name?" 
 
 " Her name ? " Hester queried. " What name ? Morrow ? " 
 
 " No. Azile." All Southward s humorous malice shone in her 
 smile. " I got it soon after I first heard it. As sure as you re sit 
 ting there, she was christened Eliza and changed it to Azile. 
 Dwight told me she had a rich old aunt Eliza." 
 
 "Do you really think so? Eliza Azile. Well, it certainly 
 sounds that way." But this did not apparently entertain Hester 
 as much as it did Southward. " What do you think of the new 
 men ? " she interrogated in her turn. " Mr. Fearing and Mr. 
 O Reilly." 
 
 " I like them both," Southward answered, " although I suppose 
 Mr. O Reilly is more my sort. He s a good-looking thing, isn t 
 he?" 
 
 " Stunning ! Every girl in this town will be dead in love with 
 him before the summer s over all those that aren t already crazy 
 about Mr. Cameron or Mr. Smith. Mr. Fearing reminded me. of 
 what Matt must have been when he was young. It never occurred 
 to me to think of Matt as a young man before. Some day I m 
 going to ask him to get out all the daguerreotypes and tin-types 
 he s got of himself. I d like to see them." 
 
 " I bet he was a looker," Southward said sleepily from the bed 
 into which she had just hopped. " Say, Hetter. Those two women 
 are in for an uncomfortable time. If I know anything at all about 
 Cape Cod weather, we re going to get a Northeaster by about to 
 morrow night."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "LAND, this is the worst tempest we ve had this summer," re 
 marked Mrs. Drake. " It s an August twister. They ll be sopping 
 wet when they git here." 
 
 " It s pretty bad," Southward admitted, flying into the dining- 
 room and back. " But they ll be dry enough. They own every 
 possible contrivance for keeping out the cold and rain. You never 
 saw such a collection of rain-coats, sport-coats, automobile wraps, 
 and steamer-rugs in your life." 
 
 " Well, all I know is I wouldn t take a two-mile drive in this 
 pelting rain for a farm down East," Mrs. Drake maintained. 
 
 " And I d like nothing better than to walk that distance in it," 
 Southward said. " I love to be out in a storm like this." 
 
 " Well, you certainly are a strange girl, Southward," her grand 
 mother rejoined. " You do like the queerest things. Hark ! Ain t 
 that wheels I hear? Or is it the wind? Land, I can t tell." 
 
 Southward did not answer immediately. But she went over to 
 the door, opened it a crack and stood with her head bent. It was 
 five days since her introduction to the camp on Long Pond; and 
 for the last two of those days it had rained. It was one of those 
 storms that seem like an attack of mania on nature s part. The 
 soggy earth looked dilapidated : The garden lay flat as though 
 mown, the flowers had been beaten to a pulp. The wind seemed to 
 be blowing from every direction at once. It formed rallying-spots 
 about the trees and tortured them out of shape, pulling branches 
 from their sockets and stripping them of their leaves. 
 
 Inside, there was every possible contrast of warmth, light, seem- 
 liness, and quiet. A fire crackled in the big deep old fireplace 
 in Mrs. Drake s room. All the bottles had disappeared from the 
 stand near the bed. In their places stood a pewter bowl of golden 
 marigolds and blue bachelor-buttons, a high slim pitcher of Canton 
 medallion and a high slim goblet of old cut glass. More flowers 
 filled the old glasses that replaced the bottles on the narrow high 
 mantel; they were reflected in the green-grey depths of the old 
 mirror above them. The whole lower floor had been put to careful 
 rights. The parlour, with its welter of black-walnut furniture, its 
 orgy of hand-made bric-a-brac, had been dusted. The dining-room, 
 
 151
 
 152 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 the table set with a white cloth and china of old-blue India, showed 
 an equally fleckless state. 
 
 Mrs. Drake, like a freshly-coloured mummy wrapped in a blue- 
 cotton kimono, her long yellow braids pinned flat to her head, 
 was propped high in bed. She wore a complete set of jewelry in 
 black enamel with pearls, earrings, a chain with a locket, a brooch, 
 bracelets. She was showing what for her was a high degree of 
 excitement. She listened again to the uproar outside. 
 
 "I guess it s only the storm," she decided. 
 
 " Yes," Southward agreed with an accent of uncertainty. " No," 
 she added decisively, " there s the carriage. I do hope Lysander ll 
 ride them right up to the step. Yes, that s what he s doing. Trust 
 Ly." She opened the door again. A comber of wind swept through 
 the room, curled up the chimney, sucking with it a spume of 
 sparks. 
 
 " We ve been worried about you," she called. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow s exotic face its sea-blondness more accented 
 than ever by the moisture peered over the black rubber flap of the 
 buggy. 
 
 " We re all right," she called cheerily. The carriage stopped. 
 Lysander leaped out and assisted her to the ground. She came 
 running to the door, her face rosy with the pelting wet, partially 
 obscured by a veil of green-gold ringlets. Lysander lifted Mrs. 
 Boardman out. Both women wore army-ponchos and big army- 
 hoods. 
 
 " Oh, thank you so much, Lysander ! " Southward called. " Come 
 in and get warm, won t you ? " 
 
 " Thanks ! Don t know but what I will," Lysander answered, 
 peering at her for a brief instant from under his yellow tarpaulin 
 hat. 
 
 " Oh, do ! " Mrs. Morrow called peremptorily, turning swiftly 
 towards him. " Oh, do ! " she added entreatingly, smiling. 
 
 " All right," Lysander said. He took off his tarpaulin coat just 
 outside the door. The two women removed their ponchos. They 
 emerged perfectly dry in walking-suits of dark silk. 
 
 Mrs. Drake s head did not move in answer to the gracious bows 
 of her guests. But, " I m glad to meet you," she said cordially. 
 " You must be chilled to the bone after that long drive. Set over 
 there by the fire. I had Southward git out some of my elderberry 
 wine for you. Be you wet?" 
 
 " Oh, no," Mrs. Boardman responded pleasantly. " We bundled 
 up carefully." Southward took the ponchos from them, handed 
 them to Lysander who bore them with an accustomed air to the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 153 
 
 kitchen; then she poured out some wine from an old glass bottle 
 that stood surrounded with goblets on a painted tin tray. 
 
 Mrs. Boardman took one of the comfortable rockers by the fire. 
 She put her hand out eagerly for one of the glasses. 
 
 " That s delicious," she cooed, sipping delicately. " I haven t 
 had any elderberry wine since I was a girl." But her eye went 
 first to the bottle, then to the tray, then to the goblet in her 
 hand. 
 
 " I allus put it up myself when I was up and around but now 
 Southward she does it." Mrs. Drake explained, " I like to have it 
 handy to offer folks. Southward makes it awful tasty." 
 
 Mrs. Morrow had in the meantime taken the other chair at the 
 fireplace. She tossed off the elderberry wine at a gulp. 
 
 " What darling stuff ! " she commented. " I never tasted it be 
 fore. It s a doll s dream of a cocktail. Oh, here s your drink, Mr. 
 Manning." She arose and handed Lysander the remaining glass. 
 Lysander s face was as pink as her own; his blue eyes even 
 more brilliant, his hair crisped in thick golden waves all over his 
 head. Mrs. Morrow watched him as he threw down the elder 
 berry wine. 
 
 " Why don t you ever come over to the camp and go in swim 
 ming with us, Mr. Manning ? " she asked. 
 
 " Thanks, I will sometime," Lysander assented. " Cameron 
 seems to like the water I hear he goes in often late at nights." 
 His steady gaze veered for a moment from Mrs. Morrow, just 
 touched Southward s immobile face, came back to Mrs. Morrow s 
 sparkling look. 
 
 " Heavens, yes ! " Mrs. Morrow said. " He takes a swim every 
 night just as the rest of us are going to bed." 
 
 " Who took Miss Hale to Hester s, Ly ? " Southward asked. 
 
 " Baxter," Lysander answered " Well, I must be going," 
 
 he concluded abruptly. " Good-bye." 
 
 Before anybody could speak, he had slipped out of the door. 
 They watched him leap into the buggy. In another instant, the 
 wheels had ceased to scrape turning round, he was driving rapidly 
 away. 
 
 " What a stunning-looking creature ! " Mrs. Morrow commented. 
 " In that tarpaulin, he looks really heroic a knight of old and 
 that sort of thing. I suppose though in his regular dress-up 
 clothes, he s a scream." 
 
 " No," Southward answered decisively. " Lysander s never 
 smart, but he s always picturesque. He has that knack. And in 
 his working-clothes he s bully."
 
 154 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Well, I m quite crazy about him," Mrs. Morrow admitted with 
 her most frivolous accent. 
 
 " Well, I m quite crazy about this glass," Mrs. Boardman inter 
 rupted, rising to deposit it on the tray. " I suppose," she went 
 on casually, "that your house is just full of such lovely old 
 treasures." 
 
 " There s a lot of old stuff scattered about," Mrs. Drake 
 answered. " It used to be all up-attic until Southward fixed the 
 garret over. Now it s all down on the next floor. Southward and 
 Hester lugged most of it down themselves like to killed them! 
 I don t care for them old antiques that folks is so crazy about 
 nowadays. So when I married Nat, I jess put them all up-attic. 
 I like furniture to be bright and shiny and stylish." 
 
 Mrs. Boardman smiled her mechanical conversational smile, but 
 Mrs. Morrow showed an appreciation of Mrs. Drake s taste that 
 was genuinely mirthful. Southward busied herself collecting the 
 goblets on the tray. Mrs. Morrow accompanied her to the kitchen. 
 
 " And those earrings that locket and bracelet you re wearing 
 they must be very old," Mrs. Boardman went on. " They re nice 
 very nice very nice indeed." 
 
 " Yes, they belonged to my grandmother," Mrs. Drake said 
 placidly. " Southward thinks they re handsome too. She s jess 
 possessed to wear them. Allus teasing me to let her. But I tell 
 her black s too old for a young girl." 
 
 " Onyx and pearl, are they not ? " Mrs. Boardman inquired. 
 
 "Yes, and the locket s got some of my grandfather s hair in it 
 they cut it off when he lay in his casket. The bracelet s got a 
 strand of my mother s baby-hair and my sister Sabry s and mine. 
 Them earrings is most too heavy. I don t wear them very often. 
 I declare I don t know how folks used to wear the clothes they 
 did." 
 
 Mrs. Boardman had by this time turned sideways from the 
 fire. The light poured placatingly over her correct copper-plate 
 profile and through the structure, elaborately puffed and plaited, 
 of her grey hair. It could do nothing to soften the expression 
 of the lineless mask of her face or the hard enamel of her keen 
 grey eyes. Those eyes darted quick glances everywhere at the 
 beautiful mantel, the windows with their twenty-four panes of old 
 glass, the door with the graceful latch, the bull s-eye glass above. 
 Her glance lingered but a moment and without change when it 
 penetrated the jungle of atrocities in the parlour and it did not 
 return. But she examined critically the old embroidered hand- 
 screen that she pulled finally between her and the blaze.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 155 
 
 " What a wonderful old house ! " she said when Mrs. Drake ran 
 down. "How I envy you! Azile," she commanded her daughter 
 who returned with Southward at this moment, " do look at this 
 screen and that old pewter candle-holder." 
 
 " I am looking at them," Azile said without a trace of expression 
 in her voice, " and dying with envy." 
 
 " Perhaps you ll show us some of what your grandmother calls 
 the old stuff upstairs?" Mrs. Boardman continued, addressing 
 Southward. 
 
 " I ll take you all over the house to-morrow," Southward offered, 
 " if you like. The light is too bad now. I hope by that time 
 it will be pleasant again." 
 
 " I shall be delighted," Mrs. Boardman said with fervour. 
 
 A moment s quiet intervened. 
 
 " Be all those puffs your own hair ? " Mrs. Drake demanded 
 suddenly, directing her glass-marble gaze at Mrs. Boardman. 
 
 " Why, grandmother! " Southward exclaimed in a shocked tone, 
 casting her lashes over the blue-and-black glimmer that immedi 
 ately filled her eyes. " You mustn t ask questions like that." 
 
 " Why, it s the first question I ve asked," Mrs. Drake protested. 
 " And Mrs. Boardman s been asking me ever so many. Haven t 
 you ? " She appealed to her guest for social rehabilitation. 
 
 " I certainly have," that lady replied. Her tone was gallant, 
 but there was a suspicion of a flush on her faded skin. " And as 
 I intend to ask a great many more, I shall take the precaution first 
 of answering all Mrs. Drake s questions. No, these puffs are not 
 my own hair." 
 
 " I thought they wasn t," Mrs. Drake said in a tone that betrayed 
 gratification at her own perspicacity. " They re handsome though. 
 There was a time after I had typhoid fever when I was a young 
 girl that my hair came out so I had to buy some false. Well, I 
 never had anything more handy than that switch. I took an awful 
 lot of comfort out of it. I could do it in my lap and see how it 
 looked, fore I put it on. Your own hair never does go up so good." 
 
 Southward s lashes continued to conceal accessions of the blue- 
 and-black glimmer. 
 
 " You re quite right," Mrs. Boardman agreed. She had regained 
 her aplomb. " Live hair is always out of order but dead hair 
 always stays put." 
 
 " I was almost sorry when my hair began to grow again," Mrs. 
 Drake said. " But, land, how it did grow. It got to be a perfect 
 nuisance. My sister Sabry bought her switch when she was forty. 
 Her hair turned early but mine never did. She put on eyeglasses
 
 156 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 when she was forty-two. She had all her teeth pulled when she 
 was forty-five. Thank God, that s all attended to, she used to 
 say. With spectacles, a good switch, and a false set, top and bot 
 tom, there ain t nothing more I can worry about. Your teeth are 
 beautiful and you don t wear glasses, do you ? " 
 
 With a gracious smile, Mrs. Boardman held up the lorgnette 
 which hung on a golden chain. 
 
 " I don t call them things glasses," said Mrs. Drake. " You re 
 an awful young-looking woman," she went on critically. " You 
 don t look a day over forty-five. Yet you must be with a daughter 
 like that. City-folks is allus so much younger-looking than 
 country-folks/ 
 
 " Well, that s very curious," Mrs. Boardman almost beamed. 
 " I was going to say the same thing to you. Country people seem 
 to keep the colour of youth so much longer than we city- folk. You 
 have a wonderful complexion, Mrs. Drake." 
 
 " Yes," Mrs. Drake agreed tranquilly. " Ain t I ? I ve allus 
 had a good skin. So d my sister Sabry; there warn t one wrinkle 
 on her face nor when she laid in her casket and she was eighty- 
 four. I ve allus had a great deal of colour too. Jess as high, no 
 matter if I was sick. When I was a young girl, I did so want to 
 be pale; folks allus look so genteel when they re pale. Oh, here 
 you be, Nat? I ll make you acquainted with my husband, Mis 
 Boardman and Mis Morrow." 
 
 The ladies bowed. 
 
 Mr. Drake standing in the doorway showed with a cruel dis 
 tinctness the angle at which his crippled back reduced his stature 
 almost to half. Yet he bowed with an appropriate ceremony and 
 with a touch of elegance. 
 
 " We re glad to see you," he said heartily. " We worried about 
 you all last evening. And when the rain grew into a tempest, 
 mother wanted that I should harness up and go over and get you 
 in the middle of the night. But Southward, she said, no. She 
 said she was sure you wouldn t want to be routed out at that hour. 
 Was you able to keep dry and warm ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. All day long, we stayed in the cabin. When your 
 granddaughter came over to visit us, she warned Mr. Smith that 
 the chimney needed mending. He fixed it the next day so, fortu 
 nately, we kept warm and dry. Only the cabin was so small and 
 we got so tired after a while of playing cards. I fancy the men 
 were relieved enough to be rid of us. Certainly I was glad to get 
 under a roof. Camping in rainy weather is not for a woman of 
 my years."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 157 
 
 Mrs. Boardman threw a gracious smile to each of her three 
 hosts. The smile showed all her white teeth, which, as Mrs. Drake 
 had observed, were in a singularly good state of preservation, not 
 withstanding occasional spatters of gold. But however gracious, 
 her smile never changed the unwinking hardness of her bright 
 eyes. 
 
 " You must be as hungry as a bear after that long drive," Mrs. 
 Drake surmised. 
 
 And "Supper most ready, Charlotte?" Mr. Drake called. 
 
 " In a moment," Charlotte s husky voice answered. " I ll ring 
 the bell when." 
 
 Both ladies protested that they were not hungry, but they arose 
 with alacrity when the bell sounded. They stood the shock of 
 Charlotte s sinister aspect without a change of expression nor a 
 lessening of the high cordial note that they had maintained ever 
 since their arrival. 
 
 " Oh, this is so like New England," Mrs. Boardman said en 
 thusiastically when they seated themselves at the table. " So 
 much food and such delicious food." Her eyes went from the 
 pot of beans to the little platter that held a cube of black and 
 wrinkled pork, to the generous loaf of brown bread, the corn, all 
 steaming, to the dishes of piccalilli and preserve, to the high round 
 layer-cake. But it was on the dishes, not the food, that her bright 
 stare rested longest. And before the meal was over, she had drawn 
 from Southward an account of all the things in the house, even to 
 the three barrels of Lowestoft that she had found a few years 
 before in the cellar. 
 
 Mrs. Boardman s conversation continued to run along these 
 lines after they had left the table. She drew Southward into a 
 discussion of her neighbours ; of the possibility of antique treasure 
 in their attics ; she suggested tentatively at last that some of these 
 things might be purchased. 
 
 Southward s answers had been for the most part mere brief, 
 non-committal phrases. At this, however, she said in a casual 
 tone: 
 
 "I don t know of course. But I fancy they re all like us 
 poor as Job s turkey but as unlikely to sell anything that belonged 
 in the family as their own arms and legs." 
 
 Conversation languished temporarily. But before the evening 
 had passed, Mrs. Boardman regained her hard brightness. At an 
 early hour, however, she admitted to fatigue and allowed herself 
 to be shown to her bedroom. 
 
 " I have no idea of going to bed so soon," Mrs. Morrow pro-
 
 158 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 tested gaily. And indeed she sailed upstairs in the wake of South 
 ward s candle with Southward s own speed and ease. 
 
 " Good gracious ! " she exclaimed, stopping short as Southward 
 went about the garret lighting up. " What an extraordinary effect ! 
 It s like a stage-setting. It s a cross between a circus-tent and a 
 museum. How did you girls come to do it ? " 
 
 " Oh, we wanted a place where nobody else could possibly come. 
 There was and still is a curious sense of adventure and secrecy 
 about it." 
 
 " Oh ! " Mrs. Morrow said, " Oh ! " and again " Oh ! It s amaz 
 ing. It s unbelievable. How I wish Mr. Cameron could see it." 
 
 Southward smiled inscrutably in the opposite direction. But 
 without comment she went from candle to lamp. Furtively she 
 picked up the revolver from the centre-table and concealed it in the 
 drawer of the secretary. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow continued to stand in the middle of the room, a 
 pivoting bunch of gasps and adjectives. "My dear, I don t be 
 lieve you realise how good all this old furniture is. Mother can 
 give you an idea. It s not only fine but it s rare." 
 
 " Yes," Southward answered coolly, " I understand a little 
 about it. Hester and I have read some of the books. All of this 
 is not colonial Chippendale and Sheraton, you know. It was 
 brought from England. Here, put this coat on." She drew a 
 Chinese sa am from one of the chairs. " There s no fire here and 
 I m afraid you ll catch cold." She herself drew on the tomato- 
 coloured prince s coat. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow pulled on the sa am. Its cool sage-green, meshed 
 with a dim figuring, made a charming contrast with her pale-gold 
 hair and her pale-grey eyes. 
 
 " These Chinese things are wonders," she commented. " I sup 
 pose you ll wear some of them to the costume-party ? " 
 
 " No," Southward said, " I ve worn them so much here, they d 
 be no novelty. I ll get something else." 
 
 " You ought to wear a boy s costume of some sort," Mrs. Morrow 
 suggested. " You re the only one of us who has the figure for it. 
 I do so wish you would let me bring Dwight see this attic." she 
 went on. " He s so susceptible to what he calls the spirit of 
 place. He says that an atmosphere will start a story in his mind 
 much quicker than a person or an event. I think this would 
 stimulate him enormously. Edith would love it too." 
 
 " Miss Hale must come sometime," Southward said with com 
 posure. " Have a cigarette ? " She pushed the box across the table 
 with one hand and an ash-tray with the other. Mrs. Morrow
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 159 
 
 lighted a cigarette at one of the candles, puffed a moment in 
 silence, her eyes meditative. Southward sat in her favourite- 
 position, stretched on the chaise-longue, her hands clasped at the 
 back of her head. She manipulated her cigarette with her lips. 
 
 " The reason it s so wonderful as a bit of atmosphere," Mrs. 
 Morrow took up her thesis again, " is that it has a real flavour of 
 this country. I suppose I appreciate that because I ve lived in so 
 many countries." 
 
 "Where have you lived?" Southward asked idly. She removed 
 the cigarette, sent a flock of smoke-bubbles curving through the 
 air, flicked off the ash with a tiny vigorous slap of her little finger. 
 
 " Lived ! " Mrs. Morrow repeated in a despairing tone, " every 
 where. I ve been somewhere else always, London, Paris, the 
 Riviera, Florence, Rome, Staples, Malta, Cairo more in Paris 
 of course than anywhere else except New York." 
 
 " How does New York compare with foreign cities ? " 
 
 " Pretty well. I d rather live in New York than any other 
 American city, although of course San Francisco and New 
 Orleans are more picturesque and Boston has more taste. It s a 
 pretty good American version of Paris commercialised though." 
 
 " People say," Southward said, drawing up to the table and 
 flicking a match back and forth over its surface, " that you can 
 live very inexpensively abroad. You re always hearing stories 
 about it. Is that right ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. I mean, no. What I really do mean is yes and no. 
 It s expensive for me to live anywhere especially in Paris. But 
 of course people do live abroad on incredibly small sums, especially 
 on the Continent. And you get so much more for your money. 
 I suppose it s a matter of temperament though." 
 
 " Oh ! " This was an exclamation, as though out of a careless 
 talk something of immediate interest had come to Southward s 
 mind. " Where are the best oculists I mean for anybody who 
 wanted a specialist?" 
 
 " Oh, Germany by long odds. We re up on the matter because 
 mother had some trouble with her eyes and had to go there." 
 
 " I see." Southward openly reflected on something of which she 
 did not speak. " It s a long way to Germany," she concluded, half 
 to herself. 
 
 " By the way, there s a big German specialist Greinschmidt 
 coming over here this year." 
 
 "Is there?" Southward said. "I must remember that. It s 
 for my aunt Miss Howes." 
 
 " But speaking of economy on the Continent," Mrs. Morrow \vent
 
 160 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 on, " Mother says Her long curling lashes dropped over her 
 
 eyes as she leaned forward to put her cigarette-end in the ash- 
 receiver. She paused an instant to poke the fire out. And in that 
 instant her lashes concealed the fact that her eyes fixed on another 
 cigarette-end there. It bore in gold letters the initials D. C. 
 " that you can live in Italy a hundred years on a thousand 
 dollars," she concluded without a change of expression. " But 
 again I say, it all depends on whether you re the kind of person 
 who can economise or not."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 " IT S so comfortable here," Edith Hale said, her melancholy 
 smile seeming to throw a faint lambent glow upwards on her still 
 face. " And so restful after all that noise and confusion." She 
 looked about the quiet gentle room with its mid-Victorian atmos 
 phere of faded pictures, faded furniture, and faded bric-a-brac. 
 " I m glad you rescued me." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell, grimly silent, darning steadily by the light of the 
 reading-lamp on the big centre-table, spoke. 
 
 "You ll be gladder later," she prophesied. "I think the 
 tempest ll break before morning; but it s going to be worse before 
 it gets better." Her grey glance shot across the table and leaped 
 in an instant over Miss Hale s entire figure. It began with her 
 hair carefully coiled and rippled, the soft gown of dull Chinese 
 silk, the bare round forearms and the long hands lying in stat 
 uesque idleness across her lap, the little feet lifting, by means of 
 a footstool, smart patent-leather shoes with brilliant steel-buckles 
 into the light. 
 
 " I m glad too," Hester said. And Hester looked glad. Her 
 gladness filled her eyes with a perpetual glow; it curved her lips 
 into a perpetual smile. A faint colour played like a flame in her 
 cheek. " I don t think I could have slept to-night, thinking of you 
 over there. The men will be all right ; they can sleep in the cabin." 
 
 " Oh, yes," Miss Hale agreed. " There s no necessity of bother 
 ing about them. Now that they ve got us off their hands, they ll 
 really enjoy the storm. Last night, Dwight, who stood the confine 
 ment with less patience than any of us, actually went in bathing." 
 
 " I should have thought he d had a chill," Mrs. Crowell declared. 
 
 " Anybody else would have," Miss Hale agreed, " but he has ex 
 traordinary vitality. Then he goes in every night. In fact they 
 all have remarkable vitality. John has the most wonderful 
 physique in many ways. But Dwight is a born athlete. Oh," she 
 gave a long sigh and again swept her glance about the pleasant, 
 gentle room. " You don t know how glad it is to see space again 
 these two nights sleeping in that little cabin the three of us 
 
 were dreadful were " She paused and a sudden violence 
 
 rent her expression " horrible. I m accustomed to read late 
 
 161
 
 162 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 indeed I can get to sleep no other way but I did not on Mrs. 
 Boardman s account. Oh, those long hours that I could not sleep 
 listening to the melancholy rain." Her look grew almost wild. 
 " You will never know what good Samaritans you were to bring me 
 here." She glanced towards the piano whose rectangular black 
 bulk filled one corner of the room. " Do you play, Miss Crowell ? " 
 
 " No," Hester said regretfully, " I don t. Mother does though. 
 Mother had me take lessons once but I didn t seem to get 
 along " 
 
 " Hester hasn t any gumption," Mrs. Crowell interposed. 
 
 " But Mother used to play beautifully," Hester went on hastily. 
 " She s given it up though." 
 
 " Oh, that s too bad." Miss Hale was sympathetic. She looked 
 questioningly at Mrs. Crowell. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell answered the look. " I did keep it up at first. And 
 then housework hardened and stiffened my hands I lost my touch. 
 I sort of got out of the way of it." Her marble mask suddenly 
 broke: light ran into it; fire. "Do you play, Miss Hale?" she 
 asked with an intensity of feeling that was almost fierce. 
 
 " Yes," Miss Hale answered directly, " I won t say that I play 
 a little for I think that I play very well. In fact, I introduced 
 the subject in hopes that you d let me try your piano. I haven t 
 seen one for two weeks now." 
 
 " Oh, do," Mrs. Crowell begged. " I can t remember when we ve 
 had any music here. When was it, Hester ? " 
 
 Hester had already jumped to her feet, was opening the piano; 
 " I was trying to think. Seems to me nobody s played here since 
 Molly Allen brought little Jennie over last spring. Oh, I m so 
 glad we re going to have some music." 
 
 Miss Hale seated herself on the stool, ran her hands up and down 
 the notes with a practised touch. She had not flattered herself in 
 saying that she played well. She played extraordinarily well. She 
 was in fact a finished, almost a distinguished pianist. Her touch 
 was soft and liquid. Hester had none of her kind of music ; and so 
 she rambled at will through a repertoire that was prevailingly 
 minor. She played for an hour; and during that time there was 
 not another sound in the room. Her own face grew rapt as 
 mentally she penetrated further and further into that country of 
 dreams which her own fingers opened for her. Hester lay back in 
 the big old chair, her eyes shut, her face the face of one who 
 sees beyond space and time. Mrs. Crowell made for a long time 
 a pretence of keeping up her work ; then gradually she slowed. 
 Suddenly, half-way through a stitch, her needle stopped. She
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 163 
 
 dropped the stocking on the table. She did not lean back as 
 Hester did, but her elbows went down on the arm of her chair 
 and her forehead dropped into the palm of her long white hand. 
 They sat thus, mother and daughter, for a long, long time. 
 
 " Oh, I can t tell you how I ve enjoyed that," Hester said with a 
 long sigh when her guest finally arose from the piano. " It s 
 been Heaven." 
 
 " I know," Miss Hale agreed, " I ve been hungry for music too 
 many times not to understand. I m coming over here often." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell said nothing. She took up her darning again. 
 Her fingers pulled the needle out of the uncompleted stitch. 
 
 " Will you tell me when you want to go to bed ? " Hester asked. 
 " You must be very tired." 
 
 " I think I ll go now," Miss Hale answered frankly. " As a rule, 
 it doesn t make any difference when I go to bed. I m rarely drowsy 
 and as I said I always have to read myself to sleep anyway. But 
 to-night I feel really tired it s those two nights of broken rest, I 
 suppose." 
 
 "You re to have my room," Hester said as after bidding Mrs. 
 Crowell good night Miss Hale started up the stairs. 
 
 " Oh, I don t want to turn you out," Miss Hale protested. 
 
 " You re not doing that exactly," Hester explained. " Mother 
 never sleeps upstairs. I always do. Sometimes I sleep in one 
 room, sometimes another. It really makes no difference to me 
 where I am. This way, please." 
 
 She set the candle down on the dresser, lighted a little glass 
 lamp at the reading-stand : " I always read at night too, you see." 
 
 " What a charming room," Edith Hale commented, gazing about 
 her. "All this white is very refreshing, such a Oh!" The 
 exclamation was so sudden and deep-toned that it made Hester 
 jump. " That door leads to a sleeping-balcony, doesn t it " There 
 was a new note in her voice and a strong one of tremendous relief. 
 
 " Oh, yes. There s a couch out there. I often sleep on it when 
 the weather s fine." 
 
 " Good ! " Again there was emotion in Miss Hale s voice : 
 delight this time, but a delight almost wild. She went to the 
 door and pressed her face against the glass panel, shading her 
 eyes from the light. " It s still raining," she sighed. That wild 
 note died down. Her voice went dead. 
 
 " Yes." Hester listened. " But I m sure mother is right. She 
 has a sixth sense when it comes to weather. This shower will 
 be bad, but it will be the clearing-up one." 
 
 "It s so romantic to sleep out of doors," Miss Hale said in a
 
 164 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 disjointed way. It was evident that her mind was not on what 
 she was saying. " Especially on a balcony. That always makes me 
 think of Romeo and Juliet and mediaeval romance and then I 
 love a door in a chamber, opening on the world." She seemed to 
 catch herself up. " This is such a nice white this room. It 
 doesn t glare at all. And it s so simple and quaint. It s not con 
 ventional exactly it has a kind of clean femininity I don t mean 
 
 femininity exactly I mean " She frowned gently, labouring 
 
 with her phrases, " whatever corresponds to virility. John would 
 like this room." 
 
 "Would he?" Hester asked in a surprised voice. She herself 
 looked about as though from a new point of view. " It is simple of 
 course. I don t like things you know. Southward and I decided 
 at least five years ago that the trouble with women is that they re 
 too much tyrannised over by things. We decided to free ourselves. 
 And we ve done it. I can truly say that, aside from some pic 
 tures, pictures of people of course, I don t care for any one thing 
 more than for any other." 
 
 " How wonderful ! " commented Edith Hale. She sank into the 
 low rocker and stared at Hester, her brows knit. " John would 
 love that. It s the doctrine he s always preaching. Now I love 
 things. They have to be beautiful things but, granted that, I feel 
 that they have every claim on my eternal love and care. My home 
 is full of Lares that are very dear to me. They re necessary to my 
 happiness. It makes a great difference to me what surrounds me. 
 I have been in places where I couldn t sleep because the things 
 were so bad." 
 
 " Is there anything I can do for you ? Anything I can get ? " 
 Hester asked. 
 
 " Nothing except a book," Miss Hale answered. " But I see there 
 are many here." 
 
 " These are all my favourites," Hester pointed to one of the 
 shelves. 
 
 Miss Hale moved over to the dresser first. Hester watched her 
 remove from a black-leather bag ivory toilet-articles, a white 
 nightgown delicately fine, a rose-coloured negligee exquisitely 
 soft. 
 
 " Then I m perfectly comfy," Miss Hale announced. " Oh, what 
 a love of a baby ! " She took up one of the pictures from the 
 dresser. " And what a lovely girl ! " She took up another. 
 
 " The girl is or was my sister Beatrice," Hester answered 
 steadily, " and the baby is or was her little daughter Bee." 
 
 " They re both dead ? " Miss Hale questioned.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 165 
 
 " Three years ago," Hester answered briefly. " They died within 
 a week of each other. That explains my mother." 
 
 "It would explain almost anything," Miss Hale said. She 
 studied the pictures carefully, one at a time. Hester stood watch 
 ing her. "We live through these things," was Miss Hale s final 
 
 comment. "But God only knows how or why " She came 
 
 to Hester immediately, her hand outstretched. "I like you," she 
 said. Then as though following a sudden impulse, she drew Hester 
 to her and kissed her. Last, as though trying to change the sub 
 ject, " You ll let me design that masquerade-costume for you, 
 won t you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Hester agreed, " gladly. I m perfectly helpless myself, 
 you know." 
 
 " What do you think of her, mother ? " Hester asked a moment 
 later, after rejoining Mrs. Crowell in the parlour. 
 
 " Very pleasant woman. And plays beautifully. Very much of 
 a lady. Fine figure. Very genteel. Very stylish. How old 
 should you say she was, Hester ? " Mrs. Crowell s voice was 
 unusually mild. 
 
 Hester s brow furrowed. " I never could guess ages," she said 
 in a perplexed tone. " If I like people, they seem young. IJ I 
 don t like them, I can t tell anything about them. I should say 
 she was getting towards thirty-five." 
 
 " She s forty-five if she s a day," Mrs. Crowell took it up crisply. 
 " Fifteen years older than you at least, Hester, and she looks 
 five years younger. That s because she s taken some interest in 
 her personal appearance. She knows how to walk and how to stand 
 and how to do her hair and above all how to dress. For pity s 
 sake, Hester, don t ever sit so near her as you did to-night. She 
 makes you look like a great, gawky, lanky old maid." 
 
 The change that came over Hester was as sudden as it was 
 sweeping. It was as though her mother s cruel talons had gone 
 over her face, clutching from it every soft shine, every radiant 
 bloom. All the dull shadows leaped into prominence; all the 
 purple contours accented themselves. She visibly wilted in her 
 chair. 
 
 " Yes, she s cared-for looking," Hester said. Her voice had lost 
 its tone. It was as though it came from dead lips. 
 
 " Well, I m glad you realise that. Do watch her while she s here 
 and see how she does it. Perhaps you can get some idea of how 
 to dress from her. I give you five years in which to become an old 
 woman if you don t begin to give some care to your appearance. 
 Good Lord, is that half -past eleven ? I guess I ll go to bed."
 
 166 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Her white slender hands, with their long cruel nails and their 
 deft accuracy of touch, seized the stockings, rolled them quickly, 
 turned them into square, flat pads. She stacked these carefully 
 into her basket, picked it up, arose. " Good night," she dropped with 
 out glancing at her daughter. 
 
 " Good night, mother," Hester answered in even tones. After 
 Mrs. Crowell s step had stopped, she sat for a long while, sagging 
 and expressionless, her eyes gazing straight ahead. 
 
 At last, she arose and went softly upstairs to bed. Miss Hale s 
 door was closed but light streamed in a long yellow cone through 
 the key-hole. That light was still there when Hester, having read 
 herself to drowsiness, put out the lamp in her own room and shut 
 the door. 
 
 Towards morning, Hester jerked upright in bed, pulled suddenly 
 to wakefulness out of a deep sleep. She sat mute and moveless, 
 listening. Then she raised her head and with lips closed drew in 
 a long breath like an animal sensing danger through his nose. The 
 next moment, she tumbled out of bed and lighted the lamp. Her 
 fingers shook. For an instant after the flame steadied, she stood 
 snuffing the air, her face perplexed. The perplexity gradually died 
 down. She threw on a kimono, seized the lamp and went out into 
 the hall. The door of Miss Hale s room had blown open. A 
 terrific gust of wind came through it, flared an instant within the 
 chimney of the lamp. But before the light could go out, Hester s 
 ewift fingers had turned the wick down. She tiptoed over to 
 Miss Hale s room. 
 
 The bed was empty. It had been occupied though. For an 
 instant Hester gazed about in a drowsy perplexity again. That 
 perplexity changed suddenly to alarm and then as suddenly became 
 (relief. The door leading to the piazza swung open and shut. 
 Hester stood mute: then she returned to her room, put down the 
 lamp, fumbled under the pillow, withdrew her electric torch. 
 Turning the light on, she retraced her steps, tiptoed lightly out on 
 the balcony. 
 
 The rain had stopped. The sky had begun to clear, but the wind 
 still mastered the earth. Great clouds were rushing from one 
 horizon to the other. In the smooth places between, single stars 
 large, solitary, white seemed to flare in the tremendous gust. 
 But even in the second that Hester stood still, the wind began to 
 go down. Hester threw the light gradually in the direction of 
 the couch. 
 
 Edith Hale lay there. Her fine, brown-black hair WM brushed
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 167 
 
 straight back from her brow, throwing her semi-classic features 
 into a high relief. A thin braid trickled over one shoulder, lost 
 itself under the bedclothes. No longer did the gentle light from 
 her eyes, the pretty flicker of her teeth, help with their illumina 
 tion. Her lips and lids lay motionless, uncoloured like carved wax. 
 At that moment, she not only looked every one of her possible 
 forty-five years but she looked dead. 
 
 Hester moved a terrified step nearer, then stopped ; obviously her 
 guest was breathing. 
 
 Hester returned to her room. For a long time, she did not 
 sleep; she tossed and turned. 
 
 " Did you rest well ? " Hester asked the next morning. 
 
 Miss Hale was as carefully dressed as ever in a morning gown 
 of a cobweb delicacy. Her hair rippled low over her forehead; 
 laces softened the line of her throat. But into the wax of her 
 skin no colour had as yet crept; her lips were still clay. 
 
 " Oh, charmingly," she answered. " I read for a time for a 
 
 long time and then and then I read " She paused. Her 
 
 eyes wandered vaguely as though by focusing on some object 
 they could help her mind to focus. " and then I fell asleep 
 fast asleep and then and then and then I woke up and thought 
 of the sleeping-balcony. That that allured me and I went out 
 there and spent and spent and spent the rest of the night the 
 night. It was wonderful the wildness of the wind and sky " 
 
 She rambled on for a long time. 
 
 " That s nice," Hester said as she paused. But she added 
 nothing.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MORENA O REILLY presented himself at Long Lanes the first 
 pleasant afternoon that followed the big storm. Slim, foreign- 
 looking white flannels, slim white shoes, Panama hat, a strange, 
 foreign-looking stick, he was very correct. But that correctness 
 seemed only to accentuate his startling good looks. 
 
 Southward was walking up and down between her flower-beds, 
 critically surveying them, when he arrived. 
 
 " I ve been Baedekering all over Shayneford this morning, Miss 
 Drake," he said, "but thus far I ve seen nothing as beautiful as 
 this. It ought to be double-starred." He stopped to survey the 
 big square height of the house and the long rectangular sweep of 
 the ell. " I was ordered to do this," he explained. " It s all that 
 Dwight and John prophesied." 
 
 Southward did not follow his glance. "Yes, I suppose it s 
 beautiful." Her tone seemed to resign itself to boredom. " But 
 I ve always lived here and I can t seem to get it from your point 
 of view to save my life." 
 
 She led the way into the orchard and they seated themselves in 
 the East Indian chairs there. Southward talked, with her char 
 acteristic composure, of many things. After a while, she served 
 tea. 
 
 " Did you enjoy your visit to the camp ? " O Reilly asked. 
 
 "Enormously," Southward replied. 
 
 " We re rather a queer gang of beggars to spring on the stranger 
 all at once," O Reilly v/ent on. " Untamed but healthy. Treat us 
 well and we eat from your hand. And merry withal." 
 
 " I found you so," Southward admitted. 
 
 " This is my first excursion into New England," O Reilly con 
 tinued fluently. " I d no idea it was like this and especially Cape 
 Cod. I thought that Cape Cod was all sand. I did not know you 
 had so much green or so many fresh-water ponds." 
 
 " People always think that surprising," Southward averred in 
 differently. " I haven t travelled enough to know much about 
 the rest of the world. But I m compelled reluctantly to believe 
 the Cape must be beautiful so many sane people find it so." 
 
 O Reilly smiled a little. But he pursued his thesis. 
 
 168
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 169 
 
 u It s very like Etaples in France, Le Touquet, and all the region 
 round Boulogne. That country, just like this, attracts artists in 
 colonies. If you were taken up at this moment and whirled across 
 the world and set down there, you wouldn t know that you had 
 left the Cape." 
 
 " That s one spot then," Southward said, " that I ll guarantee 
 you I ll never visit." 
 
 O Reilly laughed this time. And his mirth prolonged itself 
 in the amused stare with which he contemplated her. 
 
 " Yes. I quite understand that. I d never want to see the place 
 again if I had to live here always." 
 
 " Where have you lived ? " Southward asked. " Are you an 
 American ? " 
 
 " In a manner of speaking," O Reilly answered, " Yes. And 
 in a manner of speaking, no. My father was a naturalised Irish 
 man, my mother Spanish. My family went back to Europe when 
 I was sixteen. I ve been to America several times since. After a 
 while I began to do war-correspondence and since then I ve lived 
 anywhere or nowhere. It looks now as though I were pegged 
 down here for a while. You never can tell though. I ve the 
 wandering foot horizon fever in its most virulent form and it s 
 likely to break out any time." 
 
 Captain Drake emerged from the house and came through the 
 orchard. " Oh, grandfather," Southward called, "Come over here! 
 I want you to meet Mr. O Reilly." 
 
 " You re the one that s been such a traveller," Mr. Drake said 
 as he shook hands. " I guess more than likely you and I have seen 
 some of the same places ? " 
 
 " Well, let s compare notes," O Reilly suggested. He trans 
 ferred his Celtic twinkle to Mr. Drake s figure. 
 
 In the comparison process, the long list of Mr. Drake s voyages 
 fitted neatly with the list, somewhat longer but not so varied, of 
 their guest s travels. Mr. Drake s excursions had embraced the 
 ports of the Mediterranean; had spread all over the Orient. In 
 his own estimation, however the star experience had been a single 
 trip into the Arctic Circle. That, he said, he had always wanted 
 to repeat. 
 
 O Reilly s travels had been confined to Southern Europe and 
 Northern Africa. His star experience had been an excursion into 
 the Sahara desert. He talked a long time and in much detail of 
 the Balkan States to which his war divagations had several times 
 taken him. Mr. Drake listened, absorbed. 
 
 Southward sat silent through all this. But she gave the con-
 
 170 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 versation the attention which always she gave to concrete facts. 
 Only when the discussion tapered towards generalities, condi 
 tions economic and commercial, did her eyes wander. She supple 
 mented her grandfather s suggestion that O Reilly stay to supper 
 with a proper degree of cordiality. O Reilly accepted with 
 alacrity. 
 
 " All right," Mr. Drake said heartily. " You ll excuse me now. 
 I ve got to wash up." 
 
 " Your grandfather is an extraordinary man," O Reilly com 
 mented, watching Mr. Drake s powerful shamble in the direction 
 of the house. 
 
 " Yes," Southward agreed. " He always impresses people. I 
 have a great admiration for him and a great friendship. That s 
 rather unusual I think, considering that we re blood-relations and 
 that I ve lived in the house with him all my life." 
 
 "You re a Cape Cod girl?" O Reilly asked. 
 
 " Yes, and my mother before me and her mother before her 
 way back. And my father s people have always lived here." 
 
 " I would say that you had some Latin somewhere," O Reilly 
 went on. His twinkle disappeared. He fixed her thoughtfully 
 while he spoke. " And yet there s nothing Gallic or Spanish about 
 you." 
 
 " No, there s no Latin blood as far as I know on either side, only 
 Scotch and English. There s always been a family rumour of an 
 Indian strain somewhere but I don t know how or when." 
 
 " That would account for it," O Reilly said with an accent 
 of satisfaction. He continued at his ease to study her. 
 
 " Account for what ? " Southward demanded. 
 
 " A je ne sais quoi. ... a what people describe as a certain 
 something! " Morena answered. "I don t know quite what it is 
 a sort of impassivity and yet not that at all. It s really sur 
 prising in such a pretty girl. Pardon this abruptness. But I 
 suppose you know you are a pretty girl." 
 
 " A few of your sex have told me so," Southward said with 
 equanimity. " I m trying my best to believe it." 
 
 " Oh, you believe it all right," O Reilly accused her. " Every 
 expression, every movement, every gesture betrays the confidence 
 that comes from knowing that you re pretty." 
 
 If he had expected to embarrass Southward, be must have been 
 disappointed. " I m sorry I don t conceal it," was Southward s 
 composed comment. 
 
 They talked until Charlotte appeared in the door ringing the 
 blL
 
 171 
 
 " That means supper s ready," Southward explained. " I hope 
 I remembered to break it to you that it is supper you get, not 
 dinner." 
 
 "Oh, I m resigned to that," O Keilly assured her. "In fact 
 I don t care what it is. This New England food may be eccentric 
 but I find it delicious. What are you going to have to-night, if 
 it s a fair question?" 
 
 " It isn t," Southward retorted. " Not only that, but it s very 
 bad manners. Nevertheless, I ll tell you. Tha day being cool 
 you re going to have boiled dinner." 
 
 " Sounds good to me," O Reilly said. 
 
 The downstairs rooms bore their accustomed look of disorderly 
 housekeeping, crowded and careless though clean. Southward 
 however maintained her usual composure. If O Reilly was struck 
 with the contrast of the inside of the house with its outside, 
 his manner did not betray it. He showed much social perspicuity 
 in his treatment of the members of the household. At the table, 
 he continued to draw Mr. Drake out in regard to past voyages 
 and it was apparent that Mr. Drake enjoyed the experience of a 
 new audience. Charlotte did not speak, but she listened in the sad 
 silence typical of her when strangers were about. Mr. O Reilly 
 tried again and again to edge her into the conversation, but it 
 was like snaring some frightened forest creature. He was much 
 more successful with Mrs. Drake when later they repaired to that 
 lady s bedroom. Mrs. Drake responded with her usual ready 
 artlessness to all his overtures. Sitting up in bed in one of the 
 brilliant kimonos which she reserved for company use, she asked 
 him an interminable series of questions, and he answered them 
 with a fullness of detail that satisfied even her. A twinkle lay in 
 the depths of his deep-coloured Irish eyes, a half smile flickered 
 under the jetty moustache. In fact here the Celt, understanding, 
 sympathetic, kindly, humorous, seemed uppermost. After a while 
 he began to talk about his own experiences. He held Mrs. Drake 
 and Charlotte spellbound. 
 
 "I ve one favour to ask you, Miss Drake," he interpolated sud 
 denly at the end of a story. " You said something last night 
 about letting me see this house. I would be obliged if you would 
 show it to me. It s not alone because it s beautiful that it interests 
 me . . . it s because it s characteristic." 
 
 " All right," Southward said. " I ll have to get a lamp." 
 
 She took him through the disused kitchen of the main house 
 to the front where the wide hall ran between pairs of spacious 
 rooms up the noble stairway to the first floor with its sextette of
 
 172 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 high-studded bedrooms, up another flight to rooms more numerous 
 but smaller and lower. 
 
 O Reilly stopped everywhere to comment on the fine propor 
 tions of rooms and halls, the beauty of the old furniture that filled 
 them. The lower floor was crammed with what had been removed 
 from the ell to make way for Mrs. Drake s jig-sawed treasures, 
 a confusion of old mahogany, old walnut, old maple. The 
 upstairs rooms were furnished as they had always been; but 
 everything was scratched, faded dull, tattered. Southward hesi 
 tated at the foot of the garret stairs. And then, as though follow 
 ing a second impulse, she led the way upward. 
 
 The garret had much the same effect on O Reilly that it had 
 had on Dwight. He stood for a few minutes looking about, emit 
 ting comments humorously enthusiastic. They did not stay there 
 long however, only time for him to smoke the cigarette that 
 Southward offered. She sat in one of the straight-backed old 
 chairs and her guest made himself comfortable on the chaise- 
 longue. Some strange metamorphosis had worked itself in 
 O Reilly during their excursion through the silent house. The 
 debonnair Irishman had disappeared. A deep glow had taken the 
 place of the twinkle in his eyes. All the olive values in his 
 colouring had become pronounced. He looked at Southward 
 through half-shut lids. His teeth gnawed constantly at his jetty 
 moustache. He was all Spaniard. 
 
 Their conversation, alone here, tended inevitably to become 
 more personal, and O Reilly was obviously trying by hint, sug 
 gestion, innuendo, and indirect question to deepen that personal 
 quality. Southward as obviously evaded committing herself to a 
 closer intimacy. She laughed a great deal, but she ignored the 
 hints, eluded the suggestions, evaded the innuendos, answered the 
 questions with generalities. Constantly she parried, and occasion 
 ally she thrust. Yet suddenly again and again, in the midst of 
 this fencing, they came together on a little neutral area of con 
 geniality; stood there a moment disarmed. Insensibly they drifted 
 towards that closer understanding which, half perhaps in the 
 spirit of coquetry, Southward seemed determined to avoid. When 
 she suggested that they return to the lower floor, O Reilly pro 
 tested that he was much more comfortable and happy where he 
 was. Southward s reply was to take up the lamp. 
 
 It was not O Reilly s only call. He came again and again. 
 Sometimes getting home from a walk with Dwight, Southward 
 would find him with her grandfather engaged in an interested ex 
 change of foreign data; or in her grandmother s room answering
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 173 
 
 innumerable questions fluently and in detail. In the course of 
 time, Cameron, Smith, and Fearing came often enough to Long 
 Lanes to justify Mr. Drake s prophecy that they would soon be 
 " underfoot " there. O Reilly remained the favourite however, 
 with all except Charlotte. In her case, Smith and Fearing made 
 persistent though unobtrusive effort to become acquainted. She 
 never fully responded to their overtures, but it began to look as 
 though any time she might. 
 
 Shayneford, which had stood with unbroken composure the 
 shocks of two centuries of existence, presented its characteristic 
 quiet to the invasion of the New York people. A tide of gossip 
 arose of course and that tide swelled into big waves of conjecture 
 and broke into many minor currents of opinion; but this was all 
 subterranean. Superficially the village had no appearance of 
 noting the arrival of the strangers. For a few days, it achieved 
 the miracle of not seeming to know that they were there. But in 
 private it dissected the invaders microscopically; in the case of 
 the women, their looks, their gowns, their manners; in that of 
 the men, their occupation, their habits, their talk. Shayneford 
 would have been astonished to hear that it was being subjected to 
 analysis, equally ruthless and equally searching. " Typically 
 bourgeois," " a perfect case of economic determinism," " sociologi 
 cally a non-union shop " were phrases that would sorely have puz 
 zled the little Cape Cod town. However, with no appearance of 
 trying to do so, the aliens soon dominated the place. 
 
 Mrs. Boardman, alone of them all, made a determined effort 
 to get into the village life. She went to church and prayer- 
 meeting regularly. The first week, she attended a village " so 
 ciable" and a village concert. She talked to everybody. She 
 had the gift of getting acquainted quickly. The fruit of her 
 efforts soon showed itself. She was invited to join the Whist 
 Club; its members entertained her in their homes. She visited 
 other houses; made excursions far afield; had recourse finally to 
 an automobile. After a week, Sim Turner, the village carpenter, 
 began to receive loads of heterogeneous garret-loot. He crated 
 it all and sent it to Mrs. Boardman s New York address. 
 
 Just as Mrs. Boardman tried to get into Shayneford life, Miss 
 Hale tried to avoid it. Except for a growing intimacy with 
 Hester, she cultivated seclusion. She was far from an active 
 person. Dancing, she really loved; swimming, she mildly enjoyed; 
 golf, she managed to endure ; tennis, she definitely disliked ; walk 
 ing, she never did if she could help it. She came again and again
 
 174 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 to the Crowell place, though always in an automobile. But once 
 there, she seemed to make a point of playing the piano for Mrs. 
 Crowell. Twice a week, she hired a motor and she and Hester 
 went for all-day drives through the soft Cape Cod country-side. 
 At first Hester used to point out houses of historic interest; but it 
 soon appeared that Miss Hale s interest in them was tepid unless 
 they happened to be beautiful. Only one thing unfailingly aroused 
 enthusiasm an antique-shop. They spent hours poking about in 
 the miscellaneous loot of the country dealer. They rarely re 
 turned without a purchase of some sort a bit of old glass, china, 
 or silver, in rare cases a piece of old furniture. 
 
 Miss Hale had reached the point in the collection of old things 
 when she was merely matching up sets.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MRS. MORROW on the other hand seemed to absorb Shayneford 
 through her pores. In a week, she knew more about the town 
 than all the other members of her party put together. In a week, 
 too, her daring clothes, her enigmatic complexion (no two agreed 
 as to what was art and how much nature), her eternal cigarette, 
 her extraordinary dancing, her shocking and fascinating frank 
 ness were the focus of gossip for all Shayneford. She was as 
 active as she was restless, as reckless as she was active, and as 
 original as she was all three. She turned her enchantments loose 
 with an equal prodigality on Mrs. Wallis and Mrs. Crowcll. the 
 Reverend Nehemiah Dodge and Matthew Hallowell. Opinions in 
 regard to her were mixed among the women; the men of course 
 responded whole-heartedly and at once to her seductive quality. 
 She was often seen riding with Dwight Cameron in a motor foray 
 on neighbouring towns, and sometimes she appeared beside 
 Lysander in his rig. The second week she established at the camp 
 a series of informal dances which, because of their novelty and 
 charm, became the most popular entertaining in town. Disdaining 
 the little rough wooden dance platform there, she got the men first 
 to mow the grass to a velvet smoothness, then to cover it with 
 canvas. She sent to New York for a varied and high-coloured 
 assortment of Chinese lanterns; and to Boston for marvellous ices 
 and no less marvellous cakes. She invited everybody in Shayne 
 ford and everybody came even Hallowell. Very early she 
 announced that the campers would give a costume-party before 
 they left and already the town had begun to discuss what it should 
 wear. 
 
 The men took a no less intimate part in Shayneford life. They 
 called on the Shayneford girls; danced with them, swam with 
 them; played golf, tennis, and even croquet with them. But and 
 this seemed strange to Shayneford youth they seemed almost 
 equally interested in middle age and even old age. They called 
 on the elderly women; or at parties talked to them with ap 
 parently as much interest as they showed in the village belles. 
 And the rumour got about that often, returning from a late 
 festivity, they stopped at the house of the village-err uk Matthew 
 
 175
 
 176 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Hallowell, that the discussions held there lasted long after mid 
 night. Shayneford would have been astounded to hear also that, 
 though Southward and Hester were silent enough on these occa 
 sions, Mrs. Morrow and Miss Hale entered the discussion on 
 equal argumentative terms with the men and with almost an 
 equal equipment. During the Russian revolution, Hallowell had 
 made a speech in Cooper Union which Fearing still remembered. 
 They talked much of Russia. They talked of labour conditions 
 in America. There was occasional allusion to The Rebellions of 
 the Nineteenth Century. Hallowell was frank and crisp with 
 the men, punctiliously courteous with the women. He gave Mrs. 
 Boardman and Miss Hale much advice as to outlying mines of 
 antique treasure. He responded, with a gallantry which had an 
 old-time flavour to Mrs. Morrow s flirtatious charges. But back 
 of the amused twinkle in his frosty blue eyes, he seemed to study 
 the whole crowd as closely as they studied Shayneford: 
 
 Towards the end of the third week, he suggested to Southward 
 and Hester that they use his house for return hospitality to the 
 New York people. He recalled to them that he had always given 
 a party for them once during the summer when they were children ; 
 he would like to do it again. The two girls accepted his offer ; and 
 succeeded in entertaining almost as prettily as Mrs. Morrow. 
 
 Hester s friendship with John Smith had been very little inter 
 rupted by the arrival of the rest of his party. He occasionally 
 accompanied Miss Hale on the antique-hunting excursions of 
 which Hester was also a member. But though he rarely came to 
 call alone, he was very likely to invite Hester for a stroll if they 
 met by accident on the street. 
 
 On one such occasion, they emerged from the Post Office into 
 the drowsy warmth of a perfect August afternoon. 
 
 " Let s walk somewhere," Smith suggested suddenly. " I ve an 
 hour or two that I d love to waste on the bosky dingle. Are you 
 free?" 
 
 " Yes oh, yes," Hester answered. " I m always free. I should 
 like very much to walk. There s a pretty little lane between the 
 upper and lower road that perhaps you ve never seen." 
 
 "Lead me to it," Smith ordered. 
 
 It was a pretty road, though deeply rutted and narrow. It 
 wound between forests of the stumpy, stunted scrub pines which 
 give so picturesque an accent to the Cape Cod scenery. Low as 
 they were, they were high enough to darken the narrow way. On 
 each side stretched shadow-hung areas, carpeted by number-
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 177 
 
 less harvests of rusted pine-needles and roofed by pine boughs so 
 thickly interwoven that only a rainbow glint here and there showed 
 the play of the sun on their green spires. The road was deserted; 
 the air still; the warm atmosphere drowsily sweet-smelling. 
 
 " How wooing this all is," Smith commented. " It is curious 
 how certain aspects of nature induce a kind of melancholy, a 
 gentle melancholy, a melancholy that soothes rather than hurts. 
 It s like the Campagna about Rome. You re always a little sad 
 there why, you don t know but it s such a charming sadness 
 that you come back again and again to it." He interrupted him 
 self abruptly, " What shall we talk about, Hester ? " 
 
 " Tell me about your life," Hester demanded frankly. " I don t 
 know anything about you, you know." 
 
 He told her. But he prefaced the narrative with the remark 
 that there was very little to tell and seemed to prove it. His father 
 and mother had died when he was a baby. His guardian, a 
 woman, had given him rather a curious education. She had put 
 him in the hands of a succession of tutors. Two years, when he 
 was sixteen and seventeen, he had spent abroad. On his return, 
 he had gone into newspaper work in New York, had been asso 
 ciated first with this paper and then with that until he had de 
 cided to join the staff of Tomorrow. He concluded the rather 
 featureless narrative with another abrupt, "Now what shall we 
 talk about?" 
 
 " I d like you to explain a lot of things to me," Hester answered 
 with an unexpected promptness. " You see, most of the time 
 that I am listening to discussion between the men of your party, 
 I am quite in the dark in regard to what you re saying. Of 
 course I know very little about the social movements to which 
 you constantly refer, but aside from that, I don t even understand 
 the terms you use." 
 
 " For instance ? " Smith queried. 
 
 " Well, although I know what you mean when you say A. F. 
 of L. or I. W. W., I don t understand what you mean when you 
 talk about labour as though it were apart from the rest of the 
 human race. And although I understand for Matt has explained 
 that to me the difference between a socialist and an anarchist 
 I don t at all understand your various attitudes towards them. 
 For instance! They call you the I. W. W. Dwight jokes about 
 it. Edith shudders when she hears the words. She told me you 
 took her to an I. W. W. meeting once and it was like looking at 
 a hall full of mattoids. I can understand that for everybody in 
 Shaynef ord hates I. W. W. s. You call Mr. Fearing the Re-
 
 178 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 former and you joke him about it as though it were rather a 
 contemptible thing. And I don t understand that. I have always 
 thought a reformer a noble person. I don t understand the rela 
 tions in society of all these classes to each other labour anar 
 chists, socialists, reformers. Do you think you could make it 
 clear to me? Please use words of one syllable as you would to 
 a child." 
 
 John laughed. "I ll try. It s simple enough. But before I 
 begin my little spiel, let me put you right on one point. I mean 
 in regard to reform. I don t particularly care for reform piffling 
 reform reform that isn t basic, I mean. And I do joke Rip about 
 being a reformer. But I ve nothing but admiration for Rip 
 himself and for the work he s doing. As for the rest of it, let 
 me see." 
 
 He fixed an absent gaze on the pine-needles above his head. 
 The strident acid hum of some tree-insect filled a long pause. 
 
 " Imagine, Hester," he said finally, " this world in which we live 
 to be a huge dirty old toppling house; a house so old that the 
 walls keep splitting into great rents and the roof keeps cracking 
 into great holes. The glass in the windows has long ago fallen out. 
 There are two stories to this house and they are filled with people. 
 The upper story is an enormous airy hall. In that hall live all 
 those who possess more money than they can ever possibly earn, 
 more money than they know what to do with the capitalist 
 class, in short. They have managed by means of their wealth 
 to conceal all the decay and destruction that is going on 
 in their part of the foul old house. They have covered the 
 filthy walls with pictures and statues. They have concealed the 
 holes in the windows with draperies and tapestries. They have 
 covered the rents in the ceiling with a highly decorated roof. 
 And in the midst of all this of decay covered with beauty they 
 tall? and laugh and dine and wine and dance and entertain each 
 other in a thousand fantastic and extravagant ways. Now, just 
 below this great hall is another hall of exactly the same size but 
 cut up into a multitude of small rooms. That story holds the 
 great middle class. This middle class spends all its time in 
 mending the house, patching the ceiling so that it will not drop 
 down on them, reinforcing the walls so that they will not 
 fall in on them, keeping the frame together, in short, only by 
 eternal and indefatigable efforts. Below this great floor with its 
 many cut-up rooms is the cellar. And in the cellar, in dark 
 and muck, live the labouring class. But for them, the house would 
 not stand at all; for they hold the whole structure on their
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 179 
 
 shoulders. They lie in the mud on their hands and knees, their 
 very foreheads pressed into the slime. Above them, the middle 
 class in a kind of unctuous complacency go on mending walls 
 and pillars, never once glancing down to see what is the 
 foundation of their building. And above the middle class 
 the capitalist class go on tinkering with beauty, trying to 
 cover up horror, regardless of the two classes over whose heads 
 they dance and dine. I have never been able to make up my 
 mind which of those two upper floors is the most horrible. At 
 the top they are reckless and ruthless at worst; care-free and 
 thoughtless at best. On the middle floor, they are smug and self- 
 satisfied. They demand nothing of those who are above; they give 
 nothing to those who are below. But that cellar, Hester, is a 
 terrible place." 
 
 John s eyes came from the pine-needles, fixed themselves on 
 Hester s face. But it was apparent they did not see her. They 
 looked straight through her to their vision. 
 
 " The people in that cellar live and die in darkness and starva 
 tion and suffocation and disease. They never see the light. They 
 cannot move. It looks superficially jet-black there. However, it 
 is not really as black as it seems; there is a little light. For 
 everywhere, weaving in and out among them, go men, bearing tiny 
 lamps. These men whisper rebellion into the ears of the people 
 who hold the pillars of the house on their backs. Some of the 
 men call themselves reformers. Some of them call themselves 
 socialists. Some of them call themselves anarchists. And their 
 messages vary. But, although they are all suggesting different 
 ways of doing it, and some of them perhaps not as strongly 
 as others, they are all urging these bound men to do the 
 same thing. And that is to rise up in their might, throw the 
 pillars of the tottering old house off their shoulders and let it 
 crash to the ground. Some day, Hester, they will do that. And 
 you will see a race of creatures, swart, deformed, half-blinded, 
 emerging into the sunlight of the great outside world. ( Working 
 men of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your 
 chains. I would rather have written those words than all Shake 
 speare." 
 
 " I think I begin to understand," Hester said after a long pause. 
 " And of course you re with She did not finish her sentence 
 but when John completed it for her with the single word, quietly 
 spoken, " labour," she said it with him. The silence closed in on 
 them but it was palpably one of those pregnant silences when 
 two people pursue the same line of thought; a silence in which
 
 180 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 everything that goes on in one mind is perfectly clear to the 
 other. 
 
 "But you read," Hester offered tremulously after a while, "of 
 violence conspiracies assassinations dynamite. Do you justify 
 that?" 
 
 " Not for myself," John answered directly, " because I haven t 
 experienced the terrific living conditions which bring those results. 
 In the long history of labour, those things have occasionally hap 
 pened and often because men were crazed. They will happen 
 again inevitably just so long as the conditions which produce 
 madness in men s souls continue to exist. I don t excuse or justify 
 it. I only say this, Hester. If those men in the black cellar con 
 spire to violence I m with them. If they commit dynamite out 
 rages, I m with them. If they assassinate,. I m with them. And 
 the more they conspire and assassinate and commit dynamite out 
 rages " John paused. His voice had turned stern, had 
 
 run to a crescendo of bitterness ; it rang now as though his words 
 were stones dropped into a pit of iron, " the more I m with them." 
 He concluded quietly. 
 
 Again encompassing silence. Hester sighed. " Ah," she ex 
 claimed bitterly. " The world has always been like this and I ve 
 never suspected it."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SOUTHWARD was dancing with Lysander. As partners, they were 
 well matched; they moved with an effect of perfect adjustment 
 as of people who have danced much together. They danced until 
 the music ceased; continued until it started again; kept on 
 through two brief encores. 
 
 " Let s go outside, Ly," Southward said, when the music stopped 
 for the last time. " And steal a fan from somewhere. I m burst 
 ing with the heat." 
 
 Picking a fan from one of the seats, Lysander led the way 
 outdoors to a deserted end of the piazza. Vines made dense 
 shadow there. Southward parted the leaves and ensconced herself 
 on the rail. " This air feels good ! " she commented. Lysander, 
 fanning her vigorously, stood beside her. For a moment, he did 
 not speak. He gazed down into her moon-lit face. 
 
 " Southward, are you going to marry that man, Cameron ? " he 
 demanded abruptly. " Of course I realise you ve been seeing a lot 
 of him. I know all about the swimming nights in Long Pond. 
 I wondered." 
 
 Southward had been looking absently off on gleam and gloom. 
 At this she jumped and turned. " Lord no, Ly. Mercy no. He 
 hasn t asked me in the first place. It isn t that sort of thing. 
 And in the second place, I m not going to marry anybody. You 
 must have heard me say that a hundred times." 
 
 " Oh, well, all girls say they aren t going to marry," Lysander 
 commented. " It seems to be a part of their game. A fellow 
 hears that all the time but he soon learns not to put any stock 
 in it." 
 
 " Well, of all Lysander, do you mean to tell me you don t be 
 lieve it when I say it ? " 
 
 Southward s incredulity held a note of offended pride. 
 
 Lysander started to speak, hesitated, reflected an instant; then 
 started again. " I do and I don t," he admitted in a puzzled tone. 
 " Of course you re different from the other girls in Shayneford. 
 I know that well enough. Sometimes, I think it s not because 
 you re less of a woman but because you re more of one. But if 
 that s true, you don t know it and I can t prove it. I think you ll 
 marry sometime. But it ll have to be some fellow that s strong 
 
 181
 
 182 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 enough to beat your game. I can t beat it, but of course that 
 doesn t mean that there aren t men who can." He paused. When 
 he spoke though, his voice had not lifted above or sagged below 
 its cool level. " Just the same, Southward, I want you to under 
 stand this you re the first woman I ever rea 1 y wanted that I 
 couldn t get." 
 
 " I believe that easily enough," Southward said. " You re all 
 right, Lysander. I don t know why I m not in love with you," 
 she went on in a meditative tone, " for I certainly am strong for 
 you. It s because I can t fall in love really fall in love with 
 anybody, I guess. I like you better than any other man in Shayne- 
 ford. For one reason you play fair." She glanced off for a 
 moment from the main line of her argument as one who is talking 
 to fill in time. " I try to play fair with men. Sometimes, I guess, 
 I don t succeed. But you don t know how many of them haven t 
 played fair. Not that I cared. I just noticed it." 
 
 " Yes," Lysander went on, almost as though he had not heard 
 these remarks, as though straight through them he had followed 
 his own train of thought, " you ll get yours sometime, Southward. 
 It s just come to me. I thought you were immune but you aren t. 
 You ll get it and you ll get it hard. And I bet I d be just damn 
 fool enough to be sorry for you." 
 
 " Of course you would, Ly." Southward leaned forward to pat 
 his shoulder affectionately. But the next moment, she had 
 stretched upwards in a yawn. With her arms still raised above 
 her head, she asked, " Do you think I m pretty, Lysander ? I 
 don t mean according to Shayneford standards: I mean accord 
 ing to city standards. You re one of the few who ll tell me the 
 truth." She yawned again. " I mean for instance how do I 
 compare with Mrs. Morrow ? " 
 
 " Are you jealous of her ? " Lysander thrust suddenly. And 
 then with a return to the equability with which he had conducted 
 his half of the conversation, " She s more than half stuck on 
 Cameron and he s more than a quarter stuck on her. I guess 
 likely that was on the road to being a crush when you bust it up." 
 
 " No, I m not jealous of Mrs. Morrow, Ly," Southward said, the 
 blue-and-black shimmer of her eyes fronting the moonlight. " I 
 just mentioned her because she was the only good-looking city- 
 woman I could think of. I might have just as well said Miss 
 Hale only " 
 
 " Oh, well, you know Miss Hale isn t in your class for a 
 moment. Mrs. Morrow is. And the best dancer I ever saw. She 
 beats the girls out on the Barbary Coast. And then besides
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 183 
 
 well, she s high-flyer all right. But of course you qualify from 
 any point of view. Not that I haven t seen plenty of pretty women 
 too, through the West and in California in particular. But 
 there s something about you maybe it s your damned indifference 
 you certainly do things to a man. It brings out the very 
 deuce in me." 
 
 Southward s eyes absently followed the moon in its dipping 
 flight through a flock of clouds. " It s queer," she said and there 
 was a shade of sympathy in her voice. She dropped that sentence 
 and began another, "I mean " 
 
 " Yes," Lysander s interrupting voice lowered until it became 
 husky, " if a man gets you into his system once, he s going to 
 have a devil of a time getting you out." 
 
 " But I mean particularly city-women," Southward began. It 
 was as though she were not hearing Lysander at all. 
 
 " What are you asking me all this for ? " A furious perplexity 
 that threatened to become anger came into Lysander s voice. 
 
 " Oh, I don t know," Southward said. " Idle curiosity, I guess." 
 She seemed to prove her words by yawning indifferently. She 
 arose and again stretched. 
 
 Lysander jumped to his feet. His arm shot out. He seized her 
 as in an iron clamp, pulled her over to him. Before she could 
 stir, he kissed her. Then his grasp loosened. 
 
 Southward did not struggle. With a single expert movement, 
 she freed herself from his loose clutch. But her preoccupation 
 had vanished ; her eyes were flint. " Lysander," she said, " don t." 
 She added, " Please." But her please was a command. " I don t 
 expect you to slop over like that." 
 
 Lysander folded his arms over his chest. By a process of 
 physical pressure, he seemed suddenly to inhibit a huge rushing 
 tide of emotion. He seated himself. " I don t expect to slop over 
 myself, Southward. Excuse me this time. I promise you it will 
 never happen again." 
 
 " That s all right, Ly," Southward said comfortingly. " I under 
 stand. But be sure it doesn t happen again. I like you, but this 
 sort of thing actually makes me sick. I m not mushy, you know." 
 She did not sit down however. " There, the music s started up." 
 She added after a silence, " Let s go back." 
 
 The Library in which all the Shayneford dances were held had 
 been made over from an old farm house of the primitive colonial 
 type. The original living-room, into which adjacent bedrooms 
 had been thrown, now served as the dance-hall. Lo\r-ceilinged,
 
 184 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 wide-raftered, it still retained the broad smooth floor-boards, the 
 noble spacious red-brick fireplace with the old oven at one side 
 and little cupboards above. The four city-men had done very 
 well with their decorations. Boughs outlined a tracery of green 
 against the palely-papered walls and vines festooned themselves 
 between. No flowers had been employed; yet, here and there 
 flashed colour; autumn stealing on ahead of her appointed time 
 had touched the maple leaves with her flaming fingers. Files of 
 little fir-trees, enclosing a chair or two, made tete-a-tete retreats. 
 In one of these sat Hester and Ripley Fearing. 
 
 " Everybody s going out now," Fearing said. " Let s stay here. 
 It will be quieter." Then, "What a picture!" 
 
 "Yes," Hester agreed. "Don t they look picturesque?" 
 
 A jam of colour and sparkle had caught in the doorway. The 
 costumes followed the grotesque ideal which prevails at most 
 rustic affairs of the sort. In the main, the men dressed in ac 
 cordance with the comic supplement version of the farmer; hats 
 exaggeratedly large and ragged, overalls too tight and short; 
 woollen socks too thick; ties too spectacular. Farmers, darkies, 
 clowns marked the limit for imagination of rustic masculinity. 
 Ly sander wore a complete cowboy outfit even to chaps. With 
 the exception of the city-men, who came as pirates, he was the 
 most picturesque male figure in the room. The girls showed al 
 most as little imagination, but the results were more pleasing. If 
 as gipsies, flower girls, and Indian maidens, they ran to an over- 
 conventional display of unbound hair and slender ankles, at 
 least they brought colour and grace into the scheme. With this 
 bromidic picturesqueness, Miss Hale a Greek vestal, Hester a 
 Fra Angelico angel, Mrs. Morrow an Arabian houri, and South 
 ward as Robin Hood made sulphitic contrast. 
 
 No answer came from Fearing. Hester looked up at him. He 
 was not watching the dancers. He was studying the mothers who 
 sat on settees backed up to the wall. " I was thinking of them," 
 he said. 
 
 Hester s eye ran down the line; Mrs. Wallis, hard, bright-eyed, 
 with tiny sharp features, the half-grown, spectacled Esther at her 
 side, furtively following Pearl s every move; Mrs. Tubman fatly 
 complacent over King Curtis s devotion to Flora; Mrs. Peters 
 surveying over her nose every tete-a-tete group, the tail of her 
 eye always on Pinkie; Mrs. Dodge, always watching her two 
 grown girls, fat, stumpy Ella at her right; Sue-Salome enjoying 
 the affair with the bright-eyed activity of a child and snapping 
 from time to time her brisk comments down the line; Libbie at
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 185 
 
 her left, earrings in a perpetual twinkle as she matched her 
 sister s remarks with phrases quite as pungent; and so on and 
 on, grandmothers and mothers and aunts, and all with an eye, 
 wistful or appraising, proud or jealous, glued to the panorama of 
 youth. " I am thinking of a talk I had yesterday with Hallowell," 
 Fearing went on, " on my pet hohby human waste. Hallowell s 
 observations on the subject of women were very illuminating." 
 
 "Yes, he s always telling Southward and me that we re waste 
 women," Hester said. 
 
 " And you are ! " Fearing agreed promptly. He brought his 
 teeth together with a ferocious snap. But his face beamed with 
 kindness ; his dull eyes with sympathy. " I have now at this 
 minute I always have had a feeling of nausea when I look at a 
 group of average middle-aged women. They seem so useless and 
 ended, so fat and fatuous. Take that line over there for instance ! 
 They ve brought a family of children into the world and raised 
 them. The world considers that they ve done their job and they 
 think so too. And now with from twenty to thirty years of good 
 work still in them, they re just sitting in the gallery, watching 
 the march of the coming generation, waiting for their grand 
 children to appear in order to begin the same job over again. 
 They live most of the last part of their life plastered to a peep 
 hole. Lord!" 
 
 Hester s brow furrowed. " I never thought of it in that light." 
 She shivered. " But that or worse is what lies before most 
 of us. It lies before me." 
 
 "It lies before you if you deliberately walk into it," Fearing 
 warned. " But don t let life grind you like that, Hester. If I have 
 any advice to give which to my credit I will say commonly I 
 haven t it is just that. Don t let life beat you. It will beat 
 you if it can. It won t make you, unless you yourself make it 
 make you." 
 
 Hester s lids drooped. " It s beating me already," she admitted, 
 " and I can t help it." 
 
 " You ve got to help it," Fearing persisted. " You must and 
 you must do it alone. Nobody can help you in this. It s the chal 
 lenge fate has thrown to you. Remember that; it s your job." 
 His voice was almost stern now, but his melancholy hound s eyes 
 were as kind as ever. 
 
 Hester sighed a long deep sigh. 
 
 " Shall we dance or walk or just sit this out, Edith ? " John 
 Smith said to Edith Hale.
 
 186 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 "Let s sit it out," Edith answered languidly. "I feel tired. 
 But on the piazza, please." 
 
 " All right." Smith picked up the shawl of embroidered crepe 
 which she dropped as she arose and followed her slow step. 
 
 " I think you d better put this on," he said as she seated her 
 self. He held the shawl for her, but with the instinctive con 
 sciousness of her appearance that never left her, Edith proceeded 
 to arrange and rearrange it after he had placed it on her 
 shoulders. 
 
 " That s charming," John applauded her efforts. And, indeed, 
 she had manipulated the thickly-embroidered, fringed, silky square 
 until it had become an integral part of her white Greek costume 
 with its flowing draperies and the three bands which held the 
 classic knot of her hair. " You are wonderful to-night, Edith. 
 And you look well. You look better every day." 
 
 " John," Edith Hale asked directly, ignoring the compliment, 
 " are you falling in love with Hester Crowell ? " 
 
 John laughed. But he sobered immediately. "No, Edith," he 
 said, " I assure you I m not falling in love with anybody and 
 certainly not with Hester Crowell. You of all women ought to 
 realise that." 
 
 " Yes. I know what you re going to say," Edith interrupted 
 with a weary accent. " So please don t say it. But it has occurred 
 to me it looked John, I believe that people can be in love 
 without knowing it. And I think that s what s happened to you." 
 
 " I don t think I could be in love without knowing it, any more 
 than you," John said. " We re both too analytic for that, too 
 conscious of our sensations, too modern in short. No, Edith, 
 I m not in love with anybody openly or secretly. And it seems to 
 me you ought to know that; for, if I were, you d be the first to 
 hear it." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Edith said humbly after a pause in which 
 she considered this explanation. 
 
 " You like Hester ? " John questioned after a pause, in which 
 he ignored this apology. " You ve said so from the beginning. 
 But you really do, don t you ? " 
 
 " I love her," Edith answered simply. 
 
 " She s a fine creature," John commented. " But almost broken 
 on the wheel of life. She s one of those grim, implacable, relent 
 less but colourless tragedies that only New England seems able 
 to produce." 
 
 Edith shuddered. " When you think of it all that terrible 
 mother and the two deaths her sister and the little girl and all
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 187 
 
 her years stretching before her teaching teaching teaching oh, 
 well we must break it up. I m going to get her on to New York 
 next year by hook or crook." 
 
 " That s the thing to do," John assented quietly. " Change, 
 complete change, a lot of excitement and to show her how the 
 world is waking up, how differently it is thinking and acting 
 about many things, how unnecessary all her self-sacrifice is. 
 Yes, you ought to do that, Edith." 
 
 " Dwight," Azile Morrow said, " how are you getting on with 
 that new novel ? Or are you doing anything with it ? " 
 
 They were dancing. Cameron was looking down into Azile s 
 eyes with the amusement that always came into them in her 
 presence. He kept breaking into all kinds of Terpsichorean im 
 provisations to which his partner, floating as a gossamer, swaying 
 as a reed, responded with every line of her liquid body. 
 
 "No, I haven t written a word for days. Why should I, Azile? 
 This is my vacation. Can t I have a good time once in a while? 
 Especially if I work like the dickens when I get back to New 
 York. I promise to be good then." 
 
 " You promise." 
 
 " Oh, sure I ve got to. Wendell and Daly are yelling for a 
 novel. I sent them an outline of this the other day and I got 
 an enthusiastic letter from them yesterday. Oh, I want to write 
 it, and I will sure as shooting." 
 
 " I m going to have a writing-room fixed up for you at our 
 place," Azile declared, " so that you can hide from people. 
 I m determined that you shall get that book finished this winter. 
 Don t you think that will be a good idea?" 
 
 " Great ! " Cameron replied. But his tone had no enthusiasm ; 
 it was even a little absent. " I don t know how much I ll be in 
 New York though." 
 
 " Why, where are you going ? " Azile demanded. " This is 
 something new, isn t it ? " 
 
 " Oh, no," Dwight exclaimed. " I ve been thinking of going 
 away for quite a while. I haven t any special plan. I don t know 
 that the Great White Way is just the spot for me. Old John 
 says that it isn t. And this return to nature has done me so 
 much good that I ve even thought of joining the governor in 
 New Hampshire, shutting myself up and going to it." 
 
 " Rot I " Azile protested vigorously. " You d die in a little 
 country hole in the winter-time. No art-atmosphere, no shop- 
 talk, no stimulation, no, what you yourself call the spirit of
 
 188 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 place. If you want to get away, why don t you go abroad with 
 mother and me? That will give you change, experience, leisure 
 and a new kind of local colour." 
 
 " Well, you see that s quite a different proposition I 
 
 mean " Dwight with the air of a man who hasn t his argument 
 
 ready perceptibly floundered. " I don t exactly want to get out of 
 the country. I might at any time have to go back to the news 
 paper game oh, well, of course I m just talking now. Nothing s 
 settled. I have no plans really. I don t know what I m going 
 to do." 
 
 The music started after another interval. Cameron caught 
 Southward as she came into the room with Lysander. He and 
 Lysander exchanged a civil word or, two; then Cameron whirled 
 her away. 
 
 They had undoubtedly danced many times together since that 
 day of the tea at the camp. They were not so graceful as 
 Morena and Mrs. Morrow who were now floating about the room 
 in a welded composition; but they were more striking, even 
 though they were more athletic. They danced with the arrogance 
 which was equally typical of them, as though they had the 
 room to themselves. They swooped like a pair of hawks pursuing 
 prey from one end to the other and then, like a pair of sea-gulls 
 whose outstretched wings rest on the water, drifted back. The 
 other dancers gave way, following them covertly with their eyes. 
 
 " Jiminy, that was fun ! " Cameron exclaimed, mopping his face 
 after the second encore. " But let s get out quick before I melt 
 and flow through the cracks into the cellar. What do you say to 
 going for a little walk where we can talk quietly ? " 
 
 " All right," Southward agreed demurely. Her eyes glimmered. 
 
 They struck off into the tiny path which led from the piazza 
 to the pond. A clearing between the bushes at its end showed 
 a glimpse of water burnished under the moon. Southward, in her 
 Robin Hood costume of green and brown, seated herself on a flat 
 rock in the grass, clasped her hands about her knees, the curled-up 
 toes of her shoes close together. Dwight placed himself a little 
 below so that he looked up into her face. The moon was still 
 brilliant; the glimmer had not left her eyes. 
 
 "What are you laughing at?" Dwight demanded. 
 
 "I was thinking of the uncounted hordes who have begged 
 me during an intermission to come where we could talk quietly. 
 Why do they always assume that I want to talk quietly ? I 
 never wanted to talk quietly in my life."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 189 
 
 " They don t," Dwight explained. " They want to do the talk 
 ing." 
 
 " It is true," Southward remarked pensively, " that I have 
 been proposed to twice on this very rock." 
 
 " Well, damn you," Cameron protested cheerfully. " That state 
 ment puts a fierce crimp in the soft nothings I was going to 
 whisper in your shell-like ear. But how can I wax sentimental 
 with the ghosts of millions of rejected lovers standing about ? " 
 
 " The answer to that is not to wax sentimental at all," South 
 ward advised promptly, " unless you want to bore me." 
 
 " I don t want to do that of course," Dwight replied. " But 
 I will tell you parenthetically now brace yourself for a shock 
 that you are too pretty for any use." 
 
 " You needn t bother to tell me," Southward ordered im 
 pudently. " I know that already. Go on ! " 
 
 " And that you make a delicious boy." 
 
 " I know that too," Southward asserted, again impudently. 
 " Haven t you anything better or newer ? " 
 
 " And that I m certainly talking under difficulties and making 
 no headway whatever I never felt so much like losing my head 
 for a moment." 
 
 " Go on," Southward urged, still impudently. " Lose it ! You 
 can lose your head and your heart with perfect impunity. For 
 if I find them, I ll give them back to you instanter especially 
 the heart." 
 
 "It s great to hear you say that," her companion murmured, 
 his eyes sparkling with mirth, " and awfully reassuring to a 
 man who s afraid of matrimony and yet dying to singe his 
 wings a little. It s like wearing a life-preserver when you re 
 swimming in deep water. You can afford to have cramp." He 
 paused and his manner changed. The analytic look came into 
 his eyes. " You really don t want to marry, do you ? " 
 
 " You bet I don t," Southward protested with fervour. 
 
 " No more do I. But let s waive that. Oh, by the way, tell 
 me what do you think of the first chapters of the novel ? " 
 
 " Well," Southward said, " I liked them. They interested me. 
 And yet I had a feeling that you hadn t quite got the place. 
 Of course, I know it so well but then I hate love-stories any 
 way. I m no judge of such things. I m only interested in 
 facts. And I hate love-making everywhere. It bores me in 
 books and makes me tired in plays. Still, of course you held my 
 attention. I could point out to you if you d like places where 
 the talk seems to be more western than Yankee "
 
 190 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I d like to have you do that," Cameron said. His manner 
 was a little crestfallen. He seemed to wait for Southward to go 
 on ; but she added nothing. " Oh, there s another important 
 
 thing " he continued. " Aside from calling your attention to 
 
 the fact that this is our last night here, I want to know if I 
 can come over to the garret after this shindig is over ? " 
 
 " That will be pretty late, won t it ? " 
 
 "It s to stop promptly at twelve they stipulated that. Of 
 course I ll take you home." 
 
 " No," Southward interrupted, " Mr. O Keilly has already of 
 fered to do that and I said he could." 
 
 " Damn ! " Dwight murmured. " I wish Morena d keep out of 
 this. Well, I ll take some other girl home. John will undoubtedly 
 look after Hester. Say, by the way, do you think that s a case?" 
 
 " Not on Hester s side," Southward said with promptness. 
 
 " Naturally," Dwight s riposte was as quick as her own, " I m 
 not discussing that side of it. I mean old John." 
 
 " No, I don t think so," Southward decided slowly, " if you ask 
 me, I should say that Mr. Smith was immune to love." 
 
 " Well, Rip ll take Azile and Edith home. I ll wait around a 
 while and then come to Long Lanes. Two hoots as usual?" 
 
 "All right," Southward permitted lazily. 
 
 " The question to be discussed now and then " he went on, 
 
 " is whether you re coming on to New York." 
 
 " I can answer now and then " Southward said with a 
 
 sudden determined hardening of her face, " that I am coming. 
 I ve made up my mind to do that. I don t see how it s to be 
 managed yet of course, but I shall accomplish it because I ve 
 always accomplished anything that I ve set myself to do. It may 
 mean that I ll have to start Friday night and return Sunday, but 
 I ll do it." 
 
 " I believe you." Cameron s eyes grew more keenly analytic. 
 He looked at Southward as though she were a new object that 
 he had just discovered in the landscape. " I believe you," he 
 repeated. " Say, do I get the New York rights to you ? " he 
 asked suddenly. 
 
 "Don t understand," objected Southward. She leaned down, 
 plucked a blade of grass, placed it to her lips. The tense silence 
 broke suddenly in an unearthly wail. 
 
 " I mean well, I want to have the first chance to take you 
 about in New York. I want it to be understood that you re my 
 guest in a manner of speaking. That system protects you from 
 the other men."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 191 
 
 " But suppose I don t want to be protected from the other 
 men," Southward suggested shrewdly. " Besides, if I want pro 
 tection from men, the easiest thing I do is to provide it for 
 myself." 
 
 "You may find it different in New York. You re too pretty 
 and too original. I mean there ll be a dozen men in our crowd 
 who ll try to monopolise you. Then again, it protects me from 
 the women who are drifting too. You see we re not really bound 
 it doesn t prevent us from having a good time with other 
 people and yet we can use each other as a shield against them 
 if they get troublesome." 
 
 Southward s eyelashes shot downward. The glimmer faded 
 slowly from her eyes; they grew as hard as flints. Then the flint 
 softened; the glimmer came back. She produced before speaking 
 three long deliberate wails from the grass-blade. " Good Busi 
 ness ! " she commented. " I m for it. Now, see if I understand. 
 Ostensibly we re on the verge of getting engaged. That means 
 that you can send out an alarm any time trouble threatens for 
 you or I any time it threatens for me. And yet we can flirt 
 on the side just as much as we want. Is that it?" 
 
 Dwight stirred uneasily. It was as though his plan seemed a 
 little more cold-blooded when Southward outlined it. " Yes, that s 
 it," he admitted finally. But apparently it was an admission that 
 he did not entirely enjoy. 
 
 Southward considered this, alternately blowing wild maniacal 
 complaints from grass-blades and gazing mutely up at him. But 
 all the time, the glimmer in her eyes grew brighter and brighter 
 until it seemed to splash through her eyelashes. 
 
 " All right," she said, " I agree. We ve entered into a near 
 engagement." She arose. Cameron jumped to his feet too. 
 They stood close. 
 
 Cameron looked straight down into her eyes. "All right," he 
 said. " Let s seal it." He suddenly reached forward and pulled 
 her into his arms. He dropped his head. But before his lips 
 touched hers, Southward wrenched herself away. Her face 
 flushed with anger. She panted. "Don t you ever do such 
 that again." Her teeth gritted. " Our agreement doesn t cover 
 this sort of thing, remember."
 
 CHAPTEK XIII 
 
 " THIS is our dance, Angel," Smith said to Hester. " Would 
 you in its place prefer to walk the celestial fields with me ? " 
 
 " I would much prefer that," Hester answered. 
 
 " Very well where shall we go ? " 
 
 " There s a little path running round the pond that s very 
 pretty," Hester suggested. 
 
 " Let s take it," Smith agreed promptly. " I haven t seen it yet. 
 Remember, you re my guide a heavenly one too," he added, sur 
 veying her costume critically. " You see," he said as they emerged 
 into the gloom of the piazza and then to the blanched lawn, " I m 
 a foxy little man to-night. I picked the dance before the inter 
 mission so that we might take a quiet hike. I knew you wouldn t 
 mind missing the ice-cream. It seems to me," he went on as they 
 struck into a little path, open to the pond on one side and heavily 
 bushed on the other, " that you have a pippin of a moon in 
 Shayneford." 
 
 u We re very proud of it," Hester said with the shy humour that 
 happiness had begun to develop in her. " We think the Pilgrim 
 Fathers picked out a very good one for us." 
 
 " I have been accused," John went on, catching her light note 
 and sustaining it, " of being in love with you. By a man," he 
 added hastily. " I thought I d consult you about it." He still 
 maintained the light note. " What do you think ? " 
 
 Hester laughed. " What a ridiculous idea ! " She laughed 
 again. " If only somebody would say that to mother though." 
 
 Smith laughed too. There was an element of relief in his mirth. 
 " Thank you, Hester," he said gaily. " I don t mind confessing 
 to you that I don t want to fall in love with you." 
 
 Hester echoed his gay note. " Don t worry ! You won t. People 
 don t as a rule." 
 
 " But," Smith went on, " it s my conviction, Hester, that you 
 and I are as good friends as it s possible for man and woman 
 to be." 
 
 " I hope so," Hester said fervently. " and I think so only I 
 never know enough about anything, least of all friendships be 
 tween men and women, to come to any conclusions." 
 
 192
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 193 
 
 " You know enough about everything to come to conclusions, 
 Hester," Smith replied. " Hi ! what s this ? " 
 
 " The graveyard," Hester answered. 
 
 Just ahead glimmered a tall cylindrical column. Beyond, slate- 
 grey or granite-pink, or marble-white, stretched forests of grave 
 stones. Parallel iron bars running between square stone posts 
 separated them from the road. 
 
 " That s the most extraordinary thing about New England," 
 Smith said. " The graveyards. So many of them everywhere. 
 And often such beautiful places so old and vine-wreathed and 
 lichened." 
 
 " Yes, I know what you mean," Hester said. " All the grave 
 yards here are such friendly places. I never think of them with 
 horror or dread." 
 
 Smith turned suddenly and looked at her. Then he looked back 
 at the graveyard-wall, a quizzical smile on his lips. " Stand 
 there ! " he commanded, pointing. 
 
 The wall was broken at one place by the grassy mound that 
 covered a tomb. Picking up her draperies, Hester obediently 
 mounted the tiny elevation. 
 
 " Face me ! " Smith continued to command, " now put your 
 trumpet to your lips." 
 
 Edith Hale had suggested Hester s costume of a Era Angelico 
 angel. She had sent to New York for the thin white stuff of which 
 it was made. She had designed it. She had draped it about 
 Hester s thin figure. She had arranged Hester s hair. The 
 draperies were simple and unpremeditated-looking; they floated. 
 Hester s hair was parted in the middle, brought down in a burning 
 smoothness that suggested momentary rebellion far over the ears, 
 exposing a peak of forehead and only the round of the cheeks. 
 At the nape of the neck, it was imprisoned in a cylinder of stiff 
 gold lace; from there, it hung free to the knees and then came 
 into a club-like plait enclosed in another golden cylinder which 
 swung against her heels. On her head was a halo of gilded card 
 board and in her hand was a trumpet of gilded cardboard. Fearing 
 had made these properties. Now the shade turned her face to a 
 white triangle, but the moonlight put a faint golden wash on her 
 hair, her halo and the trumpet which her long slim hand held 
 to her lips. 
 
 Smith burst into chuckles. " You look like an Easter postcard," 
 he said. " Come back now." He assisted her down the incline. 
 
 " How have things been going at home ? " he asked as they 
 .strolled on.
 
 194 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Better than ever before," Hester said earnestly. " I m so 
 grateful for it, too. Mother seems more happy than I have ever 
 seen her. Miss Hale has been a great help. She always plays every 
 time she comes over. She plays as long as mother will listen. 
 And mother loves music so. I can t tell you what a difference it s 
 made." 
 
 "You like Edith?" John queried. 
 
 " I love her," Hester answered with the same fine simplicity 
 with which Edith had made a similar statement earlier in the 
 evening. 
 
 " I knew you would. I felt that you d become great friends." 
 
 " I feel so happy and so flattered to think that she would 
 
 care that I had anything to offer " Hester plunged into those 
 
 hesitancies which with her always impeded the phrasing of any 
 self-revelation. 
 
 " Do you think you ll be able to come to New York this winter ? " 
 
 " No," Hester said quietly and simply. " Nor any other winter 
 for a long while. But I shan t need to go anywhere this winter. 
 I ve had so much this summer. I shall enjoy myself being quiet 
 and remembering it all. Oh, how I shall think and think and 
 think in the long evenings and after I get to bed living every 
 moment of it over again. Sometimes it seems to me that I ve had 
 enough this summer to last me for the rest of my life." 
 
 " I ve enjoyed it too," Smith was as quiet and simple as she. 
 " More than I could tell if I attempted to tell which I shan t. 
 But don t let yourself think you ve had enough to last the rest of 
 your life. This is only the beginning. However, I think you ll 
 visit New York sometime. If not this winter, the next. And 
 we shan t forget. I ll send you a letter or a book occasionally to 
 prove it. I m not involving you in a correspondence," he said 
 hastily. "Please remember that. But I don t want you to think 
 that we re birds-of-passage friends. For when you come to New 
 York, as I m sure you will because it s the rule that we manage 
 by hook or crook to do the thing we want to do when you do 
 come, remember we ll make it as pleasant for you as possible. For 
 what I can t give you or Dwight or Azile Edith will hand you 
 on a gold platter." 
 
 " Oh, I want to go," Hester breathed, " I do want to go. You 
 will never know how much even if I attempted to tell you, which 
 I won t." To quote Smith s own words to him in this manner 
 was a decided step forward in badinage for the shy Hester. " Do 
 you think you ll come to Shaynef ord next summer ? " 
 
 Smith hesitated. "I hope so. But I don t know. It s pretty
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 195 
 
 difficult to tell. We re such a restless and wandering gang of 
 beggars. We never hare done the same thing twice yet. Perhaps 
 I can get down here for a week-end now and then." 
 
 " I see," Hester said. " Shall we go back to the dance ? " 
 
 " All right. Oh, by the way, may I take you home to-night ? 
 I ask you for a particular reason." 
 
 " Yes, certainly." She looked at him inquiringly. 
 
 He answered the look. " It s only that it s my last night here 
 and I thought I d dedicate it to you and the moon." 
 
 "I think this camp-life has done you good, Edith," Ripley 
 Fearing said to Miss Hale. They had sat out two dances in a 
 quiet end of the piazza. 
 
 " Oh, yes," Edith agreed. " No doubt about that. I ve acquired 
 enough strength and enough courage to go on for a while." She 
 smiled, but her eyes were melancholy. 
 
 " If you only acquire a little more, you ll realise that there s 
 a permanent cure. Some day you ll come to me and ask me for 
 my prescription." 
 
 I ll ask for it now, Eipley. What is it ? " 
 
 " To attach yourself to an unpopular reform movement," Fearing 
 answered. He smiled his kind smile but his hound s eyes were 
 quite as melancholy as Edith s. 
 
 Edith shook her head. "I couldn t. I m not that kind of 
 person. I don t like reformers and I don t like reform. Reformers 
 are always such ugly, dull, humourless, one-ideaed people. They 
 always make me blue and unhappy." 
 
 " Yes, that s the chief handicap that what we call reform 
 labours under," Fearing agreed, " the reformers themselves. You 
 see, in order to be able to stand up to the gruelling that the game 
 means, they hare to be filled with their idea to the exclusion of 
 anything else. Everything must go down before that idea, en 
 joyment, human interests, sense of humour, appreciation of beauty. 
 It takes a very big person indeed to retain any of these in a reform 
 work. Being a reformer means always approaching people on the 
 one side on which all their defences are up abstract justice. 
 Fighting prejudice, instinctive selfishness, and intrenched power 
 is not easy." 
 
 " My friend," Edith Hale said tremulously, " you make me 
 ashamed. And yet, I m not making a small, petty, superficial 
 criticism. It s the result of some practical experience and a good 
 deal of observation. Take reform itself. I have lived, in ^the 
 West, in one or two cities in which reform waves have struck
 
 196 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 and struck hard. And do you know the effect has been to uglify 
 and dull and deaden the whole city. It isn t because I m trying 
 to be liberal or bohemian or any of those things that we all 
 hate as poses I m describing to you a state of mind that exists 
 and that I can t argue away. What they call a wide-open town 
 is so much more lovable and gay and human than the reformed 
 town. When people who don t want to dance or drink or sit up 
 late try to enjoin other people from doing these things, the effect 
 is ugly. I don t want to live in a reform town. Now why is it ? " 
 
 " I think," Kipley answered, " that your quarrel is with the 
 wrong kind of reform. I m not for any of those movements 
 which seek to circumscribe personal liberty. And yet I suppose 
 I don t believe in complete personal liberty. There s a line some 
 where I think I ve never been able to fix it and perhaps I m 
 wrong where personal liberty stops. And that s the trouble with 
 most people they don t realise that yet. I mean for instance what 
 I drink is my business, when I drink and how much I drink is 
 also my business, provided I don t interfere with the personal 
 liberty of everybody else. And yet even that idea can be carried 
 to excess. Take dope " 
 
 " You mean you think the state ought to step in there," Edith 
 questioned as though incredulous. 
 
 " Yes decidedly." 
 
 " I don t," Edith said, her weary air touched with an inflexi 
 bility surprising in her gentleness. " I don t think it ought to step 
 in anywhere." 
 
 " However," Eipley went on, " I don t I suppose believe in the 
 wrong kind of reform any more than you do. I hate the word. 
 It s the biggest cross I bear that I find myself constantly referred 
 to as a reformer. If in my college days I had guessed I would 
 
 ever come to this But the right kind of well, call it reform 
 
 as long as there s no other name. I prefer calling it inevitable 
 change that s a great fight. Once you re in it, the other things, 
 minor personal troubles, all slip away and fall into their proper 
 perspective and their right proportions. I think you ll come to 
 me sometime and ask me to give you something to do." 
 
 " I don t think I will," Edith said. " For there are my other 
 limitations. Theoretically I hate injustice and practically I weep 
 over the individual case. But I m too fastidious. I ve developed 
 that fastidiousness to a point where it owns me and dominates 
 me. It makes all the difference in the world to me what kind of 
 people are about, even what kind of things. People and things 
 make my atmosphere really, not thoughts and ideas."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 197 
 
 Fearing did not answer. He only shook his head. 
 " No, I think I shall never turn to you now," Edith concluded. 
 " It s all settled for me. It s all been settled for a long time." 
 
 "Where d you get that costume, Mr. Manning?" Azile Morrow 
 inquired. She sat, facing Lysander, who balanced himself on the 
 rail, his back against one of the posts. 
 
 " In the West," Lysander answered. " Oh, by the way I forgot 
 to ask you do you mind my smoking ? " 
 
 " No. And may I ? Would anybody see me here ? " 
 
 Lysander, still balancing himself expertly, craned backwards. 
 " Sure ! Nobody d see you. Have one ? " He pulled himself 
 upright, moved over to her settee, slapping his pockets until he 
 struck pasteboard. Mrs. Morrow selected a cigarette from the 
 little box he held out to her. He fumbled in his pocket again. 
 But with the cigarette between her lips, she held her face up. 
 He bent down and she lighted her cigarette at his. He did not 
 return to the rail ; instead he seated himself at her side. " And 
 I don t shock you by wanting to smoke ? " she asked. 
 
 " No I ve seen women smoke before. I ve been away from here 
 in the West." 
 
 " Oh, you ve lived in the West," Mrs. Morrow said in a sur 
 prised tone. " That explains it." Lysander did not ask her what 
 it explained and she went on, " What part of the West ? " 
 
 " Colorado, Wyoming, California." 
 
 " What brought you back here ? " 
 
 " Oh I don t know habit or homesickness." 
 
 " It was a girl." Mrs. Morrow turned and looked straight up 
 into his eyes. 
 
 " You re wrong," Lysander informed her. And without turning 
 he looked straight down into her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, piffle ! " Mrs. Morrow exclaimed. " It s always a girl." 
 She puffed an airy cloud into his face. 
 
 Lysander continued to examine her critically through the grey 
 smoke-film. His arm dropped back lightly along the edge of the 
 settee. But this time he did not contradict her. 
 
 " It s awfully becoming to you," she went on, still gazing frankly 
 up into his eyes. " That get-up." Then again frankly coquettish, 
 " How do you like mine ? " 
 
 Lysander surveyed her at length and at leisure. She was veiled 
 and trousered in a harem-costume of liberty-silk in which several 
 shades of yellow melted into several more of orange. She wore 
 many sliding bracelets of gold. A large uncut topaz suspended
 
 198 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 from a chain fell on her forehead. She had blackened her long 
 eyelashes and carmined her lips, but otherwise she was not made 
 up. The soft gauzes seemed to minimise her underlying mus 
 cularity, to exaggerate an indefinable but definite suggestion of 
 voluptuousness. 
 
 " Frankly," Lysander said coolly, " I don t like it." 
 
 Mrs. Morrow smiled enchantingly. " Of course you wouldn t 
 you lovely, average, normal country lad. I m glad you don t. 
 You d like me to go as a flower-girl or a milkmaid or Night or 
 Morning, wouldn t you ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. That isn t what you asked me. You asked me 
 if I liked it. I don t. But, you are much more exciting this 
 way." 
 
 His impudent point apparently penetrated. She smiled even 
 more dazzlingly. She had continued from the instant he seated 
 himself beside her to puff her cigarette directly into his face. His 
 cigarette had gone out. " Why don t you come to New York ? " 
 she suggested. 
 
 " I hate cities," Lysander answered. " I guess I was built for 
 the country." 
 
 "I guess you were," Azile Morrow agreed. She narrowed her 
 baleful eyes and stared at him intently. " Heavens, what a com 
 plexion! And what clear eyes! What milky teeth! And such 
 curls! Aren t girls always running their hands through those 
 curls?" 
 
 " Yes," Lysander answered, still terse. 
 
 Mrs. Morrow laughed. " I love your impudence." Her shapely 
 big white hand flew like a bird upwards. It rested with a faint 
 flutter on Lysander s crisply-roached golden crest, came down 
 softly across his cheek, dropped to her lap. 
 
 Lysander fumbled again for a match, but unsuccessfully. 
 Smiling, Mrs. Morrow watched him, her chin up, her lids more 
 than half over her baleful eyes. " There s a light here you know 
 if you re so desperate," she said, talking with the cigarette 
 between her lips. 
 
 But Lysander did not after all light his cigarette. One hand 
 removed it from his lips. The other fell off the settee to Mrs. 
 Morrow s waist, tightened there. Mrs. Morrow s head fell idly back 
 on his shoulder. 
 
 " Well, of course, whenever you come to New York, Southward," 
 Morena said on the way home, " I m at your disposal." 
 " Thanks," Southward responded, " I ll remember that."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 199 
 
 "No, you won t," Morena answered. "But I will. And I ll 
 recall it to you." 
 
 " All right," Southward replied indifferently. " You remem 
 ber it then." 
 
 " You re an insulting creature," Morena burst out after a pause 
 in which he studied his companion s inscrutable profile. " I d like 
 the job of taming you." His mischievous smile made this threat 
 innocuous. 
 
 " It would be some job, mister," Southward rejoined imper- 
 turbably. 
 
 " Oh, I know that all right," Morena agreed. " But let me tell 
 you it will take only a little more of this insolence and I ll make 
 up my mind that I ll try it. And if I make up my mind, it s the 
 same as done." His smile widened and brightened with accessions 
 of his mischievous mood. 
 
 " Think so ? " Southward questioned. 
 
 Morena burst into laughter. He gave the arm nearest him a 
 squeeze that indicated only humorous enjoyment. " You re a great 
 card, little lady." 
 
 The lane began to widen. The white fence showed just 
 ahead. 
 
 " May I come up to the garret to-night ? " Morena asked. 
 
 " You may not," Southward answered. 
 
 " Please ! " 
 
 "You may not," Southward insisted implacably. She stopped 
 and began squirting the light from her torch in circles about her. 
 
 " Do you mean this is where I get off ? " Morena inquired in an 
 incredulous tone. 
 
 " I do. Good night ! " Southward held out her hand. 
 
 " It s not only good night, you know but good-bye." 
 
 " Well, good-bye then." 
 
 Morena took the hand. He held it. "You re a heartless little 
 devil, missy." The smile had left his lips and eyes. " You really 
 give no quarter and you deserve none." 
 
 Southward made no reply. She squirted her light up into the 
 big bushes and further up into the trees. 
 
 " Look at me when you say good-bye," Morena insisted. 
 
 Southward looked at him. He was looking intently at her. 
 Everything that was Celtic seemed to have faded from Morena s 
 face; it had become entirely Latin. His voice had changed. 
 "You re one of the most fascinating creatures I ever saw in my 
 life, Southward Drake," he said slowly. " You bewitch me. I 
 don t love you and I don t think I ever would you re too hard
 
 200 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 but you bewitch me". And I bewitch you a little, although you 
 don t know that yet." He paused but he continued to look hard 
 at her. And Southward, still inundating the shrubbery with 
 flushings of light, continued to look hard at him. He still 
 held her hand. Her palm rested on his, cool as a sliver of 
 slate ; but she did not remove it. " We ve not done with each 
 other yet, senorita. There s lots of history that we re going to 
 live through together. It s going to be a fight. And I confess 
 I don t know whether you ll win or I. But there s going to be 
 a devil of a scrap some day." He paused. "You don t believe 
 that?" 
 
 " No," Southward answered contemptuously, " of course I 
 don t." 
 
 A swift dark flash of emotion made his face more deeply Latin. 
 
 " Say good-bye to me ! " he commanded in an imperious tone. 
 
 The hand that held hers so loosely tightened. The arm beyond 
 the hand tautened. A little jerk suddenly pulled Southward for 
 ward onto his breast. Before she could move, his lips had dipped 
 close against hers, stayed there. She rested in his arms one 
 quiescent instant, two, three 
 
 Then suddenly she tore herself loose, tore with the fury of a 
 leopardess. She trembled; she panted. Her face was white with 
 rage, but in her big eyes and on her trembling lips lay terror, 
 lay panic. She dropped stammering phrases. 
 
 " How dare you how I could kill you I never want to see 
 you as long as you " 
 
 Suddenly she fled to the house. 
 
 When Hester came in, the dawn was just pinkening the west. 
 Hester s absent eyes were fixed far ahead. But she moved with 
 quiet. The front door, under her slim hand, shut carefully; the 
 living-room door made no sound. Her foot had just touched the 
 first stair however when her mother s door opened and, candle in 
 hand, Mrs. Crowell appeared on the threshold. She wore a dull- 
 coloured kimono. Her yellowy-white hair in two thick braids, one 
 falling on each shoulder, invested her with a belated girlishness. 
 One long, fine-taloned hand pink against the flame shaded the 
 candle. The light swept up into her face, filmed it with fire. But 
 another light, an interior one, sent outwards at her eyes a 
 stronger glare. 
 
 " Well ? " she said. And her word was a question. 
 
 Hester stared at her. " Well," she repeated, puzzled. 
 
 " Have you anything to tell me ? " Mrs. Crewell demanded.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 201 
 
 " Anything to tell you, mother," Hester repeated in a dazed yoice. 
 " Why, what could I have to tell you ? " 
 
 The light went out behind Mrs. Crowell s face. " Then what 
 kind of a girl are you ? " she demanded, " getting in at this hour of 
 night or morning? Are you a " 
 
 But Hester had flown up the stairway.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 " WELL, Southward," said Hester. 
 
 " Well, Hester," said Southward. 
 
 Hester did not speak for a moment, but she gazed intently about 
 the garret, gazed so intently that her look though untranslatable 
 was comment, gazed at everything, the disorderly centre-table, the 
 furniture standing at odds, the dust eTerywhere. In the interval 
 Southward drew a cigarette from the box, began calmly to smoke. 
 Her gaze wandered too, but without interest; it came finally to 
 Hester. 
 
 " Good gracious ! " she exclaimed suddenly, " what is the matter ? 
 What has she been doing now? You re as tallowy as a candle." 
 
 " Oh, nothing special. It isn t that I m thinking of now. She 
 thought I had a chance for matrimony. It was a terrible disap 
 pointment to her." Hester laughed and, in spite of her wanness, 
 there was real mirth in her laugh. 
 
 " It s the garret," Hester went on after a while, " that frightens 
 me now. It doesn t seem like the same place. I m afraid. I have 
 a feeling that it will never be the same again our Refuge. I ve 
 a feeling that we ve exhausted its usefulness. But then, that s 
 not strange. I feel as if we d exhausted everything. I have a 
 sensation of emptiness and vacancy and silence, as if the whole 
 universe had emptied out." Hester also lighted a cigarette, but 
 mechanically, and she began to pull at it with her characteristic 
 little nervous puffs. 
 
 " Heavens knows, I m restless enough, myself," Southward ad 
 mitted. " I wander round this garret like a strange cat. I can t 
 adjust myself at all. And then, of course, it isn t the same. I 
 feel that I owe you an apology and an explanation, Hester. It 
 isn t a Secret Place any longer. Dwight used to come up here 
 evenings right along. And Morena came once." 
 
 " But not together, I take it," Hester emitted a sly gleam. 
 
 " No, never. Then of course Mrs. Morrow and her mother, who 
 tried to buy every bit of furniture in it, and Edith. That does 
 spoil the secrecy idea. However, who cares? We were only 
 keeping it secret from boobs. It s served its usefulness. It s got 
 us over a bad period." 
 
 202
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 203 
 
 " Like a new game in the winter-time," Hester interjected 
 slowly, " that you play and play and play until the very sight of 
 it gives you a feeling of nausea." 
 
 " Things have been going so fast these last two weeks that we 
 haven t had any time to talk. I m dying to know what you think 
 
 of everybody now Let s start right from the beginning and 
 
 go down the list. Leaving out Mrs. Boardman who, I take it, 
 you found as hard as a stone and as cold as a fish as I did. By 
 the way grandmother likes her very much. And really, to do her 
 justice, the old shark seemed to take a fancy to grandmother, used 
 to come over here and have long talks with her. Let s begin with 
 Mrs. Morrow. What is your final opinion on her ? " 
 
 " My last impression is the same as my first," Hester answered. 
 " I can t make up my mind about her to save my life. She 
 fascinates me. I can t keep my eyes off her when she s about. I 
 like her. And yet I distrust her sometimes. Not that she hasn t 
 a sort of splendid generosity. How do you feel ? " 
 
 " I still hate her," Southward answered, with a vivid enjoyment 
 of her own ferocity, " hate her like the devil. And say, you 
 remember I told you that her name Azile was Eliza screwed 
 round. Well, I was right. I ve got the goods on her. She had 
 a rich old aunt, Eliza Boardman, whom she expected to inherit 
 a fortune from. The old lady married and left it to her husband 
 though." 
 
 "Who told you?" 
 
 " Dwight. Of course he hadn t got the mix-up about the name. 
 Men are always so slow about such things, and naturally I didn t 
 peep." 
 
 " And Edith ? " Hester went on, " what do you make of her ? " 
 
 " She s sick," Southward said emphatically. " There s some 
 thing wrong with her, I don t know what. I don t think she knows 
 herself. Sometimes she seemed almost nutty. Did you ever 
 notice how in the morning she d wander on in the craziest vein ? " 
 
 " Yes," Hester admitted. " I did notice that. I never thought of 
 it particularly as a symptom of illness. She s rather vague often. 
 But I m sure that she s not quite well. She always says she is 
 though." 
 
 " It s nerves," Southward vouchsafed. " She s a strange woman." 
 
 " Yes, she s strange," Hester agreed. " But I love her de 
 votedly. And Morena," she went on. " I m interested, Southward, 
 in what you say about him. I never got to know him really; for 
 you see I didn t interest him any more than I did Dwight. He 
 interested me though. I think he s the handsomest man I ever saw
 
 204 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 in my life. I should have fallen dead in love with him at sixteen. 
 But there was a kind of strangeness about him. Most of the time 
 I didn t even feel akin to him. And then suddenly I d seem to 
 know him as well as you. That was when he was Irish. But 
 sometimes he was all Spanish. Did you notice that?" 
 
 Southward was contemplating her feet that swung nervously 
 back and forth during this speech. " Yes, I noticed it," she said 
 in a constrained tone. She seemed to follow some silent trail of 
 thought. Apparently it brought her to futile conclusion; for she 
 brought her clenched fist down hard on the couch. " What do you 
 think of Kipley?" she asked. "Do you like him?" 
 
 " Very, very much," Hester declared earnestly. " He was so 
 kind to me and mother. I had such a sense of comfort when he 
 talked with me. It was as easy as though he were another woman 
 and yet he had the man s point of view. I liked that feeling." 
 
 " I wonder what the answer to him is," Southward mused in a 
 perplexed voice. " Dwight believes that it was a tragic love-affair. 
 And it is true that I never saw a man who was so impervious 
 to women he was shell-proof. He won my vote because he wasn t 
 to be taken in by me, notwithstanding he thinks me too pretty to 
 go about unleashed those were his exact words. I couldn t make 
 a dent on him anywhere. My first trying-out conversation with 
 him was one of the most humiliating experiences I ve ever had. I 
 suddenly waked up to the fact that he wasn t looking at me when 
 I talked with him. His eyes were on my face, you understand, 
 but he looked through me. Very disturbing." Southward per 
 ceptibly enjoyed her own humiliation. " Now what do you think 
 of Dwight ? " she wound up suddenly. 
 
 Hester picked up another cigarette. She straightened it, rolled 
 and pressed it in her fingers, tapped it. " I think a lot of him," 
 she said musingly. " He s interesting and able and well-balanced 
 and sane and humorous and kind except that he s as heartless 
 a young brute as I ve ever met." 
 
 " Correct ! " Southward agreed, " you ve got the map of him ac 
 curate." 
 
 "If something sobering were to happen to him," Hester went 
 on, " it would be a good thing. A grief or a responsibility of some 
 kind." 
 
 " Right again, Hester," Southward applauded. " Perhaps your 
 little friend will hand him the jolt he needs." 
 
 " Look out he doesn t hand it to you ! " Hester warned. " He s 
 ruthless." 
 
 Southward laughed triumphantly. " The man doesn t live that
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 205 
 
 could," she boasted. " They re too easy. I wish God had provided 
 us women with another sex. I m tired working with this present 
 one. I can beat their game with one hand tied." 
 
 " How did Dwight get on with his novel ? " Hester asked. 
 
 Southward laughed. " He didn t get on with it at all. He ll 
 never finish that novel or any other. He s not really a writer. He 
 only thinks he is." 
 
 " He s written one book," Hester remonstrated. 
 
 " So have I," replied Southward. " Anybody can write one 
 book." 
 
 " Now," Hester asked, " what do you think of John ? " 
 
 " In a way he s a big person," Southward answered directly. 
 " In a way, he s the best of the boiling." She stopped. " He s 
 full of energy. But I think," she went on slowly, " he lacks 
 punch somehow and someway I don t exactly know how to de 
 scribe it." 
 
 Dull silence fell. Hester looked down. Southward looked away. 
 Suddenly the two pairs of eyes met. 
 
 " I wonder," Hester said, " if they ll ever come again." 
 
 " No," Southward answered decidedly, " I don t think so. 
 They re the kind of people who want change." 
 
 There was another interval of stealthy silence. The two pairs 
 of eyes wandered. Suddenly again they met. 
 
 " I wonder," Hester said, " if we ll ever see them again." 
 
 " I wonder too," Southward echoed. " Well, they all seemed gen 
 uinely interested to have us come to New York." 
 
 " Yes," Hester agreed. She went on talking slowly, and as she 
 talked, her voice deadened gradually. " And yet do you remember 
 how wild those Elliotts were to have us come to see them and 
 how that time we went to call in Boston they didn t know us when 
 they saw us, and how frosty they were when they found out who 
 we were ? " 
 
 " Yes, I remember," Southward admitted grimly. " Still I really 
 think those people mean it." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do believe that," Hester said. " I can t for the life 
 of me think anything else." Emphasis livened her voice for the 
 moment. 
 
 Another silence fell. 
 
 " It would be strange if we never heard another word from one 
 of them," Hester dropped after a long time. Her voice had gone 
 dead again. 
 
 " Well, of course, you never can tell," Southward said philosoph 
 ically. "Hark, what s that? Oh, Charlotte s bell. That means
 
 206 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 mail. Wait a moment. I ll be right back." She flew down the 
 stairs. 
 
 She returned quickly, a big manilla envelope in one hand and 
 a small package in the other. " Well, we ve heard," she said 
 carelessly. " That s Dwight s handwriting. Let s see what s in 
 the package." She slipped the cord off, pulled the wrappings 
 away. There emerged a box of a heavy shiny white cardboard. 
 She opened it, pulled out a cigarette case of silver, mono- 
 grammed. " Isn t that a beauty ? " she exclaimed. She turned to 
 the letter. 
 
 " Well, I must be going," Hester murmured. 
 
 " Oh, stay and hear the news," Southward commanded, running 
 a hairpin under the flap of the envelope. 
 
 " No, I ll come over later," Hester protested. " Good-bye." 
 
 Southward was deep in her letter. " Good-bye," she answered 
 absently. Then, " Oh, Hester," she called abruptly. 
 
 Hester was half-way down the stairs. " Yes." 
 
 " Remember we re going to New York." 
 
 " I don t believe it, Southward." 
 
 " Hester, we re going to New York." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 Hester hurried down the South Lane and up the Lower Road to 
 the main street. She entered the Post Office with a swinging 
 tread, passed swiftly to the mail window. 
 
 " Nothing for you, Hester," the postmaster said. Hester s step 
 lagged as she emerged. She walked slowly home. 
 
 " Any mail ? " her mother demanded as she entered the house. 
 
 " No," Hester answered in a listless voice. 
 
 " Haven t heard from your New York friends yet, have you ? " 
 Mrs. Crowell went on relentlessly. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I thought you wouldn t," Mrs. Crowell declared. 
 
 Hester did not reply. 
 
 " Everybody in this town is saying," Mrs. Crowell continued in 
 her even monotone, " that Southward refused that Dwight Cameron 
 but that you didn t get a chance to refuse anybody that that John 
 Smith didn t come up to the scratch at the last moment." 
 
 "If they mean that he did not ask me to marry him, they are 
 quite right," Hester vouchsafed. " You might tell them, if you 
 care, that his attitude towards me was never anything but that of 
 a friend." 
 
 " Oh, I don t care," Mrs. Crowell protested. " That isn t what 
 they say. They say he flirted with you all the time."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 207 
 
 " They re mistaken," Hester said wearily. 
 
 " Who s that turning into the gate ? " Mrs. Crowell asked. " Oh, 
 Libbie Hatch. Hullo, Libbie. Glad to see you ! Come in!" 
 
 Libbie came in, her earrings swinging with her quick, brisk 
 trot. " Well, I saw you go by, Hester," she panted, " I was 
 at Mis Snow s. I called from the porch but you didn t hear me. 
 I tried to catch up with you but I couldn t Land sakes, how you 
 do pelt I I stopped in for your mail, knowing I was coming here. 
 These are for you, Hester." 
 
 She handed Hester a package and a letter. 
 
 Hester disappeared, floating swiftly up the stairs. 
 
 The letter was brief. 
 
 Dear Hester, 
 
 I have not written simply because I have not had a moment. I 
 want to thank you for the summer* I never had one like it before 
 and I shall never have one like it again. I m sending you a book 
 you said once that you had never read it. It is one of my 
 favourites. 
 
 John. 
 
 The book was Peter Ibbetson.
 
 BOOK THREE
 
 BOOK THREE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " THERE they are ! " Southward exclaimed. And her face that 
 had been a little shadowed with uncertainty lightened with a 
 triumphant smile. She wared her hand. 
 
 " Where ? " Hester asked. The word came in a gasp. Her hand 
 went out and clutched Southward s arm for support. But before 
 Southward could speak, Hester s face changed; her cataclysmic 
 blush filled its hollows, her smile illuminated its contours. 
 
 Dwight and John darted through the big waiting crowd in the 
 Grand Central Station and shook hands. 
 
 " The Planet has sent me up here, Miss Drake," Dwight stated 
 formally, " to ask you how you like New York." 
 
 " Oh, very much," Southward answered with an equal formality. 
 " Tell the readers of the Planet that I am charmed with the 
 metropolis. It s so like dear Paris." 
 
 Dwight laughed. " You re on ! " he exclaimed. He continued 
 to laugh as he took her arm. But obviously his laughter was 
 merely the foam of an oncoming tide of good spirits. He steered 
 her dexterously through the crowd. This was an easy process. 
 People gave way instinctively before the tall, vigorous, well-dressed 
 young man whose whole attitude breathed arrogant command and 
 whose mischievous blue eyes so pleasantly re-enforced that arro 
 gance. " Well," he said and his tone was half exultation and half 
 relief, " you re here." 
 
 " Yes," Southward returned and her tone was half triumph and 
 half gaiety, " I m here." 
 
 " Your letters have been bully." 
 
 " Well, for that matter, your own letters have been pretty good." 
 
 " God knows, I tried to entertain you." He looked at her 
 critically. " You ve lost some of your tan." 
 
 " Of course. I always do in the winter." 
 
 " You re thinner too." 
 
 " A little. You look well." 
 
 " I m feeling grand and fit. John kept after me when I got home 
 from Shayneford and I re been going to a gym regularly boxing 
 
 211
 
 212 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 and swimming. Getting in trim for your visit, you see. It ll be 
 some visit, believe me. I m going to rip New York open 
 from the Bronx to the Battery." 
 
 "Thanks. I shall enjoy that process. How s the novel going?" 
 
 " Oh, that one not at all. But a new one s going fine. You 
 see after I got away from Shayneford, it was pretty hard to keep 
 up the atmosphere. I ll have to go there again sometime, But 
 don t let s talk about that now. I ll give you a spiel about the 
 novel later." 
 
 " All right. Oh say before I forget it," Southward veered off 
 the course for an instant. " Can you tell me about that big 
 German oculist Greinschmidt that the papers are so full of at 
 present? Is he going to make a long visit to this country?" 
 
 " Yes, several months, I think. Why ? " 
 
 " A friend of mine wants to consult him." 
 
 " He s going West immediately. I ll keep an eye on him," 
 Dwight promised. " I ll tell you when he comes back." 
 
 There fell a pause. It was not, however, so much lack of 
 conversation as that Dwight fixed his companion with another 
 interested and critical scrutiny. " Lord, you are a pretty thing," 
 he exclaimed. And he continued to look at her with a cool steadi 
 ness which had a touch of deliberate impertinence. She returned 
 the look in kind. Their glances met, sparkled into mirth. 
 
 They stopped in the doorway, waiting for the others. Southward 
 stared about her. " Heavens, what a racket ! Oh, and isn t that 
 building tall ! Let me count. Twelve stories. I m crazy about the 
 skyscrapers. When I was here before, I used to stand for hours 
 watching them building one on Fourth Avenue. How I used to 
 envy those men working so high in the air. I ve seen them go 
 sailing like a bird on a girder. I d have given anything to do 
 that. Say, do you suppose I could take a trip in a flying machine 
 while I m here ? " 
 
 " Gee, you re a hard-headed young woman. It makes me dizzy 
 just to think of such heights. But don t waste any time on these 
 mushroom growths. Wait till I show you the Metropolitan Tower 
 and the Woolworth Building and the Singer. Say, they re some 
 pumpkins." 
 
 But Southward s eyes, as though involuntarily impelled, con 
 tinued to scale one after another the buildings that surrounded 
 them. 
 
 The other two were following at a slower pace, Hester obviously 
 bewildered. " Does it confuse you, Hester, all this noise ? " John 
 asked.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 213 
 
 " Oh, very much," Hester answered. " I m dazed. It doesn t 
 seem real. But then I ve been living in a dream ever since it 
 was decided that we were to come. I feel as though I d like to 
 reach out and touch something solid. It s very queer that sensa 
 tion there s a kind of giddiness to it. I feel a little as you do at 
 the beginning of sickness, as though there weren t a solid founda 
 tion under your feet. Still I hope if it is a dream that I won t 
 wake up. Is this really a station? What a wonderful place it is! 
 Like a palace. Are those the signs of the Zodiac? It makes it all 
 the more like a dream or a vision perhaps to enter New York 
 through this wonderful gateway." 
 
 John laughed. " I won t wake you up," he promised. " How 
 are you ? " He examined her searchingly while she answered. 
 
 " I feel better," Hester replied. " Ever since mother said that 
 I could go away, I ve felt better." 
 
 Her blush had faded. Now she was colourless, almost bloodless. 
 The lines of her profile cut stark through her skin. Every shadow 
 was a purple hollow. Every line was a brown furrow. 
 
 " Your mother wanted you to come to New York then ? " 
 
 " Yes. She proposed it. Mother s been very kind ever since 
 my illness. And then things happened just right for me. A 
 relative of Mrs. Drake s wrote and asked if she could come to 
 Shayneford to spend the winter. That gare Southward a chance 
 to leave. When she came over to ask me if I could go, mother 
 proposed I should before Southward could get the words out of 
 her mouth. You see the doctor had told mother that I ought to 
 have a change. I got leave of absence from the school for a year. 
 I had some money of my own saved up and mother gave me 
 some more, a hundred and fifty dollars. Southward and I can 
 stay as long as our money lasts." 
 
 " We ll see that it lasts a long time," John turned a sobered 
 glance from her face for a moment, " I suppose you know that 
 you are in our hands for the day. Dwight and I constituted 
 ourselves a committee of entertainment, the instant we 
 got your letters, saying you were coming. You re to have a 
 party of welcome at my place to-morrow night. I m afraid 
 we ve laid out a pretty exhausting program for you to-day. 
 Perhaps I d better tell Dwight that we must cut some of it 
 out." 
 
 Hester stayed him with a quick clutch on his arm. " Oh, don t," 
 she entreated. " I want to get tired. I don t sleep very well. I 
 haven t slept for more than a few hours for nights and nights and 
 nights. I want to get so tired that I ll sleep like a log. And
 
 214 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 besides, Southward will want to do everything you ve planned. 
 Please." 
 
 " All right," John said, " the original schedule goes. We re 
 taking you to your rooms first." 
 
 They continued to wind about the groups that dotted the main 
 hall of the mammoth station. At times Dwight and Southward 
 seemed to disappear, but John always found their trail. Reunited, 
 they came out finally into the blinding glare of the brilliant No 
 vember day into that welter of sharp contrasts, of tall buildings 
 with short, of foreign faces with native, of opulence with dinginess, 
 of wealth with poverty which is the New York scene, into that 
 mixture of hurry, confusion, noise, transitoriness, and incompletion 
 which is its atmosphere. Above stretched a sky, as smoothly 
 shining as a sheet of blue metal. The air was clear, crisp, electric ; 
 its tingle flashed through the blood, brought colour to the face, light 
 to the eyes. In the street, a tangle of traffic jarred and jangled 
 from curb to curb. On the sidewalk the crowd stretched from 
 gutters to buildings. That crowd drew Dwight and Southward 
 into its current, submerged them, and bore them smoothly onward. 
 John and Hester plunged in after them, crossed the street. 
 
 " Which one was it, John ? " Dwight called. " Where in thunder 
 did that oh, here he is ! " 
 
 Out of the flood of moving vehicles in the street, a taxi churned 
 to the sidewalk and came to a boiling quiet beside them. 
 
 Dwight called the address. He helped the girls in. The two 
 men seated themselves with their backs to the driver. The taxi 
 dived expertly into the flood of vehicles. 
 
 " Well," Dwight remarked easily. " This is New York." 
 
 " Yes." Southward echoed this statement with equal ease. Her 
 smile of delight filled her face with sparkle. " This is New York 
 
 again. The last time I was here " A jagged flash of expression 
 
 as of a remembered horror cut out the sparkle from her air for 
 an instant. Her eyes met Dwight s in a gleam of understanding. 
 The terror disappeared. She gave a quick glance at Hester and 
 John who were looking out one window together. " This is New 
 York," she repeated. " Get that skyscraper, Hester. Fifteen 
 stories. Think of it, Hester. New York ! " 
 
 " I don t quite believe it though," Hester said almost inaudibly. 
 Her eyes went to the sidewalk, like an overloaded escalator, 
 streaming past them. Her glance came back swiftly as though 
 the sight were too alien to be sustained with comfort. It sought 
 John s face and clung there. 
 
 " You seem to believe it, Southward," Dwight commented.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 215 
 
 " Oh, I ve believed it ever since last summer," Southward an 
 nounced tranquilly. " The things that I want to happen do 
 happen that s all." She craned out the window. " Twelve," she 
 said meditatively after a tiny pause in which her glance rapidly 
 scaled a skyscraper. And in another second with the excitement 
 of discovery, " Sixteen stories sixteen ! " Then after a long 
 pause in a loud peremptory tone. " Sit on his head, one of you ! 
 Horse down ! " she turned to explain briefly. " They ll never get 
 him up that way. See what a lovely street, Hetter. Looks a little 
 like Commonwealth Avenue." 
 
 " Yes, I m staring at it," Hester answered, " but I m afraid I m 
 not seeing it." 
 
 " Park Avenue," Dwight explained. 
 
 "I know just what you re going through, Hester," John said. 
 " For the first three years that I lived here, it was like going to 
 a different planet every time I came back to New York. I can t 
 get that feeling now to save my life. And let me tell you I miss 
 it. Keep it as long as you can, Hester." 
 
 " Keep it," Hester burst into unexpected articulateness. " It s 
 keeping me." 
 
 The taxi chugged across an avenue, dirty and crowded but broad, 
 to a street, dirty and crowded too but narrow; churned towards 
 a big cream-coloured building made of a smooth mottled brick 
 with metal fire-escapes zigzagging down its front; boiled up to 
 the curb; stopped dead. 
 
 Dwight leaped out, paid the man. " There s your letter-box 
 over there in the corner," John said as he pushed open the door. 
 " And, as I live, two letters ! " 
 
 The row of brass boxes, set into the marble of the vestibule, 
 were choked with letters, dodgers, picture postcards. Above one 
 of them was a slip of cardboard neatly printed with the two 
 names, Miss Southward Drake, Miss Hester Crowell. John drew 
 a bunch of keys from his pocket, inserted one in the lock of the 
 box; the little door swung back. 
 
 " One for you, Hester," Southward said, seizing the letters. 
 
 " From Edith," John commented. " I recognise the stationery." 
 
 " And one for me," Southward added. 
 
 " From Azile," Dwight gave it a careless glance, " I recognise 
 the writing." 
 
 John opened the inner door with another key from his collection. 
 " Now brace yourself," he warned them. " Five flights ! " 
 
 The flights were easy ones with landings half-way up. The 
 country-girls skimmed them like birds. Southward s eye caught
 
 216 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 examiningly on every detail of the upward journey; the stone steps 
 a little littered, the dumb-waiters, loaded with unsightliness, the 
 open doors which gave glimpses into shadowy, cluttered interiors, 
 the people who passed. But Hester moved swiftly up the five 
 flights without fatigue apparently but apparently also without 
 observation. 
 
 John opened the door on the sixth floor. " Welcome home ! " 
 he said as he swung it back. He led them into a narrow dark 
 passageway. 
 
 " There s your living-room." He pointed to a tiny room at 
 the right, and proceeding rapidly straight ahead, " Here s your 
 kitchen." 
 
 Hester stood stockstill holding her look of a dazed wonder. 
 
 But Southward was characteristically present-minded. She 
 darted first to the big window, pulled aside the curtains 
 that screened them from a pour of sun. It opened on a square 
 interior court. Across were red tiled roofs; above a patchwork, 
 blue and white, of cloud and sky. " Looks like pictures of 
 Italian towns," Southward commented. " I like it, don t you, 
 Hetter?" 
 
 But Hester did not speak. Very slowly she nodded. 
 
 Southward dashed through the other two rooms, a tiny bedroom 
 and a bathroom. She opened the closet doors. She stood for an 
 instant silent, looking keenly about, examining the furniture, 
 measuring heights and lengths. " I think this is great," she com 
 mented. 
 
 " I knew you d like it," John said. " Miss Winthrop, from whom 
 you are subletting it, found it very pleasant here. Remember the 
 rent is four-fifty a week and that they come round weekly, not 
 monthly, to collect. By the way, Azile and Dwight stopped in 
 yesterday and stocked the place with ice and groceries and eats 
 of various descriptions." 
 
 " That was very thoughtful of Mrs. Morrow," Southward 
 turned a level glance on Dwight. 
 
 " She was no end of help," Dw^ght replied, idly surveying the 
 court. " She spent the whole day at it and she was so bewitched 
 by the place that, instead of going out to meals with me as she 
 was invited to do she stayed here and cooked luncheon and dinner. 
 At least that was her description of it later, though it seems to 
 me I did the cooking." 
 
 John was in the meantime examining the refrigerator, explaining 
 to Hester the uses of the gas stove and the lift in the hall. " Now, 
 girls," he concluded abruptly, " Dwight and I are going over to
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 217 
 
 the Club to get our mail. We ll be back in three-quarters of an 
 hour. Remember the rest of the afternoon and evening belong 
 to us." 
 
 " How about a little walk before dinner ? " John asked when, 
 prompt to the second, they rejoined the girls. 
 
 " We d love it," Southward answered with an immediate spark 
 of vivacity. " At least it s up to Hester. Remember though, 
 Hetter, you re not to let yourself get tired out." 
 
 " I want to get tired out if you ll let me," Hester pleaded 
 humbly. " I would like to go to bed dead as a log. Yes, let s 
 walk." 
 
 " Oh, we ll agree to tire you all right," Dwight promised cheerily. 
 
 They struck across town. On Fifth Avenue, the purple street 
 lights just beginning to glow through the soft vaporous dusk, 
 produced the effect of colour not light, like flowers cut from 
 pearls and amethysts. The sidewalks were crowded; idle people 
 sauntering; smartly dressed women and no less smartly dressed 
 men, some with the easy grace, the careful dressing, the immacu 
 late grooming, the accent of personality, the studied unconscious 
 ness which marks stage people; the others an indiscriminate ruck 
 of men-and-women-about-town, demi-mondaines, store-girls, out- 
 landers : busy people hurrying ; girls with hat -boxes, messenger- 
 boys with flowers, pale readers from the Library, human wreckage 
 from the slums. Occasional lace-peddlers, squatting on the side 
 walks, held up their wares to the passers-by, giving the scene an 
 air oddly foreign; occasional beggars whipped through the crowd, 
 furtively asking for alms and adding another touch as 
 strangely un-American. These human streams netted the side 
 walks with colour, light, motion. The street was caught in another 
 web of glitter and glare, a jam of fashionable motor traffic. It 
 divided into two parallel lines of sparkling jet that jam of 
 motor traffic one going north, the other going south. But what 
 ever its direction, its burden never varied, pampered female flesh, 
 exquisitely draped and ornamented. All this was wedged between 
 a double line of shop windows, flaunting a display delicately or 
 exotically voluptuous; gowns, laces, veils, scarfs, hats, artificial 
 flowers, gloves, jewels, all of the most fragile and most expensive 
 materials, a display which explained perfectly the women in the 
 motors. At one end the sharp relentless prow of the Flatiron 
 Building cut the seething flood in two streams; at the other the 
 huge, softly-furry bank of the Park trees made mystery of its 
 disappearance.
 
 218 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 They walked north on one side to the high, grey, lacy-spired 
 pile of the Cathedral and south on the other to the flat, white, lion- 
 guarded mass of the Library. For a time, the crowd seemed to 
 increase. The men were kept busy pointing out celebrities. South 
 ward recognised a face here and there; and continually she called 
 Hester s attention to the signs of firms that they had known 
 hitherto only through advertisement. 
 
 Hester talked little and always in low tones. But excitement 
 had begun to mount in her. Superficially she looked better. Her 
 cheeks glowed with a deep pink that had a purplish tinge, as 
 though the whipping November air were warm, not cold; her eyes 
 gleamed with a perpetual surprise. "Where do all these people 
 come from ? " she asked. 
 
 John who for the most part watched her, laughed. 
 
 " Nobody knows. There are endless reservoirs in New York, and 
 the Avenue seems to tap them all." 
 
 " I have enjoyed the books very much," Hester said timidly after 
 a silence, " and the magazines." 
 
 John smiled. " I hope they made a rebel of you." 
 
 Hester shook her head. " I m too afraid. But I read them all. 
 They terrified me. I can t believe them. But I did read every 
 word. Some things I had to read over and over again before I got 
 a glimmer of an idea what they were about. I ve made out a list 
 of phrases that I want you to explain to me." 
 
 " I ll do that gladly. Why didn t you write and ask? " 
 
 " I didn t want to bother you," Hester answered almost inaudibly. 
 " It would have meant a lot of writing for you there were so 
 many of them and some of them so complicated. It would have 
 been like writing an A B C manual of socialism, anarchism, 
 syndicalism, and feminism." 
 
 " I should have enjoyed doing that for you, Hester." 
 
 Silence again fell. John broke it presently. 
 
 " I ve enjoyed your letters, Hester. You write wonderful letters. 
 It is extraordinary, that gift of correspondence which women have 
 to so much greater a degree than men. They make the most 
 commonplace happenings seem like epic history. It s a gift quite 
 different from the creative art as such. Your letters are aston 
 ishingly full of that sort of thing. Take Tabby for instance I 
 followed her fate and the fate of her two families with breathless 
 interest. I was so afraid you wouldn t find a home for Mr. Roose 
 velt that I very nearly telegraphed you to express him on here. 
 Yes, you are some letter writer." 
 
 " Oh, do you really think so? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 219 
 
 "Yes. Let me see. I have five of your letters I think nice 
 long ones." 
 
 " Yes, you must have. I have five of yours." 
 
 " I wanted more of course and many times I But I knew 
 
 I hadn t the right to involve a woman so busy in a correspondence." 
 John s voice had faltered at the beginning of this speech, but it 
 ended in a crisp controlled accent as of one who talks business. 
 
 At Forty-first Street they turned west. " Oh, Hetter," South 
 ward exclaimed joyfully, " just think we re going to be on Broad 
 way together at last." 
 
 " You say it," Hester answered tensely. " I hear your words 
 and I see your lips move, but I don t believe it. I can t." 
 
 They passed to the rear of the Library, cut through Bryant 
 Park, across Sixth Avenue through Forty-second Street. They 
 stopped on the corner and the two girls frankly looked up and 
 down the street. It contrasted in every way and in every way 
 to its disadvantage- with the Avenue they had just left; it was 
 meagre, in aspect narrow and dirty. Everywhere was swift noisy 
 movement; crowds with a more business-like air covering the 
 sidewalks; cars, drays, taxis, motors choking the streets. Twilight 
 had come definitely. On both sides, as far as the eye could reach, 
 the lights were on; the fagades of many of the buildings were 
 so heavily jewelled that they turned the night to a silver white 
 day. To the complexity of movement, gigantic electric signs, con 
 stantly changing, added their noiseless confusion. The side streets, 
 a Jblare of light at their intersection with Broadway, seemed 
 to thicken gradually until they were tunnels of impenetrable 
 gloom, except where, high up, an elevated train flashed a noiseless 
 golden ribbon across the purple dark, or where, even higher, an 
 occasional lighted window in a skyscraper seemed to paste an 
 orange patch on the very heavens. 
 
 Southward, quick, laconic, concise and always gay made com 
 ment on everything, and Dwight looked at the things she indicated 
 as from a new point of view. But Hester, without speaking, 
 stared about her and John, in much the same kind of silence, looked 
 at Hester. 
 
 " After all, Hetter," Southward turned once to say, " Broadway 
 itself is rather a cheap performance, isn t it ? " 
 
 " Good for you, Southward," Dwight applauded. " I knew they 
 wouldn t put this dingy lane over on you." He smiled as with 
 a personal triumph. " The Great White Way, the Alleys of Stars 
 the Putrid Pike would describe it better." 
 
 " They re putting it over on me," Hester admitted. And again
 
 220 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 she flared into an uncharacteristic articulateness. " I can t tell 
 you whether I m floating on a rainbow or walking through a 
 kaleidoscope." 
 
 " Good for you, Hester," John applauded in his turn. " That s 
 what they re always doing to me. Let them put it over on you. 
 It won t hurt you." 
 
 " How about dinner ? " Dwight inquired suddenly. 
 
 " Suits me," John said. " Here we are at the Pat." 
 
 The open doorway of the looming white building, light-encircled 
 at the roof, offered a spreading shelter of wrought iron and glass 
 at its base. Under this, and at the end of a carpeted path, a negro, 
 huge, bronzed, green-uniformed, swung a revolving door with the 
 regularity of an automaton. Swept centrifugally inwards, they 
 came into a wide, brilliant lobby where together men and women 
 sat and chatted and waited; or stood and chatted and waited; 
 or alone sat and stood and waited. The atmosphere was hectic 
 with colour, sparkle, perfume, laughter, chatter, silken rustlings, 
 the heady excitement of extravagant spending, waiting, and 
 rendezvous. Through openings that the shifting crowd made, a 
 dining-room displayed here a fairyland of mural decoration and 
 there a Renaissance splendour of flower, fruit, rainbow patisserie, 
 favours, piled high on a big round table. Waiters hurried noise 
 lessly across the scene. 
 
 " This hotel is eighteen stories high," Southward announced. 
 
 " The grill ? " questioned John. 
 
 " The grill," answered Dwight. 
 
 They moved to the right, into a room very simple and quiet, 
 seats lining the wall. At the door, a waiter met them. " Four," 
 said Dwight. Hester stood, rooted, gazing about her. But South 
 ward, with a quick movement, put herself ahead of her. " Follow 
 me, Hetter ! " she breathed. As though mechanically propelled, 
 Hester moved on. The men brought up the rear. The waiter led 
 the procession to a corner. Other waiters sprang to the table, 
 snatched the chairs away. 
 
 " Not too near the music," Dwight said without expression as 
 though this was the regular formula. The head waiter indicated 
 another table. 
 
 " All right," Dwight agreed. Waiters again snatched chairs 
 away. " You girls take the wall seats, please we ll take the ends." 
 They settled themselves. Dwight leisurely surveyed the room. 
 He pointed out a celebrity or two. 
 
 " What wonderful-looking women," Hester exclaimed, " I didn t 
 know women could be so beautiful."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 221 
 
 John smiled his pleasant understanding smile. He too turned 
 and surveyed the room. " I used to feel that way. But somehow 
 nowadays New York women look so artificial to me that, sub 
 consciously I accept them as so much stage-setting. If you want 
 my unbiassed opinion, I think the two most attractive women in 
 the room are at our table." 
 
 " Sure," Dwight agreed. He added in an undertone to South 
 ward, " You put it all over them." 
 
 The boyish simplicity with which Southward dressed made her 
 an effective figure anywhere, but in contrast with the artificial 
 vari-coloured splendours of Broadway, she had something of a 
 military smartness and plainness. Her trim suit of navy-blue 
 serge was without decoration of any kind, except for the triangles 
 of white china-silk blouse which at the neck turned over its lapels. 
 The crown of her plain black hat was small but it sank low on 
 her head. The rim rolled down low at the sides and the back but 
 shot up in front, and high an effect supplemented by a long, 
 white, sharp-pointed wing. It revealed, that flare upwards, the 
 whole of her beautiful brow, the dipping bands of hair, sleek as a 
 bird s breast, and underneath the profile bold as a hawk s. There 
 was a change in Southward, however, a change so impalpable as to 
 be almost imperceptible. She was thinner, more restless. Into the 
 calm and clarity of her gaze had come a question, as though the 
 stream of her thought rippled eternally over a snag. 
 
 Southward would inevitably attract attention, whatever her cos 
 tume, if only for the verve of her colouring, the audacity of her 
 look, the spirit that emanated from every movement. She would 
 always dominate the social atmosphere until it became mere setting 
 for her. And to-night all these qualities seemed emphasised in 
 her. She flashed from pose to pose with the swiftness of a woman 
 at a high point of excitement. 
 
 Hester, on the other hand, would attract attention nowhere, 
 would inevitably sink deeper and deeper into her background until 
 it absorbed her. Still though a quiet figure, she was a pleasing 
 one. She could not possibly mimic Southward s instinctive chic 
 but evidently from its air of quiet taste somebody had overseen 
 her dressing. Her modest brown suit, though palpably ready- 
 made, was at least innocuous. Her hair had been done in a new 
 and more becoming way, two long braids that encircled her head. 
 The big wide, low-crowned brown hat with its single uncurled 
 brown plume fitted perfectly into the composition. Her long, 
 slim hands looked distinguished in their long, black gloves. 
 
 All this time, the waiter stood at Dwight g elbow, presenting
 
 222 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 menus and emitting the slight deferential coughs and movements 
 that were calculated to bring this difficult party to a knowledge 
 of its duty. 
 
 " A cocktail ? " Dwight said finally, looking at Southward. 
 
 " Yes," Southward answered promptly. " Hester, get that hat 
 over in the corner." 
 
 " You too, Hester ? " Dwight asked. 
 
 Hester looked terrified. " I don t know. I never tasted a 
 cocktail in my life. What will it do to me? " 
 
 Dwight laughed. " Oh, nothing in particular except to cast 
 a pale-pink glow over life. Come on, Hester, be a sport." 
 
 Southward s amused laugh rippled out. " Make her, Dwight," 
 she advised. " In the garret, I always kept a bottle of cocktails 
 for myself. But Hetter would never drink anything stronger than 
 the elderberry we put up. Come on, Hetter, the time has come 
 to take the fatal plunge." 
 
 " Don t unless you want to," interposed John. 
 
 Hester looked more and more uncertain, more and more misera 
 ble, John more and more sympathetic. Southward and Dwight 
 continued quite openly to enjoy the situation. Even Hester began 
 to enjoy it at last. " I can t describe how I feel," she said, smiling, 
 but with a troubled brow. " It s as though I were giving my soul 
 to everlasting perdition. And yet of course I want to drink a 
 cocktail. I ve got to begin sometime. I m afraid of what it will 
 do and yet I want to see what it will do. Yes, I ll take one." 
 
 " Well, if you have to be carried out after one cocktail," Dwight 
 reassured her, " John and I guarantee that it will be done with 
 the minimum of publicity. What do you girls want to eat ? " 
 
 " Oh, go ahead and order, Dwight ! " John commanded. " Don t 
 bother them ! They don t know whether they re on their heads or 
 their heels. They ll eat anything or everything or nothing. It s 
 great." His face clouded. " I m so sorry that Edith is missing 
 this. She would love it." 
 
 " I m so sorry too," Hester said. " Why didn t she come ? " 
 
 " I begged her to come but she wouldn t. She said that it would 
 be too much of a crowd if others came trailing along and would 
 only blur your first impressions. Then she thought the long 
 evening would tire her she gets tired so easily nowadays. I really 
 am very worried about Edith. Azile, as it happened, had an 
 unbreakable engagement for the early part of the evening. She 
 was heartbroken. She was crazy to join the party." 
 
 Dwight was in the meantime ordering with the assistance of 
 the waiter, who expressed a sympathy almost tender with his
 
 223 
 
 divagations, oysters, chicken Maryland, a salad, ices, patisserie, 
 coffee, and cheese. When the oysters came, they had to teach 
 Hester how to dress them. This was accomplished with much 
 mirth, even from her. She announced that she liked them. 
 
 " Southward," Hester exclaimed suddenly between courses, 
 " there s a woman smoking over there." 
 
 Southward swept the party with her alert appraising glance. 
 " So she is ! " she said. Her hand sought her coat-pocket. She 
 pulled out a silver cigarette-case, pressed the spring. The waiter 
 brought her a light. 
 
 Dwight smiled. " They won t put anything over on you." 
 
 There was a faint note of exultation in his tones. His air was 
 that of the man whose horse has won the race. 
 
 " Are you going to smoke, Hester ? " Southward asked. 
 
 " No," Hester announced with determination. " I m not 
 going to have to think of anything to-night but what I m look 
 ing at." 
 
 It was getting towards the theatre-hour when they emerged from 
 the hotel. The confusion on Broadway had increased a hundred 
 fold. The sidewalks were crowded with cross-currents of pedes- 
 trianism; the streets were filled with cross-currents of traffic. And 
 as the confusion had increased, so immeasurably had increased the 
 noise, colour, light that quality in the atmosphere of lavish 
 pleasure-seeking ; gay or cynical or perfunctory, but always luxuri 
 ous and unthinking. They walked slowly north. At the Circle, 
 they turned and walked slowly south. Dwight and Southward 
 kept up their continual comment but it was a long time before 
 Hester spoke. " What is this place ? " she asked faintly after a 
 while. 
 
 " The Metropolitan Opera House," John answered. 
 
 " May I stop here a moment and watch ? " Hester said this in 
 a tone of excitement that had even its note of irritation, as 
 though she must hold to one stable detail for a moment or submit 
 to mental anarchy. 
 
 " Of course," John answered. " Tell us when you ve had 
 enough, Hester." 
 
 They stopped. Dwight and Southward snapped comments back 
 and forth, comments that were full of veiled impudence, an 
 obvious joy in that impudence; interrupted by sudden jets of 
 laughter. Hester, silent, moveless rapt drank the spectacle 
 down. And John, much amused and yet with an undercurrent of 
 sympathetic understanding in his look, watched Hester. 
 
 It was always the same, that spectacle. A glossy file of motors,
 
 224 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 like an interminable carefully-articulated serpent whose tail 
 stretched around the corner, followed the curve of the curb. It 
 inched continually nearer until the head lay in front of the en 
 trance. When it stopped, the door of the first motor flew open 
 and a man or two in the glossy black, the stark white of 
 evening clothes leaped out, extended assisting hands. A woman 
 or two one embodied glisten of evening gown, evening wrap, 
 bared flesh, silken ankle, and many jewels, bending an elaborate 
 coiffure to avoid the door-top, reached a cautious glittering foot 
 to the carpeted sidewalk. The deserted motor chopped itself off 
 from the file, scuttled away, lost itself in the crowded street. 
 The serpent inched nearer. 
 
 " I m ready to go," Hester said with a sigh after a while. " But, 
 Southward, let s come over here every evening and watch this. I 
 never saw such gowns and coats and slippers in my life or such 
 jewels. Sometimes I ve seen things like them in shop windows in 
 Boston, but this is the first time I ve seen people wearing 
 them. I see now that I never realised that they really did wear 
 them." 
 
 "All right," Southward agreed, "every night at this hour will 
 find us here." She laughed and her gay, clear laughter, unac- 
 customedly warm, held a wave of sympathy. Apparently, by this 
 time she had caught the degree of Hester s sense of adventure. 
 
 " Here we take a car," Dwight ordered. 
 
 They rode down below Twenty-third Street, alighted, walked 
 east. John halted them finally in front of a house of which only 
 the area windows were lighted. He led the way into a little front 
 yard, pushed open a door there, conducted them through a dim 
 hall, pushed open another door. They stepped into a room, crowded 
 with people, ablaze with light, and fogged with smoke. 
 
 At the further end was a small platform. One young woman, 
 her hands idly clasped, occupied a chair at a desk. Another, taking 
 notes on a pad, sat beside her. A third, standing between them, 
 addressed the audience. She too was young; she spoke quickly, 
 f acilely, eloquently. 
 
 Southward s eyes went to the speaker, surveyed her from head 
 to heel. She studied the other women on the platform with one 
 of her long keen looks. She examined the audience with one of 
 her quick sweeping glances. Finally her attention returned to 
 the speaker. She listened attentively. But Hester s eyes, alighting 
 nowhere, wandered with a look of stupefaction back and forth 
 many times over the room. 
 
 The audience was prevailingly youthful, proletarian, and alien.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 225 
 
 Here through the smoke bulked, purple-black, the head of a young 
 girl, who might have been of any nationality, her profile almost 
 buried in her abundant hair. There, tired, wrung, tallowy, the 
 face of a boy displayed the virile lines of the Hebraic contour. 
 Everywhere, fiery, in spite of the smile, glittered the eyes of Kussia, 
 like loaded revolvers. Working men and women older sagged 
 on the benches, tired and sodden. Leisure-class men and women 
 at least leisure seemed to be predicated by their clothes listened, 
 but without so much a sense either of fatigue or of revelation. 
 Faces that had been paled and thinned by culture or by vision 
 filled in the hiatus between these masses. 
 
 Middle age, energised by rebellion, helped to make that human 
 blend and old age still desperately demanding an answer to its 
 questions. But youth made the body of it : youth, fresh, ringing ; 
 youth, high-coloured; youth, dare-devil. 
 
 The speaker went on. Southward continued to listen attentively. 
 For a long time, Hester did not seem to hear. Then apparently 
 her ear found the voice, caught a phrase here and there. De 
 liberately she seemed to concentrate on it. She turned her gaze 
 in its direction. 
 
 "... resent that phrase . . . girl-mothers. There are no dis 
 tinctions between mothers. They are all mothers . . . just that 
 mothers. The woman who brings a healthy child into the world 
 is doing the state the best service she knows. Fatherhood is free. 
 Motherhood is bound. Rewards and honours go with motherhood 
 occasionally but only when convention has sanctioned it. They 
 should go with it always. Our world has heaped two indignities 
 on women. It has refused maternity to some and has forced it 
 on others. People talk so much nowadays about the rights of 
 women. There are only a few inalienable rights one is the right 
 to motherhood." 
 
 Here Dwight snapped his watch open. " Time s up," he whis 
 pered to John. " That is if you wish to keep to the program." 
 
 " I do," John answered. He led the way into the street. They 
 walked west. 
 
 "Gee, was that woman crazy?" Southward demanded. And 
 before Dwight could answer. " Oh, look, Hester." She pointed 
 north. 
 
 Up into the black, star-sheened dome of the sky leaped a tower, 
 square, bulky, many-windowed, an enormous monolith of white 
 granite with, near the top, the huge Cyclops eye of time. Beside 
 it, carved, starred, graceful, soared another; a slender shaft of 
 brown stone whose tip imprinted a Diana figure on the sky.
 
 226 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " The Metropolitan Tower," Dwight informed her. " And 
 Madison F<y:are Garden." 
 
 " Wait till I count the stories in that big one," Southward 
 ordered. Heater stared at the two towers but it was evident that 
 she did not see them. " What was that meeting ? " she asked John. 
 
 " A Socialist Local," John answered.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 "WHAT time is it?" John asked. 
 
 " Nine," Dwight replied, " we ll just about make it." 
 
 " Let s take a taxi there to be sure," John suggested. He 
 signalled to a driver across the way. 
 
 " Now where are we going ? " Southward inquired. 
 
 " No questions answered to-night," Dwight disposed of her. 
 
 " All right." Southward only laughed. " I like it better this 
 way. Isn t it wonderful, Hetter ? " 
 
 " Wonderful ! " 
 
 They drove over to Broadway, then north, then west. The taxi 
 stopped in front of a narrow dark alley. 
 
 Dwight led the file to the end of this alley. There, an open 
 doorway inserted a rectangle of yellow light in what looked like 
 a high cliff of red stone. Inside, a man was standing. John 
 handed him a card. He looked at it. " All right," he snapped. 
 
 " Now don t any of you speak until I give you permission," 
 Dwight ordered. His eye wandered over the party, passing with 
 assurance from John s face to Southward s. " You re the only one 
 I m uncertain of, Hester. Can you keep perfectly quiet?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," Hester promised. 
 
 " No matter what happens ? " Dwight said with an undertone of 
 seriousness. 
 
 " No matter what happens," Hester assured him. 
 
 " Then we re off ! " Dwight continued to lead the procession 
 as it proceeded up a narrow winding stairway of perforated iron. 
 They came into a large open space where men, women, and 
 children, all with hats and coats on, were standing still and quiet. 
 Just ahead flared a light. Silently Dwight and John drew the 
 girls into the crowd. 
 
 Presently, a little active, red-headed man bustled up. " All 
 right now ! " he sair 1 in a low irritated whisper. " Hurry up ! 
 Hurry up there ! Get a move on ! " The crowd stirred, billowed, 
 moved. Southward and Hester moved with it. They came on a 
 big stage. At the back spread a drop painted with a view of 
 the ocean. In front hung a curtain. Between drop and curtain 
 stretched a train of cars. Automatically the crowd climbed into 
 them. 
 
 227
 
 228 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Get in here, Southward," Dwight whispered. Southward 
 leaped in. John assisted the unquestioning Hester. The two 
 men seated themselves beside the girls. 
 
 " Where are we ? " Hester asked John, but heedful of Dwight s 
 injunction, she spoke without voice. 
 
 "You ll see in a moment," John answered, his lips close to her 
 ear. " Don t speak whatever happens." 
 
 Southward was in the meantime taking expert cognizance of 
 everything, the painted drop at the back, the vacant wings, the 
 machinery above, the scuttling stage-hands. Suddenly a bell rang. 
 The curtain rose slowly. From beyond it flashed a row of faces, 
 clear, then another row less clear, a third row vaguely sketched 
 in, then row on row of shapeless pink blurs; then monstrous 
 looming darkness. There came a quick sharp hand-clapping that 
 grew to a roar. The wheels of the car revolved madly. But the 
 cars stood still. The back drop raced by, unrolling a continuous 
 panorama of scenery. And yet they stood still. And then sud 
 denly crash! Ahead a car fell to pieces as neatly as a cigar-box 
 hit by an axe. The sides of their own car fell away and down 
 as though they had been playing cards. The passengers jumped 
 out nimbly. Dwight assisted Southward. John took care of 
 Hester. Again that quick sharp clapping grew to a monstrous 
 roar; but this time it seemed to sweep the crowd off the stage. 
 Dwight led the way downstairs into the open air. 
 
 " What was that ? " Southward asked in what was for her a 
 subdued tone. Hester apparently could not speak. 
 
 " You have just taken part in the train-wreck scene of The 
 Queen s Kohinoor, " Dwight explained. 
 
 " Now where are we going ? " It was Hester who asked this 
 time. 
 
 " No questions answered to-night," Dwight reminded her. " Oh, 
 here s a taxi." 
 
 The taxi sped north and then east. It stopped, at John s signal, 
 on a corner. He paid the man and dismissed him. They walked 
 further east half a block, halted in front of a large building whose 
 doorways, wreathed with electric lights and flanked by two 
 futurist posters in green and black and yellow and gold, opened 
 on a tall broad flight of stairs. 
 
 Dwight led the way upwards. Music came curling down to 
 meet them ; faint at first, then deeper, louder, until a door opening 
 suddenly let out a smashing blare of ragtime. Beyond that door, 
 swift in detail, slow in mass, moved a mob of dancers in fancy
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 229 
 
 costume. It was as though an enormous huddle of picture clothes, 
 floating hair, masked faces, were being revolved by a gigantic 
 churn. The door shut. Dwight led them into a room opposite. 
 There, bewilderingly confused, stretched two walls, hung with cos 
 tumes, and below counters covered with makeup material, masks, 
 wigs, properties of all descriptions. 
 
 As they entered, a quartette of circus performers, sitting at one 
 side, silent, moveless as statues, suddenly arose together and with 
 a concerted movement removed their masks ; stood smiling. 
 
 " On behalf of the Borough of Manhattan," began the handsome 
 green-and-black, white-ruffed, silver-spangled contortionist who 
 was Morena O Reilly. But he could get no further. Edith and 
 Azile and Ripley burst into a staccato confusion of greeting and 
 question. 
 
 After a while they provided Southward and Hester with masks 
 and dominoes; the whole party went upstairs to the dance hall. 
 John found a box in the balcony, which overlooked the floor; and 
 sitting about a table there, they ate and drank. Hester did not 
 leave the box for the rest of the evening, but Southward, long be 
 fore she had finished eating, had yielded to Cameron s suggestion 
 that they dance. She came back from time to time to tell Hester 
 something of her adventures, but the instant the music struck 
 up again she was off on the wing. In a quarter of an hour she 
 had become as integral a part of the occasion as though she had 
 been there from the beginning. Dwight and Morena brought their 
 friends to her for introduction. But following the convention of 
 the occasion, she danced, waiving the preliminary of an introduc 
 tion, with anybody who asked her. 
 
 " Do you see those two men over there the acrobats, the ones 
 I ve just been talking with?" she said to Hester in one of her 
 flitting expeditions into the box. Back of her tiny lace mask, the 
 blue-and-black eyes were all light. Above her flame-coloured 
 domino, her dense hair was like carved jet. " They have been 
 teasing me to give them my name and address. At first I wouldn t. 
 The tall one is a Mr. Ely, the other a Mr. Home. But they kept 
 at me so that finally I told Ely my name and made him swear he 
 wouldn t tell Home. Then I gave Home my address and made 
 him swear he wouldn t tell Ely. So that between them, you see, 
 they have all the necessary statistics, but they can t compare 
 notes because they re pledged not to do it. I am having a great 
 time with them." 
 
 Another time she thrust her wrist under Hester s eyes. On 
 it was a bracelet, a plain band of black onyx. " Somebody put
 
 230 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 that on my arm while he was dancing with me," she explained. " I 
 don t know who it was and he has probably forgotten it himself by 
 this time. It looks as though it belonged to me now." 
 
 Each time that Southward returned to the floor it seemed that 
 she plunged into its gaiety with a greater degree of abandon. Her 
 high spirits did not evaporate as the night wore on; rather they 
 increased; and her strength seemed equal to any inroads on it. 
 She danced almost without cessation. Azile as a snake-charmer 
 in yellow she was a brilliant note of colour even in that brilliant 
 scene was equally engaged. Edith did not dance. She sat up 
 stairs with Hester. She said she was tired and looked it. She wore 
 a Cossack costume, green, banded with black fur and frog-trimmed; 
 high boots; a piquant fur cap. Her make-up was so thick and 
 vivid that she wore no mask; under it, however, she showed 
 lined and hollow. Hester said she was tired too, but it was not 
 so evident in her case. The hot close air brought to her cheeks 
 the same kind of flush, thick and purply pink, that the afternoon 
 had laid there. Her eyes grew several shades deeper and her hair 
 seemed to foam like fire delicately stranded into thread flame. 
 
 " Are you getting too tired, Hester ? " Southward asked again 
 and again. 
 
 " Yes, I m tired," Hester always answered, " as tired as I can 
 be. But it s the kind of fatigue I want. And I wouldn t leave 
 for anything on earth." 
 
 At three o clock in the morning, the two girls tumbled into bed. 
 Five minutes later, Hester sank into the first dreamless sleep of 
 months. 
 
 She awoke suddenly. She sat up half-way in bed, struggled to 
 open her eyes, sank back and closed them. But presently she 
 awoke again, sat bolt upright this time. She looked about her with 
 a dazed expression. 
 
 Someone was screaming her name. Hester leaped to her feet, 
 rushed into the other room. 
 
 Southward sat huddled in the middle of the bed, her black hair 
 streaming loose, her black eyes wide, dilated, glittering. 
 
 " I m suffocating, Hester," she panted. " I keep seeing those 
 skyscrapers. They seem to be hemming me in. I feel landlocked. 
 They re choking me. I shall die for air for the sea." 
 
 Hester rushed through the apartment throwing the windows 
 wide. They opened into tunnels of dense grey fog, dimly lighted 
 by the muffled moons of the street lamps. They let in avalanches 
 of the night air. It struck cold and damp on her face. She ran 
 back to Southward.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 231 
 
 " I feel as if I were in a dungeon," Southward cried. " I m 
 going crazy I m " 
 
 " Stop it, Southward ! " Hester ordered peremptorily. " Listen ! " 
 
 Involuntarily Southward listened. Faint through the muffling 
 fog came the blast of a foghorn; from another direction came a 
 second, then another and another. The chorus linked in a circle. 
 Suddenly the night surged with hoarse voices. From every point 
 of the compass and in every accent of caution, they sounded the 
 warning of the sea. 
 
 " You re not landlocked, Southward," Hester explained in panic- 
 stricken phrases. " It s an island Manhattan water all round 
 us everywhere and it s foggy foghorns everywhere on the 
 rivers both rivers the bay listen ! " 
 
 Southward did not speak. But she listened. Gradually the 
 panic died out of her eyes. 
 
 " All right," she said, " don t bother any more. Something s 
 
 come over me lately I I My nerves aren t what they were. 
 
 I guess it was half nightmare." She drew her hair over her 
 shoulder, and rebraided it so fast that the strands flew back and 
 forth between her racing fingers. She lay down. " All right now ! " 
 Then, " Good night, Hetter! "
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE next evening Dwight called for the two girls. 
 
 " We ve been up only three hours," Southward said. " We 
 breakfasted, lunched, and dined at one fell swoop." 
 
 " That s right," Dwight approved. " You ought to sleep as 
 much as possible until you catch this New York pace. It will 
 come easier after a while. You look pretty fresh, I must say, 
 after your various dissipations." 
 
 Southward wore an evening gown of a white-figured, white 
 Chinese silk. Simple like all of her clothes, it left a V of slim 
 neck bare, came into the waist under a broad girdle made from 
 a Koman sash. Her hair lay flat like coiled jet close to her head; 
 about her neck was a necklace of onyx and gold and pearl which 
 suspended a huge locket; on her wrist was a wide bracelet, onyx 
 and gold and pearl. The new look in her eyes that sense of 
 perturbation had left them temporarily; they glimmered with 
 her old-time spirit and audacity. Hester looked as usual incon 
 spicuous. Her black evening gown, though innocuous, had the 
 grace of simplicity ; it gave her a look of womanliness. Now, with 
 her hat off, the blaze of her hair, unsubdued by its new and more 
 becoming arrangement, was brilliant as it had never been. 
 
 " What sort of a party is this going to be ? " Southward ques 
 tioned on their way to the car. 
 
 " Oh, a regular New York party," Dwight responded. " It ought 
 to be some party though, because we ve invited everybody that we 
 know who s worthy to meet you. But it s like everything that 
 happens in New York, you take a chance. It may be a cracker- 
 jack, and then again it may be as dull as ditch water." 
 
 " What will they do ? " Southward queried further. 
 
 " Talk, smoke, eat, dance," Dwight answered briefly. " They all 
 begin alike, but Heaven only knows how they ll end." 
 
 On their way down town to a street below Twenty-third Street, 
 he told them about the building in which he and John lived. He 
 said it was a perfect example of what might be the haphazard 
 history of any New York house. Big and rather splendid, done 
 by a famous architect, it had been originally the property of a 
 Westerner grown rich in a day in Wall Street. Passing before 
 
 232
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 233 
 
 his death into other hands, it had been the scene of a tragedy 
 which resulted in a cause celebre, had become next a gambling 
 house, then the Parish House of a wealthy and influential church. 
 Now almost the only residential building in a community of ware 
 houses, it had been cut roughly into apartments of various sizes. 
 John occupied an attic. Dwight had a pair of rooms two floors 
 below. 
 
 On the way up the three flights of stairs, Dwight pointed out 
 the evidences of the ecclesiastical influence; empty niches, racant 
 recesses, carved and arched doorways, the windows that matched 
 them. Hester listened closely; but from the instant the sound 
 of the victrola met them on the stairway, Southward s attention 
 left the walls and ceilings. As they went higher, bursts of 
 talk and screams of laughter came to them borne on the current 
 of ragtime punctuated by the popping of corks, the sizz of 
 syphons. 
 
 John came forward to greet them, Azile Morrow on one side, 
 Edith Hale on the other. 
 
 Groups of people who sat about the fireplace on chairs, on 
 couches, on the floor, looked up for an instant and then went on 
 with their talk. Three couples who were dancing in a corner 
 paid no attention to them whatever. Azile and Edith helped the 
 girls off with their things. John returned for them after a min 
 ute s interval, introduced them to the members of the fireside 
 group. Southward melted at once into their number, as much a 
 component part of it as though she had always been there. She 
 fell naturally into conversation with a trio of men and as she 
 talked, quite frankly but with her lightning quick glances, she 
 surveyed the room and the people. Hester drew close to Edith 
 Hale, all but clung to her. Her eyes glued themselves to Edith s 
 face as though if they left that harbour of refuge, it would be to 
 psychological shipwreck. Perhaps Edith felt that. She drew 
 Hester a little way from the rest; she conducted her about the 
 room, commenting on the characteristic glimpses of New York 
 living that the windows gave. Finally she settled with her on a 
 couch apart, proceeded to talk. 
 
 " You should have seen this room at the time of the unemploy 
 ment riots last winter. John used to bring as many I. W. W. s 
 home as the place would hold. Sometimes there were twenty 
 sleeping on the couches and chairs and floors anywhere they could 
 find a spot. John tells some awfully funny stories about them. 
 There was one, a young fellow " 
 
 Her gentle voice went on and on, soothing her companion s em-
 
 234 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 barrassment until Hester could look at this face and that imper 
 sonally as though it were a picture. 
 
 The room was large, bare-looking, unpapered, plastered white 
 on walls and ceilings with ecclesiastical archings at the four 
 corners. For furnishings, there were three single couches (two 
 of these had been drawn up close to the fire), a huge unpainted 
 table of soft pine, a few chairs, all big, shabby, and comfortable. 
 The table was covered with bottles of whiskey, brandy, and beer, 
 syphons of soda, boxes of cigars and cigarettes. A big pine and 
 burlap screen, apparently of home manufacture, shut off a corner. 
 There was not a picture on the wall, nothing anywhere that could 
 be construed as ornament, except the piles of magazines and books 
 which had been apparently dumped from the table on the floor 
 and one statue in coloured plaster of the Virgin, which stood in 
 a niche in the wall. The big fire in the generous fireplace gave 
 the room a soul, and the couches its single look of comfort. The 
 gathering brought plenty of contrast to this ascetic whiteness, 
 however. Many of the women were in evening dress. Sitting 
 about on the floor they made flower-bed spots of brilliant colour. 
 
 " You see that little blond girl over there in the corner," Edith s 
 soft listless voice was saying. " She s Angela Ade. She s a suf 
 fragette a militant. She gives very successful street talks on 
 suffrage and she s always going off on suffrage hikes; she s a lovely 
 little thing, though fiery. By and by I want to call her over 
 here." 
 
 " Street talks ! " Hester said in an awed tone. " That little 
 girl!" 
 
 " Yes," Edith answered, " that little girl. She talks from soap 
 boxes on street corners oh, it s just as wonderful to me, Hester, 
 as it is to you. I simply could not do anything like that." Edith 
 paused and skipped to another group, picking her exhibits at 
 haphazard apparently. " The big girl the brunette is Ruthie 
 Stanley. She s assistant editor on Progress. She s a college 
 graduate, very able, a strong type, a little too masculine for my 
 taste though." 
 
 Hester looked at Miss Stanley. 
 
 She was masculine if masculinity means a certain big clean- 
 cutness of featuring. And certainly her fresh crisp shirt-waist 
 and her taut trim tailored suit presented every possible contrast 
 to Edith s floating feminine fulnesses. 
 
 I should not say she looked masculine exactly," Hester com 
 mented, " only responsible and efficient." 
 
 " Perhaps you re right," Edith assented. " The little bronze-
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 235 
 
 coloured girl next to her is Jane Daly. She s an actress. Isn t 
 she a charming little thing? Don t you love her eyes? And isn t 
 her figure adorable ? " 
 
 Edith waited for no answer to her questions. She seemed to 
 assume assent and speeded on. " She s very able and works hard. 
 She s awfully ambitious. If she gets half a chance, she ll do 
 something." Again ignoring the rest of the group, Edith picked 
 apparently at random another type. " The woman on the other 
 side of the room in the morris chair notice her lovely fresh 
 colour is Jimmy Tench. She s a press agent," and at Hester s 
 gasp, " yes, and a very able one. Somehow I always feel very 
 insignificant beside Jimmy. She knows the world as a man does 
 and treats it as a man does. She meets men on a basis of 
 camaraderie that I very much admire in her and yet have no desire 
 whatever to emulate. Isn t she a clean-looking vigorous type 
 though, with that complexion, those big strong-looking teeth, those 
 huge clear eyes? Not exactly handsome she just escapes being 
 handsome but there s something awfully refreshing about Jimmy." 
 
 " Yes," Hester hazarded again, " somehow I feel less afraid of 
 her than anybody." 
 
 " You ll like her more and more, I think. Everybody likes 
 Jimmy. Now I ll tell you about some of the men. Many of them 
 are reporters. Those two talking with Azile are from the Planet 
 Dwight s paper. McAndrews is one of the cleverest newspaper 
 men in New York. He s the red-headed one. The little handsome 
 man beside him is an illustrator, Tim Carney." 
 
 " Oh, I know his work," Hester said. There was a slight em 
 phasis on the word " know " as of relief at finding some detail at 
 which her mind could catch. 
 
 " He s awfully popular. The two men on the other side of the 
 fire, talking together, are Schalberg and Van Vlagger. They re 
 from John s forces on Tomorrow. You must get to know them. 
 Schalberg has a very brilliant mind, I think. It has all the 
 metallic hardness of the Hebraic intelligence and yet there s a 
 kind of flame a kind of poetry of expression playing over his 
 observation. Van Vlagger is a bubbling personality, much less 
 intellectual, but very whimsical and paradoxical. Would you like 
 me to call one of them over here ? " 
 
 Hester caught her arm. " Not not yet. And don t leave me ! " 
 
 Edith smiled. " Very well. I ll stay with you all the evening. 
 You shan t have to talk unless you want, but you ll find every 
 body simple and nice and full of conversation. The thing to do is 
 to let them talk. But I don t have to tell you that. John says
 
 236 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 you re one of the most gifted listeners he ever met. That little 
 blond lad over there is a physician one of John s I. W. W. friends. 
 They call him the Jungle Doc. Now oh, here s Ripley." 
 
 " Well, Hester," Fearing asked, dropping on the couch beside 
 her, " how is New York treating you ? Let me look at you. I 
 haven t had a chance before." He turned his melancholy hound s 
 eyes directly on her for a moment. " It seems to me that you re 
 looking pretty well for a girl who was ill a few weeks ago." 
 
 " I m sure I should think that I felt better already," Hester 
 said, " if I could think at all. But I can t think. We ve only 
 been here two days and everything is still going at such a pace 
 that I m excited all the time, even when I sleep. I guess I must 
 be better though because I don t think of it." 
 
 " I think you are too," Fearing agreed. He removed his gaze 
 from her face, but from time to time it went back. "Did you 
 keep on dancing ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes all the fall and winter. Sometimes Southward and 
 I would dance all alone in the garret." 
 
 " I m glad of that," Ripley approved. " Oh, here s John, and 
 time he welcomed me." 
 
 " Hello, Rip." John slipped into the place that on Ripley s 
 advent Edith had vacated. " How do you feel after your various 
 dissipations, Hester ? " 
 
 " Very well," Hester answered. " I haven t had such sleep in 
 months as last night or this morning rather. When I went 
 to bed, I seemed to fall straight down into a deep dark well. 
 Southward waked me once. But I fell into the well again and 
 I stayed there till about five this afternoon. I never slept all 
 day before in my life." 
 
 "You ll find yourself doing that often in New York," John 
 warned her. 
 
 " Oh, by the way, how is Hallowell ? " Fearing asked. 
 
 " Very well," Hester said. " He came to see me one afternoon 
 when I was sick and brought me one of his revolutionary Italian 
 papers and read for my comfort translating as he went along 
 a very gory account of a labour riot in Turin." 
 
 The men laughed. " Nice old boy ! " exclaimed John. " I ve 
 been sending him Tomorrow regularly and anything else I could 
 get of a sufficiently revolutionary character. It s interesting to 
 think of him down there, Rip," he went on musingly, " in that 
 dead little town, blue-blooded, steeped in centuries of New England 
 culture, ex-sky pilot with a finger on every revolutionary move 
 ment in the world."
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 237 
 
 " Oh, yes, it s bully," agreed Fearing. " I appreciate that. And 
 how is The Rebellions of the Nineteenth Century coming on?" 
 He turned to Hester. 
 
 " It seems to be progressing," Hester answered. " He works 
 hard all the time. Of course after you two had left, he tried more 
 and more to convert Southward and me to his ideas. He used to 
 bring chapters over and read them to me while I was sick. South 
 ward only laughed the way she always does she doesn t care. 
 I cared but I was too frightened the way I always am." 
 
 " We re going to cure you of that fright, Hester," Eipley prom 
 ised. 
 
 " I hope so," Hester said, " but I m afraid not. I fear it is too 
 deep-rooted." 
 
 " I don t," disagreed Ripley. " Ah, excuse me ! " He rose and 
 crossed the room in answer to Jimmy Tench s beckoning finger. 
 
 " How do you think Edith looks, Hester? " John asked. 
 
 Edith was seated on the floor now, her long nearly bare arms 
 clasped and hanging over the fulness of her dull green gown. She 
 sat in the flare of the firelight; when it flamed it gave her skin 
 an adventitious rose-in-bloom colour; when it died, her face 
 turned waxy. 
 
 " I don t think she looks well," Hester said at once. " Not 
 nearly as well as when she was in Shayneford." 
 
 " You re right," John agreed. His brow knit. For an interval, 
 he sat regardless of Hester, his eyes fixed on Edith with the look 
 of a man who is trying to solve a problem. 
 
 Hester slowly transferred her gaze from Edith to John. He 
 had not changed appreciably in five months, although he had of 
 course lost all his Shayneford tan. But at this moment, he was 
 as far removed as possible from his usual easy self. His pose 
 had lost its normal negligent grace. His pleasant smile had gone. 
 He looked awkward, doubled up, his head protruded and his eyes 
 fixed. All that inner tumult which ordinarily showed only in 
 faint marks here and there had burst in flame into his expression. 
 It was as though his youth were torn by furies, and torn before 
 her eyes. 
 
 " I don t know what it is," he muttered. Then in a flash he 
 pulled himself together, relaxed into a characteristic easy pose. His 
 pleasant smile came back. " I m worried about Edith, Hester. 
 She seems to get paler and paler every day." 
 
 "I m worried too," Hester admitted. Their eyes met in the 
 sympathy of their common anxiety.
 
 238 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Morena O Eeilly settled himself at Southward s side. 
 
 " Well, missie, he began mischievously, " we meet again. You 
 remember I told you we would." 
 
 "Did you?" Southward s tone was languid; so was her pose. 
 But into her figure came a certain tenseness as though, cowering 
 against an attack, she had suddenly stiffened to meet it. " When 
 I don t remember 
 
 Morena laughed. " Oh, yes, you do. You remember per 
 fectly." The Celt was all in the ascendant in Morena now. 
 His deep-blue, heavily-fringed eyes sparkled and under his jetty 
 moustache a smile, almost equally sparkling, re-enforced them. 
 It was impossible to withstand that spirit of mischief. 
 
 Southward smiled with him and the rigidity went out of her 
 figure. 
 
 " I m glad you re here," Morena went on. " You are more pretty 
 than ever and I ve no doubt twice as fascinating. I d like nothing 
 better than to get an account of your conquests since last we 
 met. But of course you will never give me that. Come, let s be 
 good friends and comrades ! Will you let me show you about 
 New York a bit?" 
 
 " Of course, Mr. O Reilly. I shall be delighted. I may even 
 tell you about the conquests. Who knows? If I can remember 
 any of them." Southward continued to maintain her languor of 
 voice, her languor of pose. Her eyes lingered non-commitally on 
 Morena s face. 
 
 That gentleman laughed abruptly. " By Jove, you re a cool 
 one. Shake hands with me! You haven t shaken hands with me 
 yet." 
 
 After a perceptible instant of hesitation Southward extended 
 her hand. Morena held it a brief instant. 
 
 " What are you two shaking hands about ? " Azile called from 
 a distance. She rose and came over to where they sat. With a 
 sudden impulse, subtle as it was sudden, she subsided into a black- 
 and-gold heap on the floor. The firelight ran over the sequined 
 traceries of her gown, broke out in flame, turned her ccral earrings 
 to drops of blood. " You met last night, you know." 
 
 " Election bet, Azile," Morena said carelessly. 
 
 " How I loathe you, Morena," Azile emitted crossly. " You 
 always lie to me and I always know it." 
 
 " We re alike in that," Morena explained pleasantly. " You 
 always lie to me and I always lie to you. But I think you re 
 rather unfair, Azile. I don t hate you because you lie to me. I 
 rather like you for it."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 239 
 
 " Well, I don t like you for it. Lying is the one thing women 
 never forgive in men, Morena," Azile informed him. 
 
 " I suppose so," Morena said in a resigned tone. " Miss Drake 
 looks perfectly natural here, doesn t she ? " he went on fluently, 
 changing the subject. " She belongs wherever she falls. Now Miss 
 Crowell has every defence out and every terror." 
 
 Southward s eyes softened. " Oh, Hester ll be all right in time. 
 Hester clings to her environment however much it frightens her. 
 The instant she gets anywhere, she begins sending out roots, until 
 presently she s growing there. I feel perfectly at home in new 
 places. Sometimes they seem more natural than old places. But 
 I don t want to stay. I don t know anything I enjoy more than 
 tearing myself up by the roots." 
 
 Her listener smiled. " That s right ! " Morena applauded. 
 " That s fine ! " 
 
 " What s right," Dwight demanded, interrupting from over 
 Azile s shoulder, "and what s fine?" 
 
 " Miss Drake says," Morena translated freely, " that the farther 
 from home she gets, the more at home she feels. And the better 
 she likes a place, the sooner she wants to leave it." 
 
 " Oh, I could see she belonged," Dwight said, " the instant I 
 met her at the Grand Central. She took possession of the city 
 right then and there. I got her out of the station before it oc 
 curred to her to order everybody off the premises. Now what are 
 we going to do to show the city to these captive princesses ? " 
 
 " She s coming up to my place for the week-end," Azile inter 
 posed promptly, " and Hester s going with Edith. Edith and I 
 have decided that between us. It s settled." 
 
 " Is it ? " Dwight demanded from Southward. 
 
 Southward smiled. " It seems so." 
 
 " Come to dinner Sunday night you two," Azile ordered of 
 Dwight and Morena. 
 
 " Thanks ! " Morena answered with promptness and " All right ! " 
 Dwight replied with alacrity. 
 
 " Oh, by the way, Dwight," Azile added carelessly, " I want 
 you to take me to see that Goya. I know you ll want to sleep 
 to-morrow morning. Can you be around Wednesday about 
 eleven?" 
 
 " All right," Dwight answered again. But perhaps thij time 
 there was less alacrity in his tone. 
 
 " Oh and say, Dwight," Azile went on, " I want you to go to 
 that Sherman auction with me. It s Thursday morning. You 
 remember you were awfully interested to see those old French
 
 240 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 things that are coming up for sale. It s your day off. If you ll 
 promise to get to the house by ten, I ll promise to make the effort 
 to get up at nine." 
 
 " All right ! " Dwight answered the third time. But he said this 
 after an interval in which, biting his lip, he palpably considered 
 the matter. He became a little distrait. An irritated frown 
 grooved his forehead. 
 
 " See here, I want to talk with Miss Drake for a moment," 
 Angela Ade interrupted. " I have to be on the job everlastingly, 
 you know. And all unknown females are fish to my net. So let 
 me get this off my chest. Now first, do you believe in equal suf 
 frage, Miss Drake ? " 
 
 " I suppose I do. But I m not the least bit interested in the 
 question." 
 
 "Well, will you march in the parade in May? We need you 
 if you can do it." 
 
 " Yes, I ll agree to that if I m here." 
 
 " All right. Make out this card." 
 
 Miss Ade handed Southward a yellow card and a pencil. She 
 watched her while she wrote. " Can you make speeches on 
 corners ? " she asked. 
 
 " I could if I wanted to but I don t," Southward answered. 
 
 " Well, can you address indoor meetings ? " 
 
 " I could if I wanted to," Southward answered again, " but I 
 don t." 
 
 " Would you sell magazines for us on the street ? " Miss Ade 
 continued with undiminished zeal. 
 
 " Yes, I ll do that." 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " Jimmy Tench interrupted, kneeling at South 
 ward s side. " Give me a show here, Angel. Miss Drake, some 
 of my East Side girls are on strike. They need pickets. Will 
 you help them out ? " 
 
 "Sure!" Southward s eyes sparkled. "I d lore that. Whal 
 is a picket and what does it do ? " 
 
 Miss Tench explained. " I ll telephone you some- day this week 
 in the morning. Wait a jiff and let me take your address and 
 telephone number." 
 
 " Now, Jimmy," Miss Ade continued, " let s go over and ask 
 Miss Crowell." 
 
 The rest of the group in the spirit of mischief watched their 
 onslaught on Hester, the brisk business-like attitude of the two 
 New York women, Hester s dumb terrors, her inarticulate nega 
 tions.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 241 
 
 In the meantime, more and more people were arriving. The 
 room had begun to fill up. There were not enough chairs to 
 accommodate them, although chairs were brought in from other 
 rooms. They sat around on the floor, their backs against the walls. 
 In the centre people danced. The ragtime roar of the victrola 
 was uninterrupted. The sizz of the soda syphons sounded con 
 stantly. The atmosphere grew thick with smoke; platters of 
 sandwiches appeared from behind the screen, baskets of cheese; 
 plates of pickles and olives; tins of sardines; all the treasures of 
 the neighbouring delicatessen. Under cover of this confusion, 
 Dwight drew Southward aside. " Say, get on your things, will 
 you ? " he asked. " I want to take you for a little walk. New 
 York is very pretty, right round here." For a long interval now, 
 Dwight had maintained silence, obviously irritated. At that mo 
 ment his voice was querulous. 
 
 " All right," Southward agreed. She slipped surreptitiously 
 into her hat and coat. 
 
 " First," Dwight said, " I m going to show you my rooms." He 
 led the way two flights down; unlocked a door near the back of 
 the house. 
 
 Southward paused on the threshold an instant; threw into the 
 room one of her sweeping comprehensive looks; burst into 
 laughter. 
 
 " What s the idea ? " Dwight demanded. 
 
 " Oh, it s so different from John s rooms," Southward declared, 
 " as different as you two men are from each other." 
 
 Certainly none of the monastic bareness and whiteness 
 which marked John s quarters appeared in Dwight s big living- 
 room or the adjoining bedroom. There was plenty of colour and 
 decoration; detail. Red predominated in rugs, curtains, and up 
 holstery. Just as cheer seemed the object of the colour-scheme, so 
 comfort seemed the aim of the furniture. The chairs were all 
 big, the couch broad and piled with cushions. Everywhere, 
 framed photographs of girls on walls and mantels, decorative 
 hand-made litter on book-shelves and tables, were evidences of 
 Dwight s popularity with women. A certain bold simplicity in 
 the furniture minimised this feminine strain. Dwight lit a 
 cigarette and smoked in silence. Southward flitted from wall to 
 wall, looking at the pictures, examining the books; making occa 
 sional comment but asking no questions. Dwight volunteered no 
 information. 
 
 When they came out on the street, what remained of South 
 ward s high spirits had quite evaporated. Dwight was still moody.
 
 242 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 They walked south, talking soberly and with long pauses, of indif 
 ferent things. 
 
 " How pretty this is ! " Southward said, breaking a silence. 
 "Park Avenue looks like Commonwealth Avenue but this looks 
 like Beacon Street." 
 
 " Oh, yes, the neighbourhood of lower Fifth Avenue and the 
 Square is much the most attractive part of town in my opinion," 
 Dwight answered absently. " There, there s the Washington Arch. 
 Isn t that pretty nice ? " 
 
 But neither of them more than glanced at the Arch ; for without 
 awaiting an answer, Dwight demanded suddenly, " Have you 
 forgotten our compact? You gave me the New York rights, you 
 know." His voice had changed. It was querulous again. 
 
 " Oh, no," Southward replied. " I haven t forgotten." 
 
 " Well, see that you don t." 
 
 " Oh, I ll keep the compact until it bores me," Southward s 
 voice had become light. 
 
 11 I ll take care not to bore you," Dwight promised stiffly. 
 
 " See that you don t," Southward mimicked him. 
 
 " Which reminds me," Dwight went on, " that I have certainly 
 been bored proper this day by your friends Ely and Home. They ve 
 been telephoning me at half -hour intervals all the afternoon. One 
 wanted your address and the other your name. I said of course 
 that I couldn t give them without your permission. And they 
 besought me to get your permission. Shall I give it to them ? " 
 
 " No," Southward replied promptly. 
 
 " All right." Dwight looked relieved. 
 
 " Or at least not yet," Southward mitigated her first decision. 
 
 Now they looked at the Arch; even crossed the street to make 
 a closer examination after they had viewed it from the Avenue. 
 Suddenly they were both very light-hearted. Standing in the 
 Square, Dwight gave Southward a little history of the neigh 
 bourhood, pointing out various sections of interest with his stick; 
 the row of formal houses in varying shades of rose on the north 
 side with their deep white doorways and their beautiful vines; 
 the more bohemian row at the south with its shops and studios; 
 the bachelor apartments, east, where a famous novelist had laid 
 a famous scene in a famous book; McDougal Alley to the west 
 with its array of studios. Something unexpressed seemed to come 
 out of their talk beside all this information and the comment on 
 it; for they laughed gaily at anything that offered the faintest 
 pretext for mirth and interrupted themselves constantly to talk 
 about other things. Before they returned to the party, Dwight took
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 243 
 
 her for an abbreviated yoyage of discovery about the neighbour 
 hood. Tucking her arm in his, drawing her along at a furious 
 pace, he poured out on her a wild medley of mingled narrative 
 and description of what he called the " village " and the " vil 
 lagers." 
 
 " By the way," Southward asked as they turned back, " tell ma 
 now about the novel." 
 
 " The novel! " Dwight said, "which one? I told you, didn t I, 
 that the Cape Cod one sort of petered out? I realised, when I 
 got away from there, that what you said was true. I hadn t got 
 under the skin of those people at all. At first that discouraged 
 me a lot and I decided to put it aside. Then I began another. 
 I ve been working on it up at Azile s. She s been a great deal of 
 help. I ve had a lot of assignments on the East Side and I got aw 
 fully interested in the life there. An idea came to me some weeks 
 ago and I ve been working on it on and off ever since. I ve read 
 all of it to Azile and she seems enthusiastic about it. I m inclined 
 to trust to her judgment because, like you, she nerer was strong 
 for the Cape Cod novel. I ll read it to you some time. First 
 though I m going to take you over to the East Side. Oh, I ve 
 got a campaign of discovery and exploration mapped out for you 
 that will make your hair curl you ignorant little country-girl 
 you."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WHEN Southward and Dwight returned to John s room, it was 
 to a party much more crowded, much more noisy, much more 
 permeated with smoke. People were arriving all the time. The 
 couches had been moved back against the wall, the chairs had 
 disappeared. The dancers filled the entire room. Those who 
 wished to sit down had retreated to the halls and stairways. 
 There was no break between dances, as whenever the victrola 
 threatened to run down someone inserted a new needle. When 
 anybody thought of it the disk was changed. Dwight drew 
 Southward into the melee and they danced until their enduring 
 powers began to call forth comment derisive and otherwise. Even 
 their extraordinary strength and spirit were not proof against the 
 violence of the exercise and the heaviness of the air; finally as 
 though by mutual consent they came to a standstill. Dwight got 
 some ginger ale for Southward and some whiskey and soda for 
 himself. They retired to the stairs, but they were not allowed to 
 remain there long. Azile and Morena hunted them up presently. 
 Morena claimed a dance from Southward and Dwight whirled 
 away with Azile. 
 
 "Where did you disappear to?" Morena asked idly. 
 
 " Oh, Dwight took me about for a little walk," Southward an 
 swered with equal carelessness. " He wanted to show me this 
 neighbourhood." 
 
 " It s a pleasant neighbourhood," Morena commented. " Every 
 body will tell you that it s more like Paris than any part of New 
 York, and really it s the only place in New York that has anything 
 like an art atmosphere." 
 
 " Yes. Dwight told me a little of that." 
 
 " There are lots of interesting places in New York that I want 
 to show you," Morena went on, " picturesque, foreign aspects less 
 obviously interesting perhaps. Sometimes I think it takes a man 
 who has lived so much abroad as myself to appreciate all that. 
 You know for instance that New York is the third largest Italian 
 city in the world ? " 
 
 " I didn t know that," Southward declared. " But I am inter 
 ested to hear it." 
 
 244
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 245 
 
 " Yes. Only Naples and Milan are bigger than New York s 
 Little Italy. There s a Little Italy uptown and a Little Italy 
 downtown. I want to show them both to you. Then there s 
 always the East Side, an amusing little Chinatown and a German 
 quarter; even a Syrian quarter. I ll take you to them all if you d 
 like." 
 
 " I should like," Southward said with what was for her an accent 
 of graciousness. " Thank you very much. By the way what s 
 become of Hester ? And what has she been doing all this time ? " 
 
 " I think she s having a good time," Morena replied. " She s 
 been dancing. Then she and Edith went upstairs on the roof to 
 look at the city. I think they re together somewhere now." 
 
 Edith and Hester were sitting together on one of the couches, 
 partially protected by a screen. All the evening Edith had hovered 
 in Hester s vicinity. Whenever a man approached, she introduced 
 him to Hester and then with her usual kindness carried on the 
 conversation single-handed, gradually though, by comment or by 
 indirect appeal, drawing Hester into the discussion. As soon as 
 she had overcome Hester s shyness completely, she disappeared, 
 always coming to the rescue however when the tete-a-tete threat 
 ened to break. 
 
 "Who are those people who have just come in, Edith?" Hester 
 had just asked. " Some of the girls have short hair. How queer- 
 looking they are ! " she added slowly and then with a burst, " Why, 
 they re beautiful ! " 
 
 " They re some of the villagers," Edith answered. And then at 
 Hester s look of perplexity, " You must have heard us speak of 
 Greenwich Village the Latin quarter of New York ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes many times," Hester said. " John says Greenwich 
 Village is the only place in New York where people dress as they 
 like, work as they like, live as they like, and love as they like." 
 
 " They certainly love as they like," Edith said, laughing, " and 
 occasionally that means loving quite frequently and sometimes 
 several people at once." 
 
 " And do they all wear short hair ? " Hester went on. 
 
 " No, Country Girl," Edith responded, " not all. Mainly those 
 to whom it is becoming as everywhere else. Isn t that little one 
 in brown cunning?" 
 
 " Yes," Hester said. " I ve been looking at her. It seems to 
 me I ve never seen anybody so little and so perfect. She s all 
 one colour, isn t she golden hair, golden skin, golden eyes ? " 
 
 " They call her the Golden Girl," Edith explained. " She s a 
 model. The tall thin colourless woman in grey, Miss Ainsworth,
 
 246 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 has used her again and again for a series of what she calls Peacock 
 Studies in which she is always dressed in peacock s plumes. The 
 contrast of her nude golden skin and the green and the blue of 
 the peacock eyes is really quite marvellous. I ll take you to see 
 the Peacock Studies some day." Edith waited a minute, then she 
 added in a casual tone, " Miss Ainsworth lives with that young 
 man, the tall slender blond. His name is Loftus." 
 
 " Lives with him ! " Hester said in a shocked tone. " You mean 
 they aren t married." And at Edith s nod, " Does everybody know 
 it?" 
 
 " It s everybody s own fault if they don t," Edith responded. 
 " Miss Ainsworth tells everybody. And they re a very hospitable 
 couple they give parties all the time." 
 
 " Why don t they marry ? " Hester asked in a breathless tone. 
 
 " They say they don t want to marry," Edith answered. 
 
 " How very very " Hester seemed to have difficulty in find 
 ing words ; she ended lamely with, " strange." 
 
 " The crowd that has just come in," Edith went on fluently, 
 as though giving Hester time to recbver from the mental bewilder 
 ment into which she had plunged, " is a very delightful one; they re 
 all young, all gay, most of them beautiful, and some of them 
 gifted. The tall blond girl with the wonderful Greek face, the 
 one in profile now doesn t she look more like a youth than a girl 
 is a painter. One spring the villagers got up a marvellous pageant 
 and she was Diana. I wish you could have seen her in a drapery 
 of pink gauze with a crescent in that wonderful hair, a silver bow 
 and arrow and a great greyhound at her side. Do you see the 
 slim dark girl beside her with the huge soft black eyes? When 
 she turns, try to get her profile; the boldness of it is magnificent, 
 I think. She s a dancer. You ll find her the most beautiful 
 dancer in the room, but curiously enough I prefer to watch her 
 when she walks and talks. She is so graceful then that it almost 
 hurts. She was Cleopatra " 
 
 " Cleopatra," Hester echoed, but it was apparent that her mind 
 was not on its concept of Cleopatra, that it was straying along 
 other fields. She roused herself with a perceptible effort. " Cleo 
 patra, I can t imagine her being Cleopatra." 
 
 " She wasn t the usual idea of Cleopatra," Edith elucidated, 
 " but she was wonderful. Nothing of the conventional houri or 
 odalisque. No floating transparent draperies and tiger skin. No 
 jewelled bracelets and anklets. She wore a strange close gown, 
 with Egyptian figures on it that bound her figure almost like a 
 mummy s and a high broad flat Egyptian headpiece. With those
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 247 
 
 huge eyes of hers and that clear colourless skin, her lips 
 painted a deep purple red and her long slim bare arms oh, she 
 was marvellous." 
 
 " Is she an Egyptian ? " Hester asked timidly. 
 
 " She is from Cambridge, Mass., the daughter of a professor. 
 The third girl," Edith went on, " is a poet." 
 
 " She is magnificent," Hester commented. 
 
 " Yes, I think she is," Edith agreed. " She s an American like 
 all the rest of them but she s perfectly my idea of an Arabian. 
 That extraordinary carriage, spirited, proud, those enormous eyes 
 like lakes of burning jet, and that strange grey-olive skin." 
 
 " She gives you such an impression," Hester continued, " of 
 of untamableness." 
 
 " Exactly," Edith coincided, " she makes me think of a high 
 bred Arabian mare. I have a feeling that if I put my hand on her 
 bare skin I d feel all the nerves quivering underneath. I have 
 seen her after a dance was over at four o clock in the morning 
 burst away from the group and run down the street like a deer." 
 
 " Oh, I would like to see somebody do a thing like that ! " Hester 
 said. There was almost a note of awe in her voice. " I don t 
 believe I could run if anybody was looking at me." 
 
 " She was the Queen of Sheba in the pageant," Edith went on, 
 " and she was wonderful. I say wonderful and marvellous 
 and beautiful over and over again because those are the only 
 words that describe the pageant. She wore a gown of cloth of 
 gold; on her head was an enormous head-dress of peacocks plumes 
 and from them hung a deep glittering fringe of mock diamonds. 
 She was a combination of sumptuousness and a kind of gorgeous 
 wildness that is almost impossible to describe." 
 
 " I would like to have seen her," Hester said simply. And now 
 that mental bewilderment seemed to precipitate in concrete ques 
 tion. " But about those two who are living together, that Miss 
 Ainsworth and that Mr. Lof tus, are there many who do that ? " 
 
 Edith laughed. " Well, that s rather a difficult question to 
 answer. Of course there are all kinds of classes of what is called 
 the free union in New York. There are here, of course, as every 
 where, numbers of women who live with men for gain. They 
 are frankly mercenary immoral if you please. That is to say 
 they must live, but they want to live at the least possible trouble 
 to themselves, and so they capitalise their attractions. Then of 
 course there are many others who have no moral scruples pirate- 
 ships, social derelicts who frankly do the easiest thing in the 
 love game, unmoral not immoral, if you please. Then there are
 
 248 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 others who don t believe in the marriage ceremony at all, who are 
 living in a so-called illicit relation for a principle free lovers, 
 reformers if you please. You remember that tall dark Miss 
 Collingwood to whom I introduced you just a little while ago?" 
 
 " Yes," Hester assented. " She s sitting over there beside John." 
 
 " That s the one," Edith said. " She does not believe in the 
 marriage ceremony. She is living with that lame elderly man, Joe 
 Hendrickan. He s talking over in the corner the one with the 
 glasses, the rather fine sensitive profile. She has lived with him for 
 several years." 
 
 " And everybody knows it ? " Hester gasped. 
 
 " Yes, and she knows everybody knows it," Edith answered. 
 
 " And she doesn t mind their knowing ? " 
 
 " If she thinks they don t know," Edith declared, " she takes 
 great pains to tell them sometime during her first conversation 
 with them." 
 
 " I I never heard anything like this," Hester said. " It seems 
 
 so strange so upsetting. Of course I ve always known But 
 
 I never thought What about their children ? " she inquired 
 
 with a sudden articulate luminousness. 
 
 " Ah, that s the crux of the situation," Edith explained. " There 
 are very few children in the free-love circles. Consciously or 
 subconsciously most of them seem to feel, that although they are 
 willing to bear the brunt of a social campaign, they hate to 
 inflict its penalties on their young. They seem to feel that they 
 must make the choice between parenthood and what they con 
 sider the best type of citizenship." 
 
 "Yes. I should think it would be that way," Hester decided 
 after a long interval of quiet. 
 
 " Do you want to go home, Hester ? " Southward asked, appear 
 ing around the edge of the screen. 
 
 " Oh, no," Hester said, " not till the party s over." 
 
 " Even if it keeps up until sunrise ? " Southward pressed her. 
 
 " Not even if it keeps up until to-morrow night," Hester an 
 nounced firmly. 
 
 "She is a sport, isn t she?" Southward commented, turning to 
 Dwight who accompanied her. 
 
 " One of our best little stayers," Dwight answered promptly. 
 
 " But, Hester dear," Southward went on, and that look of tender 
 ness which came into her face often when she addressed Hester 
 for a moment dimmed its look of sparkling insouciance, " don t be 
 too much of a sport, don t let yourself get too tired. Don t stay 
 here just because you think you re taking me away. I m ready to
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 249 
 
 go at any time." Then at Hester s quick nod of dissent, "Of 
 course I know you d never consent to that. But John will take 
 you home, if you really want to go." 
 
 " I don t want to go home," Hester said with an unexpected 
 lucidity. " I do want to stay. I am not tired. But if I were 
 tired, I should still stay here until I dropped, because for the first 
 time in my life I am seeing something strange and modern, and 
 breath-taking and dazzling. I want to get enough of it to last me 
 all the rest of the long grey years in Shayneford." 
 
 " Bravo, Hester ! " Dwight threw approvingly at her as he drew 
 Southward back into the whirl of dancers. 
 
 " What is Dwight bravoing for ? " asked John, who came up in 
 time to hear this farewell salute. 
 
 Edith answered for Hester. " It s only Hester saying that she s 
 perfectly willing to stay out the rest of the week at this party." 
 
 " I applaud those sentiments," John exclaimed. " I think it s 
 a very nice party. But you mustn t get so tired to-night that 
 you won t be able to go with me on a little expedition day after 
 to-morrow." He turned explainingly to Edith. " I want to show 
 Hester that view from the ferry at night. I m so sorry you re 
 going to be away, Edith. You ought to go too. However, you ll 
 be back in time for plenty other excursions." 
 
 Edith s smile fixed a little. " It is too bad," she said. " But 
 as you say I ll be back soon." 
 
 " Oh, are you going away, Edith ? " Hester s voice was almost 
 a wail. " It frightens me to think of being in New York without 
 you here. It makes me homesick to think of it." 
 
 Edith s smile lost its fixed quality. " I hate to go too," she 
 said, " it s an old aunt that s ill who s dying slowly. It keeps 
 taking me away. But I ll be back and then we ll run round the 
 city together. I ll show you my New York, which is, I assure you, 
 very different from Azile s New York or John s or Dwight s or 
 Morena s." 
 
 The party did not last as late as the next night which 
 Hester had placed as her limit of staying, but it kept up long after 
 the sunrise which Southward had tentatively put as its conclusion. 
 Till two o clock, there seemed to be no diminution in the crowd 
 of dancers. But after two they melted away until circulation 
 was much freer; those who were left seemed to go at it with new 
 zest. By four o clock, they were tired of dancing and had taken 
 to " stunts." Songs, recitations, solo dancing of every kind and 
 description, and finally parlor acrobatic feats of every known
 
 250 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 power and variety followed one after another. At six they were, as 
 compared to their original numbers, but a handful; that handful 
 though, the youngest and gayest. They resumed dancing for a 
 while. At seven they went to a Childs restaurant near by and ate 
 ravenously of ham and eggs, steak, sausages, coffee anything that 
 the bill of fare afforded. After breakfast they repaired to the 
 studio of the Golden Girl; there with the aid of more cigarettes 
 and more drinks, they sat round on the floor telling stories, swap 
 ping experiences until their hostess fell asleep. It was some 
 time after noon when Southward and Hester got home and fell, 
 exhausted but jubilant, into their beds. It was nine o clock the 
 next morning before they opened their eyes.
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 AZILE, in a complicated negligee of rose-pink and tea-coloured 
 lace, mob cap of silver trimmed with roses, stood within when the 
 maid opened the door to Southward s ring. 
 
 " Oh, here you are ! " she exclaimed, " I m so glad. Wait a 
 moment," she called to the driver of the taxi. 
 
 " It was awfully good of you to send a taxi for me," Southward 
 said, " but very foolish. I walk everywhere, you know, and I have 
 a natural sense of direction. It s the only way to get to know 
 a new city." 
 
 " You re right," Azile approved, " but I never walk anywhere if 
 I can help it. I hate walking. And somehow I always take it 
 for granted that other people feel the way I do. One reason, of 
 course, is my high heels. I just about live in taxis. You get the 
 habit in Paris, where they are so much cheaper. I ll go without 
 anything else except clothes to have all the taxis I want." 
 
 " They re great fun, of course," Southward agreed, but without 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 " Let me take you through the shop first," Azile offered. 
 " Mother s busy with some stuff that s just arrived. You ll find it 
 very amusing, I know." 
 
 The Morrows place consisted of two of the little old-time stables 
 that so agreeably diversify New York s mid- Victorian brownness. 
 Broad stone flags led up to their wide doors; green-grey 
 slates covered their gabled roofs. One was shop, the other 
 house. They were connected by means of a single door. 
 Southward followed Azile s pink bedroom slippers into a dusty 
 dusky interior crowded with the heterogeneous collection of the 
 antique-shop. Haphazard on the walls hung old mirrors, engrav 
 ings, pictures, silhouettes, samplers, tapestries. On the sideboards 
 crowded old glass of all shapes, colours, and thicknesses. Over 
 chairs sprawled spreads, chintz hangings. On the tables piled 
 pewter, brass, candlesticks, lamps, Sheffield plate, old china. A 
 showcase at one side held a collection of old jewelry. Another, 
 opposite, was crammed with old silver, all very much in need 
 of shining. In the midst of this confusion, neat, prim, ordered, 
 
 251
 
 252 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 a big apron covering her black gown, Mrs. Morrow was super 
 intending the removal of a bureau. She stopped to shake hands 
 with Southward. 
 
 " Good Lord, that s Gert Beebee s bureau ! " Southward ex 
 claimed. " Doesn t it look beautiful ? " 
 
 " Yes, I m pleased with it," Mrs. Morrow said with satisfaction. 
 " I have a man here who s an artist a poet almost. He gets the 
 exact degree of polish on everything. I ve just sold that bureau 
 for seventy-fire dollars." 
 
 " Eeally," Southward exclaimed. " I had no idea that old furni 
 ture brought such prices." 
 
 " Doesn t it tempt you to part with some of your superfluities ? " 
 Mrs. Morrow smiled her hard bright smile. But her look was 
 of one who did not expect assent. 
 
 " Not yet," Southward answered briefly. " I d like to see that 
 man of yours at work sometime though." 
 
 " Come now ! " Azile ordered. " He s doing something over this 
 minute." 
 
 She led the way into a tiny workshop at the back. A little 
 man, scraping a sideboard with a rectangle of steel, straightened 
 up as they entered. 
 
 " Mr. Courvoisier," Azile said, " here is a lady who has a house 
 full of the most sumptuous old furniture you ever saw." 
 
 Mr. Courvoisier bowed. " Zat means nossing," he said. He 
 had a delicate small-featured face in which a pair of big black 
 eyes sparkled from the midst of long iron-grey hair and a long 
 iron-grey beard. " Do you loaf it ? " 
 
 " Enough not to give it up, though I m poor," Southward ex 
 plained briefly. 
 
 " Zat is enough," Mr. Courvoisier approved. " Nevaire give it 
 up." 
 
 Southward asked questions about his work. He answered with 
 enthusiasm, volunteered detailed accounts of processes. Azile 
 began to fidget. 
 
 " Come, come! " she ejaculated after a while. " You ve got ages 
 to learn about finishing furniture. Let s get back into the house. 
 I want to talk with you." 
 
 She led the way into the other stable. With its bare 
 polished floor, its big rugs, its few pieces of old furniture, its many 
 flowers, it presented an atmosphere of fresh simplicity which con 
 trasted sharply with the disorder of the shop. A stairway from 
 the lower big room led to a mezzanine gallery, where there were 
 four small chambers. " This is mother s," Azile said of the first
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 253 
 
 in passing. " This is mine. Here is where Dwight does his 
 writing. This is the guest-chamber." 
 
 It was very simple, the guest-chamber, and like the other rooms, 
 furnished in old stuff. A tall glass on the little snake-foot ma 
 hogany candle-stand held a single rose. A pair of silhouettes hung 
 over the desk. A sampler, gold-framed, hung over the bed. An 
 old mirror with a picture of a ship at the top hung over the bureau. 
 
 " Goodness ! " Southward exclaimed, " I should think I was back 
 on the Cape. It gives me a faint homesick feeling." 
 
 Azile laughed. " Mother said it would. She furnished this all 
 up to-day especially for you. She has a great trick of changing 
 the room over, according to the character of our guests. Mother 
 has a feeling for old things a kind of tenderness. I sometimes tell 
 her that she d sell me for a good Hepplewhite chair. Now is there 
 anything I can do for you ? " 
 
 " No, thanks," Southward answered. " While I m here though, 
 perhaps I d better get into my other dress." 
 
 " Shall I go?" Azile offered politely. 
 
 " Oh, no. Stay if you like," Southward responded indifferently. 
 
 Azile dropped into the little slat-backed rocker. Without seem 
 ing to do so, she watched Southward remove her belongings from 
 her bag a comb and brush and mirror, all very plain in white 
 celluloid, a nightgown, equally plain of a fine white nainsook, a 
 kimono even plainer of pongee, a pair of bedroom slippers of white 
 fur. She watched her get into her simple white evening dress. 
 " You re just like a boy, aren t you? " Azile said. 
 
 Southward smiled an indifferent assent. " A little," she replied. 
 
 " Now come to my room," Azile commanded. " And be pre 
 pared for a shock. It s all modern. Not for me any old stuff. 
 Furniture can t be too light and airy and convenient and above 
 all things, clean for me." 
 
 Azile s bedroom set was indeed modern; of a delicate light wood, 
 augmented with cane, painted with Dresden-like motifs of pink 
 roses and blue ribbons. A huge triptych mirror hung over the 
 generous dresser. A long mirror hung between the windows. And 
 wherever among the pictures and hangings a space permitted, a 
 mirror, short and broad or narrow and long, filled it. Southward 
 looked about and suddenly the blue-and-black shimmer came into 
 her eyes. 
 
 " You re certainly not like a boy," she commented. " Not that 
 I haven t plenty of mirrors in the garret. I only use one of 
 them, though." 
 
 " I need every one of mine," Azile asserted. She opened the
 
 254 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 closet-door of which the inside was one huge looking-glass. "I 
 put my dress onto this. I make up at the three-part one. My 
 hat goes on before the square one. One side of my profile submits 
 to inspection over there; the other side over here. The rest 
 are used according to whether it s daylight or electric light. This 
 collection of hand-mirrors helps in various ways." She pointed 
 to the big broad dresser, overloaded with implements of the toilet 
 in gold and green enamel. 
 
 " I hope you manage to make out," Southward said. Her smile 
 had broken through the non-committal impassivity in which she 
 had entered the house. 
 
 " I do, thank you," Azile responded. " Now come to Dwight s 
 room. I want to show you where he works." 
 
 Dwight s room was distinctly a man s room, a big roll-top desk, 
 a big table, a chair or two, a plain white-painted iron bed. The 
 desk and table were covered with papers. Azile began to divide 
 these into piles. 
 
 " He s awfully disorderly," she said in the tone of amused 
 indulgence with which women commonly refer to this failing in 
 men. " I straighten out his papers every day or he d never find 
 anything. Have you seen the East Side novel yet ? " She asked 
 this carelessly, bending to pick up a page of manuscript which 
 she had dropped on the floor. 
 
 " No," Southward answered. 
 
 " It s pretty good," Azile explained. " You know I didn t like 
 the Cape Cod novel." 
 
 " No ? " Southward answered. 
 
 " No. It didn t convince me. It was a reporter s account of 
 a romance not a novelist s. It didn t smack of the country. 
 Did you read it ? " 
 
 " Yes," Southward answered. 
 
 " What did you think of it ? " 
 
 " About as you do." 
 
 " I think you ll like the East Side story. Perhaps he ll read us 
 some of it to-night. I haven t heard the last two or three chapters 
 yet. Still I don t know that he ll want to do that with Morena 
 here." 
 
 Southward was silent. 
 
 " Don t you think that his work is very interesting ? " Azile 
 went on. 
 
 Southward hesitated. " I haven t made up my mind that Mr. 
 Cameron is a novelist yet," she said at last. 
 
 " Not a novelist. My dear, have you read Ginger? "
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 255 
 
 " Yes. I liked that. But Ginger strikes me as one of the acci 
 dental books that anybody might throw off who s got the merest 
 instinct to write. Almost anybody can write one book. I wrote 
 one once. A short one in college." 
 
 " What was it about ? " Azile asked, amazed. 
 
 "It was a pirate story all men no women in it. I couldn t 
 write about a woman to save my life. I laid the scene in Shayne- 
 ford in the early days. I used our family history." 
 
 " What became of it ? " Azile asked, still amazed. 
 
 " Oh, I burnt it. Of course it was bad, but it wasn t so awfully 
 bad. My English instructor at college wanted to let me let him 
 submit it to a publisher. He offered to make suggestions about 
 amplifying it. But I didn t. It only illustrates what I was saying, 
 that there s one novel in everybody. One novel doesn t make a 
 writer any more than one swallow makes a summer." 
 
 Azile stared at her. And in her eyes struggled many expressions : 
 surprise, perplexity, active indignation, a certain grudged respect. 
 " Why didn t you submit it to a publisher ? " she asked finally. 
 
 " I was afraid he might accept it. I didn t want to be a writer." 
 
 " You haven t much respect for literature or the arts in gen 
 eral ? " Azile s interrogative tone had an acid quality. 
 
 " No, they bore me. I hate to see men working at the arts 
 painters, writers, sculptors, singers, actors. Not that I ve known 
 so many. But a few have drifted to Shayneford. I can t quite 
 think of them as men. It seems to me that that sort of thing is 
 a woman s job." 
 
 " What do you like ? " There was a faint emphasis on the word 
 " do," but Azile s tone had subdued considerably. 
 
 " Machinery." 
 
 "Machinery!" Azile repeated. 
 
 " I d like to run a locomotive," Southward said. " I d like to 
 build bridges. Most of all I d like to be an aviator." 
 
 " An aviator ! Good God ! " exclaimed Azile Morrow. " There, 
 there s the telephone," she said in another moment and in a dif 
 ferent roice. " We d better go back to my room." 
 
 Ahead of Southward, Azile speeded lightly through the balcony, 
 took up the receiver. " Hello, hello. Yes, this is Mrs. Morrow. 
 Oh, you! Good morning. Yes, thanks, quite recovered. Yes! 
 Yes ! she s here now. All right." She turned. " It s Dwight, 
 Miss Drake. He wants to talk with you." She handed Southward 
 the receiver. 
 
 " Hello," Southward said. 
 
 "Hello," came Dwight s answering voice. "How are you?"
 
 256 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Very well, thank you." 
 
 "Not tired out?" 
 
 " By no means." 
 
 " I m coming up immediately. Tell Azile, please." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 "He says he s coming up immediately," Southward turned to 
 Azile. 
 
 " Heavens, then I must get dressed." 
 
 Chattering briskly all the time, Azile proceeded with her dress 
 ing. It was a long and leisurely process, involving the use of 
 many of the glittering instruments on her toilet-table, the drawing 
 over underwear delicate as a cobweb, a gown almost as filmy of 
 green and gold. She was interrupted ceaselessly: many times by 
 telephone calls, three times by the arrival of florists boxes, twice by 
 telegrams, once by a heavy pile of mail. She ignored the telephone 
 calls, opened the boxes, glanced at the cards that came with them 
 and without comment dropped them into the waste-basket, ar 
 ranged a charming combination of the orchids that came in one 
 and the daffodils in another, ordered the long-stemmed bunch of 
 American Beauties that emerged from a third to be got rid of 
 " anywhere " with a careless, " I will not have roses about ; I hate 
 them," ran rapidly over the envelopes of her mail, opened two 
 and dumped the rest untouched into a drawer of her desk. The 
 telegrams alone received her undivided attention. Before she had 
 finished, both Dwight and Morena were waiting downstairs. 
 
 " What s the taxi doing outside ? " Dwight asked as he shook 
 hands. 
 
 " ~Lordee! " Azile exclaimed with smiling indifference. " I forgot 
 to dismiss the taxi that I sent for Miss Drake. Get my pocket- 
 book, Netty ! " she ordered the maid, " and go out and pay him." 
 
 " You extravagant wench ! " Dwight commented. 
 
 Azile sighed, but she smiled too. " I m always doing that," she 
 admitted. " In Vienna once, I kept one waiting all night." 
 
 Dinner was a gay ceremony. Mrs. Boardman in a gown of black 
 and white, which, evening gown though it was, managed to pre 
 serve the effect typical to her clothes of being a uniform, presided 
 at the head of the table. Azile ministered at the foot. Azile led 
 the conversation. At times it came into the scope of Southward s 
 comprehension, but often it concerned itself with New York people 
 and interests. It gave little picturesque glimpses of parties and
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 257 
 
 personalities, glittering hints of gossip and scandal. Dwight was 
 discursive and humorous; Morena witty and epigrammatic; Azile 
 herself gay and audacious. Mrs. Boardman and Southward were 
 perforce silent ; but Southward listened with a polite interest that 
 perhaps veiled a real interest. 
 
 " Oh, Dwight," Azile exclaimed as they rose from the table. 
 " Vera Petroff called me up to-day. She wants me to go there to 
 dinner Monday. She asked me particularly if I wouldn t bring 
 you. She s brought you an ikon from Kussia." 
 
 "That s kind of her," Dwight said. "Yes, I ll go," he added. 
 " Monday did you say? " 
 
 " Yes, Monday." 
 
 " Oh, and the Taylor-Lennalian outfit want us to go motoring 
 with them Sunday. They want you to see their place at Fort 
 Washington. It s to be an all-day affair. Can you go? " 
 
 " Yes, I think I can," Dwight decided. But he said it rather 
 slowly. 
 
 " Oh, and something else Now, what was it ? Oh, yes, I 
 
 know, Tom and Jerry want us to come out to their camp for a week 
 end. They said they d let you set the date. How about it? 
 Sunday after next ? " 
 
 Perceptibly Dwight hesitated. "I ll have to think that over. 
 I m a little involved with engagements now. I ll call them up 
 sometime." 
 
 Southward and Morena listened, without comment of course, to 
 this dialogue. " Will you let me take you to dinner Monday, 
 Miss Drake?" Morena asked as they arose from the table. 
 
 " Thank you, yes," Southward answered without hesitation. 
 
 After dinner, the four went to the theatre. After the theatre 
 they went to supper and then to one of the public dance halls 
 where they danced until two. On Sunday they had breakfast with 
 Azile at twelve. Mrs. Boardman, having arisen at her regular 
 hour, did not appear at the table. But Azile presided with a 
 charming grace behind a coffee service of Sheffield plate. She 
 wore another astonishing demi-negligee, this of pale blue with a 
 cap of gold. She was exceedingly vivacious, full of life and good 
 spirits. Once a quick duck of her head in the wake of a dropped 
 napkin shed this cap and her hair, curling at the edges, fell in 
 soft green-gold cascades over her face. She shook it back; but she 
 did not resume her cap. 
 
 The afternoon was for some reason or other, dull. Dwight did 
 not seem to be talkative, although Azile rallied him constantly on 
 the score of his low spirits. Southward was silent except when
 
 258 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Azile made appeal for help; then always she laughed a careless 
 negative. Morena, all Latin, seemed to be watching the rest of 
 the party as though it were a play. At three Azile insisted that 
 Dwight should write for two hours. She made a pretty pretence 
 of compelling him to this by main force. She pulled him up out 
 }f his chair, pushed him with her hands on his shoulders up the 
 stairs and into his room, shut the door and turned the key in the 
 lock. Afterwards she disappeared into her own room. Morena 
 and Southward talked alone downstairs. When, within less than 
 the prescribed two 1 hours, Dwight emerged from his room, he was 
 silent and moody. Morena made one or two attempts to draw him 
 into his talk with Southward, but he did not respond. Dinner, 
 with the help of the wine and cocktails, was for a brief interval 
 a gay affair. Azile in another extraordinary evening gown of 
 lilac and pearl shone again. Once she said carelessly, " Oh, 
 Dwight, I looked over the last three chapters before I went to 
 sleep. I want to talk them over with you sometime." 
 
 " Thanks," Dwight answered. " It s very good of you." 
 
 "Before you leave to-night, perhaps," Azile murmured with 
 the effect of one who is trying to be heard by only one. 
 
 At half -past nine Southward rose to go. 
 
 " May I see you home ? " Morena murmured. 
 
 " Thank you. It s not necessary. I m not at all afraid," South 
 ward answered. 
 
 Nevertheless Morena drew on his coat. 
 
 " Oh, wait a moment ! " Azile exclaimed. " Just one thing 
 before you go." She dashed out of the room and flashed swiftly 
 downstairs. When she came back, she held a little pitcher in her 
 hand. " This is a souvenir of your first visit to me, Miss Drake. 
 It s such a darling piece of Lowestoft; it really belongs with your 
 collection." 
 
 " Oh, thank you very much," Southward said formally. " It s a 
 beautiful piece. The helmet shape, isn t it?" 
 
 " I m glad you like it." Azile emitted many comments about 
 Lowestoft in general as she proceeded to wrap the pitcher in tissue 
 paper and to tie it with nursery ribbon. 
 
 Southward chattered briskly to Morena all the way to the apart 
 ment. " Will you come up ? " she asked when they reached the 
 doorway. 
 
 " Thank you, no," Morena said decisively. " Remember me to 
 Miss Crowell. I ll call for you to-morrow at about half -past six." 
 
 " All right," Southward agreed. 
 
 " I m going to take you down to Chinatown. I haven t been
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 259 
 
 there for three months. Not since your friend Lysander Manning 
 was here." 
 
 " Has Lysander been in New York? " Southward asked in a tone 
 electric with surprise. 
 
 " Yes. He came here for about a week in November. Azile 
 made him stay at their place. She gave him a wonderful time. 
 One night we all went to dinner in Chinatown and afterwards 
 to the Chinese theatre. Didn t he mention it to you ? " 
 
 " No," Southward said carelessly, " but I haven t seen much of 
 Lysander this winter. He s been away a lot. As usual he s taken 
 a road- job, travelling for some razor people, I believe. You won t 
 come up ? " 
 
 " No, thank you. Good night." 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 Southward mounted the stairs slowly. As she entered the build 
 ing, all the superficial gaiety in her face dropped out of it as com 
 pletely as though it had been drained from the back. Her look 
 grew blacker and blacker; the deep scowl which always gave her 
 a predatory quality drew its sinister furrows in her brow. Her 
 eyes half closed. Her upper teeth sank so deep in her lower lip 
 that they made tiny white dents in its raspberry bloom. When 
 she entered the dark little apartment to which Hester had not as 
 yet returned, she did not light the gas; she did not even take off 
 her things. She moved over to the window in the kitchen and 
 stared out. There was no moon, only a great glittering meadow of 
 stars in the frosty night sky. The lighted windows surrounding 
 the hollow square at the back looked as though they were painted 
 in luminous gold paint on the dark wall. But it was evident that 
 Southward observed none of this. Although she stared fixedly, she 
 saw nothing. Suddenly with a jerk of her left hand the window 
 flew up. Her right arm described an arc through the air. Imme 
 diately below sounded a crash as the Lowestoft pitcher smashed on 
 the pavement.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 JOHN and Ripley called late Saturday afternoon to take Hester 
 to Edith s. The trio walked over to the Avenue, climbed to the 
 top of the bus and rode up to Fifty-ninth Street. The bus, 
 curiously expert in spite of its cumbrous green armour, picked 
 a deft path through the shiny social traffic of that busy hour. 
 On each side, a line of opalescent lights sifted a magic haze 
 over the scene. The two men did all the talking. Hester, sitting 
 next to the rail, did not even listen: she drank down the spectacle. 
 
 " Still dazed, Hester ? " John asked as they got off. 
 
 " Yes, a little," Hester answered, " but not so much as I was. 
 I can t talk about it yet though. And I ve forgotten how to 
 think." 
 
 " Don t talk," Ripley advised. " And don t think. Let it just 
 flow over you. Gradually it will sink in. You ll find yourself 
 after a while." 
 
 They were moving east. Presently they entered an apartment- 
 house; tall and slim, of white marble, its balconies filled with 
 dwarf evergreen trees. Inside, John spoke to a man at a desk. 
 Their names were telephoned upwards. Edith s message to come 
 up was telephoned downwards. They entered an elevator like a 
 miniature boudoir, manned by a boy in a fleckless green-and- 
 gold uniform. They whizzed soundlessly to the sixteenth floor. 
 Edith was standing in an open doorway, waiting for them. 
 
 " Oh, this is so nice," she said happily, " to have you all here 
 and to have you all come at once." 
 
 She led the way into a big living-room. Before Hester could 
 glance about, she conducted her to the windows which filled one 
 end of the room and then to those that filled the other. North, 
 they overlooked the park, a jumble of leafless trees and bushes, 
 springing from the frost glitter of the snow; leaden toy ponds 
 covered with the black toy figures of skaters and arched by 
 toy bridges. 
 
 "What do you think of that, Country Girl?" Edith asked in 
 gentle triumph. " Isn t that beautiful ? " 
 
 " Beautiful ! Beautiful ! " Hester repeated Edith s adjective. 
 " It looks like a Japanese print, doesn t it ? " 
 
 280
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 261 
 
 The south windows looked back on the city an irregular mass 
 of buildings; red-brick, grey granite, white marble, from which 
 leaped steeples of all proportions and decorations, chimneys of 
 all sizes and heights, windows in which were already beginning 
 to gleam lights of all colours and glitters. 
 
 " Isn t that wonderful too, Country-Girl ? " Edith demanded 
 again. " Isn t that wonderful ? " 
 
 " Wonderful ! Wonderful ! " Hester repeated her adjective 
 again. 
 
 " It will be more wonderful later when all the lights come out, 
 and the stars." 
 
 The rooms themselves were beautiful, the last cry in modernism, 
 but too crowded perhaps with pictures and bric-a-brac; although 
 all of these were harmonious, many beautiful and some rare. 
 The furniture was simple but ample and luxuriously comfortable. 
 Dark chintzes brought to the mass of warm detail the coolness 
 of harmony; brilliant flowers brought to it the piquancy of dis 
 cord. Books and magazines gave the needed touch of use. 
 
 " Now come into my dining-room," Edith said, " I want to 
 show you my new treasure." 
 
 The dining-room against a background of paper like white plush 
 displayed a collection of pewter. A small sideboard at one end 
 was covered with old Wedgewood, its twin at the other end with 
 old glass. Edith took from one of them a Wedgewood pitcher 
 of mauve. Her long-fingered, beautiful hands closed about it 
 as with a caress. 
 
 " Isn t that an angel, Hester ? " she asked. A gentle triumph 
 gleamed in her big soft eyes as she held it up to them. 
 
 " Yes, it s a very beautiful colour," Hester agreed, " and I like 
 Wedgewood very much." 
 
 " Oh, I forgot," Edith wailed. " You don t like things either. 
 Of course John and Ripley don t, but I thought for a moment 
 that you, being a woman, would." 
 
 " Oh, I admire beautiful things," Hester exclaimed with fervour, 
 " but I ve made myself not want to possess them." 
 
 " Well, I love things," Edith asserted, " and I like to possess 
 them. I always have. I always shall. And collections such as 
 mine pewter, glass, Wedgewood give one a new interest in 
 life. It s like hunting." 
 
 "Do you really care for them after you get them, Edith?" 
 John asked. " With me, you know, it s not the quarry but the 
 chase, not the laurel but the race, not the hazard but the 
 play "
 
 262 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Make me, Lord, enjoy alway! " Ripley ended for him sotto 
 voce. 
 
 "Yes, I like them just as much after I get them," Edith in 
 sisted staunchly. "My treasures never grow stale to me. I 
 take pleasure in them whenever I look at them. I can t under 
 stand the kind of mind that doesn t enjoy beauty." She stared 
 reproachfully at the two men. 
 
 " Oh, I enjoy beauty enough," Ripley defended himself. " In 
 fact it represents a special temptation to me. But some 
 how in this day and age there are so many more important 
 matters than the cultivation of mere beauty. It s so easy to lose 
 yourself in things. I won t let myself get caught in the beauty 
 trap." 
 
 " And you, John ? " Hester asked. She transferred her gaze 
 from the Wedgewood vase gleaming soft like amethyst velvet in 
 Edith s snowy hands to John s face. 
 
 " The last time I went through the galleries of Europe," John 
 answered slowly, " I felt a kind of disgust with the accumu 
 lated lumber of the ages, a kind of loathing for that dead 
 bric-a-brac. It came to me that all that art and all the talk 
 about it and all the influence it carries might be just as great 
 an obstacle to the advance of ideas as too many possessions to 
 growth in the individual life. Sometimes I think that the best 
 thing that can happen to the world at this moment would be 
 to burn every picture, to smash every piece of sculpture, in short 
 to destroy every beautiful thing that has passed out of actual 
 use. So many good minds and characters and abilities would 
 in that case be brought back to important matters. And I don t 
 know but what it would be a good thing for creative artists. 
 They could start fair for the first time since art began un 
 hampered by tradition free ! " 
 
 " John," Edith s voice thrilled with horror. " Could you destroy 
 Botticelli s Spring 1 ?" 
 
 " In a flash," John answered, " if I could destroy all the other 
 pictures with it." 
 
 " The vandals," Edith appealed to Hester, " they scare me 
 to death." 
 
 " They frighten me," Hester admitted. 
 
 " Well, come back into the living-room," Edith suggested, 
 " and talk about comfy things." 
 
 They talked first and then dined; dined off a table that was 
 one huge correlated lustre of brilliant old silver, dark old 
 mahogany, delicate old glass, and frail old china. Afterwards
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 263 
 
 they returned to the living-room; Edith drew two small couches 
 up to the fire. John and Hester sat on one, Edith and Ripley on 
 the other. 
 
 " You look better already, Hester," Edith said, " more rested, 
 a little pinker I might even say a little plumper." 
 
 "I think so too," John agreed, turning to survey Hester. 
 
 " I like that new way of doing your hair, Hester," Ripley added. 
 
 " I am glad," Hester said. And strangely enough she was 
 not embarrassed. She addressed herself to John. "You see, 
 I told Southward that I wanted to do my hair a different 
 way. And while we were in Boston, she took me to a hair 
 dresser, and told her to try her hand at it. Why, those two 
 experimented with me for at least an hour. They tried all 
 kinds of ways, and how they talked! I wish you could have 
 heard Southward argue with that woman; finally they decided to 
 braid it in two braids like this and bind it round my head. It s 
 an old fashioned way; curiously enough I have a picture of my 
 mother with her hair done exactly like it. Mother had wonder 
 ful hair it still comes to her knees. Hers was pinned in front 
 with a silver pin, a bow and arrow. I asked mother once what 
 became of that pin, and she told me she gave it to a young man 
 whom she refused to marry. I d love to have one just like it." 
 
 " Hester, if I design a bow and arrow pin and have it made 
 for you, will you wear it ? " Edith asked. 
 
 " I d love it." Hester said this obviously as the result of a 
 sudden resolution, after a palpable first impulse to refuse. 
 
 " All right, I ll do that. And now, please let me take your 
 hair down, the way we did that first night at the camp. It looked 
 so lovely hanging in braids. Will you ? " 
 
 " Yes," Hester replied. And again her assent came palpably 
 after a first impulse to refuse. But she was not embarrassed. 
 Very gently Edith pulled the pins out. The two heavy braids 
 slid down over the white liberty scarf that Hester wore with her 
 black evening gown, shimmered in the firelight like carved coils 
 of gold. 
 
 Edith returned to her place and from that vantage surveyed 
 her work. " She is certainly Cordelia," she commented, then, 
 "You two make a splendid composition as you sit there. Rip, 
 I wish you had the camera here." 
 
 " I do too," Ripley said. " John s face all light and shadow, 
 Hester s in the double glare of the firelight and her own hair." 
 
 They talked until midnight. Edith drew the two men out, 
 John about his I. W. W. activities, Ripley in regard to the
 
 264 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Negro Woman. John was in a responsive mood; he went into 
 minute detail in regard to his eccentric personal theories. Ripley 
 combated him on some points, agreed with him on others, asked 
 searching questions. Hester was as usual silent, listening intently. 
 Edith occasionally dropped a comment, but always her eyes kept 
 on the picture she had admired John and Hester in the fire 
 light. Her sweet melancholy smile kept forming on her lips, 
 kept drifting away. Once Hester changed her position. The 
 white scarf fell off her shoulder. Still talking and without look 
 ing, John s hand went up involuntarily and adjusted it. Edith s 
 smile fixed for an instant. 
 
 " Why is it, Hester," Edith asked later, after the men had gone, 
 and she had conducted Hester to her bedroom, "that I like 
 things so ? " 
 
 " I suppose because you have never found your proper work," 
 Hester answered immediately, " or because it never found you, 
 as it never has me." 
 
 " What would you say my proper work was, Hester ? " Edith 
 continued. 
 
 " Motherhood." 
 
 " And what do you consider your proper work ? " 
 
 " Motherhood," Hester answered again. 
 
 " You re right I think, Hester," Edith agreed, " and yet," she 
 shuddered a little, " it s a vile business, and it spoils the figure." 
 
 Hester said nothing. " Have you enjoyed this evening ? " Edith 
 added after a pause. 
 
 " Oh, very much." 
 
 " Will it make life easier when you go back," Edith continued, 
 " this New York experience I mean ? " 
 
 "Yes, I think so. It came a little too late, I am afraid, to 
 make me live any differently. But I ll think differently. And 
 maybe sometime I ll lie different. I haven t any courage, Edith. 
 I don t dare to believe any of the things that you are all believing 
 here, let alone do what you re doing. But I shall have memories. 
 I m listening to everything. What I can t understand I m storing 
 away. It s as though all my life I d had a great empty garret 
 in my mind. And now that garret s half full of things. When I 
 go back, I m going to take out all those things one at a time 
 and examine them. I ll understand then all that I can t under 
 stand now." 
 
 "I think I know how you feel," Edith said softly. "The 
 main thing is that it s a new experience."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 265 
 
 "It s a new dream," Hester asserted. 
 
 Hester lay in bed for hours, her lids wide, her eyes gazing at the 
 ceiling, one hand moveless at her side, the other tangled in the 
 huge braid that wound across her bosom. Finally she fell asleep. 
 
 But somewhere in the early hours she woke with a start, sat 
 upright. 
 
 For one instant she gazed wildly about her; for another like 
 an animal, she snuffed the air; the third, she bounded out of bed, 
 snapped on the lights, hurried to the door. But with her hand 
 on the knob, she stopped, hesitated. The frightened look in her 
 eyes died. She moved slowly back across the room, her head bent. 
 She had opened one of the windows before she went to bed. Now, 
 she opened the other. The moonlight inlaid roofs and chim 
 neys with its frosty enamel. She stood, pulling in long draughts 
 of air as though she were drinking. Finally she lay down, drew 
 the clothes close over her shivering figure. She did not fall asleep 
 again though.
 
 CHAPTEK VII 
 
 "Mv word but you are certainly one grand person to-day," 
 Southward exclaimed when Dwight called the next afternoon. 
 "That s a new suit, isn t it?" 
 
 " It is that," Dwight answered, " delivered from my tailor this 
 morning." 
 
 " It s stunning. I like light clothes. And rough and fuzzy like 
 that. It makes men look bigger and I like them to look as big 
 as they can." 
 
 Dwight was unusually handsome that afternoon and it was not 
 all the effect of his new, typically metropolitan clothes. Some 
 thing emanated from him an excitement that was half pride. It 
 gave to his carriage more than its normal air of arrogance. When 
 they were out in the street, he breathed a quick impatient sigh. 
 " Thank heavens, we re together at last ! Do you realise that 
 though it s a week since you arrived this is the first time we ve 
 been alone ? " 
 
 If Dwight was excited, Southward was radiant. Some inner 
 turbulence came from her in great snapping waves of activity. 
 Her feet skimmed over the ground and once or twice they broke 
 into little definitely-dancing steps. Smiles kept curling her lips; 
 and always at these times, when her eyes met Dwight s, his smile 
 answered them. 
 
 " What a remarkable statement," Southward replied. " We ve 
 danced together and walked together and talked together many 
 times." 
 
 " Oh, but you know what I mean," Dwight asserted impatiently. 
 " There s always been somebody about or near and generally 
 waiting for us to do something or other. Now, we ve got a whole 
 evening alone and, by Jove, we re going to make hay while the 
 sun shines. It s my day off, you see." 
 
 " I m for making hay," Southward answered lightly. " Always ! 
 Lead me to the hay-field, wherever it is. What are we going to do ? " 
 
 " I thought we d walk up the Avenue first and then dinner. 
 And afterwards well, we ll see then." 
 
 " All right," agreed Southward. " I m still in the mood when, 
 as everything is new, everything must be wonderful." 
 
 266
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 267 
 
 It was getting towards five and the Avenue bore the usual 
 crowds. They plunged into it and through it, crossed to the west 
 side and started north. 
 
 " What extraordinary-looking women ! " Southward commented. 
 " That s the first thing that always impresses me when I come to 
 New York. I m glad I m going to stay here long enough 
 this time to get accustomed to them. They are so different from 
 Boston women and so dazzling that I have never yet been able to 
 classify them. Sometimes, though, I think it s only a matter 
 of clothes." 
 
 "You bet it s only a matter of clothes," Dwight agreed. "I 
 guess they re a surprise to all of us at first; but you get used 
 to them. Now I can realise how different they are only by going 
 somewhere else. To tell you the truth somewhere else, as far as 
 women are concerned, looks pretty good to me. You see I ve been 
 in New York for five years now and I ve had a bad attack of New 
 Yorkitis the Broadway fever. I simply could not leave it. I ve 
 even spent my vacations here. Oh, of course I ve taken little 
 dashes, in week-end visits, to the country but among people who 
 made those places only smaller New Yorks. It was old John who 
 rescued me from all this when he made up that party to go to 
 Shayneford last summer. Believe me, I didn t want to be rescued. 
 John simply abducted me and took me off. It was the best 
 thing that ever happened to me, for I got some exercise and 
 oh, well, you know what we did down there. What I m getting at 
 is that I can t tell you how pretty those country-girls seemed 
 so fresh and all tanned and freckled up." 
 
 " Well, naturally, that seems a warped point of view to me," 
 laughed Southward. " I who have been condemned to Shayne 
 ford all my life have an altogether different opinion of it. How 
 ever, it s all natural enough I suppose." 
 
 All this time, as she talked and listened, Southward s quick 
 darting glances were beating back and forth through the crowd. 
 At no time since her arrival in New York had that character 
 istic present-mindedness of hers been more apparent. At this 
 instant, her eyes stopped on the approaching figure of a 
 young girl, surveyed her critically. Dwight s glance followed 
 hers. 
 
 " Get that hair ? " he questioned. " Looks as though it had 
 been turned out of a mould, like jelly. Nothing short of a charge 
 of shrapnel would disturb it. I notice lots of women with hair 
 like that. And I always wonder how the deuce they keep it so 
 slick. I wish somebody d tell me how it s done."
 
 268 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I ll tell you how it s done," Southward volunteered, " in her 
 lap." 
 
 "In her lap," Dwight repeated, mystified, "you mean " 
 
 " I mean that most of it is false," Southward explained. " She 
 curls it and waves it carefully and then pins it on. When you 
 see a girl whose hair is as perfect as that, you may safely con 
 clude that it never grew on her head. If it looks like the dickens, 
 you may be sure it s still rooted there." 
 
 " That explanation never occurred to me," Dwight said, and 
 his tone was slightly chagrined. " I pride myself on being a 
 reporter too." 
 
 Southward was paying no attention. Her eyes had fixed on 
 another advancing figure. 
 
 " Ermine ! " she remarked. " Look at it. She s had it at 
 least ten years. Perhaps longer. Who knows it may have 
 belonged to mother. She thinks because it s ermine, she must 
 never cast it aside. She thinks ermine is like diamonds age 
 cannot wither nor custom stale she ll wear it for ten years 
 more and maybe hand it down to her own children. It s 
 mangy and yellow and thin and ugly but it s ermine. 
 Selah ! " 
 
 Dwight laughed. "I m getting at the root of some hitherto- 
 unrevealed mysteries," he announced. " Go on. Betray your 
 sex. You ve got the best audience here you ever had in your 
 life." 
 
 Thus encouraged, Southward went on. " You see the red 
 headed girl coming the one in navy-blue. Observe the bunch 
 of violets she s wearing. Well, now, let me see. To-day is 
 Thursday. He sent her those violets yesterday. She wore them 
 to the theatre with him last night. They re dead now, but she 
 thinks she s putting it over with us that they re fresh. Just," 
 she added an instant later, " as the lady in mauve approaching 
 believes that those gloves she s wearing are still clean enough 
 to wear once more. She s just started out. I can tell that be 
 cause her face is so freshly-powdered. That might not mean 
 anything she could have stopped on the way for re-enforcements, 
 but that is a perfectly fresh veil; this is the first time it s been 
 tied. She hopes everybody will think that she s been wearing those 
 gloves all day and that s why they re so soiled. Look at the hat 
 to the left there. She trimmed it herself with that near-artistic 
 scarf. She thinks she s done a good job. She has not the re 
 motest idea that her decoration is so lop-sided that it pulls the 
 hat way down on the back of her head."
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 269 
 
 "Dear! Dear!" Dwight commented in mock disgust. "I ll 
 never root again for ballot-privileges for that sex of yours." 
 
 Southward went on to call his attention to the prevalence of 
 shops whose signs showed lettering of a skeleton gold, to sum 
 up certain window displays as lacking in " pep " and others as 
 notably " smart " ; to call attention in one passing motor to the 
 dogs which exactly matched in colour the furs of their luxurious 
 owner and in another to a pair of little girls whose hair exactly 
 matched their mother s; to one girl who was obviously wearing 
 the coat of one suit with the skirt of another and to a second 
 whose heels were so run down that they had the effect of crippling 
 her feet. 
 
 " I never knew what the phrase shoes run down at the heel 
 meant," Dwight said, " and I ve always wondered. Thank 
 you, for enlightening me. But I see you re a great little enlight- 
 ener." 
 
 " One of our best." And Southward continued to enlighten. 
 Under Dwight s encouragement, she barbed her remarks more 
 definitely with malice. The more cutting she became, the more 
 Dwight laughed. " You little cat ! " he accused her once. But 
 there was no disapproval in his torie. 
 
 In fact, later, " Do you know," he burst out suddenly, " I 
 think I ll use that fresh eye of yours in some Sunday stuff, What 
 the Country-Girl Saw. Save up your impressions for me." 
 
 " Sure ! " Southward agreed, 
 
 They had dinner in an uptown cafe a blare of colour and 
 glitter, noise and smells, the fresh perfume of the flowers min 
 gling with the stale odours of food, the crash of the music compet 
 ing with the splash of a fountain, and in the noisy laughing 
 crowd all the usual hectic figures of New York Tenderloin life. 
 It was nearly nine when they emerged into the starry, frosty 
 night. They had had cocktails and afterwards a light heady 
 wine. Southward had drunk sparingly of both, but Dwight 
 emptied the bottle. The effect was evident, but not unpleasingly 
 so, in an extra exhilaration. 
 
 " Now we re going to a party," he said. 
 
 " What, another party ! " Southward commented. 
 
 " Yes, certainly, another party. You must get accustomed to 
 that. New York life is just one party after another. In fact, 
 I must say that life here is one long party." 
 
 " Suits me all right," Southward asserted. " I can t go to too 
 many or stay too late." 
 
 "In fact," Dwight added, "there are two or three parties to-
 
 270 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 night. And if we don t like the first which is more than likely 
 we can go to the second." 
 
 " Then," Southward responded lightly, " I hope we hate the 
 first and the second and eke the third. In fact the more parties 
 we go to this evening, the better I shall be pleased." 
 
 Dwight signalled a taxi and they sped across the city east to 
 Fifth Avenue and then north. They stopped before an apart 
 ment-house of granite, the replica of many others that they passed. 
 Dwight rang a bell and, without waiting for any message at the 
 tube, advanced to the inner door which immediately clicked open. 
 They stepped into an elevator and moved slowly upwards. 
 
 " This party s no good," Dwight remarked, " if it had been, we 
 should have heard the revelry two blocks away." 
 
 They passed through a door which had evidently been left open 
 for them, into a long hall on which was strung a series of small 
 rooms. They passed them all, laughing and talking, until the 
 aspect of the front room reduced them to precipitate silence. It 
 was crowded with people sitting in rows of chairs; dimly-lighted; 
 silent except for one voice. The rows of enraged faces which their 
 noisy entrance had flashed towards them gradually turned back 
 in the direction of the voice. Southward and Dwight slipped into 
 seats near the door. Dwight dropped his eyes to the floor but 
 Southward calmly surveyed the scene. 
 
 The big room was really two rooms, papered a brilliant red, 
 the only decorations plaster replicas of skulls, gargoyles, and 
 animals. Three lights hanging from the ceiling were shaded 
 with red silk and hanging fringes of paper snakes. The voice 
 was reading a poem. They had broken into the midst of it, but 
 the interruption seemed but to give it fresh life; it went on 
 interminably. Finally, however, though it had shown no inten 
 tion of coming to an end, it stopped abruptly; the reader sat 
 down in the midst of the tumultuous applause of an audience 
 that in its enthusiasm also leaped to its feet. Under cover of the 
 confusion and congratulations, Dwight drew Southward quietly 
 away. 
 
 "Not that party," he decided, "I hope you ll forgive me. But 
 wasn t it a wonder ? " 
 
 " It was a marvel," Southward admitted. " I wouldn t have 
 minded staying." 
 
 " Too much like work," Dwight said. " The extraordinary part 
 of it was though," he added thoughtfully, " and this is rather 
 typical of New York that the poem was pretty good." 
 
 "Well, do you know," Southward agreed, "it struck me that
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 271 
 
 it wasn t half-bad. The poet was rather good-looking too," she 
 added with a reminiscent thoughtf ulness. " By the way, do 
 you write poetry ? " 
 
 " Not guilty ! " Dwight answered promptly. 
 
 "I m so glad. I hate poetry. Most of the time I can t under 
 stand it. And then I hate the poetic vocabulary. I can t tell 
 you what a rage it puts me into when I see a window called a 
 casement." 
 
 They walked over to the Avenue and took the stage downtown. 
 
 " There s no knowing what the next party will be like," Dwight 
 warned her. " It may be worse. But we ve got to sample them 
 one at a time until we find one that we approve of. The night 
 is still young, you know." 
 
 " Don t mind me ! " Southward objured him lightly. " I can 
 only reiterate the more the merrier. Everything in this here-and- 
 now New York is fish to my net." 
 
 They stopped at Washington Mews just above Washington 
 Square. At what looked like a stable, Dwight rang a bell. The 
 door was opened by the " Jungle Doc " who whispered in a 
 stage-whisper. " Hullo, people ! Come on in, the water s fine ! " 
 Back of him, curling through the door, came, ineffably sweet, the 
 wail of a violin. 
 
 They tiptoed into a large bare room, lighted by ship lanterns. 
 Some partially-completed groups of sculpture, covered with white 
 cloths, stood about on tables. It was not a big party and it had 
 formed itself into a half-circle that faced the door. They were 
 sitting or standing, utterly relaxed: dreams lay soft and still on 
 every face. The violinist finished, fitted his instrument tenderly 
 into its case before the spell broke. Immediately a loud voice 
 started an argument. 
 
 " There s Joe on psycho-analysis, again," the " Jungle Doc " 
 announced in disgust. "We ve been trying to choke him off the 
 whole evening." 
 
 "All right," Dwight said hastily, "we ll be back later when 
 he s got it out of his system. I ve heard that spiel so many 
 times that I know it by heart. Come on, Miss Drake." 
 
 In another instant they were in the silvery clear night air 
 again. 
 
 " Congratulate me on my presence of mind," Dwight entreated. 
 " If you only knew what I ve saved you from." 
 
 Southward laughed. " Still I suppose it would have amused 
 me," she admitted. 
 
 Dwight tucked her arm into his. "Not a chance on earth.
 
 272 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 I ll take you for a little walk now. I seem to have run out of 
 parties. Gee, I m strong for this neighbourhood. I ought to 
 have a place right on the Square. I did once sublet rooms for 
 the summer off a chap I know. It s a real breathing-spot and 
 there s always something doing here. The wops give it a lot of 
 colour. But there s another quality. The sky is or seems a dif 
 ferent blue from the rest of the welkin. I ve often heard artists 
 speak of it. And if you ll believe it crowded Manhattan that 
 it is the birds sang so loud in the tree-tops that at first they 
 waked me up at dawn every morning. I lived on the second 
 story and at night the electric lights outside used to throw the 
 shadows of the trees onto my ceiling through the long windows. 
 It was an extraordinary effect and believe me, kid a strange 
 sensation to fall asleep at night in a bower of leaves, or the 
 ghosts of leaves. Seemed like Merlin and Vivien and that sort 
 of thing." 
 
 " I have a horried fear that you re talking poetry," South 
 ward protested. 
 
 " Easiest thing I do," Dwight admitted. " I lisped in numbers. 
 By jiminy, this is some night." 
 
 The exhilaration had evaporated as his distance from the wine 
 grew, but now it began to mount again in the crisp air. " Gee, 
 I m glad you re here in Manhattan, Captain Southward Drake," 
 he said. " We can have a great time together. Again I warn 
 you, don t forget that I have the New York rights." 
 
 " I ll remember if you ll remember that there are limitations 
 to those rights. Of course I intend to go about with other men, 
 just as you intend to go about with other women." Southward 
 said this in a tone of indignation as though her independence 
 were being curtailed. 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " Dwight backed away hastily. " However, if 
 there s a determined rush in your direction, I shall have to 
 begin to defend my rights. I suppose by this time," he threw off 
 carelessly, " they re appearing in bunches." 
 
 " No oh, no," Southward affirmed, " only a few. Mr. O Reilly 
 has been very kind about offering to show me New York. I 
 believe we re going somewhere next week. The rest are neg 
 ligible." 
 
 Dwight said nothing but some of the exhilaration seemed to 
 drain out of his personality. He looked at his watch. " Getting 
 towards eleven, we d better hi. what s that?" 
 
 A sudden burst of song came tearing across the Square. 
 
 " There s a party over there somewhere ! " Dwight exclaimed.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 273 
 
 " Let s go to it. I don t know where it is, but we ll soon find out. 
 The hardest thing in the world to conceal is a Village party. And 
 I may not have met the people who are giving it but I don t know 
 what that s got to do with the case. Come on ! " 
 
 They hurried to the south side of the Square, Dwight keenly 
 following the sound. " Oh, that place ! " he exclaimed, " I m 
 sorry. I m bound to know somebody there. It would have been 
 fun to have come on a gang of strangers and say, Pardon us, 
 but you ve got a party for sale and we want to buy one. Can t 
 we connect ? 
 
 They ascended three flights of stairs in the comfortable old 
 house at which Dwight presently stopped. As they neared the 
 top, the noise became deafening. When Dwight opened the door 
 of a little front room, it was to let out a blast of song that 
 nearly blew them back down the stairs. 
 
 " Good morning, Patricia ! " he greeted the agreeable youn~ 
 man with whom he immediately shook hands, " Patrick O Rorke, 
 Miss Drake. It s no use, Patricia, in trying to give a party with 
 out imviting me. My intuition tells me what s going on and I 
 just come." 
 
 " I see that," said Mr. O Rorke. He cast an appreciative Celtic 
 eye in Southward s direction. " But say, we can arbitrate this. 
 Any time you bring Miss Drake, I ll let you in free of charge." 
 
 The music had stopped during this interchange of pleasantries. 
 The people, sitting about on chairs, window-seats, the floor and 
 each other s laps, shouted noisy greetings. Room was found for 
 them on a settee and without introduction they seemed at once to 
 become a part of the gathering. The singing kept up for an hour. 
 They sang American songs, French songs, German songs, college 
 songs, ragtime, and hymns. All the time a stout white-haired 
 individual stood by the gas stove at one side of the room, stirring 
 a concoction which Dwight whispered to Southward was mulled 
 wine. At intervals he ladled it into the collection of empty 
 utensils that stood about; delicate wine-glasses, thin, frail, grace 
 fully engraved; goblets, thick, heavy, and deeply-cut; plebeian- 
 looking tumblers; cups with handles and without; tin mugs. 
 One man drank from what was palpably a silver christening cup 
 and another from what was obviously a shaving-mug. All that 
 exhilaration that had died down in Dwight flamed up again under 
 the influence of the singing and the wine. A spark caught on 
 Southward s subdued spirit and set it ablaze. 
 
 Once a good-natured policeman appeared at the door to offer 
 a mild remonstrance, but he was placated with a long glass of
 
 274 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 the mulled wine. Somewhere after twelve, the singing party ad 
 journed but only to reconvene across the Square as a dancing 
 party. Still singing though running and stopping occasionally 
 to play snap the whip in the wide spaces of the Square they gained 
 a studio in McDougal Alley, waked up two painters who in 
 habited it, ordered them to open their doors. They opened the 
 doors, but themselves returned to bed immediately, undisturbed 
 by the dancing that went on for an hour. From here, they went 
 to another studio and another and another. 
 
 It was three o clock when Dwight returned Southward, still 
 fresh, to her apartment. 
 
 " When am I going to see you again ? " he asked as she stood 
 at the lower door. 
 
 " Oh, any time," she answered lightly. " I ve nothing to do 
 and as you know always ready for anything. And I m by no 
 means overrun with engagements yet." 
 
 " Let me see," he meditated aloud. " Of course, being on an 
 accursed morning paper, I have only my mornings beside my 
 day off and the occasional extra day that I have screwed out of 
 them. To-morrow I have an engagement to write at Azile s. The 
 next morning we re going off on a lark together. The next 
 I m free. I ll call you up sometime about nine. Hester doesn t 
 mind your beating it off like this ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. Hester is the most understanding person in the 
 world. Besides, we made an agreement that we should pursue 
 our own devices while we were here. We neither of us could live 
 any other way." 
 
 " Well, then I have nothing but the two engagements with 
 Azile," Dwight summed it up, "and you re perfectly free?" 
 
 " Only that tentative engagement with Mr. O Reilly," South 
 ward murmured. " He said though there were a lot of things " 
 
 " Oh, of course," Dwight interrupted. " Good night ! " 
 
 " Good night ! " 
 
 Dwight, with a step rather less buoyant, proceeded slowly down 
 the street and Southward, with an aspect decidedly more sober, 
 walked slowly up the stairs.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHEN John called for Hester a few days after the party, he 
 looked tired and seemed preoccupied. He sat in their little 
 living-room in one of his characteristic attitudes, one foot resting 
 on the other knee, his arms crossed and his chin sunk on his chest. 
 When Hester, her hat and coat and gloves on, came into the 
 room, he aroused himself from his meditations with a start. He 
 reached absently for his hat and stick; absently he pulled on his 
 greatcoat. He was still absent as they walked down the stairs. 
 
 " Are you ill or tired or worried, John ? " Hester asked timidly 
 after a while. 
 
 " Not one of them," John said evasively rousing himself. 
 "I m just a little dopey from the rush of things in the office. 
 It s hard sometimes to stop midway in the speed I keep up there." 
 He sighed a gusty sigh of relief. Suddenly his preoccupation 
 dropped from him, as definitely as though he had slipped the 
 paqk of some mental burden off his back. " I am glad, I admit 
 it candidly, to have this half-holiday. I don t take one very 
 often you know." 
 
 " I guess you don t take one often enough," Hester suggested. 
 
 " I don t think I work harder than anybody else in this town," 
 John answered. " It s a place of concentrated action and con 
 centrated speed. But I believe it goes deeper than that. The 
 air in winter is peculiarly stimulating. It not only whips you on 
 to extra work but gives you the strength for it. You ll find it so. 
 But now let me see. I thought if you didn t mind, we d walk a 
 little first. There are some places that I d like to show you." 
 
 " I d like it very much," Hester said. " You know I like to 
 walk." 
 
 " I know you do. It s one of the things I like about you. 
 We can take some bully walks together if you have the time. 
 I rarely walk with women in New York. Edith is the one I know 
 the best and she doesn t like to walk, you know. Seems to me 
 she walks less and less every year." 
 
 "You ve known Edith a long time?" Hester queried idly. 
 
 " Oh, yes years. She s the oldest friend I have in the world. 
 You must get her out into the air if you can, Hester. She likes 
 you a lot and you have a great influence with her." 
 
 275
 
 276 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I ll try," Hester said simply. " I do think fresh air is 
 what she particularly needs. Sometimes she looks so pale and 
 waxy it quite frightens me. And often at those times, she s so 
 listless and so so far away. I don t know how to express it 
 exactly. It s almost as though her thoughts were in another 
 world. I don t mean religious abstraction. It s something quite 
 different from that. It s morbid, as though it came from bad 
 health." 
 
 " I don t know exactly what you mean," John said. " Unless 
 it s I have often noted of late years with Edith that her talk 
 is characterised by sudden spells of great articulateness alter 
 nating with periods of an almost irritating vagueness. I think 
 she ought to be roused taken out of herself in some way. But 
 I confess I don t know how. I think you can do it though. I m 
 depending on you, Hester." 
 
 " I ll try," Hester said simply again. 
 
 They walked down the Avenue and gradually John s mood 
 changed. He became interested, brisk, gay even. In a few 
 moments, they were laughing and talking as though neither had 
 a care in the world. 
 
 " You look better, Hester," John declared suddenly. " I m going 
 to tell you this every time I see you. Really, you don t look like 
 the girl I met at Shayneford." 
 
 " I m not that girl," Hester stated promptly. " I m an abso 
 lutely different creature. And when I think of all I have done 
 since I ve been here and all that has happened to me it doesn t 
 seem strange to me. Sometimes I cannot believe it has really 
 happened. Why, just think ! We ve been in New York a week 
 yesterday. We arrived on Wednesday in the afternoon. We 
 went about all the rest of the day with you and Dwight, ending 
 with that amazing masked party. It was three o clock Thursday 
 morning before we got to bed. Thursday night, we went to the 
 party in your rooms. It was half-past two Friday afternoon when 
 we got home. Saturday afternoon, I went to Edith s and stayed 
 until Tuesday. We talked late every night there. Here it is 
 Thursday again. I ve never had such an experience in my life. 
 I never even heard of such gaiety. I didn t know such things 
 happened. And of course I m tired. But, oh, it is such a dif 
 ferent kind of fatigue from the one I brought on here with me. 
 That old fatigue came from dulness and lassitude and discourage 
 ment and despair. And, let me tell you, it s much easier to bear 
 the kind of tiredness that comes from having a wonderful time 
 with a wonderful group of people."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 277 
 
 " I understand perfectly," John assured her. " It was precisely 
 that that I hoped we d be able to do for you. I m no physician, but 
 my advice would be to keep right on getting just as tired as 
 you can." 
 
 " I have a great sense of excitement all the time," Hester 
 went on and now she was analytic " as though I were floating 
 on great tides. You know how it is when you go in swimming 
 and you get out to a spot just beyond where the waves break. 
 There s a continual pull backward and forward and if you give 
 yourself up to it, you can float on the surface without making 
 an effort. That s what I m doing now. I m not thinking par 
 ticularly. But, oh, there s a terrible sense of excitement in it. 
 Do you understand what I m saying?" 
 
 " Yes, Hester, I do," John smiled. " Perfectly. And I m glad. 
 There," he interrupted, " this is Gramercy Park. I brought you 
 here purposely. Isn t it nice ? " 
 
 " Charming ! " Hester said. " This is where your club is. I 
 used to address your letters to Gramercy Park." 
 
 " Yes, there are a lot of clubs here. Let s walk round it and 
 I ll spiel. It s always very quiet here. I suppose it s partly be 
 cause the Park is, in a sense, private property. And yet it s 
 essentially different from the rest of New York. Of course the 
 many club-houses help to make it quiet. But the old houses 
 that we re approaching really give it its atmosphere. It 
 always seems more like Boston or London even than New 
 York." 
 
 "I ve seen allusions to it in magazine fiction that I ve read 
 recently. Club-scenes almost always occur in Gramercy Park 
 if the heroes are actors or authors or writers or painters. It s 
 very amusing to get to know localities through novels. I have 
 never been in London, but I know that physicians must always 
 be put in Harley Street, detectives in Scotland Yard, night- 
 adventures on the Serpentine, fashionable weddings in St. 
 George s, Hanover Square, clandestine tete-a-tete dinners in Soho, 
 that you must install your mistress in St. John s Woods, and that 
 impoverished gentility must board either in Portman Square, Bed 
 ford Square, or Russell Square." 
 
 John laughed. "Your dope is all correct. And I see you ve 
 been some reader. Now, I m going to show you another pretty 
 spot." 
 
 They walked across town to Stuyvesant Square. 
 
 " This has something of the same quality," John explained, 
 " even if the Park is divided by car-lines. This is a quiet neigh-
 
 278 
 
 bourhood too; there are several hospitals here. Do you see that 
 little low red-brick building? We must walk past it. That s the 
 Friends Meeting House. It gives the Square a charming touch. 
 It s not very old. It was built sometime in the last century; and 
 yet it has a venerable air." 
 
 " It is sweet," Hester said. " I would like to come to church 
 here sometime. Will you take me, John ? " Before John could 
 reply, she added, as though offering inducement, " We can bring 
 Edith. I think she d love it." 
 
 " I think she would too," John agreed. " In fact I know she 
 would. Now why have I never thought of that myself when I m 
 always trying to invent things to entertain her? Good sugges 
 tion, Hester! We ll do that thing some day." 
 
 Hester leaned against the railing of the churchyard and 
 studied the quaint old building. Her figure drooped a little. 
 
 " I think your new clothes are all becoming, Hester," John 
 said. " You remember the presumptuous lecture I read you at 
 Shaynef ord ? " 
 
 " Remember! " Hester exclaimed. " Shall I ever forget it ? 
 Do you remember the adjective you applied to me ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," John answered with promptness. " Paintable." 
 
 " Of course it wasn t it can t be true," Hester breathed. " But, 
 oh, if you could only know how happy it made me, what a sense 
 of power or triumph it gave me. Do you know what I did? 
 I don t know why I tell you this but but I went home and took 
 my hair down and stood before the glass looking at myself and 
 saying Paintable ! paintable ! paintable ! over and over and 
 over again. Of course," she spurted on, as John attempted to 
 speak, " I realise that it wasn t a complete paintable you meant, 
 only a mitigated paintable ; that you told me it all depended 
 on my mood and if I were happy and contented and that I 
 must learn to dress myself right and do my hair in a becoming 
 way. I ve tried to do that. And I tried to tell you I had the 
 other night at Edith s. Did you get it ? " She wheeled on him 
 suddenly and fixed him with an intent glance. 
 
 " I got it." John answered sombrely, " but you don t think I 
 hadn t seen it for myself, do you? It looks lovely your hair 
 I mean you re doing it just the way it should be done." He 
 stopped abruptly. 
 
 " Thank you," Hester said. She turned back and fixed unseeing 
 eyes on the church; her tone became dreamy. "You don t know 
 what you did for me. If I were never to see you again all the 
 rest of my life, I should feel should feel that that I owed
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 279 
 
 you a debt of gratitude that I never could repay. Never ! " she 
 reiterated with a kind of fierceness. " Oh, never ! " 
 
 Neither spoke for an interval. Then Hester added out of 
 one of those pregnant silences which seem but a continuation of 
 speech : " I met mother when I came in that night and she saw 
 there was something different about me and she tried to make me 
 
 tell her but she couldn t. So she tried to make me feel But 
 
 she couldn t. Not that night. The next night perhaps and every 
 other night afterwards. But not that night. It puzzled her for 
 a long time the difference in me." Hester s voice sank into 
 another of those packed articulate silences. She did not speak 
 again. 
 
 John did not break the spell. Then suddenly, " Now I think 
 I ll take you to the subway," he ejaculated briskly. 
 
 Hester emerged from her exaltee mood to her usual docility. 
 " All right ! " she agreed. 
 
 " I m going to show you something you ve never seen before," 
 John went on briskly as they moved towards Eighteenth Street, 
 " a sight that you can see in no other city in the world. You 
 know perhaps that, so far as most phases of art are concerned, 
 America hasn t expressed herself with any great degree of 
 originality. But we have had something new to say in architec 
 ture. And I m going to show you the biggest thing architec 
 turally we ve said yet." 
 
 John talked with a feverish quickness, enlarging on his theme; 
 and Hester listened with a feverish intensity. He poured his 
 words out pell-mell and Hester absorbed them as hot sand soaks 
 water. 
 
 " I ve lived a bit in Europe," John ended his lecture. " I do 
 know something about architecture. In a way, I ve studied. For 
 a while, I collected drawings and pictures and photographs and 
 prints. I really went into it a little though only as an amateur 
 may. Europe offers opportunities for that sort of thing." 
 
 " You re all so travelled," Hester said with an accent of despair. 
 " Edith particularly has lived so much in Europe she s told me 
 such interesting things." 
 
 " Yes," John answered. He added hastily, " But not so much 
 as Azile or Morena. We are, as you say, a travelled group. I 
 gave away my truck to a little country-town library in New 
 Hampshire. That was when I definitely abandoned all idea of 
 studying architecture and went in for being a reformer or a 
 radical or a rebel or whatever offensive term you please to 
 apply to me."
 
 280 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Hester started palpably to ask a question, but although it 
 trembled on her lips, she could not put it. And presently they 
 entered the subway and conversation was for the time impossible. 
 When they emerged from under the ground into the brilliant 
 winter air, they talked of other things and particularly of the 
 New York business scene which was flying past them, even at 
 pedestrian speed, with a tremendous vigour and virility. Hester 
 asked no questions when John drew her on a ferry-boat; followed 
 without comment when he led her to the bow. 
 
 Sunset had come and almost gone. Twilight had started to 
 drop her dusky mantle; the grey waters churned by hundreds of 
 water craft were filmed with a yellowly-green sunset light. John 
 kept Hester busy watching his various points of comment. That 
 comment moved with a kind of erratic activity from the pas 
 sengers on the deck near them to the big unexplored cities that 
 fringe mammoth New York; back to the river craft. On the 
 New Jersey side, he immediately bought tickets for the return 
 trip; re-embarked at once. 
 
 " We re going straight back ? " Hester said in mystified tones. 
 
 " Yes," John answered, conducting her to the stern. " But in 
 a minute I m going to show you the something beautiful that 
 I promised." 
 
 The cold winter sunset had died to a gleaming streak close 
 to the horizon. It was more like an enamel of brilliant glass set 
 in the sooty sky than a suffusion of living light. It did not now 
 mitigate the leaden look of the waters which, except for the white 
 wakes that criss-crossed each other, had turned jetty. 
 
 " Now," John said. He led the way to the bow. 
 
 Hester gasped. 
 
 Before her lay the incredible sky-line of lower Manhattan. 
 Straight, clean-cut, monolithic, colossal towered the forest of 
 skyscrapers. They did not rise into the sky; they leaped, they 
 soared. They did not pierce the heaven; they invaded it with a 
 precipitancy that held both triumph and exultation. In the offices 
 many of the lights had come on and they set this fabric of stone 
 with an inlay of golden glass in which, prismatically mirrored, 
 lay the blue and green of the sunset. As Hester watched, other 
 lights flashed out. Outlines disappeared; separating spaces 
 vanished; bulks loomed more massive; group merged with group 
 until they became one stupendous mass, running jaggedly to great 
 heights, spreading solidly to vast widths. Dusk deepened. Then 
 more and more shadow-hung each instant and more and more 
 light-shot, just as it had grown solid, it grew imponderable. It
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 281 
 
 had seemed a great sinister fortress that held men prisoners in 
 the market-place. Frailer, it grew; thinner, softer: it floated. 
 Now it was a fairy city of the heart s warmest desire; now some 
 mystic city of the soul s deep hunger. 
 
 " Oh," Hester breathed at last. " That almost frightens me. 
 It s too beautiful. It hurts. It s wonderful though. I love the 
 feeling it gives me. It makes me want to do something some 
 thing violent and magnificent." 
 
 John said nothing. He watched an emotional excitement tear 
 the last film of lassitude from Hester s face. " Ah, Hester," he 
 said at length, " paintable is too poor a word. I ve never looked 
 at Michael Angelo s work," he veered suddenly, " Saint Peter s 
 or especially that chapel of the Medici in Florence without wish 
 ing I could show him this. I have a conviction that he couldn t 
 sleep until he had designed a city of skyscrapers. He liked big 
 ness, you know. He took a great pleasure in designing the huge 
 dome of St. Peter s. Just imagine what an inspiration it would 
 be to him to be able to use height as nobly as he has used length 
 and breadth." 
 
 They stood in the bow of the boat until they reached the New 
 York shore; but they stood there in silence. They were silent 
 for the main part on the way home. Hester kept falling deeper 
 into her strange excited reverie: and John watched Hester. 
 Once she said fervently, " Oh, I thank you for showing me that ! " 
 And another time, " It gives you a strange feeling a courage a 
 
 kind of emulation!" And again, " Isn t it lovely just to be " 
 
 She did not finish her sentence ; but she flushed a little and merged 
 it with a look of embarrassed appeal. 
 
 " Yes," John concluded it for her with a repetition. " It is 
 lovely just to be " 
 
 They walked from the subway to the apartment, in the same 
 silence. John did not ask her to dinner. He left her with a, 
 " Good-bye, Hester. I can t say when I ll see you again ; for 
 I never know when my leisure will come. But it will be as 
 often as I can make it." He hesitated an instant. " Of course 
 Edith will have all kinds of plans for us three." 
 
 " That will be sweet," Hester said vaguely. " Good-bye, John."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AT first the experiences of the country-girls were so many and 
 so various that they seemed almost unassimilable. Society 
 brought strange juxtapositions but even the most everyday 
 contacts, their brief inevitable shopping, the marketing for their 
 toy household, provided them with a welter of new impressions. 
 And when it came to the actual exploration of this crowded, 
 colourful, alien geography, the complications of new sights, 
 sounds, colours, and odours brought a fatigue that they had never 
 known before. Often they fell on their beds immediately after 
 a long tramp; they slept in hours and for periods unmatched in 
 their experiences. Along with all this came constant contact 
 with new people as, through the steady efforts of their New York 
 friends, acquaintanceship increased. 
 
 Gradually however such hours as they spent together fell into 
 a kind of routine. 
 
 They arose, late for Shayneford but early for New York, at 
 half-past seven, prepared breakfast together. Their atom of 
 housekeeping accomplished, always they set out exploring. First 
 to the clean German butcher-shop around the corner where they 
 lingered for a little talk with the fat German wife who, c-less 
 and rf-less, showed an interest flatteringly voluble in their welfare. 
 Then to the Italian shop further up the Avenue for their vege 
 tables, where Tony, the handsome, purple-faced, liquid-eyed 
 Tuscan and Bianca, his velvet-haired, olive-skinned wife, soon 
 fell into the habit of dropping everything to wait on the two 
 girls. Then for a stroll in the crisp frosty sunshine of the New 
 York winter, up Fifth Avenue. They loitered at this window and 
 that, stopped to look at an exhibition of pictures, lingered a 
 moment in the star-shot twilight of the Cathedral and then crossed 
 always to the Park. Everything interested them there, the multi 
 plicity of weaving paths, in which invariably they got lost, the 
 reservoirs, the groups of playing children, the riding and driving, 
 the zoo. Often emerging from a whole morning in the Park, 
 they did not bother to cook luncheon; but ate at a Childs 
 Restaurant. This was an experience they found unfailingly 
 entertaining. Their afternoons were spent mainly on the Avenue 
 again, gazing in a perpetual surprise and curiosity at the passing 
 throng. Anything might happen in their evenings. The tele- 
 
 282
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 283 
 
 phone was always summoning them to new experiences. One 
 night it would inform them that there were tickets awaiting 
 them at the box-office of some theatre; another night it would call 
 them to a party, hastily improvised, and often held at a house 
 they had never entered or by people they had never met. Or 
 there were invitations to dinner. In spite of these distractions, 
 however, there were plenty of evenings when the two girls sat 
 at home and talked and read. 
 
 Hester s bedroom, being provided for that purpose with a couch 
 instead of a bed, became their living-room. But they much 
 preferred the big airy kitchen in which the sink and gas stove 
 were concealed by a screen, where the big round table and wide- 
 armed chairs made for comfort. There, Hester on one side of the 
 student-lamp and Southward on the other, they sewed, read, and 
 wrote letters. Often an evening would pass without a word between 
 them. More often they talked without cessation. Sometimes, 
 just at bed-time, Southward would break the silence with a, 
 " Say, Hester, let s go over to Broadway. The theatres will be 
 letting out in a moment and it will be awfully gay." Hester 
 never refused. The two girls would fly into their things and 
 rush across town, walking until midnight. 
 
 " Hester," Southward said once, " doesn t Shayneford seem 
 like a dream to you ? " 
 
 " No, Southward," Hester answered with an intensity of em 
 phasis that made her tone almost fierce. " Shayneford is real 
 enough. It s this that s the dream." 
 
 " I feel just the other way," Southward explained. " Shayneford 
 is like a past existence so far away and long ago. I feel as 
 though this were the only life I d ever known." 
 
 " How I envy you ! " Hester sighed. " I m as fascinated as you 
 by this dazzling New York life, but I don t feel a part of it yet. 
 I feel like a person who s wild to go swimming. I see the 
 current flowing by and I d give anything if I could throw 
 myself in. But I can t make that first dive. I haven t the 
 courage because I can t quite believe that I ll ever come up 
 again." 
 
 " I wonder what all the old cats in Shayneford would say," 
 Southward mused once, a glimmer of mirth starring her eyes, 
 "if they could only know what we re doing parties, theatres 
 turning night into day, even a cocktail occasionally. I expect 
 that they d talk about us for one mortal afternoon. As for the 
 girls well, I expect Pearl Wallis would tear her hair out by the 
 roots."
 
 284 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 "You must remember, Southward," Hester suggested slyly, 
 " that with you gone from Shayneford, Pearl has a clear field 
 with Lysander." 
 
 " I don t believe," Southward answered and her lids shot 
 down over the sudden predatory fierceness which blanked her 
 mirthful glimmer " that Pearl will be able to do much with 
 Lysander. I hope not anyway. Lysander s too good for her." 
 
 " I can t agree with you," Hester said, " I think Pearl would 
 be as nice as anybody if her feelings for Lysander weren t al 
 ways coming between her and a normal attitude towards life." 
 
 But this elicited nothing from Southward. " Wonder how 
 Gert is!" she meditated next. And then as though from the 
 association of ideas, " Wouldn t it be queer if we ran into Josie 
 Caldwell sometime ? " 
 
 " I d like that very much," Hester answered. " I shall never 
 get over my fondness for Josie." 
 
 " I never liked Josie so much as you did," Southward said. 
 " She was always too bossy when we played together. Too much 
 like myself, I guess." 
 
 " Yes, she is rather a lady-of -kingdoms type," Hester insinuated. 
 
 " Now, see here, Hetter," Southward replied, glimmering, " re 
 member when you re quoting Isaiah you ve got nothing on me. 
 There are two of those lady-of -kingdoms females. If I m one of 
 them, you certainly are the other." 
 
 Hester wrote conscientiously a long letter every diy to her 
 mother. Mrs. Crowell s letters came steadily twice a week. They 
 showed a touch of concreteness that was entirely lacking from Hes 
 ter s amorphic epistles. Southward particularly enjoyed them. 
 
 " Don t worry about me being alone," ran one, " I never was 
 one to be afraid. Besides I have Libbie or Sue-Salome up for 
 the night any time I feel like it. Flora Tubman was married 
 last night. It was in the church. They had a reception after 
 wards. The wedding was all yellow and white and green, 
 dahlias and asters, great bunches of yellow satin ribbon, and 
 green boughs. Everybody was there. Flora looked lovely white 
 satin with a tulle veil and some artificial orange blossoms caught 
 in it everywhere. Her cheeks were as pink as peonies and her 
 eyes just like stars. King looked as much a lump as ever. Of 
 course Mrs. Tubman was nearly crazy what between keeping 
 everything going and yet not letting anything that was happen 
 ing get by her. Libbie was in yesterday. She said that there 
 was a rumour round town that you girls kept beer all the time 
 in your flat in New York. Mrs. Peters has told everybody in
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 285 
 
 Shayneford. Libbie asked me if it was true. I told her you 
 hadn t mentioned it in any of your letters. But one thing I 
 was sure it wasn t champagne. Libbie said Mrs. Drake started 
 that story." 
 
 " Now where did grandmother get that idea ? " Southward 
 demanded of the atmosphere. " Something I said in my letters 
 of course, but what was it? It s a good idea though. Why don t 
 we keep beer? I ll order a case to-morrow." 
 
 " Gracie Dodge is engaged to Harry Turner." Hester read on, 
 " Of course Mrs. Dodge is tickled to death. And well she might 
 be. Three homely daughters. There was plenty in this town 
 never thought Gracie d ever get Harry. Who do you suppose 
 Myra Eowell is going with? Markie Allen. Everybody s talking 
 about it. They say he s up there every night. Aline is going to 
 have another baby. Mrs. Allen is about discouraged. She says 
 this is the fifth in eight years and Aline is all worn out." 
 
 " Sarah Wallis was in yesterday." (This from another of Mrs. 
 Crowell s letters.) "She is still harping on Gert Beebee and 
 who the father of that child is. I told her probably Gert didn t know 
 herself only God knew and He wouldn t tell. I said to her I 
 didn t see why she let herself get so riled up over it; every year 
 since I ve lived in Shayneford there s been two or three and 
 sometimes more illegitimate children and it hasn t ever seemed to 
 bother her so much before. She said that in those cases we 
 always knew who the father was. Oh, I said, it s only curi 
 osity that s chewing you up. Gert stopped in the other day with 
 the baby she was going by and I beckoned to her from the win 
 dow to come in. First time I d seen him. Smart little thing I 
 must say and awful big for his age. He s got lots of red hair. 
 I do declare though he don t look like anybody round here." 
 
 And later : " I never saw anything like how cheap you get vege 
 tables in New York. And the variety ! Makes my mouth water, 
 just to read about it. But, land, you always live better in the 
 city." 
 
 " Sue-Salome called yesterday. She said there was a story 
 running round town that you two girls was living with Josie 
 Caldwell and asked me if it was true. I said not since yesterday. 
 And anyway I didn t think you two could afford to live so fine 
 as Josie. Well now, who do you think is engaged Aggie Bassett. 
 Lord, I thought she was a settled old maid. That new doctor in 
 North Shayneford Dr. Eli Larrabee. It came as the greatest 
 surprise to everybody. She s been visiting the Roswells over 
 there right along and they do say Mrs. Roswell isn t any too
 
 286 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 much pleased she thought all the time it was Flossie Dr. Larra- 
 bee was making up to. Maud Curtis s baby has come and it s a 
 girl she said if it was another girl she d drown it but I haven t 
 heard of any death in the family yet." 
 
 " Flora came to call yesterday. She thinks she s in the family 
 way already and she s as happy as she can be. She looked lovely. 
 She said that Mercy Brewster is beginning to go round with 
 Fred Snow. Isn t that the greatest ! Why, it don t seem more 
 than yesterday that Mercy was running in here asking me for 
 one of my ginger cookies. She s begun to put her hair up. Aggie 
 Bassett is going to be married in the spring. And Gracie Dodge 
 in the fall. Dora Crafts is going to have another baby. Seems 
 as though all these letters consist of is people getting engaged and 
 married and having babies. Well, come to think of it, that s 
 about all there is in life." 
 
 Southward wrote at irregular intervals, letters struck off at 
 lightning speed from an old typewriter that Dwight lent her. 
 Her writing displayed all the forthrightness and terseness that 
 characterised her speech. At long intervals came a note from 
 Mrs. Drake; written in pencil on ruled paper, unpunctuated, the 
 I s all small, as for example: 
 
 Dear Southward: 
 
 i was glad to get your nice long letter and was pleased to hear 
 that you was having such a good time New York must lie a very 
 fine city i was only there once and that was over thirty years ago 
 and Fourteenth Street was where all the best stores were i went 
 into all of them and the Eden Musay and the Park, and Coney, 
 Island and i bought a lot of things my best black barbe was 
 bought there and it is just as good now as the day i bought it 
 for i have been very saving of it there is no reason why anything 
 should ever wear out if you take good care of it i do hope you 
 will look out for them automobiles when you cross the street and 
 don t stay up too late nights as you will get old and wrinkled if 
 you lose all your beauty sleep, and don t spend your money too 
 fast and don t go around to them restaurants too much, as it is 
 expensive and the food is not so good as what you can cook at 
 home hoping you are both well, and with love to you and Hester 
 from your grandfather and Charlotte and me 
 i remain 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 Lorenzo, Drake.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 287 
 
 Southward enjoyed these letters enormously. She always read 
 them to Dwight and occasionally to John and Ripley. 
 
 " I wish that Charlotte could write to me," she said frequently. 
 " She d give us all the news. Gee, doesn t it make me wild to 
 think of Charlotte blind like that! When that Greinschmidt 
 man gets to Boston, you won t be able to see my heels for dust, 
 Hetter, I ll beat it back to Boston so quick. Charlotte doesn t 
 know yet that her eyes are going to be examined, but I do." 
 
 Southward became a victim of the New York newspapers. She 
 took half a dozen a day. Under Dwight s tutelage, she developed 
 an extraordinary acumen in regard to them. She studied the 
 various features both of the news and editorial pages, the signed 
 stuff, the sporting page, cartoons, rhymes; Sunday editions. She 
 came to have an acute sense of news values. Dwight told her 
 constantly that she ought to have been a newspaper-woman. Long 
 before Hester was awake, Southward had hopped out of bed, had 
 possessed herself of the morning paper, had drunk down the news 
 to the last dregs. She followed a famous murder-case with close 
 attention, became an authority in regard to the evidence. Often 
 at night, she would come in from the theatre bearing the latest 
 faked extra; and she never attempted to sleep until she had read 
 it thoroughly. Hester could not accustom herself to the hurly- 
 burly of the metropolitan press, the screaming head-lines, the con 
 flicting colours. Conscientiously she read the Boston Transcript 
 which her mother forwarded to her every day and the Shayneford 
 Citizen that came once a week. 
 
 The weeks flew by. Thanksgiving came in a flash and 
 Christmas seemed only a week or two later. Dwight went to Ver 
 mont to spend both holidays with his father, and Azile joined 
 fashionable out-of-town house-parties. Edith insisted on having 
 a Thanksgiving dinner and a Christmas tree for their rather 
 decimated group. She filled in the places of the absent and 
 brought their number up to a dozen with the familiars of her 
 own circle. For Christmas, they agreed to a rule that no gift 
 could cost over ten cents, but Edith refused to stint herself when 
 it came to hospitality. For the Thanksgiving dinner, she 
 brought out all her reserves of silver, china, and glass. The 
 country-girls sat down to such a table as for beauty they had 
 never seen, such a dinner as for complication they had not guessed 
 could be. 
 
 They were sitting alone one January evening in quiet. South 
 ward had just taken up the evening paper. " Good Lord, Hester ! " 
 she exclaimed suddenly in an electrified tone. " Listen to this.
 
 288 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Buster Welch marries. Buster Welch, the Bay State Champion 
 Middleweight, was married yesterday to Miss Gertrude Beebee 
 of Shayneford, Massachusetts. " 
 
 Southward dropped the paper and stared at Hester who, drop 
 ping her darning, stared back. 
 
 "What do you think of that?" Southward demanded. Then, 
 " Say, Hester, wasn t there a prizefighter staying over in Wenett 
 when sure there was! I remember. His name was Welch. 
 You remember that fall; Gert used to go over to Wenett right 
 along to visit Sadie Todd." She stopped abruptly. 
 The two girls stared at each other. 
 
 " As sure as you live, Hester," Southward went on, " he s 
 the father of that child. And now he s made good. Well, what 
 do you think of that?" 
 "I m glad," Hester said. 
 
 " Glad! So am I ! I never was so glad in my life. Do you 
 remember that night we called in to see Gert how she told us 
 that the father of that child could lick any three men in Shayne 
 ford with one hand tied, and if he were to come walking into the 
 room then we d envy her ? Well, here s the picture of this Apollo." 
 She handed the paper across the table. Hester surveyed a big 
 hard countenance in which a nose, battered permanently out of 
 its original contour, could not render sinister a prevailing Celtic 
 jollity of expression. 
 
 "I like his face," Hester announced unexpectedly. 
 " So do I," said Southward. " But I admit I m flabbergasted." 
 "I m awfully glad for Gert too," Hester concluded. 
 " I m so glad I don t know what to do." Southward suddenly 
 burst into laughter. "My dear, what will Sarah Wallis say?" 
 
 They had come to New York in time to enjoy the last period of 
 the Indian summer. November was a month of perfect days, 
 crisp at morning and night; stilly warm at noon. The streets 
 were filled with a purple haze that softened their heights and filled 
 their distances with mystery. Such trees and bushes as New 
 York possessed flaunted all the gorgeous dyes of autumn, put 
 orange and crimson conflagrations in the purple vistas. Gradu 
 ally, however, that soft still noon warmth vanished, the crispness 
 of morning and night sharpened to a stabbing cold. With 
 Thanksgiving came the first snow. In the middle of December a 
 blizzard locked the city in an embrace superficially soft and 
 smothering; in reality the grip of an iron hand. An army of 
 men carted the snow away in a single day; but not before South 
 ward, responding to Dwight s invitation, had spent a morning
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 289 
 
 walking with him through the Park. It grew steadily colder and 
 colder; but ever the brilliant New York sun put something into 
 the air that was like a flame at the heart of an icicle. South 
 ward, who frankly loved winter, grew more sparklingly handsome 
 every day. And even Hester, who as frankly disliked it, re 
 sponded to that something electric in the atmosphere with a 
 blue brightness of eye, a pink vividness of cheek, a quickening of 
 her whole expression, and an alertness of movement that bade 
 fair, if it continued, to work a complete metamorphosis in her.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SOUTHWARD of course got the map, social and geographical, of 
 New York before Hester did. For one thing, she was a longer 
 and stronger walker than Hester and for another she was more 
 inquisitive and observant. And although Hester s temperamen 
 tal lassitude was broken to some degree by the shrillness and 
 clamour, the sparkle and colour of these new experiences, it 
 recurred at intervals and often stayed for a long time. But 
 Southward was more than ever present-minded, more than ever 
 sharply curious. Often after their early morning walk, when she 
 had delivered Hester tired and hungry at their apartment, she 
 would herself start out again with undiminished ardour. Some 
 times she turned uptown again, bisecting at an impetuous pace 
 whole sections of apartment-house neighbourhoods, stopping only 
 when she reached the northern limits of the island. At other 
 times she wove back and forth from river to river. 
 
 " This city goes on and on, Hetter ! " she said after one such 
 experience. " It makes you feel that the suburbs merge with the 
 outskirts of Chicago." 
 
 Sometimes she shot through the business end of the island 
 to the water-front. " Oh, Hetter, Hetter ! " she said once on her 
 return, " the ships I ve seen this day ! Haven t you got the nerve 
 to stow away in one of them with me ? " 
 
 Southward took long car-rides and ferry-rides. She crossed all 
 the bridges, which, like steel ropes, tie the island to the sur 
 rounding country. She visited the circle of cities which surround 
 New York, to whose life the average New Yorker is profoundly 
 indifferent and of whose very existence most are only half con 
 scious. Constantly she explored country more strange to many 
 of the people she was meeting than the purlieus of London and 
 Paris. The huge map of New York which she pinned on her 
 bedroom wall became criss-crossed with the written data of her 
 experiences. 
 
 A little more than Hester, Southward responded to the tenta 
 tive social welcome held out to them by the new people they met 
 but not much more. She made no real woman-friends. For 
 here, as in the country, Southward was a lone wolf, too boyish, 
 
 290
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 291 
 
 too self-sufficient, too sure of herself to be a real comrade with 
 the members of her own sex. With men it was different. 
 
 An evening with Morena followed very soon on her evening 
 with Dwight. He called for her late one afternoon in middle 
 November, an Indian summer day so warm that it seemed as 
 though it had been left over from the summer. 
 
 " I thought I d take you to Chinatown for dinner to-night," 
 Morena suggested as they stepped out into the soft hazy air. 
 " And I had an idea of a matinee, but this is too perfect an after 
 noon to waste indoors. How about a walk ? " 
 
 " I d like that better than anything," Southward answered. 
 " I m always ready for a walk, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I ve noticed that," Morena commented. " You re rather 
 different from the rest of our women in that respect. Edith s 
 always too tired to walk anywhere she lives in taxicabs and 
 Azile is always too busy. Abroad, one walks a lot of course; 
 everything is so beautiful and so interesting. I miss it here. 
 Have you seen the Bronx yet?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Let s go there. We can walk for an hour or so before re 
 turning. Really, it s one of the most beautiful zoos I have ever 
 seen. You like animals, don t you ? " 
 
 " Very much. Especially dogs. I think I like dogs better than 
 anything." 
 
 " Better than men and women ? " Morena queried. 
 
 They were in the subway train now and their conversation was 
 limited to periods when the train stopped. With the perfect 
 control of herself which sometimes amounted to insolence, South 
 ward forebore to answer his question; waited coolly until they 
 reached the next stop. 
 
 Morena, sitting in the corner turned sideways, and with his 
 arms folded, deliberately surveyed her. His scrutiny was amused 
 and admiring and yet obviously there was irritation in it. 
 
 All the effects of the life which Southward professed to find 
 the pleasantest she had ever known showed in her face. Perfect 
 health coloured it. High spirits irradiated it. Her lips, even in 
 repose, kept rippling into vr.gue smiles, and more than ever her 
 inexhaustible fund of nervous energy tried to wear itself out in 
 movement. She could not stand still. She could not sit still. 
 Standing, one foot at least was always breaking into impromptu 
 dance-steps. Sitting, one of them continually tapped the floor. 
 Here in the subway, she had the effect of a winged creature who 
 has just alighted, not butterfly, nor swallow, nor dove nor any
 
 292 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 gentle creature of the air so much as a hawk on a marauding 
 expedition who rests perforce while his wings flutter to he off. 
 
 " Not more than men but better than all women, except a few 
 Hester particularly," she replied equably when the train stopped. 
 " Not all men of course. I like some men." 
 
 " For instance ? " Morena asked lazily, still studying the face 
 that she did not bother to turn further than its profile. 
 
 " Lysander Manning," Southward answered. " I like him. 
 We ve always been the best of friends. But there are very few 
 like Lysander." 
 
 " Why don t you like me ? " Morena demanded suddenly. 
 
 The train started again; and again with her calm insolence, 
 Southward continued to muse until the next stopping-place. 
 
 " I don t know exactly," she answered then. 
 
 " I do," Morena declared. 
 
 If he had expected Southward to display curiosity, he was 
 disappointed. She said nothing. 
 
 " Come now," Morena went on teasingly, " we re both lying. 
 You don t entirely dislike me, and you know you don t." 
 
 " That s true," Southward agreed. " More than that, there 
 are some things about you I like very much." 
 
 " Three cheers ! What are they ? " 
 
 "You have a spirit of adventure," Southward explained. 
 " And you are really democratic ; you have the feeling for people. 
 Most people think they have that, of course, and some do. But 
 it takes different forms. It happens to take the same form in you 
 that it does in me. It isn t a matter of money with either of us. 
 You don t care what people are or how they dress or where they 
 live as long as they re different. I m a little that way myself. I 
 like it in you." 
 
 And then the subway clamour broke her words off. 
 
 When next Morena spoke, he had changed the subject. 
 
 "You re looking awfully fit. This change has done you a lot 
 of good. But I remember I don t have to tell you that you re 
 good-looking. You admitted in Shayneford that you knew it." 
 
 " Yes," Southward announced without smiling. " I have 
 learned that fact about myself." 
 
 "I have often wondered," Morena went on, "just how much 
 an attractive woman understands her own attractiveness. Of 
 course she must know when her features are good. But how much 
 does she appreciate the degree of her charm physical, sexual ? " 
 
 " Couldn t answer that question," Southward replied. " And 
 especially in regard to other women. Of course for myself, I
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 293 
 
 know that my eyes and teeth are all right and my complexion. 
 There s one side of my profile bothers me though and I wish I 
 could change the end of my nose." 
 
 Morena laughed. 
 
 " You probably would take all the individuality out of your 
 face. Now there s another thing that puzzles me. I mean the 
 women who, from my point of view, seem always to wear the 
 wrong clothes. I m not referring to the frumps and dowds. 
 Count them out. I mean pretty women attractive women you 
 see them all the time who with premeditation and elaboration 
 plan clothes that are good-looking enough in themselves but just 
 the wrong things for them to wear. At least," he added hastily, 
 " they seem so from a man s point of view. Women for instance 
 who ought to wear frilly feminine things affecting a masculine 
 plainness and simplicity, anaemic women who dress in the Oriental 
 colours; blowsy, stout women who go in for Dresden china blues 
 and pinks. Now, why do they do that ? " 
 
 Southward shook her head. " I don t know. I suppose they re 
 trying to be the type they most admire themselves. But I m not 
 sure. Clothes don t interest me very much. I like them to be of 
 nice material but as simple as possible." 
 
 " Yes, I ve noticed that," asserted Morena. " I think you strike 
 the right combination of femininity and boyishness. It exactly 
 suits you. Yet those Chinese coats you wear suit you too. Now 
 Edith " 
 
 The train started again and his voice merged with its noise. 
 He waited an instant. When the silence came, Southward did 
 not speak. 
 
 " Oh, Edith ! " he exclaimed as though suddenly remembering. 
 " Edith dresses in the extreme of femininity charmingly I think. 
 She is what the French call soignee to a degree. More so than 
 any woman I have ever known. Dressing with Edith is a career 
 in itself. Hester, it is apparent, has never known and never cared. 
 Lately though, thanks to you, I suppose, she s begun to take more 
 interest. It s improved her a lot. I prophesy that she will con 
 tinue to improve in exact proportion to the interest she develops. 
 Hester could make herself into a very interesting type. John has 
 always said she was paintable, but I must confess I haven t been 
 able to see it until lately." 
 
 The train tore through this analysis and he stopped: did not 
 resume until the next quiet interval had nearly passed. " But 
 now," he took it up where he left, " Hester has something alive 
 in her face."
 
 294 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " She s quite wonderful-looking at times," Southward agreed. 
 "But it s generally when she s alone with me. I don t think 
 you ve ever seen that aspect of her." 
 
 " No," Morena assented. " Yes," he contradicted himself. 
 " Once, the first night I met you in the camp at Shayneford. Do 
 you remember you made her take her hair down? I never saw 
 such hair. I can still see her figure quite lost in those great 
 golden torrents and the firelight playing on her. Now Azile " 
 
 The train interrupted here. He rested mute until silence came 
 again. 
 
 " I think you ll find the Bronx very interesting," he began as 
 soon as he could make himself heard. 
 
 "You were saying something about Azile," Southward inter 
 rupted. 
 
 " Oh, I had forgotten." Morena paused and had the effect of 
 plunging a long way backwards into his own thought. " I can t 
 remember but it s of no consequence." 
 
 "It was something about the way she dressed," Southward 
 assisted him. 
 
 " About the way she dressed," Morena repeated meditatively. 
 " Curious how one slips a cog in this remembering business. 
 However, don t bother, it s sure to come back. My most price 
 less thoughts always do." 
 
 " You had said," Southward persisted, " that Hester was be 
 ginning to care and Edith was soignee and you had just started 
 to say something about Azile." 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " Morena exclaimed electrically. " I have it. 
 I was going to say that I think Azile understands her own beauty 
 and her own powers of attraction more than any other woman I ve 
 ever known. She s a skilful dresser that lady ! " 
 
 " Yes," Southward said, " I ve observed that." 
 
 There were several seconds of silence before the train started 
 and during those seconds Southward was visibly distrait. 
 Morena smiled to himself. 
 
 Morena had visited many zoos in Europe and as he took South 
 ward from one animal house to another, he talked of London, 
 Paris, and Berlin. 
 
 " These buildings are very satisfactory," he said, " commodious 
 and clean and bright and airy and all that sort of thing. But 
 the Romans have the best scheme. There are no cages in their 
 zoo, no rooms like these, no bars. Only patches of ground 
 covered with rocks and bushes surrounded by wide trenches. 
 You don t see those trenches sometimes until you come to the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 295 
 
 low fences which keep you from tumbling into them. You get 
 quite a start, believe me, when you suddenly catch sight of a 
 lion, not very far distant, strolling casually in your direction." 
 
 " Oh, I should like that ! " exclaimed Southward. " That would 
 interest me more than anything in Rome the Forum, the 
 Coliseum, St. Peter s anything." 
 
 " Perhaps we ll all go abroad together sometime," Morena 
 threw off idly. " I d like to be with you the first time you see 
 Europe. Of course though, now, everybody s prepared for it 
 what with pictures and the movies. I don t believe you d turn a 
 hair. You re such a cool proposition." 
 
 Southward did not reply to this; apparently it did not interest 
 her. " I do love lions and tigers," she burst out suddenly after 
 a long interval in which she stood immobile before one of the 
 lion-cages. An enormous bushy-headed yellow cat behind the 
 bars opened his eyes somnolently, surveyed her and then dis 
 dainfully closed them again. " It s their strength, tremendous 
 yet so quiet and so quick. I love that kind of strength wherever 
 I see it, in men or animals. Just lumpy strength strength in 
 the mass doesn t make such a hit with me." 
 
 The lion stretched, yawned, arose; padded with a silent long- 
 muscled grace out the door that led into the next cage. 
 
 " It gives me a great thrill to watch him ! " Southward declared. 
 " The ease of his movements the grace with which his muscles 
 generate motion. There s something almost liquid about that 
 glide. The bears entertain me but they don t delight me. They 
 have strength and speed without ease or grace they lumber so. 
 The tigers and leopards fascinate me more than any of them 
 because of their suppleness. But it s the lions I like the most. 
 Somehow I feel as though lions would play the game. If I d been 
 an early Christian martyr and they d given me my choice, I 
 would have been flung to the lions." 
 
 " I ve never hunted big game," Morena confessed, " and I never 
 shall now. The time in which I could have enjoyed it has 
 passed. I m rather a poor Spaniard, I don t like bull-fight 
 ing. When it comes to animals I m all Irish. Sometimes though 
 I wish I had had some experience hunting in the African 
 jungles." 
 
 They went from cage to cage, omitting none of the big beasts. 
 And over this common interest, their talk never flagged; grew by 
 steady degrees more intimate and confidential. After they had 
 seen all the animals, they took the pretty walk that leads to the 
 waterfall.
 
 296 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 The reactionary warmth of the day had melted some of the 
 frost in the ground. The tree-trunks were blackly damp. The 
 maze of ebony branches seemed to tear a complicated criss-cross 
 on the hard blue of the sky. The little brook purled with a sum 
 mer tinkle. Now and then a bird-note sounded. 
 
 "I ve enjoyed this very much," Southward said as they re 
 turned to the subway. "I m going to bring Hester out here 
 some day. And then I ll be coming all the time alone. I can 
 always get rid of a grouch just by watching animals." 
 
 "Any time you want company call me up," Morena suggested. 
 " I m not tied down to regular hours, you know. I can take an 
 afternoon or morning off when I please. I d like very much to 
 come here again with you." 
 
 " Thanks ! " Southward said carelessly. " I ll remember that." 
 
 They dined as Morena suggested, in Chinatown. 
 
 " I don t take women here very often," Morena explained, 
 " although I like Chinese cooking myself. I think most women 
 don t like it. I had a feeling you would though." 
 
 " I do," Southward announced lightly. " When I was a little 
 girl, an uncle who was in the navy brought home a China boy 
 from one of his voyages. My uncle had got so used to 
 Chinese cooking in the Orient that he couldn t give it up. I ve 
 often had food cooked in the Chinese fashion. And then I ve had 
 dinner in the Boston Chinatown once or twice." 
 
 They dined in an upstairs cafe at a window which opened 
 onto a little narrow curved street, packed with strange colour and 
 stranger smells. They had Chinese soup first, very thin and 
 pale with what looked like great green leaves floating in it; 
 then chow mee and chop suey; viscid preserved Chinese fruit, 
 brittle papery Chinese cake; thick heavy Chinese candy covered 
 with bird seeds; spicy, sweetish Chinese nuts. They drank several 
 pots of steaming Chinese tea. 
 
 When the Chinese waiter brought the soup, he offered with 
 it Occidental spoons of metal and a little short Oriental one of 
 china. Southward chose the latter. Morena observed this with 
 out comment but when, later, she chose chop-sticks in preference 
 to a knife and fork, he looked surprised. He took chop-sticks 
 himself. 
 
 " I learned when I was a child," Southward explained. And 
 she proceeded to demonstrate the truth of this statement by a 
 use so skilful of these strange implements that the waiter con 
 templated her for an instant of slant-eyed immobility. 
 
 After dinner, Morena took her from shop to shop of the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 297 
 
 picturesque district. Everywhere he bought her something but 
 he seemed to make a point to purchase the kind of toy that 
 would please a child. Southward manifestly enjoyed this. She 
 was full of sparkle, laughter, comment. Neither her strength 
 nor interest gave out and when finally they reached the end of 
 their explorations, late though it was, she sighed regretfully. 
 
 " I ve got to get up early to-morrow," Morena announced on 
 the way home, " and go to work on an article." 
 
 " What do you call early ? " Southward demanded. 
 
 " Eight o clock," Morena answered, " and gosh, how I dread it ! 
 It s the hardest business for me to wake in the morning. I 
 seem to sleep with an increasing heaviness, light at first and 
 heavy as sheet iron towards morning. It s hard too for me to 
 force myself out of bed even when I have finally waked." 
 
 " Why don t you get an alarm clock ? " Southward suggested 
 practically. 
 
 " I either sleep straight through the alarm or, after waking 
 up, turn over and go to sleep again. What time do you get up ? " 
 
 " Seven unless we re too dissipated." 
 
 " Oh, I say ! " Morena exclaimed. " That s a record for New 
 York. Look here," he begged, " wake me to-morrow morning 
 by telephone, when you get up, will you ? " 
 
 " Sure ! " Southward agreed promptly. " There s nothing in 
 the world I should enjoy more than ordering a lazy man out of 
 bed." 
 
 " And say," Morena continued in a wheedling voice, " I ve got 
 to work hard for the next three days. Wake me every morn 
 ing, will you ? " 
 
 " That s some responsibility," Southward said evasively. For 
 a moment she reflected visibly on the situation. Then, "All 
 right," she agreed. " I ll wake you every morning for the rest 
 of the week, provided I don t stay out so late the night before 
 that I want to sleep late myself." 
 
 " Angel ! " Morena approved. 
 
 True to her promise, Southward called Morena on the telephone 
 early next morning. 
 
 " Hello ! Hello ! " Morena s voice, a little sleepy answered. " Is 
 this the angel?" 
 
 " It is ! " Southward answered. " You re up. This is your 
 signal to stay up. Are you awake ? " 
 
 " Not so awake as I shall be if you ll stay here and talk to me 
 for a while."
 
 298 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 
 
 "You re as awake as you re going to be then," Southward re 
 torted. " My coffee is waiting and I wouldn t let that get cold 
 to save you from the everlasting pit." 
 
 She called him the next morning and the next and the next. 
 Morena insisted that her commands over the telephone did more 
 to dispel his drowsiness than his cold bath. He paid her many 
 extravagant compliments on her voice, its clearness and carrying 
 quality. He said it was like the sound of a waterfall in a desert. 
 At the end of the week, Southward announced that her labours 
 were over. But he persuaded her under one pretext or another 
 to keep on indefinitely until it became a fixed custom. Gradually 
 their morning conversations lengthened. Once, when Morena was 
 relating a merry adventure of the night before, she interrupted to 
 snatch her coffee from the table. She drank it leisurely, listen 
 ing to his narrative. And once, in the middle of the afternoon, 
 just before she curled into the nap which had become necessary 
 because of some dissipation of the night before, she called up 
 Morena and ordered him to wake her in an hour. The system 
 became mutually active and mutually useful.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOUTHWARD saw more of Azile Morrow than of any other 
 woman. Promptly within a week of her week-end stay with 
 Azile, she invited her to go to a matinee. Afterwards they went 
 to tea together. Within the ensuing week, Azile asked Southward 
 to accompany her on an all-day " spree." Southward accepted. 
 Azile arrived at the apartment at about eleven. They spent the 
 morning going from place to place; Azile had come in a taxi 
 and no matter how long they stayed inside the shops she kept 
 the machine waiting at the door. They went first to a big de 
 partment-store on the Avenue to buy the materials for an even 
 ing gown. Azile professed herself dissatisfied with everything 
 they saw, and departed carrying an envelope full of samples. 
 From there, they went to a smaller shop where, still dissatisfied, 
 she obtained another lot of samples. Then to another department- 
 store and another, then to a series of small specialty shops. Here 
 she picked up all kinds of expensive trifles that she apparently 
 had had no intention of getting when she started, had them sent 
 home. In the end she went back to the first shop and bought 
 the materials for two dresses there. She consulted Southward 
 on many points and sometimes she followed the advice, oftener 
 some sudden caprice of her own. 
 
 " You don t care much about shopping ? " she said questioningly 
 towards the end of their expedition. 
 
 " No," Southward answered, " not very much. It rather bores 
 me. I don t spend much money on clothes. I can t afford it in 
 the first place. And then I don t like to have many clothes. 
 Twice a year I plan exactly what I need for the next six months, 
 buy everything at one fell swoop. And then I don t think of 
 clothes again until another six months have gone by." 
 
 " How curious ! " Azile remarked. " I m buying things all the 
 time and so of course I m going to the dressmaker every minute. 
 I always feel that a new occasion requires a special cos 
 tume. It s my way of setting the scene I suppose. Now this 
 gown I have just bought the purple and cerise is for an occa 
 sion. Dwight s club has a Ladies Day this month. He always 
 invites me of course and I always plan to have something new 
 for it." 
 
 299
 
 300 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Southward made no comment; and Azile herself seemed there 
 after a little to lose interest in clothes. They went to a Fifth 
 Avenue hotel for lunch. 
 
 The big room was overcrowded with tables that seemed over 
 crowded with women. Crashes of music from a concealed 
 orchestra attacked but did not drown or interrupt a high shrill 
 vocal clatter. The perfume of the flowers, abundant and ex 
 quisitely fresh, contended in the atmosphere with the savoury 
 odours of the food that the waiters were scooping from the thick 
 est of silver platters onto the thinnest of porcelain dishes. Every 
 where tables were evacuating, filling up again, becoming concen 
 trated centres of talk and laughter. Waiters tripped deftly 
 through the perilous channels between these noisy islands, carving 
 and serving with a quick, quiet expertness. A head waiter with 
 an eye to every flicker of movement in the room surveyed the 
 scene and ordered all these opposing forces. When he saw .Azile, 
 he hurried to her side. 
 
 " Did you reserve a place for me, Henri ? " she demanded 
 languidly. 
 
 "Yes, madam," Henri answered deferentially. He indicated 
 a table with two chairs by the window. 
 
 Azile placed Southward in the position which commanded the 
 room. She was assisted by a group of waiters who, even after 
 they were seated, continued to hover assiduously in their neigh 
 bourhood. Henri handed them huge cards which offered them, 
 in several languages, a choice of many foods. 
 
 " What would you like, Miss Drake ? " Azile asked perfunctorily. 
 But without waiting for an answer, " What s good ? " she de 
 manded of Henri, who still stood or bent, a deferential but sym 
 pathetic human right angle, at her side. 
 
 Henri murmured a patter of professional advice. 
 
 " What would you like, Miss Drake ? " again Azile asked. 
 And again without waiting for an answer, " Oh, it s all 
 so hopeless. New York food is so bad and there s never any 
 thing new. Strawberries sound good. But will they be sweet, 
 Henri?" 
 
 Henry was enthusiastic on the subject of strawberries. 
 
 " What do you say, Miss Drake ? " Azile asked. " Don t blame 
 me though if they taste like lemon-drops." 
 
 At Azile s first appeal, Southward s lips had started to form 
 words. But at her second, they had not stirred. Now with a 
 perfect composure, she waited an instant as if to make sure that 
 an answer was expected of her. "Anything," she said at last
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 301 
 
 politely but with a superb indifference, " I eat everything. What 
 ever you order will please me." 
 
 Azile selected, after much discussion with Henri of every 
 detail, a lunch that had the appearance of simplicity and an 
 effect equally great of extravagance. It began with cocktails, for 
 the mixing of which she gave explicit direction; it ended with 
 the strawberries that she at last decided to attempt and which 
 proved to be blood-red and delicious. It included a delicate thin 
 soup, a delicate white fish with a French sauce, delicate slices of 
 cold chicken, a delicate pale-green salad. All the time, she was 
 bowing to people who were coming in or going out, or apparently 
 ensconcing themselves indefinitely. Once she left Southward to 
 join a group of women, who sumptuously dressed and elaborately 
 made up, emitted at a neighbouring table a maelstrom of excited 
 talk. 
 
 " They re going to a matinee," she told Southward on 
 her return. " Mary s Mother. I have some tickets for it in 
 my bag and perhaps we ll drop in for an act or two later. They 
 say it s good but you never can tell. I should hate it to turn 
 out tiresome. I ve got to do a little more shopping first though." 
 
 The shopping entailed going to a bookstore where she bought 
 a volume of essays. 
 
 " It s to be sent," she directed the salesman. " Give me 
 pen and ink, please." 
 
 With the fountain-pen he handed her, she inscribed a long mes 
 sage, apparently in the nature of a note, on the fly-leaf. Then 
 she gave the address Dwight s. 
 
 " There s an essay in it on The Point of View in Fiction," 
 she explained. "Dwight and I have been having a discussion on 
 that matter and I m bolstering up my side of the case with 
 authority. Do you know anything about it ? " 
 
 Southward answered this careless explanation with a state 
 ment equally careless. " We used to have some discussion about 
 it in college. But I really know nothing about it. It never in 
 terested me." 
 
 They emerged into the air again. 
 
 "Let me see," Azile meditated, "I really don t think of any 
 thing else I can do now except oh, yes, I d better call Dwight 
 right up and tell him I ve sent the book." 
 
 They went to a hotel for this. Southward sat in the lobby 
 opposite the telephone-box into which Azile shut herself. Through 
 the glass door, Azile s figure was clearly distinguishable. It was 
 a long conversation and apparently an interesting one. Azile
 
 302 
 
 dropped nickle after nickle in the slot. Several times, she threw 
 her head back and laughed with an appearance of mirth, almost 
 uproarious. She was laughing when she opened the door. 
 
 " Dwight is a witty thing," she commented. But she vouch 
 safed no elaboration of her remark. 
 
 They walked up the Avenue, Azile racking her brains, she said, 
 to recall the many things she needed; for the want of which 
 she prophesied, she would " perish " the instant she got home. 
 Passing another hotel, she suddenly remembered that she had 
 forgotten to ask Dwight to join them at tea. She telephoned 
 again. Another interminable conversation ensued. As before 
 when she came out of the telephone-box, she was laughing. 
 
 " He says he ll call at the theatre for us," she announced to 
 Southward. " I think we d better be making our way up there 
 now." 
 
 They started in the direction of the theatre; but twice articles 
 that Azile saw in window displays and twice things that she 
 suddenly remembered took them into shops. The curtain of the 
 first act was just falling as they gained seats. Southward found 
 the play interesting and said so once. Azile found it dull and 
 said so many times. She complained because their seats in the 
 second row were a little too near. She explained that she had 
 forgotten the irritating fact about this particular theatre that the 
 front seats were too low for comfort. Her comments proved that 
 she had experienced preferences in seats in most of the New York 
 theatres. She bowed to many people and, between the third and 
 fourth acts, slipped away to join a party of women in a stage- 
 box. When they left the theatre, they found Dwight waiting 
 for them. 
 
 " This seems to have been a regular tear ! " he remarked cheer 
 fully after Azile had given him a detailed account of the 
 day s doings. " How do you like the New York pace, South 
 ward?" 
 
 " I like it exceedingly," Southward answered briefly but with 
 enthusiasm. " I ve always known I d like it." 
 
 "Tea?" Dwight went on. "And where?" 
 
 " Oh, the Pat," Azile answered, " Miss Drake will enjoy that. 
 I d like to be with her when she sees it for the first time." 
 
 Southward did not explain that she had been to the Patriarch 
 before. Dwight also kept silent on this point. They sat for an 
 hour in a room even more brilliant than the one in which they 
 had lunched, and even more crowded with extravagantly dressed 
 women. Azile chattered incessantly. She emitted a medley of
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 303 
 
 autobiographical data, social allusion, and derisive comment; 
 clear apparently to Dwight but inevitably obscure to Southward. 
 Dwight kept slipping in Southward s direction little swift ex 
 planatory phrases. 
 
 "What are you girls doing this evening?" Dwight demanded 
 as he paid the bill. 
 
 " I have an engagement to go to a movie with Hester," South 
 ward answered promptly. 
 
 " Oh, damn ! " Dwight said in a disappointed tone. " And you, 
 Azile?" 
 
 " Nothing," Azile answered hastily. " But how does it hap 
 pen you re free? This isn t your day off." 
 
 " Yes, it is," Dwight interrupted. " Or it s one of them. I m 
 in holiday mood to-day because I ve just pulled off a deal with 
 the boss by which I m to have two days a week. I m doing 
 double duty in other respects: so he loses nothing. But it will 
 give me more time to work on the novel. I ve got to celebrate 
 to-night someway." 
 
 " I know how you re going to celebrate it then," Azile stated 
 with a pretty dictatoriousness. * You re going to celebrate it by 
 overhauling that last chapter." 
 
 Dwight made an impatient gesture. " Can t do it to-night, 
 Azile." 
 
 " You must," Azile insisted with sweetness. 
 
 " No," Dwight persisted, " No can do. Well, perhaps after 
 all the thing I need is sleep. I guess I ll hit the hay early, and 
 make a good start to-morrow." 
 
 " Get up to the house early as you want," Azile said. 
 
 Dwight and Azile walked home with Southward. Neither 
 would come up. They left together. Southward was silent 
 through the simple % but very delicious dinner which Hester had 
 cooked for her. Her eye was absent. A frown played constantly 
 on her brow and sometimes it deepened until it seemed that a 
 sudden black glimpse of the Drake temper might show itself. 
 
 " What is it, O Lady of Kingdoms ? " Hester asked gently 
 once. 
 
 At this Southward s smile made a delicious glimmer under the 
 black frown. " Insubordination in the ranks," she explained 
 briefly. But her smile was but a brief burst of lightness. Her 
 face fell back at once into a black gloom. 
 
 Hester did not speak again. Nor did Southward. The silence 
 was so great that at the ring of the telephone both girls jumped. 
 Southward answered it with an impatient " Hello 1 hello ! " But
 
 304 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 in a surprised voice, she added, " Oh, is it you ? " and in a formal 
 one, " Of course. We d like to have you very much." 
 
 " It s Dwight," she explained to Hester. " I told him that 
 we were going to the movies to-night and he asked if he might 
 go with us. Of course I said, yes." 
 
 Her voice and manner were perfunctory but that black cloud 
 had magically disappeared from her brow. A something so 
 triumphant that it was almost exaltation made her face brilliant. 
 Curiously enough, even more than the dark frowning of a moment 
 ago, it brought out that predatory cruelty which seemed, even in 
 her gentlest moments, to lurk in her expression: 
 
 "That s all right," was all Hester said.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HER first expedition with Dwight was soon followed by another, 
 quite dissimilar in character. 
 
 " I m going to take you three places this afternoon," he an 
 nounced. " First of all we re going to call on Dora Dewing." 
 
 "And who," Southward demanded, "is Dora Dewing?" 
 
 " Dora is an authorine," Dwight explained. " She writes foolish 
 stuff futile little verses and silly little he-and-she stories. I hate 
 Dora s work and I ve often told her so, but I like Dora. She s 
 a corker. It s a queer thing to see," he went on meditatively, 
 " how those guys whose work you ve been following for years match 
 up with your ideas of them. I ve noticed that particularly in 
 interviewing. For instance, comes along a gink that you ve ad 
 mired at the distance of the printed page ever since you can 
 remember. His stuff has done all kinds of things to you wakes 
 you up, makes you think, rings whole chimes of bells in your 
 mind he s your man in a manner of speaking. Even when he s 
 at his worst, he has something for you. And then, by Jove, you 
 meet him and he won t seem to have a thing on him. He s as 
 empty as a drum and sounds twice as hollow. He s putting it all 
 into his pen-finger. It s flowing out there in a steady torrent 
 but there isn t a thing left inside. Believe me, that s some disil 
 lusion. Then appears another guy. You hate his stuff. You 
 call it truck. It makes you tired. You go to interview him and 
 he s a corker. He s got all of it character and personality, charm 
 and ideas too. He s got a lot on him but he doesn t seem to 
 make any writing connection with it. I don t know but of all 
 the experiences you strike, that s the strangest. So Dora. I hate 
 her stuff, but Dora s the goods. Once in a dog s age, you meet a 
 celebrity who measures up to specifications in both ways and, 
 believe me, that s some experience. Why, when I went to inter 
 view Reberot that fellow who s doing such marvellous exploration 
 in the Andes I got there at ten and we talked until three before 
 either of us thought of luncheon. We just fell together." 
 
 To get to Dora s, they entered a low doorway on a West Side 
 street. They walked through a long narrow dark hall into a short 
 wide light one, knocked at a door at the end. 
 
 305
 
 306 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 It opened and Southward gasped. The big room which they 
 entered was one of two connecting heights as to ceiling and dif 
 ferent levels as to floor. The walls were whitewashed a soft 
 cream, the floors polished to a deep amber. There was little 
 furniture; but for the first time in her life perhaps, Southward 
 found herself looking at the things in a room, not the people. A 
 big maple high-boy, a small maple low-boy, old Boston rockers, 
 a sailor s chest, a small butterfly table, a big hundred-legged one, 
 rag-rugs, samplers, silhouettes, portraits under glass her eye 
 slid from one to the other. 
 
 " I guess I ve come as near to being homesick as J ever will," 
 Southward admitted. 
 
 But this absorption passed immediately. Southward turned a 
 gaze which carried it s customary alert composure on the woman 
 who at Dwight s " Oh, here you are, Dora darling ! " turned from 
 her guests to greet them. 
 
 She was a tall big woman, neutrally blond, superficially a little 
 expressionless, an effect that a pronounced cast in one eye seemed 
 to exaggerate. 
 
 " I m glad to meet you at last, Miss Drake," she said, hold 
 ing Southward s hand for a friendly interval. " It s nearly 
 three weeks now that Dwight has been promising to bring you 
 here." 
 
 Southward murmured a conventional reply. Miss Dewing turned 
 to answer at length the question which Dwight put to her. South 
 ward examined her with the minute scrutiny to which she sub 
 mitted every woman. 
 
 Miss Dewing turned back to her at once and ignoring Dwight 
 introduced her to all her friends. Miss Dewing drew her first with 
 one, then with another, into talk while she poured their tea. She 
 was a woman of a rare social gift, a quality that manifested itself 
 slowly but which must in time have become evident to the most 
 unperceptive. She not only never interrupted but she listened 
 with a real interest and a rare deference. When she ventured 
 a statement it was always a contribution. Perhaps it was one 
 tribute to her personality that among her guests there were as 
 many men as women. Perhaps it was a tribute of another kind 
 that the women were all pretty. That it was an intimate group 
 immediately became apparent. Christian names and nicknames 
 flew about and the conversation took on that enigmatic intimacy 
 often so baffling to an outsider. Miss Dewing apparently realised 
 this; for she kept casting in Southward s direction little sidelights 
 of description and explanation. And although she seemed to bear
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 307 
 
 so small a part in the conversation, deftly and unobtrusively she 
 kept turning it into channels which Southward could enter. 
 
 " That woman s a wonder," Southward commented as they came 
 out a half an hour later. " She grew on me. At first I 
 thought she was awfully plain. But she was so charming, I found 
 myself deciding that she was attractive before I knew it." 
 
 She visibly dropped into meditation from which Dwight did 
 not for the minute arouse her. " It s always such a surprise when 
 a. plain woman like that puts it all over the rest of the women 
 in the room." 
 
 " Such a flock of pippins too," Dwight answered. " Yes, that s 
 a great scoop. I always like to see it done. John says that the 
 plain woman with a big personality beats the beauty with only a 
 limited amount of personality every time. He says you expect 
 nothing of the plain woman and so anything you get is clear gain. 
 And when the charm of personality begins definitely to assert itself 
 with the inevitable result of making her seem less plain and 
 often of giving her an unexpected beauty you feel that you ve 
 struck gold. The negative pretty woman is steadily losing in 
 charm whereas the interesting plain one is always gaining." 
 
 " I see," Southward said slowly. " There s an awful lot in that, 
 isn t there? But do you know it never struck me before." 
 
 " John also says," Dwight continued, smiling, " that if he were 
 married to a pretty woman who was silly, he d certainly kill her. 
 It s rather amusing coming from old John. He s such a gentle 
 cuss. He always says that he d much rather marry a plain woman 
 with brains than a pretty woman without brains because, in 
 the case of the pretty woman, her beauty would ultimately 
 become an extra exasperation. But John has always rooted 
 for what he calls the hidden beauty, the beauty you discover 
 yourself." 
 
 " I suppose that s why he enjoys Hester so much," Southward 
 commented thoughtfully. " Not that Hester is plain of course. 
 She s far from that. But her looks are so dependent on her mood 
 not perhaps that so much as the people she s with." 
 
 " Yes. John has said something like that. I have never seen 
 a woman improve as Hester has. She really looks like quite 
 another girl." 
 
 " It s a miracle," Southward spoke with the gentleness of tone 
 which always she employed towards Hester. 
 
 " She s not the only one the trip to New York has improved," 
 Dwight insinuated slyly, " if improvement could be made on per 
 fection. Believe me, young woman, you re somewhat of a looker
 
 308 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 yourself these days. I can gaze at you several moments at a time 
 without suffering perceptible boredom." 
 
 Southward accepted this, as she accepted all compliments, with 
 composure, the faint glimmer of her mirth irradiating her eyes. 
 
 " Have you known Miss Dewing long ? " she asked casually. 
 
 " Yes, for several years," Dwight answered. " We ve knocked 
 about a good deal exploring New York. In fact we re going off 
 on a hike to-morrow." 
 
 On this Southward made no comment and Dwight himself 
 vouchsafed no further information. 
 
 " One of my publishers Wendell of Wendell and Daly is giving 
 a tea this afternoon," Dwight went on presently. " I thought 
 we might drop in there I called him up this morning in fact 
 and told him I was going to bring you. Then there s a woman 
 friend of mine Jane Yates who s trying to establish herself as 
 a literary agent. I want you to know Jane." 
 
 They divided the interval between dinner at these two places. 
 Mr. Wendell occupied rooms in a bachelor apartment on Madison 
 Avenue. They were richly furnished; old French furniture, old 
 French tapestries; a few good pictures, flowering plants; a tea 
 service in old silver; and they were so big that although there 
 were many people in them, they had no effect of being crowded. 
 Tete-a-tete groups sat about in the delicate light from shaded 
 candles, sipping their tea and talking languidly. 
 
 Mr. Wendell was a tall, portly man just entering the first period 
 of a rubicund greyness. Youngish, oldish, it was difficult to say 
 whether he was middle-aged or not. But apparently, Mr. Wendell 
 himself had no doubts on the subject. The semi-flirtations, semi- 
 jocular tete-a-tete into which he immediately drew Southward, pro 
 ceeded on a plane of age-equality. 
 
 " Beat it ! " he commanded Dwight, who grinned at his com 
 plimentary broadsides, "do get out of our cruising radius! Miss 
 Drake and I don t want you blanketing all our finest effects. 
 Besides, Patty Thompson is wandering about here somewhere 
 with a copy of Ginger she wants you to autograph." 
 
 Simultaneously, came an exclamation, " Oh, Dwight ! There 
 you are, apple of my eye ! " A big red-headed girl flew with an 
 astonishing lightness across the room, straight to Dwight s side. 
 She was carrying the brown-and-gold Ginger. " Write in it now 
 while you have time, Dwight darling," she wheedled. 
 
 Dwight grinned but he obediently took the book. 
 
 " What shall I write, Patty my angel ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Something sweet," Patty answered promptly.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 309 
 
 " All right," Dwight acceded amiably. He wrote, " Something 
 sweet." He added to it, " That s you, Patty my love ! " and 
 signed it. 
 
 " You villain ! " Patty commented, with obvious delight, reading 
 the inscription over his shoulder. "Thanks! Say, Dwight, when 
 are we going to look up that haunted house ? " 
 
 " Any time you set," Dwight answered cheerfully. " I m free 
 mornings you know and now I have two whole days a week. 
 Thursdays and Fridays." 
 
 " How about next week, Thursday ? " Patty queried. 
 
 "All right," Dwight acceded. "Thursday of next week. I ll 
 make a Sunday story out of it, Patty darling." 
 
 Southward had been responding in a measure to the flirtatious 
 sallies of her host. But all the time she had been surveying the 
 assembly with a volley of her swift darting glances. Now, 
 surreptitiously she studied Miss Thompson. 
 
 She was tall and so plump that she just grazed being stout, 
 red-headed, grey-eyed, with a complexion of such a smooth white 
 ness that the deep rose in her cheek was like a stain on marble. 
 She, it was evident, was the mistress of the ready rejoinder that 
 passes for wit. With men, she alternately coaxed, cajoled, or 
 rallied and harried. She drew Dwight into an impudent colloquy 
 in which, in strophe and antistrophe, they made extravagant love 
 or offered outrageous abuse to each other. 
 
 " You re a horrid person, Dwight," the lady concluded. " Some 
 times I think I won t marry you." 
 
 " Cast me not aside, little one," Dwight entreated, as Ginger 
 under her arm, she retreated to the group she had deserted; began 
 to coquette with another victim there. 
 
 Dwight brought many of the company to Southward. It was 
 prevailingly " smart " in tone. The women were exquisitely 
 dressed, everywhere their beautiful furs made spots of shadow; 
 their flowers touched the air freshly. The men wore correct after 
 noon clothes; often they looked more English than American. 
 They did not stay long, but long enough for Dwight to accept a 
 dinner invitation from Kathleen Warren, a tall blonde in sables 
 and orchids. 
 
 " I just wanted you to get a glimpse of it," Dwight explained 
 as they came out. " Now for Jane Yates." 
 
 " The literary agent ? " Southward asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Just exactly what is that ? " 
 
 " She s the middleman between author and publisher. She
 
 310 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 places the author s stuff and gets a commission on it. Jane s just 
 begun to establish herself and she s doing well. It happened that 
 Wendell and Jane were both giving a tea, and, as it was Dora s 
 day at home and she always has a mob I thought it would be 
 a good chance for you to see the whole chain. Jane s rather 
 remarkable, I think." 
 
 " I should think that would be a fine job for a middle-aged 
 woman," Southward commented thoughtfully, " and what a good 
 name for business Jane how plain and competent it sounds ! It 
 inspires trust." 
 
 Dwight did not answer this but he smiled as at some amusing 
 train of thought. Miss Yates apartment was farther uptown 
 and in comparison with both the other two, tiny. There were 
 more people present than at either of the preceding teas; the 
 rooms were definitely crowded. Dwight wormed a way for 
 himself and Southward through a packed mob most of whom 
 he seemed to know. They greeted him with every variety of 
 badinage. 
 
 " Jane, love of my life," he exclaimed suddenly, " here you are, 
 as usual surrounded by men. Here s the Cape Codder I promised 
 you." 
 
 Jane was a startling woman, big but with a velvety dark beauty, 
 Spanish in effect. This she quieted as much as possible by her 
 simple gown of lustreless black, a white fichu pinned at the 
 V-neck with a huge cameo-pin. Her crinkled, smoky-black hair 
 done simply too, brushed softly from the milky middle part to an 
 enormous bunch in her neck. Her great dark eyes and her wide 
 .red mouth put light and colour into a face that was the tone of 
 old ivory. Back of the brooding duskiness of her expression, 
 however, lay a resolved something that seemed to break in the 
 quickness and efficiency of her movements. That alien, superim 
 posed quality made a strange contrasting havoc of her native 
 semi-tropical languor. 
 
 She asked Southward some of the questions that the seasoned 
 New Yorker inevitably asks of the newcomer; but she asked them 
 perfunctorily. 
 
 " By the way, Dwight," she demanded suddenly, " how is the 
 novel getting on? " 
 
 " I m working like the dickens on it," Dwight said. " Honest, 
 Jane. 
 
 " That s what you always say," Miss Yates charged him. " But 
 do you really mean it? " 
 
 " Sure, Jane ! " Dwight answered fluently, " I m tearing great
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 311 
 
 wads off every day. I m nailing like the very old Nick. Ask 
 Azile. Ask Miss Drake here." 
 
 " I don t know anything about it," Southward protested promptly. 
 
 " You little coward ! " Dwight commented. " Not standing 
 by a pal in his hour of need." 
 
 " I m going to get a writ of habeas corpus out soon," Miss 
 Yates threatened. " Produce the novel ! Say, Dwight, can t you 
 bring up a chapter or two some morning next week and read it to 
 me?" 
 
 " Easiest thing I do," Dwight admitted, " reading from my own 
 immortal works." 
 
 " Tuesday," Miss Yates decided after consulting the calendar 
 that lay on her desk, "how about Tuesday?" 
 
 " O. K. for me," Dwight agreed. " Tuesday it is. Say, can t I 
 bring Azile along? She s been awfully interested in it. Some 
 times I tell her she knows more about it than I do. Certainly 
 she s done her best to keep my nose to the grindstone. Jemimia 
 Jane, you females is certainly born slave-drivers." 
 
 " Well, by this time," Jane replied, " perhaps you are ready to 
 admit that that s what you need. Don t you think so?" She 
 turned politely and included Southward in the conversation. 
 
 " I really don t know," Southward declared with equal polite 
 ness, " except that everybody does." 
 
 " Well thrust, brave girl," Dwight applauded. " Have at her 
 again ! I hereby appoint you my bodyguard." 
 
 " And I hereby decline the job," Southward announced. 
 
 " They all throw me down, Jane ! " Dwight said with a display 
 of burlesque self-pity. " I feel confident that you re the only one 
 who will cling to me to the end. I know you ll send me flowers 
 when I go to prison." 
 
 " I won t cling one instant beyond three months from date," 
 Jane insisted, " unless you deliver that novel." 
 
 Dwight grinned. It was apparent that he did not fear Jane s 
 desertion. He took Southward around the circle of Jane s friends. 
 As at every other social occasion which Southward had attended in 
 New York, there were an astonishing number of pretty women, 
 charmingly dressed and full of interesting conversation ; an equal 
 number of men, not so carefully dressed perhaps but with equal 
 powers for social entertainment. As usual too, there was a 
 celebrity or two. Here as elsewhere, their rallying of Dwight took 
 the form of reproaches for non-attendance at this party or that. 
 Dwight met them all with his customary good nature, his normal 
 slangy, witty volubility. They did not stay long however.
 
 312 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 "I just wanted you to see the three types," he explained when 
 they came out. " The writer, the publisher, and the go-between. 
 It s rery typical of New York." 
 
 " Is Miss Yates a typical middleman ? " Southward asked. 
 
 Dwight laughed enjoyingly. " Jane is scarcely a typical any 
 thing. She was left a widow with a little girl eight years ago. 
 Most women I think would have depended on their beauty to help 
 them out. But Jane s a good business woman she meets you man 
 to man and no funny business. She s awfully handsome, isn t 
 she?" 
 
 " Stunning ! " Southward did not speak for a while. " All New 
 York women seem to be handsome," came out of her meditations 
 after a while. " Aren t they the most attractive women you ever 
 saw?" 
 
 " Yes and no," Dwight answered. " Of course looks make a lot 
 of difference here and clothes. New York women doll up, it 
 seems to me, more than any women I ever saw except the Parisians. 
 But sometimes, it s the clothes, not the women themselves. Of 
 course though, there are many really beautiful women here. Jane s 
 one. Azile s another. Kathleen Warren is another. Edith too, 
 although she s not exactly to my taste. I ll probably introduce 
 you to twenty real beauties before your visit is over. But it s not 
 New York alone that s breeding them, remember. They re pouring 
 in from all over the country. They come to go on the stage and 
 into the movies, to study art and music, elocution, and God knows 
 what. It s the same in London and Paris. Nevertheless you do 
 get tired of the composite type. Well, I ve told you times enough 
 how pretty and fresh the Shayneford girls looked to me when I 
 first got there." 
 
 Southward was preoccupied during dinner, which they ate in 
 a Broadway cafe, full of coloured lights, some of which shot 
 through a huge fountain that filled one corner. Once, she said, 
 " I didn t expect a publisher to be like that either," as though 
 the day had brought more than one surprise. 
 
 " Wendell s a great old boy. I m strong for him," was Dwight s 
 comment on this. And to her next remark, " I can t tell you what 
 a respect I have for a woman so beautiful as Miss Yates who 
 builds up a business like that," "Yes, you re right. You ll see 
 a lot of that here." 
 
 He did not appear to notice her preoccupation. He kept 
 up a flowing commentary on the people in the cafe, some of 
 whom he recognised. He invited her comment. Gradually he 
 drew her to her highest point of sparkling impudence. " Gee,
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 313 
 
 Southward, you have a fresh point of view," he remarked 
 once. 
 
 " Do you dine out every night ? " Southward questioned, ig 
 noring the compliment. 
 
 " Every night," Dwight answered. " Often of course with John 
 or Morena. Sometimes somebody that my work compels me to 
 feast and banquet. But more often it s a girl. I do like a girl for 
 dinner." 
 
 Southward s preoccupation returned momentarily. But the mad 
 after-dinner round which with the remark, "Now we re going to 
 have a good time," Dwight immediately whirled her, soon broke 
 it up. They stopped first in an uptown cafe and danced for an 
 hour. Then they went to a downtown cafe and danced for two 
 hours. Everywhere Dwight ran into acquaintances. Everywhere 
 he was reproached for non-attendance at this party or that, urged 
 to attend new ones, bespoken for dinners or week-end excursions. 
 Dwight poured out voluble explanations for his truancy; accepted 
 fresh invitations on all sides. Towards midnight, they drifted 
 down to Washington Square, walked laughing and talking through 
 the Park. 
 
 " Perhaps we d better be starting towards home," Southward said 
 finally. 
 
 " Not yet," Dwight pleaded. And then suddenly as though 
 struck with a new idea, he stepped into the gutter and collected 
 a handful of pebbles. Moving out into the middle of the street, 
 he began to bombard a second-story window on the south side. 
 Presently the sash went up; the curtains parted, and there ap 
 peared over the sill a little white face diminished to a mere wafer 
 by great falling clusters of golden curls; a little white hand 
 holding a kimono together over slim child-like shoulders. 
 
 " Get up and dress, Cynthia," Dwight coaxed. " I ll take you 
 over to the Balzac and buy you a drink. Besides, there s a nice 
 girl down here that I want you to know." 
 
 " Dwight Cameron," Cynthia answered in a piercing stage- 
 whisper, " I could certainly kill you at this moment. I ve planned 
 for three days to get the big sleep to-night and here you come 
 along and ruin it. However for the nice girl s sake, I ll forgive 
 you. I ll be down in a jiff." 
 
 " Cynthia is a model," Dwight answered Southward s inquiring 
 look, " and a true Peruvian. I think you ll like her. Let s sit 
 down on the doorstep. It won t take her long." 
 
 D wight s prophecy was justified. In a surprisingly brief interval 
 the door back of them opened. There stood on the threshold a
 
 314 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 little slim, white-faced girl, dressed all in white; white corduroy- 
 suit, white tam-o -shanter and, in spite of the wintry cold, white 
 silk stockings and low white shoes. The only colour in all this 
 was the faint gold of her short hair which flew from under 
 the tam-o -shanter in great streaming masses as of wiry light and 
 the big eyes whose quick glances were like violet arrows. 
 
 " I had to put on a summer suit, because I couldn t find my 
 winter one," she explained irascibly, shaking hands with South 
 ward without waiting for Dwight s introduction and ignoring it 
 when it came. " Of course I m the most heedless person in the 
 world. I know that as well as anybody. But I really can t see 
 where a big thick suit that I ve been wearing all day could have 
 disappeared to while I was sleeping." 
 
 Southward laughed. " I can understand your state of mind per 
 fectly," she admitted. " I m not a very careful person myself." 
 Abstraction vanished completely. But in the surreptitious scru 
 tiny to which, as in the case of all the young and beautiful of her 
 own sex, she immediately subjected Cynthia, there was an element 
 of sympathetic understanding. 
 
 They crossed the Square to a side street and entered the Balzac, 
 a famous French hotel of the neighbourhood. The cabaret was 
 crowded with tiny tables, set as close together as possible. A few 
 people were eating and all were drinking. Chess, dominoes, cards, 
 cribbage strange foreign games of various sorts were going on 
 at many tables, letter-writing at a few. Their advent was greeted 
 with applause from two directions. Dwight waved a general greet 
 ing to his friends and established the two girls at a table on the 
 side. But before she sat down, Cynthia went about from group to 
 group, and explained in careful detail how she happened to be 
 wearing a summer suit. 
 
 " She never is dressed like anybody else," Dwight was in the 
 meantime humorously explaining to Southward, " although she 
 always seems to think she would be, if it weren t for some unfore 
 seen accident. She s an original and a clever little party alto 
 gether. Great fun always." He proceeded to relate some of the 
 most purple incidents in Cynthia s irresponsible career. 
 
 The subject of this biography returned in time to their table. 
 But she left it at intervals to join other parties or to invite them 
 to join her. Their table was constantly growing and diminishing 
 in size as other tables were added to it or snatched away. Cynthia 
 rapidly became the social centre of the room. Everybody who 
 entered seemed to see her first; everybody who went out said 
 good-bye to her last. She was one of those people who fill the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 315 
 
 stage whatever they do, or wherever they go. The cafe began to 
 empty. Cynthia departed abruptly at the end of an hour with 
 a group who were going in her direction. 
 
 " I think I m going to bed now," she said, " but I never can tell." 
 
 At the door she paused. " Oh, Dwight," she called, " there s a 
 pair of your pyjamas over at my place. I wish you d come and get 
 them some time." 
 
 Dwight joined in the scream of laughter that this evoked. 
 
 " She brought them home from a camping party where I left 
 them. She was visiting there the same time I was," he explained 
 to Southward. "Isn t she an imp? It s just as likely she s been 
 hatching that up the whole evening. Still she s quite as spontane 
 ous as she is premeditated. That s why she s such a wonder." 
 
 "Did you have a good time, Southward?" Hester called from 
 her room when Southward got in that night. 
 
 " Wonderful ! " Southward answered. She came into Hester s 
 room and sitting on the bed gave her a detailed account of the 
 night s adventures. But she was visibly preoccupied. An unex 
 pressed undercurrent of comment ran briskly through her mind 
 parallel with her narrative. Hester fell rapidly back to sleep again 
 when Southward finished. But Southward herself sat for a long 
 time at her window, her eyes fixed on the stars. When finally she 
 went to bed, it was on a sudden impulse, as though, after a long 
 and careful consideration of many things, she had come to a clear 
 conclusion.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IN the morning when Southward called Morena on the telepnone, 
 she lingered to talk a little. 
 
 " Oh, by the way," she concluded with the air of one who sud 
 denly remembers something, " you know that exhibition of pictures 
 you spoke of a few days ago? I find I can go to-day after all. 
 
 Another engagement has been called off Thanks Yes, 
 
 that s all right yes four o clock then." 
 
 Immediately afterwards she called another number. 
 
 " Is this Mr. Home ? Oh, good morning. You don t remember 
 me, I m sure. But I remember you perfectly. Do you recall 
 a girl who met you at the Quatre-Arts costume-party she wore 
 a plain scarlet domino? You wanted to know her name and 
 address. And she gave you one, I ve forgotten which. Oh, I see 
 you do remember. Oh I m sure you re exceedingly kind. Thank 
 you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, I d like that awfully. After 
 the theatre? Oh, yes, I see. That makes it only the more inter 
 esting. Oh, yes, I ll remember. Saturday night then. Good-bye." 
 
 She called a third number. 
 
 " I want Mr. Ely. Yes. Is this Mr. Ely. No, Mr. George Ely. 
 Thank you. Oh, good morning, Mr. Ely. I m that girl you met 
 at the Quatre-Arts ball do you remember in a scarlet domino 
 and you tried very hard to get me to give you my name and 
 address and I did give you one of them, though I ve forgotten 
 
 which one. Well, here I am Oh, I see well, my name is 
 
 Southward Drake. Oh, that s awfully kind of you. I d enjoy it 
 enormously. Thanks, yes. No. Yes, oh, yes. Thank you. All 
 right, Thursday night about ten. Good-bye." 
 
 She did not see Dwight again for the rest of the week, although 
 he called her once a day and sometimes twice on the telephone. 
 He was, he explained, exceedingly busy on the novel. " Jane sort 
 of jacked me up the other day, and I m working hard. Azile is 
 helping me every morning. You see I want to get the first book 
 finished before I read it to Jane." 
 
 It happened that the next time she met Dwight was at the party 
 to which George Ely took her. Southward had not, of course, 
 
 816
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 317 
 
 met the people who gare the "party; nor for that matter had Ely 
 more than once. They were a young married pair, actors. They 
 had just received the notice that the building in which they lived 
 was to be torn down at the beginning of the month. They had 
 moved out their Lares, leaving the rooms quite empty, for dancing. 
 Delicatessen food, drinks of all descriptions were spread out on 
 newspapers, oh window-sills and radiator-tops. They ate from 
 paper plates and drank from tin cups. Those who wished to sit 
 down between dances sat on newspapers on the floor. It was of 
 course in these circumstances an unusually successful and a wildly 
 hilarious party. And when at midnight a trio of new guests pre 
 sented themselves in shirts, overalls, and soft felt hats, which they 
 explained they had hired from some labourers working on the 
 street, and carrying the picks and dinner-pails that went with 
 them, they were greeted with uproarious applause. Someone sug 
 gested that, as the house was coming down the next day, they 
 might begin the work of destruction at once. This idea was 
 received with cheers. The joyous work began at once. With 
 picks, they attacked the walls which divided the two rooms. 
 Everybody was compelled to take a hand in this fatiguing, dirty, 
 but agreeable task. In half an hour there was a man-size hole 
 cut from room to room ; the air was full of dust, the floor covered 
 with debris. After a general washing up soapless and with hand 
 kerchiefs performing the functions of towels everybody went to 
 a nearby all-night Broadway restaurant. The people sitting at 
 the tables surveyed the mad group of revellers, headed by what 
 purported to be three street-labourers, with interest but without 
 surprise; the waiters received the picks and dinner-pails and 
 carried them off to be checked without a change of expression. 
 
 When Southward and Ely invaded this party, Dwight was 
 dancing with Azile alone in the centre of the room. Dwight s 
 glance, falling on Southward, lit with a delighted surprise which 
 died as it shifted to Ely. He bowed with the utmost cordiality 
 to them both, however. The next dance found him at South 
 ward s side. He managed to prolong it interminably by himself 
 renewing the record every time it threatened to run down. Pres 
 ently united protest affected a change in music and he released 
 her to Ely. 
 
 " Ely s a good fellow, isn t he ? " he said carelessly. " I didn t 
 know you knew him particularly." 
 
 " I don t," Southward answered with an equal carelessness. 
 " Yes, I like him. He s been very kind about offering to take me 
 about."
 
 318 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Ely engaged the next three dances and Southward encouraged 
 him to prolong them by much approval of the music. She danced 
 with the other men that he introduced and twice again 
 with Dwight. But she submitted to all Ely s attempts to monop 
 olise her. She walked with him in the procession that marched 
 a block to the restaurant and she fell in with his suggestion not 
 to separate while eating. Dwight and Azile sat opposite them at 
 the long table which the waiters immediately made from three 
 email ones. The quartette engaged in general conversation, which 
 Ely quite frankly broke off again and again to diminish to a 
 tete-a-tete with Southward. 
 
 He was a newspaper-man; full of narrative and lively repartee. 
 He had come to New York two years before, from Yale. But his 
 college atmosphere still hung over him a little; in his metro 
 politan vocabulary were still embedded the slang exotics of the 
 Yale campus. He was big, blond, and rather ugly. But his eye 
 was clear, his smile winning; he kept a look of athletic freshness. 
 
 Southward left before Azile. " By the way," Dwight said in a 
 low voice as he shook hands with her in parting, " I m going to 
 telephone you sometime to-morrow. I think it s about time we 
 went on another spree." 
 
 " All right," Southward assented indifferently. 
 
 When as usual she called Morena up the next morning, to her 
 surprise, Dwight answered her gay, " Time to get up, Morena ! " 
 with an abrupt: 
 
 " This isn t Morena. It s me. Morena s struggling with a tele 
 gram at the door." 
 
 " Oh, good morning." Southward s composure was unshaken. 
 " How surprising to hear your voice. Well, tell Mr. O Reilly that 
 I waked him as usual. Good " 
 
 " Say ! Wait a moment ! " Dwight remonstrated. " What s your 
 rush? I want to talk with you. I want to ask you something. 
 Can you go out to dinner with me to-night ? " 
 
 " I can," Southward said slowly, " if you can get me home by 
 eleven o clock. I have an engagement at half-past eleven." 
 
 " Is it a long one ? " 
 
 " Till after two, I fancy." 
 
 " Can I deliver you at your party? " 
 
 " I m afraid not. There s a man coming to the apartment for 
 me." 
 
 " All right. Curse him. However, I ll tire you out so you 
 won t have any fun with him." 
 
 " I challenge you to do that."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 319 
 
 " I accept." Dwight paused. " Don t ring off ! " he warned her. 
 " I haven t finished yet. It seems as though I hadn t seen you for 
 a dog s age. But I ve been very busy myself writing every 
 morning on the novel and all day yesterday. I feel as if I d 
 imposed on Azile, but she s been awfully good about helping me." 
 
 There was a new note in Dwight s arrogant voice, as though 
 apology tried to veil itself in explanation. 
 
 " Well," Southward said, " I must get back to my coffee. Oh, 
 by the way, congratulate Mr. O Keilly for me. Tell him, please, 
 that I call his attention to the fact that this is the first time in 
 three weeks that I ve found him awake when I called him up." 
 
 She went to dinner with Dwight, and although in an exaggerated 
 spirit of burlesque entreaty he tried to make her cut out the other 
 engagement, she steadfastly refused to do it. She made no con 
 fidence as to its nature, but when Dwight asked point-blank she 
 said that Harold Home had asked her to go to a private view of 
 a moving picture which starred a Broadway favourite. This view 
 was to be given after midnight in order that the star might him 
 self see it. 
 
 " You ll enjoy that," Dwight prophesied, " there ll be some enter 
 taining people there." 
 
 Southward admitted that she expected this. And in point of 
 fact, it was more interesting even than she anticipated. Harold 
 Home was, he told her, a Native Son of the Golden West, Sutter 
 Parlour Number 73. He was big and handsome, with the face of 
 a Greek god, a little too full as to feature and a little too high as 
 to colouring. He had the Californian s wit and resourcefulness. 
 He affected the pose of the raw Westerner in New York for the 
 first time; he referred to metropolitan conditions in the terms of a 
 mining camp. He saw to it that Southward met the entire party 
 in the little velvet-hung room in which the pictures were shown. 
 Her own audacity of spirit re-enforced his social adroitness; there 
 was not a dull moment all the evening long.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SOUTHWARD S interests were not all personal; she developed 
 others that were more general. She kept her promise to Angela 
 Ade in regard to suffrage work. Occasionally she accompanied that 
 determined young woman on a speaking expedition. Carrying 
 a soap-box, Angela stopped on these occasions first at one 
 corner, then at another, and delivered her talk. " You stand in 
 front of me, Miss Drake," were her brisk commands, " and look 
 as much like an interested audience as you can. The hardest part 
 of it all is to start off haranguing empty space." Southward did 
 not serve as audience long. First one listener joined her; then 
 another. They came by twos and threes. Once within earshot, 
 Angela held them easily enough; she was quick, succinct, logical, 
 and entertaining. Regularly two afternoons a week, Southward 
 sold copies of The Equal Franchise 011 the street. In this 
 she was peculiarly successsful and she made no effort to conceal 
 her enjoyment of the process. The touch-and-go contact with 
 the Fourteenth Street crowds brought out all her facility for 
 repartee. Many men stopped to buy of her. With some, motives 
 were obviously mixed; they were inclined to linger and talk. But 
 Southward gave them short shrift. Even more than this suffrage 
 work, she enjoyed a brief picketing experience in an East Side 
 strike. Four times a day, once early in the morning, twice at 
 noon, and late in the afternoon, she reported for duty at the 
 Strike Hall. She accompanied bands of pickets to the shops. She 
 proved so self-controlled, resourceful, and fearless that once she 
 was sent to help "pull" a shop. She came home from these 
 various experiences bursting with narrative. Hester listened with 
 interest. But Southward had no argument cogent enough to get 
 her into these stirring activities. 
 
 Southward s intimacy with Mrs. Morrow grew. Soon after their 
 arrival, Azile invited both Hester and Southward to a dinner given 
 at her house. Twenty guests sat down to table. With the excep 
 tion of their hostess, of Dwight and Morena, the country-girls 
 were the only people present not celebrities. Southward was placed 
 between a famous playwright and a famous actor, Hester between 
 
 320
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 321 
 
 a famous painter and a famous novelist. For the decoration of 
 the main room in the House-Stable, Azile had apparently robbed 
 the Shop-Stable of its greatest treasures. Old French furniture in 
 a delicately-carved white wood, upholstered in a faded, silvery, 
 grey-blue, seemed to lead the eye as through a silvery, grey-blue 
 vista to the single picture a Nattier, grey and blue and silvery 
 too. All the glass and all the silver on the bared old-oak table 
 was old. Not a piece of china appeared from the beginning of the 
 dinner to the end; nothing but old English pewter. About the 
 room were flowers whose futuristic colours matched the platters of 
 fruit on the table; matched the dinner-cards that found places for 
 the guests; matched the absurd painted wooden toys that enter 
 tained them between courses. The conversation was surprisingly 
 nonsensical, considering, Hester afterwards observed, the massed 
 ability there, but it was entertaining and occasionally broke into an 
 affording seriousness. Afterwards scores of people arrived and 
 they danced all night. 
 
 This was the beginning of Mrs. Morrow s entertaining. Sub 
 sequently, Hester dropped out of the group as her social unfitness 
 for it more clearly manifested itself. But Southward never refused 
 an invitation. 
 
 Azile was the pivot of a peculiarly picturesque crowd of people. 
 Idle, attractive, living from hand to mouth, subsisting in a way 
 possible only to adventure-loving youth without many of the 
 necessities of life but with most of the luxuries, it included gifted 
 young painters who had not arrived, handsome young stage-people 
 perennially out of a job, talented young poets and fiction-writers 
 who had found neither themselves nor a publisher; illustrators, 
 newspaper-men, movie-actors, students of the arts; and the usual 
 fringe of ne er-do-weel, happy-go-lucky nondescripts all personality 
 and problematical ability which such a crowd inevitably attracts. 
 Constantly shifting in make-up, it remained constantly inter 
 esting. Azile s place was the rallying-spot for these agreeable 
 drifters. They appeared there at any instant of the day or night; 
 stayed for hours or days. Azile s amused tolerance of their 
 vagaries was only equalled by Mrs. Boardman s cynical indiffer 
 ence to them. There was of course much haphazard, helter-skelter 
 entertaining going on all the time in the little stable which the 
 two women inhabited. And sometimes this crystallised into a tea 
 or a dinner-party which, at its beginning at least, was characterised 
 by a more formal elegance. 
 
 Temperamental, pleasure-loving, restless, of an extraordinary 
 bodily activity, a creature of the night, Azile could not be alone.
 
 322 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 But with her, the impulse to hospitality took unexpected forms; 
 came at unexpected times. Sometimes the early morning or at 
 least what was early morning for New York would find her at 
 the country-girls door ready to bear them off to some hastily- 
 improvised jaunt. Sometimes late in the evening the telephone 
 would bring her staccato exigent command to a hastily-improvised 
 party. Once, Southward and Hester were summoned from their 
 rery beds to find at her place, equally sleepy-eyed, all the members 
 of the Shayneford camp-group, plus new and interesting aliens. 
 The country-girls never said no to these invitations. 
 
 As the winter wore on, costume-party succeeded costume-party. 
 Some of them occurred in the House-Stable, but the majority of 
 them were huge public dances, given by this crowd of artists or 
 that, the socialists, the anarchists, the feminists, etc., ad infinitum. 
 These occasions were always preceded by a dinner-party of a spe 
 cially selected crowd with Azile. At nine or thereabouts they 
 ate ; at twelve or thereabouts they appeared at the dance. Every 
 body wore fresh costumes to each of these affairs ; indeed the invi 
 tations stipulated epochs or styles or even colours. Their group 
 planned its clothes with an eye to harmonising or contrasting 
 effects. Once they went as a band of circus-performers; another 
 time as gipsies; again as magazine-cover people; as vaudevillists ; 
 futurists; once in yellow and red. An Arabian Nights fete 
 brought out all their originality in rich colour; a Greek wine- 
 festival all their ingenuity in graceful drapery. Hester never at 
 tended these affairs but Southward went to them all. She was 
 often put to it to devise appropriate costumes; for her talents did 
 not lie in that direction. But with the help of the suggestions 
 given her by the painters in their crowd and the assistance of 
 Hester s slight dressmaking gift, she was always a congruous and 
 a startling figure, often a beautiful one. Azile of course wore 
 the most daring of invented costume effects. She went to any end 
 to achieve results eyen to staining her whole body brown, when 
 at the Egyptian masque, she went bare-armed and bare-legged as 
 a syce. 
 
 Occasionally Azile, Southward, Dwight, and Morena formed par 
 ties by themselves. But though they played assiduously at the 
 game of enjoyment, as New York plays it, dinners, theatres, late 
 suppers and later dancing, these parties carres were never suc 
 cessful. Azile alone seemed to enjoy them completely. Perhaps 
 that was because they were invariably run to suit her. If before 
 she arrived she had not planned them, she began to do so as soon 
 as the four were assembled. The men of course always fell
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 323 
 
 in with her suggestions and Southward never opposed them. Al 
 though Azile managed, with an appearance of impartiality, to talk 
 at the theatres and to dance afterwards at the cafes first with 
 Dwight and then with Morena, it was always Dwight who was 
 scheduled to call for her and to take her home. Dwight invariably 
 grew more and more silent as the evening passed; sometimes his 
 mood deepened until it approximated moroseness. Southward 
 maintained that impassivity which, without the break of a single 
 smile, she could sustain for hours. Next to Azile, Morena seemed 
 to extract the most enjoyment from the situation. A sardonic 
 smile always hovered back of the jetty moustache. And his spirits 
 took a definite leap upwards when the two couples parted and he 
 and Southward started on the tete-a-tete walk which always con 
 cluded the evening. 
 
 That first engagement with George Ely had led to another, and 
 that in turn had led to others. Harold Home s hospitality had 
 also sent out roots and rootlets. Southward continued to accept 
 Morena s invitations. It began to happen more and more often 
 that when Dwight tried to make an engagement with her, she was 
 already booked. The result was that Dwight began to demand 
 more and more of her time. He began occasionally to take her 
 on his assignments. As the weeks went by his assignments being 
 rather special in character this happened often. It was quite 
 apparent that he found Southward entertaining. But more than 
 this, her comments on New York life seemed to stimulate his 
 imagination, especially ir regard to his newspaper-work. He 
 found her notably help * ul in the " Sunday stuff " by means of 
 which he added regulr 7 to his income. He had long ago begun 
 his series, " What th- Country-Girl Saw." His invitations came 
 often with very littL warning; as his assignment developed into 
 one on which, with ropriety, he could take a woman. On these 
 occasions, the telep. me would ring towards noon and his voice, 
 curt, business-like, v\ould say, "Are you free to-day? If so, I can 
 take you on a story ! 
 
 "Yes," Southward answered immediately. 
 
 "All right. Meet i e 
 
 It was always a di;lorent leeting-place, and there would follow 
 his quick concise dire^ tions. Southward frankly admitted that she 
 enjoyed these events n ore thi. :i anything that had happened to her 
 in New York. Much of Dw^ ht s work was light. He had dis 
 covered a character on the East Side whose dialectic peculiarity 
 was peculiarly humorous. Many of his stories took the form of 
 interviews with this mfive, inarticulate and bewhiskered alien.
 
 324 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 To him Dwight pinned every humorous tale of the Ghetto which 
 came to his notice. But often his assignment was more serious. 
 Together they investigated a haunted house which was bringing 
 terror into a correct upper West Side neighbourhood; traced the 
 wanderings within the limits of Manhattan of a cow named 
 Isabel, who suddenly deserted bed and board and refused to return 
 to domesticity until her calf arrived; a gang of little-boy burglars 
 who dumped their booty into a cave on the outskirts of the 
 borough; a pair of spiritualist mediums who had established a new 
 relation with the other world by a process discovered by them in 
 Afghanistan. Once for three days in succession it was a mysteri 
 ous murder in the Bronx. Southward inspected the house where 
 the girl lived, the shop where she worked ; traversed the road which 
 she had followed four times a day, for two years, examined the 
 spot in the bushes where her dead body was found. This involved, 
 for Southward, long lonely periods of waiting while Dwight was 
 getting news in the police-station, but she never complained. 
 In fact, she did a little amateur detective work on her own account. 
 As much as she could, she talked with people in the neighbourhood 
 about the case. Dwight listened with interest to her comments on 
 all these things. 
 
 " I like your brain, Southward," he said often, or " I like the 
 kind of thinking you do," or " It s curious how much alike our 
 minds work 1 " 
 
 Often these expeditions ended in quick luncheons in whatever 
 neighbourhood they happened to find themselves; little restaurants, 
 often of the hole-in-the-wall type. Dwight professed to hate cheap 
 places, but Southward enjoyed them more than the expensive ones. 
 Oftener, however, Dwight would have to leave her at once to return 
 to the office and write the story. At first he showed her, in print, 
 the influence here and there of her definite opinions and her con 
 crete comments ; but gradually he became unconscious of her influ 
 ence. Increasingly, however, his newspaper-work was the result of 
 a collaboration. 
 
 After a while he read to her what he had written of the new 
 East Side novel. As in the case of the uncompleted Cape Cod 
 novel, Southward s comments were few, brief, and evasive. Ap 
 parently this piqued Dwight. He was always trying to draw her 
 to a fuller criticism. Finally he succeeded and Southward deliv 
 ered what for her amounted to a harangue. 
 
 " I feel the same way about this novel that I did about the one 
 you began last summer in Shayneford. It s awfully well-written; 
 gay, spirited, witty, full of colour it s entertaining. But some-
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 325 
 
 how it lacks something perhaps it s what literary critics call 
 atmosphere. But I really think it goes deeper than that. It s 
 not characterised. It s awfully hard for me to talk about it without 
 telling you all the truth. The people in the Cape Cod novel 
 weren t Cape Cod people at all. If it had been written from the 
 point of view of a stranger, perhaps that would have been all right. 
 But you made your hero a man who was born on the Cape and had 
 never left it and you let him tell part of the story in the first 
 person." She paused and smiled. " I don t use long words often 
 but I m going to use one now; so be prepared for the shock. I 
 should say that the trouble with that novel is that it isn t homo 
 geneous. And I feel the same way somehow about this East Side 
 one. It is as entertaining as the dickens but I have a feeling that 
 you don t really know what you re talking about." 
 
 " Damn you ! " Dwight said with mingled chagrin and amuse 
 ment. " Of course you re right. But I do want to go on with it," 
 he continued in a tone that seemed to plead with her for encour 
 agement. " Why, just think," and now that pleading carried an 
 undercurrent of shame, " I ve got two other unfinished novels 
 besides these two. There s one about the Tenderloin and another 
 that s a kind of international affair begins in the West jumps 
 to Tangiers and then to Paris." He paused and glanced with a 
 sideways mischief at his companion. " I m going to make you 
 read them all some day." 
 
 " I feel that coming," Southward announced in a resigned tone. 
 
 " Damn you again ! " Dwight exclaimed. " Well, anyway, I m a 
 good reporter." 
 
 "You are that," Southward said with conviction, "you re a 
 racker-jack. I love your stories. I look for them the first thing 
 every morning and I can always tell your style even when I don t 
 know what your assignment was. I think you do the best writing 
 in the New York papers so simple and clear and vigorous and 
 yet with such a sense of humour." 
 
 " Thanks ! " Dwight drawled, " I m eating up dose woids." 
 
 His spirits, which had visibly sunk during this colloquy, now 
 seemed to bound until they struck the zenith of his elastic powers 
 of enjoyment.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 MUCH as Dwight enjoyed his assignments, especially after he 
 began to share them with Southward, he looked upon them of 
 course as work. But he threw himself into his play. It was 
 apparent soon that though one side of him frankly enjoyed a wildly 
 hilarious party, there was another side which quite as frankly 
 enjoyed the correct side of metropolitan existence. He liked to get 
 into evening clothes; call for Southward in a taxi to bear her, also 
 in evening clothes, to dinner at Sherry s or Delmonico s. After 
 wards they went to the theatre or to the opera, although neither 
 of them cared particularly for music. He liked that was amus 
 ingly apparent also to escort a woman whose looks and appear 
 ance attracted attention; elicited admiration. Ultimately this 
 involved Southward in the purchase of two new evening gowns. 
 She bought the materials, after an examination of the models in 
 the Fifth Avenue shop windows, in a department-store on Broad 
 way. They were made into a simplified translation of those models 
 with the assistance at home of a little dressmaker who lived in 
 their house. They earned from Edith, a " Southward, I should 
 think you had bought those in Paris ! " and from Azile, a flutter 
 of the eyelashes and an ossification of her whole expression before 
 she said, " But they re charming ! Where did you find them ? " 
 
 " Wear the orange dress to-night," was Dwight s masculine 
 tribute, or with equal enthusiasm, " Put on that yellow thing with 
 the lace." 
 
 At first Dwight made a point and always he said it was to 
 complete her education to introduce her singly and in circles to 
 all kinds of people. He seemed to take a special delight in flash 
 ing her from place to place, pulling her away immediately however 
 if the occasion threatened to be dull and, before she could catch 
 her breath, darting her into another extraordinary group. He 
 watched always and with a sense of pride for the reaction which 
 her personality immediately produced. Indeed the intrusion of 
 her cold, composed, hard self-assurance, taken with her brilliant 
 vivid beauty, had the effect of a hand-grenade thrown into the 
 midst of those cynical New York crowds. His women-friends were 
 apparently legion and he never lost an opportunity to introduce 
 
 326
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 327 
 
 her to them. Now at some wild studio-party it was Eileen 
 O Hearn, a famous movie-star, a vivid pink-and-gold blonde of 
 seventeen, smothered in white furs and wound with pearls. 
 Again, it was a slip of a creature whom he stopped on the 
 Avenue, a tiny brunette with huge half-moon eyes peering 
 at them from under a fur cap and over high Tartar-shaped 
 cheek-bones. " She s the Russian diving-wonder, Katia Karhoff," 
 Dwight explained. " To be sure, her real name s Victoria 
 Hawkins, and she never left England until last year. But isn t 
 she a pippin ? " Again it would be a tall blond thoroughbred 
 creature, clothed slimly in coat-of-mail of black leather who 
 stopped her automobile to invite them for a drive through the 
 Park. " That s Jo Durland the Jo Durland," Dwight explained 
 afterwards. " She s showing her famous Airedales at the dog 
 show this week. She s an aviator too no end of courage and 
 nerve." Or it was a freckled pink-cheeked little girl, shy-eyed 
 and blushing, whose arm he caught and held until he could intro 
 duce Southward, " Maisie MacDonald, the Scotch poetess who s 
 been making such a hit in New York this winter. Isn t she a 
 soncy lassie ? " And so on and on ; competent newspaper-women ; 
 working suffragettes ; gay society butterflies. 
 
 But Dwight was no carpet-knight. He had quite as many men 
 as women-friends, perhaps more. He did not seem so eager to 
 precipitate meeting in their case, however. Introductions were 
 unavoidable of course. Newspaper-men predominated and it was 
 easy to see what Dwight s position with them was; one of those 
 brilliant, easily-successful stars of the newspaper world whom his 
 confreres admired and envied. They liked him too. But every 
 body liked Dwight. 
 
 He himself liked everybody. And he enjoyed life frankly and 
 fully. He had a strong physique, enormous vitality; an undying 
 interest in people and things. He was open-minded and open- 
 hearted. He arose every morning on a fresh world. He lived 
 every day as though it was his first conscious day of maturity; 
 enjoyed each experience as though it were the first taste of life. If 
 he were inclined to drift from one thing to another, more as the 
 result of volitions other than his own, it may be said in his 
 defence that many of his friends worked persistently at the busi 
 ness of snaring this elusive butterfly. He had all the arrogance 
 of young quick success, but he lacked all the offensive phases of 
 egotism. True he talked of his life, his experiences, his intimacies, 
 his ambitions with frankness, but it was a frankness as interesting 
 as it was engaging. Southward listened to everything he told her.
 
 328 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 She never asked questions, but she was adept at making the kind 
 of comment that is more successful in eliciting further confidence 
 than the most direct and searching interrogatories. 
 
 More and more however as Southward became identified with 
 his work, Dwight tended to avoid big parties, to segregate her at 
 crowded affairs, to take her, on his nights off, where they could 
 be alone. Inevitably, as time went on, there came less frequent 
 allusion to Dora, Jane, Patty, Cynthia, and Kathleen; or to 
 any of the other women to whom he had introduced South 
 ward. But it was apparent that his intimacy with Azile still held. 
 At first he had not alluded to his long writing sessions in the 
 Stable-House. But now he was careful to say, " I m going up to 
 Azile s Thursday morning to do a chapter." Or, " Sorry that I m 
 engaged to-morrow now that the weather s so good I m due at 
 the Stable-House." Or, "I m taking Azile off on a little 
 trip to-morrow." He never volunteered any descriptions of 
 these excursions and Southward never made any comment on 
 them. The extra work resulted inevitably in a simpler way 
 of life earlier to bed and a perceptible falling off in all-night 
 dissipation. 
 
 " Southward, you re exerting a fine moral influence on Dwight," 
 John said to her once semi-humorously. " He s keeping a much 
 better pace than last year at this time. Showing you the town is 
 an innocent diversion which has prevented dissipation." 
 
 " Thank you, John." The faint glimmer of Southward s mirth 
 made liquid the agate depths of her eyes. " It s the first time I ve 
 ever been called an elevating and refining influence. The truth of 
 the matter is that I ve been maligned. You re the only man I 
 know who really understands me." 
 
 " The moment you hear that that big German oculist, Grein- 
 schmidt, has started East," Southward prodded Dwight again and 
 again, " tell me. Because I ve got to make a quick hike back to 
 Shayneford." 
 
 "What s all this Greinschmidt business about?" Dwight de 
 manded finally. 
 
 " I want him to examine Charlotte s eyes. You remember my 
 cousin, Charlotte Howes?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," Dwight answered, " perfectly. Extraordinary-looking 
 woman." 
 
 " I want to see if her sight can be restored." 
 
 " Has she been blind long ? " 
 
 " About fifteen years. She was blind when she came to live with
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 329 
 
 us. I ve always had a feeling or at least a hope that she might 
 be cured. And if anybody can do it, Greinschmidt can." 
 
 " He s an expensive beggar," Dwight warned her. 
 
 " Yes, I know that," Southward answered. " But I have a little 
 money that my mother left me. Charlotte hasn t anything of 
 course. I m going to put the whole situation to Greinschmidt 
 and ask him to operate if it s necessary and charge what s fair. 
 I think I ve got one thing to tell him that will make him do it." 
 She said this as though for the first time confiding a resolution, 
 newly-made to herself. And as though ink had been infused into 
 her skin a sudden blackness swept over her face. 
 
 " Why the fighting-face, O Shaynef ord Spider ? " queried 
 Dwight. " I mean what s the dope ? " 
 
 " I m telling that to nobody but Greinschmidt. However I don t 
 worry about him. He s a big person. He ll do it of course." 
 
 " Yes, I think he probably will," Dwight agreed. He turned 
 and looked admiringly at Southward s incisive profile. " Gee, 
 you re a corker. You do exactly what you want, don t you ? " 
 
 " Not exactly," Southward qualified this statement. " But be 
 lieve me as nearly as it s humanly possible." 
 
 Four months had gone by. It was late in February. Although 
 Southward was seeing more of Dwight than at first, she was also 
 seeing more of Morena. Their morning talks over the telephone 
 were now prolonged tete-a-tetes from which Hester always re 
 treated, closing her door behind her. Twice a week at least South 
 ward accepted some hospitality from him. He did not do the sort 
 of thing that Dwight did for her. Morena did not at all care for 
 the superficial formal side of New York life and very little for 
 its professedly bohemian aspect. There was a curious kinship 
 between him and Southward, growing out of an unexpected simi 
 larity of tastes. Just as Dwight tended towards the expensive and 
 elegant, Morena gravitated to the simple and characterised. He 
 knew a number of tiny, quiet, out-of-the-way cafes; indeed he 
 had discovered some of them himself. As he had kept his find 
 a secret, these were still likely to be filled with the people who 
 belonged in them. 
 
 " This one," he explained to Southward of a cafe on the West 
 Side in the forties, " is a resort for all the broken-down, out-at-the- 
 elbow nobility of New York. These people sitting here are all 
 barons or counts or marquises, or princes even. If you re one of 
 those American women who yearn for a title here s your chance 
 provided you ve got the money to pay for it." Or, of a hotel cafe
 
 330 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 in the region of Fourteenth Street, " This is a great place for 
 South Americans. I could write a book on the revolutions that 
 have been plotted here, and as for filibustering expeditions they 
 couldn t be catalogued." He took her to a French pension TV here 
 the food, abundant, steaming hot, and delicious, was passed, in 
 foreign style, from hand to hand on huge platters. He took her 
 to Italian restaurants, a German, a Greek, a Syrian, a Hungarian 
 restaurant. The great surprise to her however was the Turkish 
 restaurant a surprise because she very much enjoyed the strange 
 food, all of which she later told Hester tasted as though it had 
 been perfumed. This, she further said, was a real adventure; for 
 as they entered, " Oh, there are some friends of mine ! " Morena 
 exclaimed. " The people at that corner table are all socialists 
 and anarchists. Come, you ought to meet them." They were 
 invited to join this party and ended by spending the evening with 
 it. Southward listened without comment except the unconscious 
 comment of her glimmering eyes to what she afterwards described 
 to Hester as the " wildest bunch of nonsense I ever heard in my 
 life delivered by people who looked as if they were sane." 
 
 Their before-dinner diversion took the form of walks by the 
 river or in little out-of-the-way parks, tiny secluded neighbour 
 hood, north or south, which Morena had discovered; their after- 
 dinner entertainment visits to penny vaudeville-houses, movie- 
 shows, the Irving Place Theatre. But perhaps their gayest hours 
 were spent in shooting-galleries. Southward was a good shot and 
 Morena an exceptional one. His exploits always drew an audience 
 which Southward was likely to increase to a crowd. Even the 
 employees of the place gathered when the gdy young girl so boy 
 ishly slim, so brilliantly handsome, drew the rifle to her shoulder 
 and glanced expertly down its length to the sight. Often the 
 proprietor gave her a complimentary round of shots; she left in 
 the midst of an admiring trail of exclamatives. 
 
 Their conversation had during this period a superficial effect 
 of intimacy. And to some extent, their intimacy really deepened. 
 Their kinship in enjoyment made them laugh a great deal. And 
 inevitably those who- laugh in company must draw mentally to 
 gether. Again, Morena paid her many compliments, and although 
 Southward fended them off in the conventional way, it was ap 
 parent they did not entirely displease her. 
 
 Sometimes Morena added, " I d say a good deal more of this if 
 you d let me," or " It s getting pretty hard to hold back the other 
 remarks I d like to make," or " Southward, you re a provocative 
 creature and, by Jove, I think you know it."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 331 
 
 Southward either ignored Morena s remarks, or turned the sub 
 ject; but she did this with less and less success as the weeks 
 passed. 
 
 " I don t like this line of talk," she burst out impatiently once. 
 Whereupon Morena fired for an instant. All that was Latin in 
 him glared from his face. " You don t have to put up with it. 
 You don t hare to have me round." 
 
 " That is true," Southward retorted with equal spirit. " I must 
 remember it." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Morena said in another moment. " I had 
 no business to say that. Perhaps I m a little more tired than usual 
 to-day, and sometimes, Southward, you drive me to the point 
 
 where You re a devil of course, and the worst of it is you 
 
 know exactly what you re doing." 
 
 Southward did not answer this. But she waked him up the next 
 morning at the same time. 
 
 There was, after this, a change in the atmosphere of their 
 meetings. But only for a little while. Gradually Morena became 
 more and more daring in the expression of his admiration. South 
 ward did not seem to find it so easy either to ignore or deflect it. 
 
 She resorted to badinage which increased in extravagance as 
 Morena s complimentary attacks deepened in intensity. An air of 
 wild hectic gaiety hung over their conversation. 
 
 Spring came. 
 
 It had been a cold winter, though with clear weather and little 
 snow. Gradually the frost went out of the air and a tentative 
 warmth stole into it. The trees and bushes in the little parks 
 began to have a strange look, damp and softly swollen, as though 
 something inside was getting too big for its small compass. Sud 
 denly one day there appeared on those pink-brown boughs a spark 
 here and there of green. The next day that spark was a green 
 flarne running close to the bough. A week, and the parks were filled 
 with balloon-shaped green fires. The ivy on the houses dripped 
 green fire cascades. The eye glancing down the filthy brownstone 
 vistas from blue river to blue river caught on what might have 
 been volumes of emerald smoke rolling over yards and between 
 houses. In a few days, the green fire turned to leaves, grass, 
 flowers. Snowdrops came; jonquils, narcissi. In itself, the frowsy 
 old city looked more dusty and greasy than ever. And now in the 
 crowded neighbourhoods, more and more children swarmed into the 
 streets; played among the ash-cans and garbage-pails. Uptown, 
 more and more children beautifully dressed, accompanied by taut,
 
 332 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 trim nurses, flooded the grassy hollows of the park; played about 
 the ponds; rode the donkeys; roller-skated. The shop windows 
 burst into displays more frivolous in detail, more voluptuous in 
 effect than ever before. And the people of the city taking the signal 
 from them and perhaps from that green fire whose aromatic odours 
 still burned in the air and possibly from something deeper, keener, 
 and more peremptory in their own hearts, appeared in the latest 
 and maddest caprice of fashion. 
 
 The country-girls had responded instantly to the exhilarating 
 call of winter. Their eyes took on a new sparkle, their lips a 
 fresher colour; and as was inevitable, the urban influence showed 
 itself in a more studied grace of costume. As the weeks length 
 ened to months and the days continued to take their toll of dis 
 sipation, they grew a little languid. With the oncoming of spring, 
 the tiny apartment seemed to shrink. Their windows, open 
 in the middle of the day, brought to them the clamour of the 
 street; a strange compound of the cries of playing children, con 
 flicting samples of itinerant music; the roars of neighbouring 
 gramophones; the vociferous call of passing peddlers. There 
 surged up to them all kinds of unpleasant city smells that till 
 now the frost had concealed. 
 
 " Gee, it s getting hot and noisy and dirty and smelly," South 
 ward burst out irritably one day. 
 
 " Yes," Hester answered, " when you think how heavenly Shayne- 
 ford is now." 
 
 " Goodness, yes violets anemones and every bush a bunch of 
 pink or white or yellow chiffon. And yet, I wouldn t go homo 
 for I m going to stay just as long as I can at least until the 
 gang beats it. How do you feel, Hester ? " 
 
 " I don t ever want to go home. I d stay all summer, I don t 
 care how hot it gets, or if everybody we knew left town. That is 
 if the money would only hold out. Why, Southward, I can t tell 
 you how I feel. I look upon this life here as the interval between 
 two jail sentences. Oh, you don t know. Nobody knows. I can t 
 tell anybody because I can t tell myself." Hester had begun with 
 her usual simplicity and with the increased oral smoothness and 
 articulateness that happiness had given her. But she ended in 
 a kind of wildness. 
 
 " Sometimes I go to that window," she continued, " and look out 
 on that streetful of dirty, impudent little street-brats yelling inso 
 lence and profanity to each other and anybody who happens to be 
 passing, and I drink the sight of it down as though it was the 
 picture I most want to see in all the world Botticelli s Spring."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 333 
 
 " Well, we ve certainly got a bad attack of New Yorkitis, both 
 of us," Southward remarked, as usual resolving Hester s intensity 
 by her humorous directness. 
 
 Southward had a dinner engagement that night with Morena. 
 But just before she started, Dwight telephoned to her. Their con 
 versation was prolonged. 
 
 "Do you know," she said suddenly, interrupting lightness with 
 seriousness, " Hester and I have been talking future plans to-day 
 and, for the first time since we ve come here, we re admitting to 
 each other that there s such a place as home. We even allowed as 
 how the time must come when we shall have to leave this glorious 
 burg. For one thing, money drat it will give out. And for 
 another, you don t stay all summer long in a big city. By the 
 way," she concluded as though just struck with the thought, " what 
 are you people going to do ? " 
 
 " I don t know exactly," Dwight answered. " Azile and I were 
 talking about it the other day. Of course I m strong for Shayne- 
 ford, but she isn t. You know how restless she is; it s always 
 green fields and pastures new for her. I can t get any opinion 
 one way or the other out of John. He always says, whatever the 
 rest of you decide. Edith s idea is to find a new spot preferably 
 in the mountains this time and take you two girls along. Azile 
 seemed to think that as good a plan as any." 
 
 " I can t go," Southward decided immediately, " and I m sure 
 Hester couldn t. It s a matter of money with both of us; and in 
 addition, I have to consider that operation on Charlotte s eyes." 
 
 " Well, I shall come to Shayneford anyway," Dwight announced. 
 " Of course I m not going to throw the crowd down. We ve been 
 doing things together three or four years now and that wouldn t 
 be classy. I m going to Shayneford though that is if you re 
 there. I m going to ask for an arrangement to bunch my two 
 days off every other week, and by travelling nights I can get half 
 a week there." 
 
 Southward made no comment. 
 
 " Don t you want me to come ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Then show some enthusiasm, please." 
 
 Southward said nothing. But her gay laugh, which hanging up 
 the receiver broke off, held plenty of enthusiasm. 
 
 Away from the telephone, a wild gaiety seized Southward. That 
 gaiety kept up through her dinner with Morena, held itself at a 
 high note through all their evening together. And perhaps because 
 of it, she relaxed a little the non-committal mood which, for weeks
 
 334 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 now, she had tried to sustain toward Morena. She responded to 
 his complimentary sallies with impertinent counter-attacks. She 
 laughed at him and with him. Even when she was silent, smiles 
 that had no apparent reason for being made white flashes in her 
 dark face. 
 
 Morena grew quiet as the evening passed, but his eyes never 
 left her. It was as though she were showing a new side to him 
 and yet a side more bewitching than any he had yet seen. Instead 
 of saying good-bye when she opened the inner door, he stepped with 
 her into the dimly-lighted inner hall. As she turned her face 
 inquiringly towards him, he slipped an arm about her. 
 
 The powerful jerk to which he subjected her brought her head 
 to his shoulder. Before she could raise it, he kissed her once 
 twice short fierce kisses then a long kiss. 
 
 For that long instant Southward was quiet, a dead weight in his 
 arms. Then she became lightning; a jungle-cat. She tore herself 
 loose and struck at him. He evaded a blow that was aimed at 
 his cheek. It grazed his shoulder. She retreated backwards to 
 the stairs. 
 
 " How dare you how dare you ? " she raged, " when I told you 
 that other time that you must never if you ever " 
 
 Morena was however perfectly composed by this time. 
 
 " I ought to apologise, Southward," he said gravely, " and I 
 do. But in your heart, you know you are as much to blame as I." 
 
 Southward did not answer. She fled blindly up the stairs, at 
 first with a queer staggering gait; in the end with a speed that 
 gradually attained directness. Hester did not speak when she 
 opened the door; she lay sleeping quietly, the moonlight making a 
 pale glory of her hair. Southward ran to her room; threw herself 
 face downwards on her bed; lay there until the strange shaking 
 of her body subsided. 
 
 She did not call Morena on the telephone the next morning. 
 But he called her ; apologised humbly, concluding with an entreaty 
 for her not to break off their morning talks. She accepted this 
 apology.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BUT later in the day Southward s spirits began to rise. And 
 when, towards night, Dwight called her up with an invitation to 
 frivolity, she had reached another high point of gaiety. That high 
 point maintained itself during dinner and over into the rather dull 
 party which they attended. There was no particular reason why 
 the party should be dull, Dwight pointed out to her. It was held 
 in the " village " and included the cream of the " villagers." " I 
 suppose," he added, " everybody s so blooming brilliant that the 
 light is too dazzling result as ruinous as though everybody were 
 dull. Too bad though ! " 
 
 " I don t care," Southward declared, " I feel as happy as I m 
 having the time of my life. I don t know why exactly." 
 
 " So am I," said Dwight. And his spirits perfectly matched 
 hers. " But I know why. It s because the right girl is here. You 
 make my good time, Southward." 
 
 Southward did not speak but stood immobile for an interval, her 
 eyes raised to his. Dwight did not speak either and he continued 
 to stare down into her eyes. They rested thus an instant in the 
 little alcove to which they had retreated from the dancing, South 
 ward exchanging her glimmer for Dwight s sparkle. 
 
 " Gee, you are stunning to-night," Dwight said finally. " I never 
 saw you look so you re a blazing oil-well. You mustn t get too 
 pretty you make it too hard for a man." 
 
 Unaccountably he became silent after this; grave, distrait, 
 moody. The party began to diminish in numbers. Presently there 
 were only a score left. Somebody proposed that they should go to 
 an uptown, all-night cafe. They started. 
 
 It was very late. The cars were infrequent, pedestrians occa 
 sional; taxis absent. Walking up Seventh Avenue, the crowd sud 
 denly turned as gay as though the party had been a complete 
 success. Perhaps it was the infection of Southward s spirits. She 
 started them playing games. " Ring Around a Rosie," " London 
 Bridge is Falling Down," " Snap the Whip." For blocks, they 
 met nobody but a policeman who watched their progress without 
 surprise, but with an air of judicial appraisement, and a friendly 
 drunk who, while clinging to a lamp-post for needed support, 
 
 335
 
 336 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 earnestly besought them to take him along. Southward was the 
 head and front of all this. She was wearing the short white 
 evening gown that she had brought from Shayneford. She had 
 taken off her coat, as the night was comparatively warm, had 
 handed it to Dwight. But about her white figure there floated a 
 huge square of thinnest chiffon which shaded from pale yellow to 
 deep orange, through flame colour to scarlet. She wore gold stock 
 ings and gold slippers. 
 
 As they neared Forty-second Street, Southward fell to the rear, 
 tailed the fluttering gay-plumaged line; danced alone. Behind, at 
 a distance appropriate for his amused observation, came Dwight. 
 At the corner stood a group of men, drivers apparently of the 
 taxis which lined the sidewalk. As Southward dropped from the 
 dance to the quick walk which brought her to the rest of the 
 sobered party, one of the taxi-drivers dropped a remark, obviously 
 made for her benefit. 
 
 " What was that ? " Dwight demanded peremptorily. 
 
 The man wheeled but, though apparently surprised, repeated 
 his remark after an instant of indecision. 
 
 Dwight came forward swiftly, his fists up. The crowd parted, 
 not to permit freedom to the fighters but to attack Dwight in 
 unison. Dwight stepped back lightly to a point where the wall 
 guarded his rear. 
 
 Southward had crossed the street. She turned back for Dwight. 
 By this time he had engaged all four of his assailants. He was 
 half a head taller than the tallest, and palpably a trained boxer. 
 Southward stood a poised and paralysed instant, taking in the 
 situation. In that instant, one of Dwight s opponents dropped into 
 the gutter. He lay there. 
 
 Southward s paralysis broke. She sped like a flash of lightning 
 across the street. As she reached the sidewalk, a second of 
 Dwight s antagonists reeled backwards. As though involuntarily, 
 her fist came out in passing and so accelerated the impulse Dwight 
 had given him that he fell. He was not definitely knocked out 
 like the first, but he was dazed. He raised himself on his hands 
 and stupidly contemplated the fight. 
 
 The remaining two were not such easy prey. Still Dwight 
 fought briskly, master of the situation. And as his body moved in 
 ever so tiny a radius avoiding blows, as his arms plunged forward 
 delivering them, and as he ducked and countered and side-stepped, 
 his face was white with fury. But ever he smiled. His smile was 
 a smile of absolute enjoyment; and yet there was something sinister 
 in it. Southward stood at a little distance and watched. She
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 337 
 
 did not move or speak; immobile as iron; keenly watchful yet 
 quiveringly ready to act. 
 
 The whole affair ended suddenly. A policeman appeared around 
 the corner and pulled the two drivers backwards by their collars. 
 
 " What s all this about?" he demanded gruffly. 
 
 " Nothing, officer," Dwight answered crisply. " These men made 
 a remark about this lady as she was passing and I punched them 
 that s all." 
 
 " What s your name ? " 
 
 " Cameron of the Planet." Dwight fished for a card. 
 
 The policeman studied them all with impartial suspicion, glanced 
 at the card. " Do you want to make any complaint ? " he asked. 
 
 " No," Dwight replied, " I m satisfied." 
 
 He straightened his clothes out, picked up Southward s coat 
 which he had thrown to one side. " Good night, officer." 
 
 Their party had disappeared. Dwight and Southward walked 
 in silence across Forty-second Street. Then Dwight hailed a 
 passing taxi; helped Southward in. His face had turned a deep 
 purple-crimson. 
 
 "Your cheek is cut a little," Southward said with composure. 
 With her handkerchief she wiped the blood off. 
 
 " Yes, the little dark one got to me. He could box and, 
 believe me, that punch rocked me some." Dwight did not 
 speak for an interval and Southward made no remarks. She 
 continued however to wipe the blood away until it ceased to come. 
 Dwight did not seem to notice her ministrations. He looked 
 straight ahead until that swift sinister purple-coloured wrath 
 ebbed by degrees away. 
 
 " What became of the rest of the gang ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don t know ; I suppose they think we dropped out and went 
 home." 
 
 " You were great, Southward," he said, after another pause, " I 
 don t suppose there s one girl in a thousand who wouldn t have 
 complicated matters by screaming or crying or fainting. I caught 
 sight of you out of the tail of my eye as you came running across 
 the street. You looked like a saint or a fury or an Amazon I don t 
 know what with that flame-coloured scarf streaming out back and 
 those shining slippers. You didn t seem to run you flew." 
 
 He relapsed into sombre meditation as one of the recurrent waves 
 of emotional fury carried him off again. 
 
 " You hit one of them, didn t you ? " he emerged from it again. 
 
 " The second," Southward answered succinctly. 
 
 She added nothing. And Dwight did not speak for another block.
 
 338 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Then suddenly his arm shot out as though it were delivering a 
 different kind of blow. He pulled Southward over to him so that 
 her head fell on his shoulder. She did not resist. They sat thus 
 until she got home. 
 
 There, Dwight scarcely spoke. He helped her out of the taxi 
 with rather an absent air; bade her a grave good night; left im 
 mediately. 
 
 The next morning, Dwight called her on the telephone early. 
 
 " That German gink you re so interested in Greinschmidt is 
 in Boston now. He arrived last night and is going to stay a week." 
 
 " Only a week ! " Southward exclaimed. " Only a week ? " she 
 repeated. " Well, that means I ve got to go over to Boston to-day 
 then. I ll take the ten o clock limited." 
 
 "To-day this morning!" Dwight ejaculated. "Lord, I won t 
 have a chance to see you then. I m waiting now for a guy who s 
 sailing for Europe at nine. I ve just sent my card up. Can t you 
 put it off till to-morrow or till three this afternoon ? " 
 
 " No," said Southward with instant decision, " I can t. You 
 see if I go this morning, I ll be in Shayneford to-night. Then 
 I can get Charlotte up to Boston to-morrow morning. Of course 
 there ll be everything to contend with Greinschmidt so busy that 
 I ll have to fight my way to him Charlotte frightened to death 
 and the rest of the family worried What s his hotel ? " 
 
 Dwight told her. 
 
 " I m going to long-distance at once and see if I can make an 
 appointment." 
 
 " Yes. That s the thing to do. Then I shan t see you for 
 
 How long will you be gone ? " 
 
 " Probably not over a week, ten days or so. I ll take Charlotte 
 home as soon as possible. I ll get Sue-Salome Hatch to come up 
 and help me take care of her." 
 
 " A week seems like an awful long time," Dwight said. " I can t 
 seem to see New York without you in it, Southward. There was 
 something I was going to tell you before you left." He paused. 
 " But I think probably you know what it was." 
 
 Southward did not speak. They were both silent. 
 
 " Good-bye, Southward." 
 
 " Good-bye, Dwight." 
 
 Southward stood at the telephone for an interval after she hung 
 up, her arm over her eyes, leaning against the wall. But when 
 she joined Hester at the breakfast-table, her head was thrown 
 back, her mouth smiled, in a rapture of exultation, her eyes
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 339 
 
 "Where did you get those stars you re seeing with this morn 
 ing ? " Hester asked playfully. 
 
 Southward broke the news of her trip to Shayneford. Hester 
 was at once all interest and sympathy. Southward rushed about 
 the apartment collecting clothes and toilet articles from every 
 where, threw them into her big suitcase. But here Hester inter 
 vened. She took them all out and carefully repacked them.
 
 CHAPTEK XVII 
 
 HESTER S experience in New York was, of course, very different 
 from Southward s. She did not attack the city as Southward had, 
 delivering one blow here, another there, tripping it finally so that 
 the huge Colossus fell prone, the victim of untiring initiative and 
 audacity. On the contrary, Hester stood still and let the seething 
 flood of metropolitan existence creep about her until it submerged 
 and bore her off; bore her whither it would into this little eddy of 
 activity, that tiny backwater of quiet; or for a while on yonder 
 smooth current which in the end flowed into one bearing straight 
 ahead. She was perhaps not of the type to make a swift social suc 
 cess anywhere; and certainly not in New York. The welcoming 
 gaiety interested and absorbed her; the masked costume-ball; the 
 party in John s room; Azile s high-coloured temperamental hos 
 pitality. But gradually, as her own unfitness for such hectic 
 activity manifested itself, she withdrew from it all. Edith, John, 
 and Ripley touched only the outer rim of this wheel of dissipation ; 
 Edith because she was too frail, the men because they were too 
 busy. But they offered Hester plenty of their jwn simpler forms 
 of enjoyment. 
 
 Hester had never seen such a life as Edith led, had never read 
 of one; had not even guessed such lives could be. It seemed 
 made up of long excursions into the art-world by means of art- 
 exhibitions, which she attended in wearisome numbers; long ex 
 cursions into the book -world by means of the new books, some of 
 them limited expensive editions, which she ordered with a reckless 
 prodigality; interminable wanderings through shops; examining 
 clothes, jewelry, the beautiful stuffs of which she already had a 
 collection that she could not, in any private capacity, use up during 
 a whole lifetime; gathering the antiques which for lack of room 
 she had begun to store. 
 
 Many of these expeditions ended in purchases. But these pur 
 chases were made after long consideration, many vacillations, and 
 from reasons ultimately so finely spun that they scarcely seemed 
 reasons at all. 
 
 Was the object of choice, as once happened, a wedding-gift to 
 a cousin who was marrying the grocer of a little town in the Middle 
 West, the transaction was attended by the same scrupulous care 
 
 340
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 341 
 
 which she would have shown in the case of the most fastidious 
 artist of her acquaintance. From this shop they went to that 
 shop and on to more shops until Edith found just the quality of 
 old glass that she wanted. This was the more amusing as she had 
 a very definite consciousness that her cousin knew nothing what 
 ever about old glass and might easily prefer a thick, unbeautiful 
 but durable modern variety which to Edith s delicate disgust flooded 
 the market at that time. 
 
 " But as I haven t any idea what her taste is except that it is 
 probably bad, I shall undoubtedly not please her whatever I choose. 
 And so why not please myself ? " she said to Hester. 
 
 Hester s answer was one of her self -evolved bits of philosophy; 
 quiet, gentle but with a suggestion underneath of that something 
 which made people recognise in her, despite her lassitude, her 
 mental hesitations, her social cowardice a kind of inchoate, unde 
 veloped force. 
 
 " Gift-giving is such an art," she elucidated slowly, " that some 
 times I feel as though I never wanted to give anybody anything or 
 to have anybody give me anything. Southward and I have made an 
 agreement never to exchange presents. If we could find out what 
 
 people want But often they don t know themselves. The 
 
 great thing would be to discover what subconsciously they would 
 like and haven t realised yet. But that s almost a career in itself. 
 I suppose if you were to find out that I really wanted, without at 
 all knowing it myself, a hideous coloured chromo, and got it for 
 me, that would be a perfect example of gift-giving." 
 
 " I shall never be a perfect giver then," Edith rejoined, laugh 
 ing, " because I simply cannot make gifts that I don t like myself." 
 
 " Well," Hester said, slowly still, as one who reflects, " then I 
 should say in that case you were giving yourself the gift." 
 
 " I suppose I am," Edith confessed contritely. " It would be nice 
 though if we could give what were gifts both to ourselves and the 
 other person. In fact," she added lightly, " it just occurs to me 
 that I m going to give just such a gift now if I m not much 
 mistaken. Come right up to Tiffany s with me this moment. 
 We re going to get that silver bow and arrow which I designed 
 for you to wear in your hair. It was to be ready to-day. Do you 
 remember that I asked you if I could do that for you ? " 
 
 " Of course I do," Hester answered. " That is an ideal gift. 
 It is sweet of you, Edith." 
 
 " And we ll make a holiday of to-day because it will be the first 
 time you wear it. When I get back I ll call up John and Ripley 
 and ask them to dinner."
 
 342 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 The two women proceeded to Tiffany s where the pin, slim and 
 shining, awaited them in a little velvet-lined grey box. It was 
 late in the afternoon and they went home immediately. Just as 
 soon as they arrived, Edith conducted Hester to her bedroom and 
 insisted that she should do her hair over. 
 
 " I ll admit that it s something of a job. It would tire me to 
 death to handle those great ropes. But I am wild to see how the 
 pin looks." 
 
 Edith stretched herself with a long sigh of weariness on her 
 bed. It was a big, high, canopied affair hung with masses of tea- 
 coloured lace, and an old rose brocade which dropped a faint colour 
 onto Edith s wan face. She banked herself at every point with 
 the cushions that heaped it high, relaxed with a momentary drop 
 ping of her eyelids ; watched Hester. 
 
 Docile as usual, Hester pulled down her braids, which that after 
 noon were coiled in a great basket at the back of her head, undid 
 them, brushed them out. Perhaps it was the change in the air and 
 atmosphere that, quickening her, in every way, had so enlivened 
 her hair. Its characteristic wiriness had gained a new force, its 
 lustre a new radiance. It poured in lapping floods of molten gold 
 from her head over the back of the low chair in which she sat; 
 heaped itself up on the rose-coloured carpet. 
 
 " Fairy-tale princess," Edith accused her, smiling gently. 
 
 Hester rose finally to brush and braid her hair. And the slender 
 plaits which she produced had to wind twice about her head before 
 she could catch them together, just above the middle of her brow, 
 with the new brooch. 
 
 The silver bow and arrow was a success, as John and Ripley 
 several times told Hester that evening. And as not only they, but 
 Edith, commented again and again on her improved looks, the 
 evening turned into a modest ovation for her. 
 
 Edith was the centre of a small, closely intimate circle of friends, 
 strange waifs and strays most of them, which her beauty and 
 charm attracted and her kindness held. The atmosphere of her 
 circle was very different from that of Azile s. Azile lived in a 
 whirlpool. Around her revolved a group of satellites of which the 
 inner group, small and select, was always fixed and the outer group, 
 large and casual, always shifting. Edith s menage was, in com 
 parison, like some quiet forest pool. Her formal entertaining 
 was rare, elaborate, and carefully planned. And though owing to 
 her genuine kindness, her very present interest in her friends, it 
 was never a failure, owing to her lack of force it was often a 
 little dull. It tended to be negative in character. The food at
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 343 
 
 her dinner-parties, though beautifully cooked and exquisitely 
 served, grew always tepid before it reached the table; and that 
 somehow was typical of her hospitality. 
 
 The closest of her friends was Kena Osgood, a trained nurse. 
 She was a woman of about forty, faded, with a something be 
 latedly girlish about her. Her face was pale and lined and yet 
 there was a softness everywhere; a wavy softness in her luxuriant 
 brown hair; a plaintive softness in her deep brown eyes; a 
 pathetic softness in her colourless lips. Originally she might have 
 been as shy as Hester, but ten years of metropolitan experience 
 had sloughed that shyness off. She made definite overtures of 
 friendship to Hester; an occasional invitation to the theatre on 
 her free afternoon ; or a bus ride when she was sent on errands 
 by the elderly invalid to whom she seemed as much companion as 
 nurse. Oftenest perhaps she and Hester walked in the Park 
 together. They preferred this because it gave them the best 
 opportunity to satisfy their great common taste a love of chil 
 dren. Their observations on all occasions were sprinkled with 
 side comments on the children they passed. But in the Park 
 they deliberately chose seats where they could enjoy playing 
 groups. 
 
 Miss Osgood s comments were often professional in tone and 
 in consequence tinged with the impatience of an aroused indig 
 nation. 
 
 " Look at the angle of that carriage shade ! " she would exclaim, 
 " the sun is shining straight into the baby s eyes. What a stupid 
 nurse! Now what do you suppose that child s mother would think 
 if she knew its eyes were being ruined? Well, perhaps she s 
 playing bridge and doesn t care what happens as long as she isn t 
 being bothered. Can you imagine yourself, Hester, ever leaving 
 the care of a baby to a girl as ignorant as that ? " Or, " Now look 
 at that one. See, she s tacking up that bunch of dangly things 
 just near enough so that the baby s eyes cross every time it looks 
 at them. She couldn t do anything much worse. See what a 
 darling he is too. A regular boy! Look at those big blue eyes 
 and those curls." Or, " And look at that one giving her baby a 
 pacifier. Oh, if I could only get a law passed prohibiting pacifiers." 
 Or, " That one that s just passed is a blue baby. I don t suppose 
 it will live long poor little thing." 
 
 Miss Osgood would intersperse these remarks with long stories 
 about her training and her subsequent professional experiences. 
 She particularly liked maternity cases. She had never grown dull 
 to the wonder of birth; had never ceased to marvel at it. She
 
 344 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 always grew fond of the new-born baby and some she had bidden 
 good-bye with real suffering. 
 
 " There was a little girl called Margery/ she said once, " in the 
 Josephine-Gregory hospital the Joe-Greg, we always called it in 
 Los Angeles that I took care of for the first six months of her 
 life. She was a delicate child for a while; didn t seem to digest 
 her food and kept coming back to the hospital for long periods. 
 Her mother wasn t with her of course, and after a while she was 
 very busy having another child and I had almost the complete care 
 of Margery. If I do say it as shouldn t, I made her the strong 
 healthy little girl she is to-day. She was almost like my own 
 child. And oh, she was such a darling! She had to take a nap 
 every morning and afternoon and she used to get all mixed up in 
 time she never knew which of her naps was night. 
 
 " What day is dis, Miss Osdood ? she d say after her morning nap. 
 
 " I d answer Tuesday. 
 
 " Is dis still Tooday, Miss Osdood ? she d ask after her after 
 noon nap. And she had such cunning little expressions. She 
 couldn t pronounce the hard C or K. At first she always said tie 
 for cry and later ky. When she finally left the Joe-Greg for 
 good and I knew that, except for an accident, she never would 
 come back again, I cried my eyes out. If she had been my own 
 child, I suppose I would have loved her more; but it doesn t seem 
 as if I could. And she loved me. She d leave her mother for me 
 any time. At first I used to go to see her regularly. And then 
 they went away for a while and when they came back it wasn t 
 the same her mother was all-in-all to her. Of course I still love 
 her but I shall never have any children of my own now, and yet 
 I sort of feel as though my life hadn t been lived in vain. Her 
 mother brought little Margery into the world, but it was my care 
 that kept her here." 
 
 Miss Osgood s eyes filled as she related this experience; and 
 Hester s eyes grew wet too. Her answer was to tell the story of 
 little Bee, and again Miss Osgood frankly wept. 
 
 The two women were soon recognised by the regular habitues 
 of the Park. They made overtures of friendship to nurses as 
 well as children. Soon their appearance was greeted with quiet 
 expressions of welcome from the elders, and vociferous cries of 
 joy from the children. They became popular with the nurses 
 because they frequently joined in the children s games, giving 
 them a chance to gossip uninterruptedly. If the diversion were 
 roller-skating, they helped to teach the amateurs and to curb the 
 boisterousness of the experienced. In snowy weather, they hauled
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 the babies on sleds, taught them to take tiny coasts by themsel 
 Hester used to come back from these long open-air sessions 
 
 a deep colour much approved by John on the rare occasions t 
 
 he saw it. 
 
 Southward of course scorned these experiences. 
 
 " Hester, you certainly are a strange girl," she exclaimed once, 
 " wasting all this beautiful city time on those brats in the Park. 
 What do you do it for?" 
 
 " Well, I really enjoy it for one thing," Hester replied. " And 
 then it is a great pleasure for me to look at such beautiful children. 
 They are probably the healthiest babies I have ever seen. Such 
 eyes I Such hair 1 Such complexions ! And they are dressed so 
 sensibly. I declare it s a joy to see children so perfectly equipped 
 for play. You know I love children, Southward. I have been 
 thinking, as I ve sat there in the Park watching them, of just the 
 kind of teaching I d like to do. There must be lots of people 
 living in the city who have children a little too old for nursemaids 
 and who go to day school. Their parents must be puzzled what 
 to do with them in their free hours. They can t turn them out 
 in the New York streets. It s too dangerous. Besides, there s 
 nothing for them to do there. And they must get tired those 
 older children of constantly playing in the Park, and many of 
 them can t afford a special attendant. Now I d like to take little 
 groups of say six or eight, ten at the most, for long walks up the 
 river and out into the suburbs, into museums occasionally and to 
 selected art-exhibitions but most of it to be in the open air. To 
 keep them exercising all the time that would be my idea and 
 yet to get them into the habit of looking at the world, talking it 
 over, and thinking about it." 
 
 " Say, that would be a good scheme, Hetter," Southward said. 
 " I d bet you would make a success of that. You have so much 
 patience, especially with children. I couldn t do it. Some day I d 
 get mad and brain one of the little devils. Why don t you talk it 
 over with John and Edith ? " 
 
 " What s the use ? " Hester sighed. " Mother wouldn t ever let 
 me leave her for good. And she won t go away from Shayneford." 
 
 "You don t know," Southward returned. " She might do it 
 sometime. You never can tell. You wouldn t have believed last 
 summer that you were going to spend the winter in New York." 
 
 Nevertheless, Hester did speak of her scheme to both Edith and 
 John. They encouraged her warmly. 
 
 " Keep thinking that over, Hester," John advised. " Work up 
 some routes for such entertainment, and the line of talk you d de-
 
 346 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 velop with the children. Who knows but your chance will come some 
 day? Edith and I all of us will root as hard as we can for you." 
 
 A second of Edith s intimates was a Mrs. Pelham, a widow. She 
 was a strange-looking woman. Tall, gaunt, blond, her cheeks sank 
 into shadow-lined hollows, her eyes, grey-green, retreated into deep 
 shadow-filled caverns. At a distance, her facial aspect was a little 
 that of a skull. And yet she had a kind of worn attractiveness. 
 She gave an impression of lif elessness ; for she rarely talked. Still, 
 when a vivacious mood seized her, she proved interesting; for she 
 was widely-read, much-travelled, and a musician of technique and 
 taste. 
 
 She lived in a boarding-house on upper Madison Avenue. Hester 
 went there occasionally for dinner and the evening. Mrs. Pelham 
 had a small apartment in the front of the house, a big living- 
 room with an alcove bedroom. She had furnished it herself, she 
 told Hester, but that was evident from its individuality; the sub 
 stantial old walnut-set in brown velours; the family pictures that 
 made with the profusion of foreign litter a pleasing whole. Photo 
 graphs of people in beautiful frames, silver, morocco, tortoise-shell 
 lay everywhere; among them, recurring with a notable regularity, 
 one of a young man. Without comment, Hester followed his 
 trail it was a frank, fine, gaily-handsome face from table 
 to mantel and from mantel to book-cases, from book-cases to walls, 
 until she had completed the circle. 
 
 " My son," Mrs. Pelham said quietly when Hester stopped at the 
 last picture. " He s been dead for five years," she added as Hester 
 bit off the question that formed on her lips. 
 
 Then very quietly, in almost a casual way she went on : 
 
 " We were traveling in the Sahara together, during the summer. 
 The next year he was to finish at Harvard. He had studied hard 
 and I felt that he needed a complete change. I asked him where 
 he wanted to go and he said, Into the desert. And so we went. 
 It was a beautiful trip; a small party of us, just wandering here, 
 there, everywhere, any place that he wanted to go. He enjoyed 
 it more than any travelling we d ever done; we were great pals, 
 my boy and I. It was the last week and we were beginning to 
 pack to go home. One night towards twilight, he started alone to 
 take a little walk away from camp. I was sitting in my tent. 
 He called to me that he was going, waved a good-bye and started 
 off. There was a rising full moon when he started. He seemed 
 to walk right into it. I never saw him alive again. A sandstorm 
 came up. As soon as they could of course searching parties went
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 347 
 
 ou t but it was a week before they found him. Of course that 
 
 week was There was a physician in our party and after 
 
 a while he said that Ted must be dead nobody could sur 
 vive It was easier then. But it wasn t quite easy until they 
 
 found him and I knew he couldn t be dying anywhere alone." She 
 stopped, tranquilly lighted a cigarette; puffed it. 
 
 After a long while Hester spoke. But first she looked at all the 
 pictures again. 
 
 " Did you curse your God for giving him to you," she asked, 
 " if he meant to take him away in that fashion ? " 
 
 " No. Or at least for a while I don t know what I did. Possibly 
 I did. But now I thank Him for the gift of Ted s life for what 
 I had of it. It s so strange. Everybody pities me. Edith pities 
 me. Rena pities me. You would have pitied me, but you won t 
 when I tell you this, I pity them. Somehow I feel so superior, so 
 privileged. I m so much happier than either of those women. I 
 lost him. But I had him! For twenty happy, happy years I had 
 him. Do you suppose there is any unhappiness that could ever 
 wipe out that happiness ? " 
 
 " No," Hester said. A wave of certainty deepened her voice to 
 hoarseness, " No. Of course not." 
 
 The men of Edith s group and this was not entirely the effect 
 of masculinity seemed more positive. John and Ripley were its 
 moving, dominant spirits. There came often Richard Curley, old, 
 white-bearded, bald, a broker who had retired with a fortune and 
 devoted his flagging energies to the collection of everything from 
 Roman coins and ecclesiastical silver to bandboxes and bird-cages. 
 Rockwell Doane, violinist, used to hold the company spellbound 
 through long, long intervals. He was a quiet middle-aged man 
 with a long Danteesque face that, peering above the polished 
 curves of his violin, seemed in the shifting shadows of Edith s 
 drawing-room like some mediaeval gargoyle. 
 
 Last of all came a boy-illustrator, Jackie Fell, whom the circle 
 esteemed a genius. Jackie was a slender, pale, dark lad with 
 shining eyes always laughing and downy hair always ruffled, shy 
 with the look of a chicken newly-hatched contemplating the uni 
 verse in troubled wonder. He lived in a strange fairy world that 
 he had invented himself. That world he called the " Little 
 Country." 
 
 He always made a joke of the real world but he took the " Little 
 Country " very seriously. And he referred to it with such fre 
 quency, candour, and verisimilitude that the rest of the group came 
 gradually to accept it as real. Jackie gave them positions in it;
 
 348 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 places to work and places to live; names, occupations, responsi 
 bilities. They developed a " little language " which was their joint 
 invention and which would have made much of their conversation 
 unintelligible to a stranger. In his nomenclature, Jackie alter 
 nated poetic appellations with slangy ones. For instance, Edith 
 whom he adored was the Queen of the " Little Country " but John 
 was the Chief Cop. One of his fancies was that conspirators 
 whom he called " the gang " were always trying to poison the 
 Queen, another that the Chief Cop constantly took graft. Miss 
 Osgood was the Baby-Hunter, Mrs. Pelham the Good-Peasant-in- 
 the-Forest, Curley the Guardian-of-the-Pyx, Doane the Court- 
 Magician. Ripley was the Keeper of the Great Seal. And in order 
 for Ripley the more carefully to fulfil this function, an enormous 
 swimming tank had been built inside his palace. Within the tank, 
 the Great Seal flopped happily from water to ice-floe. Hester he 
 said was the Shy Fawn living in the Royal Forest, wild and of 
 an unimaginable swiftness. She was under an enchantment. But 
 what she had been before she turned fawn nobody knew. 
 
 One day Hester went with Edith to Jackie s studio a room 
 near the top of the Metropolitan Tower. She spent an absorbed 
 afternoon looking at his work. He was doing three sets of pictures 
 to illustrate as many books, fairy forest-pictures, fairy air-pictures, 
 fairy sea-pictures. They were complicated compositions that, even 
 in their small compass, gave an effect of simplicity; crowds of 
 figures, a multiplicity of detail, done with precision and delicacy. 
 From a distance, the main outlines were bold; yet the microscope 
 revealed treasure of exquisite workmanship. 
 
 In one of the sea-pictures, a little mermaid wore long earrings 
 made of many drops of blood-red coral. 
 
 " That s you, Hester," Jackie said. " Those aren t really ear 
 rings. It s blood. You see she s under an enchantment and the 
 blood can t stop flowing until the spell is broken." 
 
 To these people, Edith was a kind of social Lady Bountiful. It 
 was evident that they brought many of the perplexities of their 
 lives to her, that she listened with a sympathy that never dis 
 solved in mere talk. She served them in all kinds of delicate and 
 unobtrusive ways. Hester fitted into this group as in the whole 
 course of her life she had fitted into no other. Perhaps socially 
 she was the most shy and inhibited of all of them; but obviously 
 she gained confidence from a perception of their shyness and 
 inhibitions. And then Edith, who seemed to grow more tired 
 every day, came to depend more and more on Hester to assist her 
 on the occasions in which she entertained.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 349 
 
 Edith s day, it soon transpired, was an abnormal one. She arose 
 at noon; ate a meagre breakfast which was also lunch; spent most 
 of the afternoon on one of her various beauty-chasing raids in 
 antique-shops or auctions, or on clothes-hunting expeditions 
 through the most expensive shops on the Avenue. Late in the 
 afternoon she drove. Up the Avenue through the Park, on to the 
 drive, back into the Park and down the Avenue the radius of 
 her drives never lengthened. She walked here no more than in 
 Shayneford. She used taxis as she would use postcards. Dinner 
 alone was a simple affair ; with guests a complicated one. Often at 
 night she went to the opera, or to a concert, and occasionally to 
 the theatre. At midnight came a little supper; then bed. Came 
 bed but not sleep. She seemed sensitive in regard to this wakeful- 
 ness, for she never discussed it directly. But in her conversation, 
 there was enough oblique allusion to apprise the least observant 
 of a prevalent state of insomnia. Apparently she read from mid 
 night to dawn. What sleep came afterwards must have been of 
 a strange and troubled variety; for Edith s first waking hours 
 were manifestly broken ones. She talked a great deal in irrelevant 
 phrases which rambled anywhere but towards a point, and which 
 had no connection with each other or with the subject under 
 discussion. In those early hours of her late day, Edith looked 
 as strange as she sounded yellowly pale, purply-hollow ; worn. 
 
 One day Hester said to Miss Osgood, " I m really very worried 
 about Edith. I know she isn t well and I think she knows it 
 herself, but she simply will not talk about her condition. Have 
 you noticed it ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Miss Osgood answered directly. " Of course I have. 
 Some day I m going to have a long talk with her. I m doing my 
 best now to get her to see a physician I know just the one for 
 her. I can t do anything about it until that aunt of hers gets 
 through dying though. But that may come any day now. Mrs. 
 Blaisdell can t last much longer." 
 
 " I always feel so secure when I realise Edith has you to take 
 care of her," Hester added. " Because you really love her. You d 
 do anything for her." 
 
 " Yes, I love her," Miss Osgood agreed. " I never could pay 
 Edith back for what she s done for me not if I tried all the rest 
 of my life. But I d like to get the chance." 
 
 " I love her too," Hester said. " And I owe her a great deal. 
 No woman except Southward has ever been so kind to me. Per 
 haps we ll both get our <hance some day."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 JOHN called up Hester on the telephone late one snowy afternoon 
 with a, " Don t you want to go out to dinner with me to-night ? I 
 had intended to take Edith but she s just telephoned to say that 
 she was rushing over to New Jersey to see that aunt." 
 
 " I d love it, John," Hester answered with her characteristic 
 frankness, " only why don t you come here ; Southward is off 
 unexpectedly with Dwight and I d just bought such a delicious 
 dinner for us two. It s on the stove now. Don t you think you d 
 enjoy some home cooking?" 
 
 " You bet I would," John answered with equal frankness. " I ll 
 be up in half an hour." 
 
 He was there sooner than that however; soon enough to spread 
 the table while Hester cooked the steak. He found the dinner 
 delicious and did not hesitate to say so. They had steak and 
 stewed tomatoes, a salad of lettuce and cucumber, a cottage pud 
 ding with hard sauce. After dinner, John helped Hester to wipe 
 the dishes. 
 
 " You certainly have made this place your own," he said as he 
 filled his pipe and began comfortably to draw on it. " Women 
 are amazing creatures in that respect. They can do anything. 
 Adopt, adapt, adept that s your sex motto, isn t it ? " 
 
 The kitchen really looked like a living-room. The floor was of 
 course bare and there were no pictures on the painted yellow walls ; 
 no superfluous decorations of any kind. But a big screen of gilded 
 burlap concealed the stove, sink, and ice-box. Over this habitually 
 hung Southward s tomato-coloured prince s coat. The shelves, at 
 one side, were filled with the collection of old Russian copper that 
 Southward, with Dwight s assistance, was gradually collecting 
 from East Side junk shops. The little china-cabinet housed rows 
 of plates and cups of a coarse yellow china, dashed with barbaric 
 colour. From brown paper Hester had made for the electric light 
 which dropped over the centre-table a shade whose shape everybody 
 admired. She had stained the big deal table, which was the only 
 bit of furniture they bought, a clean green that harmonised per 
 fectly with the clear yellow of the walls and the warm brown of 
 the woodwork. There was nothing on the table now but a big 
 
 350
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 351 
 
 basket of fruit. Hester had not pulled down the shade and the 
 frame of their single broad window enclosed a big rectangle of 
 the blue New York dusk bisected by massive folds of snow on the 
 roof across the court. Hester sat under the light, knitting with 
 long white needles on a huge worsted afghan in alternate stripes 
 of dark blue and deep green. 
 
 " And you like it here, don t you, Hester? " John went on. 
 . " Oh, yes I m very pleased with this little place. I d be per 
 fectly happy in New York if everything didn t frighten me a little 
 still. And if I weren t haunted by the fear that this is my only 
 peep at life, that I ve got to go back into that terrible grey 
 vagueness in which I ve always lived." 
 
 " You may have to go back to it," John conceded, " but it will 
 never be the same." 
 
 " No, it can t be that," Hester agreed, " but I m afraid that it 
 will be worse. You see well, I don t think you can understand 
 what my feeling towards existence has been for the last five years. 
 You can t imagine it because I can t explain it. But I ve felt all 
 the time that I wasn t really in life, but on the outside of it. It s 
 more as if there was between me and life a sheathing of something 
 transparent as ^lass, only soft and supple and indestructible. 
 There is no opening anywhere and I can t break through that 
 unyielding obstinacy. I can see what is going on under the glass, 
 but I can t hear anything. I m always on the outside. I was on 
 the outside in Shayneford and I m on the outside here. But it s 
 more interesting here, looking on. Of course, though, there must 
 ba a point somewhere where I can break through. If I can only 
 find it." 
 
 " You ll find it," John prophesied quietly. 
 
 " I hope so," Hester said. She knitted a little while in silence. 
 It was John who broke that silence first. 
 
 " Your hair is very wonderful with that light pouring on it," 
 he said inconsequently. " It looks as though the light were liquid ; 
 it s running down your braids in little sparks and globules of 
 gold." 
 
 Hester went on with her knitting. She did not raise her eyes, 
 but her fingers grew a little agitated. 
 
 " It s a good composition," John went on contemplatively, " the 
 background, the gold screen with that tomato-coloured Chinese 
 thing the green table-top with that mound of yellow, orange, and 
 crimson fruit, all that deep green and purple stuff you re working 
 on and the white needles. Yes, paintable is the word." 
 
 " You said you were never going to stop telling me that," Hester
 
 352 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 reminded him a little tremulously. " Oh, please don t stop it 
 makes me so happy ! " 
 
 John veered; returned to a previous subject of conversation. 
 
 " Of course about this what you call breaking through into 
 life I don t know when it will come or where or why. A]] I know 
 is that it will come. You can t beat life. It s like trying to get 
 away from the air. It s there, all around you; you can t suppress 
 it. Life is bound to get you. Sooner or later, it ll reach out to 
 claw or caress you, one or the other; perhaps both." 
 
 " I don t care which it does," Hester declared simply, " as long 
 as it does something." 
 
 John turned the subject. For the first time he told Hester 
 something of his work. She knew from Southward through Dwight 
 that several years before John had given up a good position on an 
 evening paper to work on an East Side weekly, that he had put 
 the little, dying Tomorrow on its feet. John did not refer to 
 this. But he told her of some of the conditions under which he 
 worked. 
 
 An old ramshackle building on the lower East Side, dirty, tiny, 
 and inconvenient, housed their plant; next door stood a paint and 
 varnish shop, which helped make Tomorrow the worst fire risk 
 in Manhattan. The front windows looked out on the wide, 
 crowded, jangling, clanging Avenue, the back onto a collection of 
 backyards fecund with the details of a picturesque alien life. Of 
 his small force, most were East Side Jews, all enthusiasts, and 
 some cranks. His stenographer, Minnie Levinsky, a pretty, 
 gazelle-eyed, twenty-year-old Jewess, had come from Russia at 
 ten with no language but her own. Now she not only spoke better 
 English than he, but some French. She had picked up, God knows 
 how, shorthand and stenography and was studying law; she spent 
 her evenings reading in the Public Library. Isadore Goldknoff, 
 his fifteen-year-old office boy, had a deep, slum-bred knowledge of 
 human nature, a preternatural social cunning, upon which John 
 depended to keep off cranks. These cranks hounded his footsteps 
 and took up his time. There was the handsome and futile society 
 woman who suddenly decided to become the link between Capital 
 and Labour; there was the mild old greybeard, obsessed with the 
 idea that the earth was about to be inundated by an ice-deluge 
 from the North Pole and who had invented a system to avert the 
 calamity; there was a quiet-spoken retired army officer who had a 
 scheme for organising the industries of America on a Germanic 
 basis. " He is hardest of all to turn down," said John, " he is such 
 a gentleman." Among his regular and useful contributors, the
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 353 
 
 most revolutionary was a little old Maine woman, white-haired and 
 wearing a cap; the most brilliant, a remarkable young poet 
 whom he had dug starving out of a garret and who had since 
 performed the phenomenal feat of writing a best-selling book of 
 verse; the most promising, a young person who wrote under the 
 pseudonym " John Stallard " the virile a Glimpses of the Ghetto/ 
 and who, run to earth, proved to be a Barnard College girl. His 
 weekly bugbear was getting the paper to press. His contributors, 
 writing mostly for their causes, had the tardiness of amateurs. 
 Copy always arrived at the eleventh hour, and on Tuesday 
 he and the foreman of the East Side shop which had the printing 
 contract worked together all night. 
 
 This first call of John s was followed by many others. He did 
 not always come alone. Sometimes he brought Edith, sometimes 
 Kipley; sometimes both. But in these cases the call was not so 
 likely to end in a walk. In the main they walked alone. John 
 knew New York. He showed her all kinds of out-of-the-way 
 spots. He had associated much with artists and, as far as 
 the layman may, had absorbed the artist s point of view. There 
 were bits that his memory had hoarded from all over New York; 
 and for those bits he demanded special hours; old doorways; 
 churches; vine-hung yards; the river from certain bridge eyries; 
 the harbour from certain tall buildings; the palisades and the 
 water-front. There were places in Europe of which many of these 
 things reminded him ; and he told Hester about them as she looked 
 at the New York variants. Occasionally, he took her to a lecture, 
 a Socialist Local, an I. W. W. meeting. But Hester always 
 emerged from revolutionary discussion in a state of mind so baf 
 fled that for days afterwards she met him with lists of questions 
 which had developed in her mind. John prescribed a course of 
 reading for her, sent her some of these books, procured others from 
 the Library. She read everything he suggested, read with a dogged 
 persistence but with great difficulty of comprehension. She com 
 plained always that she could not connect that kind of theory with 
 life. Moral precept she could translate into action; but social 
 vision seemed to hang undetached in sidereal space. 
 
 All this, though John tried to defer to her shyness, meant social 
 contact, for John s acquaintance widened wherever it touched re 
 bellion. He was always introducing her to people who, Hester after 
 wards said, might for the strangeness of their vocabulary have 
 come from Mars. On the street, they ran into friends of earlier 
 and more simple days. Here it would be a little East Side Jewess 
 whom he had met in a college settlement and who plunged, in
 
 354 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 fluent thickly-accented English, into rapid joyous reminiscences of 
 the amateur plays in which they had acted. There it would be a 
 young Irish- American lad with whom he had boxed at the gym 
 nasium and who told him proudly of recent feats in swimming and 
 running. Oftenest of all perhaps they were elderly people, an ashy 
 furtive spinster, a widow, equally colourless, shabby middle-aged 
 men with failure written all over them whom he had met in some 
 hole-in-the-corner boarding-house. In one neighbourhood border 
 ing on lower Second Avenue, he introduced her to the policeman 
 on the beat, the postman, the corner grocer, the delicatessen-keeper, 
 the butcher, the baker, the bootblack, and the fruit man. He had 
 lived in that neighbourhood for several years and had succeeded 
 in getting acquainted with everybody who touched his life. He 
 had gone to their weddings, their christenings, and their funerals. 
 Later he had described this experience in an article called " Village 
 Life in Manhattan," and at Hester s request he dug up a copy from 
 among his papers. Sometimes he would call 011 her for three days 
 in succession. Then again she would not see him for a week. 
 Their conversation always began with a consideration of their 
 common responsibility Edith. Each day Hester grew more and 
 more concerned over Edith s condition. John had already, he 
 told Hester, begun the long campaign of persuasion to which 
 Edith always had to be subjected before she would consult a 
 physician. 
 
 " Everybody who knows her loves Edith," Hester remarked once, 
 " but I think you and I love her most." 
 
 John was silent for a moment. " Of course I d do anything for 
 her," he said finally. 
 
 But their conversation inevitably drew away from this common 
 interest, wandered far afield. It travelled in comment to the 
 places they had come to see; it darted abruptly to revelations of 
 personal preferences; it went back to John s month in Shayneford 
 which they admitted to each other was an oasis in hard living; 
 it hovered over the interval of their separation ; it returned to the 
 present. It grew more and more intimate as the weeks went by. 
 Hester soon formed the habit of telling John all the simple 
 events of her New York life; her struggles with metropolitan 
 marketing, her observations on her neighbours in the model tene 
 ment. John encouraged these confidences as he encouraged any 
 narration which tended to increase Hester s developing powers of 
 articulateness. Besides, he was always peculiarly interested in ex 
 periences of value from the sociological aspect.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 RIPLEY came occasionally. But his calls were rare. Busy as 
 John was, Ripley was busier. They talked at great length; for 
 the easiest talking Hester did was with Ripley. He had a detach 
 ment from personal concerns which unloosed her confidence. 
 And he listened with as much interest as understanding and 
 sympathy. Ripley, whether for fear of boring people or because 
 it pained him, never spoke of his own work. And Hester, who 
 rarely asked questions, made no reference to it. One day he 
 had suggested an outdoors expedition. They took the subway 
 to the water s edge; walked across Brooklyn Bridge and back. 
 On the bridge, they stopped and stood for a long while gazing 
 on the shuffling scene below, a composite of watercraft big, 
 broad-beamed, waddling ferries, tiny, puffing, churning tugs, 
 slim, graceful, darting motor-boats, and in their midst a great, 
 ocean-going freighter putting uncertainly out from her dock. A 
 tugboat caught this latter, manoeuvred it so that finally it 
 steamed calmly and slowly straight down the river. 
 
 Ripley s eyes fastened on the steamer. His gaze grew absent, 
 as he appeared to follow a train of thought which utterly ignored 
 Hester. "It s very strange," he said after a time, "how little 
 things influence big things, from what tiny causes come what 
 seem to us big results. Look at that tug. It gave that great ship 
 wobbling uncertainly at the dock a little poke and now there 
 she goes swinging out of the harbour as sure of herself as can be. 
 Something like that happened to me once." He broke off, followed 
 the liner and tug with an amused smile. Hester did not break the 
 spell by a word, scarcely a breath. He went on. " You see I 
 hadn t any idea that I was going to be a reformer. I thought I 
 was going to be a painter. My father was a painter and a 
 good one. My mother, before her marriage, had been a musician 
 and a good one. I have guessed that she was a better musician 
 than my father was painter. Anyway she gave up all ambition 
 when she married, in the way women do. She proved a big stimu 
 lating, enriching, adjuvant force in my father s career. She was 
 a wonder. I was the oldest child. All children are imitative and 
 I began to paint virtually as soon as I could handle a paint-brush. 
 My people accepted this imitativeness as inherited talent, as people 
 
 355
 
 356 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 do. It was always taken for granted that I should be a painter. 
 People are just beginning nowadays to try to discover some 
 divining-rod by which they shall determine the real bent of a 
 child s abilities. But then nobody thought of anything like that. 
 Either they planned the child s career carefully themselves, or 
 left it to chance. And so I thought I was going to be a painter 
 just as they did. Of course I got plenty of instruction at home 
 and good instruction. The first fifteen years of my life, we 
 wandered everywhere. Then we went back to the old family place 
 in Massachusetts. They sent me to Harvard," Ripley smiled 
 retrospectively. " Harvard didn t hurt me so much as it might. 
 It rolled off. But I was just planning to go to Paris for a year s 
 work at the Louvre, when I went to a little manufacturing town 
 in New England to visit a friend. While I was there, there 
 occurred a what is it they always call it the usual crime 
 against women." 
 
 He paused and contemplated the water darkling now towards 
 sunset and with lights winking here and there along the shores. 
 
 " Only this wasn t the usual crime of a black man against a 
 white woman. It was the crime of a white man against a black 
 girl. I saw her afterwards a little slender terrified thing, quite 
 helpless. Here s where the fable of the tug and the ocean-liner 
 comes in. That incident gave me the impetus that nothing 
 else could. It changed my life. It made a different creature of 
 me. I have never had the same kind of mind since. All that 
 superimposed art-ambition, all that adventitious art-atmosphere 
 fell from me as completely as though it had never been. Of 
 course it had never been in any real sense. I came home, told my 
 people what I was going to do, and fought it through. I came 
 out victor. I had some money of my own. I came to New York 
 and started The Negro Woman. That was about sixteen years 
 ago. I ve been at it ever since. It was strange how it happened, 
 wasn t it?" 
 
 " Yes," Hester agreed. " Very, very strange ! " she mused. 
 " That s how you broke through," she said after a while. 
 
 "What do you mean broke through?" Eipley asked. 
 
 " Broke through into life. Perhaps we re all like that sheathed 
 about by an artificial stratum of living conditions. It must have 
 been very hard for you though, especially at first. And the 
 obstacles must many of them have been of a kind you couldn t 
 foresee or anticipate." 
 
 " Yes, it was like that," Ripley agreed. " But it had its 
 compensations. I ve met many remarkable coloured people. If
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 357 
 
 ~L ever introduced white people to them, I would introduce you. 
 But it so often leads to complications that I make it a rule 
 not to do it." 
 
 He went on to tell her about The Negro Woman, a long 
 story of an uphill fight and a steady growth in standing and 
 influence. He described some of the handicaps which life in a 
 large city presents to black people; segregation; high rents for 
 property never repaired; inadequate police protection; robberies 
 and extortions of one kind or another all along the line of living. 
 He outlined his schemes for changing this. 
 
 " I ve talked a lot about myself this afternoon," he said as 
 they emerged from the subway. " Now tell me what New York 
 is doing for you." 
 
 " It s entertaining me," Hester declared, " wonderfully. But 
 it s frightening me terribly." 
 
 " You ll get over that," Ripley prophesied authoritatively. 
 
 At the door, he held out his hand. Hester placed her hand on 
 his palm. 
 
 "Do you know, Hester," he said suddenly, "you don t know 
 how to shake hands. All you do is just to place your fingers in 
 mine. It s exactly as though you handed me an empty glove. 
 Of course nobody shakes hands in any literal sense nowadays. 
 But you should give a hearty hand-clasp. Let s try it again. 
 Now remember this time to take my hand as well as to give me 
 yours." 
 
 He held out his hand again. 
 
 Hester, in what was palpably an agony of embarrassment, 
 seized it blindly. 
 
 " No, that won t do. Scarcely any better than before. Re 
 member, Hester, I taught you to dance. Come ! once more ! " 
 
 Again he reached his hand for hers. 
 
 " A little better this time," he said encouragingly. " But you 
 can beat that. Now try again ! " 
 
 Again and again, Hester gave him her hand. Her embar 
 rassment wore off, gradually; she began after a while to take an 
 amused enjoyment in the sport. She succeeded finally in grasping 
 Ripley s hand with a quick, firm pressure. 
 
 " That was good that last one ! " Ripley approved. " And I 
 want you to practise hand-shaking on everybody, Hester. When 
 I see you again, if there isn t a permanent improvement, I ll 
 start all over again. Good night." 
 
 Hester found the apartment empty. Later, when Southward s 
 key clicked in the latch, she arose and advanced, hand out.
 
 358 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Mechanically Southward placed her hand in Hester s. " What s 
 the idea?" 
 
 " Ripley s been giving me a lesson in hand-shaking," Hester ex 
 plained. " He says I don t do it right." 
 
 "You don t," Southward agreed promptly. "You never have. 
 
 "Why didn t you tell me?" 
 
 " It never occurred to me," 
 
 " Well, how about this ? " Hester inquired with one of her rare 
 flashes- of mischief. 
 
 Southward pulled her hand away; shook it. 
 
 " That was a wonder. Keep it up along those lines." 
 
 At intervals all that evening, Hester would advance suddenly 
 on Southward; insist on shaking hands. Every day for a while, 
 she shook hands before going to bed and on rising in the morning. 
 
 The next time she saw Ripley, who had apparently forgotten 
 his lesson in the pleasure of meeting, she drew from him a sur 
 prised, " Great Scott, Hester 1 " And then a quick smile of con 
 gratulation.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 HESTER came to know a few of her neighbours in the model 
 tenement. In the next apartment were two girls, a milliner and a 
 dressmaker. The milliner, Maud Morpeth, was a Southerner, 
 a little, round, curly-headed girl whose bright eyes peered out 
 over dimples set high up on her cheek-bones and through little 
 tangly, wavy strands of hair always falling over her forehead. 
 The dressmaker was a Westerner, Ellen Day; a face delicately 
 chiselled and faintly coloured, lost in an eternal reverie; a figure 
 slimly tall and softly curved, bent in a perpetual droop. 
 
 These two girls had met in a boarding-house, had become fast 
 friends and, deciding to set themselves up in business, had entered 
 into a scheme of co-operative housekeeping that made for a 
 mutual economy of time and money. Miss Morpeth had a tiny 
 shop on Fourth Avenue. " But you watch me," she warned Hester 
 with a snap of her eyes that even a thick wad of falling curls 
 could not muffle, " Ah m, saving money, honey. Pretty soon 
 Ah ll move into a neighbourhood nearer the Avenue; then on 
 one of the side streets just off; then to the Avenue itself. Ah 
 have the shop all planned out black and white and green with 
 boxes of a big black and white plaid with green cords and my 
 name MAUD written in gold across them. Then Ah ll begin to 
 go every summer to Paris, honey, and my fortune will be made." 
 
 Miss Day s program was not so definitely made out, although 
 she was no less ambitious than her companion. But whereas 
 Miss Morpeth was a business woman, she was an artist. The idea 
 for gowns came to her, as creative ideas often come to artists, 
 in lightning flashes, leaving her giddy with a sense of achieved 
 beauty. Many of her leisure moments were spent in translating 
 these ideas by means of sketches, amusingly amateur, into a note 
 book. Personality made a strong impression on her; often set 
 the sartorial wheels to moving. The sketch-book displayed pages 
 of gowns designed for certain women stars of the theatrical world 
 whose beauty inspired her. She was always showing Southward 
 the extraordinary creations in which she would have liked to 
 clothe her. And a single glimpse of Azile, one afternoon, threw 
 her into a very orgy of invention. 
 
 359
 
 360 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Beyond them lived a girl stenographer, Amy Egan, a slender, 
 mouse-coloured nondescript who, shy enough at first, soon reached 
 the point where to Hester she chattered of all the details of her 
 life; the home, too crowded with children, in the little Middle 
 Western town; the sixteen-year-old sister, who was a beauty and 
 stage-struck, and determined to leave school in order to go on the 
 stage; the huge, clean, massively-furnished room at the top of a 
 downtown skyscraper where she worked; her big desk beside a 
 window from which she saw the ships passing back and forth in 
 the harbour; the crowd of girls who lunched together every 
 Thursday in a business man s cafe; the little stern, powerful 
 captain-of-industry from whom she took dictation; how she was 
 studying French in order to take care of his French corre 
 spondence. 
 
 " All those girls are so happy in their careers," Hester told 
 John. " I suppose it s because it s something they re making 
 for themselves. It makes teaching seem so weak and futile, some 
 how. And I m considered a pretty good teacher." 
 
 One afternoon there came a knock, tiny and quick, on the 
 door. Hester opened it. On the threshold stood an old lady in a 
 black gown of a soft rustleless silk, black lace mitts, a kerchief 
 and a close cap of broad-hemmed muslin. She was little and 
 frail and white, so transparent that the light of her spirit seemed 
 to shine through her neatly-chiselled face in a continuous pour. 
 
 " Good afternoon, my dear," she chirped in a little voice, sur 
 prisingly clear. " I heard there were two girls from Massachu 
 setts living downstairs and I couldn t rest until I d come down to 
 see you. My name is Edgerley Mrs. Edgerley. I m a Massachu 
 setts woman myself and although I haven t lived in Warrentown 
 for years, I always like to talk with Massachusetts folks. There s 
 an awful lot of culture in them most generally. Where do you 
 come from, my dear ? " 
 
 Hester answered this question and a dozen others which fol 
 lowed in its wake. " I m sorry Miss Drake isn t here," she con 
 cluded, " but I expect her back any moment." 
 
 " I hope she"ll come," Mrs. Edgerley said, " because there s 
 something I want to talk to both of you about. My land, how 
 pretty you ve made it here. Let me see, seems to me your kitchen 
 is larger than ours. I don t know though we have a jog over 
 there. Pears to me they ain t quite the same shape." 
 
 Hester made tea and sandwiches and while they were in the 
 midst of this Southward entered. She said that she would have 
 to leave immediately. But nevertheless, she sat down and talked
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 361 
 
 with their guest. Only three species of creatures melted South 
 ward s youthful hardness old people, sick people, and dogs. Now 
 she listened with her most appreciative glimmer to the rambling 
 monologue which Mrs. Edgerley emitted. 
 
 She was over eighty years old; her young womanhood had 
 seen the Civil War. She was a niece of the famous Maria Jack 
 son Tate, one of that group of pioneer suffragists who came into 
 prominence just after the Civil War. Susan Anthony, Elizabeth 
 Stanton, Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore, John J. Whittier, William 
 Lloyd Garrison were some of the names which glanced in and 
 out of her narrative. 
 
 " Once auntie let me go with her on a suffrage trip she took 
 with Susan and Mary and William," she said. " Their meetings 
 were most all of them held in little towns. Woman suffrage was 
 awful unpopular in those days. Of course they d advertise the 
 meeting as good as they could, but they couldn t do much be 
 cause they didn t have enough money. The hall would fill up 
 with the most disrespectful kind of crowd, rowdies and roughs and 
 riff-raff of all description. Often they d begin to hoot and whistle 
 and make catcalls and yell out the most insulting things. Some 
 times we d be afraid there was going to be a riot. Those times 
 we d allus send out Mary to quiet them. There was something 
 about Mary she was kinder, well, majestic I suppose you d call 
 it. Anyway, she d jest walk straight out to the middle of the 
 platform and stand there as quiet as a statue great, tall, 
 handsome woman she was and look that audience in the eye. 
 She d start at one side and jess sweep over them to the other side, 
 staring hard at them all. Well, you d oughter have seen it. All 
 that noise would die down till you could hear the big clock tick 
 ing at the far end of the hall. She was a wonderful woman. 
 Oh, but land, they all were! I never saw such women. There 
 are lots of able women in the movement now young and hand 
 some and beautifully dressed and grand talkers but there aren t 
 none like those early ones the Big Four, I used to call them. 
 Oh, and my sakes, how they used to pinch and save to make the 
 money go as far as it could. When I see them spending money 
 like water now, I think of those days when printing a program 
 was a very important item. Why, last year, my daughter took 
 me to a suffrage convention down South and a rich lady enter 
 tained all the delegates to lunch. She had a great big house 
 with servants in livery. How many there were I don t know. I 
 tried to keep track of them, but I couldn t. And we ate our 
 luncheon off of gold plate. And champagne why champagne
 
 362 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 flowed like water. Oh, you don t know how I wished that Susan 
 and auntie had been there to see it." 
 
 She stopped to oversee the pouring of another cup of tea. 
 " A little hot water, if you please, Miss Crowell that tea s kinder 
 pale, but it draws stronger than it looks. Thank you. What nice 
 little sandwiches! I do like sandwiches. I allus feel when I 
 eat them the way I did when I was a little girl and went off on 
 picnics. I often think of Susan in these days. Susan was such 
 a lovely character. Nobody but those who lived with her knew 
 jest how lovely she was. My aunt told me once that Susan said 
 to her, Maria, folks are always blaming me in their hearts be 
 cause I ve never married and brought up a family. They think 
 I m one of those unsexed women who don t care anything about 
 such things. Why, Maria, I d like to have a family and children 
 as much as any other woman I d lore it. But I ve never had the 
 time. And that s jest the way she was a true devoted creature, 
 giving up everything, even her chance of happiness, to the cause. 
 Well, I wish she could come back now and see how the little seed 
 she dropped has sprouted and grown into a big tree. If she could 
 only see what these New York women do. My land, it s wonder 
 ful in campaign times; hundreds of outdoor meetings as well as 
 indoor meetings ; bazaars and benefits and addresses in the theatre 
 and suffrage hikes and parades. You d think they had all the 
 money in the world. Take my daughter she s Mrs. Amos Fan- 
 shawe," she dropped in proud parenthesis. " She s president of 
 this Assembly District. They have a place over in Long Island 
 where they keep the children. But she s hired two apartments 
 here, one to live in, and one to do the Assembly business in. We 
 spend most of the week here; then we go home over Sundays. 
 Amos, my son-in-law, is jest as interested as she is. He helps 
 her all he can and puts up with living in these small rooms 
 without a murmur. I declare I think every day I ought to be 
 the most grateful woman in the world that I ve lived to see these 
 times." 
 
 The two girls did little else but drop exclamatory comments 
 until, through sheer lack of breath, Mrs. Edgerley ran down. 
 But they were not bored. Hester s face was soft with sympathetic 
 interest; and Southward s mischievous smile still rippled her 
 red lips. 
 
 "Well, I hate to drag myself away," Southward averred, "but 
 I ve got to." 
 
 " Don t go for a minute," Mrs. Edgerley begged. " My land, 
 I d almost forgotten that I d come here on business as well a&
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 363 
 
 pleasure." She fumbled in the reticule she carried. Among the 
 mass of documents which would have eluded any other fingers less 
 quick and slim, she pulled out some yellow papers. " I want you 
 to sign these pledges, if you will, that you ll march in the parade 
 next spring." 
 
 " I ll march," Southward said, " I ve already signed one of the 
 slips. We re both suffragists. I sell the Equal Franchise two 
 afternoons every week. Miss Crowell hasn t signed a slip yet. 
 I can t make her. You must get after her." 
 
 " I ll do that," solemnly vowed Mrs. Edgerley, shaking her 
 head with a sage expression. "I ll camp right on her trail from 
 now on." 
 
 But apparently she had had enough suffrage for the afternoon. 
 She did not mention the subject again during her call. Indeed 
 she seemed more interested in Southward. " Isn t she a hand 
 some creature ? " she said. " I admire to look at her. She s what 
 I call a perfect beauty without paint or whitewash." 
 
 Mrs. Edgerley was true to her word. She came often to the 
 apartment and she wooed the unresponsive Hester with every 
 argument in her old-time panoply. Hester enjoyed her visits 
 quite as much as Southward, for though the little old lady s nar 
 rative often rambled, it was always alive. Southward always gave 
 Mrs. Edgerley what late information in regard to the suffrage 
 movement she had in the meantime gleaned. Mrs. Edgerley lis 
 tened avidly, dropping keen caustic comment all along the route. 
 
 One day Mrs. Edgerley brought her daughter a big, handsome, 
 energetic-looking, middle-aged blonde. Mrs. Fanshawe tried her 
 persuasive powers on Hester, but all to no purpose. " I m not 
 going to give you up yet, Miss Crowell," she said as she left. 
 " It s nonsense you re not marching as long as you re convinced. 
 I give you my word that after half a block you won t think of 
 yourself. You ll be too interested in what s going on round about 
 you." 
 
 John listened with his accustomed sympathy, his quiet under 
 standing, his deferential air of enjoyment, to Hester s accounts of 
 these people. In every possible way, by question and comment 
 and direct appeal, he encouraged her to develop social relation; 
 to tell him the result of these pursuits.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THERE were many afternoons and evenings when Hester was 
 alone, however. But she rarely seemed to be idle. She read and 
 wrote letters; she darned and cooked. When these occupations 
 gave out, she sat for long intervals at the window, her hands 
 clasped in her lap, gazing at a street scene which from early 
 morning to late dusk produced kaleidoscopic colour and bewilder 
 ing clatter. But even then she was mentally busy. That was 
 apparent from her expression, wondering sometimes, or perplexed ; 
 often desperately harried, despairing, and frightened. When 
 these reflections got beyond her, a quick jump to her feet, a 
 flurried rush to her hat and coat, would carry her on one of her 
 long solitary walks. Sometimes these strolls followed in the wake 
 of an exploring expedition that she had already made with John. 
 Then she gazed hard at everything he had already pointed out to 
 her, gazed as though trying to grave it on her memory forever. 
 
 These walks came as often in the evening as the afternoon. 
 Then as though subconsciously attracted by the glare, she made 
 for Broadway; walked slowly through the rushing lights to 
 Forty-second Street, then east and back down the silent 
 dark Avenue, home. On Broadway, she consciously looked about 
 her, as though trying to beat off that band of frantic reflections 
 by tying her observation to definite things. But almost in 
 variably in crossing to the Avenue, her head would begin to 
 sink and by the time she reached the deserted purlieus of the 
 most luxurious shopping area in the city, she would be lost in 
 meditation. One night as she was walking thus, a voice sud 
 denly called. 
 
 " Well, look who s here ! Hester Crowell ! Of all things ! Can 
 you tie it ? " 
 
 Hester turned sharply. "Well, Josie Caldwell! Oh, I am 
 glad to see you ! How are you, Josie ? " 
 
 " Fine and dandy I Say, you re looking pretty slick yourself, 
 Hester. Come on and walk a little way with me, will you ? I ll 
 go as far as the Avenue. How long have you been here and 
 how long are you on for? And how s everything going in 
 Shayneford?" 
 
 "I ve been here five months. Southward and I are keeping 
 
 864
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 365 
 
 house here together. We have a little model tenement on the East 
 Side. I broke down with a sort of nervous prostration last fall 
 and the doctor said I must have a complete change. Southward 
 wanted to live in New York for a winter, so we came together. I 
 never saw you looking better, Josie." 
 
 Josie was a small slim girl from her very smallness and 
 slimness offering an effect of young girlishness that her face, 
 carefully examined, did not re-enforce. She was neat-featured, 
 piquant. All her efforts in dressing were palpably directed to 
 accentuate that piquancy; the suit of black-and-white broad 
 cloth, the ruff of black-and-white malines, not tied but falling 
 away from the cut-out V of her gown; the ruffles of delicate lace 
 in her elbow sleeves; the earrings of jet and crystal; the bunch 
 of fresh violets; the gaily-buckled low shoes and above all the 
 hat faced with rose-coloured satin, whose glow tried to correct 
 the sharpness of her eyes. 
 
 " I m feeling swell," admitted Josie. " It s a good thing you re 
 on here, Hester. I can see what it s done for you. I should 
 think you d be dead, teaching brats all these years. How do you 
 like our fair city? " 
 
 " I m having a wonderful time, Josie. There s only one out 
 about it. I ve got to go back sometime." 
 
 " The answer to that," Josie advised, " is never to go back. 
 I d die in that dead little burg. Oh, say, what s this I read about 
 Gert Beebe. You could have knocked me down with a feather 
 when I saw she d married Buster Welch." 
 
 " I don t know any more about it than you do," Hester said. 
 " I saw it in the paper ; then mother wrote how surprised every 
 body in Shayneford was." 
 
 " I suppose he was the father of that brat ? " 
 
 " I suppose he was." 
 
 " Well, of all things ! " Josie laughed harshly. " I m awful 
 glad for Gert," she added in another moment. "And Buster s 
 a good, clean, square boy." 
 
 " Do you know him ? " Hester asked. 
 
 " No, but I ve heard a lot of talk about him. He fights clean 
 as a whistle and never lays down. He keeps away from the 
 white lights too. Oh, he s a good, straight farmer-kid yet. South 
 ward having a good time ? " 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes." 
 
 " I suppose every man that sees her gets stuck on her the 
 way they always did. I never saw such a girl as Southward. 
 Eats them alive."
 
 366 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Yes, Southward s very attractive. Everybody likes her." 
 
 " I ve always liked her," Josie stated. " I like to see a girl hand 
 it to men. When I was in school, I used to think I d rather be 
 Southward Drake than anybody I d ever seen." 
 
 " Josephine ! Josephine ! " a voice called. A taxi that had 
 come churning up behind them stopped at the curb. Josie turned 
 about. The taxi-door opened and a girl leaped out. " Wait 
 for me 1 " she said. She stopped to pay the driver. Josie halted 
 for what was plainly an irresolute second. However she waited. 
 And when the girl turned she said, " I d like you to know my 
 friend, Miss Crowell, Violet. Miss Wilson, Hester. Miss 
 Crowell s a friend of mine from Shayneford, Violet," she ex 
 plained. She seemed to lay a meaningful stress on the word 
 Shayneford. 
 
 " Glad to know you, Miss Crowell," Violet said. 
 
 The two girls shook hands. 
 
 Violet was a very different type from Josie. Round, soft, 
 meltingly featured, radiantly blond, she looked as though she 
 were made of gauze, not flesh. She was noticeably dressed in 
 pale blue and white. Her rather soiled tawdriness contrasted with 
 Josie s crisp immaculateness. 
 
 "I saw you, Jo, as I came along," Miss Wilson explained. 
 "And I realised that you were late at the the hall for the 
 same reason I am. Your watch is wrong. I set mine by it last 
 night." 
 
 " That so ? " Josie asked. She consulted a little gold bracelet 
 watch. " What time are you ? " 
 
 Violet glanced at her watch, also of gold but set with blue 
 enamel. " Quarter-past nine." 
 
 " That s right. I m quarter to." With an expert movement, 
 Josie set her watch right. " Well, I must be going, Hester. I 
 wish I could see you again." 
 
 " Can t you come to see me ? " Hester asked. " I d love to have 
 you." 
 
 " Sure I can. Where do you live ? What s your phone number ? 
 I d like to come sometime when you re alone ? " She took a little 
 leather book from her wrist-bag. 
 
 Hester supplied her with the necessary data. "I shall be 
 glad to see you any time, Josie. I m indoors a great deal. And 
 of course if you telephone, I ll be sure to be there. I d be pleased 
 to have you bring Miss Wilson if she cares to come." 
 
 " All right," Jo said in a business-like way. Then, " Thanks ! " 
 Miss Wilson supplemented her.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 367 
 
 "Who do you suppose I met on the street to-night, South 
 ward ? " Hester said at midnight when Southward came in. 
 
 " I couldn t guess in a million years," Southward declared. 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Josie Caldwell." 
 
 " Good gracious ! What did she have to say for herself ? 
 What s she doing. But I don t suppose she enlarged on that 
 topic." 
 
 " No, and of course I didn t ask. But she s coming here to 
 see us some day." 
 
 " Hope I m home," Southward declared. " Still I shouldn t be 
 surprised if you never heard from her again." 
 
 Nevertheless Josie called a few days later, without waiting to 
 telephone. It was late in the afternoon and Hester immedi 
 ately set about making tea. In the meantime Josie roamed 
 through their three little rooms, examining the furnishings, 
 surveying the pictures, studying the photographs on the bureaus. 
 She did not stay long, but she asked numberless questions about 
 Shayneford, answering some of them herself. 
 
 " How s that old cat of a Sarah Wallis ? I wonder if Pearl will 
 ever get Lysander. Now s her chance with Southward away. 
 He ll never look at her when Southward s round. Just think of a 
 pretty girl like Flora Tubman marrying such a fierce proposition 
 as King Curtis. I suppose Pink ll marry Thode Snow some 
 time. He s another mess. I don t envy her." 
 
 " I d like to have you come up and see me sometime, Hester," she 
 said a little wistfully when she left. " I have a little apartment 
 uptown. Violet s just across the hall from me." 
 
 " I d like to come," Hester declared. " What time would I find 
 you at home ? " 
 
 " Well, if you were to come between five and six, that would 
 strike me about right. My work is at night. I m dancing in a 
 cabaret in a Broadway cafe. That keeps me up pretty late and 
 I sleep most of the day. What do you say to Friday. And 
 if anything comes up to make it inconvenient for either one 
 of us, why just phone." 
 
 "All right," Hester agreed. 
 
 As she got no deterring word in the meantime, Hester 
 presented herself at the stipulated day and hour at Josie s ad 
 dress. It was a tall, thin, flimsily-built, highly-coloured apartment- 
 house near the river. The street was filled with children and the 
 omnipresent concomitants to life in the cheap neighbourhoods of 
 New York city. The door clicked promptly to Hester s ring
 
 368 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 and she walked through narrow halls and up narrow stairs until 
 the doorway in which Josie stood arrested her. 
 
 " Come right in," the latter greeted her cordially, " I am glad 
 to see you. I didn t know but what you d get cold feet when it 
 came to visiting me. I ve got tea waiting." 
 
 In the number of its rooms, Josie s apartment was not larger 
 than the model tenement, but the rooms themselves were much 
 larger. With manifest pride, Josie showed a spotless kitchen, 
 a spotless bathroom, a gaudy but equally spotless living-room, a 
 bedroom spotless also but fairly spectacular. The bed and 
 dresser were draped in a cheap flamboyant cretonne. On the 
 walls were many pictures, highly coloured and gold-framed, of 
 pretty women in evening clothes. They came back presently to 
 the living-room where the tea was displayed on a cheap red-and- 
 gold, Chinese tea-service. 
 
 " Don t go yet," Josie pleaded as Hester arose, having drunk her 
 tea. " If you don t mind staying while I get ready, we can talk 
 for half an hour longer. I ve got to make-up though. I hope 
 you won t object to that." 
 
 " Not at all," said Hester. " And I should like very much to 
 watch you. I ve never seen it done." 
 
 Josie pulled a little tabouret up to her dressing-table; sat on 
 it. She tipped the mirror back. She flipped the covers off from a 
 number of little boxes in a highly-embossed silver which it was 
 apparent had recently been polished, and fell to work, talking all 
 the time. Hester watched her reflection in the mirror. 
 
 Josie was still wearing a kimono, a thin silk banded in blue, 
 and covered with great peacock-coloured poppies. Her hair was 
 combed smoothly back into a little bundle held by a single hair 
 pin. The electric light beside the glass flared on her face, brought 
 out to the last hair-line all the wrinkles that radiated about her 
 eyes and ran in little colonies from her nose to her mouth. 
 Her hair was quite lustreless and a little touched with grey at the 
 temples. The flesh of her neck and arms, however, as it was 
 revealed above her lacy, ribbon-wound underwear, was extraordi 
 narily fresh and young. She worked quickly and deftly, stopping 
 at intervals to study results with a squint-eyed scrutiny. Hester 
 continued to watch every move, fascinated, absorbed. Mechan 
 ically she answered the flood of questions which Josie poured out 
 about Shayneford. It was quite evident that, despite what she 
 said in derogation of that " slow little burg," she still yearned for 
 news of it. Hester had brought the last letter from her mother. 
 She read it.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 369 
 
 "I always liked your mother, Hester," Josie said. 
 
 "And she always liked you, Josie," Hester asserted. 
 
 " I ve never forgotten her ginger-cookies. My word,, but they 
 were licking good. I d like to have one this moment. Does she 
 still make them ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Hester answered, " she hasn t lost any of her faculty 
 for cooking." 
 
 There came a pause in conversation. 
 
 In the meantime the work of facial rehabilitation was going 
 steadily on. First Josie covered her face with a toilet cream, 
 massaged it vigorously for a few minutes. Then she rubbed the 
 cream off with a rough towel, rubbed it with a briskness that 
 brought the blood surging to the surface. Then followed rouge 
 applied with a rabbit s foot. Over the rouge came powder which 
 covered gauzily the whole face and concealed that line of contact 
 where artificial red merged with flesh tints. Next she made 
 shadows under the eyes; pencilled her eyebrows; smudged her 
 eyelashes. She pinkened her nostrils and ear lobes, reddened her 
 lips. Last she washed her hands; spreading a whitening fluid 
 on them and on her arms. 
 
 "You ll have to admit that s some improvement, Hester," she 
 said as one anticipating unfavourable comment. 
 
 "I do," Hester admitted readily enough. She asked many in 
 terested questions about make-up materials. 
 
 The next step in the process of Josie s dressing was curling her 
 hair, arranging it. This she did very skilfully. When she had 
 finished, there was not a grey hair in sight. Then she slipped out 
 of her kimono and into her immaculate black-and-white suit. She 
 adjusted ruffles; added jewelry; put on her rose-lined hat and 
 her crisp veil. She stood for a moment looking at herself in the 
 glass, a close scrutiny for which she squinted her eyes sharply. 
 That lynx-eyed examining air changed suddenly as she turned to 
 Hester. 
 
 " I suppose you know what all this is about," she said abruptly. 
 " When I speak of my work I guess you know what I mean. 
 If you don t, I ll tell you. For I wouldn t feel that I was doing 
 the square thing letting you come here without knowing what I 
 was doing. But you ve always been so good to me whenever I ve 
 gone back to Shayneford, when everybody else has handed me a 
 cut. that I ve just taken it for granted that you were wise." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know," Hester answered simply. " And it breaks my 
 heart to think of it. I wish oh, how I wish it could be dif 
 ferent. For your sake, Josie. But I of course it doesn t make
 
 370 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 any difference in my feeling for you. I ve always had an idea 
 that you weren t to blame, that you got into it against your own 
 will, that you were drugged or " 
 
 Josie interrupted with a brief strident laugh. "Drugged! 
 Hell, no! Now I m going to tell you something, Hester, not the 
 whole story though maybe I may tell you that some day. But 
 what I m saying is the truth. No, I wasn t drugged, or any 
 thing like that. I went into it with my eyes open or open as 
 wide as any woman s ever are who hasn t tried it. There was 
 a particular reason why I did what I did and I ll tell you about 
 that some day. I m not so sorry either. There s lots of things 
 about it I don t like, of course. But I ve got a business head, 
 and I clear anywhere from thirty to sixty a week and I ve got 
 my own bank-account. I d rather be what I am now, believe 
 me, kid, than a girl in a shop, or a waitress or a chambermaid. 
 But don t think I was drugged or that anybody is. I d be ashamed 
 to pull that stuff, even if it was true. This white-slave proposi 
 tion is a scream and everybody in the business knows it." She 
 stopped and gave Hester a sideways glance. " I guess this is 
 some shock to you, Hester." 
 
 " Yes, it is ! " Hester said. " And then again it isn t ; for it 
 shouldn t be. I ve given up thinking I know anything about life 
 and the way people ought to live. Everybody has a problem and 
 he must work it out in his own way. Nobody else can do it for 
 him." She paused on a rush of words; turned to the general 
 aspect of the conversation as though these concrete glimpses were 
 a little too close. " Do you mean," she demanded, " that you 
 have never in your experience heard of a girl being taken into 
 this life against her will ? " 
 
 Josie reflected, gazing squint-eyed into the mirror. " I did 
 hear of a case once," she admitted slowly. " Now let me think 
 about that. How was it?" 
 
 Her gaze narrowed and concentrated. 
 
 " Oh, I remember now. This happened about three years ago. 
 I heard it told in half a dozen different ways but the gist of the 
 mix-up was this. A young girl comes to New York from the 
 country all alone. She boards at the same place with a woman 
 who s interested in a high-class house uptown. This woman 
 wanted a young, fresh pretty girl for special reasons and she 
 wanted her quick. One story said it meant a thousand dollars 
 to her. Anyway, she invites this girl to the house intending to 
 keep her there until she d be in such a state of mind that she d 
 never want to come out. She has a man there to handle her.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 371 
 
 The girl walks into the house all right but the instant the door 
 closes she gets wise to where she is I guess likely they d for 
 gotten to cover the pictures. What do you suppose she does? 
 Pulls a gun. I never believed this story myself, because what 
 would a country-girl be travelling with a gun for? Anyway she 
 shoots the guy just as he s coming towards her and makes her 
 getaway." 
 
 " Was she arrested ? " Hester asked breathlessly. 
 
 " Not in a thousand years," Josie declared. " Nothing like 
 that in this business. Nobody d ever make a complaint for fear 
 of worse things. Of course the story leaked out after a while 
 and that s how I happened to hear it. I ve never quite swallowed 
 it though." 
 
 " Did the man die ? " 
 
 " No, though he all but. No, he s alive and kicking." 
 
 " It s a terrible story," Hester said gravely, " if true." 
 
 Josie apparently dismissed the whole subject from her mind 
 as she transferred her squint-eyed gaze to the mirror again. 
 
 " Do you want to ride downtown with me ? " she offered 
 hesitatingly after a while. " Violet and I generally go down to 
 gether. Remember, she s in the same business." Her warning 
 tone seemed to hold a challenge. 
 
 " Yes. I think I understood that," Hester replied. " Yes, I ll 
 go down with you." 
 
 They crossed the hall to Violet s apartment. Miss Wilson had 
 just finished making up. She greeted them with what seemed a 
 characteristic good nature, sparkling and warm; continued her 
 preparation. Josie helped her into the gown of which many of the 
 hooks were missing and parts of the lace torn. Violet rectified 
 all this with a skilful use of pins. 
 
 Her rooms presented a characteristic contrast to Josie s. Two 
 months after Christmas, a trio of crimson paper bells still dangled 
 from the chandelier. Tattered dusty banners of red crepe ran 
 from it to the corners of the mantel. Her bed was not made. 
 Her silver toilet articles, where they could be seen through a 
 layer of soiled handkerchiefs, dingy white gloves and crumpled 
 veils, were black with use. 
 
 " Now I m all ready," she announced, adjusting the chin-strap 
 of a big feather-laden hat. And in some extraordinary way, she 
 managed to exude a feminine charm. 
 
 That night at dinner Hester told Southward the story that 
 Josie had related to her. 
 
 The effect was extraordinary. Southward turned white; poured
 
 372 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 out a glass of water hastily and drank it down in great gulping 
 swallows. 
 
 " Why, Southward ! " Hester exclaimed in surprise, " I hadn t 
 the remotest idea that it would have such an effect on you. I m 
 sorry I told it." 
 
 " It s nothing," Southward exclaimed hastily. " Nothing what 
 ever except imagination. I couldn t help thinking how that girl 
 
 felt when she saw the man lying But then my nerve isn t 
 
 what it used to be. Do you remember the first night we got here 
 how I waked you up screaming that the tall buildings were closing 
 in on me ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I remember," Hester said. " Still this isn t much 
 like you, Southward, to get so white and trembly. Are you sure 
 you re quite well ? " 
 
 " Sure." And as though to prove it, Southward plunged into 
 a racy account of her day s doings. Hester did not refer to Josie s 
 story again.
 
 CHAPTER XXH 
 
 WITH life bombarding her vigorously from every direction, 
 Hester s aspect slowly changed. Erectness conquered the droop 
 in her carriage, alertness overcame the lassitude in her expression. 
 She still showed the air of one a little dazed by the clamour all 
 about her, of one who awaits some rescuing event. From time 
 to time, John said to her, " How about it, Hester ? Do you still 
 feel yourself on the outside of life ? " 
 
 " Quite as much as ever," Hester invariably answered. 
 
 But after a while, John added, " That may be, Hester, but you re 
 certainly putting on flesh." 
 
 A visit to the scales in the butcher-shop confirmed this surmise. 
 Her figure gained grace and authority under this process. 
 
 As spring came, she saw less and less of Edith. For Edith was 
 going with greater regularity now to the home of her dying 
 aunt. These visits were always followed by a depressing lassi 
 tude which kept her in bed for a day or two. Sometimes Hester 
 did not get a chance to see her between visits. 
 
 " I wish if that aunt of hers is going to die, she d do it to-day," 
 Hester kept saying to Rena Osgood. " She ll kill Edith if some 
 thing doesn t happen soon." 
 
 Now, however, when Hester referred to the state of Edith s 
 health, Rena always turned her head away; made some evasive 
 answer. Occasionally Hester discussed the matter with Ripley 
 who showed a helpless concern; but more often with John. 
 
 " Rena s right," John always said. " We can do nothing until 
 the aunt is dead. You can t argue with Edith when it s a point of 
 family duty. She has only this one near relative and she ll see 
 it through if it kills her. But the instant the funeral is over, I ll 
 we ll pick Edith up and take her off bodily to some quiet place 
 where she can relax and rest." 
 
 Hester s talks with John always opened with a consideration 
 of Edith s welfare; often they closed with it. John indeed could 
 give her later reports than she could get from anybody else. 
 He called at Edith s house once every day it seemed. Sometimes 
 this call came during his lunch hours; sometimes during the 
 afternoon, sometimes in the evening, but it never failed. In his 
 walks with Hester, his eye was always out for what would interest 
 
 373
 
 374 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 
 
 or entertain Edith. A picture in some out-of-the-way art window, 
 an antique in a distant second-hand shop, a glint of river or 
 harbour, a jumble of sky-tearing architecture he stored them 
 all up for her. 
 
 Edith left New York early in March and went to live with her 
 aunt. Now her only communication with Hester or even John 
 was an occasional confused, long-distance telephone talk or her 
 brief letters jotted in pencil, often smudged with haste and al 
 most incoherent. 
 
 " I d like to go to see Edith," John said, " but she refuses to let 
 me come. Apparently she doesn t want me to stay in the house, 
 and I think she s afraid that her relatives might find it a queer 
 situation if I stayed at the hotel. It s a small place and full of 
 gossip of course." 
 
 Apparently however, all the time he had given to Edith he now 
 transferred to Hester. 
 
 Spring had come with all her accustomed coyness of approach. 
 She advanced; she retreated. She made a hundred sounding 
 promises, redeemed none of them and then suddenly inundated 
 the world with passionate devotion. March that year came in 
 like a lamb and went out like a gazelle. The sky was heavy with 
 soft white clouds which, parting, displayed summer s own blue or, 
 concentrating, produced faint showers that hung over the world 
 like a golden mist. On clear days, the brilliant New York air 
 seemed to hold a rose-coloured tinge. The nights surged with 
 stars. There was something of faery about the world. John often 
 called on Hester in the early morning, on his way to the office, 
 making a wide detour for that purpose. He brought her spring 
 flowers; sometimes he took her to lunch; sometimes to dinner. 
 And as the month went by, he became more and more likely to 
 do two of these things ; and once he did all three. Their intimacy 
 had reached that point that they met sometimes without greeting, 
 merely turning together into accustomed ways. And often in the 
 midst of their most interesting and interested conversations came 
 intervals of understanding quiet. 
 
 At her mother s command it was accompanied by a re-enforc 
 ing money-order, Hester bought herself some new things. Maud 
 Morpeth made the clothes and Ellen Day the hat. In a suit 
 whose lines were designed for her figure of heavy reseda-green 
 silk with a cream-coloured blouse, trimmed with butter-coloured 
 lace and a hat whose shape was designed for her head, wide, 
 drooping, foliage-trimmed, Hester was for the first time in her 
 life a figure of quiet elegance.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 375 
 
 "You remember what I told you about yourself in Shayne- 
 f ord," John never forgot to say. " It s coming more true every 
 day." 
 
 And indeed, just as the spring thrilled the earth, it seemed to 
 thrill Hester. It flowed through her that vernal impulse in a 
 fire that broke out on her face in waves of mounting colour 
 that pulsed through her hair in waves of deepening flame. She 
 was quicker in her movements now; more nervously alert. She 
 flashed about at the sound of her name. Her face bore an eternal 
 look of expectancy. Late in March came an interval of intense 
 premature heat in which the city seemed actually to wilt. Summer 
 dresses appeared and during the evenings the wide steps of the 
 big old houses were filled with people vainly trying to get a breath 
 of air. And in this heat, Southward departed for Shayneford. 
 During her absence John came for Hester every evening. 
 
 "Where shall we walk?" he asked always. 
 
 Where it s quiet," Hester invariably answered. Off the beaten 
 track they wandered now constantly, her arm in his; along 
 favourite paths in the park or beside the river. They laughed 
 and talked at a feverish pace or kept silent with somehow an effect 
 of even greater psychological speed. 
 
 Then one twilight, the fresh young crescent moon appeared 
 like a coquettish apparition in the western sky. It rocked for a 
 few nights, a silver arc in a peacock-blue sky, tagged everywhere 
 by an evening star. They watched it grow through a misty, 
 honey-coloured adolescence to a ruddy round maturity. " Hester," 
 John said one night watching the moonlight wash over her up 
 lifted, gold-framed face, " you are beautiful." 
 
 Hester s lids sank. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " she exclaimed as though involuntarily. 
 
 John did not refute her. But the next night, he said abruptly 
 again, " Hester, you are beautiful." 
 
 This time Hester s lids only half-sank. But midway in the 
 process, they came up and her eyes looked steadily into his. 
 
 " Thank you, for thinking so," she breathed. 
 
 The next night, John said for the third time. " Hester, you 
 are beautiful." 
 
 This time her lids did not even flutter. She smiled and perhaps 
 for the first time with a sense of triumphant assurance. 
 
 " I m glad," she said.
 
 CHAPTEK XXIII 
 
 THE next morning, John called Hester up to tell her that he 
 was going out of town for a day and a night. 
 
 "It looks as though you were going to be all alone this day," 
 John commented. " My advice to you is to get some much 
 needed rest." 
 
 But Hester did not rest. An excitement perhaps left over 
 from the night before drove her into action. She put the flat 
 to perfect rights, went out and ordered groceries and provisions. 
 Then she washed her hair and this considering its mass 
 was a process far from restful. She went up on the roof to dry 
 it. In the soft sunshine which still continued and in the faint 
 breeze which maintained itself perpetually at that height, it soon 
 dried. She came down holding two great billowing, sparkling 
 masses, one over each arm. 
 
 The buzzer hummed for a moment. It was time for the boy 
 to deliver the things she had bought. Without bothering to talk 
 through the tube, Hester pressed the button which would open 
 the door. Advancing to the mirror, she contemplated with a frank 
 pleasure what the air and sunshine had done to her. She was 
 wearing a slim white morning dress of which the sleeves came 
 only to the elbow and the neck formed a square. Once she would 
 not have worn such a gown, but the addition in her weight had 
 made its style becoming. Her long white arms had rounded; her 
 hands showed a faint plumpness. Her cheeks had turned a deeper 
 pink from the wind, her eyes a warmer blue. 
 
 There came a knock on the outer door. 
 
 " Come in," she called absently. And then as the front door 
 opened and shut, " Put the things on the table, please, Tony." 
 
 " It s not Tony," John s voice called from the hall. " My old 
 plute wired me to meet him in New York, and we did our 
 business in fifteen minutes. He s going to put some money in 
 Tomorrow. I thought I d my God!" 
 
 He stopped in the doorway. Hester had turned, presenting full 
 to him a face that suddenly bloomed with smiles and blushes 
 from the midst of twin cascades of gold. 
 
 376
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 377 
 
 John stood an instant, staring. Then he advanced swiftly; 
 seized her. Hester s white arms dropped the heavy masses of 
 her hair, crept about his neck as she lifted her lips to his kiss. 
 
 Suddenly John flung himself away from her. 
 
 " Forgive me, Hester," he groaned. " I have no right to 
 do this. I couldn t help it. It got beyond me. But I haven t the 
 right." 
 
 Hester stood where he had left her, her hands hanging by her 
 side, her hair rippling nearly to the ground. She smiled and 
 her smile had the delicious sweetness of the woman confident of 
 her triumph. 
 
 " But you love me, John." 
 
 " Yes, I love you." 
 
 " And you know that I love you." 
 
 " Yes, I know that." 
 
 She waited. Her hair falling about her enclosed her as with a 
 glistening golden mail, solid except where the pink-nailed tips of 
 her beautiful hands cut through. Between its folds, she still smiled 
 deliciously. 
 
 "What is it, John?" she asked. 
 
 But her question was languid, perfunctory even. Triumph 
 surged into her voice. John was silent. But manifestly not be 
 cause he did not want to answer her, because he was so spell 
 bound by that delicious smiling confidence, that rose-coloured 
 mounting triumph. 
 
 "Are you married, John?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Is there any woman to whom you owe marriage ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Are you bound to any woman ? " 
 
 John answered directly, " No." Then after a pause. " Not 
 in the way you mean." 
 
 " And yet you re not free ? " 
 
 "No, I m free and I m bound." 
 
 He stood still looking at Hester and she stood motionless look 
 ing at him. And in that long silence, something obviously at 
 first only a tiny ripple of suspicion grew to a bounding wave, 
 swelled to an encompassing tide, crashed on her consciousness in 
 a flood of conviction. That rose-coloured triumph receded from 
 Hester s air; that delicious smile dried on her lips. 
 
 "It s Edith," she announced with certainty. "Tell me about 
 it."
 
 378 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 John looked about helplessly. "Let s sit somewhere," he sug 
 gested. "It s a long story. Yes, it s Edith." 
 
 He led the way to Southward s room. He seated himself on 
 the couch there and drew Hester by a thick strand of her hair to 
 his side. He held this strand while he talked. 
 
 " It s such a long story and so confused I don t know how 
 to tell it exactly. Perhaps I m a cad to tell it at all. But 
 there are some circumstances in which codes have to go down. 
 This is one of them. And I must make you understand, 
 if I can. For you are the woman I love. I shall always love 
 you." 
 
 He stopped and tried to collect his thoughts. 
 
 " It goes back to my rery birth. You see I don t know 
 who I am. I was found on somebody s doorstep and sent 
 to a foundling asylum. They never could trace my parents. 
 Nobody knows. That s never bothered me particularly. I don t 
 care never have. But that s why I m John Smith. That s the 
 name they gave me in the home. I lived in the institution until 
 I was twelve. Then Edith, a very young and beautiful girl of 
 twenty -two, came to visit the place. She saw me; took a fancy 
 to me. She came again and again. In the end she carried me 
 home with her. She never adopted me legally, but I always 
 thought of her as a mother. She was a very stately young woman, 
 appearing to me, a child, much older than she really was. And 
 in fact, I think she did look older than she was. She dressed 
 in an older fashion than she does now. Anyway she had a great 
 deal of dignity and poise. She had always had a lot of money 
 and she was accustomed to managing for herself. That gave 
 her an air of authority. She took me away to a place she 
 had hired for the summer in the Berkshire hills. She said 
 she was going to send me to school in the fall. But when 
 the fall came, she didn t do that. She was an orphan and, 
 except for this old aunt that s dying, with only a few far-away 
 relatives. She was lonely and I think she got accustomed to 
 having me about; she didn t want to give up the companionship. 
 Every summer she made plans for sending me away to school but 
 when the time came she never did it. I was contented enough. 
 I d had enough of institutions. I thought school would be like the 
 place I had left, and besides she hired all kinds of tutors for me. 
 She had a wonderful library. We lived everywhere; for two 
 years we travelled abroad. Of its kind of course, it was a remark 
 able education. It might have become over-feminised. But the 
 tutors tended to correct that tendency."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 379 
 
 He paused and looked off into space as though examining critic 
 ally something he saw there. 
 
 " I can t tell you how beautiful Edith seemed to me. Or 
 what an angel of gentleness and kindness. In fact, I don t have 
 to tell you anything about her. You know as well as I do. If I 
 tried to enumerate all the things she s done for me, I couldn t 
 possibly do it. If I spent the rest of my life trying to repay her, 
 I couldn t possibly do that. Of course, living in an institution, 
 I had never known the kind of affection she offered me. It seemed 
 heaven to me. I had always been a little undersized. The first 
 effect of the good living she gave me the out-of-door life, ex 
 ercise, nourishing food was that I suddenly began to shoot up. 
 At fourteen I was a man. I guess I would have been in any 
 circumstances an affectionate, easily-bossed kind of beggar, the 
 clay-in-the-woman s-hands sort of duffer. And given that disposi 
 tion, you can easily see how I would respond to Edith s affection. 
 I worshipped her. I was as lazy as most boys, but I liked to 
 wait on her. I can remember that first year when she came 
 into my bedroom to kiss me good night. Her wonderful evening 
 gowns, her jewels, her exquisite sculpturesque neck and arms, her 
 shining eyes, her lovely hair, the perfume she used well, she was 
 reading George Macdonald to me then and she was all the 
 beautiful women in his stories. She was North Wind and Day 
 light, the Princess in the Curdie books and the Fairy Godmother 
 too." 
 
 He stopped again. With his left hand, he seized another strand 
 of Hester s hair. And as he talked, he plaited and unplaited the 
 two locks. Hester sat immobile, listening attentively. 
 
 " I don t know when it first began to dawn on me that her af 
 fection for the little boy she had befriended had developed into 
 something deeper. Of course that bringing up had made me an 
 innocent, modest little chap, virginal as any girl. I can t tell you 
 when I first began to feel bothered or how the suspicion grew. 
 I can t tell even you, what made it certainty. Those years are 
 confused. As I look back on them I get only a sense of psycho 
 logical upheaval and trouble. And then bang there it was! A 
 situation that floored me completely, that I had no idea how to 
 cope with." 
 
 "You mean she fell in love with you," Hester said succinctly, 
 "but you didn t fall in love with her." 
 
 John shifted uneasily. " I suppose that s it," he admitted. 
 " You don t know what a rotter I feel to be saying anything 
 like this about Edith. However the first effect on me at fifteen
 
 380 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 was a wild interval when I tried to be as masculine as possible. 
 I just naturally reached out for anything that would counteract 
 this engulfing and rather perfervid femininity. I went to a 
 gymnasium and I tried to break every record that was. I did 
 break one or two. I ran and jumped and swam and boxed. And 
 fight! Why, Hester, from being the mildest little shaver who was 
 ever tied to a woman s apron-strings, I got to be the most per 
 sistent fighter. I d fight anybody. I d fight at the drop of a hat. 
 I went out of my way to provoke fights. I d fight my weight in 
 wildcats. The next and most important effect was that I wouldn t 
 let Edith spend any more money on me. I still lived with her, but 
 I found a job. When I was eighteen, the situation was getting 
 beyond me and I beat it to New York; got one job and 
 another job and another until after ten years I landed on To 
 morrow. For five years I didn t let Edith know where I was. 
 But as I got interested in the various forms of social rebellion, 
 it occurred to me that the solution of her problem was to get 
 out of herself. I wrote her a long letter in which I told her 
 all this and begged her to come to New York to live. She came." 
 
 John paused for a longer interval. And in that pause, the 
 inner tumult which had lined his face and brought the grey to 
 his temples broke into a blaze. 
 
 "I don t know but what that was the worst thing I could pos 
 sibly have done for her. It didn t work at all. She is always a 
 very angel of kindness and squareness in her personal relations; 
 she is instinctively charitable. But that lets her out. She can t 
 for the life of her interest herself in impersonal movements. 
 You see she has cultivated fastidiousness all her life, until she s 
 the victim of it. Then seeing me again seemed to fix her 
 in the habit of me. She depended on me more and more ; began to 
 lose her head. I often threatened to go away for good. But 
 
 she said if I did In the end of course I didn t. And there it 
 
 rests." 
 
 " You can t love Edith," Hester said. 
 
 "A man may not love his mother," John answered solemnly. 
 "I love her too much in my way to love her even a little in her 
 way. It would be sacrilege, profanation, incest. I could not do it. 
 And so I ve lived for these years in New York. I don t pretend 
 that I ve lived an ascetic life. Far from it. But I ve never per 
 mitted myself to get involved with any woman. I couldn t marry 
 Edith but I made up my mind that I wouldn t marry anybody 
 else. Of course it s cut me out of matrimony. Not that I care 
 a damn. I don t know that I m such a domestic kind of guy.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 381 
 
 That s never pinched. It s also cut me out of love. I m glad 
 of that now, because it led up to you. I ve never really cared 
 until I met you, Hester. And of course I thought I never 
 was going to tell you. But when you came towards me with your 
 hair down, looking as you did that night at the camp at Shayne- 
 ford when I fell in love with you I love you, Hester. I want to 
 marry you. And I can t." 
 
 Hester s eyes had grown dull and sombre; the blush had faded 
 from her cheeks. " I love you, John," she said quietly. " And 
 I want to marry you. But I can t." 
 
 Suddenly she arose and moved about the room. But she walked 
 with none of her old-time languor; she walked with an extraordi 
 nary vigour : she strode. When she turned to him, her eyes flared 
 with starry resolution. 
 
 " I ve been trying to think out what my duty is," she began 
 suddenly. And her voice rang. " I couldn t make up my mind 
 for a minute that I ought to tell you. It came to me the instant 
 you began to speak. And now I see plainly that you must know. 
 John, Edith takes some drug ether, I think." 
 
 John stared at her for a dumb moment. His stare grew from 
 stupefaction to horror; changed to certainty. He leaped to his 
 feet with an inarticulate exclamation. 
 
 " She s been taking ether for," Hester s voice vibrated, " oh, I 
 don t know how long." 
 
 " By God, you re right, Hester. You re absolutely right. What 
 an ass I ve been not to suspect it. How did you find it out ? " 
 
 " That night she stayed with us at Shayneford. I was waked 
 in the middle of the night by a smell of ether in the air. She 
 slept out of doors on the balcony, but the wind brought it to me. 
 It was only an instant and I didn t recognise the odour as ether. 
 But I was uneasy and got up and went out to see if she was 
 all right. She was apparently sleeping peacefully and I forgot all 
 about it. The night I spent at her house when we first got here, 
 the same thing happened. But I never put two and two together 
 until you started to tell your story." 
 
 " Does anybody else know ? " John asked. 
 
 " Rena Osgood. She s never spoken of it to me. But I realise 
 now that she has suspected for a long time. It s strange. Every 
 thing has got clear to me in the last five minutes. I think Rena 
 is preparing to open the subject to me. She s the one to take 
 care of Edith if anybody does. She ll cure her if it can be done. 
 You must get to Rena at once, John. And from her to Edith." 
 
 " I m going right up to see Rena now," John said. " Then I ll
 
 382 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 go out to see Edith. Don t leave this place. I ll telephone you 
 sometime this afternoon. Of course I ve got to attend to this 
 matter at once. But to-night I want to have a long talk with you. 
 You know, Hester, we ve got something to thrash out between us 
 that will take many hours. For remember I lore you." 
 " All right, John," Hester answered. 
 
 After John left, Hester sat by the window for a long time. 
 Then she sought the janitor. " If anybody calls on me," she said 
 to him, " I want you to say that I m out of town and won t be 
 back for three or four days. And please keep on doing this until 
 I tell you otherwise." 
 
 Her next move was to take the receiver off the hook and place 
 it on the telephone-box. It stayed there for days.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 WHEN Southward walked into Long Lanes the next night, her 
 grandfather was eating his dinner, as usual, alone with Charlotte. 
 
 " Well good Lord ! " he ejaculated, " where d you come from, 
 Southward?" 
 
 " New York," Southward answered gaily, kissing him and 
 then Charlotte. " How are you, Cap n ? " 
 
 " Pretty well," answered Mr. Drake. " Why didn t you tell us 
 you were coming? I d have been up to the station to meet you." 
 
 " Thought I d surprise you," Southward explained briefly. 
 "Besides Lysander s almost always there. He wasn t this time 
 though, and I walked. How s grandmother ? " 
 
 That question answered itself. 
 
 "Be that you, Southward?" came in surprised accents from 
 the bedroom. " I m not asleep. Come right in here this moment 
 and let me look at you ! " 
 
 Southward obeyed. She hugged her grandmother and kissed 
 her again and again. 
 
 "Well, I declare," Mrs. Drake exclaimed, "if you ain t the 
 most surprising girl! I m glad to see you though and you cer 
 tainly do look well. Is that a boughten waist or did you make 
 it yourself? How long are you going to stay or have you come 
 for good?" 
 
 "I ve only come for a little visit. But I don t know how 
 long I m going to stay yet," was Southward s careless explanation. 
 "How is everybody?" 
 
 "Pretty well now but there has been an awful lot of sickness 
 about. That Mis Ellis you know the one Mandy s second 
 cousin from the West dreadful ailing creature. Land, seems 
 as though she had everything! Ulcerated tooth, neuralgia, then 
 the la grippe. It didn t seem as if there was anything going, one 
 time there, but what she got it. And old Captain Dodd has 
 had his other leg cut off. Ain t that a dreadful shame? It 
 does seem as though he d had enough. And the Snow twins 
 had measles caught it from each other of course. I guess that s 
 all." Mrs. Drake reeled off this list with a melancholy pleasure. 
 " You been well, Southward ? And how s Hester ? " 
 
 383
 
 384 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I m always well," Southward answered, " and as for Hester, 
 I never saw her looking finer in my life." 
 
 " That s good," Mrs. Drake approved. " Mis Crowell comes 
 over sometimes and reads her letters to me and I allus read 
 yours to her, and so between us we get a good idea of what you 
 two girls was doing. I never heard tell of such good times as 
 you had but I must say I couldn t see when you slept." 
 
 " How s Lysander ? " Southward asked. 
 
 "Able to get out, I guess," Mrs. Drake emitted a spark of 
 humour. " He s been away on and off. I don t know where he 
 is now." 
 
 Southward helped Charlotte with the dishes and afterwards 
 superficially to clean up. The house showed all the inevitable mal 
 adjustments of a place managed by a blind woman and a crippled 
 man. 
 
 Southward made no comment; but, as far as she could, she 
 brought into the chaos some of that systematic orderliness which 
 she could develop in one instant and destroy in another. Then 
 she led the way into Mrs. Drake s room; talked long and rapidly 
 though ramblingly about her New York experiences. At about 
 ten o clock Mrs. Drake fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. 
 
 "Don t go to bed yet, grandfather," Southward said as they 
 tiptoed out into the dining-room. "I ve got something I want 
 to talk over with you and Charlotte." She closed the door lead 
 ing to her grandmother s room, drew up chairs to the centre- 
 table. " Sit down, please, and you too, Charlotte. Here, 
 Charlotte." 
 
 Mr. Drake folded his crippled body into the capacious chair 
 which Southward indicated. 
 
 "I know what it is," Charlotte burst out, before she settled 
 herself, "you re engaged, Southward." 
 
 " Guess again, Charlotte ! " Southward said with a swift glim 
 mer which lost itself in seriousness. "No, nothing like that. 
 There s a big German oculist in Boston," she explained immedi 
 ately, " one of the most famous men in his line in the world. 
 I ve come back here to get Charlotte and take her up to Boston 
 and have him examine her eyes." 
 
 Charlotte s body jerked in a start so convulsive that it jarred 
 the table. "My eyes my oh, Southward, Southward, do you 
 think there s any chance that oh, do you think there is?" 
 
 " I don t know," Southward answered briefly, " I don t know 
 anything. But I want to find out for sure. Anyway we re going 
 to take the chance. That s what I ve come home for. I had a
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 385 
 
 talk with Greinschmidt yesterday afternoon in Boston. I d long- 
 distanced to make the appointment." 
 
 " Will it cost much ? " Mr. Drake suggested cautiously. 
 
 " No," Southward vouchsafed non-committally. " That s all 
 arranged. I ll take care of that. We ll go up Monday morn 
 ing. He s to examine you Tuesday morning, Charlotte, and then 
 
 if he thinks there s a chance, Wednesday, he ll Of course you 
 
 realise it may mean an operation, Charlotte, but it isn t dangerous 
 or painful or long." 
 
 Charlotte s hands clasped, tugged one at the other until her 
 knuckles showed white. " I don t care what it means or how 
 hard or long or painful it is if I can only see again. Just think 
 of it! To see folks why, Southward, I haven t ever really seen 
 you." 
 
 " Well, I m a great sight believe me." Southward s tone held 
 a note of premeditated lightness. 
 
 " Do you think it will be successful, Southward ? " Charlotte s 
 question was a plea for encouragement. 
 
 " I don t know," Southward answered inflexibly again, " and 
 I m not making any guesses. Of course I hope for the best. 
 But, at the worst, the operation will do no harm and it may do 
 all that we want." 
 
 "How long will it take?" Mr. Drake asked. 
 
 " About two weeks," Southward answered. " I m going to take 
 Sue-Salome up to Boston with us. And I D have Libbie come 
 over and stay here. There ought to be more than one of us to 
 take care of Charlotte, although as I understand it, she won t 
 be in any special pain. It s just a matter of her having company." 
 
 " You ll stay with me until they take the bandages off, South 
 ward," Charlotte entreated. 
 
 "Ill stay with you until you re able to see," Southward 
 promised, " or you re in the same condition that you re in now." 
 
 " It will be great to have Charlotte seeing like the rest of us," 
 Mr. Drake said heartily. " That ll make some difference in this 
 household." 
 
 Charlotte emitted a long tremubus sigh. But Southward arose 
 and stretched and yawned. " I m as tired as a dog. I m going to 
 bed this moment and you can take my word for it, I ll sleep. 
 I expect you won t close your eyes to-night though, Charlotte." 
 
 " I expect I won t," Charlotte answered. " But I shan t mind, 
 
 it s so wonderful to think " Her voice ended in another long 
 
 tremulous sigh. 
 
 " I guess I ll get up and go to church to-morrow," Southward
 
 386 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 said, yawning again as she started upstairs. " That s the quickest 
 way I know of finding out what s happened in this burg during 
 my absence. Do you want to go too, Charlotte ? " 
 
 "Yes," Charlotte answered mechanically, rousing herself from 
 that vision her blind eyes saw. 
 
 " All right," Mr. Drake agreed. " I ll harness up and take you 
 two girls over. I reckon it won t do me any harm to go to meeting." 
 
 He waited until Charlotte had gone to bed; then came to 
 Southward s room for further particulars. Southward gave him 
 an explicit account of her talk with Greinschmidt. " If you need 
 extra money," Mr. Drake said as he left, " don t hesitate to wire 
 me, Southward." 
 
 Southward s appearance in church the next day made a sensa 
 tion. She sat in the Drake pew, well up towards the front of the 
 church, with Charlotte drooping on one side and Mr. Drake 
 hunched on the other. She was an apex during the entire service 
 of surreptitious scrutiny from the back. Mrs. Wallace surveyed 
 her from time to time with her quick darting glances that were 
 more like the shooting forward of a forked tongue than the 
 exercise of vision. Mrs. Tubman s round good eye fixed upon her 
 while the other oscillated with that swift revolving movement 
 which, with her, always indicated mental excitement. Mrs. Peters 
 stared over her nose at regular intervals. 
 
 At the door, a group gathered about her. 
 
 " Well, how are you, Southward ? " Mrs. Wallis asked. 
 
 " Oh, very well, thank you," Southward answered with a 
 languid indifference so carefully studied that it amounted to a 
 direct insolence. 
 
 " And how is Hester ? " Mrs. Wallis went on, ignoring the 
 indifference except for one glance forked with venom. " You 
 look kinder dragged out seems to me." 
 
 " Oh, Hester s looking fairly wonderful," Southward replied. 
 " I ve never seen such a change in any girl in my life." 
 
 " We ve heard about some of the good times you were having 
 in New York." Mrs. Wallis continued to hold the conversational 
 reins. " How s Josie Caldwell ? " she shot suddenly. 
 
 " Very well the last time I saw her," Southward responded, 
 "that was in Shayneford four years ago last summer." 
 
 " Are you going to stay for a while, Southward ? " Mrs. Peters 
 edged in, " or are you going right back ? " 
 
 "I m going to stay only a day," Southward rejoined care 
 lessly. " Charlotte and I are going off though for a little trip 
 to-morrow."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 387 
 
 "Charlotte!" Mrs. Tubman repeated bluntly. "What s Char 
 lotte going away for ? " 
 
 " Just a little vacation," Southward dropped airily. 
 
 The girls had now come down from the choir-loft Pearl and 
 Pinkie and Flora, Aggie Bassett and Myra Rowell. Esther and 
 Mercy joined them at the foot of the stairs. They surrounded 
 Southward. 
 
 " Do tell us about New York ! " Flora said. She looked radi 
 antly happy ; bright-eyed, pink-cheeked. " I suppose you ve been 
 seeing a lot of those people who camped out here last summer ? " 
 
 " Oh, land yes," Southward was still airy. " All the time. Yes, 
 they ve been good to us and they certainly know how to live. It s 
 a gay life though." 
 
 " Yes, that s what we hear," Mrs. Wallis managed to slip into 
 the conversation again. " We get nothing but stories of how gay 
 you are there." 
 
 " They can t possibly exaggerate it," Southward said, a faint 
 glimmer coming into her eyes. 
 
 " Is Hester going to marry that Mr. Smith ? " Mrs. Peters 
 demanded. 
 
 " If she is," Southward answered, " she hasn t told me." 
 
 "Well, is he attentive to her?" Mrs. Tubman re-enforced Mrs. 
 Peters. " Does he beau her round ? " 
 
 " He s very kind to us both," Southward returned. " He s done 
 everything he can to make our stay pleasant. Yes, he takes 
 Hester about. But so doep Mr. Fearing. And others." 
 
 "How s that Mr. Cam-ron? " Pearl inquired. "He s about the 
 most awful flirt I ever :aet in my life. I don t suppose there s an 
 instant in his life that he s not carrying on with at least three 
 girls." 
 
 Southward conter. plated Pearl s pink-and-white combination 
 of spite and vacuity. Above the patchy bloom of her cheeks, 
 Pearl s eyes were sei. in deep shadows as though she had not slept 
 for a long time. But back of the gleam in her eyes showed an 
 emotion akin to the triun ph that shone behind Southward s 
 malicious glimmer. / s the two girls looked at each other sparks 
 of antagonism shot bi.-.k and forth. 
 
 " He was in the Lost of health and spirits when I saw him 
 last," Southward replied. 
 
 " Is he coming down here next summer ? " Pearl inquired 
 further. 
 
 " Says he is," Southward answered with indifference. 
 
 " And that Miss Hale ? " Flora asked eagerly. " How is she ?
 
 388 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 I liked her better than any of them. She was always so sweet 
 to everybody. And so beautiful. She always looked kinder deli 
 cate though. I sort of thought she was coming down with some 
 thing. I hope she s all right." 
 
 " She s all right as far as I know," Southward responded. " But 
 she still looks delicate. She never seems to be ill actually ill, I 
 mean. I think she s one of those people who don t ever look as 
 strong as they really are. I haven t seen you, Flora, since the 
 great event. How are you and how s King? I ve got a pair of 
 wedding-gifts in my trunk from me and Hester. I ll come round 
 sometime late this afternoon and bring them to you. Charlotte 
 and I start early to-morrow morning." 
 
 " Where you going ? " Mrs. Peters asked with an accent of 
 irritation. 
 
 " Boston first," Southward informed her briefly. " After that 
 well, I don t know yet." 
 
 " How s that Mr. Fearing ? " piped up little Mercy Brewster, 
 her big eyes shining through her big glasses. " I thought he was 
 simply grand ! " 
 
 Southward laughed. " He s well. I didn t know you had a 
 crush on him, Mercy ! " 
 
 " I didn t have a crush on him," Mercy declared indignantly. 
 " I thought he was the most wonderful man I ever met in my life, 
 though." 
 
 " That s a fine beginning for a crush," Southward said en 
 couragingly. " Want me to take a message to him, Mercy ? " 
 
 " Yes," Mercy defied her. " Tell him to come back here." 
 
 " How s that New York widow," Mrs. Wallis returned to 
 the charge, "that fast-looking thing that used to make up 
 so?" 
 
 " In the best of health," Southward maintained, " as fast-looking 
 as ever, quite as much made up and apparently a great success 
 socially." 
 
 " That mother of hers," Mrs. Peters put in, " Mis Boardman 
 worn t that the name? was a queer thing. I ve always wondered 
 how those two women lived." 
 
 "Like every other woman you know," Southward answered 
 readily, " either on the money that some man gives them, husband 
 or father, or on what they earn themselves. These ladies are both 
 widows. Mrs. Morrow is, I believe, independent. Her mother 
 makes a living selling antiques." 
 
 "I never see anybody so persistent as that Mis Boardman," 
 Mrs. Tubman asserted with indignation. "Every time she saw
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 389 
 
 me, she tried to get me to sell her my Grandmother Fletcher s 
 melon chair. I d just about as soon think of selling Flora." 
 
 "Mrs. Boardman s antique business seems to be a big one," 
 Southward explained. " And she is certainly a wonder for picking 
 up old furniture and making it look lovely. You ought to see 
 what she did with Gert Beebee s bureau." 
 
 " Oh, Southward, what did you and Hester say when you 
 heard of Gert Beebee s marriage ? " Pinkie Peters exclaimed. 
 " Weren t you surprised ? " 
 
 " Not especially," Southward said in the languid tone which 
 in her case often accompanied a direct lie. " We were expecting 
 something like that. Which reminds me that I ve got to get 
 round to see Gert this afternoon. I ve got wedding-presents for 
 her too." 
 
 " Well," Aggie Bassett contributed as the group broke up, 
 " you can talk all you want about Mr. Cameron and Mr. Smith 
 and Mr. Fearing but I think that Mr. O Reilly was the hand 
 somest man I ever laid my eyes on." 
 
 After dinner, that day, Southward took Charlotte with her 
 while she drove from house to house making her short, exciting, 
 talk-laden calls. 
 
 " Now, Cap n," she said as she departed on this expedition, 
 " while I m gone, you tell grandmother about what I m going 
 to do with Charlotte; and answer as many of her questions as you 
 can; for I ll have to answer a small million everywhere I go 
 this afternoon." 
 
 But when she returned, it was apparent that Mr. Drake had 
 managed only to stem the tide. She sat with Mrs. Drake for 
 half an hour and submitted to interrogative bombardment 
 with the humorous patience which she reserved for her grand 
 mother alone. Afterwards she retreated to the dining-room and 
 wrote letters. Charlotte sat with Mrs. Drake. At times, South 
 ward s pen came up and stopped as she listened, glimmering, to 
 the monologue that Charlotte delivered. 
 
 " We certainly have flaxed round this afternoon," Charlotte 
 began. " First we went to Mis Crowell s and Southward told 
 her every living, breathing thing she could think of about Hester. 
 Mis Crowell asked her more n a million questions." 
 
 " It s queer how many questions some folks can ask," Mrs. 
 Drake remarked. "My sister Sabry used to say half of them 
 jest asked them so s to hear themselves talk. They don t listen to 
 the answers at all."
 
 390 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Southward was mighty good. She answered them all just 
 as patient. And you know how she hates to answer questions." 
 
 " Hardest girl to get anything out of that she don t want to tell 
 of anybody I ever saw in my life," Mrs. Drake declared. 
 
 " Mis Crowell thinks that that John Smith is sweet on Hester. 
 She didn t say so hut you could see it, and she tried every way 
 she knew how, to make Southward say it. But Southward 
 wouldn t. She didn t say he worn t. But I bet you a hat she 
 doesn t think he is." 
 
 " Yes, of course, Mis Crowell would like that," Mrs. Drake 
 murmured. " She s an awful proud woman Abbie Crowell. She d 
 hate to have her daughter be an old maid. What I d like to 
 know, is that Mr. Cameron waiting on Southward ? " 
 
 " Well, of course Southward s never said. You know how she 
 is. But I guess he is, fast enough. Most every man who s ever 
 seen her has fallen in love with her." 
 
 "Yes, she s very attractive to gentlemen," Mrs. Drake agreed. 
 " I was too when I was a young girl. Land, I could have mar 
 ried half a dozen. And as for my sister Sabry I guess Sabry 
 couldn t count the men she d said no to great strapping hand 
 some fellows too. Queer, she d marry a little pindling fellow like 
 Douglas, now worn t it ? Where d you go next ? " 
 
 "Well, then we went round to Matthew Hallowell s. South 
 ward had a great time there. She laughed and joked and she told 
 Mr. Hallowell a whole mess of stuff that I didn t understand 
 about meetings and things like that. Matthew just sat up and 
 drank it down. He said one queer thing, Southward, he says, 
 hare you or Hester exploded yet ? And Southward says, No, not 
 yet. We ve been too happy and we haven t had time. And he 
 said when he exploded from the ministry, it worn t a question of 
 time. Awful funny thing to say, worn t it? Exploded! Then 
 from there, we went to Flora Tubman s I mean Curtis seems as 
 if I never could remember her married name and Southward left 
 the wedding-presents. Flora was tickled to death with the bread- 
 and-butter plates and I guess they were handsome from what 
 folks say. I never saw Mis Tubman more pleasant to Southward. 
 Then from there we went to Gertie Beebee s I mean Gertie 
 Welch s. Don t it seem queer her having another name? Well, 
 she and Southward just talked and talked. You could scarcely 
 hear what they was saying, they went so fast and laughed so 
 much. The baby was asleep when we got there but it woke up 
 before we left. Gertie said Southward had got to hold the baby 
 or she d be mad. Southward said she d rather hold a rattlesnake,
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 391 
 
 but Gertie jest dumped it right down in her lap. Of course I 
 couldn t see what they was doing but I was afraid they d hurt the 
 baby between them. Southward didn t seem to mind it so much, 
 once she got the baby in her arms. But she didn t hold it very 
 long. She handed him over to me. My grief, but he s a strong 
 little tyke! He hit with his hand against my face as hard as 
 though he was beating a drum. And once he got hold of my 
 hair and Gertie had to take him away, he pulled it so. Gertie 
 was tickled to death too with the wedding-presents Southward 
 and Hester sent her. She put the tea-set on the table in the 
 parlour and said she was going to have tea every afternoon just 
 like the swells and she and Southward hung the picture Hester 
 gave her. She said she was awful sorry that Buster as she calls 
 him was away. Seems he s in training that means getting 
 ready for one of those prize-fights. They have to do exercises all 
 the time and they can t eat only certain things and go to bed at 
 a regular time and their wives never go to stay with them must 
 be an awful dull time for him. Southward said she was going 
 to ask him to teach her how to box sometime. She said she could 
 shoot a gun and why shouldn t she know how to use her fists. 
 Ain t Southward the queer creature? But she s the best girl I 
 ever knew," she added loyally. 
 
 Mrs. Drake asked many questions. Charlotte filled in these 
 free outlines with a mass of disconnected detail. Mrs. Drake 
 drank her narrative down as though it were a rare wine. 
 
 After a while Southward gave her whole attention to her letters. 
 
 " Dear Hetter," the first one, which was brief, began, " I ve seen 
 your mother and she s well, in the best of spirits. Of course she 
 asked a billion questions and I answered with more patience than 
 I have shown in the whole course of my life before. She said 
 again and again that you were not to come home until you 
 wanted to. She said if your money gave out, she would send 
 you another hundred dollars. Of course it was all I could do to 
 keep from breaking out in wild whoops of joy when I heard 
 that. We re going to stay you bet! To-morrow Charlotte and 
 I start on our great surgical adventure. You can have some idea 
 of my state of mind in regard to it, when I tell you that every 
 time I think of it, I come as close to praying as I ever have come 
 since I stopped demanding gifts of the Almighty. I will let you 
 know how things are going." 
 
 The second letter was long. It was to Dwight. It began with 
 a careful but succinct account of her talk with Greinschmidt.
 
 392 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 But from that point it spread to many things. It ended, "I 
 expect to be back in three weeks at the latest." 
 
 Two days later, Dr. Greinschmidt made his examination of 
 Charlotte. 
 
 "It s a slow-growing tumour," Southward wrote in half a 
 dozen letters, "on the brain, pressing on the optic nerve. Dr. 
 Greinschmidt s operation is a new one made through the nasal 
 passage. The old operation was bloody and in many ways more 
 dangerous, as the brain had to be lifted up and the operator 
 worked more in the dark. It also left a scar. In this new 
 operation, made by lifting the lip, the operator gets a clearer 
 vision; there s a thinner plate of bone to pierce and he comes into 
 more immediate contact with the tumour; less bleeding, irrita 
 tion, and destruction of tissue. Greinschmidt will say nothing 
 encouraging, but I know he s hopeful." 
 
 The next day, the operation was performed, pronounced suc 
 cessful. 
 
 A week later, Southward took Charlotte to Shayneford in a 
 closed limousine. A nurse accompanied them. At the end of 
 of another week, the nurse removed the bandages. 
 
 Charlotte saw.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 CHARLOTTE S recovery was a little better than normal. After the 
 first two weeks, Southward and Sue-Salome between them under 
 took the care of her. Each day lightened this task. And now that 
 she had accomplished her great feat, Southward s characteristic 
 restlessness, informed by some emotion obviously deeper, took pos 
 session of her. 
 
 " How much longer you going to stay, Southward ? " Mrs. Drake 
 asked once. 
 
 " About a week," Southward answered. But, " I don t think 
 I ll stay the whole week out," she said at breakfast-table Sunday 
 morning. " Charlotte is doing so well and Sue-Salome is proving 
 so capable and ready for anything. She s much better for her 
 than I am. I m such an energetic thing. Besides there s a lot of 
 things I should be attending to in New York. I think I ll go 
 Friday." 
 
 " You ll be down pretty soon, I expect," Mr. Drake said. 
 
 " Pretty soon," Southward returned evasively. " I think I won t 
 stay until Friday," she said next morning. " I do feel as if I 
 ought to go back to New York. I guess I ll go Thursday." 
 
 But Wednesday morning, when she came down to breakfast, she 
 was dressed with particular care. " I think I ll take the morning 
 train up. I ll just catch the Limited." 
 
 " Well, I guessed you d go before you said," Mr. Drake com 
 mented in a tone of resignation. " I could see you were as restless 
 as you could be." 
 
 " I m kinder glad you re going," Mrs. Drake unexpectedly in 
 formed her. " For I feel the sooner you get back there, the sooner 
 you ll get back here." 
 
 Charlotte s farewell was more protracted, interrupted by tears 
 and many broken expressions of gratitude. 
 
 The arrangement was that Sue-Salome was to stay as long as 
 Charlotte needed her. 
 
 Southward was silent in the carriage during the drive to the 
 station, only breaking her grandfather s monologue with the yes 
 or no that it required. She sat by the window all the way to 
 Boston, an elbow resting on the sill, her chin peaked in her hand. 
 
 393
 
 394 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 It was apparent, though, that her eyes saw nothing of the whirling 
 scene on which they rested. A something dominated her which 
 anybody studying her would have found there all the time since 
 her return from New York. With people about, that something 
 lingered in the background of her spirit; flashed through occa 
 sionally but only in an increased and more abrupt vivacity. Alone, 
 it showed itself in sudden starts, in quick leaps to her feet, in 
 prolonged pacing of the floor. To-day it came to the surface in 
 a succession of smiles that seemed to tear their way to her lips; 
 in a constant joyous humming; in the assurance, doubly assured, 
 of her whole attitude. 
 
 That something was triumph. 
 
 To a close observer, that triumph should have been visible the 
 day she arrived in Shayneford. It grew steadily every day of her 
 stay there. It became almost a paBan of the spirit evidenced in 
 her brilliant eyes and her rippling lips when each night she re 
 turned from the Post Office to her garret and read there the long 
 letter she received from Dwight. 
 
 When she boarded the New York train, excitement re-enforced 
 this certainty of triumph. Palpably she tried to control it. It kept 
 getting beyond her however. Her feet began to tap the floor as her 
 patience exploded in volleys of abrupt movements. She drifted 
 from one side of the car to the other; looked out of this window, 
 then another. She bought magazines and tried to read them. But 
 her efforts ended in an absent scrutiny of the illustrations. In 
 the dining-car she prolonged the business of eating as long as 
 possible and succeeded admirably considering how little she ate. 
 Once she actually drummed on the window-pane until the violent 
 tattoo she was producing penetrated even her own consciousness 
 and she stopped abruptly. At the Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street 
 station she put on her hat and gloves; stood on the platform of 
 the car during the slow toilsome progress downtown through the 
 tunnel and into the Grand Central Station. But once in the 
 street she drew into her lungs a long deep breath of New York air. 
 When that deep inspiration left her lips, it seemed to bear with 
 it all her restlessness; only triumph remained. She leaped into 
 a taxi; gave the address of the model tenement; relaxed and sat 
 lazily swaying to the motion, her eyes glued to the flashing New 
 York scene, her lips smiling, her eyes sparkling. 
 
 At the outer door, her finger hovered an instant over the buzzer. 
 Then with a mischievous glimmer, she withdrew it. She felt for 
 the key in the little handbag she carried ; opened the door. Despite 
 the weight of the suitcase, she fairly bounded up the stairs. At
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 395 
 
 her own door, however, all speed went out of her. She put the suit 
 case down with exquisite care ; noiselessly fitted the key in the lock ; 
 silently lifted the suitcase over the threshold, left it there. Still 
 without a sound she closed the door and tiptoed down the hall. 
 She glanced into her own empty room as she passed; glanced into 
 Hester s. She advanced to the kitchen doorway, her hand putting 
 the key in her bag. 
 
 There she stopped stockstill, petrified. 
 
 Dwight and Azile stood together in the middle of the room, 
 Dwight s arms were about Azile ; her head touched his shoulder, his 
 lips swept her hair. Southward s hand clutched something inside 
 her bag with a convulsive grip. As though that movement made 
 sound, Dwight looked up. He stared at Southward, equally petri 
 fied, except that mechanically his arms fell away from Azile. 
 
 Azile turned too, and as she looked into Southward s face so 
 blackly still and set, her own face blanched. 
 
 And then Southward s hand flashed out of her bag, levelled what 
 she had clutched there. 
 
 Southward s shot and Azile s scream came simultaneously. 
 Dwight swayed and fell backwards on the couch, carrying Azile 
 with him. Southward turned. As noiselessly as she had come into 
 the place, she sped away from it. 
 
 She picked up her suitcase as she ran.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE next morning Southward alighted from the train in the 
 Shayneford station. Lysander was standing at the end of the 
 platform holding his horse s bit. Late in the season as it was the 
 middle of April a sudden change in atmosphere had brought the 
 fall of an inch or two of snow. Lysander did not hear South 
 ward s approach over the snowy platform. He stood moodily gazing 
 in the other direction. Southward touched him on the shoulder. 
 
 " Good Lord, Southward ! " he exclaimed, " where did you come 
 from? I thought you were in New York." 
 
 " No," said Southward smoothly, glancing at the few people who 
 had alighted from the train and were filing past. " I didn t go to 
 New York after all." She talked with great clearness. " I went 
 as far as Boston and then I got worried about Charlotte. I decided 
 to come back and stay until she was perfectly well." 
 
 " Well, she s doing fine from all I hear," Lysander assured her. 
 " I haven t seen her yet didn t get home myself until yesterday. 
 Get into the wagon, Southward. I ll take you home." 
 
 " Thanks," Southward said carelessly. And she climbed into 
 the buggy, settled herself as far back in the corner as she could get. 
 " I don t want anybody to see me if possible. I don t want to 
 have to answer the million questions they ll ask." Leaning her 
 head back against the buggy hood, she closed her eyes. 
 
 " You look tired, Southward," Lysander commented. " Didn t 
 you have a good trip ? " 
 
 " I didn t sleep very well," Southward admitted, " last night in 
 Boston. Funny our having a snowstorm so late. I guess it s the 
 record, isn t it? Beginning to melt already." 
 
 " Yes, this is the latest snow I ever saw," Lysander agreed. " It 
 isn t the record though. My mother saw a snowstorm in Shayne 
 ford on the first of May once." 
 
 He started to turn in the direction of Long Lanes. Southward 
 raised herself. 
 
 " I wish you d take me over to Matt s first, Lysander. I want 
 to talk with him for a few minutes. And I d like you to be 
 there." 
 
 " All right." Lysander added after a moment, " Nothing wrong, 
 is there, Southward ? " 
 
 Southward did not answer this question. And Lysander did not
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 397 
 
 speak again. He shot one or two stealthy looks at her. Southward 
 now lay as still in her corner as though frozen there. Her eyelids 
 down, her mouth set close, she was without colour or expression. 
 Even her lips were putty. The effect of the disappearance of 
 its rose-values was to bring out in a curious way the fineness of 
 her skin. Her black eyelashes were so still that they might have 
 been painted on that smooth, dark texture. 
 
 " Here we are, Southward," Lysander said at last. 
 
 Southward roused herself with something of her customary alert 
 ness; leaped out of the carriage, ran swiftly up the steps, along 
 the walk to the piazza. 
 
 "Please come in, Lysander," she flung back over her shoulder. 
 And Lysander followed her. 
 
 Matthew Hallowell, surrounded by his archipelago of chairs and 
 tables, had already begun work. Stacks of papers covered the 
 tables; piles of note-books the chairs. Files of books slanted from 
 the bookcases along the carpet in his direction, as though they 
 were charging him. The sunlight flooded through the long French 
 windows, sparkled on his thick upstanding silver hair and in his 
 frosty kindly blue eyes. 
 
 " Well, Southward ! " he exclaimed. " Back again ? You just 
 spin between Shaynef ord and New York these days, don t you ? " 
 
 Southward ignored this. " Mrs. Cahoon isn t in the kitchen, 
 is she, Matt ? " she asked. 
 
 " No, she s gone to her sister s as usual," Matthew answered. 
 " She ll be here later. Why ? " 
 
 " Are you alone in the house, Matt ? " 
 
 " Yes. Why ? Anything wrong ? " 
 
 " I ll tell you," Southward assured him. " Sit down, Lysander." 
 
 Lysander who had stood impassive through this dialogue took 
 a chair. Hallowell had not risen. Southward continued to stand. 
 
 " I shot Dwight Cameron yesterday in our apartment in New 
 York," Southward said clearly. " I don t think I killed him, 
 because there was nothing about it in any of the papers this 
 morning. I think he will die though. I shot to kill and I know 
 how to shoot." 
 
 Her listeners did not stir or speak. But the intense gaze that 
 they had fixed on her, at her first words, held there as though 
 by an irresistible attraction. Lysander s colour did not change 
 perceptibly. But Hallowell grew ashen. " Are you crazy, South 
 ward?" he demanded. But this was palpably the first ejaculation 
 of shock. 
 
 " I m telling you the exact truth. I got to the apartment unex-
 
 398 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 pectedly, not knowing he was there, thinking I would see Hester. 
 I opened the door without making any noise and tiptoed into the 
 kitchen, meaning to surprise her. Hester wasn t there. I don t 
 know where she was. But he was there. How I can t understand. 
 
 But in circumstances that Well, I shot him through the 
 
 chest. I aimed for his heart." 
 
 She opened the little handbag she still carried, thrust her hand 
 into it, and withdrew a revolver. While she spoke, she broke it 
 and dropped four small cartridges onto the table. She counted 
 them as they fell. " The other one s in him." 
 
 " God! " Hallowell groaned. 
 
 Lysander emitted a queer sound that, with another emotion 
 driving back of it, might have been a laugh. 
 
 " I taught you to shoot," he said, " and I gave you that re 
 volver. Give it to me." 
 
 " No. I ll keep it." 
 
 " Before God you won t ! " Lysander ground between his teeth. 
 He sprang suddenly upon her and seized the hand that held the 
 revolver. 
 
 Southward did not resist. Only her hand closed on the butt. 
 " Listen to me, Lysander." Her tone was low but clear. " The 
 game s up. If he s dead I m done for. They ll look here 
 the first thing. I m not running away. I came to you two because 
 you are the only real friends I have in this town and I wanted 
 somebody to have the story straight. And then when the big 
 explosion comes, I want you, Matt, to explain it to the people at 
 home. And I want you, Lysander, to keep this gang of hell-cats 
 down here off them." 
 
 " I ll do that," Lysander promised grimly. He loosened his grip 
 on Southward. " But what about self-defence, Southward ? You 
 shot him because he " 
 
 "I shot him," Southward finished his sentence for him, "be 
 cause at that moment I hated him more than any human being I 
 ever saw in my life. There s nothing in the self-defence theory, 
 Lysander. There was a witness." 
 
 " Man or woman ? " Lysander asked. 
 
 "Woman," Southward answered briefly. 
 
 " God damn it ! " Lysander started out of his chair. " Can t 
 I go over there and get to her ? " 
 
 " Not very easily," Southward replied. " She d hang me with 
 her own hands if she could." 
 
 Southward sat down. She was still cool. " I came here, Matt, 
 for another reason. I want to ask a favour. I want you to let
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 399 
 
 them arrest me here. It will be an awful shock to poor grand 
 mother. Grandfather will take it pretty hard too. But he ll 
 understand. He knows in his own case what the Drake temper 
 will do. I have always felt that my temper would be my ruin, 
 
 but I didn t think Then there s poor Charlotte. Oh, I m so 
 
 glad I got her eyes fixed up before this happened! What I want 
 to do, Matthew, is to stay right here until they come for me. No 
 detectives were on my train. I m sure of that. They ll get here 
 on the afternoon train. Of course they ll go first to Long Lanes. 
 Then they ll search the town. Only a few people saw me get into 
 the buggy with Lysander. But by this time half the town knows 
 that I m back again and wondering what s the answer. All they ve 
 got to do is trace Lysander. You don t have to stay, Ly," she 
 concluded. 
 
 "I ll stay," Lysander said briefly; and thought hard. "South 
 ward," he burst out in another instant, " I think we can beat 
 them yet. Let s take what food and money Matthew s got in the 
 house and drive over to the Shayneford woods. I ll leave the 
 carriage anywhere along the road. I m sure I can get you across 
 the Cape and into a boat somewhere." 
 
 " Can t be done, Ly," Southward decided decisively. " The whole 
 place will be roused. Everybody would be beating the woods first 
 thing. No. I thought it all out last night. We could delay the 
 inevitable one day, or two, perhaps three. I ll admit I d attempt 
 it quick as a wink if we could get away with it. But we can t. So 
 I ll pull it off with as much dignity as possible." She turned to 
 Hallowell. " You ve always said, Matt, that Hester and I would 
 explode sometime. I ve done it, you see." 
 
 Hallowell s underlip quivered like a child s. Southward went 
 to him ; threw her arms about his neck. " Fm sorry to have put 
 you in this situation, Matt. But I did think you d be willing to 
 do it for me. You are, aren t you ? " 
 
 " Of course I am," Hallowell said with an emphasis that rang 
 through the tremble in his voice. " Of course I am. How I wish 
 I could save you, my poor child." 
 
 " Nobody can do that." Southward disengaged herself lightly ; 
 took off her hat and coat. " Now I ve told you all not all there 
 is to tell but all I can tell as much as I shall ever tell anybody 
 and more than I shall ever tell my lawyer or the jury. Let s 
 dismiss the subject and busy ourselves with other things. Re 
 member that one thing I have told you, you must never tell to 
 any living human being that there was a woman there. There s 
 no reason why she should be drawn into it. You swear, Matthew ? "
 
 400 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I swear," Hallowell answered. 
 
 "And you, Ly?" 
 
 " I swear too," Lysander replied. 
 
 "Very well then," Southward commented. "That s all. Will 
 you let me help you work the rest of the morning, Matt ? " 
 
 " How can I work ? " Hallowell asked. Two big tears rolled 
 down his wrinkled cheeks. 
 
 " We can t sit here and just look at each other," Southward 
 maintained inflexibly. " It will be easier after you get started. 
 Come, Matt, read me what you ve written. And when you need 
 your next reference, I ll look it up and verify it." 
 
 By dint of her insistence, her dominating will-power, her 
 capacity for concentration, she finally got Hallowell into his work, 
 though he made one or two false starts. She looked up references 
 for him; read passages from various authorities; took notes that 
 he dictated. She asked him to dismiss the delighted Mrs. Cahoon 
 and she herself prepared lunch for the two men. Afterwards they 
 went to work again. Lysander in the meantime sat stark and 
 still as a statue, staring blankly out the window from across the 
 room; or examined the magazines that lay on the table; or pulled 
 books from the shelves and tried to interest himself in their 
 contents. His efforts were much less successful than South 
 ward s. The crisp noon began to fade to mid-afternoon. 
 
 " That train will be in in half an hour," Southward said sud 
 denly. " I shouldn t say that there d be more than an hour of this 
 waiting." 
 
 Ten minutes later Lysander jumped to his feet. " Here comes 
 Bud Crosby s boy on a bicycle. He always brings telegrams. Yes, 
 he s stopping here. You d better go to the door, Matt. Don t say 
 anything about Southward s being here." 
 
 Hallowell obediently opened the front door. From the window, 
 Southward and Lysander watched him receive a little yellow en 
 velope and sign for it. He came back into the living-room, tearing 
 futilely at the flap with his trembling old fingers. Lysander seized 
 it and tore it open in a single vigorous gesture; handed it back. 
 
 "It s from John Smith," Hallowell said. He read, " Tell 
 Southward everything all right here. Jungle Doc on the case. Pa 
 tient doing well. Serious but not fatal. Shoulder. Will telegraph 
 every day. " He looked over his telegram and over his glasses at 
 Southward. Lysander turned and looked too. And as they 
 looked, Southward crumpled slowly and fell in a heap on the floor. 
 
 Half an hour later, " Now take me home, Ly," Southward 
 ordered, " I ve got to get some rest as soon as possible."
 
 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 401 
 
 Characteristically however, she stopped and put the revolver with 
 the four cartridges in her bag. 
 
 " I hope you won t ever carry that gun again, Southward," 
 Lysander said. "Perhaps I m not sorry I gave it to you." 
 
 " I shall never carry it again," Southward promised. " You may 
 be sure of that." 
 
 She disdained Lysander s proffered assistance down the path, 
 and when it came to getting into the carriage. But once there, 
 she fell in a limp heap in the corner. 
 
 " Don t take me right home after all, Ly," she begged, and her 
 voice began to break. " I m not equal to seeing them yet. I can t 
 talk with anybody. I m at the end of my rope. Drive off down 
 the lower road somewhere take that lane that leads to West 
 Shayneford. We won t see anybody there. That s right. Whip 
 him up I You don t know what I ve been through. I ve lived in 
 hell for a day and a half. If I had a drug I d take it to-night 
 I don t want to think I want to sleep for days and days I don t 
 want to think about myself." She sobbed. 
 
 " I m a terrible woman, Ly I m a dangerous woman any Drake 
 is dangerous that Drake temper makes dynamiters of us when 
 I think of grandfather s record when I think what I ve done my 
 heart turns over my blood turns to water I m frightened, Ly 
 sander I m afraid of myself. I feel as if I were possessed by 
 mania I can t count on myself any more I don t know what I ll 
 do next I ve just missed being a .murderess." 
 
 Her pants of breath were coming thicker and faster. The tears 
 were pouring down her face. For a moment sobs choked her 
 utterance. She struggled with her own words, seemed to strangle 
 over them. Lysander took advantage of this interval to whip up 
 his horse again. They flew through the main street; turned into 
 the lower road and then into the little wooded lane that South 
 ward had suggested. Lysander threw a steadying arm about her 
 waist. And all the time she was talking. 
 
 " I don t know what s going to become of me I don t know 
 where I ll end up I ve proved that I can t be trusted I need a 
 master I need a strong hand I ve never had that I ve never 
 known a father or a mother grandfather s never crossed me 
 and I could always wind grandmother round my finger and 
 Charlotte s always been my care rather than me hers I never got 
 along with my teachers I was always wilful and headstrong and 
 disobedient I ve gloried in my ability to get my own way I re 
 ridden roughshod over everybody in this town everybody except 
 Hester I ve never considered anybody s feelings but my own I
 
 402 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 don t know what it is to think of anybody but myself I m fright 
 ened to death I don t know what s going to happen to me save 
 me, Lysander save me save me I ve refused you a hundred 
 times but I m sorry now marry me, Lysander please marry 
 me for God s sake, marry me." 
 
 Lysander withdrew his arm from Southward s waist. He 
 propped her in the corner so that her drooping head was trans 
 ferred from his shoulder to the buggy-hood. " Cut this out, South 
 ward ! " he commanded. " You ll be in no shape to go home for 
 another hour if you don t get together." 
 
 " Marry me," Southward begged. " I want you to marry me, 
 Lysander." 
 
 Lysander started as though he had been shot by one of South 
 ward s own remorseless bullets. He stiffened. Then again he 
 dropped what with another emotion back of it might have been 
 a laugh. " My God, I d forgotten clean," he muttered. " I ve got 
 to tell you something, Southward. It s a secret now. But every- 
 body ll know to-morrow. This day s doings has put it out of my 
 head completely. But I went over to Plymouth last night with 
 Pearl Wallis and we got married." 
 
 The sun was just setting when Southward came walking up the 
 North Lane to the house. As she entered the clearing in which 
 stood garden, orchard, and between them the big Drake mansion, 
 the west light was besieging the house. Southward stopped as 
 instantly as though somebody had called her name. She stood 
 for a moment, staring dully. 
 
 The snow had not entirely melted. It lay lightly over the roof 
 and cornices. It glittered under the urge of the light. It ren 
 dered more brilliant the peacock-green of the old doors and 
 blinds and it made more velvety the grey-white of the 
 old clapboards. The windows were all ablaze, as though liquid 
 fire were flooding from the inside out. It was very still. The box- 
 hedges were moveless under their frail fleecy coverlets. The 
 pointed firs, still whitely powdered on their shady sides, did not 
 stir. As Southward stared, a bird detached himself from the 
 wistaria vine and flew through the air, trailing a sEeaf of gay 
 notes. It was the only sound ; the air seemed to close over it. The 
 venerable house, beset both by spring and winter and beleaguered 
 by the sunset light, stood mute, the prey of all these influences. 
 Never before though had it been more dominatingly itself; 
 poignant and magnificent at once. 
 
 She made a brief explanation her worry about Charlotte of
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 403 
 
 her swift return from New York; assured herself of Charlotte s 
 improvement; helped Sue-Salome with the dishes; talked as usual 
 with her grandmother after dinner. At nine she said she was 
 tired. Lighting her one candle and ignoring their protests that 
 it would be too cold, she proceeded to the garret. 
 
 It was cold. Southward lighted a little kerosene stove, let it 
 burn for an hour. She piled extra blankets on her couch. Once 
 in bed, she sank into a stupor which rapidly became sleep. An 
 hour later she awoke with a start, lay tossing restlessly; got up. 
 She lighted her candle, and, holding it in her hand, hunted among 
 the clothes which she had thrown restlessly hither and thither. 
 Finally her eyes fixed on her handbag. She began to tremble but 
 she opened it and took out the revolver. She put this on the table, 
 while with fingers that grew more and more shaky she fumbled 
 at the bottom of her bag. Finally she drew out the four cartridges. 
 
 Picking the revolver up, she moved over to the desk. She pulled 
 down the slant top and removed a little drawer that stood between 
 the rows of pigeonholes. Back of this drawer appeared another 
 drawer. She removed that. In the depths of the new aperture 
 gleamed a little brass spring. She pressed it. The bottom of 
 the aperture flew open, revealing a second aperture. With a hand 
 which shook violently as the result of the shudders now tearing 
 her whole body, she deposited the revolver in the secret chamber 
 and, one by one the four cartridges. Then she closed the aperture, 
 put both the drawers back, closed the desk. 
 
 When she returned to bed she fell into a deep sleep. She slept 
 late into the next morning.
 
 CHAPTEK XXVH 
 
 A TELEGRAM came every day for a week to Hallowell. On the 
 third day arrived for Southward a brief note from John telling 
 in a guarded way what had happened immediately after the 
 shooting. Azile had shown remarkable presence of mind. She 
 telephoned John s I. W. W. physician-friend. She happened to 
 get him and he came immediately. In the meantime, with unex 
 pected coolness and common sense, she rendered first aid. She also 
 got Ripley within a few minutes; and John later. Ripley arrived 
 five minutes after the doctor and John came before the doctor 
 had left. In the doctor s presence, Azile said simply that Dwight 
 had had a quarrel with a friend. The friend shot him. To John 
 and Ripley she told the truth. An examination established at once 
 that Dwight was in no immediate danger. The doctor advised 
 keeping Dwight in the apartment. 
 
 Every alternate day John wrote Southward a long letter. These 
 letters were typewritten and unsigned. The envelopes were type 
 written. All these letters ended " Burn this " ; and Southward, 
 when she had read them three times, complied with the request. 
 Her only letter in reply answered a question as to Hester s where 
 abouts. She stated briefly that she had heard only once from 
 Hester. She had written that, feeling the need of change, she was 
 starting on a little trip to Washington, perhaps to Baltimore, and 
 possibly to Richmond. The trip had undoubtedly lengthened. At 
 the end of a week, John s letter contained a hand-written note. 
 It was in a scrawled pencil from Dwight. Without reading it, 
 Southward put it in an envelope, addressed it to Dwight; mailed 
 it immediately. These pencilled notes continued to come for an 
 interval; always they went back unread. 
 
 One afternoon Southward returned from a long walk, solitary 
 except for the dogs, as all her walks were nowadays. The sound 
 of voices came from her grandmother s room as she opened the 
 door. When she entered, Azile Morrow, very trim in a cheviot 
 suit, arose to meet her. 
 
 " How do you do 1 " Azile said. " I told your grandmother that 
 I d be the last person on earth you d expect to see." She added 
 with a swift brightness, " But mother wanted me to come down to 
 the Cape to dig up some old furniture for her. I ve been attending 
 
 404
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 405 
 
 to that. But I couldn t go away without seeing you. And then 
 there are a lot of things I want tc ask you. I m so glad that I 
 found you at home." 
 
 " I see," Southward showed a smooth hard composure. " I m 
 glad you came here immediately. You must stay with us as long 
 as you remain in Shayneford." 
 
 " Thank you," Azile answered. " I will take advantage of your 
 hospitality to-night. There are some things I must ask you at 
 once," she went on insistently, " or as soon as we have the oppor 
 tunity. I m afraid I ll forget." 
 
 " After dinner perhaps," Southward suggested civilly. She 
 turned to her grandmother. " I think we d better put Mrs. Morrow 
 in the southeast chamber." 
 
 " Yes," Mrs. Drake agreed, " that s what Charlotte and I de 
 cided. She s up there fixing it up and your grandfather s building 
 afire. Mis Morrow and Charlotte and I have been having a 
 beautiful talk. Charlotte told her all about the operation. She s 
 been telling me all about her mother s shop. Ain t she a smart 
 woman? How I wish my sister Sabry could have heard about 
 that. Sabry was a terrible capable critter. She always said she d 
 admire to have a store where she could sell them old antiques. 
 I don t like old things myself. I like stylish new furniture. I ve 
 been asking Mis Morrow about everybody Miss Hale and Mr. 
 Smith and Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Fearing, and especially Mr. 
 O Reilly. He was my favourite of all the gentlemen who came 
 down here last summer. I liked Mr. Cameron too. An awful 
 flirt, I should say though. Land, I ve seen a lot of men like that in 
 my young days. Always shining up to one or two or three girls 
 at once. I guess I d let everything he said come in one ear and 
 go out the other. Handsome as a picture though." 
 
 Southward listened with a chill deference to her grandmother s 
 opinions. Then she disappeared with a formal, " Excuse me," 
 returning in a few moments with " Mrs. Morrow, your room ia 
 all ready now. Let me take you to it." 
 
 Mrs. Morrow silently followed Southward through the dining- 
 room into the hall of the big main house and to the bedroom on the 
 first floor which was closest to the ell. 
 
 It was a big square room, nobly proportioned as were all 
 the rooms in Long Lanes. The woodwork was yellow with age, 
 but beautifully carved; the paper not colonial but early Victorian 
 of a simple pattern. The big canopied bed, the tall secretary, the 
 table and chairs were all, though many of them in need of 
 upholstery, of the best colonial period.
 
 406 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 As they came in, Mr. Drake straightened up to his abbreviated 
 full stature from the fireplace where high flames roared upwards 
 in curling oak-leaves of light. Charlotte turned from her work 
 at the bed to say: 
 
 " Now I ve put fresh sheets and fresh comfortables on the bed, 
 Mis Morrow, and I don t see how there can be the least possible 
 dampness. But I m going to keep the clothes turned back for an 
 hour or so jest to make sure. Then I m going to slip some hot- 
 water bottles in before you come to bed. And with the fire going, 
 I m sure you ll be as warm and dry as in New York." 
 
 " We ve never had any trouble with dampness in this room," 
 Mr. Drake explained. " And don t be frightened because you seem 
 so far away. Southward s room is right alongside of you. And 
 I m within easy call." 
 
 " You re both very kind," Azile said graciously. " And I m 
 sure I shall be neither cold, damp, nor frightened. What a 
 beautiful fireplace! Mother and I have never forgotten that per 
 sonally-conducted tour you gave us through this house. We still 
 remember it as one of the loveliest old New England places that 
 we have ever seen." 
 
 " We ll leave Mrs. Morrow for a little while now," Southward 
 suggested. " You ll find plenty of hot water on the stand here," 
 she added, examining the supplies that Charlotte had brought, 
 " and plenty of towels, I think. Take your time ; we won t have 
 dinner until half an hour at least." 
 
 She herded her grandfather and Charlotte through the door and 
 followed in their wake. 
 
 She did not, as was her wont ordinarily, when company came 
 to Long Lanes, supervise to the minutest detail the appointments 
 of the table and the serving of the dinner. When half an hour 
 later, in answer to the bell, Mrs. Morrow still in the cheviot 
 suit which she had worn in the train, but visibly combed, washed, 
 and powdered appeared in the dining-room, she sat down to a 
 meal which was, except for the food, the replica of every one that 
 Southward had eaten in the last month. The coloured cloth and 
 napkins, blue woven with red, the bone-handled knives and forks, 
 the anemic, ugly modern china, the bad overfaceted cut glass 
 it was all in Mrs. Drake s taste. Only in the food, one of Char 
 lotte s deliciously-cooked boiled dinners, was there any sense of 
 cheer. They talked about many things, Hester in particular. 
 The meal was a brief one, although rather longer than usual, and 
 after it was over Azile joined Southward in assisting Charlotte 
 with the dishes. After dinner, to Mrs. Drake s second batch of
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 407 
 
 questions, Azile answered that, as far as she knew, Hester kad 
 come back from her trip to Washington and was still living in 
 the little apartment. Edith Hale was taking care of her dying 
 aunt, somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey. Ripley Fearing and 
 John Smith were busy as usual in New York. Dwight Cameron 
 had left the city for a little vacation trip to his house in New 
 Hampshire. All this talk ran smoothly and Southward con 
 tributed her full complement. 
 
 Presently Southward arose. " If you don t mind, Mrs. Morrow," 
 she suggested, " we ll go into your room now. I can give you all 
 that information so much better where we can have a desk or table 
 and you can make notes." 
 
 In the southwest chamber, she placed more logs on the fire, 
 drew two winged chairs to the hearth, motioned Azile to one of 
 them, herself took the other. 
 
 " I hoped to get here much sooner than this," Azile began 
 without preliminaries. " But I had to stay in New York. We did 
 not dare hire a nurse for Dwight; so we took turns caring 
 for him, Ripley, John, and myself. He s all right now. There 
 was never any real danger, only a shoulder-wound. He rallied 
 wonderfully. But of course to a bunch of amateurs like us, it all 
 looked awfully serious for a while. We moved him into his own 
 rooms after a week. Luckily Hester did not come home during 
 that time, although we had an explanation all framed for her 
 about an accidental shooting. As it is, of course, she knows 
 nothing about the real situation. At the end of two weeks Dwight 
 went to his father. He writes that he s all right now, fit as a 
 fiddle, better than he s ever been." Azile stopped and waited. 
 
 " It s very good of you to tell me all this," Southward said 
 still with her studied civility. " I confess that I was relieved to 
 get the first reassuring news. I was perfectly well aware how 
 serious the situation was, I mean in regard to myself, if things 
 had turned out badly. But now that my own safety is assured, I 
 don t mind telling you that I am quite indifferent to the effect 
 on anybody else and particularly Mr. Cameron." 
 
 " Yes, I can understand that," Azile admitted. She leaned 
 forward; appeared to examine shoe buckles winking brilliantly in 
 the firelight. " Of course as the situation concerns you and him, 
 it is not my business. As it concerns me, it is. And so I m 
 going to take the liberty of meddling further in this matter. I 
 shouldn t call it meddling exactly, although you might. How 
 ever I hope you ll hear me out, for I d like very much to say what 
 I have to say."
 
 408 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 "I m very interested," Southward announced with a courtesy, 
 still distant and even more polished. "Pray go on. You may 
 believe if you say anything that I find offensive, I shall not 
 hesitate to let you know." 
 
 "Please do that," Azile said with gravity. "I prefer it." 
 
 Southward s only reply was to assume a listening attitude. 
 
 Azile unclasped her hands, leaned back. She fitted one elbow 
 into the arm-crotch of her chair, dropped her chin to her palm. 
 
 " Miss Drake, Dwight Cameron is not in love with me. He 
 never has been in love with me. I tried my best to infatuate 
 him because oh, for several reasons. I won t go into that now, 
 
 though. But that scene What you saw that morning in your 
 
 apartment was not so much the result of his weakness as of my 
 skill. I planned it all. I took him by surprise. I made him do 
 it. Do you understand ? " 
 
 " Considering everything," Southward answered briefly, " no." 
 
 " Well, you will some time," Azile flashed at her. " I m afraid 
 I ll have to go into it pretty deeply to make you understand and 
 I must make you understand before I leave this house. You and 
 I, Miss Drake, are both flirts. You know that, don t you? You 
 recognise it to be true of me. Do you admit that it s true of 
 yourself ? " 
 
 " Yes," Southward answered briefly again. 
 
 " That will help somewhat in clearing up the situation. I ve 
 been a desperate flirt all my life. I make no bones of it. I can t 
 help it. I was born that way. I have just as much the instinct 
 for personal conquest as a Napoleon for dynastic conquest. And 
 I ve made both an art and a science of flirtation. Coquetry and 
 seduction that s where I live. I ve flirted ever since I was 
 twelve. Marriage made no change in my tendencies and inclina 
 tions, although I thought it was going to. In fact, I flirted 
 harder the first two years of my marriage than I ve ever flirted 
 before or since. The truth of the matter is, it s a stimulant to 
 me. Women who lire all over the world the way I have, amidst 
 crowds of people, making new acquaintances all the time and 
 great numbers of them, always resort to stimulants of some kind, 
 smoking or drinking or drugs. I smoke of course, but it s not 
 a necessity with me. None of those other things interest me. My 
 stimulant is men." She paused. Then she added, "You under 
 stand what I mean I m not suggesting that I m a sexual pirate." 
 
 Southward sat immobile with that admirable stillness into which 
 at any moment of stress she could crystallise her restlessness. 
 But that dark predatory look which always indicated mental
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 409 
 
 unrest gloomed on her brow, seemed to burst through her smooth 
 skin and lie there, a visible dark stain. 
 
 " I hope you understand," she said coolly, " that though I admit 
 I m a flirt, I don t accuse myself of being the kind of flirt you re 
 describing now." 
 
 " Oh, I understand the difference between us," Azile declared 
 lightly. " But I think it s only a difference of kind not of 
 degree. Sometimes I think I m the worst of the two and some 
 times I think you are. However I m coming to your case later 
 on. I ll continue with mine. I suppose I should have gone on 
 the stage. I really have a marked ability in that direction. But 
 I m one of the very few women that you ll meet in a lifetime 
 who have never been stage-struck. If I had become an actress 
 though, it would have taken care of that histrionic impulse in me. 
 For my flirting has become now only a play-acting impulse. I ll 
 tell you my secret. And it s a curious thing that I do tell it. 
 For I have never before told it to any other woman. And I 
 suppose at this moment, I like you less well than any woman I 
 know." 
 
 Southward s expression did not change. " I confess to a rather 
 similar feeling as far as you are concerned." 
 
 Azile flushed; her composed brightness snapped ^or an instant. 
 " Voila! that gives me complete liberty. It s reached the point 
 with me now that I m so bored with everything that I can only 
 interest myself in the new personality which I construct for the 
 man with whom I happen to be flirting. In the beginning, I see 
 what he wants me to be and make myself it. Rather fascinating 
 too changing into half a dozen women in the course of a 
 year. As far as Dwight is concerned, this is what happened. 
 I had known him for about a year when you met him. Of 
 course he s an outrageous flirt, and he flirted with me. It was all 
 perfectly fair. He knew that I was flirting and I knew that he 
 was. In his case however, I decided to be a literary mentor it 
 all grew out of one talk in which, according to his engaging 
 custom, he took me into his confidence about the novel he was 
 then writing asked me to read what he had done begged for 
 criticism. I had never been a literary inspiration. It interested 
 me. I became one. I worked hard at the job of mentor. Curi 
 ously enough that fascinated me with him more than the flirting 
 did and sometime in the midst of it I made up my mind that I d 
 subjugate him entirely. That was just before he came to 
 Shayneford." 
 
 Azile stopped for a moment and ran her hand through her hair.
 
 410 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 The movement rumpled its rippled green-gold masses. And ap 
 parently subconsciously impelled, she patted them into place again. 
 
 " When I came here and found him in a fair way to falling in 
 love with you, I made up my mind that I must break that up. I 
 had had other rivals in the course of my life naturally, and al 
 though some of them were much more beautiful or attractive than 
 I, none were so resourceful and so audacious. And I have met some 
 wonderful sirens on the continent. Because of one quality I often 
 won unfairly my superb physical strength my greater powers 
 of physical endurance I mean when it came to such things as 
 walking and mountain-climbing and the like. Now you were an 
 added impetus. Because you were a beauty, much more beautiful 
 than I, with all my physical strength and perhaps more and 
 equally conscienceless. Oh, I recognised in you a foeman worthy 
 of my steel. I suppose I am admitting that I am a wicked woman 
 when I say that my resolution to conquer Dwight was much 
 strengthened by my perception that Dwight was half in love with 
 you and you with him." 
 
 Southward jarred out of her immobility. " We won t discuss 
 that aspect of the situation," she said in a voice dangerously 
 quiet. 
 
 "As you will." Azile arose and reached for her cigarette-case. 
 Returning to the fire, she offered Southward a cigarette. South 
 ward refused it with a quick head-shake. 
 
 " It piqued me awfully that I could not beat your game," Azile 
 went on, perfectly in command of herself and smiling through 
 the puffs of smoke that came spiralling from her nostrils. " Here 
 you were, a little inexperienced country-girl. You d had a limited 
 realm as a belle in this little God-forsaken New England hole. 
 Your conquests had been the usual run of country riff-raff that 
 one finds in a place like this. I thought I was going to beat you 
 so easily that the conquest would be a shameful one. And yet, 
 using every weapon in my armory against you, I could not 
 succeed." 
 
 She puffed in silence a moment. Southward might have been 
 a bronze statue for any movement she made. 
 
 " There s something," Azile went on analytically, " which I 
 recognised from the beginning that you have and I haven t. I 
 can beat you easily enough when it comes to the regular woman- 
 stuff coquetry, cajolery, seduction call it what you wish. But 
 you have something that I couldn t get not in a thousand years. 
 I call it power; but really power doesn t describe it. It s more 
 than that. There s something terrifying about it. It s the quality
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 411 
 
 in you that with all your terrible, irritating natural restlessness, 
 permits you to sit silent and moveless, like some awful over 
 powering, primitive evil god as you sit this moment for instance. 
 That s wonderful. That s extraordinary. I d love it in you if 
 you were a man. But I hate it in you as a woman. Nevertheless 
 I recognise it as strength. I envy you it. . But as I said before, 
 there s something terrible about it. It s the thing that drove you 
 to do what you did to Dwight. I couldn t have done that. God! 
 Shall I ever get that picture out of my mind ? " Her voice broke, 
 sank an octave, whispered. " When Dwight tottered back onto 
 
 the couch, dragging me with him His blood was on my arm 
 
 when I pulled myself away." 
 
 She stopped short and stared, through the cloud of smoke that 
 hung between them, at Southward. Southward did not move; the 
 smooth blackness of her expression did not quiver. 
 
 " Yes, you re made of iron and stone," Azile said as though in 
 comment to herself. " Now I m going to give you a little peep 
 behind the scenes. I m going to let you see all the stage-machinery 
 make-up everything. When you came to New York, I realised 
 that the positions would be reversed to a considerable degree. In 
 Shayneford I was in your territory. In New York you would be 
 in my bailiwick. In Shayneford, I was at a disadvantage. That 
 night you brought me up to your garret, I saw one of Dwight s 
 cigarette-stubs his initials were on it in the ash-tray. I knew 
 that he was seeing you there constantly. And of course I realised, 
 as well as anybody could, what a romantic setting that garret 
 was with its awful, amateur, jumbled picturesqueness. And 
 you, so young, beautiful, and original in this house of the dead. 
 I made up my mind I d show you a thing or two in New York. 
 I thought I could intimidate you actually frighten you off. That 
 first visit you paid me and all our first meetings were stage- 
 managed with that end in view. Do you remember for instance, 
 how I forgot to dismiss the taxi and kept it waiting at my door 
 for three hours ? I did that deliberately. Do you remember when 
 you sat with me while I dressed, the letters and telegrams and 
 telephone-calls, and flowers that came? I planned all that. Do 
 you remember the clothes I wore during that week-end visit, the 
 succession of negligees and evening gowns? I planned to have a 
 whole new, fresh outfit when you arrived. Do you remember the 
 expeditions I took you on the shopping-trip in which I bought 
 scores of useless and expensive things the theatre to which I 
 was an act late the luncheon over which I made such a fuss 
 with the head waiter the perpetual rout of people at my place
 
 412 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 the dinner at which you and Hester were the only people present 
 who were not celebrities? All that was planned with the idea of 
 dazzling and terrifying you. Most of the things I bought on 
 those shopping expeditions were returned. Some of the people 
 who came to my house were cultivated for the time being just 
 to make me seem a centre of attraction. Many of the celebrities 
 that came to that dinner I scarcely knew. I got one to come 
 with the promise of another, a third with the promise of the other 
 two and so on. Yes, it was all done to dazzle and terrify you. 
 But you didn t dazzle or terrify one atom. Hester did but not 
 you." 
 
 Azile threw her cigarette-end into the fire, lighted another. 
 
 " It was a good piece of work," Southward commented. " I 
 never suspected it at all." 
 
 " Because you were so sure of yourself," Azile explained. " I 
 couldn t shake that terrible self-assurance, that fearful horrible 
 something in you that, for want of a better name, I call power. 
 I suppose the reason I can tell you this now is because I don t 
 care any more. My feeling for Dwight vanished when I saw 
 your bullet strike him down. Of course it couldn t have been a 
 real feeling. I have never had any real feeling for anybody 
 except my mother and perhaps the baby I lost. I did want awfully 
 though to conquer Dwight and to break you. But after all, if 
 I m not a woman in any womanly sense, I am an artist. I recog 
 nise true art when I see it a masterpiece genuine feeling. 
 And of course I know, as I think in your heart you know 
 although you won t admit it that you re desperately in lore with 
 Dwight and he with you." 
 
 That predatory darkness in Southward s face became a dan 
 gerous blackness. 
 
 " You look as though you could murder me now," Azile com 
 mented. "Eh bien! It makes it easier for me to go on. Now 
 I m going to tell you what happened after you left New York. 
 I had been having, all during your stay there, a harder and harder 
 time with Dwight. When he spent a whole evening or better a 
 whole day at my place working, he was of course more or less 
 under my influence. But one evening with you and my instinct 
 always told me when he had been with you and he became a 
 different person, absent, preoccupied, always on the verge of 
 irritation. I realised perfectly how things were drifting, but I 
 felt powerless. Your trip to Shayneford looked to me as though 
 the gods were playing my game. But one day, while I was out, 
 Dwight came to our place and took all his manuscripts away. I
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 413 
 
 called him up immediately, but I could get nothing out of him 
 beyond a confused notion that he wanted to be absolutely alone 
 to thrash out a new idea he had in regard to the novel. He 
 didn t want to talk it over with anybody. He told me, when I 
 questioned him, that he was not working in his own rooms, but 
 he would not tell me where. However I met John somewhere 
 and he told me that Hester had gone away. I leaped to the 
 conclusion that she had given Dwight permission to write in your 
 apartment while she was gone. I decided then on a big and final 
 coup. I went there one morning. I did not ring the bell, but 
 waited until somebody was going in and followed him upstairs 
 when he opened the door. Dwight looked perfectly thunderstruck 
 at my appearance and I thought not especially pleased. He d been 
 writing early and late and he seemed tired. Well, the rest of it 
 is one of those scenes that one never describes. I don t know 
 whether you can imagine it or not, for although you re as much 
 of a flirt as I and I maintain quite as unscrupulous you are 
 a different type. I provoke infatuation. You compel it. Anyway 
 I ll admit on that occasion I broke every rule of what we call 
 maidenly conduct. A man has no chance against a woman in 
 those circumstances. Not if he s flesh and blood, which Dwight 
 assuredly is. I m going pretty far in my effort to play this game 
 straight when I tell you that Dwight didn t take me into his arms. 
 I threw myself there." 
 
 She paused and surveyed Southward with a frank openness. 
 Southward spoke first. 
 
 " I shall have to confess," she said politely, " that although 
 most entertaining as character-study, this utterly fails to interest 
 me from any personal point of view." 
 
 Azile smiled cynically, threw her cigarette into the fire. " All s 
 well that ends well," she pronounced. " And when I again assure 
 you that Dwight is perfectly well now, my duty damn the word 
 I haven t had any active connection with it for years ends." She 
 arose, stretched, sat down. " I m going abroad," she announced 
 affably. 
 
 For a courteous fifteen minutes or more, Southward took the 
 reins of conversation into her own hands. She talked briefly on 
 general subjects and at great length about any people in Shayne- 
 ford whom Azile remembered. At Azile s request she described 
 Charlotte s operation. Then she bade her guest a ceremonious 
 good night. 
 
 At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Morrow announced to the 
 family, as she had announced to Southward the night before,
 
 414 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 that she must take an early train. Mr. Drake drove her to the 
 station. As soon as she left the house, Southward disappeared 
 with the dogs in the direction of Long Pond. Five hours later 
 she returned, cold, hungry, exhausted, wet to the knees as though 
 she had walked through damp woods. 
 
 It was a long time before Long Lanes again saw a visitor from 
 New York.
 
 CHAPTEK XXVIII 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING her explicit statements to the janitor, Hester 
 did not leave her apartments, on the day of her long talk with 
 John, until towards evening. After he had gone, she methodically 
 brushed and combed her hair; did it apparently by accident in 
 her old and unbecoming way. Then she carefully prepared herself 
 a luncheon. But after she had spread it on the table, she seemed 
 suddenly to forget about it. She seated herself in a chair by the 
 window, fixed her eyes on the strip of sky above the red-tiled 
 roof 
 
 About dusk, she put on her coat and hat. When, about twenty 
 minutes later, she pressed Josie Caldwell s bell, using the signal- 
 ring which that lady demanded of her, the door snapped ajar 
 immediately. 
 
 Upstairs, the door was open, although Josie was not in sight. 
 
 " Glad to see you," called Josie s voice. " Come right on in. At 
 the same old business of making up. How are you ? " 
 
 " I never did feel better," Hester declared. " New York cer 
 tainly agrees with me. How are you, Josie ? " 
 
 " Oh, fair to middling. Sit down if you re not tired of watch 
 ing this performance." 
 
 Hester took the little chair beside the dresser. She did not 
 speak. Josie was now busying herself with her eyes, a detail of 
 her swift, easy accustomed progress that alone seemed to call for 
 concentrated quiet. She too did not speak for an interval. The 
 silence grew heavy. As though struck by it suddenly, Josie 
 stopped, black pencil in hand, met Hester s eyes in the mirror. 
 
 " What is it, Hester ? " she demanded. 
 
 " Nothing," Hester answered easily. " I m quiet because it 
 always interests me so to watch you." 
 
 She continued to keep silence and she continued to watch. By 
 now, she had seen this process many times but, to-day, it was as 
 though her interest were new and avid. Once she leaned over 
 and, one by one, lifted the little bottles and boxes; studied their 
 labels. 
 
 " How did you learn to do it, Josie ? " she asked. 
 
 " Oh, first, I just experimented, the way everybody does. Then 
 
 415
 
 416 
 
 I picked up points from the other girls. Once I had a friend 
 who was on the stage and I used to watch her. I m pretty clever 
 at it now. I could make you up swell. Of course I wouldn t use 
 the same things for you as for myself. You being blond, I d 
 make you as pink and white as possible. Say, how d you like me 
 to try it ? " 
 
 " I d love it," Hester answered. " Now? " 
 
 " Sure. Sit right down." 
 
 Josie arose and Hester took her place. 
 
 First Josie brushed back Hester s hair; wadded the locks that 
 ordinarily hung loose about her forehead into a big weft on the top 
 of her head. Then she covered her face with a toilet cream, 
 massaged it; repeated one by one all the processes which had so 
 entertained Hester. Hester did not once remove her eyes from 
 the mirror. She watched, not breathlessly but with something 
 more tense than breathlessness, the growth of that new Hestei 
 in the glass. When Josie finished, there stared back at her a 
 doll-like replica of her own face, very pink in the cheeks but 
 very white elsewhere, except where eyes, normally grey-blue, now 
 a mysterious dark blue, sparkled from caverns of shadow. Nos 
 trils had turned a shell-pink, ear-lobes a deep rose, lips a moist 
 crimson, and all showed the smoothness of a marvellously fine 
 porcelain that has been baked and painted and fired. Josie took 
 down Hester s hair. She did not rebraid it but she recoiled it 
 in a more becoming fashion. She removed the hairpin from the 
 skein of straying wefts; combed these out fluffily; drew them in 
 waves on Hester s forehead; caught them tautly there with in 
 visible hairpins. 
 
 " My word, Hester, you look a swell ! " she said, standing off 
 and surveying her own work. " All you need is a pair of earrings, 
 long ones to be a perfect " 
 
 " Josie," Hester met Josie s admiring and amused eyes in the 
 glass. " How do you address them ? " 
 
 " Oh," Josie answered easily, " Hello, Kid, or < Hello, Blondie, 
 or Anything doing to-night, Kid?" 
 
 "And do they always answer?" 
 
 " Not on your tintype ! Most of them pay no attention what 
 ever. Some you have to follow up and others just come right 
 along like lambs." 
 
 " You don t bring them here ? " Hester asked. 
 
 " I don t. Violet does. I don t want to take chances with the 
 tenement-house law." 
 
 Hester s head dropped. Involuntarily her hands went up to
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 417 
 
 her eyes. They stopped midway in air as though she were afraid 
 of smudging the doll-face that looked at her from the glass. 
 
 " Oh, Josie, Josie ! " she ^claimed. " How did it all happen ? 
 You know that I believe I haven t any business to ask you that 
 question. And I wouldn t ask you if you hadn t said that you d 
 tell me sometime. But I love you and I m sorry. Tell me now." 
 
 " Sure I ll tell you. I don t mind telling you, Hester. It s a 
 long time now; and I ve often thought I d like you to understand 
 how it happened. I know there used to be a whole mess of talk 
 floating around about me when I lived in Shayneford. But that 
 wasn t true. I was a good girl then. I don t mean to say that 
 I didn t do a lot of things that girls shouldn t, but nobody had 
 any license to knock me in those days. And when I first came 
 to New York I was a good girl. I didn t come here with a man 
 as everybody said in Shayneford. I came alone and I came 
 because I couldn t stand the rotten dulness of that little town. I 
 had too much pep in me to stay. That was my trouble pep. 
 I got a job in a department-store first." 
 
 Josie half rose, made as though to throw off her kimono; appar 
 ently thought better of it. She sat down again and gave herself 
 completely to her narrative. 
 
 " I met a man no matter how. He was in a broker s office 
 downtown. He was the most elegant man I had ever known ; 
 handsome, good clothes, and a spender; and knew this town from 
 A to Z. I was crazy about him. If I was some girls, I d say 
 it was a case of seduction, but it wasn t. I was just as willing 
 as he was and more. And what happened needn t have hap 
 pened at all; for I was over seven and knew the ropes. But I 
 got the idea that he d marry me if I put him in a situation where 
 he d ought to. And he would of. So I laid for him. But just 
 after I got that way, he came down with typhoid. He was 
 recovering from that all right when he got appendicitis. And 
 by God, he died in three days he died. I d been putting off doing 
 anything because I knew he d marry me when he got well. When 
 he died well, for a week or two I don t know what I did. And 
 then it was too late for me to run any risks. At first I thought 
 I d go to his folks and put up a holler. They had money and 
 I thought it was up to them to take care of me. But what was 
 the use? They wouldn t of believed me. But the thing that kept 
 me from that was thinking of him. He loved his mother dearly 
 used to talk a lot about her to me. And I didn t want to make 
 her unhappy. So I didn t let them know anything about it. I 
 just stayed on here in New York and put it through. He d given
 
 418 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 me some jewelry and I had a little money. I hocked the ice. 
 But when I came out of the hospital, there was damn little left. 
 Then there was the kid to support. I thought this was the easiest 
 way out. Maybe there was some other way but I didn t know it 
 then ; and I don t know it now. Anyway, I tried it and I took 
 to it like a duck to water. Of course I ain t in this business 
 because I prefer it. Not that I m going to stand for anybody 
 looking down on me. But I ve put by and I m not always going 
 to stay with it. After a while, I m going out West to open a 
 boarding-house. Just the same, believe me, I d rather be what 
 I am than back in that department-store or a biscuit-shooter or 
 a chambermaid. Say," Josie s voice dropped to a note frankly 
 business-like, " if you ever hear in your travels of any good 
 opening for a boarding-house in a Western city, put me next, will 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes," Hester promised mechanically, " I will. Where is your 
 child, Josie?" 
 
 " I board him with a farmer s wife over on Long Island," Josie 
 answered briefly. 
 
 " Does she know ? " 
 
 "I never told her but I guess she suspects; for she soaks me 
 a little now and then. Not so much as she might though, and 
 that s why I stay with her." 
 
 Hester pondered, her chin in her hand, her blackened eyelashes 
 sweeping her pinkened cheek. " Poor Josie ! " she said. 
 
 " I don t want anybody s pity," Josie snapped. 
 
 Hester s lashes swept upwards. " I d like to see your boy, 
 Josie. Will you take me there sometime ? " 
 
 " You betchu." 
 
 " And, Josie, I d love to have him come to Shaynef ord some 
 time to stay with me. In the summer. When I m settled there 
 again. Would you like that ? " 
 
 " Sure. He s a nice kiddie, believe me. And the spit of his 
 father, which would make things easy there. Want to wash that 
 make-up off ? " 
 
 "No. If you ll lend me a veil, I think I ll wear it home. 
 There s a friend coming to call this evening. She s pretty straight- 
 laced and I m just going to let her walk in on me and find me 
 like this." 
 
 Hester put on her hat. Josie fumbled among the things in 
 the top drawer of the chiffonier; brought out a thick black veil. 
 She watched Hester adjust it with eyes suddenly become as hard 
 as pebbles from impassivity.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 419 
 
 " Good-bye," Hester said, " I must be going now. You ve been 
 awfully good to me, Josie. Oh, I ve been so glad to see you again, 
 and I understand it all now. It s so different from what every 
 body thought. I never shall worry about you again." 
 
 " You speak as if you were saying good-bye for good," Josie 
 charged her. 
 
 " No," Hester answered. " It does happen though that I m 
 * going off on a little trip, Josie. I ve never seen any other city 
 but New York and Boston and I do want to do a little travelling 
 before I go back to Shayneford. However I shall probably see 
 you again when I return to New York. I ll tell you all about 
 it then. Good-bye, Josie." She bent and kissed her. 
 
 " Good-bye, Hester," Josie said. She accompanied Hester to 
 the door. But she did not return immediately to her dressing. 
 Instead she stood for a moment in the centre of the room, thinking. 
 Then she made a sudden dash for the window of the front room, 
 pulled up the curtain and the sash; leaned half-way out. She 
 stared frantically first up, then down the street. Hester was not 
 in sight. A taxi three blocks off sped rapidly towards the dis 
 tance. 
 
 But Hester was not in that taxi. Instead she had gone into 
 the drug-store on the corner and made a variety of purchases 
 all of things that came in little high-coloured boxes and bottles. 
 
 The next morning early, she went to a department-store and 
 purchased the longest pair of cheap earrings there, a combination 
 of jet with rhinestones ; also she bought a black veil extravagantly 
 figured. Then she stayed the rest of the day indoors.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 WHEN Hester lighted the gas that evening, she pulled down 
 the shade of every window in the apartment. In her bedroom, 
 she lighted two gas-jets. She opened the bundle of purchases that 
 she had made the night before; spread out on her dresser all the 
 little boxes and bottles; broke covers, removed stoppers. There 
 was a round box of a caked white powder, a square one of deep 
 pink rouge; a diamond-shaped one of pale pink nail-dust. One 
 bottle held a white liquid which, however frequently shaken, con 
 stantly divided into two parts, a thick white sediment below, a 
 thin white liquid above. A jar held a soft fine face cream. 
 There were eyebrow pencils, eyelash brushes, a lip-stick, a rabbit s 
 foot, a powder-pad. There was a bottle of perfumery. 
 
 Hester took off the light house-gown which she had been wearing 
 all day. She removed the hairpins from the front of her hair, 
 swabbed the hair back with a brush, pegged it down with side- 
 combs, until all exposed, bare, unmitigated, her face dropped its 
 freckled oval pendent from a plane of gold. She painted over her 
 freckles a fair reproduction of the mask which Josie had put 
 there the day before. She did her hair very carefully in the way 
 Josie had done it, catching many little curving curling wisps 
 down on her forehead with invisible hairpins. Then she drew 
 on the new pale-yellow waist with the butter-coloured lace, 
 the new reseda-green skirt which Ellen Day had made; turned 
 back a little deeper the modest V at the neck. By means 
 of their tiny screws, she hung the jet-and-rhinestone earrings 
 on her ear-lobes. She put on the little reseda-green jacket. 
 She donned the black foliage-trimmed hat that Maud Morpeth 
 had fashioned for her; draped over it, so that it fell on both sides 
 of her face, the heavily-spotted new veil. She drew on long white 
 gloves. Last of all, and this after she had started for the door, 
 turning back hastily as one who forgets something, she poured 
 some perfumery from the untapped bottle into the V at her neck. 
 
 Early in April, it was a comparatively soft night. The city 
 had begun to flicker light; to flash colour; to rock with gaiety. 
 It had responded to the peremptory invitation of the spring with 
 what seemed more than its normal crowd. Hester, all the usual 
 
 420
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 421 
 
 hesitation gone from her gait, walked briskly north and east. She 
 stopped at the Grand Central Station; passed into its brilliant 
 glare. 
 
 She went immediately to the huge main room; stood for an 
 instant under the painted azure, star-specked firmament, looking 
 this way and that over the yellow floor with its criss-crossing files 
 of figures; crossed to the side where trains were arriving. There 
 she stood examining keenly the incoming throngs, as one expecting 
 a friend. She did not glance at the women. The men she gave a 
 close scrutiny. Of some that examination was brief; it ended in 
 an instant ; of others it was longer. All kinds of men passed : little 
 and insignificant; short and fat; tall and lean; big and imposing; 
 mean, dirty, vacuous, lascivious, scholarly, well-bred, absorbed, 
 frigid. Here a smartly-dressed, clean-sharen, alert-looking 
 typical New Yorker held her gaze with his quick, sure move 
 ments. There a middle-aged man, florid, prematurely white, hand 
 some, caught her flickering attention. Again, it was a dashing 
 carriage, a debonnair face, a gay smile, a ringing laugh that pulled 
 her gaze this way and that. Some of the men, glancing in her 
 direction, darted at her a look that grew liquid with invitation. 
 And one, brushing close, muttered something inarticulate under 
 his breath. 
 
 Train-load after train-load poured through the gates; deployed 
 over the huge room, disappeared through various exits. Hundreds, 
 thousands added their transient numbers to the population of the 
 night-blooming metropolis. Many of these were obviously subur 
 banites, come for an evening s entertainment. Others carried 
 suitcases, valises, boxes, bags, bundles, travelling impedimenta, 
 elegant or plebeian, or frankly makeshift; or were assisted by red- 
 capped porters. Hester s scrutiny always grew more close as these 
 pilgrims passed. 
 
 Suddenly her eye fell on a man in the midst of such a pro 
 cession of burdened travellers. He had just come from the country 
 that was evident. He carried a cheap telescope suitcase. He 
 was a born countryman, that after a longer look was also evident. 
 Big, broad-shouldered, tanned, he wore a long rough shapeless 
 overcoat and a visor-cap. From under the razor-like rim of the 
 cap came curls of a deep brick red, reached in scallops on, his 
 forehead. In his shaven neck, however, his hair made a sym 
 metrical arc. His skin would undoubtedly have been that white 
 which goes with red hair if it had not been first burned and 
 then bronzed by the weather. A porter reached for his bag 
 and he said his refusing thanks with the ready smile of one who
 
 422 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 is grateful for a courtesy. His teeth were like milk and that 
 smile flashed a soft pleasing ripple of white across the hard, 
 brown surface of his face. His clear, cool, country gaze which 
 had begun, as it penetrated the enormous station, to show a sense 
 of its overpowering bigness and noise, came to Hester, lingered 
 on her for a shy and respectful interval; went again to the huge 
 spaces that confronted him. He passed. 
 
 Hester s eyes had riveted on him. Now they followed him. Her 
 figure grew tense. He was disappearing into a crowd. Suddenly 
 she broke into a dash, hurried to his side. 
 
 " I ve been waiting a long time here for you," she murmured 
 in his ear. 
 
 When Hester returned to her apartment the next day, she wrote 
 three letters. 
 
 To her mother, she said: 
 
 " I m starting off for a week or ten days trip to Washington 
 and if my money holds out I may go on to Baltimore and Rich 
 mond. It s a little lonesome here without Southward and as I 
 have always wanted to see those cities, it seems to me that now 
 is a good time to do it. It won t cost you any more because I 
 haven t used all my own money yet. I don t know exactly where 
 I ll be but you d better send your letters General Delivery, Wash 
 ington, until I give you further particulars. If anybody should 
 ask my address, don t give it. Say that my movements are so 
 uncertain that you can t tell anything about them. The fact is 
 I don t want to have to write any letters." 
 
 To Southward, she wrote substantially the same thing, omitting 
 any address. 
 
 To John, she wrote, "I want to be alone where I won t hare 
 to talk with anybody and can think things out. So I m going 
 away for a little while. I ll write when I come back." She omitted 
 the address from this also. 
 
 Then she packed her trunk and sent it off. 
 
 On the way to the station she ran into Dwight. " Whither 
 away so early in the morning, fair maid ? " he inquired blithely. 
 " And why in such glad raiment clad ? " 
 
 " I m going off for a little visit," Hester answered, looking him 
 steadily in the eye. 
 
 " My word, you certainly look blooming ! If it weren t Hester 
 the Daughter of the Puritans, I would say that you had a regular 
 actorine make-up on under that veil. How long are you going 
 to stay?"
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 423 
 
 "A week perhaps." 
 
 " Southward saying anything definite about her return in her 
 letters to you ? " Dwight asked, a little stress on the word, you. 
 
 " No. She said about three weeks when she left and she hasn t 
 changed her plans yet. I expect I ll be back before she is. I wrote 
 her so last night. I thought this would be a good opportunity 
 while Southward was away to make some little visits that I ve 
 got to get done, before I go home. The apartment looked quite 
 sad when I left it." 
 
 " Oh, say I m glad you spoke of that. Do you mind my using 
 your place to write in while you re gone? I promise to keep it 
 as neat as possible." 
 
 " Of course, Dwight," Hester answered readily. " Use it all 
 you want. Here are the two keys this one s the outer door, this 
 the inner." 
 
 " Gee, that ll be great," Dwight said. " I m not writing at 
 Azile s any more. It was getting to be too much of an imposition 
 as busy as they are up there. Well, so long, Hester. Hope you 
 have a good time. See you when you get back."
 
 CHAPTEK XXX 
 
 IT was not a week but a month later when Hester returned to 
 her apartment. She found a note from Dwight which dated back 
 a week. 
 
 " Thank you for your hospitality, Hester," it said. " I ve got 
 along rippingly here and now I m off to New Hampshire to stay 
 with dad for a while. I find I m a little seedy. Too much dissipa 
 tion, I suppose. The people in the office have been very good 
 about giving me a lay-off. Hope to see you soon, if not here, 
 perhaps in Shayneford." 
 
 There was also a brief letter from Southward saying that she 
 was not coming back to New York and asking Hester, as soon 
 as she returned from her trip, to pack up the rest of her things 
 and send them to Long Lanes. Hester did not do this immedi 
 ately. She did not even unpack her own trunk. But from the 
 top tray she took the letters, which had come to her regularly 
 during her absence, from John. She read these three times from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 The first letter said among other things, " You were quite right 
 about Edith only it s more horrible than we guessed. When I 
 came to hunt her up in Raleigh, I found her in a little frame 
 two-story house, no aunt there. There never had been any aunt. 
 The aunt was her excuse to get off alone. However, to begin at 
 the beginning, I had a show-down with Rena, that afternoon. I 
 went straight to her from your place. As you guessed, she had 
 begun to suspect but was not quite certain. She said she had 
 made up her mind to talk it over with you, was coming the next 
 day to your apartment. I took Rena with me and together we 
 faced and accused Edith. At first, she denied it; then broke 
 down and told the whole story. It s ghastly, but that will have 
 to wait; I can t tell it now. I ve engaged a house for Edith in 
 Morriston. Such a home, all jigsaw and wooden lace. When you 
 consider Edith s tastes however, I was in a hurry and it had to 
 do. Rena will stay there with her. It s going to be a long fight, 
 but we ve got to win and we re going to win. Just as soon as 
 Edith feels like seeing anybody, of course she ll want to see you. 
 She doesn t know that you know. It didn t occur to her that you 
 
 424
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 425 
 
 might know, and so we haven t had to lie. It s going to be hell 
 at first, gradually reducing her supplies. Of course she ll hate 
 us both and mistrust everybody. Rena is the very quintessence 
 of love, devotion, and tact. I shall commute every night for a 
 while. I forgot to say that Mrs. Pelham is chaperoning the 
 arrangement. Of course we had to take her into our confidence. 
 She was not so surprised as we expected. She said that her intui 
 tion told her that something was wrong with Edith, something 
 more serious than a passing illness. She had never thought of 
 drugs though. I m coming to see you as soon as I can. Don t 
 forget, Hester, that I love you, love you, love you love you as 
 I never loved before and will never love again. Our talk the 
 other day was but the beginning of many talks. We ve got to 
 work out this situation together until the way lies clear before us. 
 You don t know, you never will know whatever happens what 
 happiness my love for you and your love for me means to me 
 and will always mean to me." 
 
 The other letters gave bulletins of Edith s condition, most of 
 them far from optimistic. Somewhere in them always came a 
 variant of this plea. " For God s sake, write to me when you 
 can. Let me know where you are and what you re doing and 
 when I can see you. I m living under a fearful strain, Hester. 
 Don t make it harder." 
 
 Strange expressions sped across Hester s face as she read. 
 Sometimes it lighted with a brilliancy that would perhaps have 
 surprised John. Again it dulled to an apathy that even her 
 Shayneford days had never seen. 
 
 When she had finished reading the letters the third time, she 
 destroyed them. Then she wrote John. " I m back in New York, 
 but I m on the wing. I still don t want to see anybody. I think 
 I ve worked everything out. Do you remember how often I ve 
 complained to you that I ve never broken through into life? I 
 think I ve done that at last but I m not sure. I ll see you when 
 I can and in the meantime I ll write when I m sure." 
 
 That afternoon she ransacked the East Side between Four 
 teenth and Twenty-third Streets for a boarding-house. Finding 
 one, she gave notice by telephone that she was leaving the 
 apartment. The next morning she moved into her new quarters. 
 She left no address with the janitor. 
 
 A week drifted by. 
 
 Superficially her days were long purposeless ones. In the 
 morning, she stayed in bed as late as was possible and yet get 
 into the dining-room for breakfast. Until luncheon, she busied
 
 426 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 herself in her room, dusting, mending, darning. The afternoons 
 were given to long aimless tramps. From river to river, across on 
 one street, back on another; up the more remote Avenues as far 
 as her strength would bear her; then back by surface-car, or 
 elevated, or subway. Across bridges and into strange new regions 
 which her eyes always examined and of which her absent mind 
 it was quite evident took no note. Over the bay in ferries, study 
 ing with an appearance of interest that was a mere mask, stretches 
 of river flecked with water-craft. In the evenings, and they were 
 long ones, lasting till midnight, she wrote letters to her mother, 
 full of detailed descriptions of a purely imaginary gaiety, in 
 which John s name constantly recurred; read herself to sleep; or 
 went to bed to lie for hours, staring open-eyed at the ceiling. 
 Yet under all this lassitude and purposelessness, existed some 
 thing tense, an expectancy that foamed with feverish anxiety as 
 one, two, three, four days went by. Another week and she was an 
 embodied restlessness, torn by conflicting impulses. 
 
 In the meantime, spring had come to stay. One by one she had 
 redeemed those promises dropped so carelessly two months ago. 
 The winter sky had melted and dropped to the earth in a hundred 
 spring showers, revealing behind it a summer sky of the tenderest 
 blue. Flowering trees and shrubs had changed from wind-blown 
 gauzes of white or pink to sturdy leafhood. The early spring 
 flowers had come and gone. The grass-plots were speckled with 
 later ones. The rivers ran smooth and blue between their filthy 
 banks. Some singing birds visited Manhattan; and a few stayed. 
 
 All the usual signs of an accepted spring on the part of 
 the human plant manifested themselves with equal inevitability. 
 The streets blossomed with new clothes, high-coloured and frailly 
 beautiful. The crowd on the Avenue thickened. Visitors grew 
 more numerous every day. Buyers from the West and South 
 appeared. The air began to fill with the annual feminist ferment. 
 Suffrage flags flashed everywhere. The words VOTES FOR 
 WOMEN in black on yellow backgrounds or against stripes of 
 green and purple and white began to pervade the Manhattan 
 world. Vivid suffrage posters flared from windows. Suffragists 
 beribboned, berosetted, becockaded, bepinned held meetings on 
 street corners; sold copies of the yellow Equal Franchise; solicited 
 names for the parade; made speeches in halls and vaudeville- 
 houses, between the acts at the drama; invaded cafes, restaurants, 
 foyers of theatres, and lobbies of hotels. 
 
 One afternoon Hester started to walk as usual. But although 
 her air of restless waiting and of nervous anxiety stayed with
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 427 
 
 her, she moved briskly as one who has an object. A little way 
 up an avenue, she turned into a side street. Midway in the block 
 was a house bearing a physician s sign. She rang the bell. 
 
 When she came out, the look of waiting and of anxiety, all the 
 restlessness and nervousness, had gone. She was quiet. But she 
 walked no longer with her head down, as one who does not care 
 where she is going; but with her eyes up and boring straight 
 ahead, as one who sees a vision at the end of a long tunnel. In 
 voluntarily she had turned towards Fifth Avenue. And now a 
 bugle-call brought her eyes to the earth. Just ahead, forming a 
 human barrier across the vacant sunlit side street, was a crowd 
 of people. As though welcoming this diversion, Hester threw her 
 self against that barrier, wormed her way through the mass. 
 People pushed her and pulled her; stared at her; commented in 
 audible and unmeasured terms on her relentless persistence. It 
 was quite evident that she heard none of this. She found herself 
 presently in the front row standing beside a policeman. Across 
 the street stretched another massed body of spectators. Music 
 sounded. 
 
 A parade was coming up the street. 
 
 A company of mounted police headed this parade. Behind the 
 parade came a band playing " The Marseillaise." Behind the band 
 walked alone a tall beautiful young woman in white, carrying a big 
 yellow suffrage flag. Behind her, on a white horse, rode another 
 woman, young also, beautiful and in white, carrying a big Ameri 
 can flag. Behind her came many women on horseback. Behind 
 the horsewomen came women on foot. More women and more 
 women and more women, pouring up from Washington Square. 
 Women and women and women, making straight for a goal under 
 the distant shadowy bank of the Park trees. Eight abreast they 
 marched, and in the middle of the street. On both sides of them, 
 planes of asphalt, glassy as mica, stretched utterly bare to the 
 curbs. As far as the eye could see those glassy planes were lined 
 with dense black-and-white, yellow-specked crowds that ran 
 smoothly over sidewalks, up steps; invaded windows; covered 
 roofs like a heavy human fungus. As far as the eye could see, 
 those glassy planes were separated by the stream of striding 
 women, bearing a thick forest of banners that flaunted every 
 color of the rainbow like a moving flower-bed. Here and there, 
 first at the right, then at the left, a marshal, white-clad, held the 
 line in order and in step. Here and there, first at the left and 
 then at the right, a policeman on horseback movelessly surveyed 
 the scene. More women and more women and more women, still
 
 428 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 pouring up the Avenue from Washington Square. Women and 
 women and women, still marching towards that goal under the 
 shadowy Park trees. All kinds of women. Women of the arts, 
 the professions, the trades, the home. They waved all kinds of 
 flags. They bore all kinds of mottoes. They wore all kinds of 
 clothes. Delegations from foreign countries showed the brilliant 
 colors of peasant costumes. Delegations of college students, in 
 caps and gowns, made black-and-white notes in this futuristic 
 welter. Carriages and motors bore wrinkled, white-haired old 
 ladies, wearing yellow badges, whose childhood had seen the in 
 ception of this movement. Mrs. Edgerley carrying a yellow flag, 
 carne in a carriage alone little, still, solemn, her spirit pouring 
 in white fire through her tiny tired face. Young mothers pushed 
 perambulators, wound in yellow, holding babies who would per 
 haps see the fruition of this movement. Mrs. Fanshawe wheeled 
 the twins, big-eyed, apple-cheeked, and smiling from under little 
 yellow caps. And more women and more women and more 
 women, still pouring up from Washington Square. Women and 
 women and women, still striding towards that goal under the 
 shadowy Park trees. Then came whole families marching to 
 gether. Then came the men, hundreds strong. Then came the 
 socialists, men and women, hundreds strong. And then more of the 
 striding women. Always by eights. Marching when they could 
 hear the music with grace and precision. Marching when they 
 could not hear it, raggedly and out of step. Old women and 
 young women. Big women and little women. Fat women and 
 thin women. Pretty women and ugly women. Well-dressed 
 women and shabby women. White women and black women. 
 Nondescript women and distinguished women. Self-conscious 
 women and unembarrassed women. Frank, free, fine women. 
 Tired, dull, sodden women. Inspired women. Hopeless women. 
 Gay, gallant women. Dry, flavourless women. More women and 
 more women and mere women. Pouring up from Washington 
 Square as though all the women in the world had gathered 
 there. Women and women and women. Striding towards that 
 goal under the shadowy Park trees as though everything that 
 Woman desired awaited them there. 
 
 Hester reached the Avenue at three o clock that Saturday after 
 noon of early May and she stood there until eight, watching. 
 She did not speak once. But from marchers came so often a 
 variation of the following dialogue that it is strange it did not 
 penetrate even her absorption.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 429 
 
 "Did you notice that tall blond girl that we passed on the 
 right? The tears were just streaming down her face." 
 
 " Yes. But if she s so interested, I wonder she isn t marching." 
 
 " Perhaps she ll fall in." 
 
 But Hester did not fall in. 
 
 There came two more months of waiting in the little boarding- 
 house. A different waiting now. Hester began to busy herself. 
 She sewed in the morning. She took long walks in the afternoon, 
 but her walks were brisk because generally there was an object 
 at the end of them. As was inevitable she became better ac 
 quainted with the people in the boarding-house, but she carefully 
 avoided intimacy. She never went to any room but her own, and 
 her fellow-boarders never came to hers. Her mother s letters began 
 to change in tone. All along they had encouraged her to stay. 
 Now they began to suggest that she come home, suggested first; 
 then urged; then commanded. For a long time, Hester s answers 
 pleaded for just a few days more. Finally a letter came which 
 said, " This is the last money I shall send you." Hester did not 
 look surprised when she read it. She smiled a little. And that 
 afternoon she began to pack.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 SHE walked in on her mother the next night. Only one lamp 
 was lighted and Mrs. Crowell sat in the glow, knitting. She looked 
 very handsome, very majestic in one of the simple gowns, of 
 almost uniform plainness, which she habitually wore. 
 
 " Well," she exclaimed, " decided to come home at last did 
 you ? " Her tone was not ill-natured and she kissed her daughter. 
 " I thought I never was going to see you again. It s the second 
 of July, miss, and you ve been gone nine months. I m glad you re 
 back for the Fourth. Hungry ? " 
 
 " I had a late luncheon on the New York train, but not time 
 for anything more than a cup of coffee in the South Station. 
 If there s anything to eat " 
 
 They went into the kitchen together. Hester removed only her 
 hat. 
 
 " Aren t you going to take your coat off and stay awhile I " her 
 mother rallied her. 
 
 " I m going to stay," Hester said with a brief evanescent smile, 
 " but I won t take my coat off just yet. Somehow the house seems 
 a little cold to me. I ve got accustomed to steam heat, you see." 
 
 She sat down at the place which her mother spread for her. 
 Mrs. Crowell, talking all the time, brought food from the ice-box; 
 warmed up some of it ; made tea. " Lucky the fire hadn t gone 
 down," she said. " You ve grown a lot stouter," she added, looking 
 keenly at Hester for an instant. " I must say it s becoming. 
 You always were too thin, Hester." 
 
 " Yes, I ve gained some," Hester admitted. " What s that? Oh, 
 Tabby." She leaned down and scooped the cat off the floor, held 
 her in her arms, petting her. " You got rid of her last family, 
 didn t you?" 
 
 "Yes. I never thought I would though. I gave away the last 
 one yesterday. That s why she s so lonesome. Seems as if every 
 body in Shayneford now had one of Tabby s kittens. I m afraid 
 we ll have to drown some of the next litter." 
 
 tf Poor little Tabby ! " Hester mused softly. " To bring so many 
 babies into the world and then never really to enjoy any of them." 
 She smoothed the cat s head delicately between the ears. Tabby 
 responded with purrs of approval. 
 
 430
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 431 
 
 " Well, you ve had a fine time, Hester," her mother said when 
 they came from the faintly-lighted kitchen to the shadowy living- 
 room. She seated herself full in the light of the lamp; resumed 
 her knitting. Hester however chose a shadowy corner. Her 
 mother glanced at her from time to time. Hester was quiet but 
 she was very different from the girl who had last occupied that 
 chair. Her quiet was no longer supineness, indecision, lassitude. 
 It seemed rather the emanation of a big central force. Now when 
 she moved, it was with briskness, precision, determination. 
 
 " You re improved," her mother vouchsafed briefly. 
 
 " I m glad you think so, mother," Hester answered. " I feel 
 myself that I ve improved. In fact, I m a different woman, in 
 many ways. I ve got so much to tell you that I really don t know 
 where to begin. And in fact, I don t think I will begin now. If 
 you don t mind I m going to run over to see Southward for a 
 few minutes." 
 
 " Why, you ve just come home," her mother expostulated. 
 
 " I know. But I have special reasons. I ve got to give South 
 ward some messages as soon as possible. Somebody is sure to 
 call this evening. Plenty saw me at the station. I feel awfully 
 tired. I don t want to talk to anybody just yet but you. You 
 and Southward. But after I get home, I ll talk all night if you 
 want." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell looked dissatisfied. A question arose to her lips, 
 hovered there. She forced it back. " All right," she agreed with 
 an unaccustomed air of uncertainty, "be back as soon as you 
 can." 
 
 Hester strode swiftly through the soft summer night, in the 
 direction of Long Lanes. So quick was her gait, so motive-driven 
 and speed-fired that of the three people she passed on the road, 
 two did not recognise her. The third called out, " Is that you, 
 Hester Crowell? My land, I d never known you, if I hadn t 
 heard you were here. Where you steaming to ? " 
 
 Hester answered, " Hullo, Libbie. I m going to Southward s. 
 See you soon, I hope." She went on with unimpeded speed. 
 
 At Long Lanes, Mr. Drake opened the door for her, welcomed 
 her in his heartiest manner. Southward was in the garret, he 
 informed her. Hester stayed for a decent interval with Mrs. 
 Drake and Charlotte, answered the volleys of questions from the 
 former, listened with interest to Charlotte s ecstasies in regard to 
 her clearing sight. After a while, however, she took a candle, 
 sped up the stairs to the dimly-lighted garret. 
 
 Southward was lying on the chaise-longue) reading. As the
 
 432 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 light came up through the stair-opening, she raised herself with 
 a surprised expression. " Hail, Lady of Kingdoms ! " Hester 
 called. 
 
 Southward jumped to her feet. " Good heavens, Better ! Where 
 did you come from ? " 
 
 " New York," Hester answered, kissing her. 
 
 " Lord, Hetter, I m glad to see you. You re the one best bet in 
 a land of fakes. When did you get in ? " 
 
 " The seven train. Surprised mother. I came over here as soon 
 as I could get away." 
 
 " I suppose you re home for keeps now." 
 
 "No," Hester said. "It s about that* that I ve come over here. 
 I ve come to say good-bye. I m going away to-morrow. I don t 
 know how long I m going to stay or when I ll come back if I 
 ever do come back. And, Southward, here s where you must 
 remember our old compact. I don t want you to ask me where 
 I m going or why. I can t tell anybody and I don t want to lie 
 to you. Nobody knows not even mother yet. Things have hap 
 pened, terrible, beautiful. I can t tell you about them now. But 
 I shall tell you as soon as I can tell anybody. And probably I 
 shall never tell but one other person beside you." 
 
 Southward stared. "Let s sit down," she said abruptly. She 
 seated herself on the chaise-longue and Hester took the wing- 
 chair. " Of course I ll do anything you ask, Hetter. It all sounds 
 awfully mysterious. But I guess you know what you re doing. 
 And I don t care what it is as long as you re doing something. 
 You ve changed, Hetter even since I saw you. You re much 
 stouter. You re improved. New York did that, didn t it ? " 
 
 " Something did. You don t look as well as you did when you 
 left New York, Southward. What s the matter?" 
 
 " I expect Charlotte s operation dragged me down a little. It 
 was considerable responsibility to take. And there s been some 
 care since. She s getting along splendidly though." 
 
 " Yes, I could see that. Oh, I m so glad." 
 
 "This year has brought its changes, hasn t it?" Southward 
 commented sombrely, " changes for all of us. Charlotte you 
 me." 
 
 "And the strangest of all," Hester said, "is what it s done to 
 me. The restoration of Charlotte s sight seems meagre beside it. 
 I m a different woman. And my life henceforward will be utterly 
 changed. The old Hester is dead. How queer it all seems ! After 
 this evening I shall be gone. And I don t know when I ll see you 
 again."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 433 
 
 "I don t think we ll be separated long," Southward prophesied 
 with a sombre optimism. " We have many things in common 
 that will bring us together." 
 
 " Perhaps." Hester seemed to agree. 
 
 They talked of many things. Once Hester asked, " Is it true 
 what mother says about Lysander and Pearl ? " and Southward 
 answered, " Seems to be." 
 
 Southward asked careless questions about New York and their 
 friends there. She left none of them out. Hester answered them 
 as fully as she could. Only in regard to Edith s illness was she 
 evasive. She said simply that it looked like a complete nervous 
 breakdown. 
 
 "I ve thought that she was delicate, from the very beginning," 
 was Southward s unsuspecting comment on this. " I m awfully 
 sorry. I like Edith always have." 
 
 Hester s information in regard to Dwight was meagre. South 
 ward did not undeceive her as to the real cause of his absence 
 from New York. Of Azile, Hester had little to say beyond the 
 fact that she had sailed for Europe. Of Morena, she knew nothing. 
 
 Their leave-taking was simple and unprotracted. 
 
 " Good-bye, Southward," Hester said with dry eyes and a steady 
 voice, " I hope it will be soon." 
 
 " Good-bye, Hetter," Southward returned, " the sooner the 
 better." 
 
 For a moment, before she kissed Southward and disappeared 
 down the stairs, Hester stared about at the extraordinary jumble 
 of background, yellow, rose, cherry; old mahogany, old glass, 
 books, Chinese coats, unframed pictures, and plaster statuettes. 
 Perhaps this one spot of colour in her grey womanhood showed 
 a new aspect just as she left it. Perhaps she wanted to deepen 
 what memory of it she was carrying into the unknown. Perhaps 
 in the light of later experiences, terrific but more human, it took 
 on a strange appearance of futility. Perhaps merely a sense of 
 sorrow burned in her heart. Whatever it was, her mood found 
 no expression. 
 
 " Don t come downstairs with me, please, Southward," she 
 begged, " I d rather you wouldn t. I want to remember you here." 
 
 In another instant she was gone. 
 
 " Well," her mother greeted her return. " You were right about 
 the callers. There s been any God s quantity of them since you 
 left. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Tubman and Flora and Sue-Salome. 
 And all as full of questions as they could stick. I don t think 
 anything that s happened in the history of the town could have
 
 434 THE LADY OF, KINGDOMS 
 
 made so much talk as you and Southward going to New York 
 and setting up housekeeping there. And then you staying so long. 
 I don t know why it should except that Southward s the kind of 
 girl that people always gossip about. The scandal about her since 
 she s come back is more than a little. Of course Sarah Wallis 
 isn t making any talk these days. Not about anybody. But the 
 others say that Southward was come up with for the first time 
 in her life, that she tried her best to get Dwight Cameron but 
 that widow Mrs. Morrow cut her out. Is that true, Hester ? " 
 
 Sitting under the lamp still, Mrs. Crowell took up her knitting. 
 Apparently she had had an exciting session. Two pink dashes 
 stained the powdery whiteness of her old skin. Her grey eyes 
 glowed like black live coals. 
 
 " As far as I know, there s nothing in it, mother," Hester 
 answered steadily. " It s rather dark here," she said irrelevantly. 
 She arose and lighted the two other lamps. Returning she stood 
 in the centre of the room. " All the time Southward was there, 
 she and Mrs. Morrow were going everywhere together. Dwight 
 took them both about, took one, then the other, or together just 
 as it happened to come. And Southward went about with three 
 or four other men, the way she s always done. I would have told 
 them that talk was all nonsense." 
 
 Her mother still addressed herself to her knitting. Hester s 
 fingers unbuttoned her long cloak, drew it off. The tiny crash 
 of the buttons against the chair on which Hester deposited it 
 drew her mother s eyes up again. 
 
 " Well, it s about time you took off " The coal-black blaze 
 
 in her eyes flashed out. They seemed to freeze to ice. " What s 
 the matter with you ? " she asked in a terrible voice.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 "WHO is he? Who is the father? If you know? Or the 
 fathers if you don t know ? Tell me or I ll kill you ! " 
 
 The calm which Hester had presented to all the violence of 
 the preceding hour did not break now. " I will not tell you, 
 mother. I told you in the beginning that I would not tell you. 
 And I won t. I can t. Only one thing. It is not John Smith. 
 You know I have never lied to you. It is not John Smith. He 
 knows nothing about it. Possibly I can tell you about it some 
 time, but not now." 
 
 " Oh, my God I " her mother groaned. " And it was for this 
 that I was sending you all that money week after week! What 
 do you suppose I let you go to New York for? Do you think 
 it was just to give you a change? It wasn t that. You may be 
 sure it wasn t that. I sent you because I thought it was your 
 last chance to get a husband, like other girls. I ve been waiting 
 every week to hear that you were engaged. Every letter that 
 came I thought would have that news. My hands used to tremble 
 when I opened them. I hoped it was John Smith. But he was 
 clever enough to see what kind of girl you were. I don t blame 
 
 him. What man wants to marry a And now you ve come 
 
 back here to tell me that you re going to bring somebody s bastard 
 into the world. I might have known this was the way you d turn 
 out. I might hare known." 
 
 Her voice had risen to a scream and she beat the table with 
 her fists. Her long sharp nails had sunk so deep in the flesh of 
 her clenched hands that they lay in little pits that were like 
 yellow wax. 
 
 Hester did not speak. 
 
 " You re always been a disappointment to me from the begin 
 ning. My first child and such a homely one. I nearly died of 
 mortification, until Beatrice came. But she was beautiful, every 
 thing I thought my child ought to be. Beatrice never disap 
 pointed me. She was sweet where you were stupid, beautiful 
 where you were ugly, graceful where you were awkward. Every 
 body loved her. Nobody liked you. And she married and married 
 well and had a baby that was as beautiful as she was. And then, 
 
 485
 
 436 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 when I was the happiest woman in the world, death took her and 
 little Bee. Took her. Took her. And left you! What is there 
 in justice when she went and you were permitted to stay. You 
 you you a " 
 
 Mrs. Crowell s harangue trailed off into expletives that perhaps 
 her vocabulary had never recognised before. 
 
 Hester remained silent. Her cheeks, as though they reflected 
 the livid patches on her mother s face, had turned a violent purple- 
 pink. Her eyes had gone dark and brilliant at the same time. 
 But there was no sign of weakening in her face, only a tremendous 
 resolution, an intense watchfulness. 
 
 " What in the name of God did you do it for ? " her mother 
 raged on, her Toice rising to ragged heights, dropping to crazy 
 depths. " If you were tempted and fell, why didn t you get out 
 of it, without letting me know anything about it? Are you such 
 a fool as not to know that that s what women do ? " 
 
 "I didn t want to get out of it, mother." 
 
 " Why, you you Are you so lost to shame that you I 
 
 believe you re glad." 
 
 "I m sorry to hurt you, mother. This means terrible suffering 
 for you. But I am glad." 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " her mother groaned again. " Oh, my God, what 
 am I going to do ? How far along are you ? " 
 
 " Three months." 
 
 " My God ! My God ! " Mrs. Crowell beat her head on the 
 table. " Think of what Shaynef ord will say. They all hate you 
 and Southward. You ve always acted so superior. You know 
 what Southward is. I ll bet she s responsible for this, the little 
 slut!" 
 
 " Southward knows nothing about it, mother. And as for 
 Shayneford, they can know nothing about Southward but good, for 
 there is nothing to be known about her but good." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell stared at her daughter as though her agony had 
 sunk for a moment to a level so low as mere exasperation. Then 
 suddenly she pulled herself into a stony inflexibility. " I won t 
 have you in my house. You can stay where you please. But 
 out of here you go. I ve never associated with your kind of 
 woman before and I m not going to do it now. I won t let you 
 keep on here and make me the laughing-stock of this town, bring 
 ing some man s illegitimate brat into the world. You won t be 
 as lucky as Pearl or Gert Beebee even. You ll never marry. No 
 man will ever want you. No, out you go ! " 
 
 " I m going, mother," Hester said. " Of course I m going. I
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 437 
 
 had no intention of staying here when I came. I go to-morrow on 
 the earliest train. My plans are all made. They were made 
 down to the last detail before I came home. At first I didn t 
 think I d come home at all. I thought I d go out West without 
 letting you know where I was, until I got there. I even con 
 sidered disappearing without ever letting you know. But there 
 were objections to all those plans. The last was too cruel. And 
 the first was too difficult. It would be hard to keep up such a 
 deception for years and years. Besides, I ve got to change my 
 name. But my real reason was that I didn t think it was quite 
 fair to you not to tell you the whole truth. I really didn t want 
 to come here. It would have been much easier to go away without 
 doing so. But I thought I owed it to you." 
 
 Her mother glared. " Am I dreaming ? " she demanded fiercely 
 after a while. " Is it true that I m sitting here and you re sitting 
 there and you re saying those things that I hear you say? You re 
 as calm as though you were going to a picnic. You don t seem 
 to realise what you re doing. Are you crazy? That s it. You re 
 crazy." 
 
 " No, I m not crazy, mother. You know that. And I realise 
 exactly what I m doing. I ve had three months to think this 
 situation over. I admit I m calm. And I shall continue to be 
 calm. I ve wondered as I sat here if I were dreaming too. For all 
 my life, you have had the power to drive me nearly insane, not I, 
 you. And you ve exercised that power ruthlessly. But you can t 
 do that any more, mother. Many a night I ve spent hours and 
 hours praying to God to give me the beauty and charm and grace 
 and brilliancy that you wanted so much. Many a day I ve spent 
 hours and hours wishing I were dead. For I never could please 
 you, no matter how much I tried. And I tried with my whole 
 heart and soul. But I couldn t please you. And, oh, how I ve 
 sorrowed over that how I ve suffered 1 I shall carry the scars of 
 those agonies to my grave, no matter how long I live or how 
 happy my life may be. But now I don t care. I ve something 
 within me that makes me independent of you and of anything 
 that life can bring me. If my baby only lives a day, it will be 
 worth while. So, remember, mother, abuse is useless. You never 
 can hurt me again." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell s words blocked each other on her lips. "You 
 you ungrateful " She stumbled to silence. 
 
 Hester arose. " I ll pack to-night," she said. " They re coming 
 for me and the two trunks early to-morrow. I shan t see you again 
 because it will only upset you."
 
 438 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Be sure you ll not see me. I never want to lay eyes on you 
 again as long as I live," Mrs. Crowell averred. " Never as long as 
 I live." She repeated her phrase with a tragic solemnity. 
 
 " I think you never will see me again," Hester assured her. 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell turned away, but she did not speak. 
 
 " Good-bye, mother." 
 
 Her mother neither moved nor spoke. 
 
 Hester hesitated an instant, and it was the only hesitation that 
 had marked her conduct since her return. Then she went upstairs. 
 
 She dragged two big trunks down from the garret and pro 
 ceeded systematically with the business of packing. Most of her 
 belongings were in her own chamber but she made a dozen jour 
 neys downstairs, returning with her arms full. Only one other 
 sound manifested itself in the house, heavy footsteps pacing 
 back and forth in Mrs. Crowell s room. It was long after mid 
 night when Hester had finished. Then before undressing, she 
 wrote two letters. 
 
 One was to Hallowell, "You ll be surprised, dear Matthew, to 
 hear that I have at last exploded. When and where and how and 
 why I can t tell you. Perhaps I can some time. I hope so. I 
 thank you for all your kindnesses to me." 
 
 The second was to John, "I ve broken through into life," it 
 began without salutation of any sort. " I ve found the way. And 
 though I m terribly unhappy, I m terribly happy too. Perhaps 
 I ll let you know about it soon. I will if I can. All my love to 
 Edith. And for the present, good-bye." 
 
 After this she went to bed; slept deeply until her alarm clock 
 awoke her at six. Then she arose, bathed, dressed; drew on her 
 hat and veil, her long loose travelling cloak. With her hand on 
 the door, she stood an instant and surveyed her denuded room, 
 smiled a little, then closed the door. She proceeded through the 
 narrow upper hall on tiptoe, came to the head of the front stairs. 
 
 There she paused. 
 
 Below on the lower step, black-clad, small black travelling 
 satchel in one hand, Tabby s head protruding from a bag in the 
 other, sat her mother. She arose as Hester started down the 
 stairs. 
 
 " I hear the barge coming up the road now," she said. " I ve 
 been sitting here for an hour. I was afraid it would be late."
 
 BOOK FOUR
 
 BOOK FOUR 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SOUTHWARD fell into a kind of lethargy after Hester s departure. 
 For hours she lay in the hammock reading, or worked in the 
 garden, or, in rare fitful bursts of energy, dashed with the dogs on 
 one of her long walks. 
 
 " What s the matter with you, Southward ? " her grandmother 
 said more than once, " you don t seem to have any gumption. You 
 don t act like yourself." 
 
 " I guess I went about too much last winter in New York," was 
 Southward s unvarying explanation. " I don t feel much like doing 
 anything but getting out in the air." 
 
 " Why don t you go over to Oldtown ? I hate to have you go, 
 but I think the change would do you good. You always have such 
 a nice time over there." 
 
 " No, I don t want to go anywhere," was Southward s surprising 
 answer, " Shayneford looks pretty good to me. I m going to stay 
 right here." 
 
 As the summer came on and she worked more and more assidu 
 ously in the garden, her annual coat of tan manifested itself. It 
 gave her a meretricious effect of blooming health. But the rose 
 colour beneath was not so high as formerly. She was thinner 
 than usual and she continued not to gain flesh. That thinness 
 seemed to exaggerate the boyish quality in her face and figure. 
 And it proved, what any sculptor would at any time have seen, 
 that the bony structure of her body was admirably proportioned 
 and beautifully shaped. 
 
 Charlotte, who had progressed steadily until her vision was as 
 nearly normal as it ever would be, interested Southward now of 
 course as she had never interested her before. She listened with 
 the greatest sympathy to Charlotte s vague and inarticulate ex 
 pressions of the most concrete and vivid impressions; the differ 
 ence between the way people really looked and her own pre 
 conceived blind notions of them; her enjoyment of green fields, 
 bright flowers, sunset, and moonlight; the results of her long, 
 minute examination of Long Lanes and of various Shayneford 
 
 441
 
 442 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 households. Southward had always been the bright particular star 
 of Charlotte s dayless existence; now she was the sun of her new 
 world. She attached herself to Southward with the same fidelity 
 that the dogs showed. She followed her about; waited on her; 
 tried to anticipate her wishes. Often in an unconseious exercise 
 of her regained power, she stared dumbly for long periods into 
 Southward s face, as though trying to find there the answer to an 
 unformulated question. 
 
 For the most part though, Southward kept to the house. She 
 had no real intimacies in Shayneford and, now that Hester was 
 gone, she lived in the midst of a self-imposed outcastdom. She 
 went for regular intervals to borrow books of Matthew Hallowell. 
 Occasionally she called on Gert Beebee. 
 
 Gert was very happy. Welch was proud of his wife and prouder 
 still of his son. And indeed he might well be proud of that young 
 person. 
 
 " My goodness, Gert," Southward had said on her first return 
 from New York, " I never saw such a gigantic baby in my life. 
 What do you feed him on roast beef ? " 
 
 " That s what Buster says," Gert asserted proudly. " He says 
 he s going to be a champion heavyweight. I want you to come 
 over here, Southward, the next time Buster gets back. I ve told 
 him a lot about you. He wants to meet you." 
 
 Southward promised to do this readily enough; and in the 
 meantime she surveyed with a great deal of interest the improve 
 ments which Buster Welch s prosperity had effected. In the 
 biggest chamber, a huge brass bed had relegated to the attic Gert s 
 little old painted wooden one. A big modern dresser, its broad 
 top covered with glass, took the place of the beautiful inlaid 
 Sheraton piece which Mrs. Boardman had wiled away from her. 
 This was covered with a toilet-set, in a highly embossed and 
 elaborately monogrammed silver. The parlour showed a big 
 rug; new, shiny, and massive mahogany furniture; a tall lamp 
 which stood on the floor; one huge India-ink portrait with an 
 ornate gold frame of Buster Welch in ring costume ; and several 
 photographs, flashed at the ringside by newspaper photographers 
 one of the knock-out that gave him the championship and the 
 others presenting Welch as he shook hands with various antag 
 onists. In the corner cabinet was a display of worn and stained 
 boxing-gloves. Evidently Mr. Welch overrated his size, for in 
 every room was at least one chair built to accommodate a heavy 
 weight. The piazza, displayed two hammocks, held up by iron 
 chains, which would have sustained the weight of a giant.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 443 
 
 " Well, you certainly are prosperous-looking, Gert," Southward 
 commented with a faint hint of her old-time glimmer. 
 
 " Oh, yes," Qert agreed promptly. " I didn t know there was as 
 much money in the world as Buster makes. We re salting most of 
 it down though. We want the baby to have a college education. 
 And Buster says he d like to have a fruit orchard in California." 
 
 " Hope he gets it," Southward said. " How did the old cats 
 take it, Gert, when you and Mr. Welch got married ? " 
 
 " Oh, land, you ought to have been here. It was as good as a 
 circus. This town was like a hornet s nest. The things they 
 said ! Well, what they didn t suspect they made up. Of course 
 they d thought everybody was the father of that child but Buster. 
 Sarah Wallis of course she was the worst you know what she s 
 like. She beat it right up here as soon as she could get away 
 from her housework and asked me a million questions. But I 
 made short work of her. I guess she was sorry though ; for, three 
 weeks later, up she comes with a half-dozen towels that she d 
 embroidered with my initials handsome they were too. You 
 know what beautiful work she does. I keep them for best. I ll 
 show them to you. They re upstairs in the high-boy." 
 
 "Don t sell that old high-boy, Gert," Southward warned her. 
 " It s a good one and now you ve got a son, you want to save all 
 your family pieces to hand down to him." 
 
 " You bet I won t sell it," Gert vowed. " I m sorry I sold that 
 Mrs. Boardman my bureau. I didn t have to either, and I don t 
 know how she got round me. Yes, I do too. She told me a lot 
 of things I could get for Junior with the money and she even 
 offered to buy them for me in New York and send them on. Of 
 course like a fool, I fell for that. I wish I had it back now." 
 
 " I saw it in Mrs. Boardman s shop," Southward said. " It made 
 a stunning piece, all polished up." 
 
 In the course of the summer Southward met Buster Welch. 
 He proved to be all that the sporting-page predicted of him, a 
 big husky hulk of muscular flesh. His humorous remarks on his 
 own professional experiences were a regularly accepted feature of 
 sporting news. And after talking with him, Southward announced 
 to her family that she believed he really had said most of them. 
 He was a combination, apparently, of his Yankee mother s dry wit 
 and his Irish father s unctuous humour. It was perfectly obrious 
 that he liked Southward, whom he treated with a rast and pro 
 found respect. Southward displayed the interest in him that with 
 her always came to the surface for definite character and concrete 
 experience. They discussed his professional encounters with an
 
 444 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 acumen which Gert did not pretend to entertain. This was a 
 high light in Southward s strange summer. 
 
 The announcement of Pearl Manning s sudden marriage to 
 Lysander had made a sensation in Shayneford which entirely 
 blanketed the echoes of the gossip about Gert. Everybody asked 
 why the secrecy and why the haste. The reason soon became 
 apparent and the village talk, which spared nobody, spared at this 
 juncture neither Pearl nor her mother. Pearl kept much to her 
 self. But Mrs. Wallis made no change in her village activities. 
 There were black circles under her eyes but she held her head as 
 high as ever. If those who in the past had suffered by her 
 malicious talk were inclined to triumph and exult, they did it 
 secretly. When she appeared in village society, it was, however, 
 to plunge into a little interval of significant silence. The instant 
 Sue-Salome brought the official news of the marriage to Long 
 Lanes, Southward ordered a wedding-present from Boston; knives, 
 forks, spoons. She sent them by her grandfather to Pearl and the 
 next day she went to call. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon, a soft spring day. The Manning 
 house was a semi-modern one on the outskirts of the town. Parts 
 of its old-time structure had been refurbished by the addition of 
 a pair of modern bay-windows and a wide piazza. As Southward 
 came down the road, two figures, one that had been lying in the 
 hammock, the other sitting in a chair beside it, arose and vanished 
 in the house. When Southward rang the bell beside the modem 
 brown-grained, painted door which held a big rectangular plate of 
 frosted glass, one of those figures opened the door. It was Pearl. 
 
 Pearl wore a long loose robe of pink canton flannel, trimmed 
 at the neck and sleeves with lace. The high, patchy pink colour 
 which ordinarily characterised her had disappeared. She looked 
 leaden. The circles under her eyes were more like bruises than 
 shadows. 
 
 " How do you do, Pearl ? " Southward greeted her briskly. " I 
 was going by so I thought I d step in." 
 
 " It s very kind of you," Pearl answered civilly. " Come in." 
 
 She led the way into the front room, a little crowded with what 
 was apparently a combination of the old things Lysander had 
 inherited from his mother and the new things he had bought for 
 his wife. The old furniture was ugly, puffy, but comfortable; 
 the new shiny, glaring, and futile. " I was just going to write 
 you a note, thanking you for the silver. It is very handsome 
 indeed. It was kind of you to send it." She went to the door 
 and called, " Mother ! Mother ! It s Southward."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 445 
 
 Mrs. Wallis glided smoothly into the room. " How do you do, 
 Southward? How s everybody up at your house? Charlotte doing 
 as well as usual ? " 
 
 " Yes, everybody s all right up there," Southward answered. 
 " And Charlotte is doing wonderfully." 
 
 " It was awful kind of you, Southward, to do what you did 
 for Charlotte," Mrs. Wallis said, a faint tinge of warmth in her 
 lack-lustre tone. " I don t suppose anybody but you would have 
 had the courage to try it. But just see how fortunate it s turned 
 out. Charlotte s life has been made over, as you might say." 
 
 " It did take some courage," Southward replied. " More than 
 at the time I would admit to myself. Of course I don t think of 
 that now, when it s come out so well. But anybody would have 
 done what I did." 
 
 " I was just telling Southward, mother," Pearl struck in, " how 
 pleased Ly and I were with the silver." 
 
 " Yes, it is very handsome," Mrs. Wallis agreed. " And heavy ! 
 The prettiest pattern I ever saw. I suppose you ll be getting mar 
 ried yourself one of these days, Southward." 
 
 " Doesn t look much like it now," Southward confessed with 
 lightness, " does it ? No, I ll be the village old maid, I expect." 
 
 Southward stayed a civil half-hour, but it was an embarrassing 
 session. Conversation languished at intervals and then broke into 
 little spurts of laboured activity in which everybody talked at once. 
 
 When she left, Pearl said, " I m not making any calls these 
 days, Southward, but I m coming to see you as soon as I can." 
 
 Southward responded that she hoped she would. But Pearl did 
 not come to call. Lysander had vanished as completely from 
 Southward s horoscope as though he had left town. The only 
 news Southward received was what Charlotte or the Hatch sisters 
 brought her. Southward grew more and more into the habit of 
 confining her pedestrian activities to the woody neighbourhood 
 and to the lonely roads about Long Lanes. 
 
 June melted insensibly into July. The regular powdering of 
 summer people had begun to make a white fluffiness in the Shayne- 
 ford streets. Hester appeared for her brief visit and vanished 
 into the unknown. July lapsed into August. The town began to 
 sizzle with mid-summer activity. Picnics in the woods, picnics 
 on the beach, walking parties, strawberry festivals, hay-rack rides, 
 clambakes, concerts, bazaars, excursions to neighbouring towns 
 Southward entered into none of them. One day grew more like 
 the next as the weeks went by until, finally, her life fell into a 
 system : the same early hour for rising, the same morning hours for
 
 446 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 work in her garden and the swim afterwards, the same afternoon 
 hours for walking with the dogs; the same evening hours for 
 reading; the same late hour for going to bed. Nowadays she slept 
 permanently downstairs in a room of the main house. She had 
 not been to the garret since the night Hester said good-bye to 
 her there. 
 And then suddenly into this dull calm broke tragedy.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 EARLY one morning, Southward was awakened by her grand 
 father s voice. 
 
 " Southward ! Southward ! " he called in high cracked tones 
 that had a note, strangely querulous, of terror. " There s some 
 thing the matter with your grandmother. I can t wake her up." 
 
 Southward leaped out of bed and in her nightgown ran through 
 the hall, through the dining-room, into Mrs. Drake s chamber. 
 
 Her grandmother lay propped high among the pillows as usual. 
 But her head had turned to one side; it drooped. Her eyelids 
 were down, but only a little. She seemed to contemplate with a 
 fixed insistent inquisitiveness, that had a touch of something 
 sinister, a point where wall met floor. She was the colour of 
 marble face, neck, arms, and long-nailed hands that lay on the 
 spread all except the set immovable irises of her grey eyes and 
 the huge masses of her yellow hair. That hair, indeed, pulling 
 out from the braids in which it ended, into long tangles about the 
 brow, gave her a curious effect of maidenhood. 
 
 " Grandmother! Grandmother! " Southward called. " Oh, speak 
 to me! What is it? Oh, speak to me, grandmother! " 
 
 She drew apart the edges of the short shabby kimono which at 
 night Mrs. Drake wore over her nightgown, put her ear over her 
 heart. When she raised her face, it had a stricken look. 
 
 " Call Dr. Simpson on the telephone, grandfather. Quick ! 
 Quick ! Charlotte ! Charlotte ! " 
 
 Charlotte appeared witch-like in a plain cotton nightgown 
 which came, without trimming, close up to her scrawny throat 
 and close down on her flat wrists, her long heavy hair, black, 
 broken by great dashes of grey, hanging to her waist. 
 
 " Fill the hot-water bottle, Charlotte ! I ll get the whiskey." 
 
 Mr. Drake hobbled to the telephone. Charlotte sprang to the 
 stove. Southward rushed to the sideboard. But on her way back, 
 Southward seized a hand-glass from the bureau. She placed it at 
 Mrs. Drake s lips. The surface of the mirror remained undimmed. 
 
 Before the doctor arrived they had banked hot-water bags and 
 bottles about the marble figure; they had managed to pour 
 whiskey between the set teeth. But all three worked with an 
 appearance of growing despair rather than of hope. 
 
 447
 
 448 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Dr. Simpson drew a stethoscope from his bag. Southward, 
 without direction, opened the kimono. Dr. Simpson, first lifting 
 the half -opened eyelids, applied the receiver. He listened a full 
 half-minute, during which the only external sounds to distract his 
 intent listening for that little significant sound within were the 
 intense breathing of Southward and her grandfather, and a sup 
 pressed sob from Charlotte. He straightened up finally, faced 
 Nathaniel Drake, seemed to hesitate, and then shook his head. 
 
 " She s been dead three or four hours, Nat. It s too bad it came 
 like this. But I told you, you must be prepared for it any time. 
 She didn t suffer a particle went off between two breaths." 
 
 Charlotte burst into hysterical weeping. It was evident that 
 Mr. Drake had to make an effort not to join her. Southward 
 alone maintained complete command of herself. She grew white 
 though, and she kept both that pallor and that command during 
 the long, weary, dreary two days which preceded the funeral. Mr. 
 Drake proved in this emergency as helpless as most men in the 
 face of birth or death. Southward had to take complete charge 
 of the situation. Most of the neighbours offered help; among 
 them Mrs. Wallis, who came immediately. But she turned them 
 all politely away, except Sue-Salome and Libbie, who insisted on 
 taking turns in sitting up with the body. 
 
 The funeral was held at home, and for that purpose Southward 
 opened the big lower rooms in the main house. She and Charlotte 
 smothered the coffin in the flowers which the neighbours sent and 
 the prodigal blooms from her own garden. There was no sign 
 of the sinister black box, except as it managed to maintain its 
 shape through this welter of blossoms. Perhaps the news got 
 about that Long Lanes was for the first time in many years to 
 be opened. And possibly to some degree curiosity actuated a pro 
 portion of the attendance. At any rate, the lower rooms, the halls, 
 stairs, and doorway were filled with people, some of whom were 
 summer guests. Long Lanes presented a strange spectacle that 
 day, a curious contrast to its normal air, solitary and poignant, 
 of a beautiful high-bred decay. Both lanes leading to the house 
 were filled with motors and carriages. And the constant arrival 
 of groups of people, soberly clad, seemed to add an extra gorgeous- 
 ness to Southward s garden, blazing with every mad colour at 
 one side, and an extra gloom to the old orchard, submerged in 
 a perpetual chrysophrase twilight, on the other. 
 
 After the funeral, life closed over this gap in the family life; 
 it flowed on with the same unimpeded sluggishness. Charlotte 
 mourned so deeply that for a week or two Southward set herself
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 449 
 
 entirely to the business of consoling and entertaining her. But 
 as her efforts bore fruit in Charlotte s improved spirits, she herself 
 seemed to fall into a lassitude deeper than before. Mr. Drake, on 
 the other hand, became with every day more and more restless. 
 All his old-time pottering diversions in barn and house, over live 
 stock and vegetable garden, decaying orchard and encroaching 
 forest, seemed of no avail now. He wandered dismally from room 
 to room looking out on the prospect as though it were at the 
 same time quite new and unutterably dull. 
 
 " Land, how I miss Lorenza ! " he said. " Who d have thought 
 a woman bedridden like that would have made such a hole when 
 she left?" 
 
 And, indeed, as Southward observed many times to sympathising 
 callers, they had never quite realised how definite and necessary 
 a part of their family happiness was Mrs. Drake s uncomplaining 
 patience, her cheerful interest in everybody. 
 
 One night after his wife had been dead about a month, Mr. 
 Drake came into Southward s room just as she was getting ready 
 to go to bed. 
 
 " Southward," he said, " I think I ll go away for a while. I 
 miss Lora so I ain t no good to myself nor nobody. I haven t 
 got any sprawl left and no appetite at all. I feel fidgety all the 
 time. And I guess the ticket for me is to go off somewhere on 
 a voyage. I ve always said I d like to go into the Circle again. 
 I think I ll go out to Frisco for a look-see up Alaska way. And 
 perhaps I ll get a chance there. You wouldn t mind being left 
 here alone with Charlotte, would you, if I got Mannie Higgins 
 to come up and look after the animals? I ll leave enough money 
 in the bank for you to live on while I m gone." 
 
 " No, Cap n," Southward said. " I wouldn t mind it at all. I 
 think it will do you a lot of good to get off somewhere for a while. 
 I don t blame you at all for wanting to go into the Circle, and if 
 you had only made it the wilds of Africa, I d go with you. But 
 I ve made a vow never to live in a colder place than Shayneford. 
 Charlotte and I will get along all right. Only you must remember 
 one thing. Put a card in among your papers saying that if you 
 fall ill anywhere, I m to be sent for at once. You promise me 
 that?" 
 
 " Yes, I promise." Mr. Drake was obviously relieved that his 
 plans were receiving so little opposition. 
 
 His spirits continued to rise during his ten days of preparation; 
 and when he left he was in a real fever of impatience and antici 
 pation.
 
 450 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " Lord, you d think this was my first voyage," he growled again 
 and again in gruff deprecation of his own impatience. 
 
 After he had gone, Southward seemed more quiet than before. 
 But one day she came down to breakfast with something new in 
 her aspect. 
 
 " Say, Charlotte," she said, " there s one thing I ve been thinking 
 for a long time I d like to do. It will be hard work but I can do 
 it if you ll help me. I d like to fix this house up the way it used 
 to be before grandfather married grandmother. I mean bring 
 down all the stuff that s in the garret and the upstairs 
 rooms and put grandmother s stuff up there in its place. Of 
 course I loved grandmother. But I hate all that truck that she 
 was so fond of. When I was in New York, I got a lot of points 
 from an old Frenchman Mrs. Boardman hired, about putting 
 antique furniture into condition. I d love to tackle some of our 
 old pieces, and see what I could do with them. I couldn t do it 
 alone in six months. But with your help, it wouldn t take many 
 weeks. And then we ll move into the main house and live there. 
 We ll fix the ell up into a summer kitchen and breakfast-room 
 the way the Drakes always had it." 
 
 "I d love to do it," Charlotte declared, "just love it. Oh, to 
 think I ve got my eyesight back and can see Long Lanes looking 
 the way it used to be ! Why, all my life I ve heard my mother tell 
 how beautiful it was." 
 
 " I ll have to have more help at first," Southward explained. 
 " IT; will take two men at least to lug the stuff down from the 
 garret and to carry the things in the ell up there. I think we d 
 better ask Sue-Salome to come and stay a week with us. There 
 are all kinds of little odd jobs she can do." 
 
 Once she had started, Southward displayed an activity almost 
 as intense as her former lassitude. She carried her plan through 
 with her customary efficiency and almost her usual speed. One day 
 they lived through household revolution, furniture coming down 
 stairs, furniture going upstairs. All the monstrosities of Mrs. 
 Drake s taste disappeared in the garret; the cheap modern oak, 
 the haircloth and black walnut, the painted knick-knacks, the 
 faded tidies, picture-drapes, chair-throws, lambrequins; the bric-a- 
 brac of gilt, ribbon, and plush ; the high-coloured chromo pictures, 
 the hueless modern china, the featureless cut glass. Often at night 
 Southward amused herself making plans of the rooms of the 
 main house, choosing the spots where the beautiful Lares and 
 Penates banished for so many years should finally be placed. 
 
 After all, not so many pieces of their old mahogany,
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 451 
 
 walnut, and maple needed to be done over. For, previous to the 
 advent of the second Mrs. Drake, the family had held its colonial 
 treasures in high esteem; had treated them with a proper defer 
 ence. But Southward used any blemish one spot, a single ring 
 made by a wet glass carelessly placed as an excuse for rehabilita 
 tion. She worked all day, worked with an unending energy and 
 a resistless persistence, worked with a patience and perseverance 
 that she had never before brought to anything practical. She 
 discovered that Libbie Hatch had a fair knack for upholstery and 
 she sent to Boston for samples of chintz. 
 
 " Most of the old upholstery is too faded and dirty to be 
 pretty," she explained to Charlotte. " We ll have every room 
 done in a different pattern." 
 
 Charlotte enjoyed this more than Southward, with whom it was 
 palpably only one method of marking time. Perhaps much of 
 her excitement came from the exercise of her restored vision on 
 all these things, especially the chintzes. " I think I ll take the 
 pink for my room, Southward," she announced, " as long as you 
 don t want it yourself. How I shall admire to wake up in the 
 morning and look at those beautiful roses ! " 
 
 " I wish Hester were here ! " Southward said again and again. 
 " Often we used to plan together how we would fix Long Lanes 
 if we ever got a chance. I d like Hester s advice too. She has 
 always had so much more sense of the artistic than I have." 
 
 The work proceeded apace. Gradually the big main house took 
 on its old look. The old floors, freshly waxed, showed in the lower 
 rooms the complication of elaborate marquetry, elsewhere the sim 
 plicity of plain hard wood or painted floors. The old pieces, 
 scraped, waxed, their inlay revived, their brasses polished, showed 
 to the best advantage against high wide wall spaces. Old candle 
 sticks reappeared from unused closets; old crystal lamps, old 
 astral lamps. Samplers, silhouettes, engravings, paintings gained 
 a new authority from cleanliness and advantageous positions 
 among contemporary furnishings. And over everything in jades, 
 crystals, teak, carved ivory, ermdal-wood, strange prints, faded em 
 broideries ran the trail of the Orient. The dining-room, with 
 the noble old sideboard brought down from the garret, displaying 
 rare Lowestoft, the corner cabinets filled with old glass, china, 
 and pewter, the big central-table and the dozen Hepplewhite chairs 
 collected from all over the house, seemed to hold the very essence 
 of a chaste old-time elegance. 
 
 The fresh modern chintzes gave the rooms the accent they 
 needed. And re-enforcing them, from every table, wide, low bowls
 
 452 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 or tall slim vases of flowers made spots of dazzling colour. At 
 night the soft lustre of the lamps and the softer lustre of the 
 candlesticks merged shining old wood, faded old paper, crisp mod 
 ern chintz, and brilliant garden-bloom into a perfected whole. The 
 stark old family portraits gazed down on a Long Lanes that they 
 had not seen for a generation. 
 
 As quietly as July had come and gone, August came and went. 
 One night, Southward was waked long after midnight by a frantic 
 pounding on the front door. She rushed to her window. 
 
 "Who is it?" she called. 
 
 " It s Lysander," Lysander s voice answered. " Will you come 
 over to the house, Southward? Pearl s sick and her mother feels 
 that she may need help. Something s happened to the telephone 
 and I ve got to get the doctor. I may find him out on a call and 
 I don t want to leave the two women too long alone there." 
 
 " All right, Ly. I ll jump on my wheel and be there in five 
 minutes. You go right on." 
 
 She heard the sounds of Lysander s buggy wheels retreating as 
 she flew about. She stopped only to put on a skirt and sweatei 
 over her nightgown, to throw on a long coat. She did not wake 
 Charlotte, whose deep breathing persisted through all this dis 
 turbance. She jumped onto her bicycle, found one of the ruts in 
 the lane, and sped through a glory of checkered light and shade 
 which the old moon produced in conjunction with the trees. 
 Every room in the Manning place \\;,^ ablaze. She knocked at 
 the door; and finding that the latch gave to her touch, opened it 
 and ran swiftly upstairs. Pearl was sitting up in bed. All her 
 high colour, unnaturally increased by child-! irth strain, had come 
 back, flooding her face with bloom. Her two dark braids ran 
 down, one on either side of her face. Wisps c-i hair lay plastered 
 against her damp forehead. Mrs. Wallis, a lo:,g dark kimono over 
 her nightgown, her hair screwed into a little round tight knot on 
 the top of her head, turned a white face towards the door. 
 
 " The baby s here, Southward," she remarked evenly. " I m glad 
 you came. I need a little help." 
 
 "Do you know what to do, mother?" Pearl asked in a voice, 
 equally composed. " You must save oiy baby." 
 
 " I know just what to do, dearie," Mrs. Wallis said tenderly. 
 " I ll save her. Come right here, Southward." 
 
 Southward threw off her coat; hurried over to the bed. 
 
 Mrs. Wallis gave detailed directions. Her voice was low. 
 Her glance re-enforced the quiet command of her words. South-
 
 453 
 
 ward obeyed that command without a word. Pearl with a strange 
 impersonal air intently watched the proceedings. 
 
 After a while, Mrs. Wallis wrapped the baby in a blanket and 
 put it on the bed. " Now, lie down, dearie," she ordered, easing 
 her daughter s slow incline with what seemed a gigantic strength 
 and a monumental gentleness. 
 
 " My baby? " Pearl questioned. 
 
 " The baby s all right, dear," Mrs. Wallis reassured her. Pearl 
 closed her eyes. Nobody spoke. A silent interval they stayed, 
 Pearl flat on the bed, Mrs. Wallis standing beside her, Southward 
 at the footboard. 
 
 " There comes the doctor now," Mrs. Wallis said. Apparently 
 no sound broke the still air and yet insensibly the buzz of a 
 distant motor manifested itself, grew into a roar. It stopped 
 and there came up the walk across the piazza and over the stairs 
 quick footsteps. Dr. Simpson and Lysander entered. 
 
 " I m glad you ve come, doctor." Mrs. Wallis marvellously 
 smiled. The doctor leaned over Pearl. " She s all right," he said. 
 " Perfectly normal. Doesn t need me at all." He took up the 
 blanketed bundle on the bed, performed some mysterious offices. 
 " I couldn t have done any better myself, ladies," he acknowledged. 
 He seized the little creature by its two feet, swung it through 
 the air, and suddenly administered a swift brisk spank. His 
 victim responded with a wail of indignant protest. 
 
 " It s alive," Southward exclaimed in amazement. 
 
 " Very much so," the doctor said. " Now, Southward, you take 
 the baby and give it a bath." He handed the blanketed parcel 
 over to Southward. " I ll want Mrs. Wallis here for a few 
 minutes." 
 
 " There s a kittle full of water on the stove, Southward," 
 Mrs. Wallis informed her briefly. " Don t get the water too 
 hot." 
 
 Southward pulled the blanket closer about the baby. As she 
 left the room, Lysander was still bending over his wife. Appar 
 ently he had not noticed that Southward was there. 
 
 Southward found a big china bowl; poured hot water into it; 
 tested the temperature carefully; washed the baby. It cried dis 
 piritedly at first. Then apparently it began to accommodate itself 
 to an extraordinary world. Southward dried it carefully, wrapped 
 it again in the soft old blanket. She held it in her arms; its 
 face against hers, listening to its soft peeps of comfort and its 
 faint grunts of disapproval. Once she looked closely into its
 
 454 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 vague eyes. When Mrs. Wallis came onto the scene half an hour 
 later, the baby was sleeping and Southward, rocking it softly, 
 was almost sleeping herself. Mrs. Wallis took the child from her; 
 performed some further ablutions; deposited it in the cradle. She 
 worked quietly and sure-handedly ; yet when she sat down the 
 tears were pouring down her cheeks. 
 
 " Southward, you don t know what I ve been through," she said, 
 gasping out her words. " I told Pearl I knew what to do, but I 
 wasn t sure. I ve had children of my own but I never saw one 
 born. I knew something had to be done quick but I just guessed. 
 I had to take a chance and I took it. But if anything had hap 
 pened to Pearl or the baby She strangled with sobs. 
 
 Southward tried to calm her. Lysander appeared. He came 
 over to his mother-in-law s side, patted her shoulder. His own 
 eyes were red. He did not seem to see Southward. " She s all 
 right, mother. The doctor says she s in fine shape. She s sleeping 
 now and there s no reason why everything shouldn t be plain 
 sailing." 
 
 Mrs. Wallis took Lysander s hand and clung to it. But she 
 controlled herself in another minute. " Don t you want to see 
 your little daughter, Lysander?" 
 
 "Sure. Is it a girl?" 
 
 Mrs. Wallis lifted the little bundle from the cradle, handed it 
 to him. She pulled the folds away from the tiny crumpled purple 
 face. Lysander stared hard at his offspring. 
 
 "She s a fine little girl, isn t she?" he commented. Then ap 
 parently his mental vision went elsewhere. " It s all right for 
 Pearl to sleep like this, isn t it, mother ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course," Mrs. Wallis answered. " The more sleep the 
 better of course. We can t be too grateful to Southward, Ly. 
 I don t know what we should have done without her here." 
 
 Lysander seemed for the first time to take cognisance of South 
 ward s presence. " Yes, it was mighty good of you, Southward. 
 I don t know how we can ever thank you enough." 
 
 " That s all right, Ly," Southward answered. " I really did 
 very little. But you know how glad I am to do that. Lucky I 
 was home when you came." 
 
 She arose and drew on the coat which Mrs. Wallis had brought 
 from downstairs. " I guess I ll go now. I ll be back again to 
 morrow I mean to-day to see how Pearl is." 
 
 She rode home through a dew-damp, opalescent dawn. She 
 went immediately to bed; but when Charlotte began to stir in the 
 kitchen, she joined her at once. Charlotte listened breathlessly
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 455 
 
 to the recital of her experience; broke into a flood of questions. 
 " Just think, now I m going to have a chance to see a little new 
 born baby," was her last comment. 
 
 Late that afternoon, Southward called at the Manning house. 
 Pearl was doing well, Mrs. Wallis informed her, sleeping most 
 of the time, asleep at that moment. She asked Southward to 
 sit down for a cup of tea and all the time they sat talking she 
 held the baby. Later she went up to reconnoitre at Pearl s door. 
 She handed the baby over to Southward and Southward held it for 
 the rest of her stay. 
 
 Southward went daily thereafter to call on Pearl. After a 
 few days Mrs. Wallis, leaving the baby with Southward, took 
 that opportunity to go on errands or to do odd tasks about the 
 house. In her absence Southward talked with Pearl; or held the 
 child. 
 
 Pearl s case was a normal one and she grew stronger steadily. 
 The baby was normal too. It slept and nursed at regular intervals 
 and with avidity. The birth-strain flush had long ago faded out 
 of Pearl s face; she looked bleak. The baby whitened more grad 
 ually; but she soon began to show signs of that beauty which 
 women see in infancy long before it really manifests itself. " She s 
 got such a nice little nose and her ears are as close to her head as 
 though they were buttoned down," Mrs. Wallis said. "! declare 
 I think ithe baby knows you," she added later. " She seems to have 
 sensed it that you come every day about this hour. I ll have to 
 tell Pearl if she doesn t get well pretty quick, and begin to take 
 care of her, you ll steal her baby s love." 
 
 Southward made no answer; but she looked with an amused 
 interest into the tiny face. 
 
 One- day when Southward came, she found Pearl sitting up. 
 In a few days she was on her feet. In a week or twcr she seemed 
 her old self, her energy touched only now and then with languor. 
 Southward continued her daily calls. And always the instant 
 she got there, one of the two women deposited the baby on her 
 lap. 
 
 October passed and November. Southward s languor began to 
 break into something like her old-time restlessness. Only a little 
 like it though; for she seemed to be actuated not so much by a 
 resistless energy breaking into movement and splashing over in 
 noise, as by a very demon of discontent. In the midst of her 
 late reading now, her eye often wandered off the page and fixed 
 on the . distance. Her walks were devil-driven feats of speed. 
 She worked with Charlotte on what remained of the furniture,
 
 456 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 in a concentration attended by long moody periods of silence 
 and sudden spasmodic bursts of talk. 
 
 " Do you know, Charlotte," she said one afternoon, " I think 
 I may run over to New York for a few days next week. I feel 
 somehow as though I needed a change of scene. It always stimu 
 lates me to go to New York." 
 
 " So do ! " Charlotte urged. " I notice you ve been kind of 
 restless lately and I think it will do you good." 
 
 " I ll have Libbie and Sue-Salome stay with you while I m 
 gone," Southward added. " You wouldn t be afraid with those 
 girls here." 
 
 " I wouldn t be afraid all alone," Charlotte boasted. " I never 
 was afraid when I was blind and now I ve got my eyes I m as 
 brave as a lion." 
 
 Southward went upstairs to the garret, dragged down a trunk 
 and a suitcase. " I think I ll take a trunk," she explained, " be 
 cause after I get over there, I may feel like staying more than a 
 few days." 
 
 " You be sure to stay just as long as you want," Charlotte 
 advised fervently. " You need a change and a rest and I want 
 that you should have it." 
 
 " It s a good thing that I chose a small trunk," Southward 
 declared after packing. " I haven t clothes enough to fill a big 
 one. The first thing I m going to do when I get to New York 
 is to buy some new duds. I hadn t realised how I d let myself 
 run down." 
 
 " You buy yourself all the pretty things you want ! " Charlotte s 
 fervour had not abated. " You ve had a hard year what with Aunt 
 Lorenza s death so sudden and Pearl s baby coming the way it did 
 not to mention all you went through with me in the spring. 
 It s been a great shock to you. I guess you don t realise. I do 
 though. You ve changed very much, Southward." 
 
 " Have I ? " asked Southward. She smiled enigmatically. 
 
 That afternoon she found Pearl alone with the baby when she 
 went to make her daily call. She told her of the proposed trip to 
 New York. 
 
 " I m glad you re going, for your own sake, Southward," Pearl 
 said, " for I think you really need a change. I shall miss you 
 very much though, and I m sure the baby will." 
 
 " I shall miss her," Southward declared, " and you too. I m 
 glad though to leave you perfectly well." 
 
 For a moment, silence fell. Pearl s eyes were riveted on her 
 baby lying asleep in Southward s arms. But it was evident that,
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 457 
 
 for once, her gaze was not really on her child. Southward s 
 glance had gone out of the window. 
 
 " Southward," Pearl broke the stillness at last, " there s some 
 thing I want to say to you something I ve wanted to tell you for 
 a long time. I ve been trying to get up my courage to open the 
 subject for over a week. I don t know that I could even have 
 done it to-day if Lysander hadn t said to me something this 
 morning that makes everything easy. He told me that he had 
 never dreamed that he could know such happiness as our married 
 life has brought him. When he said that, I found that I had 
 the courage to talk about anything with you. And now you re 
 
 going away " She paused as though trying to collect her 
 
 thoughts. 
 
 " Well, Pearl," Southward said, smiling, " it is quite evident 
 to the most inobservant that Lysander is the happiest man in 
 Shayneford." 
 
 " It s about Lysander that I want to talk," Pearl began. She 
 had apparently heard Southward s comment without considering 
 it. Now she was intent on her own thoughts. " I don t want 
 that you should have the wrong idea about Lysander. I want 
 that you should think just as highly of him as ever you did. And 
 so I m going to tell you that what happened before we were 
 married wasn t Lysander s fault. It was mine. It never would 
 
 have happened never in this world " Pearl s emphasis had a 
 
 quality of solemnity, " if I hadn t made him believe that he wasn t 
 the first man with me. He was the first but I lied to him. I m 
 telling you something, Southward, that I have never told anybody, 
 not even my mother. But Lysander didn t go away that time to 
 get out of any responsibility. He had to make a business trip. I 
 thought it was all right for him to go and told him so. And 
 then later when I realised that we must be married, I wrote him 
 and telegraphed him. Everything was delayed getting to him. 
 But he came the instant he could. I wasn t frightened. I knew 
 he d come. He nearly got down on his knees to ask my forgive 
 ness when I told him the truth. And we were married that night. 
 I can t bear to have you go away thinking I don t mind what 
 you think of me, but I want you to know that Lysander is as fine 
 and honourable as a man can be." 
 
 "I know that, Pearl," Southward maintained. "Nothing that 
 could happen could change my idea of Lysander. What you re tell 
 ing me is none of my business. And I ve been about enough now 
 to know that we can t judge of these things at all, that what s 
 on the inside is often very different from what appears on the
 
 458 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 outside. As for my opinion of you that s a matter of very little 
 consequence. I have no opinion except that you are just the wife 
 for Lysander and I don t care particularly how you happened to 
 marry each other as long as you did it ultimately." 
 
 " I don t care either," Pearl said simply. " I m so happy that 
 all the rest of my life I m going to try to deserve being so happy."
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 SOUTHWARD departed for New York the next day. She went at 
 once to a little hotel in the Thirties between Fifth and Madison 
 Avenues. The brilliant New York air produced its inevitable 
 stimulation. Her step grew more springy, her expression more 
 alert. She studied the faces of the people she passed with a 
 vivid intensity. She lingered before shop windows with an amused 
 interest. But although she wandered through shops, she bought 
 none of the new clothes that she had insisted she must get. She 
 went to the theatre alone and laughed heartily at the light enter 
 tainment provided for her there. For a week she saw nobody she 
 knew; spoke to nobody but the hotel employees. Then suddenly, 
 one day she ran into Morena. 
 
 " Southward," he exclaimed electrically and stopped in the 
 middle of the sidewalk. " Fancy meeting you ! You re the last 
 person on earth I expected to see this day. Nevertheless you re 
 a sight for sore eyes and my vision is entirely restored. How 
 well you re looking! What a coat of tan! But you re thinner, 
 aren t you ? " 
 
 " I think I am," Southward answered. Her still composure con 
 trasted with Morena s palpable embarrassment. 
 
 Morena turned and walked with her, talking on and on. Under 
 the cover of his fluency, his confusion began to recede. That 
 confusion had not at all nullified a delight, equally obvious, in 
 seeing her. " I m on my way to lunch," he ended finally. " Come 
 with me. I ll take you to a nice little place that I think you ve 
 never seen." 
 
 " Thank you, I ve lunched," Southward replied, " but I ll sit 
 with you while you eat." 
 
 " When did you get in ? How long are you going to be here ? 
 Where are you staying ? How s Hester ? " Morena bombarded her. 
 
 Southward answered all these questions with composure. "How 
 is everybody? " she demanded in her turn. " Azile, Edith, Dwight, 
 John, Ripley ? " she added with explicitness. She looked Morena 
 square in the eye. 
 
 They had turned into the little cafe near South Fifth Avenue 
 which Morena had promised her, an Italian place, small and 
 
 459
 
 460 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 
 
 crowded, but clean and inviting. Morena stopped to order his 
 lunch and the cocktail in which alone Southward agreed to join 
 him. These preliminaries concluded, he answered her questions. 
 " We re all scattered. When you and Hester deserted us, you 
 broke us up. We ve never been the same crowd since. Poor 
 Edith went to pieces in the spring and still isn t herself. Azile 
 sailed for Paris later and hasn t come back yet." 
 
 " Yes, I heard all about that from Hester," Southward threw 
 in. " I was awfully sorry too. I wrote Edith and got a nice letter 
 from her. But that s all." 
 
 " Yes, she s been in the country ever since under a nurse s 
 care a friend of hers that Miss Osgood. John and Eipley 
 go out there constantly, but I ve only been there once or twice. 
 I think she still finds company a little too exciting. She seemed 
 much improved the last time I saw her, but she s not well by any 
 means yet. I have a suspicion that Edith had a close shave. 
 Dwight " he took the wine-card up and examined it but he 
 talked straight through his scrutiny of the printed list " had an 
 attack of typhoid in the spring. He went up to his father s 
 farm you know Essex, New Hampshire to recuperate. And 
 he s b^en there ever since. I get a letter from him occasionally. 
 He s writing, I understand, free-lance stuff. He refuses to say 
 what, though." 
 
 " I m glad he s got a chance to write what he prefers, at last," 
 Southward commented coolly. " He s always wanted that." 
 
 "Eipley and John are on their separate jobs as usual. I guess 
 that s about all the history we ve made." 
 
 " What have you been doing ? " 
 
 " Oh, the same old things," Morena answered, " missing you 
 very much among them. Life lost a good deal of excitement when 
 you left town, Southward. For one thing I m never certain 
 that I ll wake at the right hour in the morning. In fact I never 
 do. Are you going to call me to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Yes, if you wish," Southward agreed. " It will constitute my 
 day s work. This is my vacation, you see. I ve had rather a hard 
 summer." 
 
 She told him briefly of her grandmother s death, of her grand 
 father s departure for the Circle and of the miracle that had been 
 performed for Charlotte. 
 
 Morena listened with the quick Celtic sympathy which was 
 one of his most agreeable attributes. He spoke of Mrs. Drake 
 with a humorous appreciation that had a touch of affection. He 
 applauded Mr. Drake s resolution to enter the Circle again and
 
 461 
 
 made Southward promise she would share her grandfather s 
 letters with him. He asked many interested questions about 
 Charlotte. But he seemed to remember everybody that he had 
 met in Shayneford. Beginning with Hallowell and Mrs. Crowell, 
 he asked in detail about all his acquaintances there. " What are 
 you doing to-night ? " he concluded as they arose from the table. 
 
 "Nothing," Southward answered. 
 
 " Then will you go to the theatre with me ? Dinner first of 
 course. Have you seen anything ? " He bought a paper and they 
 selected the play immediately. 
 
 When Southward left him, her whole manner changed. All 
 her repressed vitality seemed to bubble to the surface. That 
 vitality expressed itself in immediate action. She bought a new 
 suit, new blouses, gloves, shoes, a hat. The suit even departed 
 a little from her characteristic boyish plainness; it was almost 
 feminine in type. She expressed herself in the shop as pleased 
 with the hat; but when it came late in the afternoon, she re- 
 trimmed it. When Morena called that evening she was wearing 
 her new clothes. 
 
 " My word, Southward, you are handsome ! " Morena approved. 
 In their short walk to the Broadway restaurant, which he had 
 picked because it was near the theatre, he kept showering her 
 with admiring side glances. " And you do put these New York 
 women out. You always have. I suppose you always will. You re 
 like a virile black-and-white in the midst of a lot of feeble water- 
 colours." 
 
 " Thanks ! " Southward said carelessly, " I haven t observed that 
 effect myself. But of course it must be true if you say so." 
 
 They had a gay dinner accompanied by a cocktail and one of 
 the delicious wines, light, white, dry, which Morena was an adept 
 at choosing. Southward s spirits rose steadily. They were not 
 the result of the wine, for she drank sparingly. In half an hour, 
 the old relation had established itself; Morena pursuing half in 
 jest and half in earnest; Southward evading, eluding, parrying, 
 thrusting occasionally, and laughing all the time but with a 
 suggestion of insecurity underneath. 
 
 It was a delightful evening. The play offered them all they had 
 expected of it and even contained a surprise. Afterwards they 
 went to a Broadway cafe which was more than usually crowded 
 with celebrities and notorieties. Morena pointed them all out; 
 flooded Southward with their high-coloured histories and the 
 current gossip. They walked home in a clear crisp starry dark. 
 Before he left, Morena engaged her for dinner again, an exhibi-
 
 462 THE LAOT OF KINGDOMS 
 
 tion of pictures, a long tri mp on Staten Island for the next 
 Sunday. 
 
 This was the beginning of an intimacy that grew closer and 
 closer. Morena never left Southward without assuring himself 
 of as much of her company as it was possible to have. He had 
 not lost his old-time flair for picturesque and characterised enter 
 tainment. They made the round of the restaurants in the various 
 foreign quarters to which he had previously introduced her. He 
 took her gradually to all the new places he had discovered. They 
 went occasionally to the theatre; often to dance-halls. Oftenest 
 of all they sat at the restaurant-table talking, until the waiters 
 began to stack the chairs on the tables. Regularly every morning 
 at eight, Southward waked Morena by telephone. They talked 
 at these times for indefinite intervals. Sundays they devoted to 
 tramps about the country. 
 
 Southward drifted on the current of all this experience. She 
 invited no closer intimacy than their frank man-and-woman com 
 panionship ; neither did she provoke it. But inevitably, as she 
 placed no bars on its progress, it grew of its own volition. Now, 
 whenever they walked after dark, Morena s hand carelessly held 
 her arm. He often accented his remarks by a pat on her 
 shoulder or on her hand. He lingered over the business of holding 
 her coat. Sometimes his hands dropped on her shoulders and 
 fell caressingly down her arm to her elbow. If Southward noticed 
 this, she gave no sign. Certainly she never rebuked him. She 
 drifted. 
 
 One evening, he spoke of a picture that had been sent him 
 from Paris and suggested that he take her to his place to see it. 
 He had a pair of rooms in a big old mansion just off Madison 
 Avenue. Dignified and even beautiful, the rooms were large 
 and high; the tall doors of solid mahogany; the knobs, locks, and 
 hinges of silver. The windows, deeply recessed, were long, with 
 low seats. Morena s taste in decoration fell somewhere between 
 John s monastic plainness and Dwight s virile comfortableness; 
 it was more subtle and sophisticated than either. One or two of 
 the few pieces of furniture in his living-room were Spanish, the 
 rest French. Except for the new oil, the portrait of a dancer, 
 done in the futurist manner, there were no paintings. Above the 
 low crowded bookcases however were pinned unframed prints 
 and sketches. 
 
 Morena made coffee. While Southward sipped her cordial, 
 Morena unpinned his pictures from the wall and brought them 
 to her. Seeing that she was really interested, he showed her his
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 463 
 
 collection of foreign loot. Southward passed over the small litter 
 quickly; but she examined the "furniture with care. She told 
 him of her own experiments in scraping, waxing, and polishing. 
 They talked with much more seriousness than usual. 
 
 She stayed less than an hour. When she started to go, Morena 
 did not suggest a delay. His manner had been quiet but defer 
 ential ; almost he treated her with a distant courtesy. 
 
 They got into the way of going to his rooms for coffee; not 
 always, for Morena himself often suggested cafes where he had 
 found the coffee particularly good. Whatever his suggestions 
 were, she fell in with them. In this, as in everything else, she 
 continued to drift. 
 
 In the meantime the weather displayed a belated recrudescence 
 of Indian summer. There came two days of soft warmth, winey 
 sunshine, tender gauziness of vista. A big moon, as light as a 
 bubble of golden water, swayed through the dewy purple skies. 
 One night while still the moon stayed gold, they hurried through 
 their dinner in order to ride on a Fifth Avenue stage. 
 
 It was about eleven o clock when they returned and Morena 
 asked Southward if she thought it was too late for coffee in his 
 room. She said no. 
 
 The moonlight was shining straight through his windows and 
 Morena pulled back the curtain draperies to give it complete 
 access. He started to switch on the lights and then with a 
 "Jove, no! This is too beautiful to ruin," lighted a few candles 
 instead. The room was in half-darkness. Southward had seated 
 herself on the couch after throwing off her hat and coat. She 
 leaned among the cushions, one hand back of her neck, the other 
 extending along the back of the couch. She contemplated the 
 faery scene that the moonlight, mingled with candlelight, made; 
 the quiet mellow walls; the darkly-carved bulks of the old furni 
 ture; the great patches of amethyst and silver on the polished 
 floors; here and there the golden flicker of a candle-flame. It was 
 as though for the first time in her life a purely sensuous delight 
 had overtaken Southward; joy in the beauty of light and shade, 
 thrown on colour. Her eyes softened dreamily. Smiles turned 
 away her lips which were still the colour of raspberries and the 
 texture of pearl, in a constant delicate flutter from her softly- 
 gleaming little teeth. 
 
 Before starting the coffee, Morena came and sat at the foot 
 of the couch. He contemplated her smiling, his arms folded. 
 
 " You are beautiful to-night, Southward," he said. " You know 
 that I suppose. And tempting and I suppose you know that
 
 464 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 too. But if you know how tempting you are, you re not playing 
 fair." 
 
 Southward did not answer. 
 
 He dipped forward suddenly and kissed the hand that lay along 
 the back of the couch. Southward did not move, nor did she 
 speak. But that ripple of her lips stopped. Otherwise she was 
 passive. 
 
 With a sudden savage movement, Morena caught her in his 
 arms, pulled her forward. Her head fell on his shoulder; rested 
 there. Yet she remained passive. She drifted. 
 
 Morena paused an instant. Then his lips found hers; he kissed 
 her many times. " I feel like a cad," he said once, " here in my 
 rooms. But I can t help it." 
 
 Southward made no response even to this. She continued to 
 lie in his arms without struggling. Morena hesitated an instant, 
 stared haggardly at a patch of the moonlight; but his arms 
 drew her closer closer 
 
 Then he stopped. 
 
 " If I only understood the whole situation," he groaned. " But 
 you re such an elusive thing. I can t get you. Nobody can. 
 There s something ungraspable about you untamable. You are 
 the last word as an enigma. I defy any man to beat your game. 
 And yet all there is to it is silence and stillness. If I only under 
 stood you! I know Dwight s in love with you. He loves you 
 as he s never loved any woman in my knowledge of him. And 
 yet there s something but you don t love him. You can t love 
 him. You couldn t love him and treat him the way you do." 
 
 He stared with question into Southward s face as it lay pillowed 
 on his shoulder. Her eyes were half-closed but she opened them 
 wide and stared back at him. She did not speak. 
 
 " I can t tell now, damn you," he said. " I wonder if you know 
 yourself? One thing I do know. I ve always known it. You 
 know it too, and you ve always known it. And that is that there s 
 something between us. Some bond that pulls us together. You 
 knew it all that month I was in Shayneford and you knew it all 
 last winter when you were in New York. You re afraid of me. 
 You re not afraid of Dwight, but you re afraid of me. I ve always 
 know a that you were afraid of me. But you won t admit it to 
 yourself. I don t know whether I love you or no. I m crazy about 
 
 you of course and to-night I m But I m not sure that I m in 
 
 love with you. You re a fascinating thing but you re hard." 
 
 He stopped and stared down at her again. Again Southward s 
 closed lips parted before the impact of his sombre gaze. This
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 465 
 
 time she turned her look away. . But she smiled. Never before 
 perhaps had her lips curved in anything so definitely like invita 
 tion. Her little teeth looked in the moonlight like silver enamel 
 and between them her slender tongue velvety-pink, offered another 
 contrast as enticing as the blood-red crimson of her mouth. 
 
 Morena s clasp on her body grew tighter and tighter and yet 
 he still held her loosely. Suddenly he pulled her close with a 
 more determined savagery. He kissed her madly. 
 
 Southward still drifted. 
 
 Morena dropped her on the couch. He drew away. He knelt 
 beside her. His lips crushed her lips. " I can t stand this 
 much longer Southward is it yes or no ? " 
 
 But Southward did not speak. She might have been dead 
 except that never could she have been more intensely alive. 
 
 " Oh, you devil-woman," Morena groaned. " You leave it to 
 me. Well, I ll take my chance. I ll " 
 
 Suddenly he leaped to his feet. " No, by God, I won t. You re 
 too good for this. Dwight s in love with you. You re in love 
 with him. You re eating your hearts out for each other. It s 
 only that hellish pride of yours that won t let you admit it. I 
 know it though and you know it. I m going to take you home 
 now. You re too damned plucky and fine for this sort of thing. 
 And to-morrow you go back to Dwight. Don t let me see you 
 again. I can save you once, but I can t do it a second time." 
 
 He picked up her coat.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HESTER and her mother held no conversation on the way to the 
 train. During the ride to Boston, their comments were few and 
 mainly of superficial things : Tabby s perplexity over this strange 
 experience, a new branch that the railroad was building. In 
 Boston, Hester took complete charge of the situation. She kept 
 it for the rest of the trip. They started for the West the next 
 morning. In the meantime, leaving her mother at the hotel, 
 Hester did a little shopping. When she came back, she was 
 wearing a plain gold ring on the third finger of her left hand. 
 " My name is now Mrs. Henry Fawcett, mother," she said, 
 " Henry because it was father s name Fawcett because that was 
 his mother s name. You understand that I am a widow and my 
 child will be a posthumous one." 
 
 Her mother made no comment on this, then or at any other 
 time. Hester herself did not again refer to the subject. The five 
 days of travel across the Continent were long, silent ones. Hester, 
 who slept unaccustomedly late, always found her mother in the 
 observation-car waiting for her. Mrs. Crowell, whose sleeper was 
 across the aisle from Hester, was the first one up in the 
 car. They rarely went into the observation-car during the day. 
 For the most part, they remained in their own seats, reading or 
 sewing. Mrs. Crowell sat for long periods with her gaze fastened 
 to the flying landscape. Occasionally she made a comment on it 
 but that was obviously when the whirl of her thoughts broke, 
 producing blankness. In the evening, between their dinner and 
 their early retirement, they read magazines in the observation-car. 
 They responded to the overtures made by their fellow-passengers, 
 but they did not encourage them. 
 
 " I think it will be best to keep house in San Francisco," Hester 
 said once. " Perhaps we might board a little more cheaply. But 
 I don t want to have to talk to people. I want to keep to myself 
 as much as possible until it s all over." 
 
 " I want to keep to myself as much as possible for the rest of my 
 life," her mother answered sombrely. " Oh, yes, there s no sense 
 in trying to live any other way but in our own home." 
 
 When they reached Oakland, Hester again took charge of the 
 
 466
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 467 
 
 situation, and even more capable charge. It was necessary. Her 
 mother was like a block of wood, propelled, in walking, by some 
 mechanical power within. Crossing the bay, she gazed at the 
 craft-crowded satin-smooth, blue waters, the islands green and 
 velvety soft, the gulls swirling and creaking about the boat and 
 San Francisco, on its many hills, riding steadily nearer and nearer, 
 with a face which held one unchanging expression stupefaction. 
 That look deepened when they reached the city and gazing down 
 Market Street, crowded, colourful, gay, she saw Twin Peaks mak 
 ing a drop-curtain in the air or gazed by accident up side streets 
 whose tops broke abruptly against the sky. 
 
 They went at once to a little hotel of which Hester seemed to 
 know before she came. They spent the next day looking for an 
 apartment. Hester owned, it came out, a well-studied map of the 
 city. Also, during the past few months she had read much fiction 
 laid in California, and particularly about San Francisco. No 
 country, except perhaps Italy, has topographically so stamped 
 itself on its literature. She had a few very definite ideas in regard 
 to localities. It was therefore not entirely due to accident that 
 they ransacked Russian Hill first. 
 
 On the third day of their stay, they found a half-house on the 
 highest part of that picturesque elevation. The rent was small 
 because the house was old and sagging, ugly and inconvenient. 
 In the early days of the gold-rush, it had been brought round the 
 Horn by a sea-captain who set it up there. The five rooms which 
 constituted Hester s share of the house were big, but tall, all 
 out of proportion to their size. They bought as little furniture as 
 possible; moved in within a week. The rooms had an effect of 
 dreary bareness, but both women seemed impervious to this. 
 Perhaps it was that neither could have been more absorbed in 
 tragic reflection. But in addition, they knew few idle moments. 
 They settled the house as soon as possible: afterwards they divided 
 their time between housework and sewing. Mrs. Crowell in par 
 ticular had turned into a silent, steadily-working piece of human 
 mechanism. If it were warm, she worked outside, in the garden. 
 When it was cold, she sat at the windows. And always she gazed 
 with her perennial air of stupefaction on the strange combination 
 of city, sea, sky, forest, and mountains on which she looked. 
 
 The windows, like the doors, were narrow but high. They let 
 into their rooms constant floods of the brilliant Californian sun 
 shine and sudden impulses of perfume from surrounding gardens. 
 For this humble reminder of mining-camp days was now caught 
 in a tangle of modern residences whose elaborate beauty aped
 
 468 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 the simplicity of the old Spanish Mission. Their architecture 
 accommodated itself perfectly to the sloping sides of the hill, on 
 which it clung limpet-like, and harmonised perfectly in creamy 
 walls and red roofs with the dazzling blue of sea and sky. Be 
 tween these houses and they too tumbled down hill lay gardens 
 which looked as old and perfected as anything New England 
 had to offer with all the Californian lushness of growth beside. 
 Sea and sky were near; forest not far; and mountains just beyond. 
 
 In front the city leaped swiftly to the bay, a jumble of houses 
 of all sizes, shapes, colours, materials; ugly in near detail, pic 
 turesque in far-off mass; with close a white Spanish church offer 
 ing beautiful but quiet contrast. The bay by day was awash with 
 sea-craft. By night it lifted to their vision Oakland and Berke 
 ley, levelled on clear nights to glittering star-sown planes and 
 whipped on foggy ones to a foaming silver mist. San Francisco 
 caught in a great web of diamonds; ferry-boats all ablaze weaving 
 threads of fire between them. 
 
 At first their walks went no further than the tiny peak on 
 which they lived. It commanded in one direction Telegraph Hill 
 with the green trees at its top; Tamalpais to the left imprinting 
 on the sky the soft contours of a sleeping woman ; Mount Diabolo 
 further on lifting into the far background, as though presenting 
 a gigantic problem in aerial geometry, a perfect blue triangle; 
 Alcatraz floating on the bay, a rock-bound, white-palaced island 
 in sunlight, a jewelled mosaic by moonlight; and everywhere, 
 bounding San Francisco hills, covered with houses which looked 
 like cubes of pearl. 
 
 But gradually they extended their walks. During the day 
 time, they wandered about the streets of the shopping district, 
 gazing into the windows that offer the stranger unlimited enter 
 tainment; book shops, art shops; jewelry shops; photographers 
 showcases. At night they were very likely to turn to Market 
 Street where a perpetual gaiety seemed for a while to take them 
 out of themselves. Often though before going home, they passed 
 through the department-store area, staring into big lighted win 
 dows where groups of wax figures displayed the latest fashion 
 caprice from Paris. On Sundays, they treated themselves to a 
 car-ride to the beach or a ferry-ride to Berkeley or Sausalito. 
 These marked the limits of their explorations. 
 
 " Sometime when I m better," Hester said once, employing the 
 euphemism by which always she referred to the period after her 
 child s birth, "we ll go to Muir Woods and Tamalpais. But I 
 don t feel like it now."
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 469 
 
 Her mother assented with an indifferent, "Yes. I don t feel 
 much like doing more than we have to do, myself." 
 
 Hester s pregnancy was a difficult one, even painful at times. 
 She had weathered the nausea period but now came weakness, a 
 lassitude, to which her former lassitude was a mere shadow; 
 definite pain and discomfort. She had soon after her arrival 
 put her case into the hands of a physician. He came at rare inter 
 vals to see how she was progressing. He did not seem perturbed 
 by her condition. In answer to Mrs. Crowell s questions, he stated 
 that all this, though uncomfortable, was normal enough. Some 
 women had easy pregnancies, some difficult ones. The latter 
 seemed to have no bad effects on the children. Hester bore her 
 suffering with a fortitude that never broke or wavered. It did 
 not add, however, to the meagre cheer of their situation.
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 THEIR neighbour in the other half of the house, with whom 
 they maintained a decent civility, asked them once if they had 
 been to Chinatown. To her, Hester said no, and to her mother, 
 she added, " Well, isn t it strange that I should have forgotten 
 all about there being a Chinatown here. Somehow it just went 
 out of my mind." 
 
 They went to Chinatown that night after their early simple 
 dinner. They arrived just as the lights came up. They stayed 
 until after eleven o clock. Finding all the elements of an enter 
 tainment as picturesque as though it had been premeditated, they 
 continued to go to Chinatown, night after night. It had a curious 
 effect on Mrs. Crowell; it brought her out of the stupefied 
 lethargy into which she had fallen ; for the first time she began to 
 talk. Her memories of Shayneford went much farther back than 
 the thirty years in which she had lived there to over a half- 
 century, indeed, when she had first gone there as a child. Sea- 
 captains, active and retired, were plentiful on the Cape then. 
 On their return trips, they brought great chests of Chinese 
 treasure. Sometimes they brought back Chinese servants. 
 
 Passing the goldsmiths windows where the manufacture of gold 
 and jade and pearl jewelry was going on under their eyes, Mrs. 
 Crowell said, " Cap n Eli Snow brought Mrs. Snow a handsome 
 set of that jewelry once from one of his voyages a necklace 
 and earrings and pins and a ring. I think Mis Snow left it 
 to Lucy Arabella." Exploring the strange shops, the commonest 
 remark that came from her was something like, " Cap n Sam 
 Bassett brought a lot of that blue china home once. Maria 
 Bassett never would use it though so afraid she d break a piece 
 of it. Kept it for years in her china cabinet. And then when she 
 died Rob s wife got it. Milly didn t have any idea of saving 
 that or anything else. She used it every day. Those servants 
 she brought on from New York broke it as though it wasn t worth 
 anything. I don t believe in hoarding things up for other folks 
 to enjoy"; or, "Mrs. Admeh Tobey had a whole set "of those 
 ivory elephants once. When you were a little girl and I used to 
 take you there to call, you were just possessed to play with them. 
 She always wanted to let you she s an awful indulgent thing 
 
 470
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 471 
 
 with children but I wouldn t have it. I was afraid you d break 
 one of them " ; or, " Land, how that teakwood furniture takes me 
 back. Cap n Ike Nye had a whole dining-room full." 
 
 It was Mrs. Crowell who first suggested that they have some 
 chop suey. And once inside the clean-looking Occidentalised 
 restaurant, she scrutinised carefully the food served to other cus 
 tomers. She began to recognise the strange dishes that she had 
 enjoyed in Cape Cod houses, food prepared by a China boy in a 
 New England kitchen. " Oh, I remember that soup," she said, 
 " with those great leaves floating round in it. It s delicious. I 
 have had that chow mee lots of times. And it s good. The next 
 time we come down here, let s have some of that mock duck. You 
 have no idea how delicious it is. I ve always liked Chinese food." 
 
 " Well, mother, there s no reason why we shouldn t come down 
 here two or three times -a week," Hester offered. "Or oftener if 
 you like. We can eat cheaper here than at home." 
 
 They went to Chinatown constantly thereafter. Gradually they 
 picked up stray pieces of china, warmly decorated; bits of 
 colour in the form of prints, embroidery, bric-a-brac. All this 
 mitigated the dreary bareness of their rooms; insensibly they 
 began to take on a look of homeliness and comfort. 
 
 But much as she interested herself in the shopping and the 
 eating, it was to the Chinatown scene that Mrs. Crowell gave her 
 fullest attention. The vegetable shops, meat shops, fish shops, 
 crowded with familiar wares in strange shapes; the side streets 
 papered for intervals with scarlet posters covered with black 
 Chinese letters; toddling babies in their ugly combinations of 
 American and Chinese clothes; the little pastel-coloured, silk-clad, 
 coated-and-trousered girls with ornaments of gold and jade in their 
 sleek hair; the elderly women in black, convoying groups of gentle 
 children ; the constant procession of men in all possible variations 
 of Oriental and Occidental wear Mrs. Crowell drank the. scene 
 down. It was as though, having cast all the associations of her 
 past life overboard, she were trying to fill out the shape of her 
 soul with a new cargo, a cargo which should make up in the degree 
 of its colour and strangeness for all the lost greynesses and 
 familiarities. 
 
 " It seems queer, mother," Hester remarked once, " to think of 
 Shayneford now, the quiet of it all the big elms, the sleepy 
 streets, the lonely houses." 
 
 " I feel," her mother said grimly, " as though I d died and 
 come to life in another world." 
 
 " Do you like this world, mother ? " Hester asked timidly.
 
 472 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I don t know. I m not thinking about that. It isn t a ques 
 tion of whether I like it or not. It s forced on me. I take it 
 as it comes." 
 
 The trip across the Continent had been a drain, taken with 
 Hester s long stay in New York, on the slender resources of the 
 two women. They involved themselves in no unnecessary ex 
 pense now. Theatres, concerts, lectures knew them not. An 
 occasional picture-show was the height of their dissipation. Books 
 and magazines were also proscribed. Literature came to them 
 through their one newspaper. They had happened by accident to 
 choose the most radical of the city journals and, partly because 
 of the hunger of a literature-starved consciousness and partly 
 through the interest of the thing itself, they read this paper 
 carefully from beginning to end. Insensibly they came to know 
 San Francisco, the seething quality of its social life, the virility 
 of its labour movement; the intensity of its politics; the en 
 lightened activity of its enfranchised women : insensibly they came 
 to realise the picturesqueness of a people who flash from an athletic 
 outdoor day life to a gorgeous restaurant night life and who enter 
 tain themselves with pageant, fiesta, and carnival somewhere in 
 between. 
 
 But as for the boiling city life itself, it passed the two lonely 
 women as completely as though they were an island and it the 
 ocean which surrounded them. Their neighbours in the other 
 half of the house, their butcher, their grocer, their cobbler, the 
 boy who brought their paper, the waiter who served them in 
 Chinatown this was the list of their human affiliations. Twice 
 Hester suggested that her mother go to church, but the second 
 time Mrs. Crowell rejected this idea with so steadfast a grimness 
 that Hester never alluded to it again. A little cooking, a little 
 sewing, a little gardening, talk on what was obvious and of the 
 moment the program of one day did not differ from that of 
 another. This monotony was not even stirred by the mail. Mrs. 
 Crowell had announced that she was going to break off all con 
 nection with Shayneford for the time being. She had written to 
 nobody. Hester had not even sent the letters she had spoken of 
 writing to Southward and John. 
 
 In the meantime, the golden, rainless, sun-charged California 
 summer merged with the drab-coloured, rainless, still-sunny 
 California fall. The rains began to come. And the hills which 
 had turned from gold to grey became green in a night. The 
 tangled garden which by this time Mrs. Crowell had cleaned out 
 completely put on new growths.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 473 
 
 " Seems queer to have everything starting up at the approach of 
 winter," Mrs. Crowell commented. " What a strange country ! " 
 
 The rainy season that year was of unexampled copiousness, 
 fury, and duration. The sun seemed to disappear for good. Day 
 after day, they stared out on a sodden world. And now they 
 were giving up their excursions to Chinatown, mainly because 
 of the weather. Also, Hester s time was approaching. 
 
 There was no abatement towards the end of her suffering and 
 discomfort ; rather it increased. Great hollows encircled her eyes. 
 Weights of pain and anguish pulled down the corners of her 
 mouth. Her pallor was not white but leaden. She dragged 
 about the garden when the weather permitted, sat during the 
 rains for long periods gazing out the window. But if unhappi- 
 ness ever formed words of regret upon her lips, her will never 
 permitted them to pass. 
 
 One day, she and her mother were sitting outside together. 
 It was a little past the middle of December and they had had two 
 days of unexpected sunshine and warmth. For a while they had 
 entertained themselves with the new family that Tabby had re 
 cently produced. Now they sat silent, watching the many ferry 
 boats charging across the bay like peacocks who dragged after 
 them great thick tails of white feathers. The sun began to dim 
 and pulling their wraps about them, they watched one of the bay 
 fogs creep in from the ocean, blot out the hill country across the 
 water, and take possession of the city. Hester arose presently and 
 went into the house. Her mother still stayed; still apathetically 
 watched this aerial siege. 
 
 " Mother, Mother ! " Hester s voice called suddenly. It had a 
 new note in it, command that was pointed by expectancy and 
 even touched with relief. " Come here quick ! " 
 
 Her mother arose swiftly and, more swiftly still, ran into the 
 house. 
 
 " It s come, mother," Hester said, " I ve been in pain all the 
 time I sat there in the garden. But I couldn t believe it. I ve 
 suffered so, I was afraid I was fooling myself." 
 
 Her face contracted as a violent paroxysm seized her. 
 
 " There, there ! I guess there s no doubt. You d better call Dr. 
 Cartwright at once."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MRS. CROWELL sat in her daughter s bedroom holding her 
 grandson in her arras. Hester was asleep and so was her child. 
 But Mrs. Crowell was very wide-awake indeed. Her big, old eyes, 
 unusually brilliant in a deep setting of shadow, flew from the 
 baby s face to Hester s, from Hester s back to the baby s. Occa 
 sionally she bent forward and deposited a little soundless kiss on 
 the wrinkled red forehead at her shoulder; but the baby slept 
 on. Once or twice, she moved noiselessly from bed to window, 
 but Hester, utterly relaxed, slept on also. After a while, Mrs. 
 Crowell went silently out of the room, deposited the baby in his 
 crib in her own chamber. When she came back, Hester s eyes, 
 still sleep-filled, were half-open. 
 
 " Is the baby awake, mother ? " Hester asked. 
 
 " No," her mother answered, " sleeping soundly. I never saw 
 such a good child for sleeping." 
 
 Hester s lips curved into a smile. " I like to have you call him, 
 child. It sounds so much more permanent than baby. " 
 
 " Well, he s certainly a permanent-looking child," Mrs. Crowell 
 commented with a kind of grim pride. " He s an awful big fellow. 
 I suppose you don t realise, because the doctor says it was a 
 normal birth. But a twelve-pound baby is a big baby." 
 
 " I realise something," Hester showed a touch of her mother s 
 grimness. " I feel as though I d lost twenty-four pounds. Sit 
 down, mother. I want to talk to you." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell sat down but it was as though under protest. " I 
 don t know as I d do much talking, Hester," she remonstrated. 
 
 " I won t," Hester answered docilely, " but I do feel like talking 
 a little, especially since it s so long now that I haven t talked. I ve 
 kept silence all these months, mother, for the baby s sake and 
 for my own. But now I want to tell you something about it all, 
 so that we can go on with our new life together on a different basis 
 without suspicions or misunderstandings." 
 
 " I don t know that there s any call for you to tell me anything 
 further," her mother announced stiffly. " Perhaps in the begin 
 ning well, I don t say but what it would have relieved my mind 
 
 some. But now the thing s over and done with " 
 
 474
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 475 
 
 " But I want to tell you, mother," Hester said bearing down 
 on the word want. 
 
 " Tell me when you get well," her mother evaded. 
 
 " I want to tell you now." There was a hysteric element in 
 Hester s stress of the word now. " It s here to be said and I must 
 say it. It s in me and it must out. I can t wait. I want to get 
 it over with." Her tone became a little wild. 
 
 " All right," her mother decided after a reflective instant. " Go 
 on! I m listening." 
 
 Hester went on and with an unexpected composure into which 
 her wildness suddenly simmered. " I don t know what you ve been 
 thinking all these months, mother, but I can guess some of it. 
 I can guess some, but not all. I wonder if you think I m really 
 what you call a bad girl, that I ve done that sort of thing always 
 or often, or that I care for promiscuity or that I d like that kind 
 of life. If you believe any of these things, you are wrong. It s 
 not true. And yet if not blaming myself much is bad, then I am 
 bad. For as I look back on my life and, oh, I ve been studying 
 it hard these last nine months I feel that I m not so very much 
 to blame. Sometimes I pity myself. Sometimes it seems to me 
 even that it had to be. You see the trouble started with my being 
 the daughter of a woman who had been a beauty and yet not 
 being beautiful or attractive myself. So many lives are wrong 
 especially women s lives. I see now in the light of my own 
 life how wrong your life was. Here you were, a woman loving 
 life and gaiety, music, theatres, excitement, and people about 
 you, condemned to live in a little dead country village. That 
 life hurt you, maimed you. You aren t now at all the woman 
 you would have been if you d been placed in the proper environ 
 ment. But you didn t learn by your own experience; for you 
 made the same mistake with me. I have never had the proper 
 environment. It was all natural enough, perhaps. I was a disap 
 pointment to you and you never tried to conceal it from me. On 
 the other hand. Bee was a delight to you as she was to me. You 
 loved her with all your heart and so did I. All the affection 
 that had been starved out of both of us, we put into her. Then 
 Baby Bee came. We were both happy, you and I. I didn t 
 really start to be definitely unhappy until they died. But after 
 that well, mother, you will never know how I suffered as I shall 
 probably never realise how much you suffered. But I did suffer 
 horribly horribly " 
 
 Her mother started to rise. "Don t think of it any more, 
 Hester. Try to go to sleep."
 
 476 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 " I don t want to go to sleep, mother. I want to talk. I want 
 to tell you all about it." Hester s eyes had shed all the dews of 
 her rest; they shone with an unsteady gleam. A faint colour 
 fluttered back and forth in her white cheeks. " You know well 
 enough what a disappointment I was to you. But you don t know 
 what a disappointment I was to myself. I had never thought 
 of myself as pretty while I was growing up; indeed, I knew 
 very well that I was not even ordinarily good-looking. I was 
 the kind of girl of whom everybody said, but she has beautiful 
 hair. Oh, how I clung to the thought of my hair, my single 
 beauty. Yes, I know just as well as anybody else how plain I 
 was. People didn t have to tell me that but they did tell me 
 it in a variety of ways. They tortured me with it. But some 
 how from my littlest girlhood, I took it for granted that I d marry 
 some day and have children of my own a lot of them a big, 
 big family. Somehow I was perfectly sure that I was going to 
 have babies just as fast as I could have them. I hoped they 
 would be beautiful, but I knew they couldn t all be so, and, oh, 
 how loving and tender I was going to be with the plain ones, 
 so that they would never know that they were plain. I took 
 marriage and motherhood just as much for granted as I did 
 breathing. I thought everybody got married and everybody had 
 children. Well you know what my girlhood was like. Men 
 never took any notice of me whatever. I didn t mind that so 
 much on the score of vanity, for, God knows, I had as little 
 vanity as any woman who was ever born. But it hurt me terribly 
 when I saw what a disappointment it was to you. When I used 
 to go to parties that the girls gave and they played kissing 
 games, I used to pray that one of the boys would choose me 
 only one because it seemed to me I would die of mortification 
 if you heard that I was the only girl there who was not kissed. 
 I can t remember now when it was that it first occurred to me 
 that maybe no man would ever want to marry me. I think I was 
 about twenty. From twenty to thirty was one long misery that 
 I know, all my life, I shall hate to look back on the gradually 
 growing certainty that whatever it was that other women had 
 about them that attracted men, I didn t have it. I didn t know 
 how to get it; for I didn t know what it was. I have never flirted 
 in my life. I never had any instinctive coquetries. From the 
 beginning, I have never been able to talk to a man except as one 
 human being to another. I can t think of him as a sexed crea 
 ture first. And then as I began slowly to realise that, although 
 I wanted to attract somebody and I had my moments when I
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 477 
 
 thought almost anybody would 1 do I didn t have the faintest 
 degree of charm for men, it made me self-conscious, awkward, 
 tongue-tied. Sometimes I met men whom I would have enjoyed 
 talking with, but they never seemed to see me at all. I mean 
 literally they did not seem to see me. It was as though I wasn t 
 there. I ve been at parties with Pearl and Pinkie and Flora, 
 when they were flirting with men, and it was just as though a 
 transparent curtain had come down between them and me. I 
 was with them but not of them. I could see and hear and 
 understand everything they were doing and saying but they 
 didn t even know I was there. And so it went on. I began to 
 have periods of despair." 
 
 Her mother interposed again. " Hester, I m going out of this 
 room. You must control yourself. It will affect your milk all 
 this excitement and the baby ll suffer." 
 
 " Stay here, mother ! " Hester said in a low tone of command. 
 " If you go, I shall talk just the same. Only I ll have to shout 
 in order to make you hear me. What I m going to say, is like the 
 baby. It s got to be born. It s started and nobody can hold it 
 back." 
 
 That wild light in Hester s eyes had steadied to a permanent 
 glow. That flicker of colour had beaten to a changeless flame. 
 She went on : 
 
 " John Smith appeared in Shayneford. And then came my 
 one little triumph. He was the handsomest and ablest and kind 
 est, the most graceful and charming and distinguished man that 
 I had ever met. I fell in love with him. You know that. But 
 what you don t know is that he fell in love with me. I ve never 
 told anybody that. But it is true. He fell in love with me. 
 The only man I ever really wanted and the finest man I ever 
 met fell in love with me. I knew it the instant it happened. I 
 knew it before he knew it. I could not believe my own intuition 
 at first. I thought I believed it only because I wanted to believe 
 it. But after a while, I had to believe it. From the beginning 
 though, subconsciously, I knew that there was something wrong. 
 I didn t know that consciously though for a long time. And 
 then gradually I had to recognise that truth, that there was 
 some obstacle between us. And in New York oh, I had a 
 wonderful time in New York. I was with him more and more 
 until in the spring we were so much together that it was almost 
 like a honeymoon. Oh, those long wonderful days and those long 
 beautiful evenings! I shall never forget them. I couldn t forget 
 them if I tried. They will be fresh and warm in my memory
 
 478 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 when I lie in my tomb. I don t think now that he would ever 
 have told me that he loved me if I hadn t provoked it from him. 
 I didn t exactly mean to do that. But when I realised that he 
 loved me, a certain power came to me, a power that I had 
 never had, the power to coquet. . And once I used it just once. 
 All in an instant, I provoked him to that declaration. And then 
 everything came out. He did love me as I had guessed. I was 
 the only woman in the world for him. I was the culmination 
 of his whole Jife. But he couldn t marry me. There was an 
 obstacle." 
 
 She paused and her face contracted. Her mother arose. " I 
 think I heard the baby cry," she said, "I ll be back in a moment." 
 She disappeared but she returned presently. Hester took up her 
 narrative just where she had left it. 
 
 " All the time I stayed in New York, I had been having a 
 curious series of experiences. I suppose it was my own sensi 
 tiveness to the subject but everybody seemed to be talking about 
 motherhood. The night we arrived, John and Dwight took us 
 to a meeting of a Socialist Local. When we came in, a young 
 girl was making a speech. At first I could not believe my ears. 
 She was talking about motherhood and she said that the right 
 to bear children was inalienable to any healthy normal woman 
 that marriage or morality or religion had nothing to do with 
 it. I had never heard such ideas and the first effect of her 
 speech was actually to frighten me. I trembled for an hour after 
 wards. But I thought of what she said and thought of it and 
 thought of it and thought of it. It haunted me and after a while 
 
 I began And then I kept meeting women who were the 
 
 result of motherhood, wrong, thwarted motherhood or the complete 
 absence of it. And oh, how I pitied them. How I hated to think 
 I might grow to be like them. Just derelicts floating on an 
 uneasy sea of experience, never getting to any real port of life 
 marriage or maternity. There was Edith Hale. She was 
 thwarted by her very love of luxury, comfort, beauty, ease, 
 devotion to her own figure. There was Rena Osgood, a nurse. 
 She loved children just as much as I did and wanted them as 
 much. But she had had to undergo a severe operation and that 
 operation made maternity forever impossible. There was Mrs. 
 Pelham, a widow. She was the only one in that group who had 
 had a child. He lived to manhood and then died, lost in a desert. 
 It nearly killed her. Oh, how I pitied her. I told her once that 
 it seemed to me I would rather not have had him. She said 
 no no no. She said that that was the one consolation of her
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 479 
 
 life that she had had him. And that they had had those twenty 
 years together. She wouldn t give up the memory of that for 
 anything. She would never have been the woman she was, with 
 out it. And there was something different about her. She had 
 something that we others didn t have. I don t know what it was 
 or how to describe it, but there it was, as plain to me as though 
 it were a golden star set in her forehead. And then there was 
 an old, old lady, nearly ninety, a Mrs. Edgerley, a woman suf 
 fragist who used to come down from an apartment above to 
 talk suffrage to me. Oh, she was such a wonderful old lady. 
 She d been in that work all her life, though she had brought up 
 a large family of children too. I could see that one had helped 
 the other. She tried to make me march in the parade, to convert 
 me. But I never could seem to think or care about suffrage, 
 although I could see what happiness it had brought into her life, 
 believing in something with all her heart and soul and working 
 for it with all her mind and body. It had brought happiness 
 into her children s lives too. There was her daughter, a Mrs. 
 Fanshawe she had seven children, a pair of twins among them. 
 She d grown up believing in woman suffrage and she d worked for 
 it all her life. Worked for it just as naturally as she had for 
 those seven children. I used to try my hardest to get interested 
 in it; for of course I believed in it. But I couldn t do it; nor 
 in any other movement, even those that John and Ripley were 
 working for. They tried to interest me too. They tried to make 
 me read books. But somehow, I couldn t seem to get my mind on 
 those things." 
 
 " Hester, don t you think you d better stop talking now ? " her 
 mother pleaded. 
 
 " Not till I ve had my say," Hester answered inflexibly. " All 
 these things had been turning over and over in my head. I 
 didn t keep them there. I didn t know that some of them were 
 there. And the others I tried to get rid of. But they stayed. 
 When John told me there was an obstacle I I m not going to 
 tell you what that obstacle was. It s not my secret. It s his. 
 It wasn t a wife or a mistress. In a way it was more binding 
 than either of those. I saw that it was hopeless, that we could 
 never be married. I realised that I must give him up give him 
 up completely and give him up at once. And then I thought 
 of everything before even suicide. But I couldn t. And yet 
 all I knew was that something had to happen or I would drop 
 back into an unhappiness even more dreadful than I had ever 
 known. And I thought and I thought and then the idea came.
 
 480 THE LADY OP KINGDOMS 
 
 I knew I would have to do it at once or not at all. I knew I 
 would have to do it when I was so desperately unhappy that it 
 was as though it happened to somebody else. I knew if I waited 
 until I had accustomed myself to life without him, I never 
 could that I d love his memory too much. I knew that I must 
 act quick as one steals or murders. And so one night, I put 
 paint on my face and long earrings in my ears and I went out 
 and I went up to the Grand Central Station and I stood there 
 and waited and waited and waited and I looked at all the 
 men as they passed I looked carefully and most of them seemed 
 horrible to me. And at last there came along a great big country 
 hoy with cheeks like apples and red hair and nice frank eyes 
 with that look the country gives of cleanness he looked like 
 Lysander a little and and and I spoke to him and and 
 we went together and that next morning he told me he was 
 going to Washington and I suggested that I go too paying 
 
 my own way as I had never seen Washington He said 
 
 yes, come he didn t have much money he was going to do his 
 travelling as cheaply as possible you see I wanted to make sure 
 and and and so I went and I was gone three weeks in 
 Washington and Baltimore and Richmond. Of course it all seems 
 horrible to you perhaps it was horrible but it was not horrible 
 to me it was very simple oh, very simple. And yet all the time 
 I was in love with another man. But I liked that boy he 
 was kind and considerate in a simple boyish way I could never 
 have fallen in love with him but I liked him and respected 
 him. We used to talk about the things we were seeing and 
 about his life in the country. I made him talk about country 
 things the farmhouse and the live stock I knew every animal 
 on the place by name, and all their markings. We had a kind 
 of friendship and I felt that he grew to like me so much so 
 that in the end I slipped away without letting him know I was 
 going I just disappeared. He never knew anything about me 
 not even my name. He never will know. Perhaps some day he 
 will realise that he had a strange experience. And then I came 
 back to New York and waited and waited and waited. Oh, 
 I was so afraid that I had failed. There was only one terror 
 in my life the fear that I had failed. And then I went to the 
 doctor and he said it was true. That day that day when I came 
 out of his office onto the street I heard music. I went over to 
 the Avenue and found the suffrage parade had just started and I 
 stood there from three in the afternoon until eight at night and 
 watched that parade. And then it came to me as I looked at those
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 481 
 
 women oh, and some had such happy, happy faces that I ought 
 to have been with them marching and fighting too. I ought to 
 have been having children and working with them just as Mrs. 
 Edgerley had and Mrs. Fanshawe was doing. But my life was 
 wasted. I had been born with the maternal craving I wanted to 
 be a mother it didn t come about naturally for me to have 
 children and so all the best years of my life and the best energy 
 had gone to fighting that craving. Other things had happened to 
 make it worse, and so I was like a creature caught in a net and 
 struggling there. All about me were great world movements 
 and I couldn t get into one of them because I wao all tangled 
 up in that net. Life does that. It did it to you in a different 
 way and to poor Pearl who couldn t get into right relations 
 with people because she loved Lysander so madly. And it did it 
 to Gert Beebee and Josie Caldwell. When I got home that night, 
 I did not know myself when I looked in the glass my face was 
 so swollen and bloated. I had been crying all those five hours 
 but I didn t know I was crying. Well, I waited two months 
 longer in New York. And then I went to Shayneford. I didn t 
 expect you d come out here with me. But oh. how grateful I 
 was that you did, how grateful I am now! But don t think, 
 mother, that I haven t suffered all these six months here. I ve 
 lived in hell. Do you suppose I haven t had my terrors and 
 horrors and worse doubts. Sometimes I ve been dizzy with 
 them. Sometimes it s seemed to me that I must throw myself 
 into the bay. And I ve often been so sick so deathly sick 
 and weak. But something held me up I don t know what. And 
 I wouldn t have gone back. I don t say that I did right. But 
 I do say that when you put that baby in my arms my own baby 
 that I d gone through hell to get everything seemed all right, I 
 only knew that I d have gone through it again and twenty times 
 over to get him." 
 
 " Hester," her mother said beseechingly. 
 
 " I m not going to talk any more, mother. I know when you 
 went to the baby that time, you called Dr. Cartwright. I d have 
 heard my baby if he d cried. It wasn t necessary though. You ll 
 see when he comes." 
 
 She sank back among the pillows. 
 
 When Dr. Cartwright arrived, she was sleeping quietly, pulse 
 and temperature normal. 
 
 " She s all right," he said. " That talk must have done her 
 good."
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 WHEN Southward stepped off the train into the little station at 
 Essex, she found waiting there one dilapidated carriage drawn by 
 an aged horse and driven by a more aged darkey. 
 
 " Take me to the Cameron place," she said briefly. 
 
 " All right, lady," the darkey agreed cheerfully. He touched 
 the old horse with the whip and succeeded in evoking motion 
 from him. They ambled through a heterogeneous railroad station 
 neighbourhood and came out finally on a wide elm-bordered main 
 street. Big old white-clapboarded houses and big old red-brick 
 houses with green blinds and fan-lighted doors, with gardens and 
 orchards, made agreeable oases between groups of village stores. 
 
 Their way ran past these, past the Post Office, the Town Hall, 
 the bank, a church or two, and what was apparently the village 
 library, to the other side of the town. Here houses came at longer 
 intervals. At last they stopped at a big yellow place, long and 
 comfortably low, set back from the road. 
 
 Southward alighted, paid the driver. She walked quickly up 
 the path and produced a series of firm raps from the old brass 
 knocker. She turned about and stood absently gazing at the 
 scene, the wide street, the interlacing bare tree boughs, the 
 meadowlands back and, beyond all, hills that were almost moun 
 tains. A light fall of snow covered everything and the sun was 
 making a magic glitter on it. 
 
 " What was you wanting ? " a voice asked. 
 
 Southward turned. A middle-aged woman, her hair still in 
 curling pins, had opened the door. 
 
 ",Fd like to see Mr. Cameron," Southward said. 
 
 " Well, old man Cameron has jess gone down to the village 
 you must have passed him. Young man Cameron is in the back 
 setting-room, writing." 
 
 " It s young Mr. Cameron I want to see," Southward declared. 
 " I ll go right in there." She passed down the hall. The woman 
 stood in a state of paralysed dubiety for an instant. Then, obvi 
 ously evading the solution of this social problem, she turned into 
 the other side of the house. Southward continued down the broad 
 central-hall to the back room. The door was ajar and she pushed 
 it noiselessly open.
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 483 
 
 Within, seated at a big table at right angles with the fireplace, 
 Dwight sat writing. He looked a very different man from the one 
 Southward had seen last in New York, heavier, more serious. 
 Perhaps it was his white outing-shirt whose looseness made him 
 seem bigger, and perhaps its whiteness deepened by contrast a 
 thick coat of tan. He was absorbed in his work. 
 
 Southward came forward. Her footsteps made no sound 
 on the thick carpet. Nothing apprised Dwight of an alien pres 
 ence until she was almost at his side. He looked up. with a 
 start. 
 
 Then he did not speak. Obviously he could not. He sat, staring. 
 
 Southward extended her hand. It held her revolver, butt for 
 ward. " I ve come to give you this, Dwight," she said quietly. " I 
 shall never shoot another man." 
 
 Dwight s eyes filled with tears. But he looked steadily down 
 into Southward s eyes, which gradually filled also. He took the 
 hand that held the revolver between both his own and drew her 
 to him. For a long time they stood silent, their lips together. 
 " I knew you d come some day," Dwight said at last. 
 
 Then Southward drew herself away. " I ve got something to 
 tell you first, Dwight. I ve been in New York a month. I ve 
 been flirting with Morena flirting desperately. I would like to 
 say that I flirted out of pique and that s true, but not entirely so. 
 Morena has always had a kind of attraction for me. For a long 
 time I would not admit it to myself. I do now. But I m not 
 in love with him. I m in love with you. Of course I was insane 
 with jealousy when I found you with Azile that time. I made 
 up my mind that I d uproot every feeling for you that was in me. 
 I didn t do it though. I couldn t. And when J went to New York 
 and met Morena by accident and he seemed ready to start some 
 thing, I fell in with it. And last night I very nearly went over 
 the line. I would have too if it hadn t been for Morena. He 
 saved me from myself. He was fine. He was splendid. He roused 
 me too to a sense of where I was drifting. He told me that I 
 was in love with you and you were in love with me. He told me 
 to go to you. I saw he was right and I came as soon as I could 
 get here. I love you. But I want you to understand the situation ; 
 for it might make a difference to you. I haven t understated it. 
 I nearly drifted over the line. I nearly did myself what I was ready 
 to shoot you for doing. Do you understand ? " 
 
 " I understand perfectly," Dwight said steadily. " And of course 
 it makes no difference." He drew her to him again. " I love you 
 I love you, Southward."
 
 484 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Southward returned his kisses. " Ah," she murmured, " men 
 are more generous than women." 
 
 " Not that exactly," Dwight explained, " it s only that they 
 understand." He held her off at arm s length for a moment and 
 looked at her hard. " You are handsome, Southward," he said. 
 " I don t know though but that beautiful s the word." 
 
 " Of course beautiful s the word," Southward maintained. " It s 
 admitted universally now." She withdrew herself from his arms, 
 seated herself on the couch by the fire. " There s so much to talk 
 about," she said. 
 
 Dwight seated himself beside her and their lips met again. 
 " That s true, but we ve got all eternity to do it in." There s really 
 only one thing that we must settle this moment and that is, when 
 will you marry me?" 
 
 " As soon as you like," Southward answered. 
 
 "How about to-day?" returned Dwight. "I can fix it up in 
 no time. There s nobody at this end of the line except father who 
 really counts. And he ll be back in an hour. We can be married 
 in fifteen minutes in this very room." 
 
 " I d love that," Southward affirmed. " I d simply love it. Off 
 hand like that. In the bridegroom s house. They d say you mar 
 ried me at the point of my revolver." 
 
 Dwight laughed. " I pretty nearly have." 
 
 Southward s mirth glimmered. " That s true. But though I d 
 rather do that myself, for Charlotte s sake I must go home." 
 
 "How soon can it be then?" Dwigiit asked in a business-like 
 tone. 
 
 Southward cast her eyes towards the ceiling. She meditated 
 aloud. " To-day is Tuesday. I ll go home in the late afternoon 
 train. I ll buy myself a wedding-dress in Boston to-morrow. 
 I really owe that wedding-dress to Charlotte. And for her 
 sake I may invite just a few to the wedding. Let me see 
 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. How would Saturday at noon 
 do?" 
 
 "All right," Dwight agreed. "FaCier and I will be at Shayne- 
 ford Friday night at the latest. In fact I think I ll go back with 
 you. That s settled." He sighed contentedly. 
 
 " Yes, that s all the consideration v, e need to give that," South 
 ward agreed. 
 
 They laughed a little. 
 
 " Southward ! " Dwight exclaimed abruptly, " about Azile. It 
 wasn t quite what you thought 
 
 " I know all about that," Southward interrupted. " Azile came
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 485 
 
 to Shayneford within a month and told me the whole story. She 
 took all the blame on herself." 
 
 " Well hang it that wasn t right," Dwight protested. 
 " There s no blame exactly or if there is, it s on me. That was 
 fine of her though," he added with an accent of real admiration. 
 " But then Azile was always a gentleman and a true sport." 
 
 " Yes," Southward agreed, " it was fine. I ve always hated her, 
 you know. But of all the women I ve ever hated, I like her the 
 best. I don t suppose I shall see her again. She s in Paris now. 
 What have you been doing all these months? " 
 
 " Oh, chores ; farming, sowing, planting, weeding, harvesting, 
 pitching hay, looking after the live stock, and chopping wood. Then 
 recently I ve done a lot of writing. I had an awful sourballed 
 session when I got up here first. I found out more things about 
 myself in a few weeks than I d ever known before. One was that 
 I wasn t a novelist. You know those three partly-written novels 
 I had. Well, I made a bonfire of all of them. And I gave up 
 then any idea that I was going to be a fiction-writer." 
 
 " I m glad of that," Southward announced frankly. 
 
 " Don t gloat too soon, woman," Cameron checked her. " I may 
 turn out to be a writer after all. In two months I wrote and got 
 accepted a boys book and, believe me, it s some book. All about 
 the things we used to do up here when I was a kid. We formed 
 ourselves into rival Indian tribes, and we used to wage wars in 
 the woods, that lasted a whole vacation. We had battles, took 
 prisoners, exchanged them, and all that sort of thing. I had the 
 time of my life writing that book." 
 
 " I d like to read that," Southward exclaimed. 
 
 " Don t worry ! " Dwight reassured her. " You ll have to." 
 
 Later he asked casually, " Want to go to South America ? I have 
 Spanish, you know, and a magazine has asked me to do a series 
 of articles dealing with commercial relations between the two con 
 tinents. Not immediately. Sometime within a year. Would you 
 like to go?" 
 
 " Would I ? " Southward answered. She added after a moment s 
 thought, " I want to live at Long Lanes until we leave, though 
 on Charlotte s account." 
 
 " All right," Dwight agreed. " One place suits me as well as 
 another. I think I may turn out another boys book in that time. 
 You can help me on that. But I think I ll probably become an 
 events man. That means that wherever there s trouble, we d go 
 to it. You d like that, wouldn t you?" 
 
 Southward did not answer.
 
 486 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 Assuming assent apparently, he went on. " I ve always wanted 
 to see Latin America, beginning with Mexico and running south 
 to Patagonia. Then I d like to go to the Orient sometime, China, 
 Japan, India, Egypt. You want to see those countries, don t 
 you?" 
 
 He waited. Again Southward was silent. 
 
 Again assuming assent, he sped on. " And I ve always wanted, 
 more than anything else, to cruise among the islands of the 
 Southern Pacific Australia, New Zealand. I guess when it 
 comes to cities they re pretty much alike wherever you find them. 
 But those islands would be different from anything else on top of 
 the earth, think of Borneo, for instance. And Java . Oh, there s. 
 a lot of the world I want to see. You want to see it, too, don t 
 you ? " He waited. And then as though struck for the first time 
 by her silence, " You do, don t you ? " he repeated. 
 
 Southward arose and stood with her elbow on the mantel. She 
 gazed into the fire. " I do and I don t," she answered. Then she 
 transferred her gaze directly to Dwight s face. " I do awfully 
 and yet I don t want it to interfere with one thing. And that is 
 a family. I want a family, Dwight, a big family. I don t want 
 to do anything that s going to get in the way of that, even travel. 
 And you don t know how much I want to travel. But in the last 
 year, I ve done a lot of thinking too. I ve got pretty well ac 
 quainted with myself and I found out that I m not at all the kind 
 of woman I thought I was. You see I grew up with the idea that 
 I was different from ordinary women, that I had unusual abilities. 
 I ve learned that I m not different at all, that I haven t any 
 special ability of any kind, only great physical strength, vitality, 
 energy, and an instinct for efficiency. I suppose the reason I got 
 the idea of my own superiority was because we Drakes have always 
 dominated Shayneford and because almost any girl could put it 
 over the average girl in Shayneford. When I went to New York, 
 I found it was all different there. I wasn t a bit more able or 
 interesting than the run of women I was meeting and not half 
 so clever as many. Why, Dwight, there isn t one blessed thing 
 I can do besides fix up old furniture, garden, and dressmake in 
 the most primitive manner. But that isn t all. I ve had a great 
 understanding with myself in regard to a lot of other things. All 
 my life I had seen the Shayneford women getting. married, bringing 
 large families into the world, and working hard so that, by the 
 time they reached their thirties, they were faded, bent, unattrac 
 tive old women. I made up my mind I wasn t going to get caught 
 by life that way. I thought I was never going to marry. I
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 487 
 
 thought if I did marry I should never have any children. I 
 thought that for a long time until you came to Shayneford. And 
 then things began to happen to me." 
 
 She paused, shifted her gaze to the fire and then back to Dwight s 
 face. Dwight did not move. He sat listening intensely. He 
 looked at her intently. 
 
 " I met you. Frankly, at first all I wanted to do was to make a 
 conquest of you. I see now that I ve always been pretty ruthless 
 as far as men are concerned. But when I discovered that that 
 wasn t going to be easy, I fell in love with you as quickly as any 
 woman would. And then came all that sense of rivalry with Azile 
 Morrow, my certainty that I had beaten her, the trip to Shayne 
 ford, back to New York, the frenzy of rage and jealousy when 
 I saw you together the shooting. You don t know what that did 
 to me. I can t tell you it s too monumental. I had shot another 
 man, you remember. But that wasn t such a terrible thing; that 
 was self-defence. But this was jusf wanton murderous rage. I 
 didn t know until the next day that I hadn t killed you. I thought 
 I had. During those hours I lived in hell. Deep down, I knew 
 that I loved you with all my heart. There was the grief of that. 
 And then I was frightened of the consequences. I wasn t too proud 
 to admit my sense of relief when the news came that you were 
 safe. But I still tried to make myself believe that I hated you. 
 And then Azile Morrow came and did her best to exonerate you. 
 I could have killed her. I was too proud to forgive you. I could 
 not bear to think I couldn t stand it that she had got away 
 with her game even for a moment. But I continued to live in hell. 
 I suppose that I very nearly had nervous breakdown. The quiet 
 out-of-door life saved me from that. It shook toe though that 
 experience it rocked me as Buster Welch would say. I suppose 
 all kinds of queer things were going on inside; psychological 
 changes. One morning Lysander Manning got me out of bed to 
 come down and take care of Pearl while he went for the doctor. 
 The baby had just been born as I entered the room. I had to help 
 Mrs. Wallis. In fact, I gave the baby its first bath. I don t know 
 what it was, or what happened to me. I ve always hated babies 
 and this one looked just as red and uninteresting as any one I ve 
 ever seen. Perhaps it was because I felt that I d helped in a way 
 to bring it into the world. Anyway when I took it into my arms, 
 the greatest feeling came over me why, Dwight, I was wild about 
 that child. I was ashamed of my feeling. I wouldn t let anybody 
 know. Nobody guessed it but Pearl. I went to see it every single 
 day until I went to New York. And then it came to me that I d
 
 488 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 like awfully to have a child of my own. I want sons and daugh 
 ters too. I want a big family. And then, there s another side 
 of it. I ve got energy and activity and vitality enough for two 
 women. Without plenty of work and plenty of hard work, I ll 
 always be in mischief. I m as dangerous to have around as an 
 unused stick of dynamite. I want children. I want them to 
 come just as fast as I can have them, so that my hands will be 
 full all the time, just taking care of them." 
 
 Dwight did not answer for a moment. But he still looked at her 
 with an extraordinary tender intentness. " I m glad you feel that 
 way, Southward," he said. 
 
 Their talk wandered to their friends. 
 
 " Where is Hester? " Dwight demanded first. 
 
 " I don t know," Southward answered. " Nobody knows. She 
 and her mother just vanished. I ll hear some day. Hester ll write. 
 I have a feeling somehow that Hester s married." 
 
 From Hester, the conversation went to Edith, John, the rest of 
 the New York group; zigzagged to Shayneford, to Mr. Drake and 
 Lysander, and Pearl, Matthew Hallowell, Gert Welch. 
 
 "And Charlotte s sight is completely restored?" Dwight asked. 
 
 " Completely or nearly so," Southward answered. " She thinks 
 she sees as well as I do, but I don t think she does. That reminds 
 me, Dwight, I must always have Charlotte with me except of 
 course when we re travelling. She s my responsibility. And then 
 I m very fond of her, as you will be in time. But aside from that, 
 it would be cruel to send her anywhere else to live, no matter how 
 well provided for she was." 
 
 Dwight made an impatient gesture. " Of course ! You don t 
 think you ve got to argue that with me." 
 
 " No. But I want you to understand. I m going to tell you 
 Charlotte s story, Dwight. Nobody in Shayneford knew this except 
 grandfather, grandmother, and Hester. Charlotte is about forty- 
 five. When she was eighteen and really nothing but a little girl, 
 very innocent and inexperienced, she had a music teacher, a man. 
 He was much older than she, a real musician, very handsome and 
 fascinating, people said. He was married but nobody knew it. He 
 prevailed upon her to elope with him. Her father discovered it 
 immediately, and pursued them. They had been gone just two 
 hours and all that time they were on a train ; he caught them as 
 they got off. He took Charlotte home. The whole story came out 
 through the man s wife. Charlotte s people lived in a small town, 
 but the gossip was frightful. She became a social pariah. It 
 never occurred to the family to send Charlotte away anywhere
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 489 
 
 and she stayed on living there, under conditions that make my 
 blood boil still, whenever I think of them. Charlotte always left 
 the room when callers appeared. Her younger sisters grew up, 
 were invited out, gave parties of their own, but Charlotte was 
 never included in any of it. She was no more part of the family s 
 social life than as though she were dead. She lived in their house 
 like a ghost who was haunting it. That kept up for over ten 
 years. Then my grandfather went to visit them. Of course he d 
 seen enough of the world to have a more enlightened point of 
 view on such things. Anyway he was appalled by the hideousness 
 of Charlotte s situation. He asked them to let Charlotte come to 
 live with us. In the meantime she had gone blind. Some members 
 of her family looked on that as her punishment. My grandmother 
 told me Charlotte s story as a sort of warning, I fancy. I suppose 
 that story of twelve years of solitary confinement for a two 
 hours train-ride has done more to make me the kind of girl I 
 am than any other one thing." 
 
 Dwight leaped to his feet, strode about the room. " It s horri 
 ble," he muttered, " horrible. God Well, we ll have to do our 
 
 best to make up for it." 
 
 Southward went on. "I m not particularly fond of my sex, 
 you know. Hester likes women but I don t. I hate most of them. 
 All except a few. I liked my grandmother. I like Hester and 
 Charlotte and Gert Welch, and, yes, I like Pearl Manning, now. 
 But as a whole, women make me tired. But that story of Char 
 lotte s is the reason why, when I could, I ve worked for suffrage. 
 Of course I believe in the feminist movement. But I m only 
 mildly interested. As far as the franchise is concerned I don t 
 give a single solitary damn whether I ever vote or not. Every 
 time I think of Charlotte though, it puts me into such a frenzy that 
 the only way I can calm myself is to do something for women as 
 a whole. So you might as well be prepared for that. I ll be 
 always getting in and out of the suffrage movement, or boring you 
 and myself to death and tiring us both out." 
 
 " That s a horrible future to contemplate," Dwight admitted. 
 
 " And it adds another terror to matri Oh, father, here you 
 
 are! This is Miss Southward Drake, father, and Friday night 
 you re going to Shayneford where she lives, to be present when 
 she marries me on Saturday."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HESTER and her mother sat in the garden. It was lale in July, 
 one of the rare hot days that the San Francisco summer sometimes 
 delivers. Above them a sky of an intense foaming blue, but cloud 
 less, held a huge blazing jewel of sun. Below, the great mass of 
 pearl-white city dropped in precipitous masses from hill to hill until 
 it reached the bay. Beyond, the water stretched blue as the sky 
 and, over it, drifted white ferry-boats that might have been the 
 clouds missing from that sky. The garden, thanks to Mrs. Crowell s 
 persistent efforts, had turned from a neglected tangle to a cared-f or, 
 usable beauty-spot. The box-hedge that surrounded it had been 
 clipped to symmetrical proportions. The rose-bushes that dotted 
 it had been pruned to a fuller life. Against the box grew great 
 starry masses of the California marguerite and against these high 
 bushes of salmon-pink geranium. The day was warm enough for 
 Hester to wear one of the white middy-suits left over from 
 Shayneford days, and cool enough for Mrs. Crowell to throw a 
 white woollen shawl over her shirt-waist. Both women were bare 
 headed. They sewed. 
 
 " I suppose, mother," Hester was saying, " we could go back to 
 Shayneford now if you wish. I don t want ever to live there again 
 myself. But now that we ve respectably established my marriage, 
 widowhood, and motherhood, I wouldn t mind going back to visit 
 occasionally." 
 
 Mrs. Crowell started. She looked first at Hester s face, then at 
 the baby carriage near. But that last look was merely mechanical. 
 The hood of the perambulator was pulled close against the blinding 
 California sunshine. Mrs. Crowell s foot was on one of the car 
 riage wheels but she did not move it. 
 
 " I don t want to go back," she protested in a deep voice. " Never 
 as long as I live. I love it out here. I couldn t bear to leave it. 
 It s so free and eo beautiful. There s so much hope in the air. I 
 don t even want to go back to visit. But I may have to do that," 
 she added in a lower tone. " I ve been thinking for over a month 
 now that I d like to put the place in Dwight s hands to sell. I 
 might have to go back to attend to the packing. There are some 
 things I d want to bring out here the old furniture .and silver 
 
 490
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 491 
 
 and pictures. But there s a lot I d like to get rid of. I d have to 
 go through the garret myself though; nobody else could do that 
 for me. Things have been accumulating for nearly forty years 
 there. But, oh, there s such a lot of truck that I don t want to have 
 here. It doesn t go. Oh, no, I don t want to stay there. I want 
 to live here. I love it here, I love it," she asseverated passionately. 
 " And then," she added, " do you suppose I could leave the baby 
 now ? " 
 
 " I hope not," Hester answered. " And I m glad you feel that 
 way about California and the West. Nothing would make me go 
 back. My boy is a Native Son and I want to make a real Cali- 
 fornian of him." Absently she arose and walked towards the 
 centre of the garden between the hedges. Absently she began to 
 pick a bunch of the geranium and marguerites. 
 
 Standing amidst the rivalling colour of the flowers and in the 
 dazzling pour of the sunshine, Hester was as different a woman 
 from what she had been as it is possible to imagine. Physical 
 maternity had filled out her figure. It had broadened her hips 
 and rounded her bosom. Spiritual maternity had written a whole 
 new history on her face. The sallowness, the look of lassitude, 
 had gone. Her skin had so quickened that the freckles stood out 
 on it like sheer gold. Her eyes had cleared yet they seemed 
 to have changed to a deeper blueness. Her teeth and they had 
 always been beautiful revealed themselves now between lips of a 
 firm deep pink. Her hair, which she continued to wear in a 
 braided coronal, pinned in front with the little silver bow and 
 arrow, sparkled as though it had been carved from massy gold. 
 She moved from bush to bush with the vigour, the decision, the 
 swiftness of perfect health and absolute happiness. She came back 
 after a while to her seat, her arms full of flowers. She put these 
 on the bench beside her and took up her sewing. 
 
 " Think of the joy of having the house full of flowers all the year 
 round," she commented. " Yes, mother, this is our country now. 
 We " 
 
 The gate clicked. John Smith stepped into the garden. 
 
 " I m here just for the day," he explained after a long while. 
 " I had to come out here on a quick trip to Los Angeles. Of 
 course I had to get to San Francisco although I ve got to turn 
 right round and go back to-night. I didn t want to write for fear 
 you might not want to see me. And I had to see you. You don t 
 mind, Hester ? " 
 
 " No," Hester said, with her old-time simple frankness, gilded
 
 492 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 with her new radiant happiness. " I m glad. I should never have 
 forgiven you if you hadn t come. Now tell me about everybody. 
 First, Southward and Dwight." 
 
 " Oh, they re disgracefully happy. They enjoyed the South 
 American trip enormously. Southward expects the baby a son, 
 she maintains in the fall. Of course you know that though. 
 She s delighted and perfectly well, has been from the beginning. 
 They re going to stay at Long Lanes until the baby s six months 
 old. They ve done wonders with the old place." 
 
 " Yes. Southward s been sending me snap-shots right along. 
 The rooms must be beautiful." 
 
 " Dwight is busy all the time doing magazine-stuff articles, 
 mainly. He has written his second boys book. The first is a great 
 success, you know. It s been out since the spring." 
 
 " Yes, he sent us a copy," Hester murmured again. " Now 
 Edith ? " she continued. " Tell me about her." 
 
 John s face shadowed. " Not such good news there," he said. 
 " Edith isn t at all well. She s cured of course. But she s never 
 quite rallied as she should. We re doing everything we can think 
 of. We have the best doctors, specialists; and anything more 
 devoted than Rena s nursing, it would be impossible to imagine. 
 Yet I have a feeling that she s losing ground." 
 
 "Oh, I am so sorry." Hester s lips quivered; but her voice 
 vibrated with deep, strong feeling. " I am so sorry. Edith has 
 been so kind all her life. I cannot bear to think and all of us so 
 helpless. Could she come out here? I d do anything on earth to 
 make her happy." 
 
 John shook his head. " You couldn t move her. It would only 
 be to die. She never says anything. But I know she clings to her 
 own surroundings. She d rather die at home." 
 
 " Oh," Hester said in a breaking voice, " oh." And then diversion 
 came. The baby cried. Hester controlled herself at once. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell lifted the hood of the perambulator, reached under 
 it. With quick adroit movements, she lifted the baby out and 
 handed him to Hester. Hester s hand flew eagerly to him. She 
 settled him in her lap; and then, very simply unlaced the middy- 
 blouse and gave him her big pearly breast. 
 
 John watched. 
 
 Hester s son was a magnificent child. His hair was thick and 
 curling, a brilliant coppery red. He had black eyes and a skin 
 bursting with the colour that California paints on human flesh. 
 He settled himself to the process of feeding with little liquid grunts 
 of approval. One hand, infinitesimally brawny, pressed Hester s
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 493 
 
 breast. He sucked and grunted; dropped the nipple to stare with 
 round black eyes at his grandmother; returned to it; sucked hard 
 and grunted again. After a while, he dropped away and his eyelids 
 drooped. 
 
 " I think I ll put him in his own bed now," Mrs. Crowell de 
 cided. She carried him into the house. 
 
 A silence fell on the two in the garden. " I see that you really 
 have found your work, Hester," John said. 
 
 " Yes," Hester agreed. 
 
 " I m sure it s the right work for you," John went on. 
 
 " Yes, it was the right work," Hester agreed again, " I have no 
 doubts about that now." 
 
 " And no regrets ? " John questioned. 
 
 " No regrets," Hester answered. 
 
 Another silence fell. Hester tucked some of the pink geraniums 
 in her hair. 
 
 " You are beautiful now, Hester," John said. " You have ful 
 filled every prophecy that I made of you." 
 
 " Thank you. I am glad you think so. But I ve paid." Hester 
 lifted the sweep of heavy hair which fell down over her ear and 
 showed the white at her temples. " You can t imagine how 
 dumfounded I was when I saw the grey coming here. And after 
 the baby was born, my hair began to come out. That really 
 troubled me. That s my single vanity, you know my hair." 
 
 " You ve still got enough lor three women," John asserted. 
 
 " I ve still got enough to give me a good deal of trouble doing 
 it when there s a baby round. Do you remember telling me that 
 I was paintable ? " 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 " It may amuse you to know that a woman-artist here on the 
 hill thinks so too. She has done our picture the baby and me 
 in the garden here. It s to be exhibited in New York in the fall." 
 
 " I ll see it," John said. After another silence, " I suppose 
 you ll tell me about all this sometime, Hester." 
 
 " I suppose I will, John," Hester answered. 
 
 Another silence followed. Mrs. Crowell broke it. She appeared 
 in the doorway, holding the baby. " This young man won t go 
 to sleep inside," she complained in tones that were full of pride. 
 " Suppose you let him lie here in the sun a little longer, Hester." 
 
 " All right," Hester agreed. 
 
 Mrs. Crowell disappeared into the house. 
 
 The boy lay on his pillow, kicking his legs, thrashing his arms, 
 gurgling and bubbling.
 
 494 
 
 John rose. 
 
 " I m going away now. Good-bye, Hester." 
 " Good-bye, John." 
 They shook hands. They kissed. 
 
 At the gate John turned. " Some day, Hester, perhaps." 
 Hester did not answer. She did not hear. She was looking at 
 her son. 
 
 THE ENP
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 MAT 1 3
 
 A 000 043 661 8