/*
 
 
 4-5*-
 
 THE NEXT CORNER
 
 THE CREEPING TIDES 
 TIME THE COMEDIAN 
 AGAINST THE WINDS 
 THE NEXT CORNER
 
 A second self seemed to come to her ; a self of wisdom, 
 advising, helping her. FRONTISPIECE. See page 285.
 
 THE NEXT CORNER 
 
 BY 
 
 KATE JORDAN 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 
 
 WILSON V. CHAMBERS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1921
 
 Copyright, 1921, 
 BY KATE JORDAN VERMILYE. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published January, 1921 
 Reprinted January, 1921
 
 " Earth bears no balsam for mistakes ; 
 
 But Thou, oh Lord, 
 
 Be merciful to me, afooU" 
 
 2228453

 
 THE NEXT CORNER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PARIS. A June morning with the freshness and sweet- 
 ness of the wet, inner leaves of a young rose. Clocks had 
 just finished striking six. 
 
 In a room on an entresol that overlooked the uphill 
 Rue de Chaillot a young woman lay asleep. A pencil of 
 the sun had wavered in through the drawn persiennes, 
 had reached her and was rising by almost invisible prog- 
 ress over the rose-colored covering to her face. After 
 flickering across a bare shoulder that had slipped 
 from a gown as sheer as a veil, and touching a cheek 
 where wisps of whitish-blond hair clung, it gave a stab 
 at the closed lids whose fringes lay on her pallor like the 
 wings of brown moths. 
 
 At its touch they flew open. And they stayed open. 
 This was not a drowsy awakening. The wild look about 
 the room was a net that caught up details. 
 
 The place had the Gallic mixture of heaviness and 
 caprice to which were added notes that told of an alien 
 occupant. Mirrors were set wherever a mirror could be. 
 Antiquated, damask draperies around the bulging bed 
 had been tightly roped back for a free passage of air 
 through the wide-open windows. The cumbersome 
 armoires were so packed that ends of lacy and silken 
 skirts kept them from closing; American slippers lay 
 sideways with a coil of pale silk stockings just as they 
 had been flung off; a mass of gardenias had died among 
 a trail of silver ribbon on the bureau top in the company 
 of brushes, rouge pots and perfume bottles; midway on 
 
 1
 
 2 The Next Corner 
 
 the floor there was a telegram beside its jaggedly torn 
 envelope ; on a chaise longue a gown of smoky green tulle 
 sprawled in the semblance of a body in despair. 
 
 It was on the tulle gown that Elsie's gaze fixed itself. 
 She remembered what a recklessly happy heart it had 
 covered all through the night of mad frivolity, and with 
 what shaking hands after reading the telegram she 
 had managed to unhook it only a few hours before. In 
 its grotesque humanness it suddenly seemed to be herself, 
 stretched over there in abandoned grief. 
 
 Her arm shot up to her eyes and for a few seconds 
 stayed rigid, her teeth sunk into her underlip. 
 
 "Oh, well !" came from her with smothered desperation. 
 She squirmed from the bedclothes and went to the window. 
 
 On her journey across the big room she picked up the 
 telegram. When she had opened the persiennes a little, 
 she spread out the paper to read again the words she 
 knew by heart: 
 
 "Instead of going on with Cranston I am already on my 
 way to France to pick you up there. Bully that we can, 
 after all, go home together. I won't be able to get to 
 you before Friday evening. By going on the night train 
 to Havre we can get Saturday's ship, which I think is 
 scheduled to start early. Feeling tiptop, and hope you 
 are. Looking forward with much happiness to seeing 
 you 
 
 "ROBERT." 
 
 She went over this twice and standing there, dreaming, 
 the light on her face, she visualized the future she was 
 returning to by the past from which, nearly three years 
 before, she had escaped. 
 
 The picture of her childhood was a muddled thing, like 
 a spoiled wash drawing where people were ghosts. Of 
 her father, who had died when she was a baby, she had no 
 memory at all. She had grown up, the only child of Nina 
 Race. This persistently young and gifted mother was
 
 The Next Corner 3 
 
 a celebrated concert singer who traveled much and over 
 great distances, taking Elsie with her sometimes, more 
 often leaving her behind with a hueless sort of elderly 
 aunt as guardian. 
 
 But whether she went, dazzled and fatigued, with her 
 mother, or stayed with Aunt Esther who could not be 
 weaned from the whaleboned basques of the seventies and 
 who sucked lemon drops while through the whole year she 
 crocheted the things meant for Christmas gifts, her life 
 was spent in hotels ; second-class ones with Aunt Esther, 
 the best when with the successful singer. 
 
 An hotel child. She had come to see that there was 
 nothing on God's earth more unfitting and unfair. Eat- 
 ing, one of a crowd. Studying her lessons with the voices 
 of strangers beating on the thin doors between bedrooms. 
 Not only forbidden to play in the halls that had the in- 
 vitation of emptiness and expanse; always told to 
 speak even more quietly there. "Hush !" Oh, what a 
 shackling word that had been all through the forming 
 years, when her spirit was cramped in constantly 
 changing rooms that always bore a dreary resemblance 
 to each other; and where crowds looked at her only to 
 pass her over. 
 
 She saw other children in shops and streets and car- 
 riages, held to their mothers and kissed when they cried; 
 petted and kissed with delight when they capered and 
 laughed. No one kissed away her tears. Her passionate 
 heart, that cried for love as dry lips crave water, that 
 needed an idol on which to expend its glowing wor- 
 ship, was not of interest to any one except as an organ 
 to beat normally with health. Cats and dogs, and dolls 
 grown frayed from the endearments of her craving hands 
 were all she had as solace, and these only at times, because 
 of the shifting hotel life where so often pets were for- 
 bidden and dolls were mislaid or left behind. 
 
 Perhaps when she went with her mother to strange 
 cities it was a little more trying, especially after she was 
 sixteen. Nina, chronically juvenile in type, lovely, gay,
 
 4 The Next Corner 
 
 good-humored, was a magnet to crowds of friends, with 
 several men always on the edge of asking her to marry 
 them, or about to take to drink because she would not. 
 And then would come Nina's daughter like a fist-blow 
 statistic of Nina's age, a serious girl, thin as a wand 
 and with big, gray eyes, who seemed sullen, she said so 
 little; a guest who didn't "mix," and whose entrance sent 
 all the naughty sparkle out of Nina's parties. 
 
 The sense of misrelation to her environment had become 
 an agony to Elsie when at last a friend of Nina's, met 
 during a tour of the mining towns of the Northwest, had 
 found her worth drawing from her dumb shyness and try- 
 ing to know. As a result she had responded to Robert 
 Maury with an enthusiasm that had seemed to him and to 
 herself to be awakened love but that really had been the 
 gratitude of the rescued. Almost at once, mostly be- 
 cause it suited her mother's plans which were about to 
 take her through South America, she had married Robert. 
 
 He was of Scotch-Irish descent, thirty-seven now 
 and had always looked less than his years of good 
 height, spare and strong; light-moving, impulsive in 
 manner. His ruggedly cut face with steady blue eyes, his 
 bony jaw, his mouth, elastic and whimsical in humor and 
 like granite in decision, had been an honest declaration 
 of his nature as she had come to know it. He was a fair 
 dealer ; practical without hardness ; quick to feel affection 
 and reticent in expression of it ; of even and healthy pas- 
 sions that could be quenched as summer tempests and 
 instantly forgotten under the control of the mind; and 
 yet with a substratum of Celtic mysticism which could 
 fill him at moments with an ecstasy of vision of which he 
 rarely spoke. A man who had the curb upon every phase 
 of himself, his own master hardily and hers very gently. 
 
 Robert was a mining engineer with little money and 
 large prospects when, at nineteen, she had become his 
 wife. And for nearly four years she had lived with him 
 in forlorn mining settlements in the northwestern part of 
 the States and Canada, an experience as lacking to
 
 The Next Corner 5 
 
 her in color and the thrill of life as if she had been pent 
 up in a lighthouse. 
 
 During it she had borne a child; had loved it with all 
 the fierce, imaginative passion that was in her and that 
 her husband had never touched; had seen it grow into a 
 lovely toddler ; had seen it sicken ; had battled for its life 
 with a fairly blasphemous resistance against the Power 
 that could take it from her; had watched it die. 
 
 There had been a terrible year after that, when she 
 had felt herself a gray figure moving through the fogs 
 of melancholia, seeing always that little child change from 
 loving-eyed, warm, breathing flesh against her heart to 
 a sculptured thing with sunk-in lashes on marble cheeks 
 and tiny lips of steel. 
 
 And then a path had shown through the fog. Robert, 
 very successful now, had been selected by an English 
 mining syndicate as one of several men to report on mines 
 in Burmah. It was not an expedition to include women, 
 least of all such a ghost of a woman as she was then, so 
 he had left it to her to select where, with an attendant 
 nurse, she would live during his long absence. 
 
 Her mother was in Russia at the time, and Aunt Esther 
 had returned to her native Vermont village. She brushed 
 out both and with the freakish impulse of the sick had 
 selected Paris, for no reason except a recurrence of its 
 name in her thoughts after reading George Moore's "Con- 
 fessions of A Young Man." It had been a whisper at 
 first, then a tug and a demand. 
 
 Elsie took some listless steps to the mirror above the 
 bureau and studied herself. For nearly three years this 
 glass had reflected her face. Now that she was question- 
 ing it almost for the last time for this was to be her 
 last day in Paris she seemed to see many ghosts of her- 
 self there, as she had been in the beginning and through 
 the quickening experiences that had gone to the making 
 of the woman of twenty-six that she was on this last 
 morning.
 
 6 The Next Corner 
 
 How raw she had been at first; and drunk, innocently 
 drunk, with the joy of every simple day, crowded with 
 new things! 
 
 Health had come quickly and the nurse had been dis- 
 missed. Quickly, too, she had made friends. Not always 
 the right or best sort of friends, she well knew. At first 
 she had tried to keep her values clear and only come close 
 to men and women that she felt her husband would have 
 thought fit for her friendship. Soon, pliably, she had 
 come not to care what others were, providing they were 
 amusing. "Not to be bored" was the slogan of the cos- 
 mopolitan crowd who from various eddies had floated to 
 the part of the Paris stream that whirled her along. 
 
 She had not been wholly without purpose. Her voice, 
 an attenuated sort of inheritance from her mother, had 
 been trained fitfully. It was not a serious ambition with 
 her, and it had no market value. Truthful to herself, 
 she knew that after her arid childhood and the monotone 
 of her marriage she had been for these three years in 
 Paris a nervous devourer of life, large slices of it, with 
 many sorts of sauce upon them. With greed and fever 
 she had eaten them honestly, in the sight of all. Too 
 honestly. Few believed that her indiscretions were of 
 the surface, that the high flavors had only touched her 
 mental palate without as yet taking any healthy prop- 
 erty from the blood current. 
 
 Still while she was different from the married women 
 she knew, most of whom had lovers and several a cynically 
 easy succession of them, she was not quite on the other 
 side of the line.' Not as she had been. Not now. Not 
 to-day. The feeling that one has been close to the com- 
 mission of a wrong act can have much of the body of the 
 accomplished fault. So the telegram that she had found 
 waiting for her when she had come in close to dawn, 
 tossed, warm, with a man's first kisses burning on her 
 mouth, and that had fallen from her weak fingers, had 
 been like her husband's hand fastening upon her shoulder. 
 
 Now she flung it among the cosmetic and perfume
 
 The Next Corner 7 
 
 bottles. There was a desperate tilt to her head, a quiver 
 to her nostrils, the look of a last hope in a fight. 
 
 "If I don't go back? If I refuse?" she thought. 
 "Other women have burned the boats behind them. Were 
 they always sorry, afterward always? If I oh, if 
 I take daringly what I love, what I crave ?" 
 
 She lifted the gardenias. They were almost brown and 
 without scent except for a curious cigarette odor still 
 held in the trail of ribbon; this was unlike any of the 
 several sorts of tobacco popular in Paris; this was 
 Spanish, a pungent, enduring, woody flavor, that re- 
 called only one man Elsie knew, and she drew it in with 
 longing, her eyes shut. As she buried her face among 
 the flowers she was sorry that in the excitement of read- 
 ing the telegram she had left them to die. They had been 
 so like stars of white velvet last night. And in their 
 death they seemed also to be that night, mad and sweet 
 but lost, one that never could be again. 
 
 She was leaving Paris. She was going to-night. To- 
 night. 
 
 Her hands were very small and had a way of trembling 
 when she was agitated. They trembled now as her fingers 
 moved among the limp stems. She kissed them. A name 
 left her lips, faintly at first, then with a raging sadness 
 that shook her. It was not her husband's name.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SEVERAL hours hung on Elsie's hands before the ma- 
 chinery of the day would be set going. Her apartment, 
 though in an exclusive part of Paris with the great Arc 
 towering on its rise close by, and a high-priced one be- 
 cause of its situation, was very small, without a room 
 for a resident maid. Julie, her femme de menage, would 
 not appear until half -past eight ; and it would be another 
 twenty minutes after that before the fragrance of coffee 
 would come as the genial herald of the day's start. 
 
 The prospect was not to be borne peacefully. Elsie's 
 nerves were so responsive to her imagination they easily 
 became a fine torture to her. Besides, she did not mean 
 to waste even one moment of this last day in the city 
 that had wound its fibers about her heart. 
 
 Still in her nightgown, she sped to the brick-paved 
 kitchen where copper bowls and pans sparkled on the 
 walls with the effect of ornaments, and started the coffee 
 to percolate. While that was in progress she bathed and 
 dressed for the street, putting on a pink muslin that sent 
 a rosiness over the silver-gold hair, and a Leghorn hat 
 whose brim slashed her eyes with shadow. 
 
 She was sitting with her elbows on the kitchen table, 
 drinking the coffee listlessly when Julie arrived laden with 
 fresh croissants, fresh butter, a sheaf of purple iris from 
 the market outside the Madeleine and the morning letters. 
 Her eyes over the flowers became rigid black spots at 
 sight of Elsie. 
 
 "Madame?" she shrilled. "I did not imagine you would 
 open your eyes for hours. Is it that something's wrong?" 
 
 Julie had a deep love for her young mistress who was 
 
 8
 
 The Next Corner 9 
 
 talkative and happy over every small attention and never 
 found fault. She sympathized with her, too, in a manner 
 that was fairly that of a fighter, at having to live alone 
 "as if voila! she were already a widow !" And she 
 had the Gallic suspicion of a husband who could so settle 
 himself apart from his wife. It was no wonder that a 
 woman as lovely and seduisante as her young madame 
 should have men fluttering about her as bees after honey. 
 What would you? It was but natural! Any husband 
 might have expected this situation, she thought. And if 
 he lost his wife this absent American whom she had 
 never seen he would have only himself to blame. 
 
 "Serve him right !" she would conclude, her small teeth 
 shut, and in the thought felt herself a champion of all 
 women against all men, her own husband prominently in- 
 cluded. 
 
 Elsie decided to spare the good creature the grief that 
 knowledge of her departure would bring, until she came 
 back, when it would also be time to notify the Austrian 
 countess who had let the furnished apartment to her and 
 begin the complicated packing. 
 
 Lightsome, tender and delicious she looked to Julie's 
 adoring eyes like a big flower of gold and whitish-pink 
 against the flashing, copper-lined walls until she saw 
 her face fully, marked its dead pallor under the big hat. 
 
 "It's such a glorious morning," Elsie said, sadness 
 through one of her softly whimsical smiles. "I grew ener- 
 getic thought I'd go for an early walk." 
 
 She took the letters in one hand, a last morsel of 
 croissant in the other, and started for the door when 
 Julie's face, openly troubled, drew her back. "Qu'est-ce 
 qu'il y a, Julie? Pourquoi tu me regardes comme fa?" 
 she asked kindly. 
 
 "Something has happened something triste" said 
 the woman, hands on hips, head nodding. "I know that 
 look in your eyes, madame as if you saw down into a 
 grave !" 
 
 Elsie could not keep back a light rush of tears. She
 
 10 The Next Corner 
 
 thrust her head forward with a curving dart like a gull's 
 on starting to soar and laid her warm lips on Julie's 
 cheek. 
 
 "You dear Julie," she said, her arm along the sturdy 
 peasant shoulders, "you have been the kindest woman! I 
 don't know what I'd have done without you. I'll never 
 forget you " broke from her sharply as she turned 
 away. 
 
 "Madame?" This was muted, all dazed alarm. "It 
 is not that not that you are going to leave me?" 
 
 Elsie had gone. On the street the glow and freshness 
 took her breath. The morning was an etherialized pearl. 
 As her head sank back, swimming with sense of the beauty 
 about her, regret twisted more deeply into her. Oh, she 
 did not want to leave Paris! Why must it be? Oh, why 
 oh, why? 
 
 Cool and careful loving was never possible to her. 
 Whatever she took into her heart she cherished with fire 
 and depth. Her feeling for this city, that from the first 
 day had gladdened her, had exaltation in it. She could 
 understand a Frenchwoman dying to save it ; killing to 
 save it. Herself, this morning, would have taken it in 
 her arms if she could its sculptured loveliness, blue- 
 gray haze, leafy perspectives, fragrance and charm all 
 that made it Paris. 
 
 The sweep of the Champs Elysees between the full- 
 blossomed chestnuts showed only a few early work people, 
 motors with long distances between, and a trio of horse- 
 men on their way to the Bois for breakfast. Elsie gave 
 each of the riders a scrutinizing glance before making her 
 way to the mustard-colored metal seats under the trees, 
 and from which one of the aged women who had them in 
 charge was wiping the night dew. 
 
 It was as a sort of farewell ceremony that she gave the 
 caretaker the change from the two-franc piece with which 
 she paid for a chair and looked tenderly into the half- 
 blind eyes that flickered at her in delighted surprise while 
 the voice said fumblingly: "Je vous remercie, mademoi-
 
 The Next Corner 11 
 
 selle!" This sight of lonely old age on the youthful 
 morning kept her thoughts on their minor key as she 
 sorted her letters. 
 
 There was only one that tempted her to an immediate 
 reading. This was from her mother. And by experience 
 Elsie knew that any sort of surprise might spring at her 
 with the opening of the envelope. One received seven 
 months earlier had told her of the death of Nina's voice 
 from diphtheria ; and another, following shortly after, 
 had set forth in detail how, having lost her career and its 
 large income, she had married Percy Vining, fourteen 
 years younger than herself, who owned a millinery shop 
 on Fifth Avenue. That this one held something exciting 
 was evident at the first glance. It was in Nina's most 
 dislocated manner, a thing of dashes and underscorings 
 and exclamations: 
 
 "Elsie," it began, "I can't tell you how you are madden- 
 ing and disappointing me ! After all I said to you when I 
 was in Paris not a year ago you seem to have kept 
 on, until you have made a -fool of yourself about Don 
 Arturo ! I enclose you the anonymous letter that I've 
 just received, so you can see I am not imagining things. 
 Of course it's from some cat of a woman who is probably 
 crazy herself about that adorable Spaniard for you 
 see how just I am? No one admits more than I do all 
 his good looks and fairly uncanny fascination. All I 
 asked and still ask is that while I can't blame you 
 for having Don Arturo hanging about don't take him 
 seriously. My dear, you are so impulsive! In spite of 
 that cynical pose that the Paris game has taught you, 
 it's my belief that you could be an awful fool and make 
 some blunder that would bring life down on you in a 
 smash-up ! 
 
 "But I keep hoping that while it may be true that 
 wherever you go Don Arturo is at your heels, you won't 
 do anything to make Robert divorce you. If you do 
 you'll be ruined. For Arturo would never marry you.
 
 12 The Next Corner 
 
 I know this. Traveling all over this world as I've done, 
 I've got a line on all sorts of men. Among them I under- 
 stand Spaniards of Don Arturo's class and they are 
 not like anything else on earth. I lived a year in Madrid, 
 you know, and the sort of pride you meet among the 
 grandees makes all the other prides in the world look 
 like tin whistles beside a full string orchestra. Now your 
 Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de Burgos, is 
 a grandee of the first class. You don't get at his pride 
 on the outside because after two years at Oxford and 
 living practically ever since in Paris, he has sense enough 
 to mask it. But if } r ou could meet his family that 
 mother and sister of his who haven't traveled at all 
 one glance would show you what short work they'd make 
 of your hopes of marriage with him. I don't believe 
 they'd expect you to sit down in their presence unless 
 they told you you could. And y6u wouldn't laugh at 
 them either. This pride is so fixed, so old, it's solemn 
 sort of terrifying. 
 
 "I'll bet you're thinking that I'm such a fool for having 
 married Percy and his little hat shop, you're giving one 
 of your cool, shadowy smiles at all this advice. (Oh, I 
 can see that short upper lip go up!) But, just the same 
 / know my business. While Percy is thirty and I am 
 well, I'd die before I'd put it on paper! he looks older. 
 Also, he makes me laugh. Also he doesn't fuss because 
 I don't stick to one color hair. In fact, my Perce doesn't 
 expect anything of anybody and so he never gets left ! 
 Then, too, he has a snug little business. And best of all 
 he's a Roman Catholic and I married him in his church 
 so he'll never get away from me through any easy divorce. 
 From all this, don't you see how sensibly I've attended to 
 my future? My dear, I could bite a tack through with 
 my wisdom teeth, although people think me just a pretty 
 fool. 
 
 "I was so glad to get Robert's short letter saying he 
 was coming back within the month, though he could not 
 go on to Paris for you. Now I suggest I even beseech
 
 The Next Corner 13 
 
 you, Elsie to come now and be here ahead of him, to 
 greet him. Cable me, and I'll get rooms reserved at my 
 hotel. 
 
 "A last word! If you should do anything rash in re- 
 gard to Don Arturo that queers you with Robert, don't 
 look for assistance from me. As far as money goes I 
 haven't a cent left after my insane speculations, and 
 Percy's business only nets us an income on which we man- 
 age to live. Besides, sweet as the dear boy is, he would not 
 tolerate my taking you in with us. Couldn't stand the 
 father stunt too bridegroom^! 
 
 "For years, while Robert was a poor man, you lived 
 with him in those awful western holes and made him 
 happy. So don't lose him now when, as he tells me, he has 
 made a pile of money and is one of the directors of the 
 Burmah company. Robert's rich. And Arturo, like so 
 many of Spain's grandees, is deadly poor. That confi- 
 dential man of his Serafin, isn't it? told me as if it 
 were the most natural thing, that Arturo's sister and 
 mother live in a secret sort of poverty in just a wing of 
 the old casa senorial at Burgos so they can scrape enough 
 together to support him as a gentleman in Paris. The 
 idea of Arturo's working would be like sacrilege to all of 
 them. They'd faint at the suggestion! 
 
 "Now I've warned you, Elsie. Don't be a fool ! Come 
 home and be ready for your husband. 
 
 "Your little Muv who loves her baby." 
 
 Elsie read this with breathless interest until she 
 reached the advice tendered to the wife of a rich man in 
 love with a poor one. At this the cool smile spoken of in 
 the letter had raised her mutinous lip, as it had so often 
 in past years when at some break in her mother's mask 
 she had had a peep behind it. In the closing paragraphs 
 lay the whole meaning of this violent persuasion. It was 
 propaganda in the cause of dollars and ease. Reduced 
 to an essence it could have read : "Now that your husband 
 has wealth keep in with him, making him believe you love
 
 14 The Next Corner 
 
 him, though you may not. The other man has no 
 money." 
 
 And this was the conclusion she had, through the 
 undercurrent of her thought, been coming to ever since 
 she read her husband's telegram. Not because he was 
 rich and Arturo poor, but because she was herself. 
 
 She had no exact knowledge of all the phases of her 
 nature, but of one thing she had always been aware, 
 her lack of initiative. This was as plain to her as the 
 shape of her useless little hands. The new and perplexing 
 she had met easily and with success, because there had 
 been always the consciousness of some one as a wall back 
 of her, a brace, a shelter. In childhood, though she had 
 been perishing for affection, her safeguards had been her 
 mother and Aunt Esther. Afterward there had been 
 Robert, he, most of all. And though thousands of 
 miles from her for years, he yet remained her sureness 
 and her strength. Nothing could ever seriously harm 
 her while he found her precious. 
 
 Arturo? Ah, that was different altogether. With the 
 question there struggled up from some deep cave in her 
 spirit a reckless magnetism toward love with him along 
 strange paths. And yet the desire, now as always, coiled 
 on itself, much as one who, though knowing how to swim, 
 has a panic on venturing into water beyond his depth and 
 strikes home to the shallows where the feet, when they 
 choose, can feel the safe sands under them. 
 
 There was never clear sight of any goal with this lover 
 who had taught her the meaning of passion's intoxication. 
 All the paths with him were veiled, just as back of his 
 bitterly adoring gaze there was always something she 
 could not read ; something that belonged to traditions in 
 him unintelligible to her and that in a vague way he gave 
 the impression of living up to immutably. 
 
 No, there was nothing of surety with her lover. And 
 she was afraid of any venturesome step that might lead 
 some day to dangerous places where alone she would have 
 to face life in the raw, fight it with bare hands. The
 
 The Next Corner 15 
 
 wrong sort of training had turned her out a runaway 
 from results. This knowledge made her despise herself. 
 But it was there. It had to be faced. 
 
 Lost in her thoughts, she had kept folding the letter 
 over and over, finality in her downward look, and did not 
 see the rider who at sight of her pulled up his horse, then 
 came on close to the pavement at a walk. His shadow 
 was upon her before she raised her eyes and saw the face 
 that went with her in her dreams.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 DON ARTUBO slipped to the ground and with his free 
 hand lifted one of hers to his lips. 
 
 "Good morning," he said, adding very softly, "my 
 own, and my very dearest?" 
 
 Elsie left her hand in his. That it was cold and 
 quivered sent the glow of the master over him. He held 
 it a moment, then as passers-by were becoming more fre- 
 quent, dropped it and assumed a casual air. He knew 
 how to talk to a woman so that she could read his devo- 
 tion while to the closest watcher he would seem but casu- 
 ally attentive. 
 
 "I came in a roundabout way to ride past your house, 
 thinking you'd be fast asleep," Arturo said very boyishly. 
 "I never dreamed of seeing you out so early after getting 
 home so late. Maybe you were like me? too happy to 
 sleep?" He asked the question with a look of the most 
 intense love. His voice was languid, the tone rich; his 
 English, with the faintly emphasized exactness of the for- 
 eigner, that of the Oxford man. "Tell me, Elsie, was it 
 so?" 
 
 "I slept for a few hours. I woke up early." 
 
 "That is the way with love. It wants us to be awake 
 in the beautiful world that it makes for us. Ah and 
 isn't it beautiful?" 
 
 It was hard to have to tell him in this public place 
 what it was that had driven her out. Back of her soft 
 lips her teeth were set. She was recording every detail 
 about him to be remembered when she was far from him 
 in a different world, and divided forever. 
 
 He was twenty-nine. An air of ingenuousness would 
 disclose the boy in him. Sometimes the marks of emo- 
 
 16
 
 The Next Corner 17 
 
 tional experience of a silken depravity peeped out 
 and made him seem in the thirties. His gaze, with the 
 Spaniard's meditative sadness in repose, was often listless 
 or petulant. Though his riding clothes were very plain, 
 showed signs of use and were worn with carelessness, the 
 warm grace of the south that gives just a shade of effem- 
 inacy hung about him. His eyes were pure black, un- 
 muddied by the faintest brown, sparkling like cut jet 
 through a dreaming glow. His lightly-mustached lips 
 were sensitively curved, with deep descending corners and 
 with a smile that showed dazzling teeth and a mouth as 
 fresh as a child's. This smile came rarely through his 
 soft-lying gravity; when it did, it rose slowly to rest in 
 his eyes and deepen there musingly to the audacious 
 saying of things he would not dare put into words. 
 
 His Antinous-like beauty had two blurring notes ; a 
 look of cruelty as cold as steel that often moved over 
 the lips, flattening them, a look sometimes seen even on 
 the faces of beautiful Spanish women when watching the 
 blood-spilling of a bullfight ; and a thickness to the neck 
 that went sharply into shoulders too broad for his lithe 
 body that was but little above middle height. These 
 blemishes gave to his idyllic symmetry a look of sensual 
 aggression and strength that but heightened his attrac- 
 tiveness to women. 
 
 He radiated happiness as he went on brightly: "I'm 
 breakfasting with some men at Pre Catalan my 
 cousins. They leave Paris to-night. I'd have forgotten 
 the matter altogether if Serafin had not reminded me. 
 They would have been mortally insulted if I'd failed to 
 appear we Spaniards are so childishly oversensitive 
 about the politesse of life. Yes, if the engagement had 
 been with any one else, I'd have stayed in my bed " 
 His voice sank, his sultry eyes met hers with a message 
 that had the effect upon her of a passionate caress, and 
 words followed, all rushed and huddled together, " in 
 my dark room dreaming there of you, in the darkness. 
 Darling, darling of those last moments with you !"
 
 18 The Next Corner 
 
 She drank in the words. Perhaps in this brief meeting 
 on the Paris thoroughfare she was hearing his voice for 
 the last time. It seemed an uncanny, impossible, even a 
 wrong thing to imagine; and yet there it was, just ahead, 
 waiting, sure. 
 
 "What is the matter?" he asked suddenly, and from 
 the misgiving in his quickly widened gaze she saw he had 
 put his own interpretation upon her silence. "What's 
 become of all your brightness? It's strange not to see 
 you fluttering and jesting and laughing. But I under- 
 stand. You are regretting !" 
 
 The impatient words stopped when Elsie's hands went 
 up and down in a denial of singular hopelessness. "I was 
 going to send for you to tell you something, Arturo. 
 But seeing you now, I'll tell you " 
 
 "I do not want to hear it," broke from him coldly. 
 He straightened beside the horse. "I know what you'll 
 say. Haven't I listened to you for a year, during which 
 I might eat out my heart and show it to you, tortured, 
 getting your attention oh, yes, and even your invita- 
 tion, por Dios! yet never, until last night, permitted 
 more than a kiss upon your hand! I'm tired of that, 
 Elsie. I won't have it any more. You've got to stop 
 taking one step forward and another back. You are as 
 full of wretched love for me as I am for you. Your lips 
 told me that last night. Last night I found you. I shall 
 keep you. I intend to fill my life with your love !" 
 
 His ivory pallor had grayed with anger; he was dan- 
 geroiis in manner. Often he had looked at her this way, 
 as if his devotion were close neighbor to hatred ; as if, 
 since he could not conquer her, he wished to hurt her 
 cruelly to satisfy the exasperated need that was con- 
 suming him. And yet, as always, he managed to com- 
 municate to her the appeal of one hungry, demanding 
 bread. 
 
 "I won't be played with any longer. I'm a man to 
 keep what is mine once I am sure that it is mine." 
 
 When he would have mounted the horse she stood up
 
 The Next Corner 19 
 
 and went close to him. "You don't understand. Every- 
 thing's changed," she said, a joyless smile working over 
 her mouth, "and probably a good thing too for me ! 
 When I got in last night this morning there was a 
 telegram from my husband " 
 
 "Another?" he asked with curled lip and a look of in- 
 sult. "He is a man of telegrams ! He is made of bits 
 of paper !" 
 
 "Robert's coming for me." Her voice was faint, though 
 she met his stormy gaze steadily. "Coming to-night. I 
 leave here with him to-night. We sail in the morning 
 from Havre, for home." She gave an unhappy laugh, 
 a twitch to one shoulder, as she watched him. "I won't 
 annoy you any more, you see, Arturo ! I won't torture 
 you any more! You ought to be glad!" 
 
 He looked away from her. Intense quiet went over 
 him. His brows came down, and he fingered the bit as 
 if thinking only of its arrangement. 
 
 "So that's it?" he muttered and swung himself up 
 to the horse's back. "Very well," he shrugged. 
 
 Elsie remained looking up at him, feeling as if he had 
 flicked her face with his crop. She seemed thrust into 
 distance. 
 
 "You're not going without saying " came from her 
 with longing. 
 
 "Saying what?" he asked, his look dreary, enraged. 
 "What is there to be said?" 
 
 "Don't be childish, Arturo ! Don't blame me for what 
 I can't help," Elsie persisted. "We must part friends 
 oh, we must always be friends !" 
 
 "Will you be at home this afternoon at home to 
 me?" he asked with curt vehemence. 
 
 "I would, but Julie will be packing, and the woman 
 who owns the furniture will be there with her inven- 
 tory " 
 
 "Yes, that would be unfortunate," he replied, his suave 
 tone suggesting still deeper rage. "Well, then, there is 
 the Countess Longueval her tea. Will you be there?"
 
 20 The Next Corner 
 
 "I'd forgotten that! Yes, Arturo, I'll manage surely 
 I'll go." 
 
 "That will have to do then." He sat up straight, 
 musing for a few seconds, then bent swiftly to her with a 
 beseeching look. "I suppose it will have to do. I don't 
 suppose you would or, would you? lunch with me 
 somewhere, where we could be alone?" He swayed down 
 closer and gripped her shoulder in a storm of hope. 
 "Come with me to-day," and the whisper had fire in it. 
 "Will you? I know a place ! Will you, Elsie? On 
 this last day will you come with me, my darling? Let 
 me kiss you, bid you good-by so? Oh, you owe me that 
 for all my long love and patience. Don't you? Will you 
 come? Say yes, dear! Ah, do say it!" 
 
 In the morning sunlight, in the bustling day, his words 
 sent rapture over her, mixed as it was with guilt and 
 trouble. Steadying herself against it, she turned from 
 him. 
 
 "No. No." 
 
 "You won't?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You don't love me!" He pushed her off in a gentle 
 way, yet with his expressive fingers spread wide in the 
 force of excommunication. "You don't love me at all. 
 I could die for you, and you care nothing for me, nothing. 
 I don't believe," he said with a sneer, "it's in you to love 
 any man. You're a spirit without senses." 
 
 "I hope you are right !" she cried, her gray eyes 
 alight and fixed steadily on him. "Better for me if that's 
 true !" 
 
 Don Arturo sat quite still and stared ahead. When 
 he spoke again his voice was thick and had pain in it. 
 "Remember this," he said, remaining upright, only his 
 glance upon her ; "you have made me suffer what I have 
 never suffered for a woman before!" 
 
 He touched the horse, went from her at a rapid 
 trot and without looking back. Elsie watched him till 
 in the perspective the opposing lines of blossoms seemed
 
 The Next Corner 21 
 
 to make an arch over him and then fall behind him in a 
 curtain. 
 
 Half an hour later he appeared the gayest of the group 
 at breakfast. While he loved Elsie with a stubborn fire, 
 was savage and sick at the thought of losing her, this 
 did not shadow all moods nor interrupt his enjoyment as 
 a man with men; nor very soon prevent his meaningless 
 kisses from brushing the ear and the little finger of 
 Colette Le Nours, an eighteen-year-old dancer worshipped 
 on the boulevards, and who had left her table to join the 
 young Spaniards when they called to her in chorus. 
 
 She was markedly different from Elsie. She had a 
 brightly painted, gypsyish little face ; a rasping contralto 
 voice which poured out the coarsest argot of the Apaches 
 in an artless way that sent her audience into delighted 
 screams ; she also stuck out her tongue, or put it in her 
 cheek, or wriggled her thumb against her buttonlike nose. 
 She existed for Arturo for these rollicking, few moments ; 
 Elsie for many and serious hours later. One had her 
 place with him, though more briefly, quite as much as the 
 other. 
 
 They were still at the table and Colette had turned her 
 back on the rest for a duo with "ce beau Arturo," in 
 which she was a most businesslike pursuer and he a most 
 urbane and smiling dodger, when Serafin appeared, 
 coming toward the group, the unhurried ease of the Latin 
 mixing with a pervading deference. 
 
 His place in Don Arturo's life was an involved and in- 
 teresting one. Though he received wages, he was privi- 
 leged to a spurious sort of intimacy with his employer 
 a situation recognized amiably by the cousins present 
 his peasant mother of the mountains having supplied the 
 blue-blooded one with his first red-blooded nourishment. 
 The bond of affection between the Spanish ama and her 
 nursling is even more lasting than that between the chil- 
 dren of our own South and the black mammy, and it can 
 extend to her offspring if they are found agreeable or of 
 use. Serafin's usefulness was evident in the first look.
 
 22 The Next Corner 
 
 It seemed impossible that almost to a day he was Ar- 
 turo's age, for he seemed forty, very tall, angular, with 
 a long, priestly face, bold features and eyes with a Mon- 
 golian slant. They were arresting in their queerness, 
 those eyes, so sunken that with their wrinkled lids but 
 slightly lowered his face seemed a saffron mask ; when 
 they were open they showed as spots of fire in the bony 
 hollows ; their puckers at the lifted, outer corners gave 
 his look, even in repose, the speculative shrewdness of a 
 fox, so that he had earned this nickname and was called 
 by his intimates "Zorro" almost as often as Serafin. 
 
 Coming of Basque stock, of which the best business men 
 in the Peninsula are made, he had none of Don Arturo's 
 poetic sensuality, very little of his rooted weakness for 
 women that could so unnerve and distract his life. He 
 Was as practical in every instinct as a Birmingham fac- 
 tory owner. To this quality of mind was added six years 
 of business experience in the stock markets of New York 
 and Chicago. His passion was the accumulation of 
 money. At twenty he had left the service of Don Ar- 
 turo's family and gone to America after it ; there he had 
 made what to his peasant eyes was a large fortune, only 
 to lose it almost at once through greed in speculation 
 and had become for a time a nervous wreck. Practically 
 insolvent, venomously disappointed, he had returned to 
 the post still to be had with his former master. 
 
 For three years now, though still an ailing man, he 
 had been Don Arturo's valet, secretary, courier ; his right 
 hand, eyesight, cat's-paw, buffer or brain. He would have 
 been his conscience and heart, too, if required. But the 
 former was a word he never heard and would have puzzled 
 much about, and the latter a province whose affairs were 
 so much to Don Arturo's liking that this able assistant 
 was never permitted more than a sentry's peep through 
 the gate. 
 
 Removing his hat in a profound bow to all at the table, 
 Serafin bestowed a more intimate one upon Don Arturo 
 while remaining a short distance from his chair. "If I
 
 The Next Corner 23 
 
 might speak to you, Senor Marques?" he asked, some 
 significant thing most delicately conveyed in the tone. 
 
 Arturo rose, and with excuses to his cousins, as polite 
 as if they were all strangers at a formal meeting, moved 
 off with his man, turning almost immediately out of sight 
 around a thickly hedged path. 
 
 "You will be interested in this, senor" Serafin said 
 alertly, and taking a folded newspaper from his pocket, 
 he shook it out. His quiet eyes had their fox look marked 
 as he laid the fanged nail of a bony and tobacco-brown 
 finger on one paragraph. "Mir a! You did not know, 
 senor?" 
 
 Arturo read the few lines in the Paris Herald stating 
 that Robert Maury of the Ludgate and Burmah Mining 
 Corporation had been announced by telegraph as a pas- 
 senger on the Paul Lecat from Singapore that had 
 docked at Marseilles two days before. He was due in 
 Paris at an early date. 
 
 Colette Le Nours and every phase of the life she rep- 
 resented vanished from Arturo's thoughts as if she had 
 not existed. A blade seemed to twist through his heart. 
 Open desolation in his eyes, he fixed them upon Serafin. 
 
 "I already know about this," he said lifelessly. "As 
 I rode here I ran across Mrs. Maury, and she told me." 
 
 "Ah, si?" Serafin folded the newspaper again. 
 
 Arturo sat down on one of the benches against the 
 privet hedge and sank into thought. He looked past 
 Serafin for a full moment and then began to talk in a 
 carefully quiet tone and rapidly, his eyes fixed ahead, 
 only his lips moving to the patting rise and fall of one 
 hand against his arm. Serafin was listening as im- 
 movably. He was receiving exact directions, and his 
 replies were the brief ones of the intelligent agent who 
 reduces himself to a pair of ears. 
 
 They spoke in Spanish, Arturo in the lisping Castilian 
 of the Madrileno, Serafin with a more robust utterance, 
 that of the Basque country mixed with a few Cuban 
 and South American individualisms picked up in his
 
 24 The Next Corner 
 
 travels. The name of Mrs. Sidney Vrain and the Countess 
 Longueval occurred frequently, to which Serafin would 
 nod with an alert : "Si si, senor *t." 
 
 Arturo stood up at length. He gave a brief, sharp 
 shrug, his expression dull. "It will be quite useless, prob- 
 ably. Only the smallest sort of a chance that she will 
 help me in this." He went down the path to the res- 
 taurant, adding over his shoulder, "I'll get away from 
 here in a few moments and go home. You go to Mrs. 
 V rain's at once. She'll be just about rising, I imagine. 
 Tell her not to fail me. At four I'll expect her at the 
 Longuevals' for a talk at the end of the corridor, up- 
 stairs she knows." 
 
 Serafin assured him of obedience, saluted and departed.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE home of the Countess Longueval was one of the 
 loveliest of the ancient dwellings in the Faubourg St. 
 Germain. Elsie was glad that she was to see it once more. 
 As she made ready for the tea she imagined herself in its 
 garden, a place so quiet it seemed to be a part of the 
 deep country instead of a high-walled patch on a Paris 
 street. She saw its balconies set with tea tables, the 
 crinkled blinds of buttercup color drawn high on the open 
 windows so that they were as doors through which the 
 guests passed ; she saw the footmen in the Longueval buff 
 and silver and the bushes of forsythia, twinkling, golden, 
 making effective screens for an occasional bench placed 
 back of them in tete-a-tete seclusion. 
 
 The flare of yellow in this mind picture made her decide 
 to wear that color on this last day. Then, too, it was 
 one that Arturo thought charming for her. She recalled 
 his words a few months previous at a dance when she had 
 worn a cloud of lemon-colored tulle with beaten gold 
 hoops in her ears and a flash of the same from her girdle. 
 
 "This color brings out the yellow lights that always 
 lurk in gray-hazel eyes. I wish you'd wear it often, 
 Elsie. When your eyes are the pure gray your heart is 
 very cold and careful. They say pleasanter things to 
 me when they are gold." 
 
 And with this effect before her she began to make up 
 her face, for Elsie was tout-a-fait Parisienne in the 
 frank use of cosmetics. It did not in the least matter 
 that as turned out by nature she was a delicately lovely 
 type, with deep brown lashes a silken fringe around un- 
 shadowed eyes, and lips of coral pink. From the view- 
 point of her whim-following world a certain decadent 
 
 25
 
 26 The Next Corner 
 
 effect that could be gained only by artifice was far more 
 alluring than any ungarnished attractiveness. This was 
 smeared on real beauty as a glove is put upon the hand. 
 
 So Elsie sat before her mirror with pots, pencils and 
 brushes. She began by covering her skin with a white 
 cream and smoothing it down with powder. Melted black 
 pigment stiffened her lashes into borders of delicately 
 individualized wires and wiped out their natural brown, 
 the most intriguing touch following in the laying on of 
 bluish shadows on the lids so that the eyes looked from 
 them lengthened and languid. Rouge made the lobes of 
 the small ears blaze, and scarlet paste used freely on the 
 mouth had a flaunting invitation. When with patience 
 and care Elsie had disordered her hair into what ap- 
 peared unstudied airiness, the work was done; and 
 ethereal as this hair truly was a pale jonquil hue that 
 seemed dusted with white it deepened by contrast the 
 laid-on worldliness that it framed. 
 
 She was satisfied. She had become used to this changed 
 face with geranium-red mouth and drugged looking eyes 
 burning against its deathly pallor. She was now of an 
 accepted type. She was like all her friends. 
 
 Still, as Julie, with lids like fresh burns from weeping 
 at the prospect of parting from her, pinned a veil so that 
 it lay like a film scarcely lower than her brooding gaze, 
 a speculation quivered through the calm of habit, a touch 
 of drollery pulled at the garish mouth. 
 
 "Robert won't like me that's sure. He may even 
 ask me to wash my face!" There was amused patronage 
 in the conclusion: "He won't understand." 
 
 Earlier arrivals than Elsie had reached the Longueval 
 house. Among the first comers was Mrs. Sidney Vrain. 
 After a casual greeting to her small, dark-eyed hostess 
 who flashed like a jeweler's window and whose whitened 
 face had the impudent prettiness of a marmoset, she 
 sailed on her way as one well used to the place, and at 
 the top of the first stairway reached a corner partitioned
 
 The Next Corner 27 
 
 off by ancient tapestries. It was a spot arranged as a 
 lounge. Liquors and seltzer were on a ledge against the 
 wall. There were several small smoking tables, arm- 
 chairs and a divan as wide as a bed. 
 
 The place was empty. She had expected this. The 
 Marques de Burgos had a genius these days for making 
 her expect him and then, with graceful apologies, ar- 
 riving when he pleased. Mrs. Vrain pulled off one yard- 
 long, flesh-colored glove of such thin suede she gave the 
 effect of peeling the skin from elbow to hand, mixed her- 
 self a brandy and soda, drained it without pause, tossed 
 the pillows to a desired angle and with a cigarette taken 
 from her own gold case as large as one of the Tauch- 
 nitz novels beside which she laid it threw herself upon 
 them. She smoked thoughtfully, an ill-humored gaze fixed 
 on the turn of the stairs. 
 
 Those familiar with her would scarcely have known 
 that she was annoyed in any special Way, for she was a 
 chronically discontented being and showed it. Her walk 
 was always the most indifferent slouch. She would step 
 from a motor and let the fish tail of a tulle gown crawl 
 over yards of wet pavement or the dirt of theater lobbies 
 with no more concern than if it were a dishcloth; she 
 always flung things from her as if they were of no ac- 
 count, her gold chatelaine bag to her maid, or tips 
 to waiters, or her furs to her footman. They were all 
 treated with the soured sort of sullenness that was poi- 
 soning her. 
 
 She felt she had much to complain of. She was forty- 
 four. As if that were not bad enough, she looked it. 
 Her big body, in youth that of a powerful, lightly- 
 fleshed goddess, had grown fat with the blowsiness of the 
 overfed and sensuously inactive; a harsh redness was 
 spread over her skin; and veins that no beauty doctor 
 could rub out showed through layers of powder over the 
 puffy cheeks and thickened nose. There was of course 
 the way of self-denial that after prolonged marches could 
 have helped her back to much of the lost comeliness. That
 
 28 The Next Corner 
 
 was not a path with any invitation for Paula Vrain. As 
 her own words set forth: 
 
 "To cut out all the delicious alcohol pick-me-ups, and 
 the sweets and the sauces ; to keep walking and sweating, 
 and never knowing an easy moment at having your 
 chocolate in bed or lying down in the afternoon with a 
 novel that's a bit too thick for me, thanks ! I want 
 my old figure and complexion, but I want them while I 
 keep on living. For, my dear, I must have the fleshpots 
 I must, or go balmy and that's all there is to it." 
 
 The death of her attractiveness to men made her 
 secret bitterness ; that one man, once hers and still loved 
 wretchedly in silence, had slipped to the crowd who never 
 looked at her any more as a woman to be desired made 
 its core. 
 
 Arturo arrived at the rendezvous twenty minutes late. 
 He came with his unhurried, Castilian manner, voluble 
 in soft-voiced regret, intensely calm. Yet the jealous 
 eyes that watched him irritably noted a difference from 
 his usual self. Under his repose there was suspense, and 
 his skin had the dead sand-color that means pallor in a 
 dark face. Yes, something had gone wrong with him, 
 and he had come to her for help. Her red-brown 
 eyes burned harder. She was glad he was not happy; 
 that from some cause he was knowing pain like that 
 which she had come to bear through him. And yet, how 
 dear he was to her still and always would be! 
 
 It seemed to her then, as so often before, that powers 
 designedly complicating life must have had a hand in 
 the blending of such attractiveness as Arturo had. 
 There was no effort on his part, rather an amiable in- 
 difference that could be exasperating; still, on meeting 
 his eyes, or while wishing to meet them, one's will felt 
 glamour and was held. And this not only because he 
 had almost more beauty than should go to a man, for 
 she had known others as handsome who had never stirred 
 the pulses of women as he could. No, Arturo seemed to 
 her the complete illustration of the inscrutable thing
 
 The Next Corner 29 
 
 called charm. Else, why should she have loved him 
 so terribly, "have made", as she had often said, "a door- 
 mat of herself for him", been ready for the most final 
 open recklessness for his sake and only kept in bounds 
 by his smiling circumspection? Why? And not only 
 that past slavery; why should the mystery persist when 
 their affaire had a two-year-old gravestone over it, so 
 that she felt hope when he sought her in the most passing 
 way, and was only really miserable when he took pains 
 to let her see plainly the absolute death of all passion for 
 her? 
 
 This unanswerable "why" had brought her punctually 
 to a meeting with him to-day. And as she watched him 
 light one of his own Spanish cigarettes, its strange per- 
 fume the same that had clung to the silver ribbon on 
 Elsie's gardenias recalling their secret meetings of 
 other times, she ached to spend her despondent heart in 
 one of the fiery kisses that once had made heaven of life. 
 Gone. Lost. Dead. And she was a fool! 
 
 With this last reflection she sat up among the pillows 
 and gave a hitch to her skirt to show a slippered foot 
 that in spite of her weight, was slender and delicately 
 arched. "I came on time," she said flatly in the sulky, 
 rugged voice that once had fallen with a perverse sort 
 of pleasure upon Arturo's ears. "I don't flatter myself 
 for a moment that you wanted this tete-a-tete for just 
 me. I can be useful to you," she mocked. "What is 
 it? What do you want?" 
 
 "Don't trouble to say unkind things to me, Paula," 
 he said with cool reproach. "That sort of preface, to 
 which you are so inclined, ought to have no place with 
 friends." He leaned toward her. "Anything you'd want 
 me to do as a comrade, I'd do. And it is as a good com- 
 rade the only woman that I know that way that I 
 ask you to save me to-day." 
 
 "Save you?" She looked genuinely concerned. "Are 
 you in trouble, Arturo? real trouble? If you are, of 
 course "
 
 30 The Next Corner 
 
 He thanked her with a lift of the brows as only a 
 Spaniard could. "Not what you would call trouble, per- 
 haps. I don't need money and if I did, I should never 
 ask you, of course nor is there any danger or disgrace 
 threatening me. Just the same," and desperation hard- 
 ened his voice, "I feel like a man on whom sentence of 
 banishment has been passed. And there is a chance 
 just one that you might be able to delay it. Will you 
 do this for me, Paula? Amiga will you?" 
 
 "What is it?" she asked, the tone icy, for usefulness 
 to him as a friend and he had emphasized the amiga 
 was as sawdust on her lips. 
 
 "It's asking you to be very big and unselfish," Ar- 
 turo confessed, "but I know, Paula, that you can be like 
 that for me ! It is asking you to help me to a little 
 happiness with a woman I love, before she goes out of 
 my life forever." 
 
 She looked at him through a cold rage. Yet as he 
 had said "for him," so wholly was she still his, she 
 knew she was going to listen to more; even, it might be, 
 help him to his desire, though it contributed another 
 thorn to her unrest. 
 
 "I know who you mean at least I think I do. Elsie 
 Maury. And yet I can't believe you'd have have 
 the cheek to ask me !" She broke off, the fire of 
 misery in her look. 
 
 Arturo knew from experience how to meet the various 
 phases of her sick resentment. The only thing she could 
 not endure from him was aloofness that might end even 
 friendship between them. He drew away, a chilled, de- 
 liberate gaze studying her. 
 
 "Why shouldn't I ask you?" 
 
 "Because I hate her!" 
 
 "Why should you hate her?" 
 
 "Because you don't, I suppose," she said thickly. 
 
 "Is she to blame for that? Why not hate me, if you 
 must hate some one?" 
 
 "Oh, you make me seem such a fool !" Exasper-
 
 The Next Corner 31 
 
 ated, she drew herself nearer the decanter and lifted it 
 over a glass. 
 
 ^ Arturo's fingers, with the strength that delicate things 
 sometimes surprisingly have, the force of wire instead of 
 iron, went about her wrist. "You've had enough brandy. 
 It excites you. Wait till we finish, Paula. Then I'll 
 drink with you in gratitude if you are kind ; in a prop- 
 erly chastened spirit, if you are not. The latter is the 
 more likely I can see!" 
 
 She pulled her wrist from him and sat back obediently. 
 "Am I permitted a cigarette?" she flashed, and lighted 
 one, her hand trembling against her will. "I can't 
 imagine what you see in her," followed, venom in 
 the shut-in tone. 
 
 "Of course you don't! But does that matter? It 
 isn't necessary is it?" 
 
 "It's her blondness that gets you. For she's not 
 pretty. Not what you'd really call pretty!" 
 
 "No, she's worse than that." 
 
 "She hasn't the ghost of a figure!" 
 
 "I hate figures," said Arturo serenely. 
 
 She winced, conscious of the flesh above her laced-in 
 waist. "Then you are different from most men," she re- 
 torted. 
 
 "You are beginning to flatter me." 
 
 She sat very silent after this, smoking in a busy, ner- 
 vous way, and suddenly the tears stole down her cheeks. 
 As she threw the cigarette from her and covered her face 
 with her open hands, hands so illustrative of her life 
 burdened with rings, fleshy, with beautiful nails and nico- 
 tine-stained finger tips a quiver of real sympathy went 
 over Arturo's face. He left his chair and sat on the divan, 
 close to her. 
 
 "My dear Paula, my dear girl!" He drew down one 
 of the hands and patted it, while with the other she 
 pulled from her girdle an expensive handkerchief that 
 seemed a rag of lace and dabbed carefully her blackened 
 lashes. "What's the use? I want your friendship, I
 
 32 The Next Corner 
 
 want it terribly, and as a friend I'd do anything on 
 earth for you. I am not worth the other, my dear. I 
 tell you that honestly. I am not worth it." 
 
 "What do I care," Paula demanded wildly, "if you 
 are worth it or not? It wasn't your worth that began 
 it, heaven knows! It's just that I can't seem to 
 get over it as you have." She flung her arm suddenly 
 about his neck. "Haven't you any love left for me 
 none? I am so miserable, worn out with longing for 
 what has gone. Nothing matters to me. I hate every- 
 thing! Do kiss me once, for memory?" she begged 
 brokenly. 
 
 He drew down her arm gently. Her eyes fell under 
 his serious gaze. She knew the most final defeat. 
 
 "Too much in love with your Elsie to forget her for 
 even a moment?" she mocked. 
 
 Arturo stood up. "It was a mistake to come to you, 
 Paula. I did not know " He broke off and added 
 with great kindness: "I'm sorry you are so unhappy. I 
 cannot help it. And remember this I am unhappy, 
 too." As he reached the entrance curtain he paused 
 sharply and came back. "One thing I want to make 
 very clear to you, though. Don't suppose from what 
 I've said that Elsie and I have had an affaire. Oh, no, 
 indeed," he said vehemently. "Make no mistake about 
 that. She has been a bit provocative, shall we call 
 it? but a model in wives, I assure you! There was 
 just a chance that you " He looked down at her 
 thoughtfully. "No matter that's past!" 
 
 "What do you mean by saying she's going out of your 
 life and all that rot?" Paula suddenly demanded, her 
 glance not meeting his. "Has her mother called her back 
 to America?" Her voice showed new hope. She had not 
 dreamed of such a satisfactory result from her anony- 
 mous letter to Nina. "Is she sailing at once?" 
 
 "Yes, but her mother has nothing to do with it. How 
 could you think that what that wax doll might say 
 would matter? Ah, no; it's her husband. Quite a dif-
 
 The Next Corner 33 
 
 ferent tea party, as you English say. He gets here to- 
 night and by to-morrow she will be on her way to 
 America." His voice had been growing dull. "As 
 surely as I stand here, I know that once Elsie goes I will 
 never see her again." 
 
 "You know it?" she shrugged in angry impatience, 
 "how can you know it?" 
 
 "I feel it. Premonitions of that sort with me are never 
 wrong." 
 
 "America is only five days away on a fast ship " 
 
 "I shall never go to America. I know that, too." 
 
 The sound of voices below had been strengthening 
 louder laughter, dashes of music, and now stragglers 
 were mounting the stairs. Paula, as she regained her 
 composure, even felt a spurious sort of happiness. With 
 an emphasis of gesture she mixed herself an especially 
 strong brandy and soda, of which she felt in need. 
 
 "Come here, Arturo. Sit down again," she said 
 briskly, and as he did so she gave him a hardy grin. 
 "I'm a silly ass sometimes ! Don't mind what I said. 
 It's true that I've somehow kept on remembering what 
 you've forgotten, and at times it gets back at me, gives 
 me an awful knock, but when I said I hated everything 
 I was a liar. Oh, there's a lot to live for yet, even 
 without a grande passion. This, for instance," and she 
 lifted the glass. "Now what do you want me to do? If 
 it isn't too hard ! You don't want me to abduct the 
 immaculate one for you, I hope?" 
 
 Arturo seized her arms. She would have given a good 
 part of her wealth to have called there for herself the 
 unabashed longing that in a second transformed his 
 face. 
 
 "I've decided to go on to Spain with my cousins to- 
 night. They'll go straight to Burgos, but I'll go to the 
 mountains, to El Miradero. All I ask you to do is to 
 accept my invitation to come up there in a few days for 
 a fortnight and persuade Elsie to ask her husband to 
 let her wait over and come with you."
 
 34 The Next Corner 
 
 "That's all?" she asked in mocking dismay. "A 
 pretty large order, I call it!" 
 
 "You can manage it, Paula. Get Elsie to ask her 
 husband to let her stay behind him just long enough for 
 her to see Spain she never has and both of you 
 come a few days later. Sidney won't be back from 
 yachting for another month, so there's nothing to pre- 
 vent your coming. And you, who know El Miradero, 
 who loved its beauty surely you can tempt her to make 
 this effort. Only delay her return to America! That's 
 all I want. I don't look beyond that. Probably," he 
 added bitterly, "I could bear her going then, when I'd 
 got used to it. I feel all astray with myself now, from 
 the suddenness of it." 
 
 "As a matter of fact," Paula drawled thoughtfully, 
 "I'm leaving for a few days' visit to Sidney's sister at 
 Bordeaux you know she married oodles of money 
 all that wine business down there. And I thought that 
 after it I'd have a little whirl at San Sebastian before 
 coming back here " 
 
 "Well, there you are!" came joyously from Arturo. 
 "Just keep to your plans. Elsie could join you at San 
 Sebastian directly en route to me !" 
 
 Paula sipped and thought again silently for a mo- 
 ment, "Quite easy," she said. "But let me tell you 
 something I think you're a fool to get any deeper into 
 this affaire. Elsie Maury's the sort to play around fire 
 let her get burned though, and it would be a tragedy 
 for you both. She has the enlarged kind of conscience. 
 I've met other Americans like that an unfinished race ! 
 Will you take my advice and let her alone? Or," she 
 added slowly with some intense meaning, "will you risk 
 having her on your hands for life?" 
 
 "You sound clairvoyant. I've told you I have no 
 plans I only want to delay her going." He said this 
 sadly, musingly. 
 
 She moved to replace the glass. A smiling and faintly 
 sinister cunning passed over her face. When she turned
 
 The Next Corner 35 
 
 to him her eyes were businesslike. "All right then, if 
 you insist. I'll do what I can." 
 
 She stood up, powdered her nose, used her lip stick 
 and lifted the skinlike gloves. "Will you see her now 
 she must be here or do you want me to see her first?" 
 
 "You speak to her first." The words were faint and 
 thick with feeling. He followed her into the corridor, 
 laid his hand on her arm, and she felt its burning 
 through the chiffon sleeve. "Get her to come with you 
 to El Miradero, and Paula I'll be your servant as long 
 as I live!" 
 
 "Thanks," she said drily, adding: "I mean to help 
 you thoroughly. That's the way I am ; absolutely 
 indifferent, or a mistress of detail who spares no pains !" 
 
 As she went down the stairs, her eyes, steadily lifted 
 to his, were smiling in their kindest way. 
 
 She found Elsie, in the midst of her golden gown, seated 
 close to a great vase of lilies in an inner room. 
 
 A boyish Hindoo, who was the son of a Maharajah 
 and very much the fashion of that spring, hung about 
 her, worshipping her fairness, as he often did. He had 
 been bending his turbanned head to talk softly to her 
 for the last ten minutes, but his slumbering black eyes 
 were without content. He could see that she scarcely 
 heard him. Her gaze wandered ; her replies were absent. 
 He knew that when the Marques de Burgos came she 
 would be different, awakened; and that for the rest of 
 the time there the young Spaniard would keep close to 
 her. 
 
 Of the specific pain of this waiting to Elsie he did not 
 guess. It was her last chance to see Arturo. She had 
 come early, expecting to find him there, eager to make 
 the most of every moment with her. And -as yet he had 
 not sought her. As his last words kept coming back to 
 her, she began to believe she would not see him at all: 
 "You have made me suffer what I have never suffered 
 for a woman before," he had said. And so, perhaps that 
 was to be her last memory of him through the future far
 
 36 The Next Corner 
 
 away from him? Well, if it had to be ! She must 
 conquer herself. It was only accepting the inevitable a 
 little sooner than she had expected. 
 
 Her depression had grown fixed when Paula Vrain 
 sailed up to her, aglow and smiling in a way that was 
 unusual. She greeted the Hindoo and then put her arm 
 about Elsie's waist, schoolgirl fashion. 
 
 "Come along o' me, dear. I want to have a talk with 
 you," and when she had whisked her to a quiet spot be- 
 hind a stairway she hurried on without preface: "I'm 
 going to Arturo's shooting place up in the Cantabrian 
 mountains. He's often told you of his little house, El 
 Miradero. Now you're coming too, aren't you?" 
 
 "Why, no." 
 
 "No? Why not?" 
 
 "This is the first I've heard of it, and besides " 
 
 "Oh, I know I" Paula rattled on. "He meant it to be a 
 piquant surprise to-day. He told me to insist on your 
 coming with me. I'm not to take 'no' for an answer!" 
 
 "When did he tell you that?" 
 
 "A moment ago. He's here. He told me all about 
 how you were expecting to leave to-night for America 
 and the poor boy is too miserable to ask you, himself. 
 So, as I and a few others just who they are I don't 
 know ; Spanish probably are to be there, he begged 
 me to come to you as his missionary. Don't disappoint 
 him, Elsie ! Get another furlough from your husband 
 just two weeks more. I'm going for a few days to San 
 Sebastian and will motor from there to El Miradero. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, it's so lovely!" she ran on with an en- 
 thusiasm that was secretly fatiguing her. "All of Spain 
 is worth while so romantic so queer ! It would be 
 a burning shame to go back to the States without seeing 
 it and under such conditions ! In the towns and 
 we two might stop over a night or two on our way back 
 there are the serenos, as they call the night watch- 
 men, in long cloaks and hoods and carrying lanterns, who 
 sing a drowsy sort of song that all's well and clear
 
 The Next Corner 37 
 
 for all the world like an opera scene. The tune goes like 
 this " and she hummed it : 
 
 F&I r c _f_i 
 
 - f T F=j 
 
 it * 
 
 see 
 
 
 
 "The mantillas are lovely too ! And the boinas 
 they're the scarlet caps of the countrymen and oh, 
 the masses of carnations of every tint that one sees 
 everywhere the girls go along with them stuck in a 
 corner of their mouths, and the men in their hats, and 
 I've even seen them sticking out of the guns of the 
 carabineros! 
 
 "You see I was at El Miradero three years 
 ago. It's up on a terribly rough, steep mountain. You 
 seem at the end of the world, looking down through the 
 clouds. A gorgeous view! You've never known what 
 solitude and stillness mean until you stand there. Mira- 
 dero means watch tower, and that's exactly what it is. 
 Not a thing passes down that mountain road but a huge, 
 jingling mule coach that Arturo relies on altogether, 
 he hasn't a horse or vehicle on the place. You know 
 he's deadly poor and he goes up there to the simplest life. 
 During the summers his mother and sister live at an 
 ancestral, awfully run-down country place about five 
 miles away. This is the only time in the whole year that 
 they have a chance to be with Arturo, and when he's 
 alone they drive over in an ancient barouche to see him, 
 or he goes on a rough tramp to them. 
 
 "I got a squint at them once, and I assure you it did 
 me for all time! The old marquesa, Dona Jacinta, 
 looked for all the world like some queen's marble effigy 
 that had got slowly off its tomb and robed itself in the 
 most solemn black. The sister, too Magdalena is 
 the most amazing stick! She's five years older than 
 Arturo and spends most of her life on her knees in the
 
 38 The Next Corner 
 
 great cathedral at Burgos. Servants a pack of them 
 that I'd like to bet are honored to serve for next to 
 nothing trail about after them, carrying their prayer 
 books and reticules and scent bottles and little parasols. 
 But you won't be bored by the family. They never appear 
 unless sure that Arturo is absolutely alone and uncon- 
 taminated by his friends. 
 
 "Oh, you've no idea how fascinating he is at El Mira- 
 dero ! So simple, so real, in the roughest of clothes 
 exactly like a boy on a holiday ! And all Spaniards are 
 at their best once you step under their roof. I'll fetch 
 my new car and Athenee, so even if I crowd the little 
 house you and I will have all the comforts. You needn't 
 bother bringing a maid, you see. Athenee will do every- 
 thing for us both. Just a two weeks' entrancing 
 Spanish holiday, Elsie, and as the Vance Hamiltons are 
 sailing about then for New York, why not get your pas- 
 sage on the same ship? Now are you game? Is it a 
 
 go?" 
 
 Elsie had allowed herself to be carried on by the 
 stream of words. They unfolded alluring pictures before 
 her and eased her heart. Arturo was close to her, think- 
 ing of her, and she felt sure this mountain visit was a 
 quickly arranged plan so that he might not lose her at 
 once. Of course she could not go and how she longed 
 to ! but it gave meaning back to life that he had not 
 gone from her in rage, leaving her with an aching sense 
 of emptiness and futility. 
 
 Paula, who had declared that she was not pretty, 
 realized unwillingly in that moment how she was some- 
 thing more even than beautiful. She had never seen a 
 face so changefully vivid. She loved and understood 
 music, and as Elsie sat there, absorbed, she saw in the 
 veiled eyes ardors that touched her, as in sublime har- 
 monies, the burning trouble of the overture to "Tristan 
 and Isolde," the renunciation that floated, oncoming and 
 receding, through the Meditation of Thai's. 
 
 "I can't go." Elsie said this without force, yet posi-
 
 The Next Corner 39 
 
 tively. "And it may be years before I see Paris again." 
 A 'cello in the distance was playing Rudolph's attic 
 song from "La Boheme." As she listened, a pang went 
 over her face. "It's all wrong, of course. I'm dam- 
 aged! I should not have stayed here to become what I 
 am. I should have insisted on going to Burmah to 
 Robert. I didn't. Then I grew to love it here too much. 
 And now it's punishing me. I want it and nothing 
 else. I dread what I'm going to. I've grown away from 
 it all." Her lips came shut on a sharp sigh. "But I've 
 got to go." 
 
 "Tell me why," Paula demanded. 
 
 "That's my life. This has been my playtime. My 
 husband gets here to-night. We leave at once. I'm all 
 packed. I'm going." 
 
 "Going when you don't want to? What rubbish!" 
 
 "I ought to want to," Elsie protested, "and in one 
 way, somehow, I do. My husband is one of the kindest 
 men in the world, Paula. I'll go home with him and 
 never let him know that it's an awful pull to leave 
 what I've grown used to." 
 
 For a while they sat silent, Paula pouting and som- 
 nolent. Elsie's face, showing each fugitive thought in- 
 tensely in its passing, looked moody and driven as she 
 began, dreamily, to speak again: 
 
 "I wonder how I'll feel when I'm really gone? I 
 wonder ! . . . I've been happier in Paris than I ever was 
 in my whole life, except when I had my baby." 
 
 "Oh, yes, you did have a baby; I remember your tell- 
 ing me," Paula said, vaguely polite. 
 
 "Letty. . . . Almost three when she died." The 
 deep thrill in the simple words gave them majesty. "I 
 haven't missed her here as I will again in America. If 
 I were only going back to her !" 
 
 "Of course," came from Paula through a bitten yawn. 
 "But, d'you know, I never felt that way about my two? 
 The girl's a little liar and a peacock, and the boy's a 
 glutton," she peacefully declared.
 
 40 The Next Corner 
 
 Elsie felt herself draw in, rebuffed and chilled by the 
 words, by the whole air of the speaker's big body, 
 detached, lounging, bored. 
 
 After another dead pause Paula gave a lunge up and 
 straightened. "Well ! So you'll really go without 
 ever seeing El Miradero?" 
 
 "I must." 
 
 "You're tiresome ! talking as if you can't please 
 your husband and yet have your own way. You're not 
 so dull," she drawled with mocking astonishment. "Put 
 it to him that you've not seen Spain, that there will 
 never be a chance like this again as there never will ! 
 then swear to sail home with the Vance Hamiltons 
 in about two weeks or so. Can't you do that?" 
 
 "No !" 
 
 "I could and I'm not a quick-witted Yankee. Do 
 have a shy at it anyway for my sake," she urged, 
 adding as she stood up, "There's Arturo. I'll send him 
 to you," and she slouched away, swinging her bag.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IT was close to five o'clock when a taxicab stopped 
 before the apartment house on the Rue de Chaillot from 
 which Elsie had set forth a half hour earlier for the 
 Longueval tea. A cowhide trunk, of shining darkness 
 from use and mottled with the gay labels of the Orient, 
 was strapped upon it; a few valises of the same sort 
 banked the interior. At a glance they were all a man's 
 belongings, and the owner, Robert Maury, sat among 
 them. 
 
 He was in tweeds of a few years' previous cut that hung 
 upon him in an overloose way. With skin browned to 
 coffee color, he looked healthy in spite of the emaciation 
 that had come from hard work and a wasting strain on 
 the body through great and humid heat. 
 
 He was a big man, lean, flexible, with black hair 
 that had the glitter of gray on some of its small ripples. 
 His shoulders were spare, very broad and so absolutely 
 level they were bladelike ; with them went the torso of one 
 who has spent much of his life in the saddle, swung 
 back, so that as he walked, and even through a coat, a 
 cleft would appear along the spine between the powerful 
 muscles ridged on each side. He had an impulsive, jerky 
 way of moving, not without grace, and this showed as 
 he plunged down his head to give a glance of inquiring 
 interest at the windows of the house before which the cab 
 had stopped. 
 
 "Entresol the floor above the street she often 
 said that in her letters," he thought, his look tenderly 
 quizzical as he added: "With the pink ruffled blinds, of 
 course. That must be it. She's there." 
 
 He had grown used to humming and whistling at his 
 
 41
 
 42 The Next Corner 
 
 work in the solitudes, and as he sprang out he wanted to 
 sing, wanted to shout up to the near-by windows with the 
 rosy blinds, "Elsie hi oh!" as he often had when 
 riding home to her in the old mining days in the American 
 Northwest. 
 
 He checked the desire, as he had been subduing so many 
 of his impulses to the formality of shipboard since em- 
 barking at Singapore. He was in Paris, its exquisite and 
 permanent finish the result of a dozen centuries ; no longer 
 an individual in a wilderness, he was one of a vast and 
 conservative herd, ruled by herd laws that made all move 
 in public with the one step and the one composed look 
 whatever the heart might feel, whether of good or ill. A 
 restraint from this consciousness was growing every mo- 
 ment. 
 
 So instead of shouldering most of his luggage as he 
 would have liked, he permitted the professor-like con- 
 cierge, with side whiskers and alpaca cap, to carry it up. 
 And when this was done, instead of telling the cocker what 
 a treat to eyes tired of Asia was his face, like a big, 
 pink and white cherry, his white glazed top hat and the 
 full-blown tulip in his tightly buttoned light overcoat, he 
 contented himself with bestowing on him a pourboire that 
 brought the hat off in an emotional flourish, since it was 
 an appreciation far more to his liking than any returned 
 wanderer's spoken enthusiasm would have been. 
 
 "Ah, ces Americains! Toujours genereaux!" he splut- 
 tered joyously as he climbed back to his seat. 
 
 Robert found Julie at the open door of the apartment, 
 staring at his luggage. She removed the stare to him, and 
 before he could speak began a scurry of surprised sen- 
 tences which Robert's school French went limping after: 
 
 Oh, what ill luck that Monsieur Maury had not in- 
 formed madame that he was coming earlier than he had 
 previously stated ! Madame's trunks were all ready, 
 and a truck from the hotel around the corner was to come 
 for them after dinner and take them to the train but 
 madame was out! Madame would not of course have
 
 The Next Corner 43 
 
 gone oh, not at all for a single second ! if she had 
 dreamed of monsieur's coming so very far ahead but 
 would monsieur be so good as to come right in to the 
 salon? and it was this way, if he pleased Ah, was 
 that his foot? What a misfortune! The stingy, 
 Austrian lessee of the flat had already turned off the elec- 
 tricity, so would he be very careful and keep along by the 
 wall as the hall was so dark and so full of madame's 
 things ah, that was well ! She would pull up the salon 
 blinds now, and clear a chair for monsieur like that! 
 And would he not have some tea or coffee or sherry or 
 whiskey as there was some left of everything while 
 he waited for madame? 
 
 Robert had followed her obediently through the almost 
 black hall, stubbing his toe against one low trunk and 
 his elbow against a high one. Trunks. Only trunks to 
 greet him! He found himself looking at them in stupe- 
 faction. Elsie was not there, but her trunks and 
 surely there were a dozen of them were like hillocks in 
 the place. The warmth sank out of his blood as he gazed 
 about the strange room from which every personal pos- 
 session of Elsie's had disappeared. A chilling sense of 
 intrusion and detachment crept over him. 
 
 When he had found that he could come hours earlier 
 than his telegram had stated, he had not hesitated to 
 hurry on, impelled to it by one picture, the delight of 
 standing suddenly before Elsie, seeing her wheel to him in 
 surprise with the well-remembered little squeal of joy that 
 she used to give sometimes ; this to be followed by her 
 childish jump into his arms for she had always been 
 much of a child with him when she would croon into 
 his neck at the delight of meeting. It was so he had re- 
 membered her. 
 
 He sat down, very meekly, it seemed to Julie. She 
 would have liked him better if he had shown temper at his 
 wife's absence. That would have been unreasonable, of 
 course, but Julie liked men to be very unreasonable in 
 their demands on the love of women. She did not realize
 
 44 The Next Corner 
 
 that he was dazed by a doubt that had come with full 
 clearness before him for the first time. Would he find 
 his wife changed? Not only changed in small things; 
 would Elsie be a different sort of woman? He had had 
 glimmers of this possibility often before but had been too 
 busy and too tired for progressive analysis in his reveries 
 over her hasty, mildly affectionate, sometimes lengthy and 
 sometimes brief letters. He had always' seen her as she 
 was in the photograph that stood on the bureau in his 
 bungalow, her pale hair, with the look of whitish dust 
 upon it, parted over her serene brow and knotted low; a 
 round-necked frock showing the swaying throat above 
 which the small head was poised so winningly ; about her 
 the purity that had always suggested to him the restful- 
 ness of a church, the light of tapers, lilies in pale hands. 
 So she was in that picture and so she had seemed to him 
 from the beginning when he had met her just past child- 
 hood among her mother's card-playing, cocktail-drinking 
 set, pensive and interested, uncritical of what her deeply 
 gray eyes rested on, yet separate from it. 
 
 And now ! These trunks ? This maid with the cun- 
 ning and schooled look whose study of him his sharp eyes 
 had noted? Most of all, the old, soaked-in fragrance in 
 the air not of flowers, for to that he would have re- 
 sponded but of some cloying essence related to the 
 sense-awaking, muscadine sweetness of the East used by 
 the native women who danced and bargained, or bar- 
 gained without dancing? Slightly as he had known the 
 Cyprian world, and that only through curiosity at long 
 intervals, he felt an aura of distaste go over him to be 
 reminded of it even by a perfume, on entering the home 
 that had been his wife's for three years. 
 
 "Where has Madame Maury gone?" He asked this 
 very clearly. 
 
 "Oh, merely to a large tea at the Countess Longueval's 
 on the Rue de Lille, over on the other side of the river," 
 Julie hurried on, anxious to help her mistress, for the 
 open scrutiny of this man's light-blue eyes began to im-
 
 The Next Corner 45 
 
 press her. "Ah, it was the last chance to say good-by to 
 so many friends, monsieur. Madame is so much a fa- 
 vorite! Ah, truly she has many friends to lament her 
 going. As for me," and the sincere tears showed, "I can- 
 not think of what my life will be without my adorable 
 young madame. Desolate! Nothing nothing at all! 
 All, le bon Dieu!" 
 
 Robert's hand went toward his pocket at this outburst, 
 then sensitively he decided to defer material approval of 
 such real devotion until the hour of parting. 
 
 "I quite understand your regret," he said, and asked, 
 "What number on the Rue de Lille is this house?" 
 
 Julie gave it, adding, "Shall I not telephone to madame 
 there, to return at once, and ?" 
 
 "On no account !" 
 
 The low-toned decision was that of the master and sent 
 him up in her opinion. This man was not a meek sheep. 
 She saw that now. He had fire in him, kept out of sight. 
 A quiet man on the surface that was all. It was then 
 very well that the chere, petite madame, was leaving be- 
 fore matters had gone any further with that young 
 Spaniard who cared not who saw the desperate almost 
 angry love for her in his gaze ah, and Dieu, what an 
 adorable man! She could, herself, be quite insane about 
 him. But it was best there was to be a sudden end of 
 him, for this big, brown stranger with the fagged eyes, 
 though he could keep the world between him and his wife 
 for so long, was not one to be played for a fool. Oh, no, 
 not at all ! And the Spaniard, fashioned though he was 
 to pull a woman's heart out of her, was not to be trusted 
 to last in the daily wear and tear of life. That she had 
 always felt! 
 
 She renewed her offer of tea to Robert. He refused it, 
 adding : 
 
 "I'll smoke here a few moments. Afterward, if you'll 
 be good enough to show me, I'll freshen up a little from 
 the train, and perhaps look in at the Rue de Lille." 
 
 "Bien, monsieur! Just in here votta? is the
 
 46 The Next Corner 
 
 water and fresh towels." She hurried away, her look 
 secretly anxious. 
 
 And as Robert smoked in the room made cheerless by 
 the impending departure, the prettiness of it spoiled by 
 trunks, hat boxes and frippery rubbish arranged in heaps 
 for discarding, he tried to see, side by side, the three, 
 separate years as he and Elsie had spent them: 
 
 Himself, a machine; a fanatical worker, living in his 
 brain and for ambition ; every appetite, every bodily need 
 made to intensify its use toward success. With this there 
 had come a closeness to Infinity that had kept him from 
 callousness, oh, the wide spaces where the cold fire of 
 stars had hung so low they spoke to him as voices from 
 those distant worlds! He had worked with brain and 
 hands through days of furnace heat to lie on his 
 bungalow porch when they were done, gazing with 
 wordless wonder and trust up at these friendly stars until, 
 with deep sleep, he would seem to fall into kind, cool, 
 black depths where winds rose to gales and revived the 
 wasted body until the dawn burned again and brought the 
 straining life. This had lasted in a drugged sort of peace 
 until a few months previous when his return to Europe, 
 and after that to America, had showed on the horizon. 
 
 "Come," home called; then louder and louder, "Come 
 back! Oh, come, come!" 
 
 He had begun then to wish for many things, blurred 
 before: For Elsie first, for the living girl of the banded 
 hair and the deep-musing smile, her grace and girlishness 
 and simpleness and truth. And with her beside him for 
 a sight of temperate skies: the streams of France under 
 slim, plumed poplars; perhaps the hedges of England 
 with glowworms lighting the long and pallid dusks while 
 the hawthorn scent made the heart ache from its too much 
 sweetness. And after that, America home the first 
 winter taste of it glacially splendid, pure, sparkling, 
 a tonic of whiteness! All this with Elsie. 
 
 He looked into the uphill street at the high, drab houses 
 whose windows were hung with lace or silk, and at the
 
 The Next Corner 47 
 
 silver-bright motors rushing past them. What different 
 years she had known ! Paris perhaps of all the civi- 
 lized world the spot most embellished in a multiform way, 
 most unlike his humid, Burmese wild her home ; and 
 vividly so, for this apartment was close to the world- 
 known Champs Elysees, that was the artery through its 
 heart. These trunks held the things most precious to 
 her. This maid of hers was critical of him, almost as if 
 he had come an intruding spy within an enemy's lines. 
 And herself? she was spending the last moments of 
 this last day with a crowd of society people who must 
 have come to mean much more to her than he had guessed. 
 He felt a heated eagerness either to rout or ratify these 
 impressions. He wanted to know more of her and 
 quickly. He would see who her friends were; see her 
 among them. 
 
 Still with the feeling of being out of his element, he 
 made such preparations as were possible for appearance 
 at a fashionable tea. The water dashing into the marble 
 basin upon his hands was like a loosened cataract to his 
 sensitive ears ; he found himself walking in a hushed way 
 with small and careful steps unlike his own; it seemed a 
 staggering intrusion to enter his wife's bedroom at all 
 and, as he fastened his tie before the mirror there, his 
 hands were unsteady. 
 
 He was not a fanciful man and even as this mood per- 
 sisted he resented it, was inclined to give one of his short 
 and vigorous laughs at it. What folly ! Just because 
 Elsie was absent and the many trunks and the heavy per- 
 fume were there instead, he was acting like a nervous 
 schoolboy. 
 
 With this thought setting his teeth in amused self-im- 
 patience, he found his hat in the salon and then came 
 back deliberately to the bedroom for no reason than to 
 send a defiantly hardy gaze about it. He went to the 
 big bed and looked down at the pillows, fancying Elsie's 
 face there, a smile and the mist of sleep in her eyes. 
 Needle points of tenderness went over him as his darkened
 
 48 The Next Corner 
 
 fingers, with traces of old sun blisters on them, fingered 
 the lace upon the spread. A dream came into his eyes. 
 If he could see her there! . . . 
 
 Why if he could see her at all ! One full look, and 
 he felt sure that this depression, as of an untimely out- 
 sider, would leave him. And he could be gazing into her 
 face in ten minutes! He roused himself. He would go 
 at once. 
 
 Julie answered his call and found he had opened the 
 door to the outer passage. From there he gave her a 
 short and distinct message: He might miss his wife at 
 the tea ; she might already be on her way home. In that 
 case Julie was to say that she was to wait, and he would 
 return immediately. 
 
 She peeped like a conspirator from the salon window 
 until she saw him hail a cab, after which, with her lips 
 pursed shrewdly, she made a rush for the telephone. "A 
 husband," her thoughts ran, "when expected, can be a 
 pleasant thing. Not expected, the devil himself might be 
 more welcome. I know what I know! Madame must be 
 told that he is on hand and very much to be counted in. 
 Why, he is crazy with love for her, although he has the 
 cold English air ! Oh, yes ! Now that he is here well, 
 my faith, make no mistake ! he is here!"
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ONE of the Longueval footmen in buff and silver took 
 Julie's flustered telephone message for Madame Maury 
 that her husband had unexpectedly arrived and was on his 
 way to her at the countess's. He made an attempt to 
 find her among the crowd that strayed over gardens and 
 house. Not succeeding and other duties calling, he de- 
 ferred the search; meant to continue it; forgot it. 
 
 Elsie was in the garden on a bench behind one of the 
 forsythia bushes from which the yellow flowers were al- 
 most gone, and Arturo was beside her. He had been there 
 for ten minutes, during which he had talked earnestly, 
 and then had become silent while smoking the cigarettes 
 whose odd fragrance she knew would always be remem- 
 bered with some touch of the glamour that pained her 
 now. Within a window close to them, an English singer, 
 with a contralto of such searching sweetness it touched 
 the most cynical to a passing reality of love's "old, old 
 pain", gave Kipling's words to the padding, yearning, 
 Eastern music: 
 
 Alone, upon the housetops to the north, 
 I turn and watch the lightning in the sky, 
 The glamour of thy footsteps in the north 
 Come back to me, beloved, or I die! 
 
 Far, far below the still bazaar is laid, 
 Far, far below the weary camels lie, 
 The camels and the captives of thy raid 
 Come back to me, beloved, or I die! 
 
 They both sat listening, not looking at each other. 
 They seemed to hear the jingling clatter of the camels 
 sinking cumberously to rest; distant cymbal clashes from 
 the captives who danced ; the sob of the woman watching 
 
 49
 
 50 The Next Corner 
 
 from the housetop. Arturo was very pale. Elsie, who 
 had lighted one of his cigarettes for herself, let it burn 
 out in her drooped hand: 
 
 My father's wife is old and harsh with years, 
 And drudge of all my father's house am I, 
 My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears 
 Come back to me, beloved, or I die! 
 
 "Will you come to El Miradero?" Arturo asked and 
 so closely upon the last cry of the song the question 
 seemed its concluding despair. He did not move to her, 
 seemeVl to find it hard even to look at her. "Will I see 
 you there?" 
 
 "I've told you," Elsie said, and made a regretful, nega- 
 tive sign with the hand that held the cigarette. 
 
 "Won't even try !" 
 
 "Cannot. I've told you why, Arturo," she said in a 
 deeply sorrowful way. 
 
 "Then this is the end now and here." His hand 
 stole across and lay upon her shoulder in the lightest way. 
 "It has been my own folly believing that you loved me," 
 and his hopeless voice had a boy's tears. 
 
 The tenderness she felt for him broke through the 
 cloud upon her eyes. "Don't say that; nor think it. I 
 care Arturo." 
 
 "Words, words." 
 
 "Words? The thought of never seeing you again is a 
 sort of death. And yet there's another thing there's 
 my caring for Robert, for I do care for him too, in a 
 different way " 
 
 A triangular frown shot up between Arturo's brows. 
 "I know," he broke in, the tone uninterested. "You don't 
 hate him; you even like him. He was a habit with you 
 once, and habits can be resumed." 
 
 "No, I must be honest." She faced him, a light as from 
 a shrine within quivering through the make-up of her 
 exquisite, littk face. "The question I see is this: If I 
 go away where I will never see you, never hear any one
 
 The Next Corner 51 
 
 even speak your name, won't I learn to forget you and 
 be satisfied again in the affection I had for him? His 
 feeling for me is not like yours a terrifying sort of 
 happiness to me. Yet it's steady; so deep! He'd die 
 for me." 
 
 He laughed. "Without a doubt. And yet for years he 
 has lived quite comfortably without you ! However " 
 His bitter look was flung along the silence that held them. 
 "I see you are determined. Besides, I am a fatalist. Some 
 ancestor of mine must have been converted to Islam's 
 belief in predestination when the Moors held Spain. Yes, 
 it can only be a heritage from Morocco that I have the 
 most absolute faith in the end being arranged for us, 
 waiting for us though hidden from us before we 
 take one step. It seems now that no matter what I wish 
 or do, it is written that I am to lose you." 
 
 He gave a swift, wretched look around. No one was 
 near them. Before Elsie knew his intention, before she 
 could have checked it if she had wished, he had bent 
 his dark and gleaming face to hers with a sensuously 
 yearning movement that was a sort of agony to her, and 
 found her mouth. His lips quivered there in a raging, 
 deep-reaching kiss under which her will first hardened in 
 terror and then dissolved in a despairing rapture. 
 
 "Darling, darling, darling," he whispered, the tone 
 shaken, "adios, ah, adios if it must be !" 
 
 He was gone while his breath lingered on her face. 
 Before she could realize it he was lost in the fringe of 
 people about the windows, and she was sitting alone in 
 the leaf shadows, the most riotous sweetness with a bitter 
 edge going over her spirit. She remained so, with 
 strained eyes and breathless. 
 
 As if she peered through a storm she was looking 
 into herself, trying to find the deep under truths 
 that women have a way of edging from. Many centuries 
 have gone to the making of concealment and pretense with 
 them, yet to all but the generically celibate moments come 
 that bring the consciousness of not having lived in any
 
 52 The Next Comer 
 
 real sense until, whether early or late, there has been sur- 
 render to passionate obsession. Elsie knew this now and 
 for a moment felt rage at the fate that robbed her of it 
 when it was close to her, inviting her, cajoling her to its 
 mastering delight. 
 
 Perverse it was, this infatuation. For when she tried to 
 study it as one would the colors in a fabric, she saw that 
 the things for which she had come to love Arturo were 
 not the things she naturally valued in a man. She loved 
 his implanted pride of race no doubt narrow, intol- 
 erant yet outwardly all allure, silken and soft, and 
 that created his amused consideration of the restraining 
 morality meant for the small people. She loved his smil- 
 ing civility that could, when he wished, so mysteriously 
 convey a rigid exclusiveness ; the exotic richness of his 
 dark glance that, slowly traveling over her, would make 
 her flush with a guilty delight as if he had miraculously 
 bared her body, looked, and found her sweet. She loved 
 his beauty all the blended charm of it his gaze, and 
 smile, and voice, the way he moved with prodigal freedom, 
 warm grace. And perhaps, most of all, she loved all 
 these things because they swept over her with an electric 
 sense of danger, a fear of him that could make her 
 heart give jerking beats and seem to hold her, thrilled 
 and listening, high above the dull things of every day. 
 
 And was this all ? no gleam of reverence, of the 
 spirit, in her feeling for him? Ah, there was. To-day, 
 and for the first time, she saw it. She respected him that 
 he could love as he did her, as simple and unashamed in 
 his reasoning about it as the primeval man who tracked 
 the woman he wanted for mate patiently, tirelessly, 
 through the veiled turnings of the forests. For a year 
 he had kept beside her, his heart in his face. All had read 
 it there. He had given no thought to them. She had 
 been the sun in his eyes and he had seen nothing else. 
 Wayward, spoiled, selfish he was, living indolently, ac- 
 cording to the debilitating law of his class, upon what 
 money came through the sacrifices of women; yet he had
 
 The Next Corner 53 
 
 made her know what she had never before known, the 
 sweetness of that absolute supremacy over the will and 
 heart of a man, like no other joy in the life of a woman 
 that, while it holds, can make up to her for the loss of 
 many things otherwise precious. 
 
 Coveting another sight of Arturo, wondering if he were 
 really gone, Elsie, a little later, strolled into a small room 
 in one of the wings. She knew that a roulette wheel had 
 been set up there for the countess's intimates. The call 
 of the man acting as croupier had reached her on a regu- 
 lar rhythm through the curtains : "Fait vos jeux! Rien 
 va plus!" And so had the clatter of the ivory counters, 
 gaily disputing voices, laughter, even screams. 
 
 She had always been too poor to gamble with her ex- 
 travagant or wealthy friends ; to-day did not even 
 watch the players, and with the Hindoo again beside her, 
 sat at one side, apart from the crowd. She was silent, 
 and a tiredness to the core made her whitened face, with 
 the shadowed lids half-veiled, an absolute mask. 
 
 Through a confused moment where only her own 
 thoughts were plain she seemed to look straight at a man 
 who entered, although in reality she saw him but vaguely. 
 He gave her a brief glance, looked away; then, startled, 
 he turned sharply, came a step nearer and stopped again, 
 recognition and dismay in his gaze. The look plunged 
 through the cloud on Elsie's mind, and it rallied to at- 
 tention. At this the actual earth seemed to drop from 
 under her chair. 
 
 She was looking at Robert. He it was who stood there, 
 motionless, whose eyes with their studying look had the 
 effect of a hand pressing her back, barring her approach 
 to him. "Stay where you are," they seemed to say, 
 "while I get used to believing that this can be you." 
 
 She rose in a nervously listless way, a cigarette burn- 
 ing between her fingers, and swept to him. 
 
 "Robert ! I thought I must be seeing things !" This 
 came in a shrill tone, her vampirish mouth jerking side- 
 ways.
 
 54 The Next Corner 
 
 Quite suddenly she knew that communion between them 
 could be bearable to her only if kept to a surface light- 
 ness. And as a help she deliberately continued a freakish 
 gaiety that seemed to reach Robert across a distance and 
 hold him there. It was not her usual manner, for in 
 spite of the froth and caprice of her life she had retained 
 a sincerity of bearing and utterance unlike most of the 
 women who were her intimates. 
 
 The effect she produced on him, in her yellow gauze, 
 that though fashioned for afternoon wear was so trans- 
 parent it left a good deal of her body visible, with her 
 face undisguisedly tricked out and her gleaming cigarette 
 poised, was a harsh one, a marionette with whom 
 fashion was idolatry; an over-decorated, empty eggshell. 
 She could feel this and in a desperate way persisted in 
 the affectation that sustained her, the more so that under 
 Robert's earnest gaze a feeling of guilt made her hide- 
 ously uncomfortable. 
 
 "Throw that away," Robert said quietly with a scant 
 look at the cigarette. 
 
 She gave an empty laugh, a new laugh to him, of a 
 part with her fluttering, disdainful carriage. "Your first 
 words a command ! I'd forgotten the thing !" She turned 
 to flick it from her fingers to a table that held the 
 smokers' service. "How on earth did you get here?" she 
 ran on, and without waiting for his reply, continued, 
 "Julie sent you, of course. Let's get out of this," and as 
 he mutely followed: "What a banal ending to our third 
 act, Robert ! Husband and wife meet after long years, 
 why, sacred from all eyes, that should have occurred at 
 home. You know," and in the gayest way she thrust a 
 hand through his arm, "it's impossible to be emotional 
 in a crowd. Among a crowd of your Burmese or Hindoos, 
 perhaps yes not one like this. So you've queered the 
 drama, my dear." 
 
 "It seems so," Robert admitted, and then vigorously, 
 "How soon can you get away?" 
 
 "Now," she said casually; "we'll go now."
 
 The Next Corner 55 
 
 "You'll have to say good-by to your hostess first " 
 
 "Heavens, no!" she laughed. "Haven't an idea where 
 she is and she wouldn't thank me. Come along. There 
 are millions of taxicabs hanging about." 
 
 She went with birdlike grace through the garden ahead 
 of him. He could not see that her eyes were searching 
 for Arturo, for a last sight of him, though only at a dis- 
 tance and among a crowd. They could not find him. He 
 must have gone away in his despair, and frankly; as she 
 was going in hers, but masking it under laughter. 
 
 "You hadn't any tea," Elsie exclaimed as they waited 
 for a cab to come to them. "You were used to your tea 
 in Burmah with all those English of course ! You must 
 have some. Julie can manage it, I dare say." 
 
 He saw the disordered apartment, the trunks, and the 
 woman's too intelligent eyes, and felt the same scent that 
 floated to him from his wife's golden draperies intensified 
 there to an informing reminder. "We've plenty of time. 
 Can't we go somewhere for tea?" 
 
 "Oh, would you like to?" she drawled gladly. "That 
 would be quite too chic. I'll take you to a place that is 
 the last word in novelties. Tout-a-fait Parisian!" She 
 gave an address as they entered a cab. 
 
 The outline of the situation between them, the details 
 of her part that of the wife meeting her husband after 
 long absence were clear to her. She drew off her glove 
 submissively and laid her hand on one of Robert's with a 
 faintly urgent pressure. 
 
 "I can't believe it yet, Robert. I simply can't believe 
 it," she said helplessly, and smiled. 
 
 He smiled back, not his own smile ; his 1 lips were pushed 
 to it. "I had not meant to be so startling, my dear." 
 
 They were whizzing along a stretch of empty, pale 
 gray street that gave him perfect opportunity to kiss her. 
 He knew this, knew that she expected it. There was 
 something appalling in feeling that he had no desire to 
 kiss that foolish mouth, hard with a metallic red dye. He 
 drew her to him, and their lips met briefly.
 
 56 The Next Corner 
 
 > 
 
 "You're different, Robert," she said as she sank back, 
 studying him dreamily, and felt a great satisfaction in 
 being able to say this truthfully. The subversion in her- 
 self could be better defended since he, too, was changed. 
 
 "I'm burnt almost black and I've lost twenty pounds, 
 if that's what you mean." 
 
 "I don't mean that. And I don't mean those tiny lines 
 that have come about your eyes " 
 
 "Sun squint focussing through a blinding glare. 
 They won't last, so don't let them trouble you." 
 
 "There's something else," she murmured, and the 
 smeared lids fluttered over her steadily placed gaze. 
 "Either you're very tired or you've grown old or 
 you're bored. You used to be so impulsive, with a happy 
 look and I liked that." 
 
 Never given to evasions, he had been swept absolutely 
 clean of pretense in the simplicity in which he had lived. 
 The impulse to speak out had to be obeyed. And through 
 it he might get a little nearer to her. 
 
 "Well, let me tell you something, Elsie. You don't 
 seem yourself. Not the same at all !" 
 
 She laughed out; a dismayed trill born back of the 
 lips. "Really? Ah, my dear, you must remember I'm 
 three years older; and that I was a girl literally from 
 the backwoods when you saw me last. I'm not that now 
 Dieu merci! so I dare say I seem astoundingly dif- 
 ferent to you." The crayoned eyebrows, that vanished 
 into hair strokes like the tilted-up ends of a lash, flick- 
 ered demurringly. "You liked the old me better than this 
 me now, didn't you?" 
 
 "I did." He pressed her hand gently while deliberately 
 studying her. "Why do you do all that?" 
 
 "All what?" 
 
 "Put all that stuff on your face?" 
 
 "How crude you are!" she frowned, and continued on 
 a drawl. "Embellissement, mon cher. Pour la beaute, 
 pour le charme!" 
 
 "Do speak English!"
 
 The Next Corner 57 
 
 "Very well. Any other questions?" 
 
 "Yes," he said brusquely. "Do you suppose that you 
 fool anybody?" 
 
 "Oh, you dear, big, simple thing!" Elsie retorted and 
 sank away from him in a flurry of gayety. "Why, all the 
 women here touch up ! We don't try to fool any one. We 
 do it before every one, and it is chic to like to do it. 
 Voila!" She whisked her hand from his hold and pulled 
 a silver vanity case from her bag. "Now that you're rich 
 you'll give me a gold one won't you?" she murmured 
 as she opened it. 
 
 A mirror that lined the inner part of the top flashed 
 out, and beneath it Robert saw a half dozen, tiny, silver 
 lids that covered what were mysteries to him. He did, 
 however understand the use of the lip stick that she 
 daintily poised and whose tip was a venomously red 
 bullet/ 
 
 "What are you going to do?" came from him in ex- 
 asperated surprise. 
 
 "Show you, my dear, how we Parlsiennes dot the 'i' of 
 whatever stock of good looks we have " 
 
 "It doesn't help your stock with me," he said and drew 
 down her hand with force. "Please put that away or 
 better still chuck it out of the window !" 
 
 "Oh, really? Well, I'll put it away," she said with 
 the meekness of fatigue. "You great simple-minded bar- 
 barian, you'll have to get used to things that are not 
 q U Jte raw. We can't all be rough diamonds and 
 virgin gold. That's all you've seen for so long and 
 that's what you are. Virgin gold?" she mused. "Not in 
 demand in big cities. A little alloy not quite perfec- 
 tion is much preferred. And it really wears better, 
 my dear." 
 
 "You are mistaken, and you are misjudging me," he 
 said very clearly, jarred by the gay patronage of the 
 tone. "I'm quite of the world in my tolerance. If you 
 needed help of this sort and applied it delicately to your 
 face, I'd not mind In fact, if delicately done, probably
 
 58 The Next Corner 
 
 I'd not know of it. Civilization of this sort doesn't exist 
 only in cities like Paris." His voice grew kinder, al- 
 though his eyes remained sternly grave. "It's been from 
 the beginning of the world, and it is in the East, wherever 
 there are women. But and make a note of it they 
 are always women of a certain sort. For instance, when 
 I was in Canton I saw Chinese women who went this Paris 
 face-painting a good many points better even made 
 their lips seem of solid gold. But they were the women 
 of the flower boats. You know what that means?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. I remember you wrote me all about those 
 curious, little creatures. Well, I'm glad you weren't such 
 a pillar of propriety that you wouldn't have a look at 
 them in their pretty flower boats." Her tone became open 
 ennui. "I tell you, Robert, frankly, it does seem an 
 awful waste of time objecting to a lot of unimportant, 
 surface things. Let people do what they like, I say 
 of course, nothing that would send them to jail! That's 
 what we feel here, at any rate. Why bother? It's all 
 the same in a hundred years !" 
 
 "I don't like your philosophy." He said this in a tone 
 she remembered from the past. It had never been used 
 to her then, and only in directions to those under him 
 when he outlined something conclusively, a silencing of 
 argument in the economy of words, every one of which 
 was bitten off clean. 
 
 She laughed the same trill from the lips. "Sorry," 
 she said briefly. 
 
 "And though this may seem to you the opinion of one 
 akin to a lout or a clodhopper lacking your oppor- 
 tunity for polish, you know I'll be glad when you can 
 come to see that your face is prettier, better in every 
 way, without whitewash and red ink for that's the im- 
 pression I get from it." 
 
 "And when will that time be, I wonder?" She mur- 
 mured this, giving a brief shrug, yet with anger in the 
 tone. 
 
 "No need to wonder. I'm sure it will be when you
 
 The Next Corner 59 
 
 have left Paris behind you perhaps not until it has 
 been left behind a long time. Yet, I am hopeful." 
 
 At his words her hidden grief took on active life, put 
 fangs into her. As she remained serious, he quickly grew 
 tender. 
 
 "Elsie," he said, closed his hand on hers and gave it 
 a steady pressure, "fancy us getting into this dispute 
 when we've just found each other again ! You'll bear with 
 me a little. If you seem to me foolishly to damage your 
 real and bewitching self, I dare say I do seem a rough 
 fellow to you. We'll help each other. Shall we?" 
 
 "We've got to," Elsie said, and the words had some- 
 thing of a comrade's earnestness, though her spirit was 
 now weeping for its secret bread. 
 
 Soon they were seated in the tea shop.
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 THE place came at Robert like a knock on a fresh 
 sore. There are in Paris or were before the war had 
 made it augustly grave small tea rooms in several and 
 queer places. Some opened frankly off a boulevard or 
 residence street. Some, catering to a selected clientele, 
 were found in a back courtyard reached through an im- 
 passe; or in the rear of modiste and manicure shops ; or 
 up a flight of stairs in a studio building; or across the 
 Seine in some cul-de-sac of the Quartier. However diversi- 
 fied their placing, and whether luxurious or plain in fur- 
 nishing, their significant qualities were alike. All were 
 oriental, therefore fittingly kept in heavy shadow, per- 
 fumed, secretive. Quite respectable as far as conduct, 
 they yet were safe places for those who wished to meet to 
 talk and not be seen. 
 
 This one was in the neighborhood of the Rond Point, 
 the street thick with trees. Elsie led Robert up a green 
 alley to a small house at the back of a garden. The lower 
 floor had a show window crowded with various lengths of 
 ancient lace, with antique jewelry and silver. There was 
 only an old Frenchman in the shop, polishing a bit of 
 metal. Elsie nodded to him and went up a stairway that 
 would have seemed to lead to the merchant's home. In- 
 stead, at a turning, the light changed to a violet dusk, 
 the scent of rose potpourri stole out, and a Hindoo was 
 seen at the top, sitting on the floor, his knees hunched. He 
 rose, bowed deeply to the visitors, and on linen-sandalled 
 feet went soundlessly ahead of them to one of the screened 
 tables. Before this was reached other screens were 
 passed, subdued voices and laughter coming from behind 
 
 60
 
 The Next Corner 61 
 
 them. No one looked out. Visitors here had no curiosity 
 about their neighbors. 
 
 "This feverish effect seems rather overdone if its raison 
 d'etre is really tea." Robert said this coldly. "Do 
 you come here often?" 
 
 "Tea is merely a trimming. This sort of thing is a 
 fad. Its queerness helps Parisians to escape for an hour 
 from themselves and the actual," Elsie said, her elbows on 
 the table, chin on her laced fingers. 
 
 She felt a drowsy indifference to whatever Robert 
 might think of these caprices. No doubt they were 
 foolish. Very well what of it? 
 
 "I was here only once before, and that's three months 
 ago. As a guide takes a tourist about, I thought it might 
 amuse you to see the odd little place. You're not amused. 
 Too bad!" 
 
 During a few moments they became silent. They faced 
 each other, while in the mysteriously sacred province of 
 each brain thoughts rose and throbbed that in effect 
 separated them as if the world had suddenly parted their 
 bodies again. Elsie was remembering her only other visit 
 to this place. 
 
 On a March day of raw, high winds she had gone there 
 to meet Arturo. Unable to come, he had sent Serafin 
 with his apology and with instructions to talk to Elsie 
 and detain her there for a half hour, when he hoped to 
 appear. 
 
 She had been content to watch the man's long, shorn 
 face and slanted, unsmiling eyes while he told her of in- 
 teresting things ; of Spain ; but mostly of his master, his 
 beloved foster brother. He had dwelt with unction on 
 Arturo's rank: 
 
 The title had been created in 1470. He was the eigh- 
 teenth Marques de Burgos and twice a grandee of the 
 first class. "Gravedad, lealdad y amor de Dios" was 
 the motto of his family. 
 
 "Perhaps my master has lost sight of the last the 
 love of God in the life of cities as young men live it
 
 62 The Next Corner 
 
 to-day ; but the other things are his dignity and loy- 
 alty these, through everything. Ah, senora, I wish 
 you could know Spain and behold my master there in his 
 rightful place! It is beautiful to see. Yes, the honor 
 done his family is very beautiful for it is now so poor 
 that the old palace in Burgos with its quarterings en- 
 graved over the great, arched doors is crumbling in many 
 places. Out in the world, particularly in America, 
 nothing seems to matter but money. It is not so in 
 Spain. The uncontaminated sangre azul is worshipped 
 there just for itself," he had said, a shining awe in his 
 sunken eyes. "When the Senor Marques goes to court, 
 he enters the greatest of the three halls, the antecdmera. 
 There is no honor that he does not have. When he goes 
 to an audience with royalty the guards strike the marble 
 floor with their swords for him, and the sound is like a 
 thousand fencers in combat. Ah, it is glorious to be of 
 this blue blood of Spain, descended from the hidalgos 
 of Castile, one of the ancient ones in the Grandeza!" 
 
 All this had made a mind picture that had captivated 
 Elsie. Then, of a sudden, in mixed unbelief and rage, 
 she had seen the man change ; he had trembled hideously, 
 one dark hand with nails that were polished fangs had 
 closed on hers, and while his teeth were set against the 
 words they yet had broken from him in spurts: 
 
 "I love you, too. Men must love you easily. You 
 are the kind of woman that men of my race cannot see 
 without emotion you are so white a golden fairness 
 saint angel! Ah," as, her eyes blazing, she man- 
 aged at last to get her hand from him, "I am without 
 hope, senora. Never had I meant to speak. This place 
 has witchery silent, and dark and sweet, and you there 
 before me listening so sweetly ah, give me of your 
 pity! Forgive me!" 
 
 "You need forgiveness," she had replied, rising in cold 
 rage. "If I tell the Marques de Burgos that his 
 servant "
 
 The Next Corner 63 
 
 She had paused, terrified by the fire that had leaped 
 to the sunken eyes with the look of a goaded animal as it 
 turns to attack. 
 
 "Never that! You do not understand. You are ig- 
 norant of anything that is not American like all your 
 shop-keeping race. I am a Basque! You don't know 
 what that means. You don't know that I belong not to 
 Spain really, but to a free people. I am entitled to bear 
 arms ; all Basques are. But because we have through 
 centuries become a poor and plain people of the moun- 
 tains, we have laid aside our noble rights, and we serve 
 but only where we wish! Only where our hearts call! 
 We serve willingly then, but proudly. So tell the Senor 
 Marques what I have said to you. For a moment as the 
 Marques de Burgos, although my foster brother, he will 
 be enraged that is true. As a man, he will quickly 
 understand my temptation and overlook it. Spaniards 
 are different from your fish-cold Americans ! They find 
 toleration for any mistake born of what is called here le 
 crime passionel" 
 
 "Let me pass," Elsie had said, and had gone, her crepe 
 tunic, that fluttered backward with the free turbulence 
 of the Winged Victory's draperies, giving the effect of a 
 queen's withdrawal. 
 
 Yet with malice born of her insulted pride, she had 
 paused at the counter so that Serafin could see her pay 
 and hear her distinct words to the Hindoo : "This is for 
 my tea and this is for tea for the valet of the Marques 
 de Burgos, should he wish any, while he waits here for 
 his employer." 
 
 She had felt too humiliated to tell Arturo, and the 
 incident had seemed forgotten. Its resurrection in her 
 thoughts was like a repulsive roughness brushing her 
 flesh. 
 
 Robert's mind had been quickening during the few mo- 
 ments' silence; at first not with past events. His eyes, 
 while resting on Elsie, often did not see her at all, or but 
 vaguely, while he stared inward, analyzing his disappoint- 
 ment in its relation to himself.
 
 64 The Next Corner 
 
 He had expected rapture from his home-coming. And 
 the first flavor had been delicious. Nothing short of per- 
 fection could have continued at this height. And instead 
 of perfection there was only the blurred, the damaged, the 
 unfamiliar, the unexpected. His most important pos- 
 session, from promise of sweetness, had taken on the 
 sterility of stone. This strange Elsie eluded him, irri- 
 tated him. She seemed branded by a life lived foolishly 
 in Paris. The city loomed up between them, dividing 
 them. A hundred years seemed to have passed since he 
 had joyously looked up at the rose-pink shades of the 
 apartment on the Rue de Chaillot. He felt dejected, 
 baffled. 
 
 And through this bewilderment he sought for the basic 
 truth in himself. After all, how much had he missed 
 Elsie during his absence from her? 
 
 Two beings, closely bound, are separated for years and 
 live diversely. Change does not come to one alone. Ab- 
 sence must act alike on the chemistry of both, trans- 
 mute the old, assimilate the new, mellow and shape 
 and crystallize. Outwardly Elsie was so unlike his 
 memory of her he was revolted, saddened. He saw that 
 inwardly he was, in his way, as altered. He had grown 
 nearer to the essential and natural things ; used to spell- 
 bound self-communing ; had come nearer to his spirit ; 
 impatient of intrusions that were unsought. 
 
 Loneliness can be a thing that finds food in itself. 
 Bitter at first, it can stealthily change to an addiction to 
 isolation and solitude. And isolation like his with only 
 men, they fiercely alive in a struggle with the earth, 
 might so emphasize sheer manful virility that the revival 
 of life with a woman might be found full of irritating dis- 
 locations that only perfect sympathy could disregard. 
 
 A feeling of inertia without the liveliness of pain be- 
 came a weight upon him. There had been much of the 
 boy in him at his work always. It seemed to have left 
 him forever. He felt old, and with this intolerant in the 
 doggedly acrid way that the old can so easily become.
 
 The Next Corner 65 
 
 Almost at once he knew that these reflections led to one 
 desire to get away by himself for an interlude of lib- 
 erty before taking up the problem of Elsie her casual- 
 ness, flippancy, insincerity, her veneer and her many 
 trunks. 
 
 In contrast to companionship with her, he saw the 
 journey home as it might be without her. England first 
 this a wise business move of which he had not yet 
 spoken to her and then the voyage to New York with 
 four men with whom he felt that satisfying intimacy that 
 makes no slightest effort to express itself; irresponsible 
 drifting while as on his journey across the Indian 
 Ocean and the Mediterranean drinking in the heaving 
 reaches of water with his land-burnt eyes, tasting the salt 
 winds as reviving food ; pipes ; poker ; and desultory talks 
 on deck as late as he pleased. 
 
 This picture began to have the appeal that thought of 
 a stolen holiday has to a fagged schoolboy, demanding 
 that he creep from the classroom and make a plunge for 
 a day of delights where birds' nests were to be had for the 
 climbing and racing brooks would send ripples over bare 
 feet. 
 
 A dislike of himself began mixing with the longing even 
 while it was sharp enough to hurt. To want to escape 
 the revived responsibility had almost the yellow of 
 treachery. He fought the temptation, thrust it away. 
 It would only go around a turning in his mind. He was 
 aware that it was there, its eye peeping, ear listening. 
 
 When the tea came Elsie poured it silently. She had 
 gleaned something of Robert's thoughts and they rankled. 
 She had the feeling of being one of two people on opposite 
 sides of a gulf whose hands strive to reach across it while 
 only their fingers touch ; a clasp impossible. 
 
 How little letters could count during a long separation, 
 letters like theirs. She had put only the surface of her 
 life into hers. His had been mere bulletins ; mostly he 
 had relied on telegrams. "He is made of bits of paper," 
 Arturo had said. It almost seemed that he had been
 
 66 The Next Corner 
 
 right. She knew how reticent Robert was naturally in 
 expression of affection. So he had believed his telegrams 
 sufficient, had thought it unnecessary to keep dwelling on 
 the love between them, not realizing as she knew now 
 with the guilty sureness of her needs that love like any 
 other thing must, to endure, be fed in some way ; by con- 
 stant assurance when nothing closer is possible. 
 
 "He is disappointed in me," was her thought. "He 
 feels miles away from me. He isn't going to try to make 
 love to me. Oh, I'm glad of that !" 
 
 "There's one thing I haven't told you about, Elsie," 
 Robert said, after a cup of the excellent tea had bright- 
 ened him. He had not known how parched and travel- 
 tired he was. 
 
 She shrugged in mild inquiry. "That ?" 
 
 "We are going to England to-night, and home that 
 way." 
 
 This roused her violently. A dark flush lurched over 
 her face. She pushed her head forward. "To England, 
 you say? Why, England?" 
 
 "Some of the directors met us at the ship, and we had 
 a meeting, but several weren't able to get away from Lon- 
 don. As there's a bit of a row on something you 
 wouldn't understand we decided it would be best for 
 us all to get together once in London and have the thing 
 settled. I changed the tickets yours and mine at 
 the office of the French Line on my way to your place 
 from the train. I want to get to Dieppe to-night, reach 
 London in good time to-morrow, and after a week or ten 
 days in England, we'll sail from Liverpool." 
 
 Her discontent showed frankly. For three years she 
 had been her own law, directed her life according to her 
 mood, the most whimsical. Now she was moved as a 
 pawn by a master player, and it was not pleasant. 
 
 "You don't seem to realize that all my trunks are 
 tagged for Havre." 
 
 "I'll change them in a few moments, my dear," he said 
 with an easy touch of authority. "Don't let that annoy 
 you."
 
 The Next Corner 67 
 
 A blaze flashed through her. "But I don't like that 
 long train journey to Dieppe and then having to cross 
 the Channel by the longest way an all-night journey. 
 I did it once for economy, and I said I never would 
 again." 
 
 "It can't be helped now," he remarked peacefully and 
 ate the last slice of toast and marmalade with enjoyment. 
 
 She looked at her wrist watch. "We'll have to rush 
 through dinner, then rush for a train, then rush for the 
 boat. That horrid boat! That beastly, hateful, cheap 
 tourist, all-night journey!" Her eyes had a jet-black 
 anger he had not seen in them before. And in truth she 
 had never felt before as she did at this moment, a ner- 
 vous desperation; a longing to let herself go and weep 
 wildly without check. 
 
 "Does it really matter so much?" he asked, his brows 
 lifted and held so as he sharpened into new attention. 
 
 "I kept to your arrangements, Robert," Elsie went on 
 unevenly, "and got ready as you wished, although even 
 then I had precious little notice. Must you constantly 
 change your plans?" 
 
 "Not I business changes them." 
 
 "Well, it's hard enough without an entire upheaval 
 like this. I'm completely boideverse. Why, I loathe the 
 Channel even in the short crossing from Calais !" 
 
 "Is there something you'd rather do?" he asked and 
 tried to shut out the voice now whispering with enticement 
 of the truant's delights. "Would you rather go on from 
 France as arranged and meet me in New York?" 
 
 Several seconds passed before Elsie could speak. A 
 hush tightened upon her, seemed to hold back her breath. 
 "Go back, on this boat, alone? But you've changed the 
 tickets !" 
 
 "Well, not necessarily on this boat. Arranged this 
 way, you need not hurry. Send your trunks along as 
 arranged now to Havre, to await your orders there, and 
 leave Paris for home about the time that I leave Eng- 
 land that is, if you want to."
 
 68 The Next Corner 
 
 She began crumbling the bread to mask the quivering 
 of her fingers. Before her mind the picture of a mountain 
 swept up mistily, an odd-looking little house, with pale 
 walls splashed with roses, on its crest. And then the 
 things of which Paula had spoken: the hooded serenos 
 with lanterns ; carnations everywhere ; and the one mule 
 cart going down through the high solitude at a waddling 
 pace. She heard the gay voices of a mixed number in the 
 small house, Arturo's guests ; guitar music on the thin, 
 chill, mountain air; the tinkling of glasses. She did not 
 see Arturo nor hear his voice. He was there too per- 
 vadingly to appear as one of the details ; back of every 
 sound he was whispering to her; his warm and quivering 
 lips were seeking hers. 
 
 She continued silent. She saw that it would not only 
 be possible for her to manage the visit to El Miradero; 
 she could easily go ; if she spoke the words, Robert would 
 in all likelihood urge her to go. And yet with this sure 
 knowledge came a distinct recoil from the thought, a 
 terror of it, so deep in her it seemed a little, far-off ghost, 
 watching. 
 
 "Don't go, don't go, don't go," she felt rather than 
 heard it say. "Why delay the break a few weeks? It 
 will be even harder then, with just so many more memories 
 to torment you. Go home now. Be brave. Go home 
 now, or something may happen to keep you from ever 
 going home! You're not happy with Robert in this 
 meeting, but you will be later on. He is strong, he is 
 kind, he is steadfast." 
 
 On the wake of this appeal from her underlying fear 
 she recalled Arturo's words about fate. If it were to be, 
 it would be. And he was right. She had not made the 
 slightest effort to remain in Paris ; such a thing had 
 seemed impossible. And here the power to do so was in 
 her hands, thrust into them by her husband. Surely this 
 was fate? She determined to test this belief; let it lead 
 her, she to be relieved from responsibility in the result. 
 
 "The apartment is given up," she said decidedly. "I
 
 The Next Corner 69 
 
 couldn't stay on there. An hour after I telephoned to 
 Countess Verholst that I was leaving, she rented it. No, 
 I'd better go with you." 
 
 "If you'd rather. I want you to be contented." This 
 seemed the end, when Robert added: "You could, you 
 know, keep out what trunks you'd need and stay at the 
 Ritz until you sail." 
 
 The Ritz! That added its temptation. She had not 
 hoped ever to be able to afford that. Yes, it would be 
 chic to stop there for awhile and then maybe start 
 for Spain with Paula. Still she held to her resolve, to 
 what instinct counselled as wise. 
 
 "If I did that, Robert, I could go back on the 
 'Provence,' with the Vance Hamiltons. But I know Paula 
 Vrain would keep insisting that in the meantime I go on 
 with her You know Sidney Vrain in London " she 
 broke off, "the shipowner?" 
 
 "Of course. Insisting on your going where?" 
 
 "With her to a house party at the the Marques de 
 Burgos's place in the Cantabrian mountains not far 
 into them and they are in the north of Spain, you 
 know only across the border from France, I 
 imagine. " She paused, her heart beating with a queer 
 burning. 
 
 Robert's eyes grew a bright blue ; he tried not to make 
 them eager. But Elsie read the truth in them and remem- 
 bered it often, afterward. He looked the capable business 
 man disentangling a difficulty with ease. 
 
 "Well, go," he said. "Why not?" 
 
 "I might not get to New York until a good bit later 
 than you. I ought not to do that now when you're 
 just back from Burmah. No it doesn't matter." 
 
 "I'll have to be about New York for a month or so 
 before my next opportunity is ripe, before we both get 
 on the wing again, so a short delay in your coming home 
 would be a trifle. I haven't had time as yet to tell you 
 about my next move," he glowed. "Salary first later 
 shares for me if I can only get big results !"
 
 70 The Next Corner 
 
 "Aren't you going to live in New York after this? 
 Aren't you going to give up business that takes you to 
 the ends of the world? Surely you're not going to keep 
 on this way? Surely we'll live in New York?" 
 
 ,"Not yet. Maybe not for a year or two," he said 
 crisply with a shrewd, smiling anticipation. "South 
 American mines Venezuela are on the tapis for us. 
 I know the country well. I've already made an offer for 
 a big hacienda just outside Valencia what you'll call 
 a dream place and that you'll queen it over." 
 
 Again Elsie felt herself the pawn moved by the master 
 player. 
 
 "Queen it in Venezuela ?" she murmured. 
 
 "Yes ; while I go after the biggest thing yet. A 
 million for me no less if it's what I think it is." 
 
 "Venezuela !" she murmured with slow bitterness. 
 
 "Lovely place," Robert said again, and then hurriedly : 
 "Well? We haven't much time for deciding. What do 
 you want to do? Stop on here and go for your look at 
 Spain? Or shall we keep to the English plan?" 
 
 "Which would you rather I'd do? You must have 
 some preference," she urged, and felt the hush wind a 
 veil about her as before. 
 
 "To be honest," said Robert, "it seems foolish to lug 
 you over to London when I'll be up to my neck in business 
 all the time I'm there; and a shame for you not to see 
 Spain. That's what I think, but you do just as you 
 like." 
 
 "Spain, then," she said. She was looking down at her 
 glove as she jerked it on, but what she really saw was a 
 rambling, vine-hung house on a mountain top. A twink- 
 ling dawn seemed to break within her ; she felt relaxed in a 
 sudden sweetness as if moisture cooled her skin. "Spain 
 since you're so good,"' she said on a failing breath.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 ELSIE was in the Sud-Express, train de luxe. She 
 was travelling in the most luxurious way possible. In 
 fact, since Robert's persuasion to this last, tangential di- 
 version had come without her even seeking it, she had 
 had almost a week of the most delicious wallowing in 
 luxury. Certainly he was generous. What a sheaf of 
 mauve-pink, highly numbered franc notes he had given 
 her, thousands ! 
 
 She could not help feeling that by a princely lavish- 
 ness he had sought to conciliate himself for his wish to 
 get away from her. The woman in her, while it did not 
 crave him, objected to this; she did not want any man 
 who could mean anything to her to suggest an ease if 
 relieved of her, as Robert unconsciously had done. Yes, 
 assuredly the feminine antennae had sensed this. Liberal 
 to a fault, excessively attentive in his hurried arrange- 
 ments for her comfort at the Ritz, and then, but a few 
 hours after his coming: 
 
 "Good-by, Elsie. Have a good time, my dear. I'll 
 be up to my eyes in business in London, and it will be 
 one continual shop talk on the ship. You'll get home in 
 a few weeks with those Hamiltons you spoke of. Just a 
 little while and we'll meet in New York. I'll be at the 
 pier for you. Good-by, my dear. Get everything you 
 want. Have a good time. Good-by." 
 
 Well, here she was free tingling with that delight 
 in danger that everything connected with Arturo com- 
 municated to her, with at least three thousand dollars in 
 money in her bag as well as a roughly cut emerald on the 
 finest of chains, the sort of thing for which she had often 
 longed sinfully. Ah, the days at the Ritz ! Luxury was 
 
 71
 
 72 The Next Corner 
 
 sweet. She had come to love the spacious Place Vendome 
 from the sense of power that she felt every time she 
 stepped into it from the hotel. She had come to have a 
 sun-warmed, idling feeling in the Rue de la Paix, that 
 street of temptation to extravagance so unfittingly 
 named. Street of Peace, indeed? Never that before for 
 her when economy had strapped her, when she had had to 
 produce the effect of modish expensiveness on a small in- 
 come. It had been delicious to have had that changed as 
 if by some Aladdin. 
 
 Mannequins in the most important fashion workshops 
 of the world had paced before her, while she felt the self- 
 complacency of the buying customer. Several of the 
 gowns, so beguiling in their shimmering beauty they de- 
 served a lovelier and a flowerlike name, she had purchased 
 right off the girls' adorable backs, of which all but a 
 fraction at the girdle was allowed to be seen. And she 
 had brought two with her. Yes, she had not been able 
 to resist them, rough and simple as Paula had described 
 life at El Miradero to be. 
 
 The details of the excursion had been arranged quite 
 easily. Having seen Robert off on the train to Dieppe, 
 she had telephoned to Arturo's apartment, hoping to tell 
 him of the change in her plans before he left Paris, and 
 had been able only to get Serafin. It was the first time 
 they had spoken since his unwisdom in the tea shop. 
 With overelaborate courtesy he stated that the Senor 
 Marques had already departed on the night express for 
 Spain with his cousins, they to go on to Burgos, he 
 to the mountains. 
 
 "I am to follow to-morrow and will then inform the 
 Senor Marques that you are to arrive at El Miradero 
 later in the week with Mrs. Vrain," he said. "Mrs. Vrain 
 knows everything necessary about the journey, as she 
 has taken it before, yet lest Mrs. Vrain might have for- 
 gotten anything helpful I will, with your permission, send 
 you at once a note with full directions, madame." 
 
 The next day Elsie found Paula. She was in her
 
 The Next Corner 73 
 
 boudoir, looking astoundingly ugly with her hair in 
 strings over a damp towel while a master in the business 
 smeared it with wet henna. Her maid was already head 
 down in a sea of packing. 
 
 "Ripping, my dear, that you can go ! But I'm off to 
 Bordeaux first, you know," she had said, while managing 
 to smoke between the dabs of the man's fingers against 
 her ears. "Duty visit beastly but necessary. I'll 
 cut it short and fly on to San Sebastian. You'll find me 
 waiting for you there that is, I'll be there, unless I 
 find that I'll be able to motor still farther, to Bilbao, 
 which is not very far from the village from which that 
 mule coach I told you about goes up the mountain. So 
 we'll leave it that way. If I'm not at the station at San 
 Sebastian, I'll be at Bilbao. Meanwhile turn yourself 
 loose for three or four days on the Rue de la Paix." 
 
 After that, Paula, having sketched all the phases of 
 the journey, had sent a footman to buy Elsie's ticket and 
 to reserve a compartment for her well ahead in the 
 wagon-lit. 
 
 "It's nothing of a trip. One night on the train then 
 all the rest is easy, dreamy, delicious," Paula had genially 
 declared. 
 
 And so Elsie had found it. Through the golden evening 
 the moments had been reeled off as from well-oiled ma- 
 chinery, and she arose early to watch for the first sight 
 of the Pyrenees which, though appearing while she was 
 still in France, would be as the doorway into Spain. 
 When their pale, far, waving peaks came with a solemn 
 sort of suddenness out of the early mist, a warm feeling 
 as of being greeted went over her. Spain was no longer 
 a country to be reached after a journey. Nor was Ar- 
 turo at a distance; he even seemed there, facing her, 
 smoking in his dreamy, Spanish way, his eyes with brood- 
 ing anger and misery fixed on her as they had been so 
 constantly in the battle that had gone on between them. 
 
 Through the days at the Ritz she had schooled herself 
 in a new determination. Nothing was going to happen
 
 74 The Next Corner 
 
 during this visit that would cause her regret afterward. 
 She would be very sensible, cautious. She would keep 
 close to Paula and others of the guests, avoiding any 
 hours apart with Arturo. He must be made to see clearly 
 from the first moment that though she had come for this 
 chapter with him, it was the last chapter, finis already 
 written. 
 
 She gave a few moments' unmixed thought here to 
 Robert, especially to a letter from him that had reached 
 her at the Ritz just before she left ; this told her that 
 the business in London had been rushed through, that he 
 was sailing for New York that day. She also thought 
 very clearly, and quite without emotion, of his strength 
 and kindness. 
 
 A look into the mirror of her vanity case brought 
 a wondering, half-amused shrug. How she had gibed 
 at his criticism and behold ! it had borne fruit, for 
 her face was but lightly touched with the pencils and 
 powders. Of course he had been right. The habit of 
 plastering one's self into a Pierrot can grow into a sort 
 of debauch without one's realizing it. She had a sense of 
 his approval the while she pictured him leaning on a deck 
 rail, smoking a pipe, the droll, little sun lines showing 
 about his eyes. 
 
 This typical memory of him strengthened her resolve 
 in wisdom. She owed this to him for the royal trust with 
 which he had sent her on her way. And there was her 
 life - perhaps a long one to be spent with him. It 
 could only be bearable if she had nothing to hide that 
 she felt placed her outside his forgiveness. Yet from the 
 mountain epilogue she would get some happiness, the 
 pale and tender glow that belongs to renunciation. This 
 would spread through the secret niches of her spirit, and 
 in the years to come, as retrospection, it would effuse a 
 ghostly sweetness into gray days. 
 
 When Irun was passed and she neared San Sebastian, 
 the excitement born of novelty mixed with her sane and 
 confident mood. Soon she would be beside Paula in her
 
 The Next Corner 75 
 
 motor ; soon on the thin, chill, mountain air that she had 
 always felt in fancy from her first longing for this ex- 
 perience, she would hear Arturo speak to her again, a 
 cluster of his holiday-making, Spanish friends about him ^ 
 carefree days would follow under his roof in a setting of 
 beauty. Oh, life was an alluring thing, a draught of 
 many flavors that mingled to make something so wonder- 
 ful one would have nothing missing from it, no, not 
 even the pain ! 
 
 If, as some believe, powers for evil and good hover un- 
 seen about us, some grim presence may have smiled darkly 
 as Elsie rejoiced in the thought of this mixed blend of 
 emotions, seeing that she had missed the vital truth about 
 it, how, with bitterest grief and disappointment, life's 
 sweet savor can endure, but only to that one who remains 
 firm in self-control; how strength is another name for 
 happiness ; and weakness alone makes the slavery that 
 slays hope. 
 
 Paula was not at San Sebastian. After breakfast, 
 Elsie went on to Bilbao on a branch line. Her anticipa- 
 tion had gone into a childish depression. She had counted 
 so surely on seeing the Englishwoman's coarse, good- 
 humored face turned to her in smiling welcome that miss- 
 ing it sent the sun under a cloud. And now her thoughts 
 fastened on Bilbao with a running thrill of suspense. 
 
 Everything that she saw from the train that was typi- 
 cally Spanish helped to divert her: the first mantilla; the 
 first carabinero in blue uniform and white shako; squat, 
 heavy-browed houses of various, bright tints ; the Chinese 
 suggestion in the high cheek bones of the Basque 
 peasants, reminding her of Serafin, carnations in heaps 
 in venders' baskets ; an oxcart, the animals yoked to- 
 gether with a great bar hung with sheepskin, scarlet 
 fringes dancing above their eyes ; a priest coming down 
 a white road on a donkey. And in a larger sense, 
 wherever her eyes rested, the encompassing beauty! 
 roads twisting like ribbons unwound from a great spool, 
 deep glens, twinkling streams, and above them flashing
 
 76 The Next Corner 
 
 in sunlight the peaks of the Cantabrian mountains toward 
 which she was to journey. With all of these impressions 
 the meeting with Paula, a shadowy picture, would dance 
 in and out. 
 
 And now the long tunnel leading to Bilbao was reached. 
 Elsie gathered her smallest hand luggage and made ready, 
 after the fashion of the nervous and over-eager traveler, 
 to quit the compartment at the earliest instant possible. 
 When the train stopped, her eyes swept the waiting crowd 
 for a familiar face, Paula's, perhaps at once ; if not, then 
 her chauffeur's or her maid's. None of these came out 
 of the sea of features where every mouth was moving 
 rapidly in a chatter that made a noise like fine machinery, 
 and the tension about her heart was hardening to a ques- 
 tioning distress when she saw Serafin. 
 
 He was but a few yards from the train as she 
 descended, his hat lifted above his swarthy, priestly face. 
 She had not imagined that he could ever bring her the 
 relief which came now at sight of him. But he repre- 
 sented reality at the end of this lonely dream- journey. 
 He was something that steadied her, made her see beyond 
 him all the rest of the experience waiting for her. 
 
 So she greeted him with a sparkling gladness and he 
 received it gratefully, with marked respect. To her first 
 questions about Paula he made hurried replies. He had 
 not seen Mrs. Vrain, not yet ; and fearing some delay on 
 her part had on his own responsibility, not having been 
 directed to do so by the Senor Marques taken the pre- 
 caution to arrange for a few seats in a motor omnibus 
 that took passengers to where the mule coach started. 
 And he would search for Mrs. Vrain again as soon as he 
 had seen the luggage through the Customs, if madame 
 would wait until he was at liberty. Meanwhile, seated 
 comfortably in the spot he selected, she could keep on the 
 lookout for her friend. 
 
 This Elsie did and so unsuccessfully that as the mo- 
 ments passed a cold animosity toward Paula crept over 
 her. It had been horrid in the first place for her to have
 
 The Next Corner 77 
 
 insisted that no maid but her own Athenee would be nec- 
 essary ; while it would have been difficult for Julie to have 
 left her husband, Elsie felt she could have been persuaded 
 to go with her, and with Julie beside her nothing could 
 have made her feel as amiss as she did at that moment. 
 It had also been horrid of Paula not to have managed ar- 
 riving at San Sebastian on time, horrid to have treated 
 a woman friend so. And here was the second place of 
 meeting that she had named, and she was late ! 
 
 This was her mood when Serafin joined her, with 
 porters bearing her small trunk and dressing bag. He 
 had attended to everything. He had not seen Mrs. 
 Vrain. She was not at the station. And now they must 
 hurry on. 
 
 "But we can't hurry on!" Elsie protested. "We can't 
 go without Mrs. Vrain!" 
 
 He gave a prolonged and peaceful shrug. "Of course, 
 as you wish, madame, but I would have to leave you. If 
 I do not catch the coach, there will be no way for me to 
 go up until to-morrow at this time. What I believe is 
 this Mrs. Vrain, detained by some trouble to the car 
 on the road and realizing her failure to meet your train, 
 will, no doubt, come on by a short cut over the mountains. 
 You see, madame? Why should you wait here since, in 
 all probability, Mrs. Vrain will not now come to Bilbao 
 at all as why should she, with a powerful motor to 
 simplify matters?" 
 
 "She might think that no one would come to meet me, 
 and she'd look for me here, no matter how late," Elsie 
 said, not a flavor of hope in the tone. 
 
 "Ah, no," he smiled gently, "she understands the Senor 
 Marques better than that. And now you must decide, 
 madame we have not a moment. I feel sure that when 
 we reach El Miradero, Mrs. Vrain will already be there." 
 
 It seemed to Elsie that decision was taken from her. 
 Her brain was humming. She could think of nothing 
 better than what Serafin urged. So while insisting on 
 going with him for a last hurried look about the station,
 
 78 The Next Corner 
 
 from which the crowd had thinned to a few scattered 
 groups, she gave herself into his charge. 
 
 She was indifferent to the interesting notes on the rest 
 of the journey; they passed from her distressed mind 
 without recording themselves save in a cloudy way. In 
 the motor omnibus, even afterward in the loose- jointed, 
 mountain coach with its five mules on a string, its noisy 
 jingling, and radiantly arrayed driver in green velvet 
 trousers and scarlet boina all of which would have been 
 a delightful novelty to her in a happy mood she sat 
 pale and absorbed. Her anger against Paula had 
 changed to sensitive pain. She was hurt, and deeply, at 
 having been left to this solitary role in their adventure. 
 Surely this was the result of a rooted selfishness on 
 Paula's part, the worldly casualness that so easily can 
 become cruelty; really what might be called a social mis- 
 demeanor. 
 
 tf lf women were kind to each other, if they stood by 
 each other as men do by men, a mistake like this could 
 not happen," Elsie thought. 
 
 Two hours later, when more than half of the journey 
 was done, she gave a violent start, fairly jerked from her 
 reverie on realizing that because of the ferment of her 
 thoughts she had missed seeing the one sure road out of 
 the uncertainty, how easily Serafin could have gone 
 on, leaving her to wait in the best hotel in Bilbao until 
 Paula, arriving at El Miradero by some shorter route, 
 would have sent down her car for her. Oh, she had been 
 stupid ! And now it was too late. 
 
 One of the Spaniards seated near her, pretending to 
 read a paper but really devouring her thistle-down blond- 
 ness with glowing eyes, saw her lips shake of a sudden as 
 a child's do before a fit of weeping ; saw her turn and give 
 a wild, lingering look of regret back along the rough 
 descent.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ONE after the other the passengers had left the coach, 
 and for more than an hour Elsie and Serafin had been 
 alone in it. He sat with the red-capped driver who at 
 times would hop down to even the sagging mules and en- 
 courage them with a whooping chant that the gorges took 
 up until it seemed that a crowd of unseen runners sur- 
 rounded them, repeating it: 
 
 "Ea! Ea! Arrel Mulo!" And again: "Ea! Eal 
 Arrel Mulo!" 
 
 The shouts depressed Elsie, adding, as they did, to the 
 strangeness of the scene and her loneliness. Her eyes 
 were observant now, looking sharply to every turning, 
 hoping it would give signs of the journey's end. And 
 what a long dragging journey it had been and still was; 
 a steady three hours' climb up the winding roads through 
 woods of beech and walnut, over rough bridges, over ra- 
 vines, even over mountain torrents. Through what soli- 
 tudes ! How removed from human life from any life ! 
 for there seemed to be no birds in those slanted woods, 
 and hours had passed since the last tinkling of cowbells 
 was heard. 
 
 It had been scorching in the village from which they 
 started, and at the beginning of the ascent sunlight had 
 filled the coach. Now the interior was thick shadow. And 
 when a clearing at one height was reached, Elsie became 
 aware that the gloom was not only from the twilight. 
 Clouds of smoky darkness moved rapidly over the sky 
 and lightning played almost continuously, though with- 
 out any sound of thunder, on the imperial peaks in the 
 distance. 
 
 She took a seat nearer to Serafin, and as she spoke Jie 
 turned. 
 
 79
 
 80 The Next Corner 
 
 "How quickly this storm has come," she said. Her 
 voice had a wan sound. 
 
 "It is not a storm -yet, madame," he assured her. 
 "Often this darkness leaps into view up here and then 
 plunges below. Sometimes at El Miradero we look down 
 on rain clouds that are sending torrents into the lower 
 valleys and not a drop is falling about us." 
 
 The words did not comfort Elsie. She drew back, cold- 
 ness creeping through her as she realized that it was the 
 descent through the valleys that interested her, calm 
 weather down there that seemed at the moment urgently 
 important to her. This was curious. She wondered 
 about it. And as she sat in the gloom, her cold hands 
 locked, she saw that the thought of her return, perhaps 
 a quick one, had been with her while going upward. Be- 
 fore reaching El Miradero, in spirit she had seen herself 
 departing from it, because in spirit she had some dark 
 knowledge that Paula would not be waiting for her there. 
 
 A small house, two-storied and low-browed, of crumb- 
 ling yellow stone, with roof of red tiles, and so built on 
 the projection of a mountain it seemed to cling by talons 
 over perpendicular depths ; a rude balcony on the preci- 
 pice side and on that which looked over a garden facing 
 the road ; through several openings on this balcony 
 called windows, although they were only big square cuts 
 in the stone, without glass a dusky interior of velvety 
 richness; salmon-pink, apricot and crimson carnations, 
 planted so that they seemed a flounce of contrasting 
 brilliance against the lower part of the yellow walls ; 
 vines crawling about every casement. This was El Mira- 
 dero. 
 
 Arturo came through one of the balcony doorways on 
 the side away from the abyss and stood looking down the 
 mountain. The Paris pallor was still on his face, but he 
 wore country clothes that had seen hard service hob- 
 nailed shoes and yarn stockings, corduroy breeches, a 
 jacket that hung hussar-fashion from one shoulder, a 
 flannel shirt, a soft velour hat pulled over the eyes. He
 
 The Next Corner v 81 
 
 looked abstracted, ill at ease. After a dull gaze into the 
 distance he vaulted over the railing and crossed the 
 garden. 
 
 Here, one of his two men servants, a lad of about seven- 
 teen, rested against a wall from which a long view of the 
 dipping road, around a curve that took in miles, could 
 be seen. "Nothing except the coach has passed, excel- 
 lentisimo," the boy said in answer to his questioning look. 
 "That turned the corner twenty minutes since." 
 
 "Very well. You need not wait, Aniceto." And when 
 he had gone silently on his alpargatas those peace- 
 producing, linen-soled shoes that Spanish servants wear 
 Arturo lighted a cigarette and took his place. 
 
 He felt puzzled. Since the early afternoon he had been 
 expecting the throb of Paula's motor up the mountain, a 
 luncheon of the Spanish dishes that she especially liked 
 fresh tunny fish in a steak, and pisto, where eggs were 
 fried in oil with peppers and pimientos waiting to be 
 cooked the instant she arrived. If she had met Elsie at 
 San Sebastian as she had written him she meant to do, 
 in such a car as hers they should have arrived hours ago ; 
 if the meeting had been deferred until Bilbao, they should 
 have arrived at about the same time or only a little later. 
 Yet he was still waiting. And now the mule coach was 
 almost due the crawling coach so it could only mean 
 that Serafin was returning and probably without news of 
 them. 
 
 From the first he had been humble about Elsie's visit to 
 El Miradero, absolutely honest with Paula Vrain when 
 he had begged: "Only delay her return to America. I 
 don't look beyond that. Probably I could bear her going 
 then, when I'd got used to it." This had seemed to fail 
 and he had left Paris believing he had seen Elsie for the 
 last time, only to have heard from Serafin that the Fate 
 he believed in had interposed and instead of sending her 
 across the seas was hurrying her to him in his beloved 
 wilderness. So his disappointment was two-edged since 
 after several days of a covetous, morbidly troubled sort
 
 82 The Next Corner 
 
 of delight that had tried to keep the looming farewell out 
 of the picture, he was to suffer again. She had not come. 
 Something had happened. Or she had changed her mind, 
 perhaps because Paula had changed hers, and he was not 
 to see her at all. 
 
 The driver's shouts and the clanking of the mules' har- 
 ness came clearly to him. He stepped into the road. As 
 the coach came on a last triumphant lurch to the upland 
 valley where he stood, he saw Serafin with the driver and 
 scarcely believing his eyes saw beyond him Elsie's 
 face looking anxiously from the thick shadow. His body, 
 that had been chilled, warmed in a rush. Questions 
 seemed to laugh and scamper from him. No matter how, 
 or why, she was there, in the coach! She was there! 
 Joy made him dizzy, and his face a flash of happiness as 
 he pulled on his coat, he ran to meet her. 
 
 It is a curious phase of intense infatuation that in try- 
 ing to recall the expressions and tricks of manner of the 
 one beloved, memory will often fail altogether, so that a 
 meeting will strike with the freshness of a first, entranced 
 look ; an effect of singular power. This unexpected thing 
 cast its spell over Arturo so that he gazed, stilled, al- 
 most astounded, at Elsie, feeling her charm as no living- 
 ness of fancy had given it to him. 
 
 She was an appealing sight. Her delicately cut face 
 was fatigued, and through a film of veiling and above the 
 high collar of a blue military cloak it suggested a flower 
 dimmed by travel dust ; from the pale hair coiled against 
 her ears, wisps glittered on the -air like blown corn silk ; 
 as she moved a lovely fragrance came from her clothes 
 and mixed with the spice of a huge bunch of carnations 
 that she had bought from a peasant on the way and held 
 pressed against her breast. She seemed to him an accum- 
 ulation of all sweet and beckoning things. 
 
 Yet as the details of courtesy make the sign-manual of 
 high breeding to the Spaniard, Arturo instinctively kept 
 sight of those in which he had been reared, conquered the 
 visible signs of his lover's heart. With a striking gravity,
 
 The Next Corner 83 
 
 and bareheaded, he helped Elsie to the ground. He took 
 the flowers from her and gave them to Aniceto, who had 
 come running at sound of the coach's arrival. Holding 
 both her hands he lifted them slowly, and in turn, to his 
 lips. 
 
 "Welcome, Elsie, to El Miradero," he said with charm- 
 ing quietude and sincerity, and then glowingly in Span- 
 ish : "My house is yours ! My heart is beneath your feet !" 
 
 There was silence as she waited for him to say that for 
 which she had ceased to hope. 
 
 "Paula! She's not here?" The tone was thin, re- 
 pressed. 
 
 "Not yet," and as the rain started with violence 
 he put his hand under her arm and raced her in a joyous 
 way through the garden. 
 
 At Elsie's question illumination had spread through 
 Arturo. He had seen his last moment with Paula at the 
 Longueval house when she had said : "I mean to help you 
 thoroughly. That's the way I am ; absolutely indif- 
 ferent, or a mistress of detail who spares no pains !" 
 and he had seen the watching smile she had kept upon him 
 as she went down the stairs. Paula was not coming; 
 probably had never meant to come. He pushed the 
 troublesome thought away so that he might delight to 
 the full in one, that Elsie was at his side. Let events 
 take what course they might, nothing could alter that. 
 She was with him again. 
 
 "Paula is late; that's all," he thought it well to add, 
 as they reached the door on the balcony. 
 
 "Late?" Elsie echoed with accusation. "She has failed 
 me everywhere !" 
 
 "Well, isn't she always full of whims and surprises? 
 By the time you've changed for dinner, she'll come tearing 
 into sight up the mountain." 
 
 She jerked her arm from him and stopped sharply on 
 the threshold to look back. The downpour was hissing 
 through a deepening fog. The terraces of mountains 
 were smoky monoliths except when revealed by the
 
 84 The Next Corner 
 
 lightning, now continual blue-white glares. She looked 
 down at the valley she had left, and it had gone, in its 
 place a black pit. 
 
 "Never mind the storm ! We'll shut it out ! You must 
 have some refresco and then I'll take you to your room. 
 It's off Paula's so that you two can have long bedroom 
 talks at night !" 
 
 With excited happiness he took off her wet cloak and 
 drew her to a small table where a queerly-shaped jug of 
 cold wine with sliced fruit in it and a tray of sandwiches 
 stood. As she had not eaten since breakfast a weary sort 
 of hunger helped the weight on Elsie's spirit, and at his 
 gay command she both ate and drank a little. Afterward, 
 when he opened a door for her on the upper floor, he 
 paused there and again made her welcome in the gravely 
 gracious, Spanish way. She listened, and from her under- 
 sense of trouble could not reply. 
 
 "You are at home 'su casa? as we say," he con- 
 tinued wistfully, and looking very boyish in the loose, 
 rough clothes, his black hair, usually so sleek, roughened 
 over the brows, while he held her hand gently in both of 
 his as if it were a small bird he guarded there. "You 
 must be very happy, Elsie, at El Miradero!" 
 
 She smiled, nodded jerkily and went in. At once the 
 set look and steady step that her will had managed fell 
 away, and in an apathetic sort of confusion she stood 
 with her weight against the closed door, seeing the odd 
 room only through a blur. Later its plaster walls painted 
 a bright blue, the spangled shrine beside the rough, iron 
 bed that yet was covered by a wine-colored velvet cope 
 embroidered with gold and evidently centuries old, made 
 their appeal to her. Not now. She left the door. Still 
 with her hat on, she sank on a chair beside the trunk that, 
 at Serafin's direction, had been conveniently placed and 
 opened for her. For a long time she remained so, chin 
 on her doubled hand, hardening herself, struggling for 
 composure. 
 
 One thing became as flawlessly clear as sunlight on a
 
 The Next Corner 85 
 
 steel shield; if Paula did not arrive at El Miradero, 
 nothing would win her to remain there for the night. She 
 would wait for one hour. If by that time Paula had not 
 come, then the journey down the mountain! 
 
 The storm seemed to reply to this resolve with screech- 
 ing derision. Go back? As memory showed her the 
 plunging and twisting roads, edging ravines, over which 
 she had been dragged for hours and then made a picture 
 of the hobgoblin pandemonium they would be on a night 
 like this, she stood up, her hushed face turned to the 
 closed, wooden shutters that had need of their strong 
 latches. The rain was attacking them with the noise of 
 loosened rivers ; the wind had split into contrary gales 
 with the raucous voices of Communistic hags. 
 
 And after she had stood still for a while listening to the 
 clamor, the inner silence of the house suddenly took on 
 some meaning full of cloudy trouble. She opened the 
 door and stepped out, with no clearer purpose than to 
 find Arturo, confide her vexation, and get his promise to 
 have her taken back to Bilbao as soon as she felt she must 
 
 go- 
 Turning a corner she found herself on a rudely built 
 
 little gallery that overlooked the living room. She was in 
 deep shadow; from below the lovely beaming that mixed 
 firelight and candlelight give swept up. Yet instead of 
 hurrying down she hesitated there, keeping well out of 
 view. She did this without a defined reason, while through 
 her surreptitious sort of stealth some separated thought 
 was trying to get at her mind, seeking assurance, as a 
 small, worried thing will hunt for a corner into which it 
 can crawl. 
 
 The sounds of the house were soft and came to her 
 clearly here: servants speaking; Serafin's answer to a 
 distant call from Arturo ; later, and a little nearer, an- 
 other command from Arturo ; and again Serafin's reply. 
 No other voice than these four. The mole-like uneasiness 
 had clear outlines, there was no evidence of the other 
 guests; there had been no mention of them.
 
 86 The Next Corner 
 
 She went close to the rail, from which she had a good 
 view of the room. This was beautiful, its mountain sim- 
 plicity mixed with odd, rich notes making for comfort. 
 The solid part of a tree blazed on a deep hearth and gave 
 out hissing paroxysms when spray came down the 
 chimney. The wide chairs were of planks. There were 
 couches with skins over them. A large desk that faced 
 the wall, its high back to the room, seemed an early 
 Spanish model of oak, black from age and with the deep- 
 seated glow of ancient things. Another striking effect 
 came from the table; though but an oblong of heavy 
 planks, its appointments, even to shaded candles and 
 flowers in small vases, were fitting for a formal dinner in 
 Paris. Her look was held by it. It was set for three. 
 Paula was of course the third, and she was still absent. 
 Under that roof, then, no one was with Arturo but the 
 men in his employ and herself. 
 
 A dismayed moment engulfed her. She came out of it 
 shaken, her breath difficult. Paula had fed her with every 
 sort of lie. They could only have been a bait to get her 
 to El Miradero and find herself alone there with Arturo. 
 Paula's lies? Were they not also Arturo's? Had Paula 
 been anything more than his cat's-paw? A burning hatred 
 of the woman swept over Elsie. When, as the feeling 
 ebbed, she struggled to hate Arturo too, all she could feel 
 was a disappointment that filled her like a sickness and 
 turned the necessary accounting with him into a thing 
 of misery. 
 
 She had taken a few steps toward the stairs when his 
 voice came up and with the ring of such sharp anger in 
 it, she drew back and waited in the darkness. She 
 saw him cross the room and come to full view before the 
 fire. He had dressed informally. In his dinner jacket 
 he was again the man she had known in Paris, but the 
 look on his face, a cold sternness with perplexity, was 
 new to her. His gesture summoning Serafin to come 
 nearer an abrupt jerk of his thumb toward himself 
 was contemptuous rebuke.
 
 The Next Corner 87 
 
 She saw him look into the Basque's face, and it was 
 plain that with a frozen sort of anger he had begun ac- 
 cusing him of something for which Serafin, with suave 
 shrugs and the constant outspreading of his dark hands, 
 was making respectful excuses. Their Spanish was rapid 
 and subdued and her knowledge of the language slight. 
 She could only watch; only glean from the constant re- 
 currence of her name and Paula's that Arturo was en- 
 raged at Serafin for something connected with them both. 
 
 Her disquiet lessened under the strength of her long- 
 ing to acquit Arturo of treachery ; this gave her heart a 
 big fullness. And when one phrase in Spanish that she 
 could understand came from him cuttingly, she rejoiced: 
 
 "Paula is a devil," Arturo said. "She is nothing less 
 than a devil to have done this! And you -you, are no 
 better !" 
 
 While he was still speaking he saw Elsie, except for 
 her cloak dressed as when she left the coach, hurrying 
 down the narrow stairs to him. As he went to meet her 
 and drew her to the fire, Serafin went out. 
 
 "I understood a little," Elsie said, the flare showing up 
 the desperation of her face. "You'll get me out of this, 
 Arturo. From what you said to Serafin I know it's all 
 Paula's fault why she did it I don't know. I'm only 
 glad it was not you who tricked me into coming here " 
 The words broke. "Your only guest !" 
 
 Her look implored him to contradict this. His silence 
 was a reply. 
 
 "Am I the only one here?" 
 
 "Paula told you that there were to be others?" 
 
 "She said you were to have a house party. From the 
 very first, she said that!" 
 
 "I never intended it. I never told her so. She must 
 have been enraged because I wanted you here. She's 
 tricked us both laughing at us both." 
 
 Elsie sat down heavily. Furious weeping jolted over 
 her. "What a cat!" she blurted. "Cruel, smiling cat! 
 I hate her !"
 
 The Next Corner 
 
 "So do I," Arturo said in a still, icy way. "I'm 
 angry and I'm sorry. You do believe me?" 
 
 "I do oh, yes," she said as well as she could, adding 
 on a hurried breath, "Never mind that now. What are 
 we to do ? You must do something get something to 
 take me down to that place we started from, and I'll stay 
 there if I can't go on to Bilbao to-night." 
 
 As instead of moving he grew more grave, she tugged 
 at his hands. "Don't you hear, Arturo?" 
 
 "I have to tell you " he muttered and stopped; the 
 lids came down over his somber gaze. 
 
 "What?" she asked with dread. "You must get some- 
 thing to take me down now ! I won't stay for dinner. 
 I want to go. Oh, do hurry, Arturo please ! I'll call 
 Serafin," and she started toward the door. 
 
 "Elsie!" 
 
 The ringing word brought her back. A desperate 
 quiet had come to him. "You have been deceived quite 
 enough. Even Serafin deceived you, for he knew very 
 well he should not have brought you up here while there 
 was any doubt of Paula's coming. He knew very well 
 that there is no way " and now his hands sank with 
 force upon her shoulders as she stood lifelessly before 
 him, " no way by which you could go back until to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
 "No way?" The words formed on her lips without 
 sound. 
 
 "Even without this storm no possible way, Elsie !" 
 
 "I don't know what you mean ! Not true !" This, 
 though an unsteady breath, was a frenzied denial. 
 
 "If I could only make it not true!" 
 
 The sincerity in the tone was unquestionable, and 
 Elsie's eyes became pools of abject dread. "Then I'm not 
 to get away from here to-night!" blurted from her in 
 such entreaty and panic he forced her to a chair and knelt 
 beside her. 
 
 Elsie scarcely saw him. The most uncannily enlighten- 
 ing feeling she had ever known filled her; an encompass-
 
 The Next Corner 89 
 
 ing suspense. She tried to struggle through it. Surely 
 there was no need of it? The situation in which she 
 found herself the result of Paula's jealous venom and 
 Serafin's malice for his humiliation at her hands was 
 distasteful, but could be accepted sensibly and lived 
 through? 
 
 Instantly she knew that the fear which had come upon 
 her was for something beyond this ; it had a clairvoyant 
 whisper that seemed to mourn over some dark and chill- 
 ing consequence of the situation, and from which only 
 flight could save her. 
 
 "I am going I am !" she kept stuttering in answer 
 to this urging, her face, with a groping bewilderment on 
 it, turned away. "I must go ! I must must " 
 
 "Ah, listen, Elsie and dear, try to be sensible. As 
 soon as you were in your room," Arturo went on in a 
 quieting voice, "I sent Aniceto up to the only house with- 
 in reach, a place where they have a motor. It was shut 
 up ; the family had left on some excursion or perhaps gone 
 back to Burgos until later on. That was my only hope. 
 You see this is an uncivilized place, and this is a rude, 
 little house, Elsie. I come here for solitude and have 
 never before needed horses. 
 
 "The coaches, then, are all we have to depend on. 
 There will not be another until about three or so in the 
 morning it goes down at that time so that people can 
 get a morning train comfortably, after breakfasting in 
 one of the valley towns. Until then nothing comes this 
 way except Eduardo, a man on a donkey, who carries 
 letters to a wayside post box at the foot of the mountains. 
 He is made use of this way as a messenger because he has 
 work on the railroad that takes him down late at night 
 but he is useless in our present difficulty. I am making 
 all this clear to you, my darling, because I want you to 
 make the best of what cannot be helped. You must not 
 be afraid. You will stay here and trust me, Elsie. For 
 you can trust me !" 
 
 And then Elsie saw that what threatened her would
 
 90 The Next Corner 
 
 have its beginning in herself. As he spoke, Arturo's 
 hands had crept from her shoulders to her throat, a fur- 
 tive, hypnotic persuasion in their fondling touch. The 
 familiar, imperious fire in him she could have steeled her- 
 self against. The something unselfish in his concern for 
 her, in his anger at the tricks played upon her, a certain 
 elevation in his bearing, a touch of sorrow, were new ap- 
 peals that made her feel she was tenderly loved. 
 
 And assuredly at that moment only fair things were in 
 Arturo's heart, "the dignity and loyalty and the love 
 of God" of his race in the ascendant. He believed what 
 he said. And Elsie believed it, too, but saw what lay 
 dangerously close to it his hunger for her crying out 
 in his touch and her ungovernable response to it 
 rejected by her mind, luring her senses with the dark pull 
 of a drug. Her enemy was within. 
 
 She broke from him heavily and on feet that seemed 
 weighted reached the stairs, fright in her crowding words. 
 
 "You know I can't stay here you know that as well 
 as I do. And I don't want to, I don't want to ! I must 
 get to Bilbao or some place there must be some way 
 I can get down the mountain I'll go, if I have to walk !" 
 
 After she had gone Arturo remained in a graven sort 
 of stillness. Such an intent and searching look shot into 
 his eyes, as he stood gazing up at the spot where Elsie 
 had vanished, it seemed as if some other had slipped into 
 the darkness, was challenging him, calling down to him 
 through it. The whole effect of his face changed. It 
 grew grim, driven, concentrated in a demand. The wilful 
 lines so faint about the mouth showed like dug-in wires, 
 flattening it. An avid gleam came to his eyes. 
 
 This absorption lasted a few moments. As a hard 
 shudder went over him he seemed to surrender to some 
 force that drew him on slowly to the stairs. After a 
 pause there he went up them, his step determined. 
 
 In the passage, a few yards beyond Elsie's door, a 
 candle burned in a hanging lantern whose glass was tinted 
 the Spanish yellow and crimson arranged in mosaics.
 
 The Next Corner 91 
 
 Under this he waited restfully until Elsie came out of 
 her room. She had on her military cloak, her smallest 
 bag in her hand. 
 
 At sight of him in that attitude, his breathless, tor- 
 mented, resolute look fixed upon her a look without the 
 slightest kinship to the lovely kindness of his eyes when 
 she had left him she could not speak at first. He gave 
 her no help. Through his silence the thought came to her 
 that he felt no need of further persuasion; silence and 
 waiting were his allies, and enough. 
 
 She began a rush of fluttering words : "I'll go on. 
 Send all my things to Paris ! I'll go back to the Ritz ! 
 You'll come with me, Arturo, and show me the way? 
 You'll help me get down, won't you? won't you?" 
 
 He took her arm in a gentle yet directing grip and led 
 her to the end of the passage where one of the fastened 
 window shutters showed. 
 
 "I want you to listen to the storm," he said with moni- 
 tory quiet. "Listen to it." 
 
 She stood in silence beside him. He felt her tremble, 
 saw her eyes shrink as if from a sun too strong. The 
 whole world seemed at war outside, women wailing, and 
 hoofs ringing, and soldiers attacking, and fiends whistling 
 in some abominable triumph. 
 
 "But if you helped me, if you came down with me 
 couldn't we manage somehow?" She urged the words 
 out with a lifeless sort of obstinacy. 
 
 His answer was to force up the heavy bar on the shutter 
 and recklessly hold it open. The wind, with the quality 
 of sheet iron, tore in through the glassless space and 
 struck them back, the rain went over their heads like the 
 wash of a big wave; and this during a second. As Ar- 
 turo fought the gale and fastened the shutter again, 
 Elsie sank against the wall. She stood there, gasping, 
 wiping her face, the bag fallen to her feet. Arturo, too, 
 had pulled a big handkerchief from his sleeve, used it as 
 if it were a bath towel and shook the water from his 
 hair, while breaking into laughter with cries in Spanish.
 
 92 The Next Corner 
 
 Mad laughter it was. Elsie had never heard anything 
 even faintly like it from him before, for in his pleasure 
 he had never been gay, never frivolous like their com- 
 panions. It seemed that the prancing in of the wild 
 night, striking him, had acted as a challenge, called to 
 him to be like it, conquering all, afraid of nothing. In 
 the mixed glow from the lantern he seemed a storm-mad 
 faun, drunk with the urge of his own dancing blood. 
 
 Still laughing, deadly pale, and with overbright eyes 
 he came straight to her and curved his hands about her 
 face. As he looked down at her he grew serious. 
 
 "My darling," he said with slow determination, a glow- 
 ing clearness. 
 
 She tore at his fingers. They seemed molded to her 
 head. 
 
 "Don't," came on a shudder, a breath, for with his 
 touch and the blows of his heart against her own the peril 
 within herself had taken on a stifling sweetness. "Oh, 
 please remember! Oh, what am I to do?" 
 
 This stammering fear he answered by crushing her to 
 him, his arms trembling in yearning, hard in decision. 
 "You are to remain with me here, cara mi cielo my 
 adored and treasured love!" 
 
 "No !" 
 
 "No?" He cried this out with a return of the mad 
 laughter and kissed her cheek. "No?" he asked mockingly 
 as he pulled the pin from her hat and flung both aside. In 
 a relentless way he pressed her face down and his lips 
 swept over her hair, her ear, her throat. "No?" he 
 asked again, this time very gravely, with a note of pain. 
 His beautiful mouth, thirsting, hung just above hers. 
 "Do you say that to me, Elsie? If you do, I will let you 
 go." He waited still, his breath broken. "Can you say 
 it? Ah, can you, Elsie? . . . Can you? ..." 
 
 She could not. Under the stealing, agonizing, enfeeb- 
 ling delight of that delayed kiss, the will to resist a 
 struggling light went out, and darkness like a flood 
 rushed in. Elsie seemed drowning in it when Arturo's
 
 The Next Corner 93 
 
 lips at last burned down on hers and kept them through 
 wild words that were almost without sound: 
 
 "I'm not going to lose you going to keep you ! I 
 didn't seek this ! It's come and I'll seize it. It is our 
 destiny ! Oh, I love you how I love you ! I love you 
 too much ! Above all in life, in all the world I adore you ! 
 I've been sick for you, torn for you. You shall not go ! 
 It's no use how can I be different from what I am?" 
 
 For a time he held her with overmastering greed, the 
 red and yellow stains from the lantern dancing on their 
 pale faces, the storm knocking and chuckling and 
 whistling around them. Elsie grew weak in his arms. 
 There was triumph in being so conquered. This was life ! 
 This was all ! Without it there was nothing ! 
 
 The intoxication lasted only a moment. The unescap- 
 able despondency that flavors all collapse came to her as 
 from some warning wail rising above the clamor in her- 
 self. She drew away from Arturo, with eyes growing sick 
 in her awakening. 
 
 "Why have you done this?" her whisper came. Her 
 hands grasped her surging head. There was a dreadful 
 note in the question that followed : "Where are you taking 
 me?"
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 AND that dreadful note of utter helplessness in the 
 voice he loved came at Arturo with such reproach it 
 steadied him. With a struggle he opposed the feeling that 
 held him as with a beast's claws. Ghastly now and trem- 
 bling, he yet touched Elsie very gently. 
 
 "Dearest, don't look at me so ah, don't look at me 
 like that !" 
 
 In an assuring way he drew her to a rough bench that 
 ran beside the wall, and for a moment they sat side by 
 side in silence. Arturo only held her cold hand, lifting it 
 once to his face with a scrupulous tenderness ; and once 
 he touched his lips with their held-back, excited breath 
 to her wet sleeve. His beauty had taken on new power, 
 the splendor of line and light of a questing tiger. His 
 eyes showed the fever that tormented him kept brooding 
 under heavy and languid pulses while he comforted her. 
 
 "You are not afraid of me now, darling? You don't 
 think I would ever be unkind to you?" 
 
 The dire appeal had gone out of Elsie's face, leaving 
 in single strength a passionate adoration. As before, it 
 was his gentleness, his care that fed her craving for him. 
 In an unexpected way, appealing as a child's, she took 
 her hand from him and put her arms about his neck. As 
 he waited with a look of amazed and humble joy, for it 
 was her first impulsive caress, she drew his face down to 
 her and kissed him, this also in the way of a trustful 
 child. 
 
 "I do love you, Arturo," she said very earnestly. "I 
 can't leave you " 
 
 "Preciosa! My very heart!" 
 
 "All the fight has gone out of me. But it's the after- 
 ward all that will come afterward that frightens 
 
 94
 
 The Next Corner 95 
 
 me. Oh, make me see. Show me where I am going !" She 
 laid her face on his shoulder, hiding it, and as his lips 
 touched her neck a rapture went through her that 
 ended in a shudder. "I'm a coward," broke from her, still 
 with her face down. "To be wicked, one ought to be fear- 
 less." 
 
 "Is this being wicked?" he asked into her ear that 
 through the loose hairs veiling it was like an opening 
 blossom. "Wouldn't it be more wicked to leave me when 
 you love me and go away to live with a man you do not 
 love?" She lifted her head and looked at him with de- 
 fenseless eyes that showed her groping for truth. "You 
 did not think of that, ever?" he asked with dreamy re- 
 proach. 
 
 A light came out of the trouble in Elsie's face. Her 
 arms tightened about him. "Then you do see, Arturo, 
 the one thing that's plain to me if I stay here with you 
 I can never go back to Robert?" She stood up, her 
 hands against her wan cheeks, dragging at them. "Never, 
 never, never will I go back. I'd even pray never to come 
 face to face with him again," she whispered, and after a 
 pause as she bent down, her hands upon his shoulders, 
 added with almost a sad desperation: "My old life I'll 
 throw away forever. Whatever happens to me, going 
 with you whatever I become there will be no one but 
 you !" 
 
 The words checked Arturo. They, and the feel of her 
 holding fingers again swept a memory of Paula's words 
 to him: "Will you take my advice and let her alone? Or, 
 will you risk having her on your hands for life?" This 
 was what she had meant. Gazing up at Elsie he saw also 
 unaccustomed heights that would demand unselfishness, 
 and to which, holding her, he might be drawn. Justice 
 and pity strove within him, urging truth. 
 
 Only briefly. After the fashion of his race, intensified 
 by his manner of life, he delayed meeting the issue; later 
 he would see more clearly. Just now it was enough that 
 Elsie was like a wonderful flower that the storm had
 
 96 The Next Corner 
 
 broken and blown to him. Her falling hair a glittering 
 mist over brow and cheeks; her eyes luminous in the sad 
 gaze of one demanding its secret of Fate; the spiritual- 
 ized pallor of her skin, her charming hands, so like a 
 child's, framing her face; the waiting breath upon her 
 parted lips all the gold and white of her these made 
 him know a worship to the limits of his nature, acted as 
 a spur upon his refined and corrupted mind. He knew, 
 too, of the ardors within her fragility, hidden there until 
 he had made her love him; that he had found there like 
 fire under snow. And there would be still deeper ecstasies 
 oh, wonders ! that he would arouse as the practised 
 musician calls multiform rhapsodies from wood and 
 strings. Self-discipline? Renunciation? No! He had 
 never quite risen to the call of what was good in him, and 
 he could not now, could not escape from the goad of his 
 passion for her. The last wavering reflection vanished, 
 and he was only aware of the drumming blood in his 
 brain, a conquering languor. 
 
 "Let us finish this and not speak of it any more," he 
 said, and made her sit down again. He knelt before her, 
 his arms loosely about her waist. "When I say that I 
 want nothing but your happiness, can you doubt me?" he 
 asked and drew back a little so that she could look fully 
 into the shadows and glow of his eyes. "Now tell me what 
 troubles you?" 
 
 She grew calm at his words. "There's my husband. 
 I can't forget him. I can't play with him, Arturo, or 
 cheat him. I know that lots of women can. In Paris we 
 both knew women who did. I cannot. I can't be untrue 
 to my husband and ever see him again." 
 
 "Well, then let me ask you will you grieve for not 
 seeing him again?" 
 
 "Not if you love me " and now her face showed the 
 bite of conscience through the glamour he had brought 
 there, "not if you really love me. That could make it 
 seem to me right." 
 
 "I shall always love you," he said simply. "Do you
 
 The Next Corner 97 
 
 think any woman has ever been to me what you have been? 
 Have I endured a hell of failure for a year for any other 
 and still hung about her, suffering, as I have for you? 
 I never have. I shall love you as long as I live! Does 
 this satisfy you?" 
 
 She gave him a searching gaze. "Yes," she sighed, and 
 yet content was missing. 
 
 "I can't say that we can ever arrange our lives con- 
 ventionally you understand? There's my family my 
 mother I am dependent on her. Also, she is old and 
 loves me very much, as I do her. Then, as I've often told 
 you, she has certain beliefs and feelings that are as her 
 life blood and which I dare not, would not wish ever to 
 offend. But my sweet one, so precious to me, there is 
 the whole world with many beautiful quiet places or gay 
 bright cities where we could live together and snap our 
 fingers at formal society and its rules. Would this be 
 enough for you?" 
 
 He moved to one side, completely releasing her, and 
 leaning his arm on the bench looked up at her in a patient, 
 numbed way. "You see, I will not try to persuade you 
 with my emotion ah, dearest, which is so terrible ! 
 I will let you decide for yourself. Would what I offer be 
 enough for you?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; oh, yes," she said and shuddered as if joy 
 frightened her. As he had fully expected, it was she, re- 
 warding his self-control, who sought him. Her hand 
 smoothed his cheek. After kissing the hollowed, rosy 
 palm he tucked it against his throat. "I understand that 
 you can't promise more, Arturo. It would be a happiness 
 that seems too great if if only " 
 
 "If! Well, dear? What?" 
 
 "If only Robert knew !" 
 
 "He will know, in time." 
 
 "If he knew now !" she said wistfully, desperately. 
 
 A boyish laugh broke from Arturo. "Madre mia, I'm 
 glad he cannot that we have not yet miracles ! You 
 are a foolish child, Elsie, if ever there was one," and he
 
 98 The Next Corner 
 
 gave her a sudden, kindly caress. "You seem sometimes 
 not more than ten years of age. Nothing could make 
 your husband know now. Not unless you have mas- 
 tered telepathy. Have you?" He smiled up at her. "Or 
 what do you mean?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know exactly. But if he knew if I could 
 have told him before I left him, then I'd feel different 
 true. Then there would not be one regret. I feel guilty 
 
 until I tell him." 
 
 The poetry went out of Arturo's face. A look of blind 
 rage swept over it. "I never heard of such a thing. We 
 are to remain here as two strangers, I suppose, until we 
 are sure that Mr. Robert Maury has had time to receive 
 your letter in which you tell him that you are leaving him 
 for me. Can you expect me to consent to that?" He 
 sprang up and looked down at her with grave, cold eyes. 
 "You are playing with me. It amuses you to torment my 
 soul." 
 
 As she stared back at him she had the harassed look 
 of one trying to hold to a tune through a clash of bells. 
 "No," she murmured, "no. But at least, as you've said 
 
 I can write!" Her face clearing, she came quickly to 
 him as he still stood with rigid arms and somber gaze. 
 "That would do, Arturo ! yes, I'd be satisfied if I wrote 
 to Robert, if I knew that from the moment I made my 
 decision, from the very beginning, my letter telling him 
 the truth was on its way." She laid her head with plead- 
 ing on his shoulder. "Don't be angry! I suppose I am 
 foolish do I seem foolish?" 
 
 "Very," he said, and not able to resist the appeal of 
 her closeness let his arms fasten about her. "I can't un- 
 derstand your thinking of this man at all since you love 
 me as you do. There isn't a woman living of whom I 
 could think in such a moment!" 
 
 "But you did," Elsie urged gently, looking up. "You 
 thought of your mother." 
 
 Just the mention of his mother in that casual way by 
 a stranger and the something in him that often had
 
 The Next Corner 99 
 
 baffled Elsie was plain for a moment in a look that was 
 a spirit-quelling thing. It intrenched him at once behind 
 a rampart of pride, made her conscious of all the proud 
 quarterings over his doors. 
 
 "That was different." This was conclusive as his hold 
 upon her loosened. After a pause he added with formal- 
 ity : "I had to explain some things. You had not the 
 same reason. It is not necessary for you to guard your 
 action so that you may take support from your husband. 
 There's not that need of consideration of him. But per- 
 haps I am wrong?" he asked with a slowness that was 
 cruel. "It may be your- intention to continue to take an 
 income from him? Such a thing to me would be un- 
 natural, detestable but I am unused to American 
 ways." 
 
 Elsie had retreated, staring at him, her look appalled. 
 "How could you say that? It was horrible to say that 
 to me. Oh, it was a brutal, hateful thing," she almost 
 sobbed. 
 
 "It was !" Arturo cried and flung his head back vio- 
 lently in self-contempt. He came to her, penitent, shaken 
 with tenderness. "Forgive me, my dearest. I have a bad 
 temper! I am a Spaniard, you know, so sometimes I get 
 into a dreadful rage. It doesn't last," he smiled, "and 
 it's because I am so terribly in love with you that I feel 
 sheer insanity when you speak of any man but me !" He 
 led her to the door of the bedroom and took her face in 
 his hands. "Am I forgiven?" 
 
 "Yes, of course." 
 
 "Then write your letter, if you wish. Bring it down 
 when you come to dinner and hurry, for it is past ten. 
 Eduardo shall have it when he goes down the mountain 
 in about an hour. I'll tell Serafin to have the lantern 
 hung out that is the signal for him to stop " 
 
 "Serafin!" rang in her thoughts, but she did not utter 
 it. Having kept secret the experience with the Basque 
 that had made her dislike him, she shrank from telling it 
 now.
 
 100 The Next Corner 
 
 "Wear your prettiest gown," Arturo whispered. 
 "Have you what I love something gold?" 
 
 "No. Only one white and one black." 
 
 "Wear the white." He bent her head back. "Bride's 
 color," he whispered, and for a moment there was nothing 
 upon the earth but his arms, his loved breath and lips, 
 and the eyes that she saw close as if by the weight of his 
 delight. 
 
 "Go." His voice was smothered, his smile much like a 
 distracted boy's. "Go quickly and come back to me 
 quickly. I want every moment !" 
 
 Arturo returned to the living room. Except that he 
 went rapidly, there was little sign in his face of his wild 
 joy. A manner that could be a mask when with inferiors 
 was usual, easy to assume. He lighted a cigarette before 
 giving the loud clap of the hands that summoned servants. 
 
 Aniceto glided in at one door, Serafin came gravely 
 from another. After brief instructions to the boy about 
 serving the long-delayed dinner and which he fled at once 
 to carry out, Arturo looked peacefully at the Basque. 
 His earlier displeasure was still felt between them and 
 showed in an excessive impassiveness on Serafin's side as 
 he waited, a conciseness on Arturo's when he spoke. 
 
 In the most natural way he stated that Mrs. Maury 
 was going to remain with him indefinitely. She was send- 
 ing an important letter to her husband, by Eduardo, and 
 Serafin would see that the lantern was immediately hung 
 out. Aniceto and the cook were all that would be required 
 by him at El Miradero for the present. Serafin would 
 therefore leave. He must take the morning coach, and 
 in Bilbao rent a touring car for Arturo for a month. 
 He would return with it and a chauffeur. Going on in 
 it past El Miradero to the Senora Marquesas country 
 house, he would assure her of Arturo's well-being, and 
 without going into details, make her understand that 
 neither she nor his sister must visit him ; that instead, Ar- 
 turo would motor over within the week to spend the day 
 with them. This done, Serafin was to send the car back
 
 The Next Corner 101 
 
 to El Miradero while continuing where he pleased on a 
 vacation, to Burgos or if he wished still farther, to 
 pay his family a visit. When Arturo needed him he 
 would be recalled. For to-night he was to wait at table 
 and well, that was all. 
 
 Serafin received these directions without the slightest 
 change of expression. He bowed deeply, saying he would 
 put out the lantern at once and would be ready, as the 
 Senor Marques wished, to depart by the coach. He also 
 begged to say that he regretted keenly having displeased 
 the Senor Marques, yet assured him that in urging his 
 guest to come on alone to El Miradero he had been think- 
 ing of his master's contentment only, only hoping to 
 bring about, for his sake, exactly what had transpired. 
 And the Senor Marques could count on him as on his 
 own right hand, until his last breath. 
 
 After listening, while musingly smoking, to these as- 
 surances of fidelity, Arturo thanked him sincerely though 
 in the briefest way. Serafin bowed profoundly several 
 times and went about his duties. 
 
 There had not been a trace of Aniceto's servility or 
 haste on Serafin's part in this little scene, nevertheless 
 his loyalty and veneration were clear to Arturo. He un- 
 derstood the erectness and dignity of his Basque foster 
 brother ; it did not in the slightest way alter the fact that 
 if Serafin could at that moment have chosen his station in 
 life, he would have been, like Arturo, an hidalgo of Spain 
 rather than king of any other land.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE letter to Robert was the dominant thought to 
 Elsie through the sweet and stinging tumult of her mind. 
 Only when it was on its way would a dogging sense of 
 treachery to him leave her. Sending it, she would be as 
 honest as time and distance made possible. Sending it, 
 she would burn all her boats, their flames the signs that 
 the river that flowed between what she had been and would 
 be in the future, could never be crossed unless un- 
 less the man she loved would, sometime, marry her. And 
 even then? . . . Ah, even then, would there not always 
 be her public defiance of law, a shadow that would 
 never down while eyes could look at her with memory of it? 
 
 At this thought, as she sat bent over the desk and tried 
 to write, words from her mother's letter recurred to her, 
 and for a few seconds the shallow, pretty face seemed be- 
 side her, but twisted in rage as the lips echoed their 
 written warning : "You fool !" 
 
 Elsie gave the whisper of a desperate laugh. Well, an 
 honest fool. There was pride in knowing that. And 
 with the feeling judgment of her mother grew hard. 
 
 As they come to the drowning, so in this moment of 
 critical venturing a murked procession of pictures of her 
 childhood rose before Elsie. She saw herself tolerated or 
 pushed aside by Nina Race, the singer ; frostbitten in her 
 childish soul with her glacial aunt; never with a home; 
 never loved ; at last hurried into marriage when so young 
 with the first man that wanted her because it meant her 
 mother's escape from her as an incubus, and an in- 
 cubus that stood for a calendar showing what Nina's ap- 
 proximate age must be. No love anywhere. Ah, that 
 was it! Had she had the love on which most children 
 
 102
 
 The Next Corner 103 
 
 ripen sweetly and which with her had always been an 
 absolute need of the ingrained and suppressed ardor of 
 her nature, it was not likely that the feeling that filled 
 her now like the vertigo of heights would have found 
 her ready, at last, to pay its heavy price. 
 
 Her pen lay motionless on the paper while she followed 
 the trail of self-defending thought to Robert. A man of 
 splendid qualities, his complete mastery of himself had 
 been a numbing, fretting thing to her. There had always 
 been a wall between them. Always the flame in herself 
 had been left to burn like a candle in a bare and un- 
 tenanted room. Although she had borne him a child, it 
 was the child that she had passionately loved. (Ah, had 
 her darling lived! How nearly had losing it taken her 
 sanity!) For its father her feeling had been, at the 
 strongest, a grateful devotion mixed with eagerness to 
 stand level with him as a comrade. She was sure he cared 
 deeply for her, in his way; a careful, self-watching way, 
 so that often he would seem to have retreated into some 
 inner house with doors shut, she to be satisfied know- 
 ing he was near to sit in its vestibule or wander in its 
 garden. So as he had never spent himself prodigally in 
 loving what he had, neither would he, she felt sure, in re- 
 gret for what he would lose. He would not miss her much. 
 At their recent meeting he had felt that she had become 
 a light sort of woman and had been glad to get away from 
 her. When, from her own written words, he would see 
 her as both light and soiled, he would forget her easily. 
 
 As to his possible meaning to herself once her letter 
 was gone? She tried to see this from every side. He had 
 been little more than a shadow to her for years ; a shadow 
 that she had known would instantly have taken on en- 
 during substance had she called to him, or sought him, 
 needing him ; a shadow that had generously provided for 
 her from a distance; yet, not one that had ever winged 
 to her over the space between them the knowledge of a 
 hungry heart that waited, aching for the moment that 
 would give her again to him. And so from now on he
 
 104 The Next Corner 
 
 would become merely a less distinct shadow until soon 
 even that much of him would go and nothing of the past 
 would waver across her sunlight at all. 
 She wrote the letter : 
 
 "June 1914 El Miradero. 
 
 "This is going to hurt you, Robert, and I am deeply, 
 deeply sorry but it is inevitable. You see I am writing 
 from the lodge in the Cantabrians. You know it belongs 
 to the young Marques de Burgos, but perhaps you don't 
 realize that he is the Don Arturo I sometimes spoke of 
 in my letters. He has loved me a long time. To-night 
 I decided to remain with him because I came to see that 
 if I gave him up and went back to you I would be too 
 unhappy to live. 
 
 "Please don't think me deceitful! Please believe that 
 when you left me in Paris I did not dream that I'd ever 
 come to such a decision ! I meant after a visit here to 
 go on to New York as we arranged, never see Arturo 
 again, never hear from him. I meant to set myself to 
 forget him. This is the truth. 
 
 "I couldn't keep to it. When I found myself alone with 
 him, up in these mountains, separated from the whole 
 world, the world and its laws lost their strength. I got 
 to know myself. I could not keep faith with you. 
 
 "There's no use trying to explain I feel something 
 for Arturo unlike anything I ever felt before, a happiness 
 almost too great to believe. 
 
 "He has very little money. We'll have to wander about 
 Europe in the simplest way. I gladly give up home, 
 friends, the good opinion of the world for him. I would 
 endure any hardships for his sake. I am in love madly 
 in love! 
 
 "You see I am hiding nothing. I do this deliberately so 
 that you will realize how clearly I understand what to- 
 night I have chosen, and that the truth written here will 
 be enough to gain you a divorce. Free yourself from me 
 at once, and I pray from my heart that later you
 
 The Next Corner 105 
 
 will love a woman who will make up to you for the pain 
 I am causing you now. 
 
 "I'm not writing to my mother. Please see her and show 
 her this letter? She was afraid that I'd take this step. 
 She'll say that I'm a fool that I'll pay for it in bitter 
 disappointment. Perhaps I will but I have made my 
 choice. 
 
 "Good-by, Robert. You have loved me, I know. I am 
 so sorry to grieve and disappoint you. In all likelihood 
 we'll not meet again, and I hope we don't. I care for 
 you too much in a kind way to wish ever to see you after 
 you read this. Good-bv again. 
 
 "ELSIE." 
 
 As she dressed she could hear the lingering sounds of 
 the storm. Though the rain seemed to have ceased, the 
 wind still shook the house. 
 
 She put on the white Rue de la Paix gown. It was 
 of a shimmering tissue; her shoulders and arms rose out 
 of it as from a tulip made of crystallized vapor; it clung 
 suavely about her to below the knees ; from there broke 
 into a froth about her pointed, flashing slippers. Two 
 spots of dark red, like burns, showed high up on her 
 blanched cheeks. From her day-long anxiety and the 
 clash of emotions there was luster in her restless gaze, 
 not unlike the bright look of wasting that one has who 
 is spent from illness. And it was so thin, misty, hushed 
 and starry-eyed that Arturo saw her come down the 
 stairs and make her tremulous advance to him where he 
 stood before the fire. 
 
 She had passed Serafin in the hall above. He had been 
 opening one of the shutters and had not even glanced at 
 her. Still, while going by him she had been aware of a 
 covert simper that had seemed to exude from the pulled- 
 up corner of his eye and his twisted mouth. She had felt 
 it like a smearing gibe that lingered upon her as his hand 
 had done once upon hers ; and she felt a disgust for him 
 now as she had then. Her first words to Arturo, as he
 
 106 The Next Corner 
 
 drew her to him with a quiet sort of rapture, expressed 
 this, though guardedly: 
 
 "I wish Serafin weren't here, Arturo. I would rather 
 he didn't know " 
 
 Arturo held her away gaily, his eyes droll and aston- 
 ished. "Santo Dios but he is a servant !" He broke 
 into some musical, exclamatory Spanish and added with 
 a wondering shrug of his supple shoulders : "He does not 
 exist !" 
 
 "I don't like him. Something about him " 
 
 "Well, don't think of him. As it happens, I have al- 
 ready arranged everything as you would like it. He is 
 going." 
 
 "But you have not told him ?" 
 
 "As far as he knows, you are merely remaining until 
 I can get you comfortably away by motor. He leaves 
 here by the early coach, brings back the car, then goes 
 on to see my mother for me and to attend to some business 
 in Burgos. He will know nothing about us until later, 
 probably when we've gone from here and at a time when 
 we shall hide nothing from the world. Does that content 
 you, Elsie?" 
 
 "Yes, I'm glad. You were thoughtful, Arturo." 
 
 "I love you," he said in a soft, even, lingering tone that 
 somehow was the most final declaration. 
 
 He had spoken this mangled half-truth with every ac- 
 cent of sincerity because he was without consciousness of 
 duplicity. Some men everywhere, and most Latins, are 
 graceful liars to women. Lies can even have beauty when 
 they are salve upon the needless angers, fears and doubts 
 of those unreasonable beings who always expect too much 
 of human nature, who yet are delicious, and without whom 
 life is both inconceivable and impossible. 
 
 "Have you written your foolish letter?" 
 
 She drew it from her girdle, a gray-blue square. "You 
 think it so foolish? Why?" 
 
 "I suppose because I have an inborn dislike to setting 
 down the irremediable in black and white, to seeing any
 
 The Next Corner 107 
 
 step taken impulsively that afterthought cannot affect." 
 With a dubious smile he spread out his hands helplessly. 
 
 "This feeling comes, no doubt, from the eternal 'to- 
 morrow I will do it ' the manana that is the curse of 
 Spain." 
 
 "And with me," she said, fingering the letter delicately, 
 "this represents conscience. Don't you see? it is as 
 a bit of my conscience, Arturo, that I send it. Here 
 I left it open for you to read." She pressed it into his 
 hands and sat down, looking up at him, while her pulses 
 kept knocking at her ears through her white stillness. 
 
 As Arturo balanced the letter his face quivered slightly 
 with a look of ironic distaste. "I would not care to read 
 it, Elsie. Tell me simply what it expresses. You have 
 said clearly that you are here with me and mean to remain 
 with me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You have assumed, too, that he will get a divorce?" 
 
 "I have told him to." 
 
 "Then you have said everything. I'll seal it for you 
 with this ring," and he held up his hand on which there 
 was the dull gold crest of his family, long familiar to her. 
 
 With poised breath she watched him go to the desk. 
 As she heard him strike the match to melt the wax a feel- 
 ing of sudden, disorganizing sympathy for Robert made 
 her weak. She bent her face, and a wave of miserable 
 prayer for him and for herself swept up from her 
 heart. 
 
 "Here it is." Arturo was standing before her with the 
 letter sealed and stamped. "And I hear Serafin coming 
 for it." At this she stood up and waited for him to utter 
 the serious message that hung in his long gaze: "Now, 
 Elsie, my darling think are you sure you wish to 
 send it? Wouldn't later do?" 
 
 Serafin was a shadow in the doorway behind her as she 
 answered. Her voice reached him with the ringing clear- 
 ness of a child's, it was so desperate and sure: "It must 
 go ! Let me be honest with him from the beginning !"
 
 108 The Next Corner 
 
 "Eduardo is waiting, Senor Marques" Serafin said, 
 and approached to take the letter Arturo held out. 
 
 His voice startled Elsie. She had not known he was 
 so close. He must have heard what she said. As he spoke 
 she turned fully upon him and at once was struck by an 
 alertness never seen in him before, while his face seemed 
 locked in a look of greediness so pushing he forgot to 
 hide it. Clearly, she felt, he was burning to send the 
 letter on its way. 
 
 She would have been lacking in the acute precognition 
 of women if during those few seconds this discovery had 
 not tried to wing its warning to her. If her enemy were 
 so eager to have the letter go, how could it be other than 
 injurious to herself to satisfy him? 
 
 A frayed breath broke from her and with a touch of 
 wildness she half turned Arturo aside, her hand closing 
 on his above the gray-blue square. "Wait wait ! Oh, 
 maybe I ought to say something more in it," she said very 
 low, hoping that Serafin would not hear, " say more 
 than I did, Arturo, about all oh, all his goodness to 
 me ! be a little more kind. Send word for Eduardo to 
 wait a few moments, Arturo please. I could say " 
 
 "No." Arturo whispered this to her, the decision in 
 his face like the blue light from steel. "If you are sincere, 
 want to be forgotten quickly and quickly given your free- 
 dom don't be too kind ! You have written the plain 
 truth. Then send it or destroy it. Shall I fling it in 
 the fire?" 
 
 For a few seconds her eyes wavered in doubt while no 
 hint of the detonating consequences that hung upon her 
 answer stole to her. "No." She gave this with firm- 
 ness as she made a gesture of acceptance toward Serafin 
 and moved to a chair, steadying her hands upon its back. 
 
 Her deep gaze followed the man as he hurried from the 
 room with the letter. Arturo came to her side, and they 
 both stood listening. A moment later Serafin's voice and 
 another's reached them from without; then a hoarse 
 'Buenas noches' and frantic, coercive chirrups followed
 
 The Next Corner 109 
 
 by the diminishing clatter of hoofs on the flagged road 
 beside the garden. 
 
 When there was silence again except for the wind that 
 was now like the woods' high singing, Arturo drew Elsie 
 to the couch before the fire. 
 
 "That is done and now it is to be forgotten. Let 
 us not speak of that letter again," he implored. 
 
 "Only this once. You're very sorry that I sent it. 
 Isn't that so?" 
 
 "At first I was yes. Not now. For I see quite 
 well that 3*ou would not have been happy otherwise. Ah, 
 my Elsie if women had been even half as true with me 
 as you have been with Robert Maury!"
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DINNER was served immediately, and from the begin- 
 ning Arturo made it a joyous thing. Even his pretense 
 of a slight formality with Elsie in Serafin's presence was 
 saturated with the hidden gladness of their mutual un- 
 derstanding. And when Serafin was absent, their hasty 
 caresses had the sweetness of the stolen thing. For all 
 Arturo's poverty, he had some bottles of vintage cham- 
 pagne at El Miradero and one was brought out, the cob- 
 webs dusted from it, and drunk with toasts that, while 
 not more in speech than the usual "A toil" or "Salud!" 
 were messages of love in warm glances. 
 
 In the shaded light Elsie was magically lovely, in 
 every detail the sort of blond witch that at sight dis- 
 turbs the pulses of men of the dark, southern races. She 
 in radiant white, the candles under white lace, no color on 
 the table but a big dish of apricots and carnations of the 
 same hue in small vases, made a picture of great beauty. 
 
 When only the fruit and wine were left, and Serafin, 
 with a low-voiced "Buenas noches, Senor Marques'" and 
 a bow that included Elsie, had departed for the night, 
 Arturo moved close to her at once, his black eyes restless 
 with love. 
 
 "You make me think of snow and stars in Russia," he 
 said, his arm about her. "Did you go to Russia, chiquita, 
 when la petite Nina went?" 
 
 "No, my mother never took me on European journeys 
 just American cities, now and then. I told you how I 
 lived in New York with my father's older sister when I 
 was little. But after I was married I lived only in mining 
 places for years. When I came to Paris, that was the 
 first time I crossed the ocean." 
 
 110
 
 The Next Corner 111 
 
 "Mining towns? Huy!" he said with distaste, "Ah, 
 no wonder after such crudity Paris went to your little 
 head, Elsie. I remember that it was your hungry, joyous 
 air a gamine's as you ran about everywhere, afraid 
 of missing a single, exciting thing, that first caught my 
 heart." 
 
 Elsie's eyes took on a serious, self-studying look, a 
 smile tinged with bitterness. "Paris did go to my head 
 ah, yes, just as you say. There was a mental fever at 
 first and, after I met you, moral coma must have set in 
 gradually for you see, Arturo? to-night is the 
 sequel !" 
 
 Arturo ignored this. "Yes," he murmured, "you look 
 like one winter night in St. Petersburg that I especially 
 remember; it stands out like a diamond. The Nevsky, 
 pure white, packed with snow that creaked under the feet 
 like powdered glass and sent up sparks the big horses 
 in the sledges seeming coated with sugar and the moon- 
 light so queer and greenish against such whiteness, and 
 the ice tossing off blue lights " 
 
 "How beautiful, Arturo ! But as you detested the 
 Paris winter, I can't imagine your loving that icy sort 
 of splendor." 
 
 "I did not say I loved it I remember it for its 
 beauty. You have looked like it, to-night, you slim, white 
 wonder, as you have smiled across the table at me. Only 
 the outside! Deeper," he said, with a long sigh, "there 
 is a red, red rose for a heart. Do I not know?" he whis- 
 pered, and let his lips brush her shoulder in the softest 
 way. 
 
 "Shall we go to Russia, Arturo?" she asked, her head 
 bent to his. 
 
 "Anywhere everywhere ! Let us be two Spanish 
 gypsies, who care not whether they are liked or hated by 
 others, or what land it is, as long as they can keep to- 
 gether. But the place I think of for us now is Taor- 
 mina." He drew back, his face inspired. "Ah, how you 
 will love that spot, Elsie! No infidel," he said with.
 
 112 The Next Corner 
 
 spiritual earnestness that lingered in him under his aim- 
 lessness and voluptuous selfishness, "could stand on the 
 hills of Taormina above the sea and say: 'This is but the 
 result of chance. No God made it.' For it is God !" 
 
 A soul-moving comfort, as from the Infinity he pic- 
 tured, touched Elsie. It was the first time he had spoken 
 of faith in a life to come, and she felt a rill of gratitude 
 break deeply in her heart that he should have said these 
 words to her on this night of nights. He was not to be 
 bound by promises, yet she felt suddenly a sure belief that 
 the eternal was in his love, since he could speak of God 
 to her, to her, a rebel against law ; alone with him 
 there; every tie with her past security deliberately cut; 
 at his mercy for happiness or wretchedness in the years 
 to come. 
 
 As he saw the seriousness flow into her gaze he scowled 
 lovingly. "I have made you think of solemn things. That 
 must not be. We can take the heaven of the Church on 
 trust for I feel that God will not be too hard upon us 
 and wander now in our own paradise here." His arm 
 tightened about her in hushed, strong yearning. "When 
 we Spaniards have great joy, Elsie, we say: l Tomar el 
 cielo con las manosT that is : 'We will seize heaven with 
 our hands !' And that is where I am taking you ah, 
 Elsie ! to that heaven with me." 
 
 The wind seemed to cap these fervid words with an 
 orchestral epilogue; it trilled and sighed through one of 
 the now opened windows, then rose in warm, high strains 
 that yet were soft, as if a multitude hummed through 
 closed lips. 
 
 "It must be lovely out on the galleries after the storm," 
 Arturo said, springing up. "The moon is in its last 
 nights and rises late. I want you to see it but you 
 can't go as you are you'd be a drenched butterfly." 
 
 There was a gay ten minutes during which he insisted 
 on fetching black slippers from her room, kneeling before 
 her to put them on, laughing while he kissed each silk-clad 
 foot before he did so.
 
 The Next Corner 113 
 
 "Ah, que noche!" he said with the voice of one 
 drowsy from too much delight. "But this is a sweet 
 thing to do to wait upon you, dress you, help you so ! 
 And now your gown? what can we put about you that 
 won't spoil it? It would tear like a cobweb " 
 
 "It's stronger than it looks," Elsie said, nodding wisely. 
 "It will have to stand long wear and a good many dry 
 cleanings before I can throw it away " 
 
 "Ah, si? Pobre chiquita!" A cloud went over him. 
 "You are poor now, pretty thing. I am so sorry." 
 
 "But I am so happy !" she retorted, and then : "Shall I 
 get my cloak?" 
 
 "No !" He was alight again, his finger held up, "There 
 is something that I just remember. I have packed here 
 some ancient mantillas of my family, that my mother let 
 me have for decoration." As he went to a scarlet, enam- 
 elled chest in a corner, he was radiant. When from a 
 flat package he drew out half a dozen gloriously em- 
 broidered shawls with the cry : "Look ! And this and 
 this, too !" she saw their likeness to two happy children, 
 playing a game. 
 
 With the opening of the paper a cascade of colors had 
 fairly spilled into the room streams of crimson and 
 gold, amethyst and apricot ; of sky-blue, opaline, apple- 
 green, flame a rainbow flood. He chose one with the 
 Spanish colors to shroud in the native way, that was 
 almost Eastern, about her head and shoulders. At the 
 gold and scarlet framing her so vividly, hushed exclama- 
 tions of almost religious ecstasy broke in Spanish from 
 him, and Elsie felt the flavor of fear at the taste of too 
 much happiness. It faded for a moment at some words 
 that drifted from him thoughtlessly: 
 
 "I used these at a mantilla party that I had here last 
 year ah, very gay we were ! but not one looked as 
 you do, my darling." 
 
 She drew back a little. "Some woman wore this, 
 then?" 
 
 As he gave a shrug of regret for having spoken, he
 
 114 The Next Corner 
 
 said with light defiance: "Well, yes. Not a man, surely! 
 But, don't mind !" His arm enfolding her impetuously, 
 he drew her across the room and paused at the entrance 
 to the balcony. "All that sort of thing is done with for- 
 ever, Elsie a mixed-up splash in my mind, from which 
 no face not one looks out !" As a conclusion to 
 the words he pulled open the door. 
 
 And a wonder was before them. The high peaks were 
 silver, the lowest valleys gaping mouths of shadow; a 
 dying moon traveled the sky that was streaked with the 
 fanged trails of swollen wind clouds; just below them 
 lay the garden, its flowers drained of color, its earthy 
 walks seeming padded with snow, while across it the 
 pattern of the house was flung as if stencilled in charcoal. 
 The whole world was black and white. 
 
 With this there was the music of moving water left by 
 the flood of rain. A complaining gurgle ran along the 
 gutters of the roof above them, and over its projecting, 
 pointed corners a lilting note from the fall of thin 
 streams ; somewhere, farther on, the rush of a disgorging 
 spout was heard, that ended, more faintly, as a big splash 
 into some chasm. On the intense stillness there was no 
 other sound. 
 
 They stood in silence. Uncertainty and the faintest 
 quiver of regret departed from Elsie as she dreamed there, 
 her head against Arturo's arm. What she looked upon 
 was so unlike any encompassment that had ever been hers, 
 she felt a yielding to its force as one might accept the be- 
 wildering conditions after death and think of earth no 
 more. Her very loneliness with this man, the wild, sweet 
 flavor of whose love had captured her, and her now stark 
 need of him, filled her curiously with a fatalistic content- 
 ment, a rich drowsiness. The years ahead of them ! . .. . 
 Ah, the long years if Fate were kind of which 
 to-night was the prologue! . . . 
 
 And with this surrender, the intense passion in her na- 
 ture found expression in little ways of response, the 
 ways born with some women, never even dimly seen by
 
 The Next Corner 115 
 
 others, and beyond the acquiring of those who, seeing, 
 try to capture them for success in the land of love. It 
 is age-old, this magic, and goes only where it will, like 
 royal favor. Elsie had it. Benumbed in the taciturn 
 days with Robert, a frightening force and fought down 
 with suffering, heretofore, in her resistance to Arturo's 
 fiery pursuit, she let it sweep over her now; a sensuous 
 melting. 
 
 Her head sank far back, her eyes looked up fully into 
 his, her hand shot up to his face. And there it spoke to 
 him as no words could. That small hand, soft as flowers 
 yet with a savage call in it, stroked his cheek with 
 gossamer lightness ; stole to his hair, the fingers creeping 
 through it ; and came back to flutter with the brush of a 
 butterfly's wings over the lovely line of his brows. "Oh, 
 but I do love you," she said, a hard sound of pain in the 
 words, and with sudden violence drew down his head to the 
 tempest of her breath and lips. 
 
 This avowal of herself, unsought, flooded Arturo with 
 a new joy too wonderful for belief, and left him hushed, 
 trembling. 
 
 "Elsie !" broke from him when he could speak, "Ah, you 
 are too sweet too precious ! Never shall we part 
 never, never !" 
 
 "And I'll never think again with hard judgment for 
 what I have chosen," she murmured. "I am happy, Ar- 
 turo." 
 
 "Say 'Arturito' that is my little name. In Spain 
 we always add on letters like that to a name, where we 
 love." 
 
 "Arturito," Elsie repeated. 
 
 "How shall I make your name into a little one, that 
 way, that will be for me and no other? It is so English, 
 I cannot. Never mind. I'll think of a Spanish one for 
 you. Come to the other side. I want to show you the 
 precipice in this light." 
 
 They had almost turned from the rail when he felt 
 Elsie's fingers grow hard on his shoulder. "What is that,
 
 116 The Next Corner 
 
 down there?" she said with a driven breath, looking back 
 toward the side that they were leaving. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "You see that shadow on the path there the one 
 that does not fit into the shape of the house like the rest? 
 It is not from the house, Arturo. It moved. I saw 
 it." 
 
 "It does not move now," he said. "Yet you are 
 right " 
 
 "It is a cloak like a shoulder, too and a hat. 
 Don't you see?" 
 
 As they spoke and he was bending over the balcony to 
 call out, the shadow vanished. 
 
 "Serafin," he said to her in explanation. "Yes, it was 
 Serafin wandering about on the road. He does that often. 
 Come " and as they turned the corner, he added with 
 a laughing murmur not without its tinge of cruelty since 
 it found pleasure in another's pain, "I know very well 
 how he hates having to leave here. He has an adoration 
 for El Miradero. You see, he is of the mountains. Yes, 
 he hates to go away by the coach and it's only a few 
 hours off now, for it is growing late." 
 
 The abyss that met them on the other stretch of bal- 
 cony was a thing to hit upon the heart and keep it sus- 
 pended, beautiful, appalling. Elsie felt as if she were 
 clinging to Arturo in a nest built, in a spirit of mad 
 folly, over death. She turned from the frowning depths 
 and hid her face against him. 
 
 "I didn't know we hung like this," she mur- 
 mured, and gave a shiver. 
 
 "Chiquita frightened?" 
 
 "Isn't it foolish to have the house built so?" 
 
 "It is said to be safer, as it makes it a part of the 
 strong mountain." 
 
 "I can't look down there. Let us go back." 
 
 "Come, then." He led her to the other side and 
 through the door that he had left open. 
 
 After the awful majesty without, the room had the
 
 The Next Corner 117 
 
 spell of home. Elsie hurried to the fire and, flinging off 
 the gay shawl, sat on a stool. She bent over the heap of 
 red-hot embers, from which rich forest scents rose, and 
 that turned the silvered whiteness clothing her into a 
 crust of dancing sparks. 
 
 "You are not as cold as that," Arturo mocked lovingly, 
 coming to her. 
 
 "Yes, I am. That moon made me see horrors." 
 
 "Ah, Elsie, you have a fearfully vivid mind. Your 
 imagination is the thing that makes you afraid. You see 
 all around an idea. You were very much afraid of me 
 at first. You remember?" 
 
 "Yes," she nodded musingly. 
 
 "But now you are not?" 
 
 "No," she said clearly, with a look of dreaming love. 
 
 "Not at all?" he asked, frowning as if disappointed, 
 and knelt beside her. 
 
 "Not a bit," she smiled. "It is your turn now. You 
 must be afraid of me afraid of losing me. If I run 
 away from you, you'll never find me in these mountains !" 
 
 He answered with a laugh that, while soft, was of the 
 richest triumph. "You will never run away from me," 
 and by his look she knew how truly she^was the woman 
 adored, and with madness desired. "I have made you 
 love me. And you are going to love me more and more, 
 every day! Darling, you hear? it is striking twelve. 
 Shall we go up-stairs?" 
 
 "Not yet," Elsie murmured. "A little longer by the 
 fire." 
 
 "Then I'll give it a last flare." 
 
 He said this with sultry calmness, turned to the desk 
 and came back with rustling papers in his hands. To her 
 look of inquiry he gave a smiling sneer, a twitch of the 
 brows. 
 
 "You would never imagine what these are: old love 
 letters, to me! I spread them out and read them in a fit 
 of melancholy the other day, when I thought you were not 
 coming."
 
 118 The Next Corner 
 
 While kneeling to push the papers under the embers 
 he saw that at the words her face had darkened, and with 
 the new, high flame upon him, he swung back to her to 
 lay his head with ecstasy on her breast: 
 
 "Ah, don't you see how I dreamed over these husks from 
 a few who had loved me, when I thought you did not and 
 had gone from me forever? And don't you see how they 
 make a fitting blaze to light a last log for us to-night?" 
 
 After throwing on some wood, he settled himself at 
 her feet, facing her, his arms on her knees, his back to 
 the room, and drew from his finger the ring with which 
 he had sealed her letter. In a serious and tender way he 
 lifted her left hand. 
 
 "This is tight on my little finger, so it may fit your 
 biggest one. There ! It is loose upon it, but it will do. 
 Now, listen to me, Elsie," and he held her gaze with one 
 of deepest love, "I give this ring to you. There is no 
 other like it in the world. I give it to you forever. 
 It binds us forever. White dove very dearest if 
 I could give you more! ..." 
 
 As he crouched lower, his head almost on her knees, 
 Elsie, her face illumined, bent silently over the ring. He 
 watched her with luxurious content and saw her, still 
 without speaking, lift her hand high to let the firelight 
 play upon it. Then he saw the raised arm stiffen convul- 
 sively saw it sink as if it were stone while her face 
 became that of a statue, its rigid gaze fastened in terror 
 beyond him. 
 
 A frog-like coldness was roughening him as, still look- 
 ing at her, he started inquiringly to his knees : "Elsie ?" 
 
 "A man !" Her stare unchanged, this broke from 
 her, a hushed stammer that acted on Arturo like the pull 
 of a rope. 
 
 He sprang to his feet, swung about.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AND there was a man. He was between the portieres 
 that shut off the hall to the servants' quarters ; they were 
 of some pale heavy stuff and he made a somber splash 
 against them. For his clothes were of raven blackness, 
 the accentuated mourning of Spain; that they were also 
 the ample Spanish cloak whose folds upon one shoulder 
 were packed to his ear, and the broad-brimmed hat which 
 cast its wide shade, added notes so outre to foreign eyes, 
 they called for drama as a background. Out of this sable 
 oblong his middle-aged peasant face gleamed, chalk- 
 white; his shadowed eyes were oblique like Serafin's, and 
 deep-set, Asiatic, they burned a call to accounting across 
 the big room. 
 
 The shadow that had moved upon the garden! 
 Memory of it came at Elsie like the worrying of amazed 
 hands. Here it was materialized. It had entered the 
 house. Steadfast, it faced them, stormy with some 
 meaning. 
 
 She had risen and stood away from the fire, a little be- 
 hind Arturo. The situation had evolved so rapidly, its 
 reality eluded her and she could only take it in as a pic- 
 ture. The man's look held riveted grief, enveloping con- 
 tempt ; it was hard and cold as iron, yet with flame in it. 
 Peasant though he was, as shown by the broad face, thick, 
 short body, the coarse hand that clutched his cloak, his 
 cumbersome clay-covered boots, the subtlety and reserve 
 hung about him that she had come to recognize as the 
 proud heritage of the Basque. 
 
 She could not see Arturo's face, only knew that at the 
 first sight of the man he had stood frozen and still in 
 some terrible way. 
 
 119
 
 120 The Next Corner 
 
 After this moment of silence, neither moving, the 
 stranger poured out a flood of rapid Spanish. It was 
 like the bursting of waters long imprisoned, that swept 
 out of him as if without any will of his. Unintelligible 
 to her in the words, their meaning an accusation of 
 bitter hate was as clear as sunlight. Arturo was cold, 
 only a curt, annoyed phrase breaking from him now and 
 then in denial. 
 
 "I see you have not forgotten me," had been the peas- 
 ant's greeting. "I have come, as I wrote you I would. 
 I heard you were here, and I waited my chance. For 
 days I have been in this neighborhood, watching, while 
 I hid like a thief. And to-night you left your door 
 open! I walked in. Yes, through your open door I 
 came, for God had willed it so. From the day I knew 
 she had gone with you a year ago, now I knew that 
 sometime we would stand just as we are! My daughter 
 has been in her grave a month now, with her child, both 
 in one coffin in ground unsanctified. ... I came on 
 here and you left your door open, so that without diffi- 
 culty I could enter." He gave a chilling murmur as a 
 laugh. "You see, Senor Marques, how God has ordered 
 it all made the path easy for me? Why, look! my 
 daughter in her unsanctified grave and your door wide 
 open to me!" 
 
 The strife grew tense. An implacable fierceness had 
 come to the visitor's whole manner, though he had not 
 stirred a step, the vehemence entirely in the gestures of 
 hand and fingers, while the rushing Spanish phrases, ab- 
 solutely unaccented and evenly rhythmed as the rat-a-tat 
 of wheelwork, left Elsie dazed. While aware that her 
 heart was beating very fast, she was not terribly alarmed, 
 not even when, during the running clatter of words, the 
 man had pointed at her with a look of overwhelming in- 
 sult, for she had come to know that among the Spanish 
 even a slight difference of opinion could cause a cascade 
 of excited language. Arturo's sharp "Pero no!" and the 
 countryman's sweeping, fierce, "Pero si, Senor Marques!"
 
 The Next Corner 121 
 
 might mean no more than that he was a discharged ser- 
 vant or a tradesman to whom money was owing. 
 
 Her first fear came with a shaping misgiving after this 
 thought: Why, in such case, did not Arturo ring for his 
 servants? Why did he stand in one spot as if stricken 
 of the power to move, or as if the slightest move might 
 be dangerous, perhaps the thing to project disaster of 
 some sort? Why, instead of disdaining to listen to the 
 man, did he remain stock-still, listening with strained at- 
 tention? Why did his replies, crisp and contemptuous 
 though they were, come on a hurried breath as if he were 
 fagged from running? 
 
 In a moment she knew why. He edged slowly toward 
 her in a guarded way, while keeping a semi-gaze on his 
 opponent. And fright was written upon Arturo. It was 
 controlled fright, that longed to send out a call for help 
 and did not dare. Lips and eyes seemed those of a mask, 
 they were so stiff, while in piteous unlikeness to them a 
 line of small drops, that could have come only from the 
 viscera of feeling, sparkled upon the livid forehead; the 
 nostrils were pinched, a greenish tinge spreading from 
 them. Yet, most appalling to Elsie was his attempt to 
 convey an air of confidence matching a tone that he tried 
 to keep suave, merely that of a courteous host, while his 
 words made his stark peril plain to her : 
 
 "Go quietly, Elsie, as if you were bidding me good 
 night. He does not understand what I am saying, but 
 I dare not mention a name. Send my valet to me at once. 
 The room is on the right side of the hall past where this 
 fellow is standing. Don't knock or call. Go in, send 
 him to me without his waiting to dress. But don't seem 
 to hurry. Quietly, for God's sake. Don't let him sus- 
 pect." He managed a smile that had the twitch of a 
 grimace and the hand that he waved slightly, as if in 
 genial farewell, trembled in spite of his rigorous effort 
 to keep it steady. 
 
 She tried to obey him, tried to copy his attempt at 
 composure, and began her walk to the curtains beside
 
 122 The Next Corner 
 
 which the shadow still stood. To her weighted feet they 
 seemed a mile away. 
 
 The man had continued talking. As she slowly neared 
 him, his voice took on a conclusive fall. "We were a 
 happy family. My daughter was good. You have tried 
 to say differently in your excuse. A lie. Ascuncion was 
 good. We had reared her carefully. When you first 
 came her way, I knew the sort you were, and I drove 
 you off with threats. Then she disappeared went to 
 you. Ah," he said with terrible bitterness, "it was not 
 many months before she was back different then ! You 
 had left her with money 'and directions to go home, and 
 had gone your way. And that ended the matter for you, 
 senor. But, ah, no ! You took her, finished with her, 
 threw her away, and she is in unsanctified ground to- 
 night. So now we will have the end the one that satis- 
 fies me." 
 
 The curtains were reached. Elsie had put her hand 
 upon them when a few words that she could understand 
 rang out behind her, such hate in them they seemed to 
 fall upon her own sensitive body like stones "perfidio! 
 ladron!" 
 
 On the last raging syllable there was a shot. 
 
 The crash sent her unsteadily and face downward 
 against the curtain that she held to while a gasping call 
 for Serafin left her. When she tried to swing about, a 
 hand fastened brutally on her bare shoulder and pressed 
 her head forward so that she could not turn an inch. 
 
 There was not a sound in the room behind her. No 
 cry, no step, and yet she knew that the stillness was more 
 to be feared than anger or prayers, that something dread- 
 ful was there which she could not see. 
 
 Another shot made clamor. Though this came as the 
 end of all things to Elsie's frayed sense, she heard a 
 stumble after it, a sound as of a falling chair, and Ar- 
 turo's voice saying "Serafin" in a bubbling, feeble way. 
 The big hand that bruised her relaxed, gave her a flouting 
 thrust, and she managed to turn. She was like something
 
 The Next Corner 123 
 
 that had no feet to keep her upon substance, something 
 that seemed made of water and she saw Arturo . . . 
 
 He was sprawled across an overturned chair, his head 
 back. She could see his open mouth, blood stealing from 
 it. And he was still, oh, informingly still in that con- 
 torted pose, so different from his grace, so different from 
 himself. The white square of his shirt was changing 
 to a scarlet square and the hand that was hanging was 
 also red. 
 
 "SeTwr !" This, a call, hoarse and trembling, shat- 
 tered the hush, and close to the spot where Elsie stood on 
 those shadowy feet that had threatened to throw her, 
 Serafin appeared. 
 
 The curtains leaped out with the force of his fling as 
 he ran to Arturo. His entrance was like the rush of a 
 storm. He was in a dressing gown that hung open, show- 
 ing his night clothes, his hair tossed. He bent down 
 briefly rose stiffly, and fixed his eyes upon the man. 
 
 "Muerto!" As he said this, his hand rose, shaking, and 
 he crossed himself. 
 
 Elsie had not realized his love for Arturo. The engulf- 
 ing anguish in that one word that, though never heard 
 before, she understood, made her know it now. 
 
 The stranger had gone slowly to the balcony door. He 
 pulled it open. Ghastly, of a deadly composure, he stood 
 straight and began to speak to Serafin in quiet tones, 
 each sentence with a clipped finish: 
 
 "No one has seen me come, and none shall see me go. 
 I am leaving for America. You can keep silent, if you 
 will. But accuse me, have me caught, and I will make 
 his name a dog's through Spain." He looked ear- 
 nestly at the crumpled body growing rigid in the supreme 
 stillness. "Her soul will rest now, perhaps," he said with 
 deep sadness, and went out with an unhurried, almost a 
 reverent step, closing the door after him. 
 
 Serafin knelt beside Arturo. He made the sign of the 
 cross above the stark face. Utter hopelessness hung upon 
 him as he gazed and gazed, touching the forehead and
 
 124 The Next Corner 
 
 cheek an awed caress. As Elsie saw him nerve himself 
 to make his fingers close the eyes and press on the lids, as 
 she saw his dark, thin hands force the mouth shut, a 
 strength came out of the fog of horror and sent her to 
 him, stumbling, voiceless, all the sense of which she was 
 capable focussed in a stupid, asking gaze. 
 
 He looked up, saw her, and rose. As he faced her, 
 implacable hatred flashed through his haggardness and 
 flickered around his drawn eyes. 
 
 "Dead?" Elsie asked, the word thick in some horrible 
 way and crowding her bitter-tasting mouth. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Oh, no," came on a thin, imploring wail. "Oh, no," 
 she said again, looking down at the body that seemed 
 broken there before them, stained red and sprawling 
 ignobly, so lacking now in any trace of pride. 
 
 Serafin sullenly glowered upon her, a look to kill. 
 When she had half knelt, he caught her up under the arms 
 and flung her back with a force that sent her against the 
 table. 
 
 "This is your fault," she heard him say as if through a 
 haze. "It was because of you that he came here so early. 
 Even when he believed you had gone to America, he quit 
 Paris because he could not bear it with you not there. 
 Never before did he come here until late in July. If he 
 had waited until then, things might have been arranged. 
 He knew of his danger I warned him. But he paid no 
 heed because of you, because he had lost his senses 
 about you. And that is why he is there dead. Because 
 of you !" 
 
 "Oh, no," was all Elsie could say, a prayer, a dazed 
 whimper. 
 
 "Yes, yes !" This rang from him with increased venom. 
 "And no doubt you are sorry now, madame, that you 
 did not take his advice and destroy the letter that 
 Eduardo took away. You sent it, because you were so 
 sure in your conceit. I hope you are sorry. I hope 
 you would give your right hand to recall it !"
 
 The Next Corner 125 
 
 Her sick, turgid look, struggling to grasp memory, 
 might have touched a stone. Her hand went up to her 
 wet face. Oh, yes the letter the letter to Robert 
 that cut her off from him, from her old life, that left her 
 a stranger to everything familiar. Oh, yes, the 
 letter! . . . 
 
 One moment she saw it, a gray-blue atom, making its 
 way steadily westward like a slow-flying bird. The next, 
 and its meaning slipped from her into a swallowing space. 
 She felt only the nearer tragedy, saw only the dead 
 man who had loved her.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE harshly painted wall of cornflower blue and be- 
 side it the bed draped with the velvet cope of crimson and 
 gold. Elsie, in the room that was to have been hers, sat 
 staring at these with unmoving eyes. She did not see 
 them for what they were; they seemed only the bright 
 background against which the scenes in her thoughts 
 raced past. 
 
 Her lips were slackly apart as if she had the wish to 
 cry out at what she watched, but not the power. She 
 still wore her mistlike gown; it was stained, crushed, one 
 of its frail lengths torn. This, and the loosened hair 
 that sagged downward in a half coil were notes in the 
 picture of disaster that she made. She sat as if she had 
 not moved for years, as if she would never move again. 
 
 Over and over the happenings of the past two hours 
 took on for her a shadowy sort of life : There was Serafin 
 ordering her away to her room and calling in the horri- 
 fied servants to the work of readjustment. There she 
 was, trying to obey him, yet loitering piteously, too nerve- 
 strapped for the relief of tears. She saw him come to 
 her and try to sweep her from the room with his arm that 
 had the authority of a conqueror's; at last half-carry 
 her up the stairs. 
 
 In the bedroom, he had put her into a chair and stood 
 over her. She had been conscious of looking up at him, 
 a longing for comfort of some sort struggling through a 
 dumbness whose rivets were horror. And she had been 
 conscious, too, that his face was as livid as Arturo's, 
 while the eyes whose brightness made an uncanny con- 
 trast were cautious and businesslike as were all his move- 
 ments and tones. He was passionately capaWe. 
 
 126
 
 The Next Corner 127 
 
 Most of his words stuck to her memory in patches: 
 "Get your wits about you . . . you look stupid enough 
 to spoil everything . . . Listen to me, madame . . . 
 work to be done here . . . you must realize where we 
 all stand, and help. . . . How much of the quarrel did 
 you understand?" 
 
 He shook her as he spoke, and she had made a hideous 
 effort to drag response from her mazed brain ; it was like 
 groping into the mess of a wreck where the dead lay to 
 fish out some ghastly detail. What had she understood? 
 Little, she told him; almost nothing. Only at the last, 
 when the murderer had spoken slowly, two words had 
 made sense to her perfidio and ladron. 
 
 "Perfidious thief?" Serafin suggested, and she had 
 nodded. "Exactly," he went on. "The quarrel was about 
 some money that the Senor Marques had owed the coun- 
 tryman for a long time. You see? But that is not to 
 be made public. No one is to know there was a quarrel 
 at all. You understand me? It is to be supposed that 
 the Senor Marques surprised a thief breaking into his 
 house there are plenty of them in these mountains 
 that shots were exchanged, the thief's killing him. That 
 is to be the story. The servants know little and will do 
 as I instruct. And the thief will disappear, an unknown 
 man, who will not be traced. The family's name must be 
 safeguarded, kept clean of the slightest scandal. Do you 
 fully realize what I am saying to you?" 
 
 With her struggling gaze upon him she had said she 
 understood. 
 
 "Very good, then. When, a little later, you hear two 
 shots, do not be alarmed. You will know that I am emp- 
 tying two chambers from the Senor Marques' s pistol, so it 
 will appear that he fired to defend himself. If at any 
 future time, by any chance, you are dragged into this, 
 you will know what to say?" 
 
 "Yes," she had replied obediently, following him by an 
 effort. "I will be careful when the people come here. I 
 I will say "
 
 128 The Next Corner 
 
 "You will not be here to say anything," Serafin had 
 broken in and seized her by the arm. "There will be 
 enough to explain in my venturing to move the body 
 pretending I did not know that I had no right to touch 
 it but I could not leave it as it was, for it may be after- 
 noon before the authorities arrive. So I do not want 
 you on my hands. Take off that dress and get ready to 
 leave. Put on what you came in fortunate that your 
 trunk has not been unpacked. Get ready !" and with 
 his breathless air intensifying in capableness, he had left, 
 closing the door after him. 
 
 These various points had remained clear to her only 
 for a short while ; all, but the fact that no one must know 
 it was because of a sordid money trouble that Arturo had 
 been murdered, disappeared in the eclipse that had come 
 upon her. 
 
 She did not know how long Serafin had been gone when 
 two shots rang out from somewhere within the house. 
 They brought her to her feet. These the same sounds 
 that had produced the earlier debacle struck through 
 her torper now and caught her up as part of life. Like 
 the keynote that starts a tune, they made Arturo's last 
 guarded appeal real to her again; that woeful simulation 
 of a smile out of the doom in his face came back at her ; 
 through all her serves she heard his fall once more, then 
 saw herself turning to see him where he lay. . . . 
 
 After one whirling moment she recalled Serafin's warn- 
 ing words about the shots, and though this came as a 
 relief that brought a cold moisture upon her skin, now 
 that she was aroused she had but one motive to get out 
 of the lonely room whose specters were as agonizing as 
 the reality she was to seek, and over which she could spend 
 her heart in tears. For the tears had come. They were 
 shaking her as she opened the door, as she went along the 
 gallery and down the stairs. 
 
 The living room was empty, Serafin's voice and a ser- 
 vant's sounding from somewhere outside. As Elsie made 
 her way, both hands gripping the balustrade, her eyes
 
 The Next Corner 129 
 
 sought the spot where Arturo had fallen. The over- 
 turned chair was exactly as it had been, and beside it an 
 irregular, pulpy-looking stain that seemed black except 
 where the candles showed it bright red on the palest 
 patches of the rug. To these records of the tragedy a 
 pistol had been added and lay a few feet from them. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs her gaze swayed beyond these 
 things, then beyond the lighted middle part to the corners, 
 searching, without finding what she sought. Instinct 
 made her cross to the hall that she knew led to Arturo's 
 room on the precipice side of the house, and in a moment 
 it faced her with open door at the end of the passage, 
 dimly lighted and also empty, a different emptiness. 
 On its threshold the feeling that she was alone left her; 
 there was something fearfully living about the great, 
 great Hush that seemed to guard the long ridge covered 
 by a sheet and rising from the center of the bed. 
 
 In swooning grief she fell to her knees beside this, laid 
 her arm solemnly across it. She could not look upon the 
 face that had the expression of sculpture under the thin 
 linen. The iron hardness of the body, the silence where 
 the high-throbbing heart had been were as much as she 
 could bear. Under their appalling message, she seemed 
 to drown. 
 
 A hand joggling her shoulder, a repressed voice utter- 
 ing angry words came to Elsie as if from far away. She 
 was lying half over the bed, her face upturned, the lashes, 
 on which the pouring tears had dried stiffly, jutting from 
 below the tensely shut eyes. 
 
 "You are here!" Low-voiced fury in Spanish fol- 
 lowed, and then : "Get up, get up !" 
 
 She made a stumbling effort to obey and failed. The 
 submerging, emptying quality of grief like hers made her 
 feel as if she too had died. It was as the shell of a body 
 that still had eyes that she looked up at Serafin, tried to 
 take in what he was saying. 
 
 "You have not done as I told you!" 
 
 "Done?".
 
 130 The Next Corner 
 
 "You are still like this. I told you nearly an hour ago, 
 to dress yourself for going away " 
 
 "Going? Going?". . . 
 
 "Get up !" 
 
 The venom in the thin-lipped undertone shook her more 
 than a yell would have done. When she tried to scramble 
 to her feet and tripped on the torn flounce, he jerked her 
 up and held her so, steadying her, his long and pitiless 
 face close to hers. 
 
 "You will not make a scene," he said, and it was advice 
 that threatened. "You are going quietly. You see this 
 is the only thing to be done." 
 
 Without replying, she tried vainly to get free of him, 
 and as her look rested again on the sheeted body, the 
 floods that she had thought spent rushed out with new 
 wildness. "Oh, see, oh, see ! Oh, Arturo?" She turned 
 toward Serafin, her face twisted. "Go away a little while. 
 Oh, leave me here a little while !" 
 
 "Senora!" This came in a stern call as to one at a 
 distance. He shook her, keeping her face in the grip of 
 his palms. "Look at me." As her eyes opened, showing 
 a clot of tears and dull pain, he spoke each word in 
 separated clearness as if teaching a child a lesson. 
 "Every moment is precious, and you are wasting them. 
 You must leave El Miradero on the coach. It is due here 
 almost at once." As he felt her tremble at this, then 
 harden and draw back, he went on with a decision that 
 had an exultant brutality: "If you do not go up and 
 change your dress, if you refuse to go quietly, at once, 
 I will make you. Do you hear? You do not know me, 
 senora. When it becomes necessary for me to act with- 
 out consideration, I can do so very thoroughly. Don't 
 make me force you to leave." 
 
 He had not counted on the strength that can belong 
 to hysterical distress. Elsie's arms swept him back. She 
 changed to a menace. The fury in her face rubbed out 
 its beauty and brought the look of an animal almost over- 
 come that backs before its enemy watchfully, ready to 
 attack in some way to save its life.
 
 The Next Corner 131 
 
 And then, as through her anger the thought took her 
 that such words could be spoken to her beside Arturo 
 only because he could not hear them nor any sound of 
 life again, the piteous impotence of the dead pierced her 
 with its appeal, and to struggle beside that Stillness that 
 could not defend her became suddenly an ugly thing. 
 Keeping her face to Serafin, she drew back into the hall, 
 he following her. 
 
 "I'll speak to you here," she said. 
 
 He closed the door, his hand continuing on the knob, 
 and looked at her with the air of one who finds waiting 
 hard. 
 
 "Now what do you mean?" Elsie asked, making a su- 
 preme effort to be mistress of the moment, as was her 
 right. She kept very straight before him, though quiver- 
 ing deeply, he could see. "You tell me what I must do? 
 You tell me !" came on a choking sob with wrath. 
 "You forget your position here, and that I am a guest." 
 She almost broke down, had to steady herself by seizing 
 the casing of the door. "It's horrible to be tortured by 
 you this way. Let me alone, oh, let me alone! Oh, can't 
 you see ?" 
 
 Serafin did not permit himself to look directly at her. 
 He allowed her last words to die away before he spoke, 
 and then the implacability that had come to his level gaze 
 was in his words. "As I told you, madame, we are wast- 
 ing very precious time. Now I ask you politely will 
 you go?" 
 
 "You keep saying that," she muttered desperately. 
 "Go? Where can I go? I'll stay here a little while, till 
 I can see what to do. I've a right here " 
 
 "I tell you it is impossible. It would be very unwise 
 for you to be found here by the authorities " 
 
 "I could explain," she broke in, her mind clearer, her 
 urging passionate. "I came as a guest and I'll say 
 what you told me I'll remember I'll say I was in 
 my room, and heard the shots, and came down. What 
 harm could there be, if "
 
 132 The Next Corner 
 
 "We will leave all that then. There is another reason." 
 The words that followed were cold and measured, an im- 
 mutable exclusion of her under them. "When Aniceto 
 went on his bicycle an hour ago for the police, he went 
 also to the Senora Marquesas house to tell her that her 
 son was dead. She and her daughter will soon be here." 
 
 Elsie remained silent, only leaning more heavily against 
 the door. 
 
 "This is enough. From this you see how you cannot 
 stay." 
 
 "Why not?" She asked this faintly, though a new sort 
 of fear of him began in her at the look of disrespect that 
 brazenly widened his eyes. "If I tell Arturo's mother 
 how I came here if I explain " 
 
 "Explain?" he mocked. "You are not a fool, madame! 
 You know the world. You know that the Senora Mar- 
 quesa cannot meet the woman who was here with her son !" 
 
 Elsie slowly grew very cold, her look floundering about 
 him. "The woman?" The word sent her mouth awry 
 as if an acid had touched it. 
 
 "Exactly," he replied incisively. "Bad enough any 
 time, but to see the woman who was with him when he was 
 killed impossible ! The Senora Marquesa never thinks 
 of such things, and her son kept her sacred from them. 
 Were she to be insulted by the sight of such as you " 
 
 "Don't say any more," came in a thick sound. 
 
 "She would have you removed from her presence," he 
 continued evenly ; "she would not look upon you." 
 
 A blinding rage went over Elsie and gave her strength. 
 Through it she remembered that Arturo had said he had 
 protected her from his man by making him suppose she 
 was to leave El Miradero almost at once, but she also 
 remembered that Serafin had overheard what sort of 
 message her letter to Robert had carried. Even without 
 this latter certainty she must speak the truth now in 
 defending herself. The moment was too soul-shaking for 
 anything less, however wise, and it carried her on its 
 rush, defenseless, desperate.
 
 The Next Corner 133 
 
 "I'm not what you say ! You know I am not !" While 
 this burst from her frantically, her lips trembled in en- 
 treaty. "Don't dare to say I'm not fit to meet this 
 woman. Her son loved me. You know it. Don't you?" 
 
 He gave an ironic twitch of the brows and shoulders 
 and let its meaning sink in. "Why, yes sufficiently," 
 he answered, meeting her shocked stare calmly, and added 
 with an inference that smirched, "Sufficiently for him to 
 have had you here with him that, of course." After 
 this he spoke rapidly, his impatience returning till, in 
 effect, it was what he would have used to an exasperating 
 beggar. "You cannot be under the same roof with the 
 Senora Marquesa not for a moment. It would be not 
 less than sacrilege. It would kill her to see you." He 
 took her by the elbow and pushed her forward. "There 
 is nothing more to be said." 
 
 When she felt the touch of his hand on her flesh, felt 
 herself moved by him as if she were an inanimate obstacle, 
 the sense that something monstrous was happening to 
 her which decency compelled her to resist changed Elsie 
 to a storm of energy, repulsion and dread filling her. She 
 managed to break from his grip and, wheeling back, seized 
 the knob of the door. 
 
 Before she could turn it he bent over her, his powerful, 
 swarthy hands closing fast on both of hers and holding 
 them as motionless as if clamped. Elsie set her teeth, a 
 violence that held her brain taut until it seemed at break- 
 ing point going into her clutch, as she tried to keep what 
 advantage she had gained. They bent and twisted to- 
 gether like one body, yet opposing each other, her hair 
 slipping to full freedom and sagging against her face, his 
 breath a burning as he pressed down upon her. 
 
 "If you'd explained to me differently kindly I'd 
 have listened. I'd go quietly. But you to drive me 
 out insult me? Oh, never oh, no," she kept mutter- 
 ing, almost voiceless. "Oh, no oh, no " 
 
 And yet it was futile from the first second. As she 
 spoke the words, she knew she would be conquered. Those
 
 134 The Next Corner 
 
 dark hands, as tenacious as an ape's, seemed to have hold 
 not only on both _ of her own, that were twined and 
 strained around the knob, but on her very life. She was 
 afraid of him there, at her back, unseen, hideously close 
 
 and then she screamed. Her hands slackened of 
 themselves, writhed from beneath his, flew from the door, 
 and she sank against the wall shuddering, her eyes dis- 
 tracted. 
 
 He had kissed her on the neck. 
 
 "You you beast " The words were a shattered 
 whisper, and her fingers dragged at the spot where his 
 lips had fastened, as if to tear it away. "You hateful 
 vile " 
 
 As she looked into the deep-set, living points of his 
 eyes, her shoulders drawn up in nausea, her beauty and 
 exquisiteness gone into disarray, she was a specter of 
 despair. 
 
 " 'Necessity knows no law.' " Serafin said this cuttingly, 
 his breath broken and hurried. "Are you ready to go?" 
 
 "If you don't touch me " fell from her a ghost's 
 voice out of a maze, her look a demented woman's "if 
 
 you don't touch me again !" 
 
 Lasting furrows seemed to have come to her face as, 
 bent forward, jolted by crowding sobs, without tears, she 
 went heavily before him.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A SERVANT, the one that Elsie had not seen before, had 
 taken away her luggage and she was ready to leave El 
 Miradero. She had pulled the collar of her cloak to its 
 highest so that it half hid her face, her gloved hands 
 clutched each other, at intervals a dry spasm closed her 
 throat. With leaden shame upon her, she sat in her 
 bedroom, waiting, as Serafin had told her to do. 
 
 He had also told her to leave behind her the white gown 
 she had worn, having shown her that the gossamer edges, 
 brushed by the stained rug when at the first she had 
 sought to kneel by Arturo's body, were sprayed with 
 crimson. Just as well, Serafin had said, that it was not 
 found in her luggage at the Customs ; he would burn it. 
 
 She had obeyed the didactic tones without uttering a 
 word ; had moved in a sort of mental dishevelment where 
 thought of what she was to do, once she had left the 
 mountains, would leap up only as a lightning question. 
 When he brought up coffee and told her to drink it to 
 keep up her strength on the long ride in the chill of the 
 early morning, she had done so ; and when he had placed 
 a package in her bag, telling her it held sandwiches and 
 she was to eat them before leaving the coach, she had 
 listened with nervous earnestness to his words, feeling the 
 need of any advice that would help her, yet without once 
 letting her eyes rest upon his face. 
 
 "You will find the motor omnibus waiting at the foot 
 of the mountain, all ready to go on without permitting 
 any delay for breakfast, since in this fog that has come 
 up after last night's rain the mule coach is already late," 
 he had said. 
 
 During these preparations he had come and gone with 
 quick, almost soundless steps, his easy accomplishment of 
 
 135
 
 136 The Next Corner 
 
 every detail reaching Elsie even through her repudiation 
 of him. When he said, "Come, niadame," she rose with- 
 out change of expression, with the automatic obedience of 
 a prisoner. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs one of the unconquerable 
 moments seized her, seemed to sear through some enamel 
 encasing her nerves, and set them jumping with pain. 
 She stood still, a desperate figure, and gazed across the 
 big space with its reminders of tragedy to the curtains, 
 beyond which was Arturo's room and the bed with its 
 clay-cold burden. To look upon the dead face would 
 have been pain beyond enduring, and yet, the knowledge 
 that, had she wished this, it would not have been per- 
 mitted her, was a slur upon her sorrow. Good-by surged 
 from her choked heart and flowed toward the spot on 
 which her bitter gaze was fixed, until, aware that 
 Serafin had opened the balcony door and was looking back 
 at her with a scowl, she steeled herself and followed him 
 out. 
 
 It was after four o'clock. Faint daylight was harsh 
 with the mountain cold. In this wan hour that weakens 
 even the strong and happy a wilting consciousness of her 
 depreciation in value and her terrible loneliness went over 
 Elsie. The fog of which Serafin had spoken and that 
 made a cloud bath about her added to the strangeness. 
 It choked the valleys ; and the great peaks, with the first 
 rays traveling down them, came out of it like points of 
 dark stone pushing through cotton wool. In moving 
 along the veiled paths she had to follow Serafin closely. 
 
 "Fortunate, after all," she heard him say over his 
 shoulder, "that this fog is keeping back the mules, or you 
 would have been too late. Let us hurry now." 
 
 She wanted to ask why they were going so fast to the 
 road, since the coach was not yet there; could not; nor 
 could she bring herself to any sort of speech with him. 
 His next words gave the reason: 
 
 "We are going down the mountain a half mile or so, 
 to the first crossroad. Your luggage is already there,
 
 The Next Corner 137 
 
 and there you will get on the coach, so it will be thought 
 you have come up from some house on that side. The 
 driver will not be the one you traveled with yesterday, 
 and he will not associate you in any way with El Mira- 
 dero. He is generally stupid and sleepy, and if you are 
 careful will pay no attention to you. Try not to speak 
 at all while in the coach, so he will not be sure that you 
 are a foreigner, and when other people get in, sit quietly 
 with your veil down. Remember all I am saying to you, 
 madame," he said in a sudden forceful and cold conclu- 
 sion. "Once it is known what has happened here, it will 
 be well indeed for you to have caused no notice and to 
 be out of Spain. Do not " 
 
 The words broke. Serafin came to a quivering stop. 
 "Wait !" he said, his head lifted, listening. 
 
 They stood in silence, the vapor a moving curtain be- 
 tween them, and through it from the road where it rose 
 beyond El Miradero, a mixed sound gradually separated 
 into meaning, a nearing rumble, the ring of horses' 
 hoofs, a voice on a high distracted note. 
 
 "Too late ! I must go back be on hand to receive 
 them." He muttered this with desperation while with un- 
 conscious force he took Elsie by the arm and pulled her 
 toward the garden. She had never seen him so unstrung 
 by feeling. Even in the first dreadful moment beside Ar- 
 turo's body he had not lost command of himself as he did 
 now. His mouth jerked, his hands moved wildly as he 
 drew her to a place under the balcony where a vine-hung 
 partition made a shelter. 
 
 "Wait here, and keep out of sight until I return," he 
 stammered, and disappeared. 
 
 Elsie remained motionless. She felt sure that only the 
 coming of the police could have produced Serafin's look 
 of panic. She learned differently when out of the faintly 
 luminous fog an old-fashioned barouche, drawn by a pair 
 of huge draft horses as cumbersome as itself, was re- 
 vealed; it lumbered to the door only a few ^ards from her 
 and she saw two black-robed women in it.
 
 138 The Next Corner 
 
 The mother, the sister ! for the moment forgotten 
 by her. It was their coming that had made a trembling 
 servant of the steel-nerved Serafin, representing as they 
 did a worship as vitally a part of him as his blood. With 
 this thought Elsie's weight of abasement took on a razor 
 edge. The mother, the sister, and she there, in hiding ! 
 
 Since life with Arturo as her lover had not begun, her 
 own knowledge of her physical impeccancy had, in one 
 way, annulled what had been her intention; in one way 
 the shots that had taken Arturo's life had made her, to 
 herself, scarcely different from what she had been in 
 Paris, a rebel, loving secretly, whose daring had gone 
 no farther than her thoughts and her lover's despairing 
 kisses. And yet in another way, that she saw now made 
 the scales by which she was to be rated, she could not 
 escape from what she had meant to do, from the intention 
 set forth clearly and finally in her letter, and by which 
 she became, in status, Arturo's mistress. Her body 
 sickened at her plight while this knowledge bit in, while 
 she watched the women who must not see her. 
 
 Both wore mourning for Arturo's father, who had died 
 several years before; the sister, gravely moving and nun- 
 like; the mother with waxen, high-nosed face, her black 
 eyes staring from between the folds of crepe that rose 
 above her in a canopy. As Serafin helped them to the 
 steps, their bewildered questions, clinkingly distinct 
 through the fine still air, changed at his reply into a 
 wail for the dead, as all stood fixed, with lifted faces, and 
 crossed themselves. Then bent forward, swaying, the 
 women who had loved Arturo entered his home. 
 
 A moment's deep silence followed. Elsie waited, lean- 
 ing heavily against the lattice. In her fancy she saw 
 them going past the ghastly patch where the crimson 
 cried out to them as a mouth followed them to the hall 
 beyond to the white bed where the great Stillness 
 was. 
 
 And there their anguish found voice. Through the open 
 window that was but a little way above her, just around 
 ihe corner of the house, the grief that she had been forced
 
 The Next Corner 139 
 
 to keep dumb in herself swept down to her in the weeping 
 of strangers. Listening, her face gripped in her hands, 
 she, too, let the sobs shatter her. 
 
 "Dead ! Ay-el Ay-ei Oh, Arturo ! Oh, mother, 
 our poor mother? " She heard a voice cry out in frantic 
 unbelief. 
 
 "Arturito!" followed on the thin, shaken notes of the 
 old. "Ah, let me hold him! Dios, Dios! Ah, my 
 heart, my life, thou beautiful one, my little son Ar- 
 turito! Without thee? ay, de mi! without thee?" 
 . . . And this question on a rising scream was like the 
 death agony of some jungle creature. 
 
 So, the bluest blood the thin stream of the sacred 
 sangre azul had no other voice for pain like this than 
 that of the peasants* red and plenteous stream; called 
 vainly to heaven on the same key. No need for Elsie to 
 understand the words to know they voiced the insensate 
 loss that can turn life over as a bowl, emptied. 
 
 "Without thee?" the mother wailed. And so Elsie's 
 heart cried, too, one vast, blind question. How could 
 she bear it? How live? . . . 
 
 "Come at once. Quietly!" was whispered at her side, 
 and through her blinding tears she saw Serafin. He was 
 not the despot who had controlled her before. His face 
 was pensive; moisture had softened his queer eyes. He 
 went ahead swiftly, with a silent tread and without a 
 look at her until, after five minutes' walk down-hill, he 
 turned and pointed to the outlines of her trunk and 
 valises showing against the trees. 
 
 "This is the place. The coach can't be long now. I 
 have told you what to do," he said, with a touch of his 
 former authority through the hush that had come upon 
 him. 
 
 With no sign of having heard him, Elsie sat down on 
 the trunk, her elbow sinking heavily in weakness to the 
 bags upon it. 
 
 "If you follow carefully what I have said, you will have 
 no trouble. Wait here."
 
 140 The Next Corner 
 
 Without a word of farewell he gave a curt lift to his 
 hat and left her, lost quickly in the mist around the road's 
 turn. As suddenly he appeared again. 
 
 "I came back to say that I can understand how you 
 feel you have cause to think of me as your enemy," he 
 said in a quick, uneven tone, as if urged to speak by some 
 feeling that mastered him. "And you are right. I have 
 been your enemy since the day in Paris when you showed 
 me great cruelty for my mistake. You would not see 
 me as the Senor Marquesas foster brother and an edu- 
 cated man, who had for a moment lost his head. / No ! 
 Because I served one to whom I was deeply attached 
 although except for his family there is no other creature 
 on the earth that I would serve in the same way I was 
 to you a servant only. You have never looked at or 
 spoken to me as anything else. You therefore see now 
 how one can be made to pay for unkindness, for had you 
 been a little merciful to me, I would not have allowed 
 you to come up to El Miradero without Mrs. Vrain. 
 Have I made myself quite clear?" 
 
 While he was speaking, the memory of her struggle 
 with him outside Arturo's door and his insult there burned 
 fiercely again in Elsie, and through her wretched- 
 ness she also noticed sharply that he had ceased to use 
 his deferential "madame." She had no wish to reply to 
 him. And she knew, as women do know these things, that 
 her silence would gall him, while the most disparaging 
 thing she could say would brush over him without effect. 
 She had not been looking at him; now she turned her 
 shoulder fully on him and gazed ahead through the fog. 
 
 "I see," he cried out as if amused. "Not worth your 
 attention? Still a servant? Have it so! This would be 
 something to offend me more if you had any of my re- 
 spect. But you have not. Nevertheless I will make a 
 proposition to you," he continued in an unctuously silky 
 way through which the intentional gibe was plain, "one 
 that I always meant to express after the marques had 
 *ired of you providing, of course, you retained your
 
 The Next Corner 141 
 
 beauty, which happens to be of a sort to appeal powerfully 
 to me that I would be willing to assume his responsi- 
 bility toward you. You understand?" 
 
 She gave no sign. 
 
 "In accepting, you would have to live very humbly and 
 in my class. But as by your own written confession you 
 are exposed to your husband for what you are a stu- 
 pidly quixotic thing to have done, by the way, although 
 quite American and as after this catastrophe you are 
 stranded, with nothing at all ahead of you except the 
 precarious career of a cocotte, you will be very sensible 
 if you consider my offer seriously. Not always is a 
 woman of your sort given such swift opportunity to ar- 
 range herself after the loss of her man. Often there are 
 long intervals between lovers, when she can come close 
 to absolute penury. So what do you say? If you will 
 have me, I am willing to take you on. And, if so, you 
 can wait for me at some place in France Bordeaux 
 would be best, as it's of good size and you would stand 
 less chance of being noticed. I would surely join you 
 within ten days." 
 
 As this last and deadly slur grew plain to Elsie, black- 
 ness spread before her fixed eyes, while with overpowering 
 consciousness she felt that having heard those words, her 
 soul was smeared and seared with vileness forever; that 
 inwardly she would be as changed as she would have been 
 outwardly, if in some disaster she had lost arms or legs. 
 For as long as she lived she knew she would have to fight 
 to forget this befouling thing. 
 
 Not by the slightest movement or half glance did she 
 betray this, holding with shut teeth to immobility and 
 silence. The shudder that she could not control the 
 horror that held her up, rigid, for many seconds, and 
 then released her so sharply that she sank still lower over 
 the bags sufficiently appeased Serafin's implacable 
 grudge. 
 
 "You refuse?" he asked, laughed, a regret that was 
 mockery in his rather high, clinking voice. "Ah, well, I
 
 142 The Next Corner 
 
 had little hope, I must confess. And perhaps it is all 
 for the best, as far as I am concerned. No doubt I'll be 
 spared a good deal of irritation, for I understand you 
 so thoroughly. Women like you, living for fashion and 
 excitement, are useless in any good way. You have the 
 little hearts of cats. And what do you do with the men 
 who love you and trust you? You get them in your claws 
 you eat up their lives you betray them. So, when 
 you try to insult me, I tell you you cannot, for you are 
 nothing of no value in the world at all you, with 
 your little heart of a cat !" 
 
 The fog had taken him again. This time he was gone 
 and would not return. Still he seemed there ; for his 
 dreadful words stayed. And while Elsie resisted them, 
 a sense of outrage choking her, the thought that her own 
 act had made such dishonor possible was unbearable. For 
 a moment her surroundings faded, and she saw herself as 
 the woman she had been long, long ago, it seemed now 
 ah, how long ! living in a simple place of peace, her 
 baby on her knees, its satin fingers clutching hers in 
 wonder, she crooning to it in a welter of pure adoration. 
 
 When an eagle screeched above her and sped through 
 the gloom, its darting shadow and her own heart, knock- 
 ing, seemed the only life in the void. And when, following 
 this, sounds came, they did not help her, for through the 
 muffling haze she heard only the coach driver's cry and 
 the clanking of the harness bells, just as she had heard 
 them yesterday. Yesterday! when she was waited for 
 with longing, received with homage. Like the other mem- 
 ory, that, too, seemed remote, distant a stretch of years 
 from this forlorn departure. She bent over slackly, as if 
 she were old. Her face had the look of the lost. 
 
 And this was what it meant to be a mistress! To be 
 adored, guarded in a man's arms, to feel that his absorb- 
 ing love was all that he wanted of life, that without you 
 the world was empty for him, and then, once the breath 
 was out of his body, to be made to taste shame with your 
 sorrow; to have no right to cling to the dead, no right
 
 The Next Corner 143 
 
 even to stay near, no right to tears through which at 
 last would come some touch of gentle healing. To become 
 something that did not fit in anywhere, something not 
 wanted, a nuisance. To be dragged away by dark, 
 tendony, cruel hands so that the eyes of pure women 
 might not see you, and to be flung out, bundled out 
 anywhere anywhere only go you must ! 
 
 The horrible sadness of the pariah who looks through 
 chinks at the life of the normal, she knew it. One must 
 have caste to live at all. To be labelled declassee was to 
 be already dead. 
 
 These were her thoughts as she tumbled into the coach, 
 heard the man fling in her trunks and bags with fury as 
 if he hated them, and resume his directing cry as he ran 
 ahead beside the string of mules: "Arre! Mulo!" 
 
 She could cover her twisting face with her hands. 
 There was no one to see.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 "Parlez doucement! La malade dort encore." 
 
 Some one was speaking French? Elsie's eyes opened 
 and she listened. 
 
 "Je ne veux pas la revettler. Revenez plus tard" 
 
 "Bien, ma soeur." 
 
 Yes, they were speaking French. The voices were back 
 of her; they faded away, together with the sound of 
 softly shod feet, and no one seemed near her. She re- 
 mained in an acute sort of silence, while with the mild, 
 slow gaze of weakness she took in details surrounding her. 
 
 The bed on which she lay was small in what seemed, 
 from an angle of it that she could see beyond a screen, 
 a very large room. There were other beds in it, small 
 like hers. There was a tall window with square panes 
 that glistened, a half curtain like a starched muslin petti- 
 coat bulging across it. A briny smell that she could not 
 name, yet knew had some cleansing quality, filled the air. 
 From without she heard the murmurs of a town, silences 
 between them that belong to the day's halting start. 
 
 A shadow went like a great tongue up the plastered 
 wall, wavered there a moment, and a nun came around 
 the screen. Black and white like a charcoal outline on 
 ivory cool-lipped, bloodless face with tranquil eyes ; 
 black robes ; high, fluted white coif she stood at the 
 foot of the bed and smiled at Elsie. 
 
 "Bon jour, ma file. Having said it was better that 
 you miss your medicine and sleep on, you have, yourself 
 awakened," she murmured, and moved in a silent way that 
 was purposeful and exquisitely graceful to the free side 
 of the bed where she seated herself and laid an efficient 
 hand, cool as snowflakes, on the patient's brow, so 
 
 144
 
 The Next Corner 145 
 
 thoughtful now with every honey-colored hair brushed 
 back. "What would you have, ma file?" 
 
 "A glass of water, ma soeur, if you please." 
 
 After this was drained, Elsie remained on her elbow 
 and looked with love at this woman who on the instant 
 had conveyed the sympathy and helpfulness of a friend. 
 "I am in Spain, and yet, this French ?" she said 
 weakly with drawn brows. 
 
 "No. You are in France, my child." 
 
 "France?" A breath of wonder, a helpless look. 
 
 "In Bordeaux and in the Hospice de la Bonne Mere. 
 Now, lean back. Don't try to think at all, and I will 
 clear away some of what puzzles you. On a train belong- 
 ing to a branch line that goes from here to Blanquefort, 
 you were taken ill. You fainted, my dear. And so, as 
 soon as possible, they transferred you to a train coming 
 back to Bordeaux, that you might be cared for here. 
 That was three days ago, and you have been doing well. 
 The syncope would almost break, you would sleep fever- 
 ishly for awhile only to sink again into unconsciousness. 
 Last night you slept naturally, and this morning the 
 fever is practically gone. Now you will get well fast. 
 All you need is to rest, for you are very unstrung. Rest, 
 and light food, and soon a week or so you can- con- 
 tinue to wherever you were going. Meanwhile, you will 
 want your family or friends to be notified, of course." 
 
 As the nun was speaking, the truth in bits had found 
 its way to Elsie. Some black, some red as blood no, red 
 with blood they fitted one jagged edge to another as 
 do the portions of a dissected map. And to this knowl- 
 edge two of the phrases just heard were joined: "Soon 
 you can continue to wherever you were going. You 
 will want your family or friends to be notified, of course." 
 Where had she been going? She was not sure or 
 where she wished to go. Family? Friends? She could 
 see none. She was alone. 
 
 When the nun had gone away to bring her some food, 
 Elsie lay back among the pillows, and while weakness
 
 146 The Next Corner 
 
 seemed pulling her down through the bed with the suction 
 of a quicksand, she set herself to look back and look for- 
 ward, to see with some clearness what she must do. 
 
 The happenings of the night at El Miradero came down 
 upon her: all its mixed terror and grief; her humiliating 
 departure from it; the never-to-be-forgotten defilement of 
 Serafin's last words ; the ride almost in utter solitude 
 down that dreadful mountain through the cloud bath, 
 the driver guiding the wabbling mules on brinks of tor- 
 rents and across the brows of precipices with the fog 
 sense of a London policeman. 
 
 A misted recollection followed in which she saw herself 
 getting on and off trains, while a grinding ache at the 
 lower part of her head kept growing until it became 
 frightening. Her last clear memory was of a large sta- 
 tion, no doubt Bordeaux, and where, in error because of 
 the now enwrapping pain, she must have changed to a 
 local line instead of to the one that would have carried 
 her to Paris. 
 
 After this, her dreams in the hospital filtered back to 
 her. They had tortured her during the intervals of fever- 
 ish sleep of which the nun had spoken. In them she was 
 always in a wilderness, in vast, high solitudes. She had 
 heard water falling, falling, winds tossing branches ; had 
 seen shadows made by the dying moon tremble on the 
 great mountains. She was alone always, and always seek- 
 ing some one, Arturo first ; and he had never answered 
 her call or shown his face. Neither had her mother come, 
 nor Aunt Esther, nor Paula Vrain, nor Julie. She had 
 never called for Robert ; had always a child's panic 
 that, instead of the others, hearing her voice he might ap- 
 pear. But he had not. No one had come. No human 
 face had showed between her and the leering moon that 
 also had seemed running from her; and no human sound 
 had broken that stillness. 
 
 Through the rest of the day, as she submitted to the 
 gentle care that made her bed cool and smooth, an oasis of 
 peace, she was content to be silent, lying mostly with eyes
 
 The Next Corner 147 
 
 shut, her fingers stirring at times, and at times a nervous 
 spasm contracting her spine. Her thoughts made a 
 teeming world. Confusing images came and went there. 
 In it she kept constantly seeing the irremediable past; 
 constantly turning from it to find she faced nothing. 
 Or she seemed struggling to get through a stone wall to 
 some future where she could save herself. She would set 
 her teeth desperately, focussing on this thought. There 
 must be some goal for her if she could find it, and it must 
 not be too distant, for she was weak of spirit and body. 
 Unconsciously she was seeking some one whom she had 
 not hurt, and whose devotion would always be hers with- 
 out question or reproach. 
 
 Her intimates in Paris had not been friends; Paula 
 Vrain was a sample of them. Her mother, as practical 
 as the multiplication table and self-engrossed, would be 
 her exasperated critic. Robert did not appear even on 
 the fleetest thought, gone forever. And then ; through 
 this shifting cloud of useless ghosts, she saw Julie. 
 
 Many sweet things of this woman who had served her 
 stole to her memory and freshened it as if flowers had just 
 been placed beside her bed. Her care in small illnesses 
 during three years, her unfailing cheerfulness, admira- 
 tion, defensive loyalty. Julie, with her little, hard, dark 
 face and the hard, dark eyes that always grew kind when 
 they looked at her ah, she would welcome her back ! 
 To Julie she could open her heart ; Julie would take her 
 poor, slack hand, tell her what to do ; her future no longer 
 trembled over an empty gulf nor was she a wraith swing- 
 ing on its edge. There was Julie. 
 
 As this feeling grew stronger, a rill of hope would try 
 to rise through her weakness only to be dammed by the 
 opposing thought that, plan and strive as she might for 
 herself, Arturo was no longer among the living - never- 
 more to be seen upon this earth. Oh, inconceivable! 
 Heart-stilling . . . ! Of a sudden she would feel herself, 
 as before, the smallest thing in that Grasp under which 
 the strongest must break and run like sand. And with
 
 148 The Next Corner 
 
 this, life would spread before her again in the different, 
 unhappy aspects that had dogged her, the blinding 
 question mark, the stone wall, the empty gulf. 
 
 Nevertheless, after these slips into unavailing grief, 
 the thought of Julie would return and help her. Pictures 
 of cosy and intimate things, the sort that have a powerful 
 appeal for women, would come to her in a floating, inter- 
 lapping way : The hospital ward became her own room on 
 the Rue de Chaillot, and there was Julie, her arms full 
 of dewy narcissi or purple iris from the Madeleine market, 
 pausing to see if she still slept. Now she was stepping 
 softly through the shadow to open the persiennes a little 
 way to the morning sunlight and coming back to smile at 
 her. "Have you slept well, cliere madame?" she heard 
 her say. The water was running in her bath, the breath 
 of verveine was stealing through the half-open door, and 
 Julie was calling to her. When, cool, tingling, pow- 
 dered and verbena-scented, she had crept back to the big 
 bed, there was Julie again, this time with a tray that held 
 coffee and croissants, her letters and Le Matin. 
 
 So it went, until, with Julie, a longing came to Elsie 
 for Paris, too. Not for the Paris she had known, 
 never that again, of course ; yet still for the city that she 
 had loved and would love forever, in some poor corner of 
 which, beside this helper, she could hide and think, and at 
 last take her first steps in some new life. 
 
 Julie. Paris. She fell asleep that night holding these 
 names to her ; tried to see only them, clear of the shifting 
 darknesses that sought to intrude about them as a frame.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IT was amazing to Elsie to feel what strength had come 
 to her after a week in Julie's home. This was far from 
 the modish and verdured spaces on the right side of the 
 Seine where she had lived. It was a nest tucked under 
 the notched eaves of an old house near the Luxembourg, 
 once a great mansion, now a beehive of poor people. 
 
 During these days she had been treated with the loving 
 sort of authority with which Julie would have handled her 
 own babe in swaddling clothes. Morning engagements 
 for work were suspended so that she could bathe, feed and 
 fuss about Elsie, win her from brooding, interest her in 
 the little things about her, in the parrakeet that a 
 sailor brother had brought from French Guiana ; the fat, 
 drowsing cat with glowing coat that is such an important 
 fireside item in nearly every bourgeois home in France; 
 the flower pots on the balcony; the street musicians who 
 straggled at times into the reverberating courtyard far 
 below. 
 
 She had heard the whole of Elsie's story the first night, 
 had let her relieve her heart of its weight, and then had 
 commanded silence about it. Not a word, not a look 
 back ! The visit to El Miradero was to be as if it had 
 not been until such time as its consequences could be 
 faced by them both and their bearing on the future light- 
 ened in some way by the wise counsel of the very wise 
 Julie. 
 
 Elsie had been as an obedient child and had risen every 
 morning revived and cool from nights of the most healing 
 sleep. Sometimes she seemed to herself to be a flower 
 struggling back to freshness in a bright vacuum, so 
 separated was she from every impression that heretofore 
 
 149
 
 150 The Next Corner 
 
 had meant life for her. On the day that Julie first heard 
 Elsie laugh really laugh out at one of her drolleries, 
 she felt as gay as if, at last, she had drawn the winning 
 number in the lottery. 
 
 They had been talking of Julie's husband. He had 
 resented being driven to take a room with a friend in 
 order to make way for Elsie, and had departed the first 
 night in a towering rage, his roars of farewell crossed by 
 Julie's shrill anger and laughs. 
 
 "A week and Raymond has not come to see you," 
 Elsie had' said, as Julie brushed her hair. "I'm sorry! 
 My coming into your home this way " 
 
 "Tiens!" Julie had broken in mockingly between her 
 strokes on the pale floss that hung on the air like a web, 
 and had bent over to pat Elsie's cheek with her fore- 
 finger. "You do not understand Raymond and me, ma 
 petite. Coming in here as you did and getting us excited 
 was of the greatest help to us. You see we were getting 
 so dull oh, my God, so polite! Nothing had happened 
 for weeks to make the air go whirr about us at all. Ouf 
 it was terrible! It is not healthy for married people 
 to have all the time one big grin on the face and be all 
 the time amiable, madame. I began to see how Raymond 
 was heavy, and how his hair was left now to get long and 
 bushy and dusty and when he would fall asleep over 
 the paper and snore, I I hated him ! It was like 
 that with him too. Oh, I could tell how he was seeing that 
 I was not so young any more ! In fact we were yawning 
 in each other's faces and then you came ! and Ray- 
 mond cursed that I cared for a stranger more than for 
 him and he cast me off and I told him to go and 
 never dare to show his pig face here again if he knew 
 what was good for him. So now," Julie had said with a 
 hushed delight, "all is so well again for, let me tell 
 you " and her voice dripped with a rich content, "when 
 I came in from the market at his lunch hour I caught a 
 glimpse of him down in the courtyard, behind one of the 
 big doors, watching for me. Well, ma chere, as he peeped
 
 The Next Corner 151 
 
 out at me he looked handsome ! He had his hair cut 
 most beautifully and a big bouquet was in his buttonhole. 
 It was all I could do not to drop the things and embrace 
 him on the spot. But, not yet," Julie had decided in the 
 compressed tone of one who scrutinizes a knot to unravel 
 it. "Let him dress up a little more it will do him 
 good !" 
 
 It was then that Elsie had laughed out. 
 
 And after the surprising thing happened, the smile 
 went sharply from her face, a dead calm came upon her 
 that centered in a gaze on the triangle of Paris sky be- 
 yond the slanted window in the roof. That laugh the 
 amazement that she could laugh had swept ghosts 
 about her. They rose up in the plain of desolation that 
 was now her life. Arturo was clearest: On the balcony 
 at El Miradero he held her to him, the black and white 
 splendor of the mountains about them, the light from the 
 dying moon on his face. His veiled glance with light 
 through the lashes, as through the shutters of his soul, 
 drank her in. His kiss of desire pulled up her heart, the 
 pain that belongs to ecstasy in it. She heard his words : 
 "Never shall we part never, never !" And, in a moment 
 it seemed, he was dead. He was lying twisted over the 
 chair, the red square was spreading upon his breast, and 
 the light had left his eyes, all sound his lips ! That 
 which had meant him was not there at all. . . . 
 
 And Chance had done this. The Destiny, of which the 
 fatalist in Arturo had so often spoken, had swooped from 
 space as a monstrous hand and in an instant had swept 
 him out of the world he loved. On her its fall had been 
 lighter; belittled, abject, it had permitted her to live. 
 Yes, the great paw that had blurred all the print on her 
 page of life had left her legible below it as an ironic foot- 
 note in small type. 
 
 She stood up sharply and moved away from Julie. For 
 some seconds she remained like an animal stupidly dis- 
 mayed. 
 
 "Ah, what has seized you?" Julie asked, and shot an
 
 152 The Next Corner 
 
 arm about her. "Ma cherie, do not undo all the good by 
 thinking of things " 
 
 "It is time !" Elsie came out of the hush. She put Julie 
 from her gently and took a few steps up and down. 
 "Thoughts are coming back very clearly. They seem 
 stepping before me, in my path, rounding me up with 
 questions and they crush me !" 
 
 "Very well. Here ! I will pin your hair so ! 
 and now we will sit down by the table and go over it all." 
 
 Perhaps in no country but France could a working- 
 woman of Julie's type one who was a poor speller and 
 wrote a hand like a six-year-old child have been able 
 to bring a many-sided and alert intelligence to a situa- 
 tion like this as well as the imagination to feel all its 
 subtleties. 
 
 At the first news of Arturo's fate from Elsie she had 
 shed a few of her difficult tears for him. He had been 
 winning to her by reason of his princely beauty ; she had 
 seen him sought after in a way to have spoiled most men 
 and that had not spoiled him ; had known how exultantly 
 he had loved life and women in the Paris brightness ; and 
 his murder had been like the savage cutting down of a 
 young tree in fresh blossom. But he was gone; never 
 more would he make perplexity in her young mistress's 
 life. And instead there was left something of a fatal 
 gravity that had to do with breathing flesh and blood, 
 with the day in and day out business of living, the 
 letter of confession and farewell that Elsie had sent to 
 her husband. Oh, the senseless idea of honor that had 
 prompted it! The madness of it! That letter, and not 
 her lover's death, Julie saw as the real disaster to Elsie, f 
 through which she must be helped to struggle successfully, 
 or drift where? During ten minutes she was a concise 
 questioner; and Elsie, intensely appealing with bleak, at- 
 tentive eyes, gave obedient answers. 
 
 "First," said Julie, "let me tell you that I made it my 
 business to go to the Credit Lyonnais and look over the 
 papers on file that had been published about the time you
 
 The Next Corner 153 
 
 went to that hospital. You see, I did not read any - 
 working over here; and I wanted to know just what had 
 been written about the young marquis's death. Well, I 
 found it was all right. There was an account of how he 
 had been shot by a thief in his mountain place, some very 
 nice lines of regret for him, and some things about how 
 great his family is. C'est tout. Therefore all is well, 
 unless the police should later find out something. So tell 
 me a few things, madame. Are you sure that no one 
 noticed your going away from that place that morning?" 
 
 "No one. The coach was empty halfway down the 
 mountain. Then a few old people got in who did not look 
 at me at all." 
 
 "And that Serafin?" said Julie, her lips pursed in 
 malice. "Oh, I never liked him, as you know, madame 
 like a long, small-eyed eel ! Well you feel sure he will 
 not ever speak to the police of your having been up there 
 during ah, during that dreadful thing that happened 
 to that splendid young man, his master?" 
 
 The dark look of repugnance that always came with 
 thought of Serafin settled on Elsie's face. "Why should 
 he? It was he who made up the story of the thief to put 
 them off the track. Oh, no. I have finished with him 
 forever. I have that to be thankful for, at any rate." 
 
 "Good. So all that can be wiped out. Swish it is 
 gone!" Julie declared. "And now you must school your- 
 self to thinking, madame, that you were never in Spain 
 at all. Next about your money ? You said some 
 money had been stolen from you. To-day w* will talk of 
 it. How much did you lose, my child?" 
 * "I went over it yesterday, when you were out," Elsie 
 said. "I know I had nearly fifteen thousand francs when 
 I went to El Miradero. When I was getting ready to 
 leave the hospital and took out the wallet in my bag to 
 get some money to pay them for their care, I found that 
 I had almost nothing, hardly one thousand. Think of 
 it ! hardly two hundred dollars out of nearly three 
 thousand. I said nothing to Soeur Agatha, my sweet
 
 154 The Next Corner 
 
 nurse who had taken charge of all my things, for of 
 course I had been robbed before I reached the hospital 
 where, I can't say. It might have been that the servant 
 at El Miradero, who took my luggage down the road that 
 morning in the fog, stole the money he had plenty of 
 time ; or after I had fainted on the train, some thief " 
 She gave a weary shrug. "I don't know. It is gone, at 
 any rate." ; 
 
 "It's a pity you have so little in the way of jewelry. 
 I have been with ladies who cleverly collected fortunes in 
 that way, and so you see they were never at a loss. You 
 had only two rings as I remember, and not very expensive 
 ones either. Am I right?" 
 
 As Elsie listened she recalled the emerald pendant. 
 From the moment of her decision to remain with Arturo 
 she had meant to send this with a good part of his last 
 money gift to Robert ; and the same sensitiveness had 
 kept her from wearing the jewel at dinner at El Mira- 
 dero, lovely though it would have been against her silvery 
 whiteness. She felt sure that once Julie knew of it she 
 would advise selling it, and she was forced to see, too, 
 that necessity made this unpleasantly wise. It was ex- 
 actly what happened when from the compartment for 
 jewels in the false bottom of her handbag she brought her 
 valuables. Julie gave a shout of joy at sight of the 
 emerald, and some lightning arithmetic resulted in the 
 statement that, with a fair market, Elsie would have for 
 her salvation about a thousand dollars. Besides this 
 there were her many trunks still held in her name at 
 Havre, and these would be of value to some hundreds 
 more. 
 
 "Your passage to New York," said Julie in a tone she 
 tried to make casual while appearing blind to the look of 
 surprise and opposition that dawned in Elsie's face, "will 
 take, with other small expenses, about fifteen hundred 
 francs, let us say, and then " 
 
 "I am not going to New York." Elsie looked at her 
 with a stony and sullen sadness.
 
 The Next Corner 155 
 
 "No?" asked Julie, and sat back in pretended confu- 
 sion. 
 
 "The last place I would think of going to !" 
 
 "Where, then?" asked Julie. 
 
 "Here. I've thought a little about it since yester- 
 day. I'll stay in Paris, Julie. It's big enough to hide 
 me." 
 
 "But one must do more than hide, madame," said Julie 
 with wise nods. "One must eat, my child! And your 
 little lump of money would soon melt away." 
 
 Elsie's faintly hollowed face gave a twist of bitterness. 
 "I mean to work, of course. You don't seem to have 
 thought of that." 
 
 The words brought only a fond pity to Julie's gaze. 
 "At what ? You have a voice that is true. But as 
 you often said to me, it is not a voice like your mother's. 
 It is only a voice for pleasure, for home. Unless " 
 With candid sorrow she met the eyes that were trying 
 wistfully to read her somber look, " unless you would 
 seek a place in the cafes. Yes, your voice would get you 
 a welcome there and your looks, when you have put on 
 a little flesh " 
 
 "Don't !" Elsie swept out of the chair. In a tornado 
 of childish misery she turned to the wall, put her arm up 
 and hid her face against it. "How could you? Oh, 
 how could you? Never, never, never can I come to such 
 a horror as that !" 
 
 "There I agree with you," Julie said briskly. "No, 
 you must not. A life of that sort of struggle would be 
 as dirt upon you, kill you. Very well. Then come back, 
 ma chere, and tell me at what would you work?" 
 
 Elsie came slowly and stood with her hands pressed 
 upon the top of the low chair. There was a fierceness 
 about her. The mere picture of the half-naked, smirking 
 women that, during gay excursions of curiosity with her 
 friends, she had seen singing in the cafes to the shouted 
 and often gross familiarities of the students, had seen 
 going among tables, drinking with the patrons, pulled at
 
 156 The Next Corner 
 
 and whispered to by them, brought a rigor of self-preser- 
 vation to her. For all the shadows left by illness and her 
 unhappy mind, her face showed a new, bright strength; 
 the fine line of her brows lifted into a frown of defiance. 
 
 "I mean to find employment somewhere in Paris that 
 will be out of touch with all the people I know here. They 
 are residents, either French or cosmopolitan but resi- 
 dents. I could serve in one of the cheap and popular little 
 shops that are patronized almost altogether by American 
 tourists and where my English would be useful. I know 
 of one place like that where I used to buy gloves when I 
 first came here. You remember going there with me once 
 a little slit of a shop, hardly bigger than a cupboard, 
 almost in the shadow of the Galeries Lafayette, kept by 
 a young Frenchman and his wife, and where they cut and 
 sew the gloves right there before you? I got to know 
 them in a friendly way in those early days," Elsie con- 
 tinued hopefully, a pink coming into her cheeks. "It's 
 more than a year since I've looked in upon them, but I 
 know they will give me a chance with them if it's at all 
 possible. At any rate that shall be my first attempt to 
 find work. I hope to come back and tell you, Julie, that 
 I am to be an American clerk in a French shop, selling 
 gloves to my compatriots." 
 
 This was the moment on which Julie had counted. Now 
 that she was sure of Elsie's pitiable outlook for herself, it 
 was time to speak. 
 
 "Madame!" Her voice was tender, though it had the 
 ring of a summons, and her mouth was set. "Forgive me 
 if I say that you seem a little mad to me as you stand 
 there. Also," she went on, "like one who has fallen 
 overboard from a big comfortable ship to a small 
 boat, and who, without oars, is floating away to ah, 
 what? Well, I am going to put the oars into your hands 
 and all those things my brother the sailor has told me 
 of weather glass and compass and I'm going to 
 advise about what port you had better make for without 
 a minute's delay."
 
 The Next Corner 157 
 
 At these slow words and her stressful look, compre- 
 hension came out in Elsie's face, a wan light. "I 
 know what you mean, Julie," she said in a small voice 
 that had a shiver in it. She held up one doubled hand 
 as her eyes closed. "Don't say it." 
 
 "As I am your friend, I must," Julie said and stood up. 
 "You have one chance and one only, madame that is, 
 to go back to your husband!" 
 
 "I won't talk of it." Elsie went to the window. "If 
 you are blind or won't see then go on. I shall not 
 answer you." 
 
 "You think it is impossible because you sent that letter. 
 But ma fille, you have not thought of one thing how do 
 you know he might not listen to you, if you went down 
 on your knees and prayed to him?" 
 
 She went nearer to Elsie, whose back was to her, her 
 chin resting on the sill of the high, slanted window as 
 she stared out with sick eyes. 
 
 "I saw your husband but one day, madame," Julie con- 
 tinued bravely, her big firm mouth jolting with earnest- 
 ness, "and I knew then that when I had often thought 
 him cold and unkind to you by staying so far away from 
 you, I was wrong. Whatever the reason, it was not that. 
 For I saw something in his face that I have not seen in 
 the faces of many men. It was in the eyes so quiet, 
 so steady and clear as they looked at me that knowl- 
 edge of a strong heart came to me, and it was a heart 
 that loved you, madame. Oh, that man he loved 
 you well !" she said and ventured to place her hard fingers 
 on Elsie's downbent shoulders. 
 
 "I did not speak of this at that time, madame, for I 
 saw all ahead so fortunate for you, as you were so soon 
 to join your husband, and besides those last days be- 
 fore you left for Spain were full of such haste and fuss 
 there was not much chance for talk. But I tell you 
 now, madame, that when Monsieur Maury came into 
 the apartment and did not find you, I could see the look 
 go over him that would come to a child's face if some
 
 158 The Next Corner 
 
 one that it had believed loved it should strike it 
 tristesse, and a wonder that such a thing could be! Yes, 
 for a moment I saw that, as he stood looking about the 
 empty place. You see, he wanted you! He had come 
 full of love for you. I could tell this," said Julie with 
 deep wisdom, "for I know the look of love when I see 
 it, and I know, too, the look when the heart grows cold 
 as a stone in the breast. That was the way it was. Ah, 
 a great pity you were not there to meet your husband 
 that first day !" 
 
 Her hand dropped from Elsie's shoulder. She waited 
 humbly for some reply. None came. And the glimpse 
 she had of the face with shrouded eyes made her think 
 of the death mask of a girl that she had seen once, 
 made from one of the Seine's suicides, the same look 
 of resolute pain, the same fixed irony to the childish 
 lips. 
 
 "If you would go back and tell your husband that you 
 are sorry, madame? Ah, if you would do that!" she 
 sighed. 
 
 Elsie turned to her then. She was forlorn, but spirited, 
 burning. 
 
 "I was sure that some day you would say this to me. 
 I must set you right, so that you'll never say it again. 
 You don't understand a man like my husband, Julie 
 an American with Scotch traits. You don't know what 
 his wife's absolute fidelity means to such a man. What 
 I wrote him has changed me forever to him. I don't 
 believe he could take me back, even if, in a certain, kind 
 way for he is kind he forgave me. He would never 
 forget it no, never really care for me again. I am 
 soiled to him, and my value has gone. You can't under- 
 stand this stern feeling about woman's purity. Your 
 husband, after suffering, would take you back and never 
 let it count against you. The point of view is broader 
 here different." She took a long breath, with a small, 
 desperate smile. "Besides, I shall never say that I am 
 sorry. Let what I'VB done make a mess of my life
 
 The Next Corner 159 
 
 all right ! I shall never be a beggar, and for the best of 
 reasons because I am not sorry !" 
 
 "You are not ?" Julie stammered. 
 
 "No, I am not," Elsie repeated, and now both eyes 
 and voice though forbidding, were piercingly plaintive. 
 "Not sorry in the way you would like me to be. I am 
 sorry from the very center of my soul that Arturo had 
 to die," she said and thrust out her hand for Julie to take, 
 which she did, and began to knead lovingly the cold, 
 winding fingers, "and I am sorry that it was necessary 
 to hurt my husband as by this time that letter has hurt 
 him. But I am glad that I loved a man as I loved Arturo. 
 I was walled in before, and he brought me into a sun- 
 light so that I had a glimpse of heaven ! He is dead 
 but what of that? Does that change everything? Only 
 a few weeks ago I put my life into his hands ! Is all that 
 finished because he is not here?" A terrible sadness 
 trembled over her and the look of a worn-out soul came 
 to her gray gaze. "Do tenderness and loyalty to one 
 that is loved disappear with their breath? Oh, Julie, 
 Julie !" . . . She paused, staggered by the inexpressible. 
 "I could not say that I am sorry for what that letter 
 stands for no ! only for the loss and the pain to 
 the three of us. So you see I am the woman who wrote it, 
 and who meant it, though the man for whose, sake I wrote 
 it has gone." 
 
 There was silence between them. Julie smoothed and 
 then kissed the hand. 
 
 "I see, madame. Yes, I see," she said helplessly, 
 "that you are not one to wriggle down the easiest road, 
 as I would do. No ! I was going to tell you to go back 
 to Monsieur Maury, to weep, to kneel before him and 
 to kiss even the foot anything, but not to let him 
 escape you! I wanted you to say to him that all those 
 foolish ideas about the young marquis came from the 
 madness that begins in the spring and is so unsettling. 
 I would have had you say that when you were up on that 
 high mountain at the mercy of the man and Spaniards,
 
 160 The Next Corner 
 
 you know, are so excitable that the lover held a pistol 
 to jour head until he had made you write the letter, 
 which you did not mean at all anything, but not to 
 let your husband slip ! For you see a husband is not only 
 agreeable, but so useful," sighed Julie, "and to let him 
 get away is like tearing up money. Still, I see now that 
 this cannot be. I have warned you but each to her- 
 self. I cannot make you me !" 
 
 A grim drollery had gone over Elsie's ghost-white face 
 at this burst. She laughed with the sudden sense of 
 fun of a little girl as she pulled Julie to her and kissed her 
 on the lips, then held her away from her as her gaze grew 
 grave again. 
 
 "Let it content you, then, that you have warned me, 
 dear Julie. And as you say, each to herself I to 
 keep the honesty that to me seems plain decency. It was 
 a struggle for me to get up the sort of bravery that was 
 needed for me to do the thing I did. Then I must hold 
 to that bravery. No cringing because my desires mis- 
 carried, no bleating like a sick, frightened sheep to get 
 back into a comfortable fold. Oh, no oh, no !" 
 
 The tenacles of war fell as grappling hooks upon nations 
 and unsettled matters of high state. All were not mighty ; 
 some were so minute as scarcely to be visible and 
 quivered their way into the workshops, alleyways, attics 
 of the little people, made confusion of obscure lives, 
 pricked at humble hearts. 
 
 One of them caught Elsie as a wondering atom when, 
 after only five days of her service at the glove shop, the 
 shutters were put up there with these words chalked 
 upon them: "Closed because the owner has left to join 
 his regiment. Vive la France!" 
 
 And this was only the beginning. Mobilization had 
 taken Julie's husband, and she, red-eyed, brave-hearted, 
 was preparing to hurry to her old mother if she could 
 be reached who was not far from the French frontier 
 at Liege for which the Germans were making. Paris
 
 The Next Corner 161 
 
 rang with many sorts of fear and only one purpose, to 
 save France. Through this and above it there was an 
 hysterical clamor from the travelling Americans around 
 whom the tenacles had fastened, producing complex dis- 
 tresses and also only one purpose, to get home, to put 
 the seas between them and this incredible horror with 
 which they felt they had nothing to do. 
 
 Elsie seemed to herself no larger than an ant that yet 
 had room for a whirling brain, listening to the destruction 
 caused by some appalling wind storm; solid ground 
 seemed slipping from beneath her. She saw panic 
 on all sides as she raced about the city, seeking some 
 chance for her livelihood. Shops were closed everywhere; 
 even the Rue de la Paix was utterly forlorn. Trains 
 to the coast were in the hands of the army for mobilization. 
 Stranded Americans were holding mass meetings at em- 
 bassies, steamship offices and banks. Transportation and 
 money were words that lost meaning in the hopeless 
 muddle ; letters of credit went unhonored ; ships on which 
 return voyages had been reserved were withdrawn from 
 passenger service to be used for war, war, war! She 
 heard of men who had lost automobiles ; of women who 
 on the continent had grown frantic from days' hunger 
 and had paid for sandwiches with diamonds. 
 
 She was at a standstill in this chiaroscuro of dismay 
 when, a few days after the closing of the glove shop, 
 Julie summed up the crisis for her : 
 
 "I sold the pendant to-day for what I could get only 
 a thousand francs as to-morrow you might not be able 
 to sell it at all. And of course you cannot now get your 
 luggage at Havre perhaps never all that is swal- 
 lowed up in the trouble. So with what little money you 
 have now, madame, we must manage a passage to New 
 York for you as soon as it can be done. France is no 
 place for foreigners. My poor country is like an ox that 
 has been hit on the head with a club, twisting and turning 
 to see some way to help herself. Only the good God 
 knows what will happen to Paris now! So this is a time
 
 162 The Next Corner 
 
 when home is best. Counting out jour husband alto- 
 gether, at least in America you have your mother your 
 own flesh and blood. And with us here in this hell, 
 where your own blood is, madame, is the place for you." 
 
 Arturo had said at El Miradero: "Ah, Elsie, you have 
 a fearfully vivid mind. You see all around an idea." 
 As she listened to Julie, these words came back to her, 
 for she seemed to see packed Prussian cavalry riding up 
 the Champs Elysees with the arrogance of owners, the 
 Prussian eagles on their helmets making a hideous glitter 
 to the sad eyes of the French crowds watching them. 
 Edging this was a memory of the streets of New York as 
 they looked from the highest windows of the high hotels, 
 and as she had so constantly peered down at them in 
 childhood, fissures in mountains of battlemented stone 
 where people appeared as lines of black maggots moving 
 in swirling ways. With a new pull of intimacy and 
 yearning this New York became what Julie had pictured, 
 the spot where she was privileged to stand ; her right ; 
 her own. And as Julie had said, it was time to seek one's 
 own. 
 
 A few days later, with kisses, tears, words of hope 
 and promises of meeting again in better days, Elsie, 
 after forcing a third of her small capital on her good 
 friend, left her. On a French ship that sailed packed to 
 the deck rails, with portholes masked and lights out, 
 she was one of five in a second-class cabin that had been 
 meant to hold three.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THEY were at breakfast, the Vinings. At first sight 
 this might call up a picture of Elsie's mother and the 
 hat creator who was her husband in a trim room where 
 a table glowed with damask, sparkled with silver and 
 where a maid, immaculately capped, placed eggs and 
 bacon before the master in his correct summer flannels 
 and ready for business. 
 
 Quite different. The Vinings were in half-opened bath- 
 robes, Nina looking scalped under a blue ribbon that 
 hid her hair curlers ; an hotel tray took up the end of a 
 table on which there was a litter that began with a mani- 
 cure set, continued to a heap of soiled gloves ready for 
 the cleaner's, and ended in a half-trimmed hat. 
 
 Nina Race, for she was called that about equally 
 with Mrs. Vining and Percy approved of it as a note 
 out of the ordinary that helped business was balancing 
 a brocaded mule on her toe and frowning at a letter that 
 had slipped from her limp hand and now lay on the 
 floor. Nina was as fixedly youthful in type as she had 
 been in Elsie's childhood, except for those shadowings 
 that come relentlessly between cheek and chin when men 
 and women get to forty. Her hair was almost golden this 
 year; her nose was that lovely sort of a snub that so 
 helps a woman in her fight against Time; she had a 
 beautiful mouth, much like Elsie's in bowlike form but 
 without its lovable pensiveness, Nina's curling almost 
 ridiculously, with deep curves and nicked corners, a 
 tilted-up redness of gayety; and even in the cumbersome 
 bathrobe she showed the slimness of a girl with the 
 height that belongs to about fifteen years. 
 
 Percy was hunched over the morning paper, reading 
 the headlines about the war and speculating on what in- 
 
 163
 
 164 The Next Corner 
 
 fluence this new, martial note would have on the season's 
 hats. He was a narrow young man with weary shoulders, 
 long legs so thin they seemed like lathes under his clothes, 
 and flat, pointed feet always conspicuous below tight and 
 short trouser legs in the purple stockings that he usually 
 affected. He was blond, almost bald at thirty, almost 
 chinless, with pale, protruding eyes that seldom smiled. 
 He had a light, floating sort of voice that never strength- 
 ened, although he was given to the most vehement expres- 
 sions. As he was also a perfect imitation of the English 
 fop of comic opera, his extravagant statements in languid 
 accents were of a sort to make one see Bond Street instead 
 of Fifth Avenue. He was always "keen" for a thing, or 
 it was "quite too utterly beastly"; it was "top hole", or 
 he was "fed up with it." 
 
 For all this lightweight outwardness he was a rock of 
 sense. Even his seemingly unsuitable marriage was bound 
 to continue a success ; he had contracted it with the cau- 
 tion with which he signed a lease. Nina adored him, and 
 he had always found the devotion of one person necessary 
 for his comfort. As she was so much older, she was also 
 very grateful to him, and this kept his ego pleasantly 
 warmed. Moreover, she had anticipatory millinery in- 
 spirations that made her a valuable business partner with- 
 out the depressing need of splitting profits. And best of 
 all he liked her. 
 
 "Well, Perce," Nina said, tilting the coffee pot to ex- 
 tract the last drop, "you've read Elsie's letter to me, and 
 you haven't helped me a bit " 
 
 "Haven't I? I've told you the most important thing 
 she's stony ! She must be, to put up at that rummy hole 
 down in that ghastly neighborhood." 
 
 "Maybe she's gone there because it's so French. She 
 does such queer, impulsive things, dearest always has. 
 If she met some French people on the ship who were going 
 there, and she liked them, that would be quite enough for 
 Elsie. She never had my sense of values." She picked 
 up the letter as she spoke and eyed it drearily.
 
 The Next Corner 165 
 
 "Rubbish!" Percy sniffed. "That's not one of the 
 French places ; it's cheap commercial ! I tell you," he 
 said again as he rose and lifted his shoulders briefly in 
 what might have become a yawn, "she's stony. And it 
 means that she and Maury have had a serious spill 
 you know you were afraid of it that Spaniard ! See if 
 I'm not right. Probably Maury would have told you all 
 about it when he called here three weeks ago, if we'd been 
 in town and before he went off again somewhere Pitts- 
 burgh, didn't they say at his office, when you telephoned? 
 And you remember how he wrote on his card that he was 
 sorry not to see you ! even said very sorry, I re- 
 member." 
 
 "Oh, he'd say that anyway, coming for the first time, 
 after being away years " 
 
 "Ah, but he called twice, you see! Now take it from 
 me, your very original daughter broke loose some way 
 Maury found it out they've parted and for the pres- 
 ent, at least, she's on the rocks ! Let me hear her letter 
 again. I only glanced at the thing." 
 
 " 'Dear Muv,' " Nina began obediently. 
 
 "F-f-f h !" This was a mincing sound of nausea from 
 Percy. "How I hate her tacking 'mother' to you. Can't 
 see why you, a woman in the public eye, ever had a child. 
 Doesn't fit your type at all. Too utterly dreary !" 
 
 "Well, I had her, and I have her still !" Nina sparkled 
 as she curled herself in the armchair, for she had never 
 liked what she called "the mother stunt" and revelled in 
 being told that she did not look the part. "Besides, there 
 is something in it, Percy, that you, not being a mother, 
 can't understand. I've got to go to Elsie and see what I 
 can do for her just got to." 
 
 "Go on with the letter," Percy remarked darkly. 
 "... I reached here last night after a most exciting 
 and uncomfortable voyage. No doubt you have seen 
 Robert by this time, or heard from him of what has hap- 
 pened and how things are with us. There is more to tell 
 you things that he does not know about yet. I won't
 
 166 The Next Corner 
 
 write of it, and please don't telephone me. This is not a 
 thing to be talked of that way. I want you here, muv. 
 Don't imagine I'm going to burden you and Mr. Vin- 
 ing" 
 
 "Rather not!" Percy interrupted. "Why the deuce 
 should I be burdened with a married woman that I've 
 never seen, just because she goes dotty over a foreign 
 bounder?" 
 
 "You are a silly," Nina cooed. "You don't know what 
 you're talking about, dear. Arturo is a Spanish marquis 
 one of the oldest names in Spain. And handsome? 
 the man's a dream ! Why, let me tell you that if he'd take 
 the trouble to come over here, he could marry any one of 
 a dozen of multimillionaires' daughters as easily as turn- 
 ing his hand. I saw women of fortune and title run after 
 him shamelessly, yet for nearly two years he's never 
 looked at one of them quite mad about Elsie. So don't 
 be too hard on her. She was as ignorant of the world as 
 a baby until she went to Paris and was left there all alone 
 to plunge at her own, impulsive will. Besides, she's a 
 girlish, sweet thing doesn't look a day over twenty. 
 It's not the least bit surprising to me that Don Arturo 
 completely turned her head!" 
 
 "And now we have the trouble of turning it back," 
 Percy said, as he went concavely into the bedroom. "Go 
 on talking. I can hear you from here." 
 
 "Where was I ?" Nina muttered, bending over the letter 
 again : 
 
 "... to burden you and Mr. Vining. I simply want 
 you to help me in the first steps that must be taken " 
 
 "Divorce!" Percy called out with a conclusive, smack- 
 ing sound. "I forgot she said that. It's divorce as plain 
 as the nose on your face!" 
 
 ". . .So come as soon as you get this. Come in the 
 morning. But oh, let me ask you one thing don't come 
 to criticize or scold me " 
 
 "Impertinent, I call that!" Percy snapped. "My 
 word !"
 
 The Next Corner 167 
 
 . . . What's done, is done. Help me to piece to- 
 gether what I have left. Please come right away. 
 Faithfully Elsie." 
 
 "Not a word of affection !" Percy appeared at the door 
 with his head through a China silk shirt whose bold purple 
 bars gave it the effect of a diminutive awning. "Make a 
 note of that, my dear " and his bulging eyes had a 
 mean smirk, "your dear daughter merely means to make 
 use of you. She doesn't even try to hide it." 
 
 "That's Elsie," said Nina, as she folded the letter, un- 
 curled herself, and passed him into the bedroom. "She's 
 always been so outspoken. To tell you the truth, she 
 doesn't love me and in a way, I can't blame her." 
 
 "What does that mean, may I ask?" 
 
 "She was too affectionate as a child, and I didn't en- 
 courage it," Nina said lightly. "She was always asking 
 me to kiss her, and often, when I was going out, all ready 
 for the stage, she'd put her arms around me so hard and 
 tight she'd take my breath away. At last, on one night 
 that I remember she was about eleven and in bed early 
 because she had a cold or something I came in to 
 say good-night to her. She sprang up and clutched 
 me as if she were insane. 'You haven't kissed me for three 
 days,' she said, and her eyes had a craving, wild kind of 
 look. 'I counted them !' 'And I won't kiss you for three 
 more,' I said, getting away from her, all twisted. 'You 
 paw so,' I couldn't help saying, for I was furious, 'and 
 I hate being pawed !' I never forgot the queer change 
 that went over her, the look she fixed on me. If I'd 
 suddenly turned into a snake before her, she couldn't have 
 grown more still and terrified. 'I won't any more,' 
 she said, and slipped face down among the bedclothes. And 
 to tell you the truth, Perce, she kept her word. In fact, 
 it worried me how silent and cold she grew when alone 
 with me, so that at last it was I who would sometimes go 
 and kiss her. She'd let me I can't say more just 
 let me, for I never had a real kiss from her again, not 
 even on her wedding day," said Nina, who was now pow-
 
 168 The Next Corner 
 
 dering neck and face with a lavishness that filled the air 
 with a mist. "No, she doesn't love me as girls love their 
 mothers, and doesn't pretend to." 
 
 "I know I'll simply detest her," said Percy in a minc- 
 ing yet implacable way, as he wriggled his foot into a 
 pump. "I hate that straightforward sort of person 
 always conceited. I'd take my time about hurrying to 
 her, I can tell you !" 
 
 "I shall get to her as fast as a taxi can take me," Nina 
 replied affably. "You see, Perce, you're not a mother." 
 
 "I know I'm not!" he screamed in thin-sounding exas- 
 peration. "You said that before. And as obviously 
 it would be impossible for me to be a mother, please 
 don't say it again i" 
 
 It was close to three o'clock when Nina appeared at 
 the hat shop. This word was never used by the Vinings ; 
 they called it the "place" or the "business." And out- 
 wardly it no more suggested millinery than it did hard- 
 ware. The one imposing plate-glass window, flat on Fifth 
 Avenue, was as deep as a small room, and in it were 
 several things a fall of Italian lace, a carpet of ancient 
 embroidery, a vase made of gilded wicker work from which 
 flowers trailed, and a small, stuffed white goat with one 
 lifted hoof placed airily on the vase but not a hat in 
 sight. Only Percy had the answer to this mystifying 
 decoration and he gave it to no one but Nina: 
 
 "You say you don't understand the window, my dear? 
 That's exactly the effect I wanted. What people can't 
 understand, they remember. Besides to get a peep at 
 a Vining hat they've got to come inside and when they 
 do, it's the fly walking into the arms of the spider ! Clever? 
 
 Percy was carefully crushing a flapping Leghorn of 
 the shepherdess type over the left eye of a portly woman 
 who should have worn the matron's toque of saner 
 days. 
 
 "You have something about you a je ne sais quoi 
 for this simplicity, madam," he was saying as Nina en-
 
 The Next Corner 169 
 
 tered. "It does not matter that the face is a trifle full 
 since you have that youthful expression " 
 
 He saw that Nina had a jaded, almost a tousled air as 
 she closed the door on the baking street. After flinging 
 one look eloquent of unhappy news to him, she passed 
 without speaking through the show room into their sanc- 
 tum at the back, where the accounts were made up and 
 where their most profitable customers often had tea, or 
 something in a cup that looked like it but whose resem- 
 blance ended with the color. 
 
 She was sipping a gin and lemon when he came in after 
 completing the iniquitous sale. She had flung off her 
 hat and was clutching her head. 
 
 "Oh, Perce," she said and flapped one of her small 
 hands close to her ear as a landed, half-dead fish does its 
 tail, "oh, my dear ! " 
 
 "As bad as that?" came from his contracted mouth. 
 He sat before her, doubled over, and hugged a lifted knee. 
 "Cough it up," he said, forgetting for the moment to be 
 vulgar in some British way. 
 
 She talked with weary breaks for five minutes, during 
 which he made no sound and, when she had finished, Elsie's 
 story was plain to the last detail. Percy's look, at first 
 peevish, had become savage. He hated anything that 
 took attention from himself or disturbed his personal 
 routine. This daughter of his wife's was doing both and 
 had become, as well, a disgraced petitioner instead of the 
 newly rich benefactor who might have put money into 
 his business and whom he had intended to flatter with 
 that end in view. His sudden hatred of her had the 
 potency of vitriol. 
 
 "That letter she sent!" Nina said desperately. "Oh, 
 a terrible letter ! didn't leave her a peg to stand on. 
 I made her go over every word of it. She told Robert she 
 didn't care a pin about him any more, that she was 
 madly in love with Arturo, was writing it up in his moun- 
 tain place, all alone with him, was going to stay on with 
 him for the rest of her life, and told Robert to divorce
 
 170 The Next Corner 
 
 her at once." She gazed at him in flat helplessness. "And 
 now the Spaniard is dead! And if she hadn't sent 
 that letter the whole thing could be dismissed, for you 
 see she did nothing seriously wrong " 
 
 "Hadn't the chance," Percy rasped. 
 
 "Chance or not, she was kept from the extreme mad- 
 ness. The whole thing could be smothered up as a foolish 
 escapade only for that awful letter ! O f h, I feel as if 
 I'd go crazy." 
 
 "And you say she won't try to get back with Maury? 
 Won't beg him ?" 
 
 "Beg?" Nina almost screamed. "I wish you'd heard 
 her ! She'd see me dead at her feet rather than open her 
 mouth." 
 
 "Then as she's a dashed lunatic, you must go to him 
 tell him how the fellow was killed before the affair had 
 started " 
 
 Nina was almost too tired to continue. "Oh, Perce," 
 she sniffed into a corner of her handkerchief, "I did. I 
 went straight to his office away downtown, and without 
 a bit of lunch. Robert wasn't there. He won't be back 
 till to-morrow. Besides," she said with deeper hopeless- 
 ness, "between ourselves, I don't believe that anything 
 I could say to him would do a bit of good. It wouldn't 
 count with his conscientious sort that something like a 
 thunderbolt had happened to prevent Elsie from living 
 with De Burgos " 
 
 "He wouldn't believe it," Percy interposed. "I don't 
 myself. No man would ! Up in the mountains scene 
 all set as she wrote and then she back here as pure as 
 an Easter lily ? 'Nay, nay, Pauline !' too thick, too 
 thick !" 
 
 "He might believe it, but it wouldn't help. Robert 
 Maury sees straight colors. With him white and black 
 never mix to make gray. A woman is worth while or 
 she is not. She's straight or she's crooked. He'd only 
 consider that his wife had allowed a man to make love to 
 her, and that her intention set forth in ink had been
 
 The Next Corner 171 
 
 to live with that man, and chuck him. Oh it's just 
 terrible!" she ended on a wretched sigh. 
 
 "Then she's not going to make any play at all to get 
 back. And, as you say she is against taking any help 
 from him, it can only mean that she's going to try and 
 fasten down on us like a leech. But I be dashed if !" 
 
 "No, there's just one mite of hope. After I'd talked 
 myself hoarse for an hour, showing how it was only 
 Robert's right to know where she was, so he could get the 
 matter settled the divorce, you know she wrote him 
 a few lines and asked him to come to the hotel to-morrow 
 afternoon. Just that not another word. You'd think 
 she was writing to to a piano tuner !" Nina said, 
 and with eyes closed in exhaustion finished the gin. 
 
 "She's dotty! A bally lunatic!" was Percy's summing 
 up.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE August day had a deadly heat ; there was hu- 
 midity without sun, except as it came like the suggestion 
 of a burning lens through the mist. Vagrants slept fla- 
 grantly in the public gaze on the benches in Union 
 Square. Men, carrying hats, with heads sagging back- 
 ward to keep their chins from the touch of damp collars, 
 and women in blouses as transparent as their veils moved 
 with an effort and a resentful look as of creatures making 
 an undesired way in an element not their own. Touring 
 cars held the only refreshed ones, in town for the day 
 from country homes. 
 
 The physical discomfort was without acuteness for 
 Elsie. She had gone for a morning walk to escape from 
 the boxlike hotel bedroom and was now dragging herself 
 and her thoughts up the rise of Fifth Avenue that was 
 capped by a lilac-tinted cloud. She was in a curious 
 mood. Critical as this hour was for her, she did not seem 
 to care. Her talk with her mother had but emphasized 
 the distance between them, made her see with the clear 
 eyes of the disillusionized her pressing need of self-help- 
 fulness in a world grown dismayingly big and that was 
 able to exist successfully without a thought of her. Yet 
 the knowledge, instead of biting in as it had in Paris, 
 left her unconcerned. 
 
 When she had written to Robert, because she could not 
 refuse Nina's abjectly frantic appeal, she had felt cold 
 fear of him ; that had gone quickly with all the rest into 
 the apathy that formed the present. In this raw hour, 
 the meeting with him ahead of her, she had sharp sense 
 only for the past. A secret temple, swimming in light, 
 seemed to be in the depths of herself ; and there she glowed 
 
 172
 
 The Next Corner 173 
 
 answeringly, for there all that was finished was alive 
 again. 
 
 Elsie was one of those sensitive to the magic of mem- 
 ory. Under it the dream figure of the dead could walk 
 beside her, become the poignant thing; the "vanished 
 hand" hold hers. She was back in Paris years before 
 her first days, when every charming impression had the 
 potency of a discovery. Ah, the blue morning haze en- 
 wrapping the great Arch on its rise; the sunset making 
 it as a door into the sky. And the dear smells the 
 tang of warmed asphalt with cool odors from the Seine, 
 the scent of the chestnut blossoms along the Champs 
 Elysees and from the hyacinths and narcissi in the many 
 vendors' carts, all the magic of Paris when it is spring. 
 Then her meeting with Arturo the headiness that 
 began; the bewitched confusion. As this became the love 
 of the later time, she was with him in the Longueval 
 garden, the melting voice of the English contralto seem- 
 ing to plead for him: "Come back to me, beloved, or I 
 die !" With racing blood she was beside him in the upper 
 hall at El Miradero, the storm's stridor filling the trem- 
 bling house as he swept away her defenses with the yearn- 
 ing of his prayer and the soft fire of his lips. She did 
 not see him dead. Not to-day. 
 
 Yes, it was a curious mood and a profitless one, for 
 this pull of the lost had no value in the world struggle 
 before her ; ah, no value at all. Still it held, and the dead 
 walked close to her, spoke her name, smiled at her. Up 
 the avenue and then down, she went heavily, she and 
 her sweet torment. 
 
 This relaxed somewhat as she reentered the hotel; it 
 was so shabby, harsh, so visibly a part of her new de- 
 cadence. And when the clerk handed her a memorandum 
 to the effect that Mr. Maury had telephoned and would 
 call at four o'clock, the spell broke, sank quite away. 
 Hard, her breath held back, the cold fear of yesterday 
 crept over her again and tightened. She stared at the 
 words as at the face of a judge.
 
 174 The Next Corner 
 
 After that her thoughts centered on the future, its 
 first fragment this interview with Robert that had to be, 
 before finis was written between them. It was an ugly 
 necessity. She would have shirked it but for Nina ; would 
 have kept hidden from him, reduced to a memory, while 
 he took what course he pleased. As he had to be faced, 
 she tried to get hold upon what was in her of the practi- 
 cal. She had been starkly honest with him in her letter 
 from El Miradero. Let her only be passive and honest 
 still, while he would tell her briefly how their joint freedom 
 was to be obtained, and then he would go away. It need 
 not be too hard if she but nerved herself to a sort of stony 
 philosophy and acquiescence. 
 
 She put on one of the plain gowns that she had bought 
 as suitable for a worker in the Paris shop, a straight 
 gray linen much like a large apron with sleeves, and with 
 a turned-over, boyish white collar under which a length 
 of black silk was knotted. She did not touch her face 
 except to powder it. Although she still had with her all 
 the toilet trickeries that once had seemed so alluring, she 
 had lost the enthusiasm necessary for their use, even in 
 the most restrained way; they belonged to a woman who 
 had had the heart to be vain. 
 
 She was ready at a few moments after three. The 
 time, that at first had seemed to crawl, began to suggest 
 an opponent determined to take her strength. Some- 
 where, lately, in her reading she had seen a word "harrier- 
 hard"; it had brought her the picture of a hunting dog 
 that held like steel on a taut leash, and she had told her- 
 self that she must be like that, harrier-hard. But 
 when she felt every moment of waiting ten times its length, 
 she dreaded what at the end of so many of them her 
 physical ebb-tide and her thoughts in that dingy room 
 would do with her. She dreaded feeling soft, tearful, 
 lonely, and of having Robert Maury see that she was 
 these things. That must not be. For she had no repen- 
 tance. The plea of the woman who has made a blunder 
 through misconception of herself was not for her. She
 
 The Next Corner 175 
 
 had loved Arturo, she had, and did still. As she had 
 told Julie, her regret was for the pain edging that truth 
 and for the fatality that had turned her hopes into 
 tragedy. 
 
 These several anxieties gradually lessened before an- 
 other that nipped like a gnat, her mother might ar- 
 rive just ahead of Robert, or, even worse, while he was 
 there. She was about to try to reach Nina on the tele- 
 phone and warn her to stay away when word came up 
 from the office that Mrs. Vining was calling. And it 
 lacked only ten minutes of four! 
 
 Elsie straightened and kept her eyes on the door, des- 
 peration darkening them. This look, with the Quakerish 
 gravity of her gown, was so like an attack upon Nina 
 when she clicked in on the slippers that were as absurdly 
 tiny as their buckles were huge, that she stood still in the 
 doorway, her first planned phrase shattered. 
 
 "You should have come earlier," Elsie said, the words 
 nervous and rushed together. "You can't stay now, muv. 
 Robert will be here in a few moments." 
 
 "Oh, so he's coming!" Nina entered eagerly, her face 
 radiant. "Well, my dear, you've put on just the right 
 thing to make a good impression ; you're like a schoolgirl, 
 pale, and with lovely shadows under your eyes from 
 studying too hard ! There are a few other things I want 
 to say to you " 
 
 "Don't say them." Elsie's tense hands urged her 
 prayerfully to the door. "Can't you see that if you talk 
 I'm likely to go to pieces?" 
 
 "Goodness, am I so terrible?" Nina pouted. "Well, 
 I'll go but just listen to this I didn't dare speak to 
 Percy as I promised you, about giving you a berth as 
 saleswoman with him. He'd have snapped my head off! 
 So, dear," and she held fast to the knob, determined to 
 finish, "do remember how hard it is for any one to get 
 work just now with the summer and this war! And do 
 remember that while of course you'll easily marry again, 
 the preliminaries do require a little time now don't
 
 176 The Next Corner 
 
 they? And so, dear," she sighed conclusively, by this 
 time in the hall, "if Robert insists on your taking a small 
 income, even though, as you said, he isn't a mite to blame 
 and you are do take it. But anyway, if you don't " 
 A genuine mist here came to Nina's eyes and she shot an 
 excellently tailored arm over the gray linen shoulder, "I 
 want you to know that you can count on me, dear yes, 
 to my last penny, and Perce can go to the devil ! I've 
 got fifteen hundred of my own in a savings bank that he 
 doesn't know a thing about, and if the worst comes 
 it's yours. I thought this all out, coming down in the 
 taxicab," Nina sniffed, her face wet, as for the first time 
 since that night in the lonely long ago she felt Elsie seize 
 her and kiss her lips with a slow, deep warmth. 
 
 "What bright things come to you in a taxicab !" she 
 said, a smile passing over her sad young face. "Ah, so 
 good of you! But never fear, muv; I won't take your 
 little hoard " 
 
 "Then you must take something from Robert ! As he's 
 so generous, it's but natural he'd " 
 
 "And I'll never do that !" Elsie breathed with a touch 
 of wildness. "Something will turn up to help me. I'll 
 see, I'll think. Good-by " 
 
 The telephone bell rang. 
 
 "Robert!" broke from both in a whisper. 
 
 Elsie's lips paled. She seemed for a moment to lose the 
 power of moving. Afterward she was only dully con- 
 scious of answering the call, saying that Mr. Maury 
 might come up ; and of her mother, who feared to meet 
 him in the halls, retreating with a chair to the bathroom, 
 as the only place in which she could hide, until he had 
 gone his way again. 
 
 Elsie was left standing between the two closed doors, 
 listening to the distant clash of the elevator's metal gate 
 and then to an approaching, well-known step, easy, 
 firm and long. It paused ; there was a knock. 
 
 "Come in," she said in a voice that was not her own to 
 her ears nor to those of the man who opened the door.
 
 The Next Corner 177 
 
 Robert stood with the knob in his hand and looked 
 across at her. There was not even an attempt at the 
 smile of greeting that the situation needed as a brace; 
 neither was there any pleasantry, however trite, to give 
 it the foothold of the commonplace. He seemed dismayed, 
 as in silence he sent a dragging, uneasy glance around 
 the drab room, his brows quivering in a characteristic, 
 quizzical frown. The windows were full on the west, and 
 the sun, that had strengthened during the afternoon, 
 came through a broken yellow blind and fairly broiled 
 upon dust, rents and decrepitude. 
 
 "Good Gofl, Elsie," he said in flat-toned wonder, "what 
 are you doing here?" 
 
 As she continued silent because she could not speak, 
 he gave a fling of his loose, sharply straight shoulders 
 and came across the room, adding: "What's the meaning 
 of your coming to such a place? You had plenty of 
 money " He was halted by the defeat that came into 
 her gaze as it rose and fell, wavering about him, never 
 fully looking at him. 
 
 "Tell me why you came here?" he repeated. 
 
 "I lost my money," she said in a toneless way. "It was 
 stolen from me." 
 
 "Stolen? Well ?" He put his hat and stick on the 
 weak-legged center table between them. The question in 
 his eyes came through bright anger. "You could have 
 asked for more couldn't you? There's a cable isn't 
 there? Don't tell me that you were afraid to ask me!" 
 
 She met his eyes then. A look of fierce pride ran like 
 light over the flower tints of her face. "I never thought 
 of doing such a thing!" 
 
 She had a sharp feeling of still further separation from 
 him. He was a curious man, his first words irritation 
 caused by a minor action. This was in such direct con- 
 trast to what might have been expected, it seemed a chill- 
 ing eccentricity that affronted her. He was poised 
 against any shock or wound. Nature had supplied him 
 with some exclusive sort of comfort by which in a twink-
 
 178 The Next Corner 
 
 ling the most accustomed thing could change to a cipher. 
 Alone, he was complete! And sharply against this, she 
 felt herself under his lucidly intelligent eyes a rootless 
 weed in water that sagged on cross currents. 
 
 This impression left her when his look changed quickly, 
 so quickly that she was thrilled by it, almost terrified. 
 She could not imagine sharper regret in any face. Ah, 
 now she felt sure she was seeing him as he had looked just 
 after reading her letter in the first moment of unbelief 
 and distress. The thought took on the power of a magnet 
 for steel, drew her far away to the desk in the room at 
 El Miradero, where the wall of harsh blue stretched above 
 the ancient cope upon the bed, and there while she was 
 impassioned and trembling from the lover she had just 
 left it seemed to put the pen between her fingers, made 
 her write again: 
 
 "... He is Don Arturo. . . . To-night I decided to 
 remain with him. ... If I gave him up and went back to 
 you I would be too unhappy to live. . . When I found 
 myself alone with him up in the mountains, the world 
 and its laws lost their strength. ... I could not keep 
 faith with you. ... I gladly give up home, friends, the 
 good opinion of the world for him. ... I am in love 
 madly in love ! . . . The truth written here will be enough 
 to gain you a divorce. . . . Good-by, Robert. ... In all 
 likelihood we'll not meet again. ..." 
 
 This consciousness of a finished act so walled her from 
 the present that when Robert held out his hand it appeared 
 to come through the density of substance. His words 
 were even more unexpected: 
 
 "I began to be afraid -that I was not to see you at 
 all, Elsie," he said, and his fingers closed about hers 
 in a kind way. 
 
 "You wanted to see me?" She asked this with heavy 
 wonder. 
 
 "More than anything in the world !" And after a glance 
 that was a troubled question, he continued in the clipped
 
 The Next Corner 179 
 
 tones that she remembered had always meant decision 
 with him. "We have serious things to say to each other." 
 
 She drew away her hand and sat down. "We have. 
 And let us get them over, please as long as I'm here ! 
 I didn't mean to come back oh, never ! The war drove 
 me home." 
 
 She said this through a shudder. For all his generosity, 
 how paltry she must look to him having written 
 that she had gone to another man to be before him 
 again, astray, piteous, making the parting hard for him 
 in spite of his strength. 
 
 And oh, how strong he was ! She gazed at him across 
 her frayed life. Standing above her with his finely cut 
 face worn by energy, discerning eyes under the restless 
 brows, the hair rippling closely over his head with the 
 effect of a steel-black casque, and wearing the clothes 
 that always expressed him browns like the calfskins 
 of old books and grays like the rocks he worked among 
 he seemed more than ever a man of bronze and granite. 
 
 The next moment, and while she tried to tell him of 
 Arturo's death, another act of his surprised her even more 
 than had his handclasp. His familiar, very individual 
 way of moving jerkily, yet with a looseness that was 
 grace held her silent now as he twirled a chair to 
 him, dropped to it sideways, clasped his long arms over 
 its back, and let his eyes rest on her with an affectionate, 
 flickering smile. 
 
 "Elsie," Robert said slowly and earnestly, "why didn't 
 you write to me?" 
 
 She heard this clearly, and felt she had not heard it 
 at all. She kept an empty gaze upon him. 
 
 "You promised you would,"- he said, an echo of old 
 loneliness through every inflection. "But I've not had a 
 line from you since the night in Paris when you left 
 for Spain! Why not?"
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 So shaken was Elsie that the walls seemed to sway in- 
 ward and touch above her. Robert went into the perspec- 
 tive, a gray streak from which brilliant eyes questioned, 
 and then came back to tower over her. As the stagger- 
 ing change righted she found herself just as she had been, 
 sitting in a rocking chair, her hands holding fast to its 
 sides, and he before her with a studying, gentle look that 
 held reproach. 
 
 "Not a line!" she heard him say. "Wasn't that un- 
 necessarily harsh?" 
 
 A shadowy struggle showed in her face. He could not 
 know of the impulse that made it. She wanted to give 
 utterance to her amazement and tell the truth in one wild 
 burst ; not to tell it ; to wait, although just why she 
 should wait she did not know. 
 
 "I hoped you'd tell me to-day that you had written and 
 that the letter was roving about after me. You see, I 
 had expected to go to South America a month ago, 
 straight from the West, and some foreign letters for me 
 that came to New York were sent on there at once. I do 
 go on to Venezuela quickly now. Nevertheless I ordered 
 my mail returned here, because I felt sure that among it 
 there would be some word from you. It's all on its way 
 back now. The situation between us, Elsie, has dis- 
 turbed me to the core. I've kept thinking of it constantly. 
 I've caught at every possible hope to escape the serious- 
 ness of it. I wouldn't let myself believe that you hadn't 
 written. Lately I've felt that the confusion of the war 
 had delayed or lost some recent letter from you. In fact, 
 I've hoped this up to this very minute but you didn't 
 write to me, I can see! Didn't write at all?" 
 
 While he was speaking, Elsie, looking past him, had 
 
 180
 
 The Next Corner 181 
 
 been aware of the most cautious opening of the bathroom 
 door, only enough to show her Nina's eyes with a look of 
 wild prayer and a glimpse of her supplicating hands, 
 urging silence. This was a flash before the door came 
 between them again. 
 
 "No." Elsie said this on a suspended breath. "I 
 didn't," she added with more force, though a clutch had 
 come upon her throat as the lie struggled through. 
 
 Color went darkly over Robert's face and a look that 
 was out of keeping with its sharp strength, of na'ive, 
 boyish dejection. "I don't think I deserved that. I 
 could never have been so inconsiderate of you." 
 
 She made no answer; instead, sat gazing at him 
 with a touch of the awestruck uncertainty that comes 
 to eyes on a sudden awakening. 
 
 "You got my letters, of course." His voice was now al- 
 most coldly patient, the tone of one who starts to examine 
 some troubling thing in a dispassionate way. 
 
 "One I think. Yes, I remember. One came from 
 London before you sailed." 
 
 "That went to Paris. But there were others. I wrote 
 you fully half a dozen. One almost at once went from 
 the ship to the Spanish address you gave me; later ones 
 went to the Ritz to be held for you. Didn't you go back 
 there?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Where did you go?" 
 
 "I stayed at at " She edged from saying she had 
 lived in Julie's home. "at a small place in the Latin 
 Quarter. I told you my money was stolen. I was ill, 
 too. Julie, my maid, was with me." 
 
 "And you never thought that I would write you to 
 the Ritz? Why that seems to me the first thing that 
 would naturally have occurred to you !" He frowned 
 helplessly, so astray by this fact that for a few seconds 
 doubt shadowed the steady, blue gaze. "Something 
 hidden here? What eludes me?" it asked. 
 
 While recognizing his look as the charged wire re-
 
 182 The Next Corner 
 
 quiring careful handling, Elsie made no effort to reassure 
 him, the recklessness of honesty mixing with deceit. "I 
 forgot the Ritz," she said, the tone deadened. 
 
 At the same time she had sense of being several in- 
 telligences that worked together and yet independently. 
 With one she saw the situation as Robert, not yet having 
 had her letter, saw it. With a second she lived through 
 the agonies of her secret story in flashes, most keenly 
 those hours when, as a forlorn light-o'-love, she was 
 cast out of El Miradero, wild and lost, her soul sick from 
 shame. And with still another there came a flare of 
 what might await her, at least in the present, if she per- 
 sisted in her lie. Help was there and hope, a sedative 
 to banish the hideous feeling of belonging nowhere; es- 
 cape from the aftermath of loss. And all of these could 
 be paid for by her as the woman who is wanted by a man 
 can always pay. 
 
 It was this last that whipped her to her feet, stirred 
 deeply, open-eyed to the cowardice with which she was 
 juggling. The writer of that farewell could not evade 
 it, be false to it. She could not so outrage the one precious 
 thing left to her out of the wreck, fidelity to the loved 
 dead, and desperate pride in it. She did not want to go 
 back. She could never again be Robert's wife. Her heart 
 was in a grave. Her brain heaved under the onslaught of 
 these resolves, and the truth, already at her lips, had al- 
 most rushed over them when Robert drove them away. 
 With one of his quick lunges over the chair's back he had 
 seized her wrist. 
 
 "I understand so well just how things are between us," 
 she heard him say. "We've played recklessly with our 
 lives during these years apart; we've grown apart, we 
 have changed. But it isn't too late to start again. I 
 could not bear to lose you, Elsie !" 
 
 He was kneeling on the chair as very gently he drew 
 her nearer, taking her hand seriously in both of his. His 
 face was strong with reasonableness, humble in a plea as 
 he went on :
 
 The Next Corner 183 
 
 "After I left you in Paris, I felt dissatisfied with myself. 
 Something ' what's called the Scotch conscience, I sup- 
 pose got after me on the ship when I had plenty of 
 time for thinking tilings out. I saw how the whole busi- 
 ness of life had been wrong with us for years. That 
 was why I had suffered such disappointment in Paris. I 
 had slowly grown self-sufficient oh, hideously so and 
 you were confusingly different that day from the memory 
 I had treasured of you ! You don't look so now not at 
 all the same creature. Now you're the girl I knew so 
 little changed from my first sight of you at Nina's wild 
 card party six years ago and more, that it's really un- 
 canny." 
 
 "I am not the same, though," Elsie flashed, a bitter 
 twist moving over her beautiful mouth. "Don't imagine 
 it." 
 
 "Ah, well of course years do leave traces, even when 
 they're not seen. But you're real now, so unlike what you 
 were on that day in Paris when your three years there 
 seemed to have damaged you in some ugly and sophis- 
 ticated way, given you a cynical mind as well as a strange 
 face! I wanted nothing but to get away from you and 
 readjust myself to the depressing change. And you? 
 I know you felt just as divided from me that you 
 snatched at the chance I gave you of going to Spain, to 
 your friends. Yet, while you wanted this, I could see 
 that you resented my eagerness to have you go. Well 
 there's no use digging further into the causes for what 
 has resulted. I ask you to come with me to South 
 America, and I'll try to make you happy. I don't want 
 you ever to leave me again. I love you, Elsie !" 
 
 She shook her head slowly. Deep regret gave body to 
 her words when, after a pause, they came. "I don't love 
 you, Robert. I'm sorry. I cannot go back to you." 
 
 He dropped her hands. The blood surged up his face 
 in a painful way that was the voice of his humiliation; 
 ebbed as quickly, leaving it ashen under its brown 
 and clouded over as if an inner light had been snapped
 
 184 The Next Corner 
 
 out. He went to the open window and gazed at the mist 
 streaks through the heavy sun. 
 
 Elsie, aware that the bathroom door had opened very 
 slightly and closed again, did not give it a glance. She 
 sat down, her clasped hands on the table and waited. The 
 look of defeat on Robert's face had touched her to passion- 
 ate sympathy. She would be glad to end this meeting 
 without mention of the letter. When at last it overtook 
 him, she would not be there to see its bitter effect on 
 him. And if, through some maze of chance, this never 
 happened and he never read those lines, still better; he 
 would be spared that added twist of the screw. 
 
 Several moments passed, the room silent save for the 
 streets' clangor, before he turned. When she felt his 
 shadow sway over her as he bent across the table, she 
 looked up. 
 
 "Then come back as a friend," he said earnestly. 
 "Don't refuse me this! Let us start again that way. 
 Come with me to South America. I would be very lonely 
 not seeing you at all and troubled about you, too. This 
 would give the old feeling a fighting chance to revive, as 
 separation could not. And whenever you might wish to 
 go, you'd be perfectly free to do so. As a friend, Elsie? 
 Shall we make that compact? What do you say?" 
 
 She sat in the shadow, watching him in a way that 
 was rapt. Her fluttering hair sparkled about her face, 
 giving a luminous quality to its pallor that reminded 
 Robert of flowers of delicate tint, drained of all color 
 by the dusk, yet shining within it. A strange longing had 
 come to her hollowed and bright eyes ; a hushed look that 
 he could not understand, as if she had stumbled on some- 
 thing valuable and with doubting surprise was trying 
 to believe in its reality. This was exactly what had taken 
 place in her soul; 
 
 Could what he asked come true? She did not believe 
 it. And yet, Arturo was dead, and this living man whose 
 remembered kindness had always been an unescapable 
 thread about her heart, even when it had ached with in-
 
 The Next Corner 185 
 
 tense love for another, needed her. If she could ever 
 say good-by to despair and again count love as the sum 
 of her life, how good if it could be for this husband whom 
 she had failed! He had asked for a fighting chance. 
 And in spite of her doubt, might there be one providing 
 the letter never came into his hands? 
 
 For the first time since the moment when to her ques- 
 tion: "Dead?" Serafin had answered: "Yes," life, in its 
 collapse under the crust of desolation, stirred for her. She 
 had faint sense of a glow, a fancy of quickened days be- 
 yond some as yet unseen horizon where things might 
 matter once more and to-morrows beckon. On that feel- 
 ing spring seemed to peep into the dismal room, a garden 
 to blow its scent through the window. 
 
 Her eyes sank before Robert's gaze, neutral save that 
 it was earnest. From the deep well of womanhood in 
 her a galling drop welled up for her deception, even 
 while she muttered with broken eagerness : "Yes, yes, yes."
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SOON after this, Robert left. Nina stole out. She was 
 transformed. She found Elsie sitting at the table, lean- 
 ing on her elbows, her hands arched above her eyes. At 
 sound of a convulsive gurgle from her mother she lifted 
 her head, and her look had a wilting effect on Nina's 
 triumph. It seemed to see things far beyond and around 
 her, and there was a physical sickness in it. 
 
 "Don't say you're glad!" broke from her, a threat. 
 
 Nina held her breath. "I am glad," she found courage 
 to cry defiantly. "You've saved yourself. Of course I'm 
 glad. Some one cares for you. You've got a future. 
 You're not a bankrupt!" 
 
 "I'm worse. I'm a liar!" Her face changed start- 
 lingly to a look of inward collapse through which the 
 eyes had the poignancy of a hunted thing, listening. She 
 leaped up. "I can't do it," came from her on a whisper, 
 pitched wildly and high. "I don't know why I said I 
 would. I want to be free. I want to go away " 
 
 "Go where?" Nina demanded in angry fright. "Tell 
 me where you'll go?" 
 
 "I don't know. I can try somehow. I want to try. 
 I can't do this begin the life of a cheat. I can't un- 
 derstand how I thought I could do it. I hate myself. 
 But it's not too late. I can get away now. You stay 
 here. Tell Robert when he comes tell him anything 
 I don't care what. Tell him about Arturo and the 
 letter what I said in it !" 
 
 There was a distracted, fanatic look about her as she 
 rushed to the closet and pulled a hat from the shelf. 
 While she tried with uncertain fingers to pin it on, Nina 
 ventured to touch her appealingly on the shoulder. 
 
 "Don't try to make me stay ! It's nothing to you that 
 
 186
 
 The Next Corner 187 
 
 I think what I do feel what I do !" broke from Elsie 
 on an angry sob. "You only want me in a home, looked 
 after by a husband with money ! You won't let your- 
 self see that I'm suffering because the man I loved is dead. 
 You don't realize or care that it's of him I think 
 and not of Robert at all oh, not at all !" she finished 
 on a thin wail. 
 
 Nina could only wait. She sat down in an exhausted 
 way, terrified, and watched Elsie, as with pupils dilated, 
 her look one of raging resolve, she put her folded coat on 
 the table, opened and closed a bureau drawer in a search 
 for gloves. She was dragging these on, her mouth giving 
 nervous twitches, when Nina, as well as her weakness 
 permitted, began to speak: 
 
 "You are running off. All right. But there's just one 
 thing I want you to think about." There was a reason- 
 ableness in the tone that she could see brought her a shade 
 of Elsie's attention, the while she continued her prepara- 
 tions. 
 
 "Well, what is it? I haven't long. You can send my 
 trunk after me. I'll go to some other hotel there's 
 one on the next street " 
 
 Nina changed. She grew frantic and sat forward, 
 beating her small fists on her knees : "I want you to for- 
 get yourself for a moment!" she cried, the tone like a 
 flung missile, scorn in it. "I want you to think of what 
 the word mercy means !" 
 
 Elsie paused to look at her in a dumb way, puzzled. 
 
 "I'm not going to judge or scold you for this wretched 
 thing that happened. It happened. And it's over. But 
 there's Robert Maury's side to this," Nina went on, with 
 control of herself, though still forcefully. "It's got to 
 be considered and now is the time." 
 
 "No, no," Elsie said with bitter sadness. "Talking of 
 that won't help at all." 
 
 "I may at least ask what he has done to deserve the 
 deliberate cruelty that you are planning to hand out to 
 him? Have you any reason for causing him this shock
 
 188 The Next Corner 
 
 and suffering when the whole episode that supplied it is 
 finished finished to the uttermost? No, you have none. 
 So it must be that you hate him! And why should you 
 hate him? Is it because he still cares for you?" she tersely 
 demanded. 
 
 Elsie's head had been lifting in denial and at the last 
 words a spasm of pain softened her face. "Hate him? 
 You say that while you know it's not true!" 
 
 "Well then?" Nina demanded on a shrug that was 
 a repetition of her questions. 
 
 "I have a tender feeling for Robert liking and 
 pity, great pity. I'm not worth his caring, I know." 
 
 "And because you pity him, and because you feel you 
 don't deserve his love is that why you are determined 
 that he shall not escape?" 
 
 "The least I can do is to be honest with him not 
 lie to him !" 
 
 "Sometimes a lie is a virtue. I tell you that flat ! 
 The lie you told to-day had mercy in it. And if you take 
 it back you'll be brutal." 
 
 "We don't see things the same way," Elsie said with 
 tremulous intensity. "Robert's sure to suffer, whatever 
 way we look at it. He'll suffer when you tell him why I've 
 gone. But if I did what you want me to do, he'd suffer 
 more when at last he found me out." 
 
 Nina went to her side. She was too clever to caress 
 Elsie in her present mood, seemingly quiet, wistfully 
 defensive, with a dangerous flame underneath. She merely 
 laid the rosied nail of her right forefinger upon the table 
 as if pointing to what she described, and met her 
 daughter's eyes, her own look one in which there was no 
 emotion, only bright, concentrated force. 
 
 "But that's exactly what I mean. See here! He need 
 not have one unhappy moment because of this not if 
 you, from kindness alone, take it upon yourself to prevent 
 his finding out. It rests with you to keep that chapter 
 in Spain from ever becoming known to him no word 
 of it!"
 
 The Next Corner 189 
 
 "And how can that be done?" Elsie asked with a weary 
 wonder and unbelief. 
 
 "He wants you to go to South America with him. He 
 does this meaning to try to get you back. Of course! 
 And suppose he should succeed? wouldn't that be the 
 best thing that could happen to you? And suppose he 
 failed? couldn't you leave? But putting all that to 
 one side, your real reason for going and your real work 
 there would be to get your hands on that letter. You 
 could manage to stay long enough for that. If, then, 
 you felt you had to get away, you know that Robert 
 would keep his promise to you, wouldn't lift a finger to 
 hold you. Could anything be simpler?" Unconsciously 
 she found herself uttering one of Percy's London expres- 
 sions in Percy's helpless tone : "Now I ask you !" 
 
 Elsie drew away gently and stood at a distance, an un- 
 easy figure, her head heavily hanging. Oh, the many 
 things she saw! The confusion, past, present and to 
 come. There seemed to be about her a web whose shuttle 
 had split and set the coils leaping, while she, an atom, 
 was fighting the blinding tangles for foothold and a loop- 
 hole of escape. And as she remained so in the room's 
 deep quiet, Nina, who breathlessly watched, saw her look 
 of sickness fade and a hot brightness spread over her 
 face. 
 
 "Keep it from reaching him?" she murmured. Her 
 head swayed slightly in negation as she added, "I wish I 
 could ! how could I ? Why," and she turned to look 
 fully at her mother, "it may come any moment !" 
 
 "And it may be at the bottom of the sea !" Nina replied 
 swiftly, holding to the impression she saw she was begin- 
 ning to make on Elsie. "In fact, just about the time the 
 letter must have been on its way over, I remember reading 
 that a liner was wrecked the people all saved but 
 the ship left to break on rocks somewhere, and of course 
 all its cargo lost. So ten .to one that's the explanation, 
 and the wretched thing will never bob up at all ! Just the 
 same, to be quite sure, there's only one thing to be done ;
 
 190 The Next Corner 
 
 go with Robert, be nice and friendly with him, and should 
 the letter come manage to steal it. If let us say 
 after six months it hasn't appeared, you may feel sure 
 it never will." 
 
 Elsie sat down. With her coat folded on her knees and 
 her gloved hands clasped upon it, she seemed an unhappy 
 stranger in the hotel room. The asthenic sadness that 
 with women so easily reaches conclusion in weak tears, 
 brought them from her dull, wide-opened eyes. Nina 
 watched her, and the picture that in spite of youth she 
 made one broken in purpose, wearily at sea sent a 
 stab through her heart of a quality new to her. 
 
 "My poor dear, you have made a mess of things !" she 
 cried in pain. 
 
 "I hate going with him to cheat him. He takes me 
 so on faith, he's so decent !" Elsie muttered, her hands 
 twisting over each other in a grinding perplexity. "I 
 don't see how I can do it." 
 
 Nina, suddenly very tired, was aware of every year of 
 her age as she got slowly upon her feet. Well, she would 
 make one more effort and if she failed she would give up, 
 go home to Percy, and to a much needed gin and seltzer. 
 
 "There's something I didn't speak of before and that 
 you seem to have forgotten it's this : That letter makes 
 you out what you never actually were De Burgos's 
 mistress. It's only fair that you should try to destroy 
 it." Her gaze, with intent meaning, held Elsie's into 
 which had come the look of one edging from the unendur- 
 able. After a pause she went on winningly : "And yet this 
 is not your reason for trying to get hold of it. You'll 
 be doing that all for Robert's sake nothing selfish in 
 it!" 
 
 "You think not?" Elsie flung back with a stark 
 honesty. "You're wrong ! Any bit of good opinion that's 
 mine, I want to keep. After what I've been through 
 " and her bitter smile had corrosive knowledge, "oh, I 
 put a high value on men's respect !" 
 
 Somewhere across the sun-baked roofs a church clock
 
 The Next Corner 191 
 
 struck six, and the brazen strokes on the glare and dingi- 
 ness had a hideous effect on Nina, as if they were a 
 summons to execution. 
 
 "Well, dearie?" she sighed, her childish eyes grown 
 dim, her whole air jaded. "Robert will be along soon 
 now. So make up your mind." 
 
 Elsie's lips moved desperately. She stood up and 
 slowly drew off her gloves. "I'm going with him." And 
 then, as her mother began to cry from such relief as she 
 had never known, while muttering, "Oh, darling oh, 
 darling !" Elsie spoke again quietly and with deep 
 conviction, "But I'll pay. Make no mistake! I'll pay 
 for cheating. Something tells me this." 
 
 Nina thought it wise to ignore these words, in fact to 
 avoid all further discussion. Without an instant's delay 
 she started Elsie at packing the valise and busied herself 
 with the trunk, while keeping up a running chatter of her 
 past triumphs in Caracas and other South American 
 cities. When the work was finished she arranged her nose 
 veil, pulled on her dogskin gloves, and took Elsie into a 
 smothering embrace. 
 
 "Don't worry," she advised in a satisfied and profoundly 
 wise tone. "Trust to luck ! Be a gambler ! If I were in 
 your place I'd make myself see my life as a clear road 
 before me, and I'd not worry for a minute about this 
 trouble ever suddenly coming around the next corner!" 
 
 She was startled at feeling a hard tremor seize 
 Elsie, and drew back to study her. "What on earth's the 
 matter?" she cried. "What did I say? You look posi- 
 tively terrified! What is it?" 
 
 "Nothing, nothing. Don't let us talk any more." 
 
 Nina tripped off. She did not want to meet Robert so 
 soon after this intimate dissension and its mending. She 
 was also in a hurry to carry her good news to Percy and 
 plan a dinner for four at Delmonico's for the next night. 
 Moreover, she felt urgent need of her afternoon stimulant. 
 "God knows I've earned it," she thought as the taxicab 
 rushed her uptown.
 
 192 The Next Corner 
 
 Elsie, alone, sat listening to every sound from the 
 hotel, an odd stillness around her heart. Robert would 
 arrive in a few moments. If the letters, reforwarded from 
 South America, had been waiting for him at his office? 
 If among them there had been the gray-blue square with 
 the Spanish stamp? Nina's words, with an effect the 
 reverse of what she had intended, were like a horrid 
 nudge : The next corner! . . . She was not to forget it. 
 She was not to escape it. Day by day she would have to 
 watch it. Even now her eyes were on it, fixed as they 
 were on the door into the hall, waiting for it to open to 
 give her the first sight of Robert's face on his return.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 i 
 
 A FEBRUARY morning, very warm, yet full of life. 
 Capricious winds were abroad ; they rippled the blue lake 
 of Valencia, careened up and down the lower ranges 
 of mountains enclosing the small, North Andean city of 
 the same name, and over the smiling land blew the thick 
 sweetness of magnolias from gardens and the thin, sharp 
 scent of cinchona shrubs and screw pines growing wild. 
 
 One of the loveliest hours of the day was enticingly 
 upon the hacienda that had been the home of the Maury 
 family since the preceding September. The many ser- 
 vants, both negroes and mestizos, had finished the morn- 
 ing settling of the house, and subdued sounds of labor 
 with snatches of syncopated Spanish song floated from 
 the kitchen quarters where they were preparing the mid- 
 day almuerzo. 
 
 The patio had patches of shadow under the galleries 
 and wherever the planted palms stood up like great plumes. 
 Turkish rugs clung as if they were thin, iridescent 
 skins to the flagged space beside the fountain in the center, 
 whose splash was a whispering song. There were cane 
 couches ; chairs of hide stretched over wooden frames ; 
 and on one table, sheltered by a huge red and white um- 
 brella, books, a bowl of fruit, and embroidery in the 
 process of making were scattered. 
 
 It was the hour when a woman might well have loved 
 to loiter there, to read, work, or dream. And yet the 
 young mistress of the place was not to be seen. Nor 
 was she ever visible there at this time of the day; nor 
 in her room ; nor indeed in the house at all. 
 
 This thought was in the mind of Miss Selena Maury 
 as she stood in the doorway, her eyes narrowed and 
 
 193
 
 194 The Next Comer 
 
 glinting in a look of reflection. She was Robert's sister, 
 fifteen years his senior, and had the management of "El 
 Iris," as the place was called because of its rainbow color- 
 ing from trees, flowers, pink walls, inner shutters of 
 jade-green seen through the window bars, and its pot- 
 tiled roof of a curious dusty red. 
 
 Her invitation to be her brother's guest and helper 
 had come about casually. With a woman friend, a widow 
 of comfortable means, she had been for many years one 
 of those feminine expatriates who travel tirelessly, live 
 in trunks, who are met with all over the world and are 
 always American. When this lifelong friend had died 
 during a stay in near-by Colombia, and had been buried 
 there, Robert had seen his sister's sudden loneliness as a 
 call for him to comfort her, while at the same time helping 
 himself and Elsie. She had lived much in Spanish and 
 South American boarding houses, spoke the language 
 fluently, was capable, sensible, and he believed simple 
 and kindly. By installing her as housekeeper Elsie 
 would be relieved of responsibility in a land whose customs 
 were strange to her. She would also have a compatriot's 
 companionship during his absences of three or four days 
 at the Logrono mine that was more than fifty miles 
 away. His subtler and more precious reason for want- 
 ing her was to lighten the tete-a-tete between himself 
 and his wife that could not help becoming strained at 
 times. 
 
 Elsie had been willing for Selena to come, just as 
 she was amiably attentive to all his suggestions, a mood 
 of acceptance that rarely varied and under which he 
 was conscious of some deadness of soul. She had not 
 been expectant of Miss Maury's arrival which had hap- 
 pened in November, nor had she been indifferent to a 
 degree that showed the smallest lack of courtesy. Her 
 tonelessness, though, could not be escaped. Robert felt 
 that she was with his sister as she was often with him, 
 shut off in some subtle sense from the things she moved 
 among. Neither sullen nor inattentive in any way that
 
 The Next Corner 195 
 
 could wound for frequently he had seen her rouse her- 
 self to some special act of interest and kindness he 
 still saw plainly that his sister meant nothing in her 
 reckoning. 
 
 All of this was felt by Selena Maury. But while 
 Robert was conscious of Elsie's detachment with a gen- 
 erous regret that it had to be, his sister from the first 
 had resented it secretly and with vindictiveness. 
 
 No one guessed that back of her highly-bred, small- 
 featured primness she was a conceited woman, that con- 
 ceit was the woof of her nature. Although she was gray, 
 frail and small, wore heavily lensed spectacles, and from 
 leanness and rheumatism gave the impression of having 
 wooden joints under her austere clothing all the notes 
 of a woman grown old and turned into a tolerant watcher 
 of new types and manners she was in reality an 
 entirely different being. 
 
 Miss Maury had been a mentor, a power of a sort among 
 the various collections of woman travellers among whom 
 she had fallen during fifteen years of unimaginative 
 ambling over the world. As she read much and talked 
 with the pedant's labored clearness, she had been counted 
 very clever in these various sewing circles on the veran- 
 dahs of foreign pensions; she had a certain ironic wit, 
 too, when warmed by appreciation. Women of her own 
 sort elderly, detached had unbosomed themselves to 
 her about large and small difficulties, asking her advice 
 as one augustly fitted to point the way. And she had 
 been used to responding in positive and concise phrases 
 that rounded out her ultimatum to the smallest detail. 
 Her ruling was generally accepted. When it was not, 
 her glacial disapproval of the offender could chill a 
 houseful. 
 
 Elsie's pointless kindness to her and pointed separa- 
 tion from her had quickly embittered her, until she had 
 come to the apex of active malice. This sister-in-law, 
 just from what she was, young, popular, admired by 
 all their cordial and spontaneously hospitable Venezuelan
 
 196 The Next Corner 
 
 neighbors, and very lovely in a way that Miss Maury 
 thought spectacular for blondes somehow conveyed the 
 suggestion of immorality to her had made her feel her 
 age in a way that was disagreeable. She did not mind 
 age when it meant power. She loathed it when it made 
 her a straggler after a procession that flashed past her 
 without heed or need of her. 
 
 Today, as she stood looking across the patio, she was 
 full of unfriendliness and exasperation. She was saying 
 with savage flatness what she had edged from heretofore, 
 that she did not like Elsie ; did not like her at all ; did 
 not understand her; did not trust her. 
 
 Although Miss Maury, with the squeamishness of the 
 ineradicable vestal, shrank always from consideration of 
 sex in human relations in fact, had even dared to say 
 that it was a pity the Almighty could not have devised 
 some spiritual miracle for race continuance she could 
 not fail to see that her brother was not happy as a hus- 
 band ; indeed was not a husband. Something very serious 
 must have happened to create this situation, and with 
 clannish devotion she felt sure the fault was not Robert's. 
 It was puzzling, yet not more so than were other things, 
 small and large, noted by her covertly vigilant eyes. 
 
 The most important of these was that Elsie left the 
 house every morning an hour before the midday meal to 
 meet Domingo somewhere on his ride back from the post- 
 office. She was always brighter afterward, at breakfast, 
 than at any other time. Still this could not be due en- 
 tirely to her receiving secret letters by lying in wait 
 for Domingo, for having at times questioned the man, 
 Miss Maury had learned that often when Elsie had re- 
 turned especially refreshed, there had been no mail at 
 all for her, not even a post card. 
 
 The sense of a hidden thing was becoming intolerable. 
 The young woman was incomprehensible. There was 
 something very wrong. And with Robert's good in mind 
 Miss Maury meant to discover what she could about it. 
 She had all the sanctimonious qualifications that can twist
 
 The Next Corner 197 
 
 baseness into right for a purpose, so that spying on her 
 part she would call duty, and the unmasking of another's 
 weakness or sin a triumph of her conscientiousness. 
 
 After remaining very still in the doorway for about five 
 minutes she went with a starchy rustle of her drab linen 
 skirt to the top of the house, to a room there used by 
 Robert as a sort of laboratory, and shut the door. The 
 windows here looked over the red, fluted, dipped roof 
 toward the mountain road that Domingo must take on his 
 return from the town. Hung by a strap beside the sill 
 there was a case containing a pair of powerful field 
 glasses. Miss Maury's eyes under their reddened lids had 
 a determined light in them as she pushed open the shutters, 
 adjusted the glasses to her sight, and stared steadily out. 
 
 She slowly moved them from a straight direction to the 
 right, up the distant mountain a little, then down slowly 
 and waveringly. At last they came to a fixed pause. 
 There was something remindful of a vulture's claws about 
 the veined old hands as they tightened on the two leather 
 cylinders and held them for a long time without a tremor. 
 
 Elsie had left the hacienda shortly after ten. While 
 in sight of the house she had strolled as languidly as did 
 any one of her new Venezuelan friends on the rare oc- 
 casions when they were induced to walk more than a few 
 yards. She carried an open book on her arm, and under 
 a white umbrella lined with apple-green that stained her 
 fairness with a sea shimmer, seemed easily to read, so 
 slowly did she pace. 
 
 At the turn of the hill one of the precipitous 
 heights began, a part of the cordillera that in the far 
 distance became the Sierra Merida, soaring there into 
 snow-capped peaks that sometimes seemed to writhe in 
 the tumultuous radiance drenching them. From, this 
 spot and for almost a mile she was walled from the valley 
 where her house stood. And once within its shelter her 
 look and manner changed. 
 
 She closed the book and went faster, her eyes steadily 
 on the perspective of the waving road. Having reached
 
 198 The Next Corner 
 
 one rise, her gaze swept the shallow curve downward and 
 then up to the next hillock that hid what lay beyond. 
 She was never made really sure that this first step of each 
 day had been successfully taken until she would see Do- 
 mingo, a swaying speck, his legs hanging low over the 
 side of his burro, and coming toward her on a pattering 
 canter. 
 
 Often, when he rode rapidly, she would meet him only 
 a half mile from the house. Something had delayed him 
 to-day, for there was no sight of him by the time she had 
 reached a spot where the sheltering elbow of the mountain 
 swooped downward, and she was left facing an open 
 plateau from a road that ran like a shelf against the hill 
 on her other side. This overlooked several of the 
 brightly colored houses built on sixteenth-century Span- 
 ish models situated on the town's outskirts and nestling 
 in opposite coves of the mountains, her own home among 
 them. She felt, however, safe from observation in this 
 spot ; it was so distant from the hacienda that even if 
 seen, she would appear no more than a fly moving across 
 a great statue's face. 
 
 The self-absorbed quiet, the absent gaze that were such 
 constant notes with Elsie were never present during the 
 few times of each day when she became this watcher in 
 ambush. The high-stringed uncertainty that kept her 
 frail and shadowy-eyed would show as now: a questing 
 look in the eyes grown darker under the whitish-gold 
 hair blowing about her brow, her lips pressed so closely 
 together their rich curves were often lost. 
 
 Four months had gone since the August afternoon when 
 Robert had carried her away from the shabby hotel, 
 where she had felt the derelict's dull despair, to a new 
 outlook in a flower-filled suite at the Ritz, and then to 
 this lovely land where easeful days were all exactly alike. 
 For a long time on each awakening, one thought had 
 leaped before her as a thing that had waited by her bed 
 the night through: Would the letter come that day? 
 And when? Among the heavy mail of the morning?
 
 The Next Corner 199 
 
 Or would it DC one of the few that sometimes straggled in 
 before the afternoon siesta and for which she would 
 manage to loiter in the entrance hall of the casa? Or 
 would it come at sunset? The fear always followed that 
 something might prevent her capturing it. Conquering 
 this, she would then see herself successfully closing her 
 hand upon it, hiding it, and later, in seclusion, without 
 reading one of those bitterly regretted words, destroying 
 it with a throe of frantic joy. The whole had come to 
 have the excitement that is part of every game, the 
 craving to win. 
 
 Lately her suspense had lessened; every day the belief 
 strengthened that the letter she dreaded was lost conclu- 
 sively. But she could not trust the feeling. She had to 
 keep watching. She had to be sure. 
 
 And this not because what she had was found satisfy- 
 ing. That she was accepting Robert's hospitality under 
 false conditions often made her wretched. Often she felt 
 herself a plain fraud, when her food would seem to choke 
 her, and wild impulses seize her to end their compact, 
 to go away and make the struggle for life in a clean in- 
 dependence. The picture of the unaided fight along new 
 paths would have a vitalizing freshness that straightened 
 her spine ; even the thought of frustrations on the way to 
 success would take on a paradoxical attractiveness just 
 because of their living prod that would bring every bit 
 of her into glowingly desperate activity. Several times 
 she made up her mind to seek this liberty ; once, 
 when Robert was absent for a full week at the mine, she 
 made ready to leave. 
 
 One thing had always deflected her intention, melting 
 her to the miserable sorrow for Robert that she had felt 
 from the first sight of him in New York, the dread 
 that after she had gone, the letter with its needless stabs 
 would reach him, that he would know how far from him 
 she had gone on the night whose dark ending so often 
 splashed up in phantasmal horror upon the peace about 
 her, would know that her coming with him to Valencia
 
 200 The Next Corner 
 
 had been on the support of a lie, would believe the lie to 
 have been merely a transient and sordid accommodation 
 for herself. A determination to keep this pain from him 
 would emerge through this tenderness and hold her in her 
 place, hoping for the arrival of the thing whose secret 
 destruction could alone set her free. 
 
 What sort of future awaited them she did not know. 
 While Robert held to their bond, savagely silent and 
 neutral, she could feel that he missed her as he would miss 
 the sun. With her the past remained dominant. Some- 
 times the craving for the dead was too heart-piercing, 
 pulled her into the pit of sadness for days. Again she 
 would loathe and resent the drugged sweetness of her 
 useless life, its blessings all negations, absence of care 
 and striving, and also absence of love and all the 
 delectable things that belong to it by which the blood 
 leaps and the heart sings. With wistful pangs she would 
 remember her real self, the passionate, lyric self unknown 
 to Robert, and that seemed to have sped away on that 
 night of dying moonlight as had Arturo's soul. 
 
 There was still another mood; this generally on 
 sleepless nights. She had never recovered from the shock 
 of those hours when sensation had been a cataclysm; it 
 had left her nerves like loose wires that leap easily in 
 wrong directions and grow tangled; and when memory 
 of the several sorts of contempt she had experienced at 
 Serafin's hands would steal back to her through the dark, 
 his sardonic smile a living thing, she would moan feebly 
 as if she were a wounded creature too weak to move. It 
 was then that by contrast she would clearly long to love 
 her husband to love him really ! not as she had, 
 with shy and childish affection for what to a great extent 
 was not understood. 
 
 And all this time, deeply in her, mixed with this con- 
 fusion she wholly unconscious of it was Nature's 
 big instinct that cannot die in the woman meant for 
 motherhood; in whom it is dire need, especially after 
 she has borne a child. This was dulled dissatisfaction in
 
 The Next Corner 201 
 
 Elsie ; had been there, dulled while never ceasing to 
 strive toward inevitable fulfillment under all her first 
 feverish pursuit of pleasure after deep grief, and her 
 subsequent emotional folly. 
 
 Domingo was coming. She sat down on a weather- 
 stained stone seat, built against the hill, and waited. The 
 mestizo's song reached her first and then the swift, small 
 beat of his burro's hoofs. 
 
 He was a good-looking, brown youth, sitting his ani- 
 mal with the gay air of a boy on a hobbyhorse, his teeth 
 a crescent of snow in a large smile. From his hat of 
 brown plush to the hempen-soled feet that showed be- 
 neath ankle-short, nankeen trousers, he had become all 
 radiance at the sight of his mistress. This daily meet- 
 ing with her on the road pleased him, had the feel of a 
 spurious sort of adventure. Like Miss Maury he had 
 gradually come to sense some serious reason for it. By 
 this time he believed it had to do with a lover left behind 
 in the States who adored the young senora madly as 
 who would not? and who perhaps was either imploring 
 her to come to him or threatening to arrive on the spot 
 and slay her for her refusal. Either of these things he 
 felt might reasonably happen any day, since his mistress 
 must be unhappy. Ah, did he not know this well? For 
 was he not a lover of Candida who was the senord's per- 
 sonal maid? And had she not told him that never once 
 since the Americans had come to live at El Iris had she 
 seen the master enter his wife's room, while his own 
 were even on the other side of the house, with the whole 
 patio dividing them? 
 
 "Buenas dias, senora" came gaily from Domingo, as 
 he rollicked up the rise to her side. 
 
 "Buenas dias, Domingo. I might as well look at the 
 letters here," said Elsie. 
 
 She varied her request to him each day, her tone always 
 a careless one. They spoke in two languages Elsie 
 haltingly in Spanish which she had been studying for 
 months and an English that Domingo used, a curiously
 
 202 The Next Corner 
 
 lacerated speech that he had picked up during his ser- 
 vice with German-Americans when they had built the 
 railroad from Caracas to Valencia. 
 
 "Three for you, senora" Domingo said, as he pulled 
 open the linen sack slung about his waist. "And one for 
 Senorita Maury. There were more, senora. But the 
 senor himself stopped at the post-office this morning early 
 and took away his own." 
 
 Domingo felt that it must have been some trick of the 
 sun through the green lining of her umbrella that made his 
 mistress's face seem suddenly to change so oddly. She 
 was always pale in a way he thought angelic and that 
 no amount of the thick, native powder could impart to 
 his brown Candida but now she looked as deathlike 
 as her white linen gown; and a question, after flashing 
 up in her eyes for a second, had gone out, leaving them 
 dull, while they remained fixed beyond him in the direction 
 of the town. 
 
 "There must be a mistake," she said in a heavy way. 
 The hand which held her own letters had fastened so 
 fiercely about them the knuckles were stretched and glis- 
 tening. "Senor Maury was not expected in from the mine 
 until to-morrow. Are you sure he was in the town at 
 the post-office? What did they tell you there?" 
 
 "It was Placido Garcia that I saw, senora. He said 
 that Senor Maury was in a big motor car with another 
 gentleman, that he had taken his own letters and had gone 
 away. I did not ask Placido more, but felt sure that the 
 senor had not gone home or he would have taken all the 
 others for the house," and Domingo ended with a flowing, 
 conclusive shrug. 
 
 "I see. It's all right," Elsie said, the tone seeming re- 
 lieved. "You can tell Senorita Maury to expect the senor 
 for almuerzo. No doubt he will arrive for that, after he 
 has attended to some business." 
 
 With a sweep of the brown plush hat Domingo pattered 
 off and Elsie was alone. She looked carelessly over the 
 three letters, saw that one was from a Fifth Avenue book
 
 The Next Corner 203 
 
 shop, another from one of her few girlhood friends married 
 to an army man and living at a post in Arizona, and the 
 third, a heavy one, from her mother. 
 
 Nina's letters were always superficial. She ran no risk 
 by writing even one word in the most veiled way touching 
 the hidden scar in her daughter's life; never one to show 
 that she knew of any jar or shadow in the present associ- 
 ation of Elsie and her husband. She also had a way of 
 enclosing newspaper clippings of fashions and plays, and 
 sometimes the details of a murder or divorce interesting 
 New York. 
 
 After one glance which proved this letter no different 
 from former ones a lot of chatter of incidental things 
 that any one might safely read and that showed the 
 bulkiness to be due to some columns cut from a newspaper, 
 Elsie, without reading either, folded them together and 
 replaced them in the big envelope. With the letters on 
 her lap, as she sat back bathed in the umbrella's green 
 glitter, the chill that had struck her with Domingo's 
 news, and that had been held back, seized her again. And 
 again she looked toward Valencia. 
 
 This was the first time she had missed seeing all the 
 mail ahead of either Robert or Miss Maury. Her suc- 
 cess up to the present moment had been uncanny, for ill- 
 ness or too bad weather or some other mischance might 
 so easily have frustrated her vigilance. So to-day she 
 had her first taste of the peculiarly toothed suspense 
 that never comes from visible danger, but comes only from 
 the shrouded and suggested thing. 
 
 A mind picture that had a photographic clearness 
 brought an odd stillness about her heart: She saw her 
 husband in Valencia's post-office, in his hand the gray- 
 blue letter sealed by Arturo's ring which now hung in 
 secrecy on a chain and close to her heart. At first there 
 was only surprise as he studied the evidence of its long 
 journey soilure, its many addresses, the first post- 
 mark probably from Bilbao in July, its Spanish stamp. 
 He opened it with that boyish eagerness that could so
 
 204 The Next Corner 
 
 charmingly at the most unexpected times sweep away his 
 reserve. And with the reading she saw him frown at first 
 in startled pain; saw his eyes harden as, slowly, to the 
 strong face that could be so kind, a look of stunned and 
 contemptuous knowledge came, the look that never 
 would leave his secret thoughts of her. 
 
 One of those convulsions that imagined disasters can 
 give went through her, ghostly things that move through 
 one on a stabbing breath. Her umbrella sank backward 
 as her face turned to rest against her arm and remained 
 so for a moment until the surrender of will to destiny 
 brought its uninspiring peace. If this disclosure had to 
 come, it would come. Something outside of her and above 
 her, before which she was absolutely defenseless, would in 
 the end decide whether or not this shadow of her own act 
 would turn some corner of her life and face her with its 
 relentless smile. The decision was out of her hands. 
 
 She started up. As she turned to go home, the haci- 
 enda was at its plainest before her, and almost as if al- 
 ready she were a stranger, having left it forever, she stood 
 still and fixed a deep gaze on its colorful beauty. Al- 
 most on the instant her look changed, for the house 
 seemed balefully watching her. Yes, from a window that 
 she knew belonged to Robert's laboratory she saw two 
 great eyes, a greenish blaze in them as the sunlight caught 
 them, and they were fastened upon her. She could not 
 imagine what they could be; could only stare back at 
 them. And as she stood so, with her lips parted, they 
 vanished. 
 
 The mystified look left her as she recalled the field 
 glasses that hung by that window. Once, through them, 
 she had watched the progress of the aeroplane that 
 Robert's mining company had experimented with for use 
 over the most impassable parts of the mountains. Then 
 had Robert reached home? And had he watched her? 
 This was so unlike what he would be apt to do that she 
 was left uncertain, unnerved. Unless he had come into 
 possession of her secret! Ah, then he might watch her
 
 The Next Corner 205 
 
 so, hating her perhaps? Nothing else seemed to explain 
 it. 
 
 A pulse was beating heavily in her head, her feet and 
 hands were cold. She summoned courage, and with the 
 look of unrest that hovers on wildness, went back along 
 the road that led to the hacienda. This might be the last 
 time she would walk toward it. To-morrow might see her 
 leaving it and Robert forever. 
 
 Still and the familiar suspense began its nibbling 
 the letter might not have come to-day; perhaps she felt 
 this sick fear without cause. 
 
 It was not being sure that was racking. Oh, horrible, 
 horrible, this never being sure!
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 CANDIDA was crossing the patio as Domingo entered it. 
 She was a brown-gold mestizo, very young but large. The 
 Spanish in her showed in the diffused, warm grace with 
 which she moved and in her expressive hands, while her 
 Indian heritage was plain in the coarse strands of soot- 
 like hair and her hawk's glance that only softened when 
 her heart was stirred, as when it rested in longing on 
 Domingo. 
 
 Because these two were lovers Miss Maury frowned on 
 any talk or meetings between them during the working 
 hours ; it irritated her even to catch, en route, the ardent 
 glances they flung to each other over her head. They 
 seemed obedient automatons to her will, whereas out- 
 wardly obsequious they were secretly impudent, and 
 kissed all the more when they could, because they hated 
 her. 
 
 "The old cat is coming." Candida said this from the 
 corner of her motionless lips while carrying on her head, 
 with a beautiful balance, a tray bearing Elsie's sun- 
 bleached and lacy underclothes. "Don't say that the 
 senora did not meet you on the way, my beloved angel, 
 for I saw the old eagle with her accursed eyes glued to 
 those glasses in the senor's upstairs room, and it is my 
 belief that the devil's old cat saw the senora talking to 
 you and did not like it. Her mouth looks more than ever 
 like the iron mousetrap in the kitchen." 
 
 "Little heart, in the very center of my big heart !" was 
 Domingo's answer in a thrilling whisper. 
 
 "Admired of my soul, my heaven of whom I dreamed 
 last night !" Candida replied with a bathing glance of the 
 most overwhelming love as she swayed on with her head 
 
 206
 
 The Next Corner 207 
 
 burden to Elsie's big bedroom just as Miss Maury stepped 
 from the middle door. 
 
 "Senorita," said Domingo, his plush hat in one hand, as 
 he extended the single letter with the other. 
 
 Miss Maury, while giving a coldly comprehensive glance 
 after Candida, took it, and said acidly, "Nothing but 
 this?" 
 
 "I met Senora Maury and gave her " 
 
 "All the others!" she interrupted with thin-toned em- 
 phasis. 
 
 "No, senorita, only her own. Senor Maury already 
 has his. He was at the post-office this morning." 
 
 This interested and surprised Miss Maury so much she 
 listened in silence while Domingo explained fully. 
 
 "So Senora Maury said the senor would therefore be 
 at home for alimierzo, and I was to tell you." 
 
 "Send the cook to me here," Miss Maury snapped. 
 "Put on your white clothes," she added, as he began to 
 move away, "and try to set the table to-day without mak- 
 ing your usual absurd mistakes. You can do this if you 
 keep your eyes and your thoughts on your work." 
 
 "Si, senorita," Domingo agreed with lamblike docility, 
 turned his back on her and pursued his way with his 
 tongue stuck out stiffly in humorous disdain of her and her 
 authority, her ugliness, flat-chestedness, and what was, 
 to him, the tragedy of her fifty odd years unsweetened by 
 the love of a man. 
 
 Elsie entered shortly aftr. As she pulled off her white 
 muslin sun hat, Miss Maury was struck by the hard sort 
 of quiet in her face, like the hush before a storm breaks, 
 and by something watchful in her eyes as they moved 
 slowly around the patio to rest at last in a waiting way on 
 the steps that led up to the left gallery beyond which was 
 Robert's room. 
 
 "She looks queer. She's had news to-day that's un- 
 settled her that's sure !" Miss Maury was thinking, 
 while with a fussiness that was constitutional she re- 
 arranged unnecessarily every one of the various objects
 
 208 The Next Corner 
 
 i 
 
 on the table. "Do you think these long walks every morn- 
 ing never missing one agree with you, Elsie? You 
 look exhausted," was what she said. 
 
 Elsie had heard this so often and was at the moment so 
 engrossed with her own suspense that without any inten- 
 tion of being rude, she ignored it. "Have you seen 
 Robert?" she asked, still looking aside at the gallery 
 that held his room. 
 
 "Where would I see him?" Miss Maury retorted, the 
 resentment she would have put into very different words 
 had she dared going into the question. 
 
 "He hasn't come !" A full breath of relief left Elsie, as 
 with the back of her hand she lifted the moist tangle of 
 hair from her brows. "The sun is so warm to-day isn't 
 it? Funny to think this is February!" In a meaningless 
 way, while her thoughts kept running along the path of 
 her anxiety, she drew the folded newspaper from her 
 mother's letter. "And there may be a blizzard blocking 
 traffic in New York !" 
 
 After an uncertain pause, and trailing the closed 
 green-white umbrella beside her, she crossed to her 
 own room. 
 
 Miss Maury was about to call out in the over-polite 
 voice of criticism that she had forgotten her hat, signi- 
 fying that the patio was not the place for scattered wear- 
 ing apparel, when she saw that for all her opening of the 
 letter, Elsie had also left it with the folded paper on 
 top of it. A thought came to Miss Maury as she noted 
 them. A thought; a plan.. She waited. Her hand stole 
 forward, its crookedness from rheumatism giving it the 
 look of rapacity that belongs to talons, and pulled the 
 embroidery so that it covered both. Later, if they 
 were completely forgotten then well it would be 
 easy, with fair play to Robert in mind as part of her 
 duty, and if she could do so with safety 
 
 She did not clearly finish even to herself, but her mouth 
 was tightened, and she felt strong in righteousness. She 
 would have been the most amazed of women if illumination
 
 The Next Corner 209 
 
 had come to her that to a detective her tactics would have 
 been the familiar ones of a slick shoplifter who first lo- 
 cates what she means to steal, retires, returns, plays with 
 her intention as a cat with a mouse until she sees a secure 
 moment for making off with her loot. 
 
 Twenty minutes later, after sitting on the further and 
 sheltered side of the table, her needle darting up and down, 
 Miss Maury had managed to accomplish her purpose, 
 and knew what Elsie as yet did not every word of 
 Nina's letter; every word of the account set forth in the 
 newspaper. For the former she had only contempt; its 
 babble of frivolous things was eloquent of the flighty 
 little singer as she remembered her at Robert's marriage. 
 But the story told in print, while it made nothing plain 
 to her for there was not a name in it that she had ever 
 heard before created a picture of prodigality, sin 
 and doom that brought a ferment of possibilities and ques- 
 tions to her mind. 
 
 Who was this Marques de Burgos whose murder was 
 so vividly described? Had the mother, or daughter, or 
 both of them known him in the dissolute world of which 
 the article spoke? If so, why had Nina failed to write 
 a word in her letter concerning his dreadful death? Had 
 she, perhaps, reasons good reasons for thinking it 
 wisest to place only the public announcement of it before 
 her daughter? Or, even more likely, had they known the 
 woman who had been his companion, and who had man- 
 aged to slip without scandal from the situation as one 
 might escape at the last moment from the hangman's 
 noose? Was this creature, described as a blonde and 
 by this convincingly meretricious to Miss Maury one 
 of their own soulless, light-minded intimates? 
 
 At this last query a feeling tore through her that made 
 her sit back, breathless. Following it the malice in her 
 freshened, a sense of ascendancy warmed her pleasantly. 
 The blonde woman ! The woman whose fairness had, from 
 the description, been conspicuous, like Elsie's ! Suppose? 
 . . . The thought, when fully faced, was for a moment
 
 210 The Next Corner 
 
 overpowering, then seized her with more force. If in- 
 deed this had been Elsie's self, how completely it ex- 
 plained all that was mysterious about her, her preoc- 
 cupation, daily uneasiness, her unfailing watchfulness 
 of the mails in which she felt some news might come to 
 unmask her. Of course! And if it were true, how it 
 made visible the cause of her nervousness that very morn- 
 ing, for she must be conscious that to one who knew 
 details of her Paris life during the past June as did 
 Robert, no doubt exposure lurked in the word-picture 
 given of the woman who had played her disgraceful part 
 in this published tragedy. 
 
 It seemed almost too horrible to believe. She did not 
 fully rest on her suspicion. And yet and yet ? As 
 a sunbeam will dart about a dark and littered corner, dis- 
 closing and then shutting off its confusion, the thought 
 danced before Miss Maury's excited eyes. Sometimes it 
 struck confusingly on her sight as if mocking her. Her 
 mouth only shut the more fixedly and she was as surely 
 on its trail as when with a folded wet towel she tracked a 
 mosquito, to strike at last, hard and successfully. 
 
 When Elsie entered her bedroom, Candida was there 
 putting away the fresh clothes. She did this with the 
 impassioned sort of interest that she gave to the care of 
 all dainty and luxurious things. As she worked, the gold 
 hoops in her ears rocked to her supple swaying, her tawny 
 fingers, glossily mouse-colored on the under side, flickered 
 to their flexible tips with something of the adoration of a 
 bee as it circles in anticipation above a flower before dart- 
 ing down upon it. 
 
 "In some earlier existence I believe Candida was a pam- 
 pered, extravagant princess," Elsie had once said to 
 Robert, "and of course so very wicked that she's now 
 being punished by this dark skin and servitude. She makes 
 a fetich of luxury clothes and scent and jewelry 
 and can't resist helping herself to whatever she fancies on 
 my toilet stand, taking small and steady nibbles the way 
 a kitten's paw keeps darting out to grab a spool. I've
 
 The Next Corner 211 
 
 walked in upon her several times when she's had lumps of 
 my powder sticking to her nose and fairly reeking with 
 my 'illusion of lilies.' She almost fainted at being 
 caught. Poor Candida ! Fancy being born with her mad 
 thirst for beauty and pleasure and condemned to the fate 
 of a servant a mestizo!" 
 
 Elsie liked the girl sincerely and had her confidence. 
 She would advise her about her lover; tried to check her 
 passion for the lottery which, with other gambling, took 
 a good part of her wages ; and gave her presents of some 
 of her prettiest clothes when only slightly worn. She did 
 not know of the girl's detestation of Miss Maury as 
 nothing had heretofore come about by which she could 
 let down the shutters of her pretended respect. When to- 
 day she was asked a question that gave her a chance to 
 inform her dear senora of the older woman's dislike and 
 suspicion, a glory came into her dusky face. 
 
 "It was you, Candida, that I saw looking through the 
 the " Elsie had to illustrate the field glass. " you 
 know? from the senor's window upstairs?" With this 
 she sat down in the room's central shadow and clasped 
 her hands. 
 
 Candida had the emptied tray under her arm. She 
 poised her neck with a touch of ophidian grace that lifted 
 her lovely chin, and as a sign of emphatic negation 
 wagged the pliable index finger of her right hand. 
 
 "Not I, senora. It was Senorita Maury. She searched 
 the house for you, and then she went upstairs. I even 
 took off my alpargatas so that I could follow her without 
 a sound. She opened the shutters and stood up there a 
 long time, looking through the glasses, and I knew she 
 was watching you over on the mountain road." 
 
 Elsie understood most of this rapid, exclamatory flow. 
 Selena? A new disquiet sent a chill over her flesh, much 
 like the feeling one has on slipping where one had antici- 
 pated dryness and safety. 
 
 "You speak very queerly, Candida. I do not like it. 
 How did you know that Senorita Maury was watching
 
 212 The Next Corner 
 
 me?" Elsie asked, reproof in the steady gaze she kept on 
 the girl. "You must be mistaken." 
 
 "I knew it by the way she looked," she purred. "Oh, 
 but it was terrible as if she had just taken a 
 dose of quinine water. It is the way she often looks 
 at you, sweet senora, when you are not thinking of her 
 at all " 
 
 "Candida !" broke from Elsie warningly. 
 
 "Ah, excuse dear senora, please ! but it is the 
 truth. I think Senorita Maury does not like you because 
 you are young, so beautiful not like her !" Candida 
 continued softly but with resolution. "She does not like 
 anything that is sweet and nice like love and being 
 young. So neither does she like me or Domingo, who 
 worship so much and wish to marry. And I? I do not 
 like her. And Domingo? He, too, does not like her. 
 Never, never! Not so much as the nail on his little 
 finger. Nunca nadissimo!" 
 
 "Never speak so again of the senorita! You may go," 
 Elsie said in the low tone of one deeply disappointed and 
 with a look of reproach. 
 
 "Si, senora," Candida made a suave gesture with her 
 disengaged hand, bowed gravely and walked in her waving 
 way through the jade-colored doors to the gallery. 
 
 Elsie remained sunk in thought, a slack, childish droop 
 to her figure. Knowledge of this antagonism, added to 
 her speculation about Robert, gave her the feeling of 
 being at the mercy of an alien element, close to the pull 
 of an undertow. The grim things in the past that had 
 gone to the structure of the present moment moved be- 
 fore her, while her hearing was a sentry alert for the 
 sound of the motor that would tell her Robert had come 
 to quench or confirm her dread. 
 
 It was so that Miss Maury, after leaving the patio, 
 caught a glimpse of her. Through the partially opened 
 door that gave upon the central hall there was just space 
 for the picture Elsie made to show as a gold and white 
 patch in the middle dusk of the great room. And it was
 
 The Next Corner 213 
 
 so Miss Maury had seen her often, without being noted 
 herself, generally in the brief twilight when waiting for 
 dinner, motionless, dreaming, with the look of one 
 drugged and packed to the lips with something of which 
 she never spoke. 
 
 Robert did not appear for almuerzo although it was 
 delayed a half hour in expectancy of his arrival. 
 
 The morning of fierce sunlight, unseasonably hot for 
 February, with one of the rapid changes of weather usual 
 to the place, had become still hotter, but with the sun gone 
 and replaced by a sulphur-green gloom that blanched 
 everything under it. Accompanying this the dry wind 
 called catias gained in force. A whining cry at first, 
 this became a snarl, then deep-toned lament and all to an 
 accompaniment of solid gusts that beat on the house until 
 it seemed to be a drum resounding to unearthly blows. 
 
 Elsie had experienced the catias a few times before and 
 always with a sense of sadness and bodily weariness. It 
 never failed to recall the appalling sounds of the mountain 
 hurricane at El Miradero that had mixed with her first 
 guilt and terror as the ecstacy of love for Arturo had 
 overwhelmed her. There was the added depression to- 
 day of having to eat her breakfast indoors and alone 
 with Miss Maury. She felt a distaste for food and forced 
 herself to swallow some of the sancoche de gallina 
 a rich stew of chicken and herbs since the business 
 of eating helped to lighten the almost steady silence 
 that hung between them. When at last she could rise 
 she had to hide a dejected yawn. 
 
 For a moment she lingered at the window to look out at 
 the patio, emptied of its furnishings and full of an un- 
 canny, quick-silvered glitter. "Isn't that a dreadful 
 sky ?" she murmured heavily. "Tragic tormented 
 the sort of sky that must have been over Calvary !" 
 
 Miss Maury gave her a frowning stare. "You are so 
 fond of using sensational expressions," she said with 
 thin-lipped distinctness. "Was it fashionable in 
 Paris to be flippant about sacred things?"
 
 214 The Next Corner 
 
 "I'm not in the least flippant !" 
 
 Elsie swung about, meaning to try amiably to win the 
 woman to better understanding of her, when before Miss 
 Maury's woodenness, fixedness and narrowness from heel 
 to head the task towered up as hopeless. 
 
 "As the lightning's beginning I'll take my siesta in the 
 library. I can darken that better than any of the rooms 
 on the galleries. I hope Robert will wait somewhere until 
 the wind dies down, but if he should come, Selena, will 
 you please call me?" And she went out, a reckless sort 
 of hopelessness mixing all through her with a feeling of 
 lethargy. 
 
 Her hand was on the banister to mount to the library 
 when she changed her mind and stopped before a crepe- 
 curtained corner that held a divan; it was a little place, 
 much like a Pullman sleeper. To lie down in this nook 
 in the heart of the house, with no window at all from 
 which the lightning might be seen, was an impulse to be 
 obeyed. With relief she slipped behind the curtains, 
 pulled them together and settled herself on the couch in 
 the luxuriously coiled way natural to women and cats. 
 Almost at once she sank into a daytime sleep that from 
 the oppression of the storm had the weight of a narcotic. 
 
 This seemed not to have lasted more than a few moments 
 when she found herself gazing with bewilderment up 
 through the shadowy space at the metal rings that held 
 the curtains and v/as conscious of listening. Unless she 
 had just come out of a dream that still held, she had 
 heard Robert say her name in an angry, ringing, and 
 surprised way. She felt herself whiten as she started to 
 her elbow, her muscles hard. No dream? He had 
 spoken. She was hearing him again. 
 
 "Elsie?" This with compressed and enraged unbelief. 
 "You are saying these things of her to me? 
 Se]", ! " A cup rattled on a saucer, a chair rasped 
 the terra-cotta floor. 
 
 "Don't look at me like that, Robert. Give me a chance 
 to explain. You've always been so headstrong and so
 
 The Next Corner 215 
 
 ready to misjudge me! Yes there are a few things I've 
 noticed that I think you ought to know about and for 
 your own good " 
 
 "My good!" he mocked furiously. "That's the sort of 
 ointment you've put on every disagreeable act of yours 
 as far back as my childhood, Selena. Leave my good 
 out of the question. I'll attend to it." The conclusion 
 had a stormy serenity. 
 
 "But when I've seen Elsie wildly anxious about the 
 letters " 
 
 "I tell you " 
 
 "When," Selena rasped on in venom now desperate, 
 "from the most casual watching of her I can see " 
 
 There was the sound of the chair being flung across 
 the flooring. "And who told you to watch?" Robert de- 
 manded in fury. "Damn all this ! Selena are you 
 crazy?" 
 
 "You'll kindly not curse," Selena breathed in a tone 
 of trembling wrath. "That's something new for you!" 
 
 "Sorry. But you drive me frantic. I come home and you 
 begin by insinuating that you believe my wife is hoping 
 for and watching for letters from some man that I'm not 
 to know about that she lives in a dream with thoughts 
 that worry her, and that you've been spying on her. One 
 would think you the mistress of this house and she 
 here to fall in with your ideas and your rules. I can see, 
 too, from your face and manner and from every word 
 you've said that you don't like Elsie. No, you don't like 
 my wife! This is a shock to me. I knew when I asked 
 you here that your views were different from hers, but I 
 supposed that life and age had softened you, made you 
 more tolerant than you used to be. I was wrong. Now 
 I know I've been unjust to Elsie most unjust leav- 
 ing her here alone with you, as I have, even though it 
 was necessary. She must see how you feel toward 
 her she can't help knowing it although, unlike you, 
 she's carried no talcs, has never said a word about it. 
 Yes, she must be unhappy. My God, Selena, you want
 
 216 The Next Corner 
 
 to wake up ! Things are going to be different here from 
 to-day on !" 
 
 There was a heavy silence. Elsie could hear her heart 
 like a resounding something flung back and forth on the 
 push of her uneven breath. Relief was a brightness 
 through her, knowing from Robert's words that he had 
 not received the letter that morning. And with this, 
 pulses of tenderness seemed to have come to life and be 
 quivering all over her body because he was defending her. 
 How his flawless, ardent truth burned away the secret 
 fungus of Selena's rancor ! For he was true ! Yes, 
 that was his code and how unlike what her own had 
 become ! to be honest, to be fearless, so that the most 
 difficult, the darkest thing he faced could not help but be 
 conquered. 
 
 Her satisfaction vanished like a wisp of smoke, and 
 apprehension spread through her with Selena's next com- 
 posed yet stolidly resentful words : 
 
 "Well, at any rate read this. You may know the 
 man it's about and understand it all of it !" 
 
 "What is it?" Robert asked curtly. 
 
 "Take it. It's from a New York newspaper and came 
 to Elsie this morning in a letter from her mother." 
 
 "How do you know all this ?" 
 
 "Elsie forgot it left it on the table in the patio. 
 When the wind began and I carried in the things from the 
 table, I glanced at it, hoping it was some news of the war." 
 
 "And when you found it wasn't you read it just the 
 same." 
 
 "There seemed no harm in reading what was in a news- 
 paper! Afterward I felt it might be important for you 
 to know about it as well as Elsie. Take it." 
 
 "I don't want it." There was a rustling as of a paper 
 being flung down. "If Elsie had wished you to read it 
 she'd have given it to you. Put it with her letter in her 
 bedroom." 
 
 "But Robert ' 
 
 "Do it now, please."
 
 The Next Corner 217 
 
 "You are determined ?" 
 
 "Do it now." 
 
 Elsie heard the froufrou of Selena's stiff linen skirt; 
 then Robert's pacing step on the stone pavement; the 
 crackle of a match as he paused, and his steps again; 
 soon the returning rustle of Selena. 
 
 There was silence for a full minute. 
 
 "Listen to me," she heard Robert say with the deadly 
 quiet that she knew meant his most intense mood. "This 
 criticism of Elsie, this attempt of yours to accuse her 
 to me of something vague, yet damaging, has astounded 
 me. She's not the sort of woman you dare to hint at 
 her being. Not that sort and I know it !" After this, 
 for a full moment there was perfect stillness. Then, "I 
 must think this over, Selena. One thing I will say now, 
 and bear it in mind never make a movement in regard 
 to Elsie again except what you do openly. Anything 
 else, no matter how you decorate the act to yourself is as 
 mean as theft !" 
 
 Elsie heard his steps retreat toward the side of the 
 house that held his bedroom. She heard Selena open the 
 doors into the patio so that a rush of scented air blew in 
 and bulged the curtains about her hiding place. She 
 waited until the silence was perfect before she stepped 
 out.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 IN her bedroom, with the door into the hall locked and 
 the big double doors of green that gave on the gallery 
 bolted, Elsie had read the news in the square of paper 
 sent by her mother. She had read every word slowly, 
 some of the paragraphs again and again. And this fin- 
 ished, she was standing with the thing twisted into a coil 
 in her hands. Life seemed to have gone out of her except 
 for a nightmare look. 
 
 The extract belonged to a weekly paper where a writer 
 who knew his Debrett, Burke's Peerage and Almanach de 
 Gotha backward, wrote intimately of happenings present 
 and past among the various noble families of all the Eu- 
 ropean countries. In this he gave a belated account and 
 a true one of how the young Marques de Burgos had met 
 his death the June previous at his Cantabrian lodge. 
 
 After introducing him in the purple of his family 
 honors, he had dwelt on his social prestige in Paris, his 
 almost unbelievable good looks, his poverty that he wore 
 as a grace because of the fanatical exclusiveness that kept 
 him from marrying outside of his class for money. Don 
 Arturo's facile idea of honor in gallantry was described : 
 
 ". . . much like that of the young sparks of sixteenth- 
 century England, as shown in Wycherley's and Con- 
 greve's comedies, when expert libertinage was a fashion- 
 able profession. He was just as charming in manner as 
 these popinjay rakes, as light-minded, extravagant, gen- 
 erous, soulless, and as serenely cruel. Like them he had 
 stalked whatever woman or girl aroused desire. If, inno- 
 cent, she resisted, and was captured by some trick, she 
 was used for his pleasure, lightly discarded, instantly for- 
 gotten." 
 
 218
 
 The Next Corner 219 
 
 Sparkling cynicisms miniaturized the Paphian uses to 
 which Don Arturo had so often put El Miradero in its 
 mountain isolation, how women of fashion, one and 
 then another, had vanished from their known places to be 
 queens there, secretly and briefly, with him; and how 
 peasant girls, also one after another, had entered it, 
 casual loves, who, too late, found that hope had been left 
 behind. It was for the last of these rustic victims that 
 the Marques de Burgos had been made to pay the su- 
 preme penalty. 
 
 Her name was Ascuncion Sanchez ; her father, a re- 
 spected and very religious man, a fisherman at Lequeytio. 
 Of conspicuous beauty, with deep, soft-gazing eyes and a 
 smile to melt the heart, Ascuncion had come to sixteen 
 years and to the devotion of the lads of the red-roofed, 
 little Basque town upon the Bay of Biscay. She was in 
 the first enjoyment of her power as a woman desired, 
 walking among her simple-hearted suitors while looking 
 over and beyond them a child playing the queen 
 when Don Arturo passed her way. 
 
 And as Francesca, surrendering to love for Paola, 
 closed a book and "read no more that day", so Ascuncion, 
 for Arturo, had closed the book of innocence. The child 
 became a woman with a flaming heart, all her artless, af- 
 fected imperiousness replaced by a real, a tragic worship. 
 Willingly humble, she had asked but to be somehow, some- 
 where, a hidden possession in Don Arturo's life, content 
 with what morsels of it he could give her, if only his love 
 would endure. Her happiness had been of the briefest, 
 lasting hardly two months of that summer of nineteen 
 hundred and thirteen, when keeping away from El 
 Miradero to which they would have been tracked they 
 had hidden in small inns in out-of-the-way Spanish towns. 
 After it, Ascuncion, on the way to motherhood and al- 
 most insane from grief, had gone back to her father's 
 home. 
 
 The writer felt sure that through the following 
 pleasure-packed autumn and winter in Paris, De Burgos
 
 220 The Next Corner 
 
 had not given a thought to this girl of the people with her 
 doe's eyes and sweetly-syllabled name; yet when in, June 
 of the following year she and her infant had died, it was 
 decreed under the roof of that Basque fisherman that 
 his life was to pay for hers. From that moment he had 
 not had a chance of escape. 
 
 Her father had found him at El Miradero. This was 
 on a certain night late in June, when his anguish for his 
 daughter's destruction was at its freshest, had, more- 
 over, found him there, light-hearted, with a new mistress, 
 this time a young, strikingly blonde woman to whom De 
 Burgos had spoken in what the fisherman had felt sure 
 was English, a language whose sibilations had grown 
 familiar from the tourist sportsmen who came often to 
 Lequeytio for hake fishing and whose boats he had man- 
 aged. This beauty, in the glittering semi-nudity he de- 
 scribed, he had felt to be as sophistically wanton as the 
 man he had come to call to an accounting, the sort of 
 bacchante with whom the aristocrat should always right- 
 fully have been content, leaving the virtuous daughters 
 of the poor to their prayers and to the love of their own 
 men who made wives of them. In her presence he had 
 shot the notable and notorious young Marques de Burgos. 
 Yes this grandee, possessing the sacred blue blood he 
 had from childhood been taught to honor, he had killed 
 with the implacable precision with which he would have 
 despatched a mad dog. 
 
 The story in conclusion told how for months the truth 
 of Don Arturo's death had been smothered in the ser- 
 vants' statements that it had resulted from an encounter 
 with a thief. They were the only witnesses, as "the 
 soiled butterfly who had been the young man's companion 
 had used her tinsel wings to good effect and vanished 
 in all likelihood, to Paris. The query: 'Who was she?' 
 remains unanswered." 
 
 An accident to Ascuncion's father at Christmas time 
 in the big seaport town to which he had gone with his 
 family, while his neighbors had supposed him in America,
 
 The Next Corner 221 
 
 had brought out the facts. The man was injured beyond 
 the possibility of living, and his wife, who regarded this 
 tragedy as an expression of divine wrath for his crime, 
 beseeched him to confess. He had done so to a priest, 
 and publicly to a lawyer, saying in a blaze before he died 
 that he spoke not only to clean his soul, but as he no 
 longer had fear of the law, to stain the name of the 
 seducer, a great name in Spain. Since its owner had 
 secretly used it for vileness, why should he keep it clean? 
 
 This was what Elsie had read; what Miss Maury had 
 read ; what Robert might so easily have read Robert, 
 who knew she was at El Miradero on that date in June, 
 given so exactly. Her eyes had gone ahead of the read- 
 ing, raking the lines in dread of seeing her own name start 
 out at her. When she realized that she had escaped this, 
 her heart still rang through her clammy body with the 
 strokes of a working hammer. 
 
 Shudders ran over her. The disillusionment on 
 which Nina in sending her this revelation had shrewdly 
 counted was as real as a thunderbolt. It crashed through 
 her spirit, splitting her beliefs, turning memory from a 
 thing that had sincerity and some tragic beauty into the 
 altogether vile. 
 
 She crept into an armchair, the paper still twisted in 
 her hands. Her thoughts went back to the summer of 
 nineteen hundred and thirteen. During months previous 
 to it Arturo had told her of his absorbing love, for he 
 had not juggled with time, had made this flagrantly mani- 
 fest soon after their meeting, in the early spring. In 
 that July, bitter in despair, he had left Paris for his 
 mountain solitude. When autumn came he had returned 
 from it to keep at her side again, as fierce in his prayers, 
 seemingly as driven by disappointment, as he had been 
 from the beginning. 
 
 And now she was informed of how he had spent those 
 months in Spain, to what work he had been committed: 
 The defilement of innocence and artless trust for a sense 
 gratification ; the wrecking of a girl's life at its fresh be-
 
 222 The Next Corner 
 
 ginning, with her death and the heartbreak of those who 
 had loved her following on her disgrace. This treachery, 
 often so commonplace in light-living and palliating so- 
 ciety that the horror of its true outlines was obscured, 
 she, through feeling, saw clearly, the cynical self-com- 
 placency, the deliberate and mean deceit, the animalism 
 and rooted brutality that alone could make possible this 
 loathsome crime. 
 
 Wan, Dantesque figures hurtled through memory as she 
 sat so: Arturo, the fisherman, Serafin, herself, and the 
 sorrowful girl whom she had never seen. With these the 
 word "Ascuncion" began to beat on her mind. She had 
 noticed how often the ghastly-faced stranger had uttered 
 it, either flinging it at Arturo in rage or lingering over 
 it tenderly, and in her ignorance of Spanish then she had 
 not recognized it as a woman's name. Yes, this story of 
 Ascuncion was true. Here was the solution of Arturo's 
 murder. The vengeance that can become the very root 
 of insensate grief had judged him abominable, unfit to 
 live. 
 
 By degrees this closeness to the past sank away. As 
 Elsie still sat motionless, she found herself prefiguring 
 what would have awaited her had Arturo lived. She saw 
 the first flare of their life together over and what was 
 left? What had become of the exultant defiance of the 
 world's opinion, his homage, their consuming happiness, 
 the sweet, only half-guessed, violent joys? They were 
 gone. And Arturo was before her, almost with the look 
 of a stranger. He was as suave, and elegant, and grace- 
 ful as ever, but the liquidly brilliant eyes, so often implor- 
 ing and melancholy, had a still indifference that shook 
 her heart. He spoke, and his smooth tones had an ulti- 
 mate deadness. He was changed, he said. Things would 
 happen so. Who could know one's self surely? She must 
 be sensible. He was changed. And the idyl was over. 
 
 The unreasoning misery of women at seeing the 
 glamour depart from what has been intensely precious 
 mixed in her with a feeling of degradation and rage.
 
 The Next Corner 223 
 
 Against this thing of utter cheapness, this rank thing, 
 she had staked every good in life, even reputation. Her 
 hands went up and spread over her face, covering its 
 distress from the daylight as they had on that morning 
 in the mule coach after the cynical disrespect that is so 
 often the light woman's portion had beaten down her 
 head, given wormwood to her taste. That pain was with 
 her again. Again the shame soiled her. 
 
 A little while and she roused herself ; something bright 
 began to show in her spent eyes, strengthened into a 
 grave, fixed, gaze. It was a look of purpose. As before 
 she had flung herself without reckoning to disaster for 
 the wrong thing, so now by every possible strategy she 
 would work to save herself from any bitter aftermath at- 
 tending her weakness and mistake, now, as never be- 
 fore, since dignity had been stripped from it and thought 
 of it had passed into the intolerable.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 AN hour later the hot wind, that wailed and pounded, 
 had ceased as suddenly as it began. The servants re- 
 placed chairs and rugs in the patio for its usual occupa- 
 tion up to sunset. The air was delicious now, soft as 
 sunned milk, with tingling chills through it whose source 
 was the snow-crowned mountains miles away. 
 
 Elsie was almost dressed when she saw Robert come 
 down the steps from his gallery, lay a heap of papers 
 and account books on the table, and stretch himself in 
 a lounging chair beside it. The striped umbrella had 
 been taken away, and the lemon glitter of late afternoon 
 poured over the red roofs that made a square around the 
 patio, turned the fountain's spray behind him to sparks, 
 and struck a flash from the silver in the close ripples of 
 his hair. 
 
 From within the shelter of her room as he lay in this 
 full light, Elsie studied him. More gray edged the black 
 locks about his brow than had been there even a few months 
 ago. She saw, too, that while no doubt he had bathed and 
 rested, and had changed into the white linen that he 
 wore at dinner, it was more than likely he had not slept. 
 His eyes had a wakeful brightness and the bluish stains 
 of fatigue. He did not look at the papers, although he 
 lifted some of them for examination ; after fingering them 
 he put them back and began to pack his pipe with 
 tobacco; as suddenly he paused, left it unlighted and 
 fell into thought ; the lids were lowered under frowning 
 brows, the whole face had a look of sadness. 
 
 Elsie had designedly put on a gown he had told her 
 he liked. It was of black chiffon, cut away at the throat 
 in a round, babyish fashion, the skirt a mass of minute 
 
 224
 
 The Next Corner 225 
 
 ruffles that kept up a fluttering as of breeze-stirrea leaves. 
 In this she was a moving shadow, the pearliness of her 
 arms and tender bosom gleaming through its sheerness, 
 her pastel-tinted face and nimbus of hair a radiance 
 above it. The grievous memories just endured had worn 
 her eyes into a look of intensified spirituality ; with this the 
 determination to hold tenaciously to good repute had 
 tilted back her head, put an unusual streak of pink into 
 her cheeks, the dawn of a smile upon her hardily lifted 
 lip. It was so that she stepped out on the gallery. 
 
 Robert rose quickly. As he watched her approach, a 
 hush stole over the welcome of his look. Her quickened 
 beauty was like revelation. He had never felt it so keenly 
 nor the distance between them so cruel. As his breath 
 grew troubled, the surface of his body seemed brushed by 
 fire. 
 
 Elsie had almost reached him when the nervousness 
 she was fighting made her step unsteady, and she stumbled 
 over the end of the rug. Robert seized her by the arms 
 in a gentle, perfectly balanced grip that told of his 
 strength. But when, because of the gauze, he seemed 
 clasping her cool, bare flesh, she felt the sudden betraying 
 tremble of his muscles. He held her so for a few seconds, 
 only long enough to steady her, while his self-control 
 faltered like a flag about to fall, his look into her eyes 
 an aching cry. 
 
 Revulsion came as quickly. A flush, a frown of light 
 self-scorn passed over his face, leaving it stern. "Sit 
 down, my dear," he said, and helped her into the long 
 chair. "I missed you. Did you sleep?" 
 
 "For a whole hour, I'm sure. You see I hid away from 
 the storm." There was a break in her voice. The 
 knowledge of his unrest and longing had brought it; 
 while this gave assurance of her undiminished, even in- 
 creased power over him, it was a troubling thing. "I 
 feel the most gruesome heaviness and sadness from those 
 hot winds. You didn't sleep though did you? You 
 look so very tired," she said, and clasping her hands,
 
 226 The Next Corner 
 
 met his interested eyes with the faint, poised smile of a 
 child who waits for a story to start. 
 
 "I am tired." 
 
 "Can't you give up work at all? Take a little rest?" 
 
 "I've come in now to stay two days. Business is held 
 up until I get certain instructions from New York." 
 
 She sat back as if half-dreaming. There was a pause. 
 She had a role to play and must not suddenly be mark- 
 edly unlike the self-communing woman with whom Robert 
 had grown familiar. After a silence that pulled be- 
 tween them with none of the charm that silences can 
 have between two where there is contentment she spoke 
 again. 
 
 "Tell me something about what you do at the mines. 
 You're a wonderful bronze from the sun." 
 
 "Not only sun frost." 
 
 "Is it so cold?" 
 
 "Often it's bitter. During September and October, 
 when it rained, it was a curse nothing less. The moun- 
 tain winds through the wet were bone-piercing then. The 
 mules had a bad time. All the roads were a soft mat, 
 and where there was grass it was like progress over soaked 
 sponges. It's better now. Still we all Americans and 
 natives at times have to wear knitted wool masks 
 with holes for nose, eyes and mouth. God only knows 
 what I'd have become bv this time except for my wool 
 mask !" 
 
 Now he lighted the filled pipe and, stretching out in 
 his chair close to hers, began to smoke with enjoyment. 
 He seldom looked at her and in the barest side glances. 
 She noticed this, while feeling that the most acute con- 
 sciousness of her was in those averted eyes. 
 
 By a few questions she led him to talk again of his 
 work and heard of delays and disappointments that she 
 understood only in a sketchy way. 
 
 "I've told you that this Logrono mine is an old one, 
 first exploited six years ago and abandoned as hopeless. 
 When my people with their wealth decided, from infor-
 
 The Next Corner 227 
 
 mation that seemed sound, to take it over and begin 
 operations, they felt sure they were on the trail of a 
 bonanza. So did I. I still have faith but not in such 
 results as those on which we counted. Besides all the 
 mess I had to struggle through in starting, another angle 
 is always jutting from the situation, a complication that 
 arises from mining property adjoining ours and that was, 
 in fact, originally part of the whole Logrono mine. This, 
 you see " He broke off sharply, to brood down at the 
 stem of his pipe before saying with a drily apologetic look 
 at her: "I'm boring you. This stuff doesn't interest 
 you, perhaps isn't even intelligible to you." 
 
 "I'm not so stupid !" She smiled slightly, the tone a 
 rallying one. "Try a simplified version. I'll like hear- 
 ing of something new and that's so important to you." 
 
 "Well, briefly I'm puzzled as to what attitude I 
 dught to take regarding a proposition that's impending 
 from the native owners of the other half of the Logrono 
 mine. They have neither the money nor the outfit for 
 opening up again, although they contend that they know 
 that in their property lies the richest vein of the moun- 
 tain. Lately, a Venezuelan named Olazaba, a shrewd, 
 very convincing sort of a man and who speaks English 
 almost as well as I do, has spent a good deal of time with 
 me. He's representing the others, though as yet only in a 
 tentative sort of way putting out feelers that I can see 
 point toward amalgamation. Of course, this would mean 
 a big position for him with his backers. Also he may own 
 a big block of the now worthless stock that in the event 
 of the other half being operated with ours would at 
 once become valuable, so that his real interest may be a 
 purely selfish one in entangling us to his own profit. 
 Do you understand?" 
 
 "I think so. You mean that whether the other prop- 
 erty were good or not, this man and the others behind 
 him would benefit by association with you." 
 
 "Exactly. I'm not inclined to consider the thing at 
 all, for my own belief is that we have the rich half of the
 
 228 The Next Corner 
 
 mine. And yet as in all speculations holding to 
 this idea, I may be turning my back on fortune. Olazaba 
 was on the ground years ago during the earlier opera- 
 tions, and he has a set of arguments that on the surface 
 seem very worth while. I don't know " He left the 
 rest unsaid and began to smoke thoughtfully. 
 
 "I'm ignorant of it all, of course, but I'm sure a woman 
 in such a situation would trust to intuition," Elsie coun- 
 selled with a serious air. "Opening an old mine!" Her 
 voice grew dreamy as she said this. "I like the picture of 
 that better. Gigantic! Is it romantic, too?" 
 
 "As a picture I've no doubt it's very romantic. As a 
 business, it's been an unholy thing to struggle through! 
 The old dump and buildings and rusted machinery had to 
 be inspected and inventoried; the workings underground 
 that had filled with water had to be drained off before 
 there could be any new drilling to ascertain where the 
 old lead led and the dip of the veins beyond the place 
 where the earlier work had stopped. Some additional 
 property had to be gained and new mineral rights secured. 
 I've arranged a detailed report recommending the instal- 
 lation of still better machinery. All this takes time. I 
 thought when I came here," he added with a touch of 
 despondence as he gazed ahead, puffing softly on the 
 short pipe gripped by his browned hand, "that I'd get 
 big results in about two months and I'm still anxious. 
 You've no idea of the obstacles and dangers attending 
 the reopening of an old mine like this. To start with, its 
 chambers were full of snakes and bats and a crawling 
 mass of the arana mono a spider six inches long whose 
 bite causes the most dreadful fever. Timbering caved in. 
 Then, just as we got really going and from something 
 that looks like the work of enemies our windlass cable 
 broke. No idle dream, I assure you !" 
 
 Elsie bent forward to look into his face, her own rapt 
 and attentive. "I'd no idea you had such a frightfully 
 hard time, Robert. Why didn't you tell me something 
 about it before? You've never said a word!"
 
 The Next Corner 229 
 
 His gaze, turning fully upon her, took a most charming 
 turn; it was quizzical, with a touch of the fondness with 
 which one regards an engaging child, and with the faintest 
 shadow of reproach. "You never asked me," he said very 
 simply. 
 
 The words silenced Elsie, brought a pang of regret for 
 his loneliness. It was all the sharper as it came with 
 freshened memory of his defense of her that day. 
 
 As if he caught this last thought, he bent nearer as 
 she sank back. "Tell me something," he said in the 
 earnest tone that invites confidence. "Be frank with me, 
 Elsie. Are you ?" He hesitated, trouble in his eyes. 
 "Are you unhappy here?" 
 
 She forced her face to one of its old, sudden sparkles. 
 "Have I seemed so? a sort of Mrs. Gummidge? Dread- 
 ful ! Why, of course, Robert, I haven't been unhappy !" 
 
 "Well, are you contented?" As she did not speak he 
 went on, visibly more anxious at her silence. "Does 
 nothing irritate you? I mean, is there any single thing 
 you'd have changed? You have only to tell me," he said, 
 his straight gaze and tranquil force a seal upon the 
 words. 
 
 "I like it all." This was muted, slow, deeply sincere. 
 And then words she had not intended to speak, did not 
 want to speak, burst from her uncontrollably. "You are 
 too kind to me. Oh, from the first from that day in 
 New York, you have been kind. I feel horrid to have 
 you so good to me !" The tone, while continuing subdued, 
 had grown frantic, and tears broke from her in a sudden 
 storm. All the mixed pain of the day was in the collapse. 
 Though she fought it, her lips went awry as her head 
 sank further back, and she turned away her face. "I've 
 been cruel oh, I know it, although you've never let me 
 see it. Cruel and selfish that's what I've been ! I 
 couldn't help it but it's true." 
 
 Without moving an inch toward her or touching her, 
 Robert let the weakness expend itself. His eyes, startled 
 and anxious at first, grew comprehending and kindled 
 angrily.
 
 230 The Next Comer 
 
 "Elsie!" He said this almost in a whisper, with de- 
 cision, as her composure returned, and waited until she 
 looked at him in an unwilling, clouded way. "I don't 
 intend to answer what you say of my kindness to you. 
 That's not a word, with its charity and patronage, to 
 be used between us absurd ! I know now, however, that 
 what I feared is true. Selena chills you, tries you, has 
 made you nervous " 
 
 "No, no " 
 
 "Now you are kind to her. You are hiding the 
 truth." 
 
 "No !" She bent forward vigorously. "Please don't 
 say any more about it. For you are wrong. If I were 
 not contented here, no one would be to blame for it but 
 my own self." 
 
 A longing came to her to bathe her spirit in truth 
 as much of it as she dared speak and with this a look 
 of recklessness brought intensity to her face. 
 
 "I ought not to have come here. It isn't fair to you. 
 You asked me I didn't want to I know it isn't fair." 
 
 "It is quite fair." 
 
 "No ! I ought to go. Suppose I tell you now that I 
 cannot stay?" 
 
 He remained silent, not looking at her. "Then you 
 would go. I'd have to let you, and without a word to try 
 to keep you," he said in a quiet voice that had no likeness 
 to peace. "I asked for your companionship, hoping that 
 while we lived under the one roof you might come to know 
 yourself better than you did in New York. You told me 
 then that your love for me was gone. You didn't say 
 you cared for some one else; and you don't say it now." 
 
 He stopped. He was waiting, she knew, for her answer 
 in words to make his conviction absolute. She could not 
 bring herself to speak. It was even hard, with her 
 mouth set in a look of repudiation, to move her head 
 slightly in the negative, the while she saw a grave in 
 Spain that could not be remembered any more except with 
 the dark sense of insult.
 
 The Next Corner 231 
 
 "That's what I believed. If it had been otherwise, 
 you'd have told me. And so I hoped I couldn't help it. 
 I couldn't believe, Elsie, that things were at such a pass 
 between us as never to be righted again." After a silence 
 some wistful words came, as if defying his will. "I 
 promised to be grateful for your dear companionship 
 here on the basis of friendship. And I am! Still for- 
 give me if, just once, I speak of what I feel beneath this." 
 
 He leant his arm well over on the table and bent closer 
 to look in the face that was so still. 
 
 "You tell me that no one has taken my place in your 
 heart. I am true to you. And I have been, often through 
 temptation that might have explained my failing sav- 
 agely, tenaciously true to you because from the be- 
 ginning I have loved you with my soul. For I am the 
 sort of man who makes a temple about what is in his soul. 
 And who would soil a temple?" 
 
 This declaration went through Elsie and seemed to turn 
 her heart over. Her strained eyes, grown very dark, met 
 his look fully, bathed in it, until her lids fluttered down, 
 leaving the face as a lovely mask. 
 
 "I knew you loved me that way." This was only a 
 breath and over lips so quiet they seemed chiselled. "I 
 always knew it. You would put me away, often, Robert, 
 in a lonely niche and high up on a pedestal where it could 
 be very cold," she said, a flicker of irony in the faint smile 
 that showed and faded in her face, "but I knew your feel- 
 ing for me had holiness in it. I confess I did not value 
 that as it deserved." What followed came slowly, an 
 odd, bitter fervor in it. "I value it now" 
 
 The four intense words brought Robert elusive trouble. 
 There was no encouragement in them that his flawless love, 
 though prized, had drawn her nearer to him. He fought 
 depression. 
 
 "Stay on here a while longer," he urged. "Our marriage 
 is like a house that has partly fallen, but with the foun- 
 dation sound since we have kept the faith ! Don't 
 say you must go not yet !"
 
 232 The Next Corner 
 
 Candida, trundling the tea wagon, came from the house, 
 followed by Miss Maury. The equipage with its appetiz- 
 ing array was rolled before Elsie. 
 
 "I hope you want your tea, Selena, as badly as I do 
 at this moment," she roused herself to say as she began 
 to serve it. 
 
 "Yes," was the answer, and no more. 
 
 Robert gave his sister a long, studying look. There 
 was an ugly light in her eyes, a faintly greenish tinge 
 through her skin as of a liver actively disturbed, her 
 air of exaggerated resignation really indicating the most 
 contradictory hostility. He became very thoughtful as he 
 took his cup from Elsie. 
 
 And she, while her fingers, veiled at times by the floating 
 gauze of the long sleeves, moved prettily among the 
 china and silver, called back her determination to fight 
 any danger that threatened exposure. Selena was such 
 a danger; and without displacing her or injuring her with 
 her brother, Elsie meant, amiably, to defeat her. 
 
 "I had a letter from my mother this morning," she 
 casually announced. 
 
 Robert did not conceal his pleasure at these words. 
 It was in his look as he deliberately let it fence with 
 Selena's for a second. "What does she say about New 
 York how it's taking the war?" he asked. "The papers 
 I've seen show that while the government may declare itself 
 neutral until it's black in the face, the people go out of 
 their way to howl their rampant detestation of everything 
 German and for that at least, God be praised !" 
 x Elsie forced a sound of laughter. "Muv doesn't men- 
 tion the war, except to describe Percy's latest hat inspira- 
 tion born of it something shaped like an aeroplane 
 with big wings on each side. Her other news was like 
 that her usual prattle." 
 
 Much as a desperate creature pushes its way through 
 darkness and cold to some refuge, she made ready to 
 utter once what it was ignominy even to hold in her 
 thought. And while making this bitter struggle she seemed
 
 The Next Corner 233 
 
 a human lily, something that uglinesses like sin, deceit 
 and guilty fear could never soil. 
 
 "She sent me a horrid bit of news, though an account 
 of how a man we'd both known in Paris was killed. He 
 had seduced a young country girl and her father shot 
 him." Then, while it seemed beyond belief that it was 
 she who spoke the next words, they came with apparent 
 serenity through lips that felt frozen: "Evidently a 
 thoroughly bad lot, although he had not seemed that 
 sort." 
 
 Her spirit quailed at thought of having to speak 
 Arturo's name. Surely he would be recalled to Robert as 
 the man to whose house she had gone after their parting 
 in Paris. Yet that she could escape this seemed hopeless. 
 Robert was waiting for her next words ; she could feel 
 that to ask who the man was hesitated upon his lips. 
 
 Breaking this premonitory silence, there came the 
 sound of a light tread on the pavement at their back 
 that seemed to Elsie nothing less than Godsent. To 
 emphasize it as an interruption and divert interest from 
 herself, she gave a quick look over her shoulder. When 
 she saw Domingo, the mail bag in his hand, going 
 toward her husband, she seemed to go blind just as she 
 sat, with her head turned. 
 
 In the excitement of the past few hours she had for- 
 gotten the evening post and her usual method of inspect- 
 ing it first, as though by accident, in the entrance hall. 
 There was nothing she could do but drag back her dulled 
 eyes to rest on Robert and watch him as a prisoner does 
 the jury. Would he draw from the bag a gray-blue letter 
 a worn and scrawled letter a letter with a seal ? 
 On the long, rigid look she did not breathe. . . . 
 
 It was through a lurch of vertigo that she saw she 
 was safe. A few large white envelopes, visibly business 
 communications and circulars from places near by, were 
 all that came out. She made herself perfectly motionless 
 as with all her strength she fought the weakness, 
 glad that Robert's eyes were lowered as he read. When
 
 234 The Next Corner 
 
 the patio steadied, she relaxed heavily in the chair, peace- 
 ful again, though every bit of her was deadly cold. 
 
 One look at Miss Maury, and she knew she had not 
 escaped completely. What she read in those eyes, fixed 
 upon her in a quietly immovable way, sent the blood in a 
 rush over her face, up into the roots of her hair. 
 
 "You can deceive him," she felt the look say. "He's a 
 man, and in love with you therefore a fool. You can't 
 deceive me." 
 
 That night the Venezuelan neighbors came to the haci- 
 enda to play bridge. The tables were made up, and as 
 there were just enough without Elsie she truthfully said 
 that she was glad to be left out, as she wanted to stay in 
 the air. A Spanish lace shawl that Robert had brought 
 her from Caracas wrapped about her head and shoulders, 
 she strolled through the front doors that gave upon the 
 road. 
 
 The light from an almost full moon was a drenching 
 pallor on which every smallest leaf was moving jet. Just 
 such a night and such a light as were about her when she 
 had stood above the Cantabrian precipice ; and though 
 farther away mountains were here, their shining 
 heights rounding out the memory. The scene seemed, in 
 a way, a ghost of that other one. And she, too, with her 
 sickened heart, only a ghost of the woman who had 
 lived on life's most thrilling note that night. 
 
 After pacing for a few moments on the path before the 
 door, she crossed quickly to a wood of packed pines 
 that made shadow on the other side. She had never gone 
 even this short distance from the house alone at night, 
 and to step into the darkness of the trees required daring. 
 When, in the silence, stirrings from the bushes and the 
 scampering of tiny frightened feet about her own made 
 her know she had trespassed on the night freedom of the 
 furtive life hidden there, a shudder of repugnance went 
 over her but without bringing her to a pause until she 
 stood beside what she sought. This was a deep-channeled
 
 The Next Corner 235 
 
 and pebbly stream flowing on such a sharp slant that 
 its rush over a slope made the chatter of small waves. 
 Divisions in the trees let in the moonlight, and where the 
 water was almost level, it lay in patches that seemed 
 silver shields, molten and shivering. 
 
 Elsie did not linger for an unnecessary second. Her 
 lids were heavy, her lips set, her whole look somber. She 
 drew the folded news account from her girdle, tore it into 
 long strips, then into fragments, and poured them on the 
 ripples where they clung like a trail of snowflakes before 
 they were tossed on. From a silk handbag she drew Ar- 
 turo's crested ring and threw it into the deepest flow. 
 She saw it cut the air as a flying spark, strike on one of 
 the protruding stones, and rebound from this to the riot- 
 ous stream whose song came back to her from the 
 shadows. It was gone. 
 
 The tearing to bits of the disclosure and the repudia- 
 tion of the only tangible thing that she had belonging to 
 the concealed fragment of her life had had the solemnity 
 of a church rite to Elsie, and with it the feeling that 
 comes from the last spadeful of earth on a grave, as 
 of something forever darkened, finished. Not until this 
 day had Arturo died for her.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 ROBERT played cards played them absently until 
 late, and afterward walked home with his guests. All this 
 time his thoughts were of Elsie. Before he slept he came 
 to a decision: Simply by satisfying his freshened longing 
 to make his wife's life more pleasant, her heart lighter, 
 he would be able to answer Selena's antagonism with a 
 body blow. What could he do first? At once his thoughts 
 turned to material gifts. 
 
 This instinct, essentially masculine, makes one see the 
 eager, asking hands of women through recorded time. 
 Jewels for Cleopatra, the palfrey and the hawk brought 
 by the mediaeval knight to his castle-bred bride, the beads 
 hung on squaws by countless Hiawathas, down to the 
 necklaces and pendants that to-day pass over the 
 counters of the great jewelers of the world for the women 
 beloved of rich men, all bear witness to those little 
 hands held out while, consciously or not, eyes are bright 
 with the question: "What will he give me?" 
 
 So during his two days away from the mine, Robert 
 spent all of one in Caracas. There he picked out an 
 electric landaulette that was padded like a jewel case; 
 he meant Elsie to learn to run it herself, without having 
 to depend on the family car that needed a man at the 
 wheel. He also bought a piano whose modern mechanism 
 was housed in the frame of an ancient spinet. Elsie never 
 sang now; she was like a bird in captivity gone mute; 
 and he wanted to hear her voice again as he remembered 
 it in the days before the little child had died, in old 
 English ballads and the love songs of Grieg that suited 
 her sweet, whispering tones, their twilight charm. 
 
 On returning from his walk the night before, he had 
 found her sitting in the patio, wrapped in the Spanish 
 
 236
 
 The Next Corner 237 
 
 shawl, and had told her of these intentions. At first he 
 had been made happy by the sudden look of affection that 
 brought a glow to her dreaming eyes ; as suddenly chilled 
 by its quick fading, when with unmistakable sincerity she 
 tried to dissuade him from buying the things for her. 
 And though he had made it plain how glad he would be 
 to have her go with him on the jaunt, she had given sev- 
 eral reasons for remaining at home. 
 
 On the way to the capital he had sat with folded arms, 
 the brim of his Panama hat pulled into a point over his 
 eyes with their savage pain, and brooded upon these 
 defeats. She had not wanted the luxuries from him be- 
 cause they had seemed hampering obligations, outside 
 their compact. She had not wanted to go with him, and 
 the reasons given a dislike of the effort in the heat, 
 the closeness of the train had been dismissed by him 
 as untrue. Simply she had not wanted to go. 
 
 Of course no idea had come to him of the picture that 
 his request had flashed before Elsie on the springs of fear, 
 in which she had seen herself leaving for Caracas on the 
 early morning train, remaining absent until midnight or 
 later, the letters coming three times directly into Selena's 
 hands. Even under previous circumstances she could not 
 have endured this; and less than ever from this time on, 
 since she had come to know that the mails were watched 
 for by Selena's mystified eyes as eagerly as by her own. 
 
 She was not up when Robert left, and a few hours after 
 his departure, on starting as usual for her morning walk, 
 she had to steel herself against the examining gaze from 
 Miss Maury that she could feel follow her as she strolled 
 away; later in the day she managed to see Domingo in 
 time to get first word from him that no letters had come 
 for any one. These efforts, successful though they were, 
 left her with a feeling of desperation, her brain rasped as 
 from some steady, nagging sound. In consequence, when 
 Robert reached home very late and brightened to find 
 her still up, waiting to hear his account of the day, she 
 was in reality keyed almost to hysteria from the unre-
 
 238 The Next Corner 
 
 mitting sense of an enemy in the house whose furtive sus- 
 picion dogged her. 
 
 Elsie slept badly that night. Another day had gone 
 and the gray-blue letter had not appeared. She lay on 
 her bed the Spanish bed of hot countries ; flat, only 
 a coverlet over the springs in place of a mattress, cool 
 and smooth with its tightly drawn linen and gazed 
 through the drapery of netting rising in clouds above her, 
 toward the moonlight that filtered through the window in 
 the vaulted roof whose ribbed divisions were like a bat's 
 spread wings, while frantic hatred of what she dreaded 
 began in her. 
 
 It had been her inherent straightforwardness, alive even 
 on that June night of reckless joy and surrender, that had 
 made her write the literal truth to Robert. Ah, better 
 for her if, being a rebel, she had been a hard one! Far 
 better if the wish to be fair had not urged her pen to the 
 words that had become her threatened defeat! 
 
 She had often lulled herself with her mother's belief 
 that the letter was part of a lost ship's cargo and safely 
 at the bottom of the sea. To-night, as she lay open-eyed 
 with tensely shut hands, she could not think so. A sense 
 of prophecy kept saying to her that at last, maybe when 
 it would have even more destructive power than now, be- 
 cause she would have more to lose, it would reach its 
 haven and, unless she were fortunate, make chaos of her 
 life. 
 
 Where was it? Where, at that moment? In existence 
 somewhere, buffeted by accident and change, in having on 
 long and slow journeys, forward and back, followed 
 Robert? Was it one of hundreds in some forgotten mail 
 sack? Neglected for a time in some post-office, would it 
 soon be on its way again? Was it already on its way? 
 
 If it had only come to-day. If, to-day, she had been 
 able to see it! If, with the first well-known and the an- 
 ticipated marks of later travel upon it, she had held it in 
 her hands and had had the joy of tearing i f to bits as she 
 had torn the printed tale that had unsealed her eyes to
 
 The Next Cornet 239 
 
 the contemptibleness on which her folly had been built! 
 Oh, if it had only come to-day ! 
 
 How long would she have to keep to her post as look- 
 out while the cold hatred of a nature that repelled her 
 hung about her, as determined as it was masked? How 
 long must she feel uncertain, her eyes on the next corner 
 around which, at any moment, the sinister might step 
 and face her, its dark smile declaring: "You see I have 
 come. Yes after all I have come !" How long be- 
 fore she could feel the danger over? . . . 
 
 She tossed in a distraught wakefulness. 
 
 As the tranquil weeks passed, the desire to have the 
 letter arrive and be destroyed by her became an obsession 
 with Elsie. She was daily coming to a more warm and 
 wistful nearness to her husband. Irresistibly she kept 
 constantly seeing his reticence and self-control against 
 the memory of Arturo's pyrotechny of passion. And 
 Robert gained by the contrast. Arturo's unbridled dis- 
 play of feeling took on the cheapness of redundancy be- 
 side what she had come to know was uncompromising man- 
 hood in Robert, a pure, high pride. Daily she saw, too, 
 that this strength was only a breakwater to stem a need 
 of her whose hints of fury overleaping it had begun to 
 call to her, strong with the charm that misery and hunger 
 can give to love. 
 
 Robert no longer suggested the almost fraternal, self- 
 contained husband of their earlier life; the absorbed 
 worker who had for periods lived on a different plane, 
 she forgotten. Without knowing it he was winning 
 her because, bitterly unhappy without her, he could not 
 always prevent her seeing it. And this is sure to draw 
 a woman when a man is dear. It loses nothing in force 
 because he is a husband and not a lover. If the unhappy 
 longing for her is there, evident to her through circum- 
 stances of some sort that thwart it, he becomes a lover, 
 and the unrest from him is a flame that starts its like in 
 her until she is filled with steady consciousness of him.
 
 240 The Next Corner 
 
 Robert was far from realizing that such thoughts were 
 Elsie's. During these days he scarcely knew himself, his 
 philosophy became so inefficient and he so bitterly restive. 
 At the mine his body would move capably at his work 
 while his mind was often far from it. The early after- 
 noon, his time of rest, began to have the allure that an 
 empty church has for one unhappy who out of the 
 bustling midday steals into its dusk and silence to sit in 
 solitude, easing pain by dwelling on it. In this hour he 
 was always able to be alone in the manager's house, and 
 he would lounge in his easy, long-limbed way at his desk, 
 gazing through the open door, though not at what was 
 there, limestone gorges whose riven and mangled sides 
 were damascened with a curious verdigris-brown; the 
 crane, shaped like a bent elbow, towering out of the dark- 
 ness of the gut in the mountain's side from which the ma- 
 chinery's turmoil seemed the roar of beasts ; strings of 
 laden mules prodded by mestizos; forked and furrowed 
 heights in the distance ; and, austerely remote, the mystic 
 shimmering white of an occasional peak, like heavenly 
 watchers .blanched with disdain for the pigmies who de- 
 spoiled the land, seeking what to their mean conception 
 meant power. 
 
 None of these things were real to Robert as he mused. 
 His mind would cling to pictures of his wife remembered 
 from his previous visit home ; one, and then another, they 
 kept haunting him. His heart would burn in a dull way, 
 and his body tremble at the thoughts of her that began 
 to creep in and endure. 
 
 Foremost was the belief that soon Elsie would leave 
 him. As they lived now, he was sure she saw herself a 
 detached and parenthetical thing in his home, something 
 that daily became more irrelevant. She would decide to 
 go. And he would have to keep himself from one prayer. 
 She would vanish out of his life this woman, so dear 
 to him, from whose fragility there came to him now hints 
 of deeply hidden fervor, something sensitively unquiet, a 
 likeness to it in the effect of the hair that made a wavering
 
 The. Next Corner 241 
 
 light about her intensely white face where her eyes were 
 pools of shadow. 
 
 She would go, uniquely unarmed against new and diffi- 
 cult issues, with no close ties waiting to enfold her, no 
 wiser brain to help. And he would have to endure it. 
 There would be silence and emptiness afterward as if 
 she had died ! yet worse, since there would continue 
 with him to be savagely lived down the hideously be- 
 littling hurt that belongs to failure. 
 
 So these two, confused, uncomprehending, would meet 
 and part every few days, Robert's eyes on Elsie's face, 
 watching for a sign that did not come; and hers fixed on 
 the void in which their lives spun and where, distant or 
 near there might be eddying, to come at last into Robert's 
 hands, her own renegade words of abjuration and fare- 
 well that would send her value crashing into the splinters 
 made easily by the fall of a damaged thing.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 ELSIE brought her car to a stop. Before she could 
 step from the satin interior where mirrors reflected the 
 bouquets in hanging vases, the stable-like front doors of 
 the hacienda were rolled to each side from within by one 
 of the mestizos, while another ran out to help her alight 
 and take charge of her many packages. 
 
 She had been in the town since the morning; had spent 
 hours at the sale of a library by an Englishman who 
 was scattering his belongings before returning home ; had 
 almuerzo with one of her neighbors ; and had stopped at 
 the post-office twice, the visits having resulted in only 
 a few local letters, as the foreign mail, on the boat that 
 had reached La Guaira the day before, was not expected 
 until some time that night. 
 
 It was late March now, and the land was exotically 
 splendid. Easter was just over, its joyousness lingering 
 on in the festas of this "month of Mary." Church pro- 
 cessions were met constantly, mostly of white-veiled little 
 girls carrying lighted candles through the full sunshine; 
 after dark there was a flash of lanterns from groves on 
 the town's edge, where the natives danced ; all day long 
 until late at night, from houses and street bands music 
 came, heady, richly sweet, of uneven twisting tempo, 
 a provocation to the body to sway, while burning the 
 heart with the trouble that belongs to love. 
 
 Elsie's imagination had given quick response to these 
 notes of passionate life, finding something exquisitely 
 sensuous even in the religious ecstacy that was like the 
 flinging up of the arms of the sad world toward the sky 
 in freshened hope of happiness, keener worship of the 
 beautiful and good. She had gone about her projects 
 
 242
 
 The Next Comer 243 
 
 through the day in the dreaminess that the springtime, 
 even in bare, northern latitudes, can give, a sense 
 of budding in the root of one's spirit; a something that 
 enkindles, so that the saddest can know briefly the ghost 
 of old desires. And this delicately-sparked languor was 
 with her as she stepped into the flagged entrance hall 
 that, after the outside brilliance, seemed as black as a 
 crypt. 
 
 Instantly she found that the shadow was the only 
 likeness to a crypt. The place rang with the clash of 
 angry voices crossing each other in dispute. As she 
 paused, both tense and quivering, she realized there were 
 two speakers Miss Maury and Candida and they 
 were in her room. The upper part of the door that led 
 to it from the hall was made of stained glass, one of the 
 panes lifted on a catch for air, so that sound travelled 
 clearly. Before turning the knob she stood listening. 
 
 "Don't try to defend yourself any further, you horrible 
 girl. I have told you what you are to do," came stridently 
 from Selena. 
 
 "I won't do it!" This as a dolorous shriek from 
 Candida. "You will see! I shall go to the festa! You 
 will see ! When my senora comes ! " 
 
 "You will do as / say. Stand on your feet. Get up 
 at once !" 
 
 "No ! I shall die here first. I shall never get up !" 
 Candida wailed. "I will go to the festa!" 
 
 "You shall not move out of the house for a whole week !" 
 
 "The senora will let me! I do not care for you or 
 what you say!" 
 
 Elsie opened the door. From what she had heard she 
 was prepared to find Candida, with the native floridity 
 of expression, crouching on the floor, Selena standing 
 above her. The added touches to the scene took her 
 breath. Candida was indeed on the floor, but fairly 
 spilled on it and garbed so that at first she gave the im- 
 pression of something between an attendant in a Turkish 
 bath and a hula-hida dancer.
 
 244 The Next Corner 
 
 She had on one of Elsie's filmiest nightgowns ; this was 
 dropped far down from her shoulders and fastened under 
 the armpits with a blue and white towel as a sash; every 
 ornament of Elsie's, including a mass of native bead and 
 metal necklaces chromatic in color, bought by Robert 
 as curiosities, clanked on her bared bosom; the claret- 
 red bougainvillea made into huge rosettes were back of 
 each ear; and she had used the scent bottles so lavishly, 
 that gusts of mixed fragrance came upward with her 
 every lurch. 
 
 All this, barbaric with her tawny flesh, suggested some 
 jungle orgy; her face, dumbfounding, marked its cres- 
 cendo, as a long screech might, for it was plastered with 
 white and red, changed by crayon daubing from every 
 vestige of its own expression, her full lips under a coat 
 of scarlet paste seeming of negroid thickness. As tears 
 ran in cross streams over this mixture, a painter's pal- 
 lette rag could not have been more splashed. 
 
 Elsie's eyes took in these startling notes and, seeking 
 explanation, looked across at her toilet table. She found 
 it there in the sight of her old Paris box of cosmetics 
 which stood open, its contents scattered. As it was very 
 pretty a novelty of imported suede, shaped like a valise 
 she had kept it in the bottom of a trunk, and had not 
 seen it since unpacking on her arrival at El Iris. That it 
 had made its impression on Candida's memory was evident 
 to-day. 
 
 After a hopeless look at it, then at the girl who was now 
 lying on her back, her hands holding her head as if 
 to keep it from flying off, then at Selena who somehow 
 gave the impression of a gray yarn stocking standing in 
 judgment over an artificial rose whose colors had run 
 in the rain, Elsie dropped into a chair, unable to keep 
 back an abrupt peal of laughter. 
 
 "Candida ! You you !" She tried to find Spanish 
 for a severe reproof, failed, and broke into English. 
 "You silly, silly creature! How how dared you?" 
 
 These words and the twist of fun that went with them
 
 The Next Corner 245 
 
 acted like electricity on Selena. Before Candida could 
 do more than turn over to crawl hopefully, yet with 
 the humility of a worm toward her young mistress, 
 she changed from a yarn stocking to a crowbar. Her face 
 settled into grimness as she swept a look of wrath over 
 Elsie. 
 
 "You can laugh at her ! This girl is bad bad and 
 you know it. I find her here, half-naked this way, painted 
 like a savage, twisting and turning before that mirror, 
 ogling herself ovt. her shoulder, and at last kissing 
 do you hear ? kissing her own arm in a disgusting 
 admiration. And you laugh at her ! Are you aware that 
 you're making yourself an ally of this creature's against 
 me?" 
 
 Elsie had quickly sobered, her eyes very dark and with 
 their still look. Through the first words there had come 
 to her nothing less than the cold breath of hatred. She 
 waited until Selena's question died on a rasping note 
 before she stood up. 
 
 "Aren't you exciting yourself without reason?" she said 
 quietly. "The girl hasn't committed a crime, you know." 
 Without waiting for a reply she looked down at Candida. 
 "Are your clothes here?" she asked. 
 
 "Si, senora," Candida quavered. She had not under- 
 stood a word of the English and had kept looking from 
 one to the other of the speakers in the most racking 
 anxiety. 
 
 "Go over there by the bed and put them on. Wash 
 your face, too at once !" 
 
 Still Candida remained kneeling, trying miserably to 
 read Elsie's face for the one thing that was of moment to 
 her. 
 
 "Senora, senora," she bleated and thumped her head 
 with fists as hard as door knobs, "pardon me ! I am sorry 
 that I touched your things. Do anything to me for that 
 to-morrow only say that I can go to the fest a with 
 Domingo after dinner to-night !" She crawled sinuously 
 to where she could lay her cheek on Elsie's foot. "Only
 
 246 The Next Corner 
 
 say that, senora! Oh, say it, for the love of God, or I 
 shall die ! I shall die here this minute without a priest 
 if I cannot go !" 
 
 "You can't go !" Miss Maury interposed in her close- 
 lipped voice and painfully distinct Spanish. "I have told 
 you so." 
 
 "Don't listen to her!" Candida shrieked and pressed 
 rapid kisses on the slipper's buckle. ''She has no heart! 
 She is made of stone, that one ! She is an old maid !" 
 
 Selena drew her breath through her -"ose with a hissing 
 sound and squared her shoulders. "You have heard me 
 insulted," she said, and fixed a waiting look on Elsie. 
 
 "Get up, Candida. You must ask Sefiorita Maury's 
 pardon for what you have said." 
 
 "I will ! I will ! Forgive me, senorita!" She swung 
 about, tried to embrace Selena's knees and, after getting 
 a futile kick, swung back to pray again to Elsie's foot. 
 "But only say that I can go to the festa to-night with 
 Domingo ! Only say it !" 
 
 "Yes, you may go," Elsie said with almost a sorrowful 
 kindness. 
 
 Selena's mouth opened with a snap. It stayed open. She 
 grew ghastly, and during the time that Candida laughed 
 and cried and called down blessings from heaven on her 
 senora while hurrying to the corner to change to workday 
 clothes, she remained looking at Elsie with an icy rage 
 that had an enduring quality. 
 
 "You mean what you said to her?" she demanded at 
 last, not above a breath. 
 
 "Yes, I mean it !" 
 
 "After you heard me tell her she could not go?" 
 
 "Even after that." 
 
 "Are you not going to punish her?" Her eyes with 
 some envenomed meaning remained fixed on Elsie's face 
 that seemed as quiet as it was deadly pale. 
 
 Inwardly she was far from quiet. Unrest, whose root 
 was in her own sense of guilt, made her draw back from 
 those cold eyes that seemed reading the secrets of her heart
 
 The Next Corner 247 
 
 across the gulf between them. With this the throb of wil- 
 fulness natural to her could not be kept down and broke 
 into words. 
 
 "I think she has been punished enough. You frightened 
 her almost to death at the thought of losing her night's 
 dancing. She's young. She's full of the love of life, the 
 desire to be happy. Unlike you, I don't believe she means 
 any harm. You merely saw a dress rehearsal of her idea 
 of gorgeousness. As for using that cosmetic stuff of 
 mine? Well, of course, she made herself utterly absurd 
 poor Candida ! In the first place nature has made 
 her almost too vivid and she did not need it; besides, she 
 used too much !" 
 
 "So that's the way you look at it." The grim meaning 
 of her look intensified. "You don't denounce her for 
 this gross exhibition, for making herself look like well, 
 like something I won't even name. You'll find the word 
 in the Old Testament !" she flung out. 
 
 "I'm not as well acquainted with the Bible as you are, 
 Selena," Elsie answered, and managed a smile. "But 
 isn't the New Testament kinder? Isn't there something 
 very beautiful about charity and not judging?" 
 
 Candida had placed the borrowed clothes, folded, on 
 the bed, and called out, while wildly flickering her dark, 
 fine fingers: "Gracias, senora! Ah, gracias, gracias," 
 as she made an emotional exit. 
 
 A silence followed. It seemed to Elsie to hold the 
 menace of poised vitriol. Her nerves grew rigid in a 
 way that called for some sort of violence as relief. It 
 would have soothed her to have taken Selena by the 
 shoulders and thrust her from the room. She stifled 
 this feeling under her still seeming calm, took off her hat, 
 and unfastened her gown. 
 
 "No time now to rest before dinner," she said, sitting 
 before the mirror while drawing the pins from her hair. 
 "Robert'll be along very soon. He said he'd surely get here 
 to-night, and it's almost seven. Hadn't you better get 
 ready?"
 
 248 The Next Corner 
 
 Selena presented a strange picture. She remained very 
 stiff in the center of the bedroom, her dry mouth working 
 in the fumbling way of the old when excited. Some imp 
 seemed possessing her, urging her to speak while she 
 struggled to be wise and resist. 
 
 Elsie's bare shoulders and arms, over which the wheat- 
 colored hair had come glistening down, decided her. To 
 half-undress before her like that ! It was something 
 she would never, even if ill, have thought of doing her- 
 self ! It was of a part with the sort of underwear that 
 was disclosed, scarcely more than gauze ; of a part 
 with the paints and powders in that French box; of the 
 sinful and passionate account in the newspaper months 
 ago, and that she was sure had not been shown to 
 Robert; a part too of Candida's shamelessness and this 
 young woman's easy and cynical amusement at it ! Her 
 prejudices boiled to white heat and a sour froth. Silence 
 became impossible. 
 
 "I have a few words to say to you before I go," shot 
 breathlessly from her. Her voice, though tense and 
 clipped, was far-carrying. 
 
 "Yes?" and Elsie began combing her hair. She ex- 
 pected some questions or information about household 
 affairs, and from the tone something of a fault-finding 
 nature. 
 
 "You may as well know what I honestly think of the 
 whole situation in this house," were Selena's first surpris- 
 ing words. "That girl was able to gratify her evil in- 
 stincts through you. Here in your room she found all 
 that she needed in that disgusting French box oh, I 
 looked at the name on it ! Besides, one glance would show 
 that it could only have come out of Paris. It's easy to see, 
 too, that the contents were often used before often ! 
 So it's no wonder you'd laugh at her and send her away 
 rejoicing in her vicious inclinations. Why not? Why 
 should I expect you to do anything else? Except that 
 in her silly masquerade she was a caricature, I'm sure she 
 was much what you were in Paris," she sneered slowly.
 
 The Next Corner 249 
 
 "If one could only know all the truth of that time it 
 would be interesting, I've no doubt though hardly im- 
 proving." 
 
 Elsie's hand with the comb had dropped, her attention 
 changing to a stare of dumb bewilderment at Selena. The 
 attack, unbelievably daring, had so startled her she felt 
 as if a metallic clang had struck upon her brain, for a 
 moment paralyzing it. 
 
 "You must remember that / have been in Paris. Only 
 once and that was enough. One glimpse of the night 
 life there sent Mrs. Hoskins and me flying from it in 
 disgust. But I know the place, you see. I also know the 
 meaning of your cosmetics, for I caught sight of a flash- 
 light photograph among your things a crowd of mas- 
 queraders, you among them in a rag of black gauze above 
 your ankles, your face all made up with that mess and 
 a lot of black patches. You never use the stuff now 
 too cautious? And what of that newspaper clipping 
 you got in February? You left it behind you in the 
 patio, and I glanced at it. Your mother sent it and 
 a nice account!" Her pause here was expressive before 
 she added with edged slowness: "Was the society woman 
 mentioned in it a friend? Oh, I know you don't 
 think me worth your attention," she continued compla- 
 cently, " think me old and dull ! But you're mistaken. 
 I can put two and two together as quickly as you can! 
 I've watched your inspection of every letter that comes 
 to this house and ahead of any one else!" Spurred to 
 more vigor by the dazed guilt Elsie could not keep out 
 of her face, she became coarse under her attenuated re- 
 finement. "I've seen my poor brother fooled by you while 
 all the time he's of no value to you except as a check 
 book ! But let me tell you that even without these facts 
 I'd see through you by instinct! There are things that 
 good women feel. There are things that the wrong sort 
 of women can't hide from them. After your treatment 
 of me here to-day before that horrible girl, I made up my 
 mind to let you know just what I think. But I've no
 
 250 The Next Corner 
 
 fear that you'll dare to complain of me to my brother 
 you'd be afraid that he " 
 
 The door to the hall came inward sharply and Robert 
 stood there. He remained in the opening, his hand 
 pressed down on the knob. A sick, white look to his face 
 showed as grayness through its brown; his eyes were as 
 sad as they were stern; yet they were stern in a way to 
 inspire fear, the pupils so spread there was almost no 
 ring of blue around them. 
 
 After the briefest glance, all sorrow and an angry sort 
 of tenderness at Elsie, he spoke to his sister, whose head 
 had jolted up in defiance, though her look was as fright- 
 ened as that of a horse balking at a precipice. 
 
 "I heard some of what you said, Selena not much 
 but enough!" He pushed the door wider. "I want to 
 speak to you."
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 "WELL speak !" Selena cried, trembling. 
 
 "Outside," said Robert, and added bitterly, "where you 
 belong." 
 
 He did not look again at Elsie, who had turned away, 
 her elbows on the toilet table, her hair cloaking her 
 shoulders. As Selena still fluttered obstinately without 
 moving from where she stood, he came to her and in a 
 quietly authoritative way that counted out discussion, 
 led her by the arm until close to the threshold. There 
 she shook herself free. 
 
 "Don't imagine I'll stay in this house another hour 
 not one !" she said to him in a storm of cold rage. 
 
 "Excellent." Robert ran this in, an approving com- 
 ment, a likeness in it to the thud of a rubber stamp affixing 
 a signature. 
 
 "I can see just what you'll do and say just the sort 
 of fool you'll continue to be ! There's a boat for the 
 States on Wednesday. The Suttons are going on it. 
 I'll get to Valencia to-night. I'll stay at a hotel and take 
 the morning train to Caracas and join the Suttons there. 
 As fast as I can throw my things into a trunk I'll go. 
 Someone's got to drive me to Valencia in half an hour. 
 Nothing will induce me to spend another night in this 
 house !" 
 
 "Your decision couldn't be improved on, and I'll drive 
 you in, myself," Robert said in a new and peaceful tone. 
 "I'll see you made comfortable there. I'll see, too, that 
 you are comfortable as long as you live. But not in my 
 house. Never with me again! What else I have to say 
 to you won't be said here." 
 
 Elsie heard the door close. She remained just as she 
 
 251
 
 252 The Next Corner 
 
 was, gazing in a dull way into the glass. All of her 
 quivered in restrained excitement after the whole disrupt- 
 ing scene from which two things separated, grew sharp- 
 ened Robert's weary yet flashing face with almost an 
 anguish of protectiveness in his one look toward her, and 
 two phrases of Selena's that had a lash's sting: "There 
 are things that good women feel. There are things that 
 the wrong sort of woman can't hide from them." 
 
 Was this true? In dreary desperation she studied her 
 face. Often she had felt it strange that no mark of the 
 heart-shaking passion and grief suffered at El Miradero 
 had fixed itself outwardly upon her, that she should have 
 remained so ingenuously fair. She had been wrong? 
 That she was a woman who had, in effect, become a man's 
 mistress and as a result had quickly known horror, terror, 
 the brackish taste of brutal disrespect, the present sense 
 of day by day deceit were all there, somewhere? in 
 some faint, betraying mark, like the covert speck of blight 
 in a fair fruit? 
 
 Deep sadness went over her. Without moving, in a 
 trance of heaviness, her thoughts began a requiem for all 
 her failings, for her ill fortune and for loss. If, long 
 ago, she had insisted on going to Burmah with Robert ! 
 If she had never spun in the Paris danse macabre. Or, 
 going there, had held fast to gravity, strength ; 
 had struggled harder against Arturo's seductive power, 
 killed her infatuation for him at the beginning ! If she 
 had but gone to England with Robert that night in June ! 
 If she had parted from Serafin in time had not gone 
 up the mountain with him ! If her eyes had never rested 
 on El Miradero ! If she could go back and be no more 
 committed to the wrong than was the foolish mondame 
 who had alighted at Bilbao packed full of good intentions, 
 with no memory now of one black and galling night to 
 bruise her and no record of her madness there, written 
 by herself and floating somewhere in the world, to fear! 
 
 Still motionless, her thoughts slipped to an earlier block 
 of her life and she saw herself as a very young mother in
 
 The Next Corner 253 
 
 grief over an adored child who would never speak to her 
 again. That pain had not died. The pang of loss where 
 there has been deep love cannot die. Years pass above 
 it only as snow falls on a garden, cloaking its form but 
 with the living seed underneath, 'so that memories doing 
 the work of the warm spring rains will bring the flower 
 of pain magically to life over and over. 
 
 With this thought the cry that had silently crept 
 through her in the bedroom at El Miradero, before be- 
 ginning her letter, rose with unbearable sadness within 
 Elsie Ah, had her darling lived ! . . . And on this an- 
 other longing pressed Ah, had she then loved Robert 
 as she knew, to-night, that she had surely come to love 
 him! 
 
 Her head sank lower, her eyes closed, she felt half- 
 swooning in regret. And then, far down in the blackness 
 back of her shut eyelids into which her knuckles were dug 
 with unconscious force, there floated before her sight the 
 face of another little child with much of the irresistible 
 beauty of the one she had lost. From a vast distance it 
 glimmered, ghostlike came nearer smiled at her a 
 faint smile at first that changed slowly to a very wistful 
 appeal for welcome. "Don't you want me?" the look said. 
 "Wouldn't I comfort you? Wouldn't you love me?". . . 
 
 Elsie's breath broke. She kept yearning watch upon 
 the small wide-eyed face, so like a blossom and a star. 
 When it would drift from her, almost sink back into the 
 shadows from which it had stolen, her will recalled it, 
 held it before her with tenacity and adoration. She 
 shivered, her heart seemed breaking, her throat was thick 
 with pain. She was in the throe of the most ancient ache 
 of woman since the beginning of the world. Ah, here was 
 her need ! This, and this alone, could make true happi- 
 ness for her. She was that sort of woman needing love 
 and loving motherhood. The little cajoling face, with 
 shy eyes and a mouth like an opening bud, made her know 
 this now. Now! In the confusion of her life, in the 
 turmoil of regrets, and the dread.
 
 254 The Next Corner 
 
 A clicking sound, with subservience in it, pierced the 
 deep stillness. Elsie recognized it as the tapping of Can- 
 dida's long nails on the stained glass of the door into the 
 hall. At a call to enter, she came bearing a letter. 
 
 A very different Candida this, from the one that had 
 brought judgment clattering on her head. Her drenched 
 and plastered hair, sleek as a skullcap, was dragged so 
 tightly into a door-knob knot, the strain must have 
 hurt her face; her skin glistened like brown earthenware 
 from a harsh scrubbing with soap ; her gown was her 
 plainest butcher-blue nankeen. With these notes she had 
 taken on the mild stare of a cow and the deference of an 
 undertaker. She was, in fact, so unnaturally sedate, 
 counterfeit was written upon her from crown to toe. 
 
 After Elsie gave a look at the letter that showed her 
 Robert's writing, her attention came back to Candida. 
 Her thoughts of the regrettable in her own life had 
 softened and enriched her sympathy for the young girl 
 who, in her elemental way, was struggling in the grasp 
 of the furies that make for discontent in women and plan 
 their mistakes. 
 
 "Wait a moment, Candida, I want to ask you some- 
 thing," she said with great kindness, looking seriously into 
 the black eyes that sprang suddenly wide with an inquiry 
 in which there was fear. "Miss Maury says that you are 
 not a good girl. Tell me the truth. Are you?" 
 
 Candida tried to speak, choked, and after a silence her 
 face gave a twist of misery. 
 
 "Is Domingo a good man? Does he want to marry 
 you?" Elsie's labored Spanish gave the words peculiar 
 impressiveness. "Is it marriage for you, Candida?" 
 
 "He says so, senora. And oh I am good !" She 
 grew suddenly wild, flung both arms across her eyes and 
 rocked as if to solemn music. "I am stitt good ! 
 But Domingo tries to make me not care to stay good." 
 Her arms dropped. A distraught look had come to her 
 eyes. "He says we are fools to waste our lives without 
 love, I know he will say that again at the festa to-night.
 
 The Next Corner 255 
 
 Oh, it is so long to wait to marry ! One gets old so soon ! 
 Why, look I am almost twenty !" 
 
 Elsie lifted one of the beautiful citron-colored hands, 
 icy cold in the fingers, the palm burning and held it in 
 a friend's way. 
 
 "Why can't you marry if he is good wants you 
 for his wife?" 
 
 "He has no money now, senora." 
 
 "He has his wages and you have yours. You could 
 both still live here, together. Wouldn't this be enough 
 for a beginning?" 
 
 "Ah, no, senora," Candida said sadly, torso, head, lips 
 and brows all fluttering in a negation that had a breeze's 
 sweep. "You see he had saved two thousand pesetas 
 but he had to send it all to his sister in Bolivia. His old 
 mother and father live with her, and they were very sick. 
 As for me, to work here after I marry how could that 
 be? How could I wait upon you, senora, when I would 
 be having a baby? You would not want me that way !" 
 
 Elsie smiled at the barbarous simplicitj^ of the words. 
 "That might not happen at once" 
 
 "Oh, yes, it would ! Si! Si! My mother very quickly 
 she had sixteen," Candida sighed, nodding briskly. 
 
 "Very well. Now listen to me." Elsie patted her hand 
 and in her slow Spanish spoke earnestly, as if to a child. 
 "Domingo will marry you without delay, and I will get 
 another maid when it is necessary. To-morrow the senor 
 will give him the two thousand pesetas. I will ask him 
 to do this. Then there will be no more unhappiness for 
 you. What do you say, Candida?" 
 
 It would be impossible to translate what Candida said. 
 In a whirl of broken cries she dropped to her knees and, 
 as before, laid her cheek on Elsie's slipper. 
 
 "Don't talk to my foot !" Elsie smiled and gave a little 
 push to the prostrate shoulder. "Come, come! Look at 
 me, my dear." 
 
 "Madre mia!" Candida, in an ecstacy of tears, was 
 now risen to her knees and addressing the raftered ceiling.
 
 256 The Next Corner 
 
 "Ah, mlra! See ! see an angel is standing here who 
 turns all poor Candida's sorrow to joy! Ah, mira! 
 so beautiful, so excellent, so wonderful, so perfect, so " 
 
 "That's enough, Candida," Elsie laughed. "Now stand 
 up." And as she did so, breathless, shining, still mutter- 
 ing enthusiasms, her young mistress gazed into her eyes 
 with a sadness that enveloped her, made a deep quiet 
 fill her. "I will do this for you. What will you do for 
 me?" 
 
 "Anything, senora! Whatever the senora wants is 
 hers !" 
 
 "Bueno! Here, then is what I want that, for me, 
 you give up the festa, that you do not go to the dance 
 in the woods with Domingo to-night." 
 
 For a few seconds Candida was sheer blankness, her 
 look almost idiotic from disappointment. 
 
 "Domingo must go," said Elsie, "but alone. You will 
 be at home with me safe ! Do you understand, my 
 dear?" 
 
 Candida lifted her brows. One index finger shot to 
 her lips, remained pressed there, conveying caution. She 
 suddenly twinkled into a smile of the most hardened guile. 
 "Yes, I understand. He to go and be sorry so he could 
 die! that I am not there with him. And I to be happy 
 here, alone since marriage is so near. Ah ! how wise 
 my young senora is And may I tell him now?" 
 
 "In a moment. Wait outside the door while I read my 
 letter. There may be an answer." 
 
 "But the senor has gone," Candida cried. 
 
 "Gone!" Elsie said this in her thoughts. 
 
 "Yes, he was a long time in his room, then brought out 
 the letter, then took Senorita Maury and her trunks off 
 in the big car. He drove it himself." 
 
 Elsie waited until the girl, with a rocking sort of rap- 
 ture, had hurried away, before she opened the envelope: 
 
 "My dear Elsie I don't want to see you until I've 
 seen the last of Selena. I can't explain her atrocious
 
 The Next Corner 257 
 
 conduct except as a sort of insanity that sometimes 
 attacks the old. People grow old in many ways, but there 
 are two that stand out prominently, I've often noticed. 
 They grow tender and dim like sweet lavender, long 
 faded, as it steals from an old-time trunk; or they grow 
 rank and bitter like wine that changes to vinegar, and this 
 generally when they have kept themselves separate from 
 the things that make living a real and unselfish thing, 
 as Selena has. She is the result of a stonily detached 
 life one without a high heartbeat or a missed beat 
 centralized in a dry, bleached way. So make what al- 
 lowances you can for her. 
 
 "I shall take her away without having you go through 
 the formality of leave-taking with her. In your kind- 
 ness probably you would want this. I do not. She does 
 not deserve it. 
 
 "I'll stay with her until she is satisfactorily settled for 
 the night, and I won't be back till late. Please forget 
 as soon as you can, her hideous and outrageous insults. 
 Eat your dinner, rest, try to sleep. I will see you in the 
 morning when we will not speak of this thing at all. Let 
 us never speak of it ! You know all that I feel and must 
 not say. 
 
 "As always, yours ROBERT." 
 
 The pages fluttered to Elsie's knees. She sat very still, 
 turned sideways in the chair, her elbow on top of it. Out 
 of all the words that set forth Robert's allegiance to her, 
 she was intensely conscious of one short phrase: "She 
 does not deserve it." Ah, there was the judgment that 
 was in him under all his generosity ! She saw it as a steel 
 bar, hidden under a cloak of kind leaves, even of flowers. 
 
 Following the consciousness of the words, others came 
 out of herself thin, apprehensive, sick and joined 
 them, trailing after them : "He will meet Domingo on the 
 road, coming back with the evening mail with the 
 foreign letters. He will stop and take his own. He will 
 take his own !" .
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 IT was nearly eleven when Robert said good-by to 
 Selena. During the time spent together Elsie's name 
 had not been mentioned between them, though thought of 
 her was very present back of their new formality 
 and during the businesslike arrangement of Selena's future 
 and income. She refused to eat and he dined alone in 
 the public room of the hotel, taking her afterward to 
 talk to relatives of the people she was to join in Caracas 
 the next day, and even waiting there until she was ready to 
 leave, so that he might return with her to see her 
 comfortably settled for the night. 
 
 "I hope that when we meet, Selena, time will have 
 softened what is so cruel in you now," were Robert's last 
 words as, after the parting, he gave a fling to his sharply 
 level shoulders and turned again to gaze earnestly and 
 kindly at her. 
 
 "I don't want to be softened!" Selena rapped back 
 with fierce coldness, her drawn-in body looking more than 
 usually bony. "And I guess time is about through with 
 me. It won't bother trying any more hemstitching or 
 embroidery on me. The pattern I am I stay. You 
 don't like it. Well, you needn't. I do! Good-by." 
 
 As he drove back in the radiance of big stars that 
 showed the land in velvet-black outlines, and the moun- 
 tains ahead of him as wraiths of snow in jagged drifts, 
 he felt relief that the chapter with Selena was closed; 
 that in the home he was nearing no one waited for him 
 but a woman infinitely dear. 
 
 The night was hot and dry. Small winds made by 
 the motion of the car beat upon his face with the effect 
 of a child's blows given in play ; they were rich in perfume, 
 
 258
 
 The Next Corner 259 
 
 mostly the luring mixture of the rose's sweetness with 
 the carnation's spice. Music swept to him in cross 
 currents along his way, Spanish music that is metrical 
 love. 
 
 These impressions of warmth, fragrance and melody 
 crept through his senses, fretted them to rebellious pain, 
 while lulling them to the exquisite sort of helplessness 
 that the sick can know even when conscious of losing blood 
 that takes life with it. Glad to be returning to Elsie, his 
 thoughts of her had roots in sadness. 
 
 Selena's continued suspicions of her interest in another 
 man he dwelt upon with the ironic smile of the analyst who 
 knows the core of a subject that superficial observers 
 take at some chance value. Even so, while he dismissed 
 this possibilty, his fancy knew a crushing feeling, the 
 drag-down of jealousy, its humbling sickness. 
 
 Another man in his wife's life? A lover, waiting 
 somewhere? He let himself consider this, and the answer 
 was swift. No, no ! Elsie was not false. While he felt 
 that her years in Paris a heady drink for her ignorance 
 had damaged her transiently in taste and in point of 
 view, he did not believe they had corrupted her. She 
 had been born candid to bluntness, a certain volatile 
 wilfulness natural to her when she was happy, but always 
 open; no duplicity in her. If what he felt underlay 
 Selena's insinuations were true, she would have told him 
 so straightly at their meeting in New York. She could 
 not have been persuaded to come back to him even in a half 
 sense. Nor would he have wanted this. 
 
 Certain of her honesty, his mind swung back to the 
 questions that went with him day by day: Why had she 
 changed to him so completely? Why had the years apart 
 taken from her all need of him except as a friend for an 
 occasional hour? By degrees he believed he read the an- 
 swer: It could only be that from the beginning she had 
 given him no more than a child's fondness mixed with grati- 
 tude for his wanting her since she had suffered for so long 
 as an encumbrance in her mother's life. Yes, there lay the
 
 260 The Next Corner 
 
 answer to the failure he faced now; she had never loved 
 him ; he had not made her love him. 
 
 For a long time knowledge of a change in himself had 
 been deepening. He was piercingly conscious of it to- 
 night. Selena had been a special illumination; she had 
 poured light into the corners of his soul. That day, as 
 they stood at issue in Elsie's doorway, there had been, 
 faintly, in the intolerance and austerity of her older face 
 with eyes the color of his own, just enough of the mystery 
 of family likeness to startle him. In it he had seen him- 
 self. At the thought his face flushed ; he flinched, hating 
 it, while in his unsparing way he continued to face it. It 
 was true. The prudery that had made of Selena a 
 warped celibate had likeness to a certain precisianism and 
 asceticism in himself that in earlier years had mastered 
 him; had made him know almost a sensuous joy in the 
 pain he had to endure to acquire a perfection of self- 
 control. 
 
 He scrutinized this strata of character as he would a 
 vein in a mine, searching for its source. Looking far 
 back, he saw it emanate from the first Christians who in 
 the frenzy of conversion had labelled all sex feeling weak- 
 ness of the flesh, even sin; saw it pass on to the stern, 
 self-punishing Puritans a strong strain of whose blood 
 was in him people self-mesmerized into an hypocrisy 
 that had made life as ugly as a stone. 
 
 When bone-paring economy had enabled him to go 
 through college, it was with aloofness to the subjects that 
 he studied the classics. He had despised the suave and 
 tolerant philosophers, had steeled himself against the 
 whole pagan cult that had made human love and the 
 beauty of the human body natural blessings of which to 
 be joyously unashamed, the very sun being called to wit- 
 ness the wonder. 
 
 And he remembered how this fixed strength had re- 
 mained with him when college was past and his hard 
 struggle toward success was begun, doing good in keep- 
 ing his life pure, doing harm in taking the red corpuscles
 
 The Next Corner 261 
 
 from imagination, limiting its color wholly to the gray 
 of self-denial. 
 
 After his marriage there had been no marked change. 
 He had loved Elsie in a big way with his lucid and kinclly 
 mind; affection for her was as natural to his heart as to 
 a child's ; but in the house of his spirit, passion had been 
 a visitor on sufferance who had sidled in with an apolo- 
 getic air, willing to hide on back stairs and in secret 
 closets, to wait for moments when it would be permitted 
 to break from obscurity and restraint, fling open doors 
 and declare itself owner; and always after this brief as- 
 sertion of power still with its apologizing smirk 
 again be shut away. 
 
 He was different now, because he was older, and the 
 years in sevens, like a series of waves had brought 
 new flotsam to character. He had quickened from in- 
 forming experiences in strange, remote lands. And with 
 substantial success, his senses, taking on softness and 
 color, had become assertive. For a long time now the 
 purism that had ordered repression of his physical side, 
 while giving wrong names to the simple and natural forces 
 of life, had disintegrated, and so thoroughly that he had 
 often laughed at that other Robert Maury as a sancti- 
 monious precieux. He did not laugh to-night, not 
 when, with hopelessness, he remembered that the man he 
 used to be was the one Elsie had known as a husband and 
 from whom her heart had easily slipped away, very likely 
 forever. A sad fever filled him. 
 
 In the shadow of the gates of his home a servant was 
 lounging, waiting to take charge of the car. Robert en- 
 tered silently. It was close to midnight, and he felt sure 
 that Elsie would be asleep. The glass of her door was 
 dark. Only a lantern, hanging from the high ceiling, 
 burned in the center of the hall, its light through stained 
 slides seeming a crimson star in mid-air. The place was 
 so solemnly still he could hear a clock ticking in the heart 
 of the house. 
 
 He drew off his driving coat and the cap that was
 
 262 The Next Corner 
 
 pulled over his eyes, passed Elsie's room with careful 
 quiet, and going through the arch crossed the starlit 
 patio to where the chairs were grouped. It was silent 
 there, too, with nothing heard but the fountain's chime, 
 and the impulse to smoke for a while in the freshness be- 
 fore turning in became stronger. He would dismiss the 
 thoughts that had been tormenting him to no hopeful end 
 and consider in detail a situation at the mine that must 
 quickly be brought to a conclusion, one way or the other. 
 
 Olazaba, the Venezuelan, and the native landowners 
 back of him had refused to abide by his refusal of their 
 proposition, and after more than a month's silence had 
 begun again with what seemed an accumulation of fresh, 
 sound facts, to try to convince him of the value of their 
 desire to amalgamate with him. They had impressed him, 
 and yet to-night, with enthusiasm fading, the inclination 
 to agree was retreating from him. 
 
 What, after all, did he positively know of Olazaba or 
 his backers? And what of this instinct that, when he 
 seemed near a decision to present their proposal to his 
 New York principals, made him shy from the ultimate 
 step? While the Venezuelans talked, the thing would 
 seem plausible and right. As soon as he was alone he 
 could not keep from seeing, as a sort of persistent vision, 
 the huge blocks of the old stock in their dead half of the 
 mine that, after the fusion with him had gone quietly 
 through, they would buy back from the many small and 
 hopeless holders of it at what would seem a good price, 
 though in reality when the market value was published 
 a very poor one. His far-seeing, shadowless, Scotch 
 mind could not escape the picture of his company com- 
 mitted to the enormous expense of tunnelling through the 
 mountain while the listed stock rose steadily in value, and 
 then just before the failure of the undertaking became 
 public if failure came all these men, with the per- 
 suasive Olazaba well in the foreground, unloading their 
 worthless holdings at the top price; a thing which his 
 people's money and their high repute had made possible.
 
 The Next Corner 263 
 
 Moreover, when he was away from Olazaba with his 
 almost perfect English, he felt distrust of him, though 
 mixed with an inclination to resist the feeling. The man's 
 personality was the most puzzling he had ever met ; it 
 drew one to belief with a tidelike suction, flung one back 
 from it as if on the next incoming wave. Robert received 
 from association with him a restful sort of fascination on 
 which would trail an amused questioning as to just what 
 price Olazaba could be made to quote to sell his dearest 
 friend? When the man would declare, on the many 
 highly colored oaths that a Spaniard can pour out with 
 staggering richness and naivete, that he did not, himself, 
 own one peseta's worth of the earlier stock, that he was 
 merely spokesman for those who had much of it, Robert 
 did not believe him at all, knew from one or two items 
 of information that had come his way, that Olazaba had 
 been crippled by the collapse of the old mine. 
 
 Nevertheless, childish liar though the man was about 
 his own affairs, what he advocated for the New York com- 
 pany might be the giant's league boots to great fortune, 
 and if it were 
 
 The thought broke. The match that he had struck 
 dropped from Robert's fingers. His eyes were used now 
 to the soft yet clear light from the stars, hanging low in 
 the southern sky like heavenly lanterns, and they rested 
 upon Elsie. She was lying there in one of the long chairs. 
 She was wrapped to the chin, like a big papoose, in a 
 velvet motor rug and fast asleep in the starry night. 
 
 This coming to the patio had been the result of a mood 
 with her. After hearing from Domingo that the foreign 
 mail would not arrive until the morning, her mind had 
 been relieved. Nevertheless, as she made ready for bed, 
 the silence of the house, accented by distant chatter from 
 the servants' quarters, had produced a petrifying feeling 
 of loneliness; much like the dissociation she had felt as 
 a child in the crowded New York hotels when, after Aunt 
 Esther had left her with admonitions to go to sleep in- 
 stantly, she had lain with tight little fists and eyes rigidly
 
 264 The Next Corner 
 
 open upon the darkness, listening to the many sorts of 
 life that whispered and rustled past her door. 
 
 She had looked at the huge foreign bed under the pa- 
 goda-like netting and had seen it as a rock on which she 
 would be sure to toss, her brain more alive than in the 
 daytime. In contrast to this, the air that came in at the 
 window when she rested her cheek against the iron bars 
 was as cool, friendly fingers on her face, cajoling her to 
 come out. And the fountain's tinkling splash had called 
 to her. 
 
 She had obeyed. Over one of the inconsiderable gowns 
 on which Selena's disapproval had fallen, she had put a 
 coat-shaped garment of a silken Eastern fibre, an iri- 
 descent lilac in color, had snatched up the velvet rug from 
 a chair in the hall and with a pair of mules on, had gone 
 to find peace under the sky. 
 
 Robert moved but a few cautious steps to stand beside 
 her where he could see her face plainly. It was turned 
 only slightly sideways and glimmered up at him, an oval 
 of ivory, yet with a living glow about it as she slept there 
 in the blue bloom of the night. Something that hurt him 
 spoke wistfully from it, the Madonna clearness of the 
 brow with the pale, plaited hair falling away with gravity 
 and simplicity on each side; the full lids exactly like lus- 
 trous white tulip leaves laid upon her sight; a patience, 
 rightfully belonging to an older face, that showed in the 
 droop of the lips. She made him remember a picture of 
 the dead Elaine in her barge, going "upward with the 
 flood." He yearned over her. 
 
 And as with folded arms he remained there so close to 
 her, he was acutely conscious of how far away he was in 
 all that meant living. The two agonies of passion and 
 renunciation filled him, their flavors of lost happiness, 
 self-disgust at failure. His eyes closed heavily.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THOUGH only a moment, it seemed to Robert a long 
 time that he stood so. When he looked at Elsie again he 
 saw that she had awakened. 
 
 She was lying in strained stillness, watching him. Some 
 direct meaning in her unmoving gaze was like the heat of 
 the sun, a pulling power in it. He could not stir or 
 speak. A look of suffering stole into his face as he re- 
 mained entranced, the muscles of his folded arms con- 
 trolled to the rigor of iron. Through the increasing pain 
 he was sure of his strength. 
 
 And then, quick on the wake of this confidence, he 
 found himself on his knees beside her. 
 
 "Elsie!" The one word told all, desperation and tor- 
 ture in it. He drew the velvet rug sharply from her 
 lowered chin, pulled it down far, and on the long splash 
 of her throat pressed his burning face. "Are you 
 angry?" He asked this over and over, trembling. "Do 
 you send me away? Must I go away?" he implored, his 
 voice so husky she could scarcely hear him. 
 
 When her answer came it was an impact upon sensa- 
 tion. A suggestion of the ineffable in her yearning move- 
 ment, she turned fully to him. Her face was sultry, con- 
 vulsed. Her arms went about his head, wrapping him as 
 if sheltering him from some hurt that threatened, and in 
 a blaze she gave her lips generously to him, clung to him 
 with them, breathless, relaxed. 
 
 The delight of the deep kiss was anguish to Robert, 
 while it remade the world. A lambent rapture swept over 
 him unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was al- 
 most a moment before he could speak. When he did, and 
 faintly, the words came with conviction through wonder 
 
 265
 
 266 The Next Corner 
 
 and distraught joy: "You love me! Elsie, you love me! 
 Oh, you love me !" 
 
 She drew away. Her parted lips had a look of thirst, 
 and he knew they were burning ; yet in her eyes, through 
 the radiance, there was a sorrow that confused him, 
 heavy sorrow, much like what he had watched there years 
 before when, grieving for the child, she had sat apart, 
 tearless and tragic in a loneliness that a million clamoring 
 to engage her could not have filled. Her reply, given 
 slowly, matched this dark memory, full of some meaning 
 he could not grasp. 
 
 "I love you so much my heart is breaking." And with 
 this clear, straight statement, she sank down, turned her 
 face from him. "Go away," he heard her whisper. "Go, 
 please." 
 
 "Go?" he mocked. He even laughed. His arms went 
 avidly around her body, her smoothness and slenderness 
 thrilling every nerve. "Look at me!" he commanded. 
 She did and met his ravenous lips that went over every 
 little bit of her face, while frayed whispers came, 
 nothing too wild nor too violent to say ; nor too pleading, 
 too abject, too foolish. 
 
 Filled with a weakening joy, Elsie lay against him, 
 tasting in that strange, mixed moment a strong draught 
 of life. Deep, sweet love was there, and delight that ran 
 high, and regret profoundly black curdling it. 
 
 Her mind had a vision apart from the real, magical 
 though it was. She knew that the time had come when 
 choice must be made, confession or a final silence. And 
 through this grinding realization she retained the ap- 
 pearance of love, of surrender. 
 
 "I believe now," she heard Robert say in a tone of in- 
 tolerable delight, "that you have loved me all the time - 
 all the time, my sweet, and did not know it yourself. Oh, 
 you are just the same Elsie that I have loved from the 
 beginning, with a wild heart in you that I never knew of 
 till to-night mad, sweet, passionate, wonderful darling ! 
 Oh, why did you leave me so long alone? How I have
 
 The Next Corner 267 
 
 missed you! I have been so wretched! To-night, driv- 
 ing home, I knew all that a homesick exile suffers. And 
 more than this my fancies carried me into hell in 
 imagining that I might have to lose you, sooner or later, 
 to some man that you'd love. I was jealous but that 
 word tells nothing ! I didn't know there could be such 
 a killing pain on earth as what I felt for a while as I 
 drove home. And now? You love me. You do. Oh, 
 you love me!" 
 
 There was something uncanny, almost dreadful to her 
 in the fact that as Robert caressed her, drunk with her, 
 and while with lips and eyes and the touches of her 
 small, alluring hands she responded to him, there were 
 equally clear to her mind such grimly dissimilar pictures 
 and the questions they created. 
 
 Could she not by this time count herself free from 
 danger? The letter had not come, and every day that 
 would pass without bringing it days in which now as 
 independent mistress of her home she could watch for it 
 at her ease would be as another stone laid upon the 
 house of security. This suspense over, what else had 
 she to fear? 
 
 The published account of Arturo's death had been and 
 gone without reaching Robert's eyes; as a newspaper 
 sensation it had had its turn, to be swamped by fresher 
 happenings, and most surely by the tragedies of the war. 
 
 No one of her Paris friends except Paula Vrain knew 
 that she had been the only guest at El Miradero that 
 night ; and doubtless Arturo's death had softened her 
 enough to keep her tongue from gossip of the dupe on 
 whom her trap had closed more cruelly than she had 
 meant, for bad as she was and she was a thoroughly 
 bad woman in being a malicious one she had, in her 
 way, loved Arturo. 
 
 There was left Serafin, the, servant, who hated her. 
 She hardened herself to view him from every point as a 
 possible danger. He was her enemy, a lasting one, 
 implacable, but he was distant, in Spain or Paris ; in
 
 268 The Next Corner 
 
 all likelihood she would never see him again. Still if 
 from the unlooked-for chance that happens once in a thou- 
 sand times he should cross her path, perhaps in New York, 
 he would feel himself powerless to do her harm. He would 
 not know that Robert had not received the letter, and 
 learning that she was with her husband, he would assume 
 that its confession had not been allowed to end their mar- 
 riage ; so as there would seem to be no chink in her armor 
 through which a knife-thrust from him could pierce, he 
 would be uninterested. No, she need not fear Serafin. 
 
 These thoughts made their revolutions in Elsie's mind 
 during a few seconds. Side by side with Robert's ignor- 
 ance, they made a terrible impression on her imagination. 
 The tremendous, nailed-down solitude and secrecy of the 
 mind! Two to be face to face, even in such moments as 
 was this, and with chasms between them in thought ! He 
 did not dream! If he knew, if he knew! If he could see 
 what was so plain to her ! . . . 
 
 She could endure no more. Her arms closed frantically 
 about Robert, almost a panic in her half -closed eyes. 
 She must hold him. Now that she loved him, she must 
 keep him. There would be things of which she would never 
 speak. He must never know of the night that had been to 
 all other nights of her life as a searing burn on cool and 
 smooth flesh. 
 
 "I will never cause you pain again," she said. "You'll 
 see. I'll live only to make you happy. Only that !" 
 
 "And I will never fail you." 
 
 What followed was wonderful, the mystic in it. Elsie, 
 blanched, except for the agate-black pupils and the 
 bright stain of her mouth, was the ghost of a woman 
 in the starlight, yet one on fire. And Robert, with the 
 accent of confident, enraptured possession in the embrace, 
 drew her up to him, quite over the couch's edge, and 
 clasped her as if they were alone on some small bit of 
 land, one in being, clinging fast to each other for safety 
 against the sea that swirled in great rises and threatened 
 them. Elsie felt exalted in another way that made her
 
 The Next Corner 269 
 
 want to kneel, her heart a welter of humility unim- 
 portant, except as she responded to this conquering 
 emotion. 
 
 It held something greater than their passion and love ; 
 separated from self. It was a mighty force that owned 
 them. It was a call to life to her, to him but far 
 more to those others to come after them. It was not a 
 passive thing, submitted for their choosing or rejection. 
 It was singularly, impressively Nature's ; the omnipotent 
 in it ; both of them as seeds beneath it, to be used and 
 spent at its supreme Will. 
 
 Robert lifted her up as if she were a child. Standing 
 straight, and holding her to him so that her face was 
 against his throat, he studied her with a sacred sort of 
 tenderness. 
 
 "Do you remember, my darling, years ago after 
 Letty died when you were so sick, and you wandered 
 off, and I found you alone in the woods face down on the 
 wet ground, crying your heart out and how I carried 
 you home for more than a mile just this way? Do you 
 remember it?" 
 
 "None of the things of that time are clear to me, 
 Robert only that I seemed alone in a world that 
 frightened me a gray world," she said, the tremble of 
 sad memory in it. She smiled up at him then, and sighed. 
 "You are carrying me home to-night. And I love you now. 
 Oh, I love you now !" 
 
 Held so she glowing weakness resting in his strength 
 Robert, for the first time, went up the gallery steps 
 to his wife's room.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 A SPIRIT of gayety had come to El Iris. For six weeks 
 Elsie had been mistress of the house. The servants re- 
 sponded with delight to her new authority, persuasive 
 and confiding where Miss Maury's had been fear-compel- 
 ling. Quick to see the reunion of master and mistress, 
 they would nudge each other and smile as they watched 
 them meeting and parting with every sign of sympathetic 
 intimacy. More than ever they hated their former ty- 
 rant's memory; came to see her as the evil eye doing the 
 devil's work in keeping apart two beings who really loved. 
 If Miss Maury could have heard the now married Do- 
 mingo and Candida openly discussing her with the other 
 servants in the leisure generously allowed them all, as 
 "the sour old cat", "the bag of bones", and always pic- 
 torially consigning her to a place of flames where she 
 would "eternally fry", she would have collapsed in horror. 
 
 Elsie's morning walks to meet Domingo ceased, and she 
 was easily able to supervise the mails at home, without 
 appearing to do so. The waiting and listening torture 
 was over; the cold pause whenever a door was opened 
 suddenly; the second's icy relief when, leaving her still 
 secure, it would close. While she continued to interpose 
 herself between Robert and the chance of the letter's ar- 
 rival, she no longer actively feared this. 
 
 Often now her murmuring song filled the house; from 
 the big parlor where the spinet was a place kept in 
 deep shadow with jalousies closed the day long against 
 the sun it would steal through the opened doors, across 
 the patio, giving the impression of a sweet-voiced spirit 
 secluded in some twilit garden. 
 
 These were cloudless days. For the first time in her 
 
 270
 
 The Next Corner 271 
 
 life Elsie was truly happy. When her lips were not sing- 
 ing, the hidden choristers in her soul whose music 
 choked all through childhood and made halting in the 
 Paris days from the discords of guilt now rapturously 
 free, sang full-throated. 
 
 As was her way, her passionate heart with its bent 
 toward idealization gave Robert even more of worship 
 than she dared express. The feeling had the magic and 
 blood strength that belong to all high things of the soul 
 as well as many heretofore unvalued, small and individual 
 reasons for loving him for the slouching, straight-shoul- 
 dered ease of his long-limbed body whose grace was curi- 
 ously its own; the northern energy flashing through the 
 brown of his face where the eyes were like the deepest tur- 
 quoises against it; for his gentle yet subduing decisions; 
 his warm, sharply interested smile. 
 
 More than these she loved, as women will, and while it 
 piqued her, the sure knowledge that after the manner of 
 ambitious men of mind, there were times when she had 
 nothing of him; times of every day when she was only a 
 shadow in his life, he all shrewd, absorbed action, con- 
 cerned with calculations in which, except as a distant 
 background, she had no part. 
 
 She accepted this, yet sometimes it brought questions : 
 Had she become indispensable to Robert? Could a woman 
 ever mean such vital need to a man like him so that how- 
 ever she disappointed his belief in her, he would hold to 
 her for her sake let the hunger of the senses impinge 
 upon his code? How far in the white honesty of his 
 nature would she fall if he discovered her lie ever knew 
 that with defiance and recklessness, another man had been 
 her passionate lover for a long time in one sense, and 
 apparently in the final sense? Would this not be decided 
 for him imperiously, by something separate from his 
 inclination? 
 
 One day as they both sat by the table in the patio, the 
 apricot of late afternoon creeping under the huge um- 
 brella that hid them from the house, he writing, she em-
 
 272 The Next Corner 
 
 broidering, these doubts came as if the shadow of some 
 on-coming trouble, as yet veiled, had fallen with sudden- 
 ness upon her. She felt a shiver as she shrugged them 
 off, put down her work and went to Robert's side. As he 
 continued bent over the page, she forcibly tilted up his 
 chin with one finger and looked steadily into his eyes. 
 
 He had to wink a few times before his blue gaze quite 
 cleared of his reflections to take her in as she wished. 
 When he did, he drew down the hand showing pink and 
 white against his coffee-colored fingers with toil marks on 
 them, bent it back, and after an amused study of the 
 satiny palm, pressed his lips deeply into it. 
 
 "I've never seen on a woman in all my life such a little 
 paw. It's a baby's !" He looked up to say this and kissed 
 it again. 
 
 It went through him then how delicately youthful in 
 type Elsie was. She seemed a schoolgirl as she stood be- 
 side him, faintly smiling. The day had been very hot, 
 and she wore white cotton net as simply made as a gradu- 
 ating frock, no color about her but the straw-colored 
 feathery hair and its tint repeated exactly in the sash 
 that hung to the skirt's hem. 
 
 She drew his arms tightly about her as she slipped to 
 a seat on his knee. 
 
 "Don't establish yourself permanently there," Robert 
 frowned, a note of laughter in the words, "as I must get 
 on with this statement " 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "An account for Olazaba about what I mean to do in 
 regard to the other half of the mine. He says I dodge 
 him, evade the issue." Robert's eyes gave a cold flash. 
 "No one ever before said that of me, and after these 
 Venezuelans read this above my signature they won't say 
 it again." 
 
 Elsie's false steps and bruises in the whirlwind of life 
 had made her wise. Robert saw her give a keen almost 
 alarmed look toward the paper which he had been rapidly 
 covering with his fine and forceful writing.
 
 The Next Corner 273 
 
 "From what you told me yesterday, you are not agree- 
 ing to do what they want." 
 
 "I am agreeing to speak of their proposition when I 
 go to New York, as one having no opinion about it, good 
 or bad." He seized Elsie in a boyish clutch. "Think of 
 it ! in about two weeks more we'll be in New York's 
 springtime and out of this heat. Only for that I'd have 
 made you obstinate little devil though you are get 
 away to Macuto for the sea breeze." 
 
 Elsie did not reply to this, and he went on dreamily: 
 "I've been thinking of what you said of our going to 
 France into war work of some sort. A bully way to spend 
 some of the money I've earned. You couldn't nurse, of 
 course " 
 
 "liots of other things to be done. And I'd scrub 
 hospital floors for France ! Then I keep thinking 
 of my dear Julie," she went on, a pang in her voice. 
 "I must find her. It chills me not to have had one line 
 to all the letters I've sent her. If I could only hear 
 that she's alive. 
 
 "It's hard to get news from the wilderness and mael- 
 strom that France is now. One has to go to know." 
 
 While Elsie was sincerely interested in this latest proj- 
 ect her attention was divided. Her gaze wavered around 
 the papers on the table. 
 
 "Robert," she said slowly, "don't write anything for 
 these men. I wish you wouldn't." 
 
 "But I'd rather. They've got to know just what to 
 expect from me." 
 
 "Don't write it," Elsie repeated, the advice with a 
 shade of appeal in it that puzzled him. "Something might 
 be read into it that you don't quite mean, or there might 
 be a few words left in it that you'd wish you hadn't said. 
 From what you've told me, I feel sure you are dealing 
 with a desperate and determined lot of speculators. Any 
 signed agreement of yours might be turned and twisted 
 into some irritation for you that you never counted upon. 
 Tear it up, dearest?" she asked, bending toward the table,
 
 274 The Next Corner 
 
 while in fancy she saw all that had followed in her own 
 life after the writing of a regretted letter. 
 
 Robert looked as amused as if a white kitten with a 
 ribbon about its neck had opened its coral-pink mouth to 
 give him counsel. "Then what would you have me do?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "I'll tell you," Elsie said with soft, clear force. 
 "Olazaba comes here to dinner to-morrow night, you 
 say " 
 
 "He didn't want to come tried hard to get me to 
 go to him in Puerto Cabello where he's been stopping with 
 some others of the clan. We left it this way: If he did 
 not hear from me that I would do that, he was to come 
 here. This is to be our final talk, for he sails almost 
 at once for a Chilean port and new copper fields there." 
 
 "And he was to leave, carrying all that writing signed 
 by you !" she cried, in a sort of exultant wrath. "Instead 
 
 why not talk to this subtle, perhaps tricky Venezuelan 
 
 for I know you don't trust him and do it before a 
 witness? Me voild!" She pointed gaily to herself while 
 her face flushed to the opal-pink that lurks in the core 
 of a white rose. 
 
 "All right. But I've never known such a quietly dogged, 
 tireless, oily pleader. And he won't take positive defeat 
 well. I've often seen him looking at me with something 
 very like a threat as if, providing I failed to meet his 
 backers' wishes, he'd start some sort of retaliation." 
 
 "That's the way with money-mad men," Elsie cried. 
 "You have it in your power to make a fortune pour into 
 their hands. If because you keep to the straight truth 
 this does not happen of course they'll hate you." She 
 bent across him and lifted the papers on which his foun- 
 tain pen lay. "Let me tear them up?" she begged. 
 
 "You've got me out of the mood for writing another 
 word. So go ahead !" 
 
 As she obeyed, flinging the fragments into the basket, 
 Robert laughed. "You'll have more than you bargained
 
 The Next Corner 275 
 
 for. The clap-trap of printing presses at full speed is a 
 trifle to Juan Olazaba when he gets going." 
 
 Elsie touched her lips to his dark cheek in the lightest 
 kiss and leaned her elbow on his shoulder. 
 
 "I'm glad you let me help you," she whispered. "It's a 
 lovely feeling!" 
 
 He studied her whimsically, his glance brilliant, 
 caressing. 
 
 "You bewilder me, Elsie," he sighed. 
 
 "That's better than boring you." 
 
 "You're new wine in the old bottle of my life, and you 
 go to my head. I'm afraid I'm getting uxorious." 
 
 "I've forgotten what that means, but it has a dread- 
 ful sound." 
 
 "Uxoriousness is love of a wife," said Robert, his brows 
 up. "Or, rather, too much love of a wife." 
 
 "That's impossible !" Elsie was imperial, blithe and dry. 
 "No, that couldn't be." 
 
 After a pause she asked with droll seriousness: "Do 
 you love me as well to-day as you did yesterday?" 
 
 "Better." 
 
 "But how could you? You said then you couldn't love 
 me more." 
 
 "I was mistaken." 
 
 "And to-morrow better still?" 
 
 "Without a doubt !' 
 
 "And this will never change?" she asked, sitting back a 
 little, her gaze amusedly astounded. "More and more 
 love from you all the time?" 
 
 "More and more," he said with drowsy eyes and a 
 clipped, low-noted laugh, "until I am for the most 
 part one big, human exclamation of adoration for you, 
 with every other feeling mere little futile dots and dashes 
 around it. So, if this is my state of mind to-day 
 Wednesday you can faintly imagine its intensity by 
 Saturday!" 
 
 She bent to touch his cheek briefly with hers as she 
 said : "You are adorable. Only it happens to be Thurs- 
 day, you know."
 
 276 The Next Corner 
 
 At the words he straightened and held her off sharply. 
 "This is Wednesday !" 
 
 "No, it is not," she said, and ticked off on her fingers the 
 various happenings of the three days since Sunday. 
 
 "Good Heavens !" Robert lifted her lightly from his 
 knee and stood up. "Then Olazaba is coming to dinner 
 to-night. Didn't I tell you that?" 
 
 She looked aghast after the manner of a good house- 
 keeper taken by surprise and clasped her small hands 
 distractedly. 
 
 "Robert ! You said nothing about it at all until 
 this morning, and then only that he was coming to dinner 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "I thought to-morrow Thursday, you see. This is the 
 second time in a month that I've got twisted this way and 
 lost a day. It's about time I took a rest." 
 
 "Oh, dear, what a mistake! What can we do?" 
 
 "Why, do with what we have," he said easily. "I'll 
 make a corking Moselle cup that will cover up all de- 
 ficiencies." 
 
 "Nothing of the sort," Elsie retorted, her fine brows 
 quaintly severe. "Our dinner to-night was to be of the 
 simplest. I take a pride in my house. I'll get Gil started 
 on something more oh, I know ! his wonderful cheese 
 souffle will help and fortunately there's lots of 
 caviare " 
 
 "Splendid. Hurry it along, dear." Robert looked at 
 hjs watch. "There's not much time. Olazaba will be here 
 in twenty minutes. He'll be sure to wear a dinner jacket, 
 so I must change. You needn't. You're sweet as you 
 are." 
 
 "Oh, indeed?" She looked up at him in gay commisera- 
 tion of his need of enlightenment, as she started off. "Not 
 dress? Not put on that silver tissue that's just come 
 home? as lovely as anything to be found in Paris? 
 Wait!" and she blew him a light kiss as she ran toward 
 the kitchen quarters, calling: "Gil! Domingo! Venga V. 
 acd!"
 
 The Next Corner 277 
 
 The time raced. Instead of twenty, it was scarcely 
 fifteen minutes later when Elsie heard Olazaba arriving 
 at the front of the house and Robert's voice from the 
 entrance hall, greeting him. 
 
 Candida was fastening for her the last snaps of the 
 ductile tissue into which she had been rushed and in which 
 she gave the effect of a flexibly bending blade throwing 
 off coruscations of moonlight, when Robert stopped to 
 thrust in his head between the gallery doors. He had on 
 a lounging coat and slippers. 
 
 "Olazaba's come. I went out only half ready to meet 
 him. He's been hit a bit by the sun and is in there sitting 
 quietly with the shutters closed. I gave him some aro- 
 matic ammonia, and he'll be all right. I'll be along in 
 five minutes. You go in when you're ready." 
 
 While speaking he was obviously conscious of the cold 
 blaze from Elsie's gown framing her curd-white flesh and 
 glimmering head, her darkly languid eyes making a splash 
 of softness against all the brightness. 
 
 "Jove," he murmured. "You're too too wonderful, 
 darling! Too wonderful!" he sighed helplessly and went 
 away. 
 
 "What did the senor say about you, senora?" Candida 
 asked with her lovely simplicity, as she rose from her 
 knees and stood away from her mistress, her eyes ab- 
 sorbed, her delicate fingers lightly interlaced. 
 
 "He said I was too wonderful," Elsie answered in 
 Spanish, her lip lifted in a gay smile. 
 
 "Ah, how the senor knows all things !" Candida replied 
 with an august gravity. "The senor is wise like God 
 and what he says is always true." 
 
 Elsie gave joyous assent to this, and slightly drooping 
 with laughter, went from Candida's roundly solemn gaze 
 into the hall. The parlor was but a few steps away. It 
 was a sedately stiff room, after the Latin-American 
 manner : A dozen rockers were ranged around the walls ; 
 in the big central space there was a table with a chair on 
 each side of it ; the spinet's white keyboard yawned from
 
 278 The Next Corner 
 
 one corner. All of this lay in deep shadow, as a balm 
 against the lingering heat of the western sun, except at 
 one spot beside the table, where from slightly parted 
 jalousies behind it thin rays crept in that made a grid- 
 iron-like oblong of flickering gray upon the surrounding 
 dusk. 
 
 And as Elsie made her radiant pause in the doorway, 
 she saw a man sitting on one of the central chairs, his 
 head lowered, his arms folded. She had floated out of the 
 gloom, had reached the table before he seemed aware of 
 her entrance and rose slowly. His back was toward what 
 little light there was. As he stood up she had only sense 
 of length, slenderness, and of a mixed odor, a scent 
 sweeter than any ever used by Anglo-Saxon men and the 
 pungency of Spanish tobacco. 
 
 "Senor Olazaba?" she said graciously. 
 
 He bowed low. 
 
 "My husband tells me you speak English. I am very 
 glad " Her extended arm fell at sight of the fingers 
 that came to meet hers. A jaundiced brown they were, 
 stained bistre at the tips from nicotine, thin, strong, with 
 tendons like cords at the knuckles, the nail on the smallest 
 a cruel-looking quill. 
 
 In all the world there could only be one hand like that ! 
 
 An icy current of air seemed to close around Elsie; as 
 if, against an iron bar that had replaced her neck, she 
 lifted her terrified face. 
 
 The man had turned sideways a little, and one of the 
 pencil strokes of light lay straight across a pair of 
 sunken, oblique and glistening eyes. The fox eyes of 
 Serafin. They were upon her, an electric force in them 
 that locked her own, held her up, rigid before him, when 
 she felt she would have fallen.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 IMAGINATION halted; grew stark. For an instant, 
 through blankness and darkness, Elsie was only aware of 
 a disorganizing pang. This was protest from mortal 
 dread against the belief that it was actually Serafin at 
 whom she looked. 
 
 His voice carried reality to her. Thin of sound, me- 
 tallic, rapid, and a shade too high for a man, it brought 
 to her inward sight, on a rising and falling splash, all the 
 happenings of the tragic night where he had moved, the 
 most sinister figure. 
 
 "Control yourself! Madame do you hear me? Con- 
 trol yourself!" 
 
 As his face with swiftly moving lips darkened down 
 upon her, Elsie choked, holding by her fingers, and feebly, 
 to the edge of the table. Balance left her completely. 
 Her mouth opened for a scream; it ended abortively on 
 a breath. 
 
 Joining the threat that intensified in his eyes, Serafin's 
 hand fastened on her bare arm as it had before oh, 
 as it had before. How she remembered ! How exactly it 
 repeated the repulsion felt then, gave her flesh the same 
 furred feeling as if from a worm moving over her. This 
 brought strength that made her recoil from it, jerk it off. 
 
 "Get hold of yourself, madame." And now his tone, 
 small, succinct, expressed the most dire need of her obedi- 
 ence. "We have only a moment before your husband 
 comes back. Do you hear me? He will be with us in a 
 moment your husband !" 
 
 With sickness cold upon her, Elsie struggled to heed 
 this warning. Her nerves were stretched to their hardest. 
 
 "What is it? What?" she implored and dragged a 
 
 279
 
 280 The Next Corner 
 
 hand across her wet forehead. Growing a little stronger, 
 though the words came weakly still, as if she were at the 
 end of an exhausting race : "Why have you come 
 here?" 
 
 "You'll know all that, later. Just now get one thing 
 clearly into your mind, or you will regret it ! When your 
 husband returns, you are not to let him know that you 
 have ever seen me before. Remember!" 
 
 Strengthening still more, though her face was as a 
 dead woman's, Elsie fixed a steady gaze on him. "You're 
 to keep pretending to be some one you're not? And 
 I'm to help you do it? That's what you mean?" 
 
 "Fow have never seen me before," Serafin repeated. 
 
 "No !" burst from her. 
 
 "What do you mean by 'no'?" 
 
 "I won't do this," was whispered through her teeth 
 that shook a little, piteously. "My husband thinks you're 
 a man named Olazaba. You're not and I won't say 
 that you are. I won't " 
 
 "That is my name," he broke in on a crisp note. "You 
 never supposed that I had any other than Serafin did 
 you? Of course not! It's so usual to forget that 
 servants have family names. Is it not, madame?" and 
 the question was insensate resentment. "I am Juan 
 Serafin Olazaba. I was that in Paris. I was that in 
 Spain. It is my name." 
 
 "Posing as a Venezuelan," she said feebly. 
 
 "To your husband only. I thought it wise, fearing that 
 if he mentioned that I came from Spain and perhaps 
 described me to you, you might suspect. Except for him, 
 every one that I know knows what I am a Basque !" 
 The passionate nationalism of the diminished yet persist- 
 ently unconquered race flamed in the words. "Let all 
 that rest for the present," he continued even more hur- 
 riedly, "there is only one thing we can decide at this 
 moment." 
 
 While she could see he was listening, his eyes upon the 
 door not upon her who, defiant, wretched, and astray
 
 The Next Corner 281 
 
 in mind, swayed before him he continued in the un- 
 accented recitative of the Spaniard when speaking at 
 length and in haste. It was a series of small hammer 
 taps that touched every needed spot of a spread surface, 
 and they ran around the circle of Elsie's intelligence with 
 assurance and emphasis, making plain every phase of the 
 situation : 
 
 "Will you be silent about having known me before? I 
 am not asking from your husband anything that could 
 possibly injure him. He decides nothing to-night. I 
 did not want to come here. He has asked me to do so 
 over and over, and for weeks I have been evading it. 
 While it is not by chance that I am here in Venezuela, as 
 I will later explain, I never wanted to see you again. I 
 have no desire to renew anything from the past not the 
 slightest desire to disturb your life ! It was necessary for 
 me to accept Maury's invitation to-night or antagonize 
 him, lose what ground I have gained with him in a per- 
 fectly straight business acquaintance. Of this I assure 
 you. It is a misfortune that you hate me for what has 
 already occurred. I ask you to forget that. Treat me as 
 a stranger give me my chance as a stranger, this one 
 night. Do what you will afterward to-night I ask you 
 to be silent. If you tell your husband, I will be shown 
 the door. What good will that do you? I am not aiming 
 to hurt him nor you. Consider what I say. It will be 
 to your advantage! I have something of the greatest 
 importance to say to you, but there is not time now. 
 Keep quiet to-night. See me to-morrow morning for 
 ten minutes and I will explain." 
 
 She heard him to the end in silence. She wanted to be 
 brave, she was sick of deceit. Here was her chance to be 
 defiant of consequences for the sake of truth. If 
 straightly and simply she unmasked Serafin, no matter 
 what resulted, it would be such clean and fitting 
 tribute to her love for Robert. And, moreover, what need 
 had she of subterfuge even to save herself? Serafin could 
 not hurt her. He had no proof that would convince her
 
 282 The Next Corner 
 
 husband of her lie. She knew that Robert would not let 
 him speak against her, would silence and dismiss him. 
 And if he managed to say enough to plant the need of her 
 explanation, later, what power would his word have 
 against hers, if she denied his accusation? 
 
 By the time she had reached this question, a sick dis- 
 may came with the knowledge that she was again relying 
 on deceit, that an unburdened heart and conscience still 
 had no place in her scheme. Helplessly, in that distraught 
 moment, she accepted this as needful, found exculpation 
 for herself as something weak in the hands of a too power- 
 ful fate and that had to use any weapon for salvation. 
 
 Besides, she so hated this man! He was loathsome to 
 her. It was an insatiate repulsion that could not help 
 seizing any chance to trouble or defeat him. 
 
 "My mind is made up," came from her on a hard sigh. 
 
 She felt strong now. Her eyes were black in her face 
 that the moment's shock had left wan. 
 
 There was a pause. Serafin gave her a probing 
 glance. 
 
 "What do you mean?" His voice had thinned to a new 
 desperation. "Quickly, please !" 
 
 "I'll not let you pretend to be what you are not to 
 my husband, no, not for one moment after he enters 
 this room," she said steadily. 
 
 In the dusk that with little lingering was rushing toward 
 the night, the room had grown rapidly darker. Serafin 
 went to the window near him and peremptorily pulled the 
 shutters open to their widest, letting a deep grayness 
 sweep in. He came back to face Elsie. 
 
 "Exactly what will you tell him?" he insisted. 
 
 "He thinks you are a Venezuelan a man of impor- 
 tance. He shall know from me that I knew you in Paris 
 the Basque valet of the Marques de Burgos " 
 
 "And that I knew you there, from the first sight of you," 
 he broke in, "as the mistress of the same man." 
 
 A sound of protest on a breath came from her, her 
 look that of one staggered. She seemed at first unable
 
 The Next Corner 283 
 
 to speak. When she did, her voice came with unexpected 
 strength: "My mind is made up. You had better leave 
 before Senor Maury comes. Nothing you can say not 
 this last lie nor any other can keep me from telling 
 him who you are." 
 
 "Nothing?" he asked. 
 
 His eyes narrowed so they fairly disappeared in the 
 bony sockets. And this very nullity of face became the 
 more menacing; made it seem to Elsie as if his spirit had, 
 furtively, gone out of him to find and bring back that 
 which could not help but crush her; made of him some- 
 thing less and more terrible than a man, however bad 
 something unnatural, monstrously significant, that awoke 
 dread in her for which there were no words. 
 
 His eyes came back. Now he was listening with in- 
 tense suspense for Robert's step. While he was speaking 
 he kept watch on the door: "You are not afraid of me, 
 then?" 
 
 "No, I am not." Her lips formed the words almost 
 without sound. 
 
 Chill and luminous and tremulously fragile, she re- 
 called to him a rough yet luxurious room in the moun- 
 tains, a dinner table with candlelight through white he 
 even saw the gold of the dish of apricots and she there 
 exultantly happy, with Don Arturo, the passionate lover 
 and suavely haughty aristocrat, beside her; he the ser- 
 vant. The picture brought heat. 
 
 "I will say," Elsie rushed on, more clearly, "that you 
 are attacking me falsely because I resented your insult 
 in Paris. No one but you knows that I was the only 
 guest at El Miradero that night or that I was any- 
 thing but a guest in the ordinary way. I shall deny all 
 you say." 
 
 "Deny?" His high brows crept up eerily into a point of 
 surprise. "But, your letter, madame? Your letter to 
 your husband? He knows. Without what I should add 
 as elaboration, you, yourself, wrote him all the facts." 
 
 With his first question she saw her mistake. Incom-
 
 284 The Next Corner 
 
 prehensibly, she had for a moment forgotten what had 
 been lodged in her thoughts every day for close to a year ; 
 had forgotten, too, what she had often clearly realized 
 that if Serafin should cross her path she must make him 
 believe that the letter had reached Robert. It was not 
 too late to remedy her blunder. No ! He must be made 
 to feel that his information was already discounted. She 
 struggled to get back her poise, spoke with an affecta- 
 tion of relief, her throat dry and stiff: 
 
 "Oh, yes, oh, yes I that I'd forgotten " 
 
 Far off a door closed. Far off she heard Robert speak 
 with the carrying sound that came to voices in the stone- 
 enclosed patio. 
 
 "You'd better go that way there through the 
 front before it's too late," she implored in stumbling 
 haste. 
 
 Nervous though Serafin must have been, his outward 
 calm intensified. 
 
 "But I must have this clear. You forgot that your 
 husband already knew of your affaire with the marquts. 
 This is what you mean?" 
 
 "Yes !" 
 
 "And that he has forgiven you?" 
 
 "Yes! Yes!" 
 
 "This happened after he received the letter?" 
 
 "I told you so !" She swept him with a look of frantic 
 rage. 
 
 "Marvellous," said Serafin thoughtfully. The one 
 word, as he spoke it, had a curious effect on Elsie. It was 
 as if, on a wild run, she had been brought up short, made 
 suddenly aware of a gulf before her. "Miraculous," he 
 added with a note of laughter grim and sour, his eves 
 brilliant. "That could not be, madame, unless the law 
 in physics is wrong and an object can occupy two places 
 at one and the same time." 
 
 While saying the last words, he whipped a flat black 
 wallet from an inside coat pocket. His strong yet deli- 
 cate hand, so cruelly nailed, drew from it a glazed wrap
 
 The Next Corner 285 
 
 ping. With a finical precision he lifted this back, took 
 out what reposed within, and held it up. 
 
 Elsie saw the keenly remembered gray-blue square of 
 paper, stamped, sealed. Her own letter, fresh as at 
 the moment of writing. 
 
 Though conscious that Robert was speaking again, and 
 a little nearer, she could only stare at it. It was a thing 
 of doom ; and doom was in her stricken face. 
 
 "Look at this quickly, while there is a chance, senora," 
 Serafin said, and came closer to her, turning it slowly in 
 his dark fingers, his voice once more desperate. "You 
 see your own writing the stamp the De Burgos crest 
 on the seal? Exactly as you handed it to me ! It was 
 not given to Eduardo to take down the mountain. It did 
 not leave El Miradero. It never left my wallet. So 
 how could your very estimable husband have read it, 
 madame?" 
 
 In a flash he replaced it. Elsie stood inert. Every- 
 thing within her seemed to have dissolved to a rising flood, 
 icy cold. 
 
 Robert's step was near. 
 
 "Will you be silent until to-morrow?" she heard 
 Serafin say. 
 
 Answering this with a slack nod, she went wildly to the 
 branch of candles in a corner and was lighting them 
 when Robert entered, her back to him. 
 
 As she heard his voice with its usual tone saying that 
 she and his visitor had had time to get well acquainted, 
 a second self seemed to come to her ; a self of wisdom, ad- 
 vising, helping her. How she managed a smooth, amused 
 reply she could not tell ; she had a sense of wonder as she 
 heard herself say the words. It was easier, then, to add 
 a murmur of excuse for going, and while keeping her face 
 in shadow, start across the spacious bareness. 
 
 Her knees felt sinking, so that she had to call on every 
 nerve and set her teeth to control them. She really made 
 a natural progress, but to herself she seemed to crawl over 
 an interminable distance. She was so small; the room so
 
 286 The Next Corner 
 
 big ; the door affrightingly far off. And the feeling made 
 her live again through a similar experience, when, 
 playing at composure, as Arturo had implored her, she 
 had walked toward the curtains in the room at El Mira- 
 dero, with the implacable gaze of the pale stranger upon 
 her. 
 
 At last she was outside, could let the trembling have 
 its way with her and send her, jolting, befogged, against 
 the wall. Everything grew dim. A moment passed so 
 before she was able to take hold on her will. Yet she 
 could not stir, though her eyes were now open, watching. 
 
 They were frantic like those of some small thing that 
 stops stock-still only because there is no place to run, 
 every path blocked.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 COURAGE may follow directly on despair; a deep, still 
 recklessness that counts out consequences. When results 
 cannot, from any point of view, be speculated upon for 
 assistance, they lose force as hindrance or threat. After 
 the agony of the first moments of Elsie's frustration, in 
 which fear had been a swollen flood pouring into every 
 niche of her consciousness, an ebb came, and while leaving 
 her hopeless, it made her brave. As she stood before the 
 mirror in her room and pressed color back into her blood- 
 less face, the wiidness went out of it. 
 
 She knew that she could make no bargain with Serafin. 
 Even the passing thought of such a possibility brought 
 self-contempt. Her chance of escape was gone. Her de- 
 feat was certain. Yet two purposes pulled indomitably at 
 her sad heart: For as long as might be to prevent the 
 letter from reaching Robert, this as one would keep 
 creeping from the sweep of an advancing fire though 
 knowing death, ultimately, to be sure ; and to prevent any 
 further talk between him and Serafin by which the Basque's 
 adroitness might gain some helpful concession. 
 
 During the dinner she was a surprise to the flickering, 
 slanted eyes that watched her. Serafin read her tense 
 stillness as promise of her immediate silence without giving 
 him security. He was sharply intuitive, and he felt her 
 peace a waiting one. His hopes of money, the only thing 
 he loved in life and had most dire need of now, he could 
 feel tottering on the edge of this woman's deep-laid 
 hatred of him and one accompanying danger, whether 
 this would make her more desperate than afraid. 
 
 The scene was lovely. The table, placed on the gallery 
 that jutted from the broad part of the house, stood in 
 
 287
 
 288 The Next Corner 
 
 the center of a grayish-mauve netting; stretched over 
 a roof of bamboo sticks, this enclosed the entire space and 
 against it, from without, mosquitoes hummed venomously 
 and large spotted moths catapulted in vain. A golden 
 haze from lamps under straw-colored shades encircled the 
 chairs, in and out of which Domingo and another serving 
 man, all snowy white save their brown faces and oiled 
 black hair, moved soft-footed as ghosts. The darkness 
 and solitude of the night were suggested with lush soft- 
 ness through the veil as was the spark-blue glory of big 
 stars and the glinting of a sliver of moon that seemed a 
 lantern hung in a distant cedar. The fountain's fall 
 stole in, desultory, whimpering. 
 
 Serafin talked almost incessantly of war, politics, busi- 
 ness, dreading a pause that might lead to the danger he 
 was combating, and ate nervously ; Robert, with a 
 pleasant hunger, as he listened; Elsie, while keeping a 
 fork moving, tasted little, though she constantly drank 
 both wine and water to soothe the spasm that, like a spring 
 broken loose, would at odd moments close up her throat. 
 
 And as for the most part she sat looking down, though 
 managing a slack nod at times to Serafin's : "You agree 
 with me, senora?"a. confounding realization came to her as 
 it had before, of the inviolable privacy of thought : There 
 was no outward sign of Serafin's suspense that must be 
 churning about her, nothing of Robert's doubts of his 
 guest only his desire to know him better nothing of 
 the many things that, missing her surroundings during 
 fitful seconds, she saw; things not of this moment, or 
 night, or indeed of this land at all ; instead, all the events 
 that had followed her luckless entrance of the mule coach 
 that had taken her up the Spanish mountain with Serafin, 
 the deus ex machina who had planned disaster for her 
 and who was beside her now, seemingly her welcome guest. 
 Yes, the phantom-filled hinterland of thought could be an 
 awesome mystery. Without visible life, how authorita- 
 tively alive it was ! the voices from it a multitude's, yet 
 only heard clandestinely by each ; immutably separate.
 
 The Next Corner 289 
 
 "Is it not so, madame?" Serafin's voice on a suave note 
 broke again on Elsie's absorption. 
 
 "You say 'madame' sometimes, instead of 'senora'," 
 Robert remarked casually before she felt the need of 
 answering. "You say it as a Frenchman would." 
 
 "I have lived much in France," he nodded. 
 
 Robert looked at him in candid astonishment. "I had 
 no idea of that. I'd supposed you such a bred-in-the-bone 
 product of this Latin-America that it consumed all your 
 energy, kept you rooted, except for visits to the States. 
 Like so many South Americans, have you a certain pride 
 in feeling that you are, if anything, an improvement ' on 
 your ancestry on Spain?" 
 
 The crafty eyes met Elsie's dark, judging gaze and in 
 the swiftest way evaded it. A shade of hesitation was 
 visible before he decided that for him in her presence to 
 be as honest as was possible, would be the best policy. 
 
 "My ancestry in Spain is not remote; in fact it is 
 here, in my very own self. I am a Basque by birth," he 
 said clearly, his chin irresistibly lifting at the words. 
 
 Robert's interest intensified. "Ah ! now I understand 
 the difference between you and Rodriguez and Monsaldo 
 that often confused me. I detected it at times in your 
 Spanish, badly as I speak the language. But I supposed 
 you Venezuelan. I thought you gave me to understand 
 that. No? Odd that you did not tell me this interest- 
 ing fact about yourself before, Olazaba, in our many 
 talks." 
 
 Serafin gave a dry smile and a shoulder twist, his hand 
 spread fan-wise and moving like a dark wing, first toward 
 himself and then toward Robert, all of this a wordless 
 exclamation at his own incomprehension of himself. 
 
 "I touch very little on my personality, you see. I don't 
 know why except well, that we Basques are rather 
 taciturn. We can talk as volubly as the Spanish, to 
 whom in one way we belong and in another way feel 
 separate from, but we do not open our hearts about 
 our intimacies in their childish way, once they are familiar
 
 290 The Next Corner 
 
 with you. As the rugged, silent Bretons are different 
 from the rest of mercurial France, so we are different 
 from Spain." 
 
 The moment for which Serafin waited came when at 
 the close of the dinner he told Robert that he was an 
 enthusiastic lover of bridge. 
 
 "I hadn't thought of that," Robert said. "I'll send 
 Domingo down the road to see if the Morenos will come 
 in for a rubber no, as they are rather ceremonious 
 and a bit touchy, I'll run the car down and fetch them 
 myself." 
 
 Keeping to her resolve, Elsie had not left the men alone 
 to talk over cigars. With her own cigarette she had with- 
 drawn to a long chair, a little way from the table. While 
 Serafin, smoking, strolled into the patio, toward the foun- 
 tain, Robert stopped beside her here, bent over her. 
 
 "You've been very silent to-night, darling," he whis- 
 pered; "and you seem sad. Aren't you well?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," she murmured, her eyes faltering, all of her 
 sick with a sense of doom, of herself rushing to some 
 finality that was confused, only the pain of it clear. 
 
 "You don't like my friend," Robert whispered with one 
 of his scant, droll smiles. 
 
 "Don't call him that !" 
 
 "You like him less than you thought you would?" 
 
 "Far less ! He's horrible," she said in a fierce 
 whisper of pain. 
 
 "You're an unjust child. I found him attractive to- 
 night. I think the man's had a hard and interesting fight 
 with life. And then he's a Basque ! I was amazed. I've 
 read a lot about that little-known race poor, but in 
 their own estimation noble, and arrogant as the devil. 
 Now I'm sure it's this queer, Basque streak in Olazaba 
 secretive, reticent that has always kept me miles from 
 understanding him. The man might do anything ! He 
 might surprise with the most staggering extremes, either 
 good or bad. That's my feeling, somehow. Draw him 
 out a bit while I'm away. I'll be back in ten minutes."
 
 The Next Corner 291 
 
 As he said the last words he put his hand on hers. 
 Elsie lifted it and with a look of dumb love, kissed it. She 
 wanted to say: "Don't bring the people back. Keep 
 strangers away to-night." But she knew if she did he 
 would not leave her, and there would be no chance for 
 conclusive words with Serafin. 
 
 This thought, as she watched Robert hurry away and 
 immediately saw Serafin coming back to her through the 
 crossed shadows of the patio, made her aware that deeply 
 within her the hope she had thought slain had lifted its 
 head for a death struggle, and that it had been revived 
 by Robert's words about the mystery of the Basque 
 people : "The man might do anything. He might sur- 
 prise with the most staggering extremes, either good or 
 bad." 
 
 Cruel and unspeakably petty as Serafin had proved to 
 her in the past, she had never fathomed him and could not 
 now, only sure that he was filled to the lips with some 
 curious, twisted sort of pride belonging to his race. With 
 this thought went memory of the belief, often heard, in 
 the persistence of some idealism even in the most seem- 
 ingly irreclaimable criminals. Might there not be, then, 
 woven with baseness and inexplicability, an unconform- 
 able bit of honor lurking in this enemy, something that in 
 spite of her refusal of his appeal might induce him to 
 withhold his retaliation? 
 
 For as the decisive moment neared, disclosure a poised 
 sword above her, Elsie was filled with insurgent prayer 
 raw agony in it not known before for the destruction 
 of the letter without Robert having knowledge of it. 
 Never had it seemed so dreadful ; never so ruthlessly cruel. 
 That uncompromising relinquishment of him and the pas- 
 sionate words that declared her love for Arturo were with 
 her, unwinding before her memory like the distortions of 
 some grotesque dream. 
 
 It would be one thing to tell him the truth all the 
 truth of her folly's transient life during a few hours of 
 the June night that had ended in a crash from the havoc
 
 292 The Next Corner 
 
 of which she had crawled to find she could hold on to the 
 thread of his belief and so manage to live again. An- 
 other and a hideous thing to have his eyes rest on the 
 actual words written then, their hot livingness changing 
 her into the woman who had set them down, though 
 she knew how briefly that woman had lived, how thor- 
 oughly she had been the creation of self-delusion, what 
 regret went side by side with memory of her. 
 
 Serafin, in the swift, muted way, so remembered, came 
 up the gallery steps and while he drew back the panel of 
 stiffened netting that gave entrance as a door, she was 
 holding to the hope that in the chemistry of this strange 
 man some drop of unalloyed justice would make her suf- 
 fering at his hands not the heaviest.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 THE light of enterprise was frankly in Serafin's eyes. 
 Now that he was alone with Elsie, her dread showed so 
 plainly in her watch of him, in the appealing yet frozen 
 look across the space between them, he felt a foretaste of 
 accomplishment. Her spoken ratification one word 
 was the only thing needed to turn this to a settled content. 
 
 Having earlier seen her panic at sight of the letter that 
 like a relentless footstep, following, had at last over- 
 taken her; and having during the night studied the 
 lovely peace and richness of her life, grasped fully that 
 her love for her husband was as deep as it was tender, he 
 could not believe that she would ultimately refuse to meet 
 his terms. 
 
 He said this in effect in his first guarded words when, 
 after a look about to see that the servants were not within 
 hearing, he lighted a fresh cigarette: "You are prepared 
 to be sensible I am sure, madame. You will not refuse 
 the little I ask in order to gain for yourself so very 
 much." 
 
 When he was about to seat himself the first discord in 
 his scale of values was struck. Elsie rose sharply from 
 the long chair, and coming to the table, stood there with 
 that haunted, wavering gaze, yet straight, her head well 
 up. Words were not necessary for him to understand the 
 meaning of her action. He was intelligent and sensitive 
 and knew that she was repudiating the intimacy implied 
 in their association as hostess and guest that night. She 
 was not to talk to him as Olazaba ; he was to her the 
 Serafin she had known, and as such she would not tolerate 
 him seated familiarly in her presence. The only way to 
 prevent it was for herself to remain standing. 
 
 293
 
 294 The Next Corner 
 
 This opposition sent savage annoyance through him. 
 He was to have a hard struggle after all, and there was 
 little time in which to manage her. Besides he was tired, 
 irritated about many things, while about one the im- 
 mediate need of money to stave off ruin he was ravaged 
 at times by a sadness that had the tooth of insanity. 
 
 "Let us sit down while we talk," he said, an angry 
 thrust in the clipped tone. "That will seem more usual 
 if we are interrupted." 
 
 She remained as she was. 
 
 "To rush on without giving me a hearing," Serafin 
 insisted, "is a senseless thing. Let me explain how the 
 position we find ourselves in has come about " 
 
 "What does that matter?" broke from her on a frantic 
 note. "It matters that it has happened that's all ! I 
 am willing," her faint, excited words hurried on, "to say 
 nothing to my husband until you've gone. As soon as 
 you're out of the house I'll tell him that I knew you, and 
 where, and how. But although I do this and I shall 
 as surely as I stand here ! are you fair enough to give 
 me that letter without any conditions attached to it?" 
 
 "But why?" Serafin demanded crisply, with a cool 
 stare. 
 
 "Because it's mine! You stole it," came chokingly, 
 "just, as much as if you were to put those spoons in your 
 pocket. Are you clean enough man enough to hand 
 it over to me?" 
 
 His look changed to sly, feline amusement. "You know 
 that you have no more right to the letter than I have. 
 Once you gave it to be posted it passed out of your pos- 
 session. It became your husband's. In your heart you 
 see how fair I really am, since it is to him I mean to de- 
 liver it that is, unless you give me what I want 
 must have! to make me keep it in my pocket to-night 
 and, later on, hand it over to you." 
 
 His eyes, constantly like banked fires that could 
 send out unexpected gleams, came to a steady blaze 
 in the deep sockets. Curiously with this his manner
 
 The Next Corner 295 
 
 quieted. Dignified, vehement sentences came from his 
 closely folded lips : 
 
 "Madame, why should we clash this way? I want to 
 hold you back from rashness. All can be circumspectly 
 arranged. You misinterpret how I came to keep the 
 letter. Let me make that clear to you and you will surely 
 see the whole matter differently." 
 
 He said this as an elder brother might. Elsie knew how 
 quickly that gravity could change to brutality. Every 
 separate phase of the night that had been her Gethsemane 
 rose before her with sickening distinctness. The memory 
 brought one of those gusts of killing hate that can come 
 at extreme moments to the gentlest heart. To see him 
 was unbearable. She looked away. 
 
 "I've told you " was all she could say. 
 
 While it was plain to her that she had spoken the words, 
 they seemed to travel to her from some other, over space 
 and through a thickness. With this queerness a draining, 
 deathly feeling came as if the material part of her were 
 melting, as if she had become a sad shape of mist that 
 had to drop to a chair beside the table and feel its sup- 
 port under her elusive arms. She kept her face turned 
 from Serafin. Her heaving gaze held for help to the 
 picture of the night beyond the gauze, though this was 
 as unreal as herself ; the dim mountains, like wraiths awe- 
 somely watching the slanted rising moon, were attached 
 to a dream wheel on which the tilted world sank and rose. 
 
 "We have only a few moments," reached her from Sera- 
 fin on a rushing tone, though guardedly hushed. 
 "Please try to take in what I say ! You think I held 
 your letter back from the first to cause you trouble, and 
 that is why you will not be reasonable now. This is not 
 so! I did it to save the marques from what I considered 
 silly madness on your part. I felt sure from what I knew 
 of it that it was one which later might be of great dis- 
 advantage to him. You thought the affaire with him a 
 most serious thing one to endure indefinitely. I knew 
 this to be your folly. And I knew the marques would
 
 296 The Next Corner 
 
 bitterly repent of having in a moment of weakness for 
 you allowed you to send such a letter to your husband 
 one to be proof for a divorce where he would be named as 
 the cause you see? The devotion of my whole life had 
 been his. And it was for his sake I took it, madame; 
 not to have a hold upon you that I might at some time 
 turn to my advantage. This is the truth!" 
 
 Elsie turned ; she gave him a long, still look. El Mira- 
 dero was so resurrected by his words she almost seemed 
 there, instead of in her home with a long year of suspense 
 and Arturo's grave between. 
 
 "It is not the truth," she said slowly with the unac- 
 cented smoothness of coldest contempt. 
 
 His face grew fiercely dark; one of his fists doubled. 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "If you kept my letter for the reason you give, you'd 
 have torn it up. Or you'd have given it to me later." 
 A look of the most desolate wistfulness deepened with her 
 words. "You could have, you know so easily ! In 
 the commonest kindness you could have done this 
 soon after when Arturo was dead. No," came som- 
 berly, wildly, "not a trace of compunction from you! 
 You kept it." 
 
 "Ah, now you have touched on other moods, other 
 points of view " 
 
 Domingo appeared here to remove the linen and what 
 was left of the silver, clearing the table for the cards. 
 They had to pause, appear tranquil as if he had inter- 
 rupted only the usual desultory after-dinner talk. When 
 he had left them, Serafin gave a startled look at his watch. 
 More than ten minutes had gone. His eyes met Elsie's 
 and held them, an agony of eagerness in his. 
 
 "Scarcely any time is left, madame. Listen please ! 
 Recall that night at El Miradero. I kept the letter, 
 meaning later on to earn the marquis's gratitude it 
 was to be an evidence of my fidelity. That was my first 
 intention. Fate put it out of my power. Recall the 
 cruel shock his murder was to me! Very well. This
 
 The Next Corner 297 
 
 grief because where I love I am a violent man be- 
 came suddenly a fearful rage against you who, already, 
 I had little cause to like. I believed you to blame for Don 
 Arturo's death. I was sure he would have kept away from 
 the mountains that year had his unhappiness about you 
 not made him reckless, blind to danger. Thinking you 
 had gone back to America he went away to this solitude 
 to brood over his failure with you. I felt that you 
 had put the weapon into the hand of the Fate waiting up 
 there for him. It was this that first made me see the 
 letter to your husband as something by which I might 
 annoy you not seriously keep you perplexed you 
 understand? And the more so because your manner to 
 me then, as always, made my blood boil. It was not 
 until weeks later that this idea took on a serious side, 
 when I recalled clearly one very important thing " 
 
 He stopped. An on-coming motor was pouring its 
 resonant buzz over the roofs from the street. He saw 
 Elsie's fingers fasten on the edge of the table, apprehen- 
 sion sharpen in her already rigid body and face. When 
 he went near the house door, his head up, he had 
 the stillness of an animal listening through every 
 sense, the fox he so resembled, when the hunt for 
 him is on. 
 
 As the sound remained continous, faded, then died, 
 Elsie's head sank in relief, though her fingers, trembling, 
 remained where they had clung. She knew that Serafin 
 had come back, was leaning over her, his palms spread on 
 the table. She winced from his nearness the rush of 
 his breath, his loathsome sweetness made of perfume and 
 strong tobacco, the violent gaze that she could feel on her 
 lowered face matching the passionate, clearly separated 
 words that followed: 
 
 "I told you as soon as I saw you that it was not a coin- 
 cidence that brought me to Venezuela, madame. It was 
 not ! When I was in America, years ago, I lived here. 
 I had shares in the old Logrono mine that failed. There- 
 fore after the marques was dead, and you were gone,
 
 298 The Next Corner 
 
 I saw you suddenly as a possible chance in my future 
 the letter as an asset in my speculation. And the reason 
 is this: that just a little while before leaving for the 
 mountains to join Don Arturo, I had read in the Paris 
 Herald that your husband, representing an American 
 company, was to go in the autumn to Venezuela to report 
 on the advisability of re-opening the old mine, or part of 
 it, in which my money had been sunk. As I came to think 
 this over carefully I felt sure that you and he would 
 eventually meet and as he had not had the letter 
 almost without doubt resume your life together. There 
 was nothing holding me in Europe any more, nothing to 
 keep me from coming back to Venezuela and to the others 
 who were in the old deal with me. Once there I felt I 
 might be able to turn this American interest to our gain. 
 'And suppose,' I thought, 'I might get the friendship of 
 the wife of the American engineer as a help if I need 
 her help?' So I reasoned. And at last what has happened 
 came about. We had to meet." Sorrow, a dark wave, 
 went through Elsie with his next words: "I had little 
 hope, however, as I came to this house to-night. If 
 already you had told your husband about the letter, it 
 would not have been of the slightest advantage to me. 
 You see?" 
 
 Oh, yes, she saw. She answered him with a look, 
 morbidly acute, and with a sense of inner collapse. The 
 difference to-night, had she been truthful with Robert 
 that day in the dingy hotel room in New York ! 
 
 "Well, madame? I have told you the facts. What is 
 your answer?" He stood away and felt desperation as 
 he looked at her. Her earlier fright had wholly disap- 
 peared. After that one, piercing look, she seemed stone 
 again, staring eternally into space. Sad through and 
 through; hopeless; past fear. "You know by my un- 
 willingness to come here that I tried to succeed with- 
 out seeing you or using the letter for persuasion. Indeed, 
 I did not want to use it. Time had softened me. And 
 you may not believe it ! I meant when all was well with
 
 The Next Corner 299 
 
 me, and you had left here, to send it to you with a line of 
 explanation, and so relieve your mind of it forever." 
 
 At these last words, the hope that, even yet, he might 
 allow her to escape, came wanly back to Elsie. The 
 authority of need in her eyes, she lifted them to him. 
 
 "Then give it to me now! Not as something for some- 
 thing just because you can be generous. You've said 
 that folly made me write it. I've known for months how 
 great that folly was why Arturo was killed. I found 
 out about Ascuncion and her father." His surprise at 
 this statement while sharp was brief, dismissed as unim- 
 portant against the pressure of the moment. "So keep 
 me from suffering for my mistakes more than I 
 can bear " 
 
 "You but have to promise what I ask!" he cried, mad 
 exasperation in the tone while his voluble hands went 
 wide and stiff in finality. "Do that !" 
 
 "Never." This was dull and slow. Her eyes still 
 besought him. "In spite of this give me my letter." 
 
 Serafin's long nose lengthened in ironic consideration 
 of her. "You must see that nothing could so please my 
 pride as putting }'ou under this obligation to me. Alas, 
 I cannot so indulge myself you will have to suffer be- 
 cause of your importance. We have a proverb in Spain: 
 "A quien se hace de miel las moscas se lo comen." That 
 is ; "Smear yourself with honey and you will be devoured 
 by flies." You see? You are smeared with the honey 
 that means prosperity for me I am a very hungry and 
 determined fly. There you have my unchangeable 
 answer." 
 
 The words infuriated her. A flash of the wildness in 
 her leaped up. "Let me tell you that you are overesti- 
 mating your chances with my husband! Even if I said 
 nothing of your real history, he would not take a step 
 to help your schemes. Not one ! From his own judg- 
 ment he is not inclined to support you by so much as a 
 finger !" 
 
 "Ah, but you are wrong," Serafin declared suavely.
 
 300 The Next Corner 
 
 "When you left us alone before dinner, Senor Maury, in 
 answer to my request, said he saw no harm in my going 
 with you both to New York. He will say nothing but 
 is willing to present me to the men with whom he is 
 associated and give me a chance to outline my claims to 
 them, myself."
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 This brought Elsie to her feet. Red spots had started 
 out on her cheeks. Her mouth quivered like a child's 
 in trouble. 
 
 "You managed that much," she said on a breath. "In- 
 stead of going on to Chile " 
 
 "I shall never go to Chile," he broke in with defiance 
 and misery. "The only thing the thing that has to be 
 is New York! New York, with influence to help me, 
 is life." His force suddenly collapsed. He trembled. 
 His hands made futile, imploring dashes toward her. 
 "You did not understand this that I am facing ruin 
 or you would not deliberately set out to destroy me. No, 
 you would not do that." 
 
 "Why not?" came with the stifled stillness that so often 
 is the cup for a storm. 
 
 "Because I have never injured you as yet." 
 
 "Never injured me?" He felt the dark look impale him. 
 
 "What happened to distress you came from destiny 
 not my doing not my fault " 
 
 "All your fault !" Her voice, controlled with difficulty, 
 had the thickness of a sob. "Didn't you persuade me to 
 go to El Miradero with you, knowing what I did not 
 know that I could not come down the mountain till the 
 next morning that unless Mrs. Vrain came, I would 
 be alone there all night with Don Arturo ? That 
 was the beginning. You saw my agony at his death. 
 And at once didn't you use me vilely? Put me out when 
 his people were coming as if I were oh, what you 
 called me afterward and not fit to breathe the same 
 air with them ! Didn't you make me feel vile lost 
 when you kissed me You!" she said on a long 
 
 301
 
 302 The Next Corner 
 
 shudder. "Do you think I have, or ever can, forget that? 
 Or what you said to me at the last after you had 
 flung me out at daybreak and made me go down that 
 strange mountain alone distracted not fit to take 
 care of myself?" 
 
 Wild tears came. She could not keep them back. Her 
 face lost its lines, went into a piteous muddle of pain. 
 Holding to the chair's back she shook as if a storm had 
 entered her. Serafin had grown very still. As Elsie by 
 a violent effort steadied herself, her eyes, though wet, 
 saw clearly again, and watched in his tobacco-brown 
 throat, left long and bare above a low collar, two tendons 
 jerk like a pulley. While he was listening with every 
 nerve, his eyes were fixed as if on some one, or something, 
 beyond her, far beyond. 
 
 "You want my promise to keep your real history from 
 my husband so that through him you'll make money. 
 That you'll not get." Her breath was heavily uneven, 
 her eyes jet-black in her now drained face. "And yet, if 
 you had a drop of humanity in you, you'd give me the 
 letter. I'll tell my husband the whole story all that I 
 should have told him before. But that letter I don't 
 want him to read! I'll die ! for something in my 
 heart will die if he ever reads those words! Oh, if 
 you were the worst sort of an American, you'd hand it 
 over. No man of my race, no matter how low he might 
 be and though he had done all you've already done to me, 
 would refuse it ! You've talked of your pride. You 
 have no pride ! None if you do this. No decency 
 if you do it. If you finish with me as you say ill-treat 
 to the end a woman you've already treated so cruelly, be- 
 cause she won't let you take away the last bit of her self- 
 respect, then with all your pride your Basque pride of 
 which I heard so much even as far back as Paris 
 you're not a man at all! You're something in the scrap 
 heap. I can't name you. There is no name for you 
 no place !" 
 
 In all her life Elsie had not been capable of a denuncia-
 
 The Next Corner 303 
 
 tion like this. Expression in words had always been re- 
 pressed with her. She had blazed as never before. And 
 when she had poured out in broken frenzy all that had 
 wounded and goaded her in memory, reaction came ; faint- 
 ness. She tried to reach the opening in the netting that 
 led to the house, swayed beside a chair and sat down, bent 
 over, her face in her hands. 
 
 The silence seemed to her to have the heave of a pro- 
 found sea, she a cork on the waves. Through soundless 
 turmoil one thought beat on her: All that she wanted in 
 life she was to lose in the next few moments. Robert would 
 come and for the last time would look at her with the 
 limpid, restful gaze belonging to love and faith. For the 
 last time and for just a breath, she would be the self of 
 tenderness and peace that in their reunion she had become. 
 Then all would change. The sun would go out upon her 
 world, leaving her in the dark, in the pulling and discard- 
 ing sea where she seemed gasping now. Yes, the sun 
 would go out upon her world. It would crash into space. 
 
 Something soft, falling, fluttering first upon her head 
 and then brushing her propped arms, made her drop her 
 hands from her eyes. Still bent over, her glance moved 
 downward. The strife within her and the pressure of her 
 convulsed fingers upon her lids had blurred her sight to 
 a haze of dancing colors, yet through it she saw what was 
 unbelievable : Her letter the fresh, gray-blue square, 
 face upward, with Robert's name and New York address 
 in her writing lying at her feet, against her skirt. 
 
 Her stare remained on it, refusing to take it in. She 
 gave a jolting look up at Serafin. He was changed. His 
 arms were stiff, pressed against his sides, the hands 
 doubled into fists. Something that evaded her was 
 in his face, so dead, that a glaze seemed to have crept 
 over it, just as she had often seen the roofs' red tiles 
 take on what seemed a cloak of cobwebs under the cold 
 glamour of dawn. While her eyes were held by him, she 
 was overpoweringly conscious of the letter within reach 
 of her hand, yet could not stoop for it. The something
 
 304 The Next Corner 
 
 about him that had eluded her was changing to the appal- 
 ling. She felt the recoil that strikes warm blood at the 
 sight of sudden death. 
 
 "Yours. Pick it up." The words mild, cool, had the 
 remotest detachment in them. "I don't know why I've 
 given it to you " He paused, turned his head slowly 
 as if forced to look at some passer-by, moved it in an 
 uncertain way from side to side blank amazement in 
 it, helplessness. "And yet yet I do yes, I do know" 
 ... he said after a long pause, the tone without body ; 
 void and thin as the crash of empty eggshells. "Pick it 
 up." 
 
 She obeyed. When she felt her fingers close about the 
 letter as they had so often in her imaginings, and when 
 she saw it in her grasp, the chilling incomprehensibility 
 of Serafin went away. Strength came, a tingling fire. 
 And the solid earth was back under her feet. 
 
 "I I !" She looked up to say something she 
 had no idea what something inarticulate, some wild 
 sound of relief and gratitude and Serafin was not 
 there. 
 
 He had vanished with the stealth and silence that had 
 always characterized him. No one else that she had ever 
 known could have so flashed away with no more sound 
 than a shadow, although the panel of netting on the house 
 side resting unfastened against its bamboo jamb, showed 
 that he had crossed in front of her to leave in the ordinary 
 way. 
 
 Elsie started up, had taken a few steps toward this 
 opening when the small sound of the street door shutting 
 carefully reached her. He was gone, then. He was really 
 gone, out of the house, out of her life. And the letter 
 was hers ! 
 
 Here it was in her hand. No, in her two hands, crushed 
 between them in a silent, racking sort of thanksgiving, 
 pressed to her heart, to her shaking lips. It was hers to 
 destroy. Her many prayers were answered. Robert 
 would never read what had been for so long her secret
 
 The Next Corner 305 
 
 torment and through it suffer what she felt to be un- 
 bearable. God had helped her. At the last moment He 
 had softened her enemy's enigmatic heart, poured His 
 mercy upon her even through the medium that had seemed 
 all hardness and menace and hatred. This letter had 
 been the wake of fear following her for so long! It 
 never would again. No eye but hers would see those stab- 
 bing words now. Serafin had gone, defeated ; finished. He 
 would appear in her life no more. 
 
 She suddenly stood very still, listening. The effort to 
 hear was projected so violently, all her muscles down to 
 the tips of her fingers took on the density of iron. She 
 had the look of a bird that through full-throated singing 
 has heard the stealthy on-coming of a cat in the branches 
 and grows mute, yet too palsied by shock to stir. 
 
 If Serafin were gone, then who had again shut the street 
 door? Who was moving in the shadows, and coming 
 toward her now with sounds of confusion and haste, yet 
 without a word? The steps were not those of the linen- 
 soled servants. It was not Robert, or she would have 
 heard the gay, Spanish voices of his friends with him. It 
 must mean that Serafin had come back. He had only 
 softened and surrendered transiently. He was returning! 
 
 These thoughts fell from her as a heavy cloak, sud- 
 denly loosened, drops from the shoulders. Beyond the 
 screen, and in the soft light of the nearer hall, Robert was 
 outlined to her. He came quickly, his head thrust for- 
 ward in the alert way of one who having been awakened 
 by a puzzling sound, seeks its meaning. He pushed the 
 frail door open with an uneasy sharpness and stepped to 
 where the yellow lamplight shone fully on him, showed 
 his eyes riveted on her, mystified, a rigid furrow pointing 
 his brows. 
 
 "What happened?" he asked. The distressful picture 
 Elsie made fitted to what had already startled him and 
 brought panic to his mind. 
 
 Her luminous hair, that had been loosened by the 
 thrusts of her distraught fingers, had slipped down and
 
 306 The Next Corner 
 
 clung in wisps to her damp cheeks and forehead. This 
 was a frame for a terrifying pallor, the wild, fumbling 
 gaze of eyes grown slightly bloodshot, telling of some 
 agitation as yet unexplained. 
 
 She had stepped away from him, backward. The letter, 
 crumpled into a stiff strip, was held in both tense hands 
 clasped before her. She had the wish to answer, to ar- 
 range herself, to prepare him for what she had to tell, 
 but not the power. The sickness that earlier had heaved 
 over her returned, this time with ferocious force. As she 
 fought it, havoc within and without, Robert's voice kept 
 reaching her. Sometimes it sounded assailingly near 
 then far away. And when the qualms that she resisted 
 seemed to pull her under water, blind and deaden her, 
 she did not hear it at all. 
 
 Enough reached her to make her know that something 
 she did not understand what had prevented the 
 Morenos from returning with him. After a delay caused 
 by his taking some one somewhere he had hurried 
 home. He was bringing the car to a stop at the door 
 when he saw Olazaba come out slip out in a curious 
 way that had alarmed him. They had met on the house 
 path. Olazaba had pushed past him violently: 
 
 "... looked queer infuriated . . . pain . . . 
 I rushed after and got hold of him . . . not a word 
 . . . got away ... a ghost a madman !" . . . 
 
 Robert had come closer to Elsie, fiery anxiety in his 
 eyes. She was aware of this through a murk; knew that 
 his hands were held out to her ; knew, too, that if she gave 
 him her own the letter must go with them. She could not 
 stir; she tried to hold to him with her desperate gaze, 
 back of which the sickness was now like a giant trying to 
 throw her. 
 
 "You so silent all night as if trouble . . . some- 
 thing ... I felt, seemed to know . . . What hap- 
 pened after I left? Elsie! My God what? . . . 
 Olazaba? . . . Ill, dear? You can't tell me now?" 
 
 The air seemed to crash on Elsie, take her down with
 
 The Next Corner 307 
 
 it, as if she had been standing in a house that had sud- 
 denly caved in. In the debacle the letter left her hold. 
 She felt it go. Robert had her hands, her fingers, deathly 
 cold, fastening on his like claws. In a last effort at re- 
 trieval she tore them from him, crushed them, empty, 
 against her heart, put them out again to him blindly 
 now for his face had changed to a far, far speck 
 and the letter, lying on the floor beside him, to a pale 
 splash that grew and grew monstrously until it rose to 
 the height of a tidal wave and surged over everything. 
 
 "No use, no use " he heard her sigh, her sight going 
 into eclipse while fumbling, with saddest longing in it, 
 for his face. 
 
 "Elsie Elsie !" came to her faintly, the call 
 over a mountain of one coming to help. 
 
 She had sense that his arms swept around her, dragged 
 her up. They had seemed to come at the very last second 
 to save her from unplumbed blackness into which she had 
 Vegun to fall.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 ON her bed, where Robert had placed her, Elsie lay, un- 
 conscious. His strong fingers on her pulse could find 
 no beat at first, then a very faint fluttering. Her flesh 
 was like damp marble to his touch. He had hurried Do- 
 mingo with the car to Valencia to bring back the best 
 doctor in the place ; and Candida had come on a rush 
 silent, all eyes and quiverings to help him undress her 
 beloved mistress. 
 
 As they lifted the unresponsive body, saw the loosened 
 hair, a length of silvery floss, flash backward like a flag 
 in calm air, the face sculptured in a look of weary 
 negation a terribly finished look Elsie's likeness to 
 death drove a pang through Robert's heart, seemed to 
 take his eyes, leaving only hot rims around two spots of 
 mist. Elsie dead? If Elsie should die! Elsie 
 dead? . . . 
 
 When she was resting between the sheets, the stupor 
 enduring against all efforts to revive her, Robert left her 
 with Candida. His step as unsteady as a man's touched 
 by liquor, he went out to the gallery where they had dined. 
 As soon as he passed through the screen door the thought 
 that had been holding with strength back of all his 
 trouble shot up into a question, a driving one : What 
 had taken place on this spot during his absence? He 
 faced some unintelligible, confounding thing. There was 
 Olazaba's sudden going; his surprising repulse on their 
 meeting; the dementia of his look when on being over- 
 taken he had torn away and darted into the darkness. 
 Joining this was Elsie's mute despair; the something she 
 had seemed trying to tell him; the sickness that had fol- 
 lowed her dumb and pitiful struggle as if agitation in a 
 torrent had swept her down. 
 
 308
 
 The Next Corner 309 
 
 He was motionless on the spot where he had stood be- 
 fore, when his eyes were caught by the folded piece of 
 paper that had fallen from her hands when he had taken 
 them. What was it that she had held so? Would this 
 explain? Why had she not given it to him? Had she 
 meant not to give it ? The pervading question had split 
 to these quick and short ones, hurtling one over the other 
 in his mind, while he had picked the small thing up, flat- 
 tened it, thrust it under the shade of one of the lamps to 
 the full light, stared at it. 
 
 He could only stare. The longer he did this the more 
 unreal what he saw became. After a pause, during which 
 he was conscious of a feeling of suspension as if held in 
 space on his own halted breath, he turned the letter over, 
 looked at the seal of solid wax with the indent of a crest 
 where the words "lealdad . . . amor de Dios . . ." 
 came out indistinctly, turned it again, and again studied 
 the address upon it. 
 
 Candida had come to his side. When she found it nec- 
 essary to speak to him twice before he heard her, her 
 eyes had flashed in alarm from the letter to his face: 
 
 "The doctor has come, senor. He is with the senora." 
 
 It was a little more than an hour later. After arous- 
 ing Elsie from insensibility, the doctor had strengthened 
 her heart, and from this she had lapsed into natural sleep. 
 His smile and shrug on leaving as he talked confidentially 
 with Robert had been contented, approving: 
 
 "Nothing serious nothing but what I tell you," he 
 had said, with suave pats on his patron's arm. "You 
 will see that I am right in my surmise. Scarcely any two 
 women are alike under these circumstances. There is fre- 
 quently from the beginning a disposition to weakness like 
 this, particularly when as now from what you say 
 something has happened to unnerve, perhaps frighten 
 you understand? Quiet alone is needed. Yet should you 
 wish me to come in the morning, let me know." 
 
 The big bedroom was as still as a church. Elsie slept 
 with light, soft breathing. Candida was under the net-
 
 310 The Next Corner 
 
 ting, on a low seat beside the bed; her arm rested on it; 
 a fan was motionless in her limp hand as she half-slum- 
 bered. The colored lantern suspended on a chain from 
 the dimness of the ribbed ceiling was the only light. Most 
 of the place was in shadow. 
 
 Like the sweep of small, brown wings, Elsie's lids came 
 up. A wavering look about, and they closed again in the 
 sensuously grateful way that belongs to the coming of 
 desired sleep. This lasted a few seconds, and the eyes 
 opened, this time sharply, and remained fixed. She rose 
 with careful quiet to her elbow. Peering dread through 
 the curtains which showed her the empty room changed 
 to manifest relief, and she looked at the mestizo's drooped 
 head. 
 
 There was a hushed "Candida !" and the girl felt cold 
 fingers brush her wrist. 
 
 "Senora!" She sprang up with her sweeping grace, 
 took the expectant hand and waited, her face bright with 
 inquiring tenderness. 
 
 "Where is the ?" Elsie began, and paused with flut- 
 tering throat. 
 
 "The senor? He is in his own room, dear senora. He 
 said I must tell him when you awakened." 
 
 "Don't tell him!" came with a clutch on Candida's 
 fingers. Elsie fell back on the pillows. "I remember the 
 doctor. Was the senor here, then all the time? 
 Come closer. Tell me how the senor seemed what he 
 said?" 
 
 Candida knelt beside the pillow, all willing secrecy. 
 "The senor was here part of the time. When the doctor 
 left, he came back. He seemed sad, senora, but glad to 
 see you sleeping, and he went away oh, taking much 
 care to make no sound." 
 
 She saw Elsie tremble. The next words were very faint, 
 of prodding earnestness : "Go out to the gallery, Candida. 
 Look on the floor for a letter close to the table a 
 small letter " 
 
 "It's not there, dear senora "
 
 The Next Corner 311 
 
 "You know! You have it!" came with joy. 
 
 "No " She broke off, almost silenced by the dread 
 in the unmoving eyes. "The senor must have found it, 
 because when I went out there to say that the doctor had 
 come, it was already in his hand." 
 
 The rigid eyes seemed to say: "Go on. What else?" 
 
 "He was turning it around, looking at the envelope as 
 if he did not understand it, senora. When I told him 
 the doctor was here, he came in with me." 
 
 There was a pause, then a heavy question: "Was that 
 long ago?" 
 
 "At about half-past ten, senora. It is nearly twelve 
 now." 
 
 Elsie sank into profound stillness. There was nothing 
 more to be said or learned. Robert had the letter. With- 
 out a word from her ahead of that disclosure one word 
 to soften it and help her with him he had read what 
 she had come to view as abominable. Lines from it seemed 
 to split into black grimacing atoms before her: "... I 
 could not keep faith with you ... I would endure any 
 hardships for his sake ... I am in love madly in 
 love !" . . . Following this she had a picture of Robert, 
 at that moment, in his room. The letter was at his feet. 
 He had dropped it there as one would something that was 
 soiled, or that scorched the fingers. He was facing what 
 he believed was her real self, deceitfully hidden from him. 
 The thought was tearing him that she had been to Arturo 
 all that a woman could be to a man. Tearing him, too, 
 and humiliating him was the conclusion that, instead of 
 love, world wisdom and self-interest had brought her back 
 to him. 
 
 A dislocating sort of suffering sent heat over Elsie's 
 brain. She could not face what was ahead of her. The 
 determination to escape it took on a rocklike strength 
 not to see Robert again; not to plead; not to fight. 
 Nothing could ever be as it had been. There was nothing 
 left of their life together but torn ends and blots, only 
 things for which to be sorry. The letter had done this,
 
 312 The Next Corner 
 
 as she had for so long dreaded. The blazing words, ex- 
 tolling a delirium believed in when written as the invin- 
 cible truth, had blotted and scorched the thought of her 
 to Robert, forever. 
 
 As she flung back the bedclothes and the cloud of net- 
 ting, she was a little wild. Yet standing up straight in 
 her nightgown she looked much like a human lily, sway- 
 ing on its long stalk. 
 
 "Get my clothes," she directed on an uneven breath 
 and began to twist up her hair. 
 
 She made it plain as well as she could for the Span- 
 ish kept slipping from her hurried need of it that she 
 was going to leave the house quietly at once and get to 
 Valencia. In the morning she would take an early train 
 to Caracas and then the first boat from La Guaira to the 
 States. She did not want the senor to know. She would 
 manage to hide somewhere in Valencia. 
 
 "Senora!" The girl's eyes, widening in a paling face, 
 had the effect of splashes of black ink. "You must not 
 go !" came from her on a cry of warning. "Dios no ! 
 What would happen to you far away from this house and 
 from your husband when your trouble comes upon you?" 
 
 Elsie's shoulders gave a sharp twist upward. "What 
 do you mean?" 
 
 "The child senora. Ah, when the doctor told me 
 and said I must take good care of you, I was so happy. 
 And you you? you are not happy?" 
 
 For Elsie's arms had dropped. With taut brows and 
 mouth fallen she stood inert in Candida's embrace. 
 
 "Oh," came from her, almost without sound, and then 
 faint and dragging : "Oh oh, no !" 
 
 The girl's heart grew very sad. What she had felt 
 would be a crowning argument for steadfastness and se- 
 curity had failed. Her mistress, with a new sort of 
 strength and a dangerous quiet, had pushed her away 
 and begun to dress. 
 
 Very soon afterwards Candida was beating a faint 
 tattoo with her nails on Robert's door. It was quickly
 
 The Next Corner 313 
 
 opened. Her master had changed from his dinner jacket 
 to a loosely open corduroy house coat, though otherwise 
 dressed as he had been. The room beyond him, hazy with 
 tobacco, was brightly lit. She could see that his eyes, 
 whose blueness she admired, had the look often noticed on 
 the faces of peddlers, when fagged from body-racking 
 trudges over the mountains, they would drop to rest in a 
 shady part of the servants' courtyard. 
 
 "Go to the senora, please," she prayed. "She seems a 
 little out of her head ! She has sent me to get out her 
 car and steal away with her to Valencia to-night, 
 senor. And after that she is to get to the coast, to some 
 boat. Oh, go to her but do not say I told you or 
 my dear senora will be angry with me!" With this deso- 
 late finish and big sobs, Candida flung her apron over 
 her face and swayed off hopelessly toward her own 
 quarters. 
 
 Elsie was sitting on the edge of the bed when, after a 
 touch upon the glass panels, Robert stepped in. She was 
 tense, her hands clasped and pressed down hard between 
 her knees. She had heard his step, seen his shadow on 
 the panes, and she was the image of fear. There was, too, 
 something almost grotesquely ineffectual about her awed 
 and watching face surmounted by the traveling turban 
 and veil, much as if a staring doll, bent and placed at a 
 right angle, were trying to be the miracle of a woman. 
 
 She did not stir while Robert sat down beside her, 
 treating her exactly as he would a sick child whose fancies 
 were freakish. She heard him say he had seen Candida 
 scurrying along the hall and had come in, hoping to find 
 her awake. After one look at him she turned her head 
 away sharply. She could not understand his repose and 
 tenderness ; they added confusion to her trouble. In body 
 she remained like an automaton, let him take off her hat, 
 lift her stiff hands and gently draw off the gloves, finger 
 by finger, but when he would have kissed her cheek, her 
 uneasy heart made her flinch as if he had tried to strike 
 her. She sprang up. A despairing declaration was in
 
 314 The Next Corner 
 
 her look as it wavered over him, and it burst from her in 
 a wrung, unwilling way : 
 
 "You found and read my letter to you." 
 
 "I haven't read it, Elsie," Robert said, a rational, 
 quieting tone. "Not yet." 
 
 Her throat filled. Her hand went up to it. "Why?" 
 she stammered. 
 
 "Well, I felt that you didn't want me to read it. In- 
 stinct, I suppose. And you didn't?" 
 
 "No !" 
 
 "Ah, I was sure of that. Come here, Elsie." 
 
 He made her sit in an armchair and sat facing her, 
 bending forward in a familiar way. His face was pale 
 and very tired, destitute of every active emotion. And 
 yet its deep calm came to Elsie as sorrow in a prophetic 
 way; it was as if stillness had suddenly fallen on a stone 
 place that had just been filled with outcry and tumult. 
 The roar had been in herself. And this peace from 
 Robert in which she could rest, get breath, and think, 
 would hold only briefly. It was there because he had not 
 read the letter not yet ; because they were still as they 
 had been. A longing shot through her. If she could hold 
 that moment stationary, forever! 
 
 "You had a shock of some sort to-night," Robert said, 
 as she sat back, her eyes closed, listening with steady 
 prescience of pain ahead to every clear word, "and you're 
 still very weak, my darling. Now I don't want you to 
 talk at all no explanation to distress you. You are 
 to listen to me. And after that you're to go to bed again 
 "and try to sleep." 
 
 She could feel him bend a little nearer, but he did not 
 touch her fingers that were close to him, clasped about 
 the thin bamboo arm of the chair. 
 
 "I'm going to tell you my impressions about what I 
 feel is troubling you. When I picked up the paper 
 that fell from your hand as you fainted and found it a 
 letter written by you to me, with a Spanish stamp on it 
 and sealed with a Spanish crest, I was astounded. I'd
 
 The Next Corner 315 
 
 have opened it on impulse, I'm quite sure, if I'd not been 
 called away to see Doctor De Lima, who was with you. 
 Well," the voice throbbed on reflectively, "all the while 
 he was here I'd been piecing things about it together 
 in the back of my mind. First I realized that you must 
 have written it last summer, as that was the only time 
 you'd been in Spain, and from the crest no doubt in the 
 house you were visiting there El Miradero, the place 
 that my letter went to and that you told me you'd never 
 received. When I felt sure of this, the memory dug in 
 that you had gone there directly after our unsatisfactory 
 meeting in Paris. And then " After a pause he spoke 
 with slow emphasis : " then, of course, I remembered 
 that in New York, last September, you told me that you 
 had not written to me not once after leaving me.'' 
 
 Glancing at him, Elsie saw that he had propped his 
 head on his hands, the fingers outspread and further 
 ruffling the rippling hair. 
 
 "The mind is a mine of many crisscross veins, Elsie. 
 One deduction after another can strike on them like 
 spades, disclosing them. It became obvious that you 
 had some strong reason for telling me a falsehood in 
 New York. You had written me from Spain and here 
 was the letter in my hand ! . . . After this I recalled a 
 number of things. They came in a jumble most clearly 
 things Selena had complained of when we first came to 
 El Iris, of your secretly watching the mails ahead of any 
 one else, to get letters for yourself. Was it, instead, I 
 asked myself, this letter of your own to me that you had 
 tried to intercept? Each time the question came I felt 
 more surely that the answer was 'yes.' Was I right in 
 thinking this?" he asked, as he looked up. 
 
 Without meeting his eyes, and pale-lipped, she nodded 
 an affirmative. 
 
 "Then of course you must have believed it had been 
 mailed. Also, of course, your attempts to intercept it 
 could only mean that you did not want me ever to know 
 of it." He gave a sigh here. "Things got very muddled
 
 316 The Next Corner 
 
 after that. How did the letter get into your possession 
 to-night, without having come through the mail? 
 Where had it come from? This thought brought me up, 
 face front, to the thought of Olazaba. What had he to 
 do with the whole business? And what about several 
 things that had vaguely puzzled me from the moment 
 of his arrival here your sadness and silence all the 
 evening; his admission for the first time that he was a 
 Basque ; the way he ran from this house before my return, 
 and with the look of a man chased by the furies? The 
 meaning of it all this old letter from Spain this 
 man, a native of Spain and all the rest?" 
 
 He bent over and put his hands on Elsie's arms. She 
 did not respond. When, instead, she drew away and a 
 look of panic scudded over her shrouded face, Robert's 
 heart contracted. 
 
 "Elsie," he cried out, "you are not afraid of me ! Why 
 don't you look at me? How much of what I've reasoned 
 out is true, dear? What had Olazaba to do with this 
 letter? or had he anything to with it?" 
 
 Her eyes, dark and weary, faltered before his as she 
 forced her stiff lips to speech: "Yes, he brought it." 
 
 "Brought it?" Robert demanded. "Where did he get 
 it? How?" 
 
 "He stole it long ago the night I wrote it " 
 
 "In Spain !" Robert exclaimed, as she paused. 
 
 "At the Marques de Burgos's house last June." 
 She drew in a long breath. "It was given to him to be 
 posted. Instead, he kept it. He was a valet there." 
 
 "Olazaba !" 
 
 "Yes, he was Don Arturo's foster brother, and he was 
 also as needed his confidential man, courier, valet, 
 butler, or cook. He attended to everything for his em- 
 ployer. Juan Serafin Olazaba. That's his name. I only 
 knew him as Serafin until he came to-night." 
 
 In the silence that followed each felt illimitable empti- 
 ness, loneliness. The earth seemed to have grown very 
 still and they suddenly miles apart.
 
 The Next Corner 317 
 
 "I see." 
 
 Robert's dull and wandering tone was at sharp variance 
 with the words, though he asked no question, and sat back 
 with the look of one who is willing to wait. He could 
 not understand the sudden despondency that went over 
 him at the picture Elsie's words conveyed his wife's 
 letter going into the hands of a Spanish valet in Spain, 
 and that valet the man known to him here for months as 
 a Venezuelan speculator. Nor could he tell why with 
 the same shadowy sort of pain, the Marques de Burgos, 
 his employer, who was also Don Arturo, the friend of his 
 wife, should for the first time emerge from the cloudland 
 of non-acquaintance and become significant as a man; 
 cease to be only a name as heretofore. 
 
 Something of this was showing in his face when Elsie 
 started up with the fling of the head that tells of the 
 unbearable. She walked quickly into the shadows and 
 came back to look down at him. Her gaze with bitter 
 resolution in it bathed him before she spoke: 
 
 "Robert," and the tone suggested a missile flung from 
 a distance by wild hands, "I want you to sit there and let 
 me walk about as I talk. I can't be still ! If I keep 
 walking and thinking and I don't see you I can 
 tell you what I have to tell you !" 
 
 Robert had conquered his incomprehensible foreboding. 
 Fancies had transient life in the clarity of his mind. 
 
 "Is it," he smiled, "as bad as that? I don't think it is, 
 Elsie. What more you have to say can wait until morn- 
 ing, when you're stronger after a good sleep. This is 
 what I wish." 
 
 "I shall never sleep until I've told you" 
 
 "In the morning " 
 
 "111 tell you now!" 
 
 "But you've already explained the only thing that up- 
 set me Olazaba's part in this trouble to-night," he 
 urged. "The rest all about the letter I know. No 
 need of another word from you." 
 
 "Know? how can you? You said you hadn't read 
 it!"
 
 318 The Next Corner 
 
 "I haven't. I meant to give it to you as soon as I saw 
 you. I will in a moment. It's in my dinner coat. Ah, 
 Elsie !" and the broken phrase of comprehensive love 
 had the sun in it. 
 
 She had flung out one hand excitedly. He had taken it 
 and was holding it with warmth and strength, so cosily, 
 so carefully, he seemed drawing into a sheltering embrace 
 all her sad and shaken self. His next words swept clean 
 away this flickering rapture made her change before 
 her inner knowledge into something small and contemp- 
 tible, sick, cold and guilty. 
 
 "I can see the salient things, dear through feeling. 
 See if I'm not right ! When you got to Spain you wrote 
 me a letter in which you poured out all that was in your 
 dissatisfied heart dwelt on the disillusionment you had 
 felt during that miserable meeting in Paris. You said 
 you were not happy. You reproached me. Perhaps you 
 said you were not coming home for I remember that in 
 New York you told me you had not meant to come back, 
 and that except for the war you would not have come. 
 This letter, born of an unhappy mood, maybe bitter in 
 its reproaches, you thought was mailed. And by and by 
 you were sorry you'd written it. You regretted it so much 
 that when, in New York, you found it had not reached me, 
 you determined it never should. Isn't that it? And do 
 you suppose if I read it," came glowingly, "it could have 
 mattered now? Though you wrote it, you loved me! 
 Probably you wrote it, hurt and angry, only because you 
 loved me. Ah, dearest! Never think of it again!" 
 
 Elsie's eyes were wet as she drew her hand slowly from 
 him. She was saying good-by to the trust that was in 
 his gaze that was to go and never come back. 
 
 "It isn't like that. Oh, I wish it were!" The most 
 desolate longing was in her voice that seemed a small 
 thing and far away. "It's a different story you're going 
 to hear, Robert. Oh, let me tell you from the very be- 
 ginning please! for that's the only way you'll be 
 able to understand at all !"
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 SERAFIN'S progress was that of a rapidly moving 
 shadow against deeper shadows. He went in his swift 
 light way, seeming to be hurried without any will of his 
 own, in the grip of the Fate in which he believed and 
 with nothing in himself by which he could oppose it or 
 struggle from it. 
 
 He was headed for the hotel in Valencia where that 
 morning he had put up, yet felt no surety of reaching it ; 
 felt instead that he would have to pause when so directed 
 by the power driving him on, even though it were on the 
 roadside to lie like a vagrant in the ditch. 
 
 Serafin had had moments like this before in his life. 
 Under the flow of smooth and usual conditions he had 
 been clear-sighted and had held to arranged plans with 
 the precision of a machine, one moving consciously to 
 the value of money. For the possession of it had always 
 been to him a cogent reason for self-respect; the lack of 
 it a descent into a pitying sort of self-contempt. After 
 the failure of the Logrono mine, years before, he had been 
 reduced, as now, to the feeling of having become a human 
 rag, yet since Arturo, Marques de Burgos, lived a 
 rag that might be found efficient to the one being who had 
 meant to him even more than self. And he had proved 
 this true. He had gone back to Paris to the man he loved 
 and had felt his need like the tug of hands upon him, so 
 that by degrees he had again become a factor in living, 
 though humbled in personal ambition. 
 
 It was different now. No place awaited him. No tug 
 of hands drew him on. Instead, a new name had been 
 added to those on an ancient tomb in Spain. 
 
 319
 
 320 The Next Corner 
 
 Sensitive, confused, filled with a wish to reach a quiet 
 spot where he might settle accounts with his soul, Serafin 
 rushed on. 
 
 The lights of the town were showing in the distance, a 
 sparkling haze, when he became aware of other lights, dim 
 ones, near-by, and realized that he had reached a familiar 
 spot. This was a roadside fonda, painted the harsh, 
 medium-toned blue so loved of Spain. An electric light 
 in the front garden showed the color plainly and the stiff- 
 capitalled sign over the doorway: "Los Dos Hermanos." 
 
 The sight was like a friend coming to him with a 
 familiar hooking of the arm. Serafin knew this little 
 fonda of "The Two Brothers" well. During his previous 
 life in the neighborhood he had made it a sort of half- 
 way house for coffee ; sometimes for green-milk cocoanuts ; 
 sometimes for guarapo, the raw sugar and water with 
 aguardiente. He recalled an old waiter, name Mateo, in- 
 clined to be talkative, and who used to come forward in a 
 shambling, gracious way to serve him. He had a sagging 
 throat, sad, dark eyes and always, no matter how hot the 
 weather, had worn an old, swallow-tailed coat too large 
 for him, evidently a second-hand gift from some portly 
 patron. Of course he was gone, probably dead No ! 
 there he was. 
 
 For Serafin had crossed the garden and was at the open 
 door of the fonda, though not conscious of clear intention 
 to enter it ; and the old waiter who had been placing one 
 bared table on top of another in a corner because it was 
 almost closing time, had turned, was coming toward him 
 in the remembered shambling and gracious way. 
 
 "It is too late, perhaps?" Serafin asked. 
 
 "It is never too late, seiior" the old man crooned, "if 
 there is a customer." 
 
 Serafin sat at a table near the door, one not yet divested 
 of its cloth and facing the dark-blue shining of the night. 
 He took off his Panama hat and passed his hands over 
 his face that was hot and damp. 
 
 "I'll have some brandy and coffee."
 
 The Next Corner 321 
 
 "Do you wish the coffee in a glass, and black, senor? 
 Or with milk?" 
 
 "Black and very strong," he said. 
 
 As he spoke he turned his face to the waiter. The old 
 man with the habitual, self-effacing smile that had become 
 a label, paused as he was about to turn away. 
 
 "Do you remember me, Mateo?" Serafin asked. 
 
 And after a thoughtful look into the stranger's eyes 
 such odd, oblique eyes ; so hollowed, driven, sad the 
 Avaiter nodded. "Surely you are the gentleman who 
 years ago five, six I do not know, they go so fast," 
 he purred, "used to come here so often? Did you not 
 tell me you were from the Basque country, senor? Oh, 
 yes, I do remember you well." 
 
 "Bueno! It is nice to be remembered," Serafin said, 
 "but when I entered I had no idea you would be here 
 and the same, indeed the very same. To be truthful, you 
 were old then but you are no older now. I con- 
 gratulate you, Mateo." 
 
 "Many thanks, excellent senor. I am much the same. 
 A door on broken hinges can hang long, it is said." 
 
 Left to himself, Serafin sat over the table in a crumpled 
 way and scarcely moved until Mateo returned with a 
 tray bearing glasses small and large and a plate with one 
 of the huge, thin cassava cakes of the country. Even 
 then, his air was so absent the old waiter, used to acting 
 on whatever hints a patron's manner conveyed, drew away 
 from him without a word and took a seat in a remote 
 corner until the repast would be finished. He was very 
 tired and hoped he might be able to close the fonda soon, 
 so tired, that as the stillness in the place continued he 
 dozed without intention. 
 
 When he came out of the slumber and shook himself, 
 giving a glance of alarm about, he saw the latecomer still 
 at the table, in exactly the same position. A glance at 
 the clock showed that a full hour had passed, the striking 
 of eleven no doubt having been the sound that had 
 awakened him.
 
 322 The Next Corner 
 
 He went toward Serafin, standing subserviently at one 
 side where he could see the table. The glasses were 
 emptied; at least twenty brown cigarette ends lay on a 
 saucer; and the tray was strewn with what had been the 
 cassava cake crumbled to fine powder by the greenish- 
 brown fingers that still crushed it. 
 
 Mateo deliberately coughed. The man paid no atten- 
 tion to him. He seemed obsessed in expending on the 
 crumbs some fierce desire working in him to break or 
 assault. The fingers kept grinding the bread particles 
 that were already dust, after which they brushed it into 
 small separate mounds, swept these all together, scattered 
 this again, and were once more beginning on the separat- 
 ing and heaping when the waiter ventured nearer. 
 
 "If you do not wish anything more, senor it is 
 very late," he said. 
 
 Serafin's hand grew still but he gave no other evidence 
 of having heard. 
 
 "The owner will not like my keeping the fonda open 
 as late as this " he had begun again, when Serafin 
 turned to him. Mateo stepped back, chilled. The face 
 he could not take his eyes from scarcely seemed the one 
 seen before, so changed was it in some confounding way; 
 the parchment-like skin, tightened on the cheek bones, 
 had a waxen glitter ; the upward slanted eyes, blinking 
 as from pain, were violently bloodshot. 
 
 "Have you been sick, senor?" broke from the waiter. 
 "You look " 
 
 He stopped as a galled sort of humor showed around the 
 close-set lips. 
 
 "I have merely been thinking," Serafin replied almost 
 curtly. "Yet you are right I am sick. You never 
 have such thoughts, I suppose the sort," he said fiercely, 
 "that makes your soul retch? Eh?" 
 
 "No, senor," the old man whispered, and drew away a 
 little, as from something repulsive. 
 
 "You are lucky," was Serafin's dry answer. "Well 
 what do I owe you?"
 
 The Next Corner 323 
 
 The sum was named ; a small one. Mateo looked hope- 
 lessly at the size of the banknote that Serafin pushed 
 toward him. "I could not get change for that, senor, 
 without disturbing the owner, who has gone to bed." 
 
 "You need not disturb him. To-morrow pay him out 
 of it for what I've had. What is left, keep for yourself. 
 And here's another." 
 
 "Senot so much !" 
 
 Serafin had risen. He drew out a suede coin purse 
 and emptied it on the table of all it contained; shook it 
 to be sure that nothing was left. "This is yours, too 
 now you have all, to the last peseta." 
 
 The waiter was looking into the hollow, thirsting eyes 
 with open alarm. 
 
 "You have use for the money, haven't you?" Serafin 
 demanded impatiently, his gaze grimly upon the soiled 
 celluloid collar and shirt front. 
 
 "Oh, si, senor but why?" 
 
 "Good, then for I have not !" came quickly in answer, 
 with a simplicity that was conclusive, as he picked up his 
 hat. His tall, thin body, stiffly erect, he went with an im- 
 pressive directness from the room into the darkness. 
 
 Mateo remained inept and unhappy. Anything that 
 varied from the day's routine had a tendency to addle his 
 spongy brain. Here was something very different. And 
 he did not like it. The stranger's eyes, congested with 
 blood and in the stillness of his livid face, the heap of flour 
 dust on the tray evidence of an impulse to freakish 
 disorder, the money given him a larger sum than he had 
 ever seen at one time before the last words : "You 
 have use for the money I have not !" he liked none 
 of these. 
 
 Without touching anything on the table, he shuffled 
 timidly to the open door, expecting to make out, perhaps, 
 the figure of the unsettling visitor on the road and headed 
 for the town. When, instead, he saw him going up a near 
 path and then, as one familiar with the place, open the 
 gate that led into the large garden running from the side
 
 324 The Next Corner 
 
 of the house to the back, his earlier disquiet returned with 
 force. 
 
 Few people were privileged to enter the garden that it 
 was Mateo's duty to keep locked because of its money 
 value from the owner's collection of animals and birds. 
 These were in cages at distances among the trees : speci- 
 mens of the black, thumbless, spider monkey, gorgeous 
 beasts with black back, white cheeks and a band of 
 reddish- yellow across the forehead; a jaguar with rosette- 
 like spots, and a tawny puma ; aviaries among the vine- 
 hung trees filled with beautifully-colored cassiques with 
 their hanging nests, starlings, scarlet tanagers, gay 
 manikens, bell birds, many parrakeets and macaws 
 colored like equatorial sunsets. Few even knew of the 
 gate, as it was fashioned to seem a part of the high rail- 
 ing. This man, of course, remembered it from his previ- 
 ous acquaintance. If he should walk about there and 
 awaken the birds and beasts in their cages, the noise on 
 the night might disturb the owner ! 
 
 With the slack surrender to events that characterizes 
 the very old when the day has been overlong and a weight 
 on the tired heart, Mateo made a renunciatory gesture, 
 picked up the money with hands that shook as if working 
 under a current of electricity, finished settling the place, 
 put out the lights, and shuffled to his own room under the 
 eaves. 
 
 But as he took off the stale, daytime clothes, he could 
 not resist looking from the window that gave on the gar- 
 den at the back. It did not promise him contentment to 
 make out in the starlight the thin, sloping shoulders of 
 the unwelcome one, and that he was seated on one of the 
 central benches, his head bowed in a contemplation that 
 suggested permanence. 
 
 "Santisima Maria, he will stay there till morning be 
 seen and I will be blamed for not locking the gate !" 
 
 In a flurry of helpless dismay Mateo crossed himself, 
 crept into his cot bed and drew the quilt over his head.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 SERAFIN, as motionless as one of the trees about him, 
 saw nothing of the garden while seeing much of other 
 things. Over and over the pyramidal events of the night 
 kept climbing before him: First, his joy on finding that 
 Maury's wife was with her husband under false pretenses, 
 having relied on the letter failing to reach him. How 
 keenly and revivingly had this fact comeV to him as the 
 bridge to success through Maury's favor, a bridge to 
 be builded on the wife's need of consideration from the 
 man who had the letter and who would not give it up to 
 her until he stood securely in the lush pasture of the 
 promised land to which the bridge was to lead. 
 
 Blackmail? The word leaped into his thoughts; an 
 ugly thing and new to him. He sneered at his innate 
 shrinking from it. What matter? Had it been success- 
 ful, how easily the milk and honey of satisfied money-lust 
 would have removed its bitter taste. 
 
 But he had failed. After all his shrewd planning 
 failed! As realization of this drove like the blows of a 
 handspike through the foundation of his revery, he lifted 
 his head and looked straight before him with the fatuous, 
 incredulous questioning that had shown in his face during 
 Elsie's denunciation of him. He had found it impossible 
 to carry out his intention, not because of what she had 
 said ; no, not in the least. His war with life had hardened 
 his spirit so that in most issues it had the comfortable 
 callousness of a shell. Her raging accusation had passed 
 over him without penetrating; dismissed as he listened. 
 Not so the something that had come out of her words 
 separate from her that had first unsettled and then de- 
 feated him. He had no name for the experience except 
 one that his reason denied, even mocked, the entrance 
 
 325
 
 326 The Next Corner 
 
 of a spiritual force into the struggle between them, and 
 on her side, for although from instinctive, unshakable 
 reverence he frequently observed the outer forms of his 
 religion, he had been a sceptic for many years, had be- 
 lieved himself no different from the animals that, while 
 their hearts beat, lived, and when they ceased to beat, 
 died forever. 
 
 And yet, this overwhelming thing, to-night ! 
 
 He sat with disturbed brows, steeped in the gentle 
 silence through which the stars watched, and tried to re- 
 member it all. There had been no misty apparition from 
 the Unknown, nor had his ears in the natural way heard 
 any one speak save Maury's wife and himself. Still Don 
 Arturo had been there had owned him, bent him, made 
 him obey. 
 
 "Cease torturing her. Give her the letter and put her 
 mind at peace. I tell you to give it to her. Give it 
 now!" Don Arturo had said this. 
 
 Heard by an inner, unseen self, how his heart had 
 leaped to it ! For the first time he had realized that 
 nothing so dies with the dead as the voice. So many 
 things can linger and be met : a song that had been loved, 
 a perfume, the individuality of handwriting, a portrait 
 in which a smile can seem to quiver, but the voice, that 
 of all things holds the magic of personality, passes ut- 
 terly, can scarcely be remembered, rarely becomes real 
 in the dreams that in other ways can be heart-stirring 
 revivals of the lost. But to-night the miracle had hap- 
 pened. Mystically, in every varying cadence of the once 
 familiar speech warm-noted and impatient, urbane yet 
 disdainful the young marques had been alive to him. 
 In the familiar way, too, he had obeyed him, had gone 
 from Elsie's presence empty-handed, and with no more 
 personal assertiveness than a fallen leaf has in a squall. 
 
 The native melancholy of Spain intensified upon Sera- 
 fin. He invited memories, scenes far from this garden 
 of a Venezuelan fonda, and of other times, times far back. 
 
 He was a child in the old Basque farm on a mountain
 
 The Next Corner 327 
 
 top ; a place of carved beams, of balconies and overhang- 
 ing roof ; with cattle on the ground floor ; the first story, 
 where the family lived and his mother sewed, reached by 
 an outside staircase. His mother ! strong and fierce 
 and true, with bared arms like a smithy's and black eyes 
 with the steadiness of watch fires ! Sewing had been the 
 smallest part of her work. She had walked beside his 
 father as a lioness beside her mate. She had toiled with 
 him, digging in the fields, bearing an equal burden of the 
 harvest ; and often, alone, she had taken cattle to market 
 at daybreak over twenty miles of mountain road, return- 
 ing at night without a sign of fatigue on her calm, brown 
 face. She could not write her name, yet as he had hung 
 about her knees, she had told him stories, handed down by 
 tradition, of his ancestry founded far back amongst the 
 ancient Libyans. And always she had spoken the pure 
 Basque, so proud of her race she treasured its spirit 
 against modern Spanish confusions and corruptions as a 
 mother eagle with domed wings and open beak guards 
 her nest from attack. 
 
 One Spaniard, at least, she had violently loved, the 
 child she had nursed, the foster brother she had given to 
 her son. The difference made by class had hardly existed 
 between this boy and himself in childhood during the va- 
 cations when Arturo had come on long visits to his ama. 
 What comrades they two had been ! climbing together, 
 fishing, giggling secretly as they knelt closely side by 
 side during the solemn masses they had been forced to 
 attend, going mad with boys' joy in the primitive dances 
 of the mountains during the sowing and vintage fesias. 
 
 One memory came with such clearness of characteristic 
 detail his soul grew sick with a craving to go back. This 
 showed him an autumn and winter when Arturo was four- 
 teen. He had not been strong for months previous, and 
 the marquesa, his mother, terrified by the cough that had 
 troubled her idol, had sent him away from Burgos and 
 tutors to the dry, fine air of his ama's farm and a long 
 playtime outdoors with his foster brother. In the gayest
 
 328 The Next Corner 
 
 way Arturo had tried to become a Basque peasant; had 
 worn a red boina like Serafin's own and, when frost came, 
 a veritable mountaineer's zamarra the full, loose jacket 
 made of curly astrachan from year-old lambs reared in 
 Andalusia, the black wool on the outside. But the clothes 
 could not make him a rustic. The rakish scarlet cap had 
 only intensified the exquisite chiselling of his face; nor 
 could the bulky zamarra alter in the slightest the distinc- 
 tion and delicacy of his bearing. "Beautiful as an angel," 
 the nurse-mother had said when she saw these for the 
 first time on the luminous-eyed, pale boy from the city 
 palace that even then knew the pinch of poverty, was 
 never heated enough, always damp. 
 
 Serafin lifted his head a little. He did not look at the 
 ghostly pattern of the mountains, or the host of stars. 
 He was still racing with Arturo up the breeze-blown 
 heights though the while with dual sense he stood beside 
 the mildewed tomb in the crypt that held his body, a 
 bullet in the heart. And he saw his mother, young, 
 swift-moving, with sheaves of wheat heaped on her power- 
 ful shoulders, looking like Ruth the gleaner yet side by 
 side with the picture, saw her as she was now, a widow 
 and very old, knitting before his sister's fire, her grand- 
 children listening as he had done to tales of the times when 
 to be a Basque was to be authoritative and noble, clean 
 and true in the fierce way of the noonday sun. 
 
 He would never see his mother again. And Arturo was 
 dead. 
 
 Still he looked into the darkness. Suppose this life 
 were not the end of life? To him, an unbeliever, Arturo 
 had spoken that night. And yet was this possible? 
 If he could be sure, what a difference this might make, 
 what strength might come of it to him with which to be- 
 gin again even now and this time his fight to live 
 be the simple and honorable thing that his mother had 
 tried to make a part of him. . . . If he could be sure ! 
 . . . He sat intensely still for hours, waiting for a sign. 
 
 The air, heavy and warm all night, was freshening
 
 The Next Corner 329 
 
 toward morning when he became conscious of the most 
 intense fatigue and with it a disinclination to take one 
 step into any sort of future. Hearts can wear out except 
 as machines, though bodies move normally through the 
 day's work. What place was there for a lonely penni- 
 less man with a dead heart one who had been 
 evil-living while recognizing in himself many qualities 
 that should have made for good? If he could be sure that 
 life some sort of life something endured, even 
 when worn-out hearts had changed to ice-cold weights ! 
 His lips moved without sound a few times. At last he 
 spoke : 
 
 "Tell me!" he said in an imploring whisper. "Speak 
 to me again, and I will know, senor! ..." 
 
 He waited a long while. There was only the stillness. 
 
 "Some sign !" he prayed. "If I were not made fanciful 
 by desperation and disappointment, and you were with 
 me to-night, come to me again. Renew my strength. 
 Speak to me !" 
 
 The stillness seemed to grow deeper ; grew so impact he 
 felt it press against him as an obstacle. The first edge 
 of what was to be daylight showed in the east drab, 
 dour, hopeless. He waited until where he sat became the 
 ghost of a garden^ the heavy-headed trees creeping into 
 sight as a solid black without branch filigree, the plants 
 a smoked-green bulk with the bars of the metal cages upon 
 them like flickering ribbons of silver. 
 
 A sigh went heavily through Serafin. He drew some- 
 thing from his pocket. 
 
 Later perhaps five minutes Mateo's sparsely- 
 haired head jolted up from its pillow. The gloom out- 
 side the open window, faintly curdled with a leaden tone, 
 was full of affrighting noise whining howls from the 
 jaguars, a crepitation of monkey barks and screams, a 
 flapping of imprisoned wings joined to frantic croakings, 
 squawks, trills and chirpings. Even through his sleep 
 of sodden fatigue these animal sounds a charivari of 
 terror had reached him.
 
 330 The Next Corner 
 
 "The pests have awakened me," Mateo thought, when, 
 after hearing the owner stirring in alarm below, he began 
 rapidly to put some clothes on, "but merciful Dios 
 Cristo! what was it that awakened them?" 
 
 He knew the reason darkly, within himself, before he 
 joined his half-dressed, snarling employer who carried 
 a lantern and stepped with him into the garden. His 
 expectation became certainty as he came down the path 
 and saw the strange man still on the central bench, still 
 with his sloping shoulders bent, but with a stiffness and 
 stillness about them now that made him seem an effigy. 
 He could not touch him. 
 
 It was the owner who went to face the intruder, grasped 
 his arm in frenzy, gave the pendent head a rough push 
 upward, and then crossed himself. 
 
 The animals and birds had quieted, and the hum of a 
 heavy touring car was heard in the distance, coming 
 toward the fonda from the direction that would take it on 
 to the town. Both men rushed out by the gate and into 
 the middle of the road. Here Mateo gave quivering cries 
 of distress and his master kept waving the light in a circle 
 about his head. 
 
 The motor, coming on at a crashing speed, was jerked 
 to a stop a few feet from them. It held Robert and 
 Domingo, the mestizo driving. 
 
 "Senor! Senor!" the owner of the fonda chattered, 
 and then with recognition : "Oh, Senor Maury, help me in 
 this trouble. A man has shot himself in my garden. If 
 this becomes known, no one will come to my house for 
 months. It will be a curse! I will be ruined. Help me 
 to settle this quietly, senor! You are going to the town. 
 Will you take me with you, so that I can get the police 
 back with me and move the body before the morning? Oh, 
 senor, I am mad, mad! Twice the fellow shot, my wife 
 says, and all my creatures made a noise like Hell broken 
 loose " 
 
 Robert had stepped out. In the lantern light and the 
 feeble grayness his face looked drawn and deathly. Under
 
 The Next Corner 331 
 
 the peak of his cap his eyes had lightened as he followed 
 the man's chattering rush of words. He wore a big yellow 
 coat, heavy enough for winter, the collar drawn up high, 
 yet gave the impression of still being cold; his right 
 hand was thrust into one of its pockets. 
 
 "Show me the man," he said. 
 
 When he stood before Olazaba, whose head was up- 
 lifted and bent far back just as the owner had run from 
 it, and saw the contemptuous weariness carved into the 
 face, a strange change came to his own, as of one 
 suddenly disarmed by Authority, chastened out of his 
 own burning judgment to the acceptance of a verdict 
 including truths whose majesty belittled conditions that 
 but a moment before he had felt to be so momentous. 
 
 The hand in his pocket had the thong of an old slave 
 whip wound about it. This curio of other days had been 
 nailed on the wall of his room and he had torn it down on 
 leaving El Iris. His fingers loosened on it ; left it. They 
 came out tremblingly and curved about his chin as he 
 stood, hushed, and gazed at the dead.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THERE was no need of Robert's continuing to Valencia. 
 With the finding of Olazaba in the garden of the fonda 
 his quest was ended. He sent the tallow-faced and hastily- 
 dressed proprietor on with Domingo in the car to the 
 town. It was not his intntion to wait for its return. 
 He would walk back to El Iris. 
 
 Before starting he went into the dishevelled public 
 room and poured himself some brandy. Old Mateo, too 
 distressed to stir, sat bent forward in a corner, his mouth 
 moving in a fumbling way, his long arms sagging be- 
 tween his legs. 
 
 "You need a drink yourself," Robert said and brought 
 him a small glass of liquor. "Take this." 
 
 "Thank you, senor," he stuttered. 
 
 After gulping it down, he gained enough assurance 
 to utter what was in his thoughts : "I cannot go out 
 
 yet, senoi and I do not like to leave the body alone. 
 
 He was kind to me, poor man very kind! Could you 
 stay near him, senor, until I feel better and have dressed? 
 You see," he went on with an upward, sick look, "this 
 is not the first dead man I have seen left out in the 
 open. I was through several revolutions here, senor, 
 in my youth, and saw some killing. So I do not like 
 to leave the body out there alone. The birds and 
 insects know at once they are not afraid they hurry 
 to the dead." 
 
 A grue went over Robert as he took the glass from the 
 fingers whose under trembling was incessant. "Don't 
 distress yourself, Mateo. I'll wait out there for you. 
 Come when you are ready." 
 
 He walked with inner unwillingness to the spot. There 
 the repulsiveness of the thought put into his mind by the 
 
 332
 
 The Next Corner 333 
 
 old man deepened into a sickening sort of self-diminu- 
 tion. The swiftness with which the living creature, 
 arrogant with personality, electric with the mysterious 
 forces of the brain and the energies of the blood, can 
 become waste material with corruption imminent! The 
 birds in clusters were already on the lower branches, 
 peering down and chirping familiarly at the rigid bulk 
 upon the bench, a lizard was moving with a leisureliness 
 that was horribly informing across the dead man's knee. 
 
 Moisture stood on Robert's forehead as with his hand- 
 kerchief he flicked away the thing that was like a crawling 
 gray tongue and forced his fingers to draw the hat over 
 the lifted face, a flare in the gray. As he did this, and 
 began smoking and pacing on the path, he heard above 
 him the commotion of a flight of departing birds. 
 
 It was a chilling thing to be wide awake and alone in 
 the dawn. He saw the hour as grim, disquieting, deeply 
 sad; an anomalous thing, like a body with empty veins 
 into which at last the sun would pour as the gift of blood. 
 To this came the remembrance of that part of Elsie's 
 story whose force upon him had left a scar this same 
 deathly hour on the mountain in Spain, and she there, 
 frightened, heartsick and astray, sent on her forlorn way 
 with insult cast out with insult ! . . . 
 
 He paused in his pacing to look steadily at the frozen 
 burden on the bench. It seemed to him justice Mosaic 
 justice that it was in the dawn Olazaba had pronounced 
 life unbearable. His hour of Calvary, too. 
 
 After this, with blood drumming in his temples, he was 
 flung back in spirit to the hours just passed with Elsie. 
 He had been a silent listener to her story, as she had made 
 him see into every corner of that secret house from whose 
 windows her spirit had for so long kept peering out in 
 fear. She had been brutal in truthfulness. Without an 
 excuse for herself she had shown one picture after another 
 of her life during the years separate from him. While 
 moving in and out of the shadows of the big room at El 
 Iris, he for the most part sitting with his elbows on his
 
 334 The Next Corner 
 
 knees, and his hands spread above his eyes, they had been 
 like people between whom no veil of reticence had been 
 left lowered, their stark selves face to face. 
 
 With energy and exactness she had painted in words 
 the man who had first made her aware of the sense thirst 
 in herself, remade her to her own eyes. As reckless and 
 impassioned the eonfession had rushed on, this man was 
 before her again alive and she called him familiarly 
 Arturo. 
 
 In the still room in the dead hours of the night she had 
 shown him El Miradero, a splash of brilliant color hang- 
 ing against the wall of drab mountain, and Arturo coming 
 on a boyish run to meet the mule coach, his velveteen 
 jacket slung hussar-fashion over one shoulder, while 
 without one word of self-excuse she had told how she had 
 loved him then. In fact, she had poured out these details 
 in an absorbed way as if she had no listener and were 
 talking to herself. 
 
 As she described Arturo's unusualness in sheer beauty, 
 his distinction and grace, of all of which he had ap- 
 peared wholly unconscious, a memory had swept against 
 Robert. It had been like the brush of a curtain lifting 
 to disclose a small incident on the day he had sought 
 Elsie at the Countess Longueval's tea. As he entered 
 the house, he had passed a young man on the steps 
 who was leaving it. A casual glance at him had 
 instantly become speculative interest. The stranger 
 had been looking backward with a smile that had 
 made his dark face flash through a melancholy 
 that was like mist upon it, a wonderful smile it had 
 been, a blend of charmingly cut mobile lips lifted chal- 
 lengingly, of glowing yet languid eyes; and with it he 
 had called back to some one a good-by in Spanish. This 
 Spaniard, so clearly recalled from the one meeting, was 
 no other than Don Arturo, Marques de Burgos. With- 
 out speaking of the memory to Elsie, Robert knew this 
 had been the man. 
 
 He did not interrupt Elsie once. As she had said, she
 
 The Next Corner 335 
 
 could not bear to look at him and had progressed with 
 her story almost without pause, while pacing in the 
 shadows, her head for the most part hanging, her hands 
 sometimes coming together and sometimes flung wide. 
 
 In and out of the pictures that she made live, the man 
 known to him as Olazaba had moved with subtlety and 
 menace. She told of the storm that had seemed rending 
 the mountains, her loneliness and fright, her sense of fate 
 in the strange place, her surrender to Arturo's pleading. 
 He saw her, as her first step on the new path, writing the 
 letter of farewell. He saw Serafin receiving this from 
 his master to be given to Eduardo to carry down the 
 mountain; saw her stand in silence until the ring of the 
 donkey's hoofs from the stony road had made her sure 
 that he had gone, and with him her old life. 
 
 Of the murder she said little. A few shuddering phrases 
 were enough to show him herself, an alien, understanding 
 little of the storm of words between her lover and the 
 man who had come to make him pay, then the demo- 
 lition of her world. And after the shock, the grief. Here, 
 too, she had almost no words. 
 
 And the sequel to El Miradero : Julie's home in Paris 
 where Elsie had crept back to consider the fading nega- 
 tive of her future; the war that had made her one of the 
 demented crowds speeding homeward; the lie to him in 
 New York made possible by opportunity. He saw all this. 
 
 "I did not deceive you in New York about the letter 
 in order to make life easy for myself," she had said with 
 a straight sort of simplicity and without force. "I was 
 not as cheap as that. I came away with you to accom- 
 plish just one thing to get the letter and so keep you 
 from pain and shock that had become needless. I did not 
 love you then, I thought I never would. Once I had the 
 letter, I meant to go away, making the terms of our agree- 
 ment the excuse. My inner life here was hideous oh, 
 one long dread ! No wonder Selena suspected me. I lived 
 in security only from hour to hour. I hated the day. 
 All the day I would feel myself a hypocrite, goaded by the
 
 336 The Next Corner 
 
 fear that by some chance outside my control the letter 
 would reach you, that at any moment I might see it come 
 into your hands, see you open it, and have to endure your 
 well, perhaps your contempt. I loved the nights 
 there was no danger in the nights. With the first rays of 
 morning through the slits of the shutters, my torture 
 began again constant, unrelenting apprehension !" 
 
 There had been a long pause after this. 
 
 "Although I made this struggle to keep you from ever 
 knowing how I had given you up, I did not think that I 
 loved you at all in those first months. I kept dreaming 
 of Arturo. Life was a cloud and I moved in it, seeing 
 him. He had worn a beautiful, ancient ring with his 
 family's crest on it it had sealed my letter to you. 
 Afterward he gave it to me as a pledge, and until one day 
 last February I wore it inside my dress. A revelation 
 about him reached me then all about his sort of life 
 and why he was killed. It came in a newspaper account 
 that my mother sent. It changed me!" 
 
 In a few phrases she had given him the story of Ascun- 
 cion with the corroding knowledge it had brought of Ar- 
 turo. 
 
 "And I saw that instead of having been the one woman 
 to him, loved deeply, I had only been one in a procession 
 of women." 
 
 There was a frozen sort of stillness. She broke it with 
 a low yet piercing question : "There isn't any need for the 
 rest is there?" Before he could look up or answer she 
 had continued : "I'm different to you, forever. That's only 
 what I can expect. Well, I thought that after all these 
 months the letter had been lost in some way. I told myself 
 this every day. At last I felt absolutely sure of it. And 
 then to-night when I looked into Olazaba's face a 
 stranger's face I was looking at Serafin. ... I almost 
 died. . . . He showed me the letter before dinner. He 
 threatened to hand it to you at once unless I kept quiet 
 about him and gave him a chance to explain. . . . The 
 chance came when you went to the Morenos. . . . He said
 
 The Next Corner 337 
 
 then that unless I kept silent about having known him in 
 Europe in the way I did and would let him go to New 
 York with us to be introduced by you to your business 
 people, he would hand you the letter while saying that in 
 Paris I had been the mistress of the marques though 
 he must have known, from having to cheat me to get me 
 alone at El Miradero with his master, that this was a lie ! 
 
 Well, I refused and felt that nothing would save me 
 
 that you would read the letter I had come to hate, 
 before I could tell you all this in my own way, as I meant 
 surely to do . . . " 
 
 Her voice had trailed off here, had become thin and 
 wondering: "It was a strange experience. I will never 
 understand it suddenly he gave me the letter and 
 rushed out. He gave it," she said in a thrilling sort of 
 whisper. "What I had prayed for so hopelessly was 
 mine." 
 
 Robert recalled that after this his consciousness had 
 suddenly concentrated upon one picture. With it, the 
 entrance into him of a longing at white heat was like that 
 of an animal with claws, seizing only the memory of 
 Elsie's hours at El Miradero after the murder, where 
 Olazaba with the letter secretly in his possession had put 
 the consummate edge to her pain. When to this was added 
 thought of him as a buzzard who having long ago pre- 
 pared his chance had come to-night to take advantage of 
 it, the whole made an offense so beyond the pale of the 
 most ordinary decency, it had swept him to his feet 
 wild compelled to one sort of action. 
 
 How he had gone from Elsie with only a blurted phrase 
 that he would soon be back, and how he had left the house 
 with Domingo, he did not remember clearly. The rage 
 to kill was upon him and he hurried to satisfy it. The 
 obsession had been frightful. And yet ! As he walked 
 the path before Olazaba's dead body, a new knowledge of 
 himself grew as he realized the care with which his mind 
 had kept him from a crime; how reason, lucid and cold 
 through all his turmoil, had made him leave his pistol be-
 
 338 The Next Corner 
 
 hind him, and instead had put into his hand the slave 
 whip. To wound and hurt, to abase this man that he had 
 suddenly come to loathe with a fury he had not dreamed 
 possible to his nature, to make him cringe on the ground 
 with cries of pain as victims had often done under this 
 lash, whose history as he knew had been a frightful one, 
 this had promised primitive satisfaction side by side with 
 an under determination not to wreck himself for the crea- 
 ture he held in contempt. 
 
 And even what he had planned had been needless. His 
 hands were empty and his soul lightened. 
 
 There was a look of age on Robert's face. A transient 
 blight from the years ahead had picked out hollows in his 
 cheeks, given his eyes emptiness with the bright weariness 
 that comes of lack of sleep. And now, on the leap of a 
 second, remembrance of Elsie began to prod him. He 
 wanted Mateo to appear so that he could start for El 
 Iris and finish with her. Finish? The word was a 
 crooked pull upon his nerves. Finish? . . . How since 
 he had not previsaged at all in what words he would meet 
 the issue in their lives? 
 
 From the time he had left home his rage against Ola- 
 zaba had blurred everything else. When he tried to realize 
 that but for a fortuitous tragedy Elsie would have left 
 him for another man and without ever another sight of 
 him, he could not make himself know it. He could not 
 even become familiar with it in trying to know it. The 
 thought was in him, stupidly, rubbed in with the most 
 intense sadness and with the shudder that goes into a 
 look back at some mortal danger barely escaped. And 
 yet how could it be true? 
 
 He was only a few yards from Olazaba's body, and at 
 the top of the path in view of the gate that in the excite- 
 ment of his entrance had been left open. He was stand- 
 ing with the look of a jaded man, his back to a tree, his 
 chin buried in the high coat collar, his eyes on the ground. 
 While he waited so for Mateo the dull drumming of the 
 one thought did not stop in his aching brain: It was
 
 The Next Corner 339 
 
 true. He knew it was true. He must get used to it. 
 Once he could grasp himself as the man, Elsie the woman, 
 in the group of pictures melting one into the other before 
 memory, the matter would simplify and he could deal with 
 it sanely, oh, very sanely and generously. He knew 
 he would do this when he could really take it in as the 
 truth that he knew it was. 
 
 The rush of a light car past the open garden gate in 
 the direction of Valencia made him look up, too late to 
 see it. And then, his aroused attention drawn to another 
 descent of the audacious birds to points near the bench 
 with the body, he returned to it with a deliberately dis- 
 turbing trudge that brought alarmed chirps and a flutter- 
 ing retreat. 
 
 From this he went on in the direction he faced until the 
 house was reached, its door flung back. And here he 
 called for Mateo. 
 
 The old man's voice came feebly and desolately in 
 answer: "I cannot go yet, senor the senora is much 
 upset and needs me here. Ay-el Dios But please do 
 not wait any longer. The others will come soon now." 
 
 "Very good. Then I will go," Robert called. 
 
 He turned from the house to see Elsie, not twenty yards 
 from him. With Candida beside her she was almost di- 
 rectly in front of Olazaba's body.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SHE was different from the memory he had of her where 
 she moved nervously at one side of the ineffectively lighted 
 room and in the severe gown she had put on for traveling. 
 An unfamiliar cloak of cobweb gray and a black mantilla 
 brought almost an alien impression with which the pallid 
 light, the fantastic garden and the look on her face were 
 rightfully a part. Most of all her face, so bloodless 
 it was more ashen than white, her mouth open in a look 
 of sickness. The first glance showed him that but for 
 Candida's arms about her she would have sunk to her 
 knees. 
 
 As he hurried to her, her gaze seemed to seize him, left 
 it to move stiffly to Olazaba's copper-hued left hand lying 
 palm upward on his knee with the curved fingers open and 
 more than ever like claws in their rigor, then back again 
 to him. 
 
 "You ?" quivered on a breath as he reached her, the 
 most deadly fear in it. 
 
 "No, my dear, no," Robert said and took her from 
 Candida, feeling the upheaving shudder from her body 
 dart through his own. "He shot himself. He was here 
 alone." 
 
 In the relief her head sank against him, the eyes closed 
 as if she had fallen suddenly into sleep. He led her down 
 a path out of sight of the body to a bench there, and sat 
 beside her. She was watching him now ; waiting. 
 
 "I was passing in the car, going to find Olazaba in 
 Valencia," Robert said in answer to the look, "when the 
 man who owns this place called me in from the road to 
 help. I found Olazaba as you saw him. You are sick 
 with fright!" 
 
 "Oh, yes! When I was told that you'd gone," she 
 
 340
 
 The Next Corner 341 
 
 stuttered, "I went to your room and looked for your 
 pistol. I couldn't find it and so I thought ! 
 Oh, I couldn't bear what I thought it made me insane. 
 I had to come out, follow you, try to find you in time 
 I was terrified!" 
 
 "I'm sorry. I should have gone to you before I left 
 and told you that I was taking only that old whip that 
 was on my wall." 
 
 As she fumblingly lifted her handkerchief, he took it 
 from her and with careful touches wiped her face that 
 had the look of marble sweating. 
 
 "Don't be frightened," he urged. "There's nothing to 
 fear. You understand? there's nothing to connect me 
 us with this at all. I was passing, called in, and 
 recognized the suicide as an acquaintance. That's all. 
 It's finished." He looked at his watch and stood up. 
 "You came in your car?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "We'll go back now. The police will be here in a few 
 moments. I'd rather they didn't see you. I'll drive you 
 home. Candida can walk. No one need know you came 
 here with her. Come, Elsie." 
 
 Robert had done these things in a comforting way, said 
 these words in tones that were deeply kind. This quality 
 reached through Elsie's numbness, made its impression on 
 her, his kindness. 
 
 During the almost silent return to the house and to 
 her bedroom, where he lighted a heap of dry bark on the 
 hearth, she was still quietly, resignedly aware of his com- 
 passionate consideration. She had sense of nothing but 
 this from him. Nothing less nor more. She acknowl- 
 edged it as she sat before the blaze, her chilled hands held 
 out to it. 
 
 "You are very kind," she said in a soft, drifting way 
 and without looking at him. 
 
 Robert winced from the word. It set the situation 
 between them jangling like a damaged clock trying to 
 strike. The need of decision came throbbing out of the
 
 342 The Next Corner 
 
 confusion in him. Still, knowing this, a longing- 
 persisted to postpone any further consideration of their 
 new attitude. It was the weariness of a man recovering 
 from sickness to whom the thought of resumption of initia- 
 tive is dreary. 
 
 He bent over Elsie, smoothed her hair. "Will you try 
 to sleep now?" As instead of replying, her face went down 
 into her open hands, he spoke again persuasively: 
 "We are both so tired. After a rest we can " 
 
 She shook her head, lifted it sharply and turned side- 
 ways to look up at him. "I want to say one thing to you 
 first. One thing must be settled before there's any rest 
 for me." She pointed to a chair facing her. 
 
 Robert sat down willingly but with a sensation as if 
 his heart were only half alive. He had a desire to speak, 
 without clear knowledge of how to begin ; a consciousness 
 of the something vital needing to be said that yet kept 
 slipping from him and that his lassitude shirked from 
 following. Elsie, instead, had become suddenly vibrant. 
 Childish in look and air, weak and pale, a purpose had 
 appeared in her that was like the electric spark he had 
 often seen run along exposed wires. 
 
 The instant's silence between them had the weightiness 
 that precedes the passing of a sentence. The house was 
 absolutely still, filled with a great loneliness. From the 
 patio the early morning glamour came; it was changing 
 to a tawny glitter on the red roofs, to gold glints in the 
 trees, and seemed a fresh-faced, inquisitive new-comer look- 
 ing in at them. 
 
 "I want to get away, Robert," Elsie said, her voice 
 hard, yet with a quiver through it. "I don't want to 
 wait to go home with you. I want to be by myself 
 go to-morrow." 
 
 He frowned moodily, as if trying to take in her words. 
 
 "It's the only thing possible. I don't want to stay 
 here not for another day !" 
 
 "Why not?" This was honest, dull wonder. 
 
 "Can't that's all."
 
 The Next Corner 343 
 
 She stood up, went to the window and looked out. 
 After a silence she turned, remaining standing with her 
 back to the light. 
 
 "This is a trouble," she said passionately, "where all 
 the blame rests on one on me. I can't endure the 
 weight of it and be with you." 
 
 "This is foolish, Elsie," he said very wistfully, though 
 still in the voice that told of his tired heart. "Your place 
 is with me. I want you with me." 
 
 A flash of misery went over her face. "I know. You 
 are thinking of what the doctor told you. You are being 
 merciful to a woman you no longer care about." At 
 his startled look and attempt to speak she made a des- 
 perate gesture with her clasped hands, silencing him. 
 "This is what I felt sure would happen if you ever found 
 out about El Miradero what I had meant to do. I 
 would become different as I have. You can't help this. 
 You think that in the first place I proved I was the wrong 
 sort of woman one of the fools weak and unmoral who 
 are useless, just cumber the earth the sort that by your 
 nature is offensive to you. And all the contemptible things 
 that had to go into my struggle to keep what I had done a 
 secret from you these, too, you detest. You are that 
 sort of man." 
 
 She came a little nearer to him, her head bent back, 
 her drooped eyes studying him, and he saw the same twi- 
 light sort of sadness about her that had been there during 
 the first months of their life at El Iris. It was clear 
 that her calm edged wild tears, and though the torpor 
 within him was relaxing, the nerves that had seemed 
 sucked dry beginning to quicken again, he let her pour 
 out the thoughts choking her. An instinct came to 
 him that through Elsie's vision he might come clearly to 
 see his own. 
 
 She misinterpreted his look of waiting. She had ex- 
 pected to fight some opposition from him because of the 
 impassioned fatherhood that was in his feeling for her. 
 She had been wrong. He would easily let her slip away.
 
 344 The Next Corner 
 
 A freakish memory assailed her of frocks that in the 
 past had been spoiled; not those whose stains had easily 
 been washed out and rents mended, but others that 
 from unexpected nails protruding, or sudden fire, had 
 gone beyond reconstruction. The future with Robert ap- 
 peared much like those burned and torn little frocks, 
 jaggedly uneven and charred beyond remedy. 
 
 "I can tell that you are ready to make what excuse 
 you can for me," she said, her lips cinder-dry. "I know 
 you pity me, and I don't want pity. You forgive me. 
 That helps me, but it isn't what I want. I can never have 
 what I want any more. I know this, and I've accepted it. 
 I'll telegraph my mother," she added with decision. 
 "She can meet me." 
 
 "And after that?" Robert asked, almost, it seemed to 
 her, in the tone of a bystander. His chin was resting 
 on his clasped hands, his eyes lowered. 
 
 "I don't know. We can see." She paused and spoke 
 more decidedly. "This has really changed everything. 
 Don't let us keep making the best of a failure ! Somehow 
 I could manage to set you free." 
 
 He looked up at her then, a restrained though violent 
 look. It rested on her for a long pause, took in her 
 fragility that had likeness to a lamp, luminous from a 
 flame within ; her desperate desire to be self-sufficient ; her 
 ineffectualness. The deadness went out of him, his sinews 
 hardened. He stood up, went straight to her and took 
 her into his arms. 
 
 "How could you set me free?" he asked. 
 
 She held back from him. "I could if you couldn't 
 care for me. Don't be sorry for me! See what's right 
 for yourself !" 
 
 "But I love you," said Robert simply. 
 
 "Don't lie !" she begged and still drew away from 
 him. 
 
 "I love you, and you couldn't set me free. You might 
 leave me, and I might never see you again. And you 
 would always be with me a thirst." He held her to
 
 The Next Corner 345 
 
 him frantically, bent her head back and kissed her on 
 the mouth, long, enervating kisses. "I not only cherish 
 you with sweetness," he said, his tone wrung, "as my wife 
 who is to give me a child I am on fire with love for 
 you!" 
 
 She had no words then; could only keep looking into 
 his eyes with their burning and tenderness. 
 
 "Life without you? As you spoke I saw it parched, 
 famished, dreadful. Now listen to me. I lost you once. 
 I lost your love when you were in Paris because I hadn't 
 known how to keep it. But tell me from your soul 
 one thing: If you had loved me then as you have these 
 months here could you have forgotten me?" His lips 
 were close to hers again. "Could you?" 
 
 "Robert " she faltered. Her eyes were wild and 
 soft, her slender arms around his neck, as she held to 
 him, had a cable's strength. "Oh, Robert no !" 
 
 "The blame is mine," he said. 
 
 "You trusted me," Elsie found strength to say with 
 self-reproach. "You trusted me so absolutely !" 
 
 "To the trust of a man there should always be added the 
 pull on a woman's heart-strings. I was as far from your 
 heart as I was from your life." 
 
 "But I should have told you I should have been 
 frank with you before I went back to you, Robert. I 
 tried to and I couldn't. I have lived with you here 
 thinking of this secret all the time." 
 
 "Perfect frankness is a lovely thing because it's brave. 
 Still, I've never thought confession always necessary. 
 Often it's a mistake. I understand how you shrank from 
 it and felt that your sincerity for what lay ahead of us 
 justified you in hiding it in your own self." 
 
 As with deepening consciousness of her charm for him 
 and his need of her, he again flooded her with caresses, 
 he kept whispering with a sort of anguish: "My loved 
 one my very breath! Oh, Elsie, without you? 
 Dearest !" 
 
 She drew him back to the chair, made him sit down
 
 346 The Next Corner 
 
 and knelt beside him. For a little while she remained 
 with her elbows on his knees, looking into his eyes whose 
 heaviness had been replaced by a glitter like that from the 
 sea. 
 
 "Well?" he asked. The something so young in him 
 laughed out. "What's put a tuck in your forehead now? 
 What's bothering you?" 
 
 "It's the letter." She looked anxiously at him. 
 
 He frowned with a remembering look and drew it from 
 the pocket of his dinner coat. "I forgot that I had it," 
 and he put it into her hand. "Burn it." 
 
 Reminiscence, a shadow, had fallen on Elsie's face as 
 she studied the writing on the gray-blue envelope. When 
 she looked up, still leaning against Robert, she searched 
 his eyes, her own limpid, honest. 
 
 "I want to be so square with you," she cried, almost 
 an angry enthusiasm sweeping over her. "I'm wondering 
 if you quite realize that if you'd read this you'd have 
 believed I'd been really unfaithful that it was Fate 
 that changed all no credit to me?" The words were 
 hurting her, she had to force them from her lips. "Robert, 
 if Arturo had not been killed I'd have been with him now. 
 Or if not " and she looked past him with a desolate 
 wideness of gaze, "and I'd left him, where would I have 
 drifted? what would I have been to-day? . . . How 
 often of late I've asked myself that ! The intention the 
 whole thing I planned to do that's what really matters. 
 I know enough about the logic of men to be sure that 
 back of all you've said, you think that." 
 
 Robert had kept urgent hold of her hands with the 
 letter pressed between them as she spoke, while his face 
 grew deeply thoughtful. 
 
 "If you knew men better," he said quietly, "you'd know 
 we are utterly illogical, perhaps fools, about one thing 
 the physical sacredness of the one woman. And there's 
 something else : Have you ever thought of the potency of 
 memory? Had chance not lifted you out of the danger 
 you were in, what soiling memories you'd have now.
 
 The Next Corner 347 
 
 What we are emotionally depends so much upon the life 
 of our minds. So I say to you thank God that you 
 were kept from what would have been degradation that 
 there's no memory of it burned into you." 
 
 They remained quiet a moment after this. A glowing 
 silence. 
 
 When Elsie's voice stole through it, Robert felt it 
 the most moving thing he had ever heard: "I can bear 
 to have you read it now," and she forced the paper into 
 his hold. 
 
 He made an almost angry movement as if to tear it. 
 She clung to his hand. 
 
 "Think how I tried to keep it from reaching you, how 
 I'd seem to die at the thought of your seeing these words. 
 And now ! Oh, isn't it wonderful not to care? to 
 feel so sure?" 
 
 His look was still unwilling. "This thing has scourged 
 you enough " 
 
 "But it will satisfy me to have you know everything 
 about me, as I know myself ! The perfect frankness 
 that is brave !" 
 
 "Well if you want it so much," he said amiably. 
 
 Elsie half turned away, her cheek against his arm. 
 She heard him open the envelope, heard a slurring sound 
 as he drew out the enclosure. There was a rustle of 
 paper. Silence. The incongruous thing following made 
 her doubt the wisdom of having forced him to read what 
 she hated he had given a breathless exclamation of 
 amazement, and it seemed to jerk her to face him. 
 
 "Nothing!" he said in hushed excitement. "Look 
 nothing at all ! It's blank paper !" 
 
 He was holding the letter toward her. She tried to take 
 it. Her hand dropped, her gaze as empty as the sheet 
 spread out for it was empty no mark on it except 
 the engraved El Miradero at the top. 
 
 Robert .had begun to scrutinize the envelope. "Olaz- 
 aba ! Did he open it change it ? Did he play this 
 in his game as a gold brick, with the original safe in his
 
 348 The Next Corner 
 
 possession?" He stood up, his look changed. "Why 
 didn't I search his body? I had the chance. And I 
 thought of it I was too decent. The letter may be 
 found on him!" 
 
 Elsie had stood up too. She had drawn the envelope 
 from Robert's hand. A still look of uncanny knowledge 
 was spreading slowly in her face. 
 
 "Isn't this absolutely unbroken?" she asked, and 
 pointed to the seal. 
 
 "Yes. But the original wax might have been picked 
 off and a fresh splash put over the spot." 
 
 She shook her head slowly. "Impossible !" When after 
 a pause she spoke again, an odd deadness had come to her 
 voice. "There was only one ring on earth that could have 
 put that crest there, and I had it. Olazaba thought this 
 held my letter to you. It never did. It was changed in 
 the very beginning." 
 
 The room where she stood faded for Elsie, and Robert 
 with it. She was back in El Miradero. She had given 
 her unsealed letter to Arturo and had asked him to read 
 it. He had refused; had turned away from her to bend 
 over the high-backed desk as he had appeared only to 
 seal and stamp it. He had faced her again, the letter 
 ready in his hand and this empty sheet was in the en- 
 velope in place of her own! 
 
 She heard his words : "Think are you sure you wish 
 to send it? Wouldn't later do?" 
 
 And when she knew Serafin was coming for it, her 
 reply : "Oh, maybe I ought to say something more in it. 
 Send word for Eduardo to wait. I could say " 
 
 How full of meaning now was his remembered answer: 
 "No ! Send it or destroy it. Shall I fling it in the 
 fire?" 
 
 Ah, she might send it as it was ! Or she might burn it 
 as it was ! She might not open it. 
 
 Her mind worked so alertly, speculation as to the fate 
 of the pages that had been so nimbly stolen charged 
 through it. Had Serafin the real letter, after all? Had
 
 The Next Corner 349 
 
 he come upon it among Arturo's papers after his de^th? 
 The answer overlapped the thought No ! Serafin had 
 not found it, for Arturo had burned it when he had thrown 
 what he had called his old love letters on the last flare of 
 the fire, and he had thrown them on only that he might 
 destroy the one he feared. In the hour that had been su- 
 preme and magical to her, he had been cautious, circum- 
 spect. 
 
 As she relived this scene, she told it in patches, and 
 trembling, sat down again. Her shoulders were bent. She 
 had thought she knew humiliation at its heaviest on the 
 day she read of Ascuncion and had come to see back of 
 Arturo's gentleness and gravity a sort of self-sanctioned 
 license to passionate lawlessness and double-dealing with 
 women. Even that had held something of strength, some- 
 thing ruthlessly primitive. His precisely careful cheating 
 of her when their happiness had seemed at its loveliest was 
 cheap. She could not look at her husband. 
 
 The subsiding crackle of the fire put an edge on the 
 stillness that hung for moments. And then Robert said 
 her name. 
 
 "Don't feel so badly," he went on. "You shine by con- 
 trast. Don't you see that? Poor Elsie you were in 
 bad hands that night! The master tricked you so that 
 when time for payment came there would be nothing in 
 black and white against him. And the servant tricked 
 you, if only from a bargain hunting sense to have an 
 advantage of you that might some day be of some sort 
 of value to him." 
 
 She heard him turn away and lifted her head. Wist- 
 fulness replaced the darkness of self-repugnance as she 
 watched him throw the blank paper and its envelope into 
 the fire, press them down with his boot heel until the flame 
 had made ashes of them. 
 
 "There!" he said, and turning, drew her up. A hand 
 vigorously on each of her shoulders, he gave her a hardy 
 shake. His familiar smile, where drollery showed subtly 
 though his lips scarcely moved, considered her. "That's
 
 350 The Next Corner 
 
 over. No, my dear it never was. Like the letter that 
 haunted you, tortured you nothing nothing at all ! 
 And here's Candida with coffee God bless her." 
 
 He opened the gallery doors and the smiling girl, car- 
 rying a big tray, came through them, the blue-pink luster 
 of the morning in its full glory behind her. 
 
 THE END
 
 A Powerful Analytical Novel 
 
 AGAINST THE WINDS 
 
 By KATE JORDAN 
 
 With illustrations by Clark Fay 
 12mo. Cloth. 348 pages. 
 
 "An entertaining and vivid story, with an abundance of 
 variety and color. Conceived and written in a spirit of 
 romance, the novel is dramatic and holds the reader's atten- 
 tion throughout." New York Times. 
 
 "It is a strong story, dealing with human nature under a 
 variety of situations, which are powerfully though delicately 
 handled. It holds the reader's sympathy very firmly from 
 start to finish." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " 'Against the Winds' carries with it a new variety of emo- 
 tional appeal, an attribute of literary finish and an atmos- 
 phere of imaginative balance, which, added to the_ pure story 
 quality with which it is so happily endowed, make it one of the 
 most readable and fascinating novels of the season." Phila- 
 delphia Press. 
 
 " 'Against the Winds' is an absorbing book. ^ Completely 
 American, graphic, realistic, yet sympathetic, it reaches a 
 high mark of fictional excellence. Few books have been 
 written which indicate so clearly the fluid condition of 
 American life. It is one of the best American novels of the 
 season." Chicago Daily Tribune. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which It was borrowed.
 
 A 000 059 001 e 
 
 STRATFORD & GREEN 
 
 BOOKSELLERS 
 
 642-644 SO. MAIN ST. 
 
 523 SO. SPRING ST.