ID SMITH' 
 OK& 
 - AVINUC
 
 DIVIDED LIVES.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES 
 
 EDGAR FAWCETT 
 
 IUTHOR OF "AN AMBITIOUS WOMAN"; "THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD "; "A HOPE- 
 LESS CASE " ; " THE HOUSE AT HIGH BRIDGE " ; SOCIAL SILHOUETTES " ; " THE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 NATIONAL BOOK COMPANY 
 3, 4, 5 A*ID 6 MISSION PLACE
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1888. 
 BY BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY.
 
 TO MY FRIEND, 
 
 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP, 
 
 POET AND NOVELIST, 
 IN THE HOPE THAT MANY PROSPEROUS DAYS 
 
 MAY BE 
 
 APPORTIONED TO A WRITER 
 
 WHOM THE LETTERS OF HIS LAND 
 
 SO ILL CAN SPARE. 
 
 2061;
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE world, for at least one man who lived in it, was 
 hung with black. This man's name was Hubert Throck- 
 morton. 
 
 He had taken the cars (a journey of about an hour or 
 so) from New York to Ponchatuk. In this part of Long 
 Island lay an estate of his, left him some years ago by his 
 late father. The season was early June, and Locustwood 
 (the name of Hubert's domain) was full of that peace, 
 dream, and tender surprise which marks our belated Amer- 
 ican spring. 
 
 There had been times, with Hubert, when he had told 
 himself that he detested Ponchatuk. Its name had always 
 seemed to him the most aggressive array of bristling con- 
 sonants. Then, too, the " South Side," as it is elliptically 
 called, had been apt to bore him past words, except during 
 the season of woodcock and quail. He hated fishing; it 
 had, he thought, too much mean and sly craft in it to make 
 a real sport of; and if you did not fish at Ponchatuk you 
 hardly dwelt there. Take away its blue-fish, Hubert had 
 long ago asserted, and the South Side had nothing left except 
 its deadly pancake flatness and its sanguinary mosquitoes. 
 
 He was in error, here ; it had its magnificent salty breezes, 
 rushing straight across Fire Island from the ocean. This 
 evening, at twilight, he felt one of them sweep his face and 
 throat like the firm, cool fingers of a woman. The spring 
 sky had got a translucent daffodil color, as though the sunk- 
 en sun had dropped into some awful cauldron of ruin, and 
 7
 
 8 DIVIDED 
 
 this wild gold light were flung upward from its giant confla- 
 gration. A few of the locust-trees about the big, solemn old 
 house were pale with vernal flowers ; as their boughs tossed 
 in the uncertain dusk they were not unlike hands that plead- 
 ed. Soon the stars began to come out in their sweet, reluc- 
 tant way, and dotted the darkening heaven with globules of 
 white fire. 
 
 Hubert continued to walk about the grounds. The hour 
 suited him, with its melancholy and mystery. Notwithstand- 
 ing the tender hint of promise that all nature gave, 
 there was a plaintiveness in the rise and fall of the wind, in 
 the loitering advent of gloom, in the glitter of dawning plan- 
 ets or far remoter orbs, that accorded with his own heart- 
 broken state. 
 
 That day had been the wedding-day of the woman whose 
 smile had once fed his being, whose glance had possessed 
 the power to dizzy him with a delicious vertigo, whose, 
 touch had held for him the electric energy no wisdom can 
 explain and no rhapsody can fitly portray. 
 
 She had married, that afternoon, a man whom she could not 
 have loved, and toward whom her matrimonial motive must 
 have been sordid in the extreme. A few weeks ago, if Hu- 
 bert had been told that Angela Laight would have stood at 
 the altar with any lover except himself, he would have felt in- 
 clined to rank such a prophecy at one with the mad babble 
 heard in cells of asylums. But fate had kept this poison- 
 tipped dart in her quiver, nevertheless, and had shot it at 
 him with a frightful abruptness. He had been like one who 
 at the same time is called on to stanch as best he may an 
 ugly and almost mortal wound and to realize that it has been 
 dealt him by the last person he has deemed capable of so 
 base an injury . . . Angela had never cared for him ? She 
 was incapable of a sincere passion ? To answer these ques- 
 tions negatively was like denying gravitation or affirming 
 that two and two make five. And yet he had been forced to 
 face the anguish and irony of such a concession. Even now,
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 9 
 
 two good weeks after it had been made known to him, the 
 novelty of this truth appalled him no less than its nudity. 
 
 Still, it had become, in another sense, fatally familiar. 
 Hubert saw into his future, and found that it had about the 
 same sort of perspective as a prairie for one who roams 
 there. His life seemed to him like a tangle of torn and 
 bleeding vine-tendrils. " What shall I do with my days ? " 
 he moaned in spirit to himself, again and again. 
 
 He and Angela had known each other just a year. Des- 
 tiny had perpetrated one of her most poignant sarcasms in 
 .making the occasion of the girl's marriage to Bleakly Voght 
 the anniversary of her first meeting with Hubert. Angela 
 had been the former school-mate and present friend of a 
 brilliant and admired young widow (in some rather far- 
 removed degree a kinswoman of Hubert's) named Mrs. 
 Prescott Averill. 
 
 At the dainty and ornate little Madison Avenue abode of 
 the latter lady, Miss Laight and Mr. Throckmorton had met 
 one another. There were those who liked to say that Alva 
 Averill was equal to almost any device for making Hubert 
 visit that pretty Madison Avenue house of hers oftener than 
 he already did. If such biting talk were based on fact, 
 Angela served as a most effective decoy. 
 
 " She's the sweetest and brightest of girls," Mrs. Averill 
 had told the man who had afterwards fallen passionately in 
 love with her expected guest. " Everybody loved her at 
 Madame Charnier's. She will be with me for a month, and 
 I do so hope you will help me to make things pleasant for 
 her." 
 
 These words had been spoken in Mrs. AverilPs drawing- 
 room, one evening, while the rose-tinted beams from a near 
 lamp fell across her lucent silken dress, and a fitful fire on 
 the low hearth flung flashes of luxurious revelation over 
 pictured screen, tiger-skin rug, or big email doisonnt'yax. 
 
 Hubert nodded amicably, and looked at his hostess. Being 
 a sort of distant cousin to her, and having received from her
 
 IO DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 many social courtesies, he had often asked himself why it 
 was that he cared for her so slightly. She had made a re- 
 pulsively cold-blooded marriage. He had always hated the 
 willingness that we find in some women to wed old men for 
 their money, and Alva's husband had been sixty if a day, 
 with red-lidded eyes, and a very senile rheumatism. 
 
 " I'll make things as pleasant as I can," he said. " I'll give 
 her a little Delmonico dinner, and a dance afterwards you 
 to receive for me, of course." 
 
 " That will be ever so nice," answered Mrs. Averill. Her 
 voice had grown lower as she went on speaking, and into it 
 had crept a husky note which some men thought fascinating. 
 " I often wonder, Hu," she said, " why you are so good to 
 me always. It isn't because we're a kind of cousin to one 
 another ; it can't be ; for there's Efne Van Dam, who's your 
 first cousin, and yet whom you don't care a button for." 
 
 " And I care about the same for you," Hubert told him- 
 self. As he glanced, then, at Mrs. Averill, this quick and 
 harsh mental response dealt its own covert composer a sting 
 of conscience. There she sat, with keen-tinted cushions 
 piled for vivid background on the small sofa that held her, 
 looking lithe and delicate as a lily. But the semblance 
 went no further ; in cheek and throat dwelt almost the olive 
 shade of a mulattress, and where her smooth, full arm lifted 
 a coil of snaky gold, its darkness of tinge turned nearly 
 swarthy. Her eyes had been pronounced, by those who win 
 repute as judges of such facial effects, too large for the vis- 
 age they beamed from. But they were eyes that could flood 
 their night-black pupils with a rich and gentle splendor, and 
 one whose sorceries found few men so callous as Hubert. 
 
 It all came to this : she was very much in love with him, 
 and! wanted him for her second husband ; while he saw in her 
 only a pretty woman who made him reproach himself be- 
 cause of the vague and causeless repulsion that she sometimes 
 inspired. Meanwhile he had no idea that she aimed to be 
 his wife ; he would have laughed loud disbelief at anybody
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 1 
 
 who had so affirmed to him. His friends had always said 
 that he did not know how to behave uncivilly toward a soul 
 on earth, and this was true past all doubt whenever it 
 became a question of his receiving civil treatment from 
 another. Indeed, the art of repelling people who approach 
 us in a spirit of amity is never easy for a large and fine 
 nature ; it is the time de laquais that can both bend the knee 
 and curl the lip with a most facile readiness. " If Hubert 
 had not been a rich man, a good-looking man, and a Throck- 
 morton as well," somebody had once said of him, " society 
 would never have forgiven him for being a poet." To which 
 the answer is possible, that if he had not been a poet he 
 would perhaps never have seen anything to chill him in 
 those sensuous ebon eyes of Mrs. Averill. 
 
 As it was, Angela Laight came to her friend's house, and 
 for about two months all went wholly to the young widow's 
 approbation. Hubert plainly admired Angela ; that was but 
 nature, his hostess would argue, since the girl was both 
 handsome and bright. She would serve her purpose admi- 
 rably, if she only proved, for a month or so longer, enough 
 of a mild drastic power to fix in Hubert's mind the habit of 
 going at brief intervals to her own little bandbox of a dwell- 
 ing. Angela could retire, then ; her services would have 
 grown needless. Poor pauper that she was, she could post 
 up into Ogdensburg again, where that shiftless father of 
 hers had plunged into some new scheme with a smell of the 
 worst risk about it. " I shall have been very good to her," 
 Mrs. Averill mused. "She can't complain; she had no 
 claim upon me ; and I shall have let her stay here in town 
 with me a small eternity." 
 
 Angela did not complain ; she would have held that a 
 most thankless part to play. But a few days before the time 
 of her departure she innocently made heaven and earth 
 crash together for Mrs. Averill by saying, while a little haze 
 of pink came hurrying along either pure-curved cheek to 
 either sweet blue-gray eye. 
 
 " Mr. Throckmorton asked me last evening, Alva, if I'd
 
 12 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 be his wife, and and though I was ever so surprised and 
 confused, and could hardly speak at all, still, I believe I I 
 said 'yes.' " 
 
 The ground seemed swinging like the sea under Mrs. 
 Averill, and she felt as if her standing upright were a mira- 
 acle. At the same time she had begun to say, in cool 
 tones : 
 
 " My dear Angela, I'm so pleased ! I half suspected it 
 about a week ago. It's an engagement that will charm 
 everybody." And then she kissed the girl on each cheek. 
 
 Till Angela left her house it more than once struck the 
 young widow that she might go mad and do some dire thing. 
 Her secret, her pain, her infinite chagrin, were not to be 
 told in the hearing of any mortal ; she sometimes caught 
 herself wishing that she were a Catholic and could pour all 
 into the ear of a confessor. Then she would" laugh with 
 scorn of such an impulse, though the laugh was one of those 
 terrible silences which the silence of a tortured soul can 
 alone echo back. This infatuate choice, in its eager trend, 
 meant the single sentiment of a woman who had never 
 known one gleam of similar feeling heretofore. She could 
 never have made the marriage for money and place that she 
 had made, if love like this had ruled her in the past. Since 
 her widowhood she had looked into the eyes of passion and 
 breathed its dizzying breath. In those other days she had 
 thought Hubert a merefloseur for literary distinction, a man 
 whose foreground (as the world pictorially saw it) was 
 assumed modesty, and whose sole background was the raw 
 flamboyance of wealth. One chance meeting had changed 
 her to the core. She had afterward read his two books of 
 verse and had told herself that they were factors in the al- 
 terative process. But this had already happened, and more- 
 over hers was not a temperament that the rhythm and lilt of 
 poetry could stir ; she had no nerve-cells that vibrated to 
 such impression ; life and she were bound together only by 
 the hard cords of prose. 
 
 Angela went back to Ogdensburg, where her father had
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 13 
 
 by this time discovered that his scheme of quick self-enrich- 
 ment was air, and had begun to plan another which would 
 be earth itself for impregnable solidity. The girl had 
 begged Hubert to wait a little while before he followed 
 her. Shame was at the root of this entreaty ; she invented 
 some excuse for the delay, but in reality it had been im- 
 posed because she was fearful lest affairs at home were 
 harshly embarrassed. This proved to be the case. Her 
 father, who had managed to educate his motherless child, 
 now lacked the means of decently supporting her. But he 
 had hopes ; he was going to redeem the failure of one enter- 
 prise by the splendid success of another. Angela smiled 
 drearily as she listened ; she wondered, while she recol- 
 lected his former hap-hazard career, how he had ever con- 
 trived to pay for her past tuition as a boarding pupil at 
 Madame Charnier's. But he had done so ; perhaps he 
 would contrive to get on his feet again now, for the twen- 
 tieth time since she had known him and filially loved him. 
 A sense of commingled dread and dilicacy forbade her from 
 writing Hubert the word that would bring him at hot speed 
 to Ogdensburg. A like sense made her conceal from her 
 father the fact that she was engaged to a very rich man in 
 New York. If she told him now, at this epoch of financial 
 jeopardy, what mortifying attitude of debtor toward Hubert 
 might he not swiftly assume ? " No, no," she said to her 
 own anxious heart. " I will wait until papa rights himself 
 once more. It would kill me to have Hubert come here 
 and find us almost at straits, like this, for our daily 
 food." 
 
 But even then she sent Mrs. Averill a full account of all 
 her sharp worriments. " I trust you in every way," her 
 letters ran. " Say nothing to him. We are getting along, 
 but oh, how different it all is from your sumptuous and 
 lovely little home ! " 
 
 Mrs. Averill sent her the kindest of responses, and a gift 
 of money as well. The latter came opportunely indeed.
 
 14 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " What a generous heart Alva has ! " her friend thought. 
 " Thank Heaven, I can repay her soon. There must be one, 
 of two ways, either papa's rise or my marriage." 
 
 But destiny had given the cards of Lottimer Laight a final 
 disastrous shuffle. Far from rising again, he sank as his 
 child had never seen him sink before. He had always had 
 the most exquisite manners ; he was the sort of man who 
 prides himself upon being a gentleman even while con- 
 cerned in transactions of plebeian dinginess ; it was lucky 
 for Angela that she did not know just how the expenses of 
 her schooling had been defrayed, but had accepted " papa " 
 during girlhood with a reverence remote from the faintest 
 heresy. She rarely saw him then without he had on a pair of 
 neat gloves and wore a flower or two in his button-hole. 
 But now it was quite different ; his dandyism had evapo- 
 rated ; his handsome face, with its gray, martial moustache 
 and hopeful blue eyes, had a drawn, scared look, as though 
 the ghosts of the three or four fortunes that he had made 
 away with were whispering uncanny rebukes in his mental 
 ear. One day he spoke to Angela in sharp rage, and 
 without a shred of reason for doing so. He walked from the 
 room muttering oddly to himself, and with the last glimpse 
 that she caught of his face her pain swiftly altered to alarm. 
 His brain was already rocking to its fall, and in a day or 
 two the collapse came. It brought a helpless imbecility 
 and not the more cruel curse of dementia that Angela had 
 been dreading. At the first tidings of the calamity Hubert 
 hurried to Ogdensburg. The shame of Angela was swal- 
 lowed up in ecstasy as they fell into one another's arms. 
 
 She told him everything, then, without a shadow of 
 reserve. She let him see to just how shabby a pass poverty 
 had brought her father and herself. Hubert, pierced with 
 disgust at what he rated as his own dulness, clamored for an 
 immediate marriage. Afterward, he fervently told Angela, 
 they two could watch beside her father together, and he
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 15 
 
 would have the right to offer that glad assistance which his 
 future wife now shrank from receiving. 
 
 But within the very hour that Hubert made his passionate 
 plea, one who had learned of his departure for Ogdensburg 
 and who had boldly decided on the step of following him, 
 presented herself before Angela. This, it need hardly be 
 recorded, was Alva Averill. The bewildered and hesitating 
 girl sprang toward her sudden guest with a cry of grateful 
 delight. Bewilderment and hesitation thenceforth ceased to 
 be her own concern. " What shall I do, Alva ? " she broke 
 forth forlornly. " Poor papa is dying, and yet it may take 
 him weeks, months, to die. Hubert is here, and begs me to 
 become his wife now in a few hours, or at best a day. 
 Ought I to consent ? Advise me ! I leave it all to you ! " 
 
 " Don't think of such a step," said Mrs. Averill. " Wait ; 
 I am here with you now. I will help you ; it's right enough 
 that I should. Wait, I say. Trust all to me. You and he 
 have a lifetime before you. Think only of your father for 
 the present. Settling a few unpaid bills can't mean much 
 for me, Angela ; why should it ? Besides, to appease your 
 sensitiveness, I'll jot down a full account, which you can 
 make good to me aferward if so disposed." 
 
 " Oh, Alva ! how sweet of you ! " 
 
 Angela's tears were flowing. She kissed the cheek of the 
 new-comer again and again. She was clinging about her 
 friend's neck in her gratitude, her misery. Mrs. Averill, 
 though responding by little pats of her gloved hands to these 
 caresses, had swept her gaze about the cheerless room. In 
 another minute she had summoned her maid, whom she had 
 brought with her and who stood in discreet retirement. 
 
 " Gilberte," she instructed, " go and tell the lady who 
 keeps this house to come to me. You understand." 
 
 Gilberte understood and obeyed. She was one of those 
 keen young Frenchwomen whose errors of service are few, 
 and who can speak English with a lucidity that transcends 
 idiom.
 
 1 6 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 A little later Mrs. Averill held a talk with the keeper of 
 the house. On one side, at least, it was a mollifying confer- 
 ence, and several new bank-notes crackled crisply before its 
 end. Still later, Hubert and his cousin spoke together. 
 During their converse, new wraps and pillows and other 
 means of bringing comfort to a sick-room were being carried 
 past them to the near -bedside of Mr. Laight. " No," Mrs. 
 Averill was saying, " her place, Hubert, is where her father 
 lies. You must bear that in mind. Remember, she has 
 friends in New York, whatever they might say here in this 
 dull little settlement. Let me prove her friend now ; you 
 can be that, and more, to-morrow whenever to-morrow 
 really comes." 
 
 Hubert acquiesced. He had never liked Alva Averill so 
 much as at this period, when he watched her, intelligent, 
 patient, aidful, apparently thinking of his Angela's weal, and 
 that alone. Mr. Laight lingered on between life and death ; 
 to-day he rallied a little ; the next day he was in the gloom 
 of deathly threat; again he would show signs of spurious 
 recovery. 
 
 It was now April. Mrs. Averill had remained with the 
 sick man and the two lovers, a model of gentle fortitude and 
 sympathy. Her purse was the support of Angela and the 
 dying man. When Hubert and his fiancee had their tender 
 meetings, her conduct was that which a very goddess of dis- 
 cretion might have approved. " I once believed that woman 
 had a cold heart," Hubert said to Angela ; " I see how I 
 wronged her. Friendship and self-sacrifice couldn't come 
 much closer to one another than they've come in her present 
 conduct." 
 
 " Indeed, no ! " Angela replied. " There was never a 
 more devoted friend than Alva is. To leave her charming 
 home and all her gay town-life for weeks, just that she may 
 be near me ! It is something to vibrate through one's entire 
 lifetime." 
 
 " It teaches me a lesson," said Hubert. " What is easier
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 17 
 
 than to misjudge our fellow-creatures, and how wantonly 
 we're forever doing it ! We are all like a lot of mountebanks 
 behind an illuminated sheet. The uncouth shadows we cast 
 there are the world's misrepresentations of us." 
 
 " But we in turn are a part of that very world," smiled 
 Angela. " Oh, yes ; it's give and take." 
 
 During early April Mr. Laight painlessly breathed his last. 
 He was a man who had outlived all except the coarser asso- 
 ciations ; he ranked with those untoward beings who appear 
 to drop out of life as deserters from an army, and to take 
 death in the form of punishment rather than reprieve. It 
 would have been idle to bury him from the huge city where 
 many a friend of his untarnished days would simply have had 
 the option of refusing to attend his funeral. So he was 
 quietly buried from Ogdensburg, and no doubt made more 
 than a single such contemporary privately grateful for being 
 spared the need of deciding whether to go or remain away. 
 
 As soon as the funeral was over, Angela and Mrs. Averill 
 returned to New York, accompanied by Hubert. A mar- 
 riage had been talked of for the last day of April. It would 
 of course be very quiet. Hubert was tenderly imperative 
 about waiting longer than the first of June at the furthest. 
 But, as it turned out, he had been forced to wait on indefi- 
 nitely, with an almost suicidal anguish at his heart in place 
 of the hope that once nestled there, like a viper coiling in 
 the same nest where a bird has brooded ! 
 
 During her former stay in New York with Mrs. Averill, 
 Angela had received an offer of marriage from Mr. Bleakly 
 Voght, a gentleman almost thrice her years. Bleakly 
 Voght had long ago been accepted as one whose bachelor- 
 hood was a crystal fact that resisted all the undermining 
 erosions of gossip. He was tall, gaunt, almost bloodlessly 
 pale, with a beetling nose, a pair of small, restless gray 
 eyes, and a temper of notorious violence. But the attribute 
 just named would flash and flare like the ebullitions of a 
 hidden fire that only now and then broke bounds. He
 
 I S DIVIDED LIVES, 
 
 could be suave enough when he chose, and he chose very 
 often. Notwithstanding his ugliness, which was distinct, he 
 had the repute of a man who could exert at will strong fasci- 
 nation over women. It had been affirmed of him that his 
 unhappy exterior had formed his ablest means of amatory 
 attack ; he was understood to have achieved the adroitest of 
 his memorable conquests chiefly through the tactics of sur- 
 prise. Excessively rich, and with a name that had in its 
 very sound the memory of past patrician leadership, he fre- 
 quented circles where caste throve at a degree of the hardi- 
 est insolence, feared by some people, truckled to by others, 
 disliked by many, and treated deferentially by all. Those 
 who hated him with the most acute zest envied the gloss and 
 chic of his brougham ; those who resented most stoutly the 
 autocracy and assumption of his bearing recognized the 
 dainty excellence of his dinners. We would say of a Lon- 
 don man placed as Voght was that he belonged to all the 
 best clubs ; but in New York the best clubs mean only two 
 or three, and to these he not only belonged but was a gov- 
 ernor of one of them. In every sense a spoiled child of 
 fortune, he bore himself at nearly all times with imperious 
 caprice. If he had been less the slave of codes he might 
 have tried to set loud and quaint fashions in attire ; but con- 
 ventionalism had him in too firm a grip for that. As it was, 
 he dressed ill enough to have been the object of his tailor's 
 clandestine hate ; you never saw his lank figure that its 
 angles were not accentuated by misfits ; even his shirt-front, 
 when he was clad for the evening, made a salient, untidy 
 bulge ; a feminine critic of him had once freezingly said that 
 there was comfort in knowing he drew the line at cleanli- 
 ness. Years ago he had persuaded himself that he was a 
 parti who could marry just as he pleased, and now, in the 
 grayness of declining lustihood, he preserved the same con- 
 viction. It was by no means a baseless one. Despite cer- 
 tain ugly tales of his irascibility, and others that bore upon
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. \ g 
 
 immoral escapades both here and in Europe, he remained a 
 popular favorite of secure repute for wit, tact, and the art of 
 amusing. 
 
 Only a little while before he had become acquainted with 
 Angela it had been more than whispered that he might one 
 day wed Mrs. Averill. This report had never possessed the 
 least foundation. Mrs. Averill, with her copious income 
 and her enviable visiting-book, would as soon have thought 
 of marrying her footman as Bleakly Voght. She knew 
 very well, however, that he would still have been deemed a 
 judicious match for any woman, and when he told her, with 
 anger making him rather ludicrous than pitiable, that 
 Angela Laight had refused him, she was rendered speech- 
 less by the girl's incredible folly. There had always been 
 something about Angela that had caused her friend to seem 
 tiresomely cloud-wrapped, idealistic, and puritaine. But 
 that Lottimer Laight's daughter should have refused a hus- 
 band like Bleakly Voght passed Mrs. Averill's understand- 
 ing. She understood a short while after, however, and but 
 too clearly. 
 
 When Angela's engagement to Hubert Throckmorton 
 was announced, Bleakly Voght's dismay and humiliation 
 were no less intense than juvenile. He at once sailed for 
 Europe, after having held an interview with Mrs. Averill 
 that showed him in hues as comic as they were contempt- 
 ible. He had always despised Hubert, to whom he would 
 allude as "that poet," quite in a manner which indicated 
 that he regarded poet and fool as interchangeable terms. 
 And now that the girl he had honored by the offer of his 
 hand should have refused him for a sentimental scribbler 
 like this, who might, truly enough, be a few years younger 
 than himself, but who had not so big a fortune by at least a 
 million of dollars it transcended credence ! 
 
 The coarse and hard materialism of the man never made 
 a fitter background for his vanity than when he said to Mrs. 
 Averill, in prolonged splenetic snarl :
 
 20 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " Why, confound it, I struggled against offering myself to 
 the girl, and only gave in because I thought it would be mean 
 of me to punish her for faults that she hadn't committed. 
 Still, family's family, and blood's blood. And I'm . . ." He 
 shut both eyes for an instant and shook his head vehe- 
 mently with a most unbecoming look of disgust and annoy- 
 ance ... "I 'm Bleakly Voght." 
 
 "Of course you are," said Mrs. Averill, abettingly. 
 " You've a right to feel proud. I'm amazed at Angela. 
 Still, you know how unambitious a girl will now and then sur- 
 prise one by showing herself. Her eyes might yet be opened 
 to the really splendid position you will give her." 
 
 Voght assumed a milder look. There was no kind of per- 
 sonal flattery that he found obnoxious. You could have told 
 him that his nose was ancient Greek instead of mediaeval 
 Gothic, and he would have suspected neither satire nor men- 
 dacity. Mrs. Averill was well aware of this foible : to play 
 upon it might not be at all difficult. 
 
 " I don't wish her to marry me for whom I am, but for 
 what I am," he still tartly grumbled. " And her engage- 
 ment's on, now, with the verse-maker. No, I'd better sail for 
 Europe and try to forget the cut she's given me. If it 
 hadn't come from the daughter of Lottimer Laight if it 
 had come from a woman more des notres, you understand 
 I might have stood it better." 
 
 He carried himself off to Europe without so much as a 
 good-bye to Angela. What followed for quite a long while 
 after that has already been chronicled. It chanced that on 
 her return with Angela from Ogdensburg, Mrs. Averill made 
 an immediate discovery which did not by any means annoy 
 her. They learned that Bleakly Voght had been among the 
 recent arrivals from Europe. 
 
 ' Shall I send for him ? ' she thought, one evening, while 
 seated in the first of her two pretty little drawing-rooms and 
 hearing the low murmurs of the lovers float to her from be- 
 yond, through half-drawn tapestries. ' He may not come if I
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 21 
 
 do not send. And I want to see him, somehow, before ..." 
 Even her musings became indefinite, just here. There 
 seemed no reason why she should either send for Bleakly 
 Voght or desire to see him before Angela and Hubert were 
 made one. She knew that any effort on Voght's part to 
 break their engagement would be futile in the extreme. 
 And she herself, to put the matter with all daring bluntness 
 amid the secrecy of her own soul what lie could she tell 
 that would prove powerful enough really to be separative 
 in its consequences ? 
 
 She was a woman who had thus far chosen what is termed 
 the safe path. No one could point to any gross duplicity 
 or treachery of hers ; no one could accuse her of either rank 
 imprudence or flimsy peccadillo. But her character had al- 
 ways been of the sort that would feebly resist any potent 
 stress of temptation ; the medium of such influence would 
 have been a submissive one. Self had for years lifted its 
 head, like that of a little household Lar, somewhere in the 
 deepest recesses of her nature, and just how reverent a cult 
 the small god received she alone could have told you. 
 
 On the following day, without the least omen to have 
 warned her of its approach, she found herself confronted by 
 a severe temptation. So suddenly did this event make itself 
 and its trenchant significance felt to her, that when all was 
 over and past she had something of the same sensation 
 which might visit some wayfarer stricken by a terrible 
 tempest, who raises himself from the spot whereon it has 
 flung him, and watches it disappear with wrack and flash 
 and rumble from the heaven over which its wrath has so 
 fleetly swept.
 
 II. 
 
 ANGELA came buoyantly into the house, on the afternoon 
 of this same day. ' She was in deep mourning for her father, 
 and the dark garb she wore meant no mere nominal tribute, 
 either ; all the faults of Lottimer Laight had not weakened 
 her filial fondness. And yet, how can the gloom of death 
 prevail, though it should fight with battalions of shadows, 
 against the sunshine of youth and love ? Angela was happy 
 in a way just as unreasoning as that mood of the boughs 
 which makes them bud : she could no more have explained 
 to you why the future spread before her one shining vista of 
 welcome than a stream in the spring could declare its 
 reason for unsheathing all its dulcet babble of trebles from 
 their winter bonds of ice. 
 
 No hint of ambitious feeling entered into the love that she 
 bore Hubert. It was a sentiment founded upon tenets that 
 she had long held, and to which, as she had told a few of 
 her best friends in the past, she would always most firmly 
 cling. " The man whom I marry," she had said, " must win 
 my respect for him in two ways : first, morally, and second, 
 mentally. I want to admire his character as noble and un- 
 stained, and to see in his intellect the superior of my own. 
 And until I have done both I can never feel as if I were 
 acting rightly even to love him, apart from consenting to be- 
 come his wife." 
 
 It must be granted that a speech like this has an ex- 
 tremely priggish sound. Several times Angela had been 
 punished by the sarcastic replies of her school-mates after 
 she had thus expressed herself ; and once a truly heartless 
 reference was made to the dingy reputation of her father, 
 that threw her into a paroxysm of half-rageful tears. Oddly 
 22
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 23 
 
 enough, that very father had been the origin of her rather 
 grandiose girlish resolve. There are no parents who con- 
 trive to shine so brilliantly in precept and maxim before 
 their children as those with careers that have shown a re- 
 verse of rectitude. 
 
 But Angela had persevered in the worship of her lofty 
 matrimonial ideal. It is not maintained that she would 
 have refused to marry Hubert if he had failed to conform 
 with it. She had been in love with Hubert some time be- 
 fore he proposed to her, and we know how fierce an icono- 
 clast of theories young love may become. But in spite of 
 the appeal to fancy and imagination by which fashion with 
 its pomps and pleasures will nearly always address one of 
 her impressionable age, she had felt a shudder as involun- 
 tary as it was covert while telling Bleakly Voght that she 
 could not be his wife. Hubert stood to her as the realiza- 
 tion of all her most poetic previous visions. He was a poet 
 himself, and a little while after meeting him she had come 
 very close to the shedding of tears over some of his pub- 
 lished verses. Possibly she had been that worst of critics, a 
 person with a liking for the author of the work which asks 
 judgment. No doubt her verdict upon the man and his 
 poetry had been alike simultaneous and partisan. But she 
 would not for an instant have admitted this, and her bright 
 native intelligence was surely a fair reason why she should 
 have resented any such sweeping charge. 
 
 She was deeply happy to-day. She was indeed so happy 
 that self-reproach hurt and irked her, now and then, in her 
 more meditative moments. It seemed, at these times, as if 
 the exhilaration that was born of her coming marriage 
 pressed with an insolent profanity upon the bereavement 
 that was still so fresh amid experience. She could not 
 see her father's image in the dusky framework that now 
 appeared its rightful surrounding. Joy shed too strong a 
 light upon it ; anticipation opposed retrospect ; grief was 
 driven from its urn and willow, for the first had become a
 
 24 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 little bubbling fount of hope, and the last had begun to lose 
 its funereal droop, as though at any minute some miracle of 
 magic might change it into a bush, burning with half-opened 
 rose-buds. 
 
 She passed upstairs through the modish and tasteful hall, 
 towards her own apartments. Just as she reached the up^r 
 landing of the staircase, a door opened and Mrs. Averill 
 came out upon the second hall. A somewhat ill-dressed 
 woman at once followed her, leading a little child. The 
 woman had a pale, tired, work-a-day sort of face, but she did 
 not look as if she were a month older than Mrs. Averill her- 
 self. She had been pretty once, as you could tell at a 
 glance ; but pain, or perhaps toil, had sharpened her features 
 and sunken her cheeks, while the querulous, worried light in 
 her dark eyes bore further proof of a lot in which peace did 
 not abide. The child whose hand clung to hers was not 
 more than three years old ; she had no beauty beyond that 
 which childhood may nearly always be said to wear, and in 
 the wide blue gaze of her uplifted eyes dwelt that innocence 
 which seems either to convey the most gently magnificent 
 frankness or else to hide the very secret of the Sphinx. 
 
 Angela loved children. " What great big eyes ! " she said 
 playfully to the little girl, having passed her hostess and dear 
 friend with a nod and a smile. And then she paused in 
 front of the tiny creature. " Oh , what big eyes !" she 
 went on, with that sweet camaraderie which only those who 
 are the born devotees of children know how to use toward 
 them. 
 
 "My dear Angela ! " exclaimed Mrs. Averill, slipping in a 
 trice between herself and the child, "please don't ! I I 
 can't let you ! " Then she broke into a slight hysteric sort 
 of laugh and pushed the girl further along the hall, away 
 from both the woman and her child. 
 
 Angela's glance swept Mrs. AveriU's face. She saw 
 that it was agitated. " Why, Alva ! " she broke forth, and
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 2$ 
 
 caught her friend's wrist, looking at her intently. But still 
 no ray of suspicion had pierced Angela's mind. 
 
 " Will you go into my dressing-room, dear, and and 
 wait there for me a few minutes ? " Mrs. Averill asked. Her 
 voice appeared to be full of tremors. The door was near at 
 hand and she unclosed it while she thus spoke, and then 
 motioned for Angela to enter. The girl did so ; but, as she 
 crossed the threshold she half turned toward Mrs. Averill. 
 
 " I'll wait for you here, of course, Alva. But you seem as 
 if something dreadful had happened." 
 
 " Something dreadful has happened," was the reply. 
 
 " Oh, Alva ! Tell me ! Not Hubert ! You don't 
 mean " 
 
 " I mean that he is alive, and well enough. Nothing has 
 happened to him, except " 
 
 " Except ! " the alarmed girl once more shot in. 
 
 " That woman has come here with her child, Angela. 
 She has found out that you and I are friends. She came to 
 tell me that she . . . that the child . . . But no ; I'll not 
 say another syllable on the subject until I've talked a little 
 more with her. Pray keep inside this room, dear, and wait 
 till I rejoin you here ; I'll do so as soon as I possibly can." 
 
 Left alone, Angela sank into a chair, and wondered how 
 sudden attacks of madness came on, and whether Mrs. 
 Averill were not incontestably mad, and whether she her- 
 self ought not to take other measures than these of a pas- 
 sive kind. To doubt Hubert was like doubting the sun in 
 heaven . . . Still, what was this chilly, creeping sensation 
 in the region of her heart ? Might such a horrid thing, after 
 all, be true ? No, no ! A million noes ! . . And yet a 
 pretty little clock on the mantel, with two gilt cupids that 
 were quarrelling for the possession of time's hour-glass, 
 began to tick : " Might it be true ? Might it ? Might it ? " till 
 Angela was on the verge, three or four times, of rushing 
 from the room in which Mrs. Averill had left her. 
 
 A drop of ink will cloud a gobletful of the most crystalline
 
 26 DIVIDED LIVES, 
 
 water. As yet Angela had heard scarcely anything against 
 the man she loved ; but what she did hear had been an in- 
 nuendo just keen and subtle enough to waken the dormant 
 devil that has its lair deep down in every lover's heart. 
 
 At last Mrs. Averill came back. Her olive face was a 
 picture of misery, and for a little while all but the most 
 dejointed speech appeared to fail her. 
 
 " It it is true, my poor Angela 1 " were the first cred- 
 itably coherent words that she spoke. " She came here in 
 the hope that I would do something to prevent the marriage 
 between you and Hubert." 
 
 " Ah that was it ? " murmured Angela, who had grown 
 deathly white to her lips. 
 
 " Yes. She thinks he . . he owes marriage to her . . on the 
 child's account, you know, if not for any other reason. She 
 does not seem at all like a hardened person. I dare say 
 that circumstance has had a great deal to do with her sin- 
 ful behavior. She says that her father, whom she loved 
 dearly, was lost at sea while she needed his care and sup- 
 port, and that she never remembers having had a mother. 
 Oh, Angela, it looks as though he were far more blamable 
 than she. Forgive me for saying that, my dear, but " 
 
 " Forgive you ? " cried Angela, with a flash from the blue- 
 gray eyes that now seemed to burn black because of her 
 great pallor. " Why should I have any cause to forgive you, 
 Alva ? " A shudder passed through her frame as she hur- 
 ried on : " I I feel as if there were no power in my heart 
 to do anything but despise him" She sank into a chair 
 after thus speaking ; both hands fell at her sides and hung 
 down as if quite effortless. Her mouth quivered once or 
 twice, but her fixed eyes gathered no tears ; they grew 
 glassy instead, and this change in them, blending with her 
 complete absence of color, gave her the look of one who 
 might at any instant either swoon or die. 
 
 " Angela," said Mrs. Averill, stooping over her, " will 
 you not see this woman ? "
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 2? 
 
 " No," she answered, with a slight negative motion of the 
 head. " No, you have seen her. That is enough." 
 
 41 But, Angela," urged her companion, " it Will be best for 
 you to speak with her, you know, and make perfectly sure 
 that what she says is true." 
 
 The girl rose, then, and a new energy revealed itself in 
 her manner. " You are right," she cried. " What a fool I 
 have been ! This woman may have lied in the most horri- 
 ble way ; we will go to her, Alva. I have heard of such 
 impostors before now ; have not you ? " 
 
 " Yes. But she is not " Here Mrs. Averill checked 
 herself. 
 
 A great sigh left the other. " I see. You believe that 
 she tells the truth." 
 
 The two were standing close together, now. Mrs. 
 Averill had put one arm round Angela's waist. Suddenly 
 she drew it away and seemed searching for something in 
 the pocket of her dress. " Here " she said, " is a likeness of 
 him which the poor creature had hidden in her bosom. 
 You see, it is no proof that she is not an impostor ; it is 
 only a rather old-fashioned locket, with a common photo- 
 graph set behind the inside glass. But she did not even 
 produce it until I had asked her whether she could give me 
 any real evidence Of her assertions." 
 
 Angela scanned for a moment what the locket contained, 
 and then handed it back to Mrs. Averill. Her tones were 
 placid, but they breathed of despair. " No one should be 
 convicted on such proof as this," she said. And now her 
 voice slightly broke, her lips trembled, her head drooped. 
 " If if the woman could show a letter from him," she 
 faltered. 
 
 "A letter ?" replied Mrs. Averill. "She has a package 
 of them, or says that she has." 
 
 Angela stifled a sob. They stood looking at one another 
 for a few seconds ; Mrs. Averill's eyes, as the half-distracted 
 girl met them, seemed to brim with an exquisite sympathy.
 
 28 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " Oh, Aiva," came the abrupt cry, " if you would get her 
 to show you these letters, and and then judge for yourself ! 
 Will you do this much more to serve me, Alva ? you, who 
 have done so much already ? " 
 
 " I will do anything to serve you, my dear ! " exclaimed 
 Mrs. Averill. " But suppose I go to this woman's home 
 and see those letters ? Unless you have seen them with 
 your own eyes, how can you feel certain I have not been in 
 error ? I know that you trust me, and yet . . ." 
 
 " I trust you in all things ! " broke from Angela ; and she 
 threw both arms about the neck of her friend. " Should I 
 presume not to trust you after all that I owe you ? all that 
 you have done for me ? " 
 
 " Hush, darling ! that was nothing." 
 
 " It was devotion I should despise myself if I forgot ! 
 And this will be devotion just as great, if you will only con- 
 sent to show it." 
 
 " There is none, Angela, that I would not show, provided I 
 had the power." 
 
 " Bless you for saying so, Alva ! . . . I leave all to you. 
 The the thought of going coldly to work, myself, and 
 finding him guilty is so horrible a. one ! It will be bad 
 enough to know it hereafter as perhaps I must ! . ." 
 
 She did know it, in about two hours from then. She had 
 promised Mrs. Averill that she would under no conditions 
 permit Hubert to see her if he should present himself while 
 her friend was away. But Hubert did not present himself 
 hat afternoon ; he was looking forward to a long, divine 
 tete-ci-tete in the evening. 
 
 When he did make his appearance at Mrs. A ve rill's door, 
 he was told that neither this lady nor Miss Laight was at 
 home. " Not at home ! " he repeated, in pained amazement 
 to the footman who had opened the door. " And no word 
 was left for me if I called ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 Wanting to ask more questions, but fearing lest he might
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 2 9 
 
 appear ridiculously love-sick to the servant, he took his 
 departure. 
 
 That same evening, on his return home, he found a letter 
 from Angela awaiting him. He reeled as he read it. It 
 broke their engagement, without giving the least reason for 
 such action. It desired him never willingly to look on her 
 face again, as she meant never willingly to look on his. 
 She wished him all happiness hereafter. She brought no 
 accusation against him. It was true, the change in her had 
 been a sudden one ; but on that account it was none the 
 less radical. All was at an end. She begged him to 
 remember this fact, and not permit the faintest doubt to 
 disturb his complete certainty of it. 
 
 There are no such fools as lovers. If so sweeping and 
 dumfounding a letter had been sent him in relation to any 
 other question of his daily existence except that most vital 
 one of his love for Angela Laight, Hubert would have 
 striven to probe and dissipate the mystery by every common- 
 sense means in his scope of search. But now he passed a 
 night of wakeful agony and arose with only a vague inten- 
 tion of making direct, stringent appeal to her who had 
 thus flung so abrupt and black a shadow across his life. 
 
 He compromised with his own bleeding pride, that next 
 morning, and went again to the Madison Avenue house, 
 asking for Mrs. .Averill. 
 
 She was at home. " My unhappy Hubert," she said, as 
 she entered the room where he waited for her. 
 
 "You you know, then, about that letter?" he stam- 
 mered, pale and forlorn of mien. 
 
 "Yes." She nodded several times in quick succession, 
 gazing down at the carpet. Then she lifted her eyes, and 
 it seemed to him that their dusk pupils (which he had once 
 thought devoid of all the softer feminine beams) were melt- 
 ing with pitiful emotion. 
 
 " Angela told me she had written you," came the next 
 words.
 
 3O DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 11 Ah ! she told you ? " he sharply inquired. 
 '"Yes." 
 
 " Pray, did she tell you the monstrous treachery that letter 
 implied ? " 
 
 Alva Averill toyed with one of the front buttons of a 
 dark-blue cloth dress that fitted her neat, svelte figure like a 
 glove. " I wonder if you ever thought you men are so 
 stupid about thinking things, Hubert, where it concerns a 
 woman you're fond of that Angela is ... ambitious." 
 
 " Ambitious ! " 
 
 She smiled, very sadly, yet with a smile full enough to 
 show the white glisten of her even teeth. " My dear Hu- 
 bert, I suppose you know that Bleakly Voght cared for her." 
 
 " Bleakly Voght ! Yes well, and if he did, or does ? " 
 
 " Ah, that is just it ! He not only did, but does. He's 
 back from Europe, and ..." 
 
 " My God ! Alva, you don't mean ? " 
 
 Mrs. Averill gave a short, melancholy laugh. " I mean," 
 she said, " that he's back from Europe." 
 
 "And . . and . . it's tie?" Hubert gasped, recoiling, 
 with his face full of horror. 
 
 Mrs. Averill laughed again this time with a great gentle- 
 ness and an equally great sombreness. " Bleakly Voght is 
 a man who has always been said to possess a curious influ- 
 ence over women . . . And then he is an exceeedingly 
 rich man . . a good deal richer than you are, Hubert . . 
 Don't ask me for the real facts in the case ; I positively do 
 not know them. But he has been here to see Angela since 
 his return ..." 
 
 " He has been here ! " 
 
 " Yes two or three times. I think three times in all 
 Why, Hubert, you're ill ! " 
 
 " No, no," he said. 
 
 He had staggered backward and almost fallen into an 
 arm-chair just behind him. He was wiping from his color- 
 less face a few drops of sweat that had gathered there.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 3 I 
 
 In another second, however, he had sprung to his feet 
 again. 
 
 "I'm all right, Alva it's nothing," he exclaimed, not 
 knowing what a queer ring his voice had. " Bleakly Voght, 
 eh ? It's nothing . . . I'm quite myself, now. A shock, 
 you know a sharp shock . . We men have our nerves, at 
 times, just as you women have . . . ." And then he laughed 
 shortly. If the laugh had been a wild cry of grief, it would 
 have had far less odd a sound. 
 
 A little while after that he had left the house and had 
 never sought again to see Angela. He had felt no surprise 
 on learning that she would marry Bleakly Voght. Mrs. 
 Averill had prepared him for such tidings. They got 
 abroad, and two or three of his friends came to him with 
 eyes grown saucer-like from consternation. In the re- 
 pressed delirium of that woful week, Hubert could ill pre- 
 vent himself from insulting replies. " Trap de zele, mon 
 vieux" he recalled murmuring on one occasion ; and as he 
 afterward walked away, no doubt the stern, strained look 
 that he wore accentuated his irony. For seven days all 
 sorts of mad ideas transiently ruled him. One was to find 
 a means of forcing Voght into a duel ; another was to sting 
 his face with a horsewhip in the public street ; and still an- 
 other was even savage enough to take the form of dreaming 
 about a double assassination. But after all, in spite of his 
 excessive suffering, Hubert was a true child of his century ; 
 and that has not only given crime a scientific explanation, 
 but has vulgarized it lamentably. 
 
 When the news of the marriage came to him, he experi- 
 enced a certain relief. It was the same sensation as that 
 which comes to mourners when their dead has been placed 
 under ground, and all excitement and suspense have given 
 place to the dreary anticipation of going home and staring 
 at an empty chair.
 
 32 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 Hubert, as we know, had taken the train for Ponchatuk. 
 His house there was a homestead, rambling, spacious, and 
 American enough to have been built years ago in the heart 
 of New England, with her most beauteous hills at either 
 hand, instead of here on the ugliest portion of a huge sand- 
 bank called Long Island. Still, on the lawns of breezy- 
 Locustwood, twilight deepened into night with a lovely ten- 
 derness of gradation. When the stars had filled the 
 heavens with their white throngs, Hubert looked up at them, 
 and the thought came to him of what a mite our one little 
 world is, and what lesser mites are we that fret and strut 
 upon it. How did it matter to some of those gigantic and 
 glorious creatures who may inhabit the splendid continents 
 of Saturn, whether or no a particular female atom here on 
 earth had jilted a second male atom for a third that had 
 more mean, wee dollars to pride itself on ? Feeling the poe- 
 try wake and stir in his heart, he wondered if he would ever 
 write another line while he lived. Then he answered his 
 own surmise with a no, that seemed solemn enough to be 
 the sound of all mortal anguish since men began. And 
 then, unconscious of his own egotism, even while he had 
 just been bowing his spirit before the enormity of the infi- 
 nite, he passed indoors with loitering steps and lowered 
 head. 
 
 Some letters, newly-arrived by a late mail, were on a table 
 in the hall. He had given orders that his letters should be 
 sent here ; and now, as he stood and glanced at them, he 
 had not the energy to do more than pass his eye over their 
 superscriptions. Just above the table gleamed a portrait of 
 his dead father ; at this moment he chanced to lift his head 
 and meet the well-remembered face, gazing out at him 
 through mellow lamplight from the canvas on which a 
 skilled artist had painted it with Rembrandtesque power; 
 there seemed to him an expression of earnest, brooding so- 
 licitude on those familiar features ; he started backward al-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 33 
 
 most in awe and dismay. Another instant had told him that 
 his impression had merely been wrought by some unusual 
 effect of the light. And yet a hundred times he had seen 
 his loved father look at him just like that ! 
 
 " Not to mind who has written one's letters to one," shot 
 through his thought, " may mean the beginning of some 
 frightful mental apathy. . . . Well, I don't care. . . . Let it 
 come ! Dear old father ! .... he looked at me, there, as 
 if he meant to reproach me. Reproach me ? For what ? 
 Because I think my life is ended ? It is ended. I've noth- 
 ing more to live for nothing ! " 
 
 He glanced again at the portrait. Its eyes (following his 
 own as the eyes of portraits do when you observe them with 
 attention) seemed to indicate the letters on the table just 
 below it. Hubert glanced a second time over his corre- 
 spondence, and discovered that one of the envelopes bore 
 every sign of containing a telegram. He opened it and 
 read, with a thrill of sharper concern than he had believed 
 it possible for him to feel, these few yet pregnant lines : 
 
 " NEW YORK, May, 18 . 
 
 " Mrs. Averill, my mistress, was thrown from her carriage 
 while driving in the Park this afternoon, and very danger- 
 ously hurt. The doctors do not think she can live more 
 than a day or two. She has asked several times to see you, 
 and as if there were something on her mind that she wanted 
 to have you know. Please try and get to her at once. 
 
 " DELIA LAMB." 
 
 There was a train that left Ponchatuk for New York at 
 nine o'clock that evening. Hubert had just time to catch 
 it. This telegram from the servant of Mrs. Averill had 
 affected him in the most unforeseen way. It had swept a 
 galvanic current through his torpor, and quickened indiffer- 
 ence into vivacity. After all, there was one person in the 
 world whose welfare or misfortune interested him. He had 
 learned of late to look on Alva Averill as the salt of the 
 3
 
 34 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 earth. Angela's perfidy could not make him forget the 
 devotion of her friend. In journeying from a gay metrop- 
 olis where all sort of diversion was at her command, to help 
 in vigils at the side of her old school-mate's dying father, 
 had been a deed of the sweetest generosity. And to think 
 that this good, true woman lay at the door of death, vvhife 
 she who had so steeped herself in the foulest guile might 
 perhaps live on for years without a hint of disaster ! It was 
 one of destiny's many hideous injustices! 
 
 Hubert did not reach the Madison Avenue house until 
 about eleven o'clock that night. Delia Lamb, an elderly 
 woman, with gray streaks in her hair and a sedulous, respon- 
 sible demeanor, met him immediately. 
 
 " She's very low, sir," said Delia. " It's her spine that 
 was hurt, and the doctors are afraid she may go off any 
 minute." 
 
 Hubert repressed a shudder. " Is she in much pain ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " None, sir. She's just very weak that's all." 
 
 " Thank God she doesn't suffer ! The horses took fright, 
 I suppose." 
 
 " Yes, sir. She was thrown out after they'd gone over 
 two miles. They picked her up near the Webster statue, 
 The poor coachman was killed, sir." 
 
 " Killed ! " 
 
 "Yes, sir; and the footman, at his side on the box, 
 escaped without a scratch. When they raised Mrs. Averill 
 they thought she was dead ; but before they got her home 
 she'd come to." 
 
 " And you say that the doctors give no hope ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, sir none." 
 
 ' Why the devil,' thought Hubert, ' does this woman talk 
 about so horrid a calamity without shedding a tear ? It 
 doesn't seem as if she had human feelings. .And she's lived 
 with Alva for a century or so.' 
 
 Delia Lamb had indeed been for a long time in the ser
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 35 
 
 vice of Mrs. Averill; She had never been thought a cold 
 woman ; and yet so far she had not shown a trace of any 
 strong sorrow since the calamity had occurred. 
 
 Hubert soon saw one of the physicians and learned from 
 him that there need be no postponement of the interview 
 which his kinswoman desired to hold. She might not live 
 till morning, and she might linger on for a day or so ; but 
 her recovery was impossible, her speedy death certain. 
 Already she lay quite paralyzed from the waist clown. Still, 
 her mind was clear as it had ever been, and since it had 
 become set on holding a talk with Hubert, opposition to 
 such a plan would be almost brutality. 
 
 Shortly after his talk with the physician, Hubert was 
 shown into the chamber where Mrs. Averill lay. It was fiul 
 of a soft, brooding light, high enough for him to discern how 
 rich and effective were its appointments. The olive-tinted 
 face that was visible on one of the pillows of the bed made 
 his nerves tingle as he regarded it. Naturally it was 
 untouched by the faintest ravage of emaciation, and yet it 
 bore the plain and ghastly stamp of death. 
 
 "You came," she said, as Hubert dropped into a chair at 
 her bedside. Her voice was feeble, and keyed so unchar- 
 acteristically that if he had not known it was she who spoke, 
 he would not even have dreamed it to be hers. " You 
 came," she repeated, while he stooped over one of her hands 
 and fondled and kissed it. Then, to his astonishment, she 
 drew the hand away and slipped it beneath the coverlid. 
 " They told me," she now proceeded, " that you had gone 
 out of town. I suspected that you had gone down there to 
 the South Side. I made her telegraph you. I was right, 
 wasn't I ? " 
 
 " Yes," Hubert said. He let a slight pause ensue. " I'm 
 so glad, Alva," he presently ventured, " that you are not in 
 any pain." 
 
 " No ; I don't suffer at all. I can only move my hands, 
 and yet I have no restless feeling. I don't want to do any-
 
 36 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 thing but just lie still like this. It's lucky, isn't it ? " And 
 she smiled, almost in the same way that he had seen her 
 smile numberless times before now. 
 
 " My poor Alva ! " he said ; and here he put forth his 
 hand as if to take her own again ; but she would not give it 
 him, keeping it hidden. 
 
 " Hubert," she began, with her black eyes full on his 
 face, " I'm afraid you will not pity me when you've heard 
 what I sent for you that I might . . . confess." 
 
 " Confess ? " he iterated. " Ah, my dear Alva, you've 
 nothing to confess except good deeds ! " 
 
 "Have I not?" She closed her eyes, and he saw her 
 joined lips tighten. In another minute she was looking at 
 him again. 
 
 " ' Confess' is the only right word," she said. " I've 
 wronged you horribly, Hubert. I did the most dastardly 
 thing to you. If I were a man, alive and well, instead of a 
 woman with only a little while to live, I believe you would 
 try to kill me when you have heard the whole truth." 
 
 ' She is raving/ he thought, as he sat and watched her. 
 ' Poor Alva ! what a forlorn end of a gay, innocent, unsullied 
 life like hers ! ' 
 
 But she continued speaking, and a great horror seemed 
 slowly turning his blood to ice as he listened.
 
 III. 
 
 " HUBERT," this dying woman said, " I am to blame for all 
 that Angela Laight did. Yes, I. One day, not long since, 
 a woman with a child came to me. She had heard some tale 
 about my being on the verge of marrying Bleakly Voght. 
 After I had told her that the report was wholly false she 
 burst into tears, and declared to me what I had already felt 
 almost sure of that Bleakly Voght was the father of her 
 child. He had sworn to marry her and had not done so. 
 The woman begged that I would force him to make her this 
 
 long-promised reparation That same day Angela 
 
 Laight and my strange visitor chanced to meet in one of the 
 halls here. I was tempted, and I committed a wicked 
 crime. I told Angela that the child was yours, that the 
 woman had been your paramour. I told her this, and she 
 believed it. But she wanted further proof, and I affected to 
 want it as well. She played into my hands by asking me to 
 get such proof, and assuring me that she would think it a 
 kind service if I did. This made my task of deception 
 strangely easy. Angela and you, between you, put the 
 whole wicked game into my own hands. I had let a devilish 
 impulse rule me, and when I thought, just afterward, of how 
 detection would be almost sure to follow my act of madness, 
 I made up my mind that I would hurry off to Europe as 
 soon as exposure came, and pass the remainder of my life 
 there. Well, you know what course you chose to pursue. 
 If you had forced yourself into her presence after receiving 
 her letter (one which I had dictated to her almost word for 
 word), you might have found out the scandalous truth in no 
 time. But you simply became the slave of your own pride.
 
 38 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 You and she had made puppets of yourselves, and I held 
 the wires. Bleakly Voght's return from Europe was terribly 
 opportune, and ..." 
 
 " Stop. You need not go on. I see this whole vile 
 thing." 
 
 He had risen, and stood quite near to where she lay. 
 His hands hung at his sides, but a stronger light would have 
 shown how they were clinched. She looked up, and marked 
 his lips quiver and his eyes blaze. 
 
 " Still, you may not see what my motive has been," she 
 returned. "I loved you. I can say it now without shame, 
 since I ... I'm dying. Long before Angela ever saw you 
 I I wanted to win the place that she secured. Perhaps 
 you'll grant there's a shadow of excuse, for me on this 
 account." 
 
 " Excuse ! " 
 
 He lifted one hand, and for an instant it seemed to him 
 that he must strike her dead, woman and dying though she 
 was. But this madness left him in a second or two ; his 
 hand dropped at his side again ; he moved toward the door 
 of the chamber. 
 
 " I wanted you to forgive me," her voice now rang wail- 
 fully. " Ah, won't you, Hubert ? Think of how I am ! So 
 soon to die ! " 
 
 He turned, pausing, and met her eyes again. His own 
 appeared kindled with a scathing contempt, and he uncon- 
 sciously so curled his lip that she could catch a flash of the 
 white teeth below his scant gold moustache. 
 
 "The evil you've done will live after you," he shot back at 
 her. " Be sure of that." 
 
 " But ah," she called, " won't you forgive me, Hubert ? 
 Won't you ? " 
 
 He passed from the room, and got out into the street as 
 soon as his dazed, whirling brain would let him find the way 
 thither. One of the physicians met him in the upper hall 
 and spoke to him certain words doubtless of surprise at
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 39 
 
 his brief sojourn near Mrs. AverilFs bedside. But he did 
 not remember what answer he made the physician or 
 whether, indeed, he made any. 
 
 He went home. He had lived, ever since the death of his 
 parents, in the roomy old family-house down Fifth Avenue, 
 not far from Washington Square. As he ascended its stoop 
 a white face with black, eagerly-dilated eyes went floating 
 up too, just at his shoulder. He fancied he saw the lips 
 open, and heard a voice issue from them. " Won't you for- 
 give me, Hubert ? " cried the voice, that was like a silence 
 made weirdly audible. 
 
 In the big, lonely house it was still worse. The face 
 flitted from right to left, left to right, and 5 o did the voice. 
 
 He thought of her incomparable deceit, of the misery and 
 folly it had engendered, and he told himself that he had 
 been right, beyond all refutation right, in treating her as he 
 had done. A menace of sudden death had thrown its 
 falsely piteous glamour over her sin. But that sin was no 
 less loathsome because death had followed it with speed 
 instead of delay. It was no more pardonable on this account. 
 
 ' What,' he indignantly mused, ' will be the results of her 
 hateful deed ? She has driven that poor girl into making a 
 marriage which must mean agony of the rack itself ; she has, 
 for me, crippled the action and shackled the freedom of all 
 my future life.' 
 
 He thought of Angela, whom he might have saved an 
 hour, a half-hour, ten minutes before that wild, silly matri- 
 monial plunge of hers was taken, and he ground his teeth at 
 the doltish way in which he had let a lie snare him. Even 
 if he had called out to her at the very altar's foot, " You are 
 marrying the betrayer of the woman whom you thought I 
 had wronged," she would have turned and renounced Voght 
 on the instant. It might have been melodrama, but it would 
 have been salvation as well. And what a boon, if some pre- 
 cious entrance-cue had only come to him, that he might 
 have played the leading role in even so sensational a scene.
 
 4O DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 As matters now stood, all life was at a dead-lock with him. 
 Beyond doubt, it gave him comfort to realize that Angela 
 had not steeped herself in the worst worldly greed, and that 
 her marriage to Bleakly Voght was one of passionate pique, 
 supposably fed with all the fuel of persuasion on which, at 
 short notice, alert duplicity could light. And yet wrath 
 against her who had brought this abomination to pass, and 
 contempt of self for having failed to believe any falsity in a 
 love that he had till then trusted so devoutly, made even 
 the recognition of Angela's less blameworthy behavior con- 
 fer upon him only a tepid joy. 
 
 He avowed to himself that it would have been terrible if 
 he had killed his cousin, and yet that for him to do so would 
 have belonged less to barbarism than to simple justice. 
 And now, as for giving her his pardon ah, no ; she must 
 find some new way to die, before one word of the sort her 
 guilt-drenched soul was craving should ever be wrung from 
 his lips. 
 
 He began slowly to pace the floor of his library, a room 
 full of dark woods, and books on low shelves, and heavy- 
 folded tapestries. There were a few bronze and marble 
 busts here and there, looming through the soft light. Pres- 
 ently he drew near his favorite desk. What a pang of 
 memory shot through him as he saw the white writing-paper 
 lying there, with the pen thrown down beside it, and some 
 unfinished verses that now bore so frightful a sarcasm, and 
 were the last he had written before the blow fell, and would 
 be the last (so he had inflexibly decided) that he ever meant 
 to write again. 
 
 But during that slow, monotonous walk of his Hubert be- 
 gan to feel, as he had never dreamed of feeling before, how 
 much greatness may lie in the power to forgive. Here was 
 he, not cruel or even unkind by nature, and yet with ferocity 
 of revolt waiting at any instant to rise against the idea of 
 giving a dying woman his pardon ! 
 
 At last he sank into a chair and buried his face in his
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 4! 
 
 hands. It was a beautiful face that he thus concealed, but 
 one on whose clear, noble, poetic features already the im- 
 print of supreme sorrow had fallen. The light of a near 
 lamp was shed, at this moment, on his short, thick golden 
 curls ; and sitting thus, with hidden visage, he made a pict- 
 ure of complete desolation and dejection to which every 
 line of his tall and graceful figure lent its especial aid. 
 
 Alva's voice was yet ringing through his brain. Its 
 echoes were ineludible ; they had become as persistent as a 
 remorse. Were they growing to resemble one ? And yet 
 how should he, Hubert Throckmorton, find reason for the 
 slightest compunction in his desire to resent so traitorous 
 and abhorrent an act ? ' Would I not inflict a mighty pun 
 ishment upon her if only I could,' he asked himself, ' and 
 shall I recoil from dealing her now what is but justice in 
 its most meagre sense ? ' 
 
 Still, she was dying, and she had begged him to forgive 
 her. He could not, in spite of every effort, escape the 
 haunting potency of this appeal. His ratiocination gave it 
 just the neat, sure answer that seemed adequate beyond all 
 hint of cavil. But his sensibilities, his emotional part, his 
 irresistible impulse of pity for one stricken down by an 
 untoward blow of fate, slowly yet steadily gained ground 
 against his merciless if righteous logic. 
 
 She had loved him. Perhaps no man who ever lived has 
 been quite without vanity, and Hubert had not much of it, 
 but he possessed, after all, let us say, a distinct human share. 
 Her infamy had been committed through love of himself. 
 The more he brooded, the more clean-cut this consideration 
 rose as an off-set against the implacable causes why he 
 should neither compassionate nor condone 
 
 At last he sprang from the chair into which he had sunk, 
 and looked at his watch. It had become later than he 
 had thought. He sped from his house, got into a stray cab, 
 and had himself driven at severe spe^d to the house in Mad- 
 ison Avenue.
 
 42 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 The servant at the door told him that Mrs. Averill was 
 very ill, and that there was hardly any chance of her living 
 through the night. He pushed past this servant, who knew 
 well enough who he was. The little reception-room just off 
 the hall was full of anxious-faced people, men and ladies, 
 nearly all of whom he knew : Mrs. Averill had been too defi- 
 nite a social power for this news of her unhappy accident 
 not to have caused a sombre gathering of her particular gay- 
 minded little clan. But Hubert hurried straight upstairs. 
 No one who observed his precipitancy was in the least sur- 
 prised by it. As the poor injured lady's kinsman, he had, of 
 course, a right paramount over any which her mere acquaint- 
 ances could assume. 
 
 When he reached the door of Mrs. AverilPs chamber, the 
 physician with whom he had talked earlier in the evening 
 opened and slowly emerged from it. 
 
 " Doctor," began Hubert, using a voice louder than he 
 was himself aware of, " how is Mrs. ? " 
 
 The physician raised one finger, and a look went with his 
 gesture that could have but a single meaning, while he 
 whispered, " She has just died." Hubert felt as if he had 
 already heard the words. 
 
 Not until two days after their marriage did Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bleakly Voght learn of Alva AverilPs death. On hearing 
 the poignant news, Angela, for the first time in her life, 
 fainted away. Perhaps her youth and strength could have 
 withstood even a shock so dreadful had not the severest 
 mental strain and pressure been at work for days preceding 
 her wedding-clay. The newly joined pair were now in Wash 
 ington. It was impossible to reach New York in time for 
 the funeral, unless they spent all that night in travelling. 
 
 " And you must not think of anything so foolish," Voght 
 said to Angela, just after she had recovered from her faint- 
 ing-fit, and while the pallor in her face yet recalled it.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 43 
 
 " Oh, yes," she exclaimed, with instant resolution, " I 
 would not miss it for the world. She was my dearest 
 friend." 
 
 Voght smiled a little grimly. Perhaps he had his suspi- 
 cions as to just how dear a friend she had really been ; and 
 in any case it is sure that he long ago had guessed her love 
 for Hubert Throckmorton. 
 
 " We're not going, however," he said, " and that ends it." 
 He spoke with very kind tones, but with the air, nevertheless, 
 of one who pronounces a final decision. 
 
 " That does not end it," said Angela, shaking her head ; 
 " at least, not so far as I am concerned. I must go alone if 
 you will not go with me ; but go I certainly shall." 
 
 Voght bit his lip as he looked at her, with her creamy 
 skin, her low-growing auburn hair, and her black-lashed, 
 blue-gray eyes. She was to him peculiarly and intoxicat- 
 ingly fair and they had been married only two days. He 
 shrugged his shoulders, in another minute, went up to her, 
 kissed her on the lips, and said : 
 
 " As you please, darling. It was only of yourself that I 
 was thinking. Since you are so bent upon going, why, let it 
 be just as you say." 
 
 He had not been accustomed to yield like this. For a 
 good many years he had had his own way, tyrannically, in 
 everything. Angela had already observed in him an impe- 
 riousness toward all servants and officials which he would 
 perhaps have restrained in her presence if long habit had not 
 made him unconscious that he employed it. He was still 
 too much under the thrall of passion for the least sign of 
 his real tejnper to betray itself. He would have got down 
 upon the ground and kissed her feet if she had even sug- 
 gested to him any such obsequious act. It is safe to say 
 that he had never loved any woman until now, and posses- 
 sion of her whom he had for many months regarded as un- 
 attainable wrought in him a softness, a deference, a tender 
 humility, which would have rendered him in her own eyes,
 
 44 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 provided she herself had loved and not merely tolerated 
 him, winsome to an untold degree. As it was, she dared 
 not think at all deliberatively upon the step that she had taken. 
 She had somehow been whirled into taking it. Pique, pride, 
 a tingling sense of outrage, had abetted the counsels of Mrs. 
 Averill and the ardent resumption of a former suit, urged by 
 Voght himself. She had awakened, as it were, to find her- 
 self irrevocably married. And now had come this horrifying 
 intelligence about Alva. That took her thoughts away from 
 her own lot and perhaps (for the interval, at least) such 
 distraction was the most merciful of reprieves. 
 
 They spent the third night after their union amid the 
 clangors of a sleeping-car. Angela did not gain a second of 
 slumber, and while she lay and knew herself being darted 
 through the darkness toward the dead face of her trusted 
 and treasured friend, despairing voices seemed to address 
 her in the cacophony of the hurtling train. At one moment 
 she fancied that she heard Alva calling to her, just as 
 Hubert Throckmorton had heard not long since and yet 
 with how deep a difference ! At another moment she imag- 
 ined that Hubert's voice called, and then the fanciful and 
 delirious words were tinged with an equal repentance and 
 reproach. " Was my fault great enough, after all," her lost 
 lover seemed to say, " for you to have punished it as you 
 did? And in so punishing it, what calamitous term of mis- 
 ery may you not have brought upon your own life ? At 
 least you might have remained un wedded, out of respect for 
 the love I know so well that you once bore me, even though 
 that love had become one which your self-respect and your 
 sense of justice forbade you openly to return." 
 
 But all these antic and grotesque appeals melted into a 
 drean-, matter-of-fact silence as dawn brought with it the 
 grimy suburbs of New York and the termination of poor 
 Angela's most dolorous wedding-tour. The funeral was to 
 be held at twelve o'clock that clay. Her husband took her 
 straight to his handsome home in Gramercy Park, of which
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 45 
 
 many a New York maiden had longed through many a past 
 year to become the mistress. Here surprised servants 
 bowed to her as she entered at Voght's side, and in a trice 
 she found that a rich-appointed bed-chamber had been made 
 ready for her reception, with the light of the brilliant May 
 morning otUside tempered into the most sleep-wooing dusk. 
 
 Bleakly Voght would have been unrecognizable to his 
 friends if they could have seen him as he now adjured 
 Angela to try and get some real repose before the funeral 
 took place. 
 
 " But I must see her," she murmured, while sinking upon 
 the soft bed. " I must go to her house and see her, before 
 they close the coffin ! " It was still quite early in the morn- 
 ing, and Voght, in his fond desire for her physical welfare, 
 had hopes that she might sleep late on into the day. Still, 
 he gave her a promise that if she fell asleep she should be 
 aroused in time to carry out her most earnest desire. 
 
 As it proved, she scarcely slept at all. . . . While Alva 
 Averill's friends were gathering about her coffined face 
 some time before the hearse bore its burden to Trinity 
 Chapel, Angela appeared among the little awed and low- 
 whispering throng. Not far away, through her blinding tears, 
 she saw Hubert. She stooped and kissed the dead woman's 
 forehead again and again, while her sobs rang through the 
 still room. Once he heard " my best of friends" leave her 
 lips in a choked, struggling way. 
 
 ' If she but knew,' he thought, while he watched her. 
 
 Afterward, at the funeral, amid the great crowd that 
 filled the church, their eyes met. ' My God/ swept through 
 his mind, 'does she so soon stand at bay before the irrep- 
 arable ? ' For thus it had seemed to him, judging from the 
 wild, sweet wistfulness of her gaze, transient though that 
 had been. 
 
 The funeral was very large, and the flowers were one 
 splendid memorial glory that many a great man or woman 
 has gone to the grave without so much as a hint of; but
 
 46 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 those who went to Greenwood were rather few, though An. 
 gela insisted upon being one of them, and perhaps because 
 of the pardon that he had failed to extend the dying, Hu- 
 bert now paid this last act of kinship and kindliness to the 
 dead. 
 
 The birds were chirping over the dumb, white head-stones 
 at Greenwood, and the blue brightness of the May sky, the 
 delicate greenery of innumerable buds and shoots, brought 
 death and life, thrift and decay, motion and repose, into ac- 
 tual violence of contrast. The occupants of the various 
 carriages alighted after their long journey across the river. 
 Somehow, as they were all pressing toward the open grave, 
 it chanced that Hubert and Angela found themselves close 
 together. The latter had already seen that her husband was 
 some little distance ahead. An irresistible impulse now 
 took possession of her. 
 
 " Our poor Alva," she broke forth, " whom we both knew 
 and and loved so well ! Is it not terrible ?" 
 
 He gave a great start as it became clear to him that her 
 words were meant for his own ears. Then, as he turned 
 and looked into her face, with that enchanting sensitiveness 
 and womanliness about the mould of its lips and chin, a 
 fierce agony stormed and shook his spirit. With flashes of 
 the eye, but in a voice no less equable than low, he an- 
 swered : 
 
 " It is terrible, certainly. But if we had neither of us 
 known her nor cared for her so well, we might both have 
 been spared some of the worst suffering that lives here on 
 earth can be cursed by." 
 
 Then he forced his eyes away from hers, and soon had 
 widened the distance between them. Angela did not see 
 him afterward. He so managed that she should not. The 
 burial was made, in that implacable way which belongs to 
 all burials, whether the great or the lowly, the rich or the 
 pauper pass back into that earth whence they came. The
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 47 
 
 clods fell; the mound was heaped; the friends dispersed, 
 and the eternal monotony of forgetfulness began. . . . 
 
 For days Hubert was bitterly sorry that he had spoken to 
 Angela as he did speak. But there was no revocation pos- 
 sible, now. He had meant to keep the whole storv oi the 
 dead woman's vile conduct a strict secret. Angela had 
 done a mad thing; she must atone for it horribly. Her 
 expiation in itself would be hard and harsh enough. Why 
 burden her with new torments ? Why seek to justify himself 
 in her eyes ? She was lost to him ; what mattered it whether 
 or no she realized the enormity of her blunder ? 
 
 'I realize the enormity of mine,' he told himself, 'and I 
 endure misery in consequence.' And then there came a re- 
 flection of whose magnanimity he was not conscious, although 
 it bespoke a finer fibre of moral strength than that which the 
 majority of lovers, in all our recorded annals of them, usually 
 can appeal to. ' If she was insensately rash,' his musings 
 continued, ' so was I. She might have saved herself, and 
 did not. But I might have saved us both, and did not. 
 She knew that I loved her and that even if I had committed 
 a fault such as the one Alva charged me with, it was some- 
 thing that I must have loathed myself for, hence to a degree 
 meriting her pardon. But I, in turn, knew that such a letter 
 as the one she wrote me could not have meant her genuine 
 self. ... I had kissed her on the lips too often for that; I 
 had felt the perfume of her love too richly and intelligibly ; 
 I had surveyed in all its priceless breadth the dear dominion 
 of her trust ! ' 
 
 All that his dead relation had told him about a certain 
 woman and her child he had proved to be incontestably 
 true. There are always means of bringing to light these 
 grim secrets, and he had assured himself, through the em- 
 ployment of professional detective aid, that the sin of Voght 
 had been no less a fact than the almost equal sin of Alva 
 Averill. Inevitably his wound healed a little. He was an 
 idealist, in the imaginative sense, and he could not look on
 
 48 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 the beauty of the world about him a beauty which even the 
 ugliness of New York at its most metropolitan hideous failed 
 quite to dispel without finding in his youth and the health- 
 ful beat of his pulse incentive for some sort of patient deter- 
 mination. 
 
 He had been born in what are called the ranks of caste, 
 and his extraordinary felicity, sweetness, and gentleness of 
 demeanor had made numerous men and women seek and 
 court him. His easy wealth, too, had helped toward his 
 popularity. We have heard how Bleakly Voght despised 
 his turn for poetry ; but few others in the class to which 
 inheritance had long ago admitted him shared this prejudice. 
 On the contrary, he was esteemed so unconsciously winning 
 and even princely in his every-day deportment that the 
 fact of his being a poet but added attraction to his company. 
 He had indeed achieved a certain fame for his verses. 
 There is no critical authority in our land by which the 
 literary man may either rise or fall ; but those few judges 
 who mingle charity and acumen had already declared 
 him a poet of remarkable excellence. 
 
 But now he felt as if his Muse had departed from him 
 forever. He had not been stirred, in his most vehement 
 moods of composition, by any ambitious fervors. He had 
 desired to write simply that and had written. No spur 
 for the gain of bread had pricked him, and on this account 
 he had wrought his poems with a courage and serenity of 
 purpose that had roused the incidental rancor of profes- 
 sional detractors. His art, in earlier days, had kept him 
 from those gross excesses which are the hauriting demons 
 of idleness. He had loved poetry as an art no less than 
 painters love their canvases and colors for the same vital 
 and exhilarating reason. No one in his set had just 
 understood him, but he had not cared enough for his set to 
 care whether it understood him or no. Women had always 
 sought him and made much of him ; but they had never 
 spoiled him. Like many poets, he had no sense of the
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 49 
 
 subtler and loftier effects of music. His soul was all for 
 rhythm and not for tonic harmony or even melody. " In 
 Memoriam " or " The Princess " could move him more 
 deeply than any opera he had ever heard or ever would 
 hear. Words were both hue and sound to him, if rightly 
 placed. Yet he was not a mere lapidary of words, treating 
 them like choice or valueless gems. He gave to them their 
 secondary and rightful place in the metrical scheme ; he 
 revered Hugo, Tennyson, and a few other contemporaries as 
 poets, but the nobility of their themes first delighted him, 
 and the perfection of their art had always seemed of 
 minor import. He had, for some time past, felt convinced 
 that any poet worth hearing at all must have a voice of his 
 own, spontaneous and characteristic not a mannerism, but 
 a series of natural, native notes that breathed of unques- 
 tionable authenticity. ' Have I this endowment ? ' he had 
 repeatedly asked himself, with the restless introspection of 
 the true artist. Again and again he had said, in discour- 
 aging reply, ' No.' But there had been a few kind voices 
 that had insisted ' Yes.' And so he had gone on, doubt- 
 ing, half believing, and yet writing the verses that had given 
 him far more fame than his intrinsic modesty would let him 
 recognize. 
 
 But now . . . Well, all was chaos and night, now. He 
 would scarcely have known that May had fretted itself 
 into the heats of June if climatic changes had not thus 
 assured him. He could not write a line ; he visited his 
 clubs but rarely, and then with a feeling of annoyance, for 
 everybody there seemed to be drinking some fiery stuff 
 or another, and he had always detested that mode of 
 making time fly when it seems to lag. Women had always 
 charmed him, but he could not look on a feminine face now- 
 adays that pleased him without having it in some pathetic, 
 half-piercing way remind him of her. 
 
 " Sha'n't you go to Europe this year, Throckmorton ? " 
 somebody asked him one day in one of his clubs, 
 4
 
 50 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 He hardly knew what to answer. Europe ? He had 
 been so often. What was new to see there ? He had seen 
 everything, from the banalite's of Paris to the crude coulcur 
 locale of St. Petersburg. He had even been into Asia a 
 little, and as for Egypt, he had explored its Nile-threaded 
 monochrome of sand as far as the third cataract. 
 
 The weather grew hot. He thought of his place at 
 Ponchatuk, and remembered how he had got to hate it. 
 It made him think of that night, when the breezes were 
 flying briskly at dusk, and the white stars were globing 
 themselves, and he had felt as if he could put a bullet 
 through his head or slip a knife into his throat. Then there 
 had come that telegram about Alva. No, he would not go 
 to Ponchatuk. All the mosquitoes on the South Side (and 
 their name was trillion) would swarm round him and buzz 
 into his ears ironies about his blasted life. He had quite 
 forgotten a certain point relative to his estate at Ponchatuk. 
 It was destined before long sharply to assail him. 
 
 There came, in latter June, one of those scorching days 
 which made the town an odious glare. Till then he had 
 been comfortable enough at the big house in lower Fifth 
 Avenue. His people there were mostly old servants, who 
 knew his simple wants and ministered to them with faultless 
 discretion. But to-day the heat was unbearable. He 
 thought of cows under trees and daisies lifting their starry 
 discs to chance breezes. 
 
 " I must go somewhere," he thought, and went into Wash- 
 ington Square, only a step or two away from where he 
 dwelt. 
 
 Here the heat was blinding. A few dingy men sat on 
 benches. The fountain played with a fatigued spirt. He 
 paused under a tree that failed to shade him, and as he thus 
 paused he saw a figure approach with strides vigorous 
 enough to mean no one more definitely personal than 
 Callahan O'Hara. 
 
 The great, virile, handsome Irishman extended a hand.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 5 I 
 
 " You're the last person, Throckmorton, I dreamed of meet- 
 ing. What are you doing in town this dirty day ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Hubert. 
 
 O'Hara laughed in his mellow way. He had hazel eyes, 
 with a little diamond swimming in the pupil of each, a thick 
 reddish moustache, a crop of coarse, wavy red hair, two 
 fascinating dimples, and the sunniest smile out of his native 
 Ireland. 
 
 " Nothing must be harder to do this weather than some- 
 thing," he said ; " it gives you nothing but the heat to think 
 about." 
 
 "Just what I have found," Hubert grimly acceded. 
 " And you, O'Hara ? what are your plans ? " 
 
 " Oh, I'm going to take the Long Branch boat and pass 
 certainly one night, perhaps two, at the West End Hotel." 
 
 " I've half a mind to go down there with you," said 
 Hubert. " Will you have me ? " 
 
 " Will I have you ? " cried O'Hara, in the most jovial echo. 
 " Can I have you, old fellow ? " And he seized Hubert's 
 hand again, wringing it as if no such mishap as hot weather 
 had ever been heard of.
 
 IV. 
 
 IT was an age since Hubert had been down at Long 
 Branch. He recalled that he had then told himself no power 
 should ever drag him there again, and had denounced the 
 place as a nude stretch of sand, whose chief products were 
 intense heat, larger and more piratical mosquitoes than 
 even those of Ponchatuk, and an assemblage of the most 
 vulgar-looking people on earth. He had counted five sepa- 
 rate ladies who wore rings outside their gloves, and at a hotel 
 " hop " he had seen a young " society-man " in full evening- 
 dress, but with a neck-tie of pink silk. That pink neck-tie 
 had a criminal look which one needed not to be too callous 
 a snob for the purpose of fully recognizing. As he watched 
 its wearer's radiant self-importance, Hubert had satirically 
 told himself that surely, after all, on this earth at least, we 
 can often make our own heaven and our own hell. 
 
 Still, in spite of such harrowing memories, it now suited 
 his caprice to take the boat thither in Callahan O'Hara's 
 company. There was something dimly agreeable in the 
 realization to Hubert that he could be visited by a cap'rice 
 definite enough to be called one. As for O'Hara, he was 
 beaming with satisfaction when Hubert dashed up to the 
 wharf, perhaps three-quarters of an hour later, and not 
 hardly a minute too late to catch the bellowing steamboat. 
 
 The two men lit their cigars on the upper deck, and soon 
 felt that unutterable relief which an outgoing vessel will 
 confer when the docks it has left are smitten by a sun 
 whose rays are swords. The boat was loaded with people, 
 but in these neither Hubert nor his companion took the 
 slightest concern. Here was a different world from either 
 of their own, which, in turn, were so different from one an-
 
 DIVIDED LI]~ES. 53 
 
 other. There had been a time when Callahan O'Hara, 
 with his beauty and his lustrous mental gifts, might have won 
 a high social place. He was a man of good literary attain- 
 ments, but as so meagre a literary society exists in New York, 
 he could not have shone among the salons of blue-stockings. 
 What he might have done with brilliant success was to have 
 made himself a star of wit and taste among that luxurious, 
 indolence-loving throng which more than one clever New 
 York journalist has managed very effectually to amuse. 
 
 There had been a time, several years ago, when Hubert 
 had thought of pushing O'Hara into just such an environ- 
 ment. Indeed, he had presented the young Irishman to nu- 
 merous ladies and gentlemen whom he knew. But the push- 
 ing had soon proved impossible. O'Hara delighted, charmed, 
 and even dazzled all his new acquaintances. But there it ab- 
 ruptly ended. In those times he had two besetting faults 
 drunkenness and a tendency to borrow money. To-day he 
 would fascinate some lady of society, who would be willing 
 to declare him the handsomest and most entertaining man 
 she had met in years ; to-morrow he would appear tipsy in 
 her presence and send yesterday's roseate illusion flying 
 away on the four winds. His borrowing proclivities would 
 perhaps already have made themselves felt with her father, 
 husband, or brother. Le monde ou Von s'ennuye soon woke 
 to the fact that here was an impossible human means of 
 diverting itself. Hubert, too, had frankly conceded his 
 mistake, and had apologized with some mortification in 
 various directions. 
 
 But O'Hara had not gone from bad to worse as regard- 
 ed his intemperance. He had, indeed, drawn a rather tight 
 rein upon it for two or three years, and afterward managed 
 to drink with that species of moderation which limits itself 
 chastely to only three or four orgies a year. But it struck 
 Hubert (who knocked up against him every now and then, 
 just as he had done this afternoon) that in a journalistic 
 sense he had markedly deteriorated. He was now in a much
 
 54 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 better financial condition ; he stood as one of two or three 
 rulers over the destiny of a certain weekly journal, whose 
 tone and atmosphere were to Hubert no less repulsive than 
 distressing. He had not wanted to talk with O'Hara about 
 his paper ; there were so many other things that the engag- 
 ing fellow could talk about much more attractively for his 
 present hearer. But the subject seemed almost inevitable 
 when O'Hara began, for the third time since they had begun 
 their sail : 
 
 " Look here, my dear fellow , you haven't yet given me an 
 answer about your 'White Violets.' I recollect you don't 
 like to print your verses in the magazines, but I do so wish 
 you'd let us have that enchanting sonnet. As for price, 
 you know, whether you cared for anything or not, I would 
 make a point of promising to pay you " 
 
 " Oh ! " Hubert here broke in evasively, " I'm afraid that 
 if you should see ' White Violets ' a second time you'd lose 
 all respect for it. You were in a mood of sentiment the day 
 I read it to you ; your own personal equation had a great 
 deal to do with your admiration ; yes, I assure you it had. " 
 
 " Pshaw, my boy ; it's nothing of the sort, as you're 
 perfectly well aware. " A little silence followed now, as 
 O'Hara watched the brisk marine wind hurry away a 
 gossamer cloud of his own cigar-smoke. " I think I see why 
 you rebuff me whenever I try to get hold of that sonnet. " 
 
 " Rebuff you ? " murmured Hubert, deprecatingly. 
 
 " We don't print verses often," O'Hara went on, with a 
 decisive touch of stiffness most unhabitual to him. " A 
 good many poets would take it rather as a compliment than 
 otherwise that we should want any of their work. But it's 
 very evident, Throckmorton, that you don't like our paper." 
 
 " Frankly, I don't," said Hubert, who felt himself driven 
 into a corner, and left with nothing to do except flash out 
 his blade. Usually, as his listener very well knew, he was 
 the soul of gentleness and suavity ; he had that instinctive 
 politeness which is the appanage of all true breeding. It
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 55 
 
 was called "blood" not long ago, and in the arrogant, not 
 the merely scientific sense ; it is now beginning to be recog- 
 nized as an accompaniment and an essential of the ampler 
 moral temperament. " For manners are not idle," sings the 
 greatest English-speaking poet of the century; and then 
 he goes on to tell us how they are the fruit borne by a loyal 
 nature and a noble mind. 
 
 " Personality in journalism is most repellent to me," 
 Hubert now went on. " I seldom read newspapers to any 
 great extent, but I studiously keep away from those in 
 which I can hear either my best friend praised or my worst 
 foe reviled." 
 
 O'Hara laughed, leaning back in his camp-stool on the 
 breezy deck. " How fine for us editors if all readers had 
 the same tastes as yourself ! I can't tell you what a bore we 
 find the whole vulgar necessity. But there's no resisting it." 
 
 " I should resist it if I were an editor," said Hubert. 
 
 O'Hara turned and looked at him for a moment. " By 
 Jove ! " he exclaimed, with a ring in his voice that meant the 
 most unstinted admiration, " I suppose you would ! " He 
 was rather a cynic on the subject of his fellow-men, this 
 Callahan O'Hara, and doubted if very many of them would 
 stay their feet from dancing a reverential measure whenever 
 the guineas once began really to jingle. But Hubert was 
 one of his beliefs, and before the quiet gravity and strength 
 of the latter, with his rich vein of poetry and his immobile 
 yet unostentatious ideals, the Irishman's misanthropic theo- 
 ries would somehow courteously recoil. 
 
 " Money isn't always given, in this world," O'Hara went 
 on, " to those who value it the most. I dare say you could 
 live on a crust, Throckmorton, with ten times more grace 
 than I could. You might go off into some waste place and 
 have your thebdide there, and make it delightfully pictur- 
 esque with your pilgrim- staff and scallop-shell. I, on the 
 other hand, would bore myself to death in such .surround- 
 ings. I never touch bread; it's such monotonous eat-
 
 56 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 ing. . . . and I haven't for years drank any water without 
 at least a dash of claret in it. Now that's precisely the way 
 in which I stand. I want my claret. I must have my 
 claret, even if I'm driven to procure it at the price of my 
 self-respect." 
 
 While his companion lit another cigar from the lurid ash 
 of its predecessor, Hubert rather dryly said : " I'm glad that 
 my own liking for red wine is in.no danger of betraying me 
 into any such extravagance." 
 
 He knew very well that what O'Hara had meant as half 
 a joke was a true enough way of hitting off his ethical 
 relations toward society at large. There was certainly very 
 little satisfaction to be found in talking with such a man 
 about the degeneration of the modern newspaper. O'Hara 
 would never be able to get any further than this : the 
 demand for " spiciness " had become imperious, and not to 
 supply " spiciness " was to go without claret. Natures that 
 are selfishly immoral are like the dweller in the midst of a 
 field wholly surrounded by ditches ; his grasses and his 
 trees may be green and delectable enough, but outsiders 
 cannot possibly share his own enjoyment of them without 
 besmirching their boots. 
 
 Long prior to the landing of the boat, Hubert had suc- 
 ceeded in getting O'Hara to talk of other things. When 
 they reached the iron pier the sun's ball of molten, seething 
 gold, that it would almost have been blindness to gaze on 
 longer than a second, had just touched the rim of the hori- 
 zon. They were driven straight to the West End Hotel, 
 and after dining, were greeted with a magnificent moon, that 
 flooded the vast expanses of treeless and cottage-thronged 
 shore. The piazzas of the hotel were swarming with people, 
 but in the copious pearly light every face that Hubert gazed 
 upon was unfamiliar to him. 
 
 "No chance for any fashionable items here," observed 
 O'Hara. " The children of Israel are having it all their 
 own way."
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 57 
 
 " And what a superb time of it they seem to be having as 
 well ! " said Hubert. 
 
 Just then a loud, gay laugh rang out at his elbow from a 
 girl of about twenty, luxuriously yet not gaudily dressed, 
 with a face that would have served for a sultana in its olive 
 loveliness, and eyes that were dark stars of glory. 
 
 " They're welcome to their good time," sneered O'Hara. 
 " I'm told that in the old days here it was so different for a 
 fellow. Then they kept away." 
 
 "Yes," said Hubert. " I saw the place then. It wasn't 
 half so vivacious : it was full of New York Christians and 
 snobs." 
 
 O'Hara looked at him with a start, and then burst out 
 laughing. "How like you that is!" he exclaimed. "You 
 always were endorsing unpopular questions." 
 
 " Unpopular ! " softly echoed Hubert, as he glanced to 
 right and left, where many other handsome feminine faces 
 of either a dusky or blond type were visible in the wan, 
 penetrant moonlight. "Well, no doubt it all depends upon 
 one's line of approach. For my part, I should say that this 
 remarkable and very genial race had the upper hand of us 
 in almost everything. My limited experience has told me 
 that they are very apt to be highly educated. They are cer- 
 tainly quite often handsome to look upon ; and " 
 
 " What ? The men, for instance ? " 
 
 " Yes ; not perhaps from a standpoint of taste that would 
 be held noteworthy by some dude in a Fifth Avenue club- 
 window. Our ugly clothes are ruinous to their men. You 
 should see them in the East." 
 
 " Perhaps it would be a better plan if they all went there 
 and staid," grumbled O'Hara, glancing about him. 
 
 "I fancy they would not think it a better plan," said 
 Hubert. " Why. indeed, should they ? Here so many of 
 them are rich, and so many more of them well-to-do." 
 
 " I shall expect soon to see you going about among them 
 and having a fine time," O'Hara replied, with a sarcastic 
 tang in his tones.
 
 58 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " That would be quite impossible," Hubert answered, in 
 his quiet way, which had become, of late, a somewhat sad 
 way also. " They are too exclusive, too fond of one another. 
 I don't deny that they have many excellent reasons to be ; 
 Heinrich Heine was one of these reasons, and Spinoza was 
 one, and Mendelssohn was a third ..." 
 
 A little later, when they had strolled toward the ocean 
 and entered one of the small pavilions that skirt in such 
 numbers the whole Long Branch bluff, O'Hara declared to 
 Hubert : 
 
 " You've a style of saying things, at times, that leaves a 
 fellow in doubt as to whether you're just sincere or not. 
 And yet in all important things I've never met a more sin- 
 cere man. I won't add that I envy you your inflexible 
 honesty, however. I'm one of those chaps who can admire 
 a virtue without wishing to imitate it." 
 
 "Just," smiled Hubert, " as you'd enjoy looking at some- 
 thing pretty in a shop, with 'hands off' fastened to it." He 
 drew a long, ruminative breath, and stared down at the 
 molten silver of the combing waves. " You speak as if you 
 were making a revolt against the venders of proverbs . . as 
 if you didn't think honesty was (how do they put it?) the 
 best policy. For my part, I'm honest, most probably, 
 because it would bore me to be anything else. I should 
 feel . . . what sort of pungent simile can I hit on to express 
 just how I should feel ? Let us say as if I were forced to 
 wear a coat that was much too tight in the armholes." 
 
 "There it is again," laughed O'Hara. "You speak that 
 as if you were only half in earnest. And yet your code of 
 morals and mine are like strength beside weakness. You're 
 always despising me for not living the higher, nobler life. . . 
 Oh, yes, you are ; you needn't lift one hand in that politely 
 contradictory way, for I am quite certain you are. Well, I'm 
 free (o confess it, I do not think honesty the best policy. 
 Of course by honesty I mean unswerving rectitude, not the 
 mere decent keeping of the eighth commandment, and all 
 that sort of rudimentary thing. I revere it theoretically ; but
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 59 
 
 as an affair of practice I've found that the man succeeds best 
 in this life who tramples ideals into the dust and strikes out 
 in his own selfish and often pitiless path." 
 
 "Perhaps he does," half assented Hubert, slowly nodding 
 his head. "That is, if he really values success." 
 
 O'Hara regarded him with steadiness for an instant. " I 
 don't believe you value it," he said. 
 
 " Success ? " queried Hubert, returning his gaze. " Em- 
 phatically I do not. The conditions of life on this planet 
 make it really so absurd a failure, after all." 
 
 " But you write your poems." 
 
 " I did write . . . my verses." 
 
 "What! you've lost " began O'Hara; and then he 
 suddenly recollected the story he had heard of how a certain 
 cool-headed girl had jilted Hubert to marry a richer man. 
 With neat tact, however, he soon proceeded, as swiftly as 
 possible : " But of course you can't have lost your inspiration. 
 It's too genuine for that. Oh, I know, my dear boy ! Your 
 'White Violets ' isn't the only piece of your work that I've 
 thrilled over. And yet I'm tempted to admit you are one of 
 the very few men who despise worldly success, when I actu- 
 ally think over your poems." 
 
 Hubert gave a little careless laugh. "Ah," he said, 
 " when you think them over you discover that they are fail- 
 ures." 
 
 " No. Not for me. I like them just as they are. But . . 
 well, if they don't sell I understand why they don't." 
 
 Hubert shrugged his shoulders. " I didn't print them," 
 he said, "caring whether or no they would sell. I always 
 am my own publisher, in a certain way ; I merely hire, as 
 it were, the imprimatur of Messrs. Prescott and Everett. 
 They put the books on the market, as they call it. But the 
 books do not sell ; I happen to know that. They've been 
 well received in certain critical quarters, but neither here 
 nor in England is there the standard, the criterion of criti- 
 cism, nowadays, that mny crown an author with any distinc-
 
 60 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 tive kind of laurel. Even the two or three English Satur- 
 day reviews that were once more or less authoritative have 
 completely lost caste as judicial organs. It would seem as 
 if there were no longer any real critics ; le moule en cst 
 brise." 
 
 " Still, the public is a critic, after its fashion." 
 
 " I don't like its fashion." 
 
 " It has golden opinions indeed for those whose books it 
 likes." 
 
 " No doubt. I'm not avaricious." 
 
 " You mean you're prosperous already," smiled O'Hara. 
 " Well," he went on, " if you were not both prosperous and 
 indifferent I could tell you how you could make the public 
 love your poetry." 
 
 Hubert looked mildly interested. "The public is just 
 now understood to detest all poetry," he said. 
 
 " Never," affirmed O'Hara, with an antagonistic little 
 flourish of one hand, " was there a greater mistake. You 
 mean, the public is so wwnnderstood. Look how the poems 
 that it loves go flying from newspaper to newspaper, all 
 over this vast country ! No, my dear Throckmorton, the 
 fault is with our poets, not with our public." 
 
 " And what is the poor poets' fault ? " asked Hubert. 
 " That they are poor poets ? or that they write too many 
 rondeaux, triolets, and vilanelks write, in other words, with a 
 lisp and a simper ? " 
 
 " Oh, I wasn't thinking of those little metrical mounte- 
 banks," replied O'Hara. " I referred to the few virile 
 fellows like yourself who care to write verse nowadays." 
 
 " Oh, I see. Kind enough of you. Well ? " 
 
 "This agnosticism, this modern scientific spirit, creeps 
 into all you do. It confuses the people ; they don't under- 
 stand it ; they believe that poetry should be a kind of 
 religion. I saw, not long ago, that an eminent English 
 writer had just stated poetry to be fully three-fourths relig- 
 ion."
 
 DIVIDED LIl'ES. 6 1 
 
 " Eminent writers of all periods and all nations have said 
 foolish things/' returned Hubert. " I never have been able 
 to see why poetry is any more religion than it is gastronomy. 
 Poetry is feeling and beauty expressed rhythmically." 
 
 " Not at all a bad definition. Only, the wide throngs of 
 readers don't concern themselves with definitions ; they 
 want to have their hearts touched and their faiths quickened 
 when they read a poem." 
 
 " I know ; they want it to affect them like a camp-meeting, 
 or something in that way. Well, I don't write such poems." 
 
 " But you could, my friend, if " 
 
 " If I wanted to be untrue to myself. Yes, then I could." 
 
 " But I mean this : you could, by so writing, with your 
 extraordinary gifts of presentment and embellishment, 
 achieve a great fame." 
 
 " Thanks." Hubert fixed .his eyes on the face of his 
 companion. The light here in the pavilion shone dimmer 
 than it did outside, but O'Hara saw very plainly how serious 
 yet how tranquil was the look he wore as he answered : 
 " There's not much difference, to me, between the hypocrite 
 in life and the hypocrite in literature." 
 
 O'Hara felt those words keenly. He was a man who had 
 endured hours of the harshest unrest because of that very 
 ideal whose desecration he now counselled Hubert to com- 
 mence. With him it had once been a beautiful shining 
 lamp ; its lustre had pierced every corner of his soul. But 
 it burned feebly now, and with occasional signs of total 
 extinction. Again and again he had drearily told himself 
 that this change had not been wrought by himself alone. 
 The world had not let him tend his lamp as he would have 
 desired. Cares, vexations, disappointments had intervened 
 to thwart and spoil the fulfilment of such holy office. There 
 had been a time when he would have shuddered to realize 
 that he was ever destined to become the Callahan O'Hara 
 of the present. He had started out with noble aims in 
 journalism (odd as it may sound) as in everything else.
 
 62 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 But it would not do for him to heap too much of the blame 
 on circumstance, and his own covert admission that it would 
 not do gave him some sharply repentant hours. He had 
 always envied Hubert, and said to his own troublesome 
 conscience that he too would have preserved himself the 
 model of honor, of manliness, of gentlemanliness, with so 
 stout a golden buckler against adversity as that which fate 
 had given this most fortunate of young poets. On the other 
 hand, however, he would sometimes be assailed by a little 
 haunting whisper which assured him that Hubert, if poorer 
 than the traditional churchwarden, would never have stooped 
 the least fraction of an inch lower than self-respect would 
 have warranted. Money gives independence, but there 
 are some few spirits in the world from whom no poverty can 
 wring the meaner sort of humiliation. O'Hara had some- 
 how acquired the most secure confidence that Hubert was 
 one of these. 
 
 Till now they had been alone in the little pavilion ; but 
 a moment after Hubert had finished speaking, two new- 
 comers, a lady and a gentleman, entered. The former had 
 on her bonnet, and bore herself with a somewhat reluctant 
 air, as though she wanted to receive a transient impression 
 of how the glittering and sobbing ocean would appear from 
 this dusky little coign of shelter on one of its bluffs. Her 
 motions indicated that she was in a hurry. She stood at 
 the gentleman's side for a very brief interval, during which 
 both of their backs were turned to Hubert and O'Hara. 
 
 " Oh, what a lovely night ! " she softly exclaimed. And 
 then she slipped an arm familiarly within the gentleman's. 
 " But come along, Jack," she continued ; " we can look at the 
 ocean by moonlight just as well over in Elberon as here." 
 
 " But you can't have me over at Elberon," said Hubert, 
 rising. 
 
 The lady veered round and recognized him with a merry 
 little cry. "Oh, it's really you ! " she said. "Where hare
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 63 
 
 you been keeping yourself this age ? " And then they both 
 shook hands with Hubert. 
 
 A little later all three walked out of the pavilion together. 
 After perhaps a quarter of an hour Hubert rejoined O'Hara. 
 
 " Your friend is vivacious," said the latter. " I mean the 
 lady, of course." 
 
 " Mrs. Van Schaick ? Yes ; she's a jolly little body. But 
 she has the funniest reputation as an entertainer. Perhaps, 
 by the way, you've heard what it is." 
 
 " I ? no." 
 
 " She's forever making mistakes ; and so is he, for that 
 matter. They live in an atmosphere of social solecisms and 
 blunders. Somebody once said of Jack Van Schaick that it 
 was dangerous to get a divorce in the same city with him, 
 because he would be sure to have the two separated 
 persons at dinner sooner or later. It is really very odd 
 what a sinister fame this couple have secured for doing the 
 wrong thing quite unintentionally. I think that as a rule 
 the world miserably misjudges us ; but I fear that for once it 
 is right in what it says of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Van Schaick. 
 They're both the dearest, kindest of people. Nobody has 
 ever called Van Schaick anything but ' Jack ' since he 
 began to spend his forty or fifty thousand a year in charm- 
 ing entertainments for his myriad friends. And ever since 
 Emma Van Alstyne married him she's been ' Mrs. Jack 
 Van Schaick.' A good-hearted, true-souled woman as ever 
 lived. I've never been present at the commission of any of 
 their extraordinary faux pas. But it seems to be an irrefuta- 
 ble fact that they do commit them. And by the way, she 
 and Jack have pressed me to dine with them at their 
 Elberon cottage to-morrow night." 
 
 " You accepted ? " 
 
 " Yes ... I wasn't just sure whether I would stop over 
 to-morrow or not. But . . . well, yes, I've accepted." 
 
 " Let us hope," said O'Hara, jocosely, " that you wont be 
 the victim of their celebrated malapropos behavior."
 
 64 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " I ? " said Hubert, starting a little, and then shaking his 
 head. " I ? Oh, no. I've nothing to feel afraid of in that 
 connection." 
 
 Those words of his afterward came back to him . . . He 
 went to Elberon on the following day. The dinner-party of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Jack Van Schaick was a rather large one. 
 About fifteen guests were assembled in the drawing-room 
 of their exquisite cottage, just a stone's-throw from the sea. 
 Among these guests were Mr. and Mrs. Bleakly Voght. 
 
 But this was not all. Hubert took into dinner a lady 
 whom he had known for years in New York society, and 
 after the assemblage was seated at the brilliant dinner-table, 
 with its gay-shaded candelabra and -its gorgeous effects of 
 flowers, he discovered that on his left was Angela. 
 
 The intensity of the mistake threw a chill over the entire 
 throng. Hubert passed through several distinct moods. At 
 first he thought of rushing from the table. Then he deter- 
 mined upon self-control as his only sensible and dignified 
 course. Then he assured himself that self-control was im- 
 possible. After a little while he became aware that he had 
 exchanged several words with Angela. Had she spoken to 
 him first, or had he been the primary cause of their brief, 
 formal, forlorn little episode of conversation ? 
 
 ' I shall go mad,' Hubert thought, a few minutes later. 
 Angela was talking to the gentleman at her other side. The 
 lady at his other side was being voluble, yet nervously and 
 consciously so, as he could not help observing. He scarcely 
 had the power to follow a word that she said. He was 
 aware that the eyes of the entire company were fixed upon 
 himself and Angela. To make matters worse, the eyes of 
 Bleakly Voght, who sat just opposite, were fixed jealously, 
 inexorably, vigilantly upon himself alone. 
 
 Never was a more awkward dinner. Luckily, Elberon 
 afforded Hubert a kind of safely practicable topic. He had 
 seen it by daylight, and had admired the numberless bright 
 tinted cottages that verged its low, bare sweep of coast,
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 65 
 
 " It's like a more familiar and companionable Newport," 
 he remembered that he said. Did he say it to Angela ? He 
 was not sure. A perfume of roses floated to him from her 
 breast. Once their eyes met in a full, direct mutual gaze. 
 He dared not speak to her except in the most threadbare 
 commonplaces, and yet, toward the end of the repast he was 
 conscious that he had said something by no means common- 
 place. What had it been ? His pulses were at too unsteady 
 a gallop for him to determine. 
 
 " How have I frightfully wronged you ? Will you explain 
 to me ? Will you find a chance, later on, to do so ? " 
 
 Who had spoken those words? Had it been Angela? 
 Yes, it must have been she . . . And now the ladies were 
 quitting the dining-room. Perhaps it would soon be nec- 
 essary for him to exchange a few words with Bleakly Voght ; 
 already the two men had coldly bowed to one another. 
 
 Yet, no. Van Schaick was now but too poignantly aware 
 of his own and his wife's last infelicitous deed. He con- 
 tinued to keep Hubert and Voght separated, and without 
 showing either that the least effort had been made to pro- 
 duce this result an impulse, by-the-bye, in the direction 
 of pure tact such as he had not shown for many months. 
 
 Hubert smoked his cigar and talked with the two or three 
 men nearest him. It grew warm, and their host flung back 
 the broad panes of a window that opened upon a piazza. 
 Straightway the sweet sea-breeze flowed into the candle-lit 
 chamber, but only with impetus enough to make the delicate 
 yellow points of flame waver slightly below their rich-huecl 
 little shades. You could see some high-hanging festoons 
 and tangles of vine sharp-cut against the crystal blue 
 beyond them, and still farther away, in its fairy tenderness 
 and beauty, the spangled path of the moon across the 
 ocean. 
 
 Hubert was thinking : ' I must see her alone ; I must find 
 the chance that she spoke of. But how shall I find it ? . . 
 How ? . . how ? ' 
 5
 
 66 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 This question began to make a sort of clock-stroke in his 
 brain, mingling with the brisk hum of after-dinner converse 
 about the Monmouth races and the last fortunate coup 
 " over at the Club House," in roulette.
 
 V. 
 
 THE Van Schaicks' abode was one of the largest and most 
 beautiful in Elberon. Its piazza surrounded it on all 
 sides, and though it rose, like nearly every residence there, 
 from the centre of a rather meagre domain, cultivation had 
 nevertheless poured some of her fairest favors upon this lim- 
 ited tract. No other lawn wore grass of such velvet richness 
 or of so living an emerald, and in none other were the par- 
 terres radiant with blooms of such blended rarity and exuber- 
 ance. When the gentlemen at length joined the ladies, these 
 latter were found dispersed in groups, here and there, along 
 the piazza, some of whose nooks were filled with the densest 
 shadow. Suddenly it seemed to Hubert as if Angela glided 
 out of the lucid air itself and paused not far away from him. 
 She immediately spoke, and her voice was vibrant, but quite 
 low. 
 
 " Can you say now," she murmured, " whatever there is to 
 be said ? " 
 
 Then, without waiting for him to respond, she moved away 
 toward a part of the piazza that was much dimmer than this, 
 either because of some sloping variation in the fanciful build 
 of the roof above it, or through some special opulence and 
 implication of its vines. Hubert looked about him. A few 
 people were near, but even at slight distance their faces had 
 become just recognizable and no more. Perhaps nobody 
 had seen Angela address him. He now perceived that there 
 was a large, low window not far from where he had been 
 standing, and that this window was wide open, like the one 
 in the dining-room. No doubt Angela had slipped through 
 that from the faint-lit apartment beyond. His brain felt 
 clearer now. It seemed to him as if he had been drunk 
 67
 
 68 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 (though he had merely quaffed a few sips of champagne at 
 dinner) and that he was now awakening from semi-stupor. 
 
 He passed along the piazza in the direction that she had 
 taken. Knowing now, as he did know, just how and why 
 she had given herself to Bleakly Voght, would it not be 
 cruelty to tell her the unflinching truth ? 
 
 ' Yes,' his conscience answered him ; ' and all the more 
 cruelty if she still loves you, as you have every reason to 
 believe that she still does love you ? ' 
 
 But that last thought, ' she still does love you,' drowned 
 conscience. Besides, it seemed so hard for him to forgive 
 her that mad matrimonial step. Having yielded to Alva 
 Averill's horrid counselling was one thing; having actually 
 married Bleakly Voght was indeed another ! 
 
 In a short time he found himself quite separated from all 
 the other guests. The light came very vaguely to this part 
 of the piazza. Off amid the shadow was another shadow. 
 
 It approached him. He waited for it. He knew it would 
 be Angela. It soon proved to be. 
 
 Her voice, as she now addressed him, was one subdued 
 tumult of excitement. The moment that he looked upon 
 her face again, obscure yet passionately eager and question, 
 ing in every lineament, he was certain that he would tell her 
 all she might desire to hear. 
 
 " You accused me," she began ; " there was something 
 about your eyes, your tones, that made me imagine you you 
 thought yourself justified in doing so. " 
 
 " Justified ! " he repeated. 
 
 " And then those words you spoke at Alva's funeral. 
 I I don't know that I should have sought this meeting, even 
 after what you said to-night, if you had not said what you 
 did say there. You accused her Alva ! She was my 
 trusted friend. I had always believed her yours. " 
 
 " She was." 
 
 " Was ? You mean that'''
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 69 
 
 " I mean that I thought her so until I found out that she 
 was the worst, the cruellest, the falsest of women." 
 
 " Alva ! Good Heavens ! What did she do ? " 
 
 " What did she not do ? " answered Hubert, with his 
 accent, faintly though each sentence rang, betraying the 
 anguish that was now goading him into unrestrained utter- 
 ance of the truth. " She sent for me to come to her after 
 that accident happened. She was dying, and knew it. 
 She . . well, she had cared for me. " 
 
 " Cared for you ? " He could see his companion's face 
 much more clearly now, and there was no mistaking the woe- 
 begone naturalness of its innocent expression as she re- 
 peated : " Cared for you ? Why, how could we mistake, 
 either you or I, that she cared for us both ? " 
 
 Hubert stood pressing his lips together in the dimness for 
 a few seconds. " I mean she loved me," he soon said. 
 " That was what she had to confess when she sent for me on 
 her death-bed." 
 
 " Loved you ! " shot from Angela, in a wild whisper. A 
 moment later she recoiled several steps, and her gaze flashed 
 towards him in the dreamy gloom that engirt them both. 
 " She's dead, and can't answer that charge ! " 
 
 He clenched his hands . . It seemed to him, for a little 
 while, that he hated the woman who stood before him as 
 much as he had ever loved her. "So," he returned, "you 
 don't believe me ? Well, I've no proof. None, that is, unless 
 you'll credit the monstrous treachery she practised." 
 
 " What treachery ? " Angela asked. She was searching 
 his face, now, as well as the dusk would let her. His old 
 adoration of her rushed upon him, thrilling every vein, as he 
 saw an involuntary credence of what he might impart to her 
 light and melt the sweet, vague ovals of her eyes. 
 
 " A woman came one day to Alva Averill," he said ; " a 
 woman and a child." 
 
 " Yes I understand you." 
 
 "That woman knew nothing of me" he went on. "I
 
 7O DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 doubt if she has ever even heard of my existence. Alva 
 told you very differently, did she not ? " 
 
 " Differently ? Yes, she said . . ." 
 
 " I know ; she said that the child was mine. It was a lie." 
 
 " A lie ! " 
 
 " Yes ; the child was your husband's, and that woman was 
 its mother. Do you wish proof of this ? Alva Averill told 
 it me an hour or two before her death, and I believed her. 
 But that did not prevent my searching it all out afterward. 
 I held a consultation with the best detective I could secure, 
 and at length he brought me a detailed account of the 
 woman's life." 
 
 "One . . that incriminated . . my husband?" 
 
 " Yes ; you may verify this for yourself. If you desire it 
 at any future time, I will send you the name and address of 
 my assistant, and will instruct him to answer all your ques- 
 tions without reserve." 
 
 She was staring at him with pain and terror blent on her 
 colorless face ; she had clasped her hands together very 
 tightly and was holding them just on a line with her bosom, 
 which he could see rise and fall in agitated way beneath its 
 laces and roses. 
 
 " Perhaps I I may ask you, some day, to give me such 
 proof," she stammered. " Doubts may come to me here- 
 after . . I don't know. But now now, as I look at you and 
 hear you voice, I feel as if every syllable you speak were 
 stamped with truth . . ." 
 
 He smiled, and made a little despairing gesture. 
 
 " If you had only believed in me a short while ago ! " 
 
 " You you forget," she faltered. 
 
 "I forget nothing," he said. The words hardly rose above 
 a whisper, but in spite of that there was a knell in them. 
 
 She began to move her hands, one over the other, while 
 not discontinuing their clasp ; it was a gesture that betrayed 
 depths of perturbation, notwithstanding the slowness of its
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 71 
 
 " You you knew more of the world than I," she recom- 
 menced. " It should have been less easy to deceive you 
 than me. If, as you say, Alva did this sickening thing, you 
 had experience as a guard against her ; I had not. And 
 so . . I I am not alone culpable." 
 
 "Granted," he replied. "But that the guile of this 
 woman should have got between you and me, to push us 
 apart, is one thing. That it ever should or would have 
 driven you to the marriage you made to any marriage, in 
 fact is another." 
 
 She bowed- her head, and as she did so one of the jewels 
 in her hair darted a spiteful enough flash at him to have 
 come straight from the eyes of Bleakly Voght. 
 
 " And that child was his" now broke from her ; " that 
 woman was . . ." There she lifted her head again and looked 
 at Hubert. "Oh, my God," she gasped, "what a snare has 
 been set for me ! " 
 
 " Say set for us both ! " here fell from Hubert. He took 
 several steps nearer to her without knowing what he did. 
 And now a note of compassion pierced his tones ; the great 
 woe in her mien had addressed him with such potency that 
 he had no more reproaches left. " Angela ! " he softly 
 exclaimed ; " we have both been horribly wronged ! Perhaps 
 in a way we are both to blame ; but neither has been so very 
 culpable, after all. It was she it was that .arch-hypocrite, 
 for whom the grave that she now lies in is too decent a 
 resting-place ! " 
 
 Angela looked at him with eyes that had suddenly be- 
 come flooded in tears. 
 
 " Ah, but that letter I wrote you ! " she faltered. 
 
 He bit his lip. "I should have torn it in shreds, and 
 rushed to you afterward. I should have said : ' Angela, you 
 do not mean that you are cold or ambitious _>w/ / There 
 is some devilish pique some aching wound, behind every 
 line that you have written ! Tell me what this mystery 
 means ! ' I should have spoken so to you and in a trice all
 
 72 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 her villany would have been laid bare to us. We would 
 have found it out by the light of our own love by . . ." 
 
 He had caught her hand, but she said to him quickly and 
 with a tremor of untold sorrow in the two little words : " No 
 no ! " And then she almost flung his hand away; yet be- 
 fore she had made up her mind whether to hurry from him or 
 to remain at his side a brief while longer, his response had 
 come, contrite, touched with dignity, breathing to the ears 
 that heard it of a familiar gentle chivalry and high-strung 
 control over self. 
 
 " You are right. I think we had best leave one another. 
 Send me a line, at any time, if you want a personal meeting 
 with the man who investigated all that forlorn .affair . . . 
 God bless you ; may each year of your future life gain in 
 peace and joy ! Remember that I hold myself, in the main, 
 as rashly faulty as you were. If it were not for the marriage 
 you made I would concede ten times more that that I would 
 admit that I had been the only culprit, and that you were 
 even guiltless by comparison." 
 
 His sudden composure seemed to augment her tears. 
 They half stifled her as she raised both hands toward him 
 with timid yet fervent deprecation. 
 
 " Do not ever think of me hereafter as guiltless ! And as 
 for my being happy again, that that is beyond the most 
 daring hope ! . . Ah, you don't know what my punishment 
 has already become ! " . . . She threw back her head for an 
 instant, and there was a desperate defiance glittering from 
 her tear-besieged eyes that made her look of suffering all 
 the more pathetic to him. " I never had a meek nature 
 you know that," she swiftly pursued. " But I've married a 
 tyrant whom the meekness of a slave would not satisfy. . . 
 The future ! I grow almost mad when I let my thoughts 
 dwell on it ! And now you've turned the past into even a 
 worse horror ! You've ..." 
 
 She paused, listened for a second, and then dashed a 
 handkerchief over her face, in wild effort to wipe away the
 
 D I TIDED LIVES. 73 
 
 compromising evidence of her tears. Hubert, like herself, 
 had heard the sound of an approaching step ; it was firm, 
 deliberative, yet rapid. He discerned the lighted doorway 
 of a hall at some little distance beyond them, and in a direc- 
 tion opposite to that whence the step proceeded. 
 
 " Come with me this way," he whispered, and moved for- 
 ward as he spoke, expecting that she would at once accom- 
 pany him. 
 
 But the injunction was given too late. " Are you there, 
 Angela ? " said a perfectly cool voice which they both rec- 
 ognized as Voght's. 
 
 "Yes," she managed to answer. 
 
 In another instant he was close beside them. Hubert 
 saw that his naturally white face had got a chalky tint. He 
 addressed his wife first " I was wondering where you'd 
 disappeared," he said. 
 
 " Neither of us had gone very far," Hubert struck in, with 
 the utmost calm and nonchalance of manner. He aimed to 
 convey a double meaning, yet one which this husband, 
 whom he had just heard called a tyrant, might find reassur- 
 ing and even consolatory, while it was by no means too 
 pointed. 
 
 But Bleakly Voght, as we know, had but a weak sway 
 over his own temper. Once it got control of him, the 
 chances were strong that he would make himself either 
 obnoxious or droll. Still, in the present case it must be 
 chronicled to his credit that he did neither. The merciless 
 mockery and amusement of two or three women who were 
 seated, at that moment, not by any means far off, would not 
 have spared him hereafter, he well knew, if he had afforded 
 them any firm point d'appui for a " racy " dinner-party 
 scandal. 
 
 He showed Hubert that he was inwardly furious, how- 
 ever, as he now answered in curt, frigid tones : 
 
 " This night-air is treacherous ; there has been a change
 
 74 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 during the past hour. I think it will be more prudent if my 
 wife waits for our carriage indoors." 
 
 He offered Angela his arm, and as she took it he so stood 
 that she was forced to turn her back upon Hubert. 
 Whether or not she succeeded in hiding her tears and the 
 traces of them as she bade good-night to their host and host- 
 ess and the other guests, Hubert afterward had no knowl- 
 edge. The carriages were all arriving and being announced 
 when he joined Mrs. Van Schaick, for the purpose of say- 
 ing a quiet good-night and then slipping away. But the 
 Van Schaicks did not merely commit blunders ; they some- 
 times made them worse by would-be extenuation, reparation, 
 and apology. 
 
 " Oh, I m so sorry it happened ! " Mrs. Jack murmured to 
 him, clasping his hand in her own gloved one. She was a 
 plump little creature, and her beady black eyes glistened 
 from a plump face, over which the glossy black hair was 
 lifted high and tipped with little curving feathers, not unlike 
 the crest of a guinea-fowl. " Oh, yes, yes, Jack and I are 
 both so sorry ! But it was his fault. Of course he should 
 never have asked you, when he knew of how they were 
 surely coming and of how you and she were once engaged ! 
 I declare, it makes me sick when I think of all the horrid 
 things Jack does out of pure forgetfulness. And then, half 
 the time, people blame me. If you recollect, when we saw 
 you over at the Branch, he asked you, and not I. Still, 7 
 should have remembered about . . about //, you know. But 
 it somehow escaped my mind too, although there's some ex- 
 cuse for a woman with a family, and one who's head of two 
 or three establishments, like me .... whereas Jack, there, 
 he has nothing on earth to do from morning till night except 
 go to clubs and drive and bet and amuse himself." 
 
 " There's really nothing for you to feel distressed by," 
 said Hubert, with all his best air of repose and polish ; 
 " nothing, I assure you." 
 
 " It's quite horrible ! " Mrs. Jack gently wailed, however,
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 75 
 
 still detaining him. " Jack's mistakes are constantly being 
 traced to me. We do, both of us, commit them ; there 
 seems a grim fatality in it. But then his list is three times 
 as long as mine. I'm sure this whole affair of to-night will 
 get abroad and be called Mrs. Jack's latest ; you just see if 
 it doesn't. The other day / was accused of asking Willy 
 Wotherspoon whether he'd left that sweet little wife of his 
 quite well at Bar Harbor, when everybody knew she'd just 
 begun a suit for divorce against him in Newport. But this 
 was Jack, not I. . . And I'm beginning to suspect that he is 
 the one who turns the tables on me in that horrid way. If 
 he does, woe to him ! . . And now I'm so glad you don't 
 mind what has happened. It's so like you not to mind ; you 
 always did have such a sweetly amiable disposition." 
 
 Hubert felt a dread lest Mr. Jack might make an attempt 
 to smooth matters over with the same volubility that Mrs. 
 Jack had just employed ; so, without seeking for that gentle- 
 man, he got into the hired wagon that had been sent for 
 him from the hotel and was speedily driven back to Long 
 Branch. 
 
 One big star, as Hubert watched it during his drive, ap- 
 peared to sparkle over the immense pallor of the moonlit 
 sea with scorn and irony in its beams. The film had been 
 torn from his wound again ; it almost seemed to him that he 
 could feel it bleeding, and with his best heart's blood. 
 
 On reaching the hotel again, he was met by O'Hara, who 
 had been awaiting his return rather impatiently. 
 
 " There is hardly a soul here whom I know," began the 
 Irishman, as soon as Hubert had consented to light a cigar 
 in his company ; " and the few that I do know are of a sort 
 that I can't abide." 
 
 " Of what sort ? " asked Hubert. 
 
 " Oh, the half-professional gambler. I suppose the Club 
 House will be packed to-night, on account of the races this 
 afternoon. A few sore-headed gamesters have come over 
 here to salve their hurts at the card-tables, and a few tri-
 
 76 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 umphant ones have been led to exploit their vein of luck still 
 further." 
 
 " That is nearly always the way with the winning dealer 
 in hazards ; he turns his own worst foe the moment fortune 
 makes him her friend." 
 
 The cottage-like structure of the Club House, white, grace- 
 ful, airily filagreed about its roofs and porches, rose in the 
 moonlight, not many yards away. It had all the outside 
 innocence of some rather unpretending villa. But in another 
 minute a gallant equipage stopped before its front gateway. 
 The inmates had been singing a kind of rowdy song in a 
 semi-bacchanal manner; they were all young men, and a 
 little closer view than that which the hotel-piazza afforded 
 would have shown that most of them were tipsy. 
 
 Hubert was in a mood for any morbid excitement, just 
 then. " I haven't gambled," he said, " for over four years ; 
 and that last time was one night at Monte Carlo, when I won 
 six thousand francs and almost swore that I would never 
 court the vulgar and vitiating pastime again. But to-night I 
 well, suppose we walk over and see what the interior of 
 the place is like . . . ." 
 
 Bleakly Voght had meanwhile lost no time in getting 
 Angela away from the Van Schaicks'. She had rallied with 
 a speed that surprised him and would have produced the 
 sharpest consternation if he could have seen the interior 
 workings of her tortured spirit. But she was by no means the 
 first woman who has known how to mask agony. Doubt- 
 less the thought that her name and Hubert's must be already 
 in process of covert discussion nerved her toward new rigors 
 of self-governance. 
 
 But she drew a great fluttering breath of relief as the 
 carriage rolled away from the Van Schaicks' door, bearing 
 herself and her husband. It was a heavy family-carriage, 
 and its appearance amid all the light, gay, brilliant modernity 
 of Elberon had evoked not a little derisive comment. But
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 77 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bleakly Voght were not at present the heads of 
 their own household ; they had come to Elberon as the guests 
 of Bleakly Voght's maiden aunt, Miss Betsey Lexington. 
 The latter, who possessed several millions, had for some 
 years been expected to die and leave her only nephew at 
 least half of her great property. But she had not died ; 
 instead of that she had built, at a considerable distance back 
 from the sea-shore, what had been called the single really 
 ugly house in all Elberon. Hither each year she would ask 
 her nephew, Bleakly ; and now that he was married she held 
 it her duty to include his wife in the invitation. But Angela 
 had not pleased this gaunt, gray old woman as a bride for one 
 of her own kin. She was over seventy years old, and she 
 remembered New York society fifty years ago. It was true 
 that there had been Laights fifty years ago. Ah, yes, she 
 admitted that. But a Laight had once married his cook. 
 Miss Betsey recollected it so well ! It had shocked the 
 whole town, from Bowling Green to Canal street. That 
 cook, though not in the immediate line of Angela's grand- 
 parents, had been, notwithstanding, an uncomfortably 
 near ancestress, and Bleakly ought to have remembered 
 it. 
 
 Curiously enough, when some friend, rather free of speech, 
 pointed out to Miss Betsey the fact that Angela's father had 
 been a gentleman of precarious repute, that lady gave the 
 information hardly any heed. Scampishness in a family was 
 one thing, this logical product of so-called American aristoc- 
 racy declared. Where could you find a good old family 
 that had been without at least two or three scamps ? They 
 were just as certain to crop out as drunkards. But a 
 cook ! No ; depravity was one thing rplebeianism was 
 another ! 
 
 " You'll find Aunt Betsey a type," Voght had said to his 
 wife, "and a rather odd one. It's fast dying out ; it belongs 
 to the little old provincial New York of the past. But she's 
 a lady, and knows how to be nicely hospitable. We sha'n't
 
 78 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 see much of her ; she's nearly always in her room, with gout 
 or something of that sort. And these yearly visits, you 
 know, must be paid." 
 
 As the carriage moved to-night along the breezy, sea- 
 scented road, Voght was the first to speak. The coachman, 
 like the carriage, was an ancient family-affair, and known to 
 be almost wholly deaf. 
 
 " Do you think you showed good taste this evening ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 Angela looked at his vague face, always so pale, with its 
 hawk-like nose and its two little twinkling eyes. She re- 
 peated his words, " Good taste ? " questioningly, yet in a far 
 more stupid way than he suspected. They were words that 
 to her forlorn and shuddering soul conveyed at that moment 
 scarcely a shadow of real meaning. 
 
 " Oh," he re-commenced sneeringly, " I dare say you'll 
 lay the whole matter at the door of those blundering 
 Van Schaicks. But I'm not speaking of that. I'm speaking of 
 your going off to a lonely part of the piazza, after dinner was 
 over, and holding a meeting with him there. It was certainly 
 the most horrible taste. A year or two hence your former 
 engagement to him might almost be forgotten. But I don't 
 propose that my wife shall cheapen me, like that, before the 
 world at large. God knows what you talked about together, 
 but it was something that had made you as white as a sheet 
 and had set you crying like a baby." 
 
 He paused, with the intent of giving her a chance to 
 reply. But she remained Silent exasperatingly so, as he 
 now hotly told himself. After a little while he again 
 addressed her. 
 
 " I must insist," he urged, "upon your telling me what it 
 was that Throckmorton said which caused such agitation in 
 you." 
 
 Angela started. She had always endeavored to keep 
 clearly before her mind a conception of the courtesy and 
 allegiance due this man whose wife she had become. For
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 79 
 
 weeks past he had done much to make her forget both ; nor 
 did a sense of her own exorbitant folly in having married 
 him at all serve by any means cogently as a reminder. 
 
 "There was something which it was best for me to know," 
 she answered, " and he granted my own request by letting 
 me know it." 
 
 " Ah ... he met you, then, at your own request." 
 
 Angela tossed her head a little. " Yes. I am not at all 
 ashamed to make that admission ; why should I be ? " 
 
 " You're better able to answer the question than I," he 
 retorted acridly. 
 
 " This anger of yours is quite without cause," she pro- 
 tested. " I have done nothing whatever to deserve it." 
 She thought of what he had done to deserve her disgust 
 (unless Hubert's entire story had been a false one) and 
 leaned back, softly shivering, against the cushions of the 
 carriage. 
 
 " I see," he exclaimed ; " you wish to avoid answering my 
 question. You haven't done so yet. Do you intend to do 
 so ? " 
 
 A very bitter smile crossed Angela's face, now. " If I 
 did answer it," she said, sternly and below her breath, "you 
 might regret that you'd ever asked it." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he cried, so shrilly that the deaf 
 coachman thought he heard himself called and looked 
 round, waiting for a still louder appeal to relieve his doubts. 
 
 Knowing (as by this time she had had reason to know) the 
 violence of his temper, Angela regretted the utterance of 
 those last words. But it was too late now ; she had 
 unloosed a hurricane. 
 
 " You shall tell me what you said together about me 
 against me," rang his next wrathful sentence. He leaned 
 his face close to hers, and suddenly gripped her wrist. 
 " You shall tell me," he repeated. " Do you hear ? you've 
 let slip more than you meant you've given yourself away 
 . . . I'll make you tell me what that was I "
 
 80 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 Just then the carriage stopped before Miss Lexington's 
 residence. Realizing that the end of the brief drive had 
 been reached, Voght let his fingers fall from Angela's wrist. 
 He sprang out of the vehicle, and stood at its door, waiting 
 for her to alight. 
 
 But it seemed to her, then, as if all movement were impos- 
 sible. These bursts of ire in him smote her with greater 
 terror every time that she witnessed one of them. She had 
 begun to hold him in physical fear, distressing though such 
 attitude appeared to her own ideas of feminine dignity. 
 But it was of no use ; the old childish horror as of ogre and 
 ghoul weighed upon her ; she had had more than one dream, 
 of late, in which he had tried to kill her, and from which 
 she had wakened in a cold sweat of actual horror. 
 
 Her sensations were not far from that just now. He soon 
 thrust his head into the carriage and peered at her. 
 
 " Are you coming ? " he asked, with each word dropping 
 from his lips as though it were leaden. 
 
 " I i can't," she murmured ; and then, as he reached 
 out his hand toward her, though not at all in a hostile man- 
 ner, she suddenly uttered a little scream of fear and fainted 
 completely away. 
 
 She awoke to find him bending over her where she lay on 
 one of the drawing-room lounges. He had carried her into 
 the house himself ; those lean, long arms of his were 
 powerful, at a necessitous pitch. He had summoned no 
 help whatever, though if her swoon had continued longer 
 than the brief interval it really occupied, he would no doubt 
 have clone so. The moment that Angela opened her eyes 
 she saw the glad relief on his face. 
 
 " My darling ! " he said, kissing her more than once ; 
 " are you better ? It was nothing ; it was the merest ner- 
 vousness. I behaved too harshly ; forgive me, my Angela ! 
 Don't let us think of it any more, dearest ! I was a fool and 
 a brute both. But love made me so. That's no excuse, is 
 it ? But forgive me just this once ! You shall never tell me
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 8 1 
 
 a syllable that passed between you and him never, that is, 
 unless you choose. I want so to have you happy . . happy 
 always, my love, my dear, dear wife ! . . ." 
 
 This was certainly an altered mood, and as such it 
 repelled Angela no less than the antecedent mood had 
 alarmed her. As soon as she could rise she struggled up 
 from the lounge in spite of his penitential embraces. It was 
 pleasant to think that this one storm of tyranny was over, but 
 when might not the next appear with its rush and flare ? 
 She had begun to understand that there was no exemption 
 from the persecutions of such an ill-governed being as he 
 with whom she had linked her earthly fate. At any moment 
 he might dart upon her like an inflamed tiger. And his love 
 only gave a more tropic, hectic, even baneful character to 
 his whole personality. It was like being loved by something 
 uncanny and inhuman. 
 
 She knew that she keenly hurt him by going up-stairs 
 without the least tender response to his remorseful protesta- 
 tions. But if it had been the saving of her own life (as she 
 afterward rather exaggeratedly told herself) she could not 
 have addressed him in any loving or even wifely way. 
 Apart from the affright which he had roused in her during 
 the homeward drive, there now rose up, as a fresh, miserable 
 reason why she should never have committed the wild act of 
 marrying him at all, that mother and that child whose 
 wrongs she had laid at the door of the man whom she 
 devotedly loved. 
 
 Meanwhile Bleakly Voght lingered down-stairs. He was 
 now even more angry at himself than he had lately been at 
 Angela. 
 6
 
 VI. 
 
 His wife's apathetic treatment of him after his own rather 
 hysterical prayers for pardon had wounded him in a most 
 sensitive and expanded portion of his moral anatomy. We 
 all know of what vagaries a really stalwart vanity is capable. 
 Voght had taught his to believe that Angela loved him. 
 The feline agency exerted by Alva Averill had, it is true, 
 wrought distinct effect. After she had set in motion by her 
 fatal duplicity that disjunctive force which pressed poor 
 Hubert and Angela so sadly if so absurdly away from one 
 another, she seized the chance to utter certain counsels in 
 the ear of Bleakly Voght which not a few men of less vivid 
 self-esteem would have regarded with indecision if not posi- 
 tive belief. She had told him that Angela had never truly 
 cared for Hubert ; that the girl's heart had for months been 
 given in secret to himself, yet that she shrank bashfully 
 from all his great social grandeur. "Try her again," the 
 smooth-voiced plotter had pursued. "You think she 
 repulsed you before ; it may have been merely what I have 
 endeavored to explain ; and we women know one another 
 better than men know us. Try her again . . you have been 
 in Europe since you asked her the last time, and she has 
 watched by a dying father's bedside an experience not apt 
 to increase any girl's coquetry. See if I do not prove right ; 
 you're in love with her still you concede it ; this time you 
 will win her ; it will be reculer pour mieux sauter with you." 
 
 So it had been ; and yet not even the illusory veil of self- 
 importance could quite transform Angela's chill and grave 
 acquiescence into the timidity of concealed adoration. 
 Then there had been that hasty rupture of the engagement 
 82
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 83 
 
 between the girl and young Throckmorton. Had she really 
 grown tired of him, as Alva Averill insisted ? When Voght 
 had mentioned the matter to his fiance during the very brief 
 term of their engagement, she had a parrying and even veto- 
 ing little group of responses ready at hand. Then, soon 
 afterward, had come the marriage, and after that there had 
 been with Bleakly Voght a gradual confirmation of those 
 doubts and suspicions which had slept a little while but 
 never died. Perhaps it was because he guessed in Angela 
 the repulsion which his presence exercised upon her that he 
 strove to make himself (in fits of perverse and imperious 
 wilfulness) more antipathetic than ever. But in any case he 
 would have been hard to get along with ; his temper had 
 been a savage one for years ; he had already quarrelled 
 with almost every blood-relation he possessed except his 
 Aunt Betsey Lexington and a substantial golden reason, as 
 some people avowed, alone kept him from long ago having 
 added her to the grim list of his foes. 
 
 But however he had thus far behaved to Angela, his love 
 for her was intense. The explosions of his anger were 
 always followed by episodes of tenderness and contrition, 
 but never had this result occurred with such an accent of 
 complete self-abandonment as to-night. 
 
 " I've made an infernal ass of myself," he said, standing 
 in his aunt's rich but prim drawing-room. " She cares no 
 more for me than for one of the buttons on her glove. She 
 married me out of pique nothing more, and I was fool 
 enough to let her. She's in love with that verse-scribbler 
 still, and I don't doubt they were having some sort of an 
 explanation when I went round the edge of the piazza, there, 
 and caught her bathed in tears." 
 
 He gnawed his lips, and thrust both hands into the 
 pockets of his baggy, ill-fitting trousers, that had known the 
 scissors of a renowned Piccadilly tailor, but looked, like 
 everything he wore, as if they had come out of the Bowery. 
 All the latter part of his by no means youthful life he had
 
 84 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 been what is termed a gentlemanly gambler. Cards were 
 his only vice, just as it might be said that shooting had once 
 been his only real amusement ; for although he liked a good 
 horse and owned several, he nowadays rarely rode, and did 
 not drive half as often as he was driven. Wine he took in 
 very sparing quantities ; it brought on a neuralgia which he 
 accounted for by reckless drinking in his youth. Tobacco 
 he seldom touched, as it made him, in its mildest forms, 
 painfully nervous. But cards had for years been his solace 
 and delight when stakes of an appreciable kind were 
 played for. 
 
 Since his marriage he had striven, and with some success, 
 to control his master-passion. When he played at the club 
 in his bachelor days, it would frequently be dawn before lie 
 departed for home. This form of diversion in a married 
 man he had not considered reputable, however indulgently 
 it might be condoned in a bachelor ; and so he had put 
 gyves, as it were, on his own wrists, and had worn them, too, 
 with much stoic resolve. Now and then he had played, but 
 with a curb on his lust, permitting none of that old self-sur- 
 render which treats time as the slave all thorough-paced 
 gamblers regard him, and plucks its poppies from the brow 
 of night to find a wakeful and not soporific intoxicant in the 
 dusk eyes that burn below them. 
 
 But now, at this hour, stung, cut to the quick, feeling that 
 he had been duped by the dead as much as mocked by the 
 living, he felt a desire for that one sort of excitement which 
 would have power to soothe his fevered state. It was still 
 hardly eleven ; the Elberon hotel was but a short distance 
 away ; he could easily get a conveyance there and have him- 
 self taken to the Club House at Long Branch, where, no 
 doubt, cards would be procurable as an amusement in the 
 form of one game or another. 
 
 He soon set forth from his aunt's house with this deter- 
 mination in view, having first notified one of the servants 
 that he would probably not be home until quite a late hour.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 85 
 
 He succeeded in procuring the desired vehicle, and had him- 
 self transported to the Club House in a brief space of time. 
 He did not know one of the people assembled in the room 
 where roulette was being played, but lingered there for quite 
 a little while in rapt observation of those who were winning 
 and losing at this game. It was one which had always fas- 
 cinated him ; his record with regard to it, years ago, while 
 he was abroad, had been picturesquely disastrous. He was 
 surprised to find it going on here in this establishment. 
 Before long he determined to try his own luck. In five 
 minutes the old gaming madness was upon him. He never 
 once forgot his trouble while he continued to play, but the 
 effect of the excitement he underwent was that of some 
 potent nervine. No liquor could possibly have given him 
 the same kind of exhilaration as now came to him from 
 merely watching the red or black figures on those bits of 
 pasteboard turn up in the hands of the dealer. 
 
 Few men of large intellect have ever been gamblers. In 
 a manner Voght showed the narrowness of his mentality and 
 the resourceless nature of it. Gaming is nothing but a dis- 
 eased state of avarice, and appeals to qualities that broad- 
 minded beings rarely possess. The idlers through life are 
 those whom its dangers chiefly threaten, and when its grip 
 has once become relentless, the drunkard's doom is hardly 
 a worse one to contemplate. Voght had long ago saved 
 himself from that dire self-forgetfulness which brings ruin in 
 its wake. But you saw to-night, if you watched him with 
 any closeness of attention, that his relations toward the vice 
 had just grazed those of minion toward master. 
 
 One person, who had entered the room since he began to 
 play, did watch him with just such accentuated scrutiny. 
 This was Hubert. Both he and O'Hara had strolled hither 
 from one of the other rooms. After a little while Hubert 
 commenced playing. There was quite a crowd about the 
 table, and although he was stationed directly opposite Voght 
 it was by no means remarkable that the latter did not imme-
 
 86 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 diately perceive his presence. Rather carelessly, and in his 
 quick, nervous way, Voght flung four or five checks upon a 
 certain card. At the same moment Hubert placed three 
 checks there. Voght glanced across the table unconcern- 
 edly enough, and then gave a severe start as he saw Hubert. 
 The latter met his irate eye tranquilly. Voght's hand hov- 
 ered over the checks he had just deposited on the card. 
 Then, with a scowl, he snatched them away. But in doing 
 so he took one of Hubert's checks, though unwittingly. 
 Just afterward the card won. 
 
 The dealer paid Hubert, whom Voght's action had keenly 
 annoyed by the spirit of school-boy impertinence that I; 
 betrayed. But the payment was insufficient, and Hubert 
 said so. The dealer shrugged his shoulders. " I paid on 
 two checks all the card had," he replied. 
 
 " I put three checks on the card," declared Hubert. 
 
 " I only saw two," replied the dealer, civilly but a little 
 curtly. 
 
 " But there were three," insisted Hubert. 
 
 Several other voices now made affirmation that pointed 
 directly to the heedless mistake of Voght. And then the 
 eyes of Hubert and Voght met once more. 
 
 "True," Hubert proceeded, with firmness and calmness 
 in equal measure. " That gentleman " (as he indicated the 
 husband of Angela by a slight motion of the head) "has one 
 of my checks. It was unintentionally taken, of course, and 
 will be returned to me at once, as I can't help feeling quite 
 certain." 
 
 Voght's frown grew blacker. He bit his lip and stared 
 downward for an instant, while everybody intently watched 
 him. Meanwhile Hubert's gaze was fixed upon his face ; it 
 was a gaze no less demanding than gentlemanly. Suddenly 
 Voght's encountered it again. He was too much a man of 
 the world not to realize perfectly that he had now but one 
 proper course. But his devilish temper had quite got the 
 best of him. If almost anyone else on earth except Hubert
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 8/ 
 
 had confronted him with the polite yet resolute avowal which 
 he had just heard, his restitution and apology would have 
 been immediate. As it was, he now retorted, in tones of 
 trenchant insolence : 
 
 "Oh, you claim the check, do you? Well, there it is. I 
 don't believe in making a fuss about such trifles." And then 
 he tossed a check across the table, with such violence that 
 its ivory disc struck Hubert's hand. 
 
 " Still, it seems that you do make a fuss about trifles," 
 leapt from Hubert, as he allowed the white round to roll 
 past him and drop on the floor. 
 
 O'Hara's hazel eyes glittered as he stooped and picked up 
 the check, handing it to Hubert. Voght had cut him super- 
 ciliously a year or two before ; his remembrance of the cut 
 may or may not have intensified his attitude of championship 
 toward his friend just now. 
 
 " Right," he said to Hubert. " The check is your prop- 
 erty. A civil way of restoring it would have been more 
 advisable," 
 
 " It's no concern of yours," exclaimed Voght, who had 
 recognized O'Hara as a " newspaper fellow " whom he had 
 met somewhere an age ago and not thought worth bowing to 
 afterward. 
 
 " No ; it is a concern of mine," said Hubert placidly. 
 
 " Gentlemen," called the dealer, with a flourish of one 
 hand over his cards ; " the game, if you please." 
 
 Hubert at once presented his checks to the dealer and had 
 them redeemed in money. As soon as this was effected, he 
 strolled out of the room at O'Hara's side. Meanwhile the 
 Irishman had recalled what he would have had no difficulty in 
 recalling if his later life had not drifted so far away from the 
 deeds and misdeeds of the so-named patrician world. He 
 recollected that this Bleak\y Voght was the man who had 
 married, abruptly and peculiarly, the former sweetheart of 
 his friend, Hubert. The two men reached the outside porch 
 and stood there, for a few moments, in silence.
 
 88 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " What a devilish rowdy that fellow behaved like," O'Hara 
 presently remarked. 
 
 " Yes," said Hubert. He took out a cigarette and began 
 to roll it between leisurely fingers. " He has never known 
 how to govern his temper. It has come near getting him 
 into trouble several times." 
 
 " It came near doing so to-night," said O'Hara, with a 
 pull at his reddish moustache. " But you spoke up very 
 squarely to him ;" and a gleam of that affectionate admiration 
 which the editor had long felt for Hubert was now manifest 
 in his look. " You showed yourself his better both in wit 
 and coolness . . But I'm a little sorry that you left the room 
 as soon as you did. I can't help wishing you'd remained 
 a short time longer." 
 
 " Perhaps it might have appeared best," answered Hubert, 
 in a low voice. And then, for the first time, it flashed upon 
 his companion that underneath his calm the hottest indig- 
 nation might be smoldering. 
 
 This was indeed true. Hubert was one of the few men 
 who believe in that consistent self-discipline which is not 
 only the secret of inward repose but the talisman of good- 
 breeding as well. Still, there are bounds to human patience. 
 If he had not quitted the room when he did, Hubert was by 
 no means positive that his powers of restraint would not 
 have been most roughly over-taxed. And his philosophy 
 admitted no cheapening meekness ; he was quick to resent 
 insult, when it really came, as he was tolerant of rudeness 
 until it had passed those limits beyond which charity wars 
 with self-respect. 
 
 " You had the last word, however," said O'Hara, with a 
 boyish note of triumph in his voice, " and a quiet but effec- 
 tive last word it was." 
 
 Hubert had lit his cigarette, now. He stood gazing across 
 the garden at the immense hotel, shadowy in the opal air, 
 with its vacated galleries and its diminished lights.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 89 
 
 " Still," he said, " I think that if I had remained it would 
 not have been the last word." 
 
 "Well, perhaps not," assented O'Hara. "The fellow is 
 such a cad, you know." 
 
 Meanwhile Voght had gone on playing with a recklessness 
 that he very seldom showed, and in quite a short space of 
 time had lost several hundreds of dollars. He suddenly 
 decided that he would play no further ; the absorbing effects 
 of the game were no longer dominant with him ; his rage 
 against Hubert grew as he recalled how serenely the latter 
 had behaved and how entirely in the right he had been. 
 With such a man as Bleakly Voght such a fury as his present 
 one was wholly explainable. Never having been crossed in 
 anything, he had found himself crossed in a matter which 
 was of the most vital concern to him. He had been more 
 than once abattu, of late, at the thought that Angela never 
 had loved him and never would love him. But to feel the 
 growing conviction that Hubert had formerly held her heart 
 and still retained it, was for one whose passions had through 
 years been as ill-ruled as his, a goad of the most savage 
 torment. He had a restless craving to meet Hubert again 
 and say or do something that would show the full scope of 
 his hate. But he was better than this impulse, and it would 
 perhaps be but pure justice to state that he had curbed it 
 when he came forth on the little piazza where Hubert stood 
 at O'Hara's side. 
 
 The truth was, he had made up his mind to go straight 
 home. He had thought of walking, as the distance was not 
 far and the facilities for such a mode of return were about 
 as perfect as a macadamized pathway bordering a breezy sea 
 could render them. He had his overcoat thrown over one 
 arm, and his hat tipped slightly sideways on the bushy 
 gray of his hair. The usual bulge was in his shirt-bosom, 
 and his white cravat showed the usual rumpled laxity. He 
 strode across the piazza toward the steps, and had almost. 
 begun to descend when he saw and recognized Hubert.
 
 go DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 In some way it had been found out that Hubert had not 
 quitted the building ; and now, when Voght left the roulette 
 table and went forth into the open air, his movements were 
 stealthily watched by certain inquisitive eyes. 
 
 He stopped short on seeing Hubert. His lips twitched 
 for a second before he spoke. It here occurred to Hubert 
 that embarrassment rather than anger might just then have 
 him in its clutch. 
 
 But no ; the mere sight of Hubert had inflamed him once 
 more. It had brought with it a vision of himself kneeling by 
 the lounge on which lay Angela his wife in name yet not in 
 spirit ; it brought with it, too, the echoes of those pleadingly 
 contrite words that he had spoken, only to have them treated 
 with the dead, indifferent silence that was worse than the 
 iciest disdain. 
 
 " I hope," he said, quite bluntly and offensively to Hubert, 
 " that you have made up your mind I didn't intend to rob 
 you/' 
 
 His demeanor was aggression itself. And for this reason 
 Hubert felt wholly justified in replying, while his composed 
 and stirless eyes were fixed full upon the glittering little gray 
 ones before him : 
 
 "Pray, is that meant for an impertinence or an apology?" 
 
 " The first if you choose," said Voght. " Certainly not the 
 last." 
 
 " Do you wish to quarrel with me ? " asked Hubert. 
 
 Voght scanned him insultingly from head to foot. " It 
 seems," he replied, "as if you wished to quarrel with me" 
 
 Forms had now gathered at the doorway leading onto the 
 piazza. Some swift messengership must have prevailed 
 during the next few seconds, for in a trice the four or five 
 observers had multiplied themselves into twenty or possibly 
 thirty. 
 
 " I've no wish to quarrel with you," Hubert replied. 
 " But I can't permit you to address me with that look and 
 tone, unless you account for both.''"
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 91 
 
 " Account ? How ? " queried Voght, as he came several 
 steps nearer to Hubert. 
 
 The latter swept his eyes toward the near hallway and 
 saw the throng that had gathered there. He hated publicity 
 of all kind ; he greatly deplored the chance of a public brawl 
 like this ; nevertheless, he was unflinching in his posture of 
 calm defiance. 
 
 O'Hara, before he could make his answer, slipped to his 
 side and stood there. Hubert felt the touch of the journal- 
 ist's hand upon his arm as he responded : 
 
 "You must account to me as a gentleman for your ungen- 
 tlemanly behavior, or " 
 
 Here O'Hara's voice sounded : " Or lose a good deal of 
 the caste you pride yourself on ! " 
 
 " Is this fellow your friend ? " inquired Voght, with an 
 accent of extreme sarcasm. 
 
 "Yes," Hubert's retort sped. He instantly pushed 
 O'Hara away from him, and at the same time rapidly whis- 
 pered : " Leave this to me. Leave it to me I beg of you, 
 my dear fellow." 
 
 O'Hara obeyed him, though glowering with discomfiture, 
 and not retiring at all far from his monitor. 
 
 "That gentleman is my friend," Hubert now said to Voght. 
 " Tell me," he suddenly went on, with a fiery dart or two 
 leaving his usually kind and mild eyes ; " are you bent on 
 making a ruffian of yourself ? Or pray what are you bent 
 on doing ? " 
 
 Voght had not seen the clustered men in the near door- 
 way. " You and I have met each other to-night before now," 
 he hoarsely said. 
 
 " True," Hubert returned. 
 
 " At . . at the Van Schaicks'," came Voght's next words, 
 thickly and with clear effort. 
 
 " Yes, " said Hubert. He added : " Your mode of address 
 is still not that of one gentleman to another."
 
 92 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " I don't mean it to be," foolishly, wildly responded 
 Voght. 
 
 Hubert took a deep breath and knotted both hands. 
 "You wish to insult me, then ? " he questioned. 
 
 "I I wish to tell you," said Voght, intimidated in spite 
 of himself, " that that you behaved. . . " And there he 
 stopped, glaring at Hubert. 
 
 " Well ? " came the challenging voice of the pale, col- 
 lected man who faced him. 
 
 " You . . you and my wife," flurrieclly continued Voght. 
 " You know what I saw there at the Van Schaicks'. What 
 were you saying to her ? What right had you to say it, what- 
 ever it was ? " 
 
 This puerility, uttered so low that no listener could possi- 
 bly have heard it, brought a smile of satire to Hubert's lips. 
 In the bitterness of his soul, with an ungovernable sense of 
 his own excessive misfortune, he responded : 
 
 " I was telling her that you were the father of Jane 
 Heath's child, not /. I was telling her that the falsehood 
 Alva Averill told about my being the father of this child and 
 not you, had caused our separation had caused her to marry 
 you instead of myself." 
 
 As Hubert spoke the last three or four words Voght 
 recoiled. 
 
 " It was a lie," he faltered. 
 
 Hubert advanced toward him. " You scoundrel ! " he 
 answered. And then he struck Voght a strong, sudden 
 blow between the eyes, that sent him sprawling wretchedly 
 upon the planks of the moonlit piazza. 
 
 "I'm glad you did it," Hubert heard O'Hara say; and 
 then he squared himself for a new attack from Voght, who 
 had leapt up again and was dashing toward him. But the 
 usual thing happened people rushed in between the com- 
 batants and kept them separated. 
 
 "I shall be over at the hotel if I am wanted," Hubert said 
 to one of the excited throng in a very unexcited way. Then
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 93 
 
 he took O'Hara's arm and the two sauntered off together. 
 Perhaps even by this time Voght would infuriatedly have pur- 
 sued them. As it was, however, he had no choice in this 
 matter, being surrounded by six or seven determined peace- 
 makers. 
 
 " I don't see how I could have done anything else," 
 said Hubert to O'Hara as they walked along. " Do you ? " 
 
 " No, indeed though I will admit that I didn't hear the 
 words which caused you to strike him." 
 
 " He gave me the lie." 
 
 " Yes ? And before that ? " 
 
 " Before that ? " repeated Hubert, in a peculiar voice. 
 " Well, I said something he didn't like, very probably." 
 
 " That's answering me tout bref, with a vengeance," 
 laughed the journalist. "Well, forgive me, Throckmorton ; 
 I didn't mean to be curious." 
 
 In a few minutes more they had reached the hotel. 
 " Shall you wait here ? " O'Hara asked, as they paused on 
 the long, dim front piazza. " Wait here ? Wait for 
 what ? " returned Hubert. 
 
 " Why, for some message from him." 
 
 Hubert shrugged his shoulders. " Oh, I don't think he 
 will send any." 
 
 " But if he does ? " 
 
 " I should take no notice of it. a - 
 
 " No notice ? " O'Hara repeated. " Why, he's a man 
 who might, sooner or later, send you a challenge unless 
 I'm a good deal mistaken in him." 
 
 " A challenge ! " softly ejaculated Hubert. " He would 
 be a precious fool to do that ! " 
 
 " Still, he might do it," persisted O'Hara. 
 
 " If he did," Hubert gravely announced, " I should have 
 but one course to take." 
 
 " You mean fighf? " inquired O'Hara, thinking that he 
 could of course mean nothing else. 
 
 " Indeed, no," said Hubert with emphasis. " Quite the
 
 94 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 opposite. I should place any challenge that I received from 
 a fellow-citizen promptly in the hands of the authorities." 
 
 "You would do that!" exclaimed O'Hara. "No, no," 
 he went on ; " it isn't like you ; I can't believe it." 
 
 " Ah, you don't know me yet," answered Hubert, shaking 
 his head with a smile. " I serve my country by obeying 
 her laws, not by defying them. Besides, I loathe duelling 
 as much as I loathe murder." 
 
 " But there are times," protested O'Hara, " when its prac- 
 tise becomes a necessity among gentlemen. Take, for ex- 
 ample, this affair of yours with Voght granting that Voght 
 is a gentleman, which I admit to be a rather high flight of 
 the fancy. You struck him ; it is not either his or your 
 wish, most probably, to stand up and play the shoulder-hit- 
 ter. There is a more serious and surely a more dignified 
 way of settling your difference." 
 
 " By trying to kill each other ? I should hardly call it 
 more dignified." 
 
 " But you don't want to pound the fellow with your fists, 
 and be pounded in return, for the space of an hour or two ? " 
 
 " Decidedly not. I was wrong to strike Voght as I did. 
 I committed a punishable offence. He has the power to 
 obtain full redress if so inclined." 
 
 O'Hara lifted both hands amazedly. " You can't be 
 referring, my dear boy," he burst forth, "to a suit for 
 assault ! " 
 
 " I am so referring." 
 
 " But what satisfaction can the law possibly give any man 
 under such circumstances ? " 
 
 " If it does not give him all the satisfaction that he ought 
 to secure," replied Hubert, with a fleet, unwonted vehe- 
 mence, " then it must be a very poor law and a very need- 
 less one." 
 
 " But good heavens, man ! " exclaimed O'Hara. " How 
 is a gentleman going to call on the law to aid him where it's 
 a question of personal honor ! "
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 95 
 
 " He should be proud to have in that law a faithful yet 
 impartial friend. He rushes to it if he wishes to break his 
 father's will if he wishes to procure a divorce from his 
 wife if he is maimed by an accident if he has been 
 swindled by his neighbor. As it is both his friend and 
 guardian, he owes it the duty of respecting one of its most 
 just and moral commands. The exquisite nerves of his 
 ' personal honor ' should be made to undergo a little of the 
 pain that comes from sacrifice. And by the way, I have 
 always observed that ' personal honor ' is nowadays found 
 in a most flourishing state where the subject is just such a 
 spoiled, selfish, tyrannical, arrogant person as Bleakly 
 Voght." 
 
 " Still," O'Hara said, " you don't expect a challenge from 
 him ? " 
 
 " No," returned Hubert. " I think there are reasons for 
 his not sending me a challenge. Except for these reasons I 
 can readily imagine his doing so." 
 
 Hubert meant that guilty incident of Voght's life which 
 Mrs. Averill had made a means of separating Angela from 
 the man she loved. And as it turned out, he judged wisely. 
 Voght did shrink, and solely on this account, from the 
 publicity of an attempted duel. That name, Jane Heath, 
 wrought its paralyzing effect even upon a rancor as bitter 
 as was his own. He knew the dastard character of his 
 conduct, in previous years, to an unfriended and innocent 
 girl. He knew that the world, lenient as it sometimes was 
 to crying faults, would not pardon his share in that bitter 
 little history. 
 
 He had never dreamed of the real measures Mrs. Averill 
 had taken, and now, when Hubert's few words told him the 
 whole hideous truth, it was like having the earth split under 
 his feet. Some of those who had prevented hini from re- 
 turning Hubert's blow, said afterward among one another, 
 in sarcastic criticism, that a good deal of their force had 
 been thrown away on a rather peaceful individual. But
 
 g6 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 Voght's tractability had been simply the result of his grow- 
 ing dismay and dread. The mark of Hubert's knuckles 
 would linger on his face for days to come ; pain was already 
 assuring him of that. But the pain was also an incessant 
 reminder not only that his gross fault of the past had some- 
 how transpired, but that it was now to rise up and mock him, 
 in his relations toward Angela, as with a devil's laugh. 
 
 He hardly remembered the walk back to Elberon. On 
 arriving at his aunt's house, he passed straight up-stairs to 
 the large suite of apartments which Mrs. Lexington had 
 given himself and his wife, not omitting to lock and bolt the 
 main hall-door below. But he had no clear perception of 
 anything until he stood within his wife's chamber. The 
 traces of Hubert's clenched hand had already wrought 
 havoc with his face ; an ugly bluish bruise had begun to 
 show itself under either eye ; haggard, dishevelled, betray- 
 ing acute mental perturbation, he presented so alarming 
 an appearance that Angela almost shrieked as she saw 
 him. 
 
 She had not yet gone to bed. Feeling that sleep was im- 
 possible for at least two or three hours to come, she had 
 clad herself in a loose flannel gown whose pliant white folds 
 became her better than she either guessed or cared, and had 
 seated herself at a small table on which a lamp was still 
 burning. Here she found two or three books, and had been 
 for a long time absently turning over the leaves of one after 
 another, when the sudden apparition of her husband set 
 every nerve in her body wildly tingling.
 
 VII. 
 
 " You are up late," he said, approaching her. 
 
 " Yes," she murmured. " I I could not sleep." 
 
 He drew a long sigh, that had for her a phantasmal sound 
 in the big, still room. "And I," he said, with a lonely 
 solemnity in his voice " I feel as if I should never sleep 
 again ! " 
 
 She looked up at him. His face had always been to her 
 a repelling one, but now it almost made her start with horror, 
 
 " You have been hurt, have you not ? " she questioned 
 peering at him. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I was struck. Throckmorton struck 
 me." 
 
 " Throckmorton ! " she cried, starting to her feet, all color 
 flying from her face in a second and leaving it ghastly. 
 
 Voght smiled ; that smile seemed to her like an exclama- 
 tion of sneering triumph. But she felt immense relief after 
 he had spoken a few more words. 
 
 " Ah, you need not be so wildly distressed," he said. " I 
 didn't harm him in the least. There were people who came 
 in between us and prevented my returning his blow. But 
 afterward I felt as if I could hardly blame him for having 
 given it to me." He smiled again, pressing his thin white 
 lips together with a sardonic tensity. 
 
 Angela sank back into her seat, and he drew a little 
 closer to her. " I accused Throckmorton of lying," he con- 
 tinued, " but I now feel that I hadn't the shadow of a right 
 to do so. What do you think he said to me ? " 
 
 " I I have no idea," she replied. 
 
 " I will tell you , " and then he repeated, almost word for 
 7 97
 
 98 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 word, the two sentences that had left Hubert's lips on the 
 piazza of the Club House. Angela listened eagerly. After- 
 ward she bowed her head very low, and sat thus, with her 
 gaze fixed on the floor. 
 
 " This is true ? " Voght asked. " This is what he did say 
 to you ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And you ? . . . Did you believe him ? " 
 
 " Yes," she half whispered, after a little pause. 
 
 " But suppose I should assert that it is all a falsehood ? " 
 he flashed, yet with a certain insecurity in his very sternness 
 that betrayed it as a spurious outburst. " Did did any 
 woman come to Alva Averill ? " 
 
 She made him no answer. He stood watching her for 
 some little time, but she still kept her head drooped. An 
 expression of the most passionate cruelty and jealousy 
 crossed his face. He went very close indeed to her, then, 
 and said, with the well-known ring of rage in his husky 
 voice : 
 
 " It's all perfectly apparent, now, just why you married 
 me. Alva Averill behaved like a demon, and you, because 
 the man you loved seemed to you villanous, married some- 
 one else from motives of punishment, of revenge. I was the 
 someone else, and you showed me no more pity than if my 
 peace of mind had been made for you to wreck. Now you 
 learn that you visited my fault on Throckmorton that I was 
 the real culprit, not he and it serves you right. You've 
 only received your proper dues." At this point he hurried 
 to the door of the chamber, waving one hand above his head. 
 "It's all like a sort of devilish comedy, but you're booked 
 for your part, and you must play it out. Let Throckmorton 
 give everything away if he likes. Other men have been 
 foolish as well as I. It was a good while ago. You've 
 something to hate me for, now you know it. Almost any- 
 thing's better than your dead indifference. Come, hate me 
 abominate me as much as you please. But you must.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 99 
 
 stop there ; do you understand ? No matter what Fve done, 
 there are things I'd kill you for if I thought you'd more than 
 think them ! . ." 
 
 He passed from the room, and left her trembling there in 
 her seat beside the lamp-lit table. 
 
 The next few days were full of the severest trial for her. 
 His disfigured visage not merely forced him to remain 
 indoors and refuse all the numerous visitors who called 
 upon him, but it produced a condition of irritability that 
 eclipsed even his valet's former experiences. Angela was 
 compelled to see certain of the visitors, though at times 
 their voices would sound far away to her, and a sensation 
 of deadly faintness would mingle with the throbbing pain 
 that scarcely ever quitted her temples. Old Miss Lexington 
 was deceived by some story of a bad, dangerous fall, and as 
 she knew her nephew to be of abstemious habits, asked no 
 questions of the sort that bring ruin on loosely-wrought 
 fictions. There were times when Angela felt as if she 
 should go mad ; there were times when she almost regretted 
 that she did not. Her nature was what might be named the 
 romantic sort; she had the clearest sense of abstract duty, 
 but after all, when it came to the test, emotion ruled her. 
 We have seen how physical fear now and then influenced 
 her dealings with Voght. Since Hubert's disclosure and her 
 husband's corroboration of it, physical loathing had taken 
 the mastery even over fear. Angela's purity and love of 
 purity in others had no pharisaic touch ; it \vas perhaps the 
 chief reason why she had loved what seemed to her this 
 element at its whitest, most poetic, and most spiritual in 
 Hubert. He had been to her not merely an idealist ; she 
 was old enough, she was enough of an American girl, to 
 understand that there are men who can be idealists in their 
 professions, their assumptions, their demands, and yet fail 
 miserably of any practical correspondence to these as regards 
 their material, sublunar lives. But in Hubert she had seen, 
 or had seemed to see, no vestige of either lip-service, hypoc-
 
 TOO DH'IDED LIVES. 
 
 risy, or cant. His religion had been to keep himself un- 
 spotted from the world, not proudly and pretentiously, but 
 because of an innate aspiration for the finer, wiser, and 
 sweeter life. . . It can hardly be thought strange that the 
 damnable falsehood of Mrs. Averill, once believed in, should 
 have confused, dizzied, and benumbed poor Angela. But 
 now that she knew the magnitude of that deception and of 
 her own misfortune she could not blame herself too harshly 
 for having let any rash, mad agency of pique push her 
 toward the marriage that she had made. 
 
 'Ah,' she would sometimes wofully ask herself, 'was it 
 not, after all, only that Alva Averill held me weak and 
 wounded in her grasp ? There were times, during those 
 few days, when I had no power to think for myself when I 
 believe that Alva might have led me to do almost anything 
 (even to commit some crime) if she had only spoken to me 
 vigorously enough, and used her own will upon me without 
 stint ! ' 
 
 From the night when he openly acknowledged the sin 
 that she had laid at Hubert's door, Angela's husband 
 appeared before her in a new and far more odious light. He 
 had no longer anything to conceal. He recognized the 
 situation, so to speak, and flung off his last remnant of 
 disguise. Angela loved another man, and had married him 
 because she had held that other man to be guilty of pre- 
 cisely the same fault which he himself had committed. "A 
 sort of devilish comedy " he had called it ; and such it 
 indeed was, he now concluded, as he paced his chamber 
 overlooking the brilliant-tinted cottages of Elberon, whose 
 red, blue, or yellow tiles and shingles burned out against the 
 vivid sea. He was fond of his wife yes, passionately, 
 jealously so. He had got her, and he meant to keep her. 
 He said this alolad to Angela, in so many words, while she 
 sat or stood beside him sometimes while she was changing 
 the cloths that he kept almost incessantly spread upon his 
 injured face. She had made her bed and she must lie in it.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. IOJ 
 
 It wouldn't be exactly a couch of eider-down, either. She 
 would have his temper to contend with. Oh, yes; he knew 
 he had a temper. If any fellow came fooling about his 
 wife, as he had so often seen happen to the wives of his 
 friends, he would say passez votre chemin in no time. As for 
 that woman, Jane Heath, her having dared to appear at all 
 was a brazen outrage. He had settled two thousand a year 
 on her, and had agreed to give the child an education, as 
 well. He wasn't at all sure as to whether the child was his 
 or no. It had been a rather generous thing for him to 
 behave as he had done, any way, and her popping up like 
 that had been a piece of abominable mischief and spite. 
 Still, he couldn't regret it (could he ?) since it had been the 
 means of his securing the wife he wanted. 
 
 'Oh, this is torture!' thought Angela; and perhaps her 
 eyes were wholly blinded to what lay beneath Voght's 
 brutality and vulgarity. A sharp, goading pain lay beneath. 
 The insufficiencies of his early education, the indulgences 
 that his own wealth had showered on him, the manifold 
 failures to live by any better law of conduct than that of 
 selfish caprice, were all forces which he felt now, and which 
 seemed blending themselves together in one scorpion whip 
 of torment. He did not choose to show Angela that he was 
 keenly ashamed or that he deeply suffered ; instead of doing 
 either, he employed a bravado which came in a certain 
 sense natural to him, and which accounted for his apparent 
 attitude of detestable candor. It would have been greater 
 candor in him, after all, if he had begged Angela on his 
 knees to love him, and caught her hand between both his 
 own, bathing it with his impetuous tears. But no ; he had 
 humiliated himself once in that way and he would not do so 
 again. It was better that she should fear him than despise 
 him, he covertly argued. And if the full truth had been 
 disclosed with regard to this poor young wife's feelings, he 
 would most probably have discovered that she did both. 
 
 Hubert had asked O'Hara not to let a word of the Club
 
 102 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 House quarrel to transpire in the weekly journal of the 
 latter, and O'Hara would have lost his editorial place rather 
 than have allowed the least line of disclosure to appear 
 there. But the daily journals were quite another matter. 
 No friendly editors existed on those whom Hubert could 
 control. And in a day or two their commentaries appeared, 
 copious and unsparing. Both men were of the kind that 
 the modern newspaper loves to make a " story " about 
 And here was such a " story," all ready to be made ! The 
 real facts were twisted into twenty different effects of com 
 bination. One or two newspapers gave Hubert a pair of 
 black eyes and sent Voght back to Elberon unscathed, 
 victorious, and superb. The occurrence was just what Long 
 Branch had been wanting to " wake it up." The resident 
 journalistic letter-writers dashed for it as a starving dog 
 dashes for a bone. 
 
 Hubert was at his country-seat in Ponchatuk when he 
 read of his unhappy notoriety, but Voght still lingered in 
 the house of his aunt Lexington, afraid to show himself as 
 far as the threshold of its hall-doorway until those hateful 
 purplish blotched had quite faded from beneath his eyes. 
 Angela's days were now made heavier and more miserable 
 to her than ever before. She detested lying about the 
 affair to people as she detested, in the abstract, all lying of 
 whatever sort as she loved truth for its own clean, simple, 
 noble sake. Her mother had long ago died of what certain 
 friends had called a broken heart, and if this were a fact 
 then nothing had broken the poor lady's heart except the 
 wilful mendacity of her light-principled husband. Angela 
 was all her mother's child ; she loathed subterfuge and 
 prevarication. But she was compelled to use both with 
 the visitors who came curiously asking about her husband. 
 Then there was Voght's incessant fury against the news- 
 papers to meet and endure, day after day. There he saw 
 himself repeatedly called a coward; but it was a fact that 
 he had not a cowardly hair in his perverse, peculiar head,
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 03 
 
 'and that he had gone back to his aunt's abode, that night, 
 far more because conscience-smitten and morally disarrayed 
 by Hubert's unexpected statements than because he had felt 
 the slightest personal timidity toward his antagonist. 
 
 The plain truth was that Bleakly Voght, with all his'vital 
 faults, had for years hoarded in him the elements, the 
 " makings " of an excellent man. All his worst traits were 
 exaggerations of those evil tendencies which wrong training 
 will so disastrously turn into vices. He stood before the 
 world as a living example of what disaster may be wrought 
 in human character by parental neglect and a careless 
 handling of the powers of wealth. In the case of Jane 
 Heath he had done a vile act ; but if he had been a vile 
 man the dread of social censure would not so have demoral- 
 ized him as it then did ; he would have rallied and become 
 hotly bellicose toward Hubert instead of taking what seemed 
 a flight to his observers gathered there on the stoop of the 
 gambling-house. But now, while he sat and brooded on the 
 indignity dealt him, vengeful throbs and shivers turned his 
 dragging hours into unspeakable pain. 
 
 ' My position as a man of the world, as a gentleman, as 
 a person of honorable status,' he mused, 'is forever shat- 
 tered. I have made an absurd mistake. I should have 
 staid there on the piazza of the Club House ; I should 
 never have permitted that charge about Jane Heath to drive 
 me away. What, after all, is a charge like that in the pres- 
 ent condition of society, to a gentleman ? I was a fool to be 
 afraid that it would harm me in the opinion of society. . . . 
 The real truth about the matter is my nonsensical con- 
 science. That wrecked me after Throckmorton struck me 
 as he did. My stupid trouble is that I've never been man 
 enough to look at these peccadilloes in the proper way.' 
 
 He vowed to himself, more than once, while he staid a 
 prisoner within his apartments at his aunt's residence, that 
 he would never for an instant lose his temper with Angela. 
 Yet he lost it constantly, and thus conducted himself in an
 
 104 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 explosive manner again and again. This temper of his was 
 a question of long-scorned self-drill. It was a soldier that 
 had deserted the army more than once, and had been par- 
 doned each time. Now, when it came back again, he had 
 no properly stringent pardon to give it ; it evaded even 
 his clemency; it had got the audacious idea that he would 
 never have pith enough in him to order for it a summary 
 hanging. 
 
 At Ponchatuk, that season, in his great, lonely home- 
 stead, Hubert tried repeatedly to write. Each time he 
 failed. He had had in his head, for a long time past, the 
 idea of writing a poem in pungent, fluent blank-verse that 
 would merely be a metrical expression of the enormous 
 nineteenth century taste for fiction. In the days that he 
 had called his creative days before he had known whether 
 Angela Voght's eyes were or were not the rich blue-gray he 
 had since found them, he had told himself that the poetic 
 languor, the " twilight of the poets," apparently inseparable 
 from this era, meant only a curious misunderstanding of its 
 literary demands. ' They want novels, this queer public of 
 ours,' he had more than once mused, ' and if some very 
 able man should care to please them by a volume of hardier 
 poetic worth, of wittier, stronger, less frivolous calibre than 
 Owen Meredith's " Lucille," I think that he might so com- 
 mingle worldly experience with the pure, sweet powers of 
 poetry that he could please them past all reach of cavil. 
 Should I ever be able to perform such a task ? Tant s'en 
 faitt ! But some day I may try. If I ever do I will call my 
 work Glenalvan. ... I don't know why, but I like the name 
 Glcnalvan as that of my hero. He shall be a sort of Childe 
 Harold who journeys to this country, not to Switzerland or 
 Italy. He shall come here as an Englishman filled with 
 splendid beliefs and expectations about. America. He shall 
 teem both with beliefs and expectations and he shall be 
 frightfully disappointed. There shall be no dainty or dil- 
 ettante pessimism about him ; he shall simply be disap-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 05 
 
 pointed. He shall see the politicians at Washington and 
 shall veil his eyes. After a little while he shall unveil them, 
 my Glenalvan, and sing. He shall sing with acerbity, yet 
 with piercing harmony ; that will make my poem ; he shall 
 be so fascinating in his cynicism yet so accurate in his criti- 
 cism that the entire Republic will notice him. They will do 
 more ; they will buy him. Glenalvan shall subvert all the 
 practical literary dicta of his epoch. He shall sell thou- 
 sands and thousands of copies before his multitudinous 
 readers have yet realized the aggressive and palsying fact 
 that he is poetry.' 
 
 So Hubert, in earlier and more enthusiastic periods, had 
 addressed his own youthful and ardor-teeming spirit. Now, 
 at Locustwood, with ten times more of the technical power 
 to create a Glenalvan than when he had dreamed of the 
 poem years ago, he strove to forget a burning and poignant 
 sorrow in writing of pangs that had once seemed to him 
 easily conceivable. 
 
 At first he fancied that he could do nothing. Suddenly 
 he made a discovery. He was not dipping his pen into 
 ordinary ink ; he was dipping it into his own heart's blood. 
 The lines, many of them exquisitely musical, surprised him 
 as they grew beneath his hand. He mixed with the life of 
 Glenalvan his own anguish regarding Angela, and yet he 
 had concealed it so that even the most merciless eye could 
 not prove detective enough to discover this odd semi-por- 
 traiture. No one could actually recognize either his lost 
 mistress or himself, and yet he had tried to photograph 
 the sorrow and the blameworthiness of both, and to show 
 just how forlornly either had lost faith in a love that 
 should have defied misinterpretation. Strangely enough, 
 his former incapacity to write had now wholly fled. He 
 had come here to Ponchatuk and had lived quietly, see- 
 ing a few of the abominated newspapers and feeling the 
 jibes of them, as every decent civilian does feel. And yet
 
 IO6 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 he had been able 'to write to finish, in the latter part of 
 August his poem of Glenalvan. 
 
 He gave the book to his publishers. It was really " a 
 book " ; it had the bulk of a novel when he took it in his 
 hands and scanned its bright, neat, modish binding. How 
 had he been able to write it ? Could it have been possible 
 that he had lived here at this reposeful Locustwood, seeing 
 as in a dream the smart traps of the swells and the belles 
 flit past him on the opposite road, and yet composed such 
 stanzas as these ? All his passion for Angela was in them. 
 It was not only that the hero had melodiously declared him- 
 self, in the earlier and intermediate pages, disappointed with 
 America ; in the concluding ones he had poured forth his 
 supreme disappointment at life, destiny, all things. He 
 requested his publishers to bring it out anonymously, and 
 enjoined upon them the strictest secresy as regarded his 
 authorship. 
 
 . All this time he had been haunted by the desire to seek 
 Bleakly Voght and offer him certain apologies. The more 
 he had thought upon that wild, fierce impulse which had 
 caused him to strike Angela's husband, the more he had 
 execrated and condemned it. In the fervor of composing 
 Glenalran he had fully confessed to this clear spiritual 
 trend. ' If I ever see the man again,' he had said to himself 
 repeatedly, 'I will ask his pardon. My blow was a wound to 
 my own dignity ; I must have slight confidence in my own 
 respect for truth if I cannot calmly endure being called a 
 liar. I have reflected too much on the great meanings of 
 life to let myself be swayed by any of its petty formulas.' 
 
 Meanwhile his love for Angela did not abate. Glenalvan 
 appeared, was read by a certain few, was praised by certain 
 journals, and finally, toward the latter part of September, 
 was conceded to be a book which had, in spite of its power, 
 tombe a plat. And yet that phrase should not truly be 
 applied to it. It had shot too high ; what really fine poem 
 does not ? It had fallen flat only in a popular sense ; it had
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. IO? 
 
 thrice the wit and force of that over-estimated literary snarl, 
 " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," besides possessing 
 a story, a drama, a fine continuity. And yet it had failed. 
 Hubert felt its failure no more than if it had been the visita- 
 tion of an accidental horse-fly. He knew it had not failed 
 with a certain limited number. Letters had already reached 
 him (few, yet each of worth and note to him) telling him 
 that he, and he alone, was the author of Glenalvan. 
 
 Suddenly one day it happened that a New York journal of 
 great weight and authority appeared with a series of com- 
 plimentary statements between four and five columns long, 
 which declared that Glenalvan was not only a powerful but 
 an era-marking poem. Its vigor, this journal affirmed, was 
 past dispute ; its originality was dazzling ; its anonymous 
 author not merely equalled Dr. Holmes in rich, swift, sharp 
 humor, but transcended him in the nobler gifts of poetic 
 authenticity. Glenalvan shot into success from that moment. 
 Hubert, while the yellow leaves of the locust trees were fall- 
 ing in the woodland near his peaceful home, read of the 
 great success his poem had suddenly made. He thought 
 only of Angela while he traced the flow of these fervid 
 eulogies toward the new poetic idol. ' Who is this master ? ' 
 one man of letters had began to question of another, and 
 Hubert wondered if Angela had recognized the half-hidden 
 identity of his half-revealed passion. "There is nobody ex- 
 cept Mr. Swinburne," affirmed one wise reviewer, " who has 
 enough mastery of rhythm to have written Glenalvan. And 
 yet Mr. Swinburne, with his fatal recent decadence, with his 
 monotony of 'winds' and 'flowers' and' 'lights' and 
 'dreams' 1 and 'clouds,' could never have done anything 
 half so vivid, so robust, so actual as this song of con- 
 temporary life, experience, and passion." Toward latter 
 October Hubert was on the point of going to Russia again. 
 He had wondered whether the quaintness of Moscow might 
 not prove enlivening to fancy if not to feeling. The reclame of 
 Glenalvan amused him, but it did not by any means satisfy
 
 IO8 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 him. He was an artist, and he realized that many of its 
 verses were quite bad enough to have been signed by that 
 brilliant yet insolently lazy poet, Browning. Being the 
 artist that he was. and clearly admiring all there is to admire 
 in this pietist, genius, and poseur combined, Hubert keenly 
 regretted certain reviews that accredited the authorship of 
 Glenalvan to him who wrote " Sordello " and " Feristah's 
 Fancies." Perhaps the perusal of these reviews may have 
 accererated his impulse toward a departure from American 
 shores. 
 
 Suddenly, one day, just after he had taken passage on the 
 Mesopotamia, the fastest transatlantic steamer then afloat, 
 Hubert learned that Mr. and Mrs. Bleakly Voght were his 
 near neighbors at Ponchatuk. At first it seemed incredible. 
 They! And then he remembered. Two or three miles to 
 the north of him for years had stretched the big estate of 
 Durand Lexington, which this gentleman had left his nephew, 
 Bleakly Voght, at least fifteen years ago. A creek ran near 
 the house, through a salt meadow, and all the lawns were 
 one dark monasticism of pines. You could see Fire Island, 
 a dim, pale streak, across the Great South Bay, from the 
 upper windows. And this place, Pineland, belonged to 
 Angela's husband ! Of course it did ! Dolt that he had 
 been, not to recollect how the sweet, shaded, dreamy road 
 called "Lexington's neck " led to it, beginning not far away 
 from his own abode. And Angela was there ! 
 
 He postponed his visit to Russia that autumn. After all, 
 he told himself, the only time for one to go to Russia was 
 the spring. One day, as he chanced to be standing at his 
 own library window, he discovered a little break in the black 
 line of pines that gleamed ridgy and dense against the 
 Southern horizon. A short while afterward he had directed 
 a small telescope upon this very spot, though his view was 
 taken in the most surreptitious manner, from the window of 
 a locked chamber up-stairs. A portion of lawn and the seg- 
 ment of what might have been a big, brown, commodious
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 ICQ 
 
 country-house were the nearest approach of even a visual 
 sort that he could make to Angela. Presently he threw 
 down the telescope in disgust, and began to arraign himself 
 for having sought even a transitory glimpse of his former 
 sweetheart. 
 
 ' Confound it ! ' he mused, ' I'm not a fellow in 'one of 
 Belot's novels. It's none of my business whether she ever 
 walks out on that pine-needle carpet or not. I wish the old 
 telescope had never found its way into this old house.' 
 
 But he used it the next day, notwithstanding, and the next, 
 and the next. All his efforts, however, were equally fruit- 
 less and tantalizing. Adjust the instrument as he would, he 
 could only penetrate so far and no further into the sylvan 
 quietude that engirt the mansion. He compared himself, 
 with sorrowful humor, to the man in " The Diamond Lens." 
 
 ' Still, in my case,' he said self-correctingly to his own 
 thoughts, ' there has been the drop of water without the 
 sprite who dwelt there. She is a memory a divine one 
 and bides in the realm of reverie alone. Perhaps I am 
 fated never to see the reality again. And perhaps (most 
 aggravating of fancies !) her feet may often walk the 
 russet spaces of that lawn while I watch as now, yet never 
 pass within my field of vision. I may be staring at some 
 neglected old wing of the house that no one has lived in for 
 twenty years.' 
 
 He laughed grimly to himself at this last reflection, and 
 went and put the telescope away. That afternoon he took a 
 ride on a beautiful thorough-bred mare that he owned, named 
 Dara, gentle as a fawn and fleet as a hare. Dara was the 
 perfection of a saddle-horse, and Hubert had often re- 
 proached himself for using her as little as he did. Still, it 
 pleased him to own anything thus lovely and valuable in 
 horse-flesh and not vaunt the possession of his treasure. 
 He so detested braggadocio in others that he carried his 
 quiet reserve in matters of personal proprietorship to what 
 some people held the verge of affectation. And yet he had
 
 I IO DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 seen so much raw, coarse pretension among the good-hearted 
 as well as the bad-hearted snobs of the world that he could 
 not resist, now and then, a deep and placid enjoyment of its 
 opposite. 
 
 The afternoon was full of those keen, tingling, wintry 
 hints that blend with a mellow sun and a variegated vege- 
 tation to make our American autumn a season of unique 
 charm. Hubert took the "Lexington neck" road, though 
 several years had elapsed since he had thought of taking it 
 before. As a boy he had loved it for its quaint difference 
 from any other tract of land in the neighborhood. There 
 were huge hemlock trees at intervals along its edge, and 
 their twilight boughs made the clayey soil of the road a 
 bewitching dusk even at midday, while now and then mimic 
 pampas of ferns would seem as if they only waited the rising 
 moon to have Titania and all her elves trip thither for a 
 fairy festival. Hobgoblin-looking toad-stools would spread 
 their mottled discs at the roots of half-decayed tree-stumps, 
 though the earth on every side was so humid and semi- 
 swampy that life, whether arboreal or merely weedy, was 
 forever replacing and concealing the hurts and scars of 
 death. Some of the branch-entangling oaks were bearded 
 with feathery, drab-tinted moss ; here and there a cluster of 
 the choicest maidenhair fern would strike the eye that knew 
 and treasured its garnet gloss of stem and its ethereal foli- 
 age. As Hubert now rode along, with the hoofs of Dara 
 making muffled sounds on the damp yet firm level be- 
 neath them, he recalled a hundred memories, not so 
 much of boyhood as of early manhood, when that romantic 
 glow which is the strange and sometimes fatal birthright of 
 all poets had first sent wakening thrills through his heart. 
 
 With the poetic temperament a cult for vegetable nature 
 is always primary ; its curiosity concerning human nature 
 comes afterward; it wins more pleasure from brooding over 
 a wilding, waxen-cupped flower that wastes her delicate glory 
 amid the dimness of some lonely forest-haunt than in study-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. \ \ \ 
 
 ing all the growths of passion or caprice that ever inspired 
 a Balzac's artistry. And so it had been to Hubert, who 
 had known clays when a red-and-yellow sunset was all the 
 Byzantium he desired; when a jungle of fortuitous asters, 
 in the hollow of a cow-pasture, served him for the whole 
 Roman campagna; when a sudden-seen pool, glassy and 
 luminous at early evening, with a vague hay-rick in the back- 
 ground, was all the Venetian lagoon or majestic San Marco 
 that he dreamed of asking. 
 
 ' How we forget things ! ' he thought, as he rode along 
 through the rich-scented glooms while the short Octo- 
 ber afternoon was waning. ' Here I have been for years 
 calling Ponchatuk so ugly, and have never recollected that 
 this curiously beautiful part of it was hardly a mile from my 
 own door.' 
 
 He did not attempt to deceive himself on the subject of 
 why he had taken " Lexington's neck " to-day, after so pro- 
 longed a discountenance of its beauties. He had done so 
 for the purpose of gratifying a sentiment, even if the pictur 
 esque little pilgrimage should result in nothing except a 
 sense of augmented nearness. By-and-by the tread of his 
 mare smote dryer ground, and an open space filled with the 
 pointed ovals of small cedar-trees dawned on his sight. He 
 was dangerously near the home of the Voghts ; at a short 
 distance away rose a gate, and behind this was their domain. 
 The road now became two ; one passed under the gate, and 
 one swept toward the sodden, soggy shore beyond, winding 
 for a little way past the leisurely silver creek with its 
 bunches of tarnished salt-grass, its platoons of faded and 
 brittle reeds. Hubert here reined in his horse and looked 
 round him. Off to the left the pines crowded about the 
 house, and still quite hid it with their gaunt, bristly flocks. 
 To the right one monstrous plane of meadow-land slipped 
 away to meet a sky that was full of rolling clouds, big and 
 colored like iron. But from the changing blue rifts in the 
 heaven shafts of sun would slant brilliantly upon the huge
 
 112 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 bay that faced our horseman as he was now stationed, and 
 sometimes make flying paths of splendor on the waters, or 
 sometimes turn two or three sails in its reach as white as 
 Annunciation lilies. 
 
 Suddenly Hubert saw a shape coming toward him in the 
 dubious, flickering sort of light. It was the shape of a 
 woman, and the tricksy winds that were abroad to-day had 
 unloosened a wisp of her hair. She turned so as no longer 
 to face the gale, having both hands lifted to the back of 
 her head. As she did so her draperies gave a windward 
 swing like the canvas of a tacking yacht, and from the 
 loosened tress that she strove to rearrange there darted an 
 airy and evanescent gleam of gold. But Hubert had al- 
 ready gained one quick glimpse of her delicate profile ; and 
 this, brief a view as it proved, had told him that she was 
 Angela.
 
 VIII. 
 
 HE felt for one instant as if his blood were ice, the next 
 as if it were fire. Almost immediately she managed to con- 
 fine the rebellious lock ; she was coming toward where he 
 stood, still as an equestrian statue of himself ; she had evi- 
 dently not recognized him. The fitful wind had abated a 
 little ; her gown and her wraps fell once more in their 
 wonted graceful lines. The chill of the brisk air had put a 
 touch of pink warmth into her cheeks. Her blue-gray eyes 
 had sparks in them that seemed caught from the blue-gray 
 waves of the neighboring sea. The old enchantment of her 
 beauty had fleetly and strongly captured him in its thrall. 
 He sprang from his horse as she drew nearer ; she carried 
 a bunch of downy golden-rod in one hand, and its keen touch 
 of color lit up the mellow browns of her costume in the way 
 that painters love. Hubert was no painter, though he had 
 the instincts and tastes of one. He perceived, after a few 
 more seconds, that she had discovered who he was. Hold- 
 ing his fine horse, meek as a house-dog, lightly by the bridle, 
 he raised his hat. She had come so close to him, by this 
 time, that he could see she had grown pale. As he bowed 
 to her she paused ; there were now only a few yards be- 
 tween them. A most serious look had overspread her face, 
 and she shook her head, with an inexpressibly pained effect 
 of veto and disapproval. 
 
 " You should not have dismounted," she said, standing 
 before him with the bunch of golden blooms almost dropping 
 from her lax hold. " I am sorry that you did. I I wish 
 you would ride away." Her eyes burned toward him with 
 a great eloquence of entreaty. " You know it is best, 
 Please do it." 
 
 8 113
 
 1 14 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 He drew Dara's head toward him and stroked it softly, 
 though he did not take his look from her lovely appealing 
 face. 
 
 " I can't say that you are wrong," he answered, with hesi- 
 tation. " And yet . . ." 
 
 " I am right right," she hurried, leaning toward him with 
 great eagerness in gaze and mien, though not advancing 
 so much as a step. " Please go ; please go at once. I I 
 did not want to come here at all. It was not my wish." 
 
 " You remembered, then, about Locustwood ? " 
 
 " Remembered ? Of course." 
 
 Hubert pointed toward the sombre and spacious groups 
 of pines. " And I forgot about that place of his," he re- 
 turned. " It was very strange. I ought to have recollected. 
 Still, he went there so seldom in past summers ; he was 
 always abroad, or at Newport, or somewhere like that. 
 From childhood I knew ; but only a few days ago I had 
 cause to be vividly reminded." 
 
 " You heard we had come here ? " she asked faintly. 
 
 " Yes ... I have lived very quietly since I myself came ; 
 I have been leading a thorough vie casaniere among my 
 locust-trees. Otherwise I might have met you driving, and 
 not had to wait for my old gardener to tell me that ' the 
 house over across the neck,' as he called it, had become 
 tenanted by its owner and his . . wife." 
 
 She looked downward at the flowers that she held, and 
 brushed their velvet crests for a moment with one hand. 
 As she did so a book dropped to the ground. He made a 
 slight forward motion, but she stooped and picked the volume 
 up, replacing it beneath the folds of her cloak. And in her 
 expedition he read not only embarrassment but a distinctly 
 imploring significance. As it was, his hand had just quitted 
 the bridle of his horse and no more. He now began stroking 
 Dara's head again while she brokenly murmured : 
 
 " We have not driven out at all. My . . husband has been 
 ill."
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 1 5 
 
 " Seriously ? " 
 
 " No. He has been in much pain, however. He thought 
 this fine air would cure him. Before, when he had such 
 attacks he came here. He is better, now ; the air has worked 
 wonders with him." 
 
 " And your life has been almost as lonely, then, as mine, 
 has it not ? " Hubert said, after a short yet pregnant 
 pause. 
 
 " Yes," she answered ; " very lonely." 
 
 " You have not lost your old habit of reading, I see." 
 
 " No ... I suppose I shall always keep that." 
 
 " And you've been reading the new book, Glenalvan, have 
 you not ?" 
 
 " Glenalvan ? " she repeated, with a kind of softly fright- 
 ened ring in her voice. " Why, how did you know ? " 
 And she drew the book out, looking at it flurriedly for a 
 moment, while the pink came with a sweet, rich rush into 
 her face again. 
 
 " I recognized the cover," he said. " I've read it, too. 
 Do you care for it ? " 
 
 She drew backward from him, clasping the book and the 
 nosegay between both hands ; and now he saw that her eyes 
 had taken that liquid, shining look which could only mean 
 tears. 
 
 " Oh, did not you write it ?" she asked. " I have felt so 
 certain it was yours ! " 
 
 " Why have you felt certain ? " he replied. His voice 
 broke, but he was unaware of this ; eagerness to hear what 
 answer she would give made him unmindful of it. 
 
 " Oh, a hundred reasons have caused me to be convinced 
 it was yours," she hurried, quite self-forgetfully. 
 
 " Pray tell me one." 
 
 " First of all, the story the . . the way " 
 
 "The way poor Glenalvan found himself fooled ?" 
 
 She started, and he had never eeen her eyes wear the 
 passionately mournful look that filled them now.
 
 Il6 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " He was not the only one ! " came her fluttered cry. 
 " She was fooled as well . . . Ah, you did write it ! " He 
 saw the tears glittering on her lashes, by this time, as their 
 rain quickened. " And again and again I've thought, while 
 I read it, that perhaps, in a certain manner, you might have 
 written it for me ! " 
 
 " For you ? " 
 
 " Yes. To to show me that you realized just how I, 
 too, had been made the sport of that woman's deceit. . . . 
 You did write the poem, did you not ? " 
 
 " Yes," he replied. 
 
 " I knew it ! " she broke forth, with spontaneous, even 
 unconscious triumph. " And the newspapers have been 
 saying it was done by this, that, and the other ! All the 
 while I was so certain of its being by you ! Why, it's full 
 of your personality, your/afon, your " 
 
 She paused. A change swept over her face. She shook 
 her head excitedly and pressed her lips together, while 
 a frown of self-reproach, of entreaty, of affright, creased 
 her brows. 
 
 " All this has been wrong ! " she exclaimed, petulantly, 
 desperately. " I've been dreading it I've somehow felt 
 that it might happen. It can bring neither of us the least 
 good ; it can bring nothing but sorrowful reflections, remem- 
 brances. I I shan't be happy for weeks ; I " 
 
 " Then you were happy before you met me ? " he struck 
 in. "You'd grown contented with your fate ? " 
 
 She made an impatient, despairful gesture with the hand 
 that held the flowers ; it waved him back from her, though 
 he had not changed his place at his horse's side by the least 
 fraction of a step. 
 
 " Contented yes," she retorted, with her tones now a 
 tumult of gasps. " There has been a certain kind of con- 
 tentment. You know what I mean. You know how a 
 woman might strive to make the best of things when placed 
 as I am. You know so much about the human heart, AH
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. \ \ J 
 
 your poetry shows that ; Gtenalvan shows it even more than 
 the other writings. You're wise enough to forgive, and 
 you're wise enough to be merciful." 
 
 " I'm wise enough to be miserable," he said. 
 
 " No no ; that will not do ! You've the whole world 
 before you." 
 
 " I've a world of disappointment behind me, Angela ! " 
 
 " Ah, don't call me by my name like that ! . . . I'm 
 going yes, I'm going, now. Good-bye. Try never to see 
 me again. Try, really. In a little while we shall leave this 
 place. He is better, at present, and we shall soon leave. 
 He has almost decided on Europe ; we shall perhaps pass 
 the winter in Nice, or somewhere on the Riviera he has 
 not decided about that." She shot past him, and only 
 stopped when she had gone several yards away from him in 
 the other direction. The wind had begun its gusty assaults 
 again ; it blew the hair back from her temples, and by dis- 
 closing their sweet sculptural pallor, gave her a new look of 
 suffering, anxiety, dismay. " Promise me," sped her next 
 precipitate words, " that you will avoid us avoid me. It's 
 all profitless, mad," here a fragment of bitter laughter fell 
 from her, " and absurd, drearily absurd, as well. Promise 
 me, will you not ? Just say ' I promise,' and I'll believe 
 you ! " 
 
 He silently ground his teeth under the stress of an agony 
 that every line of her shape, every tremor of her speech fed 
 and aggravated. 
 
 " I promise yes." 
 
 " And you'll go away from here, too ? " she eagerly pur- 
 sued : " You'll let no more accidents like this happen ? 
 You'll promise that also ? " 
 
 He laughed, flinging the bridle loose upon the neck of his 
 mare, and advancing toward her a very little. Dara never 
 stirred, but her dark, gentle, humid eyes followed him with a 
 dumb wonder in their crystal depths. 
 
 "I'll make no further effort to see you," he cried, with an
 
 Il8 DIVIDED IJl'ES. 
 
 impetuosity born wildly of his pain. " There let that 
 suffice . . . And you proved tell me if I'm wrong that 
 what I said to you about his past course of life was true 
 that the woman, Jane Heath, had been. . . . ? " 
 
 " No," she broke in, receding from him as he drew toward 
 her; "no, I had not any reason to verify your statement. I 
 believed it, but even if I had not done so, his free admission 
 would have confirmed it to me." 
 
 "Ah !" exclaimed Hubert; " so then he confessed all his 
 sins to you ? You've shriven him, I suppose, and he's the 
 most contrite of penitents ! " 
 
 A second after uttering the desperate sarcasm he regretted 
 it. Her lips quivered ; he felt almost as if he had struck 
 her. " Pardon me ! " shot his next words. " Oh, my God ! 
 if you only knew my anguish if " 
 
 " Hush !" she commanded, and raised one hand with a 
 gesture whose import he almost instantly afterward discov- 
 ered. The road leading toward Pineland was shut off, as 
 recorded, by a gate, only a slight distance away. Hubert 
 now perceived that a man had just opened this gate and was 
 coming forward to where he and Angela both stood. 
 
 His first thought was that the man might be Voght. But 
 no ; in another moment he perceived that he had been 
 wholly wrong. Meanwhile he had gone toward his horse 
 again. But he did not mount. He had no idea of seeming 
 to be a fugitive from scrutiny. On the contrary, he led 
 Dara by her bridle toward the spot where Angela still stood, 
 evidently distressed at the presence of the new-comer. 
 
 " Who is it ? " he asked softly. " You are not alarmed ? 
 You have no fear of being spied upon ? " 
 
 " No," she answered. " It is only Mr. Voght's servant. 
 I think he has come to find me. I . ." 
 
 She hesitated. The man was almost within speaking dis- 
 tance, now. To get rid of her tears this time was even less 
 easy for Angela than it had been there in the moonlight 
 at Elberon. Doubtless the man saw them as he now
 
 DIVIDED LIVES, 119 
 
 approached her. He had not just the face of a servant ; or 
 if so, of a very capable one. He could not have been more 
 than thirty years, at the oldest. 
 
 He addressed Angela in polite and impassive tones. He 
 had what we Americans call the English accent. " Excuse 
 me, Mrs. Voght/' he said with his low and deferential voice. 
 Then he ceased and gave a courteous glance at Hubert, as 
 of thus tacitly asking the latter's permission to continue, no 
 less than that of his mistress. 
 
 Wretchedly perturbed though Hubert was, he could not 
 but value at its due worth the entire, tranquil, yet unexplain- 
 able tact of the man's behavior. Nothing could have been 
 more respectful, and yet nothing could have been more 
 intelligent. Indeed, if it had any fault, this was its very per- 
 fection. You might have said to yourself, witnessing it, 
 "The man knows too much for a servant ;" just as some 
 adept in the art of acting might see a trivial part of one or 
 two lines performed so admirably as to declare, with suspi- 
 cion amid his praise, " No supernumerary ever did that." 
 
 Almost at once (having allayed her agitation as best she 
 could) Angela said : " Well, Bradbourne, what is it ? " 
 
 " Mr. Voght was restless about your stopping away so 
 long, ma'am, and sent me to find you, if I could, and ask if 
 you'd return to the house." 
 
 This was more in the style of the real servant, and yet 
 somehow a doubt might have remained as to whether Brad- 
 bourne were not cultivated rather beyond his outward seem- 
 ing. Hubert would hardly have given him a second thought 
 had he not appeared at so malapropos a time. Afterward 
 events made his image ineffaceable from memory. It was 
 that of a slender, supply-knit man, with a short, close-clipped 
 auburn beard and reddish-gleaming eyes. He was so far 
 from being commonplace that almost everybody noticed him 
 and found an antagonism between what might be called the 
 emotional index of his face and the drilled formality of his 
 air as a menial.
 
 120 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 "Very well. You may say that I will join Mr. Voght 
 presently," Angela returned. . . " Stay, Bradbourne," she 
 continued, as if some new idea had flashed upon her, " I 
 will go back with you now at once." Her demeanor was 
 full of a decision, a firmness, that seemed the product of 
 effort, and yet was none the less cogent because factitious. 
 Hubert had no sooner heard her use these different tones 
 than he sprang upon his horse. While he gathered toward 
 him the reins on Dara's neck, he heard the same voice as it 
 now spoke to him, and with a collectedness, a self-possession 
 that there was no misinterpreting. 
 
 " Good day. I hope you'll have a pleasant ride back. 
 I'm sure you will, though, in this nice, breezy weather." 
 
 Hubert raised his hat. . . Without any other than this 
 mute reply he let his mare take him fleetly toward the 
 shaded road that led homeward. The brief October day 
 was already waning. Before he had regained Locustwood 
 through those elfish reaches of forest, he would hear the first 
 shrill wrangles of crickets and katydids preluding the first 
 scintillant small autumn stars. 
 
 Angela went back to where her husband, lonely and uneasy, 
 awaited her. As she entered his room, on an upper floor of 
 the great, rambling house, he rose from his chair, holding a 
 half-crumpled magazine in one hand and a half-smoked cigar 
 in the other. 
 
 " You staid a terrible time," he said querulously. " What 
 on earth kept you ? " 
 
 " It was such pleasant weather," she answered, beginning 
 to undo her wraps, " I walked further than I expected." 
 
 " Pleasant weather ! " he exclaimed, with a shiver, tossing 
 his cigar into the big wood-fire that crackled not far away. 
 " I think it's grown cold as Greenland." 
 
 " You're not so well ? " she asked patiently, and with an 
 intonation that some hospital-nurse might have used in one 
 of her professional rounds among the sick in her ward.
 
 DI VIDED LIVES. 1 2 1 
 
 " No. Those pains have come on again." 
 
 "You've smoked," she said, more critical than accusative. 
 " You know that was wrong." 
 
 " I thought it helped this infernal neuralgia, the other 
 day. But I see I was wrong ; it's made me worse this time. 
 Confound the weed I wish I hadn't lighted it. It's got 
 me so nervous I could jump out of the window. . . I shall 
 want you to rub my head again ; that eases me more than 
 anything else." 
 
 " Very well," acquiesced Angela. 
 
 The huge fire that he had caused to be built in the old- 
 fashioned fire-place had heated the room so that it made her 
 own temples throb while she passed her fingers in swift, 
 steady motion to and fro on various parts of his aching head. 
 She had now and then tried to be jocose about this task, 
 which had grown an every-day one with her of late ; slie had 
 called it his " magnetic shampoo," and once had told him 
 that she believed she must set up a kind of professorship, 
 and call herself a cerebro-manicure. 
 
 All this had struck him as droll, and he had laughed most 
 heartily at it while the tender nepenthe that for some 
 occult reason her fingers knew how to bestow would soothe 
 him past all telling. After she learned .that she could amuse 
 him amid his sufferings, pity made her seek new methods 
 of doing so. But in a little while she discovered that the 
 search involved no tax upon ingenuity. He was willing 
 enough to laugh at all her jokes. Now and then he would be 
 peevish, as we have just seen, but the cause of such out- 
 bursts was nearly always her own absence her failure to 
 be at her post, which was either close to his bedside or his 
 chair. 
 
 The illness which had seized him shortly after they left 
 Long Branch had wrought in him changes of the most acute 
 kind. His sufferings at first had been beyond description ; 
 there were times when the torture in his brain had been so 
 exquisite that he had prayed the puzzled and distressed
 
 122 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 physicians (who shrank from anaesthetics in too great quan- 
 tity) to mercifully end his life. Then had come gradual relief, 
 and then the sense of Angela's quiet, steadfast devotion. 
 
 She had almost hated him before his illness began. But 
 there is some mysterious law of our relations with our fel- 
 low-beings that forbids us to hate those whom we help. 
 Loathe our foe as we may, nothing can so quickly dissipate 
 such loathing as to do him a service. There were times 
 when Angela bent above her husband's bed, after having 
 soothed him into slumber by the music of her own voice, a 
 dearer music to him than even any golden crash that might 
 come from the orchestras of Paradise there were times 
 like these when it seemed to her as if she almost loved him. 
 He had needed love so piteously in the sharpness of his 
 affliction ! And then the discipline of pain had developed 
 in him more than one amazingly fine quality. His occa- 
 sional fortitude and endurance did more than merely astonish 
 his wife ; they roused her loyal admiration. 
 
 When a man like Voght has been half-spoiled by the 
 folly of his early instructors it is a remarkable fact that 
 traits often remain buried, so to speak, beneath the surface 
 of his nature which none but unusual or even extraordinary 
 events are able to bring forth. Such men have been ruined 
 for the actual routine of their ordinary lives ; languor and 
 indifference have cast a blurring haze across those lines pf 
 sacred duty which should be as clear in the atmosphere of 
 their own spirits as the morning-star is clear amid encom- 
 passing dusk. But a sudden calamitous turn befalls the 
 current of their fortunes, and everything changes. They 
 have now a new life to live a life in which they can be as 
 much and as frankly their real selves as the influence of 
 perverse training has prevented them from being their real 
 selves in some other train of experiences heretofore. And 
 so with Bleakly Voght. Angela no longer secretly shud- 
 dered, now, when he took both her hands fondlingly in both 
 of his and looked up into her face with all the terrible
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 123 
 
 ravages of haggardness and emaciation so manifest on his 
 own. His unhappy temper was like an extinct volcano ; it 
 smoked a little, now and then, but that was all. She had 
 ceased to fear him (she had seen him so helpless from 
 excessive prostration that a fly might not have feared him !), 
 and there was such relief in this complete absence of phys- 
 ical alarm. Now that he was better and they spent the 
 days of his convalescence here in the country together, she 
 began to realize just why it was that he had been thought 
 attractive by women in the past. Their mutual relations 
 were now wholly changed. If she did not give him any 
 evidence of personal love, she stood always toward him in a 
 ministrant, alleviative, beneficent light ; she gave him an 
 incessant friendliness, which to one in his invalided state 
 may be made quite closely to resemble love. 
 
 But in spite of all the change described, Angela had 
 begun to dread the time when convalescence would be 
 replaced by health. Not that she believed the tyrant in him 
 would ever seek to harass her again, but rather that she 
 feared lest his new demands upon her wifely tenderness 
 might shake to its foundations the entire present structure 
 of their intercourse. As long as he needed her aid, her 
 stimulating prophecy, her arm to lean upon, her hand to do 
 him a hundred little services, their mutual affairs might 
 progress comfortably, acceptably, for both ; but let restored 
 bodily vigor render him assertive where he was now de- 
 pendent, executive where he was now complaisant, and the 
 resulting boukucrsement might bring discomforts past all cal- 
 culation. 
 
 She had no doubt that the clamor which followed his 
 encounter with Hubert had caused the horrible nervous 
 malady now besieging him. There had been a period when 
 delirium would succeed his worst attacks of agony, and then 
 "Throckmorton " was a name frequently on his lips. The 
 iron of an unspeakable humiliation had entered his soul. 
 He had been knocked down in a public place and had
 
 124 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 retreated very soon after the chastisement. This much the 
 world knew, and this much it insisted upon interpreting 
 after its own arbitrary fashion. But his wife had observed 
 with relief, of late, that the whole erosive memory preyed 
 less than previously on his mind. One point gave her a 
 frequent keen uneasiness, however, and that was the inten- 
 sity of his jealousy regarding Hubert. If the latter had for- 
 gotten Pineland, he, Voght, had been very far from forgetting 
 Locustwood. He had come hither for the delightful air, 
 and it had already accomplished wonders with him. He 
 had given secret instructions to his valet, Bradbourne (a 
 servant who had but recently entered his employ and whose 
 capacity he greatly esteemed), to find out for him whether 
 Mr. Throckmorton had come to dwell at his country-place 
 this summer ; and Bradbourne, no less prompt than efficient, 
 had soon brought his master word that Mr. Throckmorton 
 was at his country-place. 
 
 From this hour Angela felt that she was watched, though 
 without knowing why such vigilance was exerted. Her 
 husband made no direct allusion to her former lover, but it 
 was evident that he regarded a meeting between Hubert 
 and his wife as among the odious possibilities of the situa- 
 tion. It had grown no new thing for Angela to have Brad- 
 bourne despatched in search of her. The reason given for 
 this intrusive espionage always had an outwardly flattering 
 form ; Mr. Voght was lonely or nervous without her ; Mr 
 Voght missed her very much. But after a while Angela 
 began to suspect that solicitude of another sort was at the 
 root of Mr. Voght's persistent surveillance. 
 
 As she walked back to the house with Bradbourne this 
 afternoon, she was once or twice on the verge of cautioning 
 him against any mention of having found her in the 
 society of a gentleman. Still, good taste forbade her from 
 carrying out this impulse. It was enough of a sting to feel 
 that Bradbourne had already guessed at the real explanation 
 of her husband's hehavior. No ! she would not invite his
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 12$ 
 
 pity, and wound her own dignity by so doing. Best to take 
 the chances of his saying nothing. He had thus far struck 
 her as a servant of the nicest prudence and discretion, with- 
 out the remotest hint in him of guile or falsity. He had 
 not a face that had ever prepossessed her. It was honest 
 enough, but under a'll its decorum and gravity she had 
 fancied that there slept an energy which might be of evil 
 source. Still, such judgments as these were so apt, she 
 told herself, to be quite en /'air. Living in this dreary old 
 house and seeing so few people had doubtless made her 
 moody. Bradbourne had come to her husband with the 
 best of recommendations as an English body-servant. 
 
 " How far did you walk ? " Voght now asked, while a 
 sigh or two of gratification left him as proof that his neuralgia 
 was being appreciably soothed. 
 
 " Oh, out into the salt-meadows, almost to Nicolson's 
 Point," said Angela. 
 
 " And you met Bradbourne ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "I suppose you were returning when you met him ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Just then Bradbourne,. with his gently official air, passed 
 into -the room through the half-open door that led from the 
 outside hall. He at once began to fold up Angela's cloak, 
 which she had thrown carelessly upon one of the chairs. 
 Then he went over to the blazing fireplace and began to re- 
 arrange the lurid logs. 
 
 ' He will think it strange if I do not mention having met 
 anybody,' mused Angela, as she covertly watched his stoop- 
 ing figure. ' But no,' her reflections quickly proceeded ; ' he 
 may have told himself that there has already been time for 
 me to have spoken on that subject.' 
 
 A silence followed. Angela continued her light, swift, 
 delicate hand-motions. Voght's head fell backward on the 
 cushioned easy-chair in which he sat. His distress was
 
 1 26 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 yielding to a pleasant sense of repose. She was near him, 
 and her very presence wrought a placating effect upon his 
 morbidly diseased nerves. 
 
 " Bradbourne," he suddenly called out, in a voice that 
 held a certain amount of actual joviality compared with the 
 peevish tones that both his hearers had so often heard him 
 use, '' Bradbourne, what are you thinking about, over there, 
 so sombre and so solemn ; eh ? I sometimes believe, Brad- 
 bourne, that you do a lot of deep thinking which nobody 
 knows about." 
 
 The man, in his stooped position by the fire, turned and 
 looked at Voght. His face did not lose a shade of its cus- 
 tomary calm as he answered : 
 
 " I was thinking, just now, Mr. Voght, of a very fine horse 
 I saw a little while ago." 
 
 " A horse ?" queried Voght, " whose ? " 
 
 Angela felt a sudden chill sweep through her veins. 
 
 " I don't know whose it was, sir," replied Bradbourne. 
 " A gentleman had it. I mean the gentleman Mrs. Voght 
 was talking to when I met her. But I suppose she has told 
 you, sir." 
 
 This was said as innocently as it was said respectfully. 
 But from that moment Angela distrusted Bradbourne. 
 
 Voght gave her one look, and then settled himself a little 
 further back in his arm-chair. She continued her rubbing 
 process, though once or twice it seemed to her as if the 
 power of moving her fingers coordinately might at any in- 
 stant desert her. 
 
 She knew very well that her husband was waiting for 
 Bradbourne to quit the room. Then the storm would burst. 
 
 Presently the valet did quit the room. He failed, how- 
 ever, to shut the door, leaving it just as it had been when 
 he entered. Suddenly, Voght rose from his chair and went 
 with steps of speed toward the door. He closed it, and then 
 turned, facing his wife.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 127 
 
 His face, grown so cadaverous since his illness, was livid. 
 His eyes glittered with a savagery of accusation. Twice or 
 thrice he essayed to speak, but only a husky sound came 
 from his lips.
 
 IX. 
 
 STRANGELY enough, Angela did not now feel any of that 
 physical fear with which he had once been able to inspire 
 her. She stood before him, surprised at her own coolness. 
 She met his enraged gaze with one quite unflinching. Was 
 not this because of the illness through which she had for 
 weeks nursed him, and in which her own strong young 
 womanhood had been so contrasted with his variant stages 
 of prostration and weakness ? 
 
 " So . . you . . you make appointments," he at length 
 managed to say, " that you do not tell me of ? " 
 
 Angela bit her lip, and then shook her head swiftly once 
 or twice, with a proud, sad air. " No," she answered, " I 
 made no appointment with him." 
 
 " With him ? with whom ? " sped Voght. 
 
 " With Hubert Throckmorton. It was he who had the 
 horse Bradbourne admired. I was talking with him when 
 Bradbourne came up." 
 
 " You admit it ? " 
 
 " Admit it ! I should scorn to deny it !" 
 
 " But . . you you did not tell me. You you waited for 
 me to learn it by an accident like that ! by the chance talk 
 of one of my servants ! " 
 
 " I did not tell you," answered Angela ; " quite right. 
 Why should I distress you by the account ? for I knew 
 that it would distress you. Since the meeting was wholly 
 accidental " 
 
 " So you say ! " he broke in, with a most acridly taunting 
 tone. " So you say ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " she cried," is it to be like that again, between you 
 138
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 I2 9 
 
 and me! I thought you had learned both to trust and to 
 honor me as your wife ! I thought you had grown to freely 
 grant me my right to your courtesy and consideration ! I be- 
 lieved those wild fits of temper (which have had much to do 
 with your wretched illness) were forever past. . . But have 
 I merely fancied all this ? While I have watched at your 
 bedside through many a long day and night, I've fallen into 
 the habit of thinking that there was to be no more insult, no 
 more persecution. But have I been wrong ? Will it all turn 
 out a foolish dream with me, and must I wake to find that 
 you're as tyrannical, unjust, childishly exacting as ever ! " 
 
 Before she had ended her last sentence Angela saw that 
 these words had produced a decided effect upon him. He 
 hurried toward her, now, with both hands outstretched, and 
 his face twitching strangely. 
 
 " Angela ! " he cried, " it isn't a dream ; it's reality. All 
 that hateful time is past. . . You say your meeting with him 
 was accidental. Very well ; I'll take your word ! " He had 
 caught both her hands, and as that last exclamation left him 
 a harsh, queer laugh rang out, accompanying it. But at 
 the same moment Angela looked into his face and saw that 
 his eyes were full of tears. ' Most curious of beings ! ' 
 flashed through her mind; 'who could ever really explain 
 him ? ' 
 
 "I'll take your word ; do you hear? "he went excitedly 
 on. " You need not tell me anything of what passed between 
 you. Perhaps it would even be better that you should not 
 tell me. . . Ah, you say truly, my darling ; you're right, my 
 Angela, my rose, my pearl, my star ! you did watch at my 
 bedside many a long day and night. And Angela. . . Oh, 
 ought I to say it ? is the time ripe for me to say it ? 
 Angela, I . . I've begun to imagine there's something 
 more than mere duty in all your goodness. Perhaps I'm 
 wrong . . ." He stared at her very intently for a little 
 while,, and then, with a certain abruptness, he dropped 
 her hands walking toward his chair again. His steps were 
 9
 
 130 DIVIDED LIVES, 
 
 a little unsteady, and his head, on which the gray hair 
 grew so weirdly bushy, drooped in a most despondent way. 
 " Don't tell me if I am wrong," he pursued ; and his voice 
 sounded as husky and hollow as that of some very old 
 man. " I'd rather not be told if you still don't care at all 
 if you still can't care." 
 
 "I can care," said Angela, following him, a great com- 
 passion (which by no means every woman would either have 
 felt or shown) rising and stirring in her soul. " I can care, 
 Bleakly, and I do ! " 
 
 He turned, and with a short, glad cry seized her in his 
 arms. " My love ! my wife ! " broke from him. He show- 
 ered kisses upon her ; the strain of his arms hurt her. But 
 while she was on the verge of uttering some sort of involun- 
 tary plaint, the grasp relaxed and his form swayed slightly 
 backward. . . In another minute she had forgotten his pas- 
 sionate embrace and was assisting him, dizzy and full of a 
 kind of nervous ague, to his chair a few yards off. . . All 
 the rest of .that day he was extremely ill, with touches of 
 slight delirium that made Angela fearful of a relapse into 
 mental conditions that she had already found fraught with 
 anxious trial. But by the following morning a marked 
 change for the better took place in him. During the next 
 day he seemed to gain strength, peace, and gradual freedom 
 from suffering, though his face still retained its terribly hag- 
 gard look. Again and again she caught him gazing at her 
 with a new elated intensity. He would avert his eyes as 
 they met her own, and Angela's conscience would reproach 
 her. What mere will-o'-the-wisp had she offered him for the 
 steadfast lamp of hope itself ? And yet, there was the other 
 way of regarding it all the merciful way. Allowing that she 
 had let him believe a falsehood, had she really committed an 
 evil act ? She could never love him as a wife should love a 
 husband ; but perhaps hereafter, if he were good to her and 
 dealt no more in those repulsive moods that had once made 
 ;11 their married future loom a hideous discouragement, she
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 3 1 
 
 might feel for him (who could tell ?) a sentiment somewhere 
 between friendship and sisterhood. The whole emotional 
 prospect, as it were, now looked very elusive, very pre- 
 carious ; it was not to be prophesied about ; it had its deli- 
 cate and stealthy developments yet ambushed in mystical 
 shadow. 
 
 ' I am willing,' Angela told herself, ' to make the best of 
 a thwarted and spoiled life. The agony through which I 
 have seen him pass has turned me more human toward him, 
 as it has made him far more endurable. If the change will 
 only last! There lies my sole chance of spiritual content- 
 ment in the coming years.' 
 
 Meanwhile the image of Hubert, as he stood at the side 
 of his beautiful horse, with the far-sweeping meadows and 
 the round, bluish, gusty clouds behind him, haunted her 
 hour after hour. She recalled every word that had been 
 spoken by him, though some of her own sentences she could 
 not find again in memory's chamber of echoes. Ah, she 
 knew well enough why ! Her heart had leaped so wildly 
 against her side as she addressed him, that sometimes the 
 sound of her voice had seemed weirdly alien, with a thin, 
 remote ring, as though a spirit were speaking there in the 
 wind, in the mutable light, and not herself. She thanked 
 Heaven that she had not let him even touch her hand that 
 she had had strength enough to pray he would never will- 
 ingly see her again. Yes, she had thus begged of him she 
 recollected that such a vein of appeal had run through her 
 eager protests, though here and there the substance of these 
 latter was vague enough as reminiscence. . . And GlenaJ- 
 van ! he had really written it ; he had acknowledged as much ! 
 Furtively she plunged from time to time amid its pages, and 
 re-read them with a new sense of verification, confirmation. 
 After all, she had not been mistaken ! She caught herself 
 kissing certain lines, and then, with a guilty tumult of self- 
 reproaches, hid the book out of sight and vowed that she
 
 132 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 would not re-open it for a twelvemonth. But this vow was 
 unstable ; it was writ in the water of her own secret tears. 
 
 The ensuing week saw Voght a greatly improved man. 
 For the first time since his arrival at Ponchatuk he took a 
 walk about the grounds of the estate. The weather con- 
 tinued magnificent, with fewer clouds than formerly in the 
 crystalline sky, and an atmosphere that made the robust 
 pines crowding the lawns look as though their boskage had 
 been cut by a wizard chisel from some sort of greenish 
 ebony. The invalid held his wife's arm during their first 
 stroll together, now and then leaning on it a little feebly, 
 while Bradbourne followed at just the proper deferential 
 distance. But the second and third strolls were quite d 
 deux, Bradbourne being no longer needed. Instead of 
 leaning on Angela's arm, Voght would sometimes draw her 
 arm within his. It repeatedly occurred to Angela, at these 
 intervals, that she was the recipient of some very amiable 
 and gallant love-making. But it was not by any means the 
 payment of an onerous or exacting court ; it was merely a 
 pretty and delicate tribute, with the decisive hint in it of 
 past illness and present convalescence. It made her mind 
 revert to the stories that she had heard before her marriage of 
 how unexpectedly fascinating this man could be with women 
 when he chose, and of how women the most difficult to 
 conquer had bowed before his adroit and subtle victories, 
 notwithstanding salient personal differences between himself 
 and the accepted type of heart-breaker. 
 
 A dread began to shape itself in her heart. There seemed 
 every apparent reason for concluding that he would soon 
 be very much better that, in fact, he would get completely 
 well. As they moved about the lawns, which were half 
 bronzed with tawny pine-needles and bestrewn, here and 
 there, with dry, ragged, swarthy cones, he spoke in tender 
 exhilaration concerning their coming winter in the Riviera 
 and the pleasures that awaited them on that wonderfully 
 salubrious tract of Mediterranean coast. But blended with
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 133 
 
 such declared anticipations were professions of fondness 
 that now and then almost took away poor Angela's breath. 
 All this had been born of a few pitying words uttered by 
 her under the keen stress of compassion ! She felt as if 
 she had been masquerading in the role of a millionaire and 
 must soon reveal what emptiness of poverty dwelt within 
 her purse. Might not the resistless disclosure of her inca- 
 pacity to return such warmth as this when it had changed 
 from mere warmth into ardent heat, restore those old hor- 
 rible relations which had so grewsomely clad the initial 
 months of their marriage ? 
 
 As Voght's fine inherent strength of nerve and limb 
 returned to him, he remembered that this was the shooting- 
 season at Ponchatuk and that woodcock abounded for the 
 sportsman among neighboring meadows. It soon delighted 
 him to learn that Bradbourne knew about the handling of 
 guns and the slaying of game birds. He held one or two 
 rather earnest conversations with his servant on this subject, 
 to all of which, as it chanced, Angela was a rather indif- 
 ferent listener. Finally an expedition was planned, one 
 especially brilliant autumn day, and it was then that these 
 words, about an hour or so before the two started, were 
 spoken quite gayly and carelessly by Voght to his man : 
 
 "You say you've only found two guns in the whole house, 
 Bradbourne ? Well, it's lucky there are even so many as that 
 here. Several years ago I recollect taking three or four out 
 of my stock when I went to make a long trip in the Adiron- 
 dacks. One got hurt and I threw it away; one, if I'm not 
 mistaken, I presented to a guide, one I lost on the train, and 
 one I'm under the impression that somebody stole from me 
 at my town house. Since then I've never shot at all except 
 a little, once or twice, while in England." 
 
 "These are very good guns, sir," said Bradbourne. He 
 held one in each hand as he stood at Voght's side. He had 
 cleaned them both thoroughly during the previous day. 
 
 Voght reached out for the larger of the two pieces. " Ah,"
 
 134 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 he said, handling it with an adept's air ; " I recollect this 
 fellow very well. I bought him last of all my lot. A splen- 
 did gun for woodcock or quail, Bradbourne ... By the way, 
 Bradbourne . . ." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "You've everything ready if I decided to start in an hour 
 or two. I mean, dogs and all ? " 
 
 "Everything, sir." 
 
 A little later Voght said to his wife. " I think I'm strong 
 enough for it, don't you ? " 
 
 "Yes," she answered slowly, as though perhaps not just 
 sure what answer she ought to give. "You'll drive to 
 the shooting-grounds, I think you said ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. We'll drive to-day, on account of my not being 
 in trim. It's rather an unsportsmanlike thing to do, but I 
 suppose it would be madness for me to take a tramp of seven 
 or eight miles across the fields before I'm quite sure of my 
 own strength." 
 
 " You're very right," replied Angela. " It would be an 
 act of the most marked imprudence." 
 
 Hubert had ridden homeward that day with set lips and 
 blank eyes. Dara took him almost whither she pleased ; if 
 she had brought him into some really dangerous swamp he 
 would perhaps have discovered the deviation just in time to 
 save himself and no more. 
 
 Through succeeding days he made at least twenty different 
 resolves about quitting Ponchatuk. Perhaps if he had had 
 some definite preference of one place over another he might 
 have departed forthwith. But all places held out the same 
 inadequate lure to him. Besides, his home was here, after 
 all, and the most sumptuous hotel-accommodations could not 
 equal its simple comforts. It was true that she had asked 
 him to go had implored him to go, in fact. Well, he would 
 grant her prayer ; he meant to grant it. And yet what if he 
 should linger here a little longer and watch the season die,
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 135 
 
 with its heavens like aerial turquoise and its woods gorgeous 
 as the tapestries of Turkestan ? She had merely meant 
 that they should avoid meeting one another in the future ; 
 what was their nearness to one another, provided no further 
 actual encounter took place ? And if he had erred once he 
 would never repeat his folly. It had been with him like 
 bringing a burn near the fire again ; only fresh ache and 
 sting had resulted. 
 
 Different from many men of the so-called aesthetic temper- 
 ament, he was by no means a lazy moralist. It had often 
 been said of him that he possessed no religious belief, which 
 may or may not have been true, and which, if entirely true, 
 would not have emphasized any reason for his not being a 
 devout believer in more substantial things. Happily, the 
 days are almost past when people of the higher and better 
 intelligence regard religion and morality as transferable 
 terms. Hubert would have been quite sure to tell you (if he 
 cared about discussing the subject with any living confidant) 
 that it needed no stronger force than his own sense of eth- 
 ical fitness to keep him from either torturing Angela Voght 
 by his presence, or weakening and harming his own spiritual 
 nature by stolen interviews full of storm and dolor. He was 
 a man who looked for no supernatural explanation of the 
 laws that bind society together. He saw in them the plain 
 and direct energies of that justice which is either subjective 
 or objective, and which defends me against my fellows, as 
 it restrains me from my fellows. Some men, knowing that 
 they possessed the power over Angela which Hubert could 
 not doubt that he still possessed, would have found easy 
 arguments to justify them in the unscrupulous employment 
 of that power. Hubert simply clenched his teeth, and told 
 himself that to employ it at all, to do anything except stamp 
 it underfoot, would be to commit one of those criminally 
 rash misdeeds which are so many thorns in the flesh of 
 human advancement. Voght's wife was his own, and so was 
 Angela's wifely honor hers. It would be vicious theft in
 
 136 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 him not to leave both unmolested. He might urge the plea 
 of peculiar sundering circumstances ; but we are all subject 
 to misfortune, and there is hardly any case in which it may 
 not be made an excuse for sin. No, his course lay clear 
 and straight before him. He meant, with all the force of 
 will that was in him, to take it, and to hold by it. 
 
 One morning he received a letter from O'Hara, who had 
 just had time to read Glenalvan, and who was quivering no 
 less with enthusiasm than with conviction. " I recognized 
 you at least twice on every page," wrote the Irishman. 
 " Oh, my friend, there can be no mistake. There is only one 
 Throckmorton in this particular epoch of ours, and sooner 
 or later the world will come to realize it. Why, my dear 
 boy, it isn't your ' manner ' that betrays you ; it's your 
 charming freedom from one. Your verse is the soul of 
 lucidity, just as it is of sincerity. You're above all trick ; 
 your individuality is wider and deeper than any dialect could 
 make it. You rest your claim upon beauty, pure and simple. 
 But good heavens ! how you throw the spell of beauty 
 about everything you touch ! Who will ever claim that ag- 
 nosticism is not a noble theme for poetry after reading that 
 conversation in Book II. between Glenalvan and the Catho- 
 lic priest ? W T ho will deny that science isn't capable of the 
 most splendid emotional treatment after that apostrophe -to 
 it in Glenalvan' s copious but sublime soliloquy ? And I 
 have never dreamed that the so-called Religion of Humanity 
 could be clad in as much burning eloquence. But that is 
 not all ; it amazes me to mark how you have contrived to 
 mingle, in your political reproaches against America, so 
 much imagination with so much pitiless logic. To think of 
 making the Muse talk about Protection and Free Trade 1 
 It did not seem possible that she could do anything with 
 such subjects except stammer gracelessly. But you make 
 her glitter with wit at one moment and melt with sentiment 
 the next. . . Ah, wondersmith ! how have you wrought this 
 enchanting poem ? No marvel that they are babbling about
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 137 
 
 it over in England, where it needs almost a new Shakespeare 
 to thrill the languor of their Saturday reviewers " 
 
 This letter of O'Hara's caused Hubert fo remember that 
 he had mentioned something about the autumn shooting at. 
 Ponchatuk when they were together at Long Branch. He 
 soon afterward wrote : " Come to me for a day or two if 
 you can, and I'll try to tell you what I think of your having 
 saddled me with Glenalvan. The shooting, as far as I can 
 learn, is very bad this year ; but if we can't shoot we can 
 always talk, and I've some Madeira here that they thought 
 fine before I was born." 
 
 O'Hara accepted the invitation with promptness. He 
 arrived one evening just at twilight ; it was cold enough for 
 Hubert to have had fires lit in all the lower rooms ; and 
 outside, just behind the gold-leaved locusts, a new moon, 
 shaped like a cup of glistening silver, hung over a sunset 
 that was like a great pool of spilt wine. 
 
 " C'est unefete de vous voir" said O'Hara, with his Celtic 
 French, and wringing his friend's hand as they met in the 
 wide old lower hall of the homestead. " My dear boy, if I 
 missed the train you told me to take, I do hope you've not 
 missed your dinner in consequence. ..." 
 
 " Dinner hasn't been served yet," said Hubert, in his 
 quiet way, as they were entering the fire-lit library. " Since 
 the evenings have grown so long, I rarely dine till eight 
 o'clock." 
 
 O'Hara stood undecidedly for a moment, glancing now 
 at the dark, tasteful, book-lined room and now at his hand- 
 some, high-bred host. He ran one big white hand rumina- 
 tively through his coarse, red, curly locks, and that little live 
 spark that was forever floating about in his hazel eyes 
 brightened into the keenest of twinkles. 
 
 " Bless me ! " he said, " how fortune showers her bless- 
 ings on some men ! " 
 
 It was impossible to avoid seeing what he meant. 
 " Blessings ! " repeated Hubert. Just as he spoke the word
 
 138 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 he approached one of the broad windows to pull down its 
 shade. Off there against the fading sunset sky those pines 
 that stood about Angela's home lifted their black massed 
 boughs. ' Blessings,' he said again, but this time to him- 
 self. 
 
 " You've the blessing of genius, my dear fellow," cried 
 O'Hara, "even if you have nothing else." And then, as 
 though this subject were one magically inspiriting, he 
 branched off into a eulogy of Glenalvan by no means less 
 florid than that which was contained in his letter. 
 
 Hubert never recalled having seen him more charming 
 than during dinner and for two or three hours afterward. 
 He abounded with wit and geniality ; he told three or four 
 convulsingly funny stories which also had the rare merits of 
 being both decent and brief ; he spoke on the literary out- 
 look, as it is called, with blended acumen and scholarship. 
 He was bon camarade, gentlemanly, captivating. Hubert, 
 who had rather dreaded having anybody at Locustwood, 
 even after his invitation had gone forth, now felt most 
 happily disappointed in the result of his little anti-ascetic 
 experiment. 
 
 O'Hara's blithe spirits were in a manner born of self-grat- 
 ulation. It had not needed what he held the almost unique 
 qualities of Glenalvan to strengthen his belief in Hubert's 
 exceptional worth. O'Hara, as we know, had started his 
 career with an ideal. That ideal seemed impossible of 
 attainment, now ; he had done things for a certain number 
 of years that made him wonder how he could ever have got 
 out of their miry rut and landed himself in the comparative 
 cleanliness of his present life. But this life still failed to 
 suit him. There were features of his journalistic career that 
 wakened within him a dull, ceaseless remorse. There were 
 lies which he lived if he did not actually tell and which at 
 times made sick the something in his spirit no mundane asso- 
 ciation could render callous. Of course heredity was at the 
 root of these repentant pangs, and education had helped
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 139 
 
 heredity, as it invariably must. He had been born and 
 reared not merely a gentleman, as the ordinary phrase runs, 
 but he had been born and reared so that every impulse and 
 tendency had prompted him, at one time of his life, to culti- 
 vate an unchangeable fineness. He had wanted to be fine 
 just as Hubert was fine Hubert, who seemed to him the 
 one shining type of parfait gentilhomme at which the index of 
 experience could safely and accurately point. Whenever 
 Hubert paid him the least civility he felt proud and keenly 
 gratified. The thought of having been asked to Locustwood 
 had exhilarated and cheered him. His expansive Irish nature 
 yearned toward his host with a loyal and grateful tenderness. 
 It was during the progress of dinner (a repast which he 
 praised with deserved epicurean compliments, and of which 
 he partook with an appetite verifying such encomium) that 
 he merrily yet seriously said : 
 
 " Ah, I see you've taken my advice about writing for the 
 public and not beyond it. And yet the devil of the matter 
 is, my dear boy, that you've written beyond and yet for it, by 
 that miraculous method which genius alone understands." 
 
 Hubert laughed while he bit an olive. " So you cling to 
 that ' fad ' regarding my authorship of Glenalvan ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, yes, you needn't either deny or affirm. I know you 
 belter than you think I do." 
 
 " It occurs to me," said Hubert, " that there should be a 
 special kind of moral law to cover the case of an author who 
 has made up his mind to preserve the anonymity of ( a cer- 
 tain work. If he says ' I did not write it,' his honor should 
 remain just as untarnished as if he had told the exact truth. 
 I don't see that he has any other way of getting along 
 except by turning wrong into right with the most topsy-turvy 
 depravity ; do you ? " 
 
 O'Hara's eyes twinkled. " Is this the prelude of an open 
 confession ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, no. I'm afraid that if I were to tell you I really 
 wrote Glenah'an your critical modesty would be shattered
 
 140 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 forever ; you'd become a greater autocrat than Dr. Johnson. 
 Besides, you admire faith and deplore the scientific spirit of 
 the age ; you've told me that you do. Now let me see you 
 preserve your faith, live in it and draw from it the sweet 
 peace that passeth understanding." 
 
 " The peace that passeth understanding is the kind that 
 comes to a Browningite," returned O'Hara ; " but with Glen- 
 alvan it's a different affair . . . Well, if you won't let the 
 cat out of the bag, all I can say is that I know she's there ; 
 I've heard her mew." 
 
 After dinner, when they were both seated near the fire in 
 the library, O'Hara again referred to the poem which had so 
 captivated him, though this time with no marks of curiosity 
 regarding its authorship. 
 
 " It amazed me, Throckmorton," he said, making a 
 smoke-cloud from one of Hubert's good cigars, " that you 
 should (pardon me I mean that the unknown writer should) 
 have succeeded so brilliantly with the management of those 
 modern questions. You know, we talked on that subject 
 while together at Long Branch, and I then declared that 
 what the great public wanted in poetry was precisely oppo- 
 site to what you to what the author of Gknalvan has 
 given it." 
 
 " Yes," nodded Hubert oracularly ; and then, after a little 
 silence, his friend continued, at first with grave sarcasm : 
 
 " I regret, for several reasons, not knowing the author of 
 that very notable work. I should like to ask him if he truly 
 believes with the hero of the history that science scientia, 
 knowledge is hereafter to answer every question relating to 
 the destiny of man." 
 
 " It would be highly probable, I should imagine," said 
 Hubert, " that Glenalvan and his creator were of one and 
 the same opinon." 
 
 " But the philosophy of agnosticism makes all knowledge 
 pause before the unknowable. ' In its ultimate essence,' 
 says Herbert Spencer, ' nothing can be known.'."
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 141 
 
 " True enough," replied Hubert. " But what now seems to 
 us the unknowable, the unconditioned, the absolute, may 
 really be within the future reach of science. There was a 
 time when to prove molecular motion would have looked 
 almost as wild as it now looks to try and get on the other side 
 of matter. Some day science may tell us that what we have 
 been taking for final causes are nothing of the kind 
 that ..." 
 
 " Science," here broke in O'Hara, " is forever behaving 
 just that way. She is forever pushing on, yet never reach- 
 ing an end." 
 
 Hubert made a slightly impatent gesture. "My dear fel- 
 low," he returned, " what sophomore has not learned that ? 
 But why shall we presume to say that sooner or later the 
 vision which Glenalvan intellectually sees may not be substan- 
 tiated here on earth ? Science will then have told man all ; 
 man, the ultimate yet infecund product of a race which it 
 has taken quintillions of years to develop through number- 
 less grades of evolution, walks the earth as the mythic 
 angels of Milton walked their mythic heaven. His mighty 
 destiny has at last been accomplished ; he is lord of this 
 planet perhaps of the entire solar system as well. Civili- 
 zation, which is he, has reached its highest condition of 
 heterogeneity, which means perfection. He has mastered 
 everything; he has conquered physical disease, and utterly 
 annihilated another form of disease once known as sin. He 
 will live on, perhaps, in a condition of statical faultlessness, 
 for many thousands of years, until the first traces of disin- 
 tegration manifest themselves both in himself and in the 
 earth which he peoples. Such disintegration will doubtless 
 be brought about by the cooling off of the sun, and as that 
 process must be enormously gradual, so will the downward 
 lapse of the race be gradual as well." 
 
 " It's tremendously poetical," said O'Hara, leaning back 
 in his chair and staring for a moment at the ceiling ; "yet I 
 can't help but think it would be finer if you let the race
 
 142 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 reach one still higher plane of grandeur instead of going so 
 miserably to seed." 
 
 " You mean ? " questioned Hubert. 
 
 " I mean, of course God." 
 
 Both smoked in silence for a little while. At length 
 Hubert said : " Perhaps, in a way, it might be finer. That 
 is, pictorially. But how if it were not true ?" 
 
 " Ah," cried O'Hara, " I've always been a poor enough 
 religionist ; but why may it not be as true as the other 
 prophecy ? " 
 
 " Why ? " repeated Hubert, a little sharply for him. And 
 then his manner grew much quieter, and he slightly shrugged 
 his shoulders. " My friend," he said, " in order to find that 
 out you'll have to meet the author of Glenalvan personally." 
 
 " Oho ! " exclaimed O'Hara, " that's altogether too Mach 
 iavellian for a poet. There was one thing about this poem 
 which I insist upon maintaining you wrote : from beginning 
 to end I did not find in it a single line that was the least 
 ambiguous." 
 
 " Nor should there be in any poem," declared Hubert, 
 with a touch of half-betraying fervor. " There is something 
 to my thought equally sad and trivial in seeing an age like 
 the present one waste precious time over metrical enigmas. 
 This is an age whose best philosophers have set us a hand- 
 some example of perspicuity. It is an age with a very 
 wholesome contempt for metaphysics. Germany allows a 
 few such cobwebs to hang ; they ought to be nearly harm- 
 less there, as most of the mischievous spiders once inhabit- 
 ing them have died a good while ago. England's brooms, 
 on the other hand, have swept all hers away; the philo- 
 sophic thought of no other country in the world is to-day 
 so exempt from metaphysical delusion as that of England. 
 But of her modern poetry this by no means is true. It has 
 often seemed to me as if she thought any speculative frag- 
 ment of dogma were good enough, nowadays, for poetic 
 treatment. Of course I include America, when I say Eng-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 143 
 
 land ; there should be some international adjective to 
 express the colonial character in which American letters 
 must, for centuries yet, stand toward English." 
 
 " Let us invent a word," said O'Hara, laughing. " Here- 
 after when anyone refers to the literature of the two great 
 English-speaking peoples, let him call it ' Anglimerican.' " 
 
 " Charming," decided Hubert. " It may be indifferent 
 philology but it is irreproachable euphony." 
 
 " But by the way, my dear boy," proceeded O'Hara, "you 
 surely don't claim that poetry and metaphysics should be 
 forever divorced from one another." 
 
 Hubert looked into the lurid fire, while a slow smile began 
 to steal about his lips. " Ah," he said, " future generations 
 will have little patience, I think, with those who beat the 
 air. If you will examine closely the work of any poet who 
 tends toward mysticism you will find that he tends toward 
 superstition also. But sooner or later I feel confident that 
 every vestige of superstition will be banished from life. If 
 from life, why not from literature, which is a form of life 
 or else nothing? No, my friend; there will no more be 
 obscure poets ' when the years have died away ' than there 
 will be obscure historians, obscure moralists." 
 
 " By Jove," said O'Hara, jumping up, with both hands 
 thrust into his pockets, " I'm prepared to take issue with 
 you there blessed if I'm not ! Now I hold that imagina- 
 tion (which no doubt is another word for superstition in 
 your new scientific dictionary) will never be banished from 
 any sort of literature ! And moreover " 
 
 " I could have no such designs upon imagination," Hubert 
 here broke in ; " let me assure you, on the contrary, that I 
 have the deepest regard for it, except that phase of it which 
 might be defined as superstition . . . However " (and now 
 he rose with his easy air of hostship) " perhaps if you mean 
 to fight it out with me you would like a little of the sinew of 
 war." 
 
 He rang, and when two or three decanters had been
 
 144 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 brought, with their satellite glasses, O'Hara began both to 
 talk and to drink. Hubert made himself some sort of dilu- 
 tion and took sparing incidental sips of it ; he had already 
 had a glass of madeira at dinner, and his was the tempera- 
 ment that inherently shrinks from all save the most moderate 
 stimulant. His companion, on the other hand, had not 
 only taken several glasses of the madeira, but had drunk 
 rather copiously of other choice wines besides. That for- 
 mer weakness for strong drink in O'Hara had been suffi- 
 ciently conquered to make his future career promise far 
 more hopeful things than had once seemed possible. But 
 occasionally the old bad greed would get the best of him 
 still, and its terms of brief mastery for the most part made 
 themselves felt when life seemed to treat .him, as now, with 
 a special softness and indulgence. He had always thought 
 it a privilege to know Hubert ; he felt a proud thrill, this 
 evening, in the realization that for the first time in his life 
 Hubert had asked him to be something more than a mere 
 guest of the hour. He was delighted by the sense of per- 
 sonal association with one whom he so heartily and devoutly 
 respected. He differed from his entertainer, now, in their 
 present rather vehement discussion'; but the pleasure of 
 drawing Hubert out, of watching his mind flash or glow 
 under stress of varying attack, was more agreeable to him 
 than his alert and often vigorous antagonisms denoted. 
 O'Hara was himself a man in whom liberal theories offered 
 a charm to which an unconquered orthodoxy had not yet 
 permitted his entire surrender. He loved to hear Hubert's 
 dauntless and cool-headed responses, delivered against his 
 own more conservative postulates. He had not "followed 
 the time " in his reading half as much as Hubert had done. 
 He had always wanted the leisure to do it ; he was trained in 
 methods of scholarship, and most efficiently so. But the 
 immense modern intellectual movement had escaped him 
 in the demand and worry of continuous journalistic work. 
 The more that Hubert calmly and logically defeated him
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 145 
 
 now, the more amazed he became that his contestant should 
 actually be the poet whom he knew him. This was indeed 
 a new kind of poet who made cold science underlie all his 
 points of controversy. But science did not seem cold, some- 
 how, as Hubert dealt with it ; the chill hardness of mere 
 fact vanished, and the warmth, the expansiveness of truth 
 appeared instead. He began to feel convinced that super- 
 stition and imagination were not one that much of the 
 romanticism in past literature had been a vast mistake 
 that the province of all art was to express human experi- 
 ence and not fascinatingly to misrepresent it that many 
 literary reputations had been built up, in preceding years, 
 upon falsehoods no less untrustworthy than engaging. 
 
 But he argued still; "e'en though vanquished," nearly 
 every clever man does ; and O'Hara was now in the position 
 of an exceedingly clever man who will not admit himself 
 worsted while he has a single big argumentative gun left 
 with a big crashing-power in its throat. Meanwhile he drank 
 copiously and carelessly. It seemed to him that he talked 
 with a greater brilliancy while he drank ; it seemed to 
 Hubert that he talked with considerably less. The hours 
 slipped on, from ten to midnight, from midnight till a good 
 deal past. . . Hubert began to find himself rather severely 
 bored. O'Hara had said a great many complimentary 
 things to him ; he had sugared a number of stout denials 
 and contradictions with profuse personal admiration. . . . 
 After a little while longer Hubert told himself, in annoyance 
 and regret, that his guest, on this the first evening of his 
 visit, was getting somewhat repellingly drunk. 
 
 It was quite true. . . O'Hara's head at last fell back on 
 the tufted support of his arm-chair, and thick, husky snores 
 ensued a little later. Hubert, more grieved than irritated, 
 rose and strove to awake him. But it was quite impossible. 
 He looked at the decanter toward which his friend's hand 
 had so often strayed during their long stance together, and 
 19
 
 146 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 started when he saw the liquid evidence of his present 
 torpor. 
 
 ' Well, well,' he reflected, ' it's too bad. I'll leave him 
 here. He knows his room ; he'll wake up some time before 
 morning, no doubt. . . His old folly ; I fancied he'd quite 
 outlived it.' 
 
 Next morning O'Hara met his host at by no means a late 
 hour. He was perfectly himself again ; his superb physical 
 health had been one of his worst temptations toward excess, 
 as it so often is with men of the same large and sure 
 vitality. His liver, his nerves, never troubled him with a 
 " to-morrow." But his conscience troubled him now, and 
 he poured forth a strain of remorse as voluminous as it was 
 sincere. 
 
 Never had his deserted " ideal " looked more sombrely re- 
 mote from him. After he had fiercely damned himself to the 
 lowest infernal depths and yet proved by eating a plowman's 
 breakfast that mental disturbance did not interfere with 
 bodily welfare, Hubert feared lest melancholy might so cloud 
 him as to render his company both tedious and uncharacteris- 
 tic. This was an error of judgment, however, and proved how 
 little the lord of Locustwood knew his visitor. O'Hara's 
 despair had in it an element of humor which made Hubert 
 think of something he had somewhere read about the rules 
 for writing good comedy, and in which the axiom had been 
 laid down that a vital seriousness should crouch at the root 
 of all exquisite fun. 
 
 O'Hara's despair was certainly serious, and Hubert fur- 
 tively reproached himself, now and then, for presuming to 
 hold it as droll. 
 
 " I came to you you, my nonpareil of moral strength and 
 high personal cultivation," he effusively mourned, " and . . 
 and did what I did! Oh, it's detestable ; it's . . But it's just 
 like me ! It comes from sinking myself years ago ! I 
 began well . . -yes, dear boy, I began with as hot a hatred 
 for coarseness as you have now ! I've longed from the first
 
 DIVIDED LI^ES. 147 
 
 to be . . to be just as fine and high as you are this minute ! 
 I've ..." 
 
 " My dear O'Hara," said Hubert, interrupting him for at 
 least the tenth time in an outburst similar to that just 
 recorded, " I'm not fine and I'm not high. I'm quite as 
 human as you are. Pray don't exalt me ; and pray forget 
 last night. I agree with you that to bathe one's brain in 
 vinous fumes must always be a wild imprudence. Je me 
 suis encanaille is a good motto for the man who finds himself 
 doing it. . But I don't preach ; I don't know any better par- 
 son than experience for a man of your age or mine." 
 
 O'Hara, who had already seized his hand, now wrung it. 
 
 "There's that about you," he exclaimed, "which ought to 
 make the whole world cherish you ! It's not so much your 
 mind as it is your nature. You find forgiveness so easy ! " 
 
 Hubert laughed softly at his hyperbole. " Perhaps I've 
 had much more than your peccadillo to forgive in my life- 
 time," he said. 
 
 O'Hara's mind instantly flew to the Long Branch scandal ; 
 he remembered how the engagement to Angela before her 
 marriage had been heartlessly bruited abroad as only news- 
 paper cruelty could bruit a matter of such commandant 
 privacy. But before he could reply, Hubert, with a light 
 gesture, as if wishing to dismiss the whole uncongenial sub- 
 ject, continued : 
 
 " You wanted some Ponchatuk shooting. They say, as I 
 wrote you, that it's miserable this year. . . But we'll try it 
 this morning, if you agree." 
 
 The shooting proved miserable indeed. Their two dogs 
 were good " setters," and the meadows they roamed had their 
 past glories of exceptional trouvailles for sportsmen. But 
 hardly a bird rose, and the few that did rise proved to be 
 hopelessly far away. Either was an excellent shot. They 
 look no servant with them. The meadows were so near 
 Locnstwood that to return for lunch was at their easy option. 
 After a little while they became separated, and Hubert, with
 
 148 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 one of the dogs meekly following, found himself at the out- 
 skirt of a wood which he knew well, having wandered it 
 often in boyhood. 
 
 The sun shone so bright outside its verge that as he 
 passed now amid the shade of the close boughs a momentary 
 dazed feeling fell upon him. But soon he saw quite clearly 
 again. The stems of oak and birch grew plain to him, 
 with the little knots of weed and of wild-flower growths 
 at their roots. He walked onward for a few paces. Sud- 
 denly a dog of the " pointer" breed sprang growling toward 
 his own. He seized the latter by the collar, but in a trice 
 saw that there was no danger of canine combat ; the differing 
 sexes of the two dogs made less harsh relations immediate. 
 He unloosed his "setter," while the "pointer," mollified 
 and playful, began a kind of gambolling minuet. As he 
 went a few paces onward he remembered that there was a 
 small open space in the wood not far off, where a huge 
 pine-tree had fallen, the rugged remnant of primeval 
 years. . 
 
 Boughs of saplings pressed their tinted leafage before him 
 as he sought this spot. He parted them with waving move- 
 ments of the right hand, holding his gun in the left. On 
 he went, with an idea that the owner of the unexpected 
 dog might at any moment confront him. 
 
 He was not mistaken. A few seconds afterward he met 
 a tall man, with a peculiarly haggard face, standing by the 
 great fallen trunk of the pine which had been known to him 
 from boyhood. On the prone stretch of half-decayed wood 
 lay spread a white napkin, with tokens of a light repast, 
 either recent or in progress. 
 
 The man advanced a few steps toward him as Hubert 
 approached. It is perhaps true that their mutual recog- 
 nition occurred at the same instant. But Hubert, for some 
 reason (possibly one born from a sense of intrusion) was the 
 first to recoil. 
 
 The man whom he had found in the little glade where 
 lay the fallen pine-trunk, was Bleakly Voght.
 
 HUBERT had started back, on seeing Voght, and with a 
 most visible agitation. Swiftly, however, he regained what 
 looked to be perfect outward composure. But he did not 
 speak. It seemed for him as impossible to speak as to 
 retire. The latter course would, he fleetly realized, be 
 ridiculous. But if he spoke, how equally ridiculous would 
 be any words that he might say to this man, whom, on last 
 meeting him at a gambling-house in Long Branch, he had 
 smitten upon the face ! 
 
 Bloodless, indeed, and like a worn-out invalid's, that face 
 looked now ! Voght unconsciously drew his brows together 
 as he continued to stare at the intruder. And then words 
 left him, spoken quite low and most probably born of com- 
 bined rage and hatred. 
 
 " So . . it's you ? You've thrust yourself in upon me 
 here ? " 
 
 Hubert felt his embarrassment vanish on the instant. He 
 slightly raised his hat, and answered : 
 
 " Pardon me. I did not thrust myself in upon you, as 
 you are pleased to put it. I chanced to be shooting on my 
 own grounds," he distinctly accentuated those last three 
 words, " and I passed into this wood by the merest acci- 
 dent." 
 
 " Your own grounds ! " burst from Voght, as he looked to 
 right and left of him in the way that a man might look who 
 finds himself environed by hostile soldiery. " I you're 
 mistaken, sir ; these grounds belong to Mr. Gansevoort 
 Lawrence." 
 
 Hubert smiled. " Mr. Lawrence's property begins," he 
 149
 
 1 5O DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 said, " about a quarter of a mile further eastward. How- 
 ever, it is a matter of no consequence. You are wholly at 
 liberty to remain in this wood, or to ramble about my fields if 
 you so wish." 
 
 Hubert was about to lift his hat again and quietly move 
 away. But merely to look on his calm, gentlemanly visage 
 had re-opened Voght's old wound. He hurried forward 
 several steps ; his lips and his eyes had both grown sneering 
 in the extreme, and his voice, the next minute, was a sneer 
 also, as he said : 
 
 " When I last had the pleasure of meeting you, sir, you 
 were not so civil as I find you to-day." 
 
 " I had less reason for civility then, I think," said Hubert. 
 He scanned the grass at his feet, for a moment, dark-green 
 and cool under the shade of the frosted trees. Then he 
 raised his eyes again, and added softly, but with much firm- 
 ness : " Do not you ? " 
 
 Voght gave a short, dry, harsh laugh. " I'm not in the 
 health I then was. If I were, you might find quite as much 
 cause for calling me rude as you then had . ." His pale 
 lips writhed apart in a smile that seemed pregnant with 
 malice, and he lifted one tight-shut hand. 
 
 Hubert stood before him for several seconds with com- 
 pressed lips and a gaze that bespoke deep if swift reflec- 
 tion. Suddenly he gave his head a slight toss, and went so 
 near to Voght that he could with ease have touched him. 
 
 " Will you let me tell you," he said, " that I greatly regret 
 what I did that evening ? Your insult to me was plain ; I 
 could not misunderstand it ; and I need not remind you that 
 the general usage of the world holds one placed as I was to 
 be without blame. But the world's opinion regarding such 
 matters cannot alter my own feelings. I believe that I was 
 wrong to strike you that I should have controlled the angry 
 impulse you roused in me. I therefore ask your pardon, and 
 ask it sincerely, repentantly." 
 
 He put out his hand, and held it for a slight time
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 5 1 
 
 thus extended. He soon saw, however, that Voght was 
 looking down at it with an undisguised disdain. 
 
 Hubert shrugged his shoulders. " As you will," he said. 
 And now he spoke with darkening face, with the flash of 
 threat in his eyes. " Wrong as I declare myself to be in 
 having struck you," he said, " I insist that your conduct was 
 aggressive, that night, and my own purely defensive." 
 
 Voght had entirely disbelieved the genuineness of this 
 proffered truce. He had promptly become convinced that 
 Hubert desired to make up with him for some subtle reason 
 wholly apart from any high and noble liberalism. 'It is 
 she,' had darted through his mind, and this abrupt conviction 
 set his jaw at a more ugly angle, filled his small gray eyes 
 with balefuller sparks. This old lover had met Angela not 
 long ago he had ridden on horseback, prowlingly to the 
 very limit of Pineland. His present high-flown generosity 
 breathed of some shrewdly politic move. Perhaps he wanted 
 to become an ami intime in the Voght household he, 
 Angela's former lover, whom she had possibly never yet 
 ceased to care for ! 
 
 The human brain can freight minute lapses of time 
 with hours of self-torment. This is what now occurred 
 with Voght. The entire detestable drama of Alva Averill's 
 deceit swept before him with electric speed. He reviewed 
 everything the forced separation between the lovers, caused 
 by infamous guile the matrimontal acquiescence of a 
 maiden half-crazed by shame and disgust the probable 
 horror of him who had permitted an evil woman to make 
 him her dupe all this, and as much more as duly completed 
 such a malign sequence of facts, passed in repulsive panorama 
 before his inward vision. 
 
 "Your own conduct, sir! " he now cried, with a bitterness 
 that had in it enough piercing reproach to have served a far 
 better cause than his own insensately jealous one. "Pray, 
 what has that been ? I am ill, as I have told you feeble
 
 152 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 in body, and therefore not fit to meet your new insult as I 
 would meet it if I were possessed of my former strength " 
 
 "Insult !" here exclaimed Hubert, with a doubt of the 
 man's real sanity crossing him, and hence taking both from 
 his face and voice all irate signs. 
 
 " Yes insult ! Do you suppose I don't see through your 
 damned plan ? But we'll say no more of it, sir ! You try 
 to place yourself most adroitly in the right as regards that 
 little affair at the Long Branch Club-House. I grant that I 
 gave you the lie there, and I'll . . yes, I'll even grant that 
 what you said about a certain bad bit of scandal was true. 
 But how do you presume to excuse yourself for having gone 
 with that story to my wife hardly an hour before then ? 
 What sort of an action do you call such miserable meanness ? 
 You had lost her for yourself, yet you could not let her re- 
 main at peace with me ; you must find a chance to tell her 
 what could only mean discomfort, if not the deepest wretch- 
 edness." 
 
 " Ah," said Hubert, with a sorrowful scorn, " this is mere 
 madman's talk ! I sought no chance to tell your wife any- 
 thing. A frightful act of treachery had divided us ; it was 
 only through a blunder of our host that we were brought 
 together again beneath the same roof. If, in the few private 
 words I held with your wife, I yielded to the impulse of 
 telling her by just what infernal trickery we had both been 
 snared, my motive was not to create any new unhappiness. 
 The woman before me, I found, was unhappy enough 
 already. Still, it was but justice that she should know I was 
 not guilty of the crime which had formed her reason for 
 breaking all ties between us. What man, placed as I was, 
 could or would have acted differently ? " 
 
 " Crime ! " scoffed Voght. " What right have you to call 
 it so ? What right had you to let her so regard it ? " He 
 spoke, now, indeed like a madman ; he showed himself the 
 searcher for any pretext, no matter how flimsy, wherewith to 
 fling hostile sentences at Hubert. " As if you could know
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 153 
 
 you, a stranger to all the events in my life how much at 
 fault I was, or how little ? " 
 
 Hubert felt his face flushing, now ; there was something 
 that savored of so despicable an attempt at bullying in this 
 new train of pompous sophistry. 
 
 " Good God, man ! " he retorted, " do you suppose I was 
 fool enough -not to make inquiries about the act I had been 
 accused of, after Alva Averill's dying confession was made 
 to me ! " 
 
 " Ah ? You began inquiries ? " demanded Voght, with a 
 sort of leering belligerence. " You played spy, in other 
 words ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " Hubert cried, now stung to an unconquerable 
 anger. " And I found out every fact regarding Jane Heath. 
 You behaved to her like the damned rascal that you are." 
 He wheeled about and passed to the edge of the little glade, 
 where a faint pathway ran among some golden birches and 
 scarlet-tinged maples that made in comminglement a tumult 
 of splendid tinges. Here he paused, and turning again, 
 saw that Voght's face had grown still more blanched and 
 furious. 
 
 " If the poor girl had had a single near male relation in 
 this country," he went on, "you might have paid dearly for 
 your scampish treatment of her. As it was, her father had 
 recently died, and except some kindred as far off as Aus- 
 tralia there was not one of her own blood to defend her. 
 That was lucky for you, Voght. The world deserves to 
 know just what a devil you made of yourself. You dare to 
 accuse me of meanness. If I had your record I should feel 
 like ending it with this gun I carry. By heaven, there are 
 times when I feel as if I could kill you myself not so much 
 because you stand between me and the woman I cared for 
 immeasurably and care for still, but because of that scoun- 
 drelism so doubly base when seen in a man born and 
 trained as you've been ! " 
 
 He had no sooner hurled out these assertions, in a ring-
 
 1 54 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 ing and excited voice, than he regretted them. The desire 
 to rid his sight of Voght and forevermore, if fate would 
 concede him such a boon ! was strongly uppermost in his 
 heart as he shifted his gun with a rapid motion from one 
 arm to another, and turned a second time, quickly losing 
 himself in the dense trees. But the next instant a shrill 
 report cleft the stillness, and he knew that the weapon in 
 his hold had discharged the contents of a barrel. The 
 " kick " of the gun would have made him sure of this, even 
 if its smoking muzzle had not promptly confirmed the fact. 
 A hateful singing noise, too, sounded in one ear, and almost 
 dazed him. But his brain was clear enough to hit speedily 
 on the cause of the explosion, which was no doubt a branch 
 that had caught in the trigger of the gun as he changed its 
 position. Immediately, moreover, he realized that the dis- 
 charge had been toward the open spot in which he had left 
 Voght. As he hurriedly parted the trees again, in eager 
 wish to learn if any mischief could have resulted, a long, 
 wild, unearthly shout smote on his ears. 
 
 That sound set every nerve tingling. He sprang past the 
 obscuring leafage, and saw what blurred his gaze, for a 
 short space, with its untold horror. 
 
 Voght had fallen upon the grass. There was a bleeding 
 wound near one of his temples. His eyes were still 
 unclosed, but they had already begun to wear a glassy 
 vacancy. 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " broke from Hubert, as he knelt down 
 beside the prostrate man. "Voght you're terribly hurt 
 how can I help you ? . . Was it my gun ? Ah, it must have 
 been ! . Here, let me bind up your head with this." He 
 had begun to tear a cambric handkerchief in twain, when 
 the noise of steps made him pause and look round. 
 
 It was Bradbourne, who had come dashing through the 
 brilliant autumnal boughs almost within a yard or two of the 
 point at which Hubert had quitted them. 
 
 He carried his gun, but flung it aside and fell on his
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 155 
 
 knees quite close to where Hubert also knelt. He seemed 
 swiftly to have comprehended that there had been a dire 
 accident ; this was revealed in his pale face and gasping 
 tones, as he addressed Hubert. 
 
 " Where was he hurt ? . . Oh, I see . . . How was it 
 caused ? " 
 
 " My gun," said Hubert, with a stifled groan. " Some 
 bushes in yonder must have caught the trigger . . . Here 
 you're nearest his head. Just bind this strip of handker- 
 chief round it as tight as you can ; then I'll give you 
 another. The chief thing to think of now is stopping the 
 blood. Afterward we'll " 
 
 Bradbourne was about to obey when Voght's hand lifted 
 itself and made a most strange motion toward Hubert. 
 Over the ghastly, blood-stained face there had come a look 
 of fierce detestation. But very soon the eyes of the 
 wounded man closed, and his head sank quite inert on the 
 grass. 
 
 ' Is he dead ? ' thought Hubert. In a few minutes he and 
 Bradbourne together had bound up Voght's head. But just 
 as they had completed (and very ineffectually) their forlorn 
 task, O'Hara appeared in the glade. He was soon followed 
 by the coachman who had driven Voght and his servant 
 over from Pineland, and who had been waiting with his 
 vehicle not far away. Two other men accompanied the 
 coachman ; they were workmen, and had been cutting corn- 
 stalks in a neighboring field. All three had heard the shot 
 sound within the wood, and all three had heard Voght's hor- 
 rible cry. 
 
 With O'Hara it had not been quite the same. The wind 
 had, in a measure, blown the cry away from him, though he 
 had very plainly heard the shot which preceded it. He was 
 considerably farther from the glade than the men had been, 
 but he had instantly gone in search of Hubert, half curious, 
 half worried; and his long, alert limb: had, in consequence,
 
 1 56 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 brought him at a fleet pace to the spot where Voght was 
 lying. 
 
 There were now six men gathered about the unfortunate 
 man. For some time Hubert had felt doubtful as to 
 whether Voght still breathed or no ; and now, with a sudden 
 shivering movement, the latter not only unclosed his eyes 
 but showed their look to be endued with intelligence vivid as 
 it was perhaps flickering. Once again, just as he had done 
 a little while ago, he uplifted one hand and made with it 
 motions toward Hubert. But at present the gestures were 
 more expressive of a decided meaning, and this meaning 
 unmistakably denoted extreme, loathing repulsion. A frown 
 of great malignancy accompanied them, and seemed to 
 darken with each tremulous back-drawing of the upraised 
 fingers. All hint of film had now passed from the small 
 gray eyes, as if the scathing fire that brimmed them had 
 burnt it away. Twice or thrice he struggled to speak and 
 failed. Then, at last, the choked and husky voice found 
 articulate power : 
 
 " He, there . . that man, Throckmorton, shot me . . . It was 
 purposely done ..." For a second or so it seemed as if 
 those would be his final words, as if no immensity of effort 
 could drag forth another from the colorless and fluttering 
 lips. But at length he did speak again, and to Hubert his 
 convulsed face wore a satanic malignancy as he panted 
 forth : 
 
 "He meant to kill me . . . 'twas no accident . . . he meant 
 to kill me, and . . he . . did!" 
 
 " Ah ! no ! no ! " cried Hubert, with a note of agonized 
 denial in his voice. 
 
 But by this time Voght's head had sunk backward, his 
 accusing hand had fallen forceless, and the next instant that 
 change which none of us can see on the face of a fellow- 
 creature without knowing it past all chance of error, had 
 overspread his features. 
 
 He had died, then and there, with the charge against 
 Hubert as his murderer the last utterance on his lips.
 
 XI. 
 
 STUPEFIED, Hubert remained standing. The bright-dyed 
 woods were reeling all about him. A monstrous oppression, 
 as of guilt, weighed on his brain ; he strove to shake it off, 
 yet with a failure that he innately knew to be mere nervous 
 dismay. He glanced downward and saw that some of the 
 group were preparing to bear away Voght. Suddenly a 
 hand fell upon his arm. He shuddered, drew back, and 
 then burst into a wild yet soft laugh that had almost the 
 intonation of mania. 
 
 It was O'Hara who had approached him. "What does 
 this mean ? " came the latter's eager question. Then 
 Hubert saw that the speaker was avidly searching his face. 
 "You you heard what he said?" O'Hara hurried on, 
 pointing toward the group that had gathered round Voght. 
 " You heard, didn't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Hubert, trying to moisten his lips, that 
 felt as if they had become like son\e sort of flexible chalk ; 
 " yes, I heard." 
 
 The next minute O'Hara's hand had caught his own, and 
 was pressing it with a vigor that would, at any other time, 
 have caused him pain. 
 
 " It isn't true ! " burst from his friend, now. " It isn't. 
 I don't ask you whether it is or not, Hubert Throckmorton ! 
 I simply say, and I mean, and I know, as I know that the 
 sun shines, as I know that I'm alive and breathe, that // isn't 
 true! there, now do you understand me? He was mis- 
 taken he fancied it was you. Or, if it was, you did it by 
 accident you must have done it by accident !" 
 
 Hubert grasped at those two words. They seemed to 
 157
 
 158 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 strike a rational ray through his confused brain and give 
 him a kind of inlet for sane thought. 
 
 " By accident," he repeated. " Yes, O'Hara, it was that. 
 He may have believed otherwise I suppose he did." 
 
 " You suppose he did ! " echoed the Irishman, in a fleet, 
 troubled whisper. He made a sign in the direction of the 
 men who were now lifting Voght from the turf. " Be care- 
 ful. How could he suppose such a thing ? were you not 
 near one another ? " 
 
 Hubert pointed toward the thick trees whence he had so 
 lately emerged. " I I was in there," he faltered. 
 
 "Then he did not see you ? How is that possible ? " 
 
 " See me ? He had seen me a short time before." 
 
 " Ah ! you had met, then ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And exchanged words together ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " They were . . . angry words ? " 
 
 " They were very angry, on both sides." 
 
 A short, vehement sigh left O'Hara. " The devil they 
 were ! " he muttered, under his breath. " Ah, if those four 
 other men had only not heard him speak as he did ! . . . 
 Well, after leaving him you you went in yonder ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You were going away from him ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Just to end the quarrel, and for no other reason ? " 
 
 " What other reason could I have had?" Hubert asked. 
 " I began by asking the man to pardon me for that blow I 
 struck him at Long Branch. He refused to take my hand, 
 and soon became sarcastic, insolent, abusive . . . But 
 though I retorted hotly enough, I did not choose to remain 
 and wrangle like that, so said my say and left him ... I 
 had got but a few yards into the wood when I shifted my 
 gun " (here he made a descriptive gesture) " and as I did so 
 one of its barrels went off. Immediately after that a great
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. \ 59 
 
 cry sounded from Voght. I hastened toward him and 
 found that the charge had wounded him as you saw." 
 
 ' And soon afterward,' sped the pained thoughts of 
 O'Hara, ' Voght died, accusing you, before five witnesses, 
 of having deliberately killed him. A rather bad showing, 
 it must be owned ! ' 
 
 But aloud he murmured, close at Hubert's ear, with a 
 voice full of the deepest meaning : 
 
 " Speak scarcely a word in the presence of these men. 
 Let me do all the talking that is needed. You must under- 
 stand why this bit of counsel is given you." 
 
 " Very well," said Hubert, after a little pause ; " I will do 
 as you say." 
 
 A slight while before that he had seen, or fancied that he 
 had seen, one of the workmen give him a furtive and rather 
 scowling look. Whether reality or imagination, the effect 
 of this impression had been poignant as a knife-stab. 
 
 Angela was seated in her room at Pineland, answering an 
 invitation which her husband and herself had lately received 
 to go and spend a week at Newport. Somehow, while 
 describing Voght's wretched ailments to the lady who had 
 made kind proffer of hospitalities, Angela fell into a train 
 of rather morbid thoughts regarding her own destiny. Surely 
 it was slave-like enough ! She was going to do her best 
 with it, but each year would bring her, she knew, a more 
 desolating fatigue, a more heart-breaking oppression. For 
 some time she had sat there in the big, still room, with pen 
 poised over her sheet of half-filled note-paper. The house, 
 was so large that a good deal of noise might be made in 
 certain parts of it without becoming audible in others. The 
 window near which Angela sat opened upon the rear portion 
 of the pine-shaded lawns. Hence it so occurred that she 
 neither saw the vehicle which bore her dead husband home 
 nor overheard any of the alarmed bustle which his ghastly 
 return created among the servants. And O'Hara, who had
 
 l6o DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 made himself an apt and able superintendent of all that 
 must now inevitably and solemnly occur, had arranged to 
 have the whole grisly tidings kept from Mrs. Voght until the 
 dead man was laid peacefully within one of the down-stairs * 
 chambers. 
 
 Hubert had found himself forced to endure a most harrow- 
 ing little episode after the body had been placed in the wag- 
 on which had brought it alive to the shooting-grounds. He 
 had then turned to O'Hara, saying : 
 
 " I will go back to Locustwood, now. It is best that I 
 should ; you understand why, of course. Come over to me, 
 will you, as soon as possible ? " 
 
 The coachman, whose name was Hugh Magee, and who 
 had been for years in the employment of Voght, started a 
 little as he imbibed the sense of these low-uttered yet dis- 
 tinct words. He was an intelligent man, with character 
 and some rather bovine obstinacy as well in his clean-shorn, 
 florid face. Several times Voght had discharged him for 
 " answering back " when reprimanded, though later clemency 
 had always re-installed him in his former position as master 
 of the stables. Whether an affection for his employer ex- 
 isted or not on the part of Magee, some sort of relative mu- 
 tual adaptability did certainly exist between the two men, in 
 their differing social grades. The death of Voght had been 
 a horrible shock to the coachman, and those words delivered 
 actually with the sufferer's dying breath had formed an 
 ample factor of his present emotion. 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," he now said, looking straight at Hu- 
 bert, whom he knew well by sight and of whose former quar- 
 rel with Voght he had long ago learned every particular, 
 " but considerin' how things has turned out I'm afraid it 
 won't be right for you to go off that way alone." 
 
 Hubert's brow darkened. That a servant should dictate 
 to him was indeed a novel sensation. And yet his natural 
 wide-minded tolerance and charity would have perhaps 
 caused him to answer Magee with a good deal qf sensible
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. l6l 
 
 calmness, had not a harsh, fierce oath now suddenly sounded 
 from one of the workmen. 
 
 " Not a divil a bit does he get loose," the same fellow 
 proceeded, eying Hubert in a most ugly way, " so long as 
 I've a pair o' legs to catch up wid 'im. If he's kilt a man in 
 cold blood, he mus' wait till the law o' the land takes its 
 coorse, so he must ! " 
 
 The Bother workman, endowed with a less assertive spirit, 
 contented himself by an emphatic grunt, coupled with a 
 hitch of his dingy blue overalls. 
 
 Hubert's eyes were blazing by this time. " Let me see 
 one of you men dare to prevent me from returning home ! " 
 he said. " I am ready to answer for everything I have done 
 when called upon. I have killed no man in cold blood " 
 
 " Then the gentleman that's layin' here," broke in the last 
 speaker, " towld a lie win death itself had a holt on 'im. An' 
 I guess that ain't much likely ! " 
 
 With a grin that disclosed scarlet gums and yellow teeth, 
 the man looked about him as if for confirmation of his grew- 
 some logic and approval of his defiant attitude. That grin 
 seemed to Hubert of a more hobgoblin hideousness than 
 any which he had ever seen on mortal face. Just then, 
 O'Hara threw an arm about his shoulders and drew him 
 slightly aside. 
 
 " My dear fellow," O'Hara began, in excessively earnest 
 whisper, " you'd best make no objection and just come 
 along with us. This fellow in a certain way is really right. 
 You know, after what Voght said when he was dy But 
 never mind about that now. Take my advice and come 
 along with us." 
 
 Hubert began to feel that chill which will creep about 
 the bravest heart when surety that one has put himself 
 under ban of the law becomes definite. 
 
 " But you are going to to his house," was the answer 
 soon received by O'Hara.
 
 1 62 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " Yes," the latter said. " Of course we must go there 
 with the body." 
 
 Hubert shuddered. " /go there \ " he faltered. 
 
 O'Hara gave a great start and involuntarily drew a little 
 away from him. Hubert reached out one hand in a helpless, 
 piteous manner. 
 
 " You you doubt me," he said, in a half-choked voice. 
 "O'Hara you do ! I see it in your . . ." 
 
 " No, no," came the swift interruption, as Hubert felt his 
 hand again warmly clasped. " I'll be frank just for an 
 instant I did doubt you. But it's past ; I'll never have that 
 feeling again, old fellow. And I remember, now, precisely 
 why you should feel a reluctance about going there. I've 
 heard, of course, that his wife that you and she once . . ." 
 
 " Were engaged to marry one another," said Hubert. 
 
 "Yes. But it need not be so intensely painful to you. 
 That is, I will smooth matters for you as much as I possibly 
 can. There must be an inquest, you know and this after- 
 noon, I suppose. Do not speak another word. Go with 
 myself and these men, quietly. You and I will walk by the 
 wagon, arm-in-arm. Leave all the talking to me ; pay no 
 heed to anyone except myself." 
 
 ' How strange ! ' O'Hara thought, a little later. ' What 
 swift intimacies calamity deals in ! Much as I cared for 
 Hubert Throckmorton, I have always felt that an impas- 
 sable little mound of ceremony rose between us. It has been 
 something, too, not so much made by caste as by that secure 
 moral superiority of his, evasive yet undeniable, and which 
 you hear in the very creak of his boots or see in the very 
 poise of his walking-stick. But now a mere flash of time 
 has done what years of ordinary acquaintance couldn't have; 
 done. He's in trouble, needs me, and presto ! we're equal. 
 God bless him ! By just standing up for him through thick 
 and thin and proving what a friend I can be when such a 
 man as he wants one, I may get a certain queer sort of self- 
 absolution . . . why not ? I've done a lot of things in my,
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 163 
 
 day that I'm more than half ashamed of. Now for some- 
 thing to be a good deal more than half proud of sticking 
 fast to a man like that when he's down and almost up to his 
 
 arm-pits in mire. . . And d it all, he'll be lucky if the 
 
 mire doesn't close over his head ! ' 
 
 Voght's body had been brought into the house and laid in 
 one of the lower drawing-rooms before Angela was even per- 
 mitted to suspect that anything extraordinary had happened. 
 Then a pale, scared maid-servant knocked at her door, and 
 in a little while she was being told everything that had 
 occurred, gradually and with a most exquisite tact, by a tall 
 man who had a reddish moustache, hazel eyes, and a won- 
 derfully sympathetic voice and look. This, of course, was 
 O'Hara, and their memorable conference took place in a 
 small sitting-room which communicated with the library. 
 O'Hara proved himself possessed of astonishing skill as a 
 bearer of dread intelligence. He had guessed instinctively 
 that the news of her husband's death would deal Angela no 
 sharp pang of grief, however seriously it might shock her 
 nerves ; for, having had some experience in the personality 
 of Bleakly Voght, it seemed incredible to him that so 
 sweetly human-looking a creature as the lady whom he 
 addressed should have loved so thoroughly ill-favored a 
 spouse. Before the talk had progressed very far he was 
 ready, with his impetuous Irish way of drawing conclusions 
 about people, to wager that there must have been some pow- 
 erful emotional reason to have caused a separation between 
 his admired Hubert and a fianc/e of such enchanting per- 
 sonal attractiveness. Minutes like these that now passed 
 between himself and Angela will reveal truths which months 
 of ordinary intercourse fail to betray. As the exact details 
 of the shooting began to imprint themselves on Mrs. Voght's 
 mind, he could not but observe the peculiar quality of that 
 agitation which she strove almost pathetically to hide. At
 
 164 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 last it was all clear to her, and she stood pale and tremulous 
 before his wistful, searching, expectant gaze. 
 
 "I am glad you bear it so well," he said, at last breaking 
 the little pause that had ensued upon his sentences of purely 
 expository recital. 
 
 " Bear it so well ? " her pale lips repeated. She pressed 
 the backs of the fingers of either hand against either momen- 
 tarily closed eye. " It it isn't at all real to me yet. I feel 
 as if I were dreaming it and in some hateful nightmare." 
 She looked at him suddenly, with a wild piaintiveness. 
 " And you believe they will accuse Hu Mr. Throckmorton 
 of having intended to kill my husband ? " 
 
 " My dear lady," said O'Hara, as he lifted both hands 
 with a gesture at once deploring and deprecating, " I am 
 reluctant enough to believe so ; and yet it now seems un- 
 avoidable ! " 
 
 " Those words that you all heard him say," she ran on, 
 feverishly " the words that made it appear as if Mr. 
 Throckmorton were guilty ! Those will have a terrible 
 weight, I suppose." Her voice broke, and she tried to hide 
 an inward shiver as she added, with a glance of most fervid 
 appeal at her listener : " Tell me do you think they would 
 have weight enough to to ? . . But you know, you know ! " 
 
 "Yes," said O'Hara, solemnly, after a slight silence; 
 " But I don't think that . . . Your husband," he continued, 
 wishing to change the subject, or at least the dismal view of 
 it just selected, " is in one of the drawing-rooms as I may 
 have mentioned to you before. Is it your wish to see him ? " 
 
 " See him ? " she panted, rising. " Oh, yes ; I must I 
 mean, it will be right for me to do so, and at once ; will it 
 not ? " 
 
 She said this so excitedly, helplessly, and irresponsibly 
 that O'Hara felt a fresh pang of pity for her pierce his heart. 
 It was evident to him that though she desired to do what 
 would seem " right," she nevertheless felt herself shrinking
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 165 
 
 in spirit, just then, from the idea of looking upon her hus- 
 band's dead face. 
 
 " If you are at all unstrung now, Mrs. Voght," he there- 
 fore gently said to her, at this point, " I should advise you 
 not to go and see him yet. You can wait until later 
 a little while before the inquest if you prefer." 
 
 " The inquest ? " she repeated. " Oh . . there is to be 
 one then ? " 
 
 "There must be. They have gone, now, for the coroner." 
 
 " And they will hold the inquest here ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I suppose there is no other place. This house is 
 so far from any of the hotels ; it's off here so alone by 
 itself." 
 
 She kept her eyes fixed on the floor, while he stood at 
 her side, watching her and wondering whether or no he 
 would turn out a correct prophet as to the question that 
 she would presently ask him. 
 
 It proved to be just the one he had expected. " If 
 the inquest is held here," she asked him, as she raised her 
 eyes to his once more, liquid and burning with anxious fires, 
 " will not Mr. Throckmorton be obliged to come ? " 
 
 " Here ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Here ? " O'Hara softly iterated ; and then with a faint 
 smile, he added : " That will not be necessary ; he is here, 
 now." 
 
 " Here now ! " She gave a violent start, and the color 
 surged up to her temples, afterward leaving her whole face 
 perhaps paler than before. 
 
 O'Hara pointed to a heavy mahogany door, closed be- 
 tween this room and the library. " He is in there," said 
 Hubert's friend. " He is . . waiting, you know. Will you 
 not go in and see him for a little while ? You and he have 
 already met, I think." O'Hara tried to make his mode of 
 speaking that last sentence as neutral a one as possible. 
 
 She had turned a good deal away from him, but he could
 
 1 66 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 see across one of her shoulders that she had got the fingers 
 of both hands tensely tangled together and that she was 
 gnawing her underlip so that every second or two a white 
 gleam showed from her teeth. Quite a long silence followed 
 between them, and then she abruptly broke it by facing him 
 full again and asking : 
 
 " Does he expect me ? " 
 
 " I can't be sure of that," returned O'Hara, with sombre 
 diplomacy. " Shall I go and tell him that you will . . a . . 
 look in upon him ? " 
 
 " No," she said, shortly and quite vetoingly. She at once 
 seemed to meditate again, standing with her head bent, and 
 her form as full of pliant curves as though she had been a 
 lily in a breeze. 
 
 Until now O'Hara had taken for granted that her skepti- 
 cism regarding Hubert's guilt was just as cogent as his own. 
 But now, for the first time, a doubt of her disbelief crossed 
 him. "Pardon me," he presently said; "but after the 
 account I have given you of all that has happened and of 
 just how decided has been Mr. Throckmorton's assertion 
 that the shooting was wholly accidental, I can't help wishing 
 to know whether you yourself hold the man whom your hus- 
 band accused as really guilty of crime." 
 
 " Guilty of crime ! " This first brief reply, all in one key 
 of indignant amazement, shot forth like an arrow. The 
 others followed more slowly, but they were forceful enough 
 to leave O'Hara very firm in his opinion as to how criminal 
 Angela Voght esteemed the recent unhappy act of Hubert. 
 
 " He no more deliberately meant to kill my husband," 
 she pursued, " than I deliberately mean to kill you at this 
 moment. I am as certain of it as I am of my name, my birth, 
 my coming death anything of which one can be certain. 
 What my husband said just before dying may have been a 
 mistake, a delusion, or it may have been ..." 
 
 ' A jealous, malicious lie,' O'Hara mentally supplied, as 
 Angela paused, and with the intonation of one who has
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 67 
 
 ventured among imprudences. ' Ah,' he added, still to him- 
 self, ' this woman is aware what manner of man she married 
 she has gauged all his capabilities and potentialities of 
 mischief ! ' 
 
 Soon after this he perceived that Angela gave every sign 
 of being beset by new painful reflections. He watched her 
 as she began to pace with what was no doubt unconscious 
 restlessness a small tract of carpet immediately adjacent to 
 that big mahogany door behind which he felt sure that 
 Hubert yet remained. But at length she came to a stand- 
 still, and as she did so she addressed O'Hara. 
 
 " I think I will go in and see Mr. Throckmorton. I I 
 don't know of any reason why I shouldn't go ; do you ? " 
 
 " There is every reason why you should go," replied 
 O'Hara urgently. 
 
 She glanced from object to object throughout the room, 
 with turns of the head that had the quickness and grace of a 
 bird's ; it seemed as though she had made her resolve and 
 now would receive some stringent reprimand from somewhere 
 the furniture, it might be, or the bodiless air itself. 
 
 " Do you think he will expect me ? " she asked, and he 
 now saw that she had moved very close to the door and had 
 even reached out one hand toward the knob, letting it fall 
 a minute later. "Don't you think that he will consider it 
 dreadfully ill-timed of me ? " 
 
 " Decidedly I do not," answered O'Hara. " Of course 
 this is a frightful blow to him. It may turn out that every 
 friend he has will refuse to believe his story that is, except 
 you and myself. I think that if you go to him now you may 
 give him fresh courage and strength for those piercing 
 ordeals through which he will be compelled to pass." 
 
 " Then I will surely go," she said ; and there swept a 
 gladness over her face that for some vague reason reminded 
 him of starlight. "Yes," she continued, with a slight catch- 
 ' ing of the breath, " I will go at once." And she put her
 
 1 68 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 hand quietly on the knob and passed into the library with- 
 out another word, closing the door behind her. 
 
 O'Hara, as he observed her, asked himself why she had 
 apparently not even thought of knocking. Was it because 
 she dreaded the effect which the very sound of Hubert's 
 voice might produce upon her ? The Irishman had known 
 some women intimately in the past. Something made him 
 almost certain that this was why the widow of the dead man 
 now glided almost stealthily into the next room as she did.
 
 XII. 
 
 THE library at Pineland was a really lovely old room, and 
 altogether the most tasteful that the house contained. The 
 kinsman who left Voght this estate had spent years in col- 
 lecting rare books, and had placed them in a chamber that 
 looked as if its heavy oaken wood-work, its polished floor, 
 and its monstrous fireplace surmounted by a superb mantel 
 of carved black marble, were all quite unfamiliar with even 
 the existence of our western continent, not to mention that 
 small segment of it known as Ponchatuk, Long Island. 
 Voght had always detested this room ; he used to affirm that 
 it gave him the horrors, it was so gloomy. He liked bright 
 walls, with gay patterns in them, like those of his own ill-tied 
 cravats. Gloomy the library certainly was, but Angela 
 loved it all the more, during certain moods, on this very 
 account. She had often read pages of Gknalvan over and 
 over again while seated there ; and more than once she had 
 heard the tones of a certain unforgettable voice float among 
 its silences. 
 
 To see Hubert standing there, now, with one of the black 
 marble mantel-columns behind his golden head, and a shaft 
 of sunshine intensifying both the pallor of his face and 
 the delicacy of its high-bred profile, was for Angela more 
 like reminiscence than actual and novel experience. She 
 went toward him with the still step of a ghost and with eyes 
 that peered at him in that eagerly straining look we some- 
 times give to those whom we immeasurably pity. 
 
 He returned her gaze in such a troubled and dubious way 
 that when she had reached the great, cheerless, empty fire- 
 place near which he was standing, she broke into a note or 
 169
 
 I/O DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 two of listless, dreary laughter. Then as if this grim kind 
 of masquerading in the role of mirth-maker had supplied her 
 with some sort of initiatory verbal formula, she began by 
 saying : 
 
 " I . . I came in so softly, did I not, that I'm afraid you 
 must be wondering if I'm not my own shadow." 
 
 And then, trying to smile with her wan lips, and knowing 
 that she wofully failed, she let both arms fall at her sides 
 and stood before him, stirred by unutterable compassion. 
 
 Hubert had scarcely moved. She saw how intently he 
 was looking at her. She waited for him to speak, and 
 meanwhile a qualm of shame hurt her for having sought to 
 hide her own piteous disarray at an hour like this behind the 
 least meagre similitude of a jest. ' I ought to have hurried 
 right up to him,' now sped through her mind, 'and assured 
 him that he had always one devout, unalterable believer in 
 his perfect innocence . . . But might not even such an ap- 
 proach as that have wounded him ? Has it not been best 
 for me to wait until he asks me whether I doubt him or no ? 
 Then I can tell him how confident I am ! ... then . . . 
 then ! ' 
 
 " I hoped you would come," he presently said, with some- 
 thing underneath his characteristic calmness that was like 
 the sense of push and throb a smooth yet swollen lapse of 
 sea will sometimes rouse in us. " I was not sure, how- 
 ever . . . Well, you have come, and there's that about you, 
 somehow, which leads me to hope in . . in another direc- 
 tion." He left the dark height of stone that had thus far 
 made so relieving a background for his head and frame ; he 
 drew nearer to her and put forth one hand his right hand. 
 And then he said, in a voice of great appeal, of great sorrow : 
 
 " You must have been told it all by this time. O'Hara 
 promised me that he would see you at once and make every- 
 thing clear ... So, now, you don't believe, do you, that I 
 could meaningly, wilfully have done anything so infamous as 
 that ? "
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 171 
 
 She sprang close to his side. Her eyes burned into his 
 unhappy soul as she answered him : 
 
 " Believe it ! If you swore to me now that it was not an 
 accident I should . . . yes, I should say you had gone mad 
 and fancied yourself guilty ! You ! oh, Hubert ! , . ." And 
 then she stopped short, frowning troublously and moving 
 her fair, delicate head from right to left, as though she were 
 looking for some ethereal ally, shaped out of the blended 
 dusk and sunshine of the peaceful room, to come and verify 
 before him her sincere and unswerving faith. 
 
 Hubert stared down at one of her hands as if he wanted 
 to touch it ; but he did not do so. He soon spoke, however. 
 " Pardon me if I have misunderstood you," he said. " Once, 
 you know, I had reason to recognize your . . your lack of 
 trust in me." 
 
 The stab went home, with her. " True," she said, just 
 loud enough for him to hear. Then she added, while her 
 voice rose again : " That sort of distrust is so different ! " 
 
 " Well, I thank you," said Hubert, " for the faith you 
 show now." He smiled, and with what struck her as a 
 supreme melancholy. " Half a loaf is better than no bread, 
 I suppose. I feel proud because of your trust I feel 
 immensely proud because of it ! " 
 
 " Now," said she, looking at him steadily, while she 
 pointed toward a chair and sank, herself, into one but a 
 yard or two away from it, " will you tell it me all over again ? 
 I heard it all from your friend ; he kept his word. But I 
 want to hear it all from you. Will you grant my wish ? " 
 
 " Of course I will," he answered. 
 
 He took the chair that she had indicated, and for quite 
 a long time his low tones made one continuous murmur 
 amid the soundless room. He narrated everything, from 
 the moment of his meeting with Voght until the death of 
 the latter under conditions that were so hideously unfore- 
 seen. After he had ended, Angela sat silent, with a brood- 
 ing look on her face, for what was perhaps not half so long
 
 1/2 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 a time as it seemed to her companion. And then, slowly, 
 with the stress of a deep significance, she said : 
 
 " I understand just why he spoke as he did. Ah, I know 
 him so well by this time ! rl have such excellent cause ! " 
 
 " You think, then, that he was not convinced I had inten- 
 tionally shot him ? " 
 
 " Convinced ! No. He realized that he was dying, but 
 he also realized that he could revenge himself on you that 
 there was time left to do it in. And he did it ! " 
 
 " He hated me like that ! " exclaimed Hubert, with a 
 shudder. 
 
 " He hated you very much ; you had cut into his pride as 
 possibly no one ever dreamed except myself alone when 
 you struck him there at Long Branch. And then there was 
 the other reason . . ." 
 
 " The other reason ? " 
 
 " Yes; you surely know what I mean." 
 
 " Ah . . you mean that he was afraid you still cared for 
 me ? " 
 
 "Well . . yes." 
 
 Hubert spoke with great softness here. " And it was 
 true, was it not ? " he asked. 
 
 " Ah," she cried, " why refer to that now ? It is no time 
 no place." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " he broke forth, " I dare say you 
 intend that only as a prelude to something with a far colder 
 chill in it ! One day you will say to me : 'It will never be 
 the time it will never be the place.' Ah," he went on 
 passionately, " how can we mortals ever be such fools as to 
 maintain that we're not the merest whims and freaks of a 
 mindless and sightless chance ? Our best happiness is a 
 blind accident, like our worst misery ! Here are you ..." 
 he rose from his chair and spread out both arms with a ges- 
 ture of fiercely rebellious pain ..." Oh, my God, Angela, 
 here are you, freed again with the bars that caged you from 
 me broken by death and yet this liberty of yours that I've
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 173 
 
 caught myself longing for so often, brings to me, at the very 
 hour you win it, a captivity bitter and horrible ! " 
 
 " Captivity ! " she repeated ; and here she also rose, and 
 went toward him. " How ' a captivity ' ? Are you thinking 
 of . . of what may happen ? " 
 
 " No," he replied ; " I am thinking of what has hap- 
 pened." 
 
 " Then . . then you are not anxious about the . . the 
 immediate future ? " she hesitated. 
 
 " Anxious ? . . I should not be much surprised if they 
 said I'd murdered Bleakly Voght. Perhaps, though, the 
 charge may not be proved as the law wants charges of that 
 sort to be proved . . ." 
 
 She clasped her hands together as he paused, and drew a 
 little nearer to him. " Oh, pray Heaven it is not ! " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " Perhaps," he proceeded, " they will even quite acquit 
 me after a time . . ." 
 
 "Yes yes," she said, with eager impetuosity. "I'm so 
 glad you have that idea ! Mr. O'Hara has it, too or some- 
 thing like it. They won't take such evidence as . . as 
 those few words from a half-unconscious man will they ? 
 No, I'm sure, myself, that they will not ! But it's so hard to 
 make predictions thus early ; isn't it ? " 
 
 Her speech was tumultuously emotional ; her bosom 
 seemed to show him the pulsations of the heart beneath it. 
 The poet in him gave adoration to her beauty, seen in this 
 unwontedly tragic light ; the lover in him longed for some 
 admission more direct and real than any which had thus far 
 fallen from her. It had grown certain to him, now, that the 
 unimagined potency of recent events had exerted over her a 
 great weakening force ; and this, he perceived, might effect, 
 at his bidding, a self-humiliation of surrender, a nakedness 
 of impulsive candor, such as all that he had formerly loved 
 in her for being a symbol of the most modest and gracious 
 womanliness would hereafter keenly repent.
 
 1/4 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 Hubert proved himself, then, notwithstanding his agita- 
 tion, his revolt against the despotism of fate, his wretched 
 bewilderment at the new and strange ill amid which his life 
 had suddenly swept, a man nerved and braced by such 
 innate nobility as only natures of true intrinsic honor may 
 claim. 
 
 He caught her joined hands in his own and held them 
 thus for a brief little interval. " Angela," he said, " I have 
 been foolish to speak as I did. We are all the slaves of 
 destiny, and yet . . and yet it is always more or less clear 
 to us that if we can't radically alter we can at least partially 
 shape this destiny, by will, by courage, by self-control ! Let 
 us be brave, you and I ! Oh, my love, my lost love, let us 
 be brave ! " He dropped her hands and receded from her, 
 while she stood before him and felt their pressure yet glow- 
 ing on her flesh almost as if some fiery contact had left 
 it there. " Remember," he hurried on, " that his corpse lies 
 in this very house now ! Remember that I killed him ! yes, 
 I killed him, as we must both concede, no matter what tor- 
 ture it deals us both ! Remember " 
 
 But she broke in, there. " I remember everything ! " she 
 exclaimed. " And I remember how you must suffer how 
 much more than I, greatly as I do suffer! Ah, you say 
 truly that we are destiny's slaves ! " She came toward him 
 again, and her eyes swam before his perturbed gaze like two 
 beautiful oscillant stars. " Oh, Hubert, I don't believe I 
 am doing the least wrong thing in telling you how I pity 
 you how I'd meet tortures to help you ! While he lived I 
 never swerved from my duty to that man. He's dead, you 
 say ? Why, so must we die ; but when we do, let us hope 
 we will not die with any such blasphemous falsehood on our 
 lips as the one he spoke against you this day ! " 
 
 " Angela ! " he protested . . . and then there sounded a 
 knock, clear and unmistakable, at the door which led from 
 the library into the outer hall. 
 
 Hubert went to this door and opened it. He expected to
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 175 
 
 find that one or two of those who had gone for the coroner 
 had returned to tell him of that official's arrival. But, in- 
 stead, Bradbourne, the valet of Voght, alone presented him- 
 self; and Hubert knew that this man had remained in the 
 house, to all appearances as a sort of guard left by the 
 others upon his own future actions. 
 
 " Well ? " he inquired, as Bradbourne entered the library. 
 " Are they back yet ? " 
 
 " No, sir," the man replied. He was stroking his short- 
 cropped auburn beard in a nervous, perplexed way. He 
 started when he saw Angela, who had withdrawn a little into 
 the shadow as he advanced. " I I didn't know Mrs. Voght 
 was here, sir," he proceeded. " If you say so, I'll . . I'll 
 not disturb you, sir." And he backed slightly toward the 
 threshold that he had just crossed, with an awkwardness 
 quite unlike his usual quiet security of movement. 
 
 Angela at once spoke. She had felt an antipathy toward 
 this man ever since the hour on which he had apparently 
 gone out of his way to acquaint her husband with the meet- 
 ing between herself and Hubert. From that time she had 
 always been suspicious that some duplicity underlay his 
 capable, methodical conduct, and she was by no means cer- 
 tain that an acrid enmity against herself did not lurk at its 
 root. 
 
 " What have you to say, Bradbourne ? " she inquired, a 
 little imperatively. "Whatever it is, I do not think Mr. 
 Throckmorton will object to my hearing it also." It seemed 
 to her, while she spoke, as if the man had been listening 
 outside before he knocked; she disliked him so that she 
 could believe almost any bad thing about him. At the same 
 time her sense of justice told her that this was a most unfair 
 posture, since what had seemed in him so artful a piece of 
 malice might have sprung from entire innocence. 
 
 He now looked full at her with his reddish-tinted eyes, and 
 she promptly saw in them a new expYession of grievous worri- 
 ment. It occurred to her, indeed, that she had not thought
 
 1/6 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 his collected, sedate countenance could ever concern itself 
 with so much evidently poignant feeling. 
 
 "The the truth is, ma'am," he began, stammering at first 
 but soon gaining much of his usual composure, " I came to 
 ask Mr. Throckmorton a question or two about the inquest- 
 I mean " (and here he addressed himself wholly to Hubert) 
 ' with regard to the testimony, sir." 
 
 " The testimony ? " queried Hubert. " Whose testimony ? 
 Yours ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 There was a silence. Angela's look was fixed steadily on 
 the new-comer's face. It struck her, once or twice, that he 
 was disagreeably aware of this fact. He had begun to feel 
 at his beard again, and the hand with which he did so (un- 
 less Angela's covert though rather keen scrutiny deceived 
 her) was a trifle tremulous. 
 
 " What questions have you to ask me in the matter of 
 your own forthcoming testimony ? " Hubert now made 
 inquiry. 
 
 Bradbourne gave a swift, uneasy glance in the direction 
 of Angela. Then he took several steps toward Hubert, who 
 stood much nearer to him than did his mistress. And here, 
 abruptly, he showed a perturbation that was in sharp con- 
 trast with his former restraint. 
 
 " I don't want to have anybody except you and me know, 
 sir, that I I came along quite so soon as I did. Whatever 
 words passed between you and Mr. Voght, sir, before . . 
 before it happened, I might just as well not have heard. You 
 understand, sir ? You do understand I'm sure you do. / 
 needn't have heard anything at all if you'll only make it 
 seem that way in your evidence ! " He went still nearer to 
 Hubert, and his tones took a touch of entreaty. " Say we 
 fix it like this, sir," .he eagerly continued : " I didn't strike 
 through the wood and find you till you'd bound Mr. Voght's 
 head up ; you bound it up yourself, sir . . don't you see ? . . 
 it was all your doing. I only got there a second or so before
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 177 
 
 the . . the other witnesses. Is it clear what I mean, sir ? . . 
 is it clear ? " 
 
 He was undoubtedly very much in earnest, now. The 
 sweat-drops glistened on his forehead, and he had become 
 so pale that Angela grew amazed at the change this pallor 
 wrought in him. 
 
 " It is clear," said Hubert, " that you wish me to sup- 
 press some of the truth at the coming inquest, and that you 
 will abet me if I do so. I take for granted that you can 
 have only one motive for this proposition a desire to be of 
 service to me. I cannot, indeed, conceive of your having 
 any other." 
 
 Bradbourne nodded several times in swift succession. 
 " Yes," he acceded, " that and no other. My motive, sir, is 
 only to make things . . . a . . well, easier for you , sir" 
 
 It had meanwhile sped through Angela's mind that Brad- 
 bourne had seemingly taken her own sympathy toward 
 Hubert quite for granted. This tended to confirm her 
 theory that he had perhaps listened at the door, and it also 
 augmented the general aversion she felt for him. In the 
 matter of blaming this man for having assumed that she 
 had given credence to Hubert's version of the shooting, 
 Angela judged with an absurd lack of self-perception ; 
 since to any servant of medium intelligence, living as long 
 in the Voght household as this one had done, it must weeks 
 ago have become plain that tolerance was the warmest kind 
 of wifely sentiment existing there. 
 
 " Easier for me ? " Hubert said, almost repeating Brad- 
 bourne's own words to him. " It is only because of making 
 things easier for me, then, that you are willing to commit 
 perjury ? " 
 
 " How, sir ? " shot the man, drawing himself up with a 
 sudden scowl. 
 
 " It would be perjury and nothing else, my good fellow," 
 said Hubert, with a sweet, frank smile. " Remember, you 
 will be on your oath. It isn't my safety you must regard ;
 
 1/8 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 it's the safety of your own word." And then Hubert, with 
 his manly, winning air, stretched out a hand to Bradbourne. 
 " I thank you," he began 
 
 " Don't ! " exclaimed Angela, taking several steps for- 
 ward. Both men turned and looked at her. Hubert dropped 
 his hand before the other could grasp it. She fixed her 
 eyes on Bradbourne's face, and with by no means an amia- 
 ble light in them, as she proceeded : 
 
 " Why should you wish to shield this gentleman ?" 
 
 " Why ? " repeated the man, with a slight toss of the head 
 that had bravado in it. " If I tell what I heard there be- 
 hind the branches it might go very hard with this gentle- 
 man. That's why, ma'am." 
 
 " What were you doing behind those branches ? " asked 
 Angela, with austerity. " You must have been eavesdrop- 
 ping, I should say, to have heard so much." 
 
 Bradbourne's face darkened again. " I'd sat down for a 
 few minutes on the stump of a tree," he said, " to eat my 
 lunch. Mr. Voght had given me three or four sandwiches 
 after I'd laid out his lunch." 
 
 " Then you must have heard our entire conversation to- 
 gether ? " Hubert said, half questioningly. 
 
 " I did, sir," was the reply. 
 
 " Very well," Hubert pursued, and he now let his hand 
 rest for an instant on the shoulder of Bradbourne ; " say your 
 say, my man, and don't have the least fear on my account." 
 He was silent for a little while, after that, and when he 
 again spoke his voice vibrated with a new depth of feeling, 
 though its gentle gravity remained the same. " I think I 
 would rather go to the scaffold because of true evidence 
 than be saved from it because of false." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Angela, with a heart-pang in her tones. " If 
 you are innocent, as you most certainly are, you should re- 
 joice all the more in being saved, by whatever means ! " 
 
 " If I am innocent, as I most certainly am," he responded, 
 with a tranquil solemnity that thrilled at least one of his
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 179 
 
 listeners, " then let the law look to it that my innocence is 
 not degraded into guilt." 
 
 Perhaps Bradbourne would have spoken further (he still 
 appeared fluttered, irresolute, worried) had not an interrup- 
 tion now occurred which was rather grimly irrepealable. 
 
 The coroner had been secured, and had come with several 
 wagon-loads of curious, wide-eyed, excited village-folk. All 
 Ponchatuk was by this time aflame with the disaster. It was 
 a fearful ordeal for Hubert. O'Hara stood near him, and 
 once or twice helped to nerve him with a few whispered 
 sentences when self-continence was on the verge of being 
 replaced by desperate personal revolt. 
 
 Bradbourne gave his evidence in a way that struck Hubert 
 as having been forced from him against his will. It was 
 damning in its character ; having been an auditor of the 
 quarrel in the glade between his master and Hubert, the 
 man repeated every fierce verbal detail of this quarrel with a 
 fidelity that rarely erred from the minutest point of accuracy. 
 
 * Poor Angela ! ' Hubert said to himself more than once 
 during the loathed progress of the inquest. 'What publicity 
 this will pour upon her ! Thank Heaven she is not required 
 to be present now. But if there is a trial (and it looks as if 
 there must be one) can they ,not force her to appear ? " 
 
 The evidence of the coachman, Hugh Magee, and of the 
 two workmen who had gone with him to the glade after 
 hearing the shot and Voght's wild subsequent cry, contained 
 a single dread factor of accusation. All three had gathered 
 from the dying man's gasped-forth charge one same fatally 
 compromising import. 
 
 As for Hubert, he attempted no defence. He narrated 
 all that had happened without a shadow of reservation or 
 prevarication. Lying had always been a lost art with him. 
 It was now his dreary and agonizing pride to tell the truth, 
 and he told it with a candor whose merciless rigor pierced 
 O'Hara by admiration and pity in equal degrees. O'Hara
 
 I SO DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 himself could do nothing but testify as the other five wit- 
 nesses had done. 
 
 The verdict of the coroner's jury came rapid and unspar- 
 ing. It declared that Bleakly Voght had met his death 
 through wilful murder at the hands of Hubert Throckmor- 
 ton. 
 
 The idea of bail, to any amount, was peremptorily refused. 
 
 The county jail was at L , an ugly, lifeless town abouf 
 
 twenty miles distant. Hubert went there that evening by 
 rail, under close custody, O'Hara faithfully accompanying 
 him. The prisoner did not see Angela before he left Pine- 
 land. O'Hara might have arranged a brief meeting, and 
 indeed somewhat pressingly volunteered to do so. But 
 Hubert refused. H,e slept at7^ that night, in a com- 
 mon cell of the prison. Or, rather, he did not sleep, but 
 lay awake brooding over the dire catastrophe that had be- 
 fallen him, and now and then telling himself, with a half- 
 miserable sort of comfort, that Angela was perhaps as wake- 
 ful and as woful as he.
 
 XIII. 
 
 THOSE days in L prison, before the trial took place, 
 
 were fraught for him with a momentously novel experience. 
 The New York newspapers might almost be said to have 
 rioted in the cause cttcbre which they were now called upon 
 to exploit and commemorate. The Long Branch episode had 
 been the merest triile of incident by comparison. Hubert's 
 past was remorselessly raked up ; lines of his poetry were 
 quoted by the column ; Angela's engagement to him was 
 narrated in a hundred different versions, and her marriage 
 with Bleakly Voght was made to-day the impulse of a co- 
 quettish pique, to-morrow the mercenary manoeuvre of a 
 hard-souled worldling. 
 
 After a while Hubert ceased to read the papers at all, 
 and refused to have them brought him. Except for O'Hara 
 he passed most of his days in solitude. That is, he preferred 
 such a life when he had fully made up his mind that O'Hara 
 had turned out to be the only real friend he had ever pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 Hours of the most keenly despondent thought had op- 
 pressed him while reflecting upon the conduct of persons 
 whom he .had once believed to be his friends. Without a 
 single exception, everybody who sought him was the bearer 
 of disappointment. Some who professed to hold him guilt- 
 less did SXD with the shabbiest parodies upon loyalty. Not a 
 few of those in whose adherence he had instinctively trusted, 
 never came near him at all. The quality of the evidence at 
 the inquest, and that of the journalistic disclosures concern-' 
 ing his former relations with Voght, had cast over his entire 
 acquaintanceship a spell of the most lukewarm tendency. 
 181
 
 1 82 DIVTDED LIVES. 
 
 His own kindred were of all the least encouraging, for the 
 simple reason that behind their assertions of fidelity he read 
 nothing except a timorous forecast of his possible criminal 
 fate. O'Hara would sometimes bring him news of Angela, 
 who was dwelling in New York amid the utmost privacy, 
 not so much crushed by the scandale publiquc of the ruffianly 
 press as by dread of what the coming trial might accomplish. 
 Hubert would not bid her to write him, though he yearned 
 for her letters. There were times when he yearned to write 
 her voluminous letters, breathing of his anguish and loneli- 
 ness. But he refrained from doing so. ' Whatever happens 
 now,' he desolately told his own heart, ' she and I can never 
 become one. The world would say that she had married 
 her husband's murderer. It would follow us wherever we 
 went, /should not care a straw except on her account ; that 
 would make me care intensely so much, indeed, that though 
 she begged and pleaded of me to marry her I would never 
 consent ! ' 
 
 Thoughts no more cheerful than these were forever taunt- 
 ing and harassing Hubert here in his onerous solitude. It 
 is wonderful that his health did not break down ; perhaps if 
 he had eaten the unwholesome prison-fare and not had meals 
 that were specially cooked for him, it would indeed have 
 succumbed. His fellow-prisoners were a vicious and often 
 filthy class of beings more odious in certain ways than even 
 those who fill the larger metropolitan jails. And yet 
 Hubert sometimes felt that their contact was a moral tonic 
 to him. The horrors of social inequality were brought 
 closer to his vision than ever before. He realized, as he 
 had never done till now, what pitiless tyranny of antenatal 
 preference had made one man the child of an unlettered or 
 perhaps drunken clod, and the other to be born with every 
 monetary and educational aid forcefully on the alert. He 
 heard the histories that some of these half-imbruted creatures 
 had to recount, and he perceived with a startling clearness 
 how great is that fallacy which claims opportunity in life to
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 183 
 
 be the handmaid of ability ; for not seldom during these 
 gloomy and growled-forth recitals he had traced from its 
 juvenile beginning a will to rise in the world and prosper, 
 coupled with a dearth of every helpful agency. Lastly, too, 
 he found his sympathies broadening and deepening toward 
 temptation, so often an energy that simply seizes the individ- 
 ual as a tiger might seize an antelope in its teeth and bears 
 him to a spiritual death if not a bodily one ! 
 
 Hubert's wealth made it easy for him to secure the most 
 skilled lawyers in the country. These soon gave him as 
 their opinion that conviction would hardly be possible in his 
 case. It might come, but as all the evidence was now 
 rather plainly en vue beforehand, its coming did not seem 
 by any means probable. After a few days of intercourse 
 Hubert thoroughly confirmed his lawyers in the belief that 
 he was innocent. He made no effort to bring about this 
 result; the quiet naturalness of his story, the subtle and del- 
 icate fragrance of honor, refinement, cultivation, good taste, 
 which his personality unconsciously diffused, wrought their 
 due and potent effect. The men who had at first let Hubert's 
 dollars tempt them into trying if they could not make the 
 black of guilt look for a certain time to twelve fellow-mortals 
 as though it were a sinless white, presently found that no 
 such tricksy species of legerdemain was needed. Hubert 
 had shot Bleakly Voght by a lamentable accident, and noth- 
 ing else. They were prepared to defend the prisoner against 
 what they now felt confident was a hideously false charge 
 made in a spirit of moribund malice. Like the majority of 
 those lawyers with whom the dealing in truth is a question 
 not wholly dominated by the size of the fee, they exulted at 
 the idea of having secured a case in which they must not 
 only do some pretty hard fighting, but do it as the most stanch 
 believers that they were fighting for a really noble cause. 
 For even a high-priced lawyer can appreciate the nobility of 
 a cause. As he might betray to you, if you caught him in 
 some confessionally mellow moment, across the walnuts and
 
 184 Di TIDED LITJ'.S. 
 
 the wine, it is not a matter of clients you shrink from tak- 
 ing, but one of clients you can't afford to shrink from tak- 
 ing. 
 
 O'Hara was from the first their devout ally, and may 
 almost be said to have acted, on more than a single occasion, 
 literally as the proxy of Hubert. Terms of comparative 
 intimacy had been established between himself and Angela. 
 Every possible turn of developments at the coming trial 
 they discussed together again and again. One evening in 
 early December, while he and she were holding an interview 
 amid the tasteful tapestries and bright embellishments of 
 Angela's New York drawing-room, the latter most meaningly 
 and deliberately said : 
 
 " There is one portion of the case, is there not, Mr. 
 O'Hara, which the lawyers feel somewhat afraid of ? " 
 
 " Yes," acquiesced O'Hara. 
 
 " And that is," continued Angela, " the portion where five 
 men will all testify to my husband's . . having . . ac- 
 cused ..." Her voice loitered and sank. He pres- 
 ently broke in, with a brisk, relieving manner. 
 
 " Yes," he said again. " That is the portion. Or rather 
 half of it." 
 
 " How ? " she queried repeated. " Is there more, then ? " 
 
 " There is the quarrel. I mean, you know, what Brad- 
 bourne overhead. His evidence will be most compromising. 
 It will have the effect of verifying those last words of Mr. 
 Voght's. You comprehend this, of course ? " 
 
 Angela stared down at her own black robes for a moment 
 the habiliment that seemed to her so exquisite a mockery, 
 and yet, in another sense, was so well adapted to her 
 present despondency. 
 
 " Yes, I do comprehend perfectly," she said. " How I 
 wish," she added, " that he had only suppressed his evidence 
 at the inquest, as he proposed, offered, almost begged to 
 do!" 
 
 "I remember," said O'Hara, stroking his chin rumina-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 185 
 
 lively. " You told me something of that before. The man's 
 behavior at the inquest was odd. He seemed so agitated, 
 once or twice, that I really thought he was going to faint." 
 
 But on the following day intelligence of a still more 
 " odd " character reached O'Hara regarding this same man, 
 
 Bradbourne. The Irishman went down to L and passed 
 
 a night there, as he had so often done since Hubert's misfort- 
 une. The more he contemplated the bitterness of tragedy 
 in which that high-strung, honorable, almost totally unself- 
 ish life had been steeped, the more he felt real thrills of 
 indignation against what one might term the brutality of 
 circumstance. A futile enough wrath to waste thought and 
 time upon, it must be owned ; and yet this very revolt has 
 now and then proved the threshold of a subsequent philoso- 
 phy from which foolhardy anger against the unavoidable 
 has been as absent as foolhardy faith in the insoluble. 
 Some of the hours which he had spent with Hubert in his 
 prison-cell had made the profoundest of impressions upon 
 O'Hara. If he had not known how forcibly his friend 
 suffered, Hubert's excessive patience might have wakened 
 an opposite belief hi him. This very agnosticism which had 
 long ago seemed to threaten the fine ideals of O'Hara 
 (though for any injury of those ideals he had solely his own 
 perversity to blame) was apparently doing, in the case of 
 Hubert, all that religion had ever achieved with martyrs of 
 past periods. Hubert was a martyr of fate ; and yet the 
 stoicism with which he met his unmerited scourges drew its 
 quiet strength from no surety wrought by the airy axioms of 
 pulpiteers. A stern hostility of events encompassed him ; 
 his hope against their worst assault was centred in his trust 
 of that equity which long sweeps of evolution had bred 
 among his fellow-men. Over all spread the Unknowable ; 
 here might lurk providential mercy ; on this point he neither 
 denied nor affirmed ; he simply granted that some sort of aid 
 might be working in his behalf. 
 
 And yet he was so calm, so uncomplaining ! O'Hura
 
 1 86 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 envied him his brave, cool resignation. He had once 
 believed that no such serenity could result from the non- 
 religious point of view. Hubert's repose was a revelation to 
 him. Whence had he derived it, since the accepted codes 
 of orthodoxy were all one valueless fable to him ? ... By 
 degrees O'Hara, through the very admiration which he had 
 always felt for what was clean and high and secure in his 
 contemporary, began to accede that a lofty moral condition 
 may base itself neither upon expectation of reward after 
 death nor a dread of posthumous punishment. For the 
 first time in his life he recognized not alone how essentially 
 Christian an agnostic may be, but how wisely consistent with 
 that so-called audacity of his rationalism. 
 
 " If Bleakly Voght really meant to bring me to the scaffold 
 by that dying accusation of his," Hubert had once said, " I 
 forgive him for the baneful impulse no less easily than I 
 would forgive a wild beast for having sought to maim me. 
 His attempt was evil ; so was my resentful speech to him. 
 Both are explainable through mentally material reasons. I 
 believe that all harm inflicted by man against his neighbor is 
 the product of insanity. Diogenes might better have said 
 that he sought a sane man than merely one worthy of the 
 generic name. Some day, I also believe, there will be no 
 wrong in the world, and hence no rage that shall seek to 
 repress or avenge it. How shall we probe the mind or the 
 soul ? Who has yet either explained to us the wherefore of 
 the human devil or the human saint ? Science may do so, 
 some day ; when it does we shall have the same trustworthy 
 amulet against spiritual evil that vaccination has given us 
 against physical evil. We are, all of us, the heirs of innu- 
 merable ancestors. I dare not allow that I ever lift my 
 hand without allowing that there has been hereditary, an- 
 cestral cause for even so simple an act millions of years ago. 
 Forgive one another ? Ah, my friend, it is only when we 
 fail to forgive ourselves that we cannot find it possible to 
 forgive our fellows." . . .
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 1 87 
 
 Many words like these fell from Hubert's lips, while he 
 was girt by the shadow and duress of his unmerited calam- 
 ity. O'Hara, who had almost reverenced him for being 
 exceptionally upright and admirable amid the levities of 
 ordinary living, now felt within his soul a respectful hom- 
 age larger and richer than he had dreamed of even furtively 
 paying before. But on this especial occasion of meeting, 
 neither the philosopher nor the poet in Hubert had much to 
 communicate. During the previous day he had received a 
 visit from Bradbourne, and it had both dismayed and per- 
 plexed him. 
 
 " The man was admitted into my cell," he told O'Hara, 
 " and the instant that I looked at him I saw a great change 
 in his appearance." 
 
 " He seemed ill ? " asked O'Hara. 
 
 "He must have lost at least thirty pounds. He was 
 never a particularly robust fellow, you recall ? But now he 
 is emaciated almost to a shadow of what he was." 
 
 " And he said ? . . . " 
 
 " For some time I could not even make out what he 
 desired to say. I took for granted that he had come to me 
 with the desire to say something definite, appreciable. But 
 for the life of me I couldn't get him, at first, to do anything 
 except besiege me with a kind of feverish, wandering com- 
 passion." 
 
 " Compassion ? " sharply asked O'Hara. 
 
 " Yes. He lamented that I was here. I struck him as 
 so sadly unsuited to my surroundings. It was an outrage. 
 My forthcoming trial was also an outrage. They ought to 
 have understood that a high-bred gentleman like me 
 couldn't, no, couldn't have committed an actual murder. . . 
 And all this was spoken so disjointeclly, so erratically, 
 so often with the suggestion in it of a dazed if not a 
 demented brain, that I began to regret the absence of 
 the turnkey and to cast my eyes about the niggard space of 
 this abode, thinking just what stout thing I might turn into
 
 1 88 DIVIDED LI: 
 
 defensive account if incoherence should suddenly take the 
 form of ferocity. But my caution proved needless. After 
 a while Braclbourne became a good deal more lucid. He 
 still remained a little wild and unsound in demeanor, but the 
 improvement had nevertheless been marked. Gradually I 
 began to learn that he wanted my consent and that of my 
 lawyers in. a successfully mysterious escape from the coun- 
 try." 
 
 " Ah! " exclaimed O'Hara, as if he held this news to be of 
 piercing importance. "And he thought you might abet him, 
 so as to avoid his testimony ! How little he knew you ! '' 
 
 " It was certainly a miscalculation," said Hubert, in his 
 placid way. "But then there was no excuse for it, this time, 
 as he had made a similar one before the inquest at Pine- 
 land." 
 
 " You showed annoyance ? " 
 
 " How could I ? The man's whole appearance was so 
 pitiable. With his gaunt figure, wasted face, and hollow 
 whisper, he gave me an absurd idea of a conspirator in some 
 opera. After a short time I found myself forgetting to take 
 him seriously. . . Australia seemed to be the one country 
 of refuge that he particularly craved. He knew it, having 
 lived there before during nearly all his boyhood and a part 
 of his early manhood, in fact. He spoke of you as being my 
 chief possible aid in getting him safely away before the trial. 
 The whole proceeding, he affirmed, could be managed 
 between the lawyers and myself. He had money enough to 
 defray all the expenses of the trip ; he did not ask me for a 
 dollar not he ! There were two people whom he would 
 like to take with him ; one was a woman, and the other a 
 child. Would I not think the plan over ? Let me recollect 
 that what they would compel him to say at the trial might 
 have a damaging effect upon me only second to Bleakly 
 Voght's awful declaration. It was true oh, yes, he admitted 
 it was quite true that he had been forced to speak harm- 
 fully about me at the inquest. But if he were not to be found
 
 DIVIDED Li, 
 
 8 9 
 
 when the trial came off, all that the prosecution might say 
 about him would not influence a jury half so much as what 
 he might say in his own voice. And suppose lots of people 
 did claim that he had been spirited off as a dangerous wit- 
 ness against the prisoner. Are not people forever babbling 
 like this about everything and everybody? The great point 
 always is whether or not they can prove their imputa- 
 tions . . . And so on, my dear O'Hara, until weariness 
 grew no name for his imploring monologue." 
 
 "You finally silenced him, of course, by a flat refusal." 
 
 " I silenced him, at first, somewhat painfully. After I 
 had spoken the word ' no ' for what sounded to my own ears 
 about the hundredth time, he literally fell on his knees 
 before me, with the tears streaming down his face." 
 
 O'Hara shook his head most puzzledly, like a man who 
 has begun to ponder something with zeal. " Strange," he 
 murmured ..." strange." 
 
 " But his swoon was still stranger," Hubert continued ; 
 "for in a few minutes I found myself kneeling beside him 
 here on the floor of my cell and looking into a face that 
 very closely resembled a dead man's. He had fainted com- 
 pletely away. . By a lucky chance the turnkey appeared soon 
 afterward, and together we succeeded in resuscitating him. 
 As soon as he was able to walk I caused him to be con- 
 ducted from the cell. He had me, with his impetuous 
 appeals, at a sort of physical disadvantage, cooped up here 
 as I was. Besides, there- had already been more than 
 enough for me of these half-savage supplications, to which 
 no inducement could make me listen. 'Get him away,' I 
 whispered to the turnkey, ' or I shall be ill myself '. . . 
 There was no clanger that he would recommence his attacks 
 before a third person, though he turned to me with a look of 
 fervent pleading on his altered face just as he was being 
 pushed across my threshold. Subsequently I learned that 
 he had left the prison in a tractable state of mind, though
 
 190 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 not until he had begged without avail permission to see me 
 privately once more." 
 
 O'Hara acted for a long time like a man who would 
 rather remain silent than speak. " This behavior on the 
 part of such a person," he at length broke forth, " is 
 deucedly perplexing. He cannot be acting solely through 
 motives of regard for you. He had never even ex- 
 changed a word with you until the day of Voght's death. 
 Merciful reluctance to testify so adversely against a fellow- 
 being ? That is at least improbable. His evidence, after 
 all, is but the truth, and he's intelligent enough to see 
 clearly that he can only show himself an honest man, in such 
 an emergency, by declaring just what happened. . . No, 
 there is some mystery . . some mystery. . . " And O'Hara 
 tapped his bowed forehead as he now scanned the floor of 
 Hubert's cell. 
 
 The latter gave a little weary sigh. " Well, if there be a 
 mystery," he said, " I can't see how any special benefit to 
 myself may result from it." 
 
 " You can't see," returned O'Hara, " nor can I. But 
 that is no reason why the solution of the mystery may not 
 prove of the utmost worth and weight." 
 
 Hubert slowly shook his head. " I don't understand you, 
 O'Hara," he murmured. 
 
 O'Hara gave a laugh that had in it only the vaguest echo 
 of his once gleeful hilarity. " I'm afraid I don't understand 
 myself," he said. 
 
 "It couldn't turn out, I suppose," suggested Hubert, 
 with melancholy sarcasm, "that Bradbourne really killed 
 Bleakly Voght instead of myself ? " 
 
 " Are you serious ? " exclaimed O'Hara, starting and 
 looking at Hubert with great intentness. 
 
 " Serious ? " echoed Hubert. " Good heavens, man, how 
 could I be ? " 
 
 " True," admitted O'Hara, a little sadly, and as though he 
 recollected something. " It couldn't possibly be ; could it ?
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 191 
 
 There was but one shot fired. Yes, if there had been 
 another we would have heard it we people, I mean, outside 
 of the wood. Besides, you had been standing in the presence 
 of Voght only a few seconds before. Oh, no ; there simply 
 could not have been any criminal act perpetrated on the part 
 of Bradbourne, against his master. He ..." 
 
 But here Hubert broke in, with his manly, thoughtful, 
 collected tones. " You are indeed right, my friend," he 
 said. " This Bradbourne cannot be guilty of any murderous 
 act against Voght. To have done that he must have had an 
 absolutely noiseless weapon, and have darted forth with it. 
 . . . But you see, we at once get into the realm of ' penny 
 dreadful ' fiction. Air-guns, and pistols that go off without 
 the slightest report, are not much in vogue nowadays, even 
 if it were ever true of them that they made no noise at all. 
 ... I think the explanation of this man's behavior may be 
 found in a disordered state of his nerves alone. I would 
 not, if I were you, postpone any other work preparatory to 
 the trial for the purpose of investigating his eccentric 
 course more closely. Remember, pray, there is not much 
 time ahead. Within two weeks from to-day, you know, the 
 trial takes place." 
 
 " Two weeks from to-day," O'Hara repeated. The sen- 
 tence held for him a deadly chill in it, as though he had felt 
 the touch of an icy hand upon his flesh. Then, with rallying 
 spirits, he added : " Well, be it as you say about Brad- 
 bourne, my dear fellow ; but I think the lawyers have made 
 every needful preparation, as it is. And they're immensely 
 confident of success, too but then no less so than I am." 
 
 Hubert smiled. " Success ? " he asked. " You mean, 
 by that, ' acquittal,' do you not ? " 
 
 " Why, surely, yes. What else could ' acquittal ' mean ? " 
 
 Hubert slowly shook his head while his eyes fell. " It 
 might mean," he said, " a cleansed name, and not the 
 stained one that I must bear through the rest of my life, 
 even if they leave me my life after they have done with me ! "
 
 XIV. 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING the advice of Hubert, future reflection 
 induced O'Hara to begin a series of close investigations 
 regarding Bradbourne's whereabouts and mode of living. 
 The young man, as a noteworthy witness in the forthcoming 
 trial, was already under vigilant watch. O'Hara had merely 
 to make inquiries with respect to his address. He then set 
 certain detectives at work, and in a few days he had learned 
 facts which filled him with strange amazement. 
 
 Braclbourne was not Bradbourne at all. His name was 
 Heath, and he was living with his sister, Jane Heath, a fragile, 
 faded-looking girl, in a decent Second Avenue flat on the 
 outskirts of Harlem. This name, " Heath," let in a world 
 of new light to him ; for Hubert had concealed no item of 
 information concerning all that he knew of Voght's past 
 misdeed. The detectives worked more boldly after they 
 had gained an infallible clew. They discovered that this 
 Jane Heath, although living under what she had given as a 
 maiden name, was the mother of a child who did not at 
 present share the home of her brother and herself. And a 
 few days later further disclosures were made. Disguise had 
 now been cast aside, and the so-called Bradbourne was 
 threatened with immediate arrest, provided he did not 
 reveal the whole truth about himself and the unfortunate 
 young woman with whom he dwelt. 
 
 " His sister is the woman who was the victim of Voght's 
 wickedness," O'Hara hurried one day into Hubert's cell 
 for the purpose of telling him. " There's no doubt of it 
 not a vestige ! I wrote you that his real name had turned 
 out to be not Braclbourne but Heath, and now comes the 
 192
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 193 
 
 news that he is unquestionably Jane Heath's brother. The 
 story of his Australian life is perfectly true. He was sepa- 
 rated from his sister, Jane, at an early age. She was left 
 here with a relation, and he was taken thither by the father 
 of both. The elder Heath was seized with a desire to win 
 rapid riches among the gold-fields. He failed to do any- 
 thing of the sort, like so many others ; and when his son, 
 Julius, had reached the age of about nine years, he died. 
 Julius had always recollected America, and now longed 
 greatly to revisit it and to see his sister once again. But 
 for a long time circumstances forbade such a step. He 
 passed two or three years of the most pinching poverty, 
 and at last succeeded in getting a fairly lucrative position 
 at Melbourne. Meanwhile he had written the most affection- 
 ate letters to his sister, whom he idolized, and passionately 
 desired to see again. Jane answered these letters punctu- 
 ally and with affection for a long time. At length the rela- 
 tion with whom she had lived (an aunt somewhat advanced 
 in years) rather suddenly breathed her last. Jane wrote 
 quite hopefully to her brother that she would go into service 
 at least until the happy time when he could rejoin her here 
 in New York ; and then . . . she wrote no more during a 
 period of about two years. One day, however, Julius Heath 
 received a letter from her in his Melbourne home. It told 
 him a story of miserable shame, and made the blood in his 
 veins boil for vengeance upon Bleakly Voght. He had by 
 this time accumulated a fairly large sum of money ; he had 
 lived with the most rigid economy on first securing the 
 situation which proved such a godsend, and afterward some 
 lucky turn of affairs had most radically improved his pros- 
 pects. In a little while longer he had delighted to tell him- 
 self, the hour of his home-coming would arrive. Then there 
 would be a great surprise indeed for Jane ! She would par- 
 don him for having played the miser thus long that she 
 might rejoice and be comfortable hereafter. The continued 
 silence of his, sister had been an agony to Julius, and 
 13
 
 194 DIVIDED LIVES, 
 
 her horrifying letter arrived when he was on the verge 
 of setting sail for these shores. He now swore a fiercely 
 determined oath that he would spend every farthing of the 
 money he possessed in seeking to force Bleakly Voght to 
 marry his sister. . . But when he at length did reach 
 America, it was to find Bleakly Voght the husband of an- 
 other woman. . . And here his story becomes most improba- 
 ble," O'Hara said, with that change of manner which accom- 
 panies the desertion of narration for criticism. " He admits 
 that he entered the employment of Bleakly Voght knowing 
 quite well who that person was, and that his entire method 
 of operation was underhand in the extreme. If Voght had 
 not been oddly careless about recommendations, I suppose 
 that Heath could never have got himself engaged as Julius 
 Bradbourne. It's most probable that Voght was prepos- 
 sessed with his nice manner, and omitted, in his own severe 
 illness, to verify whatever documents were presented to him." 
 
 " Strange," said Hubert, at this point, " that Mrs, Voght 
 should have made no personal inquiries." 
 
 " I saw her this morning," O'Hara proceeded, " and I 
 touched on that very subject. Mrs. Voght says that 
 ' Bradbourne ' came at a peculiarly trying hour. Her hus- 
 band's last valet had been discharged for a flagrant refusal 
 to obey some order given him on the previous day. She is 
 certain that the new man showed her a note of recommen- 
 dation which bore the name and address of a person living 
 in a highly proper part of the town, and that she thoroughly 
 intended to seek this person out for the purpose of having 
 the reference authenticated. But almost immediately after 
 'Bradbourne' had been told that he could at least tempo- 
 rarily begin his duties, Voght was seized with a worse attack 
 of his complaint than any from which he had yet suffered. 
 For almost a fortnight, Mrs. Voght further told me, her own 
 attendance upon the invalid was continuous. Meanwhile 
 the newly-engaged servant had so pleased and satisfied her 
 husband by his deftness and efficiency that she had gro\vi\
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 195 
 
 too grateful for having him at all to think of corroborating 
 his credentials. " Indeed," she added, " the plan of going 
 to Long Island for change of air had suddenly been formed, 
 and my chief thought was to move the whole menage thither 
 as quickly as could be done, since at any hour a new seizure 
 might have made the departure of my husband impossible." 
 These were Mrs. Voght's words to me yesterday. Now, 
 whether Bradbourne's recommendations were forged or not, 
 it is hard to tell. Doubtless all of them were genuine 
 enough. A little money, used judicously in a great city 
 like New York, can buy the vouchers of seemingly respect- 
 able people. If he wanted to get into the Voght household 
 he must have wanted to do it very much indeed, and hence, 
 being possessed of funds, he did not scruple to pave his 
 way/' 
 
 Hubert had been listening to all this with the most 
 fixed attention. " Pave his way ? " now came the interrogat- 
 ing answer. " Pave his way, O'Hara, for what purpose ? 
 If he had intended to wreak any revenge on Voght for 
 having wronged his sister, he would certainly have taken 
 advantage of those weeks which elapsed after he had 
 secured a footing near the invalid. And yet he did not do 
 so ; we know that he did not do so." Here Hubert rose 
 and began to pace the floor of his cell, while O'Hara felt 
 pangs of pity at the way in which confinement and mental 
 distress had thinningly told upon his robust figure. "I 
 think his conduct implies insanity," Hubert went on, as he 
 again drew near his friend during this nervous little walk ; 
 "but I don't see how it really can imply anything more 
 definite in the way of explanation. If Bradbourne had 
 made up his mind to kill Voght he would have carried out 
 that intention ; he wouldn't have waited . ." And now 
 O'Hara saw a smile of bitterest humor touch the speaker's 
 lips . . " No, he wouldn't have waited for me to have per- 
 formed the bloody business ! " 
 
 " How can you ! " cried O'Hara, springing up and grasp-
 
 196 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 ing his friend's hand. " Ah, this hateful prison and these 
 intolerable days of suspense are spoiling all your splendid 
 manhood or beginning some such vile work, surely ! . . . 
 Thank God, Hubert, the ordeal will soon be ended. In a 
 little while, now, this cursed waiting, this abominable 
 inaction, will have passed. Your trial will begin, and 
 whichever way it turns, its very agencies of change will 
 prove a relief." 
 
 " Right, O'Hara," murmured Hubert, as be answered the 
 pressure of his friend's hand. " Anything will be better 
 and more endurable than this monotony, this torpor, this 
 stagnation ! " 
 
 He drooped his eyes as he spoke, still grasping the hand 
 of the man who had so richly and profoundly surprised him 
 by an undreamed-of loyalty and fidelity. But the eyes of 
 O'Hara, as they gazed on the bowed head before him, were 
 brimming, at this moment, with compassionate tears. 
 
 The trial began on the appointed day. Throngs of people 
 came down from New York to be present at it, and drowsy, 
 
 ugly little L had never before been so actively roused 
 
 into a sense that it was not a place which civilized persons 
 saw only from the windows of cars. The trial lasted eight 
 days. Among the witnesses for the defence (as it is best 
 here to record) was Angela. She chose to appear and 
 testify that the violent irascibility of her husband's temper 
 might have made him accuse Hubert of being his murderer 
 even at the last mortal moment itself. Many of her friends 
 and acquaintances had held up their hands in horror at her 
 willingness to aid the prisoner by what they chose to term 
 such terribly self-compromising means. But Angela had 
 shown an inflexible purpose. No one opposed the step 
 more than Hubert, and this she knew. As for the opinion 
 of the world, she had but a single reason for not laughing 
 at it, and this was that her heart felt too heavy to let her 
 laugh at anything.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 197 
 
 " What I can do I shall do," she persisted. " Let pro- 
 priety shudder all it pleases. Let decency declare that I 
 am trampling on it. If I can influence judge or jury the 
 very least imaginable I shall be rewarded for all the dis- 
 comfiture this ordeal costs me." 
 
 It cost her more, poor Angela, than she had anticipated. 
 Her deliberate choice had been made to perform a sacrifice 
 which the law did not necessarily demand or even request 
 of her, and such an attitude was regarded by the prosecution 
 as a kind of haughty challenge flung at their own strength. 
 They forced hef to feel this, and with poignancy. But she 
 never once regretted her measure. Some of the cross- 
 examiner's questions had made her dizzy and set her cheeks 
 tingling ; the worst of these, however, were " ruled out," 
 and she was therefore allowed to escape from answering 
 them. Meanwhile a horrible dread stole through her lest 
 by having appeared at all she might be doing harm and not 
 good to Hubert. This thought agitated her so wildly for a 
 short interval that she was once or twice on the verge of 
 rushing down from the stand and asserting a new-formed 
 disinclination to testify at all. Were they going to drag out 
 the whole hateful story of Alva AverilFs treachery? of 
 what motives had caused her own marriage with Bleakly 
 Voght ? of whether, after such marriage, her affections had 
 remained with her former sweetheart ? Would they make 
 her lay bare all the weakness and faultiness of the past in 
 order that they might pour upon it their vitriolic sarcasms ? 
 But no ; her counsel beat them back ; they were strong men, 
 those lawyers of Hubert's, and to fight against them was to 
 recognize it. A few cheering whispers to Angela wrought 
 with her sinking heart like as many draughts of wine. She 
 very distinctly rallied, and from that time forward held her 
 own. It shocked some sensitive auditors wofully to hear 
 her cast disrepute upon her dead husband her " murdered " 
 husband, they put it in order that she might shield from 
 just conviction a man who was known once to have loved her
 
 198 DIVIDED LirES. 
 
 passionately and doubtless did so still. Defenders and 
 traducers took hot sides for and against the brave young 
 creature, who stood pale and resolute before the unpitying 
 stares of the packed court-room, bent only upon telling the 
 truth and telling it in such a way that it would help to save 
 him. What friends praised as her fine womanly fortitude, 
 was called by foes her coarseness, her effrontery, her brass. 
 The Voghts, the Lexingtons, and a few other relations of 
 her husband cut her dead from that hour. Some of them 
 were in the court-room while she spoke the precise facts 
 regarding Bleakly Voght's wayward and domineering nature. 
 They knew that these were facts, and that the public revela- 
 tion of them might materially assist the working of justice, 
 and yet they ground their teeth with vexation, and said to 
 one another : " She has got hold of his money and is living 
 on it, and yet she dares to talk against him like this !" " Oh, 
 what ought one to expect from the daughter of such a 
 father ? Poor Bleakly should have been warned by the girl's 
 tainted blood !" 
 
 But Angela did not care for the Lexingtons and their patri- 
 cian allies. She would have torn out her tongue rather 
 than have wronged Bleakly Voght's memory by the faintest 
 untruth, the dimmest reflection of a calumny. She believed, 
 however, that he had charged Hubert with his assassination, 
 while he felt himself to be dying, from impulses which were 
 a certain result ^f his old jealous hostility. She believed 
 this down to the inmost depths of her spirit, and thus believ- 
 ing, she judged herself irrefutably right in giving publicity 
 to her faith. 
 
 The witnesses for the prosecution had rendered her posi- 
 tion all the more difficult and unpopular. Hugh Magee and 
 the two workmen had stated honestly enough what they had 
 seen and heard, but Bradbourne (or Heath, as he should now 
 be called) had exhibited so much perturbation, prevarication, 
 and palpable insecurity of statement that here and there 
 he produced the impression of struggling to shield the prisoner
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 '99 
 
 whom his unvarnished story would have otherwise plainly 
 injured. The account of what he had overheard Hubert 
 say to Voght was wrung forth from his hueless and quiver- 
 ing lips. He looked like a man beset with a perilous 
 illness, and once or twice he placed an emaciated hand 
 against the region of his heart, as though to still pulsations 
 there that were almost costing him his consciousness. But 
 the full sum of what he had to disclose was finally forced 
 from him, in so far as concerned anything which might 
 jeopardize Hubert's favorable chances. He gave an ex- 
 haustive account of the disputatious parley between the 
 prisoner and his master, and created the profoundest sensation 
 by this most implicating narrative. At last he retired, totter- 
 ing, enerv'e, while everybody felt as if one of the beams had 
 been firmly planted which was to help make a scaffold for 
 Hubert. 
 
 Still, the adverse evidence began and continued purely 
 circumstantial. Hubert's own plea was that the death of 
 Voght had been caused by an accidental explosion of his own 
 gun, and although Heath's testimony had pointed toward per- 
 jury on the part of the slayer, it nevertheless had substan- 
 tiated no such proof. Many a man has been hanged on a 
 good deal less actual certainty of guilt ; but Hubert's law- 
 yers were astuteness itself : they allowed no point to slip 
 their lynx-like visions. The shooting had occurred, and so 
 had that harsh previous conference; but Heath, though he 
 may have heard one, had not seen the other. Then the ad- 
 mission on this man's part that he was the brother of a 
 woman whom Bleakly Voght had wronged and that he had 
 engaged himself in the service of the latter for purposes of 
 possible yet unachieved vengeance, threw an arriere pensfc 
 of cheapening influence over nearly everything that he had 
 said. Or, at least, the dexterous counsel of Hubert spared 
 no pains to produce this result. What, they queried with 
 scorching irony, was the credibility of a witness who admit- 
 ted himself to have perpetrated so insane a freak ? Or did
 
 200 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 he merely write down his own cowardly pusillanimity, and 
 concede that he had entered the Voghts' home for the pur- 
 pose of killing its proprietor, but later had found courage fail 
 him? Could any intelligent jury be asked to believe this 
 tale of a hot quarrel between the prisoner and Voght, when 
 told by so curious a blending of the jackanapes and the pol- 
 troon ? One moment the witness granted that he crossed 
 Bleakly Voght's threshold with the intention of dealing death 
 to that gentleman ; the next he affirmed that " from day to 
 day he lingered on, undecided regarding his actions at 
 almost any hour." And to the statements of so vacillating 
 yet vicious a being was to be entrusted the very life of a man 
 with so flawless a personal record as that which Hubert 
 Throckmorton had long conspicuously possessed ! . 
 
 This turn of the argument secretly troubled Hubert very 
 much. Heath had spoken the complete truth concerning 
 his turbulent interview with Voght : why seek to prove the 
 truth a falsehood ? It was an odious course of procedure, 
 Hubert passionately meditated, and as he sat listening he 
 became almost over-mastered by an impulse to leap up and 
 hurl denial at his own advocate. And yet what mad folly 
 would attend a step like that ? No ; he had given him- 
 self into the hands of these men because they were nimble 
 manipulators of the law, not because they devoutly served 
 the spirit of it. If no straight path could be found toward 
 the legal assertion of his innocence, he must resign himself 
 to the discovery of a crooked one, provided this reached for 
 him the acquittal that was his right. 
 
 Many " exceptions " had been taken by the defence. In 
 case a verdict of " guilty " were pronounced, his counsel 
 were hopeful, toward the close of the fourth day, that a new 
 trial could be secured. As before recorded, the trial oc- 
 cupied a space of eight days. The jury were " out " four, 
 and several hours previous to the bringing in of the verdict 
 a -report had got wind that they would soon make known 
 their inability to agree. O'Hara, who had seemed to himself
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 201 
 
 like a wretched blasphemer while delivering those compul- 
 sory statements which aided the arraigners of his friend, dis- 
 played toward Hubert, during that almost insupportable in- 
 terim of suspense, a devotion as spontaneous as it was charm- 
 ing . . . And at last the end came. It had been a trial 
 rather more replete with drama than most affairs of the same 
 criminal sort. In some ways it had been as technically dull 
 as far more ordinary trials ; in others, it had almost equalled 
 that lurid intensity of development which the trials loved of 
 conventional novel-writers are sure to exhibit. Its termina- 
 tion was a surprise to everyone, a delight to some few, a 
 source of shocked regret to a good many others, and to a very 
 large majority indeed the opportunity for scornful comments 
 upon those miserably perverse methods by which our re- 
 publican justice is too often administered. 
 
 Hubert's astonishingly clever lawyers had saved him. 
 There had been one missing link in the evidence against 
 him, and on the existence of this they had harped with so 
 consummate a skill of iteration that the judge, while making 
 his charge to the jury, had re-clad it in terms of decisive offi 
 cial injunction. 
 
 The verdict, delivered amid the bluish wintry dusk of a 
 cheerless afternoon, was " Not guilty." O'Hara's hand was 
 the first to grasp Hubert's in vehement congratulation. 
 
 " Thank God, my boy ! " he said, with tears in his voice. 
 
 " Thank God for what ? " asked Hubert, with a quiet, 
 searching look. 
 
 " For what? why, that you're free," broke forth O'Hara. 
 
 Hubert slowly nodded once or twice. "Yes, free," he 
 murmured. "But how? Free with a stained name. Free 
 to be despised and shunned by my fellow-men for the 
 rest of my lifetime ! . . . Ah, do you think I do not un- 
 derstand just how free I am ? " 
 
 " No, no ! " denied O'Hara. "There may be some people 
 who will " 
 
 "Don't talk that way," interrupted Hubert, laying a hand
 
 202 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 on his friend's arm. " The entire world of my acquaintance 
 believes, at this hour, that I have just missed the gallows by 
 a hair's breadth, that I have been adroitly steered to acquittal 
 by the shrewdness of my counsel, that I am and shall remain 
 the unpunished murderer of Bleakly Voght." 
 
 These words were very composedly uttered. . . . O'Hara 
 simply wrung the hand of him who had spoken them. He 
 had no honest response ready, and any other, at such a time, 
 would be the most piteous of mockeries. For all that 
 Hubert had said he felt to be most dismally true 1
 
 XV. 
 
 THAT same evening Hubert returned to New York. As 
 the dusky starlit ievels of Long Island slipped past his view, 
 he made a mental vow that he would never set foot there 
 again. While the train was plunging through malodorous 
 and slatternly Hunter's Point, just before it came to a final 
 pause, he caught himself laughing audibly. 
 
 O'Hara, who occupied the seat in front of his own in 
 the almost empty car, turned sharply at this extraordinary 
 sound. 
 
 " I suppose you're thunderstruck, are you not, old fel- 
 low ? " Hubert said. 
 
 " Well, yes, I am, rather," O'Hara replied. " But it's a 
 hundredfold better to laugh than to cry, if you'll forgive my 
 platitude." 
 
 " I was laughing," Hubert said, " at the positive refresh- 
 ment that these horrible Hunter's Point smells from oil-tanks 
 and bone-factories were able to afford me." 
 
 " Refreshment ! " 
 
 " Yes. If anyone had told me such a thing were possible 
 a few months ago ! And I had got so to dislike New York 
 before a certain . . misfortune occurred. Now I've an 
 actual throbbing desire to walk its pavements once more ! 
 There's the thought of release of getting abroad into the 
 world again and merely moving one's limbs at liberty that 
 is mixed up, no doubt, with local feelings like these. The 
 last time I breathed New York air, you know, there had 
 never been a shadow across my personal freedom. Oh, that 
 hideous kind of absence has all made such a difference ! I 
 shall go back wdth sensations that I ought to apologize to 
 Fifth Avenue for ever having denied it was beautiful." 
 203
 
 2O4 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 As the ferry-boat landed them at Thirty- Fourth Street they 
 heard boys crying extras, and in a little while had succeeded 
 in making out that the apparent gibberish yelled from sev- 
 eral lusty little throats at once, was " The acquittal of 
 Throckmorton." Hubert stepped into a carriage, shudder, 
 ing. But just as O'Hara was about to follow him he said in 
 a low voice, " Get one of those things, will you ? " And 
 O'Hara complied. 
 
 Hubert did not glance at the paper until he reached home. 
 There were lights in the drawing-room windows of his spa- 
 cious old dwelling ; he saw this through a sudden mist of 
 tears. They had received his telegram ; one or two- of the 
 servants who had been with the family in his father's and 
 mother's time must be met and spoken to. He controlled 
 himself by a severe effort while springing from the carriage 
 and ascending the low, familiar stoop. 
 
 " Through every stage of life my feet have trod the stone 
 of these very steps," he murmured to O'Hara. " How little 
 I ever dreamed that I should ascend them like this ! I have 
 come ' back home,' you know, from many various parts of the 
 world, and with, ah, so many varying emotions ! Once my 
 poor father was lying dangerously ill, and I had taken the 
 steamer with wild haste at Southampton, ten days before, on 
 hearing the unhappy news. I remember how my heart flut- 
 tered in my breast as I went up these steps then, fearing to 
 meet the truth which must be met in a minute or two . . . 
 My God, if it were like that now! . . I should be standing 
 here praying that I might find him dead !".... 
 
 A little later, as they entered the hall, Hubert said to his 
 companion, motioning toward the drawing-rooms : " Ge in 
 there, and I will join you presently." 
 
 O'Hara obeyed ; he had seen a pale gray-haired woman 
 and an elderly man standing in the rather obscure back- 
 ground of the hall, and soon he heard something that 
 seemed very much like the sound of a feminine sob or two. 
 But after the briefest of absences Hubert made his appear-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 2O5 
 
 ance. He tried to smile as his gaze met O'Hara's, but 
 the attempt bore a sadder result than if he had failed to 
 make it. 
 
 " Poor old Ellen ! " he said. " No wonder she's over- 
 come. She used to be my nurse . . . Then there's Richard, 
 too; he was our butler thirty years ago." Suddenly he 
 seemed forcing his manner into a factitious brightness. ' I 
 ought to be gay to-night, oughtn't I ? " he exclaimed. " What 
 do you say to a stroll, O'Hara a long stroll somewhere 
 among the quiet down-town streets, where we're sure not to 
 meet a soul that will know us? (I mean after dinner, of 
 course ; it's almost ready to be served now.) We might find 
 some clean, out-of-the-way place and have a glass of beer 
 there, quite a la Boheme. . . It's so strange ; I've a longing 
 to do something that will prove to me I'm a free man again, 
 and yet I shiver to think of going where people may by 
 the least possible chance recognize me ... Oh, that paper 
 you bought. Have you it ? I'll just glance at it before we 
 go upstairs." 
 
 O'Hara had already done a little more than glance at the 
 sheet. It was lying on a table near which he stood. He 
 put his hand on it, saying : 
 
 " If I were you, old fellow, I wouldn't look at it. Anyway, 
 not now." 
 
 But Hubert did not heed .the warning. He took the paper 
 up and began reading it. The account of the trial and the 
 announcement of his acquittal were not what O'Hara had 
 been thinking of. These were inserted in a flaring, sensa- 
 tional, but not specially offensive way. On the editorial 
 page, however, was a column in big type, headed " Our 
 Aristocratic Murderer." This Hubert soon saw, and this he 
 let himself read. It was one of those pieces of newspaper 
 frenzy which contain about as much moral force as a rattle- 
 snake's bite. Its innuendoes were founded on noxious 
 falsehood; its accusations were all cowardly stabs in the 
 back. But it hurt Hubert, notwithstanding its paltriness,
 
 206 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 for it made him realize that it stood for a certain phase of 
 public opinion ; and to reflect that there were any of his 
 countrymen whatever now looking on him as a red-handed 
 assassin who had bought himself free from the righteous 
 grasp of justice, was galling beyond all speech. There was 
 one long, vituperative paragraph, toward the close of the arti- 
 cle, which drew forth a deep sigh from between Hubert's 
 clenched teeth ; and one sentence here, mephitic and rancid 
 beyond the others, had been put into this hatefully memora- 
 ble shape : "No honest man should hereafter associate with the 
 criminal who has thus insolently flaunted his money in the face 
 of our law ; and every honest man whom he meets ought to try 
 and help teach him that in thus having skulked away from the 
 just recompense for his crime he has only stamped himself more 
 deeply with the brand of an unpunished infamy." 
 
 All this was a vulgar, flaunting tirade enough, and yet it 
 affected Hubert at the special forlorn hour of his home- 
 coming, with an unspeakable pang. 
 
 He flung down the paper. His colorless face was work- 
 ing ; his hands were lifted as though to smite some viewless 
 foe. All his accustomed quiet had vanished ; he sank into a 
 chair beside the table and bowed his head ; when he lifted 
 it again O'Hara saw that his mouth had taken a downward 
 curve whose meaning could only be the darkest kind of 
 dejection. 
 
 " Why should I go on living, now ? " he softly yet miser- 
 ably cried. " I have nothing to live/or nothing ! " 
 
 O'Hara, infinitely pained, stretched forth a hand, grasping 
 his arm. " You have her" he said. 
 
 Hubert sprang to his feet. " Her ? Whom ? Angela ? 
 Drag her down to my level ? make them think harder things 
 of her than what she did to save me has already made them 
 think ? Ah, no, no ! how little you know me, after all ! " 
 
 ' That was an impolitic move,' spoke the voice of O'Hara's 
 exquisite loyalty. A moment later he said aloud, going up 
 to Hubert, putting a hand on either of his shoulders and
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 207 
 
 staring with fervor straight into his desperate, gloomful eyes : 
 " Look here, old chap ; that trash shouldn't trouble you ; 
 
 you're too big for it. Judge K is an enemy of that 
 
 paper. It always was filthy in its manner of showing its 
 dislikes, and it's got as many as a porcupine has quills. 
 The judge that sat on your case offended it a year or two 
 ago by stumping the State contrary to its rotten partisan 
 opinions. Can't you see that you're not so much black- 
 guarded as the official who gave the charge to your jury ? 
 Come, now, be a man. This won't do at all. You've lots of 
 friends and supporters left . . you'll see to-morrow if you 
 haven't." . . . 
 
 To-morrow did not corroborate O'Hara's rosy prophecy, 
 nor the next day, nor the next. A few congratulatory letters 
 reached Hubert, but decidedly a few. Before long he 
 learned that the most prominent metropolitan club of which 
 he was a member had seriously debated the question of 
 demanding his resignation. But no such demand reached 
 him. There was a friendly element working in his favor, or 
 at least one that expressed the refusal to accredit him with 
 cold-bloodedly murderous motives. A certain faction de- 
 clared that if he had really shot Voght with intent to kill he 
 had done so from a terrible previous exasperation. Another 
 faction shook its head cogitatively, dubiously over the evi- 
 dence of Heath, alias Bradbourne. Still another (smaller, 
 decidedly smaller) credited his claim with regard to an acci- 
 dental manslaughter. This one leading club was large 
 enough to contain many men of many varying views. 
 Hence, after a little while, Hubert's legal exoneration was 
 socially admitted, and the final mordant humiliation was 
 spared him of being officially treated as a man not worthy 
 the companionship of gentlemen. 
 
 But in a practical sense he soon perceived that his ostra- 
 cism had become a partial if not a complete fact. He never 
 entered the doors of any of his clubs ; he lived a life almost 
 thorough in its isolation and solitude, except for the visits of
 
 208 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 O'Hara, which were frequent, and excessively welcome. 
 Sometimes in the day he would walk abroad, avoiding, for 
 the most part, streets in which he would meet former ac- 
 quaintances. Yet such occasional encounters were unavoid- 
 able, and when they took place a cold bow or a distinct cut 
 would sometimes be the consequence. He grew to hate 
 New York as he had never hated it before ; always previ- 
 ously his distaste for it had been of the dilettante kind ; he 
 had said to himself that it was a bad sort of place to live in, 
 that it failed to give a fellow the least chance for dreaming 
 nice dreams, that to an idler like himself who spent most of 
 his time avec les bras eroisfa it was fatally unsatisfactory. 
 But now it had become for him a metropolis teeming 
 with loathsome associations. Some of his kinsmen and 
 kinswomen had paid duteous calls upon him, and after each 
 one of them had done so he thanked God that he or she was 
 but remotely allied to him by blood and that the chill hypoc- 
 risy of such sympathy as theirs need not be encountered 
 more than once. 
 
 " I hate to lose you, and yet you should go abroad," 
 O'Hara repeatedly said to him. And one day he added: 
 " In my last issue of our paper, you know, I almost con- 
 structed an editorial on the advisability of it." 
 
 Hubert's eyes filled with tears, then, as he grasped his 
 friend's hand. " My dear old boy," he said, " I can't but 
 remember how you studiously avoided mentioning that Long 
 Branch quarrel in your paper, and how, afterward, while the 
 trial was pending and while it was in operation you never 
 allowed a single line to be printed there. You had a devilish 
 hard time with your co-editors, too ; you needn't deny that 
 you did ; a chance word, unintentionally dropped every now 
 and then, told me so. . . But now, when half the town I 
 may almost say half the country is hot against me, you 
 make your journal brim with my attempted vindication. . . 
 Well, you ask me why I don't go abroad and quit the whole 
 abominated environment. Shall I tell you why ? There are
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 209 
 
 two reasons. One is what my prison-life has led me to look 
 for and help in this woe-begone town." 
 
 O'Hara nodded : " I know ; you spend hours every day in 
 the dens and slums. You've tried once or twice to keep it 
 from me, 'but I've found you out; so now, I suppose, you're 
 going to make a clean breast of it . . eh, my boy ? " 
 
 Hubert answered his friend's nod. They were' sitting 
 together in his dining-room over their after-dinner coffee and 
 cigars. " That is my first reason, precisely as I have told 
 you." His face flushed, his usually grave eye sparkled, as 
 he went on : " O'Hara, what I find among the poor here is 
 beyond all my powers of telling. The so-called charities of 
 Christianity never dream of reaching those horrors that I 
 see. . . I go everywhere ; I dive into the lowest quarters. I 
 nearly always had detectives at first, to go with me, but now 
 I very often go alone. There are holes so horrible that you 
 would not believe their existence unless I brought you there. 
 Think, my friend, of cellars where Chinamen sell opium to 
 young girls often girls not more than fifteen or sixteen 
 years old at a price too revolting for me to do more than 
 hint its vileness. Think of dance-houses where quadrilles 
 are formed on big board floors every night, with each male 
 dancer a thief and each woman at his side the strumpet by 
 whose harlotry he lives. Think of countless low sheds, with 
 rickety doors, at the end of reeking alleys, where eight and 
 ten people, male and female, lie on shelves reeking with ver- 
 min, between walls whose pendant cobwebs are a ghastly 
 parody of Mrs. Manhattan's or Mrs. Amsterdam's yellow old 
 family laces. Think of children born in holes like these by 
 mothers who are drunk when they bear them ; think of tav- 
 erns where the only drink sold is a stale malt stuff, the leav- 
 ings of drained beer-kegs. Think of all brutality, bestiality, 
 infamy, desperation, grovelling and wallowing sinfulness, 
 grown an incessant part of the daily and nightly events our 
 sun and our stars gaze upon in this monstrous town. . . 
 Well, I prowl about through all these base, lewd haunts, and
 
 2IO DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 thank heaven I'm rich enough to drag some few wretches 
 out of them that arc willing to be cleansed and given a 
 decent chance against the curse of heredity. I go deeper 
 than most of the best charities go. Some of these are very 
 good ; they are trying to work wonders. I don't know that 
 I have half the beneficent aim they possess. I'm merely 
 trying to show myself, all the time, that the experience I've 
 passed through might have sunk me in the grossest pessimism, 
 but has'nt ; that, in other words, it's taught me how fortu- 
 nate I am, after all. I don't claim that my motive is other 
 than a really selfish one at heart. But you see it now for 
 what it's worth." 
 
 " I see it," said O'Hara dryly, as Hubert paused. For a 
 little while he remained silent ... A remembrance had 
 visited him of his old half-deserted ideal ; he thought of 
 how closer association with Hubert, of how intimacy with 
 this man's stoically-borne agony, had roused and kindled 
 him to a finer and sincerer action ; of how he had fought 
 with his co-laborers on the paper which he and they edited 
 for a truer and loftier standard of journalism, and of how he 
 had finally prevailed with them and won them to his cause, 
 notwithstanding a certain decrease in immediate and tempo- 
 rary profits. 
 
 A little later he went on, puffing at his cigar with a com- 
 monplace pertinacity, as if it had gone out, which it had not 
 done at all, and which the volumes of smoke that it exuded 
 quite nebulously told : 
 
 " I see of course I see, my dear Hubert. You've about 
 forty thousand dollars a year, and you might keep a coach, 
 a yacht, and goodness knows what else. You don't, how- 
 ever ; you go into frightful places like that, and God bless 
 you for doing it ... So here's your first reason for not 
 wandering off into Europe, Asia, anywhere you might choose. 
 A mightily commendable reason, I admit . . . But now 
 for the second reason. Recollect you said there were two." 
 
 Hubert began absently to pass his forefinger round the
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 211 
 
 rim of his finger-bowl. " Oh, yes, there are two reasons . . 
 I said so, and I meant it." 
 
 " And the other," said O'Hara softly, after a renewed 
 pause, " the other is . . . ?" 
 
 Hubert lifted his head and stared at his companion. 
 " You know," he murmured. 
 
 O'Hara put both elbows on the white table-cloth, and 
 ransacked the face of his host with those hazel eyes that 
 Hubert had learned to read and to love so well. 
 
 " She never ceases thinking of you, my boy," he said. 
 " She's there, up town, waiting for you to give her a sign. 
 Why don't you ? Why won't you ? " 
 
 " A sign ? " repeated Hubert, with his voice grown very 
 low ; " what sign ? " 
 
 "Ah," said O'Hara, looking down and shaking his head; 
 " you understand me ; you must ! " 
 
 " Yes, I do," he answered, with the hoarse note of pain 
 in his. modulated tones. " But it's of no use. Perhaps . . 
 I only say perhaps, mind . . . she would even agree to 
 marry me " 
 
 " Agree ! " shot in O'Hara. " Ask her, and find out for 
 yourself. Just ask her that's all ! " 
 
 Hubert turned paler. Those words of O'Hara's pierced 
 his heart ; they told him what he had already been a good 
 deal more than half sure of regarding Angela that she had 
 longed to see him, or at least hear from him, for weeks past. 
 
 That night, some time between midnight and morning, 
 when the large house was still as death and the larger city 
 which encompassed it was almost as still, he sat alone and 
 wrote Angela a letter. He poured out his love and his 
 sorrow to her equally. It was a letter meant to be final. 
 She would ever remain the idol of his life he would never 
 marry. But they must try to forget one another. Not that 
 either would succeed, but that both must try. A dire 
 fatality had launched itself between their loves. Once not 
 so very long ago it had looked as though death might
 
 212 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 bring light to them in place of darkness. Then death had 
 come, and with it a darkness that must prove, for all they 
 knew, one eternal night ... It was a hopeless, unanswer- 
 able letter. And yet Angela answered it at once, on the 
 following day. She sent her reply not by mail but by mes- 
 senger. It was very short, and its chief sentence ran thus : 
 " I concede all that you say, from your point of view, and yet 
 I beg that you will let me give you mine, not as I might 
 write it here on paper, but as I desire to express it in 
 spoken words." She furthermore mentioned an hour when 
 she would be at home on the following afternoon. If he 
 refused to come to her she would know it by his silence. 
 If he accepted, then let him write her a line to this effect. 
 
 Hubert sat gnawing his lips for quite a long time. At 
 last he took a sheet of note-paper and wrote on it at great 
 speed : 
 
 " I will be with you by five o'clock to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 Then, sealing and directing this brief response, he rang for 
 a servant and bade that it be immediately sent. He was 
 in dread lest he should recall it if it were not despatched 
 with the greatest promptitude ; and about a half-hour or 
 so later, as he had indeed anticipated, a mood of excessive 
 regret overcame him that he should have agreed to meet 
 Angela at all ... 
 
 On the next da)', however, he punctually kept his appoint- 
 ment. Angela was living with extreme quiet, just now, in 
 a house which she had rented on East Fifteenth Street, 
 directly facing Stuyvesant Square. The situation was one 
 of considerable retirement ; " out of the world " a good 
 many of Angela's acquaintances thought it. She herself 
 had been won by the view of the spacious parallel parks 
 from her upper windows, and the fine boulevard-like sweep 
 of Second Avenue, broadly dividing them. There is a 
 pathos in the fact of how New York has left to shabbiness 
 and vulgarity her only two really noble thoroughfares, the 
 Bowery and Second Avenue. Angela could see nothing
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 213 
 
 save the prosperous and handsome part of the latter street, 
 however, from her own semi-retired dwelling. She had made 
 herself very comfortable as far as material surroundings went. 
 Her home had been her chief mental recreation during 
 the past winter ; whenever she had a specially keen heart- 
 ache she would go and talk with an upholsterer, a keeper 
 of curios, a seller of etchings. The New York of 1880 or 
 thereabouts was far from being the same meagre market for 
 all artistic wares that twenty or even ten previous years had 
 seen it. One could make a very charming home for one's 
 self, she found, without going to hunt up precious rarities 
 in Paris or London. Besides, Angela did not desire any 
 particularly precious things. The income that Voght had 
 left her was a large one sixty thousand dollars a year if a 
 dime. But she had as yet spent only a comparatively small 
 portion of it, and for reasons that will presently be shown. 
 Those who knew her either well or ill equally marvelled, as 
 the months of her widowhood succeeded one another, that 
 she kept no carriage. Indeed, her life amid the calm of 
 Stuyvesant Square was hardly less sober and sedate than 
 the dreary hues of her widow's robes. Her eye craved 
 brightness, grace, and felicity of encompassment, and these 
 she permitted it to enjoy. No one had ever supposed that 
 she had loved her husband, and therefore no one could 
 understand her reasons for a course of comparative econ- 
 omy, even while the period of conventional " mourning" was 
 in progress. But Angela herself understood, and kept her 
 own counsel unalterably. The most intimate woman friend 
 whom she possessed could never gain from her a single sat- 
 isfactory response on this point. It might be added with 
 strict truth, by the way, that she had no really intimate 
 friend, now that Alva Averill (with those terrific posthumous 
 revelations of the latter's unworthiness !) had passed away. 
 To Alva she had given an immense confidence, a romantic 
 ardor of admiration. ' I seem to have shut myself in my 
 shell,' she would sometimes muse, ' toward all other women,
 
 214 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 ever since that unspeakable deceit of Alva's became known 
 to me. I am sure that I'm wrong in doing so ; there are 
 myriads of splendid women in the world, and no one real- 
 izes this more clearly than I do. Perhaps my reserve will 
 wear off before I die. I hope it will, for I believe that the 
 woman who loses all faith in her own sex runs the chance of 
 becoming, sooner or later, almost suicidally odious to her- 
 self.' 
 
 But the reserve had not worn off, and there were forcible 
 reasons for its having failed to do so. Her behavior in 
 appearing, not long since, as a witness against the cause 
 of her dead husband, had created much assertive discussion 
 among many interested cliques. The droit du plus fort had 
 proved, as she well knew, operative against her. A good 
 many people sought her company and outwardly professed a 
 certain sympathy with the posture that she had taken. She 
 could not be sure, however, whether hypocrisy or sincerity 
 was, in more than a single case, at work among just these 
 same professed adherents. Meanwhile she did not specially 
 care on the subject. She was incessantly hopeful, suspense- 
 ful, expectant as regarded a totally different matter. But 
 hope, suspense, expectancy, all three remained unaltered. 
 ' Some day he will make some sign,' she kept telling herself ; 
 ' O'Hara says that he will that it must appear before very 
 long that he will never leave the country without coming 
 to me.' 
 
 The winter had blown, rained, frozen, and snowed itself 
 into early March. Second Avenue had been piled with 
 white drifts more than once, and Sluyvesant Square had been 
 for weeks a glassy, bluish monotony of ice, previous to that 
 gusty, heavy-clouded afternoon when Hubert at last ascended 
 the stoop of Angela's house. 
 
 He sat for quite a little time in her front drawing-room, 
 before she entered. He had leisure to note in the apartment 
 certain evidences of her personality which almost thrilled 
 him like the whispered words of dead friends. It was indeed
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 215 
 
 no drawing-room at all, but a sitting-room and library com- 
 bined, with a big garnet plush curtain separating it from 
 the remainder of the floor. Here, in low cases against the 
 wall, were some of the books they had read together through 
 past untrammelled, inestimable hours. Here was a glimpse 
 of color that he knew she had always loved. Here was an 
 engraved copy of some picture that she had professed attach- 
 ment for ... Oh, how her individualism breathed to him 
 on every side, in slight, yet vivid ways ! . . And presently he 
 heard the rustling of a dress, and felt certain, in the hyper- 
 bole of his passionate sentiment, that it was, it must be, her 
 dress. It might just as well, of course, have proved to be 
 that of her maid, or of some other feminine being who was a 
 total stranger to himself. But when its prophecy seemed 
 confirmed by the entrance of Angela, he felt that love 
 should have some new word which would aurally correspond 
 to what clairvoyance had given a visual definition. 
 
 She placed her hand in his, for a moment. " You were 
 very punctual," she said, with her blue-gray eyes meeting 
 his own just long enough for him to see both fear and grief 
 in them. Then she sank into a seat quite near the one 
 which he had taken, while he resumed his own. 
 
 " I thought," he answered, with a little gleam of smile, 
 "that if I came at all I might just as well be on time." 
 
 " If you came at all ! " She stared down at her hands 
 where they lay white and delicate as curled lily-leaves 
 against the dead-black of her dress. He saw her under-lip 
 quiver for a second ; then he saw her tighten it against her 
 hidden teeth, as though to be prepared for another such 
 tremulous movement, should one arrive. After a slight 
 pause, she added, again looking up at him : " And so you 
 did not want to come you debated about it in your own 
 mind, and almost refused to come, even . . even after the 
 letter I wrote you ? " 
 
 He answered her with a sudden gloomy bluntness for 
 which she was unprepared. " I was mad to come ; I knew
 
 2l6 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 it, felt it, when I sent you back that ' yes.' It's tearing 
 an old wound open. Not that the wound had ever healed, 
 or ever would heal." 
 
 She clasped both her hands tightly together, and held 
 them pressed thus. A little spot of the chilly March sun- 
 shine swam in through a window near by, and rested like a 
 yellow jewel amid the auburn waves of her rich, dense hair. 
 ' How lovely she is ! ' he thought. ' What might not such a 
 woman, if she were bad, make a man do for her ? ' 
 
 She began in a low and hesitating voice that soon grew 
 louder and firmer : 
 
 " I should be prepared to hear you speak just like that ; 
 I should be prepared because of your letter. So much of 
 exactly that expression, that tendency, was there. You say 
 it is best that we should not even exchange any further 
 words together at all. You insist that you have forgiven me 
 for marrying as I did " 
 
 " Yes," he interrupted ; " I have forgiven you. I know 
 how you have suffered since. That you could have done it, 
 I . . well, I hate to reflect on the point of your having been 
 able to do it. But, as I say, your punishment came to you 
 and you've expiated your fault. Mind, if you had cared for 
 him, I would not have called it a fault if you had cared for 
 him enough, that is, to become his wife with the least . . the 
 least. ." 
 
 It was her turn to interrupt now, and she did so with a 
 ring of sharp censure in her tones. " Oh, I see that you 
 have not forgiven me for marrying him. You have not, and 
 you never will ! That is why you treat me as you do ! That 
 is why you declare that your coming here is a madness ! " 
 
 " No, no, Angela ! " 
 
 " Yes, yes," she protested. " Men never pardon certain 
 things in women never. I've thought it all over so much 
 and so often." Her accent had become as bitter as it was 
 mournful, now. "You assert you are so self-satisfied in 
 your assertion that consideration for me is the only motive
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 2 1/ 
 
 you have, in . . acting as you are. But it's yourself that 
 you're remembering all the time it's that wound you've 
 just told me about that wound which will never heal ! You 
 don't mean any wound that comes from losing me ; you 
 could heal it if you did, and . . and you know how. 
 Oh, I dare say this may sound unwomanly, immodest, to 
 you ; but I don't care. I want to face the truth and speak 
 the truth. Your self-love has been wounded ; you won't 
 acknowledge it, even to yourself, but that explains everything 
 in your present course. I'm . . I'm . . impure, denied, 
 repellent to you, in a certain way " 
 
 " Angela ! " 
 
 " Yes ! If you'll sound the depths of your own feelings 
 towards me, you'll find that I'm right right. Now that I'm 
 free, you discover that there are gossips and scandal-mongers 
 in the world who might destroy my peace of mind, provided 
 a . . a certain step were taken by me. As if I had not 
 trampled on all that, months ago, when I chose to appear 
 in court and say what I did ! As if my action then were not 
 proof enough how I minded the pros and cons of popular 
 opinion ! If I'd been afraid of what society's cackle and 
 clatter could do to my peace of mind, do you suppose I 
 would not have shown it then ?" 
 
 "You showed it then most heroically, Angela," he said. 
 " But even that was a torment to me. I hated seeing you 
 clad in such glaring publicity and on my own account ! " 
 
 " Why not on your account ? I owed you some reparation. 
 Was I not the cause of all that had passed ? " 
 
 "You mean," he asked, " the the killing ofVoght?" 
 
 " I mean everything." 
 
 " Good heavens," he began, "you don't think, then, that 
 I really ? But no ; it's impossible." 
 
 " No, no," she swiftly agreed ; " and you should not wrong 
 me by even such a fleeting suspicion." 
 
 " Your pardon ! " he entreated. " How could I think you 
 doubted whether I was a murderer or not ? you who. . . ."
 
 2 1 8 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 "Ah, say it all right out ! " she exclaimed, as he paused. 
 The color bathed her face as though all the air of the 
 room had suddenly grown rosy, and her eyes were like two 
 winter stars. " I who am willing to be your wife who have 
 almost begged you, in so many words, to marry me ! " 
 
 "Angela!" he said once more, but this time with an 
 intonation of the most melancholy remonstrance. 
 
 " I will not molest you ever again," she went on, " if you 
 will once assure me that I've not made a misjudgment. 
 Only say to me ' I swear that it's true I never could quite 
 forgive your marriage, and this is my actual motive for my 
 present course toward you.' Only say those words, giving 
 me your oath yes, your solemn oath as a man of honor 
 that you mean them, and I will promise sacredly on my part 
 never to write you, and never to try and see you from this 
 hour. ... I will even promise that if we should meet any- 
 where at any future time I will not show by the faintest 
 sign . . " 
 
 He rose, then, waving one uplifted hand. " What are you 
 saying ? What is this absurd vow you wish me to take ?" 
 And he walked over to a table on which there was a low 
 vase brimming with violets, and leaned his face toward them 
 for a moment or two. 
 
 She rose also, but she did not follow him. She stood with 
 the fingers of one hand slipping over the polished filigrees 
 that surmounted the back of her chair, and her gaze directed 
 downward upon its clustered ornamentations as though there 
 was something symbolic there in the way of advisory help. 
 
 " You call it an absurd vow, then ? " she queried. " There's 
 . . there's nothing to keep us apart from one another except 
 your dread of censorious things which the world may vent 
 about me ? On your word of honor there's nothing except 
 just that?" 
 
 He turned and faced her. The light struck him so reveal- 
 ingly then that she saw his great pallor with an inward start, 
 and one caused by sadness and joy strangely blended. But
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 219 
 
 the joy took swift predominance as she now heard him reply 
 to her, with a tone infinitely familar, infinitely welcome. 
 
 " On my word of honor there is nothing except just that." 
 
 His manner was so ardent that she waited for him to speak 
 still further, knowing he would do so ; and very soon he con- 
 tinued, with all the love of a life in his tumultuous utterance. 
 
 " Oh, my Angela, my treasured, my idolized Angela !" he 
 exclaimed. " If you could only realize that I cannot and 
 will not endure to have you scorned ! " 
 
 " But if I am not scorned by you," she dissented, bridling, 
 and almost fiercely. 
 
 " No, no," he murmured, and he recoiled as she advanced. 
 " Some day you would repent. I feel it I am certain of it ! " 
 
 " Then," she cried, " you are convinced that some day I 
 would cease to love you as I love you now ! " 
 
 " Not that ! " 
 
 " What else ? . . . what else ? " 
 
 " All such love as ours takes a change, a tarnish, sooner 
 or later." 
 
 "That is your old cynicism . . pessimism . . what is 
 it? You always had it. . . But you would remain you, 
 Hubert ! / would never change. You might, but I never 
 would ! I'm willing to take the chances of your changing ! " 
 
 " Still . . still, you are his widow. That is, in material 
 ways." 
 
 " Material ways ? How ? " 
 
 "You understand." 
 
 " I do not ... Ah ! you mean that I am living on what 
 he left me ? I would give everything up yes, everything ! 
 They say it's very large the lawyers have told me I've 
 only taken a little of it. Look about this room. You see ? 
 I have only made it pretty; I've gone into no extrava- 
 gances ; I've hated to spend much of what he left me. It's 
 mine, but I've always felt that some day you might say just 
 what you've said now." 
 
 " I ? And what have I said ? "
 
 22O DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " That I'd be the possessor of his money ! . . . Hubert, 
 do you hear me ? I'll give it all up. I'll give it up because 
 I love you. If you don't want me to have a dollar of it I'll 
 hate to keep even one ! Do you hear me ? even one ! I 
 don't care, I don't care, why should I care for riches, when 
 you will give me riches I prize a millionfold more ? Why 
 should I care, Hubert ? I love you and you love me ! 
 You've said it ! It's the whole world to both of us ! You're 
 not forcing me into a sacrifice ; you're simply choosing 
 whether I shall die or live whether I shall go plodding on 
 for a few years longer with sorrow in every breath I breathe, 
 or whether " 
 
 He caught her to his breast, then, and she clung to him 
 while he rained kisses on her lifted face . . . But sud- 
 denly he took both her hands by the wrists and forced her 
 away from him. 
 
 " No . . no . . no," his choked voice got breath to say. 
 " I won't I will not. You have your life before you I 
 have mine. You will give up everything and find a conso- 
 lation in me. But what will that consolation prove here- 
 after ? They will make you a jest and a by-word ! They 
 will declare that you planned to have me murder your 
 husband and defended me in open court afterward. They 
 will heap their infamous charges on your spotless character 
 . . I am a branded man, a man with a stained and tainted 
 name, and you shall not join yourself to me ... I love you, 
 I love you, I love you ! Man never loved woman more, I 
 think, through the whole sweep of that human history which 
 makes up the sum of all man's and woman's loving ! . . . 
 But you must not plead with me you . . ." 
 
 " Hubert ! " She had flung herself on her knees before 
 him, and stretched out her hands in lovely, surrendering 
 supplication. " Woman never loved man more ! " she cried. 
 " Will you leave me ? Will you make my future an 
 anguish ? I don't speak of your future I'm thinking only 
 of my own. I'm so selfish as that ; I'm selfish as love
 
 DIVIDED LU'ES. 
 
 221 
 
 always is ! See what I'm doing now ! You remember how 
 we talked together " (her voice came in quick, hard gasps, 
 here) " of of the novels they write to-day ? You remember 
 how you used to say that the the realism . . . what was 
 it ? . . never grasped the . . the whole actual truth about 
 human suffering, human desire ? " She broke into a wild, 
 hard, quick laugh. She was still on her knees, and 
 her beautiful bosom almost broke the leash of its bodice as 
 she let her form sway backward while she watched him, 
 standing over her, in his misery, his temptation, his great 
 love, his invincible sense of right. 
 
 " Good-by," he said. He sfooped and caught her deli- 
 cate, flower-like head in his grasp. He kissed her brow, 
 her cheeks, her lips . . . there he lingered, for that one 
 long kiss was indeed a good-by, and to him an eternal 
 one. 
 
 Then he fled out of the room. He had conquered him- 
 self. He would not make her his wife because he believed, 
 with every impulse toward fair-doing of which his soul was 
 capable, that in the rendering of such concession, either to 
 himself or to her, he would be committing a fault no after 
 regret could expiate.
 
 XVI. 
 
 ANGELA passed a fearful night. But she rose, the next 
 day, with a certain resigned outlook toward the future that 
 surprised even herself. It was all settled. He had gone 
 for good ; they would perhaps never meet again. She could 
 not blame him ; he had acted, altogether, just as she might 
 have known that he would act. From the hour of that 
 terrible farewell with him his image in her thought took a 
 shining idealism which it had never worn before. He was 
 lost to her forever, and yet the splendid unselfishness of his 
 choice must always thrill and sway her moral being through- 
 "out the future. A great happiness had been forfeited, but 
 she would never recall Hubert, among the years to be, 
 without a glow of pride in his nobility that would prove as 
 triumphant as it was mournful. 
 
 " I doubt if we ever meet again," she told O'Hara, a few 
 days later. " I am going abroad to live." 
 
 "Really! " he exclaimed, astonished by the news. "To 
 live?" 
 
 " Yes," she replied. " All ties are now broken here." 
 
 " And there you hope to make new ones ? " 
 
 " Only the ties of place. I have scarcely seen any of 
 Europe but a few of its larger cities, and those when I was 
 quite a little girl." 
 
 " It is too bad . . . too bad," O'Hara softly said, looking 
 down, and after quite a pause. 
 
 Angela gave one of those little flute-like laughs that seem 
 to carry a sigh in it. "What is too bad?" she asked. 
 " My going ? " 
 
 233
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 223 
 
 " Yes or rather that which makes you go." And then, 
 with an irrelevancy which, after all, did not sound like one 
 to Angela, he added : " Do you know, I still think so much 
 of that Bradbourne or Heath, as we should now call 
 him ? " 
 
 " And I ! " she exclaimed. " For hours at a time I am 
 haunted by him in the strangest way. It is simply, I sup- 
 pose, that the unexplained mystery of his dealings with my 
 husband has made upon me a deep, ineffaceable impres- 
 sion." 
 
 " The mystery ? " O'Hara inquired. 
 
 " Is it not one still ? " 
 
 " If you choose to call it so. And yet he entered into 
 your husband's employ with the motive, no doubt, of some 
 revengeful project." 
 
 " Some revengeful project which he never carried out ? " 
 said Angela. " But if so, why did he never carry it out ? " 
 
 " Lack of opportunity . . of occasion . . of courage, if 
 we are to credit his own statements." 
 
 " Opportunity and occasion he certainly had at a hundred 
 different times. As for courage, he never seemed a man 
 lacking in that . . . And then it is so strange : Hubert 
 Throckmorton's quarrel with my husband, there in the wood, 
 was partially relative to his sister; and he heard those 
 words that Mr. Throckmorton spoke about Jane Heath." 
 
 " Yes, he heard them," conceded O'Hara. 
 
 " If he had shot Mr. Voght it would have been . . well, 
 it would have been so much more natural, somehow. Don't 
 you think so ? " 
 
 " I have often thought so. He was near enough to have 
 aimed a deadly shot and fired it." 
 
 Angela was biting her lips and staring straight past O'Hara 
 in a most absorbed fashion. " But he did not fire," she mur- 
 mured, slowly shaking her head. " He did not ; he could 
 not have done so ; he would have been heard if he had." 
 
 O'Hara smiled and shrugged his shoulders. " There can
 
 224 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 hardly be any two opinions on that point," came the re- 
 sponse ; " he would inevitably have been heard." 
 
 " You have had news of him lately ? " Angela asked, dis- 
 continuing her mood of reverie and giving O'Hara her wonted 
 glance of direct frankness. 
 
 "About a week ago yes. I made inquiries, or rather 
 caused them to be made. If you ask my reasons for doing 
 this I can't precisely tell you them. Possibly they are the 
 same as yours for being haunted by recollections of the 
 man." 
 
 " Well," said Angela. " And you learned . . . ? " 
 
 "That he had been ill confined to his rooms in that flat 
 where he lives with his sister." 
 
 " You have seen her ? " Angela inquired, a little tim- 
 idly. 
 
 " No." 
 
 But it was not long before Angela was destined to see her, 
 and in the most unforseen of manners. One morning, be- 
 tween breakfast and luncheon, a servant came to Mrs. 
 Voght with the news that there' was a rather strange-acting 
 young woman down-stairs, who refused to give her name but 
 begged to see the mistress of the house. 
 
 " ' Strange-acting ' isn't a word with at all a safe sound to it, 
 Margaret," smiled Angela. There had been a number of 
 very indigent people applying for help at the house in Stuy- 
 vesant Square, ever since Mrs. Bleakly Voght had taken it. 
 The fact of her new wealth had rather widely transpired 
 among her needy fellow-citizens, for such events are apt to 
 do so even in cities as large as New York. " I hope," she 
 now continued, " that this person didn't strike you as being 
 at all out of her head." 
 
 " Oh, no, ma'am," hurried Margaret self-correctively. 
 " Not that, ma'am, at all. I only mean that she had a way 
 as if her mind wasn't much on what she was talking about, 
 and sort of as if, too, ma'am, she was frightened at herself 
 for coming. I guess she's kind of a lady, though, ma'am,"
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 22$ 
 
 ended Margaret, as if this were a matter at once dubious and 
 palliative. 
 
 Angela remembered her servant's words a little while after- 
 ward, for they so perfectly described the woman who was 
 occupying one of the drawing-room sofas with her and whose 
 name had just been given, with a painful gasp of timidity, as 
 Jane Heath. 
 
 She was thin and faded and scared-looking, now, but she had 
 once been pretty, as her brow and chin yet showed, and there 
 lurked just enough refinement in her rapid, alarmed speech 
 to make you admit of her that she was not really mal ttevte. 
 She spoke with a slight lisp, which might have been fascinat- 
 ing before the lips whence it proceeded had got that rather 
 sickly bluish tinge they now wore, and her dark eyes had a 
 look which might have been caused by the shedding of many 
 tears, and gave Angela an odd idea of black velvet faintly 
 frosted by age and use. 
 
 " I've been thinking for whole days at a time," she told 
 Angela, " as to whether I ought to come here as to whether 
 you wouldn't be furious when you found out who I am." 
 (Her manner was that of the born prattler, and there now 
 clung to it a feverish " do or die " kind of eagerness that 
 her listener soon found infinitely pathetic.) " You've really 
 seen me once before, you know ; still, you don't know, I'm 
 sure. It was that day when I went to visit Mrs. Averill. I 
 recollected you perfectly when I afterward saw you in court. 
 I'd . . I'd (yes, I will say it !) hated you till then. After I 
 heard of your marriage to him I almost went crazy. I'd be- 
 lieved he would 'pay me that atonement for the madness he 
 had made me commit . . . Oh, I don't call myself blameless 
 far, far from that ! But I was such a mere slip of a girl- 
 only seventeen and he so filled with worldly wisdom ! . . . 
 But when we met in court it was all different with me. I 
 saw in your face how you had suffered, and I heard it (oh, so 
 clearly !) in what you said. You don't dream of how grand 
 and simple and good you seemed to us all, that clay. Julius 
 15
 
 226 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 that's my brother, Julius Bradbourne Heath, though you 
 only knew him as Julius Bradbourne had let me go down 
 
 to L after it had been found out that / would not be 
 
 called as a witness. So I was in the big crowd and saw you. 
 Besides, I'd got to feel quite sure that you had never cared 
 at all for him that you hated him, in fact." 
 
 Angela had not dreamed of being angry at all this. It had 
 somehow given her a thrill of vague, indefinable expectancy 
 when she had learned who her visitor really was ; and now 
 that Jane Heath had begun her swift, excited, impetuous 
 monologue, the expectancy deepened. In afterward seeking 
 to explain this feeling she decided that it was born merely of 
 an inward mental revolt against the entire stagnation in 
 which a certain affair was now sunk. They had let Hubert 
 go free, and now they were beginning to forget that they had 
 done so. But they had never forgotten, and never would for- 
 get that his name was smirched and stained and .branded 
 for life ! 
 
 " Who told you that I hated my husband.? " Angela here 
 asked. " Your brother ? " The tones that She used were 
 not only ireless but even kindly as well. They seemed to 
 reassure Jane Heath, who now spoke with fewer gasps for 
 breath and a decidedly less rattling speed.. 
 
 "Well, yes, Julius had found that out. There was one 
 day when he saw you talking to a gentleman on horseback, 
 just outside the gate of your own house down at Ponchatuk. 
 Do you remember? Do you? He told me he thought you 
 had disliked him ever since. You recollect, then, that he 
 afterward mentioned the meeting as if with a mischievous 
 purpose of making trouble ? That was done to satisfy him- 
 self concerning your true feelings. I mean your true feel- 
 ings about that gentleman, Mr. Throckmorton. He had 
 read all those things in the newspapers when the quarrel 
 occurred at Long Branch. He had some idea, had Julius. 
 Ah, he had many ideas then that he never let me know 
 about. He has talked with me more since his wretched
 
 Dl TIDED Lll'ES. 22 / 
 
 sickness than he ever talked before. He knew that you 
 once cared for Mr. Throckmorton, and were engaged to him ; 
 the newspaper stories had caused him to find it all out ; 
 they were so searching, they went so into the depths, you un- 
 derstand. It's horrible for me to say such a thing, but I've 
 come here to make a clean breast of all I'm aware of, so I 
 must confess to you that he had not yet decided w/iat sort of 
 a revenge he would take, and that there were times when he 
 had even made up his mind that he would somehow strike 
 his blow through you. He listened afterward to the talk 
 between Bleak between your husband and yourself. You 
 never suspected it, perhaps, but he was somewhere outside 
 of the room, listening. He was very weak, was Julius, and 
 very bad, too, in his vengeful desires. He's just like me, in 
 the way of feebleness ; I think we're both very weak about 
 anything that requires firm and positive behavior. You see, 
 he was almost wild when he came home from Australia and 
 found me . . what I was. I shall never forget his rage, 
 at first. I thought he would kill me ; I had to send the 
 child away and have her kept out of his sight; there were 
 times when I dreaded that he would kill her. What saved 
 me in his eyes (that and that alone ! ) was my having lived 
 a decent life after my shame fell on me. He used to kiss 
 me in a wild way one minute and then push me from him 
 the next, crying out terrible things that were full of our poor 
 dead father's name and of the horror father would have felt 
 if he could only have known ! . . . But when Julius went to 
 live at his house and be his servant, I never knew where he 
 had gone. He simply left me and said that business mat- 
 ters I could not understand would take him a good distance 
 off. But he went away to . . to punish . . your husband. 
 He admits that now ; you know what he openly said in 
 court. Still, as you also know, he hesitated; he never 
 carried out his project, whatever it was . . . You saw how 
 sick a man he looked and acted like at the trial ? But oh, he 
 has been much worse ever since. A few days after we both
 
 228 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 got home again from L he was at death's door. The 
 
 doctors said that it meant nervous prostration. There have 
 been days when he would lie perfectly silent, with his eyes 
 closed, and never speak at all. Then he would change quite 
 suddenly, and act almost like his old self. But these alter- 
 ations in him would never last more than a day or two at a 
 time. Afterward he would droop again, and more dread- 
 fully than before. Sometimes it seemed to me as if he were 
 in a kind of living death. His lips would often move, 
 though ; he would whisper to himself with his eyes shut and 
 his face so thin and chalky ! It has been horrible . . hor- 
 rible ! " 
 
 She stopped speaking, here, and wiped away the gathering 
 tears with her handkerchief. While she did this, Angela 
 said : 
 
 " Have you ever caught any of those words that he whis- 
 pered to himself ? " 
 
 She nodded almost violently ; her emotion prevented any 
 answer for a little space, and then she resumed, with the 
 manner of one who has mastered hysteria yet is not quite 
 secure as to just how completely : 
 
 " Oh, yes . . . There was your husband's name, now and 
 then, and yours, and . . and Mr. Throckmorton's, and . . . 
 But it was very hard to overhear anything, for he would 
 start and open his eyes whenever I drew close to his bed- 
 side, no matter how carefully I did it. Not that I have ever 
 wanted to play the spy upon him ; but it had filled me with 
 such anxiety to feel that he was lying there with all kinds of 
 wretched thoughts passing through his brain. Still, I never 
 believed his brain was affected until, a fortnight ago and 
 more, he began to get stronger in body, and care for his 
 food, and occasionally take a little stroll out-of-doors. But 
 I'm not by any means certain that his mind isn't all right 
 still. His general health is better; that I'm sure of. But 
 he has long fits of brooding, and sometimes he will wake up, 
 as it were, after one of them, and speak to me. What he
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 229 
 
 Says is always the same thing. And it's because of what he 
 says, and of the mysterious doubt which will visit me regard- 
 ing his sanity, that I've determined to come here and . . 
 and talk with you." Here she laughed a desolate little 
 laugh, checking it midway, and looking at Angela as if she 
 had committed an unpardonable error in giving it vent even 
 for such a brief instant. " Oh," she went on, " I've been an 
 awfully long time in . . in coining to the point, as they say : 
 haven't I ? " 
 
 Angela tried to smile, though she did not feel at all like 
 it. Still, the aim to encourage was uppermost. Evidently 
 something noteworthy and salient had yet to be told, and she 
 wished that it should be told with all attainable clearness 
 and coherence. 
 
 " And are you really just coming to the point ? " she said. 
 " Has your brother imparted anything to you which you've 
 grown convinced that I ought to hear ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Jane Heath, with a little impulsive 
 movement in Angela's direction that she immediately re- 
 pressed. " You ought to hear it ! I'm sure you'll agree 
 with me that you ought, when I've made it known . . . 
 Julius is . . is filled with a plan. It frightened me almost 
 to death when he first confided it to me." 
 
 " A plan ? " questioned Angela. 
 
 " Yes. He . . he wants to get into your country-house at 
 Ponchatuk Pineland you call it, do you not? He wants 
 to get into the house while you are away from it, and find 
 something, recover something." 
 
 "Find something? Recover something?" Angela re- 
 peated, feeling her heart begin to throb, she knew not why. 
 
 " He is convinced that your country house has been kept 
 closed since you went away from it that no one ever lives 
 in it during the winter months." 
 
 " That is true. The gardener has a dwelling near by, but 
 there is never anyone in the house itself until the warmer 
 season comes on."
 
 236 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 " That is just what my brother says. He heard it while 
 he was there, and has not forgotten it. His one ruling idea 
 is to enter the house without being seen oh, I may as well 
 call things by their names, madam to enter it like a thief 
 in the night ! He doesn't want a living soul except myself 
 to even dream that he has been there." 
 
 " Except yourself ? " 
 
 " Yes. I alone, of the whole world, may share this part of 
 his secret. It would almost madden him with horror, I think, 
 if he knew that I was telling it to you. But I've reached 
 that state when not telling it almost maddens me. And you, 
 of all others, are the one to whom I feel that it should be 
 made known. Of course he'd never let me have the dimmest 
 suspicion of what his purpose really was, if he could only 
 manage to do without me. But he can't ; he must have 
 some one near him whose help he can count on when his 
 weak and giddy turns come over him. And for this reason 
 he talks with me by the hour about it, his language being at 
 times so full of strange repetitions that I get to doubting his 
 sanity, and have creeping chills, and am afraid to stop with 
 him like that while no one else is near. He'll take my 
 hand in his own thin, wasted one, and he'll devour my face 
 with his eyes, that seem so much larger and are so much 
 brighter than they used to be, as they burn out above his 
 sunken cheeks. ' I must spend a certain space of time, 
 Jane, inside that house,' he will say, ' and no one must see 
 me, no one except you must have the faintest idea that I'm 
 there. And not even you, Jane, must know what I've gone 
 there to do. You must keep watch while I'm doing it. 
 You'll be in the big hall. You'll never know; remember 
 that, Jane, never. But you'll serve me all the same, will 
 you not ? . . now, let us see.' . . . And then he will begin 
 to count upon his fingers the different preparations we 
 ought to make. There are two things that always per- 
 plex him greatly : one is where we can lodge without 
 creating comment and the other is how to procure a
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 231 
 
 false key that will admit us into the house when our time 
 for entering it arrives. ' But there must be a way . . there 
 must be a way,' he will mutter again and again. And in 
 the meanwhile I am growing so dreadfully nervous over it 
 all! And for days I've been tossed about between the 
 longing to let you know everything and the fear lest you 
 might be very severe with my brother. But lately a different 
 feeling has taken hold of me. I've become certain that 
 I ought to disclose it all because . . " Here the speaker 
 became abruptly silent and turned her dark, faded eyes full 
 upon Angela. 
 
 " Because ? " came the gently demanding response. 
 
 " Oh," cried Jane Heath, with great abandonment and 
 impulsiveness of manner, while she seemed to struggle once 
 more against the tears that she had already controlled, " be- 
 cause I think . . I imagine . . I I've got some sort of 
 fancy, that there's evidence of of guilt hidden in your Long 
 Island house. And if that is true I should never forgive 
 myself for not having put every means in your power to . . 
 to take away all blemish from the name of Mr. Throck- 
 morton ! " 
 
 Here she sprang to her feet and reached out both hands 
 in a supplicating gesture. Angela gravely watched her for 
 a moment, and soon slowly rose also. Then, with a swift 
 movement, she caught each of the extended hands and held 
 them tightly, drawing them both toward her. But before 
 she could pronounce a word, her visitor gasped forth, with 
 an agitation that showed itself in the throbs of her stretched 
 throat as she leaned her head backward and at the same 
 time strove to loosen this unexpected clasp. 
 
 " No, no ! It isn't right that you you should treat me 
 this way ! Think what I am who I am ! I I should not 
 have come here at all. You are his widow. Think ! And 
 // . . " 
 
 " Never mind," Angela said. " I know what he was. 
 Then, too, I married him while you . . . Well," she ended,
 
 2J2 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 with a swift, bitter smile that meant for her hearer a token 
 of priceless indulgence and tolerance, " I don't know which 
 of us was worse. I was, no doubt. . . " 
 
 " Oh, don't say that ! " exclaimed Jane Heath, with the 
 tears visibly brimming her eyes and a smile of unmistakable 
 joy beaming so warm and sweet from her lips that it made 
 Angela realize just how pretty she must have been when a 
 certain dastardly deed wrecked all her trusting youth. " You 
 fill me with such gratitude, though ! Ah ! you can't conceive 
 what it is ! To have a good woman like you take my hand ! 
 It's . . . it's . . . well, it's just heaven to me ! " 
 
 " I'm not a good woman," Angela returned, still retaining 
 the hands that she had seized. " I am very far from good. 
 .... But never mind all that, now. If you thought I 
 would not take your hand because you had done something 
 very sinful, you did not know my nature that is all. . . . 
 There have been times when I have yearned to go and 
 find just such women as you are women who have erred, 
 who have behaved unwisely, madly, recklessly, yet who are 
 regretful. Ah, there's the point ! There is something that 
 so commands a woman's best sympathy in the repentance the 
 honest repentance of a wrong done as you did yours. . . . 
 Besides, I knew him ... I knew and know just what 
 the sin must have been, on either side just how infamous a 
 pressure of temptation such a man as he was may have brought 
 to bear upon you, and just how your youth and purity may have 
 struggled against it. . . . Ah, I'm not so generous as your tear- 
 ful eyes try to tell me ! I'm human, and I'm . . a woman like 
 yourself. Then, too, recollect that I'd heard about "all this be- 
 fore. It came to me through a friend of Mr. Throckmorton 
 a very dear and noble friend of his. And then there's your 
 personality, your face, your look, your sorrow. . . . These 
 could not escape me. I put the deepest faith in you, and I 
 thank you with all my heart for coming here. . . . This may 
 sound strange to you," Angela hurried on " that I should 
 thank you. And why do I thank you ? I see your eyes ask-
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. ^ 
 
 ing me why. . . But you've said some very peculiar words 
 to me words that fill my -heart with a passionate and thrill- 
 ing hope. I'm afraid you don't understand just how much 
 hope you've wakened in me ! To take away all blemish from 
 the name of Mr. Throckmorton ! Do you realize what that 
 means ? . . Come, now, explain to me just what it does mean 
 in your own conception of the words you've used.'' 
 
 But Jane Heath only shook her head negatively ; and while 
 the tears flowed faster from her eyes, and the look of devoted 
 thankfulness toward Angela grew still more fervent than it 
 had already shone, she tremulously faltered : 
 
 " Oh, I'm in doubt if I meant anything ! . . . . You're so 
 good, so good! I ought not to have said it. There was 
 nothing behind it. How could there be ? Julius has never 
 given me a clew. If he had, I would have told you. I'd have 
 told you even if I'd thought you would have rearrested him. . . 
 No, no not that ! And yet it was . . it was conscience ! yes, 
 it was conscience that brought me to you this day ! that and 
 only that ! I knew you loved Mr. Throckmorton, and I felt 
 that there might be a chance of . . of . . what is the word ? 
 . . I don't remember it ... I'm not educated like you, 
 though I'm . . well, not ignorant, as you see. I " 
 
 "A chance of exonerating him?" replied Angela, while 
 she watched Jane's perturbed face intently. 
 
 "Yes yes," came the answer, in a voice of fervent ac- 
 quiescence. 
 
 Angela dropped the hands that she had taken. A look of 
 mournful distrust had overspread her face. 
 
 " How can Hubert Throckmorton be exonerated ? " she 
 exclaimed, drawing several paces backward from the guest 
 whom she had a brief while before treated with so opposite 
 an ardor. " The law declares that Hubert Throckmorton 
 shot Bleakly Voght by accident." 
 
 " By accident," Jane Heath iterated, with drooped head. 
 " I recall perfectly. That was the verdict." Angela darted
 
 234 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 toward her and grasped her arm. " Is there any other ver- 
 dict possible ? " 
 
 " I I don't know." 
 
 " You don't know 1 Do you . . do you even dream that 
 any other could be possible ? " 
 
 'Yes." ' 
 
 " You do ? Tell me, then, what it is ! Tell me ! tell me !" 
 
 " I I cannot !" 
 
 " And yet you speak as you have done !" 
 
 " I speak of what . . of what seems to me like guilt in 
 my brother. . . ' 
 
 " But this guilt what was it ? Can you give a name for 
 it?" 
 
 " No. " 
 
 " Then why did you mention it ? . . Because you have 
 seen him tormented by a curious fear ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And you think that curious fear might lead to. . . ? " 
 
 "I don't know what it might lead to. I've seen it. It is 
 fear. It's like the fear of a man who has done a . . a crime." 
 
 " A crime ! " Angela echoed. " But there was only one shot 
 fired. You know that as well as I do. Don't you know it? " 
 
 She leaned close to Jane Heath and put a hand on each 
 of the woman's rather frail shoulders. 
 
 Jane Heath met her vividly searching eyes. " Yes, yes. 
 But let my brother go to that place of yours . . . Pineland," 
 she said. " Let him go. Let me go with him. Find a way 
 for both of us to get in at night when all is quite still when 
 he thinks there is no one on the watch. Do this . . wil^ you 
 do it? . or. . ?" 
 
 Jane's voice failed her, then. She might, however, have 
 regained it a minute later, if Angela had not suddenly thrown 
 both arms about her neck and said, with lips leaned close to 
 her ear: 
 
 " I will do it ! You shall have every means that you desire.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 235 
 
 Thank God that you came ! I don't know why I say that, 
 but I say it ! Thank God that you came !" 
 
 And she kissed Jane Heath, pressing her lips to the lips of 
 the woman whom she knew to have once been betrayed by 
 her husband. A little later she said : -"We have more to talk 
 about more to arrange. Your brother and you shall go to 
 a farmer's cottage that I know of, not far from Pineland. 
 On a certain night he shall enter my house with a key that 
 I will provide for him through you. You will make every- 
 thing seen plausible to him. It will not be hard we will 
 talk that over. . . And when he enters Pineland I will be 
 there. I will be there, hidden, with witnesses. You 
 understand ? " 
 
 "I understand," replied Jane Heath.
 
 XVII. 
 
 " I THINK he is merely a madman," said O'Hara. 
 
 Angela laughed brokenly, and shrugged her shoulders in a 
 way that might have had numberless meanings. 
 
 " Think as you please," she said. " It is all arranged." 
 
 It had indeed all been arranged, and most carefully. The 
 words just recorded had passed between O'Hara and Angela 
 in one of the lower rooms at Pineland. They had arrived at 
 the old Voght homestead about an hour previously. Two 
 sentinels were in ambush not far away. The time was now 
 about nine o'clock in the evening. They were aware that 
 for two days past Jane Heath and her invalid brother had 
 been residents of a farm-house located within a quarter of a 
 mile from Pineland. 
 
 Jane Heath had efficiently deceived her brother. She had 
 been able to convince him by a certain tale the intricacy of 
 whose deceptive falsehood need not concern us. She had 
 procured a key wherewith to unlock the front-door of the 
 house, and had made her brother believe that the locksmith 
 who fashioned it had done so through the happy accident of 
 having in his shop an old wax impression of a key with which 
 he had supplied Mr. Voght during the previous year. Two 
 dark-lanterns were also ready, one for Julius Heath and 
 one for his sister. All day the invalid had been saving his 
 strength for that quarter of a mile walk and the return. It 
 affected Jane with a dreary sense of drollery when he said to 
 her, that same afternoon : 
 
 " Are you sure these people in the house will not think it 
 strange we should go out like this at night." 
 
 " Oh, I've prepared them for all that," replied Jane. 
 236
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 237 
 
 He started. It seemed to his sister, nowadays, as if he 
 were always starting at something. With the excessive pallor 
 of his cadaverous face, with his restless, vigilant, uneasy eyes, 
 he looked like, a man tormented by one of two agencies, 
 remorse or fear or perhaps by both together. 
 
 " Prepared them ? " he now echoed nervously. " How ? " 
 
 " I said yesterday that you were apt to feel stronger at 
 night, and that when the weather was fine your doctor 
 thought there would be benefit to you in a long evening 
 stroll. And to-night is almost perfect weather, you know." 
 
 This was true. The stars beamed lustrously from the 
 April heavens, and the air had a chilly, bracing tingle in it. 
 No least hint of leafage had yet appeared on any of the 
 trees, but the glamour of the softly brilliant starlight robbed 
 them of all gauntness. Underfoot the ground was firm and 
 dry, without a trace of that March thaw which is so grim a 
 foe to the country pedestrian. 
 
 Jane, a little while after they had begun their short journey, 
 perceived that her brother already gave signs of exhaustion. 
 Once or twice he leaned heavily on her arm, which he had 
 taken. Still, he seemed upborne by a most vigorous deter- 
 mination. " Don't be afraid that my strength will give out," 
 he said to his sister, after they had progressed about half 
 the distance which they were to traverse. " It won't give 
 out ; I may seem a little feeble, but in reality I shall be quite 
 tough enough to carry this little affair through. ... I only 
 hope," he went on, in a lingering, plaintive way, " that we 
 may get across the lawn and into the house without being 
 seen by a soul. If there's even a dog, it may ruin everything. 
 You, Jane, who have been so clever, who have found out 
 so many things, have made sure that the only people on 
 the estate live a good distance off from the main building 
 itself. That's what I was nearly certain of, as I told you ; 
 stilF, you've turned it into a real certainty. The house is 
 empty. . . the house is empty. . . . I'm glad of that ; I'm 
 very, very glad of that ! "
 
 238 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 Jane's conscience was keenly smiting her, just now. This 
 man was her brother, and had placed the most implicit 
 trust in her devotion to his mysterious cause. She, herself, 
 had been to blame for all that was disastrous in his present 
 fate. But for her sin he would have returned from Aus- 
 tralia to the enjoyment of a happy home with the sister for 
 whose companionship he had so long yearned. She had 
 been horribly, unspeakably at fault as regarded their pre- 
 vious relations, and now she was committing toward him an 
 act of guile that would make him turn and curse her when 
 the truth became plain. 
 
 Still, there was another side to the question, and when 
 Jane allowed herself to regard this, an inspiriting glow dis- 
 pelled her compunction. She had never forgotten Angela's 
 entire presentment in court, that day her face, her 
 demeanor, her words. Until then Jane had hated her for 
 being the wife of Bleakly Voght ; but thenceforward a 
 totally new feeling had supervened. It was not difficult for 
 her to divine the whole truth, in a general if not a detailed 
 sense. Angela had foolishly married one man, loving 
 another, and that other was Hubert Throckmorton. Now 
 Jane had read the newspapers both before and after 
 Hubert's trial. Her heart which was a very tender and 
 womanly one grew heavy in her breast as she realized the 
 full darkness of that stigma which he must evermore bear. 
 Then gradually rose within her the conviction that Julius 
 might know of some reason why the stigma need not be 
 borne at all. She pondered the potentiality of this fact 
 until there were times when its vexing uncertainty seemed 
 almost a threat to drive her mad. She had no friends 
 outside of her brother, for there were not a few people who 
 had turned from her in the wrath of offended righteousness 
 when they learned that she had become an unwedded 
 mother, and on this account she had never again sought any 
 close human associations. A strong inward trust, there- 
 fore, that she was about to do something of secure moral
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 239 
 
 worth blent with a sort of desperate eagerness for feminine 
 counsel and aid. She had never once feared that she could 
 possibly be jeopardizing her brother's life. Still, there were 
 moments when she had sufficient force and nerve to tell 
 herself that it was better for justice to be carried out where 
 due than for disgrace to be inflicted where undeserved. 
 
 Angela and O'Hara were seated together in one of the 
 back rooms of the homestead. The light had been cau- 
 tiously turned rather low, but there was no danger of 
 Julius Heath discerning it as he approached the house, 
 since it could not by any chance be distinguished from the 
 road which he and Jane would be sure to take. Such a sys- 
 tem of signalling had become pre-arranged between the two 
 ambuscaded men that Angela felt quite sure of prompt noti- 
 fication as soon as Julius and his sister appeared. 
 
 " You're skeptical,'' she said to O'Hara, as they sat and 
 faced one another in the dimness. " You're skeptical, and 
 I don't blame you for being so. I suppose I'm really that 
 way myself." 
 
 " Upon my word," softly laughed O'Hara, " there seems 
 so little to be skeptical or otherwise about!'" 
 
 " You're right," said Angela. She turned and stared for 
 a moment at the somewhat feebly-glimmering lamp. " That 
 looks so theatrical, doesn't it ? " she added. " I was read- 
 ing, the other day, something that one of the ' naturalistic ' 
 novel-writers had asserted in high scorn of his more roman- 
 tically inclined brethren. Good heavens! as if life were 
 not both ordinary and extraordinary, prosy and fantastic, 
 humdrum and spectacular! This little episode in which 
 we're about to take part . . isn't it like the last act of a 
 drama, and rather a lurid one as well ? " 
 
 "I hope there will be a 'truly dramatic end to it," smiled 
 O'Hara, " and not a farcical one." 
 
 " It may be farcical," admitted Angela, with a very seri- 
 ous pressing together of the lips. Then a sudden light
 
 240 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 seemed to sweep across her face in the dimness. " Oh, 
 but if only I could gain some sort of priceless knowledge 
 that would wipe away the blot from his life ! If only I 
 could ! what a glorious gift it would be to him from me ! 
 From me, who once gave him so bitterly different a gift in 
 other days. . . There, you've that pitying look again, as 
 though you thought me almost as crazy as you believe Julius 
 Heath. . . . Well, this is a crazy thing for me to do, surely ! 
 coming down here, I mean, with no one but yourself and 
 those men. Suppose we failed to catch the last train for 
 town ! " She rose abruptly, and lifted her clasped hands in 
 a dismayed manner. " I have brought no servants with 
 me ; I am quite alone except for you . . . and it could 
 never be held a pardonable thing if it were known that 
 I ..." She paused, and O'Hara saw the color steal into 
 her face. 
 
 " You never thought, did you ? " he said, with a gentle 
 accent of courtesy that she instantly appreciated. " But I 
 thought I remembered. If you were detained, Mrs. Voght, 
 there is the gardener's wife (a friend of mine, by the way, 
 good old Mrs. Malley) whom I could get to come over and 
 play duenna for you in no time at all." 
 
 " And you thought of that ! " she exclaimed, stretching 
 forth both her hands to him. " Oh, how kind of you ! 
 How like you ! You see, my mind has been sa occupied, so 
 perplexed ! " 
 
 O'Hara drooped his eyes for a moment, and shook his 
 handsome curled head. " Don't thank me" came his 
 response. " Hubert recollected, and reminded me this very 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Hubert ! But you told me that he so strongly disap- 
 proved this whole idea ! " 
 
 "He did disapprove it. But nevertheless he felt con- 
 vinced of your resolute obstinacy in carrying it out." 
 
 Just then a soft yet very clear knock sounded at one of 
 the doors.
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 24! 
 
 " Hark," murmured Angela. " It's the sign that they are 
 here." She hurried toward the door with silent speed, 
 while O'Hara followed her. 
 
 One of their sentries had come to tell them that Julius 
 and his sister had arrived and were entering the house. 
 16
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE key which Julius carried (and which he insisted on 
 using himself, although his hand shook most feebly while 
 he did so) opened the big front door of Pineland as soon 
 as it was turned in the lock. 
 
 Presently Heath whispered to his sister, after they had 
 found their way into the dark, still hall : 
 
 u Now stand just here.' Don't move. Wait for me. 
 You've your lantern. You needn't let its light shine a bit. 
 No matter how long I'm away, wait for me. I may not be 
 gone very long. I don't think I shall go upstairs. I may, 
 but I don't think I shall. You understand me, Jane, don't 
 you ? " 
 
 " Yes," she whispered back. 
 
 She watched his dim figure, seen inky-black behind the 
 cylindrical shaft of light that his own lantern emitted, until 
 he had disappeared into what seemed a room opening off 
 from the same hall where she herself yet remained immov- 
 ably stationed. 
 
 Heath had crossed the threshold of an apartment which 
 he well remembered. In Bleakly Voght's earlier days of 
 sportmanship he had been wont to keep all guns and fish- 
 ing-tackle here, and even now there were proofs of this 
 past occupancy in some dingy covered baskets that may 
 once have held scores of rosy-gilled Long Island trout, or 
 in big coils of trolling-line, with their oval " squids " of lead 
 and that dark latent hook, curving at the end of each, which 
 had made many a blue-fish writhe. The room itself was 
 rather shabbily furnished than otherwise ; Voght had once 
 said of it that every old bit of furniture used to be put there 
 after it became unfit to keep anywhere else, and this was 
 242
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 243 
 
 certainly true of a huge hair-cloth sofa with bird-claws of 
 tarnished gilt, a monstrous mahogany bureau with a pro- 
 fusion of small glass knobs, and a few other like objects, as 
 antique as they were uncouth. 
 
 It was in a certain large closet of this room that Julius 
 had found the two guns which he and Voght had taken 
 with them on their momentous trip. He now went directly 
 to this closet, but soon saw that neither gun was there. 
 
 He then swept the light of his lantern eagerly, ransack- 
 ingly about the room. On a sudden he uttered a short, 
 glad cry. He had seen a weapon of the sort that he 
 searched for, leaning against the opposite wall. 
 
 His tremulous hand set down the lantern on a table close 
 beside him. Then he darted forward, and seized the gun. 
 
 " It's mine it's the one I had what luck, what luck ! " 
 broke from him ; and while he framed these words he did 
 not know that he spoke at all. 
 
 In the steady stream of light he soon was holding the 
 piece, while he examined it with a scrutiny that swiftly told 
 him what he desired to know. It was now plain that he 
 had discovered one barrel to be empty and the other loaded. 
 With great softness he laid the gun on the table. After 
 doing so he began another search with his lantern. But it 
 was briefer than the last. Very near to the spot where the 
 gun had been discovered, he now came across the ammuni- 
 tion which he had carried on that fatal day. Evidently 
 someone had tossed it here beside the gun after thrusting 
 it all into this game-bag which he recollected also to have, 
 taken with him. Yes, everything that he needed was here ! 
 He brought the bag back with him to the table, placed the 
 lantern beside it, and took up the gun once more. The 
 glare on his face gave it. an unearthly lividness, ghastly and 
 worn as it had been for weeks past. But the wild, trium- 
 phant smile that parted his lips added a demoniac element 
 to his elfin weirdness, and made him look like some hellish 
 minion of crime and horror while he stood there with
 
 244 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 skinny hands clutching what he had so long and so avidly 
 craved. Again his lips opened and his voice sounded ; but 
 he did not know this time that he spoke, any more than he 
 had known it previously. 
 
 " Better load it than drop it down there / Better load it 
 and leave it ... load it and leave it ... that's far the 
 best way ! If I took it out in the hall Jane might easily see 
 what it was while I- passed her ! . . . Load it and leave it 
 . . . load it and leave it ... There's no better way than 
 just that." 
 
 His fingers trembled so that there seemed, at first, little 
 chance of his being able to load the weapon. But by the 
 time that he had really succeeded in commencing to load it, 
 something occurred which made a great cry burst from him. 
 
 Two men had slipped into the room like phantoms. One 
 held a big lighted lamp, \vhich he instantly deposited some- 
 where, . while it filled the room with its rays. The other 
 glided straight up to Heath and snatched the gun from his 
 hands. 
 
 " You needn't load that gun, Mr. Heath," he said quietly. 
 "I want it, sir, just as it is." 
 
 Heath dropped into a chair, gasping. " Spies on me ! " 
 were the first words that left him. 
 
 "You're right, there," said the man who had brought in 
 the lamp and who was not so civil as he who had seized the 
 gun. " What did you want to put the load back for ? Eh ? 
 What made you say it was luck for you to get that gun 
 instead of some other ? That was yours the one you 
 carried the day Mr. Voght was shot. Oh, you needn't 
 shake your head ; it was. And how is it you're found 
 sneaking into this house with a false key, after dark, for no 
 purpose under heaven but to re-load that gun ? Why did 
 you talk about loading it and leaving it, and say that to do 
 this was better than to drop it down there ? Down where ? 
 What's the meaning of this mystery? You've got to answer 
 some time or other, and you may as well do it now."
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 24$ 
 
 "I'll never do it," Heath muttered, as if through his 
 meeting teeth. " Nobody can tell my reason for coming 
 here. Even my sister Jane (who must have betrayed me in 
 the meanest way !) cannot tell it. I'll keep the secret, such 
 as it is ... I'll keep the secret till I die !" 
 
 But a voice full of deep vibrations now spoke. It was a 
 woman's voice, and Heath recognized it instantly, with a 
 choked, shivering moan. The door on whose threshold 
 Angela and O'Hara had been standing, was bathed in 
 shadow. They had heard nearly all that had passed since 
 the entrance of the two men. A few seconds before Heath 
 finished speaking, Angela had felt what she believed the 
 whole explanatory truth dart through her astonished mind. 
 
 " You cannot keep the secret, Bradbourne," she said. 
 " No, for I have guessed it if the others here have not. 
 You fired at the same second of time that Mr. Throckmorton 
 did, and so the report seemed like a single one. You fired, 
 meaning to kill Mr. Voght. Then you found out what had 
 accidentally occurred to the gun of Mr. Throckmorton. 
 This accounts for all your strange behavior after the dread- 
 ful affair took place. It accounts for your desire to come 
 here without having a soul except your sister know that you 
 had come. It accounts for everything everything ! " . . . 
 Her eyes were flaming, her bosom was in a tumult of pul- 
 sation, as she now turned toward O'Hara. "Am I not 
 right ? " she cried. " It must have been that ! I remember, 
 years ago, hearing my father, who was once a confirmed 
 sportsman, tell some story of two reports, both produced at 
 the same moment, sounding exactly like one, and deceiving 
 all who were within earshot. I " 
 
 " Good God !" struck in O'Hara. He caught one of her 
 hands, and stooping down, impetuously kissed it. " You've 
 guessed what the cleverest lawyers in the country failed to 
 dream of what these detectives and I, even after the devel- 
 opments we've witnessed, would doubtless never have hit
 
 246 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 upon ! This is like. . . well, by Jove, it's like the purest 
 inspiration and nothing a whit less ! " 
 
 She smiled, letting him hold her hand, and saying quite 
 low and with great speed: "Call it that ! I shall like to believe 
 it was that ! I shall always like to believe it the inspiration, 
 the intuition, of my love my devoted, repentant love !" 
 
 Heath did not catch these words, but he had caught 
 O'Hara's, and they were now producing a terrible effect 
 upon him. He strove to rise from the .chair into which he 
 had sunk, but failed; and then, in tones husky, defiant, 
 fraught with the most rebellious and hysteric challenge, he 
 shouted: 
 
 " It's . . it's no inspiration it's falsehood nothing but 
 falsehood ! I I did not come here to re-load that gun. I 
 saw it while while I was searching for something else. 
 For something else, do you hear ? I I happened to notice 
 that one barrel had been discharged since since I took it 
 with me that day. This was all this explains my attempt 
 to re-load the gun. . . Ah, you are so clever, Mrs. Voght ! 
 But you are too clever, just at present ! You've hated me 
 for a good while past ! You ..." His further articulation 
 became a mere pell-mell incoherence. He tried once more 
 to rise from his chair, and then, failing a second time, 
 dropped backward. His head fell on one side ; he looked as 
 though he had been smitten by death. 
 
 " Oh, if it should be ! " Angela faltered, while she busied 
 herself with his resuscitation as best she could. Jane had 
 appeared, but was almost incapable, through extreme dismay 
 and alarm, of doing anything except stare helplessly at her 
 brother's white, spectral face. * 
 
 41 It is not death," O'Hara soon whispered to Angela. 
 " He is a miserably weak and shattered man, but he may 
 have months of life yet before him. If he has, we must use 
 every means toward obtaining a full confession of his crime. 
 But even if none should come, the testimony of these two 
 men both bearing flawless reputations will be sufficient to
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 24? 
 
 cleanse Hubert's name. That, and your wonderful solution 
 of the enigma ; for such it undoubtedly is, and as such it 
 will be accepted." 
 
 But Angela shook her head with sad incredulity. " Noth- 
 ing will be accepted," she replied, except this man's complete 
 and lucid confession, made before the most disinterested wit- 
 nesses. Unless we obtain that, it will be said that we have 
 sought to exculpate Hubert by an artful ruse. Ah, you know 
 the world as well as I do ! It believes the worst about any- 
 one whom it has condemned until every vestige of compro- 
 mising statement has been rendered null ! " 
 
 Heath did not positively recover consciousness that night, 
 nor for several days afterward. He was carried into one of 
 the upstairs chambers at Pineland, and lay there, visited by 
 two or three competent physicians and most carefully nursed 
 by Angela and his sister. A severe stroke of paralysis had 
 befallen him, and the first glimmers of reason that mani- 
 fested themselves gave slight hope of his brain ever regain- 
 ing its natural equipoise. 
 
 After about a fortnight of semi-stupor, however, he sur- 
 prised his watchers by becoming thoroughly clear-headed 
 once more. But he was awakening only to die of another 
 trouble a heart complaint which at intervals caused him 
 acute suffering and made him clearly realize that his end was 
 imminent. This realization altered the entire trend of his 
 former secretive resolve. On first recovering consciousness 
 he had upbraided his sister bitterly for her treachery. 
 Afterward, in his weakness and pain, he had pardoned her. 
 Angela had spent hours at his bedside, praying him to do 
 so, and at last she had succeeded. But she also succeeded 
 in another far more vitally important matter. She and 
 death together unlocked at last the stubborn mood of his 
 silence. One afternoon, propped up by pillows and in the 
 company of certain auditors who had been hastily summoned 
 to hear him, he declared himself the murderer of Bleakly 
 Voght.
 
 248 DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 Angela had been right. Just at the same instant that 
 Hubert's gun was discharged by accident, Heath had delib- 
 erately fired upon Voght. A hundred times the man had 
 made up his mind, before then, to kill the wronger of his 
 sister, and a hundred times he had left such design unac- 
 complished. But Hubert's own angry reference to the 
 shame inflicted upon Jane had suddenly nerved him into 
 homicidal action, standing as he did stand there among the 
 obscuring trees. He had not stopped to think of the con- 
 sequences his act would entail he had stopped for that 
 only too often already . . . When, a brief while later, he 
 had seen Hubert kneeling beside the fallen man and accus- 
 ing himself of being the author of Voght's death, then a 
 temptation had swept through Heath to escape by deceitful 
 means. He alone, in the whole world, knew of those 
 strangely simultaneous shots,' one of which had passed with- 
 out harm by Voght, and the other of which had dealt a 
 deadly intended wound. Later he had striven, as we have 
 seen, partially to shield Hubert by inducing the latter to 
 say nothing on the subject of his own presence so near the 
 scene of the shooting, and hence to suppress all that damn- 
 ing record of a previous quarrel between the two men. Not 
 succeeding in this plan, he had entrenched himself behind 
 his apparently impregnable innocence. But months after- 
 ward his guilty fears had begun morbidly to prey upon him. 
 He remembered his own foolish omission to re-load the 
 empty barrel of that gun. True, no one had ever thought 
 to inquire concerning it ; it had been as little in the minds 
 of lawyers, of judge, or of jury as the gun carried by O'Hara 
 or Voght himself. Yet there it remained, in some one of the 
 many rooms of Pineland. Might it not be eventually exam- 
 ined and its condition commented upon ? In vain he sought 
 to lull this insidious and augmenting fear. It haunted 
 and teased him as a gadfly might haunt and tease a bound 
 captive. While he grew more ill in body his mind grew 
 more susceptible to its grim and shrewd visitations. Finally
 
 DIVIDED LIVES. 249 
 
 he had felt inaction an unendurable torture. He must 
 return to Pineland, and either make way with the gun by 
 dropping it into an old well not far from the house itself, or 
 else reload its tell-tale empty barrel ! . . . 
 
 His confession was made public, and its delivery had 
 been attended by circumstances of such strong credibil- 
 ity that in a few more days Hubert Throckmorton found 
 himself overwhelmed by legions of congratulations. No 
 doubt was possible any longer. His hottest newspaper foes 
 were forced to make open retraction of their charges. He 
 stood before the world as a man with a character all the 
 more spotless because of that dark brand which had been 
 removed from it. 
 
 Heath's death occurred on the day that succeeded his 
 most fateful deposition, and was held to have been accel- 
 erated by the intense excitement which that event pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Only now did Hubert dare trust himself to meet Angela, 
 and now he appeared before her, burning to express his 
 devoted thanks. O'Hara had told him of how it had been 
 she who had really reinstated him in the old place of honor 
 among his fellow-men. But for her the secret of Heath 
 might forever have remained undivulged, needing that one 
 decisive mental leap toward its solution which mathema- 
 ticians tell us it has been the higher gift of their ruling 
 geniuses at rare intervals to take. 
 
 Hubert made some reference of this sort during his first 
 happy interview with Angela. But she tossed her head a 
 little, and somewhat brusquely answered : 
 
 " It wasn't more than ordinarily bright of me, after all. I 
 merely shine in a relative way. You know the French 
 saying : ' Dans le pays des aveiigks] etc. All those wiseacre 
 lawyers were so ridiculously dull about it ; they needed a bit 
 of feminine common-sense to open their sleepy eyes." 
 
 "Ah," said Hubert, "they had none of them your sweet 
 talisman of discovery ! "
 
 2 SO DIVIDED LIVES. 
 
 She sighed and trembled as his arms clasped her. 
 " Hubert," she murmured, " at last I've redeemed all the 
 bitterness of those yesterdays ? Tell me that I have ! " 
 
 "You have more than done so," he answered; and then 
 he put his lips to hers, and a little later she heard him 
 whisper, " My love, my one inalienable love ! my wife that 
 soon shall be ! " . . . 
 
 But before they were married Angela insisted on signing 
 away every dollar of her dead husband's fortune to a few of 
 his nearest relatives. 
 
 "I come to you, Hubert," she said, "just as I would have 
 come in those other times. I was a poor girl then, you 
 know. I would have brought you nothing then ; I bring 
 you nothing now." 
 
 " You bring me everything now," he answered, " and 
 you are all the dearer because of destiny's trying delays ! "

 
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