THE 
 DON LADY 
 
 m 
 
 HELEN HUNTINGTON 
 
 1 1 i ill!
 
 
 . CLARKE 
 
 261Z8TREMOHTST.8, 
 
 30 COURT SQ. BOSTON
 
 THE MOON LADY
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 BY 
 
 HELEN HUNTINGTON 
 
 E 
 
 M 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "THE SOVEREIGN GOOD," "AN APPRENTICE TO TRUTH," ETC. 
 
 i. 1^37 r~&^^ if\ //- 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 MDCCCCXI
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS 
 PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1911
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 2136285
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE maid had informed Humphrey that his 
 mother was not at home. As he entered her 
 sitting-room, therefore, he was surprised to see a fem- 
 inine figure leaning over the cage of the piping bull- 
 finch, whistling "Pretty Polly Perkins" a rendering 
 far inferior to that of the bird's. 
 
 Becoming aware of Humphrey's presence the ap- 
 parition looked up with a start. She seemed very 
 young, and had a face which brought an instant sug- 
 gestion of sunshine and summer fragrance rather as 
 the word "June" does. 
 
 " What an extremely pretty girl ! " was the thought 
 which flashed first through his mind with the perfect 
 banality of nature itself. 
 
 "I'm so sorry!" he said aloud "I came to wait for 
 my mother." 
 
 Just then the curtains hanging in front of an old- 
 fashioned alcove were swept aside, revealing a large, 
 thickly set woman with eye-glasses on her nose and an 
 expression of intense efficiency in the commonplace 
 [3]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 on her unhealthily flushed face. It was his mother's 
 typist, Emma Cooper. She wore the air of one who 
 had already been on the scene, and was now rushing 
 to her cue for the second time. 
 
 "Miss Arnold," she said, "this is Mr. Humphrey 
 Wylde, Mrs. Wylde's son Miss Arnold is waiting by 
 appointment," she explained to Humphrey, if it could 
 be called an explanation. 
 
 Humphrey was puzzled; " appointment" had a pro- 
 fessional, business-like sound. Was Miss Arnold an 
 aspirant to literature (his mother was a well-known 
 novelist), an agent of sorts, a representative of some 
 charity board, or an interviewer ? Nothing in her ap- 
 pearance suggested any of these suppositions; on the 
 other hand nothing contradicted them. 
 
 "Sorry you have had to wait so long!" he said 
 pleasantly. The girl protested that it did not matter 
 in the least, and Humphrey thought her voice charm- 
 ing, low-pitched, and full of warmth and color, a 
 Southern voice, but without Southern inflections. 
 
 "You like birds, I see!" he said, looking at the bull- 
 finch, who was engaged in the infinitesimal activities 
 of bird-cage life. "Have you heard this one do his 
 little tune?" 
 
 "So many times!" replied the girl, laughing a little. 
 " He had only just stopped, and I was trying to make 
 him go on again when you came. They all do ' Pretty 
 [4]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Polly Perkins,' or nearly all. I've had five myself at 
 one time and another, but they are so delicate, you 
 know they all died and now I've nothing but a row 
 of little bullfinch graves." 
 
 Humphrey endeavored to look sympathetic, but 
 listened more to the music of her voice than to what 
 she said. Again he wondered what the "appoint- 
 ment," referred to by Emma Cooper, could be about. 
 His eyes rested on the face of the mysterious Miss 
 Arnold with puzzled scrutiny. 
 
 Suddenly, and for no reason, as far as he could see, 
 she flushed a brilliant rose-color. She was just young 
 enough to imagine she had talked too much, and been a 
 little naive about her bullfinches. Her manner took 
 on a shade more of formality. 
 
 "It was so kind of your mother to ask me to come 
 to see her," she said. "I have only known her, up 
 till now, by her books." 
 
 "You write yourself, perhaps?" said Humphrey 
 tentatively. 
 
 "Oh, no!" exclaimed the girl, forgetting in the 
 fervor of her disclaimer all self-consciousness. "I 
 have no talents of any kind. I don't even know 
 any clever people." 
 
 " We don't always know cleverness when we see it," 
 replied Humphrey, "either in ourselves or any one 
 else." 
 
 [5]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Personally he thought it didn't matter whether this 
 charming mourner of bullfinches was clever or not 
 she was so many other delicious things. 
 
 "But we know it in books," she said. "The mo- 
 ment I began to read your mother's novel 'Hilmer 
 Brothers' three years ago I knew she was a genius. 
 After that I read every thing she ever published. 
 They were like no other books in the world to me, and 
 when at last I ventured to write to her and she an- 
 swered asking me to come to see her, I felt it was one 
 of the greatest things in my life." 
 
 Miss Cooper, who had been a silent listener to the 
 conversation so far, here observed with conspicuous 
 lack of tact that Mrs. Wylde was a great deal too kind- 
 hearted and was always giving up her time to every- 
 body. 
 
 Humphrey's face darkened; "Hadn't you better 
 get on with that typewriting?" he said. 
 
 Miss Cooper, unconscious of offence, smiled cun- 
 ningly to herself as she withdrew. " He wants to talk 
 to that girl," she thought, "well let him what's the 
 harm." 
 
 "So you're going to meet my mother for the first 
 time she's quite a stranger to you ! " said Humphrey 
 reflectively, when the curtains closed behind Miss 
 Cooper, and the typewriter had resumed its fierce, 
 staccato theme. 
 
 [6]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Yes except that she doesn't seem strange to me. 
 Don't you think, in a way, one can know a person bet- 
 ter from what she writes than from what she says 
 when she talks to you ? You see, in talking, it's one- 
 self and the other, and in writing it's the other person 
 alone, not influenced by any consideration whatever." 
 
 "That's true half-way true, at any rate," replied 
 Humphrey. " People are freer with their minds when 
 they write, but, on the other hand, for understanding 
 each other so much of it comes from just being to- 
 gether, sort of instinct, or magnetism if that's the 
 word you know what I mean don't you ? " 
 
 "Oh yes!" exclaimed Miss Arnold with imper- 
 sonal intensity. She seemed to feel that they were hav- 
 ing a conversation of much profundity and signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 "Have you noticed my mother's portrait?" asked 
 Humphrey by way of keeping up the conversation, and 
 indicating an oil-painting by a well-known English 
 artist, which hung over the mantel-piece. Miss Ar- 
 nold crossed the room and placed herself beside Hum- 
 phrey on the hearth-rug, from where she could have 
 a better view of the picture. This simple action gave 
 Humphrey unexplained pleasure. 
 
 "I've already seen reproductions of it in maga- 
 zines," she said, "and, of course, it was the first thing 
 I noticed when I came in the room this morning." 
 
 [7]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "What do you think of it?" 
 
 "It seems to me more of a picture than a portrait, 
 somehow. It doesn't tell me anything about your 
 mother." 
 
 The two young people stood and gazed up at the 
 portrait for a moment in silence. 
 
 It might have been considered, even in its lack of 
 expression, as brooding over them fatefully, withhold- 
 ing something from their unconscious question. " How 
 wonderful it must be for you to be always with her!" 
 exclaimed the girl really nai've now that she was no 
 longer conscious of being so. 
 
 "This whole room tells things about my mother," 
 said Humphrey finally. "Do you notice the faint 
 scent of amber ? It's been part of my thoughts of her 
 ever since I was a child. And see how many fur rugs 
 there are! That's my mother too! She likes fur 
 better than jewels or lace." 
 
 Linda looked about her as if for the first time. A 
 magnificent tiger skin on the floor showed mottled 
 tawny yellow, black and white. Of a sudden she saw 
 in its pattern the sunlight flickering through boughs 
 of a jungle. A polar-bear rug had warm tints of old 
 ivory, and was time-stained like long-lingering snow 
 where white melts into pale grays and yellows. And 
 there were other furs too: a silvery gray wolf-skin, a 
 black bear, smooth to the eye as burnt-over marshes, 
 [8]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 and an eider-down cover of a delicate mushroom 
 brown, so soft that the touch of it was like cream on 
 the palate. "Oh I understand why she cares so 
 much for them!" cried Linda. 
 
 "Yes," replied Humphrey. "I understand too!" 
 Just then they heard the ring of the door-bell down- 
 stairs. "There she is now, I expect!" he cried. "I'll 
 go to meet her and tell her that you are here." He 
 spoke, unthinkingly, as if he and the visitor were al- 
 ready old friends. 
 
 When he returned he was preceded by a lady who 
 came into the room with a grace, a hint of half- 
 capricious freedom, which would have been arresting 
 and conspicuous even in a crowd. 
 
 Mrs. Wylde looked young, but her youth seemed 
 touched by faint, and what seemed premature, decay. 
 She was beautiful too, with a classic profile, deeply 
 set, weary eyes, and much unruly auburn hair; but 
 her beauty evoked less of pleasure than an indefinable 
 and mysterious pity. There was something at once 
 wistful and haggard in her face, as if she asked too 
 much of life and could bear too little. She was like 
 the finest possible knife-blade worn to the sharpest 
 possible edge. More than anything else she made the 
 appeal of mystery. 
 
 Even Humphrey felt it, accustomed as he was to be- 
 ing with her. He watched Miss Arnold curiously as 
 she looked at his mother's face for the first time.
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 It did not surprise him that her interest, already 
 stimulated by Mrs. Wylde's books, seemed captured 
 entirely by her personality. After their first words 
 Dioneme made the young girl sit down beside her on 
 a sofa, saying that they must have a good talk together. 
 Something at once practised, gracious, and indifferent 
 in her manner indicated it was not the first time she 
 had entertained youthful votaries. 
 
 "I am afraid to talk to you," said the girl. "I 
 want only to listen." 
 
 " You will listen and I will look, then," replied Mrs. 
 Wylde. "One always looks at youth." The girl 
 tried to say something about beauty which was more 
 than that of mere youth. 
 
 " Mine, you mean ? " said Mrs. Wylde. " Mine is a 
 mere legend that has grown up around me, one of those 
 ignorant and superstitious beliefs which even time 
 cannot quite destroy." She smiled a little, but with- 
 out much mirth. 
 
 "So you like my books " she went on, after a min- 
 ute. "You told me so in your letter. I wish some 
 one would say that to me every hour of the day! It 
 would make work so much easier! " She smiled again, 
 more gayly now, with a sparkle in her eyes. 
 
 "Will there be a new one soon?" asked the girl 
 eagerly. 
 
 "That is the new one," Mrs. Wylde answered, in- 
 dicating the unseen but very audible typewriter. 
 [ 10]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "That is its pre-natal cry! What do you make 
 of it?" 
 
 "I think they will keep on getting more and more 
 wonderful but the one I like best is ' Hilmer Broth- 
 ers.'" 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 The girl glanced uneasily at Humphrey, and he 
 knew that she wished he would go away. It was clear 
 to him, also, that his presence was superfluous, yet 
 he could not bring himself to leave at once. 
 
 " I must tell you some time when I know you better," 
 said Miss Arnold. "To-day I feel afraid." Hum- 
 phrey, looking at her eyes, fancied them colored like 
 a trout-stream in which summer leaves are reflected. 
 
 "We shall soon know each other better," said 
 Dioneme. "And you've made friends with my son 
 already, he tells me. He is not in the least literary, 
 but he criticises me in spite of it. He says my male 
 characters are not real men, and that my idea of a 
 man is just something to make love to a woman. 
 
 "However " she went on in a whimsical and cap- 
 tivating way, " if one goes deeply into it, perhaps there 
 are no manly men. You don't understand me, of 
 course, but let me tell you what happened to me not 
 long ago. Some critic had just said that most of the 
 men in my books were weak and effeminate, and I 
 was feeling rather resentful in consequence, so de- 
 [11]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 cided (though I never as a rule take my characters 
 from real life) that I would look about among my 
 friends and acquaintances, select one of the most manly 
 men, and immortalize him in all his splendid boldness 
 and force. 
 
 " Can you imagine what my feelings were when I tell 
 you that, in spite of a sufficiently large acquaintance, 
 I couldn't think of anybody!" 
 
 It was impossible to tell from the speaker's accent 
 whether she was making light of a real conviction, or 
 treating a joke seriously. Linda Arnold gave an un- 
 certain laugh but Dioneme's mind was off on a new 
 track. "You have such a charming name," she said, 
 abruptly. "I remember from your note ' Linda'! 
 that means beautiful in Spanish. I was afraid it 
 might not suit you but it does." 
 
 The girl blushed. "It always seemed to me rather 
 a foolish, sentimental name," she said. "My sister 
 chose it the one who brought me up my mother 
 died when I was only a few weeks old." 
 
 Humphrey saw that his mother, though apparently 
 listening to what Miss Arnold was saying, was really 
 absorbed in her own thoughts. Perhaps, with her 
 usual vivid insight, she contemplated young girlhood 
 in its essence, with its seriousness, its simplicity, its 
 reserve, its enormous and lovable egotism. It might 
 be that she saw this particular young girl as a symbol 
 [12]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of her entire sex at its moment of flowering and inno- 
 cence, felt the pathos of it all, the wonder, the mystery, 
 looked ahead and divined a future the inevitable 
 lover until she was rushed along by the current of 
 her fancy to some fleeting conception of all woman- 
 kind, forever dominated by man, forever guarding from 
 this appointed and often beloved master the secret of 
 her thought of him. 
 
 He felt that the time had come to leave the two 
 together, and so he did. His mother hardly noticed 
 his farewell nor his departure, but the girl gave a sigh 
 of relief. 
 
 "One can talk so much easier when one is alone!" 
 she said involuntarily. 
 
 " That is true," agreed her hostess. At this thought 
 she summoned Miss Cooper from her alcove. 
 
 "You can go to lunch now, Emma," she said. "I 
 sha'n't want you until two o'clock." 
 
 "But it's only twelve-thirty, and I never lunch 
 until one," protested Miss Cooper, as if aggrieved. 
 
 "To-day you can lunch earlier," said Mrs. Wylde 
 sweetly, but with decision. 
 
 "I don't want to lunch," said the typist, with the 
 air of one doggedly defending a principle. "You 
 never wanted me to lunch at twelve-thirty before!" 
 
 Mrs. Wylde made no reply, but looked fixedly at 
 her employee with a faint, formal smile on her lips. 
 [13]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Miss Cooper walked toward the door. She mur- 
 , mured something unintelligible. It might have been 
 divined that she was repeating that she never lunched 
 until one. 
 
 "Emma is fond of* me," commented Mrs. Wylde, 
 "but she finds me irresponsible and erratic. Once I 
 spelled rhapsody without an h and she couldn't under- 
 stand it, because I had never spelled it that way before. 
 She often speaks of it." 
 
 "My sister is like that, in a way," said Linda 
 Arnold. " She always expects people to be consistent, 
 and if they're not" she thinks they are unreliable. She 
 is very consistent herself and so good !" 
 
 Now, the girl felt, they were really launched on that 
 momentous talk to which she had been looking forward 
 for days. 
 
 It seemed to Humphrey, who was waiting down- 
 stairs, a very long interview, but finally he heard the 
 parlor-maid closing the front door, and going to the 
 window he was in time to see Miss Arnold walking 
 down the street. He could not see her face, but in the 
 curving grace and buoyancy of her young figure there 
 was something which suggested to him the lift up- 
 ward of a wave of the sea. 
 
 [14]
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ETER, in the drawing-room, Humphrey and his 
 mother waited for luncheon to be announced. 
 Their surroundings were conventional, artistic and 
 comfortable. Chairs and tables of Georgian style, 
 chintzes, old engravings and porcelains a delightful 
 room but like many others. Those who knew Dio- 
 neme sometimes wondered that her personality did not 
 express itself in a more unusual interior, not realizing 
 that the greater the imagination the more it can dis- 
 pense, as a rule, with artificial stimulus. The real 
 poet and dreamer sees not his surroundings, but the 
 ineffable beauty of his dream. " Tell me more about 
 that girl this morning," said Humphrey. He stood 
 on the bear-skin rug in front of the wood-fire, his feet 
 well apart as if to brace himself against unexpected 
 attack, his hands in his pockets. The oval Hepple- 
 white mirror over the chimney-piece reflected the back 
 of his head with its smooth black hair and he looked 
 down at his mother with the steady blue eyes which he 
 had inherited from a sailor grandfather. There was 
 a hint of sly humor in these eyes, as well as of the 
 qualities of courage and patience it so often is called 
 upon to support. 
 
 [15]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Dioneme's slimness trailed along a low chair as 
 flexibly as a scarf cast upon it. She returned Hum- 
 phrey's gaze with an amused sparkle in her face, but 
 no jealous apprehension. She knew that Humphrey 
 had never cared for young girls. 
 
 "You've already learned her name," she said. 
 " She lives with her father and sister in a new house on 
 upper Fifth Avenue. The people she knows are the 
 ones who make an art of living, and are as a rule 
 ignorant of other arts, except for purposes of patron- 
 age. They are agreeable certainties. I attract her 
 because I am an uncertainty to her the unknown, 
 and also because she likes my books. 
 
 " Seemed a nice kind of girl," observed Humphrey, 
 with studied carelessness. 
 
 " She is coming again soon but only to see me, re- 
 member!" Dioneme went on again with the hint of 
 innuendo. It amused her, knowing his real indiffer- 
 ence, to speak as if Humphrey might be interested in 
 the visitor. 
 
 In a way she was right. Heretofore young girls 
 had not pleased Humphrey, their very girlishness 
 was an annoyance, they were so serious about the 
 serious things of life! Where the married woman 
 laughed the girl, as often as not, uttered a solemn 
 platitude, where the wise married woman was silent 
 the girl invariably gushed. 
 
 [16]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 But what his mother did not divine was that Miss 
 Arnold had struck him as strangely and appealingly 
 different. 
 
 He meditated in silence for a moment on the odd 
 and rather attractive slant of her eyebrows, which he 
 had happened to particularly notice that morning. 
 Her voice, too, had certainly a vibration which haunted 
 one. 
 
 "She was pretty didn't you think so? like a 
 spring flower with the sun on it!" said Dioneme, whose 
 mind worked in similes. 
 
 She clasped her hands behind her head and gazed 
 into the fire as she went on: 
 
 " I don't know when I've had a visitor who pleased 
 me so much, or who seemed to appreciate me so well. 
 Of course I'm perfectly well aware that only un- 
 qualifying admirers are called appreciators by any 
 writer. The flattery which really satisfies one is the 
 flattery of youth, the over-estimation of those who 
 cannot possibly know!" It was characteristic of 
 Dioneme's low opinion of her own work that she put 
 down unrestricted praise as the inevitable offspring of 
 ignorance. 
 
 "Still she was an intelligent little thing " she went 
 on meditatively, more to herself than Humphrey. 
 
 He did not answer her. He was thinking that he 
 and Miss Arnold would almost certainly meet again, 
 [17]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 even if he did not as he might be tempted break in 
 on his mother's interviews with her. 
 
 "What time is it?" asked Dioneme suddenly. 
 
 "The clock's before your eyes and a watch on 
 your wrist," said Humphrey laughing. "Why ask 
 me!" 
 
 " But the clock has stopped and my watch says half- 
 past nine. No one's timepiece but yours goes in this 
 house. By the way, I thought of such a nice design 
 for a clock the other day. Father Time playing dia- 
 bolo with an hour-glass!" 
 
 "I thought diabolo was out of fashion." 
 
 "So it is, but that will only make my clock more 
 quaint and rococo. What time did you say it was ? " 
 
 "It's half-past one. Why don't we have lunch?" 
 
 "It's ready now," replied Dioneme as the parlor- 
 maid appeared in the door. They went into the din- 
 ing-room, which, like most New York dining-rooms, 
 was dark and showed through the draped windows a 
 vista of brick walls. Two electric lights, burning in 
 side brackets, helped to eke out the pale and feeble 
 light of day. But in the semi-obscurity Dioneme's 
 splendid hair gleamed and her white face was young 
 and exquisite. 
 
 Humphrey unfolded his napkin, and seemed to 
 arouse himself for the first time from his state of ab- 
 sent-mindedness. 
 
 [18]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Well, and how are you to-day, my dear mother?" 
 he said, as if they had just met. 
 
 "Pretty well," said Dioneme simply. 
 
 "I mean, how are your mind and heart and soul?" 
 
 "Oh, starved," she replied, with an accent, half- 
 playful, half-sincere, "all starved." 
 
 "Perhaps they're overfed," suggested Humphrey. 
 "Rather alike, aren't they the pains of starvation 
 and indigestion?" 
 
 "Don't talk about it!" exclaimed Dioneme. "You 
 wouldn't understand ! " A pause ensued. 
 
 "How is the new story coming on?" asked Hum- 
 phrey finally. 
 
 "It's almost finished, but I can't think of a name. 
 I lie awake nights, but nothing comes to me nothing, 
 nothing, nothing I " 
 
 " Why don't you take a book the Bible, for instance, 
 that's full of titles! shut your eyes and put your fin- 
 ger on a line. That would be as good a way as any 
 other. Titles don't have anything to do with the book, 
 as far as I can see. I've just read a story called, 
 'Sick Cannons' any human being know what that 
 means ? " 
 
 Dioneme laughed, but with the air of one who hu- 
 mors a child. She seemed self-absorbed and merely 
 played with the food on her plate. 
 
 " Very good, this minced chicken," said Humphrey, 
 [19]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 helping himself liberally. " Take some more, mother. 
 You don't eat enough." 
 
 "I can't eat," said Dioneme. "I'm not hungry. 
 All I want is a cup of coffee." Just then the telephone 
 bell rang in the hall, and the maid went to answer it. 
 
 " Some one wants to speak to Mr. Humphrey," she 
 said when she returned. While her son was gone 
 Dioneme abstractedly picked to pieces a rose which 
 she took from the silver bowl in the centre of the table. 
 When the operation was finished she looked at the 
 strewn petals and the naked stalk with something like 
 horror, as if she had waked suddenly from a state of 
 somnambulism to find herself dissecting the body of 
 a little delicate animal. 
 
 After a few moments Humphrey came back. 
 
 "It was Norris," he said. Norris Peters was his 
 best friend and associate architect. " Something about 
 the plans we're working on now." 
 
 " For that Michigan medical college, you mean ? " 
 
 "Yes, Norris has just seen one of the faculty, and 
 he says that the old man most interested in it, in fact 
 the one who is giving most of the money, has his heart 
 set on something in what he calls ' Christian IV style,' 
 kind of Danish Renaissance! It appears he came 
 from Copenhagen, or his father did. 'The cradle 
 always calls,' as the Spanish proverb says. Now, 
 of course, whoever pleases this old man his name is 
 [20]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Garborg will get the building. He's capable of throw- 
 ing away no end of money in plans until he gets what 
 he wants." 
 
 "What is Danish Renaissance?" asked Dioneme. 
 
 " A mongrel offspring of the Dutch sixteenth century 
 style. I'll show you a picture I've got somewhere of 
 the Exchange in Copenhagen. It's got a tower one 
 hundred and sixty-seven feet high, surmounted by four 
 huge dragons standing on their heads with their tails 
 entwined. Of course, we couldn't be responsible for 
 a building in Christian IV style, besides our plan is 
 already thought out, all 'Beaux Arts,' if you like, but 
 good of its kind. Some one has got to persuade old 
 Garborg that he doesn't want Copenhagen architecture 
 in La Salle, Michigan, and Norris thinks he can do it. 
 He's going on to Washington, where Garborg is stay- 
 ing until Sunday, to have a talk with him." 
 
 Humphrey, interested in his subject, talked on and 
 on, until he noticed that his mother's expression was 
 distant and preoccupied, though she kept her eyes 
 on his face with an attempt at real attention. Only 
 at the mention of the sky-signalling dragons' tails had 
 any spark kindled in her. Plainly, and regrettably 
 from an artistic point of view, the architectural mon- 
 strosity delighted her imagination with its suggestion 
 of the fanciful and baroque. 
 
 When her son stopped she said, very sincerely and 
 [21 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 with apparently deep interest, that she hoped he would 
 get the building. She wanted him to succeed. 
 
 " Not so much for the money; there's money enough 
 for us both!" 
 
 Humphrey winced, and seemed about to reopen 
 some old discussion, but changed his mind, and they 
 went back into the drawing-room to take their coffee 
 by the fire. "Bring some green chartreuse, too, 
 Ellen," said Dioneme. 
 
 Humphrey frowned. "Bad for you, mother!" he 
 said, "you can't write books on no food and green 
 chartreuse!" 
 
 " But I'm so tired, Humphrey, and I want to do two 
 hours' more work this afternoon. I must have some- 
 thing to give me strength, you see!" 
 
 She looked at her son with pretty cajolery as if he 
 had been her lover, but he did not answer for a mo- 
 ment. The maid brought the coffee, the bottle of 
 chartreuse, and the liqueur glasses, and put them down 
 on a small round mahogany table near the fire. 
 
 Humphrey, in his old place in front of the chim- 
 ney-piece, watched her abstractedly. There was a 
 troubled expression on his face as if he considered 
 difficulties which were as yet uncertainties. Finally 
 he said: 
 
 " You know we had a talk the other day about stimu- 
 lants, and you agreed to give them up." 
 [22]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Yes, I know, and I have for the most part. You 
 saw I took only one small glass of white wine at lunch! 
 But when I need it!" 
 
 "You don't need it, that's just the point; regular 
 poison for you, alcohol is! A nervous, highly strung 
 woman like you! But why do we have to go over the 
 whole thing again. You promised, you remember." 
 
 A flicker of rare anger showed in Dioneme's eyes. 
 His tone though affectionate was peremptory. A 
 child did not speak so to his mother! And he was too 
 tedious and matter-of-fact, unlike himself! "Don't 
 preach, Humphrey," she said shortly, and taking her 
 coffee, drank it down in quick gulps. Humphrey's 
 remained untouched. He seemed to have forgotten 
 it. Neither of them spoke, and in the silence there 
 was a certain gravity and disquietude. 
 
 Suddenly Dioneme rose and with a pretty and im- 
 pulsive gesture laid her hand on her son's broad 
 shoulders. 
 
 " I can't bear to see you feel this way about nothing 
 at all," she said. " I won't take it." 
 
 " Good," said Humphrey briefly, with his arm 
 around her. They stood close together in this way 
 for a moment without speaking, then Dioneme threw 
 herself down in her low chair again. Humphrey 
 reached for his neglected coffee and sipped it slowly 
 while his mother began to talk. 
 [23]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "You can't realize, a strong creature like you," 
 she said, with her usual charm and intensity, "how 
 one feels when stimulant of some kind becomes a 
 necessity. To-day I'm like a hop-vine trying to stand 
 up without its pole. Everything seems so queer and 
 light and unreal to me! 
 
 "Do you remember, Humphrey, when you were a 
 child and used to blow soap-bubbles ? Just at the end, 
 before they burst, the colors deepened and whirled 
 in them till one was giddy! The world seems that 
 way to me sometimes, swimming and changing and 
 meaningless. It's all unbearable! I feel as if I were 
 going mad." 
 
 "Nerves," said Humphrey laconically, but there 
 was an unboyish accent of sympathy and comprehen- 
 sion in his voice. " What you need is rest. Go and 
 take a nap this minute, will you ? I'm off to the 
 office!" He leaned over and dropped a kiss on his 
 mother's hair. " Man who saw you with me the other 
 day thought you were my sister," he said, and de- 
 parted. 
 
 Dioneme listened to his footsteps in the hall and 
 to the opening and closing of the front door without 
 moving. Gradually the smile which his last words 
 had brought to her lips faded and her face grew al- 
 most haggard again. 
 
 "His name, Humphrey, means 'protector of the 
 [24]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 house,'" she said to herself, fancifully. For a mo- 
 ment she may have felt a pride in thinking that her 
 son was stronger than she, then she gradually reverted 
 to the abuse of her own dignity in his supervision and 
 watchfulness. At last she seemed to dismiss the sub- 
 ject with a sigh, got up and went to the window, look- 
 ing out, absent-mindedly, on the hard, sunlit street, 
 which was beginning to wake up to its decorous after- 
 noon activities. The luncheon guests of the lady who 
 lived opposite fluttered through the door, one by one, 
 like pigeons issuing from a cote, entered their waiting 
 carriages or motors, and were borne away. Then the 
 hostess herself made an imposing sortie, flanked by 
 her butler, footman, carriage groom and toy-dog, 
 and drove off in a high-swung victoria, the plume in 
 her toque waving loftily. 
 
 At another house they began to lay down a strip of 
 red carpet, horrid portent of an afternoon tea. De- 
 livery wagons rattled by, and asthmatic taximetre 
 cabs. A mounted policeman took up his stand on 
 the corner and petrified himself into a statue of law 
 and order. Above the houses the sky showed a 
 crude brilliant blue, the light and shadow everywhere 
 was sharp-edged, incisive; there was something al- 
 most brutal in the exposure of every outline and detail, 
 something raw, uncompromising, unpersuasive, like 
 the city itself. After a time it increased Dioneme's 
 [25]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 nervousness. Her limbs seemed full of twitching 
 springs. She was so exhausted that she longed for 
 inaction, but it was impossible for her to keep still, 
 and she paced up and down the room a few times with 
 her hand clutching her throat, a prey to the most tort- 
 uring nervousness. Her eyes fell again on the glass of 
 chartreuse and lingered as if fascinated. It glowed, 
 soft, translucent, like some splendid green peridot. 
 
 " Humphrey makes himself ridiculous," she thought, 
 with sudden anger and felt as if she must shriek aloud 
 with the tension of her nerves. The oily green liqueur 
 continued to hold her gaze with the strange spell of 
 jewels. 
 
 "I won't take it, I won't take it," she said, half 
 aloud, but even as she spoke, moved by some force 
 stronger than her own volition, she walked to the table, 
 seized the glass, and swallowed the liqueur eagerly. 
 It seemed of mingled fire and oil. Almost at once 
 warmth flowed through her veins, every muscle re- 
 laxed, the tension on her nerves ceased. She imagined 
 she felt like one of those dried Japanese plants which, 
 placed in water, gently unfold. Her eyelids drooped 
 heavily over her eyes with a sense of delicious languor. 
 
 The second glass of chartreuse thrilled her with its 
 
 sweet exotic perfume, she thought of fields of strange 
 
 flowers, of the clinging fragrance of Eastern bazaars, 
 
 and sipped it slowly, slowly, lingering over each swal- 
 
 [26]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 low. Then she sank back into her low chair and 
 closed her eyes. How wonderful to feel the world 
 slipping away in this glow of peace and happiness. 
 No thought of Humphrey troubled her. Oh, the 
 ecstasy of relief from that agony of the nerves! Now 
 she could sleep, now she could forget! 
 
 When Humphrey came back that evening, unusu- 
 ally late, for he had stopped at his club on the way, he 
 found his mother had already gone out. 
 
 "Mrs. Wylde was dining with some people and 
 going to the play afterward, I think, sir," explained 
 the maid of whom he made inquiries. He was a little 
 surprised, as this kind of festivity was one Dioneme 
 had not indulged in since his father's death. In his 
 own room, however, he found a note from his mother, 
 scribbled hastily in pencil, in which she gave the same 
 explanation of her absence. " I forgot to tell you this 
 morning," she said. Looking at the note again he 
 saw there was a postscript : " I felt so badly after you 
 went away that I took the liqueur, after all." The 
 words reverberated in Humphrey with a sense of great 
 import. He had not guessed, until now, that there 
 was any question of temptation. Here, too, was a 
 faint signal to him of something sinister, something 
 from which his mind recoiled. There passed over him 
 the first dim perception of the tragic, for tragedy lies 
 [27]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 not in the fact itself, but in the shadow which it casts 
 on the soul. His mother had broken her promise to 
 him. What did this petty betrayal mean ? 
 
 By it he perceived a new and painful significance to 
 past and future. How long had it been since he had 
 first noticed his mother's fondness for stimulants ? 
 He could not remember. 
 
 There flashed through his mind a sudden remem- 
 brance of a play he had once seen in a French theatre. 
 The details came back vaguely. There had been a 
 pretty woman, lightly intoxicated, the whole a mere 
 bit of Gallic humor, daintily done, acceptable. He 
 had laughed, he recollected, with the rest. Now cer- 
 tain words, pronounced in a whisper even, but in con- 
 nection with his mother, were monstrous, obscene. 
 They made the world reel. 
 
 Later he pulled himself together by an effort and 
 denied, with determined bravado, his own perception. 
 It was a momentary supposition, only, which had ar- 
 rested him, a fear showing a face like reality. Finally 
 he succeeded in reaching a state of mind in which he 
 could take a certain satisfaction in his mother's frank- 
 ness of avowal and no longer ask whether the avowal 
 itself came from indifference to a small thing or ac- 
 knowledgment of a great. 
 
 [28]
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HUMPHREY'S childhood had been spent in one 
 of the older New Jersey suburbs a place un- 
 known to fashion and contemptuous of it. In Omp- 
 ton people lived with decorum and strict economy, 
 paid their discreet tribute to contemporary art, science, 
 and literature, and dwelt much on their ancestry. 
 The celebrities of this community were often distantly 
 connected with celebrities of the adjacent metropolis. 
 The local financial magnate was cousin to a world- 
 famous railroad president, the head of the Ompton 
 Fortnightly Literary Club was a nephew of the editor 
 
 of 's Magazine, and the style in hats was set by 
 
 a lady whose sister had married into the family of 
 a Newport millionaire. 
 
 Humphrey's father and mother had never held 
 much intercourse with their neighbors, but lived some- 
 what apart, the latter occupied with her writing, while 
 Morris Wylde kept to himself by reason of the delicate 
 and instinctive fastidiousness which made him, all 
 his life, more or less of an enigma to those who knew 
 him. 
 
 The Wyldes' house was a long, low, wooden one, 
 painted brown, and with a veranda which ran along 
 [29]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 three sides of it. It stood on a corner at the top of a 
 hill and had a smoothly clipped lawn around it, and a 
 small kitchen garden at the back. 
 
 The street on the side of the house led down past a 
 strip of low-lying waste land to the railroad tracks and 
 was called Murray Street. It symbolized for Hum- 
 phrey all that his childish imagination divined of fear 
 and of evil. 
 
 At the top of the street stood, first of all, the Insane 
 Asylum, an edifice of bleak red brick which ran down 
 precipitously at the back to where the Ompton River, 
 muddy and sluggish, lay among a tangle of wild plants 
 and straggling trees and received the refuse from 
 sewer-pipes. 
 
 Beyond this river was the sunken ground, twenty 
 feet, perhaps, below the level of the road, so that, in 
 passing along the sidewalk, one looked down into it 
 as if it were a yawning gulf. 
 
 Coarse, ill-smelling weeds and all kind of rank 
 vegetation flourished in the Murray Street low ground, 
 snakes crawled there and sometimes came up to lie 
 with their slimy lengths along the sidewalk; in rainy 
 springs the place was flooded and smelt of yellow 
 ooze, and on humid summer nights it reeked of malaria 
 and was alive with poisonous mosquitoes and with 
 myriads of fire-flies, twinkling like baleful flames. 
 
 To walk along Murray Street was always an ad- 
 [30]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 venture to Humphrey. It was like going out into a 
 jungle and facing swarming, unseen perils. At night 
 he sometimes dreamed of it, and woke with a start, 
 cold and damp with perspiration. 
 
 Of course he said nothing of all this to his parents, 
 being ashamed of his unmanly terrors and resolved to 
 conquer them. The evil spell of Murray Street re- 
 mained therefore unsuspected by either Dioneme or 
 Mr. Wylde. 
 
 On Sundays Humphrey went with his father to the 
 ivy-covered stone church of St. John the Divine. 
 
 Dioneme seldom accompanied them, and was much 
 condemned by her neighbors in consequence. Some 
 of them professed to have seen her on Sunday morn- 
 ings strolling, bare-headed, through a little grove at 
 the edge of the town, singing to herself like a mad 
 Ophelia, and once, on Ascension Day, she created 
 quite a scandal by galloping noisily down Main Street 
 on her chestnut horse just as the congregation were 
 coming out from evening prayer. 
 
 Dioneme was, at all times, much discussed in Omp- 
 ton as was to have been expected. People argued with 
 each other about her strange pale beauty, which some 
 could see and others denied, and repeated what they 
 knew of her history. 
 
 She had, it appeared, been born in Honolulu (which 
 of itself had an outlandish sound). Her father had 
 [31]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 been a naval officer, of a distinguished Southern family, 
 but her mother was no more than an actress in a San 
 Francisco theatre, who had died young and unknown 
 to fame. Dioneme, when a young girl, had followed 
 her father, in vagabond fashion, around the world 
 (tales, more or less fabulous, were told of her advent- 
 ures in various ports). 
 
 At eighteen she had won a prize offered by a London 
 newspaper syndicate for the best story of ten thou- 
 sand words, and that was the beginning of her literary 
 career. Soon afterward, at Nice, she had met Mor- 
 ris Wylde, the son of an old but somewhat obscure 
 Knickerbocker family, and they had married after a 
 month's acquaintance. 
 
 "A queer marriage!" said the people of Ompton 
 and predicted disaster. They had a vague pride in 
 Dioneme as a noted writer, though they did not like 
 her books, which they found disconcerting in their 
 ruthless presentation of facts, hysterical in their ardent 
 imagination. "Morbid" was the word most often 
 used in regard to them. 
 
 But Humphrey never suspected that his father and 
 mother differed from other boys' fathers and mothers. 
 He, of all the family, identified himself with his sur- 
 roundings. He went, as a child, to a kindergarten 
 and afterward to a boys' day school, where he became 
 extremely popular. He played tennis and foot-ball, 
 [32 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 made a collection of postage-stamps, raised bull- 
 terriers, and sent valentines to the girls. When he was 
 fifteen his father inherited from an old aunt the house 
 on Madison Avenue and a small fortune, and they 
 moved to New York. Ompton receded into the shad- 
 owy distance, except, perhaps, Murray Street, which 
 through all his life continued to menace him in dreams. 
 
 From this time Dioneme's reputation grew rapidly. 
 She was absorbed by her work and the interests and 
 excitements it brought her, and her husband was ab- 
 sorbed in her. Humphrey, away at school, spending 
 his holidays often with his boy friends, grew more and 
 more out of touch with his father and mother. When 
 he was at home the house was always either full of 
 people or wrapped in a hush which no one must dis- 
 turb, as it meant that his mother was working. 
 
 Among the people or in the hush moved his father, 
 more or less like a stage hero to him, sympathetic, but 
 strangely unapproachable, hidden from familiar knowl- 
 edge as if in some quaintly fashioned mantle of other 
 times, a pleasing and dignified figure, but moving 
 only, as it were, to the breath of another's inspiration. 
 
 Humphrey entered college early, graduated at 
 twenty, and went abroad to study architecture at the 
 Beaux Arts. In Paris he discovered Beauty and 
 learned the blague of the schools. Matronly members 
 of the now rapidly disintegrating American colony 
 [33]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 made him at home in their exactly similar apartments, 
 and saw to it that he ate turkey at Christmas. Through 
 the friendship of some compatriots, who had married 
 into the Faubourg, he also ventured, now and then, 
 (joli gargon et ires sympat hique /) into French society. 
 
 When he was twenty-three, having lived abroad 
 uninterruptedly and without having seen his parents 
 for three years, he received a cable summoning him 
 home. His father was seriously ill. 
 
 He sailed at once, and during the six days on board 
 the Deutschland walked the decks almost unceasingly, 
 in the midst of cold and fog and rain, thinking over 
 the relationship of father and son which, under the 
 menace of loss, became of great significance. What if 
 it should be too late for him ever to know his father! 
 On a gray November morning, the Deutschland, after 
 a long delay at Quarantine, began to steam slowly tow- 
 ard New York. From an upper deck Humphrey 
 watched, in vague impatience, the outlines of the coast. 
 Suddenly from thin, pink eyelets in the clouds rays of 
 sunlight slanted down over distant Coney Island. 
 The sullen water warmed with tints of blue and green. 
 The bay narrowed, and now gulls flew circling around 
 the ship. On the shore bleak suburban villas showed 
 over banks of wintry green. Then the city lifted itself 
 out of the rose-flecked fog, shouting across the water 
 of its force and brutality. Dim towers and factory 
 [34]
 
 chimneys, bridges, gas-tanks, vast office-buildings and 
 grain-elevators strove, in their glimpsed, uncouth 
 immensity, to drive away any gracious and tender 
 thoughts of home. For a moment Humphrey felt 
 that coming back to one's own land was less like cast- 
 ing oneself into the bosom of a mother than saluting 
 an armed and mailed commander to whom one owed 
 allegiance. Then his thoughts fastened themselves 
 anew on his own anxieties. The boat was nearing 
 the dock now. He looked over the mass of faces on 
 the pier, but could see none that was familiar. 
 
 Was it a good sign or a bad ? He could not be sure. 
 As he was walking down the gang-plank he caught 
 sight of a red-headed young man whom he recognized 
 as the assistant of their family physician. This person 
 hurried up to him at once. 
 
 " Glad to see you back," he said. " Your father's 
 no worse to-day. They thought I'd better come down 
 and tell you." 
 
 Humphrey cleared his throat before he could answer. 
 The strain of the long uncertainty had been greater 
 than he had realized. He had feared graver news. 
 
 "Thanks, very much, Giddings." He dreaded to 
 put the next question but it must be done. 
 
 "He he's pretty bad?" 
 
 "We think he will live another day or two." 
 
 "Ah!" Humphrey squared his shoulders. Now 
 [35]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 he knew the worst, and could compel himself to face it. 
 He thought of Dioneme. 
 
 "And my mother? Has she broken down? How 
 is she?" 
 
 "Nearly worn out, of course the watching and 
 anxiety. She got some sleep last night. We gave her 
 a little morphine." 
 
 Giddings pushed his way rapidly through the crowd 
 on the dock and Humphrey followed him. 
 
 " I've got a taxi here for you. Just jump right in and 
 go along. There'll be no trouble about the customs 
 foreign resident, you know. Man here with me will 
 see to all that for you ! " 
 
 Giddings rushed Humphrey into the taxi-cab, 
 slammed the door, and before the latter knew it, he 
 was rattling through the Hoboken streets and had 
 crossed the ferry on his way home. The skies were 
 still lowering, the sun trying vainly to force its way 
 through the light fog. In the dingy streets near the 
 river the air seemed raw and tainted. Yet, though it 
 was a crowded quarter, there was little noise or anima- 
 tion, no street cries or babble of voices or children's 
 laughter. Humphrey felt that he had forgotten what 
 New York was like. They reached Madison Square, 
 and he noted the changes in it mechanically. He 
 wished the motor would go faster. They turned into 
 Madison Avenue, and soon afterward stopped in front 
 [36]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of a brownstone house with a high old-fashioned 
 "stoop." Humphrey jumped out, thrust into the 
 driver's hand the fare ready for him, and rushed up 
 the steps. He found his mother in the long, dim 
 drawing-room. She said nothing when she saw him, 
 but he saw there were tears in her eyes, and he took 
 her in his arms, feeling how soft and tremulous she 
 was, and that she was a woman and must be com- 
 forted. 
 
 "Your father wants to see you," she managed to 
 say finally. " He is in his old room, quite quiet now 
 and without any pain. You must go to him at once." 
 
 " Will you come too ? " 
 
 " No, dear, he asked to see you alone." 
 
 Humphrey went up the stairs quickly, but with a 
 kind of heaviness as if he were no longer a young man. 
 To his surprise, he found his father sitting up, or rather 
 half reclining, in an invalid's chair. An old gray 
 army blanket covered his feet and knees, and there 
 was a white linen pillow under his head. His delicate, 
 intellectual face was yellow and drawn, but had lost 
 nothing of its look of calmness and distinction. Only 
 his blue eyes shone with a kind of unnatural brightness, 
 and there was a tremor in his hands. 
 
 The room where he lay was almost painful in its 
 neatness and order, there was little to suggest illness; 
 it was evident that the real battle was over; science 
 [37]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 and humanity, outmatched, had surrendered to their 
 conqueror, and everything was ready for his arrival. 
 
 Humphrey greeted his father quietly, controlling 
 with difficulty the lump in his throat. He felt as if the 
 man in front of him was, in some sense, a stranger, but 
 a stranger whose loss would be irremediable, because 
 he carried in himself the promise of being a friend. 
 
 During Wylde's life the very conventionality of his 
 words and manner had, in its exaggeration, made a 
 mystery of him. He cut himself off from his fellow- 
 creatures' comprehension by his scrupulous conform- 
 ity to their own regulations. They were baffled by 
 him because he never defied them. 
 
 Now, at the last, however, this strange, impersonal 
 disguise seemed slipping away from him, or rather it 
 was as if he deliberately clutched it with both hands 
 and tore it off in desperation. The soul, at its mo- 
 ment of farewell, would not be hampered. 
 
 " Humphrey my dear boy " he said, and faltered. 
 Humphrey sat down beside his father and laid his hand 
 gently on his. In spite of the effort he made, the tears 
 came to his eyes. 
 
 "You have been away a long time three years," 
 said the older man. 
 
 "It was your wish, father." 
 
 " Yes, I know. And you have worked well, I hear. 
 It is hard that you should not be able to go back, 
 [38 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 but your place, hereafter, will be here, with your 
 mother." 
 
 "I can go on with my work, now, anywhere," said 
 Humphrey. " I need never leave you and my mother." 
 
 "It is I who must be leaving now." 
 
 They sat in silence for a moment or two, Humphrey 
 struggling not to give way to his emotion, and his father 
 staring through the window at the bare tracery of a 
 wistaria vine on the rear wall of a brick house facing 
 them. His eyes had the deep and clouded look of 
 those whose gaze is turned inward, and who no longer 
 perceive the visible. 
 
 " I want to talk to you about the future and what 
 I am bequeathing to you, Humphrey," he said, after a 
 time. "Not of property," and he made a slight, im- 
 patient gesture with his hand " all that sort of thing 
 you will find in order it will explain itself and my old 
 friend, Martin, who is one of my executors will help 
 you. It is something else." He paused and a flame 
 seemed to kindle in his eyes. "I want to speak to 
 you about your mother," he said finally. 
 
 At his words it seemed as if, with a last wrench, the 
 disguise of years had fallen. Humphrey suddenly 
 realized that the whole passion and mystery of his 
 father's life had been his wife. 
 
 " You have known her as a child," went on the older 
 man, "and accepted her as a child accepts the peo- 
 [39]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 pie around him, without analysis or comprehension, 
 merely as beings who provide and support. Later you 
 have heard of her reputation, and, perhaps, been proud 
 or at times annoyed at having your mother a 
 famous writer. But of the woman herself you know 
 nothing." 
 
 "That is quite true," said Humphrey. "I went 
 away from home a boy." 
 
 "It is as a man that I am going to speak to you, for 
 I want you to understand your mother. She is more 
 than maternal, more than woman. She is, first and 
 foremost, a genius, a creature of fire and fancy, apart 
 from the rest of us, infinitely strong and infinitely weak. 
 To her life must be poetry." He paused, fatigued 
 with the effort of talking. When he spoke again it was 
 half-dreamily as if to himself: "Was she not born 
 on a midsummer night, in an island of the sea, and 
 christened from a book of Herrick's songs! Beauty 
 is the essential with her, and the world of men, which 
 is unbeautiful, becomes at times intolerable. To es- 
 cape from it she might seize the first thing that came 
 to her hand. It is at moments like these she must be 
 guarded. Think of the loneliness of a soul like hers, 
 perceiving often what to us is unknown! The anguish 
 of trying to reveal it to us and seeing us staring 
 stupidly, incapable of comprehension!" Again he 
 paused and Humphrey waited in silence. 
 [40]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "And this power in a woman, do you realize what 
 that means, the frailness of the body, with its constant 
 ebb and flow of nervous will, the timidity of instinct, 
 the rack of intuition ? 
 
 "There were times when your mother was a mere 
 quivering child in my arms, times when she soared so 
 far above me that even the wings of my love could not 
 reach her. But even when coldest and most remote 
 she touched my brain with a kind of madness. She 
 was forever changing like the moon! I called her 
 my Moon Lady." 
 
 Wylde seemed to forget his son for a moment. His 
 head fell on his breast and with closed eyes he lived 
 over old days and nights. Finally he roused himself. 
 
 "Humphrey," he said, "you must take care of your 
 mother, as I have done I leave her in your charge." 
 
 "I will do my best." Humphrey was sensible of 
 much that was unexpressed in his father's words and 
 would have liked to have questioned him about he 
 knew not what, but now the sick man began to show 
 signs of great fatigue, and at the desire of the nurse, 
 who came in just then, Humphrey left him. 
 
 Two days afterward he died peacefully, with his 
 eyes turned on Dioneme's face. 
 
 [41]
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MORRIS WYLDE had left all his affairs in order, 
 as he had said, and after his death Humphrey 
 found there was little for him to do personally in re- 
 gard to settling up the estate. 
 
 His mind turned toward his profession. One of 
 his Paris friends urged him to open an office with him 
 in New York, and this he finally decided to do. 
 
 He regretted that he could not have finished his 
 course at the Beaux Arts, but hoped that practical 
 experience would in the long run make up for the loss 
 of further academical training. If his mother had 
 proposed living in Paris he might have gone on with 
 his studies there, but she did not do so, probably be- 
 cause with her usual self-absorption the idea did not 
 come to her. 
 
 Moreover, Humphrey had once heard her say that 
 she hated Paris and could never work there. He put 
 the whole matter aside therefore as of small importance. 
 
 The first year of their mourning passed not too 
 
 unhappily. Life with his mother was interesting to 
 
 Humphrey. It was more forming a new relation than 
 
 resuming an old one, and Dioneme did not lack fas- 
 
 [42]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 cination, even for her son. Without making any con- 
 scious effort he became necessary to her. She liked 
 to talk to him; he never bored her, either with in- 
 trusive youth or lack of understanding, and Dioneme's 
 capacity for boredom extended beyond the bar of 
 blood or affection. 
 
 The individual on whom for the moment she flashed 
 the light of her imagination was always interesting 
 to her, no matter of how common a clay he was really 
 made but woe to the one who sat temporarily in 
 darkness and clamored for attention out of his turn! 
 Humphrey never made demands, so his society was 
 always acceptable. The maternal in Dioneme was 
 a thing of intermittence. On the whole, Humphrey 
 was probably dearer to her because he was Humphrey 
 than, because he was her son. 
 
 It never occurred to her that there might be any 
 unsuspected corner of his mind, anything in his char- 
 acter with which she was not in touch instinctively 
 and through the mere tie of nature. 
 
 She would have been amazed, for instance, if she had 
 known how much he thought of Linda Arnold after 
 that one meeting with her. It surprised the young 
 man himself indeed. He speculated upon the slight 
 information his mother had given him as to her life 
 and environment, and it pleased him, also, to recall her 
 face. He saw again the rose-flushed cheeks, the slant 
 [43]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of the eyebrows, which gave such an expression of in- 
 nocent mockery. She had looked gentle yet disdain- 
 ful. Probably many men were in love with her. He 
 wondered if, by any possibility, she could be engaged 
 to one of them, but this supposition he dismissed im- 
 patiently. 
 
 Of course he would see her again. New York, in a 
 sense, was small and they undoubtedly had friends in 
 common. If they did not meet in one way, he would 
 see that they did in another, but he would wait to test 
 the kindliness of fate before taking matters in his own 
 hands. Chance was kind to him, however. One 
 evening, while he was waiting in Sherry's hall for the 
 man with whom he was to dine, he caught sight of 
 Linda. She recognized him at once, and the quality 
 of her bow encouraged him to go up and speak to her. 
 To his surprise he found that he was a little nervous. 
 Linda in the panoply of evening dress, with bare 
 white throat, was almost too beautiful, formidable in 
 her beauty. And in her innocent suavity and grace, 
 her lack of self-consciousness, her gentle insouciance 
 there was a quality of perfection which seemed to set 
 her entirely apart from him, as if she were not flesh 
 and blood, but some exquisitely fragile work of art. 
 
 "How is your mother?" asked the girl, almost im- 
 mediately, and Humphrey, with an effort, conquered 
 his puzzling nervousness. 
 
 [44]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Well thank you a little tired nervous per- 
 haps!" 
 
 " I'm going to see her on Wednesday," said Linda, 
 her eyes distant and contemplative. It was evident 
 that the time would seem long to her until then. 
 Humphrey realized that he did not exist for her ex- 
 cept as the son of Dioneme. But he said nothing, 
 only continued to look at Linda fixedly as if he 
 would wrest from her face the mystery of its beauty, 
 and its unlikeness to the faces of all other young 
 girls. 
 
 Just then they were joined by a tall, thin man of 
 thirty, with fair hair parted in the middle of his narrow 
 pointed head, a high nose, and an eyeglass. 
 
 "Do you two know each other!" he exclaimed, with 
 amiable familiarity. "How amusing!" 
 
 Humphrey had met Walter Jackson in Paris and 
 shunned him ever since with painstaking artifice. 
 Now he breathed to himself a short profane comment. 
 Of course no one could take such a person seriously! 
 A moment later he was painfully surprised to see that 
 Miss Arnold's manner to the intruder was of an un- 
 feigned cordiality. They seemed to be on the footing 
 of old friends with much in common. Humphrey 
 reviewed hastily in his mind the facts he knew about 
 Jackson, regretting that they were so slightly condem- 
 natory. Certainly there was nothing definitely against 
 [45]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 him. He was a gentleman by birth at least knew 
 everybody even the unknown. 
 
 Relinquishing the hope of finding something to be 
 harshly criticised in Jackson's life, Humphrey was 
 more than ever willing to proclaim the man's unattrac- 
 tiveness. Or was there only something antipathetic 
 to him personally in Jackson's individuality ? 
 
 "Done with the Beaux Arts, are you Wylde?" the 
 latter asked now, with the amiability which is uncon- 
 scious of showing its basis of patronage. 
 
 "It's done with me. I've been in New York for 
 a year." 
 
 "Really!" exclaimed the other, his mind plainly 
 elsewhere. "Stunning woman that widow from 
 Pittsburg," he said to Linda. "She's coming in 
 now." 
 
 The widow with a restaurant manner of elaborate 
 unconsciousness passed them in a glitter of steel pail- 
 lettes and a whiff of strong perfume. 
 
 "She doesn't look exactly like a lady," observed 
 Linda, with a little hesitation. 
 
 "Perhaps not but how exactly would you de- 
 fine a lady?" asked Jackson, with an air of brilliant 
 playfulness. 
 
 " Some one who speaks gently, tells the truth, and is 
 never afraid," said Humphrey off-hand. 
 
 To Jackson this explanation was incomprehensible, 
 [46]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 whether taken seriously or as a joke. His gaze roved 
 again over the assembly. 
 
 "There come the Bertie Clarks at last!" he ex- 
 claimed to Linda, ignoring Humphrey. "Do you 
 see them ? they're over there in that corner. You're 
 dining with them, too, aren't you ? Come along." 
 
 He swept her imperiously away, but she nodded to 
 Humphrey, and he distinguished some vague last word 
 a message to his mother, of course! 
 
 A moment afterward he caught sight of the man 
 with whom he was himself to dine, and joining him 
 they went into the restaurant. 
 
 But he was, of a sudden, discontented and irritable, 
 no longer hungry even. His senses rebelled against 
 the smell and taste of food, against the banal music, 
 and the sight of the large, over-dressed women at the 
 table next to him, trying in varying, but universally 
 misguided ways, to be sirens. 
 
 He could not look at Linda Arnold at all, but caught 
 occasional unwelcome glimpses of Jackson's high, 
 pointed head. 
 
 It was the day before Christmas before he saw the 
 girl again. By that time she was already on a footing 
 of something approaching intimacy with his mother. 
 He had come from his office a little earlier than usual 
 to find Dioneme with Linda and three men taking tea 
 by the drawing-room fire. 
 
 [47]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 The male visitors were old, young, and middle-aged 
 respectively easily classified, as their intelligences 
 were on a scale with their years. They admired their 
 hostess, with equal fervor, from their various stages of 
 perception. 
 
 The room was filled with ribbon-bedecked baskets 
 of flowers, offerings of the season, filling the air with 
 strong, hot-house perfumes. 
 
 " Why need a rose-bush wear a blue ribbon because 
 it's Christmas?" asked Humphrey, sitting down by 
 Linda. 
 
 "It's not only on Christmas!" said the girl. "It 's 
 all the year. Paris fashions for flowers ! " 
 
 "We'll see ostrich plumes and paillettes on them, 
 next!" observed the youngest of the three men visitors, 
 spurring his feeble wit, as always, along the trail made 
 by some one else "or fur! Think of the note a bit 
 of chinchilla would give to a pot of hyacinths ! " 
 
 "Your mother has so many friends!" observed 
 Linda to Humphrey. "The room upstairs is just as 
 full of flowers as this one, and it is only the day before 
 Christmas!" 
 
 " I think you're capable of sending them all yourself!" 
 Humphrey said with a smile. " Sure you didn't, now ? " 
 
 Linda flushed. She felt that her sentiment for Mrs. 
 Wylde was being touched upon too lightly. 
 
 "You are most unlike your mother!" she said to 
 [48]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Humphrey irrelevantly and with unkind intention. 
 "It seems strange that you should be her son." Hum- 
 phrey laughed and watched Linda intently. It did 
 not really matter what she said so long as he could sit 
 and look at her. 
 
 Dioneme was talking about art with her oldest 
 visitor, and had entirely forgotten to give her son his 
 tea, but he never missed it. The shadows from the 
 firelight the room was otherwise very dim quivered 
 on Linda's delicately oval cheek. 
 
 "Are you going to let me come to see you some- 
 time?" asked Humphrey abruptly. 
 
 Linda was startled she didn't know why. After 
 her recognition of Humphrey as a very good-looking 
 young man on the occasion of their first meeting, he 
 had ceased to exist for her, except as a casually recalled 
 appurtenance of his mother's. 
 
 Now, surprisingly, he was proposing to become an 
 active agent on his own account, forcing himself, un- 
 asked and not particularly desired, on her own ter- 
 ritorial reserves. 
 
 "I should be delighted to see you," she finally said, 
 formally and without much warmth. "I'm always 
 at home after five." 
 
 "So I see!" replied Humphrey quizzically, looking 
 at the clock, which pointed to quarter before six. "I 
 will come on Wednesday." 
 
 [49]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "But that is the day after to-morrow!" exclaimed 
 Linda, her accent still unflattering. 
 
 " To-morrow is Christmas. I didn't like to suggest 
 coming Christmas!" 
 
 Linda's indignation (though she could with difficulty 
 have formulated a reason for it) gave her back her 
 presence of mind. 
 
 " I'm surprised that there was anything you hesitated 
 to suggest!" she said coldly, and felt how unfortunate 
 it was that a woman like Dioneme Wylde should have 
 such an odious son. 
 
 But suddenly Humphrey's manner changed, and 
 his voice grew grave. "You mustn't be angry," he 
 said. "I'm only trying to show how much I want to 
 see you again." 
 
 Linda looked at him squarely and was forced, 
 though against her will, to admit that he had nice eyes 
 which is going a good way for a young girl ! 
 
 " Where did you know Walter Jackson ?" she asked, 
 changing the subject with a gracious air of being willing 
 to condone past offences. 
 
 "In Paris," replied Humphrey briefly. 
 
 Linda felt a sudden impulse to ask Humphrey what 
 he thought of him but restrained it. After all, what 
 did any one else's opinion of Walter Jackson matter, 
 least of all that of a comparative stranger? 
 
 " Great friend of yours ? " inquired Humphrey. 
 [50]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " Our families have known each other always," an- 
 swered Linda with dignity. 
 
 Here Dioneme discovered that Humphrey had had 
 no tea and the sympathy for him became universal. 
 
 "Let me ring for more hot water!" volunteered the 
 middle-aged man, dissembling his rheumatism as he 
 hastened to the bell. 
 
 "Here's some whiskey, Wylde!" said the youngest 
 visitor, indicating a decanter which stood on the table 
 near Dioneme. "Your mother and I have been cele- 
 brating the season!" 
 
 "Thanks, I'll wait for the tea," he replied shortly. 
 The hobgoblin thought, always in the back of his 
 brain, suddenly took entire possession of him. He 
 would have strangled it secretly, if he could, refusing 
 to hear it, but the malign thing was too strong. 
 
 After a few moments he moved away from Linda's 
 side, yielding his place to one of the visitors, and sat 
 down where he could see his mother more distinctly. 
 She and the oldest man had resumed their discussion. 
 
 "Every one defines genius," said Dioneme, "yet 
 we never learn what it is." An unusual color burned 
 in her cheeks, her voice was perhaps more highly 
 pitched than usual. 
 
 " Genius is not as rare as people imagine," said the 
 old man, looking at Dioneme as if she were only a 
 favored and precocious child. " We see it around us 
 [51]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 everywhere, in minute, intermittent flashes, like fire- 
 flies on a summer night. It is all lost or most of it 
 goes for nothing even an illumination! The real 
 phenomenon is genius as a positive and continuing 
 force." 
 
 Humphrey wondered that no one seemed to notice 
 how excited his mother was. When she spoke it was 
 with a kind of reckless animation, encouraged and 
 applauded by the admiring attention of her hearers. 
 She talked of the futility of effort, the forever-evading 
 dream. "There are moments," she said finally, 
 " when I have a kind of vision a divinity in art not 
 yet revealed to us. I divine some standard by which 
 all men's accomplishments, up till now, will seem piti- 
 able. What do we know? Velasquez was puerile, 
 perhaps, Beethoven mediocre even Shakespeare in- 
 significant. There may be a higher Olympus!" 
 
 Her fervor and the magnetism that was in her made 
 what she said impressive. Only the youngest man 
 stirred uneasily, abashed before a form of imagination 
 he could honor but not comprehend. 
 
 "If the vision is too great it may paralyze achieve- 
 ment," said the middle-aged man. 
 
 "Nothing can paralyze genius," said the oldest. 
 "For genius cannot be denied. It goes out into the 
 world, like a child into a field of flowers, and gath- 
 ers what it will. But it must never be restrained or 
 [52]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 directed or it will lose its fresh and divine impulses. 
 The part of its wisest guardian is only to say, at the 
 end, ' What beautiful things you have gathered! ' " 
 
 "But you Mrs. Wylde," said the youngest man, 
 venturing to break into the conversation, "how do 
 you know so much about the human heart ? " 
 
 "By the little lantern of Self," said Dioneme. 
 
 "By that lantern, 'Self,'" said the old man, "each 
 individual may show us a new world." 
 
 While they talked Humphrey tortured himself with 
 suspicion which was almost certainty. He could not 
 take his eyes from his mother's feverish face; even 
 Linda was no longer in his thoughts. He longed to 
 drive away all the visitors so that he might be alone 
 with Dioneme. Perhaps then he could persuade her 
 to lie down and rest for a while. " Somewhere in the 
 dark," he thought instinctively, his painful impulse 
 being to hide her from observation. Linda's infatua- 
 tion for her, and the admiration of the three men, be- 
 came, little by little, unbearably distasteful to him. 
 He watched Dioneme's animation die out and her eyes 
 grow heavy. Finally, Linda rose to go and Humphrey 
 went out with her to put her into her waiting motor-car. 
 It had begun to snow and the electric street lights 
 shone, in the early dark, through a mist of gently fall- 
 ing flakes. The air was indescribably soft, and one 
 could imagine that the noises of the city were muffled, 
 [53]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 even as its outlines were blurred, and that a strange 
 spell of beauty and silence lay in the storm. 
 
 "Until Wednesday!" Humphrey reminded Linda 
 as he said good-by but even she noticed that he had 
 changed in some inexplicable way. Now he was pre- 
 occupied, looked at her as if he were considering a 
 separation instead of a meeting. 
 
 If she had been less under the influence of Dioneme's 
 recent company she might have been slightly piqued, 
 but, for the moment, there was room for but one obses- 
 sion in her soul. She had the unselfish capacity for 
 absorption in another, which makes hero-worship pos- 
 sible. Behind the charm of Dioneme, too, was always 
 the charm of her books, into which the best and wisest 
 of herself had been compressed. To meet she was, 
 perhaps, no more than an interesting and unusual 
 woman; in her writings there were glimpses of the 
 seer. 
 
 When Linda had gone Humphrey did not return to 
 the drawing-room, but went upstairs to his mother's 
 sitting-room. From there he could hear the murmur 
 of voices, below and the empty laugh of the youngest 
 man, helping out his wits when words, presumably, 
 failed him. 
 
 The clock struck seven and still the talk went on. 
 Dioneme's voice was inaudible though he strained 
 his attention to catch it. They seemed to be amusing 
 [ 54 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 themselves very well. Strange that he could not hear 
 his mother's voice. Why was she not talking ? Had 
 she grown drowsy what with the heat of the fire 
 and everything ? 
 
 Once again he fought with the hobgoblin thought 
 now so much to the fore in his brain, and, with boyish 
 contempt, characterized himself as morbid and imagi- 
 native. If he was not mistaken, he had, at all events, 
 exaggerated. A stir and the moving of chairs in the 
 room below indicated that the visitors were about to 
 depart. He heard them come out into the hall, repeat- 
 ing their farewells to Dioneme, whom he pictured 
 standing at the drawing-room door. Did she waver, 
 ever so slightly, as she stood ? Again the monstrous 
 fancy leaped out at him. He must be what old-fash- 
 ioned people called "possessed." Now the front door 
 opened, a faint descendant of the cold wind which 
 entered swept up the stairs and drifted into the sitting- 
 room. A moment later the jovial men's voices ceased, 
 the door closed. His mother would be coming up- 
 stairs directly now. 
 
 Humphrey felt that there was nothing for him to 
 say to her, so he went off to his own room, paralyzed 
 by his own uncertainties, yet, in some indefinable way, 
 aware of the ponderous, on-moving machine of what 
 must be. 
 
 [55]
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AS before, after a violent outbreak, the hobgoblin 
 JL\. fear ceased to trouble Humphrey for a while, 
 and everything about him became normal and un- 
 disquieting once more. 
 
 His first visit to Linda had been the beginning of 
 others, as was to have been expected. On the occa- 
 sion of the fourth he perceived, tardily even then, that 
 he had fallen in love with her, and set himself resolutely 
 to the task of conquest. 
 
 There was no doubt in his mind nor hesitancy; 
 Linda was the girl he wanted for his future wife. The 
 thing of instant importance was to win her love. He 
 could afford to disregard financial considerations, or 
 so he felt, as his future was more or less assured. His 
 father's estate had been willed entirely to Dioneme, 
 leaving it to her to provide, as she would surely do, for 
 their son. Moreover, Humphrey was doing well in his 
 profession. All things pointed to prosperity in life and 
 in love. 
 
 But presently he became aware, with some bewilder- 
 ment, that there was an obstacle in his path and that 
 the incredible one of Walter Jackson. Twice he and 
 Jackson had taken a grudging tea together at Miss 
 [56]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Arnold's table, once he had observed them chatting 
 with intimacy and absorption in some one's opera box, 
 and once they had ridden past him in the park, and 
 he had felt a bit of gravel thrown up by their horses 
 hoofs strike against his cheek. 
 
 Astounding as it seemed Miss Arnold seemed to 
 enjoy Jackson's society. In the light of his rival's 
 apparent successes Humphrey began to think disparag- 
 ingly of his own attractions. What did it matter if 
 ladies of the Faubourg had found him " joli gargon 
 et tres sympathique" (a characterization which had, 
 indeed, always suggested a bright young barber to 
 his mind), or what availed his subsequent modest 
 triumphs, if Jackson was to outstrip him now! 
 
 He was feeling unusually downcast and lacking in 
 self-confidence one day, when he suddenly met Linda 
 as they were both coming out early from a Sunday con- 
 cert at the New Theatre. 
 
 " Can I get your car for you ?" he asked, when they 
 had exchanged greetings. 
 
 "I'm walking. It's such a nice day I thought it 
 would be pleasant going across the park." 
 
 "I can't think of anything that would be pleas- 
 anter!" said Humphrey, and the humble prayer of 
 the true lover was in his eyes. 
 
 "Won't you come too?" said Linda in dizzying 
 response to this look, and they set forth together. 
 [57]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 The park was covered with a light fall of snow and 
 every tree and shrub wore a coating of crystal ice. 
 Fairylike blue mist veiled the hollows, purple shadows 
 lay on the drifts under the pines and the setting sun 
 shone palely gold in the western sky. The air was 
 so pure and cold and still that it was more sense- 
 stirring than the most subtle perfume. Some hardy 
 sparrows twittered among the icicles. 
 
 " Ripping day !" said Humphrey blithely and inade- 
 quately. 
 
 He and Linda swung along the hard, frozen walks, 
 keeping step together in an intoxicating rhythm. This 
 was a taste of the joy of life the girl you loved alone 
 with you in the great, free, out-of-door world, where 
 there was no drawing-room cunning or artificiality. 
 
 They talked about the concert. Humphrey, who 
 was not musical, said that the orchestra, clustered 
 around the two immense electric lamps suspended from 
 the ceiling, had seemed to him like a swarm of giant 
 insects, attracted by the light, humming and buzzing, 
 beetle-like some of them, with waving antennae of 
 scraping bows. Linda laughed and then frowned. 
 Had not Humphrey appreciated the wonderful song 
 music of the second movement in Tschaikovsky's Sym- 
 phony in F Minor? Humphrey listened respectfully 
 to her opinions. Like most American men he was 
 inclined to defer to a woman's judgment when it came 
 [58]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to an art of which he knew little. Linda did not talk 
 to him of architecture. 
 
 "I've been to five concerts this last week," said the 
 girl with naive pride, "and to the opera two nights, 
 and one matinee." 
 
 "You do too much," observed Humphrey. "You 
 will wear yourself out." This hardly perceptible ap- 
 proach to proprietary interest gave him a thrill of joy. 
 
 "Do I look worn out?" asked Linda with some 
 coquetry. 
 
 Humphrey turned so that he could take a better 
 view of his companion and bent slightly toward her. 
 
 Slim and strong and radiant, with cheeks like the 
 petals of a rose, she looked at him with sweet, chal- 
 lenging eyes. 
 
 "You look like the morning of the world," he said 
 impulsively, and her eyes fell. 
 
 When they reached Linda's house they found her sis- 
 ter and Walter Jackson in the drawing-room. Linda's 
 sister was forty, plain of face, but perfect of figure, 
 consummately well-dressed, with no originality what- 
 ever. She had pale, kind eyes, a very long, straight 
 nose, and was called Julie (having been christened at a 
 period when only names ending in ie were thought 
 pretty and feminine) . Her interests in life were Linda, 
 the town and country houses, the Sarah Emmons Mis- 
 sion for Seamen and the giving and attending of din- 
 [59]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 ners. Her father, though near to her most of the time 
 in the flesh, had succeeded in removing himself from 
 her sphere as far as volition and action were concerned, 
 so he is not included. As Linda and Humphrey 
 entered the room it was caught in a glowing mesh of 
 varying lights : rose flicker of the fire, white glow from 
 the lamps, the setting sun pouring in a golden flood 
 through the still uncurtained windows all crossing 
 and melting into each other until, with the flush of the 
 roses and azaleas everywhere, there was a very riot of 
 color and radiance. 
 
 The perfume of flowers, the faint aroma of tea, and 
 the odor of Jackson's cigarette were in the air. On 
 the hearth lay Linda's Irish terrier. 
 
 The Arnolds had moved up-town from their old 
 house on Thirty-eighth Street only three years before, 
 moved by the instinct which impels New Yorkers ever 
 onward. Their new house faced the park, and from 
 its windows they looked out over the old reservoir, 
 which in its age and retirement from active duty was 
 sometimes known as a lake. Sea-gulls flew in from 
 the ocean to rest on the calm blue surface of this lake, 
 or rose to sweep above it in circles, gleaming snow- 
 white in the sun. On stormy days the waters lashed 
 themselves into an imitation of fury, and dashed, gray- 
 green and tipped with foam, against the artificial 
 banks, and when it grew cold this pretence of a lake 
 [60]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was frozen over, irregularly and with hummocks and 
 cracks and crevices like a miniature Polar Sea. 
 
 Around it ran a path and below that a bridle road. 
 Lower still was the carriage-drive and the walk, and 
 then came the street level and the asphalt of Fifth 
 Avenue. Looking up from the Arnolds' front door, 
 the whole had the effect of some complicated mechani- 
 cal toy, the motors and omnibuses and drays moving 
 along the avenue, then the nurses and perambulators 
 and tramps on the park walk, then the smoothly roll- 
 ing victorias and hansoms, then, higher still, the gallop- 
 ing horses, working with a stiff, jerky motion against 
 the sky-line, and, finally, drolly silhouetted, the earnest 
 pedestrians who were making the tour of the reservoir 
 for a constitutional. All this motion seemed to have 
 been started by some hidden spring; one felt that at 
 any moment it might run down and have to be wound 
 up again; as if, some day, all these amusing little men 
 and women and horses would get out of order and be 
 unable to go through their automatic motions. 
 
 When it came to furnishing their new house the 
 Arnolds found themselves embarrassed. On Thirty- 
 eighth Street they had lived comfortably and envied 
 by their neighbors among the chairs and tables, the 
 bibelots and oil-paintings accumulated before 1890. 
 
 But their architect and decorator was conscientious 
 and determined; Louis the Sixteenth was his god and 
 [61]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 he acknowledged no other. The new house must be 
 a Louis Sixteenth house. So the old-gold upholstered 
 satin furniture, the inlaid chairs, the malachite tables, 
 the carved mahogany dining furniture, the painting by 
 Vibert, the Dresden china, and the piano lamps van- 
 ished to adorn the homes of country relations, and the 
 Arnolds moved into a perfectly complete, harmonious, 
 and, it must be admitted, beautiful abode. 
 
 If Walter Jackson was annoyed at seeing Humphrey 
 he was too consciously a man of the world to show it. 
 Nevertheless, he made a mental note of his entrance 
 with Linda and marked it as important and something 
 to be seriously considered. For Jackson had picked 
 out Linda as, taking everything altogether, the wife 
 who would be most what he wished. She was rich, 
 of the best family and position, good-looking, and what 
 was more important, healthy, amiable and, he thought, 
 not too clever, which is to say eccentric. In short, she 
 would in every way advance his own importance in 
 New York, and be not too disagreeable a drag on him 
 personally. Carefully as he prepared himself for every 
 new step in life, Jackson made ready for matrimony. 
 He had little doubt of his success, once he seriously be- 
 gan to make love. He was experienced with women 
 and attractive and distinguished personally, with his 
 tall, thin blondeness, his smoothly shaven face, and his 
 eye-glass. Rivals, however, would be very unwelcome 
 [62]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to him, and while he did not really think seriously of 
 Humphrey as a rival, he felt that he was not an alto- 
 gether negligible factor. Jackson moved along the 
 lower altitudes of life with a calmness of judgment 
 which was as good as intellect, and a steadiness of pur- 
 pose as great as genius. To be rich and influential 
 in New York society was his aim, and everything was 
 sacrificed to its attainment. Had he ever given way to 
 an unfashionable impulse? No one knew. Was he 
 capable of a passion ? His acquaintances asked it of 
 each other in their moments of psychological research 
 and found no reply. Everywhere they went they en- 
 countered Walter Jackson, carefully dressed and im- 
 perturbable, with perfect manners and a ready smile. 
 He was, though non-essential, a part of New York. 
 His business was in Wall Street; he belonged to a firm 
 of small conservative brokers. In commercial and 
 down-town circles he was regarded as a " safe " young 
 man and a hard worker. Financial magnates approved 
 of him ponderously while admitting he would never 
 dictate to corporations. 
 
 As he and Linda, Julie and Humphrey sat around 
 the tea-table together the latter was convinced that of 
 such a company nothing could come but a probably 
 painful and fruitless effort to make interesting con- 
 versation. After a short stay, therefore, he removed 
 the large spongy paws of "Paddy," the terrier, from 
 [63]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 his lap and rose to go. No one tried to detain him. 
 Linda, inevitably, sent a long message to his mother, 
 and he found himself again in the wintry streets which 
 were now growing dark. He stopped in at his club, 
 had a glass of soda with his friend, Norris Peters, who 
 was, as he expressed it, "on the water wagon," and 
 reached home at half-past seven. All the time, even 
 while he was discussing the advantages of metallic 
 door trims for school-houses and office-buildings with 
 Peters, his whole being was filled with a sense of Linda, 
 the grace and sweetness of her, the high spirit and the 
 innocence. At the thought of her soft, curved mouth, 
 a thrill went through him. He had never been in love 
 before at any rate, not like this! 
 
 When he reached home he found Dioneme at her 
 writing-table. Amid billows of proof-sheets she was 
 unusually and conventionally established on a small 
 island of silver-edged blotting tablet, answering notes. 
 
 "Is that you, Humphrey?" she said, looking up, 
 plainly worn and irritated with her task. "Do you 
 want to dine with old Miss Godwin on the twenty- 
 third? I do not, but, as she is giving the dinner for 
 me, I suppose I must go." 
 
 " Why not have her give the dinner for you with you 
 absent ? " said Humphrey. " Like one of those me- 
 morial services where there is no corpse, you know." 
 
 But Dioneme was not in a mood for fantasy. " Will 
 [64]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 you go or not?" she repeated with determined con- 
 centration. 
 
 "Yes, I'll go. Who is Miss Godwin?" 
 
 " But surely you remember Miss Godwin, my dear 
 boy!" said Dioneme, who never remembered any one. 
 
 "You mean the old lady who lives in one of those 
 big, ancient houses on Irving Place ? " 
 
 "Yes. She knows everybody, all sets, I mean, the 
 simply clever and the simply fashionable; the fashion- 
 able people who are clever and the clever people who 
 are fashionable." 
 
 " Does she have a kind of salon ? " asked Humphrey. 
 
 "Not as bad as that! Women's salons seem to me 
 so often only sensuality in an intellectual mask. I 
 expect Circe had the first." 
 
 Dioneme finished her note while Humphrey smoked 
 a cigarette in silence, turning over the leaves of a book 
 he picked up from the table. 
 
 "Oh!" said his mother finally, observing him, 
 "That's rather a good book, that life of George Sand. 
 I was reading it this afternoon." 
 
 She kindled into vivacity, left free to take up a sub- 
 ject which really interested her. "Of course, it is 
 mostly about her love affairs. Isn't it strange, when 
 you come to think of it, that the people of to-day are 
 so much more interested in George Sand's lovers than 
 in her novels?" 
 
 [65]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "About as many of one as of the other, weren't 
 there?" said Humphrey. 
 
 "It's a sad comment," went on Dioneme "the 
 woman's outliving the author, as if to be merely woman 
 were best!" 
 
 She fell into one of her sudden, deep reveries, from 
 the look on her face a painful one. Humphrey watched 
 her with a new curiosity, clairvoyant all at once and 
 freed from the banal perception imposed by relation- 
 ship. She sat with the silver handle of her pen just 
 touching her lips, her deep eyes fixed on the outside 
 dark. Dressed in one of Mariano Fortuny's painted 
 gowns, which fell around her in folds of dim blues and 
 purples, bordered with strange designs in gold, a 
 mysterious gown which seemed all twilight and stars, 
 she impressed him more than ever before with her 
 beauty and her curious charm as a personality. He 
 wondered if her genius itself ever hampered her, clung 
 around her feet like a heavy and cumbrous garment; if 
 she ever longed for the naked and primeval, to be 
 swayed by unthinking passions, untortured by the 
 intellect, submissive to man's unquestioned will. Did 
 she ever think regretfully of her own beauty, and how 
 it was burning itself out ? Was she tortured by visions 
 of simple Pagan women, passionate and unashamed ? 
 Or was she simply a creator, one of those exotic creat- 
 ures, born to feel more than others, perhaps, but, in the 
 [66]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 need of reproducing that feeling in art, to lose it 
 utterly. Was she unmoral in her remoteness from any 
 personal imprint from experience, whether good or 
 evil? 
 
 Humphrey felt that only he, at that moment, per- 
 ceived her power, as only he knew her weakness. 
 Yet the sum of the two remained uncertainty, and 
 he was seized with a kind of foreboding. He realized 
 that this woman (she seemed so distant just then 
 that he instinctively avoided the human thought of 
 "mother") stood between him and the world, even as 
 he must, unquestioningly, stand between the world 
 and her. 
 
 [67]
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 DIONEME was late in dressing on the evening 
 of Miss Godwin's dinner. When she finally 
 joined Humphrey in the hall, muffled in furs, for it was 
 a cold night, he had not seen her since the morning. 
 They entered the waiting carriage and were driven 
 hurriedly and for the most part in silence to Irving 
 Place. When they entered Miss Godwin's drawing- 
 room it was full of people; plainly they were the last 
 and it was, to be a large dinner. 
 
 Humphrey looked around him and saw that his 
 mother had given a truthful account of their hostess's 
 catholic tastes in entertaining. He recognized Mrs. 
 Claypool West, known as one of the leaders of New 
 York society to all those who were not in it. Under 
 her elaborately coiffed white hair her eyes, like those 
 of a wise, tired old monkey, gleamed dully. Near her 
 was Mrs. Loring Grey, who was not clever enough to 
 have friends as clever as herself and so was always 
 bored. She had the perfect New York manner a 
 compound of suavity, languour, and ice. 
 
 Dr. Trageser, an unfashionable professor of physics 
 from one of the universities, talked deferentially to a 
 [68]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 steel millionaire, recently passed on by Pittsburg to 
 New York, and the latest French portrait painter 
 struggled to escape from a lean, amorous-eyed spinster, 
 last of an old Knickerbocker family, who supported 
 herself by making hats and read Pierre Louys in secret. 
 
 Humphrey had gone so far in his survey of the room, 
 when he caught sight of Linda Arnold, standing, star- 
 like, near the fireplace. He went over to her at once. 
 
 " I noticed you when you came in with your mother," 
 she said. "I never dreamed she was to be here to- 
 night what a joyful surprise! Now the evening will 
 be worth while!" 
 
 Not for the first time the girl's absorption in his 
 mother grated on Humphrey. 
 
 " You are easily pleased and excited," he said with 
 an accent of disapproval, though his eyes resting on 
 her face spoke only infatuation. "You are very 
 young." Now, there is nothing, except telling an old 
 woman that she is old, as insulting as telling a very 
 young one that she is young. 
 
 Linda ignored the look in Humphrey's eyes and 
 answered his words, as she felt they deserved, with 
 spirit. 
 
 "I am old enough to know my own mind," she said. 
 This sounded well in spite of its vagueness. Just then 
 they perceived that the couples were solemnly forming 
 to go in to dinner. 
 
 [69]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Sorry I'm not to take you in," said Humphrey. 
 " I'd convince you you didn't know your own mind at 
 all." His speech was as vague as hers, but left her 
 with a tremulous sense of masculine power over her 
 sex. He departed in search of Mrs. Stebbins, whose 
 named adorned the narrow white card in his waistcoat 
 pocket. Mrs. Stebbins, when found, with the aid of 
 a mutual friend, turned out to be an elderly flirt, with 
 dyed hair and painted eyebrows, who smiled per- 
 petually, showing long, brilliant, white teeth. Hum- 
 phrey's distress was further increased by the fact that 
 at the table he sat on the same side as Linda, so could 
 not even look at her. His mother was opposite, a few 
 places down. While Mrs. Stebbins opened a brisk 
 campaign by inquiring if he didn't think some people 
 much easier to get acquainted with than others, Hum- 
 phrey looked at Dioneme, casually at first, then with 
 a kind of foreboding anxiety. Her face wore the flush 
 he already knew and she was talking intimately, almost 
 confidentially, with the old gentleman on her right. 
 
 The latter was a conservative member of the Union 
 Club, a vestryman of Trinity Church, and prominent 
 on the boards of many influential societies. 
 
 His eyes rested on Dioneme's face with an expres- 
 sion of admiration and puzzled attention. Clearly 
 he was saying to himself, " This is a handsome woman, 
 but there is something I don't understand about her." 
 [70]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Humphrey, in the midst of his uneasiness, smiled at the 
 thought of Colonel Livingstone Irving's trying to un- 
 derstand the author of " Hilmer Brothers." 
 
 Sherry was served with the soup, and the champagne 
 almost immediately afterward. Humphrey watched 
 his mother as she raised the glass to her lips and his 
 sensation of foreboding grew to sickness of heart. He 
 was conscious of Linda, watching a little farther down 
 the table, and of all the indifferent, idle, curious people, 
 eager for a new bit of gossip to repeat at other dinner- 
 tables. 
 
 Mrs. Stebbins, who had been momentarily engaged 
 by her neighbor on the other side, now turned her teeth 
 on Humphrey with a smile of determined coquetry. 
 
 "I hear you are the son of Mrs. Wylde, the writer," 
 she said. "Is she here to-night? Do point her out 
 to me! I'm so excited!" 
 
 Humphrey indicated where his mother was sitting. 
 The butler was just refilling her champagne glass. 
 
 "I think she is perfectly beautiful," gushed Mrs. 
 Stebbins, " such wonderful eyes and hair and such a 
 profile! So young too! It doesn't seem possible that 
 you can be her son!" 
 
 "We grew up together," said Humphrey. And 
 Mrs. Stebbins screamed with laughter. 
 
 "Oh, how witty you are! You are really too witty 
 now I know that you must be her son!" 
 [71]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 The dinner began to be more animated. Where 
 Dioneme sat the conversation was becoming general. 
 She was too much of a celebrity to be left entirely 
 to old Livingstone Irving, and she was evidently in 
 her best vein, for people around her were listening 
 eagerly. But her champagne glass was often refilled 
 and Humphrey felt that he could not longer sit and 
 watch. 
 
 The time had come for him to do something what, 
 he did not know but inaction was impossible. At 
 any moment old Irving 's shrewd eyes might perceive 
 that his neighbor's vivacity was a little unnatural, or 
 Dioneme herself might lapse into the heavy drowsiness 
 which would betray her. 
 
 "I remember when I read your mother's novel, 
 'Doane Beach,'" said Mrs. Stebbins. "It seemed to 
 me I was reading the story of my own life, and curiously 
 enough a friend of mine said to me once that I was like 
 the heroine. You remember the heroine, don't you ? 
 Her name was Elizabeth. Now, does it seem to you 
 as a stranger just as a first impression, that I am like 
 her?" 
 
 "I think you never could have done what Elizabeth 
 did," replied Humphrey. " You are too feminine. He 
 hardly knew what he was saying, but Mrs. Stebbins 
 was delighted. 
 
 "That is it," she exclaimed. "How strange that 
 [72]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 you should have understood me at once! There is 
 something almost uncanny about it! Yes. I am too 
 feminine, too warm-hearted and trusting, but in other 
 ways I am exactly like Elizabeth. Do you remember 
 her gray-green eyes ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Humphrey vaguely but politely. He 
 whispered a word to the footman, who was at that mo- 
 ment presenting to him a dish of fresh asparagus. 
 The man vanished, but presently came back and mur- 
 mured something in Humphrey's ear. No one had 
 noticed his disappearance, but several saw him return, 
 his delivery of a message to Humphrey, and the latter's 
 well-simulated restrained start of surprise and dismay. 
 
 As a matter of fact what the man said was, " The 
 letter you ask for is not in your overcoat pocket, sir." 
 
 " Excuse me for a moment, I must send a line to my 
 mother," Humphrey remarked to his neighbor. 
 
 "Nothing has happened, I hope?" she asked in- 
 quisitively. 
 
 "I'm afraid we must slip away," he said. "I've 
 had bad news." 
 
 He wrote on the back of a dinner card: "Have a 
 message which makes it necessary for us to leave at 
 once. Say a word quietly to Miss Godwin as you pass 
 her chair." 
 
 The butler carried the missive to Dioneme and 
 Humphrey watched her read it, change color, and look 
 [73]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 at him apprehensively, with a frightened question in 
 her eyes. The shock steadied her. She murmured 
 a word or two of excuse to her neighbors on the right 
 and left, and rose, stopping to speak to their hostess on 
 her way out of the room. Humphrey followed her. 
 In the hall, where they had left their coats, she took 
 him by the arm and excitedly demanded an explana- 
 tion. 
 
 "Nothing to be too much frightened about," he 
 said reassuringly for the benefit of the maid who was 
 helping Dioneme into her cloak. "Tell you in the 
 carriage." 
 
 But already his mother, in spite of her still half-con- 
 fused wits, had guessed his subterfuge, and her momen- 
 tary alarm had given place to an unnatural anger. 
 Humphrey saw that she was trembling that she could 
 hardly control herself until they were out of the house 
 and on their way home. 
 
 When she began to speak, finally, her voice was al- 
 most unrecognizable, but he hardly heeded what she 
 said, feeling that it was not really his mother who 
 talked, but some one pitiable through irresponsibility. 
 After a time she grew rambling and incoherent until 
 in the end her resentment wore itself out in ambigu- 
 ous self-pity. Humphrey put his arm around her 
 and drew her head down on his shoulder. As he did 
 so he felt that there were tears on her cheek. A boyish 
 [74]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 shame kept him silent where he would have liked to 
 venture some word of encouragement and reassur- 
 ance, but though he undoubtedly suffered, his pre- 
 dominant emotion at that moment was relief at having 
 escaped from that long, glittering, argus-eyed dinner- 
 table before his mother had betrayed herself. 
 
 Clearly she must have taken stimulant of some kind 
 before they left home and the champagne afterward ! 
 
 He wondered if she were conscious of her own posi- 
 tion and smarted under it. What wretchedness for her 
 to know that he, her son, was now aware of her secret! 
 He hated, for her sake, his own assured knowledge. 
 Pity rushed over him and drowned other feelings. 
 When they reached home he roused Dioneme from the 
 apathy she had fallen into, and helped her into the 
 house and up the stairs to her own room. 
 
 " Mrs. Wylde's maid is not in yet," said the parlor- 
 maid. " She was told she could be out until half-past 
 ten and it is only ten now." 
 
 "Yes, I know," said Humphrey. "We came home 
 earlier than we expected. Tell Parker, when she 
 comes in, that Mrs. Wylde will not need her to-night." 
 
 "Very good, sir," said the servant and departed, 
 wondering a little. 
 
 Humphrey helped his mother into a loose dressing- 
 gown. She was very quiet still and seemed exhausted, 
 with the vague, loose motions of a convalescent. 
 [75]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Humphrey put her into a low chair and forced 
 himself to talk, cheerfully, about trivial things. But 
 his mother made no response, seeming not to hear 
 him. 
 
 "Where is Parker?" she murmured at last, reiter- 
 ating gently, like an ailing child, that she wanted 
 Parker to come and put her to bed. 
 
 Humphrey went to the window and drew aside the 
 curtains, looking out at the night as if it held the answer 
 to riddles. He was heavy at heart, though it was not 
 courage or determination that failed him, but judg- 
 ment. He was conscious now of his youth and inex- 
 perience probably a first sign of the loss of both. 
 
 But surely it needed only the right word of appeal ! 
 Once aroused to the necessity his mother, with her in- 
 sight into truth and the force of will which, hand in 
 hand with creative force, had made her what she was, 
 would be strong enough to save herself. She had not 
 perceived her danger, had not yet realized the depths 
 into which she was sinking. 
 
 He turned impetuously eager to make the appeal 
 at that moment, feeling himself suddenly and irre- 
 sistibly armed with the eloquence of love and convic- 
 tion, but Dioneme had dropped into a heavy sleep and 
 lay in her chair, inert. 
 
 Humphrey drew the curtains again, and went out of 
 the room. How foolish he had been to think of mak- 
 [76]
 
 ing any impression on her to-night. He must wait 
 until she was entirely herself again. No matter what 
 came now, and in his renewed discouragement he felt 
 inclined to count the worst as the most probable, his 
 mother must be protected from the world. No one 
 should ever suspect her weakness. This he swore to 
 himself grimly. 
 
 The next morning Linda came early to ask after 
 Dioneme. Miss Godwin had said casually, the night 
 before, that Mrs. Wylde and her son had bad news of 
 the serious illness of a relative, and so explained their 
 sudden disappearance. As no one wished to endan- 
 ger the gayety of the dinner by dwelling on melancholy 
 topics, the matter had been allowed to drop, but Linda 
 was full of anxiety and interest. 
 
 At the Madison Avenue house she saw only Emma 
 Cooper, who was sitting idly in the morning-room, 
 awaiting the allotment of her day's work. 
 
 " Good-morning," she said, when Linda was shown 
 in. "You'll have to wait some time, I guess, if you 
 want to see her. She isn't up yet." 
 
 "Mrs. Wylde isn't ill, is she?" asked Linda, 
 alarmed. "Was it very bad news she had last 
 night?" 
 
 "I don't know anything about last night. Mr. 
 Humphrey came in here before he went away, about an 
 hour ago, and said she was very tired and wanted to 
 [77] '
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sleep late this morning and not be disturbed until she 
 rang. What did you mean about bad news ? " 
 
 Linda briefly related the events of the dinner. 
 
 " Hm! guess it was a false alarm. Mr. Humphrey 
 didn't mention anything." But Miss Cooper's curi- 
 osity was aroused and she speculated some time on 
 what the news might have been. 
 
 "I had a bad enough time myself last night," she 
 remarked finally. 
 
 "How was that?" asked Linda, and Miss Cooper, 
 needing little encouragement, plunged into a recital 
 which seemed to Linda, ignorant as she was of the 
 future, both tedious and irrelevant. 
 
 "Why, that little Flora Kelly, the manicure, (you 
 remember I told you about her, she boards in our 
 boarding-house), was dreadfully sick. Mrs. Mindel- 
 baum and I were up most all night with her. The 
 other boarders were real cross at breakfast because 
 they said we kept them awake moving around, heating 
 water and so on. She got cold and it settled on her 
 stomach, I guess. They all hate little Kelly or per- 
 haps they would have been more sympathetic. I 
 don't care much for her myself, but when you see 
 everybody down on a person you just take up for them 
 naturally. She's a pretty creature, but so slack, her 
 hair always coming down and hanging about her face 
 in strings, and her petticoat showing below her skirt, 
 [78]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 and her shirtwaist riding up in the back. And you 
 should have seen her dirty little feet when we put the 
 rubber hot water bottle to 'em!" 
 
 "Is she better this morning?" asked Linda. It 
 was not the first time that she had been made familiar 
 with life in Mrs. Mindelbaum's boarding-house. 
 
 "Oh, yes, she's all right," said Emma cheerfully. 
 " She ate a soft-boiled egg for her breakfast and seemed 
 to relish it very much. She was going to work again 
 this afternoon. She manicures at Levy's parlors." 
 
 " She must be very grateful to you," observed Linda, 
 looking at the clock and wondering how long it would 
 be before she could see Mrs. Wylde. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. She's the kind that takes 
 things pretty much for granted," Emma replied. 
 "She thinks a lot about the men, I guess, and about 
 having a good time spends all her money on clothes 
 and going to the vaudeville theatres and the cinemat- 
 ograph. The Canadian nurse who boards at Mindel- 
 baum's hints all kinds of things about her, but I never 
 listen to that kind of talk myself. And I never cared 
 for Lizzie Graham, anyhow. She has a great deal too 
 much to say about the families she nurses in. No first- 
 class nurse does that, and for my part I don't believe 
 she ever saw the inside of the Vanderbilt's front hall, 
 though to hear her talk you'd think she'd been brought 
 up by them." 
 
 [79]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "I expect the little Kelly girl needs a friend badly 
 enough," said Linda, meditating on an existence so im- 
 measurably removed from her own. 
 
 "She hasn't many at Mindelbaum's, but it's her 
 own fault, I guess. It's hard to have patience with her 
 sometimes. But she's got that sort of delicate, pretty 
 little face. I can't help taking up for her." 
 
 " You have a kind heart, Emma," said Linda gently, 
 and the typewriter, though she gave a disclaiming 
 snort, was secretly pleased and flattered by the ap- 
 proval. 
 
 Not long afterward Dioneme came in with rather an 
 absent manner. Her eyelids were a little swollen and 
 reddened. Linda anxiously inquired about the night 
 before. 
 
 "I heard you had bad news," she said. 
 
 "Humphrey was unnecessarily alarmed," said 
 Dioneme, " it turned out to be nothing, after all." She 
 smiled at Linda, but there was something secret in 
 her smile, which the girl felt unpleasantly. She 
 asked no more questions; perhaps something had 
 happened of which Mrs. Wylde was not at liberty to 
 speak. 
 
 "What am I to do this morning, please?" asked 
 Emma Cooper. 
 
 Dioneme unlocked the drawer of her writing-table 
 and took from it some closely written sheets of paper. 
 [80]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 These she handed to Emma, who retired with them 
 into her curtained alcove. 
 
 "When did you do all that?" inquired Linda re- 
 spectfully. The sight of Dioneme's work in manu- 
 script never failed to impress her. 
 
 "Yesterday, after lunch." 
 
 " But you were so tired when I saw you in the morn- 
 ing!" 
 
 " I took something to strengthen me," replied Dion- 
 erne, "after that I worked very well." 
 
 "Have you ever tried strychnine?" asked Linda 
 innocently; "my sister says it is such a wonderful 
 stimulant." 
 
 "Dear little Linda!" said Dioneme caressingly, 
 "you always want to help! You are like a good little 
 house-fairy! I will buy you a tiny green cap such as 
 fairies wear, it will look so pretty on your bronze-col- 
 ored hair!" 
 
 " But it might make me invisible," Linda answered 
 laughing. "I don't want to be invisible!" 
 
 " Now I see you are too vain to be a house-fairy! It 
 was all a mistake!" 
 
 Had the events of the evening before faded from 
 Dioneme's mind? It would have been hard to 
 tell. 
 
 When Humphrey came home that evening deter- 
 mined to make the plea to her courage and strength of 
 [81]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 will which he had already resolved on, it seemed to him 
 that she had forgotten everything. 
 
 As far as her personal emotions went she seemed, 
 at all times, to live entirely in the present. Her joy 
 or pain of the moment was so excessive, its interest 
 for her so overwhelming, that there was little space left 
 in her mind for either foresight or retrospect. 
 
 Another more worldly woman would have been 
 concerned about the possible comments around Miss 
 Godwin's dinner-table, but Dioneme took the world 
 and its opinions very lightly. She went into society 
 as a school-boy goes into his playground in the hour 
 of recreation. The one serious and important world 
 to her was presumably that of her own creation, where- 
 in walked the puppets of her fancy. 
 
 The opinion of her acquaintances about her books 
 interested her, and received due attention, but for their 
 opinions about herself she cared not an iota. 
 
 Humphrey, once he had perceived his mother's 
 state of mind, was wise enough to forego the appeal 
 he had thought of making. But he was profoundly 
 discouraged. There was no way of approaching or 
 taking hold of her. He was dealing with a creature 
 whose real thoughts and principles seemed as intangi- 
 ble and evanescent as smoke drifting through fog. 
 
 [82]
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THERE was no further manifestation of Dion- 
 erne's weakness for a long time. It even ceased 
 to be considered in Humphrey's mind as a persistent 
 evil, but rather as something of rare and perhaps 
 doubtful recurrence, negligible almost in importance. 
 
 He felt free to give his energy to his office work, and 
 in his spare moments dreamed of Linda. An obscure 
 connection between his professional duties and the 
 girl he loved made the former not only essential, but 
 enjoyable. There was always the future to be thought 
 of even when it was uncertain. When work was over 
 Humphrey, who cared little for society as a routine and 
 an institution, was often driven into it, like many other 
 men, by the necessity of seeing the woman he loved. 
 With this end in view he made ready, one evening in 
 the middle of the winter, to attend the tableaux vi- 
 vants for the benefit of the Sarah Emmons Mission for 
 Seamen, at the Plaza Hotel. Linda's sister, as was to 
 have been expected, was actively interested in these 
 tableaux and Linda herself was to appear in he knew 
 not what scene. 
 
 He arrived rather late at the hotel and could only 
 [83]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 find a seat near the end of the big ballroom. There 
 was no one he knew in his immediate vicinity, so he 
 amused himself by looking around at the assembly, 
 most of whom presented their backs to him, bare or 
 broadclothed, according to sex. He reflected that the 
 majority of those present had scrambled through their 
 dinners in order to get to the Plaza in time to secure an 
 advantageous seat, that they would be more or less 
 bored while there, and start a stampede of exodus, if 
 possible, before the performance was over. But that 
 was the New York conception of social enjoyment! 
 
 The enormous room was stiflingly hot and as an 
 epidemic of colds was raging, an irritating accompani- 
 ment of coughs and sneezes was heard to the hum of 
 conversation. Considered from the point of view of 
 numbers the gathering did great credit to the zeal 
 and energy of the managers of the Sarah Emmons 
 Mission. 
 
 "They've got all the social register here, and most 
 of the telephone directory," a woman in front of 
 Humphrey murmured to her neighbor. 
 
 The tableaux had been arranged by a well-known 
 artist (socially well known) and each was supposed 
 to be illustrative of a song to be sung by a tenor voice 
 just before the curtains were drawn aside. They were 
 advertised to begin at nine o'clock, but it was twenty 
 minutes later when Schumann's "Du bist wie eine 
 [84]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Blume, so hold und schon und rein!" was heard and 
 the hanging folds of red velvet parted to show, in an 
 oval frame, the exquisite face of Hildegarde Barnard, a 
 seventeen-year old debutante. 
 
 A storm of perfectly spontaneous applause greeted 
 this tableau and it had to be repeated again and again 
 until the delicate head of the poser swayed on her 
 long, slim throat and the roses trembled in her hand. 
 
 After this came Rubinstein's "Es war ein alter 
 Konig,"and this was a pompous court scene, where the 
 " junge Konigin " wore all her jewels, said to be worth 
 a million dollars (in real life she was the wife of a man 
 designated loosely but impressively as "Standard 
 Oil"). She was attended by Count Aldobrunetti, a 
 large-eyed Florentine, in the person of the romantic 
 but illy-inspired page. 
 
 This tableau was received with a more restrained 
 approval. It was generally remarked that Mrs. 
 Dickey, the Konigin, stood as if she had been tipped 
 back from the knees, and doubts were expressed as to 
 the widely circulated value of the jewels. The next 
 time it was Linda's turn. She was to be seen in an 
 illustration of the old Neopolitan song, " Carme." 
 As he heard the first notes of the music Humphrey's 
 heart beat a little faster, as it often did before a glimpse 
 of Linda, but the tableau itself disappointed him. 
 The pose and the costume, he felt, did not do Linda
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 justice. It was not the part to have chosen for her. 
 She could have been the interpreter of some dainty 
 French madrigal of the eighteenth century, or perhaps 
 of something as remote from that as Burns's " Mary 
 Morrison." Her personality would have lent itself to 
 either. 
 
 But the audience did not seem to share Humphrey's 
 opinion, for " Carme " was loudly applauded. 
 
 When each tableau was over, the impersonator came 
 out of the improvised greenroom to mingle with the 
 audience, and this gave the occasion a pleasant aspect 
 of informality and intimacy. One might almost for- 
 get he had aided the Seamen's Mission to the extent 
 of a five-dollar ticket, and imagine he was in the 
 Plaza ballroom by invitation. 
 
 Humphrey waited until he saw Linda come down the 
 steps beyond the stage, descend the long aisle near the 
 wall, and join some friends on the other side of the 
 room from where he was sitting. Then he rose and 
 went across to speak to her. The face she turned to 
 him, stiff with paint and powder, was strange and star- 
 tling to him. She was astonishingly, dazzlingly pretty, 
 but all this artifice, the blackened eyes, the showy 
 costume, gave to her innocent distinction a suggestion 
 of perversity, troubling and disconcerting. 
 
 " Una rosa piu bella non v'e," he said to her, quoting 
 from the song. 
 
 [86]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " But this ' Carme' doesn't understand Neapolitan," 
 flashed back Linda, half sorry for her ignorance, stim- 
 ulated into an unusual coquetry by the excitement of 
 the evening, and perhaps by the fantastic, half-dis- 
 guise of her costume. 
 
 "Won't you say it in English?" 
 
 "Sometime undoubtedly. But don't you want 
 to sit down ? " He looked around him. " There are 
 two chairs just behind us, at the very end of the room 
 you won't see anything, though!" 
 
 "It doesn't matter," said Linda, "I've seen more 
 than enough of these tableaux at rehearsal but what 
 about you ? " 
 
 "A longer view of 'Carme' is what I want," Hum- 
 phrey answered. "All that I want!" 
 
 They sat down in the place he had indicated and 
 found themselves in a warm isolation, as odd as it was 
 complete, with compact masses of humanity forming 
 a bulwark around them. They were cut off from the 
 least glimpse of what was taking place on the stage 
 and were themselves almost invisible and quite un- 
 heeded. 
 
 And this detachment from the rest of the world, 
 Linda's nearness and exaggerated, unfamiliar beauty, 
 the perfume of the scarlet carnations she wore in her 
 hair, the gleam of coquetry in her eyes, stirred Hum- 
 phrey's senses. He was seized with a desperate long- 
 [87]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 ing to touch this small alluring creature, to feel under 
 his fingers the silken texture of her skin, the softness 
 of her hair, to break down at a rush all barriers be- 
 tween them and take her at once in his arms, without 
 all the long preamble of courtship and polite attention 
 decreed by convention. 
 
 For one mad instant he forgot entirely where he 
 was perhaps, and Linda must have divined a little of 
 all this from the way he looked at her, for she found 
 speech difficult and could only play nervously with 
 her fan. She was aware that her pulses, too, were 
 beating a little faster. What had changed Humphrey 
 of a sudden ? He had become a new person, domi- 
 nating, disturbing. She was curiously, and not dis- 
 agreeably conscious of his nearness to her, and of the 
 strength in his elastic but rather thickly set figure. 
 His thick black hair, and his short-lashed, steady blue 
 eyes also gave her a strange sense of pleasure. 
 
 Touched by an old magic, these two young people 
 were momentarily drawn perilously close to each other. 
 
 The shock to the girl was abrupt and incompre- 
 hensible, though to Humphrey it came as the culmina- 
 tion of a sentiment which had been born at his first 
 sight of Linda. 
 
 Mastering himself a little he leaned over and took 
 the girl's fan from her. But his fingers shook and be- 
 fore he knew it the sticks of the fan snapped in his hold. 
 [88]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Never mind!" said Linda, trying to speak natu- 
 rally. " It's of no value ' Carme ' couldn't afford ex- 
 pensive fans, you know." 
 
 She felt as if her own voice came to her from a long 
 way off and there was a humming in her ears, but she 
 tried to raise her eyes and look Humphrey carelessly in 
 the face. It was of no use, his gaze held hers with 
 something so bold, so insistent yet caressing, that she 
 hastily turned her head away again, frightened at she 
 knew not what. 
 
 In her trouble and shyness he read a hope, almost a 
 promise, and grew suddenly confident. It was enough 
 for the moment he would ask nothing more this was 
 not the time nor the place. 
 
 Linda, when she reached home that night and was 
 at last alone, in bed and trying to sleep, went over 
 and over the little scene. What had been said or done ? 
 Nothing yet her cheeks burned now at the memory, 
 her nerves were in a tumult. Something of significance 
 had happened. Humphrey Wylde had changed, she 
 had changed, the whole world had changed. Yet 
 what did she really know of Mrs. Wylde's son ? He 
 was almost a stranger to her. Was this strange feeling 
 of intimate knowledge only an hallucination or was it 
 real ? She felt poor child! as if she were trying to 
 seize and inquire into the substance of a flying shadow. 
 She was baffled and tormented by her very attempts 
 [89]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 at self-analysis, and still Humphrey's long look seemed 
 to burn through her and she lay, until nearly daylight, 
 sleepless, not knowing whether what she felt was 
 pain or joy. 
 
 The next morning she was to have gone to see Di- 
 oneme, but a new self -consciousness made her feel that 
 such a visit was, just at that moment, impossible. 
 She telephoned, therefore, to say that she could not 
 keep her engagement. Irrationally enough she felt 
 guilty of an infidelity to the mother in having dwelt 
 too long on thoughts of the son. As an obscure ex- 
 pression of remorse she took Dioneme's last book from 
 the shelf and sat down to reread it. While she was 
 thus occupied she happened to think of the trivial 
 circumstance that neither Humphrey nor his mother 
 had ever been asked to dine with them. Such an 
 oversight struck her as inconceivable for she had been 
 strictly trained to conventional observances. How 
 had it occurred? 
 
 She went at once to her sister's room and found 
 Julie sitting in front of her writing-table. An engage- 
 ment calendar was on her right hand and on her left 
 a box divided into compartments labelled respectively, 
 "bills," "letters," "invitations," "charities," and 
 "circulars." Neat packages of papers, held together 
 by india-rubber bands, lay before her on the table, 
 and the chef's menu book was under her immediate 
 [90]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 scrutiny. Julie was in the very thick of her morning 
 employments. She looked up, inquiringly, with her 
 eye-glasses balanced on her long, aristocratic nose, as 
 Linda entered. 
 
 "I thought you were going out?" 
 
 "So I was but I decided not to, after all. When 
 are you giving your next dinner, sister ? " 
 
 "Let me see!" said Julie, meditatively, turning 
 over the leaves of the engagement calendar; " I think it 
 is on the 30th, yes, Friday, the 30th, and I want you, 
 too, Linda; there are some younger people coming 
 Jim Strong and his wife, Walter Jackson, and the 
 Stevenson boy." 
 
 "I wish you would ask Mrs. Wylde and her son, if 
 you have room. They've never dined here and they 
 must think it so rude of us!" 
 
 Even as she spoke it flashed through Linda's mind 
 how little attention Dioneme paid to social considera- 
 tions ; to picture her brooding over the fact of not re- 
 ceiving any particular invitation was absurd. And 
 Humphrey was almost as nonchalant. No, it was not 
 on their account that she saw the sudden and pressing 
 necessity of their being asked to dinner, it was because 
 she herself, for some indefinable reason, felt it well to 
 establish formal relations between the two families. 
 
 Julie, meanwhile, kept her brows bent in anxious 
 reflection. She had never been able to entirely ap- 
 [91]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 prove Linda's intimacy with Mrs. Wylde, but had 
 looked upon it as a girl's infatuation which would soon 
 pass. Most careful inquiry had given her no real 
 reason for interfering with this friendship. Mrs. 
 Wylde was eccentric a literary genius not exactly 
 in their own restricted circle, but there was nothing 
 whatever to be said against her. Her husband, it 
 appeared, belonged to one of the oldest New York 
 families, and the son was quite all he should be and a 
 member of a good club. In spite of these assurances, 
 with which she often fortified herself, Julie had still a 
 dim distrust of Mrs. Wylde's influence on her younger 
 sister. Now she was asked not only to countenance, 
 but to publicly approve this association by asking the 
 famous writer to dinner. It was a thing which re- 
 quired earnest thought and consideration. 
 
 The smallest matter was often to Julie of great, even 
 spiritual, significance. She was not, as she seemed, 
 perhaps, absorbed in the commonplace, but groping 
 blindly toward philosophy. 
 
 Through as simple a thing as the renunciation of 
 her morning coffee she struggled, self-consciously, with 
 the intricate question of power of habit as opposed 
 to suggestion; and the choice between a summer in 
 Europe and one with her old aunt at Lenox brought her 
 face to face with the vast mystery of will and predesti- 
 nation. 
 
 [92]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the question of in- 
 viting Mrs. Wylde to dinner would not be disposed of 
 lightly. To gain time she affected to be absorbed in a 
 study of her dinner list, until at last Linda grew a little 
 impatient. 
 
 "But, surely, you know, sister, whether you have 
 room for two more or not!" she exclaimed. 
 
 "We are twenty already," replied Julie, "and there 
 are only twenty of those old Dresden desert plates." 
 
 "But you've often had twenty-two or twenty-four. 
 What does it matter about the old Dresden! Let 
 them use something else." 
 
 "Mrs. Williamson may drop out," went on Julie 
 meditatively. "I heard last night at the tableaux 
 that she was ill with grippe and that it might develop 
 into pneumonia at any minute." 
 
 Linda's usual gay good-nature seemed to have failed 
 her that morning, for she found her sister's slow delib- 
 erations unbearably irritating. 
 
 " Let me know to-night what you decide will you, 
 please ? " she said at this point, and hurried out of the 
 room, fearing that she might be betrayed into some 
 expression of her impatience. 
 
 In the end Mrs. Wylde and Humphrey were invited 
 
 and accepted with commendable promptness. In the 
 
 interval between this and the dinner itself Linda saw 
 
 both her friends several times, but Humphrey, in spite 
 
 [93]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of his efforts, could never find himself alone with her. 
 With inborn feminine skill the girl avoided this soli- 
 tary meeting, the thought of which filled her with a 
 kind of terror. Then the inexplicable would perhaps 
 be explained, and she preferred to wander, not un- 
 happily, in her present limbo of doubt and self-ques- 
 tioning and timorous remembrance. 
 
 Though she and Humphrey had fancied themselves 
 unnoticed on the night of the tableaux, Walter Jack- 
 son, never unobservant, had caught a glimpse of them, 
 and their very apparent absorption in each other's 
 society had confirmed him in an old suspicion. 
 
 He felt certain now that young Wylde was not only 
 a rival, but a serious one. Fortunately he had the 
 greatest confidence in his own abilities. He was, he 
 felt, more experienced and more subtle than Hum- 
 phrey, besides he had more weapons with which to 
 work. 
 
 Love, as a sentiment, was not much in his line of 
 thought. Otherwise he might have reflected that 
 when it once enters the field it wins victories, though 
 ignorant and unarmed. 
 
 There were two relations of the sexes, according to 
 Jackson's classifications: The first, marriage (when 
 advantageous) was a duty to oneself and, if put grand- 
 diloquently, to the State. It advanced a man's con- 
 sideration and importance. 
 
 [94]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 The second, mere gratification of the senses, was 
 a thing apart, of no emphasis, the common pas- 
 time. 
 
 Beyond this his imagination did not go. At first 
 glimpse Humphrey, as an admitted rival, offered re- 
 grettably little opportunity for honest detraction. 
 There was nothing to be learned against him and 
 (which was even more unfortunate ridicule being 
 more potent than slander) he was not an easy figure at 
 which to poke fun. He took himself with such cheer- 
 ful lightness that humor, who prefers a solemn, even 
 pompous, mask, found herself at a loss. 
 
 But Jackson did not begin his campaign with de- 
 spair. He had learned the immense value of being 
 able to wait, and when even a dull man learns this he 
 becomes formidable. In the meantime he was anxious 
 to find out how far Linda's interest in Humphrey 
 was already engaged, and to this end, when they next 
 rode together in the park, he led the conversation to 
 the subject of the Wyldes. 
 
 Jackson was at his best on a horse. He had a good 
 seat, and his long, lean figure showed to advantage. 
 The knowedge of this gave him even greater confi- 
 dence in himself and his power to make himself master 
 of the situation. 
 
 "I've been reading one of Mrs. Wylde's books 
 lately," he remarked, as they walked their horses 
 [95]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 around the reservoir, after a long trot. " Very clever 
 I thought." 
 
 There was no surer way to his companion's atten- 
 tion and he knew it. Privately he considered all 
 novels, except detective stories, about as stimulating as 
 tepid and unseasoned soup. 
 
 " Which one did you read ? " 
 
 " Let me see I think it was called ' Doane Beach' 
 or something like that I can't for the life of me re- 
 member the names of books but I remember the 
 story of this well enough!" he added hastily, observ- 
 ing Linda's look of surprise. "You see a lot of the 
 author, I believe. She must be a wonder!" 
 
 "There's no one like her," said Linda. "She is 
 like a witch and a queen and a little child all at the 
 same time and so beautiful one could drown in her 
 eyes!" 
 
 "Hm!" said Jackson, faintly ironical, "must be a 
 fine woman! Do you find young Wylde at all like 
 her?" 
 
 " Absolutely different," replied Linda shortly. She 
 realized that Walter had found her girlish and senti- 
 mental. 
 
 " I was talking with a man who knew them both the 
 
 other day," continued Jackson. "He said that the 
 
 son was a very clever fellow and that, in certain ways, 
 
 his mother is entirely under his influence that he 
 
 [96]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 makes all her business contracts for her, arranges her 
 hours for work and plans all appointments with people 
 who wish to see her. Curious isn't it!" 
 
 " I don't think it's true," said Linda, speaking with 
 what seemed to Jackson too great an acquaintance 
 with the habits and characteristics of the Wylde 
 family. 
 
 " Well of course you know better than I," he re- 
 plied. " I'm only repeating what I heard bad habit, 
 I know, but, after all, our fellow-creatures are more 
 interesting than anything else. This man who was 
 talking to me said that old Mr. Wylde the father 
 left everything when he died to his wife and that Hum- 
 phrey was quite dependent on her. He seemed to 
 think it was quite natural that the son should try to get 
 as strong an influence over the mother as possible, with 
 an eye to the future." 
 
 "Sometimes I hate this world!" exclaimed Linda 
 suddenly. She touched her brown mare on the shoul- 
 der and broke into a gallop. Jackson went flying 
 after her around the reservoir. The mud from the soft, 
 spongy ground spattered up from under the hoofs 
 of the horses, and the cool, damp air blew hard in their 
 faces and whipped Linda's cheeks into a flaming scar- 
 let. A wisp of her hair came loose and blew out from 
 behind her ears, the blood rushed through her veins 
 with an exhilaration, which made her for a moment for- 
 [97]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 get everything annoying. She saw some sea-gulls that 
 flew screaming into the air from the reservoir and circled 
 over their heads, and she smelt the odor of wet earth 
 and of saddle-leather. Walter Jackson looked at her 
 with unemotional approval. How strong and vigor- 
 ous she was what a thoroughbred! Just the girl he 
 wanted for a wife. She would do him credit, and 
 there would be no nervous prostration or doctor's bills. 
 They would be in the smart younger set, and their 
 names his unusually stimulated imagination pictured 
 them printed in the papers, "Mr. and Mrs. Walter 
 Jackson " would be known over the entire country. 
 
 He felt that he had made a mistake in seeming to 
 criticise Humphrey to her, and that he must put him- 
 self right. 
 
 " That fellow I was telling you about," he said, when 
 they settled down to a walk again, resuming their con- 
 versation where it had been left off, " tried to fill me up 
 with a lot more information about the Wyldes, but I 
 shut him off. I think, with you, there's too much 
 mean gossip in the world. I like Humphrey, too 
 liked him when I knew him in Paris. He's not at all 
 a bad sort. I don't quite agree with you about the 
 mother, perhaps. She's a genius but odd got too 
 much what they call 'temperament' for my taste!" 
 
 "Genius is rarely understood," observed Linda 
 somewhat loftily. 
 
 [98]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " Which means I'm too coarse and commonplace to 
 understand it!" said Jackson laughing. "Well 
 you're right there!" 
 
 Linda liked him for his good temper. She felt 
 that she had not treated him very well that morning 
 and exerted herself now to be agreeable, so that the 
 rest of their ride passed pleasantly. 
 
 [99]
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HUMPHREY, on his way to his mother's room on 
 the night of the Arnolds' dinner, met Parker, 
 the maid, carrying a tray with a half-filled decanter 
 of cognac and an empty glass. 
 
 His long-dormant fears sprang up again to life. " I 
 hope Mrs. Wylde is not ill, Parker?" 
 
 The woman looked at him with a perfectly expres- 
 sionless face. Her voice when she spoke was low- 
 pitched and deferential. 
 
 " Oh, not really ill, sir, but she had a slight nervous 
 chill and thought a little cognac might do her good." 
 
 Humphrey started to reply, but checked himself 
 and studied Parker's face with more attention than 
 he had ever before given it, though she had been in his 
 mother's employ for four years. She was an English 
 woman and looked about forty. Her scanty brown 
 hair was worn parted and brushed smoothly back and 
 her thin but stocky figure was always very neatly 
 dressed in black. She had insignificant hazel eyes 
 and a wen on her forehead. 
 
 Humphrey decided that she looked, as she always 
 seemed, honest and discreet. 
 [ 100]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "I'm not sure that cognac is good for nerves, you 
 know," he said finally. 
 
 A shade of something like embarrassment crossed 
 the maid's face and she shifted her glance. 
 
 "It's what I often tell Mrs. Wylde, sir," she re- 
 plied. 
 
 Humphrey, convinced anew and most distressingly 
 of the need for watchfulness and care in regard to his 
 mother, felt that here, perhaps, he might find a humble 
 ally. Sometime he might venture to say a few words 
 to her which would show her plainly her mistress's 
 condition, but, for the moment, the idea of putting 
 himself in confidential relations with a servant was 
 distasteful to him. It seemed to savor of disloyalty 
 to his mother. He did not yet realize that Parker 
 might know more of her state than he did himself. 
 
 He went on to Dioneme's room, full of painful ap- 
 prehension, and found her lying on a low couch in 
 front of the fire relaxed as if from extreme exhaustion. 
 Her hair, carefully dressed by Parker a few minutes 
 before, was already disarranged. Through her un- 
 fastened Japanese dressing-gown of blue silk embroi- 
 dered with dragon-flies he saw her white delicate 
 throat. She looked up at him with heavy, indifferent 
 eyes and he saw at once that the dinner was not to be 
 thought of. Would there be a difficult moment of 
 persuasion? But no, Dioneme made no attempt at 
 [101]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 resistance, fell in at once with his proposal that they 
 should not go. 
 
 "Did Parker tell you how ill I felt?" she asked 
 vaguely. "I was so cold. It seemed to me I could 
 never get warm. But now I am better. I should like 
 to sleep." 
 
 Humphrey bent over her and laid his hand on her 
 forehead. " You have no fever," he said, rebelling at 
 this pretence. The scent of amber came to him from 
 his mother's draperies, but through it he could detect 
 the vapors of the cognac. His blue eyes grew a little 
 stern. "I will go and telephone to Miss Arnold," 
 he added; "they will think us rude, but it can't be 
 helped." As he went out of the door he heard Dion- 
 erne's heavy breathing. She was already asleep. 
 After he had sent his message Humphrey went to his 
 own room and shut himself in. What was Linda think- 
 ing of him ? He had not said that his mother was ill, 
 but simply announced that it would be impossible for 
 them to keep their engagement. Now he asked him- 
 self why he had done this. He might so honestly have 
 said that she was not well enough to dine out and that 
 he could not leave her. But then Linda the next 
 morning would have found her, probably, in the best 
 of health and spirits. He was already pledged to per- 
 petual deceit, if he were to keep his mother's secret. 
 Artifice was closing in all around him like a fog, 
 [ 102]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to cut him off from all other human beings. For the 
 rest of the world, it didn't matter. But Linda! If 
 she could understand, could give him a word of pity, 
 of understanding! Pity, so intolerable from others, 
 would be sweet from her. 
 
 He had not seen her alone since the night of the 
 tableaux. Twice he had been to her house, but 
 only to find other visitors before him and others still 
 to persistently outstay him. He had tried to read 
 something in her eyes, but they were veiled and dis- 
 tant. There was nothing of that sweet trouble he 
 had seen in them before. She had regained all her 
 self-possession and become again virginal, tantalizing 
 and remote. If he had only been bold enough to 
 have taken his chance that other night! But every- 
 thing had seemed so sure then, words would have 
 seemed crude, intrusive. They had been so near to 
 each other for a moment and now 
 
 Humphrey got up, lit a cigarette, and began to walk 
 up and down the room. The floor creaked under his 
 heavy tread and it occurred to him, though unnecessa- 
 rily, that his mother, in the room underneath, might 
 be wakened, so he sat down again. 
 
 How he had looked forward to this evening, count- 
 ing on the chance of a few words with Linda. He 
 had thought he might even sit next to her at the table. 
 Now it was all over. She would think him ill-bred 
 [ 103]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 and indifferent and he could never explain. There 
 was the night of the Godwin dinner too! He and 
 his mother would be soon voted socially impossible. 
 Not that he cared, except for Linda! It was better 
 than having people guess the horrible truth. 
 
 More and more his will concentrated itself on this 
 essential, which was to become the motive of his 
 entire existence. If his purpose had needed conse- 
 cration there was the remembrance of his father's last 
 words. 
 
 Meanwhile at the Arnolds' twenty minutes past 
 eight found all the guests but Humphrey and Di- 
 oneme assembled in the drawing-room. 
 
 A slight undercurrent of impatience could be 
 divined, though it was more or less politely hidden be- 
 neath smiles and voluble chatter. Julie, as hostess, 
 found it hard to fix her mind on what the old man be- 
 side her was saying. Her gaze kept wandering anx- 
 iously to the door, though the trained smile of the 
 accustomed dinner-giver remained on her lips. But 
 Linda was more nervous than her sister. She felt 
 as if Humphrey and his mother were her guests, and 
 as if she were in some way responsible for them. 
 What was keeping them ? Had something happened ? 
 
 At half-past eight Mrs. Harry Montgomery, who 
 was an intimate of the house, said to Julie: "I 
 wouldn't wait any longer if I were you. Do let us go 
 [ 104 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 in!" just at that moment the butler entered with a 
 message which he murmured discreetly in Miss 
 Arnold's ear. 
 
 "Mr Humphrey Wylde has just telephoned that it 
 will be impossible for Mrs. Wylde and himself to dine 
 here this evening." 
 
 Julie's trained smile flickered for a moment on her 
 lips as if it were on the point of being extinguished. 
 
 "How exactly like literary people!" exclaimed 
 Mrs. Montgomery, who had caught the message and 
 was divided between amusement and indignation. 
 "I told you one could never depend on them. They 
 are more casual than the English." 
 
 The word from the missing guests was repeated cir- 
 cumspectly around the room and met with disapproval 
 and some amusement. It was a relief, however, to 
 be able to go in to dinner, at last. 
 
 The two extra covers had been hastily removed, 
 but it brought together two women who were not 
 friendly and two men who had never met before and 
 had nothing in common. Julie felt that the evening 
 was a failure, and as dinners, from their social aspect, 
 were of vast import to her, she was as distressed as she 
 was indignant. Why had she ever yielded to Linda's 
 desire of inviting these accidental outsiders, for, though 
 Humphrey was a gentleman and Dioneme a celebrity, 
 they were now fixed in Julie's mind as altogether alien. 
 [ 105 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 As for Linda she was less angry than alarmed. She 
 felt that Humphrey's short message had concealed 
 something in the nature of a calamity, either great or 
 small. Then that other occasion at Miss Godwin's 
 came to her mind, and for a moment it struck her as 
 odd and unaccountable that fatality should pursue the 
 Wyldes when they dined out. 
 
 Walter Jackson, who sat next to her, was inclined to 
 condone and be sympathetic. He agreed with her 
 that something of a certain seriousness must have 
 happened. 
 
 "I know Wylde too well to believe he would let 
 his mother break a dinner engagement at the last 
 moment just because she had a slight headache, or 
 didn't feel like meeting people, or some nonsense like 
 that! Whatever he is he isn't an inconsiderate 
 bounder, and no one but a bounder fails his hostess 
 at the last moment for no reason whatever. No, 
 you'll find there is some good explanation." 
 
 "If she was ill," said Linda reasonably, "he 
 might have come without her." 
 
 " Perhaps he didn't like to leave her," replied Jack- 
 son, who seemed determined to be Humphrey's 
 friend. 
 
 "Yes, that's true," assented the girl with a sigh. 
 She felt grateful to Walter and said to herself that she 
 had never liked him so well, which was exactly the 
 [ 106]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 comment he had been working for. His instinct told 
 him that he must appeal to Linda through her imagi- 
 nation, and the more moral and heroic qualities he 
 could contrive to suggest the better would be his chance 
 with her. He had already the advantage of being an 
 old friend, able to see her when he liked, and to judge 
 of the tendencies of her daily life. 
 
 Linda received a letter from Humphrey by the early 
 post the next morning. It apologized most humbly for 
 their failure to appear at the dinner; his mother had, 
 at the last moment, felt quite unequal to going, and 
 had wanted him with her. He hoped that she and her 
 sister would forgive their seeming but unavoidable 
 rudeness, etc., etc. It was a well-written letter, but 
 not convincing. Linda read it aloud to Julie and saw 
 that the cold light of disapproval in the latter's 
 eyes did not change. 
 
 Certainly the letter did not seem to supply a very 
 adequate excuse for her friends' failure to appear at 
 dinner. Walter's words recurred to her against her 
 will: "No one but a bounder fails his hostess at the 
 last moment for no reason whatever." If the whole 
 thing had merely been one of Mrs. Wylde's caprices, 
 and if her son had the influence over her that people 
 said, he should have insisted on her keeping her en- 
 gagement. 
 
 Of course Dioneme was different from any one else, 
 [ 107 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 though; she must be permitted to be fitful and incon- 
 sistent. 
 
 But Linda wished it were not all so impossible to 
 explain to Julie, whose friends always did what they 
 were expected to do. 
 
 Later in the day, when she had been out for her 
 morning ride, the matter seemed less serious to her. 
 After all, what a fuss over nothing! But something, 
 nevertheless, had been placed as a slight obstacle in the 
 current that was sweeping her toward Humphrey; it 
 had been checked in its spontaneity, turned ever so 
 little aside. 
 
 Meanwhile her devotion to Humphrey's mother in- 
 creased. She had been forced to defend her against 
 her sister's lady-like but outspoken criticism, and in 
 this way Dioneme had of course attained in the girl's 
 eyes an added value. 
 
 They did not meet again until three or four days 
 after the dinner and then on the occasion of a small 
 tea Dioneme gave for a visiting Italian critic. 
 
 As a rule Linda preferred seeng her friend when 
 there were no other guests. This time, however, she 
 had expressed a desire to meet Signor Giovanni Aldi, 
 having read with interest his brilliant studies on the 
 early Italian painters. 
 
 Humphrey had not encountered Linda in his 
 mother's home for a long time and had almost ceased 
 [ I**]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to expect it. He had even acquiesced in this ruling 
 of chance, feeling, perhaps, that he did not wish to 
 take advantage of his mother's friendship with the 
 girl, or, more obscurely, desiring to separate himself 
 from Dioneme in her mind, to fight on his own ground 
 and win with his own weapons. 
 
 When he came in the drawing-room, on the after- 
 noon of the tea, he was, therefore, astonished to find 
 Linda standing near the window listening to Signor 
 Aldi, who, tall and gaunt, with long dishevelled hair 
 and a worn and not too scrupulously brushed frock 
 coat was discoursing on the lack of art in America, 
 and the immense futility of modern art everywhere. 
 He was one of those people to whom the personality 
 of the hearer is nought, and who are never hampered 
 in their monologues by a passing doubt as to how it 
 will be received or whether it will be comprehended or 
 not. Signor Aldi had only one method in, talking, 
 that of the lecture hall. He had proposed marriage to 
 the present Signora Aldi in the same flowing and so- 
 norous periods with which he addressed an audience of 
 university students. 
 
 Humphrey saw that Linda was looking bewildered, 
 and as he approached she turned to him with the 
 look of one who, in dire straits, hails salvation. 
 
 Aldi greeted Humphrey as if he saw him not and 
 was proceeding with his discourse when they were in- 
 terrupted by an old lady, who wished to recall to the 
 [109]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 distinguished critic the fact that she had once met him 
 in Rome in the winter of 1894. 
 
 Humphrey and Linda made their escape and sat 
 down in a corner by the fire. 
 
 "I am very angry with you," she said and he 
 thought how pretty she looked when she was angry, 
 and how bright her eyes were "you behaved very 
 badly about our dinner." 
 
 " Forgive me," said Humphrey. She had expected 
 a longer apology, explanations, excuses, but there was 
 something so troubled yet so honest and convincing in 
 Humphrey's look that she found herself almost exoner- 
 ating him without further effort. She did not find 
 him, at first, very talkative. He seemed satisfied to 
 look at her, so she herself began to make conversation, 
 impelled by an inexplicable dread of more silences 
 between them. 
 
 "Who is that coming in now?" she asked. 
 
 "That is Dr. Macklevaine," replied Humphrey, 
 looking at a burly gentleman of fifty-five, who was 
 kissing his mother's hand in a manner which showed 
 that the gesture was an entirely foreign one to him, 
 adopted because of its discreet privileges. Dr. Mack- 
 levaine had small steel-grey eyes and his high, sharply 
 moulded nose cut through his face like the prow of a 
 ship and seemed to cast billows of purplish red over 
 his fat cheeks. 
 
 "Best surgeon in town and a great admirer of my 
 
 [ no]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 mother's," explained Humphrey, "probably of all 
 men on earth the one least capable of understanding 
 her." 
 
 "Does he read her books?" 
 
 "No hates her books because they take her time 
 and vitality. He's Meredith's ' old dog.' " 
 
 "What do you mean by 'old dog'?" 
 
 " The ' old dog,' according to Meredith, is the lover 
 who is the least loved, but the most faithful; who re- 
 mains when all the brilliant, favoured, and fascina- 
 ting ones have left; when the hero even is a thing of the 
 past, there you have the 'old dog'!" 
 
 "Do all women have one?" asked Linda. 
 
 " You will," he answered. 
 
 Her lips curved in a sly smile and she looked at 
 Humphrey with a question of some daring in her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " he said promptly. " / shall not be the 
 'old dog'! I shall probably be the hero." 
 
 "You are very bold and self-assured," she replied, 
 frowning a little. 
 
 "Heroes have to be!" 
 
 Around them the room hummed with talk and 
 laughter, Signer Aldi's voice booming above the rest. 
 His little wife, dressed in a black jetted silk frock, 
 with a coral and gold brooch at her throat, stood near 
 him. She had been told that the ladies in New York 
 dressed a great deal, so had decided upon wearing 
 [111 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 the black silk. It pleased her that there was nothing 
 so elaborate in the room, all the other women guests 
 being in dark tailor gowns, but of course it was only 
 fitting that she, as the guest of honor, should be the 
 most magnificently arrayed. 
 
 She listened to her husband's conversation with 
 Dioneme about the merits of the Sassetta Polyptych 
 in the cathedral of Asciano with tranquillity. She 
 knew he did not admire clever women, or even beau- 
 tiful ones. He thought with the German Emperor 
 that woman's place was in the home. The plainer and 
 duller she was the more likely she would be to stay 
 there. 
 
 Linda, while she talked with Humphrey, was watch- 
 ing his mother. She was certainly unusually lovely 
 that afternoon. Her face had the strange, luminous 
 pallor which was a sign of health with her. She 
 moved attentively among her guests, yet seemed im- 
 measureably remote from them. It was as if, while 
 she gave herself to them, they remained as individuals 
 in darkness to her. 
 
 After she left Aldi she crossed the room to greet a 
 new visitor, apparently an unexpected one, who had 
 just been announced. 
 
 "Oh, dear Mrs. Wylde," said a sharp, insistent 
 voice. "I didn't know you were having a tea! Do 
 forgive me for coming when you were having a tea." 
 [112]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 The new-comer, who had a keen, fox-like face, looked 
 about the room while she spoke with eyes which noted 
 every one. Finally her gaze fastened itself on the 
 face of the Italian. "Isn't that Giovanni Aldi, the 
 critic?" she exclaimed, enchanted. "Do introduce 
 me to him!" 
 
 "What an odd woman!" said Linda, "who is 
 she?" 
 
 " She is, to me, the most disagreeable woman in New 
 York, and the most unsnubbable. If, in desperation, 
 one brained her with a club she would look up in her 
 death-agony and murmur, ' Will you dine with me next 
 Tuesday?'" 
 
 "Don't tell me her name," Linda said laughing, 
 "I want to forget her but you are very cruel!" It 
 occurred to her that Humphrey was unlike himself 
 that afternoon, that his high spirits were assumed. 
 
 "No, it is you that is cruel." His tone grew sud- 
 denly serious. Linda did not dare to ask why. She 
 glanced around the room again in search of a new 
 subject for dissection. 
 
 "You keep me talking chaff when I want to be 
 talking seriously," went on Humphrey. 
 
 "One doesn't talk seriously at an afternoon tea," 
 said Linda, rising, driven to flight by the determina- 
 tion in Humphrey's eyes. "Besides I must go. It 
 is getting late." 
 
 [113]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " When shall I see you again ? " Now that she 
 was really going Linda, perhaps, felt safer and could 
 permit herself to be kind. At least it seemed to Hum- 
 phrey that a softer light came into her eyes for a 
 moment. 
 
 "We are to meet at the Symphony Concert, I be- 
 lieve," she said. "Old Miss Godwin said she was 
 going to ask you but if you don't care for music 
 
 Humphrey dismissed the question of his fondness 
 for music. 
 
 " Old Miss Godwin's lovers never watched the post 
 for her letters as I shall!" he said. 
 
 "Did old Miss Godwin ever have lovers?" ex- 
 claimed Linda, and she laughed, with the ferocious 
 cruelty of youth holding love in its hand. 
 
 [114]
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 A^ the Symphony Concert they had just finished 
 playing the last piece on the programme, 
 Richard Strauss's "Tod und Verklarung." Once 
 more, triumphantly, beauty had held out the " divine 
 gift of oblivion," and the audience was still tremulous. 
 Vague, pensive smiles quivered on those long lines 
 of faces, a sense of confused rapture. 
 
 Humphrey sat behind Linda in a box near the stage. 
 He had come to the hall full of anxiety in regard to his 
 mother, despondent even before the prospect of seeing 
 Linda. 
 
 But little by little, though ignorant of music, he 
 found himself intoxicated by it. His fears and his 
 heavy sense of responsibility slipped from him. He 
 thought only of Linda, sitting so near him that if he 
 leaned forward a little he could catch a faint, almost 
 imperceptible, perfume like spring flowers, which 
 came from her dress. 
 
 A wave of something he could not resist swept him 
 on, with the symphony, to a climax of ecstasy. He 
 waited, sitting very still and tense, for the moment when 
 Linda would turn and look at him. At last, as he 
 had expected, she moved her head. 
 [115]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " Wasn't it beautiful ! " she said, almost in a whisper. 
 There were tears in her eyes. 
 
 "Yes " said Humphrey then, abruptly "it 
 made me feel how much I love you." 
 
 The girl started and grew suddenly pale. Perhaps 
 her nerves were still shaken by the passion of Strauss's 
 symphonic poem. She felt it was cruel of Humphrey 
 to speak to her at that moment, suddenly, when she 
 was unexpectant and off her guard, but even in her 
 resentment and alarm something in her soul responded 
 to his voice as it had responded to the music. 
 
 She tried to answer, to protest but her words 
 were unintelligible. 
 
 Desperately, as if in appeal, she glanced toward the 
 other side of the box. The two old ladies with whom 
 they were sitting had at last risen and were chatting 
 together as they gathered up their furs in preparation 
 for departure; Linda also rose with a growing sug- 
 gestion of panic. 
 
 "Miss Godwin, Miss Godwin," she cried appeal- 
 ingly. "Will you take me home in your motor? 
 Julie has ours for all the afternoon." 
 
 She felt that she must instantly provide for herself 
 a way of escape, be free from the spell of Humphrey's 
 voice and eyes. 
 
 But on their way to the street he was close at her 
 side, touching her almost, pleading in her ears: 
 [ 116]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "When can I see you ? When may I come ? When 
 will you answer me?" 
 
 And he was conscious that Linda thought only of 
 getting away from him and that he could not let her go. 
 He seemed to actually hear her heart beating in her 
 side; he was pursuing something wild, helpless and 
 innocent, but something that must be his, that called 
 to him even as it fled. 
 
 Not until Linda was safely shut in beside Miss God- 
 win in the motor did she feel safe. Humphrey stood 
 at the door. Conventionality and a sense of being 
 observed had made him his usual self again. Only 
 his eyes were brilliant and intent. 
 
 "I shall come to-morrow," he said to Linda, as the 
 car started, speaking as if it had been an agreement 
 between them, and before she could reply they were 
 borne away. 
 
 "What a nice concert!" said Miss Godwin comfort- 
 ably. "That piece by Strauss was wonderful. I'm 
 sorry the other young people couldn't come, but the 
 Wylde boy is very agreeable, don't you think so ? " 
 
 Linda agreed that he was, secretly trying to dominate 
 her inner turmoil by repeating to herself that she never 
 wanted to see him again. When she was removed 
 from the personal influence Humphrey possessed over 
 her, her vague uncertainties about him returned. 
 
 She felt that she did not know him enough, some- 
 [117]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 thing was it what Walter Jackson had hinted? 
 restrained the natural impulse she had to entirely 
 trust him. 
 
 "Where there is no faith there can be no love," 
 she repeated to herself, with the young girl's terrible 
 faith in this axiom. 
 
 At first she thought she would try to avoid that in- 
 terview insisted upon for the following day. After- 
 ward, as she grew calmer, more certain of herself, she 
 reflected that to avoid it now would be only to put it 
 off. Better perhaps to have it over with, once for all , 
 and behind her. Deciding this she felt very calm and 
 worldly-wise. 
 
 But when Humphrey came he would not listen to 
 her denial or her doubts; he masterfully pushed aside 
 both her dignity and her scruples; he was intolerable, 
 but, as usual, when she was with him, very nearly 
 irresistible. Instead of sending him away a dis- 
 carded and hopeless suitor, she let him go feeling that 
 his battle was half won ; instead of retiring to her own 
 room with all the calm of maidenly self-possession, 
 she fled to it in a pitiable rout, to bury her hot face in 
 the sofa cushions, tingling with anger and excitement 
 and dismay and some racking, undefined feeling, to 
 which she could not give a name. There was but one 
 thing left to her-r-flight. 
 
 The next day she announced to her sister that she 
 [118]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was going away no matter where so long as it was 
 at once. She said she was ill, nervous, had taken a 
 cold, was restless and bored, piled reasons upon reasons 
 to make Julie see the necessity of an instant change 
 of air. 
 
 "Where will you go?" asked the latter finally, 
 with judicious deliberation. On her side she was 
 inclined to think it might be well to send Linda out of 
 town for a while. It would break up, temporarily at 
 least, the intimacy with Dioneme Wylde (Julie was 
 happily ignorant of the complications in regard to 
 Humphrey) . 
 
 "I will go to Aunt Evelyn's, at Lockton, and you 
 mustn't let any one know where I am. I want a real 
 rest, no bothers!" 
 
 A look of bird-like cunning came into Julie's sen- 
 sible spinster countenance. She cocked her head on 
 one side with conscious archness. 
 
 "Running from a suitor?" she asked, delighted 
 with her perspicacity. 
 
 "No danger," replied Linda. "One has to run 
 after them in New York." Shame at her own deceit 
 colored her cheeks scarlet, and she turned to look 
 out of the window so that her sister would not notice. 
 But Julie had finished with playfulness, and was back 
 in the matter-of fact. 
 
 " When do you want to start ? " she asked. 
 [119]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "This afternoon the 2.40 express gets to Lockton 
 at 8. Marie can pack in no time. I sha'n't want 
 much there." 
 
 " I don't know what father will say ! " 
 
 "Oh, father!" Linda's accent was not disrespect- 
 ful, but showed she placed no false value on herself as 
 a factor in her parent's existence. Mr. Arnold's affec- 
 tion for his children expressed itself in large cheques 
 and perfect enfranchisement. But Julie felt that her 
 own authority as her younger sister's guardian could 
 not be maintained except by further parley. 
 
 "What about your engagements?" she asked se- 
 verely. This to her was a delicate and vital point, 
 but Linda assured her that all her engagements could 
 be broken painlessly as to the other contractors and 
 without loss of her own reputation for good manners. 
 
 " Besides, I am really not well," she said, and felt it. 
 She had spent a sleepless night, and her usual perfect 
 physical poise was shaken. But even if she had spoken 
 artfully she could have been no better inspired, for any 
 hint of ill-health on Linda's part was the one thing 
 which could entirely rout and destroy her sister's 
 prejudices, principles, and aims in life. 
 
 If Linda had a threatening sore throat Julie was 
 
 capable of putting off any number of dinner-guests, 
 
 absenting herself from the annual meeting of the Board 
 
 of Managers of the Mission to Seamen, wearing an 
 
 [ 120]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 unbecoming and vulgarly cut frock and letting the 
 chef indulge his Gallic fancy in unexpurgated menus. 
 By which it will be seen that Julie had a passion, and 
 so could never be uninteresting. 
 
 As was to have been expected, therefore, half -past 
 two o'clock that afternoon found Linda and her maid 
 at the Grand Central Station, ready to start for 
 Lockton. Nothing but a suspicious, nervous haste in 
 the young girl's motions, a somewhat feverish bright- 
 ness in her eyes would have made any one suspect 
 that it was a flight. Once or twice she looked over 
 her shoulder, fearfully, as if she expected to see Hum- 
 phrey advancing from the midst of the crowd, suddenly 
 warned of her plan of escape by love, the sorcerer, 
 who seemed to be his ally. 
 
 But in this case that powerful coadjutor, being, no 
 doubt, engaged with his tricks elsewhere, failed Hum- 
 phrey completely. Nothing of what was passing in 
 the Grand Central Station, or of the necessity of his 
 presence there, entered his mind, and Linda, still 
 looking nervously over her shoulder for a familiar 
 face, saw only Emma Cooper. 
 
 The typist was making her way through the jostling, 
 unruly crowd with her usual expression of efficiency 
 and independence. No one in looking at her could 
 doubt for a moment that Miss Cooper would safely 
 arrive at the place where she intended to go; it was 
 [121]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 equally impossible to entertain any fears as to the 
 safety of her pocket-book, her umbrella, or her hand- 
 
 When she saw Linda she bowed, smiled, and hesi- 
 tated a moment whether to approach or not. But 
 the girl made a slight gesture and Emma joined her, 
 to the obvious disapproval of Marie, the maid. 
 
 "I'm going to Albany to see my step-mother," 
 Miss Cooper explained. "Mrs. Wylde gave me the 
 money and said I could stay a week; real kind of her, 
 wasn't it? But she isn't well, herself, she says, and 
 has no work for me just now." 
 
 "Isn't well!" exclaimed Linda, alarmed, but the 
 time had come for their train to start and they must 
 not lose a moment in getting to their seats. 
 
 "Come with me in the drawing-room car," said 
 Linda impetuously. "I must hear about Mrs. 
 Wylde." 
 
 Miss Cooper, highly flattered, but concealing her 
 emotions with what she conceived as quiet elegance, 
 followed Linda, and they sat down in adjacent chairs. 
 The maid found a seat on the sofa at the end of the car 
 whence she watched them with inquisitive wonder. 
 An English lady's maid is surprised at nothing, a 
 French one at everything. It may be argued which 
 attitude toward the world shows the greater omni- 
 science.
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Now, do tell me about it!" said Linda, when the 
 train had started. " Is she really ill ? She seemed so 
 well when I saw her four days ago!" 
 
 "No, she isn't really what you would call ill," 
 replied Miss Cooper, adjusting herself primly in her 
 chair and glancing about the car to see how many 
 people were looking at them. The moment was a 
 most enjoyable one to her. 
 
 "She doesn't seem like herself, somehow. They 
 say she don't eat enough to keep a canary alive. I 
 guess she works her brain too hard. That's awfully 
 hard on women." 
 
 " Has she seen a doctor ? ' 
 
 " No. She won't have a doctor, and Mr. Humphrey 
 just gives way to her." 
 
 Linda felt an impulse to say that apparently he did 
 not often do this, but checked herself, not wishing to 
 question, but Emma answered, as it were, her un- 
 spoken words. 
 
 "He's got more influence over her than any one 
 else, Mr. Humphrey; he ought to make her have 
 some medical advice." 
 
 "There's her old friend Dr. Macklevaine," said 
 Linda, making a mental record of Miss Cooper's testi- 
 mony in regard to Humphrey. 
 
 "Yes, but she'd never consult him of her own ac- 
 cord. She says the roles of friend and physician can't 
 [ 123]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 be doubled by even the best actor; you know that cute 
 way she has of talking!" 
 
 "I do wish I could have seen her before I went 
 away!" exclaimed Linda. 
 
 "She's been expecting you for some days," said 
 Emma. There was a suggestion of reproach in her 
 tone. 
 
 "It has been impossible for me to go," Linda re- 
 plied with a kind of vehement regret, but the reproach 
 Emma had implied could not be answered. She felt 
 a desire to change the subject. 
 
 " What are you reading ? " she asked, taking up the 
 book in Miss Cooper's lap. It bore the ponderous 
 title: "A Pluralistic Universe." Linda marvelled, 
 but Miss Cooper showed a simple pride in her choice 
 of literature. Living in an atmosphere of what she 
 thought culture she felt it was becoming of her to be 
 in the picture, as it were. She had become uneasily 
 self-conscious about what she called her mind and 
 was always taking her intellectual temperature by 
 reading a few chapters in some reputedly profound 
 book, to see if she understood it. 
 
 "I've only just begun this," she explained. "I 
 don't have much time for reading, and when I get 
 home tired at night, a novel is more restful, somehow." 
 
 " Are you still at the same boarding-house ? " asked 
 Linda. 
 
 [ 124 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Oh, yes! I'm still at Mindelbaum's. Sometimes 
 I think I'll make a change, because the people there 
 are not as refined as I should like, but it's pretty clean, 
 and the food's good, so I stay. I've got a real nice 
 room too. It's small, but I hung all the walls with 
 blue and pink figured silkoline, with curtains and bed- 
 cover of the same and it's quite dainty and pretty. 
 Wherever I am I like to have things home-like. Old 
 Mrs. Candy, who has the first floor front (her husband 
 works with Lindeberg & Strumm, the firm I typewrite 
 for sometimes) says she just loves to come to my room, 
 it's so lady-like." 
 
 At times the annals of Mrs. Mindelbaum's boarding- 
 house had for Linda a homely fascination, but to- 
 day she began to wish that she had not insisted on 
 Emma's company. She would have liked to be alone 
 to brood over the interesting complications of her own 
 life. There would be even a melancholy pleasure in 
 contemplating what she felt was a difficult and ro- 
 mantic situation. But she did not wish to hurt her 
 companion's feelings by suggesting any change, so 
 let her talk on. She even asked an encouraging ques- 
 tion, racking her brains to remember a name and an 
 incident. 
 
 "How is that little manicure getting on. Flora 
 something I can't think of her other name ? " 
 
 "Flora Kelly? oh! I feel real worried about her 
 [ 125]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sometimes. I guess if the other boarders treated her 
 better she'd have more chance. But they keep whis- 
 pering to each other about the ' downward path ' and 
 not passing the butter to her when she comes in to 
 meals; it's enough to make any girl seek other com- 
 pany. She's looking very pretty just now, doing her 
 hair a new way that makes it stay in behind the ears, 
 and she's got one of those new tight skirts. When she 
 wore it down to dinner the first time, Mrs. Candy 
 nudged Lizzie Graham and said, 'By your fruits ye 
 shall know them.' She pretended to speak low, but 
 we could all hear. Of course it was kind of a mis- 
 placed quotation, but Mrs. Candy isn't in the least 
 literary and there was nothing misplaced about her 
 meaning. I saw Flora get red, and first she looked 
 as if she were going to cry, and then she got angry and 
 just put up her chin and wouldn't speak to anybody, 
 not even to little old Mr. Moses, who's got asthma so 
 badly, and is always nice and kind to everybody. 
 What I think is it's no use to make little Kelly feel 
 a sort of suspect in her own boarding-house. She 
 hasn't got any home or family or any friends outside 
 to do her any good. You don't know what a place like 
 Levey's Manicuring Parlors is, Miss Arnold, nor do I, 
 but I have kind of an idea. I made up my mind I'd 
 have a good talk with Flora, and just show her she'd 
 got one friend at Mindelbaum's, anyway. Well, I 
 [126]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 went to her room that night. It's the hall bedroom 
 on my floor and was all out of order with shoes and 
 petticoats lying around. Flora was in her kimona, 
 putting cold-cream on her face, but she wiped it off 
 with a towel and seemed glad to see me. We talked 
 for a while about that story of the Russian Grand 
 Duke marrying Miss Sherman that was in the paper, 
 and about the snowfall and how hard it was getting to 
 work, mornings, with the trolleys all stuck. I couldn't 
 help seeing a theatre programme lying on her wash- 
 stand, one of the Hudson Theatre ones, and she had a 
 two-dollar-and-a-half bunch of violets in a gla^s, pretty 
 withered, but I saw by the kind of ribbon on them 
 they were Thorley's violets, not just bought on the 
 street. 
 
 " 'Been going to the play?' I asked her casually. 
 
 " ' Yes, a friend took me to see Mary Mannering 
 last night,' she said, speaking as if she went to theatres 
 like the Hudson every day of her life. I waited for 
 her to tell me more, I knew she would. 
 
 " ' Oh, Miss Cooper,' she said, just as I thought. 
 'I do wish you could meet my friend. He's one of 
 the real Four Hundred!' I asked her how she met 
 him herself and then the whole story came out. She 
 went to a cinematograph show one afternoon, just 
 to pass the time, as it was a half-holiday, and while 
 she was there this man came in with a lady and a little 
 [127]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 boy. I guess they had brought the little boy to see the 
 flying-machines. I don't know. Anyway, the lady 
 got faint or sick or something and had to be taken 
 away, but the child wouldn't go because the flying- 
 machines were just on and he must have been kind 
 of a spoiled child, anyway. So they made him promise 
 to be good, and sit still and the gentleman said he'd 
 be back in fifteen minutes, and then he and the lady, 
 it was his sister, hurried away. Well, directly they 
 were gone, the flying-machines came to an end, and 
 they put on a murder story, and the child got fright- 
 ened. Flora felt sorry for him, and I guess she liked it 
 because he was so well-dressed and stylish and all 
 that so she talked to him and kept him quiet, and 
 then the man came back. That was the way they 
 got acquainted. Old Mrs. Candy would say right 
 away that Flora was nice to the little boy for her own 
 reasons, but I am willing to give her the benefit of the 
 doubt. She's a kind-hearted little thing, and always 
 liked children, anyhow. 
 
 "She told me all this, very fully, but she didn't 
 say much about what happened afterward, except that 
 he had been very kind to her and treated her with as 
 much respect as if she lived on Fifth Avenue. 
 
 " ' You read a lot of novels, Flora,' I said to her, 
 'and you know the kind of adventures that begin 
 like this?' 
 
 [ 128]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " ' Yes, I know,' she said, in a rather independent 
 way, 'and that's why it's all right; if you remember, 
 the girls in the books never did know!' 
 
 "I told her she was alone in the world, and good- 
 looking and hadn't got any too many friends at Min- 
 delbaum's. 
 
 " ' I've got you, anyway,' she said, and all of a sud- 
 den she threw her arms around my neck and kissed 
 me. 
 
 "There's something about the little creature you 
 can't help liking, though when I think of her slack 
 ways and her foolishness, I've no patience with her. 
 Well, there's where it is, Miss Arnold. This friend, as 
 she calls him, takes her to the theatre every once in a 
 while, and though the other boarders don't know any- 
 thing about it now they are sure to find out and they'll 
 think the worst things they can possibly think." 
 
 It was a very old and commonplace story that Emma 
 told, but to Linda it was almost new. Poetry made 
 it more romantic, novels gave it a more sombre tragedy, 
 but here it was, surprisingly, a part of life itself, the 
 life that went on all around her. 
 
 Flora Kelly's adventure and the possible fate hang- 
 ing over her now absorbed Linda painfully and to the 
 exclusion of everything else. 
 
 But Miss Cooper had suddenly become aware that 
 the tale she had been telling was perhaps not of the 
 [ 129]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 kind that are related to young girls like Linda. She 
 was filled with humiliation. Had she perhaps been 
 too outspoken, unrefined, she whose whole aim was 
 to be lady-like as well as intellectual ? It was a cruel 
 and piercing question. What could she say now ? 
 How could she apologize if she had made a mistake ? 
 Her volubility had come to an end as abruptly as a 
 flow of water is stopped by the closing of a spigot. In 
 the most distressing embarrassment she turned her 
 pocket-book over and over in her lap. 
 
 Linda, surprised at the long silence, looked at her 
 companion curiously, and immediately divined what 
 was troubling her. She was surprised. Did Emma 
 think any girl of twenty, fairly well-read and intelli- 
 gent, was in the present day ignorant of the very exist- 
 ence of wickedness! She smiled to herself at the idea, 
 not knowing really what either knowledge or ignorance 
 meant, unconscious of the fantastic nature of her 
 own pretensions to understanding. 
 
 But she must not let Emma remain any longer in her 
 visible state of perturbation. 
 
 "Poor little Flora Kelly!" she said. "One can't 
 help feeling sorry for her! It makes me think of a 
 story just like it my sister told me the other day 
 only I hope this will have a happier ending!" 
 
 Emma's face lightened. Then her offence had not 
 been as great as she feared! It was so hard to tell 
 [ 130]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 what people like Miss Arnold and her sister did or did 
 not talk about! 
 
 In spite of her reassurance, however, she felt it just 
 as well, for the moment, to choose another topic. 
 
 "Life doesn't have endings like books, often!" she 
 said with an appropriate sigh. "By the way, how 
 did you like the ending of Mrs. Wylde's last book, 
 Miss Arnold ? " 
 
 By this cunning transition, Emma felt she showed 
 qualities of tact and ease which were lost in her present 
 condition of life.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PENDING the final decision of Mr. Garborg as to 
 the designs for his medical college, there was a 
 cessation of activity in the office of Peters and Wylde, 
 and much leisure for thought and conversation. 
 Humphrey smoked numberless cigarettes and dis- 
 cussed with Norris by the hour the advisability of enter- 
 ing for the Greek Church competition. But they felt 
 that their future hung, more or less, on the definite 
 opinion of Mr. Garborg. 
 
 The medical college was the first real opportunity 
 they had had to show what they could do. Already, 
 poring over their blue-prints as a musician pores over 
 a score, they saw it rising before them in its completed 
 beauty of line and proportion. It was to be the be- 
 ginning of their reputation and their fortunes. To 
 Humphrey it promised, above everything else, the first 
 step toward independence. His mother paid the 
 household bills and gave him a liberal yearly allow- 
 ance. That was as it should be, for she was, compara- 
 tively speaking, a rich woman and all his father's 
 money had been left to her. But Humphrey longed 
 for the freedom of knowing that he was sufficient to 
 [ 132]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 himself. He was essentially an American and wished 
 to stand or fall by his personal effort and achievement, 
 not as a product of by-gone energies. The individual 
 in him clamored for a justification of its existence. 
 
 He felt himself bound to the future, but through 
 no obligations from the past, being a product of 
 that robust individualism which makes the American 
 conceive of force as a thing which must proceed from 
 him and not to him. The people of the old-world 
 monarchies think of their country as the child thinks 
 of the father, the American thinks of the United States 
 as the father does of the child. 
 
 Now in addition to Humphrey's instinctive impulse 
 toward independence was the desire to stand well in 
 Linda's eyes, to win some prize in the metropolitan 
 tourney, so that she might be forced to fix her atten- 
 tion on him and applaud. He thought of her as the 
 spectator before whom he must play his part among 
 contenders, but she was also the goal and the award. 
 
 He had come away from his last agitated interview 
 with her feeling that she was almost won. The very 
 fierceness of her struggles to repulse him made him 
 suspect that she felt the mastery of the power she 
 denied. When he heard of her flight he smiled to 
 himself, thinking it a betrayal of weakness, well con- 
 tented that she should distrust her own self-com- 
 mand. He was willing to wait. Once or twice his 
 [ 133]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 mother mentioned having had letters from her, and 
 marvelled that she said nothing of her whereabouts, 
 asking only that anything for her should be sent to the 
 New York house from whence it would be forwarded. 
 
 "Seems to be in hiding," commented Humphrey, 
 when this fact was revealed to him, and smiled to him- 
 self, as at some bit of humor which he alone could per- 
 ceive. These days of inaction and uncertainty were 
 not, as a whole, unpleasant ones. 
 
 His mother, as he put it, evasively even to himself, 
 was " better." With the eternal buoyancy of human 
 nature, the constantly reviving hope which alone 
 makes living possible, he persuaded himself that her 
 use of stimulants had perhaps been but a temporary 
 thing, induced by nervous strain and ill health. As 
 soon as she was physically stronger (and already he 
 seemed to see a change in her, or fancied he did) she 
 would no longer feel the temptation of alcohol. When 
 he recalled the moment of despair in which it had 
 seemed necessary to sacrifice all hopes of his own to 
 the promise he had made his father it seemed incredi- 
 ble to him, as fantastic as a nightmare. 
 
 Garborg finally decided to build his college accord- 
 ing to their plans, and when he communicated this to 
 them by letter, Humphrey was assured that things 
 were swinging into their right place at last, and that 
 life would now become normal and consistent. He 
 [ 134]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was, himself, one of those perfectly sane beings to 
 whom happiness seems the natural law of existence, 
 other things being incidental, against the rules. 
 
 He and Peters decided they would give a supper to 
 celebrate, not ostensibly, but only in their secret con- 
 sciousness, the triumph over Garborg and the archi- 
 tecture of Christian IV. 
 
 " Where shall it be ? " asked Humphrey. 
 
 " The Comedians" Peters replied, indicating a small 
 Bohemian club of which they were both members. 
 
 " I'll pay my share," said Humphrey, " but you must 
 give the supper. We don't want to give it as a, firm, 
 they might divine it was a sort of cackle over our 
 success." 
 
 "All right," assented Peters, "I'll prove what I've 
 always told you : that I'm a host in myself. Only, to 
 square things up and give you a chance to make a 
 reputation for hospitality, there ought to be a second 
 supper, where I pay a share and you receive alone." 
 
 "Have to wait for another happy occasion," said 
 Humphrey, allowing his mind to dwell for a moment 
 on the possibility of one of those romantic announce- 
 ments generally accompanied by festivity. 
 
 There were eight men at the supper. Forbes and 
 
 Keasbey, two brother architects; Charles Notman, 
 
 the artist; Thome, a newspaper editor; Lewis and 
 
 Hoyt, real estate brokers; Livingstone Winthrop, 
 
 [135 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 club-man and patron of the drama; and, lastly, the 
 Vicomte de Champery, whom Humphrey invited be- 
 cause the Frenchman had brought letters of introduc- 
 tion to him, and it was obligatory that he should be 
 entertained in one way or another. Naturally, they 
 talked about America, it was de Champery's first visit, 
 especially New York. 
 
 "A city of mirthless waste," growled Joe Keasbey, 
 who had lived ten years with Paris the courtesan, and 
 foresworn legitimate ties forever. " Puritanism drunk 
 and carousing!" 
 
 The Frenchman, who did not speak English fluently, 
 stuck to the safe course of banal compliment, but Not- 
 man took the matter seriously, and gave a long tirade 
 on the beauty of New York, the new beauty of massed 
 towers, mountain-ranges of brick and mortar, shadow- 
 filled canyon-like streets topped with a strip of blazing 
 Spanish blue, aisle-like vistas of gray thoroughfares 
 ending in a far-away glimmer of opal haze. But the 
 newspaper man did not live for beauty, and turned 
 the conversation on politics and an ex-President, 
 who charged into the dinner as he had charged up a 
 famous hill, and for three courses was attacked and 
 defended with a vigor which proved him the represen- 
 tative of that law of worthy life which is the law of 
 strife. 
 
 Afterward, when the smoke of this engagement had 
 [ 136 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 cleared, the talk became more mellow and anecdotal. 
 Humor obtained an ascendency over spirits softened 
 by wine and good food, and the theme of woman was 
 also introduced, coming slyly in at the end of the din- 
 ner like a dancer with a lifted skirt. 
 
 When Humphrey reached home that night he found 
 his mother still sitting up, writing on a short story 
 which she had promised to one of the magazines. 
 When she saw him, she put it aside, remarking that 
 she had done enough for that evening. 
 
 "Tell me about the dinner," she said. 
 
 Humphrey described the guests and repeated what 
 he thought worthy to be repeated of the conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 "And what did De Champery think of it all ?" she 
 asked. "How does he like American men?" 
 
 "Probably American men will never know," Hum- 
 phrey replied, "unless he writes a book." 
 
 " And American women ? " 
 
 " Can't you hear him on that subject * sirens who 
 have never been taught to sing and who wear their 
 hair short,' was one thing he said to me confidentially 
 to-night." 
 
 "The American woman has never learned Vart de 
 sefaire aimer," observed Dioneme; "all she wants is 
 admiration and that she gets, even with her siren hair 
 short, as your Frenchman puts it." 
 [ 137]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " He said that, generally speaking, he found Ameri- 
 cans shy and self-distrustful. Their boasting he 
 thought a naif attempt to make themselves important 
 and popular, as a child brags of its new mittens so that 
 the other children will treat him with respect." 
 
 "We have certainly become wonderfully tame, al- 
 most timid," said Dioneme, "when one thinks whom 
 we descended from shouting old sea-vikings, stringy, 
 Indian-fighting pilgrim fathers, Dutchmen who de- 
 fended the Netherlands, and all the rest of them!" 
 
 " I think we could face oceans and wars and Indians 
 all right," said Humphrey; "we're still settlers and 
 fighters and barbarians at heart. It's this modern 
 civilization that embarrasses us. We're like gypsies 
 at court!" 
 
 "But we're individually so shrinking, no one ever 
 does what some one else hasn't done. Now, for in- 
 stance, imagine getting on a horse, late at night, and 
 galloping down Fifth Avenue from One Hundred and 
 Eleventh Street to Washington Square. Could any- 
 thing be more glorious! But not a human being in 
 New York, not even a mounted policeman, would dare 
 to do it. No, it would be 'queer' " 
 
 "And, incidentally, you'd be arrested," remarked 
 Humphrey. 
 
 "And, another thing," went on Dioneme, "why 
 don't we use our city, climb its towers, walk on its 
 [ 138]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 bridges, explore its water-fronts? It's only like a 
 great factory engine; we set it going in the morning, 
 and it grinds out a living for us, and at night we stop 
 it, and that's all." 
 
 "You forget Broadway!" observed Humphrey. 
 
 "Oh, Broadway I suppose you mean what they 
 call the ' White Way ' is only the noisy dinner of the 
 factory hands." 
 
 Dioneme meditated for a moment, then sat up very 
 straight, with a childish animation and eagerness in 
 her eyes. 
 
 "Humphrey!" she exclaimed, "don't you think it 
 would be delightful to walk across the Queensboro 
 Bridge late, late at night a winter night like this ! " 
 
 "Get your hat!" said Humphrey briefly. 
 
 "Thank God for you, Humphrey!" breathed Dion- 
 eme as she went in search of her outer garments. 
 
 A few moments later they started in a taxi-cab, 
 for even Dioneme's enthusiasm was unequal to walk- 
 ing the whole distance. 
 
 "How strange," she exclaimed, when they were on 
 their way, "that once in every twenty-four hours we 
 must go through this long black tunnel of night!" 
 She leaned forward, looking eagerly out of the window 
 as if she were seeing everything for the first time. 
 
 It was a warm night for winter, with a starless, 
 opaque sky, and the asphalt pavement, wet from re- 
 [ 139]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 cent rain, was tinted with long reflections from varying 
 lights, violet, lemon color, orange and gold. To the 
 west, over Broadway, the heavens glowed a dull, 
 smooth rose as if a fire burned steadily beneath them. 
 As they neared the bridge, they found the side street 
 a yawning chasm surrounded by formless scaffolding 
 on which clustered red lantern signals of danger. 
 
 "Chaos here!" said Dioneme, as they turned back, 
 "but that's New York always in the agony of dis- 
 solution, or new birth." 
 
 Finally they were able to leave their taxi-cab, and 
 mount to the promenade of the bridge. 
 
 "What silence!" she cried. "We are quite alone. 
 I don't even hear the sound of horses' feet on the drive, 
 or of a tram, or an automobile." They walked briskly 
 along the high-swung way, looking out over the im- 
 mensity of earth and sky and water, and as they went 
 on Dioneme talked intermittently in short broken 
 sentences, abstracted, as if she were murmuring in her 
 sleep. 
 
 "The bridge is more over land than water, yet 
 there seems to be water everywhere. I feel as if I were 
 looking down deep into some city at the bottom of a 
 sea. How damp and salt the air is, yet not pure, some- 
 how; it has a faint flavor of human squalor in it, of 
 slime and mouldy river-banks. It feels thick against 
 my face. Now we are over the water and it is fresher. 
 [ 140]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 See the East River, how thin it looks ; a Venetian canal 
 on each side of Blackwells Island! And that long, 
 quivering line of blue light what is that ? I saw a 
 phosphorescent marine creature like it once in an 
 aquarium. This is no sleeping world, it crouches, 
 watching, like an animal in the dark. How long the 
 walk is! It seems to lead to infinity. There are no 
 stars, Humphrey, but what glorious beauty. We are 
 suspended over the heads of all men like a divine 
 thought spanning chasms. All the power of the 
 bridge seems to be in us, don't you feel it! we are 
 iron, triumphant, invincible! 
 
 "Now, I'm not going to talk any more" she said 
 finally, "just walk on silently. I shall feel it more." 
 
 "Good," agreed Humphrey. He was mentally 
 engaged in considering statistics he had read in regard 
 to this bridge. After some time he remembered to 
 ask his mother if she were not tired, if she were enjoy- 
 ing herself, if it was what she had wanted. 
 
 " It is perfect," she said almost in a whisper, " won- 
 derful! It makes me forget who I am and what life 
 is. Now I am just part of the bridge between land 
 and sky, with cities in each hand." 
 
 Three days after their night walk, Humphrey started 
 for Michigan. 
 
 "Take good care of her, Parker," he said to the 
 maid when he bade his mother good-by. His mind
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was almost at ease about her, and on the journey he 
 permitted himself to think entirely of his work and 
 of Linda. He had, indeed, a boyish vision of taking 
 her himself, on some future day, to see the medical 
 college in all its completed architectural beauty. In 
 his mind he pictured her sitting in the empty place be- 
 side him. Indeed, if airy imagination could take form, 
 many commonplace and seemingly stolid young men 
 might be seen, on their travels, in similar radiant com- 
 pany. Humphrey still knew nothing of Linda's place 
 of retreat, but it was a consolation to know that his 
 rival was no better informed than he. Jackson had 
 inadvertently betrayed as much when the two men met 
 one day at the club. He still felt that he could afford 
 to wait; sooner or later Linda would come back to him, 
 and of her own free will. Since that last talk with her, 
 on the day after the concert, he had had no real doubts. 
 Humphrey was absent from home for a week, and 
 returned on a bleak day in March when the rain was 
 slanting fiercely over the city, freezing as it fell. The 
 house, too, as he entered it struck him as being sin- 
 gularly cheerless. No fire burned on the drawing- 
 room hearth, though it was five o'clock in the after- 
 noon, and the flower-vases were unfilled. An over- 
 looked dust-cloth trailed forlornly along a chair. The 
 house-maid snatched it up, and hastily concealed it 
 about her person. 
 
 [ 142]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Isn't Mrs. Wylde at home? Doesn't she expect 
 me?" asked Humphrey puzzled. 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir, Mrs. Wylde had the telegram this 
 morning, but she's not been quite well, Parker says. 
 She hasn't been downstairs since yesterday morning. 
 I think she's asleep now, sir." 
 
 Humphrey, filled with anxiety, dashed upstairs to 
 his mother's room. Parker was nowhere to be seen. 
 He opened the bedroom door and saw that Dioneme 
 was lying on the couch by the fire. Near her, on a 
 table, a single shaded light was burning. She seemed 
 asleep, but Humphrey saw that it was more stupor than 
 natural slumber. He bent over to examine her face; 
 it looked swollen and unnatural, with loose, partly 
 open lips. Her beautiful hair hung tangled about her 
 ears. She was breathing heavily, almost snoring. 
 Never had Humphrey seen her as she was now, for this 
 was complete downfall and overthrow. It was a noi- 
 some caricature of Dioneme which lay there, uncon- 
 scious, incapable of either thought or speech. It was 
 as if some gross and unclean spirit had entered her 
 body and driven out its rightful owner. 
 
 For a moment Humphrey's hopes, his courage, even, 
 failed him. Then the pity of it mastered everything 
 else. His mother in the grip of such a horror! He 
 felt as he might have done if he had known her 
 secretly married to a satyr. She must be freed at no 
 matter what cost! 
 
 [143]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 He touched the hand which hung down inertly 
 at her side, the veins swollen with blood. It was a 
 thin, nervous hand with delicately smooth and pointed 
 fingers, the hand of an artist, a dreamer, one who 
 could not fight the world alone. He remembered his 
 father's words : " She was born on a midsummer night 
 in an island of the sea, and christened from a book of 
 Herrick's songs," and a choking sensation made itself 
 felt in his throat. He went out of the room quietly, 
 closing the door after him. Then he sent for Parker 
 to come to him in his mother's sitting-room. While 
 he waited for her he strode up and down restlessly, 
 planning what he would say and do. Clearly, his 
 mother must no longer be left to herself: she must be 
 continually guarded and watched. She must be con- 
 sidered now as an invalid too weak and inconsequent 
 to know what treatment she needed. 
 
 And this Humphrey could not do alone, even if he 
 gave all his time to it. He must have a helper, an ally, 
 some one whom he could trust and bind to his service. 
 Would Parker be sufficient ? He asked himself doubt- 
 fully, waiting for their approaching interview before 
 passing judgment. 
 
 The woman came in at last with her usual quiet 
 and respectful air, and waited for him to speak. 
 
 "I have just seen Mrs. Wylde," said Humphrey, 
 " but I did not wake her up." 
 
 "No, sir?" replied Parker with a carefully non- 
 [ 144 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 committal accent. Humphrey found his position 
 more difficult even than he had feared. But it was 
 useless to pretend to any artifices of phrase. 
 
 " Her condition was a great shock and a great sur- 
 prise to me," he went on. 
 
 The maid made no reply, and a sudden flare of 
 annoyance blazed up in Humphrey. There was 
 something profoundly irritating about this smooth 
 and self-sufficient silence. It seemed more insolent 
 than respectful in its all-knowing reticence. He 
 wished that he could suddenly shatter Parker's mask 
 of well-trained servitude, and behold a human coun- 
 tenance, responsive to his own. Then a moment's 
 reflection showed him he was unjust. The woman 
 was in a trying situation, where discretion was all 
 that was possible to her. 
 
 "I think we agreed once before, Parker, that 
 stimulants were dangerous for my mother," he said 
 finally. " Now the time has come when it is a matter 
 of great importance that she should not be able to get 
 them." 
 
 "Yes, sir," agreed Parker. Her clear but insig- 
 nificant hazel eyes met Humphrey's for the first time 
 in a glance which seemed to promise co-operation. 
 He noticed that the light in which she was standing 
 brought the wen on her forehead into unusual promi- 
 nence. 
 
 [ 145]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "She must have been very unlike herself during 
 the last few days, very careless of consequences?" 
 said Humphrey, sick at heart for seeming to ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "It was Ellen," remarked the maid. " Mrs. Wylde 
 asked her for the champagne and she brought it. I 
 tried to argue with Mrs. Wylde, but it was no use, she 
 was like an ill person, some one in a fever." 
 
 "It is an illness," said Humphrey. 
 
 "Yes, I know, sir." 
 
 Humphrey reflected for a moment. "Does Ellen 
 have charge of the keys of the wine-cellar?" he asked 
 finally. 
 
 "Yes, sir, but there's very little wine kept in the 
 house, you know, on account of there being so little 
 room." 
 
 Humphrey said that thereafter he should keep the 
 keys himself, and that when Ellen needed wine for the 
 table she must come to him. 
 
 " You are fond of my mother, I think, Parker ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes, I always tell every one she is a very nice 
 lady," replied the maid. Her accent of conscientious 
 recommendation would have amused Humphrey at 
 another time. 
 
 " She's been kind to you ?" 
 
 "Very, sir." 
 
 [ 146]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " You have a chance now, Parker, to be of the great- 
 est help to Mrs. Wylde and to me. You know what 
 her condition is. She is growing gradually worse, 
 and will never be well again until she gives up alcoholic 
 stimulants. She is too weak, just now, to do this of 
 her own will. I know she wishes it. She must be 
 helped by keeping all these things absolutely away 
 from her. Can you do it?" 
 
 Parker remarked in a level, unemotional voice that 
 it was a hard task, but Humphrey thought he saw 
 a look of sympathy glimmer for a moment on her 
 face. 
 
 " I know it is hard," he said, " but I shall be here as 
 much as possible to help you. Between us we must 
 cure her!" His faith and enthusiasm should have 
 been contagious, but Parker only sighed. 
 
 " I'm sure I hope so, sir," she said. " 'Tis a terrible 
 thing! I never thought I should have a thing like 
 it come on me, and such a nice lady too ! " 
 
 Humphrey considered another aspect of the situ- 
 ation. Perhaps it had already been in the maid's 
 mind. 
 
 "Of course I realize I am asking for much more 
 than your usual services, and you shall be paid accord- 
 ingly," he remarked. 
 
 Parker replied deferentially that she knew Mr. 
 Humphrey would do what was right. 
 [147]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "I shall give you double your present wages," he 
 said, after some consideration. " Of course, Mrs. 
 Wylde will not know of this." 
 
 " Of course not, sir. Thank you, sir." 
 
 " It will be as if I had engaged a nurse, in addition 
 to a maid. Invalids are often obliged to have the 
 attendance of a nurse against their will." 
 
 Parker did not apparently grasp the necessity of 
 this presentation of the facts a presentation by which 
 Humphrey strove to silence inward protest but ac- 
 quiesced in it. There was a moment's silence. 
 
 "Is that all, sir?" asked the maid, at last. 
 
 It seemed to Humphrey that there was a great deal 
 more, but he could not have explained what it was. 
 He had anticipated something vaguely different from 
 his talk with Parker, yet he felt that there was nothing 
 of which he could precisely complain. The woman 
 had been respectful, understanding, willing to do her 
 best to help him. Perhaps in his own disappointment 
 and trouble he would have liked a warmer expression 
 of sympathy, even if it had been less full of respect. 
 A little human friendliness, something less chilly than 
 the carefully repressed condolence of an inferior. If 
 she could have forgotten for a moment that she was 
 an inferior it would have been grateful to him. If she 
 could have been just a kind, middle-aged woman, not 
 a lady's maid! He said to himself, though, that he 
 [148]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 had expected the impossible. Parker was faithful and 
 devoted to his mother. She had been with them for 
 five years, through all the trial of his father's illness and 
 death, she would not fail them now, in any of the things 
 which were essential. 
 
 [149]
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " J UT you're mad ! " exclaimed Norris Peters, 
 
 1 3 "you're raving! I never heard such nonsense 
 in my life!" 
 
 "Nonsense or not it's got to be," said Humphrey 
 firmly. 
 
 The two men had been lunching together at Del- 
 monico's, and were lingering over their coffee and 
 cigarettes. 
 
 " Give up the work in Michigan give up the office! 
 why, it's your life, man, you're giving up!" 
 
 "Life's a long affair," said Humphrey. His face 
 wore a somewhat stolid expression. He stared with 
 the fixedness of the unperceiving gaze at an old man 
 sitting at a table near them. 
 
 Peters was silent for a moment, unable to find words 
 to express his annoyance and disapproval. Finally 
 he burst forth again: 
 
 "So you've lost your ambition and got too lazy 
 to work! That's the way it looks, at all events! 
 I'm joking of course don't mind it! What's at the 
 bottom of it all, Humphrey? You're not going to 
 make a mystery of it to me are you ? " 
 [ 150]
 
 "Certainly not the facts are what I've told you. 
 My mother is not well I want to be more with her. 
 We may travel. As you know, it isn't really necessary 
 for me to make money. Why shouldn't I do as I 
 like?" 
 
 " Keep your reasons to yourself if you like " said 
 Peters, " but don't talk like that, at least to me. I'm 
 not a fool. What does your mother say to all 
 this?" 
 
 Humphrey hesitated finesse was not strongly in 
 his character. In diplomacy he would, in all proba- 
 bility, have followed the school of Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 "She doesn't know what my plan is as yet," he said 
 finally. "She'll approve when she knows it. Keas- 
 bey's been anxious to come in with us for some time," 
 he added. "Now's your chance to get him." 
 
 "Damn Keasbey," observed Peters. 
 
 " Don't think I'm not sorry to leave you, old Norry," 
 Humphrey said. 
 
 They smoked in silence for a short time, watched 
 by an indifferent waiter, who was hanging about, with 
 dog-like patience, waiting for his tip. He observed to 
 himself that the young gentlemen did not seem very 
 friendly, not divining that it was against the demands 
 of friendship they were both struggling. 
 
 "Well," said Peters, at length, "it's quarter to three 
 no use to talk this over any more, I suppose?" 
 [151 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "No use," said Humphrey, "there'll be a lot of ar- 
 rangements to make, but that will all come along in 
 time." 
 
 " We'd better be off, then." Peters put a half-dol- 
 lar into the discreetly extended palm and went with 
 Humphrey into the hall where they struggled into 
 their coats. "Going back to the office?" asked 
 Humphrey. 
 
 "No I've got to see a man about that electrical 
 contract and one or two other things besides." 
 
 Peters watched Humphrey disappear through the 
 swinging doors, and then went to the telephone booth, 
 where he looked up a name and address. 
 
 " Hello give me 1195 is that 1195 ? Dr. Mackle- 
 vaine ? Ask him if he can see Norris Peters some time 
 this afternoon. Yes Hello? At once, you say? 
 Yes, in five minutes. I'll be there." 
 
 Peters came out of the booth with the calm expres- 
 sion of one who has decided on a proper course of 
 action and taken the first step. A taxi-cab rushed 
 him to the office of Dr. Macklevaine, and he found 
 that robust gentleman alone in a working cabinet which 
 was decorated with scientific instruments and charts, 
 and smelt of iodoform. 
 
 " What can I do for you ? " asked the doctor, in his 
 professional manner. From the young man's expres- 
 sion he thought he foresaw some emergency operation. 
 [ 152]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "It's not for me it's Humphrey Wylde," said 
 Peters. 
 
 "Is Humphrey ill?" 
 
 "No not in body," replied Peters impatiently. 
 He longed to get to the vital thing he had to speak of 
 at once, without beating about the bush. 
 
 "Look here, doctor," he said, "you and I don't 
 know each other very well, but we're both friends of 
 the Wyldes." 
 
 At this preamble a guarded expression crept into 
 the doctor's eyes, his professional geniality of encour- 
 agement vanished ; it was as if he had hastily put on a 
 disguise of dark glasses. 
 
 But Peters, if he noticed, was not disconcerted. 
 
 " Now as far as the world goes the Wyldes' secrets 
 are my secrets," he continued, "just as they are yours 
 but friends, such as we are, are not blind." 
 
 "I don't understand you " said the doctor, seem- 
 ing to bristle, like the old dog he was. 
 
 "I'll speak more plainly, then. Humphrey is about 
 to give up his work as an architect his whole career 
 and future in fact so as to be constantly with his 
 mother, and protect her from the suspicions of the 
 world. I don't deny that it's a fine quixotic thing to 
 do, but, all the same, Humphrey mustn't be sacri- 
 ficed." 
 
 " Sacrificed to what ? " inquired the doctor. There 
 [ 153 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was a gathering and portentous wrath hovering about 
 him which should have been a warning, but the younger 
 man went incautiously on. 
 
 "To the vice of a woman whose life is more than 
 half over, while his is just beginning," he said 
 boldly. 
 
 The doctor rose from his seat, and turned on his 
 visitor like a great bull teased into combat. " Young 
 man," he said, " my house is not a place where a lady 
 can be lightly spoken of." His face was congested 
 with anger. 
 
 In the soul of each individual there is one spot that 
 is holy but vulnerable. It will be defended to the ut- 
 termost, and woe to the assailant. Whether deliber- 
 ate or accidental, his will be a hazardous invasion. 
 
 Peters saw that he had touched this spot in Dr. 
 Macklevaine and instinctively drew back. 
 
 " I it was not my intention " he stammered. 
 A little reflection gave him back his courage. "I in- 
 sult no one, sir not even in my thoughts. There 
 are failings which are infirmities; one thinks of them 
 only with pity. But can't these failings be guarded 
 cured perhaps without destroying a life like Hum- 
 phrey's?" 
 
 Old Macklevaine controlled himself with a giant 
 effort, and brought himself to speak with calm civility 
 to this venturesome intruder. 
 [154]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Even presuming that there was a situation which 
 called for self-sacrifice," he said, "it is not a virtue 
 which destroys a life rather, it builds up." 
 
 " Character yes but what of Humphrey's career ?" 
 
 "It will be Mrs. Wylde who will have made the 
 name of her son and his father remembered." The 
 doctor's lips twisted painfully as he spoke of Dioneme 
 but there was a finality in what he said. Peters felt 
 that against this sore and stubborn passion there was 
 no attack possible. Dr. Macklevaine would look ap- 
 provingly on Humphrey's ruin if by it his mother 
 could be saved or even helped. It was a new dis- 
 closure to Peters. He had always put down the doc- 
 tor's devotion to Dioneme as merely the chivalrous 
 sentiment which is the child and sometimes life-long 
 survivor of youthful ardor. Now the enthusiasm with 
 which he had come to the house, the arguments by 
 which he hoped to find aid in preventing Humphrey 
 from throwing away his future, slipped from him. 
 He tried to repeat with more effect what he had already 
 said about misguided self-sacrifice, and ventured to 
 suggest that each individual had a right to his own 
 freedom, to his own self-expression, but, before Dr. 
 Macklevaine's scornful silence, his words sounded 
 feeble and unconvincing. 
 
 Finally he rose to go. 
 
 "You believe that I came as a friend not only of 
 [155]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Humphrey's, but of his mother's ? " he said, as he 
 stood at the door. 
 
 " Your motives were, I am sure, most praiseworthy," 
 replied the doctor. But Peters felt when he went down 
 the steps that, if his late host had followed his desires, 
 he would have given him an impetus to departure as 
 vulgar as it was vehement. 
 
 It was without any further resistance on the part 
 of his friend that Humphrey finally retired from busi- 
 ness temporarily, he put it to himself, though with a 
 doubt in his mind. He had fancied that an explana- 
 tion with his mother would be difficult, but Dioneme, 
 when he spoke to her, was abstracted, musing on other 
 things, and said that he must do what he thought best. 
 Probably it would be better for him to be by himself, 
 when he returned to work later, than to be one of a 
 firm. She took it for granted that Humphrey wanted 
 to travel, to study the art of other civilizations, but 
 begged him, a little wistfully, not to leave her just yet. 
 And so things drifted. 
 
 He often wondered how much she concealed from 
 him of her own knowledge of her condition. It was 
 a question they never spoke of openly. If she strug- 
 gled against her weakness, she gave no sign; if she 
 fell and this fear was always uppermost in Hum- 
 phrey's mind, she contrived to conceal it. She made 
 no comment to him on the changes he had effected in 
 [ 156 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 the ordering of the household; overlooked, if she even 
 suspected it, his secret understanding with Parker. 
 Once the maid had informed Humphrey of certain 
 confiscations she had made, parcels which had been 
 brought into the house stealthily but though he per- 
 ceived the necessity of knowing these things he always 
 shrank distastefully from any of the lady's-maid's 
 communications. She, perhaps, felt this repugnance 
 and, taking it personally, secretly resented it. 
 
 It was while Humphrey was making his final ar- 
 rangements for dissolving the partnership with Peters 
 that Linda returned to town. She had been away six 
 weeks. It was now early spring, but still cold, with 
 occasional flurries of snow, as the winter that year 
 lingered long. During her absence Dioneme's book 
 had appeared, and, by its perusal, her infatuation for 
 the author had been fed and maintained. Constant 
 personal association with Dioneme had dimmed, in a 
 degree, the sense of her genius; the novel again pro- 
 claimed it. Linda thought that in her renewed ab- 
 sorption by the mother her temporary madness in 
 regard to the son had been completely cured. She 
 looked forward with perfect calmness to her next meet- 
 ing with Humphrey. They would be friends, she told 
 herself, with the eternal confidence of young women 
 in that eloquent phrase. She informed Dioneme of 
 her return in a brief note, and asked when she could 
 [ 157]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 see her. The only reply she had was a message from 
 Emma Cooper, over the telephone, saying that Mrs. 
 Wylde was not well, but hoped to be able to receive 
 Miss Arnold in a very few days. At least Humphrey 
 would come to see her immediately, Linda thought. 
 He was, of course, still the eager lover, even if he had 
 been angry for a while at her flight and her silence. 
 His mother would have let him know of her return. 
 She looked forward to telling him calmly what their 
 future relations were to be it would be a pleasure to 
 let him see how much she really liked and esteemed 
 him, now that she no longer feared, on her own 
 part, either his supplications or any of those tu- 
 multuous silences which had so confounded her in 
 the past. 
 
 But Humphrey did not come, and she was forced 
 into the reluctant belief that he had been angrier at 
 her running away from him than she had thought 
 possible. Altogether there was much that was un- 
 satisfactory about her home-coming. She had so 
 looked forward to taking the threads of events in her 
 own hands, had felt herself so strong and competent! 
 Now things were in a mysterious tangle and there 
 was no one to unravel them. If she could only see 
 Dioneme! But still no summons came, and her pride 
 would not permit her to write a second time asking for 
 an interview. She had to be contented with frequent 
 [ 158 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 inquiries sent through servants over the telephone 
 to which the answer was always that Mrs. Wylde was 
 a little better nothing more. 
 
 When Walter Jackson was shown in one afternoon 
 at tea time soon after her return, she received him with 
 pleasure, not only for his own sake, but because she 
 thought he might bring her news of the Wyldes. 
 
 Though she did not know it, this was the express 
 purpose of Walter's visit. At first, however, this matter 
 of prime importance to both of them was diplomati- 
 cally held in reserve. 
 
 "No need to ask how you are," said Jackson, as he 
 took the cup of tea she had prepared for him, "you 
 show you've had six weeks of open air and early hours." 
 
 "The country was delicious," replied Linda. "I 
 skated when the roads were too hard to ride." 
 
 " Any people staying in the house ? " asked the young 
 man, on the lookout for rivals. 
 
 "No my little cousin had the whooping-cough, so 
 they couldn't have visitors. I wasn't sorry. I like 
 being alone." 
 
 This Jackson put down as a girlish vagary which 
 time would overcome. No well-balanced human being 
 liked being alone especially in the country. 
 
 "What has been going on in New York?" asked 
 Linda. 
 
 " Nothing much no end of people have gone South. 
 [ 159]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 There was the Hollister's Ball, but it was dull not 
 enough men and the O'Gradys had the Swedish 
 dancers paid a fortune for one night every one went 
 out of curiosity, even old Miss Anne Sturdevant who 
 always swore she wouldn't set foot inside the O'Grady's 
 house." 
 
 Jackson talked on easily, giving her the record of 
 the little surface happenings which had broken the 
 monotony of their circle. A student of life would have 
 read profounder meanings into these events, but in 
 Walter Jackson thought had few reflexes. This was 
 one of the reasons why he filled so competently and 
 aggreeably the place in society where chance and his 
 own exertions had located him. 
 
 Linda was not unheedful of the mild gossip it is 
 against nature not to listen when we hear what our 
 friends and acquaintances have been doing but the 
 dissatisfaction of which she had been aware ever since 
 her return increased. In her mind she pronounced 
 an arraignment against the nothingness of New York 
 society. Would Walter tell her anything about the 
 Wyldes without being asked, or must she, in despera- 
 tion, venture a question ? This last was spared her, as 
 Jackson was even more anxious than she to concern 
 himself with Humphrey and his mother. 
 
 " What do you think of young Wylde's last move ? " 
 he asked abruptly. He had hoped to take her by sur- 
 [ 160 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 prise and when he saw her expression change felt that 
 he had done so. She knew nothing he felt sure. 
 
 "You forget I've been away," said Linda. 
 
 "Oh, I thought you might have heard by letter! 
 Well he's given up his profession, retired from work 
 altogether. It's what the men who knew him in Paris 
 always predicted / never believed it took me quite 
 off my feet when I heard it." 
 
 Linda's apparent lack of interest was unnatural, 
 and even Jackson was only partially deceived by it. 
 
 "Strange you hadn't heard!" he remarked, eyeing 
 her closely. 
 
 "Of course there's some reason for it," she said; 
 "what does he say?" 
 
 "I haven't seen him, myself but I hear he doesn't 
 say anything. After all if it conies to that, why need 
 a man work if there's no need for it? Mrs. Wylde 
 makes money enough for two and there's the father's 
 fortune beside. He wasn't rich, old Wylde, but he 
 was no pauper!" 
 
 Linda tried to force herself into a realization of how 
 contemptible Humphrey had shown himself to be, 
 how he had justified her undefined suspicions of him, 
 but succeeded only in feeling that she had never liked 
 Walter Jackson so little. 
 
 "Perhaps he wants to take care of his mother, to 
 be with her more," she suggested, leaping at a half 
 [161]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 truth with feminine divination. "You know, she is 
 not well." 
 
 " Men don't give up their professions to take care of 
 women," replied Jackson, with undeniable reason 
 "but it shows how kind-hearted you are to try and 
 find an excuse for him. Other people aren't so chari- 
 table. Every one's down on him too much down on 
 him, from my point of view. But they'll forget it in a 
 week what does it matter ? " 
 
 Linda's mind was in a distressing confusion. She 
 was vexed with Walter that he had repeated such a 
 tale about Humphrey; vexed that he should try to de- 
 fend him with such an unrighteous argument as that 
 there was no need of a man's working if he could be 
 supported otherwise. She longed to be able to cast out 
 Humphrey utterly, and at the same time every instinct 
 in her rushed to his defence against those who would 
 themselves cast him out. 
 
 Now it seemed to her imperative that she should see 
 him and at once. But he would not come and she 
 dared not write to him. They had parted almost as 
 lovers. She had fled from herself as much as from 
 him. A summons from her now would mean only one 
 thing to him; that was, no doubt, one reason why he 
 was waiting. He left the decision to her. Probably 
 he had taken her flight as a mere bit of girl's caprice, 
 and, if he was angry, was also smiling in his sleeve. 
 [ 162]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "It's not by any means the last of Humphrey. He's 
 a hard man to down," said Jackson aloud, in startling 
 parallel with her thoughts. 
 
 Linda wrenched herself out of abstraction. 
 
 " No I dare say not," she said. " Will you have a 
 little more tea?" 
 
 Jackson had come to the house that afternoon with 
 some idea of advancing his own suit by other than in- 
 direct methods, but he finally decided that it was not 
 yet the time He drank his second cup of tea, which, 
 being prepared without attention or interest on the part 
 of the maker, was strong, bitter, and nearly cold. Then 
 he took his departure. 
 
 Linda sat idly by the tea-table for some time after- 
 ward. Life she felt was not only difficult but distaste- 
 ful. Her Irish terrier climbed up and laid his head 
 against her arm. On his ugly bearded face was a 
 look of age, wisdom, and intense devotion. But for 
 once this appeal left Linda indifferent. 
 
 "Go and lie down, Paddy," she said coldly. So 
 another honest heart felt the ache of a puzzled love! 
 
 [ 163]
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IT was a windy day in early spring; stiff breezes 
 came in gusts and swept the dust and dried manure 
 of the streets into little whirling eddies; odd scraps of 
 paper skimmed along the sidewalks and the women's 
 skirts flapped behind them as they walked tilted to 
 meet the rushing air. 
 
 Linda came out of the house with her dog and 
 turned into the park. There was beauty and the 
 promise of early spring. Surrounded by the grim, 
 compressing city this bit of nature was like some fresh, 
 exquisite body squeezed in a corset. 
 
 Linda walked briskly, the dog ahead of her tugging 
 on his leash. On the benches tramps, nurse-maids with 
 their charges, and robust matrons from Second Avenue 
 sunned themselves and read the morning American. 
 A group of children on roller-skates streamed by her 
 with a noise like a cataract. She turned into a nar- 
 rower path which led across a meadow. There it was 
 quiet almost like the country. An old German was 
 feeding two gray squirrels, who sat demurely on their 
 haunches, cracking peanuts with their sharp little teeth, 
 their furry tails stiffly upheld like battle standards at 
 [ 164]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 rest. Paddy strained at his leash, but they looked at 
 him indifferently with their bright, roving eyes, know- 
 ing no evil, protected by the laws of the city. 
 
 "New York's one sentimentality," thought Linda. 
 She moved aside to let a wobbly baby, strayed too far 
 from its nurse, pass her in safety. Somehow the at- 
 mosphere of the park was less peaceful and soothing 
 than she had hoped. It was just then that she per- 
 ceived Humphrey. He was coming toward her from 
 the west side of the park. She imagined that there 
 was an air of unhappy leisure about him, that he was 
 there, most perceptibly, because he had nothing else 
 to do. This conviction hardened her heart, which had 
 stirred a little at sight of him. 
 
 He must have noticed her from a long distance, for 
 he showed no surprise as he came up to her. Any 
 other emotion he may have felt was carefully concealed. 
 He took off his hat and the sun glistened on his sleek, 
 black hair. His blue, sailor's eyes met Linda's with- 
 out a shadow of self-consciousness. Again that sick- 
 ening conviction that it was he who commanded the 
 situation, that helplessness she always felt when she 
 was with him, swept over her. But he must explain 
 himself must prove that he was not unworthy! 
 This done she was, she all at once discovered, ready 
 to cast all her magnificent resolutions to the wind, to 
 deny her own calm and the cure wrought by absence, 
 [ 165 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to yield entirely to the emotion that shook her at the 
 renewed sight of him. But on the necessity of ex- 
 planation she held firm. "Where there is no respect 
 there can be no love," was still her shibboleth, though 
 every slender thread of her being denied it. 
 
 "So you are back in town!" said Humphrey. 
 
 "Didn't you know?" 
 
 "I suspected." 
 
 "And you didn't come to see me!" said Linda with 
 uneasy and ineffectual coquetry. 
 
 Humphrey made no direct answer. 
 
 "Shall we sit down?" he asked, indicating a bench 
 somewhat removed from the vicinity of the old Ger- 
 man. Linda assented, and tied her dog to the iron 
 arm of the bench. They sat in silence for a moment. 
 The softness of the spring around them seemed to woo 
 them to gentleness and peace, but Linda stood fast in 
 her inward determination to love only where she could 
 respect. 
 
 "How does it happen that you are walking in the 
 park at eleven o'clock in the morning?" she asked 
 uncompromisingly. 
 
 Humphrey was studying her soft, flushed cheeks, the 
 slant of her eyebrows, and the curve of her young 
 mouth. How often he had seen that little face before 
 him in the dark of sleepless nights! But it was more 
 beautiful even than he remembered it more dear! 
 [ 166]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "I asked you why you were in the park at eleven 
 o'clock," repeated Linda. She met his eyes for an 
 instant, grew tremulous, and looked away. 
 
 "Why do you ask?" 
 
 "You used to be at work." 
 
 "I have given up my office," said Humphrey 
 shortly. 
 
 Linda waited for an explanation, but none came. 
 His ignoring of his own offence made her angry. Was 
 it possible he thought, as Walter had suggested, that 
 there was no necessity for a man to work if he had 
 other means of support ? Did he really intend to live 
 in idleness on the bounty of his mother ? 
 
 " But you mean to work at something, don't you ? " 
 she asked insistently. Around them some sparrows 
 twittered gayly as if of the futility of hair-splitting 
 morality and ethical argument. The warm air, full 
 of the pleasant scent of brown mould and of the first 
 grass blades which were beginning to tint the wintry 
 turf with green, blew in their faces. Love! love! 
 breathed the delicious breath of coming spring. 
 
 "What does it matter what I mean to do?" said 
 Humphrey, leaning toward her. "Can't you trust 
 me?" 
 
 "Oh I want to trust you!" exclaimed Linda; "it 
 is what I want most of all." Now that she had made 
 this admission she perceived its truth. 
 [167]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "There is only one thing that matters everything 
 else is a part of that." What this was Humphrey 
 made known to her wordlessly. Unrebuked he laid 
 his hand on hers. 
 
 " Are you going to marry me some day, Linda ? " he 
 said suddenly. The girl turned away from him though 
 she left her hand where it was. 
 
 "Oh I can't believe in you! I can't believe in 
 you!" she moaned. 
 
 "Won't you trust your heart?" 
 
 "I must be sure the man I love is absolutely all I 
 want him to be before I think of before I " she 
 faltered at the word "marry." It was unpronounce- 
 able. " Oh can't you tell me why you give up your 
 work!" 
 
 "Some day you will know everything about me. 
 Don't be afraid of that day, dear," said Humphrey. 
 
 " But I want to know now! " Linda cried. He felt a 
 flash of something like anger at this childish obstinacy, 
 this insistence on the mere ethics of their relationship, 
 but it vanished in an instant. Linda was so ignorant 
 of life and of her own heart! 
 
 "Where there is no respect there can be no love," 
 she repeated now. It was the first time she had pro- 
 nounced this watchword aloud and it gave her new 
 courage. 
 
 Humphrey sighed. She had drawn her hand away 
 [ 168]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 from him, but she looked him directly in the eyes this 
 time, with something so innocent, so appealing in her 
 gaze that his heart stirred with a kind of pity. How 
 could he teach her that love was enough or would it 
 change her too much if she knew ? 
 
 "I can't argue with you, Linda," he said. "How 
 can we sit here together and argue like two professors ! 
 Do you love me or not ? " 
 
 "You talk as if love were everything!" said Linda, 
 endowed, of a sudden, with the dignity of a real con- 
 viction, her very platitudes breathing eloquence, her 
 eyes flashing. " It may be the most powerful but it's 
 not everything. There is much more that we have to 
 consider in life whether we want to or not honor, 
 our duty to other people things like that. 
 
 " It may be, as you seem to think, that love can sweep 
 everything else aside, and be its own justification, but 
 the other things will not let themselves be forgotten." 
 
 A change came over Humphrey's face as she talked, 
 it grew graver, his expression showed that her words 
 h d started him on some track of thought in which she 
 had little or no part. 
 
 When she had finished it half alarmed her to see 
 how much her arguments had apparently moved him, 
 how carefully he could suppress in a moment all signs 
 of his late tenderness. His manner had now only what 
 seemed a studied consideration. While she had been 
 [ 169]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 doubting, hesitating about drawing nearer to him, he, 
 it seemed, had removed himself irrevocably from her. 
 It was another mystery. She waited for him to speak, 
 trembling a little. 
 
 " There is a great deal that I can't explain to you," 
 he said finally. He had risen now and was standing 
 in front of her, looking down into her face. " A great 
 deal you will never understand perhaps. When I saw 
 you again to-day I thought that you loved me, and I 
 believed still believe that love is enough! 
 
 "If it is the real thing it is inspired even though 
 unconsciously often by what you call 'respect' not 
 at war with it. I felt that this love between us could 
 make everything else that seemed difficult quite plain 
 and easy. I wouldn't have hesitated to have taken you 
 to share even trouble, responsibility with me, if I had 
 been sure of your love. 
 
 " But now, all of a sudden, you have made me see 
 things differently. You don't believe in me, you 
 can't love me without believing in me, you say. I 
 doubt if you could ever love me at all! And, uncon- 
 sciously, you've pointed out other things. I don't 
 need to speak of them. They have nothing to do with 
 you. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking of marriage 
 at all or rather perhaps I didn't think of it enough. 
 
 " It is clear to me now, at any rate, that I must give 
 up such thoughts." 
 
 [ 170]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Then his voice changed, and Linda divined in him 
 a last uncontrollable flaring up of hope. 
 
 "There is nothing else you want to say to me?" 
 he asked finally. 
 
 Something in Linda's soul at that moment mourned 
 for him with tears and cries. If he had given her any 
 hint that he was in trouble, that his life was difficult, 
 that he needed her help, her petty doubts of herself 
 and of him might have vanished ; for, in spite of her 
 twenty years, her inexperience and the narrow en- 
 vironment in which she had always lived, Linda was 
 one of that divine class of women whose nature it is to 
 give. But Humphrey showed no sign of needing any 
 one's pity rather he seemed more than usually master 
 of himself and assured. 
 
 "No there is nothing more," she said, in response 
 to his question. She would have liked to have added 
 something, even now, about their being friends, but 
 it was impossible for her to articulate these convention- 
 alities. 
 
 "Good-by, then!" said Humphrey. 
 
 "Good-by," she replied, and he was gone. 
 
 Linda sat quite still on the bench, numb and be- 
 wildered, trying to think how it had all happened 
 and so quickly! 
 
 The old German was still feeding the squirrels at 
 a little distance, her terrier lay rolled up in a shaggy 
 [171]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 red ball at her feet but Humphrey had gone. Out of 
 her life ? 
 
 She supplied a violent negation to this query from 
 her inmost necessities. No, they must still be friends! 
 She felt, unconscious of her own absurdities, that she 
 could trust him enough, at least, for that relationship. 
 
 Meanwhile Humphrey had swung himself into a 
 Fifth Avenue motor bus and was being borne, heavily 
 and noisily, a solitary passenger, toward his home. 
 The strain of the past half hour had been so great that 
 he threw it off not simply by a mental effort but through 
 the inevitable reaction of nature itself. It was not 
 impossible to occupy himself with trivialities as a man 
 may who issues from the consulting-room of a dis- 
 pensary where he has heard himself doomed, but at 
 the same time the unacknowledged pain persisted 
 a reminder that all was not well with him. 
 
 He lit a cigarette and the smoke from it floated, un- 
 lawfully, through the open windows of the omnibus. 
 In the park he noticed the willow-trees were chang- 
 ing from the golden brown of lacquer to a delicate 
 green. Workmen were busy with the new wing of the 
 Metropolitan Museum. He wondered idly when it 
 would be finished. 
 
 A camel, led by an Arab in native dress, padded its 
 exotic way along the asphalt, advertising on its saddle- 
 cloth a newly opened cafe. With wide, melancholy 
 [ 172]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 eyes, accustomed once to the limitless sands of Sahara, 
 it gazed ahead at the Plaza Hotel, looming up like an 
 inconceivably vast white porcelain German stove. 
 
 At Fifty-ninth Street a little milliner's apprentice 
 carrying a brightly flowered paper hat-box got into 
 the bus. Humphrey threw his cigarette out of the win- 
 dow, and the girl looked at him shyly, adjusting the 
 cheap gilt side-combs she wore in her yellow hair. 
 She was a pretty girl, about sixteen, with short skirts 
 which showed her clumsy patched boots. 
 
 The omnibus swung into the congestion of lower 
 Fifth Avenue and their progress was slower. Com- 
 merce and fashion joined here to form a turbulent pro- 
 cession in which their separate guilds, rivals, or allies, 
 were all audaciously represented. 
 
 Here was life, clangorous, ever-changing yet inex- 
 tinguishable Humphrey, beholding, drew from it in 
 some strange way the serenity which many men find 
 by gazing at the stars. His own trouble was lost 
 temporarily in this vast tumult. It cured like the in- 
 oculation of serum extracted from the body of a creat- 
 ure which has suffered from the disease similar to one's 
 own. 
 
 When he reached home he found Dr. Macklevaine, 
 
 who had come to lunch. Dioneme was entertaining 
 
 him by the window in the drawing-room. She had 
 
 been ill with a severe cold and had come downstairs to 
 
 [173]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 lunch for the first time in a week. " I'm much better 
 in all kinds of ways and it's mostly due to Hum- 
 phrey," she said to the doctor, when the former came 
 in. " You know, he stays at home with me now. All 
 I needed was some one to take care of me ! " 
 
 "He's done quite right!" said the doctor grufHy; 
 and each of the three wondered how much the others 
 divined of what was really meant. They were like 
 people in three separate small boats who join hands for 
 a moment under the smiling pretence of being at one. 
 Of them all Dioneme was the most truly insouciant. 
 Humphrey, as he looked at her, was amazed, as always, 
 at her unfeigned forgetfulness of realities, her absorp- 
 tion in the non-existent. 
 
 " How is the book coming on ? " asked Dr. Mackle- 
 vaine, intent on pleasing. 
 
 "Very well, I believe," replied Dioneme indifferent- 
 ly. "It doesn't interest me, now that it is published, 
 any more than the menu of a dinner I've already 
 eaten." 
 
 " Thinking of a new one, are you ? " 
 
 "Yes I want to write a story about a miner but 
 I know nothing about mines! I shall have to read a 
 great many books, which will be hard work. The 
 trouble with me is I have mind, but no memory." 
 
 "You have the essential," said the doctor pon- 
 derously. 
 
 [174]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " Perhaps but memory is the valet of mind ; it goes 
 behind and carries the paraphernalia with which mind 
 bedecks itself in order to make a brilliant appearance in 
 the world." Humphrey took no part in the ensuing 
 discussion. It did not seem to him at that moment of 
 any special significance. If his mother could ignore 
 realities, he, at any rate, must gather them up and see 
 that they were given their proper place. 
 
 After luncheon, when Dioneme had left them for a 
 few moments, Dr. Macklevaine spoke to Humphrey 
 in a tone which showed that he, too, dealt conscien- 
 tiously as well as by instinct with realities. 
 
 "Your mother's looks don't please me," he said, 
 "and her cough lasts too long I should like to have 
 Giles see her." 
 
 "Giles?" 
 
 Humphrey looked up sharply. This selection of a 
 specialist alarmed him. Dr. Macklevaine met him 
 with a steady look in the eyes. Their intelligences 
 communicated wordlessly. Finally Humphrey said 
 aloud, groping, as he was, among uncertainties: 
 
 "You've known my mother for a long time but 
 there is a great deal perhaps " 
 
 The doctor interrupted him, fingering attentively a 
 
 small spoon which lay before him, in order not to again 
 
 meet Humphrey's gaze. "There is nothing you can 
 
 tell me about your mother which I do not know," he 
 
 [175]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 said. "I know her life, her temptations, her " he 
 hesitated a little " her failings. It is because of this 
 knowledge that I am anxious about her now. She is 
 not in a condition to resist disease." 
 
 The import of the doctor's words seemed to par- 
 tially evade Humphrey, though the sense of misfortune 
 which had been upon him grew heavier. There was 
 a moment of instinctive and personal revolt. It was 
 more than he could bear. 
 
 "Poor mother!" he said then "this is not the 
 first knock I've had to-day." In his very attempt at 
 courage there may have been an unconscious wish for 
 sympathy. 
 
 But Dr. Macklevaine was not much interested in 
 Humphrey except as the son might minister to the 
 needs of the mother. 
 
 " Ah ? " he said vaguely. " Things often come like 
 that. We must face them." 
 
 He sighed, thinking of Dioneme. 
 
 "It's time for me to be off," he added in a moment. 
 "I have a hernia operation in the hospital at three." 
 
 "It's a good thing to have work," said Humphrey 
 mechanically. 
 
 [176]
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 "T'M anxious about Mrs. Wylde, sir. Do you know 
 JL where she is?" Humphrey had just come in, a 
 little after twelve at night, to find Parker waiting for 
 him in the hall, with something stealthy added to the 
 usual discretion of her attitude. 
 
 "In bed and asleep, I thought. What do you 
 mean ! " 
 
 Presentiment leaped at him like the flame from a 
 suddenly lighted match. 
 
 " Mrs. Wylde had some dinner on a tray upstairs," 
 said Parker. " She told me that she was going to read 
 for a while and that I was not to disturb her, but come 
 when she rang. I waited until after eleven nearly 
 half past, then I thought she might have fallen asleep, 
 so I went to the door and listened. There wasn't a 
 sound. I knocked, but got no answer, so I ventured 
 to open the door, sir. Mrs. Wylde was not in the sit- 
 ting-room, nor in her bedroom. I saw the tea gown 
 she had been wearing lying on a chair, and the hat^she 
 puts on mornings and one of her tailor suits were miss- 
 ing from the wardrobe. Then I knew she must have 
 [ 177]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 gone out. I ran down and asked Ellen and she said 
 she thought she heard a door closed about ten o'clock, 
 but persuaded herself she just imagined it." Parker 
 paused and looked at Humphrey with a sharp query 
 in her eyes, though her face was otherwise pas- 
 sive. 
 
 " Did Mrs. Wylde eat much dinner ? " he asked. 
 
 "No, sir, she hardly touched it. She asked me to 
 get her some champagne, sir, but I persuaded her that 
 it was impossible." 
 
 Parker's eyes were cast down. Her little speech was 
 like a message delivered in cipher, as it were, to be read 
 only by one who held the key, and of more sinister 
 meaning than the words themselves made apparent. 
 
 Humphrey felt convinced now of the maid's loyalty 
 and discretion. 
 
 " You've no idea, whatever, where my mother might 
 have gone?" 
 
 "No, sir, it is so long since she has been out of an 
 evening." Parker reflected for a moment. "There's 
 a cab-stand just around the corner," she suggested. 
 "She might have taken a hansom there in case she 
 wanted one." 
 
 Humphrey had his hand on the door, ready to go 
 
 out again. " Send the other servants to bed and wait 
 
 for Mrs. Wylde yourself," he said, as he opened it. 
 
 As yet he had no plan for himself. He must take time 
 
 [ 178 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to think one out. To call in the aid of an outsider was 
 not to be thought of at least until it became impera- 
 tive. 
 
 Parker had spoken of a cab-stand, the one on 
 
 Street, no doubt. He turned in that direction, unable 
 at the moment to think of anything better. In front 
 of the Club there were only two cabs, four wheelers, 
 the drivers asleep on their respective boxes. Humphrey 
 woke up the nearest and asked him if he could give 
 any information about a lady who had taken a cab 
 there earlier in the evening. 
 
 " What kind of a lady ? " asked the man. He was 
 fat and unmannerly, with a bloated red face, and ad- 
 dressed Humphrey from his lofty seat with what seemed 
 disdain. 
 
 "A tall, thin lady, very pale, with reddish hair and 
 dark eyes," said Humphrey, marvelling painfully that 
 he should be describing his mother to an insolent, Irish 
 cab-driver. The man settled down to his slumbers 
 again and closed his eyes. 
 
 "Feller ahead had a party like that, about ten 
 o'clock," he let fall grudgingly. "Ye kin ask him 
 about her." 
 
 The man on the next cab had a thin, smoothly 
 shaven face, of the English type, lined and pinched with 
 hard experience, yet with a kind of protesting and sar- 
 donic humor in it. Yes, he remembered his fare, of 
 [ 179]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 course, why shouldn't he he had had only two that 
 
 evening. He had taken her to a hotel on Street, 
 
 but she hadn't stayed a minute, hurried out as if she 
 were angry and told him to drive about a little any- 
 where she wanted the air. After they had been 
 driving for about fifteen minutes she put her head out 
 of the window and told him to stop. It was in front 
 of the " Windermere." She paid him his fare and he 
 saw her go into the restaurant. The cabman had the 
 indifferent manner of one who can be surprised by 
 nothing; but his regard, as he bent it on Humphrey, 
 had a certain penetrating quality. Of this Humphrey 
 saw nothing. He felt grateful for the unconcern of the 
 man's words. It made things, if possible, less over- 
 whelming to face. For an instant he glanced up vague- 
 ly at the huge office-building, overtopping them, surg- 
 ing in the sky like a stupendous wave which threatened 
 to break on their heads. The sparsely scattered elec- 
 tric lights in front of the club flared into the gaping 
 blackness of an empty lot opposite, which was piled 
 with the formless, uncouth debris of a recently de- 
 molished house. 
 
 " Drive to the Windermere and be quick about it," 
 he said, and jumped in the cab. It had the sour, 
 musty smell of all such vehicles, the cocoa mat under 
 his feet felt damp and slimy, the windows were shut 
 and spattered with mud. They started forward with 
 [ 180 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 a lurch, bumping over a deep hole in the asphalt pave- 
 ment. 
 
 " So she came ! " said Humphrey to himself and the 
 thought repeated itself mechanically over and over in 
 his brain until he felt himself actually in his mother's 
 place and began to almost sickeningly understand 
 some of her misery, the intense, irresistible, bodily crav- 
 ing, the wavering will, the horror of life which engulfed 
 her and would not let her go, nerves, imagination, tor- 
 tured until they shrieked for any way of escape, even 
 the most degraded. 
 
 In the distance he saw the monstrous flare of Broad- 
 way ablaze with electric signs which looked like fire- 
 works fixed immutably in the sky. 
 
 The side street led, tunnel-like and dark, toward 
 all this brilliance. Just before they reached it the cab 
 stopped. " Windermere " Humphrey read in letters of 
 light. He jumped out. 
 
 "Shall I wait?" asked the driver. 
 
 "Yes wait," said Humphrey over his shoulder. 
 He pushed open the glass doors, covered with curtains 
 of dark green silk, and went in. 
 
 A drunken man, well-dressed, elderly, what re- 
 mained of a gentleman, rolled in beside him, carrying 
 some bills tightly clenched in one hand and a red rose 
 in the other. 
 
 A boy took Humphrey's hat and coat and disap- 
 [181]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 peared with them up a mysterious stairway which led 
 from the outer hall, and he was then shown into a large 
 square room on the left of the entrance a room like a 
 roofed-over patio, with an upper balcony, decked with 
 the puckered-up flags of all nations and with enormous, 
 many-colored Japanese lanterns. The walls were all 
 of looking-glass and covered with lattice-work over 
 which trailed dusty imitation wistaria vines. Under 
 his feet the dirt on the floor scraped like sand. 
 
 He was conscious of a riot of colors, of the over- 
 powering smell of food and wine and strong cigars, and 
 a din of coarse voices and laughter. Between the lat- 
 tice-work the mirrors reflected this scene in an inter- 
 minable series of gaudy squares, which seemed to fit 
 into each other like boxes, or be laid in quaint, mosaic- 
 like patterns. 
 
 Here, where any woman might enter alone and un- 
 questioned, Humphrey was to look for his mother. 
 He began to pick his way slowly among the crowded 
 tables. Many bold eyes, mocking, leering, or indif- 
 ferent, looked up at him from under rakish hat brims. 
 He came across the old man who had entered the 
 restaurant with him lolling at a small table and 
 contemplating his rose vacantly with a maudlin 
 smile. 
 
 "Woman is a flower lasts but an hour " he was 
 mumbling to himself. The musicians played with Ital- 
 [ 182 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 ian fervor the intermezzo from " Cavalleria," and fol- 
 lowed it by "The Rosary." For the moment senti- 
 mentality was uppermost. A girl with her feathered 
 hat at a grotesque angle on the back of her head be- 
 gan to sob violently. Then a new party came in 
 prosperous, underbred Jews. They were greeted with 
 shouts and good-natured jests from their apparently 
 numerous friends, and sat down noisily, near the cen- 
 tre of the room. 
 
 A low-browed waiter with a filthy mop began to 
 move nonchalantly up and down, as intent merely on 
 his task of cleaning up the floor as if it had been six 
 o'clock in the morning and he alone in a deserted 
 room. 
 
 Humphrey, half desperate, reflected that if his 
 mother were really here she would be in some quiet 
 corner, if there were such a corner. He dreaded ask- 
 ing questions of an employee he must find her alone. 
 Once more he passed the table of the old man with the 
 rose, who was still crooning to himself: 
 
 "Woman is a flower lasts but an hour." 
 
 Very soon Humphrey saw Dioneme. She was not 
 sitting in a corner, but at a small table on the side of 
 the room, half concealed by the musicians, staring in 
 front of her in a kind of stupor. 
 
 A black chiffon veil covered her low hat and her hair, 
 and framed her delicately cut face. She looked very 
 [ 183]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 ill and wan, half unconscious, and her whole body was 
 relaxed as if with mortal fatigue. 
 
 Her distinction, even so, was painful. A group of 
 men at an adjacent table were watching her curiously 
 and whispering among themselves. Humphrey took 
 the seat opposite her as if he had been expected and 
 was merely keeping an appointment. 
 
 When she saw him she looked bewildered and 
 alarmed for a moment, then a flush mounted to her 
 forehead and faded, leaving her whiter than before. 
 She made no effort to speak. 
 
 Humphrey took a block of white paper from his 
 pocket and pushed it, with a pencil, across the table to 
 her. 
 
 "Well," he said pleasantly, "have you got enough 
 material ? Do you want to make any notes ? " 
 
 The men at the next table still stared, but with less 
 curiosity. 
 
 " Writing up the Windermere for the papers ! " said 
 one. 
 
 "Had her drink too soon," replied another with a 
 chuckle. " She'll say now there are two Windermeres 
 chasing each other round the block." 
 
 "Something wrong there," said the third man, shak- 
 ing his head, as he regarded Humphrey giving an order 
 for two large cups of black coffee. 
 
 Later the attention of these critics was distracted by 
 [ 184 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 a noisy quarrel between a young mulatto girl and her 
 escort and the subsequent intervention of the man- 
 ager of the Windermere. 
 
 Dioneme and Humphrey exchanged no words. She 
 sipped a little of the black coffee, her hand trembling, 
 and then played aimlessly with the pencil and the block 
 of paper. She looked physically on the verge of faint- 
 ing, but a vague and rather sweet smile hovered on her 
 lips as if she brooded over some pleasant thought. 
 She seemed now to have quite forgotten her surround- 
 ings and even Humphrey. 
 
 He wondered if she would be able to walk unsup- 
 ported out of the room. 
 
 "Drink a little more coffee," he said to her in- 
 sistently, and she obeyed him under the spell of sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 Now the beneficent power of the actual and the con- 
 crete asserted itself over Humphrey. He ceased to 
 vibrate under the horror of the situation, was no longer 
 even conscious of why he and his mother were there. 
 
 His mind, with nothing more in it, as it were, than 
 affectionate solicitude for a convalescent, fixed itself 
 on the possibility of her walking the length of the room. 
 
 Finally he decided that the moment had come. He 
 paid the waiter and helped his mother out of her 
 chair. She tottered very slightly as she rose to her 
 feet. 
 
 [185]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Take my arm," he said hurriedly, "the air in 
 this place is sickening," and so, he supporting her, 
 they left the restaurant, few noticing their depart- 
 ure. 
 
 While he was standing on the sidewalk giving the 
 direction to the cab driver, a couple passed, the hard 
 light from the electric lamp illuminating their faces 
 a slight girl with straggling golden hair and a cheap, 
 showy dress and, to Humphrey's momentary dismay, 
 Walter Jackson. Had Jackson noticed him? No 
 mercifully, he was intent on his companion. They 
 drifted past like phantoms, part of the fitfully seen, 
 tragically unimportant life of midnight. He gave 
 them no more thought. 
 
 Would his mother try to talk to him on the way 
 home, attempt some incoherent explanation ? He 
 asked himself the question half fearfully but she re- 
 mained inert, insensible almost. He could feel her 
 weight against his shoulder, heavy and inelastic. 
 
 At least his dreadful search was over. God! the 
 relief of being out of that restaurant! 
 
 Parker would be waiting for them. He was glad 
 now that he had Parker for an ally. 
 
 When the cab stopped in front of their house he 
 
 could rouse his mother but slightly and that with great 
 
 effort, and he was obliged to almost carry her up the 
 
 old-fashioned, brown-stone steps. The door opened 
 
 [ 186]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 before he had found his key. Parker must have been 
 in the hall and heard the carriage. They exchanged 
 a glance bare of pretence, and together got Dioneme 
 upstairs to her own room. 
 
 [ 187]
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WALTER JACKSON, emboldened by the ad- 
 verse criticism of Humphrey which was gen- 
 erally expressed by his acquaintances, now discarded 
 his former methods and came out openly as his de- 
 tractor. The facts, which seemed undeniably to sup- 
 port his assertions were presented to Linda on various 
 occasions separately or in sum, not brutally, but with 
 an insinuating persuasiveness. Humphrey lived on 
 his mother, there was no doubt of it, was too indolent 
 and inefficient to do anything for himself and, with 
 petty suspicion, tried to keep from Dioneme's presence 
 any one whom he thought might obtain too great 
 an influence over her. While these statements could 
 never be denied they never, on the other hand, quite 
 destroyed Linda's instinctive sympathy with Hum- 
 phrey, that cry toward him which seemed to come at 
 once from body and from soul. The world, or that 
 part of it represented by her own immediate surround- 
 ings, grew oddly meaningless and unsatisfactory. 
 
 Even when she was pleasantly busy with familiar 
 things a feeling of unreality often took possession of 
 her; she seemed to herself to be moving through some 
 [ 188]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 stiff, formal dance, her very garments like a mas- 
 querade garb, the smile on her lips set and as if as- 
 sumed for a part. And all the time she longed to live, 
 which, though she did not know it, meant that she 
 longed to love. Humphrey had awakened the sex 
 in her, but though she was no longer entirely a child, 
 she was not quite a woman, for a woman would have 
 almost certainly divined that her lover had some secret 
 care, suffered under some not dishonorable obligation. 
 
 The door which had partly opened for Linda, giv- 
 ing glimpses of confusing happiness, had been closed 
 again by her own impulsion. 
 
 Her mind was full of regret for what she had never 
 had, of sadness and revolt and sweet uncertain tender- 
 ness. 
 
 People said that she had never been so pretty; ad- 
 mirers of course hovered around, tantalized and al- 
 lured, but she classed them together, a mere group, 
 and failed to single out individuals. Of them all Jack- 
 son was the only one who came near to her the old 
 friend whom she had known so long, on whom she 
 could depend, who walked and rode with her, visited 
 the same houses, knew the same people. And they 
 were so often seen together that their names were 
 coupled openly though of this she suspected nothing. 
 
 It was spring now, the season was over, every day 
 the ocean liners carried hundreds away from New 
 [189]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 York, and country houses were being opened in Long 
 Island, Tuxedo and Westchester. 
 
 Unrest was in the air, a disturbing fever. At night 
 Linda could not sleep because of April April throb- 
 bing in the dark outside. She seemed to see, even in 
 her curtained room, the budding trees of the park toss- 
 ing lightly against a starlit sky and the thought of 
 the spring, warm, perfumed, all-conquering, haunted 
 her, kept her witch-bound, dreaming though awake. 
 
 So, for days at a time, she seemed to herself to have 
 two selves: one lightly gay, self-satisfied enough, the 
 other like an ill and peevish child crying unceasingly 
 for some toy denied to it. 
 
 Jackson dropped in at tea time one unusually warm 
 afternoon. He found Linda alone. The curtains 
 had been drawn to keep out the too searching sun, but 
 through the windows came a constant whirring noise 
 from the motor-busses stationed in front of the house, 
 and the shouts of some Italian children who, living in 
 Avenue A, found Fifth Avenue a convenient play- 
 ground. The drawing-room was full of potted hya- 
 cinths and narcissi, and in the warmth and perfume 
 one was conscious of the fine dust which came in with 
 the air from outside, and of a general oppressive intru- 
 sion on the part of the city. Was it the moment for 
 Jackson to have chosen for a declaration of his hopes 
 and desires ? Who can tell ! 
 [190]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Linda, though she listened gently, not too surprised, 
 refused to give any definite answer, put him off, was 
 irritating, coquettish, even, he felt, insincere. But on 
 the other hand anything was better than a direct re- 
 fusal. He was confident of winning her in the end. 
 
 After this scene Linda felt mysteriously the need of 
 justifying herself in her treatment of Humphrey. It 
 occurred to her that she had never sought to find out 
 indirectly, but from Dioneme herself, the truth about 
 him. While the mother would never accuse her son, 
 or perhaps consciously admit even to herself his short- 
 comings, she would certainly betray the reality una- 
 wares. 
 
 It had been a long time since Linda and her friend 
 had met, not indeed since the finality of the former's 
 talk with Humphrey in the park. At first a certain 
 shyness or pride had kept Linda away, afterward she 
 had made several attempts to go to Dioneme, but had 
 always been put off on a plea of absorption in a piece 
 of literary work, absence from town, or ill health. The 
 base thought that it was Humphrey who had, by way 
 of punishment for her treatment of him, prevented her 
 from seeing his mother, several times entered Linda's 
 brain, a mean and unwelcome thing, but not easily 
 ejected. As soon as she had decided to make another 
 effort toward a meeting with Dioneme she went to the 
 telephone and called up the Madison Avenue house. 
 [191]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 When Humphrey's voice answered her she was ex- 
 traordinarily taken aback, hesitated for a word, much 
 to her annoyance, but finally managed to say that she 
 would like to speak to Mrs. Wylde. 
 
 " Who is it ? " asked the voice again. 
 
 It surprised her even over the telephone with its 
 power to induce in her a nervous tremor. 
 
 " Linda Arnold," she replied. There was a rather 
 long pause, then Humphrey spoke again. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said, "but my mother is not well 
 and can't come to the telephone just now. Can I give 
 her a message?" 
 
 That was all no acknowledgment of Linda herself 
 as anything but an abstract personality. 
 
 " Will you ask your mother when she can see me 
 just we two, alone, for a little talk ? " said Linda, striv- 
 ing to make her voice as unconcerned as Humphrey's 
 seemed to be. A girlish terror seized her. What if 
 Humphrey should think she was making some advance 
 toward a new understanding with himself ? She grew 
 hot at the thought and felt like precipitately hanging 
 up the telephone receiver, but the wretched thing held 
 her like some soulless machine which she had set in 
 motion and could not stop. 
 
 " Will you hold the wire, or shall I call you up later 
 and let you know what she says ? " came Humphrey's 
 voice. Its accent of remote courtesy angered Linda 
 [ 192]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 unreasonably, but what else could she wish? Again 
 she regretted her impulse to telephone but her resolve 
 to see Dioneme remained with her. 
 
 "I'll hold the wire," she said. 
 
 During the minutes which elapsed before Hum- 
 phrey's return, as she sat holding the receiver, she had 
 an odd impression that unexpressed and incoherent 
 communications were passing along the line between 
 her house and his. And these intelligences, presum- 
 ably of the utmost importance, she was incapable of 
 grasping. It was as if she sat, impotently, with a 
 thread of destiny in her hand. 
 
 Presently she heard his voice again and with the 
 resumption of material intercourse her fancy of the 
 psychic became immediately grotesque. 
 
 "My mother wants very much to see you," said 
 Humphrey, " but the doctor has told her she must have 
 a few days of absolute rest, a week perhaps. She will 
 write to you at the end of the time and name a day for 
 you to come." 
 
 "Thank you," replied Linda and hung up the re- 
 ceiver without further formality. 
 
 "She will never write!" she said to herself with 
 vexed conviction. But nevertheless she waited a week 
 with a certain amount of hope. At the end of that 
 time she was assured that Humphrey had determined 
 to keep her away from his mother at all costs and no 
 [ 193]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 inquiry into his possible motives could produce for her 
 mental consideration anything but the unworthy. 
 But now her spirit of opposition was really aroused. 
 She would see Dioneme! Therefore one afternoon 
 she drove to the well-known house on Madison Avenue, 
 mounted the steps with an amusing air of dogged re- 
 solve, and rang the bell. 
 
 Chance was on her side, for, as the door was opened 
 by the maid, Linda caught sight of Emma Cooper 
 standing in the hall, cloaked and hatted, apparently 
 just on the point of taking her departure. 
 
 "Oh, is that you, Emma!" said Linda, not giving 
 the maid an opportunity to deliver the formal message 
 that her mistress was not at home. "How is Mrs. 
 Wylde? And could you arrange for me to see her a 
 moment ? " 
 
 Thus appealed to as an authority and a power 
 Emma was easily influenced. 
 
 "Why, go right in the parlor, Miss Arnold," she 
 said genially. " It's been a long time since you were 
 here, seems to me. She's been real ill had a relapse 
 after getting over the grippe but I believe it will do 
 her good to see you. Doctors don't know anything, 
 anyway!" Having wiped out all the pretensions of 
 medical science in this swift and ruthless way, Emma 
 went upstairs to interview her employer. She came 
 back with a shade less enthusiasm in her manner. 
 [ 194 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "You're to go right up," she said, "but I guess you 
 better not be there too long, she seems real weak and 
 nervous to-day." 
 
 "I'll only stay a little while," said Linda, but lin- 
 gered before she turned upstairs. 
 
 " How are you getting on ? " she asked Miss Cooper, 
 pleasantly. "I've heard nothing about you for so 
 long." 
 
 The typist reddened a little with embarrassment. 
 
 " Well," she replied hesitatingly, " things have been 
 better than now, but I was never one to complain." 
 
 Linda looked at her more attentively and perceived 
 that her hat and boots were shabby and that she was 
 wearing cotton gloves. She smiled at Miss Cooper 
 with gentle friendliness. 
 
 " You mustn't forget me," she said, " if you ever need 
 any help. Perhaps I might be able to hear of some 
 work for you. Do you promise ? " 
 
 "Yes, I promise," Miss Cooper answered, as if the 
 words were wrenched from her with difficulty. She in- 
 finitely disliked receiving favors, but her admiration for 
 Linda was great and throttled her pride. Miss Arnold 
 was not so much beauty and romance nor even kind- 
 ness to her perhaps as she was part of that Olympian 
 world of fashion, merely to read of which was a 
 debauch of the imagination. She longed now to tell 
 Miss Arnold that she had seen in the paper that 
 [ 195 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 morning a description of the dress the former had 
 worn at a wedding, but her courage failed her, and the 
 moment was soon over, for Linda, with her pretty smile, 
 turned inexorably toward the stairs. 
 
 Now that she was really on the point of seeing 
 Dioneme again, her pulses began to beat a little faster 
 and she was conscious of a certain suspense and doubt 
 in her anticipation of the meeting. Weeks had gone 
 by since she had last been with Dioneme and in those 
 weeks she felt, complacently, that she had grown older, 
 more perceptive and experienced. Would her friend 
 seem the same to her ? A first glimpse reassured her 
 of her own fidelity of impression, for Dioneme, look- 
 ing up at her from a low chair with her whimsical and 
 evasive smile, sent out the old swift message of charm 
 and power. 
 
 "Linda! Linda! Linda!" she cried. "Your name 
 has rung in my head so often, like a little silver bell, 
 and here you are again at last!" 
 
 "I have tried to come ever so many times," said the 
 girl, "but you always put me off." 
 
 "Ah, that was Humphrey Humphrey with the 
 doctor to back him up. They keep me a prisoner!" 
 
 Linda clutched instantly at this confirmation of her 
 
 suspicions, but under the influence of Dioneme's 
 
 mature and absorbing personality they seemed, all at 
 
 once, of less importance. She began once more to 
 
 [ 196]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 realize that she was inexperienced and shy, but, not- 
 withstanding, pursued her investigation. 
 
 " Then you don't feel, yourself, so very ill ? " she 
 asked, sitting down by Dioneme. 
 
 " Not ill enough to have my hands tied ! " a look 
 almost like petulance crossed Mrs. Wylde's face " but 
 please don't talk of me at least not of my state of 
 health. Let us talk of real things. Did you read my 
 book?" 
 
 " Of course," said Linda. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 Linda hesitated. 
 
 "It was wonderfully good, but I was a little dis- 
 appointed because there seemed to me so little of 
 yourself in it." 
 
 "You mean of the self that you personally know, 
 little Linda." 
 
 Linda was abashed. 
 
 "Perhaps," she admitted. 
 
 " Each individual knows a separate bit of one," said 
 Dioneme, "but put all together and added up they 
 don't make one's real self." 
 
 She was silent for a moment, lost in thought and 
 Linda, meanwhile, studied her face. Yes, she had 
 changed ; her eyes always deeply set now looked sunken, 
 her lips had a purplish tinge. She looked as if she 
 had suffered. 
 
 [ 197]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "I suppose," went on Dioneme finally, "only our- 
 selves know our selves and that merely at intervals, 
 when other things permit." 
 
 "It frightens me, somehow, to think that!" said 
 Linda. 
 
 " Did you never feel," asked Dioneme, sitting upright 
 and speaking with more vivacity, " as if you had wan- 
 dered away from your Self, left it sitting alone in some 
 far-off place?" 
 
 "I don't quite know what you mean," said Linda; 
 but she began to feel the rising tide of half-mys- 
 tical excitement which Dioneme often unloosed for 
 her. 
 
 "Sometimes," the older woman continued a little 
 wistfully, "I find it so lonely in the world without my 
 Self, I try to go back to the place where I seem to have 
 left her and am in terror lest I should not be able to 
 find the road the turning, twisting road!" 
 
 " Can no one else ever find one's Self ? " asked Linda, 
 thinking of the instincts of love. 
 
 " No one," Dioneme answered with strange convic- 
 tion. "Self always sits alone; when I am away from 
 mine I seem only to remember the place dimly, but it 
 is like a dark forest, where there is music like the 
 music of violins, only deeper, perhaps and a white 
 starlight, and many flowers." 
 
 Dioneme's voice made the words poetry. There 
 [ 198]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was a silence after she had finished. Linda was al- 
 most afraid to speak. 
 
 " Are the flowers lilies ? " she asked at last. 
 
 "Yes," said Dioneme dreamily, "the flowers are 
 lilies." 
 
 Why had Linda come ? She strove to remember 
 clearly. Oh, yes, to find out, indirectly, whether the 
 rumors in regard to Humphrey's treatment of his 
 mother were true or false. 
 
 She looked at her friend as she lay back among her 
 cushions fingering the long string of green jade beads 
 she was wearing and was impressed more than ever 
 before with the belief that the real events of life con- 
 cerned her but little, except as they furnished stimulus 
 to the imagination or were suited for picturesque re- 
 production. Dioneme was not worldly, she was not 
 even material and it was this rare and exquisite 
 creature, so Linda reflected, whom Humphrey allowed 
 to support him in self-chosen idleness. The thing 
 was unbelievable ! There must be some explanation. 
 She summoned all her courage to ask a direct ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "It isn't good, I should think, for you to be too 
 much alone. Isn't your son able to be with you 
 much ? " In her endeavor to look carelessly un-self- 
 conscious she felt as if she were making strange 
 grimaces. 
 
 [ 199]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "He is almost always with me," Dioneme answered, 
 and one might have fancied there was a note of dis- 
 satisfaction in her voice. 
 
 "What about his work?" Linda asked again, her 
 heart beating violently as she put the question. 
 
 " Haven't you heard ? He's given up his office a 
 pity, I think, he was more contented when he had some- 
 thing to do." Dioneme spoke as if a child had given 
 up playing marbles. The thing, evidently, had no 
 significance to her. She was above all mean mistrust. 
 Linda's immense pity for her friend, lit now by indig- 
 nation, made it hard for her to listen to the former's 
 absorbed setting forth of the plot for a new story which 
 she had in mind. Was it not on the income from that 
 story that Humphrey, partially, at least, was to be 
 maintained! And Dioneme was an ill woman, no 
 longer young. She had certainly faded since Linda 
 saw her last. How large even her slender hands 
 looked on her emaciated arms! The vitality in her 
 seemed largely of the mind, a flickering gleam il- 
 luminating physical decay. She seemed tired now. 
 Perhaps Linda's visit had already been too long. She 
 glanced at the clock remembering Emma Cooper's 
 words. Yes, it was time for her to go. 
 
 Dioneme made no protest when she rose. She did 
 not even ask her to come again though her good-by 
 was affectionately given. 
 
 [ 200 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " When you kiss me I feel sad, Linda," she said. " I 
 wonder why!" 
 
 At the door the young girl turned for another look, 
 but Dioneme lay back with her eyes closed and did not 
 see her. 
 
 Every detail about the languid figure and its sur- 
 roundings stamped itself on Linda's memory: the 
 translucent green jade beads which lay among the 
 folds of Dioneme's dress, the flowering plant on the 
 table, the deep purple of a book-cover, a picture-frame 
 in dull gold. The glow of the late afternoon focussed 
 it all into a warm and subtle harmony, like an illumi- 
 nated missal. 
 
 " Good-by," said Linda, and closed the door softly 
 behind her. Certainly the visit had given her no 
 reason for regretting the renunciation of her lover. 
 
 [ 201
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE care of his mother having been forced on 
 him to the exclusion of other things, Humphrey 
 accepted it dispassionately as an unavoidable obliga- 
 tion, but did not applaud himself by repeating fine 
 phrases in regard to duty and unselfishness. He had 
 nothing of the spiritual exaltation of the religious zealot 
 to console him; self-sacrifice seemed to him a womanish 
 virtue at the best (renunciation being emphatically for 
 the feeble) , and he would have been annoyed to have 
 had it attributed to him. 
 
 There was more of the soldier in him than the vision- 
 ary. Life was discipline, one submitted without over- 
 much thought of personal justice or injustice, one was 
 part of an organization. 
 
 What pity he felt was for his mother. She was a 
 woman and Humphrey was capable of an unreasoning 
 tenderness toward women. They often seemed to 
 him to have been but poorly equipped by their Creator 
 for the field on which they were to engage. 
 
 Sometimes when he felt that Dioneme was tired of 
 his constant presence (in spite of his efforts at dis- 
 simulation she easily divined that she was watched) 
 [ 02 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 he made an effort and sallied temporarily into the 
 world. Peters, too, dragged him now and then to the 
 play. They started on one of these expeditions a cer- 
 tain evening toward the end of April, Peters bent on the 
 process of what he called diverting Humphrey's mind. 
 The theatre, when they reached it, had the warm dim- 
 ness of an underground aquarium, the light coming 
 through thick shades of green glass. It was quaint, 
 unpleasant and, according to the theories of the dec- 
 orator, eminently artistic. The boxes, as it happened, 
 were more brightly lighted and hung conspicuously 
 next the stage over the heads of the audience. As 
 Peters and Humphrey took their seats a number of 
 people entered the box on their side of the house. 
 Peters, with great vexation, recognized Linda Arnold 
 and gave Humphrey a quick side-glance, full of dis- 
 may. By what observation, intuition, and hearsay 
 he had divined all the latter's secrets it would be im- 
 possible to say, but they were undeniably in his 
 possession. 
 
 Linda came to the front of the box like Juliet walk- 
 ing out on her balcony, as young, as beautiful, as fit 
 for love, and Peters foresaw that it would be a hard 
 evening for old Humphrey. 
 
 "I hope to God she sits where he can't see her!" he 
 breathed with inward fervor, but, signalled by her 
 hostess, Linda placed herself where her lovely head was 
 [ 203 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 outlined against a Fra Angelico background of gold 
 pillar, startling almost in its effectiveness. Hum- 
 phrey's eyes were bent on his programme. If he had 
 seen he gave no sign. 
 
 " Who are these people acting to-night ? " he asked. 
 "Never heard of any of them before!" 
 
 " Oh, yes," replied Norris, absent-mindedly," you've 
 forgotten ! " 
 
 He now observed with increased dismay that Walter 
 Jackson had seated himself behind Linda in the box 
 and was leaning over, talking into her ear with an air 
 of willingly advertised devotion. 
 
 "Damn it all!" said Peters to himself, and aloud: 
 " I think you'll like that scene in the desert, the one in 
 the third act, remember, I told you about it." 
 
 "Is it a desert with real sand?" asked Humphrey 
 with a dreary attempt at humor which Peters ap- 
 plauded with a mirthless but well-intentioned laugh. 
 
 He saw his friend glance upward, constrainedly, and 
 as if against his violent determination, at the upper 
 box. 
 
 " Why the devil doesn't the thing begin ? " exclaimed 
 Peters nervously; but just then the curtain rose on a 
 solemn convent scene. 
 
 " Thought you said it was an amusing play ? " said 
 Humphrey somewhat querulously. He found Peters's 
 society intolerable. Peters he knew was secretly sym- 
 [ 204 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 pathizing with him watching to see how he felt, and 
 his attempts to be tactful, to deal with the situation 
 skilfully, to direct Humphrey's attention, made the 
 latter feel like homicide. 
 
 " It is amusing, I mean entertaining. I didn't know 
 you expected a roaring farce. Perhaps we had better 
 try something else," replied Peters, opening a way of 
 escape if Humphrey should be inclined to take it. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " exclaimed the latter with an effort at 
 good-humor. "This is all right. The convent sur- 
 prised me, that's all." 
 
 But when the play was well on, and Norris fell per- 
 force into silence, Humphrey found that his friend's 
 well-meant offices had not been without their small 
 success. Left to himself it was as if all his past weeks 
 of stoic endurance had massed themselves together 
 to break upon him now irresistibly. At each glance he 
 stole at Linda and Jackson a new pang smote him, 
 physical in its intensity. Yet in spite of all, each turn 
 of Linda's head, each movement of her hand was, in 
 a way, dear to him and put immediately away in his 
 memory for eternal preservation. 
 
 Once, indeed, her look was turned downward tow- 
 ard the audience; she seemed to be gazing directly at 
 him, but he had no means of guessing whether she saw 
 him or not. She gave no sign. Meanwhile the play 
 went on in what appeared confusion and inanity. Its 
 [ 205 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sense escaped Humphrey altogether, he saw the actors 
 coming and going, speaking, moving their hands, as 
 an animal might have seen them, with keen but un- 
 apprehending vision. 
 
 After the end of the first act he and Peters went out 
 to get a breath of air and smoke a cigarette. Standing 
 together in silence they watched several thin, long- 
 legged young men in evening clothes dart across the 
 street from the theatre to a small cafe opposite, as 
 grotesque as adjutant birds. 
 
 "Have a drink with me?" said Peters, "do you 
 good!" 
 
 " No," said Humphrey shortly. 
 
 "I was mistaken about this play," said Peters again, 
 after a pause. "Rotten bad stuff! Think it's worth 
 going on with it?" 
 
 Again, he hinted at escape, feeling as cunningly 
 diplomatic as a mother with a difficult child to manage. 
 
 "Do as you like," replied Humphrey, "I'm going 
 to see it through." 
 
 They went back to their seats and Linda, who had 
 apparently been chatting with some one in the back 
 of the box, at almost the same moment resumed her 
 place of beatitude against the gold pillar. During the 
 second act Humphrey did not once raise his eyes 
 to her. 
 
 "Who knows what it costs him," thought Peters. 
 [ 206 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "He's up against it this time sure enough, poor old 
 Humphrey!" 
 
 On the stage the heroine, dismounting from a real 
 Egyptian donkey, was about to enter the tent her lover 
 had prepared for her in the desert. The audience, 
 enchanted with the donkey, were preparing to have 
 their nerves pleasantly titillated by what was under- 
 stood to be a more than usually indecorous love scene, 
 when suddenly a shrill cry exploded in the gallery. 
 There was something in the crude, piercing terror of 
 this cry which froze that first inevitable impulse to 
 laugh at the unexpected, common to all Americans. 
 This was tragedy, swift, unmistakable but what, 
 what?" 
 
 The house rose to its feet with a simultaneous move- 
 ment, faced the galleries, and swayed for a moment in 
 heavy bewilderment, like a savage and unwieldy ani- 
 mal suddenly confronted with danger. 
 
 The cry rang out again, more intense this time, 
 terrible in its concentration of fear. 
 
 " Fire is it Jlre ! " said some one to his neighbor. 
 The word was instantly caught up, repeated, itself a 
 conflagration. 
 
 Humphrey found himself, he never knew how, half- 
 way up the stairs leading to Linda's box. He met her 
 hurrying down, white-cheeked, and they stood face to 
 face for an instant in the beginning of a wild turmoil, 
 [ 207 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 and looked into each other's eyes. Then, almost im- 
 mediately, Linda was drawn back from above, there 
 seemed to be a sudden calm in the theatre. During 
 that moment on the stairs some change had taken place 
 in the spirit of the audience. 
 
 Humphrey, wondering, turned back and met Norris 
 Peters, who was laughing. People had resumed their 
 seats, and were talking together with relief and pleas- 
 ant animation, the actors prepared to go on with the 
 play. 
 
 "A tempest in a tea-pot," said Peters. "Man 
 fainted in the gallery and his wife thought he was dead 
 and got hysteria." 
 
 "It was touch and go," remarked Humphrey. 
 "Half a minute more and we should have had a 
 panic." 
 
 His own moment of tremor had been that meeting 
 with Linda on the stairs. The marvel of it stayed 
 with him. Why had they sought each other instinc- 
 tively, without conscious will or intention ? What had 
 her eyes said to him? He could not answer, but his 
 trouble of the earlier part of the evening grew less. 
 During that brief moment with Linda on the stairs, 
 something in her had responded to him, of that he felt 
 sure; their natures had met in a mysterious flash as 
 once before when he had dared to hope that he might 
 win her. 
 
 [ 208 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Now, indeed, he had given up the thought of per- 
 sonal happiness. Linda was not for him. That he ac- 
 cepted or persuaded himself he did, fixing his mind on 
 other obligations. Notwithstanding, the lightening of 
 his pain persisted. 
 
 The play went on, and now as he looked furtively 
 from time to time at the upper box (Peters still watched 
 him) it seemed to Humphrey as if Linda, against her 
 gold pillar, was languid and absent-minded. 
 
 Once, in fact, she turned slightly and seemed to be 
 searching the audience. Could it be for him! 
 
 But destiny was malignly capricious to Humphrey 
 that night, played pitch and toss with him unmerci- 
 fully. The party in the box left a little before the play 
 ended. When they departed Peters heaved a sigh of 
 immense relief as if a burden had been removed from 
 him, and the curtain finally lowered and he began 
 to talk to Humphrey for the first time that evening 
 with his usual ease and spontaneity. Progress toward 
 the door was slow and in the vestibule they were 
 stopped altogether. A light rain had begun to fall out- 
 side and the unforeseen demand for taxi-cabs and han- 
 soms was impossible to supply at once. The crowd, 
 wedged together in almost indecent promiscuity, was 
 for the most part tolerant and patient, chatting wit- 
 lessly about the play. 
 
 Surrounded on all sides by plump and over-scented 
 [ 209 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 femininity, Humphrey found himself, little by little and 
 from fear of uncivil resistance, propelled away from 
 his companion. Behind him two women, one of whom 
 kept unconsciously prodding his arm with an object 
 which he conceived to be a small bag containing 
 opera-glasses, talked together in cultivated but some- 
 what acidulous accents. 
 
 "One never sees a human being one knows at the 
 play nowadays," said one voice. "Where do all 
 these people come from ? " 
 
 "From Duluth and Hoboken," responded the other, 
 evidently sharing the general New York opinion that 
 the above cities have only a humorous significance. 
 " But you forget Linda Arnold ! " 
 
 Humphrey felt an overpowering desire to escape, 
 but, short of exercising that force which, directed against 
 woman, is traditionally supposed to be unmanly, this 
 was impossible. He was as annoyed at hearing Lin- 
 da's name mentioned in this way as if he had been 
 confronted unexpectedly, in a public place with some 
 blatant poster representing her face. 
 
 "Oh, yes, Linda Arnold!" repeated the first voice, 
 aggravating the offence, " she looked very well to-night, 
 too, but I can't say I admire her as much as some 
 people do. It isn't a type I especially care for." 
 
 "She doesn't look as well as she did. She has 
 grown thinner, I think." 
 
 [ 210 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Humphrey, urged to desperation, once more es- 
 sayed to move forward, but the expanse of purple satin 
 evening cloak in front of him resisted like a granite wall. 
 Over the tops of outrageously coiffed heads, heavy 
 with curls, he looked out at rain-splashed Broadway, 
 an unattainable paradise. 
 
 "It's the first time I've seen her since her engage- 
 ment to Walter Jackson was announced," said the 
 voice behind him placidly, and at the words, the 
 theatre, the people, Broadway and the world suddenly 
 faded from Humphrey's consciousness. But the voice 
 persisted : 
 
 "Why, I didn't know it had been formally an- 
 nounced!" 
 
 "Two days ago, but it hasn't been in the papers 
 yet." 
 
 Here for some undiscoverable reason the crowd sud- 
 denly surged forward and Humphrey found himself 
 beside Peters once more and near the door. 
 
 " The sea has given up its dead ! " exclaimed the lat- 
 ter with humorous intent. A glance at Humphrey's 
 face, however, alarmed him. 
 
 "What's up now!" thought this intuitive and long- 
 suffering friend. 
 
 With all the sympathy in the world it is hardly pos- 
 sible to take the love affairs of others with the unfailing 
 sympathy they deserve, and for one shameful moment 
 [211 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Peters felt that the evening had been a very irksome 
 one, and wearied a little of his role of silent supporter. 
 Moreover, as he was thirty, six years older than Hum- 
 phrey, he took a more or less elderly view of passion 
 and permitted himself to hope that the latter would out- 
 live his present sufferings. 
 
 But to Peters's credit it must be said that this callous- 
 ness was quickly forgotten and he became all unselfish- 
 ness again in the consideration of Humphrey's actual 
 state, which showed itself in a sudden outburst of ill 
 humor against the construction of the theatre, its 
 general management, and particularly its way of 
 handling a departing audience. 
 
 Such irritability, almost unprecedented in Hum- 
 phrey, showed that his nerves were in a bad state. 
 
 "Well, well," said Peters soothingly. "You're 
 right about the construction of the theatre. This kind 
 of thing is outrageous." He busied himself with se- 
 curing a taxi-cab, but when he had finally succeeded, 
 Humphrey refused to share it with him saying that he 
 wanted a walk. 
 
 " Best thing for him, perhaps," reflected Peters as- 
 senting to this; but as he drove off he retained an un- 
 pleasantly vivid impression of his friend's face as he 
 stood, vacant-eyed, in the rain. 
 
 [212]
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 DR. MACKLEVAINE sat in Mrs. Wjlde's draw- 
 ing-room, his heavy figure sunk in an arm-chair, 
 inelastic, suggestive of momentary despondency. He 
 was alone, waiting for Dioneme, who had been much 
 better for a few days, almost like her old self. In his 
 mind he was reviewing her case, shunning even in the 
 most secret place of his thought the use of a too ugly 
 word. 
 
 Lover and physician confronted each other grimly, 
 and the former held the latter dominated though ac- 
 knowledged the clearer-sighted. 
 
 Lover cried to physician: "Save her!" and the 
 physician did not dare respond: "There is no way." 
 To be blind where he saw, to hope where he despaired 
 that was Macklevaine's problem. 
 
 Little by little his mind ceased to struggle with it, 
 drifted back to the past twenty-three years since he 
 had first known Dioneme! He sighed, ponderously, 
 shifting his weight from one side to another. His eyes 
 fell on a little red amber dog standing on a table near 
 him. He had sent her that bit of amber, he remem- 
 bered, on one of the first Christmases of their acquaint- 
 [213]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 anceship, a trifling acknowledgment of the hospitality 
 she and her husband had extended to him. For years 
 Macklevaine had not, in his simple, science-enveloped 
 and possibly bourgeois soul, conceived the idea that 
 he might have fallen in love with a married wom- 
 an. Diagnosis of the emotions had never been his 
 specialty. With his eyes still on the little red amber 
 dog, which gleamed like the heart of a fire in the ray of 
 light which fell athwart it, old Macklevaine recalled 
 the moment when a consciousness of what seemed to 
 him his guilt finally reached him. 
 
 It had happened one evening when Dioneme stood 
 beside Morris at the foot of the stairs as he was saying 
 good-by late at night to them both. He remembered 
 the gesture, full of tenderness and abandonment, with 
 which Dioneme had thrown back her lovely head 
 against her husband's shoulder. The sudden pang 
 which smote him then had been the birth-pain of con- 
 scious passion. Since then the long road! the 
 stoicism, the self-denial! Now he was old. 
 
 He brooded with his head on his breast until he 
 heard Dioneme's step. As she came in the room and 
 he looked up at her, he was conscious not merely of her 
 charming, faintly smiling face, her silvery dress, her 
 slow motion, but of a hundred impalpable and out- 
 lived things in which she seemed to exist as in an 
 atmosphere. 
 
 [ 214 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Around her hung, as it were, in a shimmery nimbus, 
 all that she had suffered, all that she had sinned, her 
 most secret thoughts, her most obscure aspirations. 
 He felt in every fibre a sense of the woman herself, a 
 strangely perfected, composite personality, colored by 
 the passage of experience with a thousand hues as 
 varying as those of some wave- washed shell ; yet even 
 in this rare moment of perception she remained mys- 
 terious to him. 
 
 " Humphrey says I must go away," were Dioneme's 
 first words. Her eyes were troubled as they rested on 
 the doctor's face. There was a certain childish help- 
 lessness about her. "Was it you who put it in his 
 head?" 
 
 " We certainly spoke of it," said the doctor. " Your 
 health has not been of the best lately ; you are tired out 
 from the winter, a little run down. In such cases a 
 change is most advisable." 
 
 He spoke with a slightly professional manner, 
 gruffly even. No one would have suspected him of 
 sympathy. 
 
 " But where shall I go ? " asked Dioneme, still child- 
 ishly. 
 
 " Go abroad for a while, travel, have a new environ- 
 ment, see new people." 
 
 Deep in Mrs. Wylde's pathetic eyes something like 
 a flicker from old innocent coquetries lit a gleam. 
 [215 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "But do you want me to go, John?" She did not 
 often call him by his Christian name. 
 
 "I want only your own good." There was a little 
 of conscious paladinship in Macklevaine's manner, 
 but he had certainly long proved a claim to it. 
 
 "Perhaps it would be best. I know Humphrey 
 thinks so. I am not really well. I seem to have no 
 will. Everything is against me." Dioneme spoke 
 ambiguously, with gentle indecision of phrase. 
 Macklevaine wondered if she suspected how much he 
 knew about her. Would she wince under the realiza- 
 tion of this knowledge or remain entirely apathetic? 
 
 "How soon could you start?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, if I must go, at any time. Parker is very 
 clever. She could pack in a day or two." 
 
 "It might be hard to get steamer accommodations 
 just now on such short notice," said the doctor, 
 " though people often give up their rooms at the last 
 moment." 
 
 "But we haven't decided yet where I am to go," 
 said Dioneme with a flicker of enthusiasm. "Shall 
 we send for the morning paper?" When it was 
 brought she leaned with the doctor over the slightly 
 smudgy sheet with its acrid odor of printers' ink. 
 
 "How exciting they are, steamer notices!" she said. 
 "How full of suggestion! 'The Royal Dutch West 
 India Mail.' Isn't it quaint and delicious! Don't 
 [216]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 you smell spices ? and for seventy-five dollars one 
 can take the Hellig Olav fancy it! and sail straight 
 away to that cold northern sea of Ibsen's, the blue gleam 
 in the background of all his plays." 
 
 "Well," said Macklevaine tolerantly, "shall it be 
 either of these ? " 
 
 " Listen," exclaimed Dioneme, not taking any notice 
 of him, "'The Booth Line, Brazil and Amazon River.' 
 Can't you see those hot, thick forests and hear the par- 
 rots scream! We've all got a glow in the heart of us 
 when we hear the word 'tropics." 
 
 But as Dioneme leaned near him over the news- 
 paper, a faint, unmistakable aroma made Mackle- 
 vaine shudder. Lover and physician clasped hands 
 now in mutual trouble. " Fools I Fools ! " he groaned 
 to himself. " Can't they keep the accursed stuff away 
 from her!" 
 
 " Well," he said again a little gruffly, wrestling with 
 the pain in him, "can't you decide? Where will you 
 go?" 
 
 "I think, after all, I will go to Paris," said Dioneme 
 unexpectedly. "I need some clothes." 
 
 At that moment Humphrey joined them. Even to 
 Macklevaine's unconcern it was apparent that a change 
 had taken place in him. He was thinner, of a less 
 healthy color. 
 
 " We are talking of a trip to Europe," said the doctor. 
 [217]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "What do you say to the Augusta Victoria, sailing 
 Saturday?" 
 
 "Only five days," said Humphrey doubtfully. 
 "Could she do it?" 
 
 "Why not!" Dioneme replied. "Some one can 
 close the house for us after we have gone." 
 
 Of a sudden she seemed to embrace the project 
 eagerly, and a little more talk decided it. When the 
 doctor left Humphrey went out with him and they 
 walked down the street together. It was warm and the 
 air was full of dust and charged with the smell of gaso- 
 lene from passing motor-cars. On the street-corner 
 stood a boy with a basket full of mimosa. A man in his 
 shirt-sleeves leaned against an area rail talking to a 
 pretty, bareheaded housemaid. Near the curb-stone 
 stood a hand-cart piled with oranges, bananas, and 
 pineapples. The music of a hand-organ came from 
 the distance. Slowly the city was relaxing into its 
 southern season of heat and shiftless ease. 
 
 "You really think then, doctor, that this trip will 
 benefit my mother?" asked Humphrey. 
 
 "It is her best chance," Macklevaine replied shortly. 
 He paused for a moment, weighing his words. " I do 
 not say her only one," he added, but as if nothing 
 more than consideration for Humphrey prevented him. 
 
 " What am I to do while we are away ? " asked the 
 younger man. "Is there any special thing?" 
 [218 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " See that she is not alone, watch her, do not let her 
 be overtired or excited or dull." 
 
 Macklevaine adjusted this burden on Humphrey's 
 shoulders without a thought of its weight. Hum- 
 phrey was the instrument by which Dioneme might 
 possibly be saved, that was all. Lest the old doctor 
 seem too monstrous in his thoughtlessness, it must be 
 said that he envied Humphrey his task, difficult and 
 painful as it was. 
 
 "You are sure of the maid, Parker?" he asked, 
 after a pause. 
 
 " Quite. She's devoted to my mother, very trust- 
 worthy," replied Humphrey, and, in a slightly differ- 
 ent tone, " I've had proof, you know, more than once." 
 
 " Hm ! " grunted Macklevaine. Both men were em- 
 barrassed. They had never but once, on the day after 
 Dioneme's visit to the Windermere, talked openly 
 of the situation. "I'm not without a suspicion that 
 your mother sometimes finds means of eluding her 
 still, of eluding you both," said the doctor now. "In 
 these cases one must be forever vigilant. A cunning is 
 sometimes developed beyond belief." 
 
 Humphrey gave something like a groan. 
 
 "We must never forget," went on Macklevaine, 
 " that in cases like this the amount of moral responsi- 
 bility is small. Undoubtedly what are called the psy- 
 chic neurons are slightly diseased" (physician now was 
 [ 219 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 undoubtedly uppermost in him) . " We have therefore 
 most distinctly, to my mind, a case of attenuated re- 
 sponsibility; Michelon (you have heard of him, no 
 doubt) would deny the scientific value as well as the 
 practical expediency of this conclusion, considering it, 
 as he has said, a mere formula, a label correspond- 
 ing to no reality. Possibly, regarded in the light of its 
 legal and social consequence, his theory is open to dis- 
 cussion. I, as a physician, looking at the question 
 from the stand-point of medicine alone, must continue 
 to affirm my diagnosis." 
 
 Humphrey had not entirely followed the doctor in 
 this speech, but gathered that he exonerated his mother 
 from the blame of her own condition, and willingly 
 agreed with him. Indeed neither man could have been 
 brought to believe that Dioneme's vice was the out- 
 come of her own character and volition, any more than 
 a malignant growth is part of a natural and healthy 
 organism. But in spite of this faith, upheld by the 
 doctor with such convincing technical phrases, Hum- 
 phrey felt that he had reached a point where he could 
 discuss his mother no longer. He stopped abruptly at 
 a street-crossing. "I'm taking a taxi here," he said. 
 " Better lose no time, I think, in getting to the steamer- 
 office about those tickets, don't you think so ?" 
 
 The doctor assenting to this, they separated with 
 mutual relief. 
 
 [ 220 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 A week later Linda, lunching with Miss Godwin, 
 heard with painful interest a report that Dioneme 
 was seriously ill. Being referred to as an intimate 
 authority she could only say that she had not seen 
 Mrs. Wylde for some time and had heard nothing 
 from her. 
 
 "They say," observed one of her fellow-guests, 
 " that her lungs are affected. She certainly has grown 
 painfully thin. I met her in the Chinese shop not long 
 ago, looking at some porcelains, and was quite 
 shocked." 
 
 " She was always fragile to look at," said Miss God- 
 win, " but with immense vitality all the same contra- 
 dictory in that as in many things. I've known her a 
 long time, and at some periods have seen a good deal 
 of her, but she is an unknown creature to me still. 
 She is always gentle, even when most brilliant, but 
 when I try to get near her, humanly, as it were, for 
 warmth and affection, why, then, I find myself chilly, 
 awed a little by that same soft strangeness." 
 
 Linda had felt this too perhaps, but her loyalty re- 
 sented Miss Godwin's words. She said to herself that 
 the clever old lady's personality, genial as it might be, 
 was not one that would enable her to approach very 
 closely to Dioneme. 
 
 " What humanity Mrs. Wylde has, it seems to me," 
 said another woman, "is put into that wide general 
 [221 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sympathy which enables her to write the books she 
 does. She never appears to have much personal feel- 
 ing. But I'm very sorry she is ill. Consumption, you 
 say ? How dreadful ! " 
 
 "It's only a rumor," said Miss Godwin stubbornly. 
 " I feel sure it is not true." But Linda, nevertheless, 
 was alarmed and fearful. Something in her deeper 
 nature was touched and reverberated painfully. Of 
 late she had only been moving nonchalantly on the sur- 
 face of things, occupied with the festivities and mani- 
 festations of friendship incident to the announcement 
 of her engagement. She was inclined to agree with 
 Julie that she had settled her future very sensibly and 
 she had allowed the people among whom she had been 
 born and bred to close in around her and shut out the 
 rest of the world. But there was the old thrill at the 
 mention of Dioneme, and was it for Dioneme alone? 
 This question she put aside, conscientiously, but at 
 least she could go to Mrs. Wylde's house to ask after 
 her. That was no more than her duty. She even left 
 Miss Godwin's a little earlier than she had planned in 
 order to do this. It was such a pleasant day that she 
 decided to walk and dismissed her motor, feeling the 
 mild thrill of adventure experienced by young ladies 
 who go on unaccustomed feet through a little-known 
 part of town. Gramercy Park was tranquil enough 
 and not disconcerting, but in Fourth Avenue and 
 [ 222 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Twenty-third Street she found herself shrinking a little 
 before the grim unconcern of the city. Contemplating 
 it from a new point of view she forgot her personal 
 preoccupation for a moment and saw herself for what 
 she was, an inappreciable atom. Yet, in spite of this, 
 there came to her, flashing through her mind more in 
 inspiration than definable thought, a sense of her own 
 relationship to this stupendous city. How it had 
 formed and constrained her, this vast inchoate, incom- 
 prehensible mass! She had been born of it was its 
 child; its blood was in her veins, its odors clung to 
 her skirts. Even in its very mystery and power it was 
 intimate; everything she felt and did became a part 
 of it, was devoured by its immensity. But this momen- 
 tary vision swept over her like a cloud. The young 
 do not linger over abstractions. By the time she 
 turned into Madison Avenue her mind was busy again 
 with her own affairs. She thought of her engagement. 
 It had not been an unpleasant experience on the whole. 
 She had had all along the complacent consciousness of 
 having done the fitting and desirable thing; the con- 
 gratulations of her friends had been unmistakably sin- 
 cere. But beyond all this was the inevitableness of 
 marriage, and marriage with Walter: her innocence 
 and her twenty years shrank a little. Was it not better 
 though to begin an indissoluble partnership with some 
 one who had been a life-long friend, trusted for years, 
 [ 223 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 rather than with a chance new acquaintance who had 
 lit a sudden, unaccountable spark in one's nature ? 
 
 Even as she reasoned with herself in this way, Linda 
 had a faint suspicion that she was grotesquely stereo- 
 typed, insincere even. 
 
 One of Walter's gardenias sent her that morning, 
 and which she was wearing, fell to the sidewalk. She 
 did not stoop to pick it up. 
 
 " I must tell him that I don't care very much for gar- 
 denias," she reflected. 
 
 Strange that in all these years he had never found it 
 out. Perhaps there were other things about her he 
 would never find out! She wondered. 
 
 Now she was approaching the well-known, brown- 
 stone house near Thirty-ninth Street. Old times came 
 back to her vividly. Was it altogether anxiety for 
 Dioneme that made her nervous ? She evaded the 
 question. What if she should meet Humphrey coming 
 down the steps ? Would he stop and speak to her or 
 would they merely look long at each other in silence 
 as on that strange night at the theatre the night of 
 the threatened panic ? The mere imaginative picturing 
 of this possible encounter troubled her inexplicably. 
 
 As she walked on she saw that in front of the Wylde 
 
 house there was a vacuum cleaning wagon. A trail of 
 
 rubber tubing lay up the steps, unpleasantly reptilian 
 
 in form and color. The windows were all wide-open 
 
 [ 224 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 and some one was shaking a dust-cloth from the second 
 floor. A bleak activity seemed generally in progress. 
 The whole place had become meaningless and imper- 
 sonal, repellent of all hospitality. 
 
 "They are certainly having a violent house-clean- 
 ing!" thought Linda, endeavoring to reassure herself 
 against what seemed almost certain disappointment. 
 
 Her ring at the door-bell was answered after some 
 delay by a frowsy scrubwoman, with bare, red arms 
 and a turned up gingham apron, who looked at Linda 
 with unexplained hostility. 
 
 " No," she said, " there's nobody here. The family 
 sailed for Europe two days ago." 
 
 "For long?" Linda asked. 
 
 " Sure, I don't know nothing at all about it. Ye'll 
 have to find out somewhere else," said the woman, 
 still in her mysteriously aggressive manner. 
 
 Linda was on the point of making other inquiries, 
 but checked herself. What was the use ! 
 
 "Thank you," she said to the warlike Irishwoman, 
 and wishing her good-morning with a politeness which 
 had still some lingering hope of being propitiatory she 
 went down the brown-stone steps again. 
 
 She felt suddenly tired arid wished she had not sent 
 
 away her motor-car. What unacknowledged hopes 
 
 and desires had been in her when she came to the 
 
 house of Humohrey's mother that now she felt such a 
 
 [ 225 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sickness of defeat? She had, as it were, risked a last 
 throw of the dice with fate and been, once for all, de- 
 feated. 
 
 Youth is always tragically accepting a finality in 
 human relationships (in effect, there is only one). 
 Already Linda had many times said to herself, " This is 
 the end." Once more, and this time with completest 
 conviction, she repeated the phrase. Was she not to 
 marry Walter Jackson in June ? 
 
 [ 226 ]
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 "T HEAR that your friends the Wyldes have gone 
 
 A away," said Julie, in a light, conversational tone. 
 She and Linda were in the former's sitting-room amid 
 a confusion of key-boxes, inventories, moth-balls, and 
 neatly labelled packages. It was the day before they 
 were to move to the country, and Julie, with her usual 
 system, had been personally supervising the putting- 
 away of many small articles. Now, somewhat tired 
 but complacently aware of having been equal to the 
 situation, she was taking a cup of tea from a japanned 
 tray and with a kitchen spoon, as the household silver 
 had already been sent away. 
 
 " Yes, they sailed last week," replied Linda shortly. 
 
 "There was always something a little odd about 
 those people, to me," Julie went on. "Apart from 
 their behavior the night of that dinner, I mean. I 
 never liked to say what I really thought of them be- 
 cause I was afraid of hurting your feelings but lately 
 you have seen so little of them." 
 
 " Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings," said Linda 
 in a level tone. " I have heard all kinds of things about 
 Humphrey Wylde." 
 
 [ 227 ] '
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " But don't you yourself think it a little odd ? Here 
 is a man who is dependent on what his mother allows 
 him he contrives to come between her and all her 
 friends and isolates her so that she can see no one but 
 the people he himself selects. Now I hear they have 
 suddenly left the country with no notice to any of their 
 friends, and giving apparently no address. At least, 
 not a soul seems to know where they have gone." 
 
 " They are not, at least Dioneme is not, very conven- 
 tional, and she has been ill, too, and probably wants to 
 get away from people." There was not much warmth 
 in Linda's defence and Julie felt it and was encouraged 
 to go on. 
 
 " Of course I don't altogether believe what some peo- 
 ple say that she has an incurable disease and cannot 
 live long, and that the son, knowing how erratic and 
 easily influenced she is, is worried lest she might be in- 
 duced to make a will against him." 
 
 " Ah, you don't believe that then," said Linda list- 
 lessly; Julie was puzzled by something in her sister's 
 accent. 
 
 " What do you think ? " she asked with real curios- 
 ity. 
 
 "I think we bother our heads far too much about 
 things that don't concern us in the least," exclaimed 
 Linda with sudden and vehement, moral triteness, 
 " and I rather wonder at you, Julie! " 
 [ 228 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Julie was abashed and lost for a moment her elder- 
 sister air of complete assurance and competency. 
 
 " I was only rather sorry for Mrs. Wylde," she mur- 
 mured lamely. 
 
 "In spite of her being 'odd'!" 
 
 " Really, my dear, I'm not as narrow-minded as you 
 always seem to think," Julie plucked up courage 
 enough to say. But Linda was not disposed to argue 
 further, and fed Paddy small morsels of buttered toast 
 in silence. 
 
 " I'm glad you are going to be married in the coun- 
 try," remarked Julie, after a sufficiently long pause for 
 relations with her sister to resume their perfect equilib- 
 rium. "There is nothing so nice as a country wed- 
 ding, and in June too." 
 
 " Yes," assented Linda, " if it's a nice day." 
 
 " Have you decided about the bridesmaids' dresses ?" 
 
 "I haven't even thought of them." 
 
 Julie's occasional and distressing suspicion that her 
 sister was unlike other girls had received food from the 
 manner in which Linda contemplated her wedding. 
 Surely it was unnatural and wanting in appropriate 
 feeling. Here a servant came in and informed Linda 
 that a Miss Cooper wished to see her. 
 
 "Cooper? Cooper," Linda searched her memory 
 for an instant. Ah, yes, Emma Cooper, the typist! 
 " Where did you put her, James ? " 
 [ 229 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "She's in the little room downstairs, miss." 
 
 " Well, show her into the library and say that I will 
 be down directly." 
 
 " Who is ' Emma Cooper' ? " inquired Julie. 
 
 " Only a working woman I am interested in. I told 
 her once to come to me if she needed help." 
 
 "From one of your charities, I suppose," commented 
 her sister, and Linda did not enlighten her further. 
 
 In the library she found Miss Cooper, seated on the 
 edge of a chair, plainly embarrassed, not by her sur- 
 roundings but by her mission. The signs of poverty 
 which Linda had noticed about her at their last meet- 
 ing were even more evident. When she had with dif- 
 ficulty and not without assistance explained her neces- 
 sity and Linda had promised to help her she rose to 
 leave, stiffly formal. 
 
 " Don't go," said Linda kindly, " stay and tell me a 
 little more about yourself. Are you still at Mrs. Min- 
 delbaum's?" 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Cooper, sitting down again, at 
 once voluble and self-possessed when it was no longer a 
 matter of asking favors, "I'm still there. Mindel- 
 baum 's been real considerate. I took a smaller room 
 of course, higher up under the roof. She wouldn't hear 
 of my leaving. Give me the Jews every time, I say ! " 
 
 " And the little manicure you used to tell me about, 
 Flora something is she there too ? " 
 [ 230 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Miss Cooper's face sobered, though its expression of 
 self-importance increased. "Why, it's a long story 
 about Flora," she said, "and I don't want to take up 
 your time." 
 
 "I have nothing to do just now," said Linda, "I 
 should like to hear it." 
 
 " It's been a great worry to me; I've been at my wit's 
 end about it," began Miss Cooper. "You remember 
 I told you Flora had a beau and used to go out with 
 him, and how the people at Mindelbaum's were begin- 
 ning to say things and act ugly to her. Well, it went 
 on for some time. I used to talk to her till I guess she 
 hated me, but it wasn't any use. Her head was com- 
 pletely turned because he was a gentleman, or so she 
 said. I never saw him myself. He was always 
 mighty careful about that. When he took her to the 
 theatre she always used to meet him at a restau- 
 rant or some such place. Flora tried me a good deal, 
 she was so uppish about it all, and every cent she could 
 scrape together she put on her back. She bought a 
 hat with ostrich feathers that made her look like the 
 picture of an actress it was becoming enough in a way, 
 but she ought not to have worn it. 
 
 "One afternoon in Easter week she came into my 
 room in a great state of excitement and said she was 
 going to a place on Long Island to have supper going 
 in an automobile. 
 
 [231 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " ' Who's going with you ? ' I asked, ' any other wom- 
 an ?' She just giggled and said I was a fussy old maid 
 that hadn't had any good times myself and didn't want 
 any one else to have any. 
 
 "'I guess I can look out for myself,' she said, 'and 
 anyway my friend is a perfect gentleman.' She had 
 said that so many times it made me sort of sick. Well, 
 off she went in a pale blue chiffon automobile veil she'd 
 bought herself, and somehow she was so kind of child- 
 ish and happy I didn't feel as mad with her as I ought 
 to have been. 
 
 " I didn't expect her home until late, but I had some 
 copying work to do that night so I just thought I'd sit 
 up and see her when she came in. I left the door of my 
 room ajar so I could hear her come up the stairs. She 
 had a key so that she could let herself in without wak- 
 ing up the girl. After eleven the house got quiet. I 
 finished my work and by the time it struck twelve 
 began to worry a little. She hadn't any business to 
 be out alone as late as that. Perhaps something had 
 happened to that old automobile ! I got real nervous 
 finally, somehow I knew it wasn't the automobile 
 and when I thought of her going off so young and 
 pretty in her blue veil! Well, to make a long story 
 short she never came back that whole night. I 
 just sat, with my heart in my mouth, listening for a 
 step on the stairs. It was awful. I never felt like 
 [ 232 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 going to sleep at all. If Flora had been my own sister 
 I couldn't have felt worse, but, of course, all women are 
 kind of sisters. 
 
 "When it began to get light I went into Flora's 
 room and mussed up the bed so that it would look as if 
 some one had slept in it and I poured out some water 
 in the basin and washed my hands and wiped them on 
 a towel. I didn't want any one in the house to suspect 
 anything if I could help it. Later I dressed myself all 
 fresh and went down to breakfast. I guess I must 
 have looked pretty badly, for Mrs. Mindelbaum asked 
 if I was sick. 
 
 "'Where's Miss Kelly this morning?'" asked that 
 Lizzie Graham. ' Has any one seen her ? ' 
 
 " ' She's not here,' I said, ' she had to be out early to- 
 day.' So no one thought any more about that. 
 
 "I had to go out after breakfast to see a man who 
 had half promised me some work, but I felt pretty mis- 
 erable, I can tell you. When I got back at one o'clock 
 I went to Flora's door. It was tight shut. I knocked, 
 but got no answer for a minute, so I knocked again. 
 My heart was in my mouth. I had a feeling she was 
 there but would she let me in ? And how would she 
 treat me sort of hard and defiant ? I didn't want to 
 hear her laugh ; somehow I knew it would be a differ- 
 ent kind of laugh from the one she went away with and 
 I felt I couldn't stand it. After a while I heard Flora's 
 voice saying : ' Who's there ? ' 
 [ 233 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "'It's me, Emma Cooper,' I said, and I tried to 
 make my voice a little encouraging, so she wouldn't be 
 afraid of me. 
 
 "Then I heard the key turn in the lock, and then 
 Flora's voice said again, ' Come in.' 
 
 " Well, I went in and she was lying on the bed, all in 
 a heap, crying. There didn't seem to be anything left 
 of her. She made me think of something that had 
 been broken and thrown away. I tell you, Miss Ar- 
 nold, I hated that man. 
 
 "'Oh, Emma!' she said, when she saw me, and she 
 just threw her arms around my neck and buried her 
 face against me, as if she didn't want me to look at 
 her. 
 
 "After a while I went down stairs, and got Mrs. 
 Mindelbaum to let me take her up a cup of tea and a 
 piece of bread and butter. I told Mrs. Mindelbaum 
 Flora had a sick headache. She couldn't eat anything, 
 but she drank the tea and it made her feel better so that 
 she sat hunched up in the bed and told me everything. 
 Well, it's not exactly the story for you to hear." 
 
 " No," said Linda mechanically, and shuddered. 
 
 "I guess things happen like that pretty often," Miss 
 Cooper went on, "but they seem terrible when they 
 come near to you, and Flora was always one of the kind 
 who have to tell everything sooner or later. She even 
 told me the man's name, 'Walter Jackson,' she said, 
 but naturally it didn't mean anything to me." 
 [ 234 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 At this point Linda startled the narrator by rising 
 abruptly and walking to the window. She had not 
 spoken, but the effect of her action was as if she had 
 given a sharp and sudden cry. 
 
 "Why!" said Miss Cooper, hesitating, amazed. 
 But Linda recovered speedily her presence of mind and 
 turned to face her visitor. 
 
 "It is a terrible story," she said, "I felt faint almost 
 for a moment. It is all over now." She looked a little 
 pale, but smiled reassuringly at Emma's anxious con- 
 cern. 
 
 "You're too sympathetic, that's what it is!." ex- 
 claimed the typist. " I hadn't ought to tell you things 
 like this." 
 
 "Nonsense!" replied Linda, "it's better to know 
 things! Did Flora Kelly ever tell you how the man 
 looked?" 
 
 " She always said he was a great swell, tall and thin, 
 with fair hair and he wore an eye-glass." 
 
 " Are you sure that was his real name ? " she asked 
 again. 
 
 " Yes, I'm sure, because she found it out by chance 
 at first. He let an envelope addressed to him fall out 
 of his pocket-book. I guess he wouldn't have let her 
 know it except for that." 
 
 "Probably not," assented Linda. Her own calm- 
 ness and freedom from personal distress amazed her. 
 At the same time she was aware that beneath it all 
 [ 235 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 smouldered an anger so intense that she dreaded being 
 alone and feeling it burst into flame. Though Emma, 
 dimly uneasy, now wished to leave her, she detained 
 her as long as possible. 
 
 By dint of questioning she learned that Flora Kelly 
 had left Mrs. Mindelbaum's and gone to stay with a 
 distant connection who had a farm in Indiana. 
 
 "She promised to write to me," said Miss Cooper, 
 "but I've only had just a picture post-card from her 
 with 'greetings' on it. Well, I guess the country's the 
 best place for her! " She sighed despondently, pulling 
 the tips of her much-worn gloves. 
 
 When she finally left the house, Linda went again to 
 the window and watched her until she disappeared 
 down the street. Amazement at the chances of fate 
 filled the girl's mind for the moment to the rejection of 
 everything else. What was the use of voluntary plans 
 when one's future was taken out of one's hands like this 
 and by an Emma Cooper! 
 
 As for Walter, a youthfully intense wrath and disgust 
 again got the better of her, overcame her superstition 
 and her philosophy. What terms were opprobrious 
 enough for him? She even found time amid the 
 clamor of her personal wrongs for a desolate thought 
 of little Flora Kelly. And she had been on the verge 
 of marrying Walter, was still as far as conventional 
 obligations held. 
 
 But at least not an hour need go by before she freed 
 [ 236 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 herself. Burning with indignation, with hurt pride 
 and a sense of stained innocence of mind, Linda hur- 
 ried to her own room and sitting down at her desk 
 wrote rapidly eight closely filled pages. 
 
 After reflection, however, she destroyed the letter 
 and traced on a single sheet a few short words, which, 
 with her engagement ring, she ultimately despatched. 
 
 [ 237 ]
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MACKLEVAINE had advised a motor-trip as the 
 best means of taking up Dioneme's mind and 
 keeping her in the fresh air, so after a month's stay in 
 Paris Humphrey and his mother, in a hired Renault, 
 started for Brittany. Parker and the essential chauf- 
 feur were their only companions. 
 
 It was June. The resorts along the coast had not yet 
 been aroused from their out-of-season paralysis, but a 
 sober summer beauty was on the gray land. In Brit- 
 tany beauty is never riotous. One thinks of it in 
 greens and grays and purples patches of other colors 
 seem exotic, as when the pine-trees, here and there, 
 wade in seas of yellow broom, or where flat stretches of 
 exotically red clover, the red of painted mosques and 
 Eastern textiles, lie spread out on the plain. It did 
 not rain much during the four weeks Humphrey and 
 Dioneme spent in the country, neither did the sun shine 
 often. Their days were all swift and almost noiseless 
 motion over a flat and generally featureless land, the 
 wash of the sea in their ears often, the clouds scud- 
 ding over their heads. Occasionally they stopped to 
 look at a cathedral, a provincial museum, some pre- 
 [ 238 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 historic remains, or a row of quaintly gabled sixteenth 
 century houses in some sleepy town. In sight-seeing, 
 however, Dioneme took little interest; she was easily 
 fatigued, almost always absent-minded. What pleased 
 her most was to motor long hours, mostly in silence, 
 with the wind blowing in her face and the incidents of 
 their route constantly exciting her fancy. 
 
 "Humphrey!" she would say suddenly, "see that 
 tiny village at the end of this long, long narrow road ? 
 Isn't it just like some quaint toy tied to a string!" or 
 again she would call his attention to a field where the 
 early planting had come up in straight parallel green 
 lines, marking the earth like a blank music score. 
 
 "Summer will write part of its fantasia there," she 
 would say whimsically. 
 
 A multitude of conically roofed bee-hives in a grove 
 of young trees made her think of the huts of a tribe of 
 savage dwarfs in some miniature forest, and once she 
 talked for a quarter of an hour about a little house they 
 passed which was entirely surrounded by tall, thick 
 currant bushes. Some one had spread a fine white net 
 all over these bushes and it looked, Dioneme said, as if 
 a gigantic spider had spun a web around the house to 
 protect it. 
 
 " It might be an enchanted house ! " she said. 
 
 All this childishness delighted Humphrey. It meant 
 his mother was pleased, diverted, taken out of herself. 
 [ 239 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 At night, when they stopped, she was healthily tired, 
 ate her dinner with unaccustomed appetite and went 
 early to bed. The few books she had brought with 
 her remained unread. Humphrey and Parker ex- 
 changed in guarded words their new hopes and reas- 
 surances. 
 
 "Macklevaine was right," said Humphrey. "It 
 was change she needed and life in the open air." 
 
 But at the end of a month Dioneme grew dissatisfied. 
 All these sea-side places with their empty hotels and 
 silent streets were depressing. She was tired of Brit- 
 tany, its sad, dull peasants, its grayness, its humility, 
 its remoteness. She wanted to go back to Paris, to 
 hear laughter again, the din of the boulevards, the mid- 
 night taxis rattling past her window. " And I want to 
 hear some ideas expressed," she said. " We have been 
 living like the lower order of animals nothing but sen- 
 sations, to eat, to sleep, to breathe the fresh air! We've 
 forgotten how to think! I believe you're even getting 
 fat, Humphrey." 
 
 But this was a delusion. Humphrey had enough on 
 his mind to prevent his caring overmuch for food 
 and as for sleep it still often eluded him. 
 
 It was not only for his mother he had sought a cure 
 
 in Brittany. He, too, wanted forgetfulness of the past, 
 
 a new courage and strength of will. In his own veins 
 
 was also a poison, insidious, lingering in its traces. 
 
 [ 240 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 There were times when he despaired, youthfully, of 
 ever ridding himself of this bane. Again he called it 
 by other names, it became his intoxicant, his divine 
 stimulation. Even without hope his feeling for Lin- 
 da was the one supreme thing. At such times for 
 Humphrey, considered by her as matter-of-fact, was 
 not the child of his mother for nothing he set his love, 
 as it were, in a silver shrine and his thoughts went tow- 
 ard it ceaselessly, like pilgrims with their hands full of 
 flowers. 
 
 Sometimes he could not rid himself of the conviction 
 that in spite of everything Linda belonged to him, was 
 his, chosen by the gods, eternally sealed. What mat- 
 tered absence, time, her marriage to another, life itself 
 in the face of these certainties. In such moods he 
 felt as if between his soul and hers there was always 
 flowing a stream of uncontrolled and intimate thought. 
 Often this stream reflected the very blue of heaven 
 and was strewn with stars, then again its surface was 
 ice-bound, waiting for an awakening sun. 
 
 He would rouse himself from these reveries perhaps 
 to curse his imagination and resolve, once and for all, 
 to put Linda out of his mind. 
 
 In July Paris was warm and uncomfortable and 
 Dioneme grew worse. 
 
 Parker, too, was nervous, almost irritable, unlike her- 
 self. She conveyed to Humphrey her feeling that hers 
 [ 241 ] '
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was a most trying and difficult position, and he again 
 raised her wages. It became necessary to be with 
 Dioneme constantly, and once or twice Humphrey 
 even contemplated calling in a physician a thing he 
 shrank from. 
 
 One night when Dioneme had gone to bed early and 
 was apparently asleep he went out and strolled aim- 
 lessly down the Rue de Castiglione. It was eight 
 o'clock, the street was almost deserted. Under the 
 arcades the shadows were growing deeper, and the bars 
 were up in front of all the shop windows. An un- 
 speakable dreariness of heat lay like a miasma over 
 the city. 
 
 Humphrey felt that his feet dragged heavily as he 
 walked; he breathed in a fine dust with every respira- 
 tion. 
 
 " What wouldn't I give now for a good swim in the 
 sea!" he thought. His muscles hardened at the idea. 
 He imagined himself cutting his way through cold 
 salt water, his eyes full of spray. 
 
 Just then he saw a figure coming toward him in the 
 dimness of the arcades. There was something familiar 
 about it! By Jove it was old Norris! What on 
 earth ! 
 
 "Thought I'd surprise you," said Peters, calmly 
 when they had grasped hands. "Landed this morn- 
 ing Cherbourg. How are things with you, old man ? " 
 [ 242 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " Wait a minute," cried Humphrey, after their first 
 greetings were over. "Have you dined? Why not 
 dine together in the Ritz garden ? " 
 
 Peters agreed and they turned back and walked 
 around the Place Vendome to the hotel. The garden 
 terrace even at that season was full of well-dressed, lan- 
 guid people seated at small tables chatting in a desul- 
 tory way, eating capriciously, listening now and then 
 to the Hungarian musicians, whose leader, fat and in- 
 different after many years of hotel service, played 
 American rag-time with scornful skill. 
 
 Humphrey and Peters bowed to some acquaintances 
 at one of the tables and found a place for themselves at 
 the end of the terrace nearest the fountain. There they 
 heard a faint trickle of water and the perfume of helio- 
 trope came to them from a garden-bed. Behind the 
 high wall of this tiny and coquettish garden showed the 
 great trees of the garden beyond. One might have im- 
 agined oneself anywhere but in the centre of a great city. 
 
 " And to think how the trolleys are rattling up Broad- 
 way," exclaimed Peters, with a sigh of satisfaction. 
 
 " How is business ? " asked Humphrey, and listened 
 attentively while his friend told him all that had been 
 done on the Michigan medical college and of the de- 
 signs he was making for a competition for the construc- 
 tion of a new State building at Washington. 
 
 "We are also building a household storage ware- 
 [ 243 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 house for the Zimmerman Company," said Peters, and 
 he and Humphrey fell into a discussion as to the value 
 of steel frame structures with tile or concrete insulating 
 properties compared with a re-enforced concrete con- 
 struction, which was absorbing to them, but of little 
 general interest. 
 
 " Qu'ils sont droles les Americains ! " observed a 
 Nattier-like blonde near them, who tried vainly with 
 the most discreet and artistic ingenuity and through 
 the entire course of dinner to attract their attention. 
 " Of what are they talking ? " 
 
 "Of everything except the little ladies," said her 
 neighbor at table also French. 
 
 From their profession Humphrey and Peters drifted 
 to politics and considered, though with less ardor, the 
 revolt against Clark, candidate for the New York State 
 Senate of the Tammany leader, and the possible nomi- 
 nation of a compromise candidate. 
 
 " For me it's the beginning of the end for O'Brien," 
 said Peters (O'Brien being the Tammany leader.) 
 "He's been pulling every wire he could lay his dirty 
 hands on to bring the insurgents to terms but it's no 
 use." He spoke with languid interest. The mood of 
 a summer night in Paris was beginning to steal upon 
 him. For the first time he perceived consciously the 
 Nattier-like blonde and the beauty of her round white 
 throat. 
 
 [ 244 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Over their coffee he and Humphrey fell into silence, 
 while the leader of the Hungarian musicians played 
 with accentuated sentimentality a Viennese waltz. 
 
 "So your mother is really better," said Peters. He 
 had asked after her at the moment of their meeting. 
 
 " Yes but this heat is bad for her. We're going to 
 Switzerland next week to sit on a mountain." 
 
 "That's a good plan," assented Peters. "I wish I 
 could join you there but I've got to go to Germany, as 
 you know, and must be back in New York by the first 
 of August." 
 
 Here the Nattier lady rose to depart, bending with a 
 swan-like motion to submerge herself in the floating 
 mass of vaporous blue which symbolized her evening 
 cloak. The two men followed her with their eyes until 
 she disappeared through an open door of the hotel cor- 
 ridor. 
 
 "Good-looking woman," Peters observed; "nice 
 throat. " 
 
 "Ugly feet," objected Humphrey, and the subject 
 dropped. 
 
 Little by little the crowd thinned, the air grew cooler, 
 and the moon rose high in the sky. Only a few people 
 lingered over their liqueurs and cigarettes and with the 
 lengthening night a greater beauty fell upon the garden. 
 Now the violins made themselves heard with more in- 
 sistence. The leader forgot his ennui and disdain and 
 [245]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 falling into a nightingale mood put into his music some- 
 thing of impulsive passion and the rapture of the night, 
 
 After a time this, too, ceased. The musicians de- 
 parted with their instruments. The last diner van- 
 ished. Humphrey and Peters were left alone in the 
 garden. The plashing of the fountain was more aud- 
 ible now. They could even hear the soft whirring 
 wings of a night moth hovering near them. 
 
 "I heard a piece of news just before I left New 
 York," said Peters, after a while. " Walter Jackson's 
 engagement to Miss Arnold has been broken off." 
 
 It was so long before Humphrey answered that the 
 other was uneasy. Finally he asked in what seemed a 
 perfectly natural voice : 
 
 "Who told you?" 
 
 "A friend of Jackson's man named Henderson 
 there's no doubt about its truth but nobody knows 
 the reason that is if Jackson himself wasn't reason 
 enough." 
 
 "Well," said Humphrey, "I'm glad she's not going 
 to marry a cad." 
 
 He tried to suppress the joy rising in him at Norris's 
 news. What if Linda was indeed free? She was as 
 far removed from him as ever. He was contemptible 
 even in her eyes. Between them were endless, insur- 
 mountable walls. Even if she could ever be brought 
 to trust him entirely and without question, he himself 
 [ 246 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 was more bound than ever. There was his mother 
 and now something formless and dark took the irre- 
 sistible joy by the throat. No there was no room for 
 exaltation. 
 
 But the night was beautiful ! It was good to see old 
 Peters again surprisingly good! He wondered how 
 much his friend understood. There had never been 
 a great deal said between them that Humphrey could 
 recollect. Yet he had always seemed to know every- 
 thing. He remembered that there had been times when 
 he had come near to resenting even this silent, intimate 
 appreciation of all that was troubling him. Now such 
 sympathy had become acceptable more of great 
 value. 
 
 In Anglo-Saxon muteness, but bound by a vibrant 
 tie of friendship, he and Peters sat and smoked. 
 
 [ 247 ]
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE hotel where Humphrey took his mother 
 stood with its terraced garden and its little col- 
 ony of smaller buildings on the side of a mountain 
 which rose above Lake Geneva. 
 
 It was as if the whole picturesquely decked-out set- 
 tlement leaned from its high-swung place to gaze, 
 Juliet-like, on its lover, the town, far below on the shore 
 of the lake. 
 
 The windows of the hotel looked out over wide shim- 
 mering spaces of water to blue mountain heights. 
 Each room had its balcony fastened like a swallow's 
 nest to a wall, and from these balconies and the gar- 
 den below came an intermittent chatter in many strange 
 languages, light laughter, twittering children's voices, 
 and sometimes a burst of unpremeditated song, so that 
 the hotel seemed, Dioneme said, like some vast bird- 
 cote, high-hung, resounding with volatile life. 
 
 She was at first happier here than Humphrey had 
 seen her in a long time, planned a new story, and in the 
 afternoon took walks with him in the woods. She 
 rarely appeared before lunch and did not like to be dis- 
 turbed, so he had the mornings to himself, mornings of 
 [248]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 glorious early climbing toward the heights, or hawk- 
 like dips into the valley. When he started out in the 
 dew and sunshine of the hours soon after dawn, all that 
 was not of the instant dropped away from him. He 
 was conscious only of the glory of the world, and of the 
 strength and perfection for service of his own body. 
 He took possession of it, as a man might seat himself at 
 the steering wheel of a perfectly constructed car, know- 
 ing he could count on endurance and speed and safety; 
 that he could climb with the stoutest, compete with the 
 most daring; that he was young, fearless, not to be out- 
 done. 
 
 One morning he left the hotel at six. At first fog lay 
 about him, soft, dense, and all-enveloping; then it 
 lifted, the sun came out and peeled the shadow off the 
 mountain in front of him as rind is peeled from fruit. 
 
 From the hill-side where he stood he looked down 
 into a deep gorge and seemed to see the very roots of 
 the mountain, black and elemental, then up, up, to its 
 dazzling summit, snow-topped, gleaming against the 
 blue. It unrolled before him like a splendid symphony, 
 awful almost in the deafening crash of its mystery and 
 power, the ineffableness of its beauty. But youth and 
 the joy of living were strong in Humphrey, he felt little 
 of either reverence or fear. 
 
 "Sometime I will have a try at that," he thought 
 nonchalantly. 
 
 [ 249 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Just then, though, he was bound for the valley, hav- 
 ing a commission for his mother in the little town. 
 
 Soon he left the high levels where the fields were 
 thick with flowers (blue, for the most part, as if, so near 
 the sky, they had caught its color) and where the fine 
 thin air, chilly from the night, smelt of mint and 
 thyme and clover. The path led for a while down 
 through pine woods, sombre and sweet, then through 
 fields again, where he was joined by a little white goat 
 with neat black hoofs and a soft, twitching nose, which 
 she kept poking in his hand, bleating feebly. 
 
 Deserted after a time by this engaging companion, 
 he fell in, further on, with a possible male relative of 
 hers, who reared itself in Humphrey's path, plastered 
 with slime, reeking with strong goat odors, its mali- 
 cious head crowned with large horns, a very symbol 
 of Satan. 
 
 The intentions of this apparition being evidently 
 friendly too friendly Humphrey discouraged it with 
 a small stone, well aimed, and was enabled to go on his 
 way unaccompanied. 
 
 Now the grassy slope of the entire side of the moun- 
 tain lay in soft doublings and creases like the splendid 
 green-velvet folds of a spreading court train. The air 
 grew warmer as he descended. He passed cottages 
 where round-eyed children played in the sun and slat- 
 ternly women were busy with morning industries. 
 [ 250 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Here and there a chalet coquettishly garlanded with 
 roses began to show among the trees. A dog barked 
 at him; once he had to step aside (being now on the 
 high road) to let a motor-car whiz past. Signs of a 
 town multiplied; the uplands seemed far away indeed. 
 
 Raising his eyes, Humphrey could see his hotel, aston- 
 ishingly remote, perched on the heights. A little of 
 his early chanticleer mood left him. He felt warm 
 and hungry and resolved to stop at an unpretentious 
 hotel he knew of a little farther on to get a cup of 
 coffee. 
 
 Once seated in the lattice-enclosed veranda of the 
 Hotel du Soleil before a round table covered with a 
 doubtfully clean red and white linen cloth, he took off 
 his cap with a sigh of relief and mopped his hot fore- 
 head. 
 
 " I must have made pretty good time down that hill ! " 
 he said to himself, and fell into elaborate calculations 
 of metres turned into miles. 
 
 A waiter as hot, greasy, and unctuous in manner 
 as if he had issued from one of the Hotel du Soleil's 
 large soup pots, the incarnation of its mixed and 
 doubtful contents, appeared and took Humphrey's 
 order. 
 
 "Mind you have the milk hot,noi boiled," he directed, 
 " and strained, so there won't be any skim on top of it." 
 The presentation of this desire in French was of the 
 [ 251 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 utmost difficulty and took time, but Humphrey was 
 fastidious about hot milk and had patience until he was 
 comprehended. 
 
 While he waited for his cafe au lait a small gray kitten 
 came, mewing, and rubbed itself against his feet. 
 
 "Hello!" exclaimed Humphrey with a boyish im- 
 pulse, "I'll take this home to mother. It will amuse 
 her," and he tucked the little scraggy creature inside 
 his coat, where it began to purr contentedly and weave 
 his shirt with its veiled claws. 
 
 Later he gave it a drink of milk from his saucer, paid 
 the proprietoi of the hotel two francs to part with it, 
 and so became its master to his own mind, at least. 
 It is doubtful if a cat ever acknowledges to itself any 
 master. 
 
 Dioneme was delighted with this offering and made 
 arrangements for its comforts and conveniences with 
 great zest. 
 
 "I shall call it 'Mimi,'" she said, "'pourquoi je 
 ne saisl' but Mimi is a good cat name. You know, all 
 the morning, I've felt curiously excited. Now I know 
 why. It was because this funny little bit of life was 
 coming toward me. I was going to have a cat!" 
 
 Humphrey laughed, much amused. 
 
 If his mother had only showed more signs of im- 
 provement he woulol have been fairly happy in these 
 days. But Dioneme grew unaccountably worse instead 
 [252 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of better. Her good spirits, little by little, became 
 more varying and uncertain; she was sometimes irri- 
 table, sometimes morose, coughed a little still, and 
 seemed to prefer being alone under one pretext or an- 
 other most of the time. As for her writing, it had been 
 almost definitely laid aside, though she talked, occa- 
 sionally, of a new novel. 
 
 One day it occurred to Humphrey that his mother's 
 face had changed. In spite of its thinness it appeared 
 swollen in places, the skin about the eyes was dis- 
 colored, and her splendid red hair, too, looked dull 
 and faded. He tried to talk with Parker, but it was 
 hard to get hold of the woman; she seemed to evade 
 him. Probably she, as well as he, dreaded these inter- 
 views, where so much that was usually decently hidden 
 had to be dragged nakedly between them. 
 
 Once Humphrey found his mother, with bowed head, 
 gloating over a picture of herself at eighteen which she 
 held in her hand. He turned away hastily, shocked 
 at the revelation of that most sterile and pathetic of 
 passions the passion of a woman for her own eternally 
 vanished beauty. Yet this with Dioneme was, like other 
 emotions, only a mood and would pass. 
 
 Humphrey wrote a long letter to Dr. Mackelvaine 
 about his mother's condition and waited anxiously for 
 a reply. It was long in coming, necessarily, and he al- 
 most made up his mind to consult the doctor resident 
 [253]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 in the hotel. Dioneme had given up her daily walk 
 and spent her afternoons lying in a long chair on the 
 balcony. One day while Humphrey was reading 
 aloud to her they heard the kitten mewing in the room 
 behind them. 
 
 "What does she want?" asked Humphrey. "Is 
 she hungry ? " 
 
 "Perhaps; call Parker to get her some milk." 
 
 "I'll get it; where is it?" 
 
 "In a jar, outside the inner door, and her saucer is 
 in the bath room a little pink saucer." 
 
 Humphrey found the milk and started, the kitten at 
 his heels, to look for the saucer. It was not in sight, 
 so he opened various cupboard doors, but to no avail. 
 Finally he noticed a small, square door curiously placed 
 in the low wainscoting, half hidden by a table. 
 
 " What's that little place!" said Humphrey to him- 
 self. "Perhaps it's there." 
 
 He moved the table and opened the low door. 
 
 " Nothing but a hole in the wall," he thought, then 
 " What in the name of heaven ! " He bent over to 
 look more closely and gave a sharp exclamation, quickly 
 suppressed. This row of dark empty bottles, hidden 
 away, loathsome in their suggestiveness, meant one 
 more step in his mother's degradation. How had she 
 found the means of eluding him! There was only one 
 way; Parker had been bought had betrayed him. He 
 [ 254 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 stood for a moment as if stupefied, incapable of further 
 reflection, and during that moment his surroundings, 
 commonplace as they were, fixed themselves visually 
 on his brain with a hideous and never-to-be-forgotten 
 significance. At last he became aware of the con- 
 tinued mewing of the kitten. He closed the small low 
 door, pushed the table against it once more, and went 
 back to his mother. 
 
 His face was perfectly white. He was partly con- 
 scious of it, and lest she should notice some change in 
 him he stood a little back of her so that he could not be 
 seen. 
 
 "I can't find the kitten's saucer," he said. "You'll 
 have to send for Parker, after all." 
 
 "Very well," assented Dioneme; "ring the bell, 
 please." 
 
 In the tranquil unconcern of her voice there was 
 nothing to Humphrey but a mockery of him and his 
 would-be protection of her. He felt he could not trust 
 himself to stay with his mother just then. Even his 
 pity for her had lost its usual restraining power. 
 
 " When Parker comes tell her I want to speak to her 
 in my room," he said, adding, in an explanatory way, 
 " she hasn't had her wages this month " ; and he went 
 out closing the door behind him. 
 
 When the maid came to him, ten minutes later, she 
 found him sitting at his writing-table, looking much 
 [ 255 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 less boyish than usual, with something curiously 
 formal, not to say judicial, in his attitude. 
 
 " You sent for me, sir ? " she said. 
 
 "Yes, I wanted to tell you that in looking about 
 Mrs. Wylde's rooms to-day I came upon unmistakable 
 signs that she has found the means of deceiving me, of 
 getting secretly the stuff that, as you know, is poison 
 for her." 
 
 The Englishwoman raised her head, suddenly de- 
 fiant, and Humphrey saw in her eyes, free of dissimu- 
 lation, a spark of that fierce class hatred which until 
 now he had never been personally conscious of. It 
 existed, then, this dislike and ill-will, merely because 
 one was master and the other servant. It lurked in 
 the dark, cunningly hiding itself behind a show of re- 
 spect and devotion, betraying at the end all the ties of 
 association, of gratitude and trust. 
 
 An instant, and Parker's gaze dropped. She re- 
 sumed her usual manner, though there was a shade of 
 almost insolent unconcern in her voice as she said : 
 
 " There's no use, sir. Better give it to her and let 
 her be happy. There's no help for them when they are 
 as bad as that." 
 
 " You admit it was you who got it for her ? " 
 
 "I was wore out, sir, and she begged so. She's 
 always been very kind to me, poor lady." 
 
 "Bribed, of course," said Humphrey sombrely. 
 [ 256 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 He reflected a moment while the maid stood pas- 
 sively hostile. 
 
 "You are an untrustworthy woman, Parker," he 
 said at length, " and a bad servant. I am sending to- 
 day for a trained nurse and Mrs. Wylde shall be put 
 under her care at once. As soon as this person ar- 
 rives you will start for Paris." 
 
 "I suppose you know you're obliged by the law to 
 give me my passage back to New York," she remarked 
 viciously. "I was engaged there." 
 
 All at once, with no warning, her face began to work 
 curiously and she burst into a storm of weak and angry 
 tears. Between her sobs came loud vociferation; de- 
 nials, regret, and pleas for pardon. In her hysteria 
 she scrubbed her coarsely reddened face incessantly 
 with a handkerchief rolled into a hard ball. 
 
 Humphrey, who had been momentarily disturbed 
 by the menace of her former attitude, now perceived 
 that she was merely ignorant and lacking in moral 
 perception, driven by cupidity to the coward's road of 
 deceit. 
 
 But he was sick at his own disappointment in her. 
 She had been his one ally. 
 
 Left alone, he faced the situation with an attempt at 
 confidence. 
 
 " It will be better to have a nurse, anyway," he said 
 to himself. " I should have had one long ago. After 
 [257]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 all, my eyes are open, and that's so much the better 
 I know what I'm doing now. " 
 
 The rest of the day he was busy making plans, tele- 
 phoning to Lausanne about the nurse, looking up 
 trains, consulting the resident hotel doctor, arranging 
 for the visit of another more celebrated. Action left 
 him little time for thought. 
 
 But when night came he found he could not sleep. 
 For hours he lay turning feverishly from side to side, 
 thumping his pillow into one uncomfortable shape 
 after another. Finally, tormented beyond endurance, 
 he rose and went to the window. Drawing back the 
 curtain he stepped out on the balcony. It was three 
 o'clock and the chilly, almost sinister, silence of the 
 hours after midnight enveloped the visible world. 
 
 The wall of mountains on the farther shore of the 
 lake loomed up in shadow, mysterious and lonely. 
 Just above, a reddish moon, old and waning, risen 
 late, was already sinking down toward a far horizon. 
 In its disturbed beauty, its ravaged perfection, there 
 was something malign and inauspicious. 
 
 It seemed well to Humphrey that there was no one 
 but himself to look upon it. 
 
 Suddenly his thought went back to Dioneme, Had 
 
 not his father called her the Moon Lady! But Morris 
 
 Wylde's fancy must have been of some slender crescent 
 
 gleaming, virginal and remote, in the purple twilight 
 
 [ 258 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of spring, or, it may have been of a fuller and more 
 rounded glory, white fire on midsummer nights. 
 
 He, thank God! had never dreamed of a moon like 
 this this wan and evil planet tottering down the sky. 
 
 [ 259 ]
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 WHAT passed between his mother and Parker 
 after his interview with the latter Humphrey 
 never knew. When he spoke of the necessity of send- 
 ing the maid away and of his plan for installing a 
 trained nurse in her place, Dioneme turned abruptly 
 from him she was lying as usual on the balcony and 
 hid her face. There was to him a new and pitiable 
 abjectness in this gesture. When she spoke it seemed 
 to be with difficulty, as if she struggled against a con- 
 traction in her throat. It was the first and only time 
 Humphrey ever saw her give any outward evidence of 
 the torment from which, intermittently at least, she 
 must have suffered, the one occasion when he per- 
 ceived that her vice was recognized as a part of her, 
 something for which she was responsible. 
 
 " Humphrey," she said brokenly, " you must judge 
 me by what I am and not by what I do." 
 
 " Don't think I judge you, mother!" 
 
 A fit of coughing seized Dioneme. When it was over 
 she said: 
 
 "You are right about the nurse. I am not really 
 well. You must treat me as if I were not well, Hum- 
 phrey. I seem to have no will." 
 [ 260 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Don't talk about it, please," said Humphrey. "I 
 understand." 
 
 But though he spoke in this way he was, in fact, 
 very far from suspecting the truth of Dioneme's phys- 
 ical condition. Her weakness of body had increased 
 so gradually that he did not realize how much she had 
 changed. What difference he saw in her he put down, 
 despairingly, to her secret infirmity, not to the disease 
 with which it went hand in hand. 
 
 When the nurse arrived from Lausanne, a lean, 
 brown-faced Canadian with an agreeable smile, Dio- 
 neme's life was reorganized on an openly sick-room 
 basis. 
 
 Humphrey was left with more time on his hands, 
 found himself obliged to lunch in the restaurant often 
 instead of in his mother's sitting-room, and so began to 
 be more remarked in the hotel. Nervous fellow- 
 guests, always in dread of contagion, made inquiries 
 as to the nature of Dioneme's illness and were far from 
 satisfied with the explanation of the director of the 
 hotel who pronounced it nervous prostration. 
 
 "I am sure I heard her cough," said one bangle- 
 bedecked British spinster to another. " One is never 
 free from those things now in mountain resorts. Soon 
 there will be no safe places left." 
 
 This uneasiness seemed, indeed, to lurk always in 
 the atmosphere of the Splendide Hotel like a breath 
 [261 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 of unhealthy air. New-comers were given a searching 
 scrutiny and any young person who seemed too thin, 
 with flushed cheeks and over-brilliant eyes, was im- 
 mediately under suspicion. 
 
 Humphrey, however, was unconscious of all this. 
 If he studied the people around him it was from mere 
 idle curiosity and because he had little else to do. 
 There were many fellow-guests, gay and energetic, 
 coming and going, playing tennis, mountain-climbing, 
 dancing at night in the vast, gaudy ball-room. Some- 
 times Humphrey fell into casual talk with one or 
 another and suggestions were thrown out that he should 
 join them in these diversions, but he always refused, 
 giving his mother's illness as an excuse. 
 
 The women at least regretted this. There was one 
 tall brunette, with a mouth which looked as if it had 
 known countless kisses and longed for more, who often 
 darted sly, swallow-like glances at him as he passed. 
 
 But sport tempted him more than beauty. Once on 
 the hill-side he came upon a group of young men 
 shooting clay pigeons. The director of the hotel, a 
 stout, eternally frock-coated, polyglot German, fussy 
 and energetic, was keeping score, and some girls in 
 knitted woollen coats with caps to match watched from 
 a board shelter. 
 
 On an impulse, urged by the effusive German, 
 Humphrey joined the contestants. As he lifted a gun 
 [ 262 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 to his shoulder the young Frenchmen and Spaniards 
 stood about him, courteous, but with a suggestion of 
 veiled mockery. 
 
 "Ready!" cried Humphrey and the two clay balls 
 flew out from the trap under the edge of the hill. 
 
 "One! two!" both birds fell. This was repeated 
 several times. Humphrey, to his secret pride, did 
 not miss a shot. When his turn was over there was a 
 murmur of applause mingled it would seem with a 
 certain astonishment. 
 
 "Vive VAmerique!" shouted a fat little Parisian, 
 throwing his cap in the air. 
 
 The contagion of the sport seized upon Humphrey. 
 He stayed and shot clay pigeons for the rest of the 
 afternoon. At the end his score stood the best. 
 
 "L'Americain gagne," said a Spaniard, who had 
 made the next best record, laughing, a friendly soul 
 even in defeat. 
 
 Humphrey, warm with the flush of triumph and the 
 unaccustomed pleasure of good-fellowship, walked 
 back to the hotel with all these gay young people. 
 
 The early evening air was cool and crisp and ex- 
 hilarating. As he bounded upstairs to his mother's 
 room after leaving his companions he hummed a lit- 
 tle tune. 
 
 But he found that Dioneme had been lonely, missed 
 him during his unusual absence at the tea hour. On 
 [ 263 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 the table, too, lay the long-expected letter from Dr. 
 Macklevaine. 
 
 The boyish look faded from Humphrey's face as he 
 opened it. Yes, it was as he had expected. Mackle- 
 vaine advised that his mother be taken home, pro- 
 vided that a certain doctor at Ouchy should advise it 
 after examination and with a complete knowledge of 
 the case. 
 
 "How would you like to go back to New York, 
 mother ? " asked Humphrey that evening. 
 
 " Now do you mean ? " said Dioneme vaguely. 
 
 " Yes or as soon as you could get ready." 
 
 " How long have we been away ? " 
 
 "Nearly five months." 
 
 Dioneme sighed. 
 
 "So long! I thought I should have had my new 
 book more than half written by now. I feel, somehow, 
 as if this year had had a crack in it and time had all 
 leaked away." 
 
 " But about going home ? " asked Humphrey again. 
 
 "Yes let us go home! One is so comfortable in 
 one's own bed. Will Miss Kingston go with us ? " 
 
 Miss Kingston was the nurse. 
 
 " Of course. You've made a conquest of her. She 
 says she would go anywhere with you." 
 
 "One makes many conquests by being pitiable!" 
 observed Dioneme. "So many people enjoy being 
 [ 264 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sorry for one I used to have a less abject way of 
 winning favor." 
 
 She gazed dreamily down toward the valley where 
 far below them twinkled myriad lights, looking in 
 the cloudy night like diamonds spread out on black 
 velvet. Humphrey wondered what she was thinking 
 of. Since he had known of her long-practised deceit, 
 there had come, in spite of himself, an increased mental 
 alienation between him and his mother which, strange 
 to say, did not materially lessen his affection for her 
 nor her persistent charm for him. But less than ever 
 could he understand her unfettered, every-varying 
 point of view. 
 
 Of late there had been added to this native elusive- 
 ness the invalid's lack of a sense of the values of out- 
 side things. 
 
 The world, never very personally important to 
 Dioneme, had narrowed, little by little, to the con- 
 fines of her own room. Of her bodily state there 
 could be no question at the present moment. She was 
 alarmingly weak. There was even a doubt in Hum- 
 phrey's mind whether she would be able to stand with 
 safety the fatigues of the journey home, but Miss 
 Kingston assured him that the trip might be of 
 benefit. 
 
 This was also the opinion of the doctor from Ouchy 
 when he was consulted. 
 
 [ 265 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Better for her to be under the care of some one 
 who has studied her case from the first," he said 
 gruffly, but observing Dioneme with unusual interest, 
 as most people did. 
 
 Humphrey had concealed nothing from him. It 
 would indeed have been useless to try. 
 
 The doctor had come to the isolated hotel half under 
 protest, crawling up the hill in the snorting funicular 
 .with curses on the heads of spoiled Americans who 
 insisted on having everything come to them. But 
 when he saw his patient he did not altogether regret 
 the enforced expedition. From a psychological stand- 
 point, if from no other, she was interesting. And he 
 had been told that she was a well-known writer. He 
 lingered longer than was strictly necessary beside 
 Dioneme's chair on the balcony, talking with her 
 about this thing and that, and looking out over the 
 wide stretch of water and mountain and sky spread 
 before them, a mingling of blue so intense and radiant, 
 so shot with sunlight, that it was hard to face it with 
 unblinking eyes. 
 
 When he finally left he encountered the nurse in 
 the corridor. She was one who had often worked for 
 him and he gave her a friendly nod of greeting. 
 
 "Bad case," he said briefly, indicating the room 
 from which he had just come. The nurse assented 
 mutely, with the deference of her position. 
 [ 266 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "You think it is best for her to go home, sir?" she 
 ventured to ask. 
 
 "Hm!" said the doctor. "It doesn't matter now 
 where she goes." 
 
 "As bad as that!" murmured the nurse involun- 
 tarily. 
 
 The doctor shrugged his shoulders with a gesture 
 which indicated regret, helplessness, and an ac- 
 knowledgment of the inevitable and they parted. 
 
 A week later Humphrey and Dioneme left the 
 hotel to begin the first stage of their homeward 
 journey. It was a cool September morning, too early 
 for any one to be about but the manager, the clerk, 
 and some of the employees of the hotel who stood 
 near the entrance to say farewell to the departing 
 guests. 
 
 They were to drive down the mountain in an old- 
 fashioned barouche with two horses, as the trip in the 
 funicular was considered too fatiguing for Dioneme. 
 Miss Kingston had gone on ahead to arrange about 
 the luggage and the railroad accommodations at the 
 station in the valley. 
 
 On the drive Dioneme was unusually talkative, 
 stimulated perhaps by the excitement of her early ris- 
 ing, by the bracing morning air, and the prospect of 
 change and adventure. They went at a snail's pace, 
 brakes on, horses straining backward. 
 [ 267 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "It is always supposed to be so easy to go down- 
 hill," said Dioneme, "but it is quite the contrary 
 for many people. Puritans, for instance you know 
 the type their downward course is such an involun- 
 tary holding-back at every step that immorality be- 
 comes, I dare say, really fatiguing." 
 
 " And the depths cease to allure," added Humphrey, 
 delighted to see his mother in such a communicative 
 frame of mind. She had been unnaturally silent of 
 late. 
 
 " We will soon pass the place where the kitten came 
 from," he said again. "I must show it to you." 
 
 "Poor Mimi," exclaimed Dioneme. "The por- 
 ter's little girl has her. She will grow up and forget 
 me." 
 
 " Cats don't love us like dogs." 
 
 " Cats are only little toy tigers all their movements 
 are of the jungle that's why they fascinate one," 
 his mother said. There was a silence while they 
 descended lower and lower and the cool air blew in 
 their faces. 
 
 Suddenly Dioneme stretched out her thin hand 
 from the huge sleeve of her fur travelling coat and 
 laid it on Humphrey's. Her deep eyes as she looked 
 at him had something of their old sparkle. 
 
 "Isn't it delicious to be going somewhere!" she ex- 
 claimed " and I love this road the pine trees in the 
 t.
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 gray mist! After all, I was very tired of being up there 
 on that hill! Weren't you, Humphrey? Didn't it 
 bore you at times ? " 
 
 It was the first occasion on which she had ever 
 considered Humphrey in this matter, but now that 
 the idea had finally come to her she was all interest 
 and solicitude. 
 
 " You must get very tired, too, of being with me all 
 the time," she went on, studying his face. "Are you 
 sure you never find it dull with me? I know you say 
 you don't." 
 
 Humphrey laughed with an appearance of light- 
 ness, though this appeal seemed to him affecting. 
 
 "Did any one in your whole life ever tell you you 
 were a bore, mother?" he asked, tucking the rug 
 more tightly about her knees. 
 
 But Dioneme was not to be put off. 
 
 " I know you have never cared much for girls," she 
 said, "but you like men and sport and all that. 
 It seems to me that perhaps you ought to be freer 
 to play about more." 
 
 " What about mountain-climbing," said Humphrey. 
 "Feel my muscles!" extending an arm for investiga- 
 tion. "Nothing soft about that, is there? These 
 weeks have done me no end of good." 
 
 Dioneme, apparently convinced, mused in silence. 
 
 Finally she said with something like timidity: 
 [ 269 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "It's very strange, Humphrey, that you've never 
 been in love!" 
 
 He did not answer immediately, neither did he 
 burst into laughter as she had expected, dreaded per- 
 haps, for Dioneme was as much poet as novelist and 
 approached the idea of love with something more than 
 psychological curiosity. 
 
 " Don't deceive yourself, my dear, I've been in love 
 scores of times." 
 
 "But scores of times adds up naught in love you 
 don't understand the arithmetic of those things." 
 
 "Perhaps not." 
 
 " You have nothing romantic about you," was Dion- 
 eme's conclusion. 
 
 " Thank God ! " breathed Humphrey fervently. " I 
 suppose you would like a youthful Shelley for a son." 
 
 Dioneme laughed. 
 
 "I like you just as you are," she admitted, and so, 
 talking lightly, with that amazing temporary forgetful- 
 ness of darker issues which alone makes human ex- 
 istence possible, they descended the mountain. 
 
 [ 270
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE first person Linda met when she returned to 
 New York toward the end of October was Miss 
 Godwin. Their encounter took place in the lift at 
 the Colony Club, as they were on their way up to the 
 dining-room. 
 
 " Lunching alone ? " asked the old lady. " So am 
 I shall we lunch together ? " 
 
 Linda assenting, they went into the small members* 
 dining-room and sat down at a round table. 
 
 One of the club servants in livery presented a card. 
 
 " The regular lunch," said Miss Godwin, waving the 
 man away, " bring everything and we can eat what we 
 like Now tell me about your summer, Linda." Miss 
 Godwin's popularity rested on the warm human sym- 
 pathy which is genuinely interested in everybody. 
 
 "Well," began Linda obediently, "we were on 
 Long Island all the time except for three weeks at Bar 
 Harbor. I meant to go to the Adirondacks to stay 
 with the Worthingtons, but their mother died and they 
 had to close the camp. We are in town earlier than 
 usual because father got so tired going in and out 
 every day." 
 
 [ 271 ] '
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " So on the whole it's been a pleasant summer ? " 
 
 "Very," Linda replied, but without enthusiasm. 
 Miss Godwin looked at her shrewdly and wondered, 
 for the thousandth time, what had been the real story 
 of her brief engagement to Walter Jackson. Cer- 
 tainly there had been no tragedy about it, yet Linda's 
 face had acquired a new meaning, the expression one 
 associates with deep experience. 
 
 "You look too lovely, Linda, my child!" said the 
 old lady lightly, aloud. " How many hearts are you 
 going to break this winter ? " 
 
 " What does one break hearts with in New York ? " 
 asked the girl laughing, "a sledge hammer?" 
 
 "Don't be cynical. It's not your style. I know 
 it's the fashion nowadays. Romance went out with 
 the hoop-skirt. I suppose you would say that both 
 inflated human beings unnaturally, but I sha'n't give 
 you a chance." 
 
 "I'm not romantic, I expect," said Linda with an 
 involuntary sigh. The sigh again reminded Miss 
 Godwin of the girl's broken engagement, and she 
 chasseed gracefully away from the question of romance. 
 
 " By the way, I hear dresses are to be stranger than 
 ever this year," she said, " skirts a couple of yards 
 wide. Can you imagine me in a garment like that?" 
 
 "You could never wear anything but what was 
 pretty and becoming, I'm sure," said Linda. 
 { 272 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "You're a smooth-tongued young person, Linda 
 Arnold! I'm not sure it's not your smooth tongue 
 more than your pretty face that throws the 'come- 
 hither' (as the Irishman says) over us all." 
 
 "Talk about flattery!" exclaimed Linda. 
 
 "Well, well! here are our eggs at last. If they're 
 not good I shall write a letter to the House Commit- 
 tee," and she fell to with an appetite. 
 
 " This is true, this is real" said Linda to herself, in 
 the meantime, "sitting here with Miss Godwin in the 
 Colony Club and eating ceufs Meyerbeer" The night 
 before she had Iain awake and thought of Humphrey, 
 of her disillusions in regard to Walter, and her own 
 loneliness. Now the remembrance of this emotion 
 seemed fantastic to her. " It was all nervousness and 
 imagination," she thought, forgetting that the night 
 before she had just as emphatically decided that feel- 
 ing alone was real, and that everything else in life 
 was merely routine and mechanism. 
 
 Miss Godwin, her first hunger appeased, and having 
 heard all the news of Linda's family, proceeded to 
 give a rapid epitome of recent gossip. Finally Mrs. 
 Wylde's name was mentioned. 
 
 " She's back again you know, with her good-looking 
 son at her apron strings as usual. I hear that she's 
 no better. Do you know anything about it ? " 
 
 "No," said Linda, "I've not seen anything of her 
 [ 273 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 for some time. You remember I told you so when 
 we were talking of her at your luncheon last spring." 
 In a less composed voice she added : " I wish I knew 
 how she really was ! " Her own agitation surprised her. 
 She thought that Dioneme, as well as Humphrey, had 
 gone out of her life. Did nothing ever really come 
 to an end then ! She still held the belief that life was a 
 series of disconnected episodes, at the end of each of 
 which one wrote "finis" as one thought fit. 
 
 "It will be easy to learn," said Miss Godwin, re- 
 plying to Linda's words. "Poor Dioneme! One 
 can't think, somehow, of a white flame like that being 
 put out." 
 
 "Put out!" repeated the girl, shocked and ar- 
 rested. "Do you mean " 
 
 "If one could only see her " Miss Godwin said, 
 "but the son is always on guard. I believe it's true 
 that he doesn't wish his mother to have any friends, 
 though it seems senseless!" 
 
 Linda went away from the luncheon saddened and 
 alarmed. Was Dioneme dying ? No, it could not be 
 possible. And must it all begin over again her at- 
 tempts to see her, Humphrey's persistent refusals, the 
 old bafBing mystery of it? Why could she not be 
 allowed to forget? But she had loved Dioneme; her 
 friend might even now turn to that love and wonder 
 that it failed. She remembered how beautiful she 
 [ 274 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 had been on the day when she had last seen her, lying 
 in the glow of the spring afternoon with the green 
 jade beads in the folds of her dress, but how weak and 
 ill even then! Finally in her despairing uncertainty 
 Linda determined to see Dr. Macklevaine, though 
 she knew him but slightly, and learn from him the 
 truth about Dioneme's condition. 
 
 But how to do this ? She felt that she could never 
 go to his office on such an errand, and to call him up 
 on the telephone seemed equally difficult. If only they 
 could meet by chance! 
 
 In the child-like hope of this she waited a week 
 or ten days, asking, meantime, every one whom she 
 thought might know for news of Dioneme. But 
 nothing happened and she could learn nothing definite, 
 so that her anxiety grew with suspense. More and 
 more this one thing obsessed her. 
 
 At last, strangely enough, her opportunity really 
 came, for one day as she was standing in the ante- 
 room of the Ritz-Carlton she saw Dr. Macklevaine. 
 He had just finished lunching with a confrere from 
 Washington, and was emerging from the restaurant 
 redder-faced than ever, corpulent and unconcerned, 
 when Linda accosted him. At first he did not recog- 
 nize her. There was to his mind an astonishing re- 
 semblance between all young girls. They were like 
 rows of tulips, gayly pink and white, inconsiderable. 
 [275]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 This one, he observed, had a quantity of bronze- 
 colored hair and a green feather in her hat. He looked 
 at her vaguely but benevolently. 
 
 "You don't remember me!" said Linda aggrieved, 
 far from guessing how little of the responsible adult 
 she seemed to the old doctor. " I met you once at Mrs. 
 Wylde's and you set father's arm when he fell from 
 his horse and broke it." 
 
 Linking herself thus to the absorbing interests of 
 existence Linda finally became a definite personality 
 to Dr. Macklevaine. 
 
 "Of course I remember you!" he said. "You're 
 Gregory Arnold's daughter. Is your father well ? 
 I've not seen him for months." 
 
 "Yes, father is very well, thanks, but it was about 
 Mrs. Wylde I wanted to ask you. I hear so many 
 stories about her that she is ill, seriously ill, and yet 
 I can't seem to get at anything definite. Can't you 
 tell me how she really is?" 
 
 Here was a daring and ignorant young intruder in- 
 deed, crashing through all the defences of private sen- 
 timent and professional etiquette. Yet why put up 
 signs warning off the premises if the trespasser could 
 not read. This was plainly a case of simplicity and 
 ignorance, and Arnold's daughter was a pretty child, 
 very much in earnest too. The doctor was not sure 
 that there had not been a slight mist of tears in her 
 [276]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 eyes. He asked himself, puzzled, if this could have 
 been possible. 
 
 If he hesitated before speaking it was not becaus^ 
 he was so much vexed at the question as at a loss for 
 an answer which should evade as well as satisfy. 
 
 Not for an instant did he contemplate revealing the 
 truth. Even he, hardened as he was by long expe- 
 rience, had not yet been brought to accept it. But 
 yet this young thing must be answered, put off! 
 
 "You are a great friend of Mrs. Wylde's?" he 
 asked finally, wondering what part in Dioneme's life 
 his questioner could play. 
 
 "I am a great admirer of her's," said Linda, "I 
 am very fond of her." 
 
 "Ah!" observed the doctor, not much enlightened. 
 
 "I don't ask from idle curiosity," urged the girl, 
 "you must see that! " This time he was certain about 
 the quick blur of tears in her eyes. " Won't you tell 
 me how she really is ? " 
 
 Something in Macklevaine's breast responded to 
 the blur of tears. He understood them indeed. They 
 might have been light drops on the surface of his own 
 hidden well of pain. 
 
 "One doesn't feel about Mrs. Wylde as about the 
 rest of the world," Linda went on. " She is different 
 from any one else." 
 
 Again the depths of old Macklevaine's soul re- 
 [ 277 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 sponded. " Yes," he said, " she has a mind and soul 
 given to few of her sex. She has also great physical 
 vitality. It is on that we have counted until now." 
 
 "Ah!" said Linda with a sudden sharp breath, "I 
 can see you think she is very ill ! " 
 
 People coming out from the restaurant looked in- 
 quisitively at this oddly paired couple, absorbed as 
 they were in their talk. 
 
 "I have not said so," replied the doctor. His ex- 
 pression was non-committal, but he underestimated 
 Linda's powers of intuition. 
 
 "But tell me there is hope," she urged, "that she 
 may get well." Without being conscious of it they 
 had moved gradually to one side and now stood in a 
 more or less sheltered corner near a great potted palm. 
 
 "My dear child," said Macklevaine gravely, "I 
 am a physician and a physician never admits there is 
 no hope." But his tone contradicted his words and 
 there was no need to inquire farther. Lidna knew. 
 
 One thing more she must find out though before they 
 separated. She put it in another eager, tremulous 
 question. 
 
 " Do you think that I could see her ? " 
 
 "She doesn't see many people," replied the doctor. 
 " Quiet is best for her, but possibly do you know her 
 son? He might arrange for you to pay her a short 
 visit. Mind you it's got to be a short one ! " 
 [ 278 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Linda's face darkened at this allusion to Humphrey, 
 but she made no comment. 
 
 "Thank you," she said to the doctor. Having 
 played his part he was no longer necessary to her, but 
 even in her sorrowful preoccupation she found time for 
 a passing regret that people as old and world-hardened 
 as he could know nothing of feeling or sentiment. 
 
 Macklevaine, to Linda's mind, had passed the age 
 of human sympathies, moved in a far-off, unimagina- 
 ble world, gray and sterile, where time was spent in the 
 observation of scientific facts and the fostering of 
 material comfort. He was as inconsiderable from her 
 point of view as she was from his. Yet across the 
 breach made by the passing merely of one generation 
 they gazed for a moment at each other before they 
 parted with not unfriendly curiosity. 
 
 Linda went home dazed and bewildered, as if she 
 had been caught in some street accident and slightly 
 wounded she did not yet know how much. It was 
 true, then, the vague, disquieting rumor! Dioneme 
 was really going to die. For the first time in her life 
 an outer circle from the eternal shadow crept near to 
 Linda. Her own environment dimmed. A chill en- 
 veloped her. She tried to resist it, making an effort to 
 be brave and face the matter reasonably. 
 
 What would Dioneme touched now by this mys- 
 tery be like ? What would she say ? 
 [ 279 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Linda was awe-struck half frightened longed yet 
 dreaded to go to her friend. 
 
 Would she talk of death or would it be possible to 
 ignore everything that was tragic! Her reluctance was 
 the inevitable protest of youth, always pagan in its 
 instinctive impulses, intolerant of all that is not, like 
 itself, health and beauty and joy. Finally the spirit 
 of love conquered this diffidence. More than ever she 
 longed to pour out for Dioneme all her affection and 
 
 Pity- 
 She tried to think of a plan by which she might 
 
 find her way to her without Humphrey's intervention. 
 Not that she was afraid this time of a rebuff, she felt 
 there could be no more petty jealousies. Not even 
 Humphrey, hard as his enemies believed him, would 
 try to stand between her and his mother now. Never- 
 theless her anger against him persisted. What was 
 it that had brought Dioneme so low? Overwork, 
 perhaps. The thought was intolerable. But how 
 could she arrange to see Dioneme ? Suddenly she 
 thought of Emma Cooper, of whom she had had no 
 news for a long time. Of course Emma was the one 
 to whom, as once before, she could appeal. 
 
 [ 280 ]
 
 CHAPTER XXII ' 
 
 CONSULTING her address book Linda found 
 the whereabouts of Emma Cooper and, at the 
 earliest possible moment, set forth to look her up, 
 smiling a little ruefully at the thought that she was 
 now to see for herself the long-fabled domain of Mrs. 
 Mindelbaum. 
 
 The house when she found it was a dingy, high- 
 porched, brown-stone relic on Lexington Avenue. 
 Cheap lace curtains festooned the windows, and the 
 outside steps were stained and unswept, wisps of straw 
 and paper decorating the corners. 
 
 A small and impudently jovial negro boy answered 
 her ring, his grinning self-assurance changing to awe 
 however as he caught sight of Linda's motor-car. 
 The door, opened at first only half-way, was swung 
 wide, and a strong and sickening odor of boiled cab- 
 bage poured out in great volume. 
 
 Upon inquiring for Miss Cooper Linda was told that 
 she was at home, as indeed was expected, it being the 
 hour when she always returned from her day's work, 
 and rested a little before her dinner. 
 
 The visitor was shown into a front room divided 
 [ 281 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 by curtains into two separate apartments. From be- 
 hind these curtains came the murmur of low voices, the 
 occasional wail of a baby, and a smell of arnica lini- 
 ment equalling that of the boiled cabbage in intensity, 
 but it was apparently a place of unbroken gloom, for 
 no light of any kind showed over the screening curtains. 
 Linda wondered if it were the last post held by the 
 Mindelbaum family, or if, in a press of lodgers, the 
 end of the drawing-room had been rented out to some 
 one not too exacting in the way of light and air. On 
 her side of the curtains there reigned a prim neatness 
 which was at the same time grimy and frayed, with 
 an abundance of tawdry decoration which failed to 
 decorate: crocheted woollen mats, stamped gilt pict- 
 ure-frames, Japanese fans, Christmas cards, and orna- 
 ments from the ten-cent counter of some cheap depart- 
 ment shop. The lights in the imitation bronze chan- 
 delier had shades made of rose-colored paper, and two 
 china lamps were adorned in the same way. Linda 
 took in these details with a vague and sympathizing 
 pity. Did not the hand-painted tambourine on the 
 draped mantel-piece represent the same struggle up- 
 ward toward beauty as the old Ming jar which stood 
 on her own ? The rose-colored shades of crimped 
 tissue-paper also struck her as symbolic and touching. 
 She imagined the elderly, hard-working spinster 
 boarders sitting of an evening in this pink glow. 
 [ 282 ]
 
 While she was examining a photograph of a group, 
 presumably the Mindelbaum family, Emma Cooper 
 came in. There was no trace of agitation in her man- 
 ner as they exchanged greetings, though the red of in- 
 tense nervous excitement colored her prominent cheek- 
 bones. Probably of all the events of life, the one she 
 had least expected was a call from Miss Arnold. Her 
 sense of what was due to her own self-respect and her 
 knowledge of deportment would have kept her out- 
 wardly calm, however, under even more distracting 
 events. 
 
 "Do sit down, Miss Arnold," she said. "You'll 
 find that rocker most comfortable, I guess, though 
 rockers are kind of old-fashioned now." 
 
 Linda made a slight gesture toward the end of the 
 room where behind the curtains the murmur of voices 
 still continued. "Why couldn't we go up to your 
 room where we could talk without being overheard ? " 
 she suggested. 
 
 For the barest instant Miss Cooper hesitated. 
 
 "Why, of course," she said. "If you don't mind 
 climbing three flights of stairs. I would have hated 
 to have asked you." 
 
 "I don't mind in the least, and those people back 
 there, whom one hears without being able to see, make 
 me just a little self-conscious." 
 
 "Dear me," said Emma. "You needn't have 
 [ 283 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 minded them! It's only Mrs. Mindelbaum's mar- 
 ried daughter but I guess it will be quieter up- 
 stairs." 
 
 They made the ascent silently, accompanied by the 
 smell of boiled cabbage in diminuendo. At a door 
 near the fourth-floor landing Emma paused. 
 
 "That was Flora Kelly's room," she said in a whis- 
 per, and Linda felt a sudden, creeping unpleasantness 
 and disquietude, as if she had been shown the room 
 of some one who had died a violent death. The 
 whole ignominious, commonplace tragedy woke in her 
 memory. How strange that it should have played a 
 decisive part in her own life! And here she was steal- 
 ing past little Flora Kelly's door like an interloper. 
 She wondered what had become of the girl but was 
 half afraid to ask, her feelings toward her were too 
 complex pity and disgust and some dim unclassified 
 emotion which bore a resemblance to gratitude. 
 Certainly she had never loved Walter, but some things 
 are nevertheless an offence to one's pride. 
 
 In this uncertain mood she was ushered into Emma's 
 hall bedroom, with its hangings and covers of silkoline. 
 A shelf of books and a framed photograph of Mrs. 
 Wylde witnessed Miss Cooper's greatest claim to dis- 
 tinction. Linda sat down on one of the two chairs and 
 smiled at her hostess. 
 
 " How pleasant you have made your little room," she 
 [284]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 said. "I could have recognized it in a minute from 
 what you told me!" 
 
 "Oh Miss Arnold," exclaimed Emma, quite 
 choked with the intensity of her feelings, " if it hadn't 
 been for you I'd never have got back to it. You 
 couldn't ever have come to see me in the room I was 
 living in when you got me that work last April." 
 
 "Was it as bad as all that?" said Linda. "Poor 
 Emma! but you like your work now don't you, and 
 have plenty of it?" 
 
 "Everything's fine now, thank you. See here 
 Miss Arnold, I want to show you this photograph. It's 
 Flora Kelly taken when I first knew her a real, 
 pretty little face, isn't it ? but no chin to speak of. I 
 guess that's what was the matter with her. People 
 can't get through life without chins." 
 
 Linda contemplated the weak, childish face in si- 
 lence for a moment. 
 
 " Where is she now ? " she asked. " Have you ever 
 heard from her ? I remember you told me last spring 
 you had only received a post-card." 
 
 " Oh I had a long letter from her not so many days 
 ago sort of a pathetic letter! She passed over a good 
 deal. I had to guess at things. She said she'd been 
 sick for quite a while there at that farm in Indiana 
 where she went. Those silly little things like Flora 
 go down pretty deep into life sometimes. Strange 
 [285 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 isn't it! But it don't change them much. They come 
 out just the same as ever. 
 
 " She's quite well now and it seems she's met a man 
 who keeps a drug store in the nearest town to where 
 she is and he's in love with her and she's going to 
 marry him. She says he is a handsome man and 
 well-to-do and that she's very happy. He's build- 
 ing a new house for her and has bought her a 
 pianola." 
 
 " Do you suppose she told him about New York t " 
 asked Linda after a moment's hesitation. 
 
 Miss Cooper sighed. 
 
 "There's no telling," she said. "Flora never 
 seemed to sense the importance of things or what 
 was right or what was wrong. Perhaps she told him 
 and he didn't care. There are men like that, or maybe 
 he just took her side. She had a way of making 
 people sympathize with her even when she was to 
 blame. And she was pretty enough for anything." 
 
 " Yes," Linda replied, still regarding the photograph. 
 "She was certainly pretty." After a little she laid the 
 picture down on the table. 
 
 " So that's an end of Flora Kelly's story," she said 
 gravely. 
 
 " For you and me, I guess," Emma replied, not even 
 dimly imagining how her visitor's own story had been 
 woven with an ugly thread from little Flora's. 
 [ 286 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Well," said Linda, drawing a long breath as if 
 about to enter on the serious matter of her visit, "I 
 suppose you're wondering what I've come to see you 
 for, Emma." 
 
 "I hope it's because you want something of me. 
 There's nothing that would give me as much pleasure 
 as that." 
 
 "Yes, I do in a way do you ever work for Mrs. 
 Wylde now?'* 
 
 Emma's face saddened. 
 
 "Oh, don't you know, Miss Arnold," she said. 
 "She can't work now. I guess she isn't ever going 
 to work much more." 
 
 "Do you ever see her?" 
 
 " Yes I go to the house sometimes to see if there's 
 some little thing I can do for her. I worked for her 
 so long she kind of likes to have me about. She don't 
 see many people." 
 
 " Her son doesn't wish it ? " There was a shade of 
 almost unprecedented bitterness in Linda's voice. 
 
 "No. Mr. Humphrey watches over her more than 
 ever. I never saw a young gentleman so devoted to 
 his mother." 
 
 " What I want you to do," said Linda firmly, " is 
 to find out from Mrs. Wylde whether she wants to see 
 me or not, and if she does, arrange a meeting even 
 if Mr. Wylde disapproves. Will you ? " 
 [ 287 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 " Of course I'll do anything you say," began Emma 
 doubtfully "but there's the doctor what if he 
 thinks it would be bad for her?" 
 
 "I've already talked with Dr. Macklevaine he 
 didn't disapprove of my seeing her for a few minutes 
 only. It's only her son who wants to keep everything 
 and everybody away from her." 
 
 " I'm sure Mr. Humphrey knows what's best," fal- 
 tered Emma, torn by divided allegiance. 
 
 Linda, with an effort, maintained a reserved silence, 
 and not even by the expression of her face made Emma 
 acquainted with her own opinion of Humphrey. 
 Undoubtedly, too, a subtle and inadmissible interest 
 in hearing his name mentioned persisted with her 
 scorn of him. 
 
 "It isn't as if Mrs. Wylde wouldn't be sure to 
 want to see you '* went on Emma, arguing with 
 herself. 
 
 Linda looked at the framed photograph on the 
 wall and it seemed to her to wear the same sweet, 
 baffling smile as the original. 
 
 "You think," she asked, "that she really would 
 care?" 
 
 " Why I never saw her take such a fancy to any 
 
 one, Miss Arnold, as she did to you. She talked 
 
 about you lots you know her way of saying things. 
 
 I heard her tell Mr. Humphrey once that you looked 
 
 [ 288 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 as if your lips said, ' Kiss me,' and your eyes said, 
 'If you dare!'" 
 
 Linda rose and examined the photograph more 
 closely. 
 
 "That's a very good picture," she said. "I never 
 saw it before." 
 
 "She's changed since then," Emma remarked, 
 dusting the frame carefully with her handkerchief. 
 " You'll be kind of shocked if you see her. It's better 
 for you to be prepared. I wasn't and I sha'n't ever 
 forget my first glimpse of her after she got back from 
 Europe. I could hardly keep from crying. There was 
 always something about her that made you feel sorry, 
 somehow, and excited at the same time (it's hard to 
 describe) and now that she's so sick it's much 
 worse." 
 
 "She must have failed very fast," said Linda. 
 " In the spring she didn't seem so ill did she ? " 
 
 "Oh, I guess no one knew how ill she was and 
 those things go quick toward the end." 
 
 " 'Toward the end,' " echoed mournfully in Linda's 
 soul. She had been talking with calmness enough 
 but now something made her suddenly faint and trem- 
 ulous. Her self-control failed and her throat swelled 
 with emotion. It seemed impossible that Dioneme 
 should die never more impossible than now when she 
 was assured of it. But Emma talked on, dry-eyed, 
 [ 289 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 with the composure of those who are familiar with the 
 grimness of both life and death. 
 
 " You see, I've got all her books," she said, laying 
 her hand on the shelf. " Everything she ever wrote 
 and most of them have a dedication. 'With best 
 wishes from the author.' See here!" and she opened 
 "Hilmer Brothers" and showed the inscribed fly-leaf 
 to Linda with pride. 
 
 "I typed all of them except the first two. One of 
 them's got a character in it quite like me. I don't 
 know whether she ever meant it or not." 
 
 " She always used to say she never took her charac- 
 ters from life." 
 
 "Well I guess she never meant to but writers 
 don't always know when they're remembering and 
 when they're making up." 
 
 "I'm sure she never wrote anything to hurt any- 
 body," said Linda. 
 
 "Yes I'm sure of that," agreed Emma, "or at 
 any rate she never intended it if she did." 
 
 Unconsciously they were talking as if Dioneme had 
 already become a thing of the past. Their voices had 
 the note of tenderness and solemnity with which wom- 
 en speak of the dead. 
 
 After a time Linda grew aware that the little room 
 where they sat was almost entirely dark. In their absorp- 
 tion they had not noticed that the daylight had faded. 
 [ 290 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Let me light the gas!" cried Emma, suddenly 
 alert and hospitable. 
 
 " No, no," cried Linda, to whom the dim light was 
 welcome. " I must go now ! And you will telephone 
 me when Mrs. Wylde can see me ? " 
 
 It had been ta itly assumed between them that 
 Linda was to have her way. 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Cooper. "I will telephone but 
 I daren't let Mr. Humphrey know!" 
 
 "Don't worry about that," replied Linda. "You 
 are not doing anything wrong. Mrs. Wylde can 
 surely decide for herself and we have Macklevaine's 
 permission." 
 
 "Yes," assented Miss Cooper, but half-heartedly 
 still. 
 
 A faint suspicion that there was something in the 
 relations of Linda and Mrs. Wylde and her son which 
 she did not understand passed for the first time through 
 her mind. 
 
 [291 ]
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 AS once before, Humphrey, coming home and go- 
 ing directly to his mother's sitting-room, was 
 surprised to find there a slight feminine figure. But 
 this time it was not an unfamiliar one. Standing 
 under the portrait of Dioneme, Linda, his little love, 
 faced him with something of defiance and agitation, 
 a bright color glowing in her cheeks. 
 
 Looking at her Humphrey realized how unalterably 
 dear she was, how brave and sweet in her mistaken 
 anger against him and her loyalty to his mother. 
 His eyes, hungry after long abstinence, took in every 
 subtle detail of her, the little beauties his lover's imagi- 
 nation fancied it had discovered for itself, the odd 
 slant of her eyebrows, the soft delicious spot behind 
 her little rosy ears, the wave in her hair where it dipped, 
 curving, over her eyes. 
 
 And he waited for her to speak, knowing the peculiar 
 vibration in her voice would affect his nerves as always, 
 dreading yet longing for it. 
 
 But Linda was silent, unable it seemed to find 
 words, and he was forced to have pity on her and speak 
 first himself. 
 
 [ 292 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "It is a surprise to find you here," he said. "I 
 didn't know that you were coming." 
 
 The girl fancied she heard displeasure in his even 
 tones, resentment at being as it were outwitted. 
 
 " Your mother wished to see me. If I hadn't made 
 sure of that I would not be here. Dr. Macklevaine, 
 too, gave me permission. It was only you who wished 
 to keep us apart." 
 
 Humphrey made no reply. 
 
 "Do you deny it?" urged Linda, after a moment. 
 
 "No," he said. 
 
 " Yet you knew I loved your mother and that she, 
 I think, liked to have me with her." 
 
 " I wanted you to love her," said Humphrey simply. 
 "I wanted your love for her to remain always the 
 same what it was when you first knew her. Have 
 you seen her yet ? " 
 
 "No," said Linda. Not yet. The nurse told me 
 to wait here until she called me." 
 
 "Yesterday was one of her bad days," said Hum- 
 phrey, sighing a little at the remembrance, " and to-day 
 she is feeling the effects. Wouldn't it be better for 
 you to come some other time perhaps ? It is a pity 
 to keep you waiting here." 
 
 He spoke with formal courtesy, moving aside from 
 the door as if to let her pass if she wished. 
 
 But Linda disregarded this suggestion. 
 [ 293 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "You talk of affection," she exclaimed, "but what 
 do you, yourself, know of it? Can you pretend to 
 really love your mother unselfishly ? If what people 
 say is true you have failed to prove it." There was 
 an almost brutal directness in this speech the direct- 
 ness of which extreme youth alone is capable. Only 
 inexperience is merciless. 
 
 "And what do people say?" asked Humphrey. 
 He had gone nearer to her and was looking squarely 
 into her eyes. In their excitement they had both 
 raised their voices. 
 
 " Why do you want me to repeat it ! Words make it 
 coarse. I become coarse myself only by talking of 
 it." 
 
 " But I wish to know. I insist on your telling me." 
 Something in the very violence of their words showed 
 that this was a quarrel between two who had been, 
 and perhaps still were, lovers. Under their anger, 
 stimulating it and supporting it, was a wave of pas- 
 sion. 
 
 "You know the facts. Why do you take any in- 
 terest in the comments on them?" 
 
 "I have a right to know. Tell me what they say," 
 repeated Humphrey masterfully. 
 
 "Let him hear then!" thought Linda, and she 
 poured forth the whole arraignment that Humphrey 
 had allowed his mother to work in order that he might 
 [ 294 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 live in idleness, giving up his profession and all am- 
 bition to make a place for himself in the world; that 
 when his mother's health had broken down under the 
 strain of too much mental labor, he had, with an eye 
 to future provision for himself and fearing inter- 
 ference from outsiders, gradually alienated her from 
 all her friends and acquaintances, breaking engage- 
 ments without excuse, absenting himself with his 
 mother for long periods of time without any cause or 
 explanation and giving no address "And as for me," 
 concluded Linda, "you said you loved me almost 
 persuaded me that I cared for you but when I could 
 not accept the idea of your giving up your profession 
 to live in idleness, when I told you it would be im- 
 possible for me to love a man I couldn't respect you 
 made no effort to change, but simply accepted my 
 decision and showed your resentment by trying, in 
 every small and petty way possible, to prevent my 
 seeing your mother. You punished me, as it were, 
 for daring to criticise you by taking away from me 
 all companionship with your mother the thing that 
 was my greatest pleasure." 
 
 Here poor little Linda's nerves got the better of her 
 completely and she began to sob, uncontrollably, like 
 an overstrained child. 
 
 Mingled with her anger was a confused sense of 
 shame and paltriness which she could not account for. 
 [ 295 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 No security of righteousness upheld her. Her own 
 arguments seemed unconvincing now that her tirade 
 was at an end. 
 
 And Humphrey never answered. That made it 
 worse, more unbearable. She sank weakly in a chair 
 and hid her face, while he stood over her, protectingly 
 almost, but still without words. 
 
 Something of strength and calm seemed to come 
 from him, even in his muteness. Instinctively she 
 yielded to it and little by little ceased to sob. 
 
 "Why don't you defend yourself?" she asked 
 naively. "Is there nothing you have to say?" 
 
 "I do not want to 'defend myself as you call it," 
 Humphrey replied, " but I am not the blackguard you 
 try to make yourself think me and I love you and I 
 shall always love you. What is more, I think in the 
 bottom of your heart you love me." 
 
 Linda, protesting, started to answer, but just then 
 Dioneme's voice came to them from the room beyond, 
 weak but unmistakable. 
 
 "Humphrey! Linda!" it called. 
 
 Linda, startled, dismayed, sprang to her feet. She 
 saw that the door between the sitting-room and the bed 
 room was very slightly ajar. Forgetful now of them- 
 selves she and Humphrey exchanged a glance full of 
 consternation. How much had Dioneme heard ? What 
 would it mean to her ? 
 
 [ 296 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "Humphrey! Linda!" called the voice again, 
 sweet but imperious. 
 
 Further hesitation was impossible. They must 
 obey. Humphrey pushed open the door for his com- 
 panion and followed her into the other room. 
 
 They saw Dioneme lying on a couch pulled near the 
 window. Tipped back against blue, lace-covered 
 cushions, her face did not at first seem to Linda 
 greatly changed, except that a new quality had been 
 added to its beauty, a quality she could not define 
 something luminous, impersonal, penetrating. 
 
 "Come here, children!" said Dioneme, reaching 
 out a shadowy hand. 
 
 As they wen" nearer to her she looked at them both 
 with a kind of grave wonder. 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me you were in love with each 
 other ? " she said ; " why did you leave it to chance for 
 me to find it out ? " 
 
 Humphrey tried to answer, but she stopped him. 
 
 " Ah, yes, Humphrey and I found out more besides 
 that it is I who have kept you and Linda apart all 
 this time I with my hideous secret. ' Protector of the 
 house,' Humphrey to your own cost! I should have 
 guessed! But now it is time for truth and Linda 
 must have it! ' 
 
 Again Humphrey tried to protest, but his mother 
 did not heed him. With a slight gesture she motioned 
 [ 297 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Linda to her side. The girl sank on the floor by the 
 couch, her face upturned, her hand in Dioneme's. 
 Humphrey withdrawing into the shadow at the corner 
 of the room watched them both intently. His mother 
 seemed to have become, of a sudden, supremely hu- 
 man. All her fierce and splendid egotism was, as if 
 at once and finally consumed by the flaming-up in her 
 of the divine, the will to sacrifice self for love of another. 
 
 " You have been a good little friend to me, Linda," 
 said Dioneme to the girl. " You have cared for me a 
 good deal, haven't you?" 
 
 "If I could only tell you how much," moaned the 
 girl. 
 
 " You've thought me a wonderful creature perfect, 
 I dare say!" 
 
 "There was never any one like you!" 
 
 "Ah! I wish I might have left that memory! " 
 the cry was instinctive, not to be controlled. "But 
 you've been deluding yourself, Linda. I'm not the 
 woman you think. I've two natures; one that looks 
 over the heads of other people in some ways perhaps, 
 one that lies in the mud at their feet. You've only 
 seen me star-gazing but Humphrey poor boy! has 
 found me, many times, lying low. He'll tell you 
 what my vice has been, a common, degrading vice 
 outcasts have it more often than kings. It's been a 
 hard thing to hide, but Humphrey has contrived to 
 [ 298 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 hide it by giving up all life of his own all love of his 
 own!" 
 
 Here Linda gave a smothered cry which somehow 
 wrung Humphrey's heart more than all his mother's 
 words. 
 
 The older woman laid her hand lightly on the girl's 
 shoulder: 
 
 "You see, you've been in the wrong," she said. 
 "When your heart said 'love him' you should have 
 trusted it. You've just said there was never any one 
 like me. Was there ever any one like Humphrey ? " 
 
 There came an inarticulate dissent from the corner 
 where Humphrey stood. Dioneme answered it imme- 
 diately; "Yes I know you've always hated words, 
 my dear boy but things must be said sometimes 
 better when it's not too late!" 
 
 Her son crossed the room swiftly and leaning over 
 kissed her hair in his old fashion, struggling now for 
 self-control. Linda's face was still hidden. 
 
 "I know you are sorry for me both of you," said 
 Dioneme. "Perhaps you would be even more sorry 
 if you could guess what the horror of the struggle has 
 been for there was a struggle I didn't go down will- 
 ingly, no one does." 
 
 She paused a moment, shaken by nervous weakness 
 and suffering. The ordeal was almost too much for 
 her. 
 
 [ 299 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 "I have seen an unclean spirit face to face," she 
 said at last, almost in a whisper, as if to herself. Linda 
 shuddered and the silence in the room was painful. 
 
 At last Dioneme, with a great effort, threw off this 
 oppression. 
 
 "Somehow I feel that everything will be different 
 now," she said. " When I am well I shall not be the 
 same woman. We will never talk of this any more 
 but you will not believe I knowingly kept Humphrey 
 from you will you, Linda? The truth is hateful 
 enough without that." 
 
 Did Dioneme know when she talked so confidently 
 about the future that for her it would be short ? 
 
 "Oh I can never believe anything against you!" 
 moaned the girl. "I shall always love you just the 
 same. Nothing that you say can ever change my 
 thoughts of you!" For the moment she felt she was 
 speaking the truth, but Dioneme was not deceived. 
 Her deep eyes were full of wisdom and profoundly sad. 
 When she spoke again, however, it was even more 
 lightly. 
 
 " And now will you two children go and talk to each 
 other for a while ?" she said, "I feel that I should like 
 to rest a little. I am tired and want to lie quietly and 
 think everything over. It will all weave itself into a 
 kind of pattern I expect like a story. Things have 
 always been stories to me even my own life!" 
 [ 300 ]
 
 THE MOON LADY 
 
 Humphrey and Linda kissed her and went out of the 
 room lingeringly, hand in hand. 
 
 After they had gone Dioneme lay motionless, her 
 eyes on distance and something like her old whimsical 
 and evasive smile on her lips, though the tears wrung 
 from her by the bitterness of her confession still moist- 
 ened her cheeks. 
 
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