THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE
 
 THE LABYRINTH 
 OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 E. A. U. VALENTINE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HECLA SANDWITH " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E P DUTTON & COMPANY 
 31 West Twenty-Third Street 
 1912
 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 TO 
 
 MY COUSINS 
 EDWARD AND ELIZABETH PHELPS 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 2138779 *
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE QUEST 3 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE TEST 235
 
 BOOK I. THE QUEST
 
 THE LABYRINTH OFLIFE 
 
 Book I: The Quest 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 As Harding turned into the Champs Elyse"es, he felt, 
 as it were, the exhilaration of a convalescent released 
 from a sick-room. It was a bright May afternoon, 
 and the embowered thoroughfare, in all the glory of 
 its fresh greenness, tingled with the flood of passing 
 vehicles, the steady rhythm broken by the pretentious 
 snort of motors, the jingle of bells, and the presto tune 
 of saddle horses, woven together into a medley of 
 sound that fell on the young man's ears like a paean of 
 the world. The sidewalks were crowded with people 
 afoot or occupying bench and hired chair. It seemed 
 that all Paris was abroad enjoying the sunshine like 
 ephemera breaking from winter cocoons. In the rumour 
 and animation of the scene was that note of the 
 pageantry and joy of living which the French metro- 
 polis most expresses in its high-scaled nervousness, 
 and which at the same time excites and devitalizes its 
 inhabitants. To Harding it had the elating effect of 
 novel experience this Paris in first flush of springtime, 
 full of flooding white light enveloping middle distances 
 in soft iridescence like the bloom of a Tanagra vase, 
 
 B2
 
 4 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 that made the horizon, as one got it, guarded by the 
 stately Arc, a wonder of melting purple. It was all of 
 a curious sensitive poetry that appealed to lately 
 dormant things in him ; and he felt it lighten his mental 
 languor like wine, as his eye caught the gamut of greens 
 overhead, the beauty of the chestnuts opulently loaded 
 with plumy clusters, and then returned to his fellow 
 promenaders, whose faces wore such an air of personal 
 greeting, as though springtime created a general bond. 
 
 The last week or so had been a gradual realization 
 of the Paris his ignorance had pictured in advance 
 and that he had almost ceased to accept, in default of 
 a favouring season. He had arrived, for the first time, 
 the previous autumn, after the poplars by the river 
 banks had dropped premature leaves, and there had 
 followed a particularly disagreeable, dragged-out 
 winter, the humid chill of which had searched his blood 
 with the fine insinuation of a surgeon's lancet. His 
 nature was acutely barometrical, and it clouded sadly 
 under the melancholy of overcast skies and leaden rain- 
 fall. It seemed always raining here. In the depression 
 it caused him, he called Paris the City of Dreadful 
 Day. Paris, apparently, was always wrapped in mists 
 grey as the legendary ones of Ultima Thule. And how 
 brief and uncertain the pale sun a viscid glimmer 
 quickly lost in melancholy, greedy nights, where the 
 blear street lamps glowed like phosphorescent eyes of 
 sea monsters behind aquarium panes. 
 
 It had been rather dreary, his last half-year of Paris, 
 in spite of the friends he had made, the attraction of
 
 THE QUEST 5 
 
 art galleries for he was fond of pictures the theatres, 
 the cafes. He had often resorted to the last, in fits 
 of depression, when he meant, instead, to spend the 
 evening in work. If he was disappointed in the climate 
 of Paris, he was as much disappointed with what Paris 
 had so far done for him artistically. He had expected 
 marvels from merely breathing its air. He had meant 
 it to be an escape from old disheartening conditions; 
 it was to have been the goal of new, serious achieve- 
 ments. Alas, he had counted too much on foreign 
 environment too much on that, as perhaps he had 
 counted too little on himself, on the hampering effect 
 of a temperament easily lowered and bent aside by 
 mood and accident. He blamed the constant slant of 
 dirty rain against the prospects revealed by the 
 Bohemian quarter on the Seine where he had taken 
 lodgings. He had told himself, when he found this 
 out-of-the-way coign with the balconied windows 
 and its near glimpse of Notre Dame, that the lovely, 
 neglected site should typify the seriousness of his 
 spiritual vistas. The silhouette of the Cathedral that 
 he loved, almost casting its shadow on his labours, 
 was it not meant to bless and inspire ? It was all part 
 of the dreamed-of " sea-change " of soul and sense 
 he had counted on in crossing the ocean. But had 
 there been any redeeming change in him? Any of 
 that happiness of a nature released, warmed, made to 
 feel itself and its best powers, the happiness over 
 things he longed for and always secretly doubted the 
 ability to attain, which had made him eager to grasp
 
 6 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 the staff of adventure, to wander, shift environment, 
 live . . . and he told himself that he had never really 
 lived, only " existed " in the whilom ambients. It 
 was the realization that he was still his old self, would 
 probably always be his old self, which heightened the 
 melancholy that had oppressed him during the dull 
 winter just passed. But . . . Spring was come, and surely 
 one could trust to the inspiration it sent like a wave 
 though the veins. Spring could make a poet of any one. 
 Not that he wanted to be a poet any more, but, in a 
 way, it meant what he did want. 
 
 Harding was on his way to take tea with Miss Julia 
 Vanderhurst, whose telegram, blue as his winter 
 moods, informed him of her arrival in Paris. He was 
 fond of her, in a way, and she had ladened him with 
 unused letters of introduction to people in Paris, when 
 he sailed from New York. Her invitation for four- 
 thirty, at her hotel, was an excuse for his idle after- 
 noon. He knew he owed her the courtesy, and the 
 weather encouraged the duty. But now that he had 
 left his lodgings, was abroad in the eloquent sunlight, 
 he felt a growing disinclination to keep his appoint- 
 ment. She would, he knew, put awkward questions 
 to him, and he was in no mood to account for himself 
 was not sure that he could account for himself in the 
 kind of particulars which interested her. Besides, her 
 worldly vivacities, representing effort of mental 
 variance, loomed as a bore when he wished to give 
 himself to the spirit of irresponsibility filling the world. 
 Moved by a whim to wear a token of his springlike
 
 THE QUEST 7 
 
 temper, he stopped at a flowercart, pushed up against the 
 side-walk, and picked out a bunch of violets, that the 
 vendor a hardy cheeked dame of the Halles fastened 
 in his lapel with a motherly air that was part of the 
 general feeling of kindness animating the world. 
 
 He strolled on, savouring the bright aspects of the 
 parade. Leaving the sidewalk, after a while, he ex- 
 plored the shadier retreats of its neighbouring par- 
 terres, charming with the taste of Parisian gardening, 
 where flamed flowering rhododendrons masses of 
 pink and mauve. Birds piped their pastorals, indifferent 
 to the proximity of human life. A butterfly flitted 
 across his path . . . soul of Parisian coquette returned 
 to earth ? How everybody seemed to have yielded to 
 the spell of weather! Harding felt the appeal of life 
 mount within him. For once he had the sense of being 
 an attuned instrument, adjusted to the casual, joyous 
 touch of things. It was good to be young still, to 
 have delusive dreams, to fancy that there was before 
 him a future worth anticipating. 
 
 Crossing the avenue, by aid of its little oases, he 
 gained the hotel at which Miss Vanderhurst was 
 staying. He directed his steps to the tea room. A 
 throng of over-dressed worldlings were pouring into 
 the great glass-domed corridor, and securing the 
 innumerable small tables that attendants, in scarlet 
 waistcoats and black satin shorts, pushed about to 
 suit the caprice of patrons. The place was noisy as 
 a rookery. Throaty voices of British tourists blent 
 with the American upper register, sharp as the twang
 
 8 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 of a banjo, the general polyglot clamour competing 
 with the music of a Neapolitan band. The atmo- 
 sphere, painfully at contrast with the outside air, 
 was stale with the smell of hothouse flowers, cigarette 
 smoke and perfumes of newest, most aggressive 
 vogue. 
 
 Harding hesitated, confronting the rococo splendours 
 and uproar of this traveller's paradise, which had 
 unsuccessfully aimed at rivalling certain fashionable 
 rendezvous of Paris, and had accepted its vogue 
 among the vulgar. Its catch-all magnificence, that 
 had recently cropped up, mushroom fashion, to remind 
 one of the determined spread of bad taste, was a side 
 of Paris he hated. He resented it, as he resented with 
 the artist's rebellion, the unmeaning display of New 
 York that scoffed at modest means and simple living. 
 It was the oppression of such conditions that, among 
 other things, he had sought to escape in coming to 
 Europe where, supposedly, a gross and flaunting 
 opulence fell before the disdain of centuried culture. 
 His features only recaptured their conventional lines 
 as, after some moments, he caught sight of Miss 
 Vanderhurst's signalling fan. 
 
 The spinster welcomed him with a smile which had 
 the reputation of putting the most awkward at ease. 
 One of her definite traits was her enthusiasm for 
 friends, of which she had a countless number, scattered 
 over the world, for she travelled untiringly; and it was 
 instinctive with her to make much of every small 
 merit possessed by people with whom she came in
 
 THE QUEST 9 
 
 contact. Harding had known her first in New York, 
 where they had a common milieu in a set of non- 
 serious Bohemians, who played at being interested in 
 literature as countenanced by the best American 
 magazines. The intimacy, partly accidental, ripened 
 on the elderly woman's part into a flattering concern 
 for Julian Harding' s work and unformulated future. 
 The literary calling had for her a romantic appeal, 
 owing, no doubt, to her ignorance of its prosaic side; 
 and Harding impressed her, without intention, as a 
 promising young man it would eventually be a credit 
 to know. He had published some verses and was 
 supposed to have achieved success among people 
 content with surface signs of prosperity. And Miss 
 Vanderhurst had accordingly made herself his cham- 
 pion, spreading among her world sanguine views of 
 his unfolding talents. 
 
 " You see how selfish I am," she said, when he had 
 made his way to her side, " asking you here alone like 
 this. But I wanted a chance for a real talk, to hear all 
 about your stay in Paris. This is rather a nice place, 
 don't you think, for tea . . . such amusing, incredible 
 people. It quite reminds me of the Waldorf-Astoria." 
 
 " Yes, entirely too much," he returned in the 
 bantering manner he adopted when with people like 
 Miss Vanderhurst. It pleased his vanity that such 
 contact, for which he had no special aptitude, created 
 in him a kind of verbal effervescence like tisane one 
 could hardly call it champagne sparkle. " It's what 
 I contend. Americans only come to Europe to find
 
 io THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 their civilization translated into foreign languages. 
 The idea of you, Miss Vanderhurst " it was a liberty 
 his long acquaintance allowed " caring for such 
 Ollendorf French as this. There's not a Parisian 
 here. . . . It's a crowd made up of our countrymen, 
 rastaquoeres, people from heaven knows where. It 
 may be all very well for others like myself who 
 haven't exhausted their naivete. But for you, who 
 knows Europe so enviably . . . where, I demand, is your 
 excuse for your taste in hotels ? " And he regarded her 
 challengingly. 
 
 She listened indulgently to his gay tirade, her thin 
 fingers, rich with rose diamonds, busying themselves 
 with the tea service an attendant, with haughty 
 assiduity, placed on the table. She was an effective 
 old maid, with her beautifully arranged grey hair, 
 that had the tone of unpolished silver, and her com- 
 plexion, which though crumpled, had a touch of 
 pleasant pink that time was unable to banish. Her 
 kindness, indeed, gave her personality almost a physical 
 bloom. Travel, much familiarity with people and 
 things, had supplemented the somewhat rudimentary 
 education of her period. She read the best books, 
 took in the reviews, and could talk resourcefully, 
 expressing enough borrowed opinions to serve her well 
 in whatever world her insatiable love of society carried 
 her. Harding sometimes found her really entertaining 
 through little flashes of unexpectedness in her worldly 
 comments. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Harding," she returned dryly, as she
 
 THE QUEST n 
 
 passed him his cup, " when you've arrived at years 
 of indiscretion, like me, you won't bother about 
 rastaquoeres and the other things you object to 
 round us. Coming abroad, in the sense of half a century 
 ago as though it were a pilgrimage to a shrine is 
 obsolete, you know, except with school mistresses, 
 stereopticon lecturers and dreamers like yourself. I 
 don't take my Europe so seriously. I travel for change 
 and comfort. All Americans adore their ease, and I'm 
 a thorough American, even if I spend half my time 
 away from my own land. Perhaps that is the reason 
 Europe is a school of patriotism. When I select a hotel 
 it's to be amused; and noise and movement please me. 
 It picks up my system like an electric shock, does me 
 good generally. That's why I came here. It's always 
 so delightfully crowded. Then," she added, with a 
 smile that was meant to be humorous, " the waiters 
 don't have to be told to serve ice-water." 
 
 She leaned back, and unsheathing her gold lorgn- 
 ette, applied them to her shrewd eyes. 
 
 " Tell me," she demanded, " what half these people 
 do when they're not drinking bad tea and drowning 
 the music by their gabble Or rather, what are they ? " 
 
 " Don't ask me that," he said, yielding to youthful 
 affectation and a love of phrase making. " It always 
 seems easier to say what people aren't than what they 
 are. They belong to the genus homo; and beyond 
 that it is a waste of time to speculate. I doubt if half 
 know the secret of their own being. One may infer, 
 however, that the women are mostly possessed by a
 
 12 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 passion to pervert their natural looks. Every blonde 
 appears to be an evolved brunette as every brunette 
 an ex-blonde. Are they, after all, more than hair- 
 dressers' blocks? If you'd lift off their heads you'd 
 probably find their breasts stuffed with candied violets 
 like Easter novelties in confectioners' windows. I 
 wonder if anything about them is human their 
 laughter, even. It sounds like a sort of polite hic- 
 cough mere mechanical emissions of sound, as though 
 a dentist had been administering gas before extracting 
 a tooth. Heine would say they had metronomes under 
 their corsets, in lieu of hearts." 
 
 She smiled, finding him rather amusing. " I don't 
 know about the metronomes," she objected, meeting 
 his mood. " I question whether there's room for any- 
 thing under those French corsets even for the women 
 themselves. They do seem unnecessarily artificial, 
 with their bleach and rouge. It goes to prove how 
 times have changed since I was a girl. Nowadays it's 
 almost immodest to appear in public with nothing on 
 one's face but what nature put there. Of course people 
 in society used to paint, but they did it with no 
 intention of deceiving. It was the line they drew 
 between themselves and well, other people. The 
 demimondaine sets the fashion now. There's nothing so 
 democratic as the toilette. Doucet and Paquin, they 
 are the great levellers; ladies go there to look what 
 they aren't, as others go to pretend to be what they'd 
 like to be, as one so often hears it said. I'm getting old, 
 but I've no desire to bury my bones in a reddened-
 
 THE QUEST 13 
 
 and-whited sepulchre like people here." She said it 
 with the little air of one knowing that nature makes 
 all that superfluous. 
 
 He was lighting a cigarette a Nubian, the clou 
 of the place, with a dazzling display of primitive teeth, 
 had given his assistance to that ceremony. It was part 
 of Harding' s protest regarding the place that this 
 chocolate-visaged person so enchanted his country- 
 men " and what," he asked, " have you been doing 
 with yourself since you came here ? " 
 
 " I ? " She smiled again, for she never forgot to be 
 charming. " Nothing, as yet, except standing all day, 
 with the patience of a pillared saint, at Amy Linker's. 
 What woman can endure in martyrdom to these Paris 
 fitters ! How do we ever survive it, do you know ? " 
 And she turned a face of comical appeal on him. 
 
 Some experience in social compliment made him 
 ready. " I suppose," he said, " it's the survival of the 
 truly fitted, to apply the Darwinian theory to dress- 
 making that fortunate class to which you belong." 
 And he indicated by a glance of vague appreciation his 
 hostess's attire. It was one of Miss Vanderhurst's dis- 
 cretions that she wore only what became her years 
 and personality. 
 
 " There," she returned, with a flattered laugh, 
 " make fun of us poor females and our efforts to look 
 our best. I suppose you hold us all up to ridicule in 
 your book, don't you? And what, may I ask, has 
 become of the magnum opus ? You know, I have had a 
 long-standing order for it at the book-seller's."
 
 14 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Harding stifled a sigh at the inevitable query. It 
 was one he had learned to dread. " But," he pro- 
 tested, " I've scarcely begun my book. It takes 
 time to write anything worth while. There is the 
 equation of temperament worn phrase that it is 
 to consider. One isn't a machine, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose there is that to consider, as you 
 say," she allowed dubiously. " Temperament is 
 something all artists claim though just what they 
 mean by it rather puzzles me. It's such a vague- 
 sounding thing a kind of unrest, I suppose one should 
 say, that keeps them from work at the time. . . . Yet, 
 after all, does it differ from other people's moods, 
 the ups and downs from which we suffer, and in spite 
 of which we manage somehow to do what's expected 
 of us? That's what has never been clear to me." 
 And she assumed a comely air of half combativeness, 
 not rare with people who, convinced of the indolence 
 of the artist class, feel missioned to administer a 
 spoonful of reproof as occasion offers. 
 
 He shrugged. " You know, the Lord has made us 
 what we are what can we do as to temperament or 
 anything else ? " 
 
 She regarded him with that pleasant light air of one 
 to whom nothing has been particularly serious in 
 life. 
 
 " If your temperament troubles," she replied, 
 " Why don't you consult my doctor ? He's such a nice 
 man, and it's wonderful the way he builds one up." 
 
 " Ah," he retorted, half moved to earnestness by
 
 THE QUEST 15 
 
 the sacred things she touched on. " I see. You regard 
 ' temperament,' as only a kind of spring fever of the 
 soul. Isn't that so? It's quite typically American of 
 you, to think it. It's because there are millions of other 
 Americans who back you up that artists to use the 
 grand phrase either perish among us, through sheer 
 inanition and misunderstood purpose, or come to 
 Europe, where they find the atmosphere of com- 
 prehension which helps their work. American contempt 
 for leisure of mind and body is one reason why there 
 is so little art at home. They ask us to make bricks 
 without straw and consequently we feel it to be a 
 land of bondage and come to Europe as to Canaan. 
 Besides, America is too much concerned with the 
 Beauty of Holiness to remember the holiness of beauty. 
 How can one expect abstract art to be respected 
 there?" 
 
 " But you shouldn't feel that way," she protested, 
 with patriotism. " America was where you were born, 
 where you expect to get things. You say it discourages 
 art, yet it's where you mean to print your books and 
 find your public." 
 
 He was in the grasp of the gloom that came to him 
 with her protest. " That's true enough," he acknow- 
 ledged. " But there's no inconsistency in the fact. 
 The desire to live by what means we may is instinctive, 
 Miss Vanderhurst. Everybody tries to elude the mill- 
 stones. Some sublime individuals hold it our duty to 
 be ground between them . . . but I don't know that I 
 agree. There's a class of people who are not really
 
 16 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 qualified for life under present conditions. It's not 
 their fault. They didn't fix their century, choose 
 their type. The world calls them the ' failures.' 
 Whereas, the truth is, perhaps, it's the reason for 
 their existence that has failed." 
 
 He spoke with attempted lightness, conscious of the 
 heresy of such views, but Miss Vanderhurst scarce 
 heeded. She was still full of the enormity of his prior 
 declarations. 
 
 " But it's absurd of you to say you can't write in 
 America," she debated. " Why, New York is full of 
 authors I haven't time to keep up with half they 
 bring out. Now I'm going to tell you what I think is 
 the real reason you praise Europe. It's because you 
 can throw off the yoke of convention here. And you 
 shouldn't want to. You mustn't fall into bad habits, 
 like those Latin Quarter creatures who go about with 
 baggy trousers and so much hair. But there's no 
 danger of your doing that," she qualified, with a satis- 
 fied inspection of his clothes. " You're too much of 
 a gentleman to imitate Murger's characters. No, if 
 you live in Paris, you should meet the right sort of 
 people ... go into society." She was very firm about 
 it, as he saw. 
 
 " Le monde od Von s 'ennuie," he mocked. " It's 
 the sort of thing I came abroad to avoid." 
 
 " It's the world where one gets on in life," she re- 
 torted rather tartly. " And you have a future to 
 consider. Every young man must know people. What 
 can a novelist learn about human nature, unless he 
 goes about ? My friends " her pride in the word
 
 THE QUEST 17 
 
 was excuse enough " will be delighted to receive a 
 promising young author like you." 
 
 That everybody should know everybody else, was a 
 mania with Miss Vanderhurst. She possessed to per- 
 fection the art of bringing people together and cement- 
 ing ties that would never have existed except for her 
 unbounded belief in human affinities. With her, as 
 with a large part of the world to which she belonged, 
 kindness took the form of a pleasant practical invest- 
 ment. She had experienced all the benefits of being 
 " passed on," as she put it, and if she gave introductions 
 freely, she as freely made use of them herself. Julian 
 Harding was, in her eyes, an eligible young man who, 
 besides his picturesque profession, had a good deal of 
 personal attractiveness. She had, in her enthusiasm, 
 discovered in him some resemblance to Titian's Man 
 with the Glove, her ideal of gentlemanly looks: and to 
 be gentlemanly looking was all that one of his sex need 
 be, even failing the standard set by the Louvre master- 
 piece. 
 
 Harding accepted her statement with a cynical 
 grimace, that veiled a sense of flattery. " But Paris 
 is full of ' promising young authors,' " he remarked. 
 " It's easy enough to ' promise ' a different thing 
 to keep one's word. Society is tired of accepting the 
 I.O.U. individual he so often turns out to be worth- 
 less paper. People nowadays go in for more solid secu- 
 rities. That's my reason for keeping out of your 
 Vanity Fair I leave it to some better equipped 
 Autolycus." 
 
 " Nonsense," was her brisk retort, " Society is 
 
 c
 
 i8 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 where a nice looking man like you belongs, talent or no 
 talent. What's the use of wasting yourself on common 
 people. Now, let me think whom I most want you to 
 meet. There are the Eversleys, of course . . . charming 
 Americans living in Paris. You remember, I gave you 
 a letter to them last autumn. They have a little set 
 you'll find quite to your taste, I'm sure. Lena the 
 mother, I mean is a dear friend of mine. She mar- 
 ried a Colonel Eversley, of England, who died shortly 
 afterwards, and she's lived abroad ever since. She is 
 giving a garden fe"te, by the way, next week, and I'll ask 
 her if I may bring you. She has a daughter, Monica, 
 but I doubt if you'll care much for her." 
 
 " And why won't I ? " he demanded, thinking how 
 little she knew what he did care for. 
 
 " Well, for one thing, she's too serious for you." 
 
 " And how serious does a girl have to be for that ? " 
 Harding contended humorously. 
 
 " Oh, I know your sex," she affirmed confidently, 
 " especially literary men. They like to do their own 
 thinking. I remember Keats wanted to lay his head on 
 an unanalytic breast, and wasn't it Heine's Rosalie who 
 was so attractive because she couldn't read? Monica 
 is a nice enough girl, but she doesn't care for society, 
 goes in for art she does beautiful enamels charities, 
 and that sort of thing. In fact, she's what one may 
 call a superior girl." 
 
 " With the usual inferior figure ? " 
 
 " Oh, her figure is quite above criticism. Indeed, 
 some people consider her very handsome ... as she
 
 THE QUEST 19 
 
 ought to be, with her mother such a beauty. No, she 
 doesn't represent the homely, spectacled kind of cul- 
 ture. Only, as I say, she is full of her Dorcas doings 
 . . . and rather a pity, perhaps." Miss Vanderhurst 
 took society seriously, holding, as Harding facetiously 
 put it to himself, that charity began " At Homes." 
 
 "Well, it's quite as fashionable as bridge, these days 
 charity," he observed. 
 
 At which she made a little mouth, characteristic 
 when her friends were assailed. 
 
 " Yes, but I do Monica the justice of believing her 
 governed by higher motives," she returned. " You 
 shouldn't be so cynical, Mr. Harding." 
 
 He smiled at her crispness. " Then it's the daughter, 
 after all, you want me to admire ? " 
 
 " Admire her, certainly, if you wish. . . . Only it will, 
 I fancy, be a waste of time. I understand there's a 
 Frenchman devoted to her a Monsieur Fernet, who 
 took the Prix de Rome for sculpture. Seriously," she 
 continued, " I should much like you to be nice to Lena. 
 I've known and loved her since I was a girl. To be sure, 
 I was considerably her senior then, as I am like her 
 grandmother now." And she gave a tolerant laugh, 
 that had a great deal of sound philosophy in it. " Lena 
 is one of those Madame Recamiers that one meets, 
 perhaps, once in a lifetime. She's quite as young in 
 heart as she is in looks. Her youthfulness is one of her 
 little weaknesses, I admit ; and she spends more time at 
 the Institut de Beaut6 like other beauties than I'd 
 care to myself . . . but chacun d son gotit. Besides, 
 
 C2
 
 20 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 she has her standard to keep up, poor dear. One can 
 forgive the harmless vanity in a woman as pretty as she 
 is. She may strike you as a little frivolous at first, but 
 her girlhood was a rather sad one, and that excuses her 
 love of enjoyment now. She entertains a great deal, 
 especially the art set. You'll meet Percy Colston at 
 her house, among others." 
 
 " And who is Percy Colston ? " 
 
 " But I thought everybody in Paris knew him. It's 
 his play that's to be given next Monday. He's an 
 American that has expatriated himself sold his birth- 
 right for a mess of foreign ideas. I don't know that I 
 care for him : he is affected, precious, and far too much 
 of an Antinous in looks. He's been useful to Lena in 
 helping her to make her little circle of clever people, so 
 I don't wonder she's devoted to him." 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst allowed it in a way that suggested 
 qualifications. It was evident she had Lena a good deal 
 on her mind. She hesitated, considering Harding as 
 though interweaving him into some design. But she 
 checked herself before words came. Curiosity, of a sort, 
 made him ply her further with questions as to these 
 friends of hers, who struck him as a bit depressing in 
 contemplation: a woman of smiling anachronistic 
 youth, preoccupied with beauty lotions and bleaches; 
 a daughter on whom doubtless weighed the burden of 
 heavy, half-digested reading. He was not fond of 
 what passed in the world as " culture "; it seemed to 
 him it deadened the natural aroma in people. The girl 
 would take herself seriously and expect him to take
 
 THE QUEST 21 
 
 her at her own value. Knowing that Miss Vander- 
 hurst was inclined to throw a primrose hue over those 
 she had once accepted, he asked, with pretended 
 enthusiasm: 
 
 " So Mrs. Eversley is interested in art as well as her 
 daughter? " 
 
 " Well, not as interested in it as in artists, perhaps," 
 she replied. " They amuse her, and she stays them 
 with flagons and comforts them with truffles. They 
 make her Wednesday dinners decorative. Now Percy 
 Colston is altogether decorative. He goes well with 
 Lena's furniture, which is mostly of his choosing. 
 That's one reason, I suppose, she so likes to have him 
 about he's a kind of objet d'art . . . ." 
 
 A puzzled look had crossed her face. 
 
 " Have you noticed," she interrupted herself," those 
 Americans over there? I seem to recall having seen 
 them before and, you know, I'm rather proud of 
 never forgetting faces." 
 
 Harding followed her glance. " It's Miss Zenobia 
 Baxter and her niece, of Boston," he said. 
 
 In her interest she did not remark his constraint. 
 " Of course," she said, relievedly, " I remember now. 
 They were at Pinehurst, a year ago last March. Miss 
 Buttercup was doing a great deal of golfing with a cloud 
 of male witnesses. It was said at the Carolina that the 
 aunt went to bed with her sunbursts on a rather 
 terrible person. It's the family, you know, of Hiram 
 Baxter, the tea merchant, who is so absurdly rich. 
 ' Baxter's Surpassing Ceylon ' . . . one sees it advertised
 
 22 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 everywhere." Miss Vanderhurst resorted to her lorgn- 
 ette, to assist her astigmatic vision in summing them 
 up. " The girl is handsome, but too conspicuously 
 dressed. And like that sort of American, she talks with 
 the loud pedal on. How we do love to make our pre- 
 sence felt! When we come into public places I can't 
 help thinking of the Soldiers' Chorus in Faust." 
 
 " If we were only that musical," he commented. 
 " But I fear we were born with megaphones, not bugles, 
 in our mouth." 
 
 He was in that stage of European development when 
 Americans are rather harsh as to their own people. 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst still inspected the objects of her 
 criticism. 
 
 " You can see," she said, " that that Italian tenor is 
 singing his ' O sole mio ' to her, and that she knows it. 
 I do wonder if all that colour is her own." 
 
 " If it isn't," he said lightly, " it isn't because she 
 hasn't enough of her own. But I've observed that 
 putting on paint is as much a question of temperament 
 as of cheeks. There are women I know with complex- 
 ions like roses, that rouge. It's the age of gilding 
 refined gold." 
 
 " Well, there's nothing refined about Hiram Baxter's 
 gold," she answered, with her Knickerbocker prejudices 
 coming to the surface. " They are friends of yours, 
 then ? " and she eyed him with suspicion. 
 
 " Yes," he admitted, " I've seen something of them. 
 . . . They've been spending the winter in Paris. " 
 
 She let the fact settle down in her before she replied.
 
 THE QUEST 23 
 
 " So, like Jason, you're in quest of the golden fleece? 
 It was stupid of me not to guess the reason why you 
 neglected the letters I gave you. Yet," and she 
 smiled with the charity which comprehended conditions 
 alien to herself, " why not marry to be comfortable ? 
 Literary men, of all people, need to be looked after, and 
 probably Miss Buttercup will make an excellent wife. 
 Americans are so clever at getting civilised . . . that's 
 one reason I respect them so. Now, it won't be hard 
 to teach your young woman not to put too much en- 
 thusiasm into showing how perfectly at ease she is. 
 One often goes to such pains to be vulgar to prove one 
 isn't. But I blame the girl's aunt and not her for her 
 little mistakes." 
 
 " I've heard it said," he observed, " that Miss Zeno- 
 bia looks every inch a duchess. You notice she has a 
 good many round the waist ! " And he broke into a 
 laugh that was genuine enough. 
 
 ' Yes, I suppose she does look . . . like some duchesses, 
 poor thing;" she replied. "But that's not her fault. 
 No doubt, she has her good points. I'm sure, any way, 
 she's kind-hearted people with double chins always 
 are. Besides, you're not going to marry the aunt." 
 
 " Have I said I was going to marry anybody ! " with 
 an apposing laugh. 
 
 " No, of course you haven't," she promptly returned. 
 " One doesn't live fifty odd years without discovering 
 it's generally what people don't say that counts. You're 
 doubtless right, Mr. Harding, in marrying where there's 
 room for improvement. Half the failures in matrimony
 
 24 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 come from mating perfection. It will give you some- 
 thing to do, sand-papering Miss Buttercup down so 
 that she can pour her father's tea for you with credit, 
 when you're a celebrity. And where there's so much 
 tea, she went on with good-natured banter, " it's a pity 
 not to drink it with nice people. Now, I'll let you go 
 to your heiress, who, I see, is pining for you." She 
 gave him her hand as she spoke, adding with more 
 gravity, " and remember, try to be happy. It's an art 
 you haven't sufficiently cultivated, I fear." 
 
 Her sharp old eyes had marked the shadow on his 
 face, in spite of its conventional smiles. 
 
 " I wish I could," he answered, with some seriousness. 
 
 She had retained his hand. " My dear boy," she said 
 gently, " there's something about you that worries me 
 a little, though I don't know what it is. It's common- 
 place to remind you that all life's before you and to 
 have everything still to live for is such a wonderful 
 thing. If youth only knew," and she vented a little 
 sigh, " but it doesn't, so why preach ? But be warned, 
 the time will come when you'll regret les jours heureux 
 quand j'etais miserable. If I've learned nothing else 
 of life, I've taught myself to take its present j oys. And 
 now, goodbye. . . . And remember, I shall expect you at 
 four o'clock, next Monday, to go with me to the Evers- 
 leys'. "
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HARDING had been moved to say something to Miss 
 Vanderhurst which he usually kept to himself, aware 
 of the ridicule with which it was received. He was, as 
 he knew, governed by a most unpopular philosophy 
 about life, the theory of which had escaped him in his 
 rather artificial talk with that amiable and experienced 
 spinster. It was that there is a certain proportion of 
 people in the world wholly unqualified for life under its 
 present conditions. The thought often mocked him in 
 his literary impulse, inclined him, as a general thing, to 
 feel that the profession he had adopted, like any other 
 he might have chosen, was merely the invention of a 
 man who, from necessity, indulges in deception, by 
 parading a " reason " for his existence before the 
 world. He felt there was no reason at all that it was 
 all a pitiable pretence. It lay far back in life, was even 
 the strange germ of his infancy. Little able to define 
 himself, he a good deal puzzled others: for the world 
 mostly depends, in attempting to understand us, on 
 the explanatory attitude we adopt towards it. Harding 
 made no attempt to offer even half-clues. Of varied 
 opinions entertained about life, he was conscious that 
 his was the least acceptable. To dispose of deity was 
 more excusable than to dispose of oneself as a negligible 
 factor in the grand scheme of things which, according
 
 26 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 to popular hypothesis, whirled about the hub of one's 
 poor little universe. It offended the egotism of man- 
 kind, and that was the sin of sins. Mankind was 
 created in the likeness of God. . . . Was it not that, half 
 the time, it confused itself with that supreme spirit ? 
 
 Besides, in Harding's case, there seemed no particu- 
 lar warrant for the depressing heresy. He was young, 
 with, as Miss Vanderhurst unorigmally remarked, " the 
 world before him"; together with his presentable 
 appearance, also an asset in her eyes, he was possessed 
 of considerable, if somewhat confused talent, and un- 
 hampered by definite ills of the flesh. That was as 
 much capital as the average person had to draw on, 
 when taking part in the game of life, the rigours of 
 which, as was often affirmed by his friends, impressed 
 its zest. It was certainly the natural, robust way of 
 looking at things, they said, and Harding not infre- 
 quently was obliged to agree that it was. 
 
 Yet and there had lain his melancholy the 
 cankering sense of personal futility was in him; and 
 it too often triumphed over his arguments with him- 
 self. It seemed to him that he was born with that 
 blind, gnawing worm in his heart, that it had always, 
 more or less consciously, made its presence known to 
 him . . . even in earliest youth, when the poet part 
 of his nature awakened to the mystery and beauty of 
 the world, bringing a curious old kind of world-ache. 
 Child that he was, he recognized a certain exiling 
 difference between himself and others. As he waxed 
 older, he endeavoured to diagnose the feeling, which
 
 THE QUEST 27 
 
 seemed to say he was not in his own spiritual country 
 or age. Life struck him oddly as having some elusive 
 quality of alien unmeaningness, as if he had been born 
 without birthright. So affected was his imagination by 
 the idea, that he believed he saw the confirmation in 
 all he futilely tried to do; and he ended by saying to 
 himself he would always grope and never reach an 
 actual goal. It was a desolating philosophy, but it had 
 the merit of being sincere. 
 
 Up to his present thirty years, life had been one of 
 rather lamentable makeshift. His boyhood had passed 
 pleasantly enough, amid ease and parental indulgence. 
 And his taste for books had naturally led to his being 
 sent to a university, even at some pinch of family 
 pocket. Already things had begun to go wrong with 
 the Hardings. His father, a man without business 
 or profession, but possessed by a passion for visionary 
 fortune-making, had, by a last unlucky investment, 
 consumed all but a pittance of money, hardly sufficient 
 to keep himself and his heroically Christian wife in 
 their Catskill home, whence one could see the Hudson 
 bending in wide silvery expanses as it poured its waters 
 on to New York, seemingly so remote from the peace 
 of green things that the Hardings enjoyed. 
 
 When the knowledge came that his father was no 
 longer able to support the expense of his education, 
 Julian abandoned university life without the regret 
 that might have come from riper study. He recognized 
 that he had not the scholarly mind. His acquisition 
 of knowledge had been spasmodic and superficial; his
 
 28 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 memory was inaccurate; he could master only what 
 emotionally appealed to him. He had but skimmed 
 the classics, retained general outlines of history, drawn 
 sparse food from philosophy, and he added to this 
 small mental capital a fair acquaintance with general 
 literature. 
 
 It was a slender equipment, and he could, with it, 
 hardly enter a profession. He turned, therefore, 
 without complaint, to bread earning in a business 
 world. He was conscious here of a lack of qualification. 
 But he possessed the hopefulness of youth, in his 
 brighter moments. That will wins the day, was so well 
 authenticated an axiom that he accepted it as truth, 
 applying it to his attitude towards work. 
 
 An ineradicable fear of life was forgotten in these 
 initial efforts of living. Search for occupation proved, 
 however, vain; letters of seeming influence, personal 
 appeal, all was met by polite subterfuge, easing con- 
 science on one side, tending to sustain false hope on 
 the other. Harding had the precocity to see that his 
 inutility was read at a glance; that he inspired the 
 practical world with suspicion. Yet he did not quail 
 before the recognition. . . . He often wondered, later, 
 what became of the spirit that could so resolutely, yet 
 so hopelessly face life, in those early days. 
 
 Was there nothing to do, then, he asked himself, 
 but try to turn his vague literary talents to some 
 account ? Favour of a kind had been shown his verses 
 by different magazines. There had been, perhaps, 
 a real flash of inspiration in them; but successful
 
 THE QUEST 29 
 
 versifiers were a rarity; and, in truth, it demanded 
 greater power than he possessed to stir the dreary 
 twilight fallen on the realm of poetry, though the 
 wasted Muses still wove their thin laurels for a few 
 brows. As for prose writing, he had done little of it, 
 and, as was pointed out to him with academic severity 
 by his instructors, his style showed the over-coloured 
 lyricism common to the poetic mind, depreciating its 
 journalistic usefulness. Besides, he was still too much 
 the dreamer. Experience of life, of human nature, 
 resource of the story-teller was not within his com- 
 pass. People in general, the concerns of daily living, 
 had never much interested him; his mind lay still 
 under the spell of the unreal, that phantasy the 
 century derided in its passion for the vivid notes of the 
 contemporaneous. 
 
 His funds sank sadly low; yet pride forebade a 
 return home, beaten from the fields of labour. Des- 
 perate, he consulted, one day the " Want " columns 
 of a newspaper, and chanced on the advertisement 
 of an obscure publishing house in need of someone 
 " who could make himself useful." The address was 
 a shabby old-time mansion, in a part of the town 
 long abandoned by the fashion which had once hal- 
 lowed it. At the sight of the well-dressed applicant, 
 the dyspeptic-faced proprietor of the dubious concern 
 declared Harding unfit for the manual work desired; 
 but as Harding persisted in his appeal, he was at last 
 engaged on the wages of three dollars a week. 
 
 He nevertheless rejoiced over this first foothold
 
 30 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 in commercial life, and threw himself energetically in 
 his tasks. These began at six in the morning, when he 
 set out on the basement rail sensational announce- 
 ments of the pirated second-rate publications of the 
 house; after which he swept the floors and made fires 
 preparatory to the arrival of his employer and the 
 several clerks. A certain socialistic treatise, which had 
 attained wide popularity in England, was the main 
 source of the publisher's prosperity; and this cheap 
 American edition, flaunting cherry-coloured covers, 
 Harding spent the day tying up in express parcels; 
 or he prepared for the mail bag a weekly sheet, com- 
 posed of cuttings from newspapers and periodicals, 
 which, under an iconoclastic title, was launched on a 
 small world of rabid reformers. The occasional visits 
 of these subscribers some of whom had dreams of 
 founding Utopias in uncivilized lands added to the 
 ironic enjoyment he took in his work. Cheerfulness 
 did not desert him, in spite of the hard makeshifts of 
 his life. The incongruity of his position pleased his 
 sense of humour and added to his knowledge of human 
 types. By writing verses at night he earned a little 
 extra money, enough to keep him alive; and after 
 some weeks he secured a more lucrative place in another 
 more reputable publishing-house which, hearing what 
 he was doing, reconsidered the letter of recom- 
 mendation he had presented on first coming to the 
 city. 
 
 He found, however, that the change, if more 
 advantageous to his pocket, was more offensive to his
 
 THE QUEST 31 
 
 feelings than the humble occupation given up. Besides, 
 the novelty of unsuitable toil had begun to wear off 
 leaving him with a keener sense of deprivations. He 
 had now before him the necessity, as a clerk in a 
 popular book-shop, of trying to adopt the dapper 
 airs and glib speciousness that obtained round 
 him. To rattle off formulas of unread books with the 
 manner of the well-informed, to hesitate at no lie 
 calculated to force on customers a dull work of the 
 house in preference to a more desirable one produced 
 by a rival firm, these were some of the expected qualifi- 
 cations of successful book clerkship. Harding revolted 
 at such standards of servile mendacity; traditions of 
 birth, instinctive scrupulousness of nature, not yet 
 yielding to time, made him balk at being thus broken 
 on the wheel of trade usage; and the rebellion was 
 quickly noted. The clerks resented his reserve, that 
 cooled their advances; the head of the department, 
 a lean, jauntily-dressed time-server, delighted in 
 humiliating one who presumed to play the gentleman 
 behind the counter. And after the " rush season " 
 Christmas " holiday week," that exacted of him and his 
 tired fellow-clerks night work at poor extra wages 
 he was told he was no longer needed on the ground 
 that the pay-roll of the house demanded curtailment. 
 He left the shop with a feeling of inexpressible relief, 
 though it thrust him again face to face with the 
 desperate problem of living. 
 
 From one mean job to another he drifted through 
 the winter. The humiliation of these continued defeats
 
 32 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 affected his spirits; and he suffered, too, from a personal 
 shabbiness, that proclaimed his failure to the world. 
 His nervous organization, never strong, demanded 
 better nourishment than was afforded by the cheap 
 boarding houses, noisy with vulgar inmates, where he 
 found shelter in unsanitary well-rooms. The strain of 
 night-work for in the only hours he was free he 
 feverishly wrote whatever editors would take, sowed 
 seeds of insomnia which eventually began sapping his 
 vitality. Yet, as he told himself, there was nothing to 
 do but struggle on; that inescapable fact discounted 
 any sentiment of heroism that might have come to 
 his spiritual support. In truth, the idea of heroism of 
 effort never crossed his mind, for there were too many 
 people like him in the world. With odd enough per- 
 sistence, as he came to think in the end, he clung to the 
 hypothesis that life, if it failed to be a bountiful mother, 
 must at least give grudging stepdame dole to the 
 deserving; and he pleased himself, on occasion, with 
 picturing ultimate reward of honest effort at self- 
 maintenance. Surely there was a key to his prison door 
 that he would find at last ! 
 
 Work had permitted no return home; and to inquir- 
 ing letters from his parents, he returned evasive replies. 
 . . . Why add to the melancholy of their aged days by 
 recounting his disappointments? But as the spring 
 came on, the longing for his familiar mountains, for 
 the sweetness and healing of green growing things, 
 came to him like thirsty mirages looming on desert 
 sands. He endeavoured to satisfy this nature hunger
 
 THE QUEST 33 
 
 by strolls in Central Park or along Riverside Drive in 
 the glamorous twilights of the unfolding year. His 
 passion for beauty found some solace on Sunday after- 
 noon visits to the Metropolitan Museum with its 
 pictures and marbles, that recreated old regions of 
 imagination where once he had strayed. 
 
 It was here, before the nobler things of art, that fits 
 of ineffable sadness swept him; here, where with 
 reviving ache for the loveliness of life, he experienced 
 a sense of bitter alienation from the world that held 
 his youth captive. He had not been born, he told 
 himself, for such mean struggle; and even victory, if 
 ever it came, could not compensate for what fortune 
 had robbed him . . . that evanescence of some fragile 
 inner quality of boyhood, right to a realm of spirit 
 where once he had wandered and felt himself at home. 
 
 One hot day in August, as he tramped the street 
 in the dreary capacity of a book agent, he received a 
 sunstroke and was taken, unconscious, to a hospital, 
 where he lay ill for some weeks. On his convalescence, 
 the doctor advised a sea-trip, and with money supplied 
 by his parents, aware at last of his straits, he embarked 
 on a sailing vessel for South America, where a friend of 
 university days was engaged in cattle-raising. And 
 here, in a new world of bracing out-door life, he spent 
 a half-year piecing together his shattered health. 
 
 On returning to New York it seemed that the door 
 of opportunity at which he had knocked so unsuccess- 
 fully, was no longer bolted, but stood invitingly ajar. 
 He had written ranch life in a series of articles that a 
 
 D
 
 34 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 magazine readily accepted. These led, after a little, 
 through friendly intervention, to an offer of a literary 
 sub-editorship on a newspaper that had decided to 
 expand its book-reviewing department to something 
 like the dignity of space given its sporting columns. 
 His articles read well, and he should have been loth 
 to acknowledge what their effectiveness cost him. His 
 natural prose style had no spontaneity of life, and the 
 " pleasing quality " of his sketches had been secured 
 only by determined re-writing. 
 
 While the success of these articles inspired him with 
 some belief in his ability to write acceptable prose, he 
 found his pen far from trained for the work imposed on 
 him as a reviewer. He knew little of the ephemeral 
 literature of the day. What he had read had been of the 
 best, though unsystematic in choice and mostly 
 governed by whim; yet for all that, he had acquired a 
 fair accumulation of useful odds and ends to aid him 
 in his task. Besides which he had a natural fitness of 
 taste, with a disposition to judge art broadly and 
 impersonally. With scrupulous care, he attacked the 
 toppling crags of books hemming in his desk. He 
 deliberated over his judgments as though they were 
 life and death sentences, and devoted to the fashion 
 of saying things such pains that he found little time 
 for recreation. His seriousness amused his fellow 
 journalists, but as they saw his ardour continue they 
 spoke of him in the end with some respect. 
 
 The routine of a New York newspaper office was 
 something to which he slowly grew inured. Although
 
 THE QUEST 35 
 
 in the world of news-gathering, he never was nor 
 could be of it. Willingly he performed what was 
 demanded of him and it was varied enough but 
 at bottom there remained an unconquerable detach- 
 ment of spirit. He cared nothing about the multi- 
 tudinous details of life that gave reason for journalism. 
 What did mere news matter to anybody ? Yet it was 
 his obligation to take the trivial seriously, bend his 
 knee before Ephemera, supreme Tenth muse of feverish 
 modern worship. The turmoil of the office was a 
 reproduction in life of the vast pandemonium reigning 
 outside, in the street, in the looming, honeycombed 
 monoliths that made New York mountainous, stupen- 
 dously scenic, a transplanted Garden of the Gods. 
 It was all part of the madness of the new Stone Age, 
 where everything was hard, granitic, from the giddy 
 Babel towers round him to the hearts of those that 
 reared them. The breathlessness of journalism hectored 
 and confused him. There were days of " rush copy," 
 where no time was granted to think of what one wrote, 
 the altars of the Press called for their hecatombs; and 
 what was not known, had to be invented. It was not 
 ignorance that was a crime, it was its confession. The 
 school was one in which, if he failed to secure a diploma, 
 he could hardly help acquiring the art of doing what 
 was expected; and he did it, in spite of distaste, with 
 more than average proficiency. 
 
 It was among such surroundings that the best 
 years of youth passed. His salary increased slowly, 
 until he was able to live with a fair amount of comfort. 
 
 D2
 
 36 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Faces came and went in the office; but he remained. 
 Change meant acquiring new methods for new masters, 
 who would exact the same thing . . . the greatest 
 amount of work for the least amount of money. That 
 was business, that was life, it was what New York 
 scrawled across the heavens that arched above it in 
 sulphurous smoke . . . the only coherent message 
 shrieked by the roar of occupation. The thought did 
 not make him socialistic, as it made some. It produced 
 rather a dull wonder that he had ever conceived life 
 to be other than he found it. Yet, why had things been 
 born in him only to fade like sad sunsets heralding 
 starless dark . . . the darkness of instincts atrophied, 
 of tastes starved to death? He was treading, it was 
 true, the common path, known as the " morality of 
 labour " It was what a generally accepted philosophy 
 termed " evolution," bringing, it was affirmed, the 
 fruit of the tested and perfected man. It might mean 
 perfection for some. . . . But was there ultimate per- 
 fection in it for him ? One by one, it seemed, the strings 
 of his spirit snapped, the innate music of life faltered 
 and grew thin. How was it " evolving " to change from 
 the dreamer to the accomplished slave of circumstance, 
 having nothing beyond the day filled with its trivial 
 sops and its utter lassitude of heart ? 
 
 As he learned to do his work more facilely, he found 
 some leisure for human intercourse. Reading as a pas- 
 time had long been discounted through the monotony 
 and eye-strain of reviewing; and there remained 
 no freshness for personal creation after a day de-
 
 THE QUEST 37 
 
 voted to the creations of others. Relaxation of mind 
 was a necessity, and he began to go out in the 
 world. His parents who meanwhile had died in 
 weary agedness had once had many social ties in New 
 York, and he was received by these friends for his 
 family's sake and for his own. One day he gathered 
 together his printed verses and sent them to a publisher. 
 The appearance of the small volume received some 
 favourable comment; then it passed into the shadow 
 of the things of yesterday. Its little hour on the book- 
 stalls had, however, given him his claim to notice; 
 and New York classed him among its hosts of lesser 
 authors. 
 
 He dipped into the artistic circles of the city, yet 
 with no great feeling of congeniality. What he met 
 seemed to him a depressing proof of the decadence of 
 modern letters. It was better, he avowed, to see 
 authorship through the glass of book-shop windows 
 than thus face to face shorn of last illusions. Those 
 who succeeded and those who failed seemed equally 
 corrupted by the commercialism of the day. The talk 
 he listened to, reminded him of the ticking in a broker's 
 office ; books appeared to have a doubtful value beyond 
 the market quotations. Literature had become a means 
 of bread winning, and everything about it smacked 
 of the dough-trough. It was with disappointment he 
 turned from it all to a world which had, at least, the 
 charm of easy, agreeable living, where cultivation was 
 like a personal ornament, not a ball-and-chain dragged 
 about to recall one's servitude to art. Yet he was not
 
 38 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 very congenial here. His attitude towards society was 
 one of surface adaptations, that left the inner man 
 unused. Unwillingly, he acknowledged that he had 
 no talent for getting the best out of people. In spirit 
 he was a stranger within the social gates, one contri- 
 buting little real and receiving little real in return. 
 
 The day arrived when he woke from his stupor of 
 living. He fell in love. It was one of those spontaneous, 
 unreasoning passions of youth that take the heart 
 like a malady. It changed him, brought him down 
 from abstract emotions to a single concrete absorption. 
 But love was all on his side, and when it ended for 
 him, he was still too young not to take it tragically 
 and try to cauterize his heart with cynicism. He 
 believed himself sentimentally bankrupt. He did not 
 tell himself he could never love again. But he was 
 convinced his nature was incapable of any more such 
 reckless, complete giving. 
 
 Something, indeed, was for the time being gone; 
 life seemed more and more a hopeless grind, and over 
 his spirit fell more blackly the shadow of realizing the 
 doom he had chosen for himself; a newspaper hack 
 who must pass the rest of his days on a fixed small 
 salary of a newspaper hack. 
 
 He revolted, perhaps, because New York had become 
 intolerable to him through the restlessness bred by a 
 heart which still felt its loss; and one day, taking his 
 courage in hand, he applied for a year's leave of absence, 
 in which to go abroad. The paper, perhaps not un- 
 appreciative of long faithful service, arranged that he
 
 THE QUEST 39 
 
 should do correspondence work for it from Paris. He 
 had picked on Paris as the place most calculated to 
 dissipate melancholy and give back artistic ardour. 
 Perhaps it might even help him to read the sphinx's 
 riddle of life, which, so far, he had unsuccessfully 
 answered. 
 
 And now, after a half-year in Paris, he still faced that 
 monster barring existence's Theban road, as unable as 
 before to solve the conundrum demanded of his man- 
 hood. 
 
 But he had learned one thing that it was easier to 
 change environment than character.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE fine spring weather on which depended the Evers- 
 leys' garden party, that was rather forcing the season, 
 held out, and on the following Monday, Harding pre- 
 sented himself, in accordance with his promise, at Miss 
 Vanderhurst's hotel. 
 
 The Eversleys lived at Neuilly, and the cab having 
 passed the Porte Maillot, proceeded up the Boulevard 
 Bineau and turning into a side street drew up before a 
 large, white-plastered corner house with green shutters. 
 
 They were admitted into a broad hall, lighted by 
 glass doors giving on a garden. The effect of well-con- 
 sidered decoration, Harding gathered in a hasty glance. 
 Between plastered spaces of wall, left to its original 
 stucco, panels in tempera by Panini displayed charm- 
 ingly impossible classic landscapes. Below these were 
 several handsome light-framed canapes relieved in 
 gold, and flanking the salon doorway verd antique 
 pedestals supported marble busts of eighteenth century 
 actresses by Coysevoix. 
 
 Under a great ormolu chandelier, a number of people 
 in theatrical attire were gathered about a graceful 
 youth, dressed as a troubadour, whose voice was raised 
 in shrill grievance above the general talk. From the 
 group, at the sight of the visitors, an elder woman 
 detached herself and, as she came forward, Harding 
 was struck by her unusual prettiness.
 
 THE QUEST 41 
 
 " You see, Lena," Miss Vanderhurst remarked, as 
 they exchanged kisses, " we've come ahead of time, as 
 you said we might. I wanted Mr. Harding to meet you 
 before your other guests arrive." 
 
 " I'm so glad you did," Mrs. Eversley smiled, " and 
 that Mr. Harding could come. We hope to see a great 
 deal of him while he's in Paris." 
 
 Her soft, affected voice was gracious, but he noticed, 
 as she gave him her hand, laden with rings, that she 
 scrutinized his face in an odd way that made him 
 wonder what she expected to read there. It seemed 
 to him the quick glance was half apprehensive. 
 Evidently what she noted relieved her mind, for she 
 smiled again, more sincerely; then led them towards 
 the salon, saying to Miss Vanderhurst : 
 
 " Such a time, my dear, as we've been having over 
 Mr. Colston's play. The house, as you see, has been 
 turned into a green room. It's all the fault of the 
 wretched costumier. Mr. Colston gave him implicit 
 directions about the fifteenth century dress even 
 sketched the designs and when the things came 
 at the last moment, of course he found that his was 
 wrong in a number of little particulars. He takes the 
 principal part, and he's furious. He says the man's 
 stupidity has ruined the play. We are all, I assure 
 you, quite worn out about it ... I know I look so." 
 
 And she glanced, with a pretty air of martyrdom, in 
 a pier glass before which she had, perhaps not by 
 chance, seated herself. 
 
 " As though you ever looked anything but charm- 
 ing," Miss Vanderhurst returned, as one administers a
 
 42 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 bonbon to a petted child. " It's the wonderful thing 
 about you." 
 
 It was, indeed, wonderful, Harding mentally agreed, 
 trying to realize that his hostess was or rather, " had 
 been " a contemporary of the grey-haired spinster 
 who faced her. In the discreet light of the white and 
 gold salon, Mrs. Eversley appeared a woman of thirty- 
 five. Yet, if she and Miss Vanderhurst had been " girls 
 together," twenty years more must be nearer the truth. 
 How she had managed so to arrest time's wing, was 
 beyond his masculine surmise, and he had a sudden 
 respect for the immortality conferred by beauty shops. 
 Her early sorrow had apparently left no mark on her 
 bright-haired loveliness, which had the blooming fra- 
 gility of a Sevres shepherdess. Her air was one of 
 beguiling sweetness, but he was not quite sure that she 
 was as sweet or as simple as she seemed. There was 
 something about it that seemed as unreal as her bisque- 
 like blooms. He had met the " no harm in her " 
 type before once or twice in his life, and was sensible of 
 the havoc the harmlessness often wrought. He decided 
 to be on his guard until he knew the workings of this fair 
 instance of worldly frivolousness. 
 
 She was smiling with a smile he could fancy one 
 might get a little tired of in acknowledgement of the 
 spinster's remark, devoured after the fashion of one 
 accustomed to compliments, yet insatiable. 
 
 " That's nice of you, dear," ske returned, " but you 
 know you're not so critical as the rest of the world." 
 It seemed the place for the little sigh she heaved. " But 
 there, I'm boring you with my troubles. It's too
 
 THE QUEST . 43 
 
 absurd, isn't it, to make such a tragedy of ... of a 
 comedy." 
 
 She seemed rather pleased at her mot, though it ended 
 in a nervous laugh. It was plain, from the sounds 
 outside, that the troubadour, whom Harding guessed 
 to be Percy Colston, had quite lost his temper. His 
 voice arose to the shrill key of a tearful, spoiled child. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley made an attempt to ignore the dis- 
 traction. She talked on with pretty affectedness, but 
 it was obviously forced. Harding marked her straying 
 attention and wondered if his hostess's interest in the 
 angry youth were the cause of the uneasiness. He 
 conceived her to be not above a tangle of small love 
 affairs, although he held her incapable of serious 
 sentiment. A real heart-throb would have the effect, 
 he told himself, of shattering this fragile creature of 
 Sevres into a myriad bright bits. No doubt she knew 
 that herself. She must have been very wonderful in 
 her real youth, he mused, to be so wonderful in the 
 youth she had invented for herself. There was not a 
 line on her face, and her figure, perfect though it was, 
 did not owe everything to the corset-maker. Harding 
 had heard that hands reveal age where nothing else 
 does; but Mrs. Eversley appeared proud of hers she 
 raised one to arrange a strand of her not altogether 
 convincing blonde hair. The sapphire on it was 
 hardly brighter than her blue eyes, which seemed to ask 
 masculine protection. 
 
 The dispute continued. At last she said, as though 
 with sudden resolution : 
 
 " Really, I shall have to go and see if I can't pour oil
 
 44 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 on the troubled waters. Poor Mr. Colston's nerves are 
 so upset! It's his artistic temperament, you see. 
 What they need, the lot of them, is their tea. . . . 
 They're quite forgetting people will soon be here. 
 Come, Mr. Harding, let us see what's to be done with 
 these impossible young squabblers." 
 
 Harding followed her with some misgiving. It did 
 not appear a propitious moment for the introductions 
 by means of which he saw his hostess planned to quell 
 the difficulties. 
 
 The poet seemed the butt of general badinage, 
 which he was taking in bad part. His face was flushed 
 with vexation, in which wounded vanity was dominant. 
 He held a lute, and his violet costume showed off his 
 graceful figure, as he was manifestly aware. Harding 
 conceived a dislike for him, though he admitted the 
 good looks Miss Vanderhurst had described in an 
 epicene way. Effeminacy was certainly to the fore at 
 the moment, for he bit at his lip to restrain tears. 
 
 As they approached, Harding heard a blond English- 
 man, in a herald's surcoat of apple-green, exclaim 
 protestingly : 
 
 " I say, Percy, do be a man ! " 
 
 " I'm not a man . . . I'm a poet ! " was the peevish 
 rejoinder, and at this the group broke out in amused 
 laughter. 
 
 It seemed to have a relieving effect on the group ; and 
 someone ventured, " Well, so was Shakespeare, and he 
 didn't make a row over costumes . . . anything did to put 
 on, you know, when he acted."
 
 THE QUEST 45 
 
 " Anything didn't do," was the dramatist's vehement 
 retort, " as Shakespeare scholars could tell you. The 
 original folios are full of directions about wardrobes ..." 
 the rest was lost in the animation that ensued. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley paused in her olive-branch-bearing, 
 as though courage failed her. 
 
 " I don't wonder he's tired," she said under cover of 
 the babel, "he's worked so hard to make his piece a 
 success. Miss Fitzgerald," she w r ent on, as a last 
 resource, to an Irish girl, with a nimbus of red hair that 
 an Alma Tadema model would have rejoiced in, " will 
 you take Mr. Harding out in the garden and tell Monica 
 to give you all tea ? It's much more to the point than 
 discussing Shakespeare at such a time." 
 
 Miss Fitzgerald made an expressive face. " Monica 
 is the only one who seems to be taking things calmly. 
 I wish the others emulated her." 
 
 She led the way into the garden. It was a limited 
 bit of plaisance, sheltered from the street by high, ivy- 
 mantled walls. The spring sunshine had drawn from 
 the shaven sod an intense green, in contrast with the 
 red-gravelled paths, which formed a formal design 
 round the central fountain a sunken basin with a 
 languid flower of spray, under which a pair of bronze 
 ducks floated complacently. There were some tubbed 
 orange trees, and a moss-streaked Flora, in a bower, 
 that disconsolately held out an offering of fruit. Hard- 
 ing wondered where the play would be given there 
 was no evidence of a theatre. 
 
 Miss Fitzgerald, who was in ordinary dress, led him
 
 46 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 towards a marble bench on which Miss Eversley sat, a 
 tea table before her. She seemed to him quite a stately 
 person in her theatrical garb. The dress was of samite, 
 ermine-edged and embroidered with silver fleurs-de-lys, 
 and about her head was a fillet of oak leaves tied by 
 long white ribbons. Conversing with her was a man 
 of heavy build and artist-like bushy hair, presented as 
 Monsieur Fernet. 
 
 After a moment or so of talk, the Frenchman and 
 Miss Fitzgerald moved off, to join several actors who 
 issued from the house, leaving Miss Eversley and Hard- 
 ing alone. 
 
 As he took the glass of punch she served him, 
 Harding admitted that Monica Eversley hardly realized 
 his mental sketch of her. She was handsomer than he 
 expected, her features were strong and regular without 
 being tiresomely correct. Her eyes rather took his 
 fancy in their grey-green of a moral Felise and set with 
 short jet lashes. Her complexion was singular in its 
 dull nacre tone, that did not seem ill-health. She was 
 serious, certainly, compared with her mother, and he 
 didn't wonder at it. ... There appeared some provoca- 
 tion at reaction from the latter' s artificiality. Fri- 
 volous mothers frequently produced sober daughters. 
 
 She shook hands with him in a cool, detached 
 way. 
 
 " You've been all winter in Paris, I think Miss 
 Vanderhurst said," she remarked. He fancied she had 
 no great interest in the play; she had listened with 
 what was almost impatience to a comment he had 
 made about her costume.
 
 THE QUEST 47 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I came after the bad weather set 
 in hardly a time for favourable impressions. I had 
 the romantic idea Paris was pre-empt from ordinary 
 vicissitudes of climate. What a different place it is 
 in spring. . . like a gay finish to a Scotch sermon. Yet 
 it's always artistic, isn't it. ... There were winter days 
 that were worth seeing from my balcony on the Seine. I 
 suppose Whistler is responsible for them. You know 
 he discovered the Thames fogs." 
 
 If he expected appreciation of his effort at brightness, 
 he was disappointed. > 
 
 " You live on the quays, then ? " she asked, evidently 
 only to make conversation. 
 
 " Yes, literally on them, most of the time. That's 
 where I do my idling. I picked quarters for the sake of 
 the river; I like it more than anything else about Paris. 
 It was after I tried pensions. ... I thought that was the 
 way to learn the language. I didn't, of course. Does 
 one ever hear French in Paris? It seems a dead 
 tongue. So," he went on autobiographically, in spite 
 of her formal air, " being bored to no purpose by 
 superannuated Anglo-Saxon spinsters, I decided on my 
 present lodgings rather the Grub Street sort, but with 
 something big to look at out of the window Notre 
 Dame. Mai de briques is an intermittent fever of mine. 
 I was born in the mountains that's why I get Switzer 
 longings for them. Notre Dame's a kind of Mont 
 Blanc. ... I work off the feeling by climbing it. Miss 
 Vanderhurst," he added, with a laugh, " thinks it a 
 hopelessly bohemian part of the city. She wants me 
 to give it up for a more respectable address."
 
 48 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " You speak as though you meant to be persuaded," 
 she returned, with a slight arch of her fine brows. 
 
 " Shouldn't one spare the feelings of friends? " he 
 challenged gaily. 
 
 " At the expense of one's own ? I thought men 
 claimed the privilege of ordering their own lives." 
 
 " But does one ever order them ? I know I've never 
 succeeded in ordering mine," he replied with a shrug. 
 
 " I don't believe you've tried . . . that is, hard 
 enough," was her frank answer. He had the feeling, as 
 he met her analyzing eyes, that already she had sized 
 him up as lacking strength of purpose. 
 
 Then, as if she preferred more impersonal conversa- 
 tion, she remarked: " If you like Nature, you have the 
 Bois Parisians are very fond of it." 
 
 " But do you think that is Nature, really ? I don't 
 care for parks. They lack genuineness as a Watteau 
 marquise with a beribboned crook differs from a 
 shepherdess in homespun. Of course, the public 
 gardens of Paris have charm but it's the charm of a 
 pretty woman done to death by her coiffeur and mani- 
 curist." 
 
 " Perhaps that's how our little garden strikes you 
 it rather suggests a problem in Euclid." 
 
 " It's the setting for the present scene, though, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 And he regarded the costumed figures straying about, 
 or seated with their tea cups, which Miss Eversley, 
 assisted by two English servants, had been dispensing 
 while she talked. A troubadour, cigarette in mouth,
 
 THE QUEST 49 
 
 was tuning his lute, while a lady-in-waiting, smelling 
 a bouquet of almond blossoms, chatted mirthfully with 
 a scarlet-robed Cardinal. Two heralds in bright sur- 
 coats amused themselves tossing bits of biscuit to the 
 ducks come to the fountain brink. 
 
 " If you care so much for the real in life, it's strange, 
 isn't it, you come to Paris? " Miss Eversley presently 
 observed. 
 
 He thought she regarded him with a little more 
 interest. 
 
 " Why does one do anything ? It's, perhaps, because 
 one's always seeking what one never finds," he answered. 
 " And, after all, Paris has its own kind of sincerities, I 
 suppose. Artists, you know, are told they find their 
 salvation here." He spoke with a negligent laugh. 
 
 " I didn't know that mere places offered that," she 
 returned. 
 
 " You mean one ought to find it in oneself ? It's an 
 ideal way of looking at things, I admit. Nevertheless, 
 I think we need any aid we can wring out of the sorry 
 scheme of things. Life at best isn't a particularly easy 
 matter. The Great Gardener has lost the habit of 
 planting primroses along one's path. The twentieth 
 century primrose is a hothouse flower . . . only pro- 
 curable at hothouse prices." 
 
 " Why depend on them, then ? " He saw that his 
 lightness affected her unfavourably, that she ranked" 
 him with the triflers of whom, he fancied, she had seen 
 much. Her coolness rather nettled him, and he went 
 on provokingly : 
 
 E
 
 50 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Still, if you know how they're grown, I wish you'd 
 give me the horticultural recipe I'm devoted to prim- 
 roses." 
 
 " Are you ? " with decided sarcasm, this tune. "I'm 
 sorry I don't kno'w much about them." She left the 
 table, adding, " I see that it's time to make a retreat 
 people are coming." 
 
 And, with a dismissing nod, she moved towards the 
 knot of actors who had signalled her. 
 
 He watched her go, trailing her long white robes 
 across the green, a scroll clasped against her breast, 
 her head, crowned by its ribboned wreath, held rather 
 proudly, in a way that was probably natural to her. 
 The stately costume of a dead day seemed to isolate 
 her from the modern world with its materialism, its 
 vexing problems, its moral compromises. His gaze 
 followed her until she disappeared, with the other 
 players, through an ivy-framed gate, leading to 
 another garden where the spectacle was to be given; 
 and he thought, with irony, that Wordsworth would 
 have chosen her as an impersonation of his " stern 
 daughter of the voice of God." Her critical com- 
 posure left him with vague feelings of irritation, and 
 he mused on her lack of wit, her sober way of 
 taking the irresponsible utterances of casual talk. It 
 , was rather absurd of her. She seemed to enjoy exer- 
 cising le plaisir aristocratique de deplaire. After all, 
 he concluded, it was only her good looks that saved 
 her. 
 
 He watched, for a moment or so, the guests that now
 
 THE QUEST 51 
 
 poured from the house. He was about to seek 
 Miss Vanderhurst when he saw Miss Fitzgerald 
 approach, and her bright recognition carried him to 
 her side. Together they passed into the next garden, 
 where, on an ampler lawn an open-air stage was 
 erected, with cushioned benches for the spectators. 
 
 " And why aren't you acting, too? " he asked, as 
 they found seats. 
 
 " But I am," she returned. " That is, I'm supposed 
 to be filling the role of half hostess a sort of under- 
 study to Mrs. Eversley, as the play is being given in our 
 garden. That's the limit to my histrionic talents. 
 Besides, Mr. Colston wanted me to sing in one of the 
 scenes and Mme. Marchesi forbids my using my voice 
 in public yet. You're an American, aren't you?" she 
 continued. " One doesn't often meet them at the 
 Eversleys'. The only one in favour is Mr. Colston 
 and he's so depayse he scarcely counts." 
 
 "But why are they excluded from grace?" he 
 asked, rather liking her. 
 
 " I don't know that they are exactly excluded. It 
 may only be chance one doesn't oftener see them at the 
 house though I shouldn't say Mrs. Eversley makes a 
 speciality of her own nation. It's rather a cosmopolitan 
 crowd, isn't it ? ... and most celebrities of one sort 
 or another." And she pointed out some well-known 
 figures of the Paris art-world. " I don't know that I 
 care much for artists, do you? But perhaps," she 
 added apologetically, " you are one yourself, though 
 you don't look it." 
 
 E2
 
 52 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Oh, I'm not enough of a one to count," he smiled. 
 " But what's wrong with them ? " 
 
 " Nothing; except one finds them rather self- 
 absorbed, as a rule. Percy Colston is an aggravated 
 case of it. He's like the ancient mariner, the way he 
 holds you with his glittering I. But that's not original. 
 ... It's what he said of some one who out-talked him. 
 Art theories and his dog, Chicot, are his only variations 
 of that topic, and they come in like a recurrent theme 
 in a Bach fugue. You don't know Chicot ? Then your 
 Colston education's been neglected. If anybody ever 
 elopes with poor Percy he's in deadly fear some one 
 will Chicot will have to be included, like Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's Flush." And she laughed gaily. " Oh, Mr. Colston 
 is quite amusing, I assure you. Mrs. Eversley prizes 
 him above her best china, and, of course, he treats her 
 like a bad child. You saw how he forgot himself a 
 while ago, I suppose? It's the only way he ever does 
 forget himself, I admit. His chord of self isn't the kind 
 that trembles out of sight. He and Monica don't 
 get on, she leaves him to her mother. But then she's 
 like me she prefers art to artists." 
 
 " Yes, I've heard she does something in it it's 
 enamelling, isn't it? " 
 
 " You haven't seen her things in this year's Salon, 
 then? She's quite successful, you know. Her work 
 makes her independent of her mother. Mrs. Eversley 
 holds it's vulgar to want to earn money. But I think 
 that's because she urges Monica to go into society
 
 THE QUEST 53 
 
 . . . now. She didn't use to, and that's what's so strange. 
 I remember when I first came to Paris I thought Mrs. 
 Eversley was her own daughter, so to speak. She never 
 admitted she was old enough to have one. I think 
 Monica must have been locked up in a dark room, 
 those days. She's just begun to be a little in evidence." 
 
 Harding was rather taken with this gay frankness. 
 " But is Mrs. Eversley really grown up ? She's astonish- 
 ingly youthful, I thought." 
 
 " She's astonishing in a good many ways," was the 
 answer. " I fancy she wants Monica to marry. It's 
 one way of solving the daughter difficulty, you know." 
 
 " But I was given to understand," he answered, 
 " that Miss Eversley was in the way of solving that 
 for herself. She struck me as having the ' engaged ' 
 air. You see it generally. Such girls are either so nice 
 to you that you feel it's an overflow, or they snuff you 
 out without provocation. Isn't there a sculptor 
 a Monsieur Fernet who's being attentive? " 
 
 " Yes; it's the man she was talking to when I 
 introduced you. He's the pupil of Saint Marceaux. 
 He came back from Italy this winter. Mr. Colston and 
 he have an apartment together in the rue St. Honore", 
 though I don't see the bond, unless it's because Percy 
 poses for him. He's very nice I mean Monsieur Fernet 
 though he stutters a bit. Really I don't know whether 
 it's a case of understanding or misunderstanding 
 between him and Monica. It's gone on for years, any- 
 way. Perhaps it's because he's tongue-tied it hasn't
 
 54 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 come to anything. You know if you hesitate you're 
 lost. Though I think it's Percy Colston that's the 
 trouble. It's like him to interfere," she concluded, a 
 little spitefully. 
 
 " But why should he ? " 
 
 " Oh, but don't you see? " And she regarded him 
 with amused eyes. " If Monica married Monsieur 
 Fernet, it would break up their household. It's a 
 selfish way for Percy to look at it ... but then he's a 
 poet. He rules all his friends, you know. It would be 
 such a solution if only he'd marry Mrs. Eversley. Of 
 course, there's the difference of their ages." 
 
 And she sighed with an air that suggested she would 
 like to give points to Providence. 
 
 " But Mrs. Eversley doesn't show her age." 
 
 " Yes; but I don't know that she wants to marry. 
 She might be a kind of married older sister fill the 
 place vacated by poor Kate Colston. You ought to 
 have known his sister Kate. They had a flat together 
 hardly big enough for one. They were always enter- 
 taining, however, with screens and things, to hide the 
 makeshifts. They had to deceive to receive, I suppose 
 you'd say. And how people did fall over the decep- 
 tions ! " She laughed with the recollection. " There was 
 a sword over the fireplace that belonged to his father, 
 a famous colonel in your civil war. We called it le 
 sabre de mon pere, for Ajax's in La Belle Helene, Percy 
 was so awfully proud of it. Later, he was left a legacy, 
 and everything prospered except poor Kate. . . . She
 
 THE QUEST 55 
 
 died, just when she was no longer needed. But she 
 was always so accommodating ! " 
 
 Miss Fitzgerald's reminiscences were interrupted 
 by the appearance of a jester, jingling his bells for 
 attention. He delivered a prologue in verse. After 
 which the audience was treated to a Court of Love, 
 in which the r61e of the successful candidate for poetical 
 honours was filled by the author. He received the 
 prize a golden eglantine from Monica Eversley as 
 Queen of Love, surrounded by her ladies. The piece 
 was a graceful composition, done in affected, archaic 
 style, and it was heartily applauded. 
 
 " How well Monica acted," Miss Fitzgerald com- 
 mented, after the players retreated. " Especially when 
 one knows how she hated taking the part. It required 
 art for her to crown Percy Colston in that smiling way. 
 But here comes Isadore Duncan," she added, as she 
 dipped into an ice a servant had handed her,"j" I love 
 her, don't you ? " 
 
 The dancer was arrayed as Primavera, in a robe of 
 pale mauve, embroidered with song-birds. In her hair 
 were daisies and daffodils, and about her neck a collar 
 of violets. She held a cage of silver wire, filled with 
 linnets, that she released, with charming gestures of 
 farewell. It was a delicious pantomime, in the light 
 of the declining spring afternoon, in which the 
 veritable spirit of the year seemed come into the garden. 
 
 The dance finished the performance, and the 
 audience, breaking the spell which the artists had cast
 
 56 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 on it, arose, and dispersing, fell into gossiping groups. 
 The actors appeared to receive congratulations. 
 Harding, joining Miss Vanderhurst, went up to pay 
 his compliments to his hostess. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley had, evidently, recovered her equan- 
 imity. The success of the entertainment seemed to 
 compensate her for the jars that had preceded it. 
 
 " Yes, I think these out-door pieces are attractive," 
 she remarked radiantly. " And then the weather was 
 so perfect. You have left me your address, 
 Mr. Harding ? I shall want you, you know, to come to 
 dine with me soon." 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst was preoccupied on the way back 
 to her hotel. 
 
 " Miss Fitzgerald was speaking to me of Monsieur 
 Fernet and Miss Eversley," Harding observed to break 
 the silence. " She rather suggested there was some 
 impediment. ..." 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst glanced at him inquisitively. 
 "I'm sure I don't know what it can be," she said, 
 rather tartly. " Unless it's in his speech . . . Monsieur 
 Fernet stutters, I believe. It would be an excellent 
 match. He's well-bred, a sculptor of note, and quite 
 comfortably off. But Monica is such a strange girl . . . 
 I don't know that I at all understand her. I wish there 
 was more congeniality between her and her mother. 
 How did she impress you ? " 
 
 " Well, frankly," he laughed, " she depressed me 
 more than impressed me. I felt terribly inferior,
 
 THE QUEST 57 
 
 somehow. She's quite handsome, but I wonder if a 
 mere mortal could live up to her." 
 
 " Don't try," she returned drily. " Let Lena live 
 up to you. ... It would be better for her than living 
 down to Percy Colston. I wish, for my sake, you'd 
 promise to be nice to Lena it's one reason why I 
 wanted you to meet her." 
 
 Her worldly eyes were quite earnest about it, as she 
 turned them on him. 
 
 " Of course, I will, if you ask it," he answered.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HARDING had expected the fair spring weather would 
 inspire him in writing his book; but it was delightful 
 to be out-of-doors, and besides that temptation, Miss 
 Vanderhurst pre-empted his time during her pause 
 in Paris. The spinster had resolved to take him 
 socially in hand. The world, to her, was not allied 
 to the flesh and the twentieth-century substitute for 
 the devil. This last assailed those who kept to bohemian 
 quarters and neglected people dwelling in the sacred 
 Etoile district. It was a great pity, she thought, that 
 he did not interest himself in the " right sort of people." 
 That class certainly not to be found in places where, 
 apparently, Harding passed his time stood as the 
 panacea for everything. They kept one cheerful, 
 for society was cheerfulness; to go about, demanded 
 thinking of others instead of oneself. Accordingly she 
 multiplied engagements with him, weaving in to her 
 plans for his good the hope that he might encounter 
 someone better fitted to arouse his sentiment than 
 Miss Buttercup Baxter. She had not been serious in 
 recommending an alliance between Harding and the 
 tea merchant's daughter . . . she didn't see why he 
 couldn't do better for himself than that. Fortunately, 
 there were a few nice girls left who had fortune. And 
 Buttercup didn't strike her as " nice," irrespective of
 
 THE QUEST 59 
 
 the tea trade. So when, one day, Harding spoke of 
 having an engagement with that young woman to go 
 to the races, she lifted her brows rather superciliously. 
 
 " You really are in love with her, then ? " she 
 demanded; and at his flushed denial, she smiled in a 
 way that left him small doubt as to what she concluded 
 to be the object of his attentions. 
 
 His acquaintance with Miss Buttercup and her 
 chaperoning relative dated from the previous autumn, 
 when they had crossed on the same steamer from New 
 York to Genoa, where Harding parted from them to 
 go on to Paris. The ten days on board had made him 
 and Buttercup rather intimate. Intimacy with that 
 young woman was not a difficult thing. She had a 
 hearty way of taking people that easily won her 
 friends; and if he found her Americanism a trifle 
 crude, on the other hand her naive relish of life, her 
 good-natured, somewhat high-keyed laughter, which 
 went well with her florid youth, made her an agreeable 
 companion on an ocean trip. When later she appeared 
 in Paris, he saw a good deal of her from time to time. 
 Miss Baxter, on discovering him to be a writer, pro- 
 fessed delight. She " hailed," as she would have said, 
 from Boston, where she heard much but saw little of 
 its literary set, and Harding's claim to authorship 
 gave him some importance in her eyes. She demanded 
 his Adonis - Garden with a dedicatory fly-leaf, and 
 spoke so enthusiastically of the verses that his regard 
 for her sensibly increased. The idea of proposing to 
 her began to figure vaguely in his thoughts. That her
 
 60 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 father was " absurdly rich," to use Miss Vander- 
 hurst's phrase, was a notorious fact. The branch 
 houses of Hiram Baxter and Co., scattered over the 
 United States, testified eloquently to that. Butter- 
 cup herself took pride in the knowledge, to the extent 
 of ingenuously counting the advertisements of 
 " Baxter's Surpassing Ceylon " that, decorating the 
 hoardings of European capitals, proclaimed the 
 world-wide fame of her papa's product. She and her 
 aunt, Miss Zenobia, were wont to make wry faces 
 when served any other brand. 
 
 Harding was far from thinking he was of the class 
 of vulgar fortune hunters. He told himself that 
 marriage with Buttercup was out of the question unless 
 sentiment warranted it. His sentiments so far, he 
 was obliged to admit, were of a rather lukewarm order; 
 but he liked her, and much lay in propinquity. . . . 
 If he had no great love to offer, Miss Buttercup did 
 not, on her side, seem the girl to demand it. Practical 
 advantages, certainly, recommended the suit. From 
 early youth he had been counselled by interested 
 friends to make a marriage that would eliminate the 
 grosser anxieties of life. He had resented these 
 suggestions as a reflection on his capacity to work 
 out his salvation unaided. But an increase of his 
 pessimistic disbelief in himself and his powers, born 
 from years of dreary slavery at his desk, had brought 
 him to look more favourably on worldly advice; and 
 experience provoked in him the dull conviction that 
 the altitudes of art towards which his spirit strained in
 
 THE QUEST 61 
 
 theory, were left like mountain peaks to a glacial 
 unrewarded isolation. It was not the highest in art 
 that the world wanted or was willing to pay for. A 
 marriage of ease would leave him free to devote him- 
 self to his best, without considering the depressing 
 money side of literary occupation. His imagination, 
 in tired overworked moments, had therefore played 
 more and more with the idea. Yet he found himself 
 strangely reluctant to take the decisive step, even in 
 the face of what seemed encouragement on the young 
 woman's part. 
 
 Things about the Baxters had, indeed, their reaction- 
 ary effect upon him, causing him to wonder if, after 
 all, he could endure the family milieu. Miss Zenobia 
 was rather an impossible person, and her vulgarities 
 had, he felt, corrupted her niece. The day at Auteuil 
 proved an unfortunate excursion in that respect, 
 tending to check his suitor enthusiasms. The weather 
 promised fair, and his hostesses, who had engaged 
 a drag, were resplendent in fresh rue de la Paix toil- 
 ettes. After they got in the jam of vehicles at the race, 
 a sudden storm came up, and everybody was drenched 
 to the skin. Miss Zenobia and her niece took the 
 accident tragically, as if it had been a crash in the tea 
 trade. The scarlet poppies in the stout spinster's hat 
 trickled down in blood-like drops as, object of grim 
 dejection, she sat mopping her cheeks with her hand- 
 kerchief. It was plain she darkly reckoned the cost 
 represented by the ruin of her clothes. Buttercup 
 made only the sickliest attempts to meet the good
 
 62 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 humour of her guests, one of whom, a girl whose 
 wilted finery was probably her only gala dress, amused 
 herself feeding near-by horses with cherries. Harding 
 scarcely knew which was the worse damper the 
 shower or his hostesses; and he told himself the 
 Baxters sometimes failed to live up to the cheerful 
 quality of their surpassing Ceylon. It was one of the 
 occasions, he confessed, when Miss Buttercup was dis- 
 illusioning; and he parted from her and her aunt 
 rather coldly. 
 
 Was it his punishment for not taking the girls the 
 gods provide, that events followed which put a sudden 
 end to his social idlings ? 
 
 The newspaper for which he worked had left him 
 free, seemingly, to follow his own whims in the corre- 
 spondence he furnished weekly. Hearing nothing from 
 it, beyond the formal word that accompanied the 
 periodic cheque, he concluded that his work gave 
 satisfaction to the managing editor who passed on such 
 things. Apparent security about the position had not 
 made him lax in his fashion of writing he had what 
 is called the " literary conscience " and he always used 
 his pen with care but the eternal search after subject- 
 matter was fatiguing and he was inclined to make the 
 most of what he casually gleaned. He had not, he knew, 
 the " journalistic nose," to employ the odious office 
 word, for news, and when it came to burrowing he 
 was perhaps rather negligent. It was all part of the 
 emptiness of what weighed on his spirit as a means 
 of livelihood. He tried to take it seriously, because
 
 THE QUEST 63 
 
 I 
 
 what hung on it was serious; and the thought that the 
 
 rest of his days might be concerned with that sort 
 of task, made him sigh often with weariness of spirit. 
 
 But the day after Miss Vanderhurst departed from 
 Paris with many injunctions as to pursuing the social 
 path she had cleared for him, arrived a letter from his 
 paper in which his correspondence work was criticized 
 for lacking " snappiness " and " general interest," 
 and he read between the lines that his recall to the 
 staff position was imminent. 
 
 The paper, he reflected, had repented of having given 
 him this chance to rejuvenate his faculties, widen his 
 experience, enrich his taste advantages which his 
 co-workers could not enjoy. The leave-of -absence 
 had only been a Greek gift. It supplied his employer 
 with the excuse to try someone else in the position 
 he had so long filled. The new candidate had probably 
 made good with the opportunity. " Fresh blood," 
 that was journalism's shibboleth. It was what the 
 paper continually demanded to keep its vigour and 
 brightness in competition with rivals. How many had 
 come and gone in the office since he had entered, 
 simulating coolness, nervous over the novel require- 
 ments of them ! Young as he was, he was almost the 
 doyen of the editorial staff a dangerous fact, in its 
 constant reminder to the paper that he was reaching 
 the end of usefulness. Ten years, it was reckoned, wore 
 out a New York journalist. And after that? . . . Who 
 indeed, troubled to discover what became of the 
 voluntarily departing or the discharged ? Faithfulness
 
 64 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 to one's post did not count. ... He was well aware of 
 that. There was even such a thing as being too faithful. 
 His chief often referred disparagingly to those who 
 adhered to the paper overlong, as if it were a self- 
 confessed incompetence. 
 
 Perhaps the decision which now appeared to Harding 
 was as much necessity as choice. Not to evolve out of 
 the old worn sphere into a newer, higher one, was, in 
 effect, to retrograde into the ranks of those who, 
 venturing nothing, lost all. 
 
 He would throw off the yoke of journalism, stay on in 
 Paris, fight fortune with his only weapon, what 
 remained of early artistic impulse. And if he failed? 
 Well, what fairer place to fail in than Paris, eloquent 
 in its soft spring beauty, that seemed to say if he could 
 only believe in himself, all would yet be well. 
 
 Before committing himself to the irrevocable, and 
 rather to soothe his conscience than to modify his 
 decision, he went in to see a friend whom he had made 
 since coming to Paris. Nicolls was a young Englishman 
 who filled the post of city editor on the Paris Gazette, 
 a weekly journal devoted to the interests of the Anglo- 
 Saxon traveller; and Harding was in the habit of calling 
 on him once or twice a week to glance over the news- 
 papers there on file and discuss matters connected with 
 his journalistic work. He found Nicolls at a desk, 
 strewn with copy just from the printer. Nicolls was 
 always toiling. He reminded Harding of Emerson's 
 saying that steam was only another name for an 
 Englishman. Harding rather envied him his energy
 
 THE QUEST 65 
 
 and determined ambitions; success was written all 
 over him, and he never complained of life's difficulties. 
 He had lived his life out of England, Harding knew; 
 his father, a collector for the British Museum, had died 
 leaving him to his own resources. Without being good- 
 looking he had something in his face which attracted; 
 it was perhaps his sincere blue eyes, the quiet sturdiness 
 of his personality. 
 
 Nicolls had, as usual, a suggestion for the next news- 
 paper article Harding owed much to the other's 
 interest in his work ; he also had some theatre tickets for 
 him. But Harding came quickly to his point, showing 
 the letter just received from the New York paper. 
 
 " Well," Nicolls commented, " it appears a simple 
 matter. All you have to do is to adapt yourself to their 
 demands. If the Salon isn't ' snappy ' enough for them, 
 then interview Edmond Blanc's jockey." 
 
 " One gets so infernally tired of ' adapting ' oneself." 
 Harding said, impatiently. " I've done nothing else 
 all my life. I've done it badly, I suppose, like a dog 
 that tries to stand on its head, yet as well as most 
 people filling roles not fitted to them. And what's come 
 of it ? Nothing beyond putting bread in one's mouth, 
 and none too much of that, either. And in the mean- 
 time, everything that really matters to one is left to 
 waste away. You can hardly deny that that sort of 
 suppression is bad . . . that it ends in one getting 
 atrophied, going on day after day, year after year like 
 this. That's the trouble with ' adapting.' . . . One adapts 
 too well." And his face gleamed with rebellion. 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 " I don't know about that." Nicolls objected 
 indulgently. " It's a good deal in the way one takes 
 things. There's generally something to be got from 
 even the worst sort of sweating. That's where one's 
 cleverness comes in. And you're clever enough, 
 Harding." 
 
 He spoke soberly, seeing that the other was depressed. 
 It was not the first time they had argued over these 
 problems, without altering their opposing view of life. 
 
 " That's a way of saying one has only to ' do one's 
 duty ' to get a pleasant pat from Providence in the 
 end." And Harding thought of the hopeful axioms of 
 youth of which he had discovered the hollowness. He 
 was silent a moment, struggling with memories of futile 
 effort, yet lured by the vision of independence. He 
 felt as though it was the moment when he must 
 challenge fate or submit to a life of drudgery. 
 
 "I'm tired of all this bowing in the house of Rim- 
 mon," he continued, finding resolve come with his 
 words. " I've had to think, write, breathe the meaning- 
 less and commonplace so long, I've half lost my sight, 
 mentally, like fish in underground streams. One has 
 to cut loose from the compromise, or become a com- 
 promise oneself. I wasn't made for journalism, 
 Nicolls. I'd like to find out what I was made for . . . 
 if there's any real art in me, for instance. No, there's 
 nothing to do, that I can see, but throw up the job 
 tell the paper I refuse to write the twaddle they demand. 
 I want to be free, trust to my best. If I don't succeed, 
 it'll be failing, at all events, in a decent cause. One
 
 THE QUEST 67 
 
 should know how to fail, I suppose, as well as how to 
 succeed," he concluded bitterly. 
 
 " But my dear fellow," Nicolls remonstrated, " your 
 way of looking at practical situations is so needlessly 
 dramatic. Why suddenly, without means to fall back 
 on you told me that you depend on your salary 
 throw up the thing that keeps you afloat, to go into 
 such an uncertain field as literature? You ought to 
 wait, I should say, until you've tested what you can 
 do there. Patience is a great thing. . . . You know the 
 adage." 
 
 "That everything comes to him who waits?" 
 Harding smiled scornfully. " On the contrary, nothing 
 comes to him who waits . . . too long. Better take the 
 plunge and be done with it." And he rose, saying more 
 lightly: "But I'm keeping your printer waiting. 
 Nothing will come to him, any way, if I go on talking." 
 
 And with a laugh that had a dash of bravado, he 
 shook hands and left the office. 
 
 The laugh was the froth, so to speak, on the ebullition 
 of his self persuasive arguments. The ebullition died 
 almost as quickly as the laugh did; and in the street 
 he experienced some reaction as to his hastily-made 
 vow of independence. Yet he knew that what he 
 uttered, however rhetorically phrased, was less void 
 of reason than he confessed. Nicolls, after all, was 
 ignorant of the true position in which he stood, although 
 he might partly have guessed from Harding's fits of 
 gloom, inexplicable to the other's excellent balance 
 of mind unless based on some real difficulty. 
 
 F2
 
 68 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Paris struck him as never lovelier than in its misty 
 spring-time veil, with the afternoon sun raying from 
 piled-up clouds behind the distant Trocadero. He 
 paused, on his way across the Seine, to watch the trim 
 little steamboats plying up and down the current, the 
 quivering poplars lining the river-banks, the glittering 
 domes and marble shafts of a city that weaves its 
 wizardry over the heart of beauty lovers and the river 
 with its ripples and eddyings, like some finger writing 
 ever obliterated sentences in some unknown language. 
 
 Harding, leaning against the stone parapets, mused 
 on destiny and what it might hold for him. Was it 
 better to remain and strive for " the best " in him, as 
 he expressed it to Nicolls, or to return to a grimed 
 newspaper office in a Moloch-like metropolis which had 
 crushed out his youth and ambition? He wished, 
 wearily, that some counselling inner voice could tell 
 him in what lay wisdom. The old fear of life was on him, 
 that strange, corrupting doubt of himself and his 
 fortune, the feeling that in nothing he might do dwelt 
 salvation. Nicolls had spoken of the " uncertainty of 
 literature." . . . What he had meant was the defeating 
 uncertainty in himself. Yes, he lauded, in his talk with 
 his friend, the solution to be found in art. Had it any ? 
 What was art but the melancholy of the unattainable ? 
 Why add to the Niagara of books that had poured on 
 his head as he sat at his desk, year in and year out, 
 writing [about them as if the ephemeral flood of print 
 meant anything really to anybody? What heartache 
 of vain endeavour many of them represented, what
 
 THE QUEST 69 
 
 dreams of fame unrealized, what sacrifices of youth, 
 what starvation on the part of those who had held 
 the pen ! What vanity to suppose it might be given to 
 him to achieve something worthy of even passing 
 comment. And yet not to have lived towards some 
 higher hope, not to have tried to lift himself above the 
 sordidness of unmeaning drudgery. . . . 
 
 Wavering between fear and hope of the future, the 
 resolve to free himself from journalistic servitude 
 seemed the most momentous he had ever made. He 
 had grasped the spar that had floated to him on the sea 
 of struggle, with the relief of a drowning man; and he 
 had clung to it as the only thing between him and the 
 gulf into which he had nearly sunk. He was astonished 
 at his present temerity. He braced himself by a drink 
 at a boulevard cafe, and wrote his letter to the paper; 
 when he added his signature, he looked on it as if it 
 were his death warrant. 
 
 Having dropped the envelope in a letter box, he 
 experienced a reaction which demanded something to 
 occupy his mind. He dined at a good restaurant as part 
 of his defiant attitude towards fate ; and then consulted, 
 on returning to the street, a theatrical column. He 
 saw that (Edipe Roi was to be given that night by 
 the Comedie Franaise with Mounet Sully, whom he 
 admired, in the title rdle. 
 
 He afterwards wondered whether something more 
 than chance had governed his selection of the spectacle 
 on the unforgettable night. It was certainly not a 
 piece calculated to encourage optimism, he reflected,
 
 70 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 as he climbed to his inexpensive gallery seat, which he 
 had chosen less from economy than to be removed 
 from the distracting worldliness of the better part of 
 the house. The play was Jules Lacroix's version of 
 (Edipus Tyrannus, an adaptation rather than a 
 translation; and he had read it although he had never 
 before seen it on the stage. 
 
 The polite language of the French had not robbed 
 the drama of its seizing classic power. As he sat, 
 detached from his surroundings, in the grateful 
 shadow, it seemed to Harding that life towered in 
 majestic outline, that small unessential emotions were 
 engulfed in a great elemental ocean. He felt lifted, 
 purged, to use the old phrase, made to face the reve- 
 lation of infinitely tragic things. It was as if the hand 
 of Sophocles snatched from existence the veil of pre- 
 tence, showing the vast, appalling skeleton of its 
 fundamental facts. The voice of the drama, rising out 
 of the deepest recess of life, wandered on, a hopeless cry 
 of the human, through all space and for all time. 
 Only triumphant Christian faith could, indeed, dull 
 the ear to that profound lamentation of Greek 
 philosophy and Harding had no such faith. 
 
 The piece was superbly set. The curtain rose on the 
 stately palace front where (Edipus appeared to address 
 his people, come to implore his aid in arresting the 
 dreadful plague that devoured the city. Opposite was 
 the temple of Apollo, and the details of ancient Thebes 
 rose on the background. It was dusk, an oppressive, 
 fever-tainted dusk, that mounted to purple daybreak
 
 THE QUEST 71 
 
 as Mounet Sully 's majestic, mantled form emerged 
 through the palace portals. Harding was familiar with 
 the circumstances that preceded the drama; how 
 (Edipus, the son of Laius and Jocasta, had, because of 
 what the oracles predicted, been exposed as a babe on 
 the mountains; and had there been rescued by a 
 shepherd; had, in manhood, on the road to Thebes, 
 unwittingly slain his own father in a quarrel; how, 
 in solving the sphinx's riddle and thus ridding the city 
 from that ravening chimera, he had been hailed king, 
 and married his own mother, the widowed Jocasta, 
 dwelling with her in tranquil ignorance of his lineage 
 until the plague had broken out which was to bring 
 about an awful knowledge of his sacrilege. 
 
 It is here that the play begins, with the efforts of 
 (Edipus to find and punish the slayer of Laius. Step by 
 step the evidence is pieced together, until the fact is 
 borne home on the King that it is he himself who is 
 the author of the deed. Jocasta, hearing the frightful 
 truth, disappears, with an exclamation of horror, into 
 the palace, when comes a messenger to announce 
 that she has hanged herself. (Edipus, who has followed 
 her, while the chorus fills the air with exclamations, 
 staggers forth, having blinded his eyes with a gold 
 ornament plucked from Jocasta' s hair, and uttering 
 frightful cries. Then, after a heart-breaking parting 
 from his children, he goes forth, a wanderer to expiate 
 his crimes, victim of the dark machinations of fate, 
 sport of a merciless destiny; lesson and warning to 
 those who trust to the moment's happiness, since all
 
 72 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 are in the hands of the gods who weave life as 
 they list. 
 
 Mounet Sully was masterly in the role of (Edipus, 
 possessing as well as genius a presence strikingly regal. 
 Even the violence of his delivery, characteristic of his 
 acting, seemed to express the elemental emotions of 
 the Theban monarch; and Harding left the theatre 
 with the awful cries he uttered, in lifting despairing 
 hands to heaven, still ringing in his ears. 
 
 On his way down the rue de Rivoli, Harding heard 
 the sounds being imitated in sport by several gay 
 pedestrians ahead of him ... he surmised them to be 
 students. It was done with all the exuberance of care- 
 less youth; yet as it echoed through the midnight 
 street, he had the feeling that it carried (Edipus' s 
 lament into modern life, that it was the voice of tragedy 
 the same to-day as in those legend-breeding times 
 preceding that era of Greek art which seized on and 
 moulded the theme into enduring form. 
 
 A profound melancholy filled him. The play had 
 sapped the life out of his new resolves; it seemed to 
 emasculate his will, blight with its ironic comment on 
 human plannings. What mattered what one did or did 
 not do? One was in " the hands of the gods." One 
 could not alter fate. However one strove, the end was 
 the same. 
 
 Yet, next morning, shaking off the obsession of the 
 play, he applied himself to his book with an energy that 
 came of recognizing the need to finish it as soon as 
 possible. In it lay his only hope of solving material
 
 THE QUEST 73 
 
 difficulties. He had several hundred dollars still laid by, 
 and by practising economy it Would last him, no doubt, 
 until the manuscript was completed. 
 
 He wrote slowly. Dispatch he had never acquired, 
 in spite of long journalistic schooling. Even the 
 prodding of necessity could not overcome the habit, 
 which arose from his over fastidiousness about phrase. 
 Style was his strongest artistic absorption. In the 
 thankless exercise of newspaper craft he had clung, as 
 though therein lay its dignity, to the gloss of expres- 
 sion, giving to each sheet of ephemeral " copy," the 
 stamp of a critical taste. It had been deemed a fault 
 in the office, where ease in turning out matter was 
 valued; and Harding had consequently acquired 
 among his fellow workers the reputation of being a 
 clever but unready writer not to be depended upon in 
 grand emergencies of haste. 
 
 Seldom satisfied with what he did, his uncertainty 
 in writing was like an echo of his uncertainty of 
 character's sensitiveness to mood and surrounding. 
 Recklessly he tore up chapters to write them in different 
 fashion until he exhausted himself, reacted against 
 work, indulged in idleness while he waited for what 
 seemed a more favouring inspiration. Thus his story 
 had grown tardily, never seemed nearer completion. 
 The end loomed like a mountain peak, seen through 
 trick of atmosphere, that appears to retreat as one 
 advances. 
 
 The plot itself had given him little trouble. It was a 
 simple human story of American village life, drawn
 
 74 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 from the recollections of youth, and in which his mother 
 moved as the dominating figure. It was his tribute to 
 her heroic self-sacrifices and high-mindedness, the 
 sense of which had escaped him in boyhood, but which 
 haunted him now, mixed with regret that he had so 
 little appreciated her. None of his own pessimism had 
 come into the pages. ... He had tried to see life through 
 her eyes, not his own.
 
 75 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AT Percy Colston's request, Mrs. Eversley had invited 
 Harding to one of her Wednesday evening dinners for 
 celebrities. At least, Colston had told Harding it was at 
 his suggestion, and on the strength of it he had first 
 invited himself to lunch with Harding, and had then 
 invited Harding to call for him in a cab on the way to 
 Neuilly. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley, her arbiter of elegance explained as 
 they drove, was a beauty of the night-blooming order 
 . . . she never properly unfolded except under gas light, 
 and Harding, as he shook hands, acknowledged that his 
 hostess looked very lovely in the glow shed by the wax 
 tapers of the Murano chandelier beneath which she 
 stood to receive her guests. Her gown of blended 
 materials showed her perfect neck, encircled by a Rene 
 Lalique necklace of small uncut emeralds; and the 
 dubious blonde of her hair had a sprinkling of gold dust 
 so it shone in a charming cloud about her delicate face, 
 with its red lips and girlish eyes, a little vague as if from 
 belladonna. 
 
 She welcomed him in a pretty, slightly timid way, 
 like a bride giving her first party. There was something 
 quite disarming about her, he had to confess, as of one 
 who says : " I really am harmless, how can you doubt it ? "
 
 76 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 And with her soft, conciliatory hand in his, he felt it 
 was unkind to criticize. 
 
 She was very flattering in telling him how good it was 
 of him to come when, according to Mr. Colston, he was 
 busy on a book. There were so many claims on one's 
 time, but he would have to spare her a little of his 
 leisure since, as Miss Vanderhurst said, they must be 
 friendly. It was not a big dinner to-night . . . only 
 fourteen. That is, if Elsie Fitzgerald didn't fail. She 
 hoped she wouldn't, for it would make thirteen at table, 
 and she was a little superstitious about unlucky 
 numbers . . . was he? Indeed, she was always con- 
 sulting Madame de Kansa, the great Paris sorciere 
 who, he'd be interested to know, perhaps, was one of 
 her guests. She read one's palm in a most marvellous 
 way. 
 
 "Ah, there is Miss Fitzgerald now," she broke off, as 
 a mantled figure passed through the hall, "so we are 
 saved." 
 
 The poet remarked it was always the least important 
 guest who arrived last at dinner. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley gave him a chiding touch with her fan. 
 
 " Isn't he incorrigible, Mr. Harding ? " she appealed. 
 "He never spares anyone with his epigrams. Miss 
 Fitzgerald is one of Marchesi's most promising pupils, 
 but Percy hasn't forgiven her for not singing in his play. 
 Now, you must know whom I've chosen for you to take 
 in to dinner Mrs. Emily Longford, the English 
 novelist. You'll find her interesting, I'm sure. Have 
 you met any of the others here, I wonder? That is
 
 THE QUEST 77 
 
 Madame Stenoff, talking with Monsieur Chelard, the 
 composer: she is reforming our funeral customs, and 
 has written a book on the cinerary urns of the ancients. 
 When her husband died, she courageously mourned for 
 him in yellow after the Chinese mode. That sallow- 
 looking young man is an Armenian actor, an associate 
 of Lugny-Poe, and a great Shakespeare enthusiast. And 
 that is the poetess, Mile. Dolores Lagrange ' Mystic 
 Dolores,' as Mr. Colston calls her whose volume, 
 Parfum de Lotus bleu, the critics say, has such a 
 wonderful sob in it. The two men by the fireplace are 
 Herr Wolff, the Munich artist, and Professor Piranesi, 
 of Milan, who is lecturing here on what we'd have been 
 had we evolved from elephants instead of apes." 
 
 She seemed to take quite a girlish delight in all the 
 lions and lionesses she had caged, as taking Harding' s 
 arm she led him forward to where they shook their 
 manes. 
 
 The dining-room, opening from the salon, was furnished 
 in Henri II style, with oak panelling and tapestries. 
 Harding's eye was attracted by the beautiful buf- 
 fet, its doors carved with classic scenes. On this 
 rested some rare old pewter and an antique dianandrie, 
 representing a peacock, in yellow-hued bronze. Over 
 the entabulatured chimney piece, flanked by chairs of 
 odd caquetoire type, hung a portrait, school of Frangois 
 Clouet, of a fleshy mignon, of the court of Henri II, 
 wearing earrings and blue plumed bonnet, a white 
 greyhound by his side, and in his hand an egg of Nurn- 
 berg he consulted, as if impatient for a rendezvous.
 
 78 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 The table shone with discreet light, the silk candle 
 shades the handiwork of a Japanese artist in moment- 
 ary vogue in Paris. The centre ornament was a Capa 
 de Manote triumph, filled with white poppies, repeating 
 their pale note in opalescent lachrymatories, Pompeiian 
 style, placed at each cover. 
 
 Mrs. Emily Longford was a discontented -looking 
 woman, whose books Harding thought boring. Nature 
 had played a little joke on a lady of unimpeachable 
 morals, by bestowing a physiognomy resembling that 
 of Catherine of Russia. The steel beads dangling on 
 her corsage were kept in constant agitation by the 
 matronly breathing of a bosom, the bellows' capacity 
 of which was calculated to keep the divine fire going in 
 the least gifted. 
 
 It was in the midst of a course that Harding, who 
 chatted with Miss Fitzgerald on his right, was recalled 
 to the duties he owed to the novelist, by having her 
 observe querulously: 
 
 " What an extraordinary glow the candles shed. 
 It's almost cadaverous. Mrs. Eversley seems the only 
 one proof against it. But that wonderful complexion 
 of hers is, I imagine, equal to anything. I'm not sur- 
 prised her daughter has taken up enamelling . . . she 
 probably inherits the taste from her mother. I ques- 
 tion, though, if she'll ever achieve such a masterpiece 
 as Mrs. Eversley." 
 
 Harding glanced about him. The effect of the 
 candles was rather greenery-yallery, as he expressed it 
 to himself, now his attention was called to it suggest- 
 ing that the guests were in an incipient stage of chlorosis.
 
 THE QUEST 79 
 
 Mrs. Eversley alone, as Mrs. Longford bitterly noted, 
 remained unaffected. Her beauty glowed triumphant 
 in rosy light. Then some confidences of Percy Colston 
 on their way to the house came back to him. . . . How 
 he had suggested to Mrs. Eversley the device of exalting 
 her looks at the expense of her guests by employing 
 such candle shades at her dinner table. He wondered 
 at this inhospitable vanity, which did not even spare 
 her own daughter. Certainly, as the poet affirmed, she 
 had not the temperament of the mother. The reflection 
 caused him some reaction from the sentiment inspired 
 by his talk with her. 
 
 " She is a masterpiece, isn't she ? " he responded 
 lightly. " But perhaps she ' makes up ' for lost time, 
 as Gilbert says in the Bab Ballads. You know she 
 isn't as young as she looks." 
 
 The novelist, who looked older than she was, was 
 still resentful of her hostess. " I should say all her 
 time was lost time," she replied. " I wonder a woman 
 of her light tastes cares to collect intellectual people 
 about her. These talked-of ' Wednesday dinners ' of 
 hers are to me one of the many incongruities of Parisian 
 life." 
 
 " At least the lightness is reflected in the pastry," he 
 returned as he broke the vol-au-vent on his plate. 
 " Why ask too much of dinner givers ? A good menu 
 is the main thing in a hostess. One prefers it to a 
 feast of reason and the blunders of a bad cook. At all 
 events, that appears to be the opinion of Monsieur 
 Chelard." 
 
 The composer, who had a bon-vivant's visage, was
 
 8o THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 quoting, to Mrs. Eversley, Rossini, prince of gourmands, 
 in support of the theory that the stomach was the 
 musical conductor of the passions. 
 
 " An empty stomach," he was saying, " is like a 
 bassoon, which growls with discontent, or a piccolo 
 flute, expressing its desires in shrill tones. A full 
 stomach, on the other hand, is the triangle of pleasure, 
 the drum of joy. To eat, love, sing, digest . . . these, 
 madame, as the composer maintains, are the four acts 
 of the comic opera, called Life, and who lets his day 
 pass without enjoying them, lacks wisdom. Yes, chere 
 madame, the table was meant to be an art. As Savarin 
 puts it, ' Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what 
 you are.' ' 
 
 " Yes, but Monsieur Chelard," said his hostess with 
 pretty earnestness, " how difficult it is to tell what one 
 eats, nowadays. I remember, last week, at Baroness 
 von Schneider's dinner, how each course was like a 
 charade. One had to guess what it was.and then it 
 generally wasn't. You know how fin-de-siecle she is, 
 how complicated. I've heard her chef reads Ibsen, 
 which may account for his morbid taste in menus 
 they're quite like problem plays. For my part, I like 
 simple food. ..." 
 
 " I agree with you, Madame Eversley," said the 
 lady who mourned in yellow as a protest against crape. 
 " It's what I'm always urging simplicity in diet. 
 When I write I restrict myself to a daily portion of 
 Persian rice, prepared according to a recipe learned 
 from the Parsees. I find rice produces mental exalta-
 
 THE QUEST 81 
 
 tion. Monsieur Chelard will pardon me I am not a 
 musician." 
 
 " Few authors are music lovers," observed the 
 author of the Elephant-Man versus the Homo Caudatus. 
 " You remember how Gautier and other French 
 litterateurs felt the same. I confess, frankly, I detest 
 modern music. It's only a form of neuroticism, use- 
 lessly upsetting the nerves of hysterical persons. I 
 congratulate Monsieur Chelard that he is a follower of 
 Rossini and not one of Wagner's neurasthenic apes." 
 
 Music became the topic of the table. Percy Colston 
 criticized the Paris Op6ra directors for presenting 
 nothing but Gounod and Verdi. He found the cafe- 
 chantant preferable. " It's ' Variety/ " he remarked, 
 "that is the spice of Paris life. Go to the Ambas- 
 sadeurs, and hear Yvette Guilbert sing. Hers is the 
 true art of the age, that hides tragedy in laughter, 
 is the sadder for seeming gay. How symbolic her 
 black-gloved arms. . . . One feels that they are dyed in 
 the Eternal Night where she leans so pityingly, to em- 
 brace the lost soul of things." He sipped his chablis 
 pensively. " Monsieur Chelard is right. To live, we 
 must evade, forget . . . and wine is one of the nepenthes. 
 It is there we find the eternal youth of Omar. One 
 swallow makes a springtime of the heart." 
 
 The " Mystic Dolores " listened raptly. She sug- 
 gested a Beardsley drawing, with her thin figure and 
 strangely-arranged mustard-hued hair. Upon her 
 filleted pale brow hung an oddly designed pendant. 
 There was something about it which evoked em- 
 
 G
 
 82 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 barrassment, although it would have been hard to 
 say why. 
 
 She confessed that music was her great inspirator of 
 life. Half her poems came of hearing it. There were 
 certain 'cello passages of Schumann that painted land- 
 scapes of dream more wonderful than those of Corot or 
 Boclin. She sighed: " Ah, without it ..." 
 
 She did not finish, as though there were mysteries of 
 soul-life too sacred for utterance. Some at the table 
 seemed relieved at the reticence. 
 
 Mrs. Longford had heard her with disapproval. 
 " Mademoiselle Lagrange, I understand," she said to 
 Harding, " believes herself an incarnation of Cleopatra, 
 and is meditating a trip to Egypt to ' lift the veil of 
 Isis.' It seems she sleeps in a mummy case and marks 
 her linen with scarabees I wonder what her laundry- 
 woman thinks. Her Blue Lotus, you know, was con- 
 sidered so improper it had to be published in Belgium. 
 She appears to enjoy her neighbour, Herr Wolff, the 
 artist who paints snails that look like human beings. I 
 saw one of his pictures at last year's Salon." She 
 shuddered expressively. 
 
 " ' The Rape of the Snail- Women,' wasn't it? " he 
 replied. " One can't accuse his snails of being slow." 
 He was tempted to flippancy by her solemnity. 
 
 Mrs. Longford stared with Anglo-Saxon misgiving. 
 
 " I presume that is what Americans call a pun," she 
 said with crushing intent, "I'm told it is the highest 
 form of your national humour." 
 
 " Yes, every race has its own kind, you know," he
 
 THE QUEST 83 
 
 agreed, unabashed. " With the French it's the 
 naughty double entente that grace saves from offending. 
 The German's jest is rather strong like his delicatessen. 
 The English idea of wit or was it your Scotchman's 
 is, according to Dr. Johnson, laughing uproariously at 
 stated intervals. That's certainly less of a strain." 
 
 " I don't sympathise with laughter," she replied, as 
 though the speech was beneath her. " Human nature 
 never seems so degraded to me as when it betrays 
 itself in the distorted physiognomy of coarse mirth. 
 That, I think, is why mediaeval artists gave leering 
 faces to the obscene grotesques on their cathedrals. 
 Life is no laughing matter, Mr. Harding. The idea that 
 the world was invented only to be the subject of jest is 
 what has destroyed the French. Their blague, as they 
 call it, has poisoned their faith and slain their self- 
 respect. Their civilization is a tragedy, for it is without 
 God or sense of decency." 
 
 The table talk grew more animated. The egotism of 
 personal predilections manifested itself generally. 
 Madame Stenoff urged the aesthetic advantages of 
 adopting, for crematory uses, the painted funeral urns 
 of the Greeks. The Armenian actor drew a comparison 
 between Hamlet and Ibsen's Ghosts. Madame de 
 Kansa was asking d propos of the coming coronation of 
 the King of Spain, what her science forewarned would 
 be the young Alphonso's fate. 
 
 " I haven't read his hand," the seeress replied, with 
 the air of one habituated to royal clients. " But I am 
 familiar with his traits, that show the degenerate 
 
 G2
 
 84 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 stigma characteristic of the ill-starred Hapsbourgs. 
 His exaggerated maxillary and consequent out-thrust 
 lower lip are the abnormal facial signs of his house 
 and they only too plainly tell his end. All of his blood 
 have had the same features, from the days of Charles 
 the Fifth. Predispositions have been fortified by 
 numberless consanguineous marriages. The Haps- 
 bourg jaw is, indeed, so dominating that whether male 
 or female members espouse one of alien extraction, the 
 sign invariably imposes itself on descendants . . . though 
 naturally, the female has the more strongly transmitted 
 it as is the case with all heredities." 
 
 A fly had settled on Colston's chin, and he brushed it 
 off rather ostentatiously, as if to call attention to the 
 classic modelling of that feature. " Yes," he interpo- 
 lated, " It's like the Austrian lip of poor Marie Antoin- 
 ette; or the nose of the Medicis. How Cosimo the 
 Second's descendants must have blessed him for 
 blowing that famous organ of his before it hardened." 
 
 " The degeneracy of the Hapsbourgs is undeniable," 
 said the Milanese lecturer, who had no patience with 
 flippancy. " It only goes to prove how unfit the 
 crowned heads of Europe are to rule the peoples con- 
 fided to their keeping. I have always insisted in my 
 books on the enormity of these consanguineous unions 
 among those who have their feeble hands on the rudder 
 of civilization. Marriages that carry on the seed of 
 madness, vice, and other ills, have no excuse even in the 
 face of the supposed necessity of nations strengthening 
 their thrones by royal alliances. How much less have
 
 THE QUEST 85 
 
 private individuals right to pass on hampering inherit- 
 ance to innocent, unborn victims. But science has 
 aroused the world to a sense of that evil, and coming 
 generations will act in accordance with its warnings. 
 
 " Yes," he continued, his eyes shining like glow 
 worms through the glasses on his brown, dry face, 
 " we have begun to accept the fact that there is no 
 such thing as isolate personality. Every individual 
 is consequent on the mental and physical self behind 
 him a mere link in the endless chain of evolution. 
 The law of human responsibility is being strengthened. 
 The fate of civilization rests on the cardinal obligation 
 of maternity. To transmit that which handicaps racial 
 development, is the crime of crimes. It is conscience 
 regarding the physical side of life that will constitute 
 the religion of the future." 
 
 The speaker paused to gaze about him, to gather, 
 as it were, a plebiscite of approval from those on whom 
 his carrying voice fastened the yoke of attention. 
 Harding chanced to look at Miss Eversley. Her strange 
 eyes, the colour of which so attracted him, were fixed 
 on the drooping poppies of the centrepiece. From the 
 expression of her lips, pressed together, he got the idea 
 that she was crushing emotion. He wondered if Pro- 
 fessor Piranesi's views had in some way displeased her. 
 He could fancy her having rather decided ones of her 
 own on such subjects. Her self-guarding quiet 
 interested him he would like to have known what 
 underlay it. Her air, as she thus sat between the 
 Armenian and Herr Wolff, gave the impression of one
 
 86 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 a stranger in her home. Had she passed through some 
 trying experience that had frozen the spontaneous, 
 warmer woman in her ? She did not look like one cold 
 by nature, but rather through accident. He saw that 
 Percy Colston was watching her with a faint smile of 
 malice, as if he savoured some effect of situation. Mrs. 
 Eversley, too, appeared agitated . . . she was leaning 
 back, nervously playing with her gloves. Harding was 
 intrigued over the vague suggestion of drama expressed 
 by the attitude of the three in the momentary pause. 
 
 It was all taken in while the speaker cleared his 
 throat in a way he had probably acquired from public 
 lecturing; and he started to continue, when Mrs. 
 Eversley checked him by abruptly rising, leaving her 
 guests to follow her into the salon or betake themselves 
 to the smoking-room for coffee. 
 
 On entering the salon, after his cigarette, Harding 
 made his way to Miss Eversley. She sat in a bergere, 
 near the Erard piano, over the queue of which was 
 thrown a piece of old gold brocade that made an 
 effective background for her dark head. Monsieur 
 Chelard was at the keys, improvising. Conversation was 
 taking generally a light tone, as reaction from the 
 serious note struck at the dinner's close. Miss Eversley 
 alone preserved her grave, preoccupied air of detach- 
 ment from digestive trivialities being exchanged 
 around her. Harding was less struck by her appearance 
 in the simple evening dress she had on. It was of grey 
 crepe de Chine, and it did not particularly become 
 her; and he got the impression she dressed effacingly
 
 THE QUEST 87 
 
 through a wish to avoid comparison with her 
 mother. 
 
 " It's been an evening of suggestive discussion, 
 hasn't it? " he remarked, as he seated himself beside 
 her. " One has to come to France for the art of con- 
 versation. . . . We haven't evolved it yet in America. 
 We're too absorbed in stocks and bonds and the servant 
 problem there to give Shakespeare and the musical 
 glasses much show." 
 
 He had thought the table talk about as mad as 
 Alice's tea party, and his own strain to contribute a 
 share had left a bad taste on his mental tongue. He 
 seldom was his real self in society, being convinced 
 that he had no genuine affiliation with it, and that his 
 veritable feelings and thoughts had nothing to recom- 
 mend them to the well-fed, comfortable class. To get 
 the best out of people, one must give the best, as well 
 he knew, but he persisted in his artificiality with the 
 world. His effort at careless, epigrammatic brightness, 
 he often told himself, was like fox-fire. 
 
 He did not know why he adopted this tone towards 
 Miss Eversley. He felt it did not please her, that she 
 suspected him of sarcasm, which was scarcely courteous 
 to the daughter of his hostess. Yet there was some- 
 thing in her intelligent composure that tempted. . . . 
 He wanted to arouse her, find the real woman under 
 that calm. It was one of his inconsistencies that while 
 sensitive to people's dislike, he often did his best 
 to challenge it. There was a certain fascination in 
 appearing to be what prejudice conceived.
 
 88 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 She did not seem to think his remark called for any 
 reply. Miss Eversley had the rare accomplishment 
 of being silent when she had nothing to say, without 
 appearing gauche or unready. So few people were able 
 to resist the coercion of filling in a pause cause of so 
 much idle talk in society. Her grey-green eyes merely 
 regarded him a moment in a casual, analysing way, 
 as she took up, from the tabour at her elbow, a carved 
 knife and played with it. It was instinctive with her, 
 perhaps, to employ her hands, which were fine, 
 dexterous and white. 
 
 " Madame de Kansa is a striking looking woman," 
 he went on, " don't you think ? " He had glanced 
 across the room at those gathered about the seeress. 
 " I don't believe she knows how to smile. . . . She 
 reminds one of what was said to be the effect of passing 
 a night in the cave of Triphonius. It must be a bit 
 uncomfortable to have the blood of Norma in your 
 veins unless you make a point of prophesying 
 ' smooth things,' which, I suppose, is what most 
 people pay to hear. You believe in palmistry? " 
 
 " I think the hand indicates character in a general 
 way," she answered. " I doubt, though, if palmists 
 depend as much on lines as on their cleverness at 
 deduction when fortune-telling. If one understands 
 oneself, one ought to be able to forecast the future 
 without need of a Madame de Kansa." 
 
 " But who does understand oneself ? I wish I did 
 or why one is at all. It's part of the general mystery 
 of things."
 
 THE QUEST 89 
 
 " That's scarcely a flattering view to take of one- 
 self," she said, as though conceding something to a 
 pose. " Most people find reason enough for living." 
 
 " Yes, I know we like to think there's a reason. We 
 try to find it in religion or, in default of that, in science. 
 The choice is a question which we prefer the heart 
 or the head. As for me, I find one as little satisfying 
 as the other. I had an attack of atheism at six, I 
 remember, and used to bury my head under the bed- 
 clothes at night trembling at my precocious audacity. 
 As to science, I've always hated it and its explanations 
 that never really explain. But you are interested in 
 it, aren't you? At least, I got that impression from 
 your air at table I rather fancied you'd have liked 
 to combat some of Professor Piranesi's views." 
 
 He regretted the speech, for she looked at him a 
 moment as though he had committed an impertinence. 
 The regard was proud; it seemed to him it safeguarded 
 some wound he had dealt her unaware. To spare her 
 any answer, he went on hastily : 
 
 " Interest in that kind of thing is, of course, a 
 question of temperament. As I say, science doesn't 
 appeal to mine. It seems to me it strips life of beauty 
 and charm, by reducing it to a mere matter of physical 
 laws. If, after all, it is only that, I'd rather delude 
 myself, fancy it more. Facts are disagreeable things 
 to face, as a rule." 
 
 " I prefer to face them, however," she returned as 
 though she were being taxed with cowardice. Harding 
 had the feeling she was assuming in his words some
 
 90 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 motive beyond what appeared. From curiosity to know 
 her opinions about things, he had drifted into personal 
 analysis. 
 
 He knew he was impressing her unfavourably, but 
 tormenting taste for challenging hostile minds caused 
 him to continue. 
 
 " Even at the price one generally pays for truth? " 
 he demanded. " It's not how artists usually feel, you 
 know and Miss Vanderhurst tells me you are one. 
 For instance, there's the new view science takes of 
 art Lombroso's, I mean that it's only the product 
 of degeneracy and half-madness. It's rather depressing 
 to face that, don't you think, if it's true ? and I can't 
 help feeling that there is something in it. Art is try- 
 ing to create the illusion that life is joy and light and 
 science would stamp artists out by proving to them 
 they're only drones in the hive. Yet I don't see that it 
 offers anything that compensates for what it robs the 
 world of." 
 
 She did not listen to him very graciously, but he felt 
 he had engaged her interest, antagonistic as that 
 appeared. He smiled a little to himself in reflecting 
 that, after all, few women are wholly unamenable to 
 the compliment paid them in assuming they possess the 
 intelligence to discuss abstract things. 
 
 " That ignores the fact science shows there is an 
 evolutionary purpose in nature," she observed. " It 
 imposes responsibility on the individual as part of a 
 great design." 
 
 " But I don't see the design," he protested. " And
 
 THE QUEST 91 
 
 to be a mere ' link in a chain/ as Professor Piranesi 
 puts it, offends one's vanity of independence. Science 
 is so snubbing in the way it regards the individual. 
 It forbids us to think of our own ego. And, after all, 
 one cares more about oneself than the race at large. 
 One mostly wants life to feed one to the full I know I 
 do," he ended audaciously. 
 
 In speaking, he had fixed his eyes on her hands, 
 that still played with the paper knife. They were 
 certainly unusual hands almost as white as the ivory 
 ornament she held, with a distinct blue vein that, 
 wandering from the wrist, was lost among the shapely 
 knuckles. The tapering finger tips seemed eloquent of 
 the delicate special craft which had occupied them so 
 well. They were beautiful hands, and they looked 
 practical in their fine way. Harding remembered 
 afterwards how they had attracted him from the first. 
 
 " Ah, then, after all, you do confess to one reason for 
 living?" she returned. He could hardly blame her, 
 since both his words and manner had invited it. 
 
 " But life's bad enough as it is, without devising 
 ' duties,' to make it duller," he said flippantly. 
 
 She regarded him with her curious eyes, as though 
 hesitating to argue with such a trifler. 
 
 " You are quite hopeless, it would seem," she said 
 after a moment. " Wouldn't it be fairer to find less 
 fault with the world? I remember you complained, 
 the first time I met you, of a lack of primroses along 
 your path. Is that your ideal of happiness to employ 
 your time picking them ? "
 
 There was a slight in her voice, and he felt she viewed 
 him as a self-absorbed, superficial lover of ease, to 
 whom it was hardly worth while to talk seriously. 
 
 It annoyed him, although he could scarcely censure 
 her for accepting the role he assumed. He thought to 
 himself she might modify her opinion if she knew 
 what a slavish grind his life had been. He let his eyes 
 fall on the evidences of luxury round him. It wasn't 
 difficult for her to take a superior tone. No doubt, she 
 thought that her studio and her pretty enamels, her 
 fashionable charities, justified her attitude of reproving 
 the idler in him. 
 
 " Perhaps you'd attach more valueto promises if you'd 
 not been brought up on them," he returned with some 
 bluntness. " I wonder how much you really know 
 about life the struggles of living, I mean. There's 
 more reason for hopelessness than you're probably 
 aware. Existence with a good many people is a losing 
 game. Our hands are dealt out to us by others, one may 
 say: I mean we're more or less bundles of hereditary 
 conditions. We all haven't the Hapsbourg jaw as the 
 outward sign of our handicap it lies in hidden marks 
 of failure. So many detrimental things are passed down 
 to us, like ill-health, unbalanced mind, practical 
 incapacity, that it's almost absurd to talk of being a 
 free agent. One isn't free one is in bondage to our 
 forefathers. What we are, seems to me depressingly the 
 work of chance. I don't suppose you deny that here- 
 dity lays its morte-main on people, that our character 
 mostly depends on the kind of birthright we inherit."
 
 THE QUEST 93 
 
 He spoke sincerely enough now, with growing 
 resentment against her as one who symbolised the 
 advantages of fortune. There was a certain satisfaction 
 in letting her have truth from the shoulder. 
 
 His words, or perhaps it was the tone in which they 
 were uttered, seemingly stirred some emotion in her. 
 She ceased to toy with the paper cutter in her 
 hands. 
 
 " We can't ignore heredity, I admit," she answered, 
 as though at some cost to herself. " Yet is it fair to 
 lay all the blame of our failings on our ancestors ? We 
 have, at least, something that is our own our will 
 power. We can use it, if we choose, to remake the 
 character for ourselves. That is, I think, a refuge from 
 whatever is unfortunate in our blood." 
 
 " You honestly think we can remake ourselves? " 
 he said cynically. 
 
 " I shouldn't have much respect for myself if I 
 thought I couldn't," she said, with eyes that deepened 
 a little. He saw that her mouth had the expression 
 which he had noticed at table. 
 
 The guests were beginning to go, and he rose. " We've 
 had a rather serious talk, haven't we ? " he said, as he 
 held out his hand. " You've made science more inter- 
 esting than Professor Piranesi." 
 
 He had fallen back into the light, half jesting tone 
 with which he had begun the conversation. 
 
 The effect of this attempt at polite compli- 
 ment seemed to revive her stiffness. 
 
 She looked at him, without responding, as if she
 
 94 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 regretted the earnestness of her last words. And again 
 he admired her art of being silent when she chose. 
 
 " But I mean it," he protested more warmly. 
 
 Then as she merely smiled intolerantly, he added in 
 rather tardy repentance for his flippancies of the 
 evening. 
 
 " I'm afraid you think me insincere, Miss Eversley ? " 
 
 After all, he rather regretted to part from her, 
 leaving her so badly impressed. 
 
 " Wouldn't that be a liberty since I hardly know 
 you?" 
 
 " But that can be overcome," he said, unabashed. 
 " You are at home on Fridays, aren't you ? " 
 
 " It is my mother's day I have no fixed one." 
 
 " Then I'll trust to chance for seeing you," he 
 responded, taking it as a rebuff. And with a bow he 
 turned away. 
 
 On his way home he wondered why he had laid 
 himself open to the snubbing he might have expected. 
 Did he really wish to see her again? If so, it was 
 certainly not because they were or ever could be 
 congenial. Yet something about her piqued his 
 interest, stirred his ambition to make her like him, in 
 spite of antipathy. He told himself, with an annoyed 
 laugh, that he would cause her to capitulate.
 
 95 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BUT he forgot her and his pique by next morning, when 
 he threw himself again into his work, seeing nobody 
 and, indeed, thinking of nothing but his book and the 
 necessity of getting it done with dispatch. Years of 
 desk toil had bred the working habit in him, and he 
 laboured on careless of consequences the overstrain 
 of nerves and depression which usually followed these 
 mental debauches of his. While the spell of inspiration 
 was on him, he begrudged time for needed exercise or 
 seeing friends. Naturally fond of solitude, life had 
 fostered the taste in him, and it was his disposition to 
 seek companionship not so much when he was happy 
 as when he craved cheer or sympathy in his moody 
 discouragements. It is, after all, the rare individual 
 who gives the world his best ; and Harding was apt to 
 give it his worst. 
 
 He had made considerable progress on his story, and, 
 indeed, was rather pleased with what he had done 
 when, one day, he was awakened from literary absorp- 
 tion by receiving a note from Buttercup Baxter, telling 
 him that she and her aunt were leaving Paris in a few 
 days, and asking him to come to dinner " to say 
 good-bye." 
 
 The news of the Baxters' departure had a somewhat 
 sobering effect. He had not conceived of their leaving
 
 96 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Paris for some time, and he wondered if they intended 
 to return. Buttercup had merely mentioned that they 
 were going on a motor trip through Touraine, without 
 saying what were their plans after that. Even if it 
 were their present purpose to come back, he was 
 familiar enough with Buttercup's gay capriciousness 
 not to place any dependence on that. It would hardly 
 be until the following autumn, if then. He knew that 
 Miss Zenobia was tired of Paris. She had so glutted 
 herself with rue de la Paix shopping, that her mental 
 indigestion would require a long dieting before she 
 recovered her appetite for jewellery shops and dress- 
 makers. 
 
 His reason told him that if he intended proposing to 
 Buttercup, it was now or never. In spite of shifting 
 sentiment, he was fond of her, and worldly considera- 
 tions certainly prompted him. It was the solution of 
 his material difficulties, and if he failed to take advan- 
 tage of it, had he the right to complain of fate ? Yet 
 pride, love of independence, the hope that, after all, he 
 might achieve his salvation without such a humiliating 
 resort, filled his heart with rebellion. He was glad to 
 reflect, as he dressed for dinner, that, at least, he could 
 say he was fond of her; yet he was conscious that had 
 fortune been kinder to him, he would never have con- 
 templated asking Buttercup to be his wife. 
 
 On his arrival at the Hotel de 1'Athenee, he was 
 shown up to the Baxters' sitting-room, where he found 
 Miss Zenobia arrayed with the magnificence of the 
 Queen of Saba. She was large and heroic like her
 
 THE QUEST 97 
 
 name. Her complacency about her appearance proba- 
 bly originated in the fact that as a young woman, and 
 before stoutness set in, she was an employee in the 
 United States Mint, where her face had been used as a 
 model for a certain goddess of liberty ornamenting a 
 centenary coin issued by that temple of Midas. Time 
 had doubled her chin and the fortune of her merchant 
 brother, who made it unnecessary for her to continue to 
 earn her living; yet it was only natural she should 
 remember the distinction accorded her earlier profile; 
 and it perhaps justified her role of a goddess of liberty 
 enlightening the world as to the superiority of her 
 native land a task she fulfilled with creditable 
 thoroughness. 
 
 The present trip abroad the first for herself as well as 
 for her niece was intended, in a way, to be a lesson in 
 European disillusion for Buttercup, to correct in the 
 latter any foolish notions that novels and other falsifying 
 reports might have put in her head. Miss Zenobia had, 
 however, strong confidence in her niece, and in their 
 travels allowed her that personal freedom precious 
 privilege of American girls she enjoyed at home. 
 " What's the use," the sturdy spinster was fond of 
 saying, " of our forefathers having fought and bled for 
 Freedom and Equality, if we can't be as free as we like 
 and equal to anything." 
 
 Her chaperonage of Buttercup had, accordingly, 
 been perfunctory. " Buttercup," she confided to 
 Harding, " doesn't know what wickedness is and she 
 don't want to know. I let her enjoy herself, for no 
 
 H
 
 98 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 harm can come of it. One hears of American girls 
 falling in love with counts and that kind of foreign 
 cattle but Buttercup won't. She's got too much 
 sense. Besides, Hiram wouldn't put up with 'em." 
 
 She received her guest rather stiffly, as a rebuke for 
 his recent neglect; but his plea of work mollified her. 
 She had worked herself. True, it had been where gold 
 flowed; but she knew it was easier to coin it for others 
 than to coin it for oneself. 
 
 She informed him that Buttercup had motored out 
 to the Chateau of Madrid for tea, and had not yet come 
 in. 
 
 " So you've decided to leave Paris? " he said. 
 
 " Yes, I want some of God's good air," Miss Zenobia 
 replied, caressing a necklace of gems, given her by 
 friends, that she called her " love string." It had the 
 effect of making her bosom look like the jeweller's tray, 
 but she loved her love string, which kept increasing in 
 length and variety of precious stones. Harding 
 sometimes speculated whether she wore it to bed 
 with her sunbursts. 
 
 " Paris is getting too stuffy for me," she continued. 
 " And there's Sans Souci (it was the name the Baxters 
 had given their resplendent motor) " that we don't 
 get enough use of the chauffeur spends most of his 
 time taking the chambermaids out in the Bois. I 
 suppose Buttercup told you we're going to do the 
 Chateaux " Miss Zenobia pronounced it " ch'toes " 
 " of Touraine. We put them down as something we 
 ought to see though I don't believe they come up to 
 our millionaires' homes at Brookline. After that, we
 
 THE QUEST 99 
 
 don't know where we'll go. Buttercup expects you to 
 come along with us, as I guess she wrote you ? And, by 
 the way," she added significantly, " she's been seeing a 
 good deal of a friend of yours lately a Percy Colston, 
 somebody brought here. I don't take to him much 
 myself, but Buttercup says he makes her laugh, though 
 that ain't hard to do. He's not been to his own country 
 for ten years, he says, and, as I told him, he ought to be 
 ashamed of himself. And the way he talks French, 
 too! Now, I hope you won't get Parisian and forget 
 where you're from, like him." 
 
 " If I do, nobody else will, at all events," he laughed. 
 " You see, I still speak American French." 
 
 " I'd be sorry if you spoke any other sort," she said, 
 reprovingly. " I guess it's living over here that makes 
 Percy Colston so pert; he advised me to turn somer- 
 saults on a mattress, mornings, to get thin said it 
 was better than Marienbad. Somersaults, indeed! I 
 nearly boxed his ears for him ! " And Miss Zenobia's 
 bosom rose in resuscitated offence. She was proud of 
 her health, having, as she was fond of asserting, " a 
 constitution of iron," and corpulence was her principal 
 preoccupation. She wrestled with it like Jacob with 
 the angel. But the inches round her waist increased 
 like the love-string round her neck as though it were 
 a race between them. 
 
 Buttercup burst into the room in her cheerful, cyclonic 
 style. Her cheeks glowed under a cloud of motor veil 
 that streamed behind like the tail of a comet. She 
 breathlessly apologised for lateness. 
 
 H2
 
 ioo THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Percy Colston and I've been out in the Bois," she 
 announced. " You ought to have seen the way I 
 drove him back we nearly got arrested for speeding. 
 He almost had heart failure coming down the Champs 
 Elysees, though he pretended he was scared on account 
 of Chicot. Chicot's under the doctor's care for neuras- 
 thenia and can't stand excitement, he says. Mr. Col- 
 ston's too absurd for words. Did aunt tell you what he 
 said about her iron constitution ? That it must have 
 been drawn up by Thomas Jefferson ? That's because 
 she's so patriotic, you know. He recommended some 
 Delsarte that rather startled her. But they kissed and 
 made up, and he brought her a cat'seye for her love- 
 string." And she laughed in her hearty way. " We 
 expect you to go on the Touraine trip they say the 
 roads are grand." 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't," Harding answered. " You 
 see, I've got my book to finish." 
 
 " Oh, bother the old book," she said, with the irre- 
 sponsibility of youth and a millionaire father. ' You 
 might just as well come and enjoy yourself. Your 
 work can wait and you need a change." 
 
 She left them, to reappear, after a half hour, dressed 
 as though for a ball. 
 
 They went down to the main dining-room, where 
 their entrance created general interest. A Frenchman, 
 at a neighbouring table, screwed his glass into his eye 
 to get a better focus on Buttercup's brilliant looks and 
 more brilliant attire. 
 
 " How that man stares," Miss Baxter remarked in a
 
 THE QUEST 101 
 
 carrying voice. " I believe it's my cheeks. People 
 are always saying I rouge." 
 
 " Of course, he stares," Miss Zenobia returned 
 comfortably. " Everybody over here notices you. 
 You ought to be accustomed to it by this time. And 
 no wonder. They don't often see anything that comes 
 up to an American girl. " 
 
 The conversation grated on Harding, who wondered 
 if time would suppress the young woman's too audible 
 tones in public places, and her taste for flamboyant 
 attire that was even more vociferous. If it was only a 
 matter, as Miss Vanderhurst said, of " sandpapering 
 her down," he had depressing visions of having to order 
 sandpaper by the great gross. 
 
 When dinner was over, Miss Zenobia joined some 
 hotel acquaintances for a game of bridge, leaving 
 Harding to a tete-d-tete with her niece. The oppor- 
 tunity, now that it had arrived, was not as inspiring as 
 he had hoped it would be. He felt he lacked will and 
 words, somehow, to take proper advantage of it. 
 There was something oppressively commonplace in 
 the little salon, furnished in Maple and Co.'s style with 
 its sallow gilt and smirking satins. The bisque clock 
 kept up a matter-of-fact ticking on the mantelpiece 
 it had apparently outlived interest in the love-making 
 which hallowed the retreat. 
 
 " So you won't go with us on the motor trip ? " 
 Buttercup demanded, examining her finger nails on 
 which a manicurist had laboured a good part of the 
 morning. No one could accuse them of lacking polish,
 
 102 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 whatever might be said of their owner. " I think it's 
 horrid of you. You know your book is only an 
 excuse." 
 
 It was indeed the only excuse he could give; the 
 plea of a rapidly flattening pocket-book could not be 
 advanced. Harding defended himself. It took time 
 and ingenuity. But, at last, he put it in such a way 
 that she reluctantly withdrew the charge. Then the 
 conversation flowed into other channels. Miss Baxter 
 gave a lively account of her amusements since she had 
 seen him last. His offence, however, evidently 
 lingered behind her conceding animations. And, after 
 awhile, she remarked abruptly: 
 
 " Mr. Colston tells me you dined with some friends of 
 his last week the Eversleys. He said the daughter 
 is conceited, and the dead serious kind. Did you find 
 her so? " 
 
 " She's rather serious, yes," he answered. 
 
 " And quite intellectual, I suppose ? I should think 
 you'd find her congenial, then. Own up, isn't that why 
 you don't want to leave Paris ? " 
 
 " Hardly. Besides, I've only seen her twice." 
 
 " How about love at first sight ? " 
 
 He laughed, remembering his snubbing. " I can't 
 say that the sight of Miss Eversley had that effect on 
 me. I'm not particularly attracted by ' intellectual 
 girls,' you see." 
 
 i " Oh," with an air of half resentment. " I suppose, 
 then, that's why you like me." 
 
 " I like you for the best of reasons," he said. " Be-
 
 THE QUEST 103 
 
 cause you are you and not Miss Eversley, nor any- 
 body else. After all, does one ever know just why one 
 likes a person? " 
 
 Miss Buttercup looked as though she thought she 
 could guess why some people liked her, though the fact 
 didn't seem especially to disturb her. Again she 
 regarded her nails, which were as rosy as love's young 
 dreams. 
 
 It was plainly the psychological moment. Harding 
 knew that it was yet he let it fade. Miss Buttercup, 
 her head propped by piled-up sofa pillows, was certainly 
 good to look at. Her high note of costume, which had 
 grated on him in the dining room, was swallowed up by 
 the far guiltier floridness of the little salon. There 
 was a pleasant animal health about Miss Buttercup 
 Baxter and she promised to be handsomer after a 
 year or two. She was rather tall, and she carried herself 
 well. An abundance of chestnut hair fell attractively 
 about her bright cheeks, a little freckled by sun, for she 
 was fond of being out of doors, and excelled in golf and 
 tennis. She declared that she had never been ill nor 
 bored and everything about her endorsed this. 
 
 The catechising had come after a considerable inter- 
 val of time, during which she had, among other topics, 
 touched on his literary work. It was rather a worn 
 subject between them, one she often broached, no 
 doubt to please him and make herself agreeable. He 
 had rather liked discussing his story with her; for she 
 was not lacking in intelligence, and her criticisms had 
 the good sense that might be expected of a successful
 
 104 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 business man's daughter. But to-night it bored 
 Harding; he felt the gulf between them. What would 
 their relations be, spiritually speaking, except that of a 
 Pyramus and Thisbe whispering through the crevice 
 of a wall ? After all, could anything compensate for a 
 marriage of half sympathies ? 
 
 Yet he still intended to propose to her. 
 
 He even started to frame the words, as the lateness 
 of the hour, registered by the over-ornamental time- 
 piece, warned him his chance was slipping by. Some- 
 thing checked the declaration. The hands of the 
 clock, on which he fixed his eyes, seemed to make 
 mesmeric passes, paralysing his tongue as he sought to 
 shape the phrases of love. 
 
 "You're coming back to Paris, I suppose?" he 
 faltered, grasping at that straw of procrastination. 
 
 " I don't know." Her tone was stiff. " We haven't 
 made any plans beyond the motor trip. Aunt wants 
 to go to Marienbad, and I'm thinking of taking singing 
 lessons in Berlin, next winter." 
 
 " So it's good-bye. ..." 
 
 " Yes unless you change your mind, and join us in 
 the Touraine tour. I think," she added, after a little 
 pause, " of asking Percy Colston, in case you don't." 
 
 He felt a jealous twinge. " You know him well 
 enough for that ? " 
 
 " I suppose you mean, does he know me well enough 
 to accept? " and she gave a slight laugh, that showed 
 she had her touch of cynicism. " I guess he will. 
 . . . People like motoring whether or not they like you.
 
 THE QUEST 105 
 
 And he's called three times," she concluded, as if that 
 was intimacy. 
 
 Harding wondered how she had met him, but he did 
 not inquire. Colston hadn't lost any time in getting 
 on the Baxters' trail. The thought of a friendship 
 between Buttercup and the poet annoyed him, as if it 
 were an infringement of personal rights. 
 
 He made no reply, and she added: " Of course, I'd 
 much rather have you." 
 
 It was uttered with conciliatory sweetness, but he 
 had not mastered his pique, and he returned formally, 
 
 " No doubt you'll find him quite amusing." 
 
 His annoyance seemed to give her pleasure perhaps 
 she augured a change of mind on his part as the result 
 of it. But she refrained from pressing him further, 
 and talked animatedly about the roads, the best hotels 
 to stop at, and the likely diversions by the way. It 
 was not until parting that she reiterated: " If you 
 change your mind ..." 
 
 She said it rather oddly, and without looking at him. 
 
 At last he was out in the street and he had not 
 spoken. The clear night was refreshing in its velvety 
 coolness, after the stuffy atmosphere of the hotel. 
 The daffodil-coloured lights of the Boulevards sparkled 
 gaily through the gloom. There was exhilaration in it 
 all the brilliant cafes, the crowds emptying from the 
 theatres, the cries of camelots, the sense of living, at 
 full pulse, that frothed like champagne in a cup. 
 Harding felt his blood stir in response. He had not 
 spoken, he was still free. Liberty never seemed so
 
 106 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 dear as at that moment, when he had come so near 
 losing it by an act that might or not have been best 
 he did not know. He only felt the intoxication of his 
 freedom freedom to do as he chose, to seek his way 
 through life as his instincts dictated. A feeling of 
 pride, of talent, flooded his heart. He would not 
 accept the mean bribes of life, yield to caressing servi- 
 tudes. He was, and would remain, true to himself. 
 And as his mood threw the challenge to fate, he felt, 
 like a vibrant chord, that thrill of egotism which some- 
 times exalts us in the face of desperate situations. 
 
 Yet, on his return to his room, he experienced the 
 reaction which so often followed his mental exaltations. 
 He had seated himself at his desk, in a mood to con- 
 tinue the chapter on which he had laboured before 
 going out that evening. He had been pleased with 
 what he had written: now as he glanced over it, it 
 struck him as poor, without effect. In the intervening 
 hours its seeming gold had turned to dross. With a 
 feeling of oppression he turned back, glancing over this 
 or that page of the manuscript. All appeared to have 
 undergone some subtle chemical change, like paints 
 that when applied glow richly only to fade to false, 
 sickly tones after they are dry. 
 
 So the book on which rested his salvation, was 
 nothing, after all ! He had taken midnight coin of the 
 elves to wake on the morning and find the wealth a 
 handful of leaves. 
 
 He thrust the manuscript aside roughly, and sat 
 staring before him. He seemed to see the long, white
 
 THE GUEST 107 
 
 road of the years; himself plodding on, with burdened 
 shoulders, parched with choking dust. Courage 
 dropped like a mantle that had broken its clasp, leaving 
 him to the chill of realities. Was not artistic aspira- 
 tion, all aspiration, but the device of life to lure him 
 on to his own defeat ? For a few trivial sheets of 
 writing, that the world would scorn, he had rejected 
 ease and the end of the futile struggle to live through 
 and by his own efforts. How wearisome was poverty, 
 how wearisome, in truth, was everything! 
 
 He got up, after a while, and went out on his balcony. 
 The air was full of stars dimmed by the glory of a full 
 moon that lay in the west like a magnolia blossom 
 afloat on enchanted waters. He could see the vast 
 silhouette of Notre Dame rising, a film-like mass, in 
 the mild silver-misted night. 
 
 He thought of the centuried grotesques that watched 
 from those shadowy pinnacles. He knew them all, 
 from many a toilsome climb up the winding stone steps 
 that lead to the soaring inferno of mediaeval genius, 
 knew them from musing hours when, like hundreds 
 of others, he gazed down on Paris, pondering over it, 
 pondering over life. 
 
 He had called Notre Dame " His Lady," feeling 
 sometimes that its shadow fell like a benediction on 
 work and dreams. Yet was it not rather " the exceed- 
 ing high mount " of the Tempter ? It was there, leaning 
 over the parapets, that the sadness and mockery of life 
 oftenest came to him there, amongst the leering 
 demons,* that host of nightmare creatures, chewing the
 
 io8 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 cud of evil merriment, jesting over that thing called 
 man, the human farce enacted under their eyes. The 
 Styge, arch fiend of the unclean rout, thrusting its 
 tongue out derisively as it kept watch through the 
 years, had seemed to whisper devilish counsel. There 
 had been times, he knew, when that Walpurgisnacht 
 atmosphere of unholy creatures tempted to madness 
 times when he fled the influence of their perpetual 
 Sabbat lest his courage, his hope, his manliness be 
 overpowered. Notre Dame ... it was, in sooth, a 
 " Mountain of Mystery." 
 
 As he watched and mused, lounging on his balcony, 
 the unrests that took him on his Dantesque pilgrimages 
 to that heaven-high Hell filled his heart. He was of 
 an age on which lay the heavy weight of material 
 necessity. And he ... was only a dreamer, that was the 
 supreme mockery a dreamer, with no right to dream !
 
 109 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 UNDER the impulse of reaction, he wrote a note, 
 telling Buttercup that he would accept her invitation. 
 But his night's rest changed the mood, and he did not 
 send it. He had forgotten to ask what day she was 
 leaving Paris, and when he called at her hotel the next 
 afternoon, he learned that the Baxters had already 
 left. It was more of a shock than he would have 
 supposed, and following close upon it came the idea 
 of calling upon Miss Eversley, which impulse he obeyed 
 without stopping to analyse it. 
 
 Miss Eversley was out, but the servant said he would 
 see if Mrs. Eversley were at home, so he ushered 
 Harding into the salon while he himself went upstairs. 
 
 As Harding waited, he noted idly the room's fine 
 evidences of taste ; the gilded chairs covered with good 
 Belgian tapestries, the Braccia marble chimney-piece 
 with a big-eyed Psyche by Clodion, the discreet note of 
 colour here and there, the pieces of bronze and old 
 Saxe. 
 
 Presently he caught the sound of voices from the 
 adjoining salon, across the doorway of which a portiere 
 was lightly drawn. One he recognised as Mrs. 
 Eversley's, the other from its hesitant way of speaking 
 he judged to be that of the sculptor Fernet. 
 
 " But I assure you Mr. Colston didn't tell you the
 
 no THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 truth," Mrs. Eversley said with some emphasis. 
 " I never opposed your attentions to my daughter. 
 Quite the contrary. But she is very much her own 
 mistress. I can't control her, I only wish I could. . . . 
 She has the absurd idea that she must devote herself 
 to art and charities. She insists she doesn't want to 
 marry." 
 
 He made some reply that Mrs. Eversley interrupted 
 sharply: " But that's unjust ... I am not under Mr. 
 Colston's influence. Nor do I support him in his quarrel 
 with you. I think him in the wrong. I tell you that, 
 of course, in confidence. I regret it should be about 
 Monica. Naturally, I shouldn't sacrifice my daughter's 
 happiness to him. I promise you. . . ." 
 
 Harding had already coughed to warn them of his 
 presence; he succeeded only the second time in 
 attracting attention. There was a silence. Then Mrs. 
 Eversley, pushing back the curtain, appeared, looking 
 disconcerted. Harding got the impression that she 
 thought him Percy Colston. At the sight of him, at all 
 events, her face lost its guilty expression of one caught 
 in a conspiracy. 
 
 "Oh! Mr. Harding!" she said, in a half -gasp. 
 " How stupid of that new servant not to know I was 
 in the little salon! M. Fernet and I think it cosier. 
 You have met each other, I believe? " 
 
 He followed her into the next room, where Fernet 
 had waited. 
 
 The two men bowed, the sculptor with evident 
 stiffness and embarrassment, and he took his leave after
 
 THE QUEST in 
 
 a few seconds of superficial conversation. As he kissed 
 his hostess's hand, he murmured something about 
 seeing her soon. 
 
 Harding expressed regret at having interrupted 
 her. 
 
 " Oh, I am very glad you came, I assure you," she 
 returned with a pretty shrug of relief which did not 
 bear conviction. " M. Fernet called about a rather 
 delicate matter, it's true, but for that reason I was not 
 sorry to end the talk." 
 
 She hesitated, and he saw that she was weighing the 
 advisability of correcting the impressions he might 
 have gathered. That he had heard part of the conver- 
 sation, she could hardly doubt, but it was a question of 
 how much. Harding himself felt uncomfortable over 
 the knowledge thrust upon him, that there was a 
 quarrel between Fernet and Colston, and that it was 
 about Monica Eversley. He was a little curious as 
 to Mrs. Eversley's real attitude. He had discovered her 
 apparently intriguing with the sculptor against his 
 friend. Was it only a blind? 
 
 From her preparatory air, he saw Mrs. Eversley had 
 decided on confidences. He doubted, however, that 
 they would be genuine. She sighed prettily. He had 
 learned that sighs often preceded confidences. 
 
 " You haven't any idea, Mr. Harding, in what a 
 delicate position a mother is often placed," she said 
 mournfully. " Miss Vanderhurst may have told you 
 that M. Fernet is devoted to my daughter. There 
 has been some little talk about it, unfortunately,
 
 ii2 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 because she doesn't care for him, and M. Fernet has 
 the French notion that I ought to coerce her. He 
 doesn't understand us Anglo-Saxons, you see, or how 
 we look on marriage. Of course I wouldn't, I couldn't 
 persuade Monica to marry unless she wished to. But 
 sometimes one must be diplomatic, though I hate it, 
 in regard to such things. So to-day I have been sooth- 
 ing poor M. Fernet by telling him I would do what I 
 could. Of course it was only to spare him. He's so 
 nice, and I wouldn't treat him otherwise than sweetly ! 
 5>ut what a horror I have of marriage without senti- 
 ment ! I am too much a woman of heart to urge any- 
 one, least of all my daughter, to such a mistake. Of 
 course you will not say anything about it to Mr. 
 Colston " her confident smile was a command to his 
 sense of honour, and she resumed with graceful light- 
 ness: " Now let us forget about poor M. Fernet's 
 troubles, and have some tea." 
 
 She rang, and settled herself comfortably among the 
 cushions of her arm-chair. Her smile flatteringly 
 suggested that an intimate chat with him was of all 
 things what she most desired. He saw she was satis- 
 fied that any unpleasant inferences he might have 
 drawn from her talk with the sculptor, had been dis- 
 sipated. He wondered why she should have troubled 
 about the situation, unless it was fear of Percy Colston, 
 and then she would have reflected on his own gentle- 
 manliness. 
 
 "It surprises me that you are in Paris," Mrs. 
 Eversley resumed. " I thought you, like Mr. Colston,
 
 THE QUEST 113 
 
 had gone on the Baxters' motoring trip. Miss Baxter 
 is quite a friend of yours, is she not ? From what Miss 
 Vanderhurst rather hinted, I fancy I might almost 
 offer my congratulations to you." 
 
 " Miss Vanderhurst can hardly have said more than 
 that we are friends; that much, at all events, is quite 
 true," Harding answered. 
 
 "Then it is a mistake? " She paused to gather 
 reafnrmation, and accordingly read it in his embarrass- 
 ment. "So I shall be frank if I may, and say I am 
 rather glad. It doesn't seem from what I hear 
 that it would have been the match for a man like you, 
 Mr. Harding. You see I speak quite as though I were 
 an old friend. But you know, Miss Vanderhurst 
 asked me to take you under my wing. And young 
 men do need us women at times ! I am only sorry I've 
 had so little opportunity thus far of seeing you, and we 
 are leaving shortly for the seashore. You know 
 Normandy, Mr. Harding ? Yes, I should have insisted 
 on your coming oftener if I hadn't understood that 
 Miss Baxter had first claim on your time." 
 
 " It has only been my work which kept me rather 
 close," said Harding. 
 
 " I am glad it was your work," returned Mrs. 
 Eversley with a little air of earnestness. " Indeed, I 
 rather wondered, after I met you, at what Miss 
 Vanderhurst hinted. Nothing seems to me such a pity 
 as these unequal marriages. And Miss Buttercup 
 Baxter that is her odd, Pinafore sort of a name, isn't 
 it ? must be a trifle crude. A grocer's daughter, is 
 
 i
 
 H4 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 she not? You can imagine my surprise when Mr. 
 Colston accepted their motoring invitation. They 
 must naturally be socially ambitious; people of that 
 class usually are; and of course Mr. Colston's position 
 is calculated to arouse well, hopes that would scarcely 
 be confirmed by events. Percy Colston couldn't consider 
 Miss Buttercup Baxter. He is far too fastidious, too 
 privileged, so I can't help feeling it was inconsiderate 
 of him to accept their hospitality." 
 
 Her sweet, semi-virginal voice robbed the speech of 
 some of its ill-nature. He saw that she was uneasy 
 about Colston and the Baxters. Was she in love with 
 the " privileged Percy," or only desirous of having him 
 remain in the family? He had " taken her up"; it 
 would be rather annoying to be laid down for a Butter- 
 cup Baxter. Apparently she guessed his thoughts, 
 for she went on quickly. 
 
 " You see, I am so much interested in my friends ! 
 After all, it is among the few things left us older 
 women." She smiled with what he thought some 
 courage; for Mrs. Eversley to admit the principle of 
 age was a heroism. Still, no doubt, she suspected Miss 
 Vanderhurst had told him the truth about her being 
 old enough to have a grown daughter. " I am simple 
 in my tastes. You see how I am occupying myself." 
 
 Still smiling, she held up a bit of cobwebby em- 
 broidery. It was not new, as her maid could have told 
 Harding; like Mrs. Eversley, it had a misleading 
 youthfulness. She rather liked to have it in her hands 
 when she chatted with young men. It somehow paved
 
 THE QUEST 115 
 
 the way to her effective confessions. Mrs. Eversley's 
 confessions were no more real than her complexion or 
 the colour of her hair, but they had their peculiar 
 charm, and she found they called forth confidences 
 from others. There was a faint odour clinging about 
 the little salon which seemed eloquent of pretty past 
 romances. He wondered whether Monica ever entered 
 it without duly announcing herself. He could fancy 
 her avoiding her mother's private theatricals. 
 
 " But you must tell me about your work," Mrs. 
 Eversley said briskly. " Miss Vanderhurst says your 
 poems have been so flatteringly mentioned by the 
 critics, I do wish you would give me an author's copy. 
 I'm devoted to poetry." 
 
 He promised, looking more complimented than he 
 felt. She went on to ask the usual questions, the name 
 of his novel, when it would be finished, whether his 
 heroine was a real girl or if he had made her up; and 
 having obtained answers whose evasiveness perfectly 
 satisfied her, she then wanted to know if he intended 
 making his home in Paris, next asked how long he 
 would remain, when he said it depended on his work, 
 and finally demanded his frank opinion as to Madame 
 de Kansa, whom she somehow felt he hadn't altogether 
 understood. 
 
 " Why, I thought her so interesting that I went to 
 interview her," Harding replied. " In fact, my very 
 last newspaper article was devoted to her. She very 
 kindly offered to read my palm in order to show me 
 what her method was. I assure you, I like her 
 
 12
 
 n6 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 sincerely," Harding added tactfully, seeing the 
 pleasurable excitement which brightened Mrs. 
 Eversley's eyes and doubtless would have flushed her 
 cheek if her maid had not already flushed it for her. 
 
 " She read your palm. What did she say ? " Mrs. 
 Eversley cried eagerly. 
 
 " Oh, the usual thing; that I'd make lots of money 
 from my book, would have a real ' career ' as she 
 expressed it in fact, she was so flattering that I can't 
 believe a word of it." 
 
 " Oh, but you must ! If Madame de Kansa said it, 
 you can count on its being absolutely true. I believe 
 implicitly in everything she says." He felt that this 
 incident had made a great difference in her opinion 
 of him. She was even more gracious for the rest of 
 their talk. 
 
 Harding had some concert tickets which Nicolls 
 had sent him, and it occurred to him it might be a 
 politeness to offer them to Mrs. Eversley and her 
 daughter. While he was still speaking of them, Monica 
 entered the house, and her mother called her to the 
 salon. 
 
 Monica had already had tea; she had been with 
 Elsie Fitzgerald talking of the Amies des Pauvres. 
 Mrs. Eversley threw in what he imagined was a 
 characteristic deprecatory remark about these working 
 crazes among modern society girls. Miss Eversley 
 frowned slightly, as if she resented such personalities 
 before a stranger, and Harding understood Miss 
 Vanderhurst's comment on the lack of congeniality
 
 THE QUEST 117 
 
 between mother and daughter. To change the dis- 
 tasteful subject, Mrs. Eversley asked if Monica would 
 go to hear Ysaye on the following Thursday, since 
 Mr. Harding had kindly offered to take them; Monica 
 refused on the plea of a Working Girls' Club. 
 
 Harding got up to go. Mrs. Eversley pressed his 
 hand with pleasant warmth. 
 
 "If we don't see you again before we go away," 
 she said, " you must come to see us next autumn as 
 soon as we return. He must decide to remain in Paris, 
 mustn't he, Monica? " 
 
 " I imagine Mr. Harding is the best judge of that," 
 was all Monica found to say. 
 
 " But you forget he is a writer. You certainly agree 
 that Paris is a much better place than America for a 
 literary man." 
 
 But the atmosphere most favourable to literary life 
 did not seem to interest Miss Eversley in the least.
 
 n8 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE fact that Percy Colston was motoring with the 
 Baxters, of which Harding was first made aware 
 through Mrs. Eversley, was confirmed by a pictured 
 post-card sent him from Tours by Buttercup. Others 
 followed, and all made reference to the poet. He was so 
 amusing and useful : added so much to the pleasure of 
 the trip. Harding smiled ironically, as he read these 
 underscored ecstasies. As the days passed, the post- 
 cards (Harding asked himself if they had not a grain 
 of malice) fluttered to him less frequently. At last, 
 they ceased altogether. 
 
 Meanwhile, he had applied himself so determinedly 
 to his book that he got it done. Having dispatched it 
 to an American firm, with which he had had some 
 dealing on the subject, he would gladly have recalled 
 it circumstances permitting through artist dis- 
 satisfactions. But art was long, his pocket short so 
 short, indeed, that he had been forced to ask for a sum 
 down in case of acceptance. The amount demanded 
 was modest, but even so it was a venturesome stipula- 
 tion to make, considering it was a first novel, and he 
 was not hopeful about its being granted. But the book 
 was a gamble his " last throw," as he phrased it to 
 himself and he concluded he might as well risk the 
 extra hazard.
 
 THE QUEST 119 
 
 The manuscript off his hands, Harding felt the blank 
 of an occupation gone. He was consumed, too, with 
 uneasiness about his uncertain future. This, with the 
 fatigue following on weeks of hard work, left him in a 
 state of mind unfitting him for any further literary 
 efforts for the moment. Unaccustomed to being idle, 
 he scarce knew what to do with his time. The craving 
 for society was on him, though less for people he knew 
 slightly than for those to whom he could talk at ease. 
 But Nicolls was his only close friend in Paris, and him 
 he preferred to avoid while waiting for news of his 
 book. Nicolls had remonstrated with him over his 
 imprudence in throwing up his journalistic work in the 
 spirit he had, and pride withheld him from stopping 
 in at that office while he had no proofs to show that his 
 strike for independence was justified. He accordingly 
 spent a good deal of time in long solitary rambles 
 through parts of Paris still unfamiliar to him. 
 
 It was towards the close of June when, one afternoon, 
 in wandering along a by-path of the Bois, he caught 
 sight of Miss Eversley, seated on a bench, some dis- 
 tance in front of him. 
 
 Surprised, for he had supposed that she and her 
 mother had left Paris, he hesitated, undecided whether 
 to advance or turn and avoid an encounter which 
 might only reward him with another snubbing. He 
 had thought her manner decidedly unfriendly the day 
 he called on Mrs. Eversley. But there is a fascination 
 for some in the distaste people apparently have for 
 them : it challenges human vanity to try and overcome
 
 120 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 it. And Harding remembered that he had vowed to 
 make Monica Eversley like him, and, thereupon, he 
 continued his stroll. 
 
 She did not notice his approach. The picture Miss 
 Eversley made, seated under a spreading beech, was 
 attractive. She had on a white serge walking skirt and 
 silk blouse, with a black straw hat, the broad brim of 
 which shaded her eyes. Seemingly, she had sought 
 the shady retreat to read, but the volume she had 
 borne thither lay unheeded on her lap, and she appeared 
 to be watching a squirrel that, stationed at a discreet 
 distance, regarded her brightly, its tiny paws crossed 
 like an elf at prayer. Her present posture had less of 
 the stiff, young grace which had amused him the day 
 of the garden f^te, when she had left him to join the 
 other actors, sweeping her robes across the lawn with 
 queenly disdain of his trivialities. It had, he reflected, 
 been a declaration of war between them from their first 
 meeting. Yet to-day she struck him as more approach- 
 able and human. He could fancy her most herself in 
 the green quiet of such surroundings. Certainly they 
 suited her better than the sophisticated background of 
 her mother's house, where Mrs. Eversley's artificiality 
 was like an aggressive perfume. Her defiance of the 
 latter's weakness expressed itself in her clothes, dis- 
 regardful of all but neatness, her air that plainly asked 
 for no masculine tributes of admiration. As he drew 
 near, he saw that she was lost in meditation, and that 
 her face had a trace of melancholy. He wondered if 
 she were trying to solve some problem of life. No
 
 THE QUEST 121 
 
 doubt, she had her own difficulties, after all, and 
 perhaps her cool composure concealed actual suffering. 
 How little one ever knew the truth about people. 
 
 At his greeting, she looked up as though rather 
 rudely shaken out of her thoughts. He had expected 
 she would resent his invasion of her solitude, and he 
 was surprised at the way she shook hands with him. 
 It was certainly more gracious than when they last 
 met. 
 
 At the movement, one of the books in her lap slipped 
 to the ground, and as he picked it up he noticed, with 
 some pleasure, that it was the copy of his Adonis- 
 Garden for which her mother had asked him. 
 
 " I hardly expected you to pay my book that com- 
 pliment," he said, restoring it to her. 
 
 " I don't see why," she returned, with a matter-of- 
 fact air. "I'm rather fond of modern verse. A 
 number of your things strike me as very beautiful 
 especially the lyrics." 
 
 Something in the tone with which she referred to 
 them, caused him to laugh. 
 
 " You were agreeably surprised, then ? You didn't 
 expect you'd like anything. I can see that." 
 
 " No, that's not true. But I perhaps thought they 
 would be different." 
 
 "In what way? " 
 
 " Well, more personal, introspective . . ." 
 
 " Morbid, in short," he interrupted, supplying the 
 word he felt was really in her mind. 
 
 " Yes, a little so, I admit," at his air of insistence.
 
 122 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " They don't seem like you, exactly as I've found 
 you in conversation, I mean." 
 
 He seated himself beside her. " I wrote most of 
 them years ago, you see. When I was a boy, in fact. 
 That may account for it. I don't suppose they are 
 much like me now." And a shade settled for a moment 
 on his face, as he looked at the squirrel which had 
 cautiously reappeared to inspect the two. He was 
 not thinking of squirrels, but of the difference the last 
 ten years had wrought in him. What had become of 
 his earlier, more hopeful self, he remembered as 
 vaguely as half the pieces in the volume Miss Eversley 
 held. He seldom glanced over the Adonis-Garden, 
 any more than he turned back the pages of his ripened 
 manhood. He had laid aside his passion for writing 
 poetry, with so many other things. Yet it sometimes 
 gave him a pang to think the impulse was dead in him. 
 Her words, too, recalled the thought of the one love 
 that had been the inspiration and disappointment of 
 his New York life. He had never tried writing verse 
 after it had ended in the taste of ashes. It had, he 
 was bitterly persuaded, snapped in his spirit the last 
 of the seven strings worn by hardship, disillusion, and 
 the dry-rot of living. 
 
 Then he went on with forced lightness: 
 
 " Time, you know, is apt to knock the poetry out of 
 one, even if one retains the knack of rhyming. Besides, 
 verse-making is a luxury few can afford, these days. 
 To scrape a living with the pen, one has to write novels. 
 They're the vulgar necessity of authorship. The
 
 THE QUEST 123 
 
 rewards are not magnificent, but, at least, it's an im- 
 provement on verse-writing. It's the commutation of 
 a sentence of death by starvation to one of life im- 
 prisonment on bread and water." 
 
 And he smiled at her as he dug at a tuft of grass with 
 his stick. He was not unattractive, with his long 
 figure and thin, expressive face. There was not much 
 of the " Man with the Glove " in him, as Miss Vander- 
 hurst fancied, but she was right, at least, in thinking 
 him gentlemanly. 
 
 She studied him for a moment with her sober eyes. It 
 was evident first impressions had been disturbed by 
 reading his book. One hand still lay on the volume in 
 question. The contact seemed to plead for the soberer 
 man under the one who uttered persistent flippancies. 
 At all events, her face retained its new, more tolerant 
 expression. 
 
 His glance fell on her hand, the shapely whiteness of 
 which had attracted him on the night of the dinner. 
 Where had he recently seen the same type ? Then he 
 remembered it was at Madame de Kansa's. While 
 waiting in her ante-room, he had picked up among the 
 curiosities on the table, a plaster cast of the hand of the 
 Marquise de Brinvilliers, the seventeenth-century 
 poisoner. How similar the two hands were. But he 
 was sceptical of chiromancy, and it made no particular 
 impression on him. He merely thought of the freaks 
 that Nature plays. 
 
 " But if you have such discouraged views of writing, 
 why make it your profession ? " Miss Eversley observed.
 
 124 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Yes, I admit, it sounds disgruntled," he said, with 
 a shrug; " the kind of thing the fox says of the grapes 
 that hang too high. It's confessing oneself a failure in 
 art, isn't it ? But I can't say I'm a ' failure ' in it yet, 
 since I haven't given failure a chance. I've just sent 
 my first novel to an American publisher, and as I fore- 
 cast what will happen, I can't take an optimistic tone 
 about literature. My excuse for going into it, is that it 
 was necessity, not choice. I tried a number of honest 
 livelihoods with ignominious results. All the builders 
 rejected me as a worthless stone, so there was nothing 
 to do, it seemed, but dip pen in ink-bottle, see if what 
 apparently was my only talent might gather some 
 interest. It was better than wrapping it up in a 
 napkin, no doubt." 
 
 She made no comment and he went on: 
 " You see, life doesn't give people much choice in 
 the matter of what they do. They do what they can. 
 Often what they can't. And, after all, as to literature, 
 it isn't a holy place any more. One needn't take off 
 shoes there one's constant struggle is to keep one's 
 coat on. It isn't as though one waited for a voice out 
 of heaven saying ' Write.' We aren't Saint Johns: we 
 don't pretend to be inspired. My warrant is that if I 
 hadn't gone into it I'd probably have starved. It's the 
 shabby-genteel resort of desperation. Really, it's 
 absurd to take book-writing seriously, you know, Miss 
 Eversley, when its mostly to furnish amusement for 
 brokers on their way home in the train, for housewives 
 with a moment to spare when the roast's browning.
 
 THE QUEST 125 
 
 Anybody is justified in taking it up, if only he's clever 
 enough to compound the sort of thing wanted, so that 
 it pays." And his eyes, though morose, challenged 
 her humorously. 
 
 " I don't believe that's quite the spirit in which you 
 write, Mr. Harding," she said. " At least, the reason 
 why you wrote what's here." And her hand again 
 rested on the Adonis-Garden as though she were 
 soothing its injured feelings. Her voice was kind, 
 perhaps too kind, since it almost suggested pity for one 
 who took himself so lightly. 
 
 He might have resented her tone in another mood. 
 But he was glad of an ear lent to his destructive self- 
 analysis, his discontent with himself, and his inaptitude 
 for getting the better of life as others did. He was 
 sincere, for the moment, in regretting his lack of what 
 he considered the necessary "bunco" that makes 
 existence the successful and comfortable thing it 
 can be. 
 
 " Well, perhaps not," he conceded with a laugh, that 
 was as bad a failure as he sometimes thought himself. 
 " And that's why the book I've just sent across the 
 water will, no doubt, come back to me again like the 
 traditional bread. Though, to be honest, it's written 
 in a would-be money-making, ' popular ' vein. Only 
 I did please myself trying to give it style. After all, 
 the public sometimes does forgive a book being well- 
 written." 
 
 With the sunlight of early summer filtering through 
 the leaves, the spot was suggestive of a decidedly diffe-
 
 126 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 rent order of talk. Miss Eversley had nothing of the 
 coquette, it was true, but few women are entirely un- 
 conscious of their youthful good looks, and she was 
 assuredly good-looking in a stately, dark-browed way. 
 And he was not sure that, in spite of her air of indiffer- 
 ence towards the other sex, she did not resent, a little, 
 his lack of gallantry. It may be flattering to be taken 
 as a girl of superior brains, but even Hypatia exacted 
 some tribute to her human loveliness. 
 
 " I don't wonder you think me egotistical," he said. 
 " But really, I wasn't posing. I have an abominable 
 philosophy about myself. I wish I hadn't. If I could 
 borrow some of your wisdom I'd count myself fortun- 
 ate." 
 
 " But what do you know of my wisdom ? When 
 have I expressed any ? " 
 
 " I haven't given you much chance, have I ? It's 
 rather in the unconscious impression, of being a 
 person who knows how to fill ' a place in the world ' 
 which you have, and that I've never found for myself. 
 That's the difference between us. You have and I 
 haven't. And, that being the case, I don't wonder 
 you feel towards me as you do." 
 
 She looked at him as though rather astonished at 
 his assumption that she felt anything about him. He 
 saw that he wasn't making matters better by this bold 
 attack on her reserve. Yet he persisted. 
 
 " I've given you some cause, I know, Miss Eversley, 
 for disliking me, I saw that you did, from the moment 
 we met."
 
 THE QUEST 127 
 
 " But why should I like or dislike you? I hardly 
 know you." 
 
 " Yes; but one forms impressions, and yours hasn't 
 been exactly flattering." 
 
 " Suppose it hasn't? " 
 
 " Still one relies a good deal in life on the sympathy 
 and understanding of others. Few are independent of 
 help." 
 
 She mused a moment over the argument, yet without 
 enthusiasm. " I don't know," she returned. "People 
 don't, half the time, want to be helped. They only 
 think they do. Besides, the cure for most personal 
 things doesn't lie with others." 
 
 " You say that, perhaps, because you're exceptional." 
 He deliberately flattered her. " It was what struck me, 
 the first time I saw you, that you were the sort of 
 person who didn't need others. It's what makes your 
 friendship worth having. You know what poor, old, 
 neglected Emerson says of the value that lies in the 
 friendship of one who can do without friends. That's 
 why I should like should so much prize yours." 
 
 But Miss Eversley seemed rather wary. She re- 
 garded him as if the question were one entirely of kind- 
 ness towards him. The dubious look in her calm eyes, 
 that suggested an unlighted stage where dramas 
 might be enacted, was not flattering to the place 
 Harding held in her thoughts. 
 
 "Isn't that just a mood?" she said. "I don't 
 believe you really want my friendship. I am not even 
 sure that friendship means as much to you as you say."
 
 128 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " It means a great deal to me: at least, yours would. 
 I've had the feeling all along that you were going to be 
 an influence in my life." He had the sincerity of the 
 moment, and it infused into his voice a taking quality. 
 Under his assurances there was, perhaps, the crude 
 desire to vanquish her antipathy, but he was hardly 
 conscious of it. 
 
 Miss Eversley did not, however, yield to his appeal. 
 " But I don't at all care about influencing," she re- 
 turned; and in saying it she, too, had the sincerity of 
 the moment. 
 
 " But what woman does not want to exercise her 
 influence?" Harding asked audaciously. "I never 
 met one who didn't." 
 
 " You think that is what they were invented for, no 
 doubt? " she parried. 
 
 " That reason of itself would be good enough," he 
 replied, enjoying the debate. " We can't do without 
 human contact, you know." 
 
 " I can do without it." And the proud way she 
 raised her head almost persuaded him that she could. 
 It had, at all events, he felt, been her effort so to live; 
 and he wondered what unfortunate experience what 
 disappointment of heart had fostered the unnatural 
 attitude. She had admitted she thought him morbid. 
 Was she not the more morbid of the two ? Curiosity 
 caused him to say, in hope of drawing her out : 
 
 " Then you can never have suffered." 
 
 Her momentary hesitation told him he had touched
 
 THE QUEST 129 
 
 on some sore place in her. " Everybody has troubles," 
 she returned, with eyes that darkened a little. " No- 
 body's life is free from them." 
 
 " True, I have no right to say that, since I know 
 nothing about your life . . . though I'd like to," he 
 said. 
 
 But she only stiffened at the liberty. " I am not of 
 those who get pleasure out of talking about their lives." 
 
 " You make me rather ashamed of having been so 
 unreserved," he returned. 
 
 " Why should you ? It's only that we're different." 
 
 " You are very independent, Miss Eversley. Oughtn't 
 you to share with others the secret that sustains you ? " 
 
 " There is no secret to share, Mr. Harding," she said 
 simply. " I merely try to accept life like other people. 
 It doesn't help matters, does it, to be so bitter about it 
 as you appear to be ? " 
 
 " But that's because I have no faith in it I never 
 could see where its reasonableness came in." 
 
 " Has it treated you so badly, then ? " Her eyes inti- 
 mated that she didn't think it had, though her voice 
 was gentler. It might have been that she regretted 
 her brusqueness. 
 
 " No, I don't suppose it has, really," he said. " Only 
 it has somehow knocked all belief out of me. I don't 
 think I had much to start with." 
 
 " Tell me a little about your life, if you care to," she 
 said, as if to compensate for having seemed difficult. 
 Or perhaps he had touched her womanly side. 
 
 K
 
 130 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " There's not much to tell," he said carelessly, " but 
 it will, perhaps, explain why I came to Paris. I got 
 tired of the old ruts." He hesitated, feeling half 
 ashamed. Yet it was a means of putting himself more 
 in touch with her, and his mood craved understanding. 
 
 He sketched his last ten years of New York life, 
 without emphasizing the hardships; he only offered 
 such facts as appeared to justify his futility, his feeling 
 of hopelessness. 
 
 She listened with more interest than he had expected 
 her to show. " I hadn't thought of things being quite 
 so difficult for you," she said, when he ended with an 
 awkward laugh, that was meant as an apology for his 
 recital. He had the feeling that he had shown himself 
 an awful egotist. 
 
 She was silent a moment. " Yet I don't see why it 
 has robbed you of all faith in life," she added, with 
 something in her eyes he did not understand. " Can 
 nothing give it back, Mr. Harding? " 
 
 Her face had lost much of its coldness, and he said 
 in an impulse, moved by the feeling her tone inspired : 
 
 " Yes, I think you could, if you wanted to." 
 
 " I? " And a slight colour came into her cheeks, 
 that seemed surprise rather than pleasure. It faded as 
 quickly as it came, and she said, as if to discourage 
 idle gallantry: " How can I give you back something 
 that lies with yourself? " And, unconsciously, her 
 tone betrayed a touch of bitterness, as though her 
 self poise had been born of that acquired knowledge.
 
 THE QUEST 131 
 
 " You can, Miss Eversley." He hardly knew whether 
 or not he was sincere ; but he had an odd desire to call 
 out the woman in her, to see in her half-rebellious eyes 
 a different look the warmer light that belonged to 
 them. It was all that was needed to make her really 
 beautiful, he told himself. 
 
 " After all, a woman's friendship can do a great deal 
 for a man," he went on. " The worst thing about life is 
 its isolation, the dullness that comes from seeing noth- 
 ing beyond drudgery. The fact of bread being nothing 
 but bread. You know the miracle of St. Elizabeth. 
 That is what some women can do for one change the 
 bread into roses, so to speak." 
 
 She smiled faintly. "Or primroses? It's only 
 another way of saying what you did the night you 
 dined with my mother " (he wondered why she did 
 not say " with us " ?) isn't it ? Don't you make 
 rather too much of a point of the flower side of life ? " 
 
 " But roses or primroses, if you prefer symbolize 
 with me the feeling of beauty that goes with living. 
 Can you get on without it ? I know I can't. I think it's 
 losing sight of it that's the matter with me. And one 
 doesn't find it in abstract things best, but through 
 what friendship gives. That's why I ask yours. You 
 must admit we ' can't live by bread alone.' ' 
 
 " Nor by people to the extent you say. You pay 
 others too great a compliment. It would be better 
 if you paid it to yourself." 
 
 He took it as a rejection of his overtures. 
 
 K2
 
 132 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " So," he said, with a flush of sensitive egotism, 
 " it's true, you do dislike me, Miss Eversley." 
 
 " But why should you suppose that ? I do not dis- 
 like you. Yet, in spite of the difference in our way of 
 feeling about things . . ." she hesitated. "There is no 
 reason, Mr. Harding, why we shouldn't be friends, 
 since you appear to want it so much. But what you 
 most need, is to believe in yourself." 
 
 She rose, as she spoke, and he accompanied her, 
 more affected by the concession than he would have 
 thought possible.
 
 133 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PARIS was precipitated in the stuffiness of midsummer, 
 when one day, Harding received a letter which he saw, 
 from the superscription on the envelope, was from 
 the publishing firm to which he had sent his manuscript. 
 Bracing himself for bad news, he broke it open and 
 as he drew forth the contents he saw a folded cheque 
 within. It covered the sum he had demanded. The 
 Horns of the Altar was accepted. After the strain of 
 waiting, relief almost unnerved him; for a moment 
 he could hardly read the typed communication, con- 
 firming the fact. 
 
 Bentley and Company was a new and pushing New 
 York house that had acquired a reputation for launch- 
 ing popular novels, and for having more " best-sellers " 
 on its list than any of its numerous rivals. The junior 
 member of the firm, to whose ingenious advertising 
 schemes it owed much of its success in floating books 
 on brisk, modern lines, was slightly acquainted with 
 Harding, and it was he who had dictated the letter; 
 telling him that his story was just what the house was 
 looking for. The American public, reacting from a 
 long diet of historical romances, was in the humour 
 for homely, human tales of local life, and he antici- 
 pated for The Horns of the Altar which would be
 
 134 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 brought out early in the autumn one of the successes 
 of the year. 
 
 This was far more than Harding had dreamed in 
 his most sanguine moods, and the prospect of entering 
 on a literary life, freed from harassing need, had the 
 effect of creating for him a new heaven and a new earth. 
 Something in him, that for years had lain drugged by 
 the opiates of discouragement, awoke to active being; 
 and on his way to the banker's, to cash the cheque 
 which came opportunely to reimburse his empty 
 pocket, he meditated over a new book which, he vowed, 
 would be better than the first. He would begin it 
 immediately, and as change and tonic for work, would 
 find some place outside of Paris in which to settle for 
 the rest of the summer. He knew of a small hotel on 
 the Marne, near a popular boating resort, and he 
 decided, as he was fond of rowing, to select this as best 
 suited to his purpose. 
 
 He had stopped in at Nicolls's office, to tell him 
 the news and invite him to lunch, but finding him out, 
 he had a solitary meal at a restaurant; after which 
 he roamed about the neighbourhood of the Place de 
 1'Opera, left to the midsummer tourist, debating how 
 to put in his time. As he turned down the Boulevard 
 Haussmann he chanced on Percy Colston, who was 
 coming out of a haberdasher's. Harding was in the 
 frame of mind to welcome any acquaintance with 
 pleasure, and his greeting of the poet was more friendly 
 than it would have been in a less cheerful moment. 
 He had not seen the privileged youth since the trip
 
 THE QUEST 135 
 
 with the Baxters, and as Miss Buttercup had ceased 
 to figure importantly in his thoughts, he found it 
 easy to forgive him for having, apparently, eclipsed 
 him with that buoyant young woman. Colston told 
 him he was staying with friends out at St. Germain- 
 en-Laye, and as he had a half-hour to spare before 
 his train, Harding suggested that they should have 
 a cooling drink at Sylvain's, near by. 
 
 Colston told him that after he had parted from the 
 Baxters, these had gone to Marienbad, so Miss Zenobia 
 could take a flesh-reducing course; then they would 
 travel for several months and finally return to Paris. 
 
 " But Miss Baxter told me she intended passing next 
 winter in Berlin," Harding commented. 
 
 " Yes; but that was before I advised her not to," 
 the poet returned airily. " She is leaving details to 
 me now, you see. I am always saving people, and I've 
 decided to save Buttercup. Crudeness is her note, if 
 she learns to strike it effectively. I told her to come 
 back to Paris and I'd make her a success. Her success 
 lies in her voice. It has the real American timbre. I'm 
 getting a friend to put Whitman's Leaves of Grass 
 to music so Buttercup can sing them. She'll be the 
 rage here chaunting the Saga of the States. As I told 
 her, her capital lay in her defects, if she only culti- 
 vated them." 
 
 His condescending adoption of Buttercup made the 
 other smile. It was evident that Colston had taken up 
 the Baxters; and Harding wondered how Mrs. Eversley 
 would accept the situation. He asked whether there
 
 136 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 was any news from that rejuvenated lady since she 
 had gone to Trouville. 
 
 "I'm always hearing from her," her fickle arbiter 
 replied, sipping his cassis. It's nulle diem sine linea 
 with her. She writes notes with the frightful fluency 
 of people having nothing to say. She tells me that 
 Trouville promises to have a dull season this year, so 
 I don't know that I'll pay her my usual August visit. 
 Besides, I am getting tired of asking people to accept 
 her for my sake. Then, that walking Moral Tale, her 
 daughter, is with her. Her Maria Edgeworth heroine 
 airs always did get on my nerves; and, you know, I 
 don't speak to her now, on account of her trying to 
 inveigle Fernet into marrying her." 
 
 Harding recalled the fragment of conversation he 
 had heard in Mrs. Eversley's drawing-room. 
 
 " She didn't strike me as that sort of girl," he 
 observed. 
 
 " No, it didn't strike Fernet, either," the poet 
 snapped. " That is where she's so clever. She makes 
 advances by appearing to retreat. She'd probably have 
 succeeded in taking Fernet in, if I hadn't interfered, 
 and shown him that she'd kill anybody's career. 
 Fernet and I had a quarrel about her in which he 
 treated me brutally. But I've forgiven him though, 
 as I told him, I never could feel the same again. He 
 doesn't appreciate all I've done for him. If I hadn't 
 posed for his ' Youth ' he'd never have got anywhere. 
 Fortunately, he's gone to his family in Brittany; 
 so he's safe from her at present, anyway."
 
 THE QUEST 137 
 
 He asked where Harding purposed spending the 
 rest of the summer, and on the latter giving him the 
 address, he said that he might be visiting at Cham- 
 pigny, in which case, as it was near by, he would come 
 over. After which they parted. 
 
 The summer went by rather quickly for Harding. 
 The proofs of his book arrived in August, and he was 
 kept busy correcting them in the mornings. The after- 
 noons he spent on the river. He saw no acquaint- 
 ances, for Nicolls was on a vacation in England, and 
 his other friends were either in the country or by the 
 sea. One day, however, Percy Colston fulfilled that 
 promise of coming over from Champigny to see him. 
 
 Harding rowed him to Joinville-le-Pont, where they 
 dined at the willow-embowered Tte Noire. The talk 
 was mostly on art problems which, as the other 
 already discovered, his guest was fond of discussing in 
 an authoritative way. It was, indeed, their most 
 congenial meeting-ground, and Harding' s willingness 
 to listen to his dissertations evidently won favour, 
 for the visit was repeated several times during the 
 month. 
 
 Although Harding did not take altogether seriously 
 the poet's opinions on art, yet they had some influence 
 on him. He had written The Horns of the Altar in a 
 detached spirit, more concerned with its style than with 
 the theme, which, as he told Miss Eversley, had been 
 deliberately selected in hope of its being popular. 
 It was a tour de force into which, he believed, little 
 of his real self had entered; and Colston's contention
 
 138 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 that the highest form of art consisted in self-assertion, 
 appealed to him. He recognised, however, that he had 
 a morbid streak, and lacked a balanced criticism of 
 life, and that these were obstacles to writing in a 
 popular yet personal fashion. The poet derided the 
 argument as Philistinism. An artist, he held, should 
 write for artists, not for the crowd. The touch of 
 neurasthenia to which Harding confessed, he lauded 
 as a gift the gods bestow only on the elect. 
 
 " If you have nerves," he asserted, as he sat at the 
 bow of the boat he was not fond of rowing " write 
 with your nerves. Nothing counts but temperament. 
 It's what American writers lack. They manufacture 
 books by rote, according to a recipe, with an eye on 
 the Ten Commandments and the fear of the God of 
 Mammon in their hearts. There's no personal feeling 
 and thinking with them. America tramples out 
 individuality in art as in society. There's only one 
 motive for a book, and that's oneself." And he rang 
 the changes on his idea with a persuasive self-confi- 
 dence which his auditor rather envied him. 
 
 His visitor's contemptuous dismissal of The Horns 
 of the Altar as a work of no artistic significance an 
 opinion based on deductions since he had not seen the 
 proofs had its effect on Harding's susceptible nature; 
 and he ended by being half ashamed of it, and in 
 doubt as to his best line of future work. 
 
 Percy Colston came over one day in a state of great 
 exasperation. He had been down to Trouville after 
 all, and had found there Fernet who had pretended 
 to be with his family.
 
 THE QUEST 139 
 
 " Mrs. Eversley is nothing but a detestable intriguer," 
 he said. " I taxed her with treachery. She denies 
 having invited Fernet, but he never would have gone 
 on his own initiative. Fernet 's like a lump of his own 
 clay, anybody can mould him. Monica pretends to be 
 indifferent to him, but it's only her way of trying to 
 attract; she tried it with Nicolls, and didn't learn her 
 lesson, either, when it failed to work." 
 
 " You mean to say Nicolls was in love with her? " 
 Harding asked. 
 
 " He may have been in love with her, but love 
 didn't take him as far as the horns of the altar," 
 Percy returned. " Ever since I found her out, Mrs. 
 Eversley's been trying to propitiate me. I live in 
 terror of bells like a Matthias. Messenger boys with 
 telegrams are ringing all the time at the house where I 
 am" staying that's why I come over to see you, to get 
 away from them," he added flatteringly. 
 
 " Perhaps Mrs. Eversley isn't as anxious to marry 
 her daughter to Fernet as she is to marry herself to 
 you. After all, she's still on the sunny side of sixty." 
 
 " She'd make me sixty if I did," was the answer. 
 "I'm sure her husband died of premature octo- 
 genarianism ! " 
 
 On another occasion, something brought up the 
 question of transmitted tendency which Madame de 
 Kansa and the Milanese lecturer had discussed at 
 Mrs. Eversley's dinner. The conversation had lingered 
 in Harding' s mind largely because of its effect on 
 Monica. His talk with her afterwards in the salon had 
 supplied some clue to her air of opposition to the
 
 140 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 ideas expressed; yet it did not account for the smile 
 of malice with which Percy Colston had regarded 
 her. Harding cited her views as being in favour of the 
 self-assertiveness which Colston extolled. The poet 
 heard him with scornful impatience. 
 
 " Oh, with her it's all argue, argue, and dodge facts 
 at the same time while pretending to understand," 
 he said. " It's a fond delusion with that type of 
 tiresome persons. But there's more in this than Monica 
 Eversley cares to dream about in her self-contented 
 philosophy. Her attitude irritates me so, that if I 
 wrote novels, I'd make one out of this business." 
 And he sketched a striking plot dealing with criminal 
 ancestry. 
 
 Harding's objection was, that it involved a scientific 
 thesis: and as for himself, he had no convictions on 
 the subject of heredity, and was not sure that he liked 
 books with a purpose, anyway. 
 
 Colston may not have liked books with a purpose 
 either; but here he appeared to have a purpose for 
 the book. 
 
 " Don't think of science think of the tragedy in 
 the theme," he said. " It holds almost Sophoclean 
 possibilities. Heredity appears here as another 
 name for the Three Fates, holding in their lean hands 
 the thread of destiny. As I'm always contending, it's 
 not so much what one writes as the way one writes it. 
 Art can make even science dramatic. The trouble is, 
 that most writers who select such subjects write with 
 the point of a scalpel; they fail because they are usually 
 not artists, but scientists, at soul."
 
 THE QUEST 141 
 
 And the poet garnished his idea with a number of 
 details that brought it graphically before Harding's 
 eyes. They discussed the suggestion for the rest of 
 dinner, and when they parted, Harding rowed back 
 from Joinville under the star-lit sky, filled with 
 enthusiasm for the theme. It was one, indeed, which 
 tempted him in spite of the objections he had raised 
 perhaps because of them. Much that was half conviction, 
 his pessimistic attitude towards life a blind maze 
 in which the individual groped, the victim of accident, 
 burdened by unescapable fate could enter into such 
 a story. He recalled the effect upon him of the perform- 
 ance of (Edipe Roi, which he had seen at the 
 Comedie Francaise, how its art had invested horror 
 with a vitality transcending the trivialities of modern 
 literature. If he could but get a touch of such grandeur 
 into his story! He smiled at the ambition. Yet one 
 should aim high whether or not one shot low. It 
 would be a pleasure to try . . . and he had taken no 
 pleasure in his other book. How could art mean any- 
 thing to others unless it meant something to the artist 
 who had begot it ? 
 
 His enthusiasm remained with him, and by the end 
 of the week he had made a rough draft of the plot. 
 He laid the scenes partly in America, partly in Paris, 
 following the idea as he had discussed it with Percy 
 Colston, who had disclaimed any intention to utilize 
 the material. There was no reason why he himself 
 should not take it.
 
 142 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HARDING called on Mrs. Eversley immediately after 
 her return from Trouville, and she asked him to take 
 her to the Opera Comique for the premiere of Le Gage 
 d' Amour, an opera by Chelard whom he had met at 
 her dinner. Driving in from Neuilly, she was in a 
 confidential mood, and spoke almost sentimentally 
 of his sympathy and power of understanding, due to 
 his inborn talent as a writer, which she had felt even 
 before knowing all he had done. Of Monica, too, she 
 spoke, and indeed, of most of her recent troubles, 
 touching on them lightly. 
 
 " Monica is far weaker than you think, Mr. Harding; 
 she is very much of a woman, she was made to be loved, 
 to be cared for. But she has such beautiful ideals 
 about love, and it's her disappointment in the men 
 she meets that causes her to fall back on her art, 
 her charities . . . that can never fill a girl's life. She 
 must abide by her standards. It was really to escape 
 M. Fernet's attentions that she went to England. You 
 remember, I told you last June how hopeless that was, 
 and how sorry I was for him. So when he asked me to 
 come down to Trouville, I hadn't the heart to say no. 
 Perhaps it was unwise I'm so impulsive ! I couldn't 
 have thought Mr. Colston could so misjudge me ! He's 
 so clever and accomplished, but a woman could never
 
 THE QUEST 143 
 
 repose in him the same faith as in you ! " Whereupon 
 she reposed very near his shoulder in a way which 
 certainly promised well for their friendship. But 
 more momentous developments yet were reserved for 
 the evening. 
 
 In a box opposite to them, Colston sat with the 
 Baroness de Chanzy, looking so markedly at Mrs. 
 Eversley as he talked that he was evidently discussing 
 her; and Mrs. Eversley struck Harding as a woman 
 acting under the effects of fear rather than love he re- 
 membered that Colston had once boasted of "knowing 
 her story." Mrs. Eversley finally begged Harding to 
 bring the poet to her during an entr'acte, and was so 
 upset by the interview that she asked to be taken 
 home before the end of the performance. Then, in the 
 cab, she broke into a hysterical passion of tears which, 
 dark as it was, caused such ravages in her youthful 
 beauty that he wondered if he would ever be pardoned 
 the revelation after she had looked at herself in a 
 glass. He made the best of the situation, however, by 
 taking her hand, and comforting her as best he might 
 he thought her groping for his hand, though it may have 
 been only for the powder box ; and then he made swift 
 farewells at the door so as neither to see too much 
 nor to keep her too long from consulting her glass and 
 seeing the worst for herself. 
 
 Next time he called, she showed no resentment, 
 but accepted him on a footing of intimacy; and while 
 her impossible blonde head had a droop which suggested 
 that it required a more substantial prop than the silk
 
 144 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 cushions of the little salon, she shed no more tears 
 doubtless her mirror's revelations of the havoc to her 
 would-be youth had dried them up permanently at 
 their fountain-source. Taking her hand, Harding 
 assured her of his friendship and sympathy in her 
 trouble with the poet and with Fernet ; and they agreed 
 that the privileged Percy was most unkind and 
 tyrannical with others. On Harding hinting that 
 perhaps it would be wise of her to try to forget him, 
 since, apparently, he intended to forget her, Mrs. 
 Eversley mournfully admitted that perhaps it was 
 better; and so, by degrees, " Percy " had dropped out 
 of their conversation as he had dropped out of Mrs. 
 Eversley's life. 
 
 What had passed between them on the night of the 
 Gage d" Amour premiere, Harding never learned; 
 yet he fancied that, in spite of Mrs. Eversley's break- 
 down in the carriage, the interview had somehow 
 dissipated the fears from which she had seemingly 
 suffered. He concluded these fears were no clearer 
 than any other points connected with their relations; 
 unless she apprehended that the poet would tell the 
 " odious " Baroness de Chanzy and others her " story," 
 whatever it might be. As to her tears, they were half 
 nerves, half tribute to a disappointed heart. 
 
 Harding had encountered Colston only once since 
 that night, when he would have passed him rather 
 coldly by, had not the other greeted him amiably 
 and chatted away quite as though no reason existed 
 for coolness. And indeed, Harding had none, beyond
 
 THE QUEST 145 
 
 chivalry towards Mrs. Eversley. Besides, he was in 
 debt to the other for suggesting material for his new 
 novel, which rather obliged him (he remembered the 
 next moment) to pause at least long enough to say that 
 he had definitely adopted the plot. The poet smiled rather 
 strangely, he thought, but magnificently brushed 
 aside Harding's expressions of indebtedness, to speak 
 of his own affairs. It seemed that he and Fernet had 
 had a definite break, and the cause lay not with Monica 
 Eversley the hope of gaining whom the sculptor had 
 resigned, according to her mother but with Buttercup 
 Baxter. Harding had seen by the Paris Herald that 
 she and her aunt were again at the Hotel de I'Athene'e. 
 It was about a bust of the young woman, Harding was 
 informed, and the result of the rupture was that 
 Colston had left his friend's apartment in the rue St. 
 Honore. 
 
 " You know I made Fernet, by posing for his 
 ' Youth/ he continued, " and I once thought he had 
 a future, but he's sadly fallen off. I got Buttercup 
 to sit for him, for I'm always thinking of others. But 
 when the bust was half done, I saw it would be a failure. 
 So I took her to Circour, a pupil of Rodin, who I knew 
 could touch off her American crudeness in a thoroughly 
 effective way. Fernet said it was outrageous of me. 
 I told him it wasn't half as outrageous as his bust of 
 Buttercup. As he wouldn't apologise for his behaviour, 
 I moved my things out next day. I refuse to be treated 
 unjustly." 
 
 " And where are you living now? " 
 
 L
 
 146 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Oh, with Circour, naturally," was the answer. " I 
 told him, as he caused the break, he owed me a home. 
 He's pretty hard up. But he has talent, and I'm already 
 making him the fashion." 
 
 Harding asked whether Buttercup had begun sing- 
 ing the Saga of the States. But it appeared that Miss 
 Zenobia had set her foot down. The poet had read her 
 ' The Song of Adam/ and almost shocked her into 
 apoplexy. 
 
 " She implied," continued Buttercup's saviour, 
 " that there was too much grass about the ' Leaves,' 
 and not enough fig. I was quite indignant with her. 
 When she called Whitman ' indecent,' I told her 
 there was nothing filthier than lucre, and if she could 
 face an American dollar, she needn't faint at ' The 
 Song of Adam.' She's really the most impossible 
 woman I ever met." 
 
 It appeared, however, that he had taken up the 
 Baxters all the same, which perhaps explained his 
 neglect of Mrs. Eversley. Harding saw their names 
 frequently in the paper as among those at various 
 fashionable entertainments, proving that Percy Colston 
 touted for Miss Baxter as diligently as he had for her 
 predecessor in his favour. Harding called once or twice 
 during the late autumn, but on finding them always 
 out, he resigned them to his rival. 
 
 His increasing intimacy with the Eversley s had, 
 indeed, something to do with the slighting of Buttercup 
 and her aunt Work on his book demanded most of
 
 THE QUEST 147 
 
 his hours, and what leisure he had, was pretty well 
 taken up in " being good " to Mrs. Eversley at first; 
 and in time he would, perhaps, have faltered in his 
 benevolence, had not his visits to the house thrown him 
 with her daughter. Monica had at first treated him 
 coolly, having apparently repented of her half-capitu- 
 lation in the Bois; and Harding felt that his intimacy 
 with her mother counted against him. It was part of 
 her general prejudice that took time to overcome. 
 But he overcame it in great measure, as the weeks 
 passed, by adapting his ideas to hers, by checking his 
 tendency to utter flippant cynicisms. Pique entered, 
 in a way, into his efforts to please her : her indifference 
 towards him both attracted and challenged ; and when 
 he actually gained her friendship, he felt that it was 
 a triumph over her natural antipathy. 
 
 Perhaps it would have been more difficult, had not 
 his novel helped to win her favour. Its healthy, 
 optimistic tone pleased her, as had his poems by their 
 lack of bitterness and morbid self-analysis. The book 
 had been going well, as a result of the publishers' 
 abundant advertisement. It figured as one of " the 
 best sellers," and the house had arranged with a 
 playwright for its dramatisation it was the moment 
 when popular novels got on the boards so that 
 Harding could look forward sanguinely to some 
 thousands of royalty at the beginning of the year. 
 This had all inspired him for work ; and he had another 
 manuscript ready to float in the wake of his first 
 
 L2
 
 148 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 success. The Labyrinth of Life, as he called his new 
 story, had almost seemed to write itself; and he had 
 put the finishing touches to it the previous week. He 
 had never done work so quickly and with so little 
 agonising over the style. 
 
 He had given Monica Eversley the manuscript to 
 read before sending it to the publisher this showed 
 where he had got in his relations with her. He knew 
 she had grown to like him through liking The Horns 
 of the Altar. After reading that first novel, she had 
 told him he misrepresented himself in conversation, 
 that he was not the discouraged, futile person he 
 claimed to be. He deprecated her assumption that 
 the optimistic tone of the story was his real self, his 
 pessimism about life a pose; and, indeed, there had 
 been many moments when, exhilarated by success 
 newly come to him, he was half persuaded it had been 
 a pose; but he saw that Monica Eversley did not 
 believe in his efforts to be honest with her. And desire 
 for honesty with her had grown in him, with the growth 
 of their friendship, until he resolved and he felt it one 
 of the crises of his life that he would make it an issue 
 between them: she should accept him pessimist as he 
 was, or not accept him at all. He knew that he 
 had a fundamental distrust of the reasonableness 
 and equity of things a lack of faith in himself, and in 
 his world and he could not, would not pretend to 
 any other opinion. Yet the loss of Monica Eversley's 
 respect and liking would be a heavy price to pay for
 
 THE QUEST 149 
 
 this honesty with himself and with her. It was all 
 part of his new intolerance towards compromise. 
 The Labyrinth of Life was his protest against hypocrisy 
 in literature, as his placing the manuscript in Monica 
 Eversley's hands to read, was his protest in friendship 
 or rather love, for he knew that he had come to 
 love her. Yet he had confidence that she would 
 accept him still, even thus altered in her eyes. She 
 was sincere, and would surely respect sincerity. 
 
 It was this reflection which sustained him as he 
 thought of the story; for it was a sheer contradiction 
 of the attitude towards life he had taken in The Horns 
 of the Altar. It was a tale of two lovers held apart 
 by a criminal shadow on the part of the woman's 
 family. Her grandmother had committed a crime, and 
 she had vowed herself to singleness rather than marry 
 and transmit to her offspring the stain perhaps 
 the vicious tendencies of ancestry. But, overcome 
 in the end by her lover's pleading and by the prompting 
 of her own heart, she marries. A child is born that 
 demonstrates the force of hereditary influence, and fate 
 brings tragic punishment to those who have broken 
 the tables of duty on the Mount Sinai of Science's 
 law. 
 
 He had effectively employed the element of Greek 
 fatality in the story, and he prided himself on having 
 written it without thought of popularity. In so much 
 had the lofty counsels of Percy Colston prevailed. 
 He hoped that Monica would, at all events, commend
 
 150 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 the art of the book, however much she might dis- 
 approve of the argument; and, after all, she had 
 boasted of her own ability to face unflinchingly the facts 
 of existence; and he had faced them himself, artisti- 
 cally, boldly, allowing all that belonged to the situation 
 in the story to claim the dues of ill heritage stalking 
 down the blood of a family, generation after genera- 
 tion. He had laboured to echo the choral wail of old 
 classic drama, remembering the despair of (Edipus, 
 as Mounet Sully had made it vital to him, the violent 
 solution of Jocasta to the tangle of horror in which 
 fate had involved her.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SNOW had fallen all Christmas day, its feathery flakes 
 dropping through the air like notes of a delicate 
 melody. But towards twilight it had ceased; and now 
 as Harding issued from his room, overhead in the clear 
 sky hung the bright moon. 
 
 Paris had never seemed to him so much an en- 
 chanted city as thus clothed in the silvery phantasy 
 of snow, with the fabulous light of the moon filtering 
 through the deep blue air. It called out a strange sort 
 of passion in him, the sense of love that had so long 
 lain unused in his heart. Harding had begun to feel 
 the lack of a big stimulus in his life, and it no longer 
 seemed enough that love should merely brush his 
 manhood in an abstract way. He wanted it to dominate 
 him, as the moon dominated the snowy night. 
 
 As he walked along the quay he played with new 
 thoughts of Monica Eversley, the only woman who 
 had come into his life with the appeal of a definite 
 personality. His sentimental moments with Mrs. 
 Eversley had meant nothing, though he had been 
 moved to take her small white hand and say things 
 to her he did not feel. Thinking of her daughter, 
 he recalled some of his first rather pursuing fancies 
 about her. One had been suggested by strolling 
 through the Salon where he had come on one of
 
 152 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Maxence's canvas, representing a woman clasped in 
 an ermine mantle, pensively straying by an Alpine 
 glacier, in her hand green crystals of ice that were 
 intended, no doubt, to symbolise a virginal heart and 
 pure dreams. He had the feeling that Monica Eversley 
 was like her, cold, unawakened to love, to the earthly 
 side of life. He had been tempted to awaken her, he 
 had succeeded in awakening himself. 
 
 Crossing the Pont de Solferino, he entered the 
 Tuileries Gardens, meaning when he reached the rue 
 de Rivoli to take a cab. He wanted to walk awhile 
 and breathe deep into his lungs the crisp, tonic night, 
 The snow-mantled solitude of the gardens was like 
 consecrated ground. It was a world of dreams, a place 
 pure with spiritual exaltation. Fallen snow masked 
 the earth and heroic marble shapes of statuary; 
 glittering icicles hung from the trees; it was all 
 exquisite as a landscape of sleep some white version 
 of the spell-bound domains of Armida, with its glacial 
 flowers, its shrouded trees, bright from the flooding 
 moonbeams on the frosted sward. What had been 
 familiar to him was transformed, wrought to symbols 
 of chastity befitting mystic purlieus where dwelt the 
 Dian-soul of winter. It was life untouched by taint 
 of experience, untrampled by care, virgin-white as the 
 untried. 
 
 He was dining at Neuilly, that night; only one 
 other guest was invited, Miss Fitzgerald, who was 
 stopping at the house. When he arrived, Mrs. Eversley 
 thanked him for the roses he had sent. She anyway had
 
 THE QUEST 153 
 
 preserved the sentimentality of their earlier relations, 
 if Harding had forgotten there ever had been senti- 
 mentality between them. . . . He never dignified it by 
 sentiment. She was full of her old smiling assurance. 
 Her " story " was seemingly still safe, and she went 
 about a great deal again, not, it was true, in the most 
 elect society, nor did so many of the artistic set Percy 
 Colston had gathered about her come now to the 
 house; Harding heard nothing about a " salon," nor 
 were there any "Wednesday dinners"; yet if she 
 suffered from this half eclipse of her former role as a 
 patroness of art, she made shift to conceal her bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 Harding was glad to meet Elsie Fitzgerald again. He 
 had not seen her since Mrs. Eversley's dinner the previous 
 spring, and he had pleasant recollections of her bright 
 talkativeness at the garden party. She told him that 
 she had been travelling with her father, and that his 
 health had prevented her going on with her work under 
 Marchesi. But she had taken it up again, and had, 
 that winter, been studying opera roles and hoped 
 eventually to obtain a Paris engagement. Harding 
 thought, with her clear Irish face and auburn hair, 
 what an attractive Isolde she would make. 
 
 After some moments, Monica entered the room. 
 Her stateliness was one of the things he admired in 
 her. She was only of medium height, but her carriage 
 gave the effect of greater stature. There was nothing 
 of her mother's pretty fragility in her strong, young 
 figure, that has just enough maturity to suit the serious
 
 154 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Madonna-like eyes. He could fancy her a Madonna of 
 the modern school, holding against her breast a child, 
 sober-eyed like herself. There was latent suggestion 
 of a beautiful maternity in her, Harding thought, 
 in spite of her cold manner. Her greyish eyes had the 
 attraction of something deep, even brooding, but they 
 were hard to-night, as she gave him her hand. Indeed, 
 the formality of her greeting surprised him, prepared 
 as he was for some possible manifestations of dis- 
 approval, born of reading his manuscript. It seemed to 
 thrust him brusquely back to the period of their 
 initial acquaintance. He had allowed for something 
 of this, yet it did not save him from being disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 It robbed him of the spirits with which he had come 
 in from the snowy night, preoccupied him, in spite of 
 himself, while at table, although he made an effort 
 to meet Miss Fitzgerald's gaieties, display the proper 
 amount of interest in Mrs. Eversley's affected little 
 speeches. It was a relief when dinner was over, and 
 they passed into the smoking-room. After a little, 
 Mrs. Eversley carried off Elsie Fitzgerald on the plea 
 that she wanted her to sing, leaving him and Monica 
 alone. It was what he had hoped might happen. He 
 wanted the opportunity to know how he stood with 
 Monica, what underlay her altered manner. 
 
 He had taken his stand before the fireplace, while 
 he stirred his coffee. The light from the wood fire 
 on the hearth cast sharp flickerings on the objects of 
 the room; the low bookcases, with their varied
 
 THE QUEST 155 
 
 surface of soberly bound volumes ; the pieces of Rouen 
 china, blue and white Moustir and Rodi, ranged along 
 the edge of the high dado. The bright shadows, leaping 
 here and there, fell on one of Miss Eversley's hands, as 
 it lay on her lap, staining it red . . . the beautiful 
 hand he had always admired. He recalled again, idly, 
 how he had found a resemblance between it and the 
 cast of the Marquise de Brinvillier's in Madame de 
 Kansa's waiting-room. He could fancy the latter's 
 reddened thus . . . the small, subtle hand so ingenious 
 in dealing death, as old pages of criminal history related. 
 On second thought, he rather wished he had never seen 
 the plaster model. 
 
 She sat on a divan under a portrait of her mother 
 painted by J. Blanche. It was a study in whites, and 
 cleverly suggested the original's trivial, self-satisfied 
 airs of chic. The contrast between Mrs. Eversley in 
 paint and her daughter in person below, serious, with 
 something half antagonistic in her attitude, made him 
 freshly sensible of the difference between the two. It 
 had demanded, he thought, a good deal of adapt- 
 ability to win the favour of both, as he had succeeded 
 in doing; at least, for a while, in the case of Miss 
 Eversley. But he could see he was not in favour now. 
 Her effort to be polite at table had passed with the 
 disappearance of her mother and Elsie Fitzgerald. 
 Displeasure if it was that sat rather well on her, 
 he confessed. She was handsomer than usual. Her 
 gown of green Liberty satin, of shifting shades and 
 simply made, suited her dark hair and harmonized
 
 156 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 with her eyes; not small and spiteful as such eyes often 
 were, but with a suggestion of chill in the depths; 
 they were like sea water under northern skies. 
 
 She left it to him to begin the conversation. Con- 
 straint due to her manner made him silent awhile, 
 during which Miss Fitzgerald's voice, wafted from the 
 salon, came to their ears. She was singing Senta's 
 ballad from the Flying Dutchman. 
 
 " How well Miss Fitzgerald sings," he remarked 
 finally. 
 
 " Yes; her voice has gained a great deal this last 
 year, though she has had to neglect it," Miss Eversley 
 answered. " Elsie is glad to be back in Paris, and quite 
 triumphant over having finally got her family to see 
 she was meant to be a singer. It is a pleasure to have her 
 here again." 
 
 " I should think it would be ... she is a charming 
 girl." 
 
 They were silent once more, and then, after a moment 
 or so, Monica rising, went to her escritoire and taking 
 from a drawer Harding's manuscript, handed it to him, 
 saying : 
 
 " Here is your story, Mr. Harding. I have finished 
 it." 
 
 He took it, wounded by the casual way in which 
 she returned it. 
 
 " I see," he said, " it hasn't pleased you. I'm sorry, 
 for I wanted it to, and I value your judgment. I wish 
 you'd tell me frankly how it strikes you." 
 
 " I'd much rather not discuss it."
 
 THE QUEST 157 
 
 " Really, I don't see why," he said, perplexed, 
 " and I had quite counted on you." 
 
 She regarded him haughtily for an instant, as though 
 his assurance surprised her. He had the odd impression 
 that she assumed some hidden design on his part in 
 giving her the manuscript. It confused him a little, 
 he did not know why ; for he had no reason for self- 
 consciousness about it, outside of the feelings he bore 
 her. 
 
 " You can't imagine it would be otherwise than 
 distasteful to me," she returned. " Unless . . ." 
 
 She checked the hasty tone in which she had begun. 
 But it was a reluctant half concession. 
 
 He flushed at her ungraciousness. " Of course," 
 he said stiffly, " I shan't insist. But I confess I am at 
 a loss to account for your feeling that way. You 
 expressed interest in the story, you remember, and 
 seemed willing enough to read it." 
 
 " You didn't tell me what it was about." 
 
 " I know I didn't, I thought it better you should 
 get your impressions from the plot properly clothed. 
 Besides, I haven't much skill at describing in brief. 
 Did it strike you as so disagreeable, then ? " 
 
 " What, did you think, Mr. Harding, that it could be 
 agreeable ? " 
 
 Her eyes were bright as she faced him, one hand 
 resting on the back of a chair. Her whole attitude 
 was so unexpected and inexplicable that he hardly 
 knew what to say. 
 
 " I thought, at all events, that it might interest
 
 158 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 you," he ventured. " That seemed the main thing. 
 About its being disagreeable or not ... I don't know 
 I put it that way to myself. It isn't a question one 
 especially considers, unless a story deals with things 
 outside the pales of what is ordinarily discussable 
 between people. And there isn't any such element in 
 mine. At least, I can't see it." 
 
 Her face changed a little under his hesitant per- 
 plexity ; it was obvious that he was sincere. 
 
 " Really," he went on, " your attitude rather 
 mystifies me. I don't mean your not liking the story, 
 but your way of taking it. I thought we were friends 
 friends in the sense you'd care to talk about my work 
 with me. Naturally, I expected frankness. You can 
 hit as hard as you want, you know. It isn't that, but 
 your wanting to say nothing, to refuse me the benefit 
 of criticism. Even if it doesn't interest you. . . ." 
 
 " I haven't said it doesn't interest me," she inter- 
 rupted, more herself. " Painful, disagreeable things 
 often do that. It's because I feel strongly about the 
 story, too strongly perhaps, that I don't care to discuss 
 it. Yet, after all, it may be better . . . since you don't 
 see may misinterpret," and her voice quickened to 
 pride again " my reasons. I'd like to ask you, though, 
 first, how you happened to choose this particular theme. 
 I remember you once told me you cared nothing for 
 scientific theses, that they didn't ' appeal to your 
 temperament ' was, I think, your phrase. Naturally, 
 I was rather surprised to find the story what it is." 
 
 " It's true, I never have much interested myself
 
 THE QUEST 159 
 
 in such things; and it was the dramatic rather than 
 the problematic element of heredity that tempted 
 me. I wanted to see if I couldn't make a scientific 
 thesis a bit less dreary artistically than most novelists 
 do. It wouldn't have occurred to me, though, I confess, 
 if I hadn't had a talk with Percy Colston last summer. 
 He, really, gave me the idea of the plot." 
 
 Her face, that had yielded a little, grew cold again. 
 " Ah, then it was deliberate!" 
 
 She stopped at his puzzled look, and half turned from 
 him, as if to conceal emotion. 
 
 Afterwards, he wondered why he had not better 
 understood; but he merely thought her displeased at 
 his putting himself under obligations to a man who had 
 abused her mother's confidence, and been the cause 
 of so much mortification to herself. 
 
 "I'm sorry if you think it was in bad taste," he 
 stammered. " I shouldn't have done it now, under the 
 circumstances of our friendship, for I know you dis- 
 like him, or rather don't respect him I don't suppose 
 you'd trouble to dislike him but I hadn't decided on 
 any plot for a new book, and he said it was an idea 
 which had come into his head, that he never wrote 
 stories; and after he suggested it, it took such hold 
 of me I felt as though I had to write it." 
 
 She had turned towards him as he spoke, and if 
 there was still a trace of emotion in her face, relief was 
 there, as if he had reinstated himself in her opinion, 
 to some degree, by his defence. 
 
 " Perhaps I have misjudged you," she said, after
 
 160 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 a moment. " That was not what I meant. It is not 
 my place to criticize you for taking advantage of Mr. 
 Colston's . . . ideas. It's not your taking them, it's 
 the spirit in which you use them. Have you no scruples 
 in treating a scientific theory ... for the sake of mere 
 dramatic suggestion ? " 
 
 Somehow, for all his resolve to be honest with her, 
 he hesitated over confessing that, in reading up for 
 his story, he had been won to believe or half believe 
 his heredity thesis; and he said instead: 
 
 " It's a plausible theory, anyway." 
 
 "And is it being 'plausible' enough? Have you 
 thought of the public effect of such a story as The 
 Labyrinth of Life? You must realise what harm it 
 can do." 
 
 Under her reproach, the tone of her voice, which 
 had the vibrating quality of suppressed feeling, he 
 experienced tenderness for her mixed with something 
 of a schoolboy's sense of guilt under his master's 
 eye. How could he disillusion her, as he had planned 
 that night, by telling her that the hard-won faith she 
 had in his character, as, apparently, it revealed itself 
 in his first book she liked, was misplaced, that the 
 manuscript he now held was more than a story ... it 
 was his true self? Her fingers still touched the chair- 
 back near her, and as his glance fell on their tapered 
 whiteness, he wondered what their caress was like. 
 Her hands seemed destined only to hurl thunderbolts 
 of condemnation at him. As they stood there, before 
 the fire, regarding each other, she seemed to him a
 
 THE QUEST 161 
 
 dark-browed young spirit guarding the sacred rights 
 of life he trampled in artistic wantonness. 
 
 " I speak strongly," she continued, after a pause, 
 which seemed offered him as means to justify himself, 
 " Because I can't understand how a man like you can 
 write like that. I thought you had more conscience 
 than to try to persuade people that hereditary instincts 
 are uncombatable, that people are powerless against 
 the taint of blood, the weaknesses handed down to 
 them. You ask me what I think of the story, so 
 conceived, flippantly, without pity or heart. What 
 do you suppose I think ? can help thinking of it ... 
 or of you ? " 
 
 She was severe with him, certainly, he said to him- 
 self, and he fancied she would be more so, if she knew 
 the truth. His impulse to be honest died within him 
 as he thought it was of no use. . . . He would lose her 
 through sincerity, as he had half lost her already. 
 
 " But what difference does it make whether I, Julian 
 Harding, personally believe or not a theory if that 
 theory has the endorsement of great scientists? " 
 he temporized lamely. 
 
 " But scientific works don't generally fall into the 
 hands of emotional, unthinking people," she returned. 
 " And you have deliberately aimed, it seems, to make 
 it all as bad as possible, for the sake of a ' dramatic ' 
 ending, I suppose. And has even science the right to 
 preach non-resistance? Why should one live at all, 
 if one can't conquer things in oneself, if one has to 
 succumb under an ancestral weight? " 
 
 M
 
 162 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Yet if some fall, others rise, on the evolutionary, 
 principle, you know. If it weren't for that, it would 
 be all pretty hopeless," he ventured, adding mentally, 
 " as it all really is." 
 
 " But I won't believe there isn't a chance for every- 
 body to rise," she exclaimed with feeling. " That's 
 what I used so to dislike in you, the feeling you pre- 
 tended to have about life. I know there is the principle 
 of right in the world, and there would be none if the 
 weak had no resort. A scientist who snatches away that 
 hope from people, commits a sin. It disappoints me, 
 that you should write such a book . . . after your other 
 book showed you in such a different and helping 
 light." 
 
 He was silent, hesitating under an impulse. He 
 knew that she verged on that reactionary moment 
 which comes after condemnation has been taken 
 humbly, as he had taken hers. Having been so harsh, 
 it would not be difficult for her to be kind. He was 
 tempted to tell her that she was right in thinking he 
 did himself injustice, that he had been led astray by 
 an artistic whim to misrepresent himself, that he did 
 not believe in heredity, that he was the more hopeful 
 teacher of his first book, not the bitter discouraged 
 philosopher of the pages she had so lately turned with 
 displeasure. But self-respect led him to confide to 
 her only the conclusion he reached. 
 
 " Well, you have convinced me of the mistake. I 
 hate disappointing you. ..." He saw she faltered a 
 little under his look. "I'll not publish^the story. I
 
 THE QUEST 163 
 
 promise you that, if only it will help to redeem me 
 in your opinion." 
 
 Faint colour touched her cheek. He had once before 
 seen it there, the day he had talked with her in the 
 Bois. It encouraged him, as some proof that her 
 severity sprang from regard for him. Something about 
 her made him feel she perhaps cared more than she 
 wished to show. 
 
 Having spoken, he made a little gesture, as though 
 to pitch the manuscript into the fire. 
 
 "No!" she cried, putting her hand arrestingly 
 on his arm. Alarmed protest was in her voice. 
 
 He hardly knew whether he really had intended to 
 cast it in the hearth where the flaming logs burned 
 brightly, like licking tongues hungry for food. It was 
 at least a genuine half-impulse; for he was stirred by 
 the sense of her love subtly responding to his own. 
 He was sensitive, too, to condemnation of his work, 
 and her words had left him robbed of pride in his 
 story. 
 
 Yet the touch of her hand on his arm almost seemed 
 to compensate. 
 
 " You don't want me to destroy it, then ? " he asked, 
 thinking how capricious her sex was. 
 
 " No, not like that as though you were doing it to 
 please me. It is too much a sacrifice to another's 
 opinion. If you destroy it, do it for your own sake. 
 Otherwise you will regret it." 
 
 " But you've convinced me I ought to. That it's 
 the only thing to do," he returned. " Your good 
 
 M2
 
 164 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 opinion matters more than a book more or less . . . 
 though a half-year's thrown away." He couldn't 
 help adding this, that she might appreciate the sacrifice. 
 " You told me, not kfng ago," he went on, " that I 
 seemed changed since you first knew me. If I am, you 
 must know why. You remember that day in the Bois 
 I told you I felt you were going to be an influence on 
 my life. You didn't believe me I don't know I 
 altogether believed myself. It was only instinct. 
 You drew me then, had been drawing me from the 
 first, though I didn't guess what our wrangles meant 
 really, how surface antagonism was attraction at heart. 
 And, well . . . you must see what it's grown to be with 
 me." 
 
 f ' I haven't wanted to see." 
 
 She did not say it falteringly, but she had turned a 
 little from him. It seemed a favourable sign that she 
 did not face his love-making as courageously as she had 
 their previous issues. 
 
 " Your friendship is all I've cared for." 
 
 " And you have cared about that, then ? Do you 
 think if only you had a little more confidence in me 
 that you'd care otherwise too? I'm not sure," he 
 went on boldly, " you don't already. I can't help 
 feeling that you do ... a little." 
 
 It was unwise; the colour again came to her cheek. 
 It was the stain of indignation, as though he had looked 
 rudely into her bosom. 
 
 " But you have no right to," she responded quickly. 
 "I've given you no cause. Surely one may step a
 
 THE QUEST 165 
 
 little out of one's reserve, be a friend to a man, without 
 such inference. I trusted, somehow, you understood 
 that . . . that I hate the thought of love," she ended 
 almost fiercely. She looked at him now, as though she 
 challenged him to find in her face any sign of it there. 
 
 " Hate it ... and why? " he asked. "You don't 
 mean that. " You can't mean it. It's nonsense. 
 Why should you not care for what all women care for 
 ... to love and be loved. And I need you, Monica. 
 You must see that, what a help you'd be in the life of 
 a man like me, who hasn't any particular standards. 
 It's what you've done for me that is almost like a 
 claim to what you can still do. You've started me 
 in the right direction. Surely, you ought to want to 
 keep me there." 
 
 " But I can't keep you there," she exclaimed, as 
 though struggling against the appeal that affected her 
 most. " Nobody can, but yourself. I've given you 
 my confidence in the character you malign. If that 
 can't help . . . nothing can." 
 
 He tried to take her hand. In his thoughts he often 
 named her " Monica of the White Hand." " It's not 
 your ethics, you know," he said with a conciliatory 
 tenderness, " it's you that counts. Think, Monica, 
 what you could call out in me." 
 
 " Don't ask me to make your life for you, Mr. Hard- 
 ing," and hearing her use the formal word, he wondered 
 if she was resisting him or herself. " It doesn't lie with 
 others . . . you know it. You think I matter, for the 
 moment. But I don't. And besides " he was
 
 166 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 touched by the dignity in her face, which she assumed, 
 he thought, from a realization that she appeared to be 
 leading him on " it's all useless. I never intend to 
 marry. Nobody, nothing would induce me to." 
 
 " I'm afraid," he said, with a smile that wasn't a 
 particularly brilliant effort, " that if men took the word 
 of every woman who said that, there wouldn't be many 
 marriages on earth . . . however many there may be in 
 heaven." 
 
 " You may believe me." 
 
 " Yes, as regards myself, no doubt," he answered a 
 little sarcastically, for while he hadn't given up hope, 
 something told him his suit was destined to come to 
 naught. " But how about others. Suppose the right 
 man comes . . . and, evidently, I'm not he." 
 
 She seemed to appreciate his pique and to wish to 
 soothe it. After all, she was more womanly than she 
 appeared. " I've told you that it has nothing to do 
 with you . . . with anybody." 
 
 " But your reasons ! Give me some fair plea for such 
 a feeling 1 " He hoped, because he wished to hope, 
 that he could make short work of them. 
 
 " My reasons concern myself," she answered; " and 
 I'd much rather you wouldn't speak any more of this. 
 In any case," she hesitated, a little, over it " I 
 should never marry you, Mr. Harding. I don't mean 
 it unkindly . . . but only to make you see I'm serious, 
 so you may dismiss the thought of me while it is, 
 perhaps, only an impulse. I mean," and she seemed 
 to wish that she might make herself quite clear, " that
 
 THE QUEST 167 
 
 whether I cared for you or not, it would be out of the 
 question. If you don't see why, some day you may." 
 
 He flushed, sensitively. " I confess, I don't," he 
 answered. " Unless the fault lies with my character." 
 
 " Your character has nothing to do with it," she said 
 gently. " There is a great deal in you that I like, 
 though you are always misrepresenting yourself. But 
 you have shown me what are your views about certain 
 things, and they make my refusal inevitable. I say 
 that really to spare your feelings, not to hurt them; 
 and to prove to you that you mustn't ever speak to me 
 in this way again." Her voice had dropped almost 
 into pleading. 
 
 He did not, however, stop to consider what she 
 meant, though vaguely he supposed she referred to 
 the heresies of his manuscript, which, it seemed to 
 him, she could now afford to forget. Surely, by his 
 promise to destroy the story, the poor ghost of his 
 " mistake " in writing the book needn't hang about 
 them, dispensing its death-damps. In fact, though he 
 didn't argue it out with himself, it gave him a feeling 
 that after all she was " serious " to the extent that 
 made her half the intellectual prude Percy Colston 
 accused her of being. He almost resented his vain 
 sacrifice, and he replied, in his impulse of chagrin: 
 
 " Then I suppose it is rather stupid to speak of 
 ' friendship ' either. When one leaves it for something 
 more, it's absurd to suppose one ever goes back to it. 
 One doesn't." 
 
 "I'm sorry you ever left it then, Mr. Harding." He
 
 168 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 saw that his air of finality about their relations grieved 
 her; her eyes showed some pain, and the proud 
 antagonistic woman who had treated him to a lecture 
 on the duties of authors to the public had subsided, 
 leaving her oddly young, faltering in spite of herself, 
 and certainly a woman that a man would like to kiss. 
 It was not the grand Miss Eversley who swept by in 
 regal skirts to crown the detested Percy Colston for 
 winning a mediaeval golden eglantine. It was a girl 
 who regretted that a man who had become her friend 
 was breaking with her under the delusion that love 
 could make either of them happy. 
 
 He softened under it, piqued as he was; though he 
 put out his hand formally. He really hoped by this 
 mark of farewell that she would, with the unexpected- 
 ness of woman which, after all a man expects treat 
 with him ere the parting was final. But she did not 
 waver, so he said: 
 
 " Monica, why must it be your answer ? I believe 
 you do care for me, though you won't say so. Isn't 
 there anything that will change you? " 
 
 " No, nothing," she answered briefly, though it 
 was not, in its tone, a hard answer. 
 
 " Very well, then," he replied. And with the memory 
 of the picture she made, standing, with saddened eyes, 
 by the fire, he left her.
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HARDING stood moodily at his window, watching the 
 watery light of a dull February afternoon fade from the 
 sky-line above the long black silhouette of the Palais 
 de Justice. 
 
 He was heartily tired of Paris, tired of its vulgar 
 winter weather that dampened his spirits, tired of the 
 futile life he had led the last two months. Literary 
 success had come to him, and he was taking it no better 
 than his former failures. Indeed, he sometimes 
 wondered if success wasn't the worst failure of all. In 
 a way, he would have liked to think sometimes did 
 think that Monica Eversley's rejection of him was the 
 cause of his discontent with himself and the world. 
 But that feeling was only the surface conviction of 
 moments. His gloomy humour, in analysing himself, 
 could not credit the despairing lover; and he asked 
 himself if his grievance wasn't less a blighted heart 
 than wounded vanity pique at not succeeding any 
 better than Nicolls and Fernet. Whatever the reason, 
 the thought of Monica Eversley continued to dominate 
 him the more desirable, perhaps, because unattainable. 
 Often he criticized her resentfully, ridiculed his folly 
 hi proposing to her; and with it was the regret that 
 he had forfeited self-respect in adopting such a tone 
 with her, that Christmas night. It had been in the hope
 
 170 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 of winning her; and having failed, he would like to be 
 able to reflect that, at least, he had been honest with 
 her, stood, so to say, by his philosophic guns. He had not 
 seen her since, although he had left cards at the house 
 several times when he knew that both she and her 
 mother would be out; for he preferred that Mrs. Eversley 
 should not suspect his relations with her daughter 
 were broken off. He supposed she would eventually 
 find a new shoulder to lean on. Percy Colston alleged 
 that she was given to discussing her daughter's little 
 love affairs; Harding did not want 'to be quoted as 
 the last chapter. There were times when he would 
 have liked to fall back on the old friendly footing 
 with Monica, for he did not believe that many men took 
 rejections as tragically as they protested. But he had 
 committed himself to an attitude, and pride, if not 
 sentiment, held him to it. And it had, at least, the 
 virtue of dignity. He did not want Monica to think, 
 any more than he wished to think himself, that his 
 feelings for her were trivial. 
 
 He had not taken up any new literary work. There 
 was, as yet, no particular need of having another book 
 ready, for The Horns of the Altar was still selling well. 
 His royalties, the first of the year, had been gratify- 
 ingly large ; and in the flush of easier circumstances he 
 had unaccustomed to a full pocket let himself 
 go a good deal, in taking the pleasures Paris afforded. 
 Reaction from late nights had added to his bad spirits, 
 for he was not strong, and he had inherited a touch of 
 neurasthenia from his father, a man of irritable nerves
 
 THE QUEST 171 
 
 and disposed to melancholy like himself. It had only 
 been by exercising care over his health that he had 
 borne the strain of New York life; his constitution 
 had never quite recovered from the physical breakdown 
 of his first youth. 
 
 It was with a feeling of boredom that he turned from 
 the dreary prospects outside, and picked up a volume 
 lying on the table. It was De Musset's Poesies 
 Nouvelles, which had lately come from the binder's a 
 picturesque old shop behind St. Eustache that he had 
 unearthed in roaming about Paris. Glancing over its 
 pages he came on the tale of Rolla thinly disguised 
 figure of De Musset himself who, seeker after the 
 life of the heart, preferred the prodigal brief career to 
 a long one of ennui and prudence. Why not, Harding 
 mused, follow that hero's example ? 
 
 // prit trois bourses d'or, et durant trots annees, 
 II vecut au soleil sans se douter des lois. 
 
 He had his little capital his " three purses " and 
 it would allow him to wander where he would, far from 
 cities, civilization, for which, he thought dispiritedly, 
 he was temperamentally unfit. What had he ever got 
 out of it really ? 
 
 He had travelled so little. The one momentous 
 experience had been his half-year in South America. 
 Nothing he had seen since had approached those early 
 vivid impressions: the sun-steeped landscapes, the 
 billowy green savannahs; the palm forests lifting royal 
 crowns; the flight of parakeets across the twilight- 
 reddened heavens, the enchanted nights of flooding
 
 172 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 moonlight so bright it awoke the hubbub of birds mis- 
 taking it for dawn. He remembered how the odour of 
 jasmine had filled his bedroom where, through the open 
 door, bats and huge moths entered, beating against the 
 netting of his couch like evil dreams. Why had he left 
 such freedom for the tiresome, grinding life of cities, for 
 the mockery of art ambition ? How little did literary 
 success mean to him. He was tired of it already. He 
 wondered if many writers cared as much for their 
 profession as they pretended. He had encountered no 
 few who confessed to its weary strain, who doubtless 
 would have been glad to escape if they could from such 
 a life of mean rewards. 
 
 It was long after his usual hour for dining; and he 
 left his lodgings, turning his steps towards the bright 
 Boulevards, its throngs and brasseries, with their music 
 and bustle. He was sick of that cheap side of Paris 
 life, but it was better than brooding in his room. 
 
 He had got as far as the Place Roy ale before he realized 
 it was Mardi Gras. Traffic had been suspended in the 
 main down-town avenues, so that out-door celebra- 
 tion of the death of Carnival might be pursued without 
 bar. The Boulevards were already thick underfoot 
 with confetti, and the crowd was keyed up to mad 
 merriment. Camelots vended, in shrill voice, bags of 
 parti-coloured missiles and masks; and the brimming 
 stream of pedestrians, some in domino and fancy dress, 
 were engaged in animated warfare. Harding was 
 facetiously greeted, as he made his way along, from 
 time to time receiving a fusillade of confetti in full face.
 
 THE QUEST 173 
 
 But he was in no mood to respond, and it all struck him 
 morosely, as some Dance of Death that mocked at his 
 loneliness and depression. He almost regretted that 
 he had come abroad. 
 
 A fine rain began to fall, and the Boulevards were 
 quickly deserted for various refuges. Harding found 
 himself near a restaurant, and entered it, at random, to 
 get his belated dinner. 
 
 The drizzle was over when he came out; and a chill 
 wind blew in the street. Turning up his coat collar, he 
 strolled as far as the Place de l'Op6ra, where he paused, 
 debating whether or not he should go back to his room. 
 
 The OpeYa was ablaze with light, announcing one of 
 its periodical masked balls. Harding had never 
 attended any of these, and he yielded to curiosity to see 
 a spectacle that had lost much of its old prestige for 
 abandoned mummery. Buying a ticket at the bureau, 
 with its row of black-garbed officials, looking like 
 judges convened to pass sentence on human folly, he 
 mounted the great marble staircase to the couloirs 
 giving on the parquet, cleared of seats to accommodate 
 the dancers. It was after midnight, and the rout was 
 getting into full swing. Newcomers like himself were 
 pouring in, the majority in evening dress, some in 
 domino. The music sent deafening ripples over the 
 ebullition of human voices. Wedging his way through 
 the crowd Harding found a place whence he secured a 
 general view of the house. 
 
 The battle that earlier had animated the Boulevards, 
 was being waged here with greater verve; coloured
 
 174 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 paper discs rained through the air and lay in heaps 
 underfoot; shooting stars, trailing long ribbons, shot 
 from the boxes and gave the pit the appearance of a 
 huge, glittering spider web, among the meshes of which 
 the dancers struggled like bright-winged insects. 
 Quadrilles were in progress and Harding gazed at the 
 phantasy of costume that picked out in warm hues the 
 black, shifting mass. There were the usual parti- 
 coloured figures in tights, the Pierrots and Columbines, 
 mignons of Henri II, that flirted with Watteau shep- 
 herdesses and goddesses of liberty; musketeers in false 
 noses, that capered with the sorceresses and vivandieres, 
 ogling caricatured notabilities of the day. Mixed with 
 these were the conventionally dominoed contingent, 
 dancers in ordinary dress, foreign adventurers, vieux 
 marcheurs, provincial sports arm in arm with farded 
 mistresses ... a veritable Masque of Comus, where 
 gaiety expressed itself in high kicking, shrill jest, and 
 breathless laughter. 
 
 When the quadrille was over, Harding joined the 
 others circulating about the floor. He strayed idly, 
 glancing up at the boxes occupied by demi-mondaines, 
 rich shopkeepers, foreigners, and others who preferred 
 to be mere spectators. 
 
 As he passed one of the boxes, he received in his 
 face a fusillade of confetti. It was followed by a high- 
 keyed laugh that seemed familiar. When he had 
 sufficiently cleared his vision, he beheld Percy Colston 
 leaning towards the pit and signalling. Behind him 
 were two women in masks and black silk dominoes.
 
 THE QUEST 175 
 
 " Come up and join us," the poet hailed. " The 
 Baxters are with me, studying half-world, fleshings 
 and would-be devilry. We watched you straying 
 about and couldn't make up our minds whether you've 
 attended the ball as a Watts' Hymn or as Alaster, 
 Weary of his Solitude." 
 
 His companions seconded the invitation by beckon- 
 ings, and rather reluctantly, Harding made his way into 
 the box. 
 
 " Well now," remarked Miss Zenobia, as she shook 
 hands, " isn't this real nice! We were talking of you 
 only yesterday and wondering if you'd clean forgotten 
 us? I don't know as I'd a let you find me at such a 
 gay place as this, if it wasn't you're a stranger, these 
 days. I haven't congratulated you yet about your 
 book. Many happy returns of the day! Why, they 
 say it's been selling like hot cakes in America, so I 
 guess you're quite set up! " 
 
 Buttercup, who had taken off her mask to fan her- 
 self with it, made a grimace at her aunt's homely 
 similitude. Harding had the feeling that she fancied 
 herself evolved beyond such phraseology. She was less 
 florid in looks and was already fulfilling her promise 
 of being handsomer. Had the poet then not succeeded 
 in keeping her crude? 
 
 " Yes," she supplemented, "he's quite dropped old 
 friends. But we all know why." And she smiled 
 significantly, with reproach in her eyes. 
 
 " Yes, Buttercup and I have bet as to who is to get the 
 apple out at Neuilly," the poet contributed languidly.
 
 176 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " I say it's the mother, and she holds it's the daughter. 
 Which is it Venus or Minerva? I wish you'd tell 
 us, for we're both dying to know." 
 
 " Leave him alone, Percy ! " said Buttercup gaily. 
 " I didn't have him come up here to be made sport of. 
 He's going to give me a dance, aren't you, Mr Harding ? 
 Percy says it isn't comme il faut, but I don't care 
 whether it is or not. I'm crazy for a waltz. There, 
 that's the ' Valse Bleue ' now . . . it's such a dream ! 
 Here, Percy, put on my mask, if you're afraid your 
 friends will see you." 
 
 " There are none of them here, I assure you," the 
 poet returned, affecting to stifle a yawn. " Nobody 
 comes to the Opera ball any more. It went out of 
 fashion years ago. The managers have to hire male 
 supers to try to give it life. As you see, it's dying of 
 low-class respectability. It took our grandmothers 
 to give it spice." 
 
 " I know the kind my grandmother would give it," 
 Miss Zenobia commented. " And that's cayenne. 
 She had plenty on her tongue, I can tell you, when 
 she didn't take to other folk's doings. But all the same, 
 go dance with Mr. Harding, Buttercup, if you want 
 to. Now we're in Paris, you might as well take in 
 everything going. Percy here forgets girls will be 
 girls " 
 
 " When they won't be boys," the poet finished, 
 pointing out a fluffy-headed nymph that skipped by 
 dressed en garfon. " You'd better take a turn your-
 
 THE QUEST 177 
 
 self, Miss Zenobia. It will save you the expense of 
 going back to Marienbad this summer." 
 
 " Don't you be pert ! " replied that lady, with a 
 flush of ire. "I'd rather see a torn-boy than a Miss 
 Nancy, any day." 
 
 Buttercup laughed, as she and Harding left the 
 box. " Aunt Zenobia is a match for Percy," she said, 
 carelessly. " They're always at it. But you look as if 
 you had the blues," she added, pausing to regard him. 
 " Perhaps you don't feel up to a waltz ? " 
 
 " On the contrary, I think it will be great sport," 
 he returned, summoning a mood more suited to her 
 gaiety. " Especially with you," he supplemented as an 
 after- thought. 
 
 She had put on her mask again, so he did not see the 
 slight increase of her hardy bloom, as she answered: 
 " You're improving. You didn't use to be much at 
 compliments. Has Mrs. Eversley been taking you in 
 hand?" 
 
 " Suppose we drop the Eversley subject," he said, 
 rather stiffly. " This is the way to the floor, I 
 believe." 
 
 Buttercup danced well, and Harding, taking fire 
 from her excited relish, enjoyed the rather jostled waltz. 
 A looping tress of his partner's hair, blown from the 
 rich mass crowning her head, kept tantalizingly 
 brushing his cheek, as he guided her round the floor. 
 The contact with her healthy, vibrant youth stirred 
 his pulse, and he was strongly tempted to kiss her 
 
 N
 
 178 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 under cover of the general revelry. But before he could 
 put the impulse into effect, the music stopped with a 
 crashing chord. Buttercup broke in to one of her ready 
 laughs as they turned towards the corridor. 
 
 " Well, this is old times," she said gaily. " You 
 remember the night of the Captain's dinner, on board 
 the Kdnigen Luise, how we danced together all evening 
 . . . They joked us about being ' engaged.' Let's find 
 the buffet and see if there's such a thing in Paris as a 
 glass of water. Isn't it warm." 
 
 They discovered the refreshment bar. Harding got 
 his companion a glass of iced champagne, and then 
 they sought seats. Buttercup, as she assuaged her 
 thirst, continued to talk animatedly of their golden 
 yesterdays. Her air seemed to anticipate confident 
 to-morrows together, as outcome of this pleasant 
 evening's intimacy. 
 
 She hadn't changed much, after all, he thought, 
 under Percy Colston's tutelage. The more sophisticated 
 manner with which she had greeted him, seemed to 
 slip away as she chatted on with the old spontaneity. 
 There was something decidedly attractive about her. 
 If they had married, there would have been, of course, 
 mental variance, but there would, also, have been 
 healthy everyday enthusiasms on her side, that, perhaps, 
 would have won him from his pessimist glooms more 
 effectively than Monica Eversley's insistent moral 
 standards. And florid, crude, over-accentuated as she 
 was still, she didn't lack intelligence and adaptability,
 
 THE QUEST 179 
 
 and time would tone her down to pass muster in the 
 social world. She was the kind of girl that even the 
 critical would learn to take by mere force of the way 
 in which she took herself. If he had asked her to marry 
 him, the night he had dined at the Athen6e, would 
 it have been the mistake he thought ? 
 
 " Do you "know," she was saying, " I've often 
 wished you'd gone on that motor trip with us." 
 
 " Yes, I'm sorry I didn't," he said. " But I couldn't 
 manage it." 
 
 The admission, or, perhaps, the shade of regret in his 
 voice as he said it, seemed to fan the remembered 
 rancour to something like a flame. 
 
 " It was horrid of you not to," she said. " And 
 you've been horrid ever since. Were you put out 
 because I asked Percy Colston instead ? I don't believe 
 you like him much. He says you've dropped him." 
 
 " I never particularly took him up," Harding 
 answered. " And it's a case, I should say, of his 
 dropping me. Of course, I wasn't put out by your 
 asking him. Why should I have been? And as for 
 acting ' horridly,' I'm sure I haven't meant to." 
 
 " I don't know what you call it, then," she returned, 
 giving him a sentimental glance. " But, then, I never 
 have known what you meant by anything. Poets 
 aren't like other people." 
 
 " Don't, please, call me that," he said. " I leave 
 poetry to Percy Colston." 
 
 " You leave a good deal to him, it seems to me," she 
 returned significantly. 
 
 N2
 
 i8o THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Do I ? " His momentary feeling about her had 
 passed away, and the conversation began to bore him. 
 Harding preferred to do his own courting. 
 
 At the unenthusiastic response, a piqued flush 
 mounted to her cheek, half concealed by her mask. He 
 saw just enough of the flush to know there was more. 
 
 " You needn't have been so snappy about the Evers- 
 leys," she said with abrupt irrelevance. His stiffness 
 when they left the box had evidently been marked, 
 though she resented it so tardily. " I didn't say any- 
 thing against them, did I ? " 
 
 " No; but I didn't like what Percy Colston said." 
 
 She laughed unpleasantly. 
 
 " I should think they'd be accustomed to being dis- 
 cussed by this time," she said. " At least, there was 
 enough talk about the grandmother to last for several 
 generations. So I hardly wonder you are touchy. 
 Aunt remembers all about the famous Perdoe trial, only 
 she'd forgotten the name of the Englishman the Perdoe 
 woman's daughter married. I think I'd better go 
 back to the box now. . . . They'll be wondering what's 
 become of me." She got up, then hesitated, aware of 
 the alienating effect of her speech. " I shouldn't have 
 told you," she said in awkward half-apology, " if you 
 hadn't made me mad, praising them so." 
 
 He did not reply, and perhaps from his air she 
 guessed the truth; that something more than friendship 
 towards the Eversleys towards the daughter, at least 
 had made him difficult over her criticism in the box. 
 The realization may have stung her heart, at any rate
 
 THE QUEST 181 
 
 it disposed of her repentance. She regarded him, 
 facing her, stiffly displeased, thinking how ill-natured 
 she was, understanding her too well, it might be; and 
 she added, in a forcedly careless voice : 
 
 " I had to get it out of my system. After all, it was 
 only paying you back for the way you talked of Percy 
 Colston. I am engaged to him, you know." 
 
 Somehow he got the impression that the statement 
 anticipated fact. Her manner suggested she had 
 come to the decision while she stood there. She was 
 not engaged to him, but she had made up her mind to 
 be. 
 
 He had recovered himself. " Indeed ? " he returned. 
 " I offer you my heartiest congratulations, Miss Baxter. 
 No doubt, if you have Percy Colston in your system, 
 that explains your wanting to get a good many things 
 out of it. There's a limit to what one system can 
 bear." And he bowed sarcastically. 
 
 She stared with startled eyes of offence, then rather 
 tempestuously turned towards the box. Harding fol- 
 lowed her in silence as far as the door, reflecting he had 
 been inexcusably rude. 
 
 On reaching home, he found a note that had arrived 
 by the late post. It was from Miss Vanderhurst. " I'm 
 in Paris for a few days on my way to Rome," she wrote. 
 " Come to my hotel to-morrow at four, and we'll go to 
 Colombin's for tea."
 
 182 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HARDING hailed Miss Vanderhurst's timely reappear- 
 ance in Paris. It seemed quite providential she should 
 turn up just then; for, of course, she could, and would, 
 no doubt, tell him what he wanted to know. He 
 would talk quite frankly to her about the Eversleys, and 
 what Buttercup affirmed. Buttercup, he said to him- 
 self, had inherited some of the cayenne that Miss Zeno- 
 bia attributed to her grandmother's tongue. He 
 rather wondered at that lady's apparent knowledge of 
 such an ancestor; but, if she wasn't mythical, it only 
 went to prove that groceries had been in the family 
 some generations. 
 
 " So you've become famous since I saw you," was 
 Miss Vanderhurst's greeting, when he called on her 
 next day. " I knew you'd wake up to it, sooner or 
 later. I was charmed with The Horns of the Altar, as I 
 wrote you. But," inspecting him, " you're not look- 
 ing well." 
 
 " I can't say the same of you," he returned gallantly. 
 " I don't know when I've seen you more blooming." 
 
 " Well, if I'm blooming, it must be century-plant 
 bloom," was her dry reply, blooming still more at the 
 compliment. " But tell me, what's wrong with you ? 
 Is it that troublesome temperament still? Or have
 
 THE QUEST 183 
 
 you been over- working ; for I suppose the publishers 
 are demanding more stories of you." 
 
 " No; I haven't been writing anything. I've been 
 trying to amuse myself, and I find it overworks one far 
 more than novels." 
 
 " So that's how you take your good fortune," she 
 chided. " I'm ashamed of you. Don't get bored. 
 Life ought never to bore." 
 
 " It's not life that bores me. It's myself. 
 
 " Then don't have any self. Exist for other people. 
 I thought that now you'd be existing for Miss Butter- 
 cup Baxter. In anticipation of it I've religiously drunk 
 nothing but ' Surpassing Ceylon ' since I saw you. 
 Don't tell me you've quarrelled with your heiress." 
 
 " She never was my heiress. She's Percy Colston's 
 heiress now, as it happens. At least, for the time being. 
 She's just announced her engagement to him." 
 
 " It's a broken heart, then ? I hope you've saved 
 the pieces. There's always some one ready, you know, 
 to mend that interesting organ when the owner's young 
 and celebrated. I shall have to cheer you up, I see. 
 What shall we do for the few days I'm here ? I think 
 I'd like to go to the Louvre. It's years since I've seen 
 the ' Flying Victory '[and the ' Virgin of the Rocks.' We'll 
 lunch on duck at the Tour d' Argent, go to one of those 
 queer students' balls, do all the things people do 
 when they first come to Paris. We'll drink Lipton's 
 tea instead of Surpassing Ceylon . . . and forget the 
 Baxters." 
 
 " I never particularly remembered them," he said
 
 184 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 insincerely. " My interest in them existed mostly in 
 your imagination. It's the old complaint, if anything's 
 wrong. You know I always held that I had no talent 
 for life." 
 
 " My dear boy," she remonstrated, giving his hand 
 a pat, " don't be so in love with your Byronnic gloom. 
 It's gone out of fashion with soft collars and loose 
 ties that were the most picturesque part of it. Nothing 
 is wrong with yourself or the world. When something 
 does go wrong with you, you'll recognise the need of 
 being happy. I resolved long ago I would be happy . . . 
 and I have been, as the result. It's mostly a matter of 
 resolve. I wish you would follow my example. The 
 Eversleys," she said, with the discretion of one who 
 knows when to change a topic, " tell me they see little 
 of you now. Lena's so fond of you, Mr. Harding. She 
 says you've been quite lovely to her, as I knew you'd 
 be." 
 
 " She's been lovely to me." 
 
 " Poor Lena ! Did you know she met with a motor 
 accident, the other day? She had quite a shock from 
 the collision, and the doctor has kept her in a darkened 
 room ever since. He fears trouble for her eyes." 
 
 " I'm sorry No, I hadn't heard." 
 
 He was silent, hesitating how to begin. 
 
 " There's something you can do for me, Miss Vander- 
 hurst, if you will," he said soberly. 
 
 " You know, I'll be only too glad." 
 
 " Well, it's in regard to Monica Eversley, then.
 
 THE QUEST 185 
 
 And I'd better begin by telling you I proposed to her 
 and she wouldn't have me." 
 
 " Then the trouble is specific, after all ? I'm sorry, 
 Mr. Harding." She was still a moment, considering 
 him. " In a way I'm surprised that Monica has so 
 appealed to you. You're sure she really does ? " 
 
 "When I tell you I proposed to her? " he said, 
 in rather injured tones. " I admit we weren't very 
 sympathetic at first. In fact, we began by half dis- 
 liking each other. I conquered her antipathy finally . . . 
 and thought I'd conquered her. It all came about, 
 I suppose, from the feeling of some common need, 
 though she won't concede she has any need of me." 
 
 " As to proposing to her, Mr. Harding," Miss Vander- 
 hurst returned a bit dryly, " I don't know that that 
 proves anything. I've seen a good deal of men, and 
 it seems to me they reach stages when they're apt 
 to propose to women at random. You say you think 
 Monica ' needs you.' Now, I have my doubts. I 
 question if she has need of anybody. She is very inde- 
 pendent and self reliant. I've often been struck with 
 that, and, in a way, it rather offends my old-fashioned 
 notions of women being the weaker vessel. You 
 know I'm not the new sort of woman . . . I've lived too 
 long to try to be new in anything. And Monica appears 
 to me very distinctly to belong to the period that pro- 
 duced her." 
 
 " I know she seems all you say," he agreed. " Yet 
 have you ever thought that it may all be the surface,
 
 186 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 merely a shield ? I've always been struck with some- 
 thing unnatural in her attitude towards people, as 
 though she were governed by some warped idea about 
 herself. She professes she doesn't want to marry. 
 And I don't think it comes from a sense of superiority 
 the new woman kind of stand towards men but as 
 if she recognised some bar to marrying. Do you know 
 any reason why she should feel so? " 
 
 The question showed that he had been thinking a 
 good many things out for himself. 
 
 " Be more explicit, Mr. Harding, and then I can 
 answer you, perhaps," Miss Vanderhurst returned, 
 non-committally. 
 
 "Well, then," he said, " I'll put it this way. Is there 
 any shadow on her family, any blot on the Eversley 
 escutcheon, so to speak, something of that sort, to 
 account for her morbidity I can't help thinking it 
 that about not marrying." 
 
 " You've heard gossip about them ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have," he acknowledged frankly, " and I 
 want you to tell me what you know. The truth about 
 it. That is, if you don't mind." 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst moved her wrinkled, white hands 
 impatiently. " I'm sorry, Mr. Harding," she said. 
 " It's such a pity to rake up what's past and over. 
 Besides, the Eversleys are dear friends of mine. Yet, 
 since the old scandal appears to have cropped up and 
 you tell me how you feel towards Monica, it's best, 
 I suppose, you should know."
 
 THE QUEST 187 
 
 " Then, it's true that Miss Eversley's grandmother 
 
 ri 
 
 " Yes, she was Mrs. Perdoe. You remember the 
 case, I fancy. I don't suppose a more sensational 
 criminal trial ever stirred New York society . . . when 
 New York had society. It happened about thirty years 
 ago, before we'd become callous about such things. I 
 must say it was very hard on Lena. She was a beauti- 
 ful girl you can imagine what she must have been 
 from what she still is and was just about to come out. 
 Of course, it finished all that. Mrs. Perdoe enjoyed the 
 privileges of the best old Knickerbocker circles, and 
 was a brilliant, worldly woman. A marriage had been 
 arranged between Lena and a young man of prominent 
 family, and the match was broken off, naturally. It 
 was a good deal later that she met Colonel Eversley of 
 England. He fell in love with her at first sight, and on 
 his death a year after the marriage Lena came 
 abroad with her baby. At first she lived in rather 
 out-of-the-way places, for the scandal followed her, as 
 scandals will; but, at last, getting tired of roaming, she 
 settled here in Paris." 
 
 Harding, a little impatient over Miss Vanderhurst's 
 rambling way of telling the story, interrupted her to 
 ask: 
 
 " And do you think Miss Eversley knows about her 
 grandmother? " 
 
 " I've always assumed she didn't," was the answer. 
 " Her mother, I know, has tried to save her the know-
 
 i88 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 ledge. Yet she may know. Monica is strange in many 
 ways, and not at all given to confidences. Lena, I am 
 convinced, believes her ignorant, and doubtless her 
 daughter would be inclined to encourage the idea. 
 I'm sorry there is not more congeniality between them. 
 ... It would have helped Lena to face the world. Lena 
 behaved very bravely during the trial. She stood by 
 her mother most faithfully, even staying with her in her 
 cell. It is the courage she showed then, as a mere girl, 
 that makes me love her so much and forgive her her 
 little vanities and passion to seem young. Life began 
 so ill for her, you see; she never had a chance when she 
 was really youthful." 
 
 '' But were circumstances so against Mrs. Perdoe ? " 
 " My dear boy," was the answer, " what have ' facts ' 
 to do with such things. You know when people are 
 placed in certain positions the damage is practically 
 done, and no amount of exculpation, no proofs of inno- 
 cence, ever much help. And the evidence was certainly 
 terribly against Mrs. Perdoe . . . though the jury 
 acquitted her. Indeed, few, besides Lena herself, 
 believed her guiltless. 
 
 " Mrs. Perdoe," she continued, coming to the story 
 at last, " had been left a considerable fortune by her 
 husband, but she was extravagant, and her affairs were 
 in rather a tangle when an old business friend of the 
 family, a Mr. John Adams a most courtly, delightful 
 man, by the way died at her home. He lived in 
 Boston and had come to New York to see Mrs. Perdoe 
 about the payment of a large sum of money he lent her.
 
 THE QUEST 189 
 
 He was sixty about, apparently in good health up to 
 the time of his visit. It was warm weather, and Mrs. 
 Perdoe gave him some lemonade, after which he was 
 taken violently ill. There were several people staying 
 at the house, and there was a good deal of testimony. 
 Mrs. Perdoe insisted, as was natural enough, on being 
 Mr. Adams's nurse ; and it was she alone who adminis- 
 tered the medicine. Instead of getting better, Mr. 
 Adams grew worse and finally died. A post-mortem 
 examination discovered in his stomach at least twenty 
 grains of tartar emetic. Mrs. Perdoe's explanation 
 was that she was in the habit of using this for plasters. 
 . . . Her chest was delicate. It developed that the 
 bottle of medicine left by the physician was over- 
 turned, and Mrs. Perdoe, in sending a servant to have 
 the prescription refilled, ordered, at the same time, 
 more tartar emetic of the apothecary. It may have 
 been that no tartar emetic was given Mr. Adams, 
 except in the lemonade, and it might well have been 
 that Mrs. Perdoe mistook what she previously had 
 for sugar; although the paroxysms of vomiting con- 
 tinued. It is one of the questions about which the 
 doctors and the lawyers disagreed. I trust it was 
 an accident. Certainly one has no right to assume 
 the contrary in face of the verdict of the jury that 
 freed her. Yet," she ended slowly, " public senti- 
 ment was always against her." 
 
 " And do you think her guilty, Miss Vanderhurst ? " 
 
 " I have never wanted to ask myself the question," 
 
 was the rather chill reply. " It makes no difference
 
 igo THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 it never made any difference in regard to my 
 friendship for Lena. My sympathies were all for her, 
 and I did what lay in my power it was little enough 
 to make her lot brighter. I simply tell you the 
 facts as I remember them; and I leave it to you to 
 decide whether or not you still wish to marry one 
 whose family history is, to say the least, un- 
 fortunate." 
 
 " But I'm not thinking of that," Harding answered. 
 " The Eversleys' past history is nothing to me. I 
 haven't asked you, Miss Vanderhurst, to tell me the 
 story for any such reason; I want only to get at possible 
 explanations for Miss Eversley's rejection of me . . . 
 why, seemingly, she doesn't want to marry at all. 
 What you say casts a new light on her treatment of me. 
 If she is aware of her grandmother's case, then it is 
 easy to understand that pride would have made her 
 refuse me. The night I proposed to her she had just 
 read the manuscript of a new novel of mine, in which 
 I used a situation suggested by Percy Colston I see 
 now he must have known of the Perdoe trial that 
 rather resembles Miss Eversley's own. It was a study 
 in hereditary influences, and I confess I drew pretty 
 gloomy conclusions. Of course, she couldn't think I 
 modelled the plot on her grandmother's case, aware 
 that it was her case; and, indeed, I so changed things, 
 had so few facts to go on, it can scarcely be called 
 her grandmother's story. Yet it was most unfortunate, 
 and I don't wonder she refused to listen to me, under 
 the circumstances. There's no way now I can efface
 
 THE QUEST 191 
 
 the blunder, I fear, unless, Miss Vanderhurst, you'll 
 help me by acting as intermediary." 
 
 The spinster was pensive. " I don't know, Mr. 
 Harding, that I want to be an intermediary. Still, 
 I'll have a talk with Monica, and if I find out that she 
 knows about her grandmother and is affected in the 
 way you assume, I shall let you know. I can promise 
 you that much, any way." 
 
 He saw, from the way she regarded him, that she 
 was trying to make up her mind about it all. 
 
 " I like you the better for feeling as you do," she 
 said finally. " It's nobler than the attitude of poor 
 Lena's first suitor. Yet I can't say I approve of the 
 match. After all, clean ancestry is of consequence to 
 everybody" with pride in her own unimpeachable 
 forebears " and even if we choose to disregard taint 
 of blood, have we quite the right, do you think, to pass 
 on a heritage of shame? You care for Monica now, 
 but should you cease to care, your opinion as to the 
 importance of such things may change. Such re- 
 flections may well have caused Monica to refuse you, 
 granting it wasn't for the prosaic reason that she 
 isn't in love with you." 
 
 " But I think she does care, and there is no danger 
 of my ceasing to," he said. " And as to what you hold 
 about clean ancestry, how many of us, Miss Vander- 
 hurst, when it comes to that, can go back in one's 
 family and not find something discreditable ? I'm afraid 
 if we were too particular, marriage would go out of 
 fashion. I can only assure you again that what Monica's
 
 192 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 grandmother did or didn't do can never alter my 
 feelings for Monica herself." 
 
 " Well, I agree to do what I can," she returned, after 
 some inward debate. " But I warn you, I hardly hope 
 to influence Monica against her will. To be frank, 
 I'm sorry, irrespective of her family history, your 
 choice has fallen on her. Monica is quite fitted, I'm 
 convinced, to take care of herself; and since I coiffed 
 Sainte Catherine myself, I don't regard her spinster 
 resolutions as such a tragedy. I'm not so certain, 
 Mr. Harding, that marriage with her would be the 
 helpful, solving thing for you. I'm not even sure you 
 have quite the temperament for marriage, no matter 
 who were your wife. Yet I may be wrong. And 
 Monica may be the ideal mate for you. I'm sure I hope 
 so ... if you marry her. In fact, I'm always a hopeful 
 person, a believer, you know, in the ultimate happy 
 outcome of most things in life." 
 
 " Then you agree to be my ambassador? " 
 " Yes," she said, with a little sigh over it, that was 
 not in keeping with her last statement; " I promise."
 
 193 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MRS. EVERSLEY'S bedroom suite was all a pretty 
 woman of the world could require. The chamber in 
 which she slept was large and well-lighted, and its 
 mirrored walls offered at every turn flattering reflec- 
 tions of herself. Mrs. Eversley delighted in mirrors; 
 she consulted them as a priestess consults the auguries 
 of the gods. She was never lonely with this multiplied 
 company of herself moving as she moved, smiling 
 when she smiled, paying her the compliment of servile 
 imitation. 
 
 She spent most of the morning in her room. Rising 
 late, she appeared downstairs only after the most 
 careful attention to her toilette; even Monica had never 
 seen her in a really negligent negligee. Indolent by 
 nature, she pleaded " delicate health " as justification 
 in consuming her morning hours idly. That delicacy 
 had, happily, taken an agreeable form. It gave a 
 touch of fragility to her figure, augmented youthful 
 appearance. And it was the preservation of this charm- 
 ing anachronism that most mattered to her. The 
 bills from the Institut de Beaute testified to that. 
 Likewise the innumerable silver-stoppered bottles, 
 jars, and other paraphernalia of her dressing table. 
 Also the possession of her expensive maid an accom- 
 
 o
 
 I 9 4 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 plished Frenchwoman, somewhat passee; for Mrs. 
 Eversley tolerated no rivalry, in either servants or 
 guests. Pretty women never got invitations to her 
 dinners, if she could help it ! 
 
 Opening from the bed-chamber on one side was her 
 beautiful tiled bath room; on the other a dainty 
 boudoir, which had been copied, at Percy Colston's 
 suggestion, from Madame de Sevign6's. It was into 
 this she passed after rousing herself from her long 
 Lady-of-Shalott-like musings before her glass, to glance 
 over the Figaro, for its fashionable information, dip 
 into the latest romance, study her Paris-Parisien 
 for the year, or indulge in correspondence at her 
 secretary, stocked with initial note-paper and private 
 pneumatiques. . . . Mrs. Eversley loved her private 
 pneumatiques. Thus the morning passed contentedly, 
 without ennui; for one who lives for oneself can always 
 live with oneself. 
 
 She lay awake, on the present morning, enjoying the 
 twilight dimness of her wide curtained bed. The pain- 
 ful effects of the motor accident had worn off, except 
 for some feeling of ache in her eyes. She had, indeed, 
 the previous evening, felt so much better that she had 
 ordered Simone to wake her in time to be dressed and 
 receive the doctor in a becoming matinee. The doctor 
 was a young man she had chosen for his delightful 
 sympathetic understanding of her. His predecessor 
 had not been like him. He had, in fact, been most 
 brutal, in the way he warned her against the pernicious 
 effect of certain cosmetics. " Your beauty, madame,"
 
 THE QUEST 195 
 
 he had said, " is, indeed, ' a fatal gift.' " After which 
 she had summoned him no more. 
 
 She wanted to rise, yet rather dreaded Simone's 
 knock. Bed was a comfortable place, and there were 
 so many things to think about as she lay there. Alas, 
 not all pleasant things. Miss Vanderhurst had told 
 her of Percy Colston's reported engagement to Miss 
 Buttercup Baxter, and the news had made her so 
 inwardly spiteful with her well-intentioned informant 
 that she had made a complete catalogue, while her 
 friend chatted on, of the latter's personal defects: 
 the grey hair, the crowsfeet, the wrinkled hands, the 
 spinster figure. This news had cut her cruelly cruelly 
 as some of Percy's speeches. The loss of her adjutant 
 was now irretrievable, she told herself, and she needed 
 him as much as ever. She couldn't get on without 
 him, any more than she could without the dangerous 
 cosmetics her former doctor wished to ban. She needed 
 him for her dinners, her neglected salon ; she needed to 
 consult him about her toilettes, about the right people 
 to know; she needed him to tell her what books to read, 
 the things she ought to say; in short, she needed him 
 for everything. He was like a drug. He wasn't good 
 for her, but she had got used to him; and the things 
 that weren't good for one like certain table delicacies 
 she couldn't afford to touch were what one always 
 most wanted. And he had deserted her for a common 
 American, the daughter of a nobody, who sold " Sur- 
 passing Ceylon." She could hardly credit it. But then, 
 everybody loved money! 
 
 02
 
 196 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Herself included, she might have added: but, then, 
 she needed money; and it was one of those unpleasant 
 facts she hated to face. Only it was getting necessary 
 to face it. There were so many pressing bills bills 
 that couldn't be laid aside that came from exigent 
 tradespeople without proper respect for those who had 
 to dress and live up to fashionable requirements. 
 Bills had become more and more troublesome as she 
 realized she had long lived beyond her income. Indeed, 
 it was no longer income that she was living on, but 
 capital. She had drawn liberally on it for years, 
 without thinking of the consequences, without remem- 
 bering the day of reckoning; it was all very stupid. 
 " Her " capital was how she put it, but, in reality, 
 it was Monica's the fortune Colonel Eversley had 
 left his daughter, and of which she, Mrs. Eversley, 
 had been made sole executrix. Nothing remained now 
 but Monica's money. Monica might have claimed it 
 on arriving at age; but she hadn't. She had signed 
 papers and left her mother a free hand and Mrs. 
 Eversley had been very free. Besides, Monica seemed 
 to enjoy supporting herself. ... It was one of the 
 queer sides of her nature. 
 
 Yet the remembrance of it all made Mrs. Eversley 
 uncomfortable at times, now that she drearily realized 
 that she wholly depended on what was left of her 
 daughter's fortune. It came as an afterthought; as 
 Monica was herself an afterthought. It had aroused 
 a tardy, sweet maternal solicitude about this daughter 
 of hers; and the solicitude took the practical form of
 
 THE QUEST 197 
 
 trying to many her off to someone sufficiently rich 
 not to want a dot, who might provide them both with 
 a pleasant home, in case she was compelled to give 
 up her Neuilly house. She had really been most self- 
 sacrificing about Monica's future, since in encouraging 
 Monsieur Fernet's suit she had risked and lost the 
 friendship of Percy Colston. Of course, in talking with 
 Monsieur Fernet she had had to allude in a general 
 way to her daughter's " little fortune"; but he was 
 rich, not grasping, as French suitors usually were, and 
 she had flattered herself that, in the end, the question 
 of the dot would be got over somehow. . . . He had 
 seemed so much in love with Monica's cold statuesque- 
 ness; indeed, it was quite a case of Pygmalion and 
 Galatea. She found it difficult even to try to forgive 
 Monica for not being coerced into the match. It 
 really was very selfish. Why Monica refused Monsieur 
 Fernet was as inexplicable as why she hadn't listened 
 to Mr. Nicolls. It was quite time she married some- 
 body. As to Mr. Nicolls, she had, it was true, been 
 glad at the time; there hadn't been enough money. 
 She regretted it now in a way, since, as it had after- 
 wards developed, the young man would inherit one day 
 from an uncle. 
 
 From these past issues Mrs. Eversley's mind travelled 
 to the present one of her daughter and Julian Harding. 
 Miss Vanderhurst had confirmed her suspicions that 
 Mr. Harding was in love with Monica. He had acted 
 so differently of late, scarcely came to the house any 
 more. He wasn't rich, it was true, but Madame de
 
 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Kansa had prophesied that he would make name and 
 fortune. And she believed implicitly in Madame de 
 Kansa's forecasts; and as Miss Vanderhurst also was 
 sure he would arrive had, indeed, half arrived already 
 with his first novel selling so well, he seemed not a 
 bad substitute for Monsieur Fernet. How few girls 
 had Monica's matrimonial chances! And why didn't 
 she take advantage of them ? It was most provoking. 
 It seemed quite an irony of fate that she, Lena Eversley, 
 so worldly wise, who planned, calculated, should have 
 such a disappointingly unambitious daughter. Well, 
 something had to be done. Monica must be made to 
 think of somebody besides herself. She was so incon- 
 siderate, so self-absorbed! 
 
 Simone interrupted Mrs. Eversley's meditations by 
 bringing in her tray of chocolate and the morning's 
 post. While Simone let in the light, her mistress 
 tasted the chocolate, and vented a fretful exclamation. 
 ...... What wretched stuff! Simone was growing so 
 
 careless, and she was always grumbling about arrears 
 of wages. Servants nowadays seemed to have no 
 idea of the kind of submission they owed their em- 
 ployers. Mrs. Eversley pushed the chocolate aside, 
 and took up her letters. Half of them looked like bills 
 . . . always bills! She opened one or two of the less 
 dubious envelopes. Only invitations to stupid things 
 everybody got. She broke the seal of another. Ah, 
 that was different. A card to the Austro-Hungarian 
 Embassy. That was select. Few Americans managed
 
 THE QUEST 199 
 
 to get invited . . . and how she hated Americans! 
 She had never mastered her old dread of them and 
 what they might know. Yet the worst of her recent 
 scares was the night of Monsieur Chelard's premiere, 
 when she was persuaded that Percy Colston was 
 whispering her story into the Baroness de Chanzy's 
 ear. She had discovered he had only pretended to to 
 make her uncomfortable and indulge his spite. She 
 had got him to promise he wouldn't ruin her; and, 
 after all she had done for him, he might well promise 
 it. He had been very nasty about it though, and the 
 things he had said had caused those odious tears in 
 the carriage, disfiguring her cheeks, which, alas! she 
 was never able to bathe, particularly not in tears. 
 The card to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy elated her 
 a little, though, unfortunately, she wouldn't be able 
 to appear at the reception. In anticipation of the 
 card she had ordered a new gown of a new maker, 
 who was more sensible about being paid some day 
 or other than former ones she had dealt with. She 
 demanded of her maid if the frock had come. 
 
 " Yes, madame, it arrived last night." 
 
 Simone's manner was not particularly gracious. If 
 her mistress was bothered by bills, she was bothered 
 by a lover who spent her wages for her . . . that is, 
 when her wages were paid. 
 
 " Let me see it." Mrs. Eversley's tone was like an 
 eager child's. 
 
 Her serving- woman fetched the box. Mrs. Eversley
 
 200 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 sat up in bed to watch her undo it. She was reflecting 
 how well the gown would go with her black plumed 
 Virot hat. 
 
 " You think I look best in mixed colours? " 
 
 " Yes, madame." 
 
 The gown was drawn from its tissue wrappings, and 
 Simone spread it over her knees for her mistress's 
 criticism. 
 
 It was a charming thing. A black-and-white striped 
 silk, with old lace and knots of red velvet. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley studied it. " Why didn't she trim it 
 as we agreed. I hate cottturieres who make changes 
 without consulting one. If she disobeys my orders, 
 I'll go back to Pasquier and Loisellier. Besides, they 
 always know what makes one look young." 
 
 Simone smiled disagreeably. " And their last 
 account, madame? You forget they said that they 
 would supply no more dresses until you settled it." 
 
 Mrs. Eversley sighed. " These insufferable trades- 
 people. . . . But I must have those velvet knots 
 changed." 
 
 The doctor arrived, and the interview left his patient 
 depressed, half hysterical. She had the feeling he 
 hadn't told her the worst. As it was, it was a tragedy. 
 She must remain in her room. The consulting oculist 
 whom he had brought hinted she would have to wear 
 glasses. The shock of her fall had injured her sight 
 rather seriously. He used some strange Latin term 
 dealing with refraction that made her shudder. She 
 might not see things quite as they were. Perhaps
 
 THE QUEST 201 
 
 that was why the velvet knots of her new gown looked 
 so ugly, an opinion in which Simone had not con- 
 curred. The optical trouble was rare, the doctor 
 remarked, and quite interesting from a medical point 
 of view. But glasses would help to correct it, if she 
 wore them constantly. Glasses! She thought of the 
 horror she would be in them. It was the end, then. 
 She would not, could not, appear in public with 
 glasses on. 
 
 She was in a despairing, irritable frame of mind 
 when, later on, Monica came into her room, after 
 discreetly rapping, to ask how she was and to offer to 
 read her the Herald. 
 
 " I don't care to hear it," her mother said fretfully. 
 " What is the use of knowing what other people are 
 doing if I can't do anything myself. Did the doctor 
 tell you that awful thing about my eyes? " 
 
 " Yes, but he said that if you wore glasses . . ." 
 
 " But I can't wear glasses, make a fright of myself. 
 I should be ridiculous, a horror. My poor eyes! 
 How can I endure not seeing things as they are." 
 
 Monica reflected that her mother never had seen 
 things as they were. 
 
 " I'm sorry I spoke of it, since it distresses you." 
 
 " I only wish you never distressed me in any other 
 way," was the reply. " You have always distressed 
 me. You distress me now by wearing that old black 
 skirt. I hate black. ... It reminds me of death. I 
 had to put it on when your father died, of course. 
 I respected him, and his sudden death was a terrible
 
 202 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 shock. I said, as I looked into the glass: 'This has 
 made me look ten years older.' And it had. I do 
 wish you wouldn't put on those dull things." 
 
 " But I don't care about clothes." 
 
 " I know you don't, and that's why you look so 
 plain half the time. To-day you are positively homely 
 . . . pale, worn out, and I don't know how old. You 
 wouldn't look so if you thought more about your 
 appearance. No one of our family ever was plain; 
 we've been famous beauties for generations. And 
 always successes in society. But you're so different. 
 I don't know why you hate to go about." 
 
 " Because it has become a habit, I suppose. You 
 never cared to take me out when I was younger. 
 I'm willing to leave it to you, who enjoy it." 
 
 " Pray don't try to put the blame on me," her 
 mother said irritably. " You know you've never 
 cared for anybody or anything, except your foolish 
 art, your silly charities. If you only had the interests 
 of ordinary people. But, there, it's useless to discuss 
 it all with you, you're so ... so impossible. I often 
 wonder, unless it's the Eversley in you, how it happens 
 you are like that. Nobody in our family ever was, 
 I'm sure. We always cared for society, never thought 
 of earning a living, or teaching odious people how 
 to do things. If poor people can't manage for them- 
 selves, they ought to starve. I detest all this fuss 
 about the lower classes. The ones to sympathize with 
 are society persons. They have far worse troubles 
 than merely being a little hungry. It encourages the
 
 THE QUEST 203 
 
 masses to be impertinent and think themselves as 
 good as we are. Simone has grown simply unbearable. 
 She doesn't care how she massages me or does my 
 hair. You're always talking about ' sparing my 
 feelings.' I wish you would, once in a while." 
 
 " I try to at least." 
 
 " If you tried," her mother retorted in an impa- 
 tient, grown-up voice that would have been a revela- 
 tion to Harding and others, " you wouldn't keep me 
 so anxious about your future. As though I hadn't 
 enough on my mind as it is. But when is one ever 
 allowed to think of oneself ! I want to talk seriously 
 to you," she went on, allowing her daughter to arrange 
 the cushions on the chaise-longue where she had 
 established herself. " Tell me why Mr. Harding has 
 given up coming here. Have you quarrelled with 
 him, or what has happened? I know there's some- 
 thing. I remember how oddly he behaved last Christ- 
 mas night when he came into the salon to say good- 
 night. Did he propose to you ? " 
 
 " Yes," was the reluctant reply. 
 
 " Well ? " Mrs. Eversley urged. " I mean, did you 
 refuse him ? " 
 
 " Yes." Monica's voice expressed the dislike of a 
 reserved nature to be catechised. 
 
 " Pray, don't answer me in that yes-and-no way. 
 Why did you refuse him ? He's a well-bred, agreeable 
 man. Madame de Kansa says he has a brilliant future. 
 He ought to be^able to support you decently . . . and 
 much more than that. Authors make no end of
 
 204 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 incomes out of books in America, these days the 
 successful ones." 
 
 " All that has nothing to do with it." 
 
 "Then what has? You are very hard to suit, it 
 seems to me. Mr. Nicolls didn't suit, nor Monsieur 
 Fernet. I wish you'd be frank with me, and say what 
 would suit. I get so tired of your reticences about 
 everything." Mrs. Eversley was enjoying all an 
 invalid's privileges to be querulous. 
 
 " But I have told you often enough, mother, that I 
 have no wish to marry." 
 
 " Yes, but without giving me any good reason for 
 such a silly resolve. Is it because you think yourself 
 above marrying? You fancy yourself very clever, I 
 know; so much cleverer than other people. Really, 
 your airs estrange one so. One can never be at ease 
 with you. If only I had a sympathetic daughter." She 
 sighed. 
 
 " If I haven't been sympathetic, it's because I never 
 have quite understood you," Monica answered 
 temperately; for she had learned to practise self- 
 control in talking with her mother. 
 
 " That's because you've never tried to understand 
 me. You think me vain and foolish. You look down 
 on me from your superior heights. You imagine you 
 know life . . . and you don't. If you did, you would 
 see the advantages of society, of your youth. Ah, if 
 only I had your chances! I assure you I'd not be such 
 a fool, as not to make the proper use of them. You'll 
 wake up some day, when it's too late, and realize your
 
 THE QUEST 205 
 
 mistake. Something has to be done, as I was saying 
 to myself this morning. My affairs have been going 
 all wrong. I have had severe money losses. It's been 
 very unfortunate and not at all my fault. I've managed 
 the best I could on what I have. Really, I don't 
 know what is to become of us, after awhile. If I had 
 not been so true to your father's memory, I might have 
 married, of course. But it's no use thinking of that 
 now. It lies with you to smooth things for both of us. 
 You owe it to me for the sacrifices I've made. If you 
 married Mr. Harding, say you wouldn't need 
 the trifle your father left you. Americans don't ask 
 for dots, and I'd merely use the income of your money 
 for the few years that remain to me," and Mrs. 
 Eversley's voice became pathetic. She added with 
 resignation: " I suppose I could somehow get on with 
 it." 
 
 Mrs. Eversley spoke with the confidence of one who 
 believes that the most improbable statement, if uttered 
 positively enough, disproves any self-evident fact. 
 It was the method she adopted to support the fiction 
 of her girlishness, the complexion selected, the figure 
 which in reality outshone that of most genuine ingenues. 
 In a way, she got to believe a good many of the things 
 she asserted, and she took it for granted that Monica 
 believed them, too. She did not know her daughter 
 very well. She had put her at school, where she had 
 forgotten her, as she had forgotten her own age until 
 the embarrassing fact of a grown-up offspring forced 
 it on her. She had never, however, quite credited it.
 
 206 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 certainly not to the degree of carrying Monica about 
 with her as a testimony to passing time. It had been 
 inconvenient enough to have her under the roof which 
 she necessitated. It was one thing to flit about Europe, 
 from capital to capital, from one friend's house to 
 another, as an engaging young widow. Quite another 
 to move with Monica at her heels like a serious, 
 thoughtful shadow. 
 
 " Yes, I shoulcV think you might manage on the 
 income," her daughter responded, after a moment. 
 " It can't be so very small an amount since I've never 
 touched it. And that, of course, has added to the 
 capital. However, if it's that which troubles you, I can 
 relieve your mind. You are welcome to the income. 
 I can go on doing without. My tastes are not extrava- 
 gant, and I know how to support myself. I like to 
 work." 
 
 Mrs. Eversley felt a touch of uneasiness. She had the 
 uncomfortable idea that her daughter, generously 
 indifferent as she showed herself, might not be quite 
 pleased if aware that this repudiation had already been 
 taken for granted, and the accumulated income, to 
 which she referred, had already been applied to pay 
 for her mother's toilettes and dinners, or the expensive 
 little trifles she had given Percy Colston to keep him 
 amiable. Monica had such a difficult way of looking 
 at things, was so unnecessarily nice on points of that 
 sort. Mrs. Eversley was, accordingly, rather relieved 
 to escape the issue by taking up her daughter's last 
 words.
 
 THE QUEST 207 
 
 " Like to work ! " she exclaimed. " What rubbish, 
 my dear. A young, good-looking girl preferring to 
 grub, when she might marry and be cared for. One 
 might think you had no family or traditions. People 
 owe something to their position in life. I'm sure I've 
 tried to live up to mine. I can't forget my mother 
 moved in the most exclusive circles. Indeed, I've 
 often wondered how you can look so much like her and 
 be so different." 
 
 Monica winced, as though the remark struck a raw 
 nerve. 
 
 " Don't, mother," she said painfully. " I can't bear 
 you to say that . . . that I look like her." 
 
 At the shiver of repugnance, Mrs. Eversley stared, 
 thinking her daughter was under some misconception 
 as to the compliment. 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know why you can't. Everybody 
 thought her beautiful. I wish you had half her charm. 
 You could have copied her and not suffered, I assure 
 you." 
 
 Monica's eyes darkened, and she regarded her 
 mother a moment in silence. She had patiently listened 
 to the other's taxing talk, but she was still under a 
 strain from the conversation she had had, the previous 
 day, with Miss Vanderhurst. It had left her disturbed 
 in many ways, and she had passed a rather wakeful 
 night in which she had lived afresh the old tragic 
 issue of her earlier girlhood. She was now so candid 
 with herself, that she was disposed far more than her 
 wont, to be impatient with her mother's deceits.
 
 208 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Indeed, Mrs. Eversley hardly seemed to be her mother, 
 and she surprised herself as much as the invalid, grace- 
 fully leaning back in the pale blue matinee, by saying : 
 
 " How can you speak of her as you do ? As long 
 as you don't praise her, hold her up as a model, I can, 
 in a way, endure the deception. ..." She broke off, to 
 add, with some emotion, "You say I'm not frank with 
 you. Why haven't you been frank with me? Do 
 you suppose I don't know, haven't known for years, 
 the truth about my grandmother? " 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 Mrs. Eversley tried to be natural, but she didn't 
 succeed. Her voice was like that of a scared child. 
 
 " What she was accused of ... about the trial." 
 
 It was said at last, and Monica felt all the relief of 
 ending this pretence of ignorance. She had felt 
 much the same in her talk with Miss Vanderhurst 
 When she saw that that spinster desired to find out 
 if she knew of the family skeleton, she had said that 
 she did. She hated false roles; it had never been her 
 instinct to fill them. Her tone in conversing with 
 Miss Vanderhurst had, however, been less prosaic 
 than in speaking with her mother. She knew the 
 value of being prosaic with Mrs. Eversley. 
 
 " I sent to America for a report of the case . . . 
 after I learned the truth," she continued, and from 
 her manner one might have supposed she referred to 
 nothing more important than the weather. 
 
 It had its effect. Mrs. Eversley's fear of an agitat- 
 ing scene subsided. She had laboured to keep the
 
 THE QUEST 209 
 
 disgraceful knowledge from Monica. But since Monica 
 knew . . . well, it was like getting rid of a weight, 
 almost a pleasure, in fact, to have done with half a 
 lifetime of silence. Here, suddenly and unexpectedly, 
 a safe confidant was provided for her. 
 
 "And who told you?" Mrs. Eversley said inter- 
 estedly, sitting up. 
 
 " Percy Colston. It was about the time Monsieur 
 Fernet took his Prix de Rome. Mr. Colston threatened 
 to tell everybody unless I pledged myself not to marry 
 Monsieur Fernet. I answered that he might do as he 
 pleased; but, as it was, I had no wish to marry Monsieur 
 Fernet. Later, I spoke of my grandmother to Mon- 
 sieur Fernet . . . told him she had been tried for 
 murder." 
 
 Mrs. Eversley had got no further than the fact 
 that Percy Colston had told of the blot on her family. 
 " He told you? " she cried. " After he promised he 
 would never mention it ! And I trusted him, counted 
 on his honour. How infamous of him ! " she went on 
 half tearfully. "And you were nice to him after 
 that. How could you had you no pride?" 
 
 " When it comes to pride. . . ." Then Monica 
 checked herself. After all, Mrs. Eversley was her 
 mother. " I don't know that I was ever particularly 
 nice to him, as you call it. But I endured him because 
 you liked him. He was your friend, or, rather, you 
 fancied him so. I'm not sure," she continued, after 
 a pause, " that I minded having him tell me. I think, 
 perhaps, I was even grateful. He thought it hurt, 
 
 p
 
 210 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 and, instead, I think it helped. It made me reflect 
 about a good many things I should probably never 
 have considered. Yes," she ended, as though im- 
 personally weighing it all, "I am grateful to him 
 for telling me." 
 
 "Grateful!" was her [mother's exclamation. 
 " Grateful to Percy Colston for betraying me, for 
 proving how false, how malicious he is! How much 
 he has made me surfer! Yet I didn't think him 
 capable of telling you. And you speak of gratitude ! " 
 
 " Yes, because I hate deceptions. I like to have 
 the truth, no matter what it costs. I often have 
 wondered why you never told me yourself." 
 
 " Because you're not the person I could ever confide 
 in ... about anything," said her mother pathetically. 
 " I kept the thing from you for your own sake . . . 
 just as I've made a hundred sacrifices for you. I 
 often wanted to tell you. It would have been a relief. 
 You don't know what it cost me not to. Think of 
 living all these years with you and not telling. Yes, 
 it cost me a great deal." 
 
 " Yes, I think I can understand," Monica said 
 gently, after reflection. " It was kind to want to 
 spare me." 
 
 " I've always been kind to you," Mrs. Eversley 
 cried, with a little wail of self-pity, " though you 
 have never appreciated it. I've wanted to see you 
 married, protected from the world that has been so 
 cruel to me. My heart is set on your marrying Mr. 
 Harding."
 
 THE QUEST 211 
 
 " But I can't, mother. . . . It's out of the question," 
 was the response. And Monica sighed wearily at this 
 return to the issue between them. 
 
 " You mean he knows about . . . about the shameful 
 injustice done my mother? " Mrs. Eversley sharply 
 queried; "and does not wish to marry you now? Or 
 is it because you don't care for him? Tell me the 
 truth." 
 
 " Yes, he still wants to, I think," Monica said hesi- 
 tatingly, thinking of what Miss Vanderhurst had told 
 her. " Although he knows about my grandmother," 
 she added, a little pensively. 
 
 " Well, then. . . ." 
 
 " But it doesn't alter matters. ..." 
 
 " You don't care for him, you mean ? " 
 
 " No, it isn't that . , . that I don't care." 
 
 " Then why, pray ? " 
 
 " I have my reasons." 
 
 " Then let me have them. Really, I get so tired of 
 you never speaking out. It is one of the provoking 
 things about you." 
 
 " But it would only wound you." 
 
 She hesitated, seeking to put it most soothingly to 
 her mother's ear 
 
 " Well, for one thing I think of what marriage would 
 mean under the circumstances. Mr. Harding himself 
 might care enough to forget it all. But I am thinking 
 that that if there were a child. ..." 
 
 "Child!" her mother interrupted. One or two 
 tears, escaping her eyes, had dried on her cheek, and, 
 
 P2
 
 212 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 reaching out for her powder puff, she removed the 
 stain. She was beginning to recover. If she dreaded 
 the old scandal, she dreaded more the effect of feeling 
 too much. " The idea of you, an unmarried girl, 
 thinking of ' children.' I don't know what to make 
 of this generation. Girls of these days don't seem 
 to have a sense of modesty. It comes of the impossible 
 books you read, your ' advanced views.' If you went 
 to church and were more conventional, such ideas 
 wouldn't enter your mind. I've always lamented you 
 were so irreligious. It's one of your great defects." 
 Mrs. Eversley believed in religion. She believed in 
 having a church a fashionable one. It wasn't chic, 
 in her opinion, to do without a God, as apparently 
 Monica did. 
 
 " And what ' circumstances,' " she continued indig- 
 nantly, " need debar you? If your grandmother was 
 misjudged, if she suffered a great wrong, is that a 
 reason for speaking of her in such a fashion? " 
 
 "And you think she was misjudged?" Monica 
 returned. "I'm sorry, mother, to enter into a dis- 
 cussion about it. Yet I did not provoke it, did I? 
 I have no wish to hurt you ... if you hold her inno- 
 cent." 
 
 " And you dare hint that my mother was guilty of 
 a crime ? " Mrs. Eversley exclaimed, stirred anew. 
 " Don't you know that she was acquitted ? Why, she 
 was a martyr, a victim of circumstances. And the 
 jury recognized it." 
 
 Monica was silent, and the mother viewed her
 
 THE QUEST 213 
 
 irritably, seeing that she did not share the jury's 
 opinion. 
 
 " You don't think her innocent ? " Mrs. Eversley 
 insisted. 
 
 " No, since you ask me," was the reply. " She 
 may have been ... I don't say no. But it is not how 
 it impressed me, after reading the case." 
 
 What Monica could not have added was her further 
 impression from the documentary evidence she had 
 sent for, that Mrs. Eversley had perjured herself to 
 save Mrs. Perdoe. 
 
 The mother smiled bitterly. " How wise you are ! 
 So much wiser than the judge and jury! But you 
 never knew her. If you had, you'd have seen she 
 was incapable of crime. How wonderfully she behaved 
 in court ! She was always grande dame, my mother. 
 In her cell she was like Marie Antoinette at the Con- 
 ciergerie. She endured everything in silence, with 
 dignity. She never once complained. But why," 
 and Mrs. Eversley's voice broke into a sob, " do you 
 bring it all up again. You've never suffered as I 
 have. You don't know what suffering is." 
 
 " Yet I think I can guess . . . what suffering is," 
 was the answer. Monica's voice was gentle, and she 
 put out her hand to comfort her mother. It was a 
 little awkwardly done, for there had never been much 
 exchange of affection between them. At the touch 
 on her arm, Mrs. Eversley drew it away. She had no 
 wish to accept comfort from one who doubted Mrs. 
 Perdoe's innocence.
 
 214 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Yet if you have suffered," Monica said after a 
 silence, as though she struggled to understand things 
 through her mother's character, " how can you so 
 have forgotten ? To have lived as you have done . . .". 
 
 " And suppose one remembered. Don't you know 
 that it's only by forgetting one lives at all? Yet I 
 haven't forgotten, I've only tried to forget. And so 
 you blush for your grandmother. You ought to blush 
 for yourself. I was never ashamed . . . only I did 
 want to forget, forget, if the world had let me," she 
 sobbed. 
 
 " And was that why you came to Europe ? I think 
 I'd have stayed and fought it out, if I believed in her 
 as you do. What have you gained by it, mother? 
 Sacrificing yourself to Percy Colston, because he 
 knew your secret. And you speak of forgetting." 
 
 " It's easy for you to say that," Mrs. Eversley 
 retorted tearfully. " You have been spared it all. 
 You haven't lived a life of hateful whispers and gossip 
 wherever you went." And she looked indignation at 
 her daughter, who could sit so calmly there and tell 
 her her duty. " What are you, after all, but an 
 ignorant girl. I brought you up to please yourself, 
 flatter your vanity with high-flown ideas, spared you 
 everything 1 " And her face expressed the sublimity 
 of self-imagined sacrifice. 
 
 " You couldn't spare me myself," Monica said half 
 audibly. She spoke rather to herself than to her 
 mother. She, too, had suffered in her own way. 
 She was suffering now, through the weakness of her
 
 THE QUEST 215 
 
 heart. The memory of the woman who had been 
 weak in The Labyrinth of Life was with her. It 
 helped that counselling memory to a mastery of 
 herself. But other things besides the book had 
 helped her, too. She had long schooled herself to 
 suppress emotion, in encouraging her head to rule her 
 heart. Yet there were times when she almost wished 
 herself different . . . that she might not see duty so 
 plainly. 
 
 Her mother had not heard the words, nor would 
 she have understood them if she had. She was 
 thinking of her shadowed girlhood. " I was about to 
 make my debut," she said, as if that was the greatest 
 of her disappointments. " Such darling dresses as 
 were ordered. But I never put them on. The world 
 shut its doors; I had no youth; I only had sorrows, 
 disillusions. I was jilted by the only man I ever 
 loved. I don't know what would have become of me 
 if I hadn't met your father. Fortunately, he didn't 
 know." 
 
 " Didn't know ! " Monica echoed wonderingly. " You 
 never told him? " She had cherished her father's 
 memory for the nobility he had shown in wedding the 
 daughter of a criminal. 
 
 " If I'd told him, he mightn't have married me," 
 was the answer. " And it was an escape, I came to 
 Europe . . . and had a little happiness. I'd be happy 
 now, if there wasn't all this trouble about money. 
 You think it doesn't matter, but it does. You'll learn 
 that some day."
 
 216 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 She spoke truer than she knew. 
 
 " I can't do without it," Mrs. Eversley continued. 
 " I know I shall never manage on the pittance left me." 
 
 " But I shall work," her daughter said. 
 
 " And what about things like these ? " And Mrs. 
 Eversley indicated her luxurious bedroom, its mirrors, 
 its toilette table with silver-backed brushes, filagreed 
 phials of perfume, the hundred little utilities for 
 personal use. 
 
 A vision of a reasonable existence for them 
 had come to Monica almost in spite of herself. But 
 alas, she was forgetting that it demanded that 
 different life, a different mother. " Why not leave 
 Paris ? " she asked. " We can find some quiet place 
 far away from it all, where there are real things of 
 happiness to be had, instead of these trumpery pre- 
 occupations. Think of the kind of people you have 
 gathered about you, the false, paradoxical talk at 
 your dinner parties. It is all such irony, mother, surely 
 it can't mean much to you, such a world. You say life 
 is almost over for you. Has it even begun ? " 
 
 " What nonsense you talk." And Mrs. Eversley 
 stifled a yawn. It was a style of conversation that 
 always bored her. " Really, one might think, my dear, 
 that you'd stepped out of a book. You have the ideas 
 that one might expect of a governess. Bury oneself in 
 the provinces, vegetate in a Swiss Pension, do without 
 dresses, society. Why," she cried, enjoying her 
 indignation, " you are asking me to give up what 
 belongs to my caste. Yes, I think you had better read
 
 THE QUEST 217 
 
 the Herald. See if that odious Baroness de Chanzy 
 was really dining with the Duchess of Blackmore 
 yesterday. These discussions only try me . . . and I 
 hate to be tried." And she settled herself more comfort- 
 ably on her chair. 
 
 " I ought to add, though," she remarked, " that you 
 are a singularly unfeeling girl. If you had any heart, 
 you couldn't treat Mr. Harding as you do. Julia 
 Vanderhurst tells me he has grown cynical and dissi- 
 pated, and I know she thinks you led him on. You 
 heard yourself what she said." 
 
 " Yes, I heard," was the hesitating answer, and 
 Monica took up the Herald. 
 
 " Well, I shouldn't like to have his ruin on my 
 conscience," her mother observed. " And such a 
 pleasant, dear fellow he is, too." 
 
 She spoke rather sentimentally. It was another of 
 the sacrifices she had made to her daughter, she 
 reflected. She liked Harding and had enjoyed their 
 little flirtation; and it had been vexatious to be 
 discarded for her daughter. Fernet had begun in the 
 same way, but she had found that the sculptor wasn't 
 as hesitating in actions as he was in speech, and it had 
 been difficult in his case to keep things where she 
 wanted them. And she did not want a real liaison, any 
 more than she desired to marry. In that she had been 
 truer to her late husband than she had been to the 
 more serious side of her nature. She was afraid of 
 marriage, of its ageing effects; and it had not been hard 
 to sacrifice heart to beauty. The biggest struggle had
 
 218 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 been Percy Colston. She loved him as much as she was 
 capable of loving anyone; and she believed she could 
 have persuaded him to marry her. The marriage would 
 have been a mistake: she knew he was selfish and 
 irritable, and she would have constantly made him 
 lose his temper. She seldom lost her own, but she had 
 the unfortunate habit of losing other people's for them. 
 " Crabbed youth and age may not live together " 
 she admitted the truth of Percy's corrected Shakes- 
 peare. Yet she sometimes sighed over Percy, as she 
 sighed now a little over Harding. The latter, she 
 thought, had not shown much taste in preferring Monica 
 to herself.
 
 219 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 HARDING sat in the Eversleys' salon wondering if 
 Monica would receive him. The servant had been 
 instructed to deny her to callers on account of her 
 mother's illness, but Harding had insisted on sending up 
 his name. 
 
 The salon looked sober in the grey afternoon light; 
 its atmosphere seemed to have absorbed something of 
 the changed sentiment of the household. It was as 
 though it recognized that a good deal of its usefulness 
 had passed with the passing of Percy Colston. Eden 
 left to its original simplicity, after the exciting Adam- 
 and-Eve episode, may have experienced the reaction- 
 ary insipidity that Mrs. Eversley's drawing room 
 appeared to feel, on the present February day. The 
 hour was too early for lighted lamps, too late not to 
 suggest the thought of them. The half twilight 
 depressed Harding as he looked about him. The 
 furniture, that had tried as hard to look old as Lena 
 Eversley tried to look young, was a duller gilt than 
 usual, as if it, like everything else, was affected by 
 a sense of mental mildew in the air. There was no 
 longer any appropriateness in being bright, alas, 
 without a Percy Colston, and other epigram-minded 
 visitors to make Wednesday evenings seem champagny 
 on the frothiness of intellectual small beer. Mrs.
 
 220 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Eversley was lying above, afflicted with the strange 
 malady of not seeing things as they were. Perhaps it 
 was Harding who did not see the salon as it really 
 was. There was a dampness about the fading day that 
 almost warranted the insensate chairs and cabinets, 
 in whose venerable character Harding believed, feeling 
 a rheumatic twinge in keeping with their supposed age. 
 The Clodion Psyche whose affected smile had often 
 reminded him of Mrs. Eversley 's efforts to please 
 looked serious and sorry for herself; as though she 
 missed her Eros as its owner missed her Percy, similarly 
 lost through indiscretion. Certainly the bust appeared 
 less conceited than usual. Harding, glancing at it, 
 was reminded of the bust of Buttercup and the quarrel 
 between that young woman's present suitor and the 
 past suitor of Monica Eversley, Monsieur Fernet. 
 
 Life seemed to be one complication of suitors, none 
 of whom suited. For instance, Colston, though 
 accepted, did not suit Buttercup but only one of her 
 moods, he mused. What would the unsuitableness of 
 the engagement lead to ? ... A rupture, of course, in 
 the end; since the poet prided himself on quarrelling 
 with everybody in time. But would it be a rupture 
 before or after marriage ? He had the feeling that the 
 engagement was a consequence of ruptures all round. 
 Colston, having, as he knew, broken with Circour over 
 the price of Buttercup's bust, was probably in quest 
 of a new home. Had there been no rupture between 
 himself and Buttercup the night of the Opera 
 masked ball, her acceptance of the poet might not have
 
 THE QUEST 221 
 
 suggested itself as the afterthought of pique he was 
 inclined to think it. Her air with him prior to the 
 sudden announcement of the betrothal had been 
 inconsistent enough to warrant him in that flattering 
 conclusion. Harding's thoughts wandered, like his 
 gaze, from the Psyche to the " little salon," but paused 
 there only long enough to reflect how its littleness 
 suited the scenes it had witnessed and to which the 
 portiere, now oddly limp, had been like a drop-curtain. 
 Would he ever forget the jingle of its rings as Mrs. 
 Eversley drew it shut ! It was behind it he had over- 
 heard that lady practising a part with the sculptor 
 that had ended in such sadly unexpected develop- 
 ments. He had been an intruder in that small drama 
 then. Now he was one of the main actors. 
 
 Harding, as he waited for the servant's return, felt 
 as sober as the salon looked. What Miss Vanderhurst 
 had told him, after her promised talk with Monica, 
 had been illuminative; it revealed that the latter 
 knew, as he had felt she did, of the family scandal, 
 and it supplied a clue to her behaviour towards himself 
 and the world; explained a great deal about her that 
 had puzzled him. He could understand that Monica's 
 way of taking the fact of criminal ancestry would differ 
 from that of ordinary natures. It gave a new, dignifying 
 reason for her sobriety, and modified his first conception 
 of her aloofness and air of the superior young woman 
 treating others to Scotch sermons. 
 
 His coming to the house to-day had been preceded 
 by a rather bold act; and on the way he was sup-
 
 222 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 ported by the belief that he could in a masterly way 
 brush aside the cobwebs of complications between 
 them. Yet now he was there, he was less certain of 
 himself. He had the feeling that the conversation he 
 had pictured as taking place, might after all be of a 
 different character. He had perhaps too much counted 
 on his attitude towards things, too little on hers. He 
 had been very eloquent in the imaginary dialogue, 
 she quite inept; yet in former arguments, he recalled 
 as he sat impatiently waiting, that she had held her 
 own. Still, to counterbalance this disheartening 
 reflection, had he not in his left breast inner pocket 
 the place for it a letter from Monica in which, practi- 
 cally, she confessed she loved him ? 
 
 It was this letter that brought him to her. It was 
 in answer to one he had written her. Before he received 
 hers there had, however, arrived a telegram bidding 
 him destroy the letter unread. Instead he had broken 
 the seal and read it many times. He had done this after 
 some debate with himself over the impropriety of dis- 
 obeying her command; but it had ended in a decision 
 that he had the right to know the contents. Instinct 
 told him that within the envelope lay the truth of 
 her feelings towards him; and the truth about them 
 was necessary to him, to their common happiness. 
 A woman's letter was herself. He had Maupassant's 
 authority for that. And Maupassant knew women. 
 Monica might deceive him by mastering her exterior 
 self, by treating him coolly; but in the prohibited 
 letter he was sure she had unveiled her heart. " The
 
 THE QUEST 223 
 
 black words on paper, they are the soul all naked," 
 Maupassant, in referring to woman's pen, had said. 
 And after reading Monica's answer, he was confident 
 he had won her love. 
 
 He had waited some time before he heard the trail- 
 ing of her skirt. He knew it was she, for the sounds of 
 her movements were individual as other things about 
 her; her step was sober and stately, it had none of the 
 frou-frou of her mother's frivolous, half -floating 
 advance. The dull afternoon obscured the room, but 
 there was enough light to tell him that her face was 
 paler than its wont, and not auspicious to his lover's 
 errand. 
 
 " I am sorry, Mr. Harding," she said, as she shook 
 hands, " but my mother is not well to-day. I came 
 because your message by the servant was so urgent. ..." 
 She took a seat, as though it was a concession to polite- 
 ness at the price of heart discretion. It was far from 
 the nearest one left him to select. He saw that she 
 suspected a pitfall of some sort, and nerved herself to 
 avoid it. 
 
 It looked to him, in truth, like a case of Katherine- 
 taming. 
 
 " I read your letter," he said, without prelude. 
 " And after that, I had to see you. Forgive me for 
 insisting ... I don't want to seem inconsiderate. 
 But I couldn't wait." 
 
 " You read my letter ? " she echoed, incredulously; 
 and her eyes lighted indignantly as he assented. 
 
 " Yes; and I'm not ashamed to confess it. Our
 
 224 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 happiness depended on it. If I hadn't, I should have 
 forgiven myself. It was my right to know the truth. 
 And I was sure it was there. Nothing now can take 
 away the knowledge . . . that you care, Monica. You 
 understand I had to ! " 
 
 She disregarded the appeal of his voice; her face was 
 hard. " But the letter was mine, not yours. It was as 
 sacredly mine as though I had never sent it. How 
 could you ! " 
 
 " I expected you would be angry, of course. But 
 I resolved to risk that. Say it was indelicate, dis- 
 honourable even. . . . Perhaps it was. What do I 
 care about that, since the letter gave me hope ? Do 
 you think, when love is at stake, that a man can destroy 
 such a letter unread and congratulate himself on his 
 honour? The only thing that mattered was to know 
 how you really felt towards me. You can't deny 
 now, Monica after writing what you did that you 
 do care. And that is why I've come. I want you 
 to listen to me. ..." 
 
 " But I don't want to listen, Mr. Harding," she 
 interrupted; " it's for you to listen to me. Since you 
 read my letter against my express wish you shall 
 know why I wrote it. Miss Vanderhurst said you 
 were wasting your life, that you had given up work, 
 seemed to have lost ambition, were wretched. Then 
 came a letter from you, saying that if only you could 
 feel I cared for you, it would help you, no matter 
 whether I married you or not. So I answered out of 
 impulse, because I was distressed, because I wanted to
 
 THE QUEST 225 
 
 give you what support I could. Then, after I mailed 
 the letter, I realized it could do no good . . . but only 
 harm. Your coming here to-day shows that instead 
 of helping, the letter only made you more unwilling 
 to accept the situation. And you must accept it," 
 she went on resolutely. " I cannot, will not, marry 
 you. No weakness of mine can alter that. If I saw 
 my mistake before, I see it doubly now." 
 
 " But surely you don't regret giving me one hour of 
 happiness ? " he remonstrated. 
 
 " I only regret its consequences for you," she said, 
 after some struggle with herself. "If it really could 
 help, I'd be glad. Naturally, I have no wish to be 
 thought hard and unsympathetic. Only it doesn't 
 alter my reasons for feeling as I do." 
 
 " Don't call them reasons," he broke in upon her 
 rebellious admissions. " Why should you take the 
 stand that, because your grandmother was charged 
 with a crime, you must be sacrificed? It makes no 
 real difference to me if she committed a hundred 
 crimes, instead of merely being accused of one. It 
 doesn't make you less lovable because you imagine 
 yourself under some shadow; you're more to me, in 
 fact, because you have suffered through what the 
 world ought long ago to have forgotten. Besides, it 
 has forgotten." 
 
 "It isn't a question with me what the world has 
 remembered or forgotten. It is what I myself remem- 
 ber. I am convinced that my grandmother did commit 
 the crime of which she was accused. And I know that 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 you, too, think it. Do you suppose," she continued 
 after a moment's pause, " that I don't still recall 
 The Labyrinth of Life and what it tried to prove? 
 You say its views are not your own, but, anyway, it 
 showed what they might have been. And that is 
 enough. If nothing else kept us apart, your book 
 would." 
 
 " But I have destroyed it ! " 
 
 " Not the memory of it. Nor what it evoked . . . 
 what it must always evoke for me. I am not a child, 
 Mr. Harding ..." she said, as though in the assertion 
 she had gathered all her young womanhood together, 
 " and I am not so ignorant of human nature as not 
 to know that a man can say things, under the emotion 
 of a moment, that his life mayn't prove. You say 
 you love me, and I think perhaps you do. Yet any 
 feelings you have for me, or I for you, can never blind 
 me to what I recognize as duty. It is, I know it, my 
 duty not to marry you. I'm glad to think you care 
 for me though it makes me unhappy. I oughtn't 
 to listen to you, I don't want to listen to you. Use 
 such arguments to women who only feel . . . and don't 
 think. My protection has always been that I do 
 think." 
 
 \ " You've spent your life thinking, Monica, instead of 
 giving your heart a chance," he said. " I don't know 
 how old you are I doubt if you're much more than 
 twenty-two. One of the things that has attracted me 
 in you is that you're so slow at getting young. Of 
 course, one doesn't really begin to get young until
 
 THE QUEST 227 
 
 one's thirty," he said lightly, putting it discreetly 
 at that age for fear she would think him sneering at 
 her mother; " but, even so, you ought to see that 
 nothing matters so very much in life except the one 
 great cause of living love. You told me once you 
 could do without love. Nobody can. Life becomes 
 hideous, dry, uneventful. Be sensible, dear. Forget 
 grandmothers, forget stodgy professors, forget me as 
 a writer, as one who may do a great deal of wise talking 
 in books, but who, after all and it's the side I ask 
 you to think of wants love, as you want it, though 
 you refuse to say so. Feeling, isn't it all feeling with 
 us, when the last word is said? " 
 
 He saw that the eloquence of his voice, which gave 
 eloquence to his words, had some effect upon her. 
 Still she said: 
 
 " But feelings go, and reason remains. It isn't just 
 now; it is the years to come. No " and she seemed 
 resolutely to dismiss the prospect he painted " don't 
 tell me what I owe myself. I know it all better than 
 you. It's new to you, it is old old to me." And in 
 the assertion he understood what the years of know- 
 ledge had meant to her those years in which she had 
 dismissed Fernet because she did not love him, and 
 Nicolls because perhaps she did. No, she wasn't 
 young, except in her youth's suppressed unlogic. 
 She faced him, dark-browed, a sturdy yet pathetic 
 image of renunciation. 
 
 " Monica," he said, " don't you see that the years 
 would bring us both happiness . . . together? " 
 
 Q2
 
 228 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 She stirred with the resentment of one who feels her 
 defences weakening. " You talk," she said, " as if 
 you thought me a sentimentalist." She had lived 
 with the type, in living with her mother. "As if 
 ' feelings ' were my one absorption. I am not that 
 kind of woman, Mr. Harding. I might have been 
 happier " her voice faltered a little " if I were. 
 Yet I don't think so. People lose themselves in their 
 feelings. I might be happier, I say, if ... if I were 
 like the woman in your book. But I am happy 
 enough. I have my brains, my energy, my will to 
 be useful. You mistake," she continued, with a lift 
 of the head, " if you fancy I am in want of sympathy. 
 I am strong, quite strong, to meet the future. And 
 it isn't just, I know, to represent it as you do," she 
 ended proudly. 
 
 " Nobody is as strong as you claim to be," he said; 
 " though it's true, you are strong, Monica. It is 
 why I want you to marry me. I need your help. 
 You could make my life anything you chose; I am 
 sure of that. You say you can face whatever the 
 future may hold. If that's so, why c.an't you face a 
 future with me? How does it keep us apart when 
 neither of us accepts its theories ? " In his earnestness 
 with her, he quite forgot that he did accept its theories. 
 
 But she did not yield. " And aren't you," was her 
 response, " playing with a theory now, as you played 
 with those in your story? The theory, Mr. Harding, 
 that we could ever be happy together. It's true that I 
 don't believe in what the book held. But I once did.
 
 THE QUEST 229 
 
 It was then I resolved that I should never marry. You 
 said to me that day in the Bois, you would like to know 
 what my life had been ; and I shall tell you a little now, 
 so you may understand me. My life, I mean, since I 
 learned about my grandmother. For, before that, 
 it had nothing worth telling. Some five years ago, I 
 first discovered," she went on, in her rich quiet voice, 
 " what was the matter with my mother, the cause of the 
 strange existence we led. How I learned the truth, 
 doesn't matter. It is the fact that I did learn, I was 
 still young enough to be shocked by it in the crudest 
 sort of way. How could I have fancied such a thing . . . 
 my mother's mother a criminal ? I did not want to ask 
 my mother about it, but I resolved to know all there was 
 to know. So I sent to America and got the reports of 
 the trial. I studied them carefully, because I wanted 
 to have the truth, irrespective of judge and jury. And 
 I came to the conclusion that my grandmother 
 notwithstanding the verdict was guilty; that the 
 evidence proved it. Thinking about it, I said to myself, 
 that people do not do such things from mere impulse 
 of temptation. That the causes of such crime lie deeper, 
 come from a soul and mind radically wrong. It was a 
 question of moral disease." 
 
 She drew her breath sharply, as though she lived 
 again through something of those past emotions. 
 
 " I revolted against such a hateful heritage, suffered 
 from the thought of it. It seemed cruel of life to have 
 thrust it on me. That many people knew, that others 
 suspected, never mattered as much, for I had already
 
 230 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 learned to depend on myself " and he guessed her 
 mother's neglect to be a part of that schooling " and 
 I already had found interests outside of society. No, 
 it was my sense of personal stain ... of having criminal 
 blood in my veins ; that was what I resented most, what 
 was so hard to get over. And it was then I vowed to 
 myself I should not marry. One has no right to cause 
 suffering for others." 
 
 She seemed to expect an assent to this; but he held 
 himself in reserve, following her recital to seize on its 
 weakness when his moment for argument should come. 
 
 " Then I began to recover, as one recovers from an 
 illness of body. Intelligence came to the rescue. I 
 told myself that inherited taint could be combated like 
 everything else. Nature is too fair to deny us the 
 strength to struggle against what is abnormal or vicious 
 in us. And so I got back self-respect at last. My life 
 had been an effort to overcome any wrong instinct that 
 may have been passed down to me. But I still feel 
 bound to keep the earlier promise I made, when 
 weighed down by my heredity. It may be illogical, 
 mere sentiment, in a way; but whatever it is, it is 
 sacred to me. And," she ended, with a dignity that 
 moved him, " you will not ask me to break it, I know." 
 
 " But, Monica," he said, catching her hand, " don't 
 you see the wrong you do yourself by the confession. If 
 you didn't, at heart, still hold the views you deny, you 
 wouldn't remember such a pledge. I, too, have my 
 ill-heritages ... or say they are weaknesses of my own 
 fostering, if you prefer. But, however that may be, I
 
 THE QUEST 231 
 
 ought to fight them . . . and I will fight them, if you will 
 help. ! And you can only help by marrying me, Monica. 
 Why not fight these things together? You must see 
 how much I need you. Don't tell me that promises are 
 more to you than my happiness, my good. Have 
 faith in me and what life together might give us. Your 
 confidence in me will restore my own." 
 
 " Oh, why will you ask it," she cried, as he drew her 
 to him. " You, who never found happiness for your- 
 self, how can you find it for me ? " 
 
 " Because there is no happiness that isn't found 
 together," he answered. 
 
 " If only you were stronger," she whispered, brokenly, 
 yielding to his kiss. " For I am a woman . . . who wants 
 to be led." 
 
 " We shall lead each other. Or, rather, love shall 
 lead us. That is best of all."
 
 BOOK II. THE TEST
 
 Book II: The Test 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " To see Rothenbourg, to love in Venice," was a bit of 
 fashionable counsel that Harding had wished to apply 
 after his marriage the previous June. He and Monica 
 had meant to stay in the old Bavarian town only a day 
 or two, " to see it " ; but akeady the Tauber valley was 
 slipping on its Nessus shirt of burning foliage, and 
 Harding had grown restless. He wanted to follow the 
 storks, that were abandoning their nests on the tiled 
 archways to go where perpetual summer reigned. 
 Somehow he hated the thought of autumn. Not that 
 he was unhappy, nor that he questioned happiness in 
 the future. Nothing had marred his four months of 
 married life. It was, perhaps, that he had been, if 
 anything, too content, and summer had symbolized it. 
 
 At all events, he was tired of Rothenbourg; he 
 wanted to travel now, as much as before he had argued 
 to remain and rent the old little hunting-lodge, called 
 the " Kaiserschlossen," lying outside the town, which 
 haply had been offered for the season by some artist 
 friends of Monica's. It had charmed him to think of 
 trying for awhile this picturesque, irresponsible house- 
 keeping in the tumble-down landmark of other days. 
 The experiment could hardly be called a failure, in 
 spite of the small domestic tragedies it involved; there
 
 236 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 had been a touch of romance in it all. But Harding 
 had outlived the whim. Besides, it was to be his 
 wander year, in which to recover health for he had 
 suffered during the past spring from a bronchial attack 
 and to acquire experience and material for work. It 
 excused him and Monica for leaving Mrs. Eversley, still 
 in a somewhat invalidic state, especially as Miss Van- 
 derhurst had agreed to companion her during their 
 absence; reports from that admirable spinster had 
 continued to be reassuring, so the two had no reason to 
 reproach themselves for lack of duty to " dear Lena," 
 as Miss Vanderhurst always called her old friend. 
 
 Leaving Paris had meant, too, to Harding, leaving 
 old past states of mind, all the misery and tangle of 
 his former life. He was wedded to the woman he 
 had desired; he was enjoying fairly easy circum- 
 stances; his literary prospects were bright the success 
 of The Horns of the Altar was a proof that he could 
 depend on his pen, free from former harassing condi- 
 tions; and if the years of strain, and some months of 
 reckless pleasure-seeking, had a little told on his con- 
 stitution, it would only be a question of time until 
 he was sound again in body and mind. He was sur- 
 prised how, already, the old melancholy of spirits 
 had been dissipated; and he told himself that much 
 of what he had attributed to convictions of philosophy 
 lay in unsatisfactory bachelorhood, in living alone and 
 selfishly. Marriage had a tranquillising effect; every- 
 thing seemed to dispose him to see things as he had 
 sworn to Monica he really did see them. He felt
 
 THE TEST 237 
 
 there was no reason to confess that, in a way, he had 
 deceived her in repudiating his book, in claiming to 
 be an optimist at heart. It had not been true then, 
 when he had proposed to her, but it was true now. 
 Why disturb the faith she had had in him, the faith 
 she continued to repose in him? It was very sweet 
 that she should believe so completely, should take him 
 wholly for granted, should picture him already as far 
 on the road to attaining her own reasoned feelings 
 about existence. 
 
 He was only just beginning to know her, after these 
 quickly passed months of marriage. The failure of 
 her rejected lovers has been, perhaps, in their holding 
 that she needed them. His success had been that he 
 needed her. And it was his effort to prove that he 
 really did need her, to show that his happiness and 
 welfare depended on her help and love for him. 
 
 He continually told himself how satisfied he was 
 with the love Monica gave him. True, it was not 
 quite the kind of love he had dreamed of in his youth. 
 In old, overburdened New York days, hearing Tristan 
 and Isolde from cheap gallery seats at the Metropolitan 
 he had recognized what capacity lay deep in his heart 
 for some such passionate, reckless love. As the 
 music sang into his nerves, burnt his sight with blur 
 of tears, he had felt the answering cry arise in the 
 exaltation of the hour. That was what he craved, the 
 utmost of feeling, one infinite breath of abandonment 
 and divine life of heart, and for it he would gladly 
 pay the price. It was what he had dreamed; and
 
 238 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Monica was the reality. There was nothing of the 
 Isolde about her. He had not cried for her as Tristan, 
 as the whole passionate waves of the orchestra break- 
 ing like a foam-fraught sea on the audience had cried, 
 "Isolde," until it was almost more than any heart could 
 bear. But he, too, was the reality. The Tristan in 
 him was only of the hour of such glorious glimpses 
 into heart-emotions. With the music faded from his 
 soul, seated again at the drudgery of his desk, there 
 seemed little in him that warranted such a gift from 
 life. And Monica, for all her contained nature, for 
 all the maternal side of her love, had shown that her 
 quiet feelings were deep. Her qualities were restful, 
 compensating things, and he was content with them. 
 He would be an ingrate not to be content. . . . 
 
 Monica, too, had had her dreams. She had not 
 desired a Tristan as Harding had desired an Isolde; 
 but her heart had conceived a very different type of 
 lover from Julian: a man whose strength was greater 
 than her own, who would do the " leading " which had 
 been her cry in her troubled and unwilling surrender. 
 As she had then confessed, she was, after all, "a 
 woman," with a woman's instinct of dependence, in 
 spite of the hardening fortitude of her nature which 
 accident had fostered. It was no inconsistency of sex 
 that had caused her to yield. She could have with- 
 stood the pleading of her heart well enough. But 
 she had had a vision of a black sea, with a hand 
 stretched out to her. A shipwrecked character had 
 asked to be saved; and she could not resist the appeal.
 
 THE TEST 239 
 
 She had not thought of the consequences to herself; 
 had not stepped to reflect that the involuntary act 
 might involve her own safety, that sometimes the 
 clutch of the drowning draws down the would-be 
 saviour. 
 
 Now that she had taken irrevocable pledges, she 
 told herself, as Harding was telling himself, that she 
 was content. Her love and care had already, it 
 seemed, done her husband good. He was healthier in 
 mind and body; he spoke sanguinely of the future, was 
 full of plans for work, interested in travel, and he 
 had not expressed regret, as she sometimes feared he 
 might, at having destroyed The Labyrinth of Life. 
 She had not wanted him to do it for her sake, but for 
 his own, and he had assured her it was for his own. 
 In a way it might seem a little thing, but it involved 
 the question of conscience what an artist owed to 
 himself and to others. To her the philosophy of the 
 book was pernicious: she had conceived of it as injur- 
 ing lives, depriving people of courage, and in her 
 opinion to sow broadcast on the world insincere and 
 hurtful ideas was to ignore human responsibilities, to 
 misuse talent. But she was enough the artist to 
 realize what the sacrifice was: to cast the produce of 
 one's brain into the waste basket, to kill what one had 
 made live, even if it were unworthy ; and she honoured 
 Julian for the heroism, although she honoured him 
 more for what underlay the heroism. It had shown 
 her he was worthy of being loved. With that proof 
 of the finer side of his characters he might well be
 
 240 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 patient, while waiting for all that must eventually 
 follow, the step by step whereby he would attain 
 at last the high, reasonable plane of living on which 
 she herself endeavoured to move. 
 
 So the months passed, and the next Spring came, 
 finding them, after much shift of places, at the Hotel 
 des Palmes, in the old Sicilian capital. It was almost 
 a year now since their marriage, a lotus-eating year, 
 and Monica was beginning to hope that Julian would 
 soon have had enough of travel and settle down to a 
 soberer, more useful existence.
 
 241 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ON a calm purple day the two undertook an excursion 
 up Monte Pellegrino. The white Spring sunshine 
 blazed on bare yellow rocks and wrung the odours out 
 of weed and flower tufting the chasm-cleft mountain- 
 side. Monica, for whom Harding had hired a donkey, 
 seemed disinclined to talk; and he, walking beside her 
 up the zigzagging viaduct, shared her thoughtful 
 silence. Murmurs stole from the plain below, but so 
 faint, drowned by distance, that they only emphasized 
 a sense of remoteness from the world. As the road 
 climbed they had wider glimpses of the Conco d'Oro: 
 grey-green expanses of olives, in the wilderness of 
 which twinkled white villas of wealthy Palmerians; 
 farther, rose the domes and minarets of the Sicilian 
 capital by the blue sea, all shrouded in tender opales- 
 cence. 
 
 Half-way up the mountain Harding espied some 
 gorse that the Spring warmth had called into golden 
 blossom. 
 
 " See," he said, showing his wife the sprig he had 
 plucked, " the genista of Leopardi. It's the /lore 
 di deserto of his famous poem. You remember the 
 idea was suggested by seeing the plant growing on 
 the crater of Vesuvius. It sums up his philosophy of 
 life, won him the name of ' Poet of Pessimism.' Listen 
 
 R
 
 242 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 to this." He read some of the lines from the volume 
 of Leopardi he had picked up that morning at a 
 bookstall of the Via Macqueda. 
 
 " That is a poem which should never have been 
 given to the world," Monica observed when he stopped, 
 " whatever personal wretchedness may have inspired 
 it. I remember reading once how his publisher 
 begged him not to print it for the sake of the young 
 patriots whom it might rob of courage at a juncture 
 when Italy needed their utmost effort. But Leopardi 
 thought of his own fame, not of the political crisis 
 his country had to face. He should have done as you 
 did, Julian, with The Labyrinth of Life destroyed it. 
 Those who preach the doctrine of despair abuse their 
 talents." 
 
 It was the second time since their marriage that 
 Monica had alluded to the manuscript as destroyed. 
 On the first occasion Harding's conscience had twinged 
 him. After his talk with Monica about The Labyrinth 
 of Life he had gone back to his room and rather grimly 
 burned the manuscript an act of sacrifice that at 
 the moment satisfied his mood. Only, much later, 
 when packing to leave for Italy, he found the original 
 rough copy from which the one Monica had seen had 
 been typed. It is not human nature to be heroic at 
 all times; it was a shock to discover that his sacrifice 
 had not been complete, but he could not nerve himself 
 to completeness at that particular moment. He 
 therefore tossed the bundle of papers into a spare 
 trunk with books and other things, which he stored
 
 THE TEST 243 
 
 in Paris. He wondered if he should not now tell 
 Monica; but there was a drawn, tired look in her face 
 which made him hesitate for her sake. 
 
 He put the flower between the pages of the book, 
 which he restored to his pocket. Monica's gaze 
 rested on his brooding face; she showed uneasiness 
 and disappointment. Harding suddenly shook off 
 his mood and smiled at her to dispel the atmosphere 
 he had provoked between them. How seriously she 
 took everything! She made no allowances for tem- 
 peraments more elastic than her own. 
 
 " Forgive me," he said in a different tone, " I'm 
 spoiling your afternoon. I am out of sorts to-day." 
 
 A turn in the road brought them in sight of the 
 mountain shrine of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of 
 Palermo. They left the donkey with the asino who 
 acted as their guide, and, ringing the convent bell 
 that summoned a monk to the portal, they were 
 conducted to the grotto chapel. 
 
 As they made their way along the cool, stone-flagged 
 corridors they could hear the muffled sounds of a Gre- 
 gorian chant. The chapel was in half gloom. They 
 barely made out the fantastic vault of stalactites, the 
 constant drip from which was carried off by a maze 
 of lead pipes. Candles twinkled on the altar, before 
 which knelt some dozen of worshippers. They paused 
 in the background until the services were over. 
 
 When the black-garbed monks had filed out of the 
 strange sanctuary, they approached the glass-protected 
 shrine of the Saint. It was a sculptured figure of a 
 
 R3
 
 244 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 young woman, covered with votive jewellery, repre- 
 sented as asleep, while an angel, a lily in his hand, 
 bent over her. In the mystic obscurity of the chapel 
 there was something quite impressive about the 
 wonder-working image carried with pomp through 
 the streets of Palermo on occasions of plague and 
 other public misfortune. 
 
 Harding left Monica here to climb the rough foot- 
 path that led to the summit of Monte Pellegrino, 
 whence the eye had a vast panorama of sea and shore, 
 with distant snow peaks; on clear days Stromboli 
 could be picked out, and the pale apex of JEtna. in 
 its mantling mists. 
 
 When he returned, he found Monica still seated in 
 the chapel. She looked up, as though shaken out of 
 reveries. 
 
 " You have not been long," she said. 
 
 " Almost an hour," he smiled. " You have been 
 dreaming, like Santa Rosalia. Has she been con- 
 verting you to Catholicism? After all, if one must 
 deceive oneself, I think I'd choose the Church of 
 Rome in preference to Protestantism, that is as super- 
 stitious, and not even lovely in its art and music. 
 Besides, the feminine side of Romanism is poetic. 
 Its elevation of maternity is what gives it such a hold 
 on women." 
 
 " I think that women would have elevated mother- 
 hood, any way," she returned. 
 
 The dignity of her tone made him glance inquiringly 
 at her: and he understood what had been absorbing
 
 THE TEST 245 
 
 her during his absence. For the first time Monica's 
 approaching motherhood presented itself to him as 
 something more than an unwelcome fact. He had not 
 very strong paternal instincts, at least, they had 
 hardly yet been awakened in him. He realized how 
 different were Monica's feelings, how much it meant 
 to her. 
 
 It brought him self-reproach over his irresponsi- 
 bility. He had considered marriage, somehow, as 
 always just a matter of Monica and himself. The 
 deepness of her look had a tinge of sadness, he thought, 
 and he wondered whence it sprang, just what her 
 meditations were; yet he could not bring himself to 
 ask. Reserve wrapped her about in shadows like 
 those investing the chapel where she sat. It was 
 one of the times when it came to him how the nearest 
 of relations had its separating veils. Would he ever 
 know her truly ? 
 
 On their way back to Palermo his mind was occu- 
 pied by the new sentiments evoked in him. Yes, he 
 was far too self-centred. The year had been one of 
 personal gratification, of idle enjoyment. But all 
 that must end. He could not go on drifting, marriage 
 had raised up issues that had to be met. It was he, 
 not Monica, who ought to do the planning. No 
 doubt she had been thinking of the future, all it held 
 for them both, during the hour she had sat in Santa 
 Rosalia's chapel. She had been thinking thinking of 
 life and its problems. Was she secretly unhappy? 
 Something in her expression had fallen on him like
 
 246 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 a rebuke. If only Monica were less perfect. ... It 
 would be a relief in some ways; it would make things 
 so much less difficult for them both. 
 
 Twilight slowly sank as they continued their winding 
 descent to the plain. The moment was a solvent of 
 all things earthly, fusing everything into a marvellous 
 vision of colour and softness. The beauty of the 
 picture made Harding's senses ache. As long as life 
 could so enrich, it compensated for the tangles and 
 ironies. He would seek his motive for living in beauty, 
 as Monica found hers in moral obligation. . . . 
 
 They were half-way down the road when Harding 
 paused. 
 
 " Listen," he said, " an idyll of Theocritus." 
 
 From the heights above, where the jagged cliffs 
 caught the sunset glow, came a tinkling of innumerable 
 bells, pierced by gruff cries that strangely stirred the 
 wistful twilight. 
 
 The goatherds of Monte Pellegrino were driving 
 their flocks down from the bleak upper pasturage. 
 The mountain-side, which during the afternoon had 
 seemed barren of life, was suddenly alive. Hundreds 
 of goats yellow, white, dun-coloured shepherded 
 by their guardians in pagan-like sheepskins, came 
 leaping like a cascade from boulder to boulder. The 
 clamour of copper bells grew deafening as the flocks 
 approached. At length they flooded the causeway, 
 while some of the goats, mounting the dizzy parapets, 
 ran along them with frolicsome, sure-footed ease. 
 
 They brought with them sharp, acrid odours and
 
 THE TEST 247 
 
 clouds of dust, as they inundated the angle of the 
 road where the travellers had paused. Monica's sober 
 beast, that had submitted with saintly patience to 
 its master's goadings, was jostled aside by the advance 
 guard. It began baulking, in spite of the boy's 
 commands and bridle jerks. As the flocks continued 
 to crowd by the animal was thrust violently against 
 the stone wall of the viaduct, and Monica, half un- 
 seated, was in danger of being dashed into the chasm. 
 Harding saved her, and supported her as best he 
 could. They waited until the riotous herds had 
 passed, carrying the dust and clamour on to the plain. 
 
 " Are you hurt ? " he exclaimed. He was trembling 
 from the shock of her danger. 
 
 " No," she returned, attempting a reassuring smile. 
 But she was pale, and he saw that the incident had 
 unnerved her. 
 
 It evoked tenderness in him. Suppose she had been 
 taken from him before he had proved that her faith 
 in him was not misplaced. 
 
 They took no more long excursions after that. 
 For several days Monica kept to her room, and when 
 she reappeared she was languid and disinclined to 
 talk. Harding redoubled in his attentions, brought 
 Monica flowers, read to her, or talked in a cheerful, 
 confident strain as they took short drives or walked 
 or sat in the public gardens. But the thought of the 
 child lay like a shadow in his thoughts. He longed 
 to have their life go on as it had been. 
 
 He repioached himself now for not having proposed
 
 248 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 their return to Paris, where Monica might have been 
 under her mother's roof. But it seemed too late; the 
 journey was long, Paris still under its winter blight. 
 He asked if she would like him to send for Mrs. Eversley, 
 but she negatived the suggestion. He could conceive 
 of her mother being too selfish, too " invalidic " to 
 take the trip, and, after all, Mrs. Eversley would be 
 little solace. 
 
 " Then Miss Vanderhurst? " he urged. 
 
 But she shook her head. " Why ask so much of 
 her? " she answered. He was moved. How lonely 
 must her girlhood have been, how schooled to inde- 
 pendence, that she could do so well without others. 
 ****** 
 
 When the child came Harding's thoughts were all 
 for Monica, until he noticed the doctor shaking a 
 grave head over the little bundle whose feeble wail 
 seemed a protest against its own being. 
 
 " A slight deformity the right foot," said the 
 doctor. 
 
 " WiU he be lame? " Harding faltered. 
 
 The doctor nodded: " I fear so. It must have 
 been the accident on Monte Pellegrino." 
 
 " Poor Monica ! " Harding thought. And, with a 
 guilty start, he remembered the theme he had so 
 subtly imagined in The Labyrinth of Life.
 
 249 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THEY returned to Paris as soon as Monica and the 
 child were able to make the journey. Harding recog- 
 nized that his " wander year," as he called it, was over, 
 and that circumstances demanded he settle down 
 somewhere and make a home for his family ; and Paris 
 seemed the best spot. Yet it was, perhaps, less sense 
 of responsibility as a married man than uneasiness as 
 an author, with a future still to confirm, that brought 
 him to this conclusion. He had met in the smoking 
 room of the hotel, one evening, a fellow traveller, an 
 American, who seeing his name on the tabetta, intro- 
 duced himself and spoke praisingly of The Horns of the 
 Altar. " I suppose," he said, " that you will soon have 
 another book out." 
 
 " Not for some time yet," Harding replied. 
 
 " That's the drawback to a popular hit; it sets a 
 standard one has to live up to." The smile that accom- 
 panied the remark was a little disparaging, touched, it 
 might be, with envy. The man was the author of 
 several books which had received scant attention. " So 
 you've been spending your time in Italy," he went on. 
 " There is something insidious in the life here, don't 
 you find ? I call Italy the ' afternoon of living.' A 
 good place to end one's days in, but bad for those with 
 ambition left."
 
 250 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 The conversation dwelt uncomfortably in Harding's 
 mind, and he said to Monica: " It's time I was getting 
 into harness again. There's no mental ionic in these 
 Southern countries. And Paris is where I did my best 
 work." There was a passing sadness on his face at the 
 thought of The Labyrinth of Life which, in his opinion, 
 was his one proof of real talent. 
 
 Monica's ready assent to the proposition displeased 
 him; it seemed to suggest that privately she had long 
 deprecated this idleness. 
 
 Although he started north with some regret, Harding, 
 on reaching Paris, felt its old charm come over him. 
 Yes, he was glad to be there again. The staccato beat 
 of the cab horses on the asphalte, as they left the station 
 for Neuilly, fell inspiritingly on his ear, and he breathed 
 with pleasure the pungent odour of dampness left by a 
 recent April shower. The bustle and brightness of the 
 city gave him a sense of close renewal with his age. It 
 challenged ambition, aroused mental activities. Suc- 
 cess meant something in a great metropolis; life was a 
 compromise, a half defeat, lived in the relaxing sur- 
 roundings of remote Rothenbourg and indolent Palermo. 
 He talked to his wife with so much animation on the 
 way to her mother's home where they were to pay a 
 visit before taking an apartment that she was im- 
 pressed by the man displayed. Julian was getting to 
 be what she had hoped; the year of rest and change had 
 had rewarding effect. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley received them with a graceful, semi- 
 invalidic, but almost reproachful smile. She lay Ian-
 
 THE TEST 251 
 
 guidly on her long chair, in her Madame de Sevigne 
 boudoir. She wished to look lovely lovely in a fragile, 
 convalescent way. It was sentiment that bore her up, 
 and the fact that it happened to be one of her " good 
 days." The calendar had covered a good many of these 
 during the dear truants' long absence. She had been at 
 Aix-les-Bains the previous summer, where many louis 
 drawn from what was left of Monica's fortune had gone 
 in amusing herself at the casino tables; and having had, 
 the past winter, Julia Vanderhurst to multiply acquaint- 
 ances for her, she had enjoyed going out and receiving 
 people in, with remarkable activity considering the 
 invalid she was. Her eyes, it was true, still suffered 
 from that awful Latin name the oculist had applied to 
 them, and she continued to prefer seeing things as they 
 were not to seeing them as they were through dis- 
 figuring glasses; and, after all, there were worse 
 maladies. Besides, it had not interfered with con- 
 templating, in the cheval glass, always convenient to 
 her couch, what seemed to her a very satisfying vision of 
 girlish beauty. 
 
 She informed the mother-neglecting prodigals that 
 it had been rather a lonely winter, in spite of a devoted 
 Julia by her side, and that she had missed them sadly. 
 She had spared the spinster who had now gone to 
 London the whole knowledge of her ills : one hated to 
 distress kind friends; and yes, she supposed she was 
 improving under her new and even more sympathetic 
 doctor; she was sure, since they were returned to 
 cheer her up, her present little attack would soon pass.
 
 252 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Of course, she must do a little entertaining for them, a 
 dinner or so; revive her afternoons. Not much she 
 had not the strength, alas, for much but just enough 
 to put them in touch with their friends again. 
 
 She consented, without much enthusiasm, to have 
 the infant brought to her. Harding felt that she blamed 
 him for his lack of consideration in making her a grand- 
 mother. It had been hard enough to endure the 
 incriminating fact of a daughter. 
 
 " What a puny little thing," was her comment, after 
 a rather casual inspection of the addition to the family. 
 " He doesn't resemble either of you especially, does 
 he ? I wonder what sort of a child it will grow up to be." 
 
 It was what Harding himself sometimes wondered; 
 but he had a reticence, somehow, about discussing the 
 subject with his wife. Monica had never alluded to 
 the poor twisted foot, which seemed to him almost a 
 foreshadowing of a twisted nature. It was a vague 
 theory of his that deformed minds went with deformed 
 bodies. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley roused herself heroically to her dinner 
 and tea giving, because, as she confided to her son-in- 
 law, the end of the season must be made pleasant for 
 them. It was in connection with this immolation of 
 invalidism on the social altar that the question of the 
 apartment came up. It was not to be thought of, she 
 said; they were, naturally, to make their home with her. 
 
 " I thought it was all settled before you left Paris 
 that you were to remain here," she cried reproachfully. 
 " What should I do all alone in a great house like
 
 THE TEST 253 
 
 this? I've just renewed the lease in expectation of 
 your coming. Besides, you will be so much more 
 comfortable. Monica is a dear girl, full of good 
 domestic intentions, but inexperienced. You see, I 
 brought her up under the idea it would never be neces- 
 sary to take the control of a house in the painful, tire- 
 some sense. ... I mean where she would have a hundred 
 little cares, like knowing the price of chops, for 
 instance." It appeared that Mrs. Eversley regarded 
 it as quite tragic to have to know the price of chops. 
 " And then ' a modest apartment ' has such a depres- 
 sing sound, as though you weren't, Julian as, of 
 course, you are a successful author who can count on 
 ample means. I know there is a good deal of old- 
 fashioned talk about beginning married life simply, and 
 that sort of thing ; but times have so changed, and we 
 really can't afford being ' simple ' any more. People 
 expect much of us nowadays. One has to live well 
 and entertain, or be ignored. And who can stand 
 being ignored I know I can't and it would be fatal, 
 as far as you are concerned. The world only cares to 
 read the books of people whom the papers describe as 
 writing in charming, tasteful studies, with a motor 
 at the door. How can one believe in the reliability of 
 their versions of life unless . . . well, unless there is a 
 motor. You see, I have my Limousine; and then the 
 background of this house. I do think it is sweet, 
 with so many genuine things in it, and I can create 
 you such an ideal study where no one shall disturb 
 you; I shall see to that. Yes, I think you owe the
 
 254 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 effect of all that to yourself, to the literary position 
 you have achieved. Of course, I know it is really 
 Monica. Poor, dear, earnest Monica ! She does mean 
 so well, but she makes her mistakes, alas! And it 
 would be such a mistake to listen to her . . . burying 
 yourself in some out-of-the-way quarter of town and 
 giving the impression you're both half starving." 
 
 She was very smiling and sweet; but, under her 
 words, Harding felt was the implication that, unless 
 he could keep up appearances, as she had described 
 them, he had misrepresented his ability to give Monica 
 the comforts he owed her. 
 
 And, indeed, the Neuilly house flattered his growing 
 taste for luxury and fastidiousness in regard to sur- 
 roundings. He had his American sentiments about 
 independence, but it did seem an unnecessary protest 
 to exchange Mrs. Eversley's ample and beautiful home 
 for an apartment; and in the conversation that fol- 
 lowed Mrs. Eversley conceded that, of course, he 
 might contribute his share in the expenses of the 
 common menage since it would so ease his pride 
 although she let him infer that it would not be much, 
 that she meant to be more than generous over it all. 
 Her air was one of playful allowance of his man's 
 sentiments. 
 
 She might well be generous, he reflected, remember- 
 ing Monica's temporary renunciation of her fortune. 
 He might have thought his wife foolishly generous, 
 but it had left him no great feeling of disappointment. 
 In a way he, too, was careless about money matters
 
 THE TEST 255 
 
 as long as he had enough in his pocket. He was glad, 
 however, to remember that Monica had a fortune, even 
 if she did not enjoy it during her mother's lifetime. 
 It protected her in case of misfortune to himself; was 
 ample protection, judging from what Mrs. Eversley 
 could do on the income. The self-sacrificing act 
 when he recalled it modified his feeling that Monica 
 was rather hard and indifferent in her filial senti- 
 ments. 
 
 When he spoke to her of Mrs. Eversley's proposal, 
 she looked disappointed, but did not oppose it beyond 
 suggesting that, as by his own confession, he was not 
 well off, the expense attached to the arrangement 
 might prove awkward. 
 
 " Oh, as to that," he returned, " I am quite able 
 to meet my share. But, of course, we'll take an apart- 
 ment, if you prefer." His sensitiveness was aroused 
 by what appeared to be a reflection on his spirit of 
 independence. " I was only thinking you might be 
 more comfortable here. However, we'll look up 
 apartments to-morrow," he added. 
 
 But there was a tea next day that Mrs. Eversley 
 particularly wanted him to escort her to: a tea where 
 he would meet some interesting artistic personalities 
 like himself, as she flatteringly put it. Monica declined 
 to go, on the ground that she cared little for such 
 functions. 
 
 " Poor Monica," was her mother's comment. " I 
 fear she is determined to be one of those dull, domestic 
 wives. It is a pity, Julian; you really oughtn't to
 
 256 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 let her. A dull wife tempts a man to be a gay 
 husband." 
 
 She looked at him rather archly; it was pleasant 
 to be going about again with a young man who was 
 not a bad substitute for Percy. If it was easy for her 
 to forget that her daughter existed, it required no 
 strain at all to forget that Julian was her son-in-law. 
 She had on a lovely new toilette it was a mere inci- 
 dent that it had not been paid for yet. It was all 
 part of her sweet, girlish irresponsibility, for she was 
 a girl yet, she told herself, as she glanced (without 
 glasses on, of course) in the hall mirror. Yes, she 
 felt quite vernal, like the May weather, in starting 
 forth with dear Julian, even if there could be no holding 
 hands any more in the little salon. 
 
 Harding was a bit annoyed at Monica's refusal to 
 accompany them, although the child was so young 
 and frail that it seemed natural for a mother to remain 
 with it. But he was not thinking of that. He was 
 wondering if Monica hadn't more sensitiveness about 
 the family scandal than she admitted. This explana- 
 tion, he felt, might suggest itself to people who knew 
 the story and never met her in society. Pride almost 
 seemed to demand her going out to negative the idea. 
 It was part of his respect for her that he believed she 
 could rise above it in this connection as he had in 
 marrying her. 
 
 Yet he kissed her devotedly enough on parting 
 from her.
 
 257 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ONE June morning Harding was out in the Bois. He 
 needed exercise and fresh air; he was worried by his 
 slowness in constructing a plot. It must be a bright, 
 optimistic story, dedicated to his wife but, somehow, 
 the prospect of such a theme did not fire him with 
 enthusiasm. There was certainly much suggestion of 
 cheerfulness in his surroundings; the house was 
 cheerful, Mrs. Eversley was cheerful, the Clodion 
 Psyche was cheerful; but such outward indications 
 could not suffice where the quality lacked in himself. 
 Art was to him not only a question of " cheerfulness " : 
 the dramatic element was always required to stir him, 
 and the all-pleasant, with its inevitable buffoonery, 
 failed to interest him even casually as a reader, so 
 he could not approach it as a creator. 
 
 Worried as he was by this condition of his thoughts, 
 material complications disturbed him, which he might 
 have set aside had he been absorbed in work that really 
 appealed to him. The charming study that Mrs. 
 Eversley had arranged as a refuge for family author- 
 ship had taken some time to fit up; she kept having 
 new inspirations as to its furnishing. Then he had 
 to look up Nicolls and other friends. There had been 
 dinners and late receptions, too, that had left him 
 out of trim for work next day. There was the habit 
 
 s
 
 258 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 of a year's idleness to overcome. He missed the 
 familiar conditions of his little room on the quay, 
 and missed, too, the self-isolation which had been 
 possible there. Apart from the necessity of sharing 
 his life with others, he could not even consider himself 
 at home in his mother-in-law's house. He was still 
 there in the position of a guest and a " paying guest," 
 at that. The promised talk between Mrs. Eversley 
 and himself about expenses had never taken place. 
 She had set it aside with the air of one generously 
 ignoring a trifle. During the month, however, sundry 
 large housekeeping bills had been presented; and he, 
 being appealed to by the servants, had paid impa- 
 tiently rather than expose himself to the indignity of 
 dunning. Mrs. Eversley on these occasions had 
 always been lying down, or just going out, or unable 
 to find her cheque-book; and after he had paid- 
 she would invariably say in a tone of gentle reproof: 
 " Oh, but why did you do it ? " Then, a few days later, 
 when she could decently appear to have forgotten the 
 incident, she would make a dainty allusion to the 
 " little business talk we must have the very first time 
 I feel strong enough." Meanwhile Harding's bank- 
 account was growing more invalidic week by week, 
 and he felt the real urgency of getting on with his 
 book. Yes, he certainly ought to be "cheerful"; 
 but he certainly wasn't. 
 
 As he paced along the Avenue des Acacias, in all 
 its gala sweetness of flower, a Limousine stopped on 
 the road beside, and he recognized a familiar, fresh-
 
 THE TEST 259 
 
 coloured face at the lowered pane. He knew, by Miss 
 Vanderhurst's letters, that Buttercup's marriage to 
 Percy Colston had taken place shortly after his de- 
 parture from Paris the previous June; and that the 
 two occupied a house in the Avenue du Bois de Bou- 
 logne, the palatial splendours of which advertised the 
 triumph of tea as a wealth-conductor if a nerve- 
 destroyer. Harding had once or twice wondered why 
 he had not met the poet and his bride at the various 
 entertainments he had attended; it was mere chance, 
 no doubt, for Buttercup, he was aware, had pursued 
 ardently the social path opened by her marriage. 
 
 He had not settled in his mind how he would greet 
 her, but was saved embarrassment on that score by 
 Buttercup's frank pleasure at seeing him. " There," 
 she said, as he shook hands, " I was expecting this. 
 Get into the machine, and we'll go drive as far as the 
 Cascades. I am out for an airing, and I see you are; 
 so we might as well take it together. Besides, there 
 are all sorts of things to talk over, you know." 
 
 She seemed wholly to assume that their misunder- 
 standing at the Opera Ball was forgotten; evidently 
 she herself had forgotten it. And, indeed, it was 
 hardly cause for lifelong coldness; if she had been 
 rather malicious in telling him of the Eversleys' 
 ancestry, he had in great measure provoked it. The 
 quarrel lay, after all, between Percy Colston and 
 himself; Colston had bred all the mischief. 
 
 " Well, so we both have been married a year," she 
 said, when he had seated himself beside her. " Quite 
 
 S3
 
 260 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 time we were comparing notes, don't you agree? " 
 And she laughed, as though she took matrimony 
 lightly and concluded he did. 
 
 The laugh was not quite the old one, it struck him; 
 there was a new note in it. It accorded with a good 
 deal else that seemed new about Buttercup. Harding 
 was impressed, almost surprised, at the transformation 
 which a year had made in Hiram Baxter's daughter. 
 She had acquired quite the air of a young woman of 
 fashion. There was tone, sophistication, about her, 
 and it suited her riper beauty; her clothes had a 
 knowing chic, and her voice had been put out to school 
 it was modified, almost elegant in its intonations. 
 As he met her eyes for she was studying him with 
 frank interest he had the sense of even greater dif- 
 ferences under all this easy adaptation to Parisian 
 standards of looks and dress. There were clouded 
 depths, like a clear pool that had been stirred, half 
 revealing things which, no doubt, had been there 
 always, in abeyance. Harding had not found her 
 eyes particularly interesting before; but they inter- 
 ested him now. First, youth was gone; it was no 
 longer girlhood that guessed about life, it was woman- 
 hood that knew. There was about Mrs. Percy Colston 
 consciousness of her physical attraction, of the subtler 
 uses that could be made of it. It was more than a 
 revelation, it came as a shock; Buttercup's old candid 
 heartiness had pleased him, had compensated for her 
 crudities. Mrs. Percy Colston was certainly no longer 
 crude; she seemed, on the contrary, fairly far on the
 
 THE TEST 261 
 
 road to becoming over-civilized. He wondered how 
 much " Percy " was responsible for the accent which 
 he vaguely divined in her. It caused a passing twinge 
 of conscience, for he still nursed the flattering idea 
 that his treatment of Buttercup had precipitated the 
 foolish marriage. No wonder Buttercup laughed 
 about her matrimonial whim. But he was glad that 
 she could laugh. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " I have been quite looking forward 
 to seeing you. Somebody told me I forget who, one 
 meets so many people that you and your wife were 
 in Paris. At least, my informant supposed it was 
 both, though you are reported to go out alone, or, 
 rather, with Mrs. Eversley hovering like a guardian 
 angel. Now, don't grow cross. Can't an old friend 
 tease you ? And I am that, I hope. But why do you 
 look at me so ? Do you think I have changed ? But 
 you've changed, too." 
 
 " Have I ? " and his laugh was meant to match her 
 own. " In what way? " 
 
 " Oh, it's being married, I suppose. But the 
 changes in us don't mean we've got to change to each 
 other. I always let Percy manage his own feuds, so 
 I don't see why we should have any Montague and 
 Capulet feelings." Again she laughed, perhaps enjoy- 
 ing all the remark suggested. She added: " With the 
 sentiment left out, of course. Just a friendly alliance, 
 you know, between picked members of the hostile 
 houses of Eversley and Colston. Why not? " 
 
 " Why not, indeed ? " He thought she showed more
 
 262 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 skill in talking. He could well believe it was her hus- 
 band. He recalled Nicolls's remark that Buttercup, 
 with half a chance, would soak up culture as blotting- 
 paper does ink. He went on, feeling some response 
 due to her challenging air: " We couldn't be anything 
 but friends." 
 
 ' Yes, so it seemed," she returned dryly, seizing on 
 the unintended ambiguity of his assurance. " Though 
 I took you rather seriously in the beginning. You 
 flirted with me outrageously you know you did. I 
 was silly; but I'm not sure even now that it was quite 
 fair of you. But, there, if we speak of that, we may 
 fall to quarrelling. And, as I say, I leave quarrelling 
 to Percy. It's his speciality." 
 
 " It's just as well not to revive all that. Though it 
 gives me the chance to apologize for having been rude 
 at the Opera that night." 
 
 " Oh, I've forgiven that, and everything else," she 
 affirmed. And again her eyes met his. ' You see, I 
 have to cultivate a good temper. Nobody could live 
 with Percy who didn't. Oh, don't think from that," 
 she added, guessing his thought, " that we don't get 
 on. We do." And this time her laugh was slightly 
 hard. " We understand each othei and that's a 
 great deal in this life, you know." 
 
 She hesitated for a moment, caressing her Pomera- 
 nian, whose bright ribbon matched her gown. It was 
 part of a studied harmony about her, and expressed 
 an acquired elegance of life. The completeness of 
 little luxurious accessories in the Limousine suggested
 
 THE TEST 263 
 
 that she must spend most of her days in it ; he noticed 
 particularly a silver cigarette case. When he knew 
 her, she had not smoked. 
 
 " Papa, as you can imagine, did not take to Percy 
 much," Buttercup began again, her conversation 
 flowing with something of the old spontaneity. " But, 
 then, he was deadly afraid I would fall in love with a 
 foreigner. The worst American, to his mind, is 
 better than the best European." Again her laugh 
 came the new moderated laugh that told him so 
 much. " Then I enjoy living in Paris. Society's so 
 new to me Paris society, I mean," she corrected 
 hastily. " Of course, I'm on the go the whole time. 
 Now tell me about yourself it's your turn. You've 
 become quite a man of the world, haven't you ? You've 
 given up being an author, any way; I never see any- 
 thing of yours. I still have your Adonis-Garden 
 with its dedication. Don't you write verses any more ? 
 And is it because life's all prose, no poetry ? " 
 
 "If life were ever anything else but prose, there 
 would be no need of poets trying to say it isn't," he 
 returned. "As to telling about myself, I don't know 
 there's anything to tell. I'm writing, but slowly; 
 and I go out slowly, too." 
 
 " I don't wonder you look slow, then," she com- 
 mented. " But it's not for me to criticize; if you 
 sound prosaic, why, I do, too. Your wife's quite 
 handsome, I'm told. I know she doesn't go out, so 
 I won't suggest calling." 
 
 " She is rather domestic," Harding suggested.
 
 264 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " And you ? " Buttercup demanded. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not ideally so. I don't particularly care 
 for Society, but I'm not crazy about always staying 
 at home, either." 
 
 " Then you'll have to come to my afternoons. 
 We'll probably be meeting all the time, any way. I 
 shouldn't like to make Mrs. Harding jealous, though, 
 since she doesn't go about with you." 
 
 " Oh, she's never jealous." 
 
 " Really ? How fond she must be of you, then ! 
 Percy feels quite safe about me, too. He doesn't 
 have to break any of the Sevres china papa gave us." 
 
 Then, as though personalities had lasted long 
 enough, she drifted to general subjects. 
 
 When Harding parted fiom Buttercup, he promised 
 to come to her next " At home." 
 
 And, indeed, he asked himself: Why not? 
 ****** 
 
 Harding would have expected to be angry when 
 he first met Percy Colston; but rancour, at the end 
 of a year, is apt to stale. The two came face to face 
 in front of the Ritz one day shortly after Harding's 
 drive with Buttercup. Colston's manner was dis- 
 arming; and, besides, when Harding, with character- 
 istic directness, brought up the question of The Laby- 
 rinth of Life, he found himself in an untenable position 
 through the poet's positive denial of any responsibility 
 in regard to it : 
 
 " Why, my dear fellow, what had I to do with your 
 writing that story? I don't encourage other people
 
 THE TEST 265 
 
 to write novels. Novels are middle-class art. I 
 should blush to have done one myself. In fact, I 
 always say: Don't! to people who have the vulgar 
 mania. I don't say a plot never crops up in my 
 mind all sorts of odious things will happen to a 
 man. But if I moan it out in my misery, and you 
 snap it up, thinking it's a good thing, don't cast 
 reflections on my character, but keep a sharp lookout 
 for your own. You are as ungrateful and as impossible 
 as Fernet and Circour, who are always stealing my 
 ideas and then nursing sore heads afterwards. But, 
 at least, they steal ideas, and you come nosing around 
 in the backyard with notions I'd be ashamed to own. 
 Really, you are the limit er er as Hiram Baxter 
 would say, of course, because, as you know, I never 
 use slang. 
 
 " Still, you might have told me the truth," Harding 
 said. 
 
 " When I'd promised Mrs. Eversley not to ? She 
 was always fussing about it, as though a family crime 
 was the only thing to lend importance to a woman." 
 
 Harding had invited him into the Ritz, but he 
 indignantly refused tea. 
 
 " I've had enough tea to last me for the rest of my 
 life. My system is poisoned with tannin. I haven't 
 seen you, have I, since Buttercup and I got married ? 
 Well, then, of course, you can't understand how 
 Surpassing Ceylon has got on my nerves. You see, it 
 was the name of Baxter that induced me to say ' yes ' 
 when Buttercup was offered. I thought of Baxter's
 
 266 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Saint's Rest, which was grateful to one as tired 
 of the world as I am. I said it would be a rest for me. 
 But, then, I hadn't seen Hiram and his sideburns. I 
 couldn't how could I ? have conceived of anything 
 so awful. I thought Nature, when she had invented 
 Miss Zenobia, had committed her worst. Those two 
 weeks in America have left me in a state of nervous 
 prostration from which I shall never recover. Chicot 
 was as much affected as I. He wanted to warn me, 
 the poor little creature; he jangled his bells as much 
 as to tell me if I married into such a dreadful ambient, 
 it would be jangle for the rest of my life. 
 
 ' Yes, as I say, how was I to know you were going 
 to marry Monica Eversley? It no more occurred to 
 me than that I was going to marry Buttercup. That's 
 the interesting thing about life. It keeps you guessing 
 what is going to happen. Buttercup took me so by 
 surprise that I said I would, when I meant I wouldn't. 
 She proposed so crudely it was the night of that 
 Opera ball that I was rather charmed. I had begun 
 to despair of her remaining elementary it was what 
 took my fancy, you remember and it revived my 
 hopes of her. But how she has disappointed me! 
 You'd hardly know her for the same girl. She's 
 sickeningly grammatical, like everybody else. As I 
 tell her, if only she would be unsyntaxical again. 
 But she won't, she hardly ever commits a solecism. 
 She has absolutely no conception of the value of being 
 vulgar. In fact, Buttercup is almost a lady now, I 
 fear." And he sighed wearily.
 
 THE TEST 267 
 
 " Don't be hard on Mrs. Perdoe," he continued, as 
 he sipped vermouth, " for making away with objec- 
 tionable persons. I wish she were alive to exercise 
 her beautiful art upon Hiram Baxter. I hate the 
 name of tea. I never take a cup that I don't read 
 my fate in the leaves at the bottom." 
 
 Harding interrupted him to say that Mrs. Perdoe 
 had only been charged, not convicted, of criminal 
 acts. The poet seemed to think that rather robbed 
 the scandal of interest. 
 
 "And what, by the way, became of the book? " 
 he asked. " I don't seem to have heard that it was 
 published." 
 
 " Of course it wasn't," Harding said angrily. " Do 
 you suppose I'd publish it under the circum- 
 stances? " 
 
 " What circumstances? " returned the poet. " The 
 American public, you mean? No, I don't suppose 
 it would have pleased the Miss Zenobias, found favour 
 with clerks on their way to suburban homes, Maine 
 school-mistresses, women with no thoughts above 
 servants and Sunday roasts. It wouldn't have been 
 talked about at afternoon teas and mothers' meetings. 
 It didn't dilute truth with a pint of rose-water; it 
 hadn't any kitchen-hall humour. In a word, it was 
 Art, and you feared if you were artistic, you'd lose 
 your popularity. My dear fellow, I warned you 
 against the camp of the Philistines. But I see it was 
 no use. You've given yourself over, hand and foot, 
 to Mammon and all mercantile unrighteousness."
 
 268 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " I haven't given myself to anything," said Harding, 
 thinking of his manuscript scarcely begun. " I seem 
 to have lost the knack of writing." 
 
 " Ah no wonder! Art knocked at your door, and 
 you turned her away. Besides, you oughtn't to have 
 married. Marriage is the champion of ' the world and 
 what it fears.' In brief, you've become too respect- 
 able. An artist should never be respectable. Once 
 you belonged, or might have belonged, to literature. 
 Now, my dear fellow, you belong to your wife. And, 
 you know, the sacred fire was meant for altars, not for 
 hearthstones. There's too little draught on a hearth- 
 stone." Percy liked to pose as a hearthstone breaker, 
 though really not man enough to try it. 
 
 Harding recalled to him the fact that he was married 
 himself. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so, but I'm married as little as 
 possible," the poet qualified. " Buttercup and I 
 agreed to be sensible about it; it's the only time we 
 ever did agree as to what was common-sense. Yes, 
 it's ' agreement a la mode ' with us. Buttercup, you 
 know, isn't particular, so long as she knows she's 
 fashionable." 
 
 Harding felt sorry for Buttercup as he left Colston. 
 He had repented of his promise to call, and would 
 probably not have gone, if it had not been for that 
 meeting at the Ritz. As it was, however, he went. She 
 received him heartily, and, while there was no oppor- 
 tunity for any real conversation, he enjoyed the visit. 
 He did not mention it to Monica; why should he not
 
 THE TEST 269 
 
 see his friends ? He had the right to liberty of action. 
 And right to liberty of Art, too. 
 
 Although he felt Colston was posing as usual, their 
 talk had left him with a sense of profound discourage- 
 ment. Marriage was not, he mused, conducive to 
 literary glow; it was forcing him, for the sake of his 
 wife, for the sake of money, for the sake of " respect- 
 ability," to write in a vein of insincerity. A number 
 of vague ideas had occurred to him, and every one 
 that he liked seemed to lack the " wholesome " note 
 that he knew Monica expected, as demonstrating his 
 " reform "; and he truly desired to please her, while 
 not renouncing the hope to please his Art-self simul- 
 taneously. He had not succeeded. He dreaded any 
 more Labyrinth of Life issues. Yet he did not want 
 to return to the smug fashion of The Horns of the 
 Altar. Smug was the word he applied after re-reading 
 the book to which he owed his position. No wonder 
 it had sold, for it had none of the awkwardness, the 
 alienating effect of real Art. The book chilled him by 
 its commonplaceness, its authenticated sentiments, 
 and, mentally, he compared it with the manuscript 
 he had sacrificed for Monica; the only thing he had 
 done that was really artistic. As he thought of it, 
 cast aside, a smothered resentment rose in him. 
 Though he did not suspect the fact, from that day 
 reflections upon past mistakes held a more important 
 place in his thought than the speculations as to a new 
 plot to which he sincerely believed he was devoting 
 himself.
 
 270 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Mrs. Eversley leased a villa at Trouville for that 
 summer; her health really required it, she said, and 
 also little Julian's health it was the first time she 
 had taken thought of the child. Harding accepted 
 the arrangement not unwillingly, believing it would 
 be bracing to write by the sea; more experienced 
 authors might have told him the task would be a 
 well-nigh hopeless one. When they returned to Paris 
 after a summer of expense so great that he felt he 
 must positively force the issue of finances with Mrs. 
 Eversley, or else announce to her that he and Monica 
 must make other less expensive arrangements his 
 book was still where it had been that spring: some- 
 times in the clouds, sometimes in the poetic sighing of 
 the sea, sometimes in the rings of his cigar smoke, 
 but most times nowhere at all.
 
 271 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HARDING found it difficult to secure an interview 
 with Mrs. Eversley, in spite of his resolve to force one. 
 He suspected that she was trying to elude him, for 
 he had dropped enough hints as a kind of mental 
 clearing of the throat to put her on her guard. It 
 became a case of a hunter tracking a wary bird already 
 acquainted with the gun. He preferred not to have 
 the talk take place in Monica's presence, and he 
 seldom saw Mrs. Eversley alone, and then at most 
 inauspicious moments. That her condition of health 
 since their return was really serious was privately 
 made known to him and Monica by the doctor, who 
 hinted that, in addition to other complications, Mrs. 
 Eversley's use of cosmetics had affected her blood. 
 Yet she went out more than ever, as though social 
 amusement helped to dull her anxiety. That she 
 worried about herself or about something became 
 evident enough. The ravages were only superficially 
 disguised by a visit to the Institut de Beaute, from 
 which she emerged glowing like a Dead Sea apple. 
 In spite of his growing impatience with her, Harding 
 was moved by these struggles of hers against age and 
 malady. She spent her mornings in her room, where, 
 too, she frequently had her luncheon served, and it 
 was a kind of barricade he could scarcely break
 
 272 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 through. She had to have a great deal of repose, it 
 seemed, and the dear sympathetic doctor as she 
 pointedly informed her son-in-law had particularly 
 warned her against the effects of agitation. The rest 
 of the time was consumed in hastening to teas or 
 dinners, from which she returned " so tired " that it 
 appeared almost brutal to engage her in a serious 
 business talk. 
 
 She never asked him to accompany her out now, and 
 it appeared in line with her policy of avoidance. Yet 
 another reason was supplied him by Buttercup, whom 
 he met by chance one day shortly after his return to 
 Paris. She told him, with some amusement, that 
 Mrs. Eversley and Percy had patched up their quarrel, 
 and she was quite jealous of the flirtation between 
 them. She said it with a laugh which told him how 
 indifferent she was over rivals in Percy's favour. 
 Harding, on his way home after this meeting, wondered 
 how much Monica shared Buttercup's equanimity on 
 the subject of husbands' attentions to other women. 
 He did not think Monica jealous, as, indeed, she had 
 little reason to be; but about her had gathered the 
 atmosphere of marital neglect. It showed itself in a 
 slight increase of dignity with him, in less responsive- 
 ness to his kiss a little perfunctory at times, for his 
 mind was preoccupied. Her manner seemed to imply, 
 too, he said to himself, that she held he wasted his 
 days, and, half convinced this was so, he accepted 
 few invitations. It had been, in great measure, Mrs. 
 Eversley who had fostered his taste for society. Going
 
 THE TEST 273 
 
 out had tended to flatter his vanity. As much as he 
 personally condemned The Horns of the Altar, it pleased 
 him to have people praise his work; it picked up his 
 flagging belief in his talents. But such complimentary 
 allusions to the book were generally accompanied by 
 a question when a new novel was to appear. The 
 query had the effect of casting gloom on his spirit for 
 hours afterwards. 
 
 Reacting from this mood one afternoon, he lost 
 patience with Mrs. Eversley's evasions, and deter- 
 minedly rapped at her boudoir door. 
 
 Mrs. Eversley was at her desk, evidently waiting to 
 go out. She was glancing over a little note-book, in 
 which she had jotted down stray remarks of people 
 to serve as conversational aids. Most of them were 
 old sayings of Percy's; some were Harding's, although 
 there were fewer of these. They pleased her less 
 they hadn't Percy's dear, delightful sparkle; and, 
 indeed, Julian's recent sayings she considered not 
 worth using at all. Marriage had certainly made him 
 dull, she often reflected. His inability to furnish her 
 with effective little speeches was one thing she had 
 against him these days. 
 
 She smiled, forcedly he thought, on seeing him 
 enter; but she calmly replaced her note-book in the 
 desk drawer, remarking: 
 
 " Oh, it's you, Julian? I was just looking over my 
 engagements for the afternoon, and I find if I don't 
 get off at once, I sha'n't manage half I have on hand. 
 Be a dear, and see if the motor's ready. I've rung 
 
 T
 
 274 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 three times for Simone I can't imagine what has 
 become of her. What a bore these teas are, but people 
 are so sensitive if one doesn't turn up." And she 
 sighed as she rose, and, taking up her hat, moved 
 to the mirror. Her air was that of a fond mother-in- 
 law who supposed he had stepped in for a casual, 
 ill-timed chat or to borrow something to read. She 
 always had the latest novels to skim through. 
 
 " But it is only a little after three," he answered, 
 " and the motor hasn't come yet. So I wonder if you 
 can't spare me a few moments " 
 
 She interrupted him. " But I said three. I hadn't 
 any idea it was so late. What tiresome creatures 
 servants are they don't pay the least attention to 
 orders. Simone is the worst of all, never about and 
 always grumbling. It really is too hard on me, in 
 my state of health, to have to endure their carelessness. 
 Nobody has any consideration." And with another 
 more pathetic sigh, she pressed the button to summon 
 her maid, as if to show how discourteous it was of 
 him not to do her bidding. 
 
 But he had no intention of being thus lightly dis- 
 missed to-day. 
 
 "There must have been some mistake," he observed. 
 " I asked downstairs when you were going out, and 
 was told the motor had been ordered for four. So, 
 as you will have to wait a little while any way, you 
 can surely give me a moment or so. It is a matter of 
 considerable importance to me, or I should not bother
 
 THE TEST 275 
 
 you. You know, I tried to see you earlier, but Simone 
 said you were dressing." 
 
 " Of course, I could hardly go out otherwise." 
 And her small, vexed laugh concealed some nervous- 
 ness. Her voice had grown a good deal was almost 
 out of its teens since Julian had become one of the 
 family. He had less reason to find its sweetness 
 cloying. " And ' a matter of importance ' ! That 
 sounds so depressing. Really, Julian," and, mastering 
 herself, she put on an air of playful reproach, " I do 
 think you might spare me such an ordeal to-day 
 when I'm feeling particularly badly. It won't leave 
 me strength for anything. Can't you wait until I 
 have one of my good days. Sometimes I think you 
 and Monica don't quite realize what an invalid I am." 
 
 " Yes, I know you're not well," he said, yielding to 
 his feeling of annoyance, " still, if you have strength 
 for teas this afternoon, I should think you might 
 bear a short business talk. It's about our staying on 
 with you. It is pleasant for us, of course; but you 
 and I have never come to an arrangement about it. 
 I'm sorry to trouble you, but I simply must know- 
 where we stand." 
 
 " But I can't tell you such things offhand," she 
 returned languidly. " I have such a poor head for 
 figures. And I have assured you all along that I con- 
 sider you and Monica my guests, that you should look 
 on the house as your home. I love to have you with 
 me, and it all costs me so little " as indeed it had 
 
 T2
 
 276 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 the last year " living the way we do. It would hurt 
 me somehow to put it on the horrid, formal basis 
 you propose. If it eases your foolish pride, Julian, 
 why just pay a trifling bill now and then when my 
 cheque-book isn't at hand, or I am out, or something 
 like that. Cut-and-dried business arrangements are 
 such a bore." 
 
 As she spoke she contemplated her image in the 
 cheval glass, a hatpin in one hand, while searching 
 the proper spot to pierce her new Virot creation. She 
 was wondering if Percy would approve of her costume 
 he had such critical taste. He had promised to be 
 at one of the teas she was going to, and it was her 
 main reason for venturing out that afternoon, for she 
 really felt quite ill. She knew she looked it that her 
 eyes were dull indeed, they were so dim that, to 
 study herself, she had to stand quite close to the 
 mirror, and even then the effect was rather blurred. 
 
 " It is extremely kind of you to put it that way," 
 Harding returned, " but it isn't fair to you. As to 
 paying a bill now and then " and his tone was a little 
 sarcastic over her slighting dismissal of those he had 
 settled " I have met a number so far. It amounts 
 to a good many thousand francs, as you will see," and 
 he drew out a slip of paper on which he had made a 
 list of them. " Far more, in fact, than I can afford." 
 
 " But why have you done it ? I'm sure I never 
 asked you to," she said indifferently. 
 
 " No, perhaps not. But I preferred to do so rather 
 than be annoyed by constant dunning. I'm sorry,
 
 THE TEST 277 
 
 but the state of my bank account won't permit of 
 matters remaining like this. To be plain, I have 
 almost kept the establishment going, and, besides, 
 have settled many of your personal accounts." 
 
 "It isn't true!" she cried with hastily assumed 
 haughtiness. " It seems to me I'm always paying 
 some stupid bill or other. And if you would settle my 
 accounts now and then with your silly American 
 notions about not keeping awful tradespeople waiting, 
 as everybody does in Europe it isn't very nice of 
 you to cast it at me like this. And I've tried my best 
 to be nice to you, to make you feel at home, and 
 and been most generous in fact I don't think you 
 appreciate all I have done." She was losing her 
 temper, which did not often happen to her, but she 
 clung to her habitual fictions as if they were facts. 
 Perhaps she would not have brought issues to this 
 point, for it was not clever, if she had not been ner- 
 vously unstrung; her heart troubled her. There was 
 an unpleasant numbness which came more and more 
 often now as though her circulation were arrested. 
 
 But Harding's own nerves were none of the best, 
 and his temper met the slight flare of her own. "I 
 haven't said that you have not been generous," he 
 answered. " I only speak of the accounts because it 
 is right that they should be cleared up. I am not a 
 rich man, and I have to take some thought for the 
 future." 
 
 " But you must have enough to live on," she ex- 
 claimed agitatedly. "It was, of course, what I sup-
 
 278 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 posed what you gave me to understand when you 
 proposed to my daughter. You don't mean, then, 
 that you are poor, that Monica has married a man 
 who can't support her? It isn't true it can't be 
 true that you haven't any money, with your book 
 and all that. Authors make thousands and thousands 
 out of writing these days; I know they do. And Julia 
 Vanderhurst told me you were successful, and Madame 
 de Kansa prophesied how remunerative your work 
 would be ... or that was what you pretended she said. 
 If it isn't so, and you have deceived us all, you are 
 nothing more than a fortune-hunter. But I don't 
 believe you. It's just that you are miserly, love 
 money, like all Americans, and begrudge the little you 
 have spent while here. I should think you'd be ashamed 
 to mention those trifling bills ! " And she regarded 
 him, struggling with her hysterical tears that meant 
 ruin to a brand-new complexion, bought especially 
 dear, since it exceeded the number of enamellings 
 which science pronounced safe. She considered herself 
 insulted, and it quite warranted, she felt, the cutting 
 reply. 
 
 " I haven't said I couldn't support my family," 
 he returned with a flush. " Although we may differ 
 about what is proper support. As to being a fortune- 
 hunter, it seems to me facts dispose of any such accu- 
 sation. I knew before I married Monica that she 
 had nothing, and that she had renounced such fortune as 
 she possessed. Who is enjoying the income that 
 belongs to her by her father's will? "
 
 THE TEST 279 
 
 Mrs. Eversley pressed her hands to her heart 
 partly as dramatic resort but she experienced a 
 strange sensation there: "You are killing me," she 
 cried; " you have no right to come to my room and 
 behave in this cruel way. I'll have Monica here to 
 protect me against you." And, wildly pressing the 
 bell, she ordered Simone whose prompt appearance 
 suggested that she had been standing outside to tell 
 her daughter to come at once. Then her strength 
 failing her, she sank on the couch without regard for 
 her Virot hat. 
 
 She broke into sobs as Monica entered the boudoir. 
 Monica paused a moment in surprise to regard the 
 two, then went to her mother. " What is the matter ?" 
 she inquired with marked concern. 
 
 " Julian has been making a scene," her mother 
 breathed hysterically. " He has attacked me out- 
 rageously, and wants the money you let me have for 
 my little comforts. He has shown no consideration 
 for me. I am ill, ill over it all. He knows I am ill, 
 yet he hasn't spared me," and she clung to her daughter, 
 who was bending over her trying to soothe her. 
 
 " But Julian quite understands that," Monica said. 
 " I told him about the arrangement I had made with 
 you. You might see, Julian, that my mother isn't in 
 a condition to have painful talks. It would have been 
 better, wouldn't it, if you had discussed the subject 
 with me, instead." 
 
 She looked rather reproachfully at him, for, judging 
 from her mother's collapse, he had not been quite
 
 280 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 considerate; he knew that the doctor had warned 
 them against the effect of agitation. She had grown 
 more tender to Mrs. Eversley since learning of her 
 precarious state of health. Harding thought his wife 
 unjust towards him. 
 
 " My only reason for coming here," he answered, 
 " was to ask for a settlement of our accounts. It was 
 really necessary that I should." Distaste held him 
 from saying more. 
 
 "My heart is troubling me so!" moaned Mrs. 
 Eversley like a stricken ringdove. Monica and Simone 
 helped her to bed, and they gave her a dose of the 
 medicine which the " sympathetic " doctor perhaps 
 he had more sympathy than conscience had left to 
 be used in such emergencies. After an hour her 
 hysteria subsided, and the crisis being thus happily 
 weathered, she remained alone, having dispatched 
 Monica to write some twenty notes and Harding to 
 give some forty telephone calls. 
 
 In the middle of the night Mrs. Eversley suddenly 
 awoke. She had had a nightmare about her eyes: 
 she wanted light, light, all the light possible. It 
 seemed to her terrified nerves that even the little 
 night-lamp on her table glowed dimly. Stretching 
 out her hand, she turned the electric switch. Even 
 then the room did not appear as bright as usual. 
 She sat up in bed, shivering with fear. Suppose she 
 were going blind? The very thought iced the blood 
 in her veins. How could she judge, how measure her 
 misfortune, thus alone in the night? She slipped
 
 THE TEST 281 
 
 weakly out of bed and tottered towards her mirror, 
 instinctively seeking a glimpse of the object she knew 
 best and loved best in all the world. Whatever else 
 had been false, it had remained true to its own 
 standards. But how horrible she looked! Literally 
 a ghost of herself! She was old and ugly ah, but 
 she was undressed ! 
 
 She rang for Simone, and, while waiting, went to 
 the wardrobe and got out the new dress with which 
 she had planned to fascinate Percy Colston that 
 afternoon. Yes, it was a lovely creation; she would 
 surely look lovely in it. She still held the gown 
 caressingly in her hands when Simone entered with 
 frowning brow and towzled hair. 
 
 " Help me on with this," Mrs. Eversley ordered. 
 
 " But, madame, it is three o'clock in the morning! " 
 Simone protested in sleepy indignation. 
 
 " What does it matter what time it is? I want to 
 see how I look in it." 
 
 " This is too much, to be called out of bed in the 
 middle of the night for no reason at all! And my 
 wages owing for months at that! I give you my 
 eight days' notice, and I promise you that if my 
 wages aren't paid then, you'll have to come in your 
 new dress and settle with me before the commissary 
 of police! " And Simone left the room, banging the 
 door after her. 
 
 Dazed by the violence of the scene and the threat 
 with which it had been closed, Mrs. Eversley reverted 
 to her original thought her dress, her appearance.
 
 282 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 With trembling hands she struggled into the gown, 
 and then tried to put a little order in her dishevelled 
 hair. It was not as it should be, she knew, but she 
 could not do better, thus ill, alone, and betrayed. 
 Once more she approached the glass. 
 
 Why was it so misty? Was it the light or her 
 
 eyes? And she pressed her face closer. 
 
 ****** 
 
 They found her next morning, crouched there, her 
 rouged lips touching their image in the glass; death 
 had taken her while she knelt a worshipper of herself 
 to the last.
 
 283 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE settlement of Mrs. Eversley's affairs took a good deal 
 of time. At the news of her demise, bills, endless bills, 
 as it seemed to Harding, poured in. Even before the 
 funeral, a writ on the furniture a considerable asset 
 was taken out. 
 
 Of Monica's fortune, when Mrs. Eversley's debts 
 were paid, only a few hundred pounds remained. 
 
 At the Hotel Drouot, where the Eversley sale took 
 place, Percy Colston was one of the largest bidders. He 
 had a sentiment about the furniture, it appeared, for it 
 had mostly been selected on his advice. 
 
 As to Mrs. Eversley's misappropriation of her 
 daughter's money, Harding could never bring himself 
 to speak to Monica, after he first acquainted her with 
 the fact. And then she had received the news in 
 silence that strange silence which often puzzled him 
 and wrapped her in a dignity peculiarly her own. But 
 her eyes had deepened with what was pain or pride, or 
 both ; and he noticed that from this moment a new 
 expression stamped itself on her face. Sometimes he 
 thought the discovery had hardened her a little, though, 
 at other times, he told himself that it was the summon- 
 ing of more resolution to combat in herself this new 
 proof of unfortunate ancestry. At all events, Monica 
 now realized that he had been driven by absolute
 
 284 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 necessity to that interview which had so disturbed 
 Mrs. Eversley as to precipitate her death ; and that very 
 disturbance had been caused, not by Harding's words, 
 but by guilt of conscience. 
 
 He was, himself, inclined to think the revelation 
 went to confirm the ancestral theories of his book. 
 Mrs. Eversley had, no doubt, inherited her extrava- 
 gance from Mrs. Perdoe and the latter 's lack of 
 integrity that had led at last to crime. 
 
 The Hardings took a small furnished apartment 
 with a studio in the rue Guenegaud, a short, quiet 
 street lying between the Boulevard St. Germain and 
 the quays. From the rear windows they had a pic- 
 turesque view of the older, unfashionable Paris, and the 
 few things saved from the sale of Mrs. Eversley's be- 
 longings helped to give their home a comfortable, 
 attractive air. It was far from the Etoile district, 
 where most of their acquaintance dwelt, and the abode 
 was modest compared with the Neuilly background. 
 It left a good deal for the world to surmise as to his 
 changed fortune, and Harding, after enjoying the 
 reputation of successful authorship, felt somewhat 
 sensitive at the difference. But he had abandoned social 
 ambitions by this time. He had discovered that 
 Americans in Paris talk about books, and borrow books, 
 and subscribe for library books, but never buy books, 
 so that his social activities were not commercially 
 worth to him the price of his cabs. 
 
 He revived his former intimacy with Nicolls whom, 
 since his marriage, he had seen less often. The English-
 
 THE TEST 285 
 
 man had called rarely at Neuilly; for he had no great 
 liking for Mrs. Eversley and her set ; but he yielded now 
 to his friend's pressing invitations and gradually fell 
 into the habit of dropping in frequently of an evening 
 or informally for dinner. He was an agreeable talker 
 and brought with him an atmosphere of outside 
 interests that relieved Harding' s life of some of its 
 present dullness. 
 
 When Elsie Fitzgerald was at the house, too, they 
 had unusually pleasant musical evenings. Harding 
 fancied that mutual attachment would come of the 
 Englishman's contacts with the Irish girl, for she 
 was bright and attractive, and Nicolls good-looking, 
 gentlemanly, and in the position to marry. Miss 
 Fitzgerald, who had an engagement at the Opera 
 Comique, where she had scored a success in a secondary 
 part of a new piece by Chelard, was amiable about 
 singing, and it was through his wife's accompaniments 
 on the piano that Harding discovered how well Monica 
 played. It was something of a surprise, for he had 
 not suspected the talent in her; and it suggested a 
 new side to her nature. The expression that passed 
 into her face as she sat at the keyboard told him of 
 abeyant emotions, and he asked himself, as he studied 
 her, if he had ever called out her depths. Her love had 
 always struck him as touched less with passion than 
 maternal sentiment. That Monica was conscien- 
 tiously trying to fill the role of a moral rescuer some- 
 times a little irritated and humiliated him. His appeal 
 of a supposed need of her had won her to marry him ;
 
 286 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 no doubt it had flattered her woman's vanity; but he 
 did not care to have her take it too seriously. It left 
 him with a feeling that their relation lacked fullness, 
 was indeed a bit prosaic. 
 
 Yet, in some respects, the change in their life brought 
 them nearer. At Neuilly she had been a good deal 
 under the shadow of her mother, had spent much of 
 her time with the child, and had had no domestic 
 responsibilities. Although she lacked housekeeping 
 training, she showed her competence in running the 
 apartment on a careful, economic scale. This orderli- 
 ness and care in promptly meeting bills was, perhaps, 
 her protest against her mother's extravagance, perhaps 
 an effort to prove her character in all respects a reaction 
 against dubious antecedents. Harding felt still that he 
 did not wholly understand her nature, for there was 
 always reserve about her he had never broken down. 
 Sometimes he thought it was his own fault. At all 
 events, he was unable to question her about many 
 things. 
 
 As the winter came on, Harding's health troubled 
 him a good deal; he had a bronchial attack which, 
 with the humidity of Paris at that season, and the 
 weakening effect of his cough, made writing difficult. 
 Yet he had signed a contract with Bentley and Com- 
 pany to deliver a new manuscript for early spring, and 
 it, as well as the looming need of money, incited him to 
 struggle with the uncongenial novel he had finally 
 sketched out. To keep up his strength he depended 
 more on artificial stimulation than formerly. He had
 
 THE TEST 287 
 
 always been an inveterate smoker he had acquired 
 the habit in concentrating when there was hurried copy 
 to get down in the rush work of journalistic days and 
 it further irritated his lungs. 
 
 Monica showed concern about his state of health, 
 and one day she remonstrated over his lack of care 
 of himself. Her suggestion that he smoked too much 
 seemed justified his study was saturated with tobacco 
 fumes. But he received the comment rather irritably. 
 
 " I can't help it," he replied. " It's impossible to 
 fix my mind on my work if I don't. I'm not feeling 
 particularly well, and it quiets my nerves. When the 
 manuscript is off my hands I'll give it up, perhaps, and 
 take more rest." And he sighed impatiently, for he 
 was sick of what he called " Monica's novel." Life 
 wasn't just then conducive to optimistic sentiments, 
 and the cheerful tone he was adopting in the story had 
 its irony. 
 
 " Why not at least give yourself a few days of rest 
 it will freshen you for work again. You don't look 
 well, Julian, and it troubles me." 
 
 " But I can't; every day counts now. I almost wish 
 I hadn't made a contract with Bentley. It hangs 
 over my head uncomfortably, the feeling that I have to 
 get a manuscript done in a given time. Talk about 
 the uneasy head that wears a crown. A book on the 
 crown is ten times worse." 
 
 " You never told me that you had signed a contract 
 with them," she observed. " Was it necessary to bind 
 yourself that way? "
 
 288 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Yes, because I wanted money. Hart, the junior 
 member of the firm who did most to float the first book 
 you ought to have heard him descr be what he called 
 their ' street-car ads,' and other devices to thrust it 
 down people's throats" and his voice was sarcastic 
 " passed through Paris last September, and called on 
 me. So I took the occasion to demand a thousand 
 dollars down, to clinch the bargain between us for a 
 next novel. Of course, if it hadn't been for that, I 
 shouldn't have saddled myself with the contract." 
 
 She considered a moment. "If it affects your 
 work and you feel it a burden, wouldn't it be better to 
 return the money and free yourself ? " 
 
 He laughed shortly. " Yes, perhaps, if there was 
 any of it to return. I applied it to renting the apart- 
 ment, as it happened. I doubt, anyway, that they 
 would consent to relieve me. It isn't business, and 
 Bentley and Company is nothing if not that." And he 
 recalled Hart's matter-of-fact countenance and talk on 
 the saleable side of manuscripts. He had, like Lochin- 
 var, come out of the West, bringing with him its 
 breezy style of doing business. It was his boast he had 
 put life into the New York book trade. 
 
 Harding regretted the discouraged mood that had 
 caused him to speak of his financial straits. So far he 
 had kept it to himself, partly from pride, partly because 
 he had wished to avoid for Monica his own anxieties 
 about the future. 
 
 " But I think it is important that the money be 
 returned," she replied. " You are not well, and the
 
 THE TEST 289 
 
 contract weighs on your mind. You know I have a 
 little money of my own still, and we can manage 
 through my taking up enamelling again. There is 
 always a certain demand for my work," she added. 
 She spoke without complacence which, perhaps, might 
 have had its excuse, for she was well known in her art, 
 and it had always been easy to dispose of her things 
 at flattering prices. It had been one of her sacrifices 
 that she had abandoned her beautiful craft in marrying 
 him. 
 
 " But I won't have it," he said with a flush. " You 
 have enough on your shoulders as it is. Besides, the 
 whole proposition is humiliating. I shall finish the 
 book in time, so don't think any more about it." 
 
 " Why should it humiliate you ? " she returned, 
 earnestly. " You are run down, you need rest. The 
 house almost cares for itself now, and I am strong. I 
 have plenty of time for the enamelling. It is agreeable, 
 easy work, and not a tax on the brain like writing. 
 Your health and peace of mind are of more consequence 
 than your pride. Send the money to Bentley, and I 
 promise that you need have no anxiety. There are 
 ways to recoup, if necessary. It is the proper solution, 
 and I wish you would let me, Julian." And she laid a 
 hand persuadingly on his arm as he sat frowning, 
 offended, at his desk. Her voice was a little hesitating, 
 as though she feared to offend him by seeming to 
 parade her sense of resource. He had always had the 
 half f eeling that, in formally leaving to him the mastery 
 of their life, there had been in her an attitude of waiting, 
 
 u
 
 2QO THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 the consciousness of ability to face the issues of their 
 married existence when the time should come. 
 
 " I won't hear of it," he reiterated emphatically. 
 " There is no real reason for such drudgery being laid 
 on you. I'm not ill only a bit run down. It would 
 worry me far more to think of you toiling to make ends 
 meet, than to finish the story under pressure. So 
 please don't speak of it again." 
 
 She lingered, with a look of disappointment on her 
 face. 
 
 " I thought," she said, after a moment, " when you 
 asked me to marry you, that I was to be allowed to 
 help." 
 
 " Yes, but that isn't the kind of help I meant. I 
 didn't propose that you were to work for us both. 
 What I wanted most was your love." He drew her to 
 him, and kissed her with some emotion. How generous 
 of her to have wished it. Yet what did she think of him 
 seriously to propose it ? 
 
 The goad of this reflection caused him to throw him- 
 self in his work for the next few days with redoubled 
 energy. 
 
 He vowed that he would get the story done by the 
 period contracted for, no matter what the effort cost 
 him.
 
 29 1 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHETHER or not Nicolls guessed the state of his affairs, 
 Harding did not know. The Englishman came once 
 or twice a week to the house, and seemed to take pains 
 to be entertaining and show his friendliness. His 
 manner implied a willingness to be of any service he 
 could, but Harding ignored the opportunity to accept 
 a loan of money. He had no wish to put himself under 
 that obligation and, indeed, met it in a manner to 
 negative the idea that he required help of any sort. 
 There was already enough contrast between their 
 present conditions, for Nicolls, besides enjoying health, 
 had grown prosperous. He owned a share in the 
 paper he edited, and he was sent on important journal- 
 istic missions that enhanced his standing in Paris and 
 elsewhere. Harding could not question that Nicolls 
 was a warm, sincere friend, yet he had the growing 
 idea that his frequent visits were due to a lingering 
 sentiment about Monica. The two were manifestly 
 congenial, and with a renewal of their old acquaintance 
 had grown up a sense of mutual understanding and 
 confidence that was expressed in their air with each 
 other rather than in any words. He sometimes 
 wondered if any regret for the Englishman passed 
 across Monica's heart, yet he was not jealous; and he 
 left them together of an evening, to shut himself up in 
 
 U2
 
 2Q3 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 his study, glad that his wife had someone to entertain 
 her. The question of trusting them never even pre- 
 sented itself to his mind. They were both embodi- 
 ments of correctness. 
 
 He went to his study a little ostentatiously, however, 
 on some evenings when Nicolls was in, for that at 
 least tended to remove the impression as to his neglect- 
 ing work. Nicolls probably wondered why he had not 
 brought out another story. Harding had never 
 mentioned to him the fate of The Labyrinth of 
 Life. 
 
 In spite of pressure of time, he could not overcome 
 his fastidiousness, and he wrote and rewrote, tore up 
 sheets, began a chapter over, until often he lost all con- 
 fidence in himself. He did not see things clearly, and 
 it was all against his own convictions about life as he 
 had found it. He blamed himself for want of real 
 education, the higher training that went with higher 
 art. After all, he had spent his best years in drudgery, 
 and all he was capable of, he sometimes told himself 
 morosely, was work of the drudgery sort. 
 
 He was annoyed, yet relieved, one day, by receiving 
 a letter from his publisher. It returned a cheque 
 which had been sent by Monica, saying that the house 
 refused to free Harding from his contract, but that they 
 would extend the date of publication of the novel. 
 They deprecated the delay, but, Mr. Hart added, the 
 story would no doubt be the better for the extra time 
 devoted to it. Harding's first impulse was to find 
 fault with his wife for what she had done without con-
 
 THE TEST 293 
 
 suiting him, but reflection made him judge it as an act 
 of concern about him, and he welcomed the added 
 months allowed for his task. 
 
 He thought he could justifiably indulge in a little 
 rest, of which he was actually in need. He had 
 taken scarcely any exercise, and he went out now for 
 afternoon strolls. He encountered friends occasionally 
 that way, and came home feeling the better for it. 
 After all, he had been leading a dull life, and lack of 
 social amusement, he told himself, had something to do 
 with his lack of interest hi writing. His temperament 
 needed it writers had to keep in touch with the 
 world. It gave them ideas, fostered their powers of 
 observation, increased their knowledge of character, 
 life. Yes, he had been getting stale. 
 
 He chanced one afternoon on passing up the rue de 
 la Paix, to meet Mrs. Percy Colston, who was issuing 
 from her dressmaker's. He had not seen her since 
 Mrs. Eversley's death and, indeed, he had half meant 
 to give up the acquaintance. It was among the re- 
 nunciations that his present existence seemed to im- 
 pose on him, somehow. She was cordial with him, in 
 spite of his long neglect. 
 
 " I'm done to death," she said, " getting hung with 
 garlands like the Golden Calf. That's one of the names, 
 by the way, that Percy has invented for me although 
 I can't say he does so much worshipping. Suppose we 
 go into the Ritz and have tea. I'm half fainting for it." 
 
 Her voice was hard and strained. He wondered if 
 it was cutters or mundane care that gave it the tired
 
 294 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 intonation. She seemed to have changed since he last 
 saw her there was less than ever of the old Buttercup. 
 Perhaps she was reacting from the life she had been 
 leading. She had steadily climbed the Paris social 
 ladder, as he knew from seeing her name almost daily 
 in the papers. 
 
 " Let's find some quieter place," he objected. " No 
 one can talk at the Ritz it's worse than a cage of 
 cockatoos. There's a tea-room opposite that hasn't 
 become the fashion yet." 
 
 " Then let's go there," she agreed. "I'm getting 
 sick of ' fashion.' It's all scream and feathers, as you 
 say. I haven't much imagination any more if I ever 
 had or I shouldn't have proposed the other. But it's 
 one of the ruts one gets into." 
 
 They went to the place Harding proposed and found 
 a corner, fairly apart from the general clatter of tea 
 cups. 
 
 " Why haven't you been to see me ? " she demanded, 
 after she had talked a while, in a disillusioned way, 
 about recent amusements and less personal things. It 
 all implied that her life was empty and idle, and 
 Harding experienced a touch of conscience. Her 
 foolish marriage was responsible for it in a way, no 
 doubt, and he was responsible for the marriage. He 
 would have liked to help her if he could, but he saw 
 no way; without medicine to cure his own malady of 
 soul, he was scarcely in a position to save this girl who 
 had, apparently, ruined her nature through ambition or 
 whim. Colston's reference to Buttercup that spring
 
 THE TEST 295 
 
 had given him a glimpse into what their marriage must 
 be. 
 
 "I go nowhere now," he answered. " We're in 
 mourning, and then I'm working. Besides, I can't say 
 society ever did me much good." 
 
 " It doesn't do anyone any good," she said dispirit- 
 edly. " But then, what does ? I long ago gave up the 
 idea of having any serious interests. Percy once 
 urged me to pursue what he called the ' career of crude- 
 ness.' He proposed to me a salon celebrity by chaunting 
 Walt Whitman, arrayed in primitive beads and feathers. 
 It has struck me now that I know more of Paris 
 that there is little need here of Whitman. It is mostly 
 'jThe Song of Adam,' I should say. Yes, I heard of 
 Mrs. Eversley's death and of your taking a flat in town. 
 She wasn't as rich, it appears, as people thought. I 
 suppose that was why Percy threw her over. He has 
 an instinct about sinking vessels. But I'm sorry for 
 your sake, even if your marriage was such a one of 
 sentiment. I don't know much about sentiment " 
 and she laughed with some bitterness " but I fancy 
 there must be times when it's hard to live on it exclu- 
 sively." 
 
 Her tone implied, in contradiction to her words, that 
 she conceived him disappointed in his matrimonial 
 calculations. She had perhaps had reason to think he 
 had approached her in rather a fortune-hunting spirit. 
 It annoyed him, and he remarked : 
 
 " It was rather hard on my wife, of course. As for 
 myself, I'm not certain it wasn't the best thing I'd
 
 296 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 probably have grown slack about work if there had been 
 much money. One gets lazy when there's no need of 
 earning one's bread. And writing people are a rather 
 idle set." 
 
 " Yes, I see a good deal of them they're fond of 
 idling in the house. And then I've been reading 
 Daudet's Femmes d' Artistes that's rather illuminating. 
 I suppose I ought to call myself one, granting Percy's 
 carved cherry stones is Art. Daudet describes a good 
 many kinds of artists, and I amused myself trying to 
 see which of the situations described fitted your case. 
 Oh, no, I don't read much, and then mostly French 
 novels. I once aimed at improving my mind, and 
 Percy seemed a road to culture. But I gave it up. 
 In fact, I've given up pretty much everything except 
 trying to amuse myself. Yes, as a femme d'artiste 
 I can hardly be called a success." She added, after 
 a moment, " I'm sure Mrs. Harding must make an 
 ideal one." 
 
 He would have preferred her not to bring Monica 
 into the conversation, it seemed bad taste; he hesitated 
 between ignoring the remark and disposing of any 
 assumption she might have formed as to his marriage 
 not being satisfactory. 
 
 " Yes, she is ideal, to use your word," he replied. 
 " She's entirely too good for me, in fact." 
 
 " Yes, I can't fancy you exactly ' ideal ' yourself," 
 she returned with a slight laugh. " I shouldn't like 
 you as well though. One gets on better with people 
 who have their faults. I'm human, as I needn't say,
 
 THE TEST 297 
 
 no doubt, and I'm more at ease with others who're 
 human also. But it's really horrid of you not to come 
 to see me. Are you too much in love with your ideal 
 home-life to care to keep up old friendships? Don't 
 come, though, on my 'days,' it will only bore you. And 
 then I really want to talk to you. A talk about old 
 times will do me good." And she looked at him rather 
 wistfully, as though his neglect of her had cut. Again 
 he felt a twinge. She had risen, and, as he escorted 
 her to her motor, he said: 
 
 " I'd certainly be glad to do you any good, even if 
 it is only talking over old times. But I'm not much 
 of a hand at doing anybody good, I fear." 
 
 She sighed restlessly. " I doubt, really, if anybody 
 can do me any good. It's too late for it, I imagine. 
 I don't believe in anything or anybody any more. 
 The last year has taken it out of me somehow." Then, as 
 she gave him her hand: " But come and try, any way." 
 
 And he left her, moved by the look in her eyes as 
 she nodded farewell. 
 
 When he returned home he found that Monica 
 had put her studio in working order during his absence. 
 He had asked her to go out with him, and had been a 
 little wounded that she had not come. That was the 
 explanation she had resolved to take up her enamelling 
 again. 
 
 It gave him a mixed feeling of annoyance and pain, 
 and that evening he shut himself in his study, although 
 no inspiration came. It was his protest against her 
 opposing his wishes.
 
 298 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Yes, as Buttercup said, she was ideal. He ought to 
 appreciate it instead of resenting the sacrifices she 
 was making for him. 
 
 Why did it produce the odd feeling of alienation ? 
 
 She was the star to which he had hitched his wagon 
 stuck in the mud and ruts of life. But, like stars, she 
 was set high, and the light was cold. He wished she 
 were a little more human, more loving, and less calm. 
 
 And he thought of the look in Buttercup's eyes as 
 they parted. 
 
 Yes, nobody could say that Buttercup wasn't 
 human. 
 
 He struggled with his writing for the ensuing week, 
 and did not keep his promise of calling on Buttercup. 
 But he remained out of sorts, and his brain felt heavy, 
 and, even with extra red wine at dinner and a return 
 to smoking, he seemed unable to stimulate himself 
 to the extent of getting any decent work done. What 
 was the matter with him, he asked himself. Had he 
 lost all mental life, imagination, glow, in the early 
 thirties? His old discouraged feelings about his 
 futility, his lack of place in life, came more heavily 
 to him. Would he go on like this, and was Monica's 
 hand always to rest at the helm, and he remain a 
 wreck, a mere drone, filling the odious position of a 
 wife-supported husband? He told himself he could 
 not endure it. Yet where was the solution ? 
 
 He yielded enough to his prejudice in having Monica 
 take up her enamelling, to sit sometimes in the studio, 
 talking or reading to her, but it was all such a painful
 
 THE TEST 299 
 
 reminder of dependence that gradually reproaching 
 himself for it he avoided the studio or looked in only 
 occasionally. It seemed like a wanton neglect, yet 
 he did not feel he could draw breath freely watching 
 her working, always working. The sight depressed 
 him, increased his melancholy over everything! 
 
 He did not often stay out at night, but one evening 
 he met an old New York acquaintance a fellow 
 journalist who invited him to dine; and afterwards 
 they had gone to the theatre and had had beer at a 
 boulevard cafe. Harding seldom permitted himself 
 such relaxation, and if he had drunk and smoked more 
 than was prudent, considering his state of health, he 
 had enjoyed the evening and the talk over New York 
 days, and he came home in better spirits. 
 
 He expected to find Monica gone to bed, and he 
 entered quietly so as not to disturb her. But he dis- 
 covered that she was not in the apartment. He turned 
 to the studio, annoyed that she should work at such 
 an hour. She certainly overdid things, particularly in 
 contrast with the evening he had spent. 
 
 The studio was not connected with the apartment 
 and was at the farther end of the hall. He moved 
 down the corridor, his tread muffled by the carpet. 
 As he approached, a faint odour of acids greeted his 
 sense it suggested the atmosphere of an apothecary. 
 The hall was in darkness, and the only light that 
 came to him was from the studio, for the door was 
 ajar. 
 
 He was rather curious to see what she was doing,
 
 300 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 and it arrested his step at the threshold, as did also 
 the picture presented to his view. 
 
 The large studio was only dimly lighted. Besides 
 a single shaded lamp the illumination came from the 
 open mouth of the muffler, in which Monica baked her 
 enamels. It required a high degree of heat, and the 
 charcoal glowed now, sending on the half dusk of the 
 studio a play of scarlet light. It denned in red all 
 the cracks and joinings of the small furnace like the 
 sutures of a skull. The light emphasized the obscurity, 
 wherein much of its simple furniture remained un- 
 defined. There was a gleam of steel tools on her 
 working bench, the pale notes of a few plaster casts 
 that hung against the wall. The muffler was placed 
 in the middle of the room; and before it Monica 
 was standing, examining something in her hands 
 no doubt an enamel which had recently been 
 baked. 
 
 The sanguinary light smote her hi full face, so that 
 she was the main feature of the picture. She was in 
 a greyish linen blouse, and her heavy black hair, drawn 
 back from her brows, fell in a loose, long plait over 
 one shoulder. It was like a picture by Schalcken 
 reminded Harding of certain old engravings he had 
 seen. He paused, impressed, not wanting to disturb 
 the effect by making his presence known. He noted 
 it all, but what struck him most powerfully was the 
 strange expression on his wife's face. Her whole 
 aspect was different from what he was familiar with: 
 there was something so sinister in her immobile air:
 
 THE TEST 301 
 
 against the midnight-weighted dusk of the studio it 
 produced almost a sense of shock. 
 
 He understood after a moment that it was the light. 
 It fell on her features in such a way as to erase the 
 everyday lines, remodel them. He had himself some- 
 times experimented in the distortion of expression 
 produced by shifting a candle flame in front of a face. 
 It was odd what certain shifts brought out, as though 
 revealing secrets of the soul there, sketching all the 
 possibilities that Nature concealed. Yet he could not 
 have believed that the illumination falling, as it did, 
 on his wife's face could so transform it, make it look 
 hard, unpleasant, almost evil. 
 
 He was about to enter the studio when Monica 
 turned from the furnace and went to one side of the 
 room. She took from a stand there a bottle and a 
 small pair of scales. She laid two slips of paper on 
 the pans, and, unstopping the bottle, began carefully 
 to pour out some white powder. It was borax, to 
 which she resorted in baking the enamels when the 
 heat refused sufficiently to melt the colours. The 
 powder clung inside the bottle, and to pour it she 
 tapped the bottom with her finger tips very lightly, 
 just enough to have the proper portion. Then she 
 touched the scales to set them balancing, to judge 
 whether they were working properly. It was fine, 
 delicate work, and Harding had never seen her at 
 it on the occasions he had stopped in the studio, 
 Monica was generally busy with her brush or sketching 
 some design.
 
 302 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 What impressed him now was her dexterity, the 
 curious, odd play of her long, tapering fingers. They 
 had always attracted him, but it was more than that 
 as he watched it was fascination. The light red- 
 dened and elongated them, made their motions re- 
 semble some white, cruel spider. They held him by 
 sheer force of their unpleasantness. Then the con- 
 nection came back, and a shock of feeling caused the 
 moisture to spring to his skin. He had forgotten the 
 plaster cast of the Marquise de Brinvillier's hand in 
 Madame de Kansa's ante-room. 
 
 Monica had the hands of a poisoner. 
 
 And with the recollection came the thought of Mrs. 
 Perdoe. It was from her, no doubt, that Monica had 
 got her hands. She, too, had been a poisoner. He 
 could fancy her pouring out, in the same adept way, 
 the fatal dose of powder, white and just enough, like 
 that, for her victim, while the silent midnight held her. 
 
 And, with a strange sense of sickness, Harding 
 turned and went back silently to the apartment. 
 
 When, after a little, Monica entered, he pretended 
 to be asleep.
 
 303 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BY next day the impression lost much of its force. 
 He ridiculed himself for allowing nerves to get such a 
 mastery of him. It was more than absurd it insulted 
 Monica and his love for her. She had been labouring 
 in her studio for his sake, and, instead of being touched 
 by it, he had yielded to morbid fancies about her. It 
 had only been the midnight hour, the silence, the 
 sombre shadows, the trick of light; and, seeing her 
 next day, calm, dignified, as usual, moving about in 
 the performance of household duties, he felt ashamed. 
 Yet her hands continued to have a strange fascination 
 for him as he watched her arrange in the vases the 
 simple market flowers she brought home, or do a 
 bundle in her neat, dexterous way. And he had to 
 control a feeling of dislike at having her touch him. 
 
 He asked what she was doing in her studio, remain- 
 ing up so late. The question was put casually, and 
 he did not tell her that he had watched her work. 
 He professed that annoyance at finding her employed 
 after midnight had caused him to go to bed without 
 waiting for her. 
 
 She brought the panel for him to see. It was a 
 beautiful thing, representing a robed female figure 
 groping with outstretched arms through a cloud. 
 
 " What do you call it ? " he asked.
 
 304 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Love in a Mist," and she indicated the border of 
 pale, interwoven flowers of that name. 
 
 He wondered what had suggested the idea. Was 
 she struggling in a cloud of doubt herself? 
 
 A few days later he was searching for a book in 
 the boxes left untouched since taken out of storage. 
 He picked up a bundle of papers which proved to 
 be the original version of The Labyrinth of Life. He 
 had by this time half forgotten the existence of this 
 manuscript; and with some curiosity he glanced 
 over it. 
 
 The story was a melancholy one, defiant in its 
 exploitation of life's sombre side. But he felt it had 
 strength, was well done; and if he had doubted a 
 little while writing, the justice of his philosophy, he 
 now doubted no more. Reading it in his study, his 
 self-confidence as a writer partly returned. How 
 unfortunate that he could not print it! It would so 
 opportunely meet the demand of his publisher for a 
 new book, save him from again defaulting on the 
 contract, permit him the rest which was becoming 
 more and more imperative. He thought that he had 
 attached too much importance to the slight analogies 
 that might be drawn between this case and that of 
 Mrs. Perdoe. After all, it was not Monica's grand- 
 mother that he had portrayed, but a fiction of his 
 own which a mere idle allusion had suggested. Monica 
 herself had not reproached him for that; her objection 
 had been based entirely on the idea of responsibility 
 in Art.
 
 THE TEST 305 
 
 Perhaps he could persuade her to treat the situation 
 in a less tragic light. 
 
 Several days passed before he could nerve himself 
 to broach the subject. Then he did it tentatively one 
 evening at table. 
 
 It was a pretty, though simple dinner, in which his 
 special predilections had been thought of. Monica, 
 concerned over his depression, had evidently meant 
 to flatter his likes and perhaps thereby win him to a 
 more cheerful mood. She talked more than was her 
 habit, and of light, distracting things. This was the 
 most comfortable room of the apartment, and its 
 crimson paper helped, like the fire on the hearth, to 
 shut out the memory of the damps and chill of a Paris 
 winter. They were accustomed to linger over the 
 evening meal, for both liked to be there. Besides, 
 it was the hour that they could count on being to- 
 gether the rest of the day often had its separating 
 tasks. 
 
 It was not until after dessert that Harding, who 
 had remained preoccupied, could bring himself to 
 mention the manuscript. He swallowed his coffee 
 rather hastily he had perhaps waited for its stimu- 
 lating effect. 
 
 " I had to look through one of those boxes from my 
 room on the quays," he remarked, trying to speak 
 casually. " And I came across that old story of 
 mine. It has been such a long time since I wrote it 
 that I was able to read it detachedly. And it struck 
 me as by far the best thing I've attempted." 
 
 x
 
 306 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 "What old story?" she returned with a puzzled 
 look, trying to recall the manuscripts he had mentioned 
 to her. She was thinking it must be one of the various 
 inchoate sketches he had occupied himself with during 
 their travels. He had discussed so many literary ideas 
 with her. 
 
 " Why, The Labyrinth of Life," he said, with more 
 coolness than he felt. "It is the only other long 
 story I've done, you know. I was wondering if you 
 wouldn't like to look over it again. You might change 
 your opinion. It would settle all that bother with 
 Bentley for one thing." 
 
 " But you destroyed it." Monica struggled to 
 understand a statement which contradicted facts as 
 she knew them. She was not a woman who hastily 
 drew unwelcome conclusions. He had said he had 
 destroyed the story; so, of course, he had. 
 
 " Yes, I destroyed the final, typed copy. I burned 
 it that Christmas night when I got home. But there 
 was the original which I had already tossed aside. I 
 forgot it for the moment, and afterwards, when I came 
 upon it, that ordeal of fire seemed so unnecessarily 
 dramatic " he recalled the phrase Nicolls had applied 
 to him. 
 
 She did not say anything for a breath. Her little 
 pauses before replying, where their talk was on any 
 subject of importance, gave value to her speech. 
 They stamped her words as distinct from the phrases 
 of impulse; they expressed, like so many other things
 
 THE TEST 307 
 
 about her, her poised intelligence: they had always 
 made her seem older than she was. 
 
 " You mean that you told me a falsehood ? " She 
 said it very clearly. 
 
 " That's putting it pretty strong, isn't it ? " he 
 replied, with a flush of offence. 
 
 " It is putting it plainly. I'm afraid I'm too literal 
 not to understand ' destroyed ' as destroyed. It has 
 been the word always used by us in referring to the 
 book. Now you say that in burning one copy you 
 kept another. I did not hold you capable of such 
 deception ! " 
 
 Her voice was hard as in the days of their first 
 acquaintance before he had conquered her instinctive 
 antagonism. It had grown so much gentler and 
 sweeter since their marriage that the tone, as well as 
 her words, fell with the cold effect of a sudden breach 
 between them. All a lifetime of scrupulous self- 
 training in little things expressed itself in her reply. 
 For her, to tell one lie was the same thing as telling 
 a thousand. 
 
 "It is not as though I had made you destroy the 
 book," she continued. " I stopped you when you 
 were going to cast it in the fire that Christmas night 
 at our house. I did not want you merely to please 
 me. It was something that lay with your own con- 
 science. Yet it meant a great deal to me when you 
 said that you had done it voluntarily because you 
 were convinced that it was the only right thing to do." 
 
 X2
 
 308 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 " Don't take it like that, Monica," he protested, 
 trying to check his annoyance. " You are so exact. 
 Do make some allowance for people who don't live by 
 the letter. It is one of the discouraging things about 
 you, that you have no imagination, no latitude in 
 dealing with others. You are making a grand issue 
 out of nothing. When I told you I had destroyed the 
 manuscript, I thought I had. I suppose, when later 
 I remembered the other copy, I ought to have corrected 
 your impression." He floundered under the steady 
 look with which she heard him out. 
 
 " What I started to ask," he went on more resolutely, 
 " was whether you won't re-read the story, as long as 
 it does exist. You might be induced to yield your 
 point about its pernicious effect. This book would 
 relieve the whole present situation. I am not well, I 
 doubt if I can get another novel done now, and Bentley 
 expects the contract to be filled this time. He has 
 already begun announcing a new work by me. I need 
 the money and I need the relief and rest that it 
 would give me. We all need it, in fact. We might 
 be able to go to the Riviera for a while. . . . The doctor 
 has urged it. Really, since you say my peace of mind 
 matters so much to you, you might at least give me 
 a chance by reading the story again." 
 
 "It is not necessary for me to re-read it," she 
 answered, growing steadily colder. " I remember 
 perfectly I can't imagine myself forgetting. And 
 what I thought before, I think still and shall always 
 think. But you are a free agent. And if you think
 
 THE TEST 309 
 
 that a need of money warrants you in going against 
 your feeling of right if you are satisfied to profit by 
 injuring others, by spreading ideas to rob people of 
 courage, by shouting out falsehood as though it were 
 truth what is there to say except that you are not 
 what I thought." 
 
 He turned on her with the resentment roused by 
 her display of rancour which was almost temper. 
 
 " One might think the story was a ' Werther ' to 
 make people blow out their brains. We are not 
 living in a romantic age; people don't take books that 
 way any more." 
 
 " We are living in a real age, of real books," she 
 replied unyielding. " And books do persuade. Re- 
 member that to write falsely is worse than to speak 
 falsely, because your public is immeasurably larger. 
 Even if you believed the book, there might be some 
 frail excuse for publishing it, but The Labyrinth of 
 Life stands for what you don't believe." 
 
 " I'm not so sure of that. What is life but the 
 miserable, blind, ironic thing I represent it to be 
 in the book ? What cause have I to see it the wonder- 
 ful, smug, smiling thing you allege it to be? Where 
 is there any real demonstration of your optimistic 
 theories? " he demanded passionately. " God knows, 
 I began life hopefully enough, did my duty as I recog- 
 nized it, slaved my youth out in an effort to get bread; 
 struggled, scrambled on, clung to such spars as drifted 
 my way had a moment's gleam of success, only to 
 drop back into the slough again; and find myself at
 
 310 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 thirty a wreck, incapable of work, a mere shell of 
 futility, a dependent on you for support and you 
 tell me not to publish The Labyrinth of Life because it 
 may discourage a stray reader! Let it discourage a 
 reader, let it discourage the whole world, if the dis- 
 couragement is the truth. Why shouldn't the world 
 have the truth? You say a writer ought to write 
 honestly. I am honest in the book you wanted me to 
 throw in the fire, the only book that has meant any- 
 thing, my only book that has any Art in it. Half the 
 trouble with me now is that I have not been honest, 
 and that is why the novel I am doing, to please you, 
 to get money in a far baser way, has never got done 
 why it lies on my desk yonder a mass of incoherent, 
 meaningless twaddle would-be pabulum for school- 
 girls, for people who dress up life to please their senti- 
 mental fancies. No wonder I loathe it, that I go to 
 my study with disgust and humiliation over the whole 
 farce of this imitated optimism of yours. But you 
 aren't optimistic you are no more honest with me 
 than I have been with you. You know you believe 
 the book, that you believe in what it says of heredity, 
 that your opposition all along has been your sensitive- 
 ness, though you wouldn't be frank enough to say so. 
 Instead, you come out with your sophistries, your talk 
 of ' artistic responsibility.' ' 
 
 He had begun by merely contending on superficial 
 grounds for the book, and he had ended, through pas- 
 sion gradually seizing him, in a complete avowal of 
 the truth. With a rash hand he had swept down the
 
 THE TEST 311 
 
 fabric of her faith in him, the effort she had made to 
 hold him up to the ideals on which their marriage had 
 been reared. He felt the tragedy of it, yet felt, too, 
 a strange new sense of freedom. It seemed to him 
 that his self-reliance was restored. 
 
 He pushed back his chair, and, rising, stood regard- 
 ing her uncertainly. But she remained in cold im- 
 mobility. An ember fell on the hearth with a little 
 shock to the silence. The faint ticking of the clock 
 was like the heart-beat of fate that had overtaken their 
 life at last. 
 
 " Monica, forgive me if I have gone too far," he 
 faltered, " but you have not realised all my book 
 meant to me. An author's principles become vested 
 in his books, as a woman's in her surroundings." 
 
 His last words seemed lost upon her; her eyes had a 
 strange, almost sinister, gleam under her drawn 
 brows. He felt a species of fear, which her silence only 
 increased. 
 
 " You told me to search my conscience," he began 
 again uneasily. " I have only suggested that you 
 search your own. The situation is not one for quib- 
 bling. We are dealing with our problem of living. 
 I cannot sacrifice my means of self-support for the 
 sheer sake of a magnificently-attenuated ideal. If it 
 is as my wife that the publication of this book seems 
 wrong to you, that is one thing; but if other sentiments 
 come into play, then it is different." 
 
 He stopped and waited, compelling her to speak. 
 
 " If a novelist is also a man, a wife is also a woman,"
 
 312 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 she said at last. " You begin by attempting to humi- 
 liate me with your insinuations, and now you ask me 
 to accept bread which would be as bitter in my mouth 
 as it ought to be in yours. If our ease is to depend on 
 compromise, then let us accept poverty. But all 
 this is wide of the mark perhaps needlessly dramatic, 
 as you would say, but certainly needlessly insulting 
 to me. I have received an order from the Arundel 
 Society for some enamelling. I am to be well paid. 
 You may go to the Riviera if you wish. And we can 
 still each cling to what we choose to take as our ideals." 
 
 The slow red mounted to his cheek. " And sup- 
 pose I was so mean-spirited as to comply how about 
 my contract with Bentley ? " 
 
 " Your publisher had the opportunity to reimburse 
 himself," she answered. " He returned the money 
 because he had faith in you, but I promise you he 
 shall not suffer if you never write another story." 
 
 He could tolerate no more. " I think you are right 
 in saying our talk is wide of the mark," he returned 
 bitingly. " Let this question of the manuscript rest 
 for the present but I don't promise never to pub- 
 lish it." 
 
 He turned and entered his study. He spent the 
 remainder of the evening at his desk, with scattered 
 sheets of the new story before him. All he wanted to 
 write about was a description of a woman's brooding 
 look that somehow was burned into his brain. But 
 there was no room for this in his fiction.
 
 313 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE child, who had always been sickly, developed 
 serious symptoms. Monica, fearing that her doctor 
 did not understand the case, sent for a noted specialist 
 in consultation; this new authority claimed to dis- 
 cover trouble in the spine, by which he explained not 
 only the present feverish state, but also the weakness 
 of one foot which had existed since the child's birth. 
 While not actually saying that little Julian's life was 
 in danger, his attitude seemed to imply as much; he 
 objected to Monica's system of keeping the cradle near 
 her as she worked in the studio, for he feared the 
 effects of both the high temperature and the odour 
 of the acids; and he insisted that a nurse should be 
 engaged. Monica found a fairly good nurse; but at 
 his next visit, the usual doctor, whether from the 
 necessities of the case or because he did not wish to 
 appear unfashionable as compared with the specialist, 
 insisted that a trained nurse could alone watch the 
 symptoms and dispense the medicines. To which 
 Monica replied that any additional care could be given 
 by her; but within thirty-six hours the child's state 
 became really so alarming that she was forced to 
 yield the point. 
 
 During all these anxious days Harding saw that 
 Monica was divided between maternal duties and the
 
 314 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 determination to provide necessary funds. She passed 
 from the sick room to her studio, sacrificing her own 
 health and strength. It was heroic, but profoundly 
 exasperating; and Harding felt there was defiance in 
 it, too, as though Monica was dominated by an almost 
 fanatical obstinacy. She evidently intended to give 
 him no excuse for sending off the manuscript on the 
 plea of pecuniary pressure. She would save him from 
 himself, from what in her opinion was a moral com- 
 promise. He had known, in youth, a similar enthu- 
 siast, a temperance relative, who, in dying, waved 
 aside the spoonful of brandy on which he had been 
 told his life depended. 
 
 Setting his teeth determinedly, and casting aside 
 the over-fastidiousness which had always hampered 
 his work, he toiled in his room while she toiled in her 
 studio, and found savage satisfaction in seeing that 
 he made real progress with his story, which flowed 
 smoothly from the simple fact that he allowed it to 
 flow. He no longer feared for it or doubted in him- 
 self: his sole concern was over the lapse of time required 
 for the actual writing of so many thousand words a 
 day. Meanwhile bills rained in so as to remind him 
 of the dreary months at Mrs. Eversley's; living in 
 Paris was no longer the cheap thing it had been con- 
 sidered, and being ill in Paris was a luxury few could 
 afford. Then, one day, the child grew decidedly 
 worse; a second specialist was called in, who required 
 a night nurse as well as a day nurse and a complete 
 new set of drugs, of dishes, of fittings, at all of which
 
 THE TEST 315 
 
 Harding gazed in dismay. Going to his study, he 
 looked over his manuscript. It would be another 
 month before he would have it written to the end in 
 its first rough form; even then developments might 
 impose further important modifications. He felt that 
 after all that had passed he could not afford to risk 
 a rebuff from Bentley by submitting to them a rough 
 unsatisfactory story; four weeks, perhaps six, were 
 all that he needed but that time he must have; and 
 while it elapsed poor Monica ! 
 
 There was but one thing to do. He sent The 
 Labyrinth of Life as a substitute; and, confident as 
 he was of the value of the story, he asked for a further 
 advance on his royalties. 
 
 That very night the child died. 
 
 The weeks that followed, in which their life appeared 
 to resume much of its old daily aspects, were almost 
 unendurable to Harding. He lived in suspense, not 
 daring to speak of what lay most on his heart, though 
 oppressed by the desire to bring to a point the issue 
 that underlay the surface of their intercourse. Yet 
 no opportunity was provided, for Monica did not even 
 indirectly allude to their momentous argument. She 
 was as calmly kind as formerly, and she took seemingly 
 more pains than ever in attempting to attend to his 
 comforts. Her love for him might be dead, but sense 
 of wifely duty evidently had not lessened its claim. 
 No matter what her feelings about him were, she 
 would always do her duty, was his embittered reflec- 
 tion. She was Duty itself. At times he was almost
 
 316 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 persuaded from her air that the loss of her child had 
 put their conversation out of her mind. But he knew 
 she was not the kind of woman who forgot. 
 
 Nicolls still came often to the house, but Harding 
 almost hated him now. He felt that under the Eng- 
 lishman's friendliness, even in their affliction, there was 
 a latent sense of criticism of him and pity for Monica. 
 He had always been fond of little Julian, and Harding 
 said to himself jealously, it sprang from old senti- 
 ments about Monica. Furthermore, the Englishman 
 brought with him an air of prosperity and competence, 
 of satisfaction with himself and the world, that added 
 to Harding's feelings of dull, smouldering resentment. 
 It was all a declaration of the mistake Monica had 
 made not to marry him a man in accord with her 
 own character and views, who could care for her, give 
 her ease. Now that she was disappointed in her 
 husband, had perhaps given him up as utterly with- 
 out redemption, such thoughts must sometimes cross 
 her heart. Yet, far from interfering with their friend- 
 ship, Harding rather pointedly left the two together 
 to go to his study, where he sat idly brooding, picturing 
 them there by the salon fire Monica, in her black 
 dress, grave, interested in the things of life they dis- 
 cussed together; Nicolls admiring, expressing by his 
 attitude his sympathy for her. Yes, Nature had 
 designed them for each other, he thought bitterly, 
 and it was he who had deluded Monica into marriage 
 on the ground that therein lay a mission stood 
 between them !
 
 THE TEST 317 
 
 One night he found on his study table a package 
 from Bentley & Company. It was his manuscript, 
 and he broke open the envelope of the letter which 
 accompanied it. 
 
 He crushed the sheet furiously in his hand after he 
 had read. They had returned The Labyrinth of Life. 
 It was not in the line they had expected, it would be 
 disastrous to the reputation he had made with The 
 Horns of the Altar. They took even a magnificent 
 moral tone: " We would not publish it," Mr. Hart 
 wrote, " even if we counted on its selling by the 
 thousands." 
 
 So Monica had been right ? 
 
 He had not spoken to her of sending off the manu- 
 script, he did not speak now of its return. But he 
 felt that she knew and triumphed. It would have 
 taken a less human man than Harding not to re- 
 sent all that her silence implied. Even though she 
 were right, her attitude was intolerable. After an 
 entire day of angry rebellion, he could no longer 
 support it. 
 
 They sat by the fire that night, talking of indifferent 
 things while Monica embroidered. Her slim white 
 hands thus employed gave him in his nervous condi- 
 tion something of the old repugnance; and he had 
 taken up his newspaper, professing to read it. After 
 a little he glanced at her and saw that she was idly 
 staring in the flames. 
 
 " Monica, what is the use of our going on like this," 
 he burst out. " Why don't you be frank and tell me
 
 3i8 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 what you think of me? Don't you suppose I know 
 what your thoughts are? " 
 
 " Then what need is there of speaking ? " she said 
 quietly. 
 
 " But there is a reason. I can't bear living day 
 after day with this silence between us. It's quite 
 time we talked out what is in both our minds." 
 
 "What need is there of frankness now?" And 
 her eyes deepened as she still regarded the fire. " I 
 was frank when you asked me to marry you, and you 
 were not. You choose a moment when it can do no 
 good. It cannot alter the one great fact in our life." 
 
 "And that?" 
 
 " The mistake you made in asking me to marry 
 you. I cannot help as you asked me to. You do not 
 even wish me to. Did you ever wish it? " 
 
 " No, I never did in the way you mean. I loved 
 you, and I wanted your love. It's why most men ask 
 a woman to marry them. After all, does anything 
 else matter? " 
 
 " A great deal matters to me." 
 
 " Yes. You don't value love, you think only of 
 helping others, as though that was all marriage meant." 
 
 " And isn't love help ? " 
 
 " Perhaps, but help isn't always love. I have tried 
 to please you," he went on with increased feeling, 
 " tried to adapt myself to your ideas, done it to the 
 suppression of my own. And that has been the 
 trouble, I fancy. I have been living a life of false 
 adaptations. If I sent the manuscript to Bentley,
 
 THE TEST 319 
 
 I did it because I had to it was the only thing left 
 to do." 
 
 She remained silent, and he felt that there she did 
 not, never would yield. 
 
 "It is true," he said, after a pause, " that you 
 meant more to me than my own convictions when I 
 married you. If I deceived you in promising to 
 mould myself to your views of life, I deceived myself 
 as well. I thought I could. I find I can't. Why 
 can't you accept me as I am, Monica ? Suppose I do 
 find life a melancholy, hopeless riddle? Why should 
 you cease to care for me because I do ? And perhaps 
 you would find it so, if you really allowed yourself to 
 see things as they are. Then we could face its failure 
 together, find the solace love gives, and the rest 
 well, the rest could go. But you are a woman born 
 with the fixed idea that you have a mission to reform 
 the world. You think you have a mission to reform 
 me, to force me to see things as you see them. Yet 
 I wonder if, after all, I don't face the truth more 
 squarely than you do ... than any woman ever does." 
 He drew a breath of emotion. " That's why we've 
 never found any real happiness together. I suppose 
 it was wrong to get you to marry me, knowing what 
 I am, what you are." 
 
 He spoke with the nervousness of a man who has 
 too long held his feelings in check. It was a relief to 
 give vent to it all, although he was conscious of the 
 brutality with which he presented it. 
 
 " It was my fault for you are much younger than
 
 320 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 I yes, I should have known how it would all end," 
 he added, staring moodily into the fire. 
 
 " And I, too," she replied slowly, " I was not too 
 young. I was never too young ... I left youthfulness 
 to my mother." But there was no irony in her voice. 
 
 Her air touched him, and he said in a changed tone : 
 
 " Oh, Monica, if only you sometimes hesitated over 
 questions of ethics or, rather, if you thought less 
 about life, took it differently, in a more simple way! 
 I know I have disappointed you. But could it have 
 been otherwise? This trying to make people what 
 they aren't, can never be. There's the tragedy of it 
 all. One can't make people over they have to be 
 what they are." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps I was too credulous," she answered, 
 with her first bitter touch. 
 
 He got up and paced the room in a fit of futile 
 rebellion against himself, against her, against the whole 
 coil of things. 
 
 " And nothing can ever make us alike," he resumed 
 after a moment. " We are opposed as much as certain 
 forces in nature. They say marriage adjusts. ... I 
 remember it was what Miss Vanderhurst so confidently 
 held. But what ever really adjusts two people as 
 contrary as you and I? I make you unhappy I 
 shall always make you unhappy. There is no solution 
 that I can see." 
 
 " Say it for yourself if you wish," she answered; 
 " not for me, for I still can hope." 
 
 " Your hope !" he replied, " it is part of your whole
 
 THE TEST 321 
 
 attitude. You won't give it up your ' mission ' ; 
 you'll still aim to make me something else than 
 I am. We can be happy in just being our human 
 selves." 
 
 " I can never be happy drifting," she said intensely; 
 " life would not be worth the living so. It was not 
 meant that it should be without effort, without 
 courage, without even self-respect." She lifted her 
 head and her grey eyes fixed him. 
 
 " But unless you yield something, how are we to find 
 the least bit of peace ? It isn't that I'm utterly without 
 redemption, it is only your thinking so. If I hold one 
 thing one day, another the next, if my feelings and 
 points of view change, it's because I am the artist type. 
 Can't you make allowance for that in me ? " 
 
 " I am not thinking of the artist, I am thinking of the 
 man," she responded. 
 
 "The 'man,'" he laughed shortly. "As though 
 ' the man,' as you call it, ( wasn't always crucified in the 
 artist. You mean I'm weak, and what artist isn't 
 weak, when it comes to that? Don't you see that 
 nature sacrifices one thing in giving the world another ? 
 It is the artist's weakness that is his strength. An 
 artist isn't normal, he never was normal. If you con- 
 ventionalize him, if he sees, acts, feels like other people, 
 he is stripped of his usefulness, of the only side that 
 makes his power." 
 
 " If I thought that, if I thought ' art ' meant the 
 shirking of ordinary responsibilities of living, was 
 based on moral flabbiness, I should lose all respect for 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 it. And it isn't so the greatest artists have always 
 been men one could respect." 
 
 He smiled sarcastically. " I'm afraid you haven't 
 read the biographies of genius, then. But I doubt if 
 even that would shake your views. Nothing would 
 make you give up what means more to you than love 
 or happiness." 
 
 " I have wanted to help your life, not hinder it," 
 she returned ; and her eyes still gazed darkly in the flame. 
 " But you had no right to hinder mine. You owed me 
 fairness in the beginning. How dared you ask me to 
 marry you " and her pale face gathered a sudden 
 proud emotion " feeling as you do ? Not about 
 ' art,' but about all that was most sacred, most vital to 
 me. What do you suppose every day, every moment, 
 has been to me since you told me that you believed in 
 your book and its theories have always believed therr . 
 My being your wife under the circumstances is a humili- 
 ation. It can only mean that in your eyes I committed 
 wrong to marry you. No artist plea can excuse you 
 there. Even an artist " and her lip showed her sense 
 of outrage " can be merciful. And what mercy did 
 you show me ? But why should I speak of your weak- 
 ness. ... I was weaker than you." 
 
 " Why do you take it like that, Monica? " he said, 
 pleadingly. " I never meant to wrong you. I don't 
 see how I wrong you now. It is only your pride and 
 sensitiveness. You regard the story as though it 
 passed judgement on you. And you know I never 
 intended that. It is unjust, it's foolish, to hold the
 
 THE TEST 323 
 
 book against me. What difference can it make, if we 
 love each other? " 
 
 " What difference ? You make me speak of the 
 manuscript then. Well, let us speak of it. And what 
 did the sending of it to your publisher mean ? It 
 meant that you cast contempt on your own child. I 
 pass over what the humiliation was to me that may 
 go. Perhaps it was best that Julian died. . . . He 
 might have grown up to read The Labyrinth of Life." 
 
 At that moment, Nicolls entered the salon, and 
 Harding, murmuring some curt apology, left the 
 apartment.
 
 324 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " I WANT to leave Chicot with you. I'm going to 
 London to get some clothes; I wouldn't separate my- 
 self from the dear little soul for anything less important 
 than clothes. And where I've learned I can't trust 
 Buttercup with herself, imagine my trusting her with 
 Chicot! I wish I hadn't quarrelled with that M.P. 
 who was such a dear friend of mine he could have had 
 that damned English dog law repealed, and now I know 
 he's helping to keep it, just to spite me ! " 
 
 The poet delivered himself of this speech without a 
 pause, as he sat down uninvited at the table Harding 
 was occupying on the terrace of Weber's. The invita- 
 tion to care for his dog, like the invitation to buy a 
 drink for himself, had evidently come to Colston on 
 seeing his former friend, whom he greeted with a cor- 
 diality which was scarcely returned. Still, Harding 
 had no reason for insulting Buttercup's husband; 
 indeed, he was one of the few people who had never 
 actually quarrelled with Percy. That was what friends 
 were invented for, hi Percy's opinion. " Out of my 
 great quarrels I make little songs," he had once informed 
 Harding. 
 
 " I wish some one would invent a drink that would 
 give an appetite for life instead of merely for dinner," 
 he remarked, after the waiter had filled his order. " And
 
 THE TEST 325 
 
 there is no aperitif that inspires me nowadays with a 
 desire to dine at home. To sit opposite Buttercup gives 
 me the feeling that I have had a full meal before I have 
 even tasted soup. It is wonderful what a sense of 
 satiety some women cause." And he sighed wearily. 
 " I used to think there was nothing like committing a 
 mistake. It gives you something to remedy. But 
 there is no remedying Buttercup unless she gets a 
 divorce, and that is so unoriginal. It is one of those 
 uninteresting privileges like having a soul or a vote in 
 America. There is nothing left any more that isn't 
 vulgar. For instance, what is more vulgar than sitting 
 here with you in the rue Royale? Americans have 
 made the Boulevards as bad as Broadway. I wonder 
 what Barbey d'Aur6villy and other Empire dandies 
 would think if they came back and saw them. Yes, 
 Paris has changed, and Americans are responsible for 
 it. I wish some one would undiscover America. But 
 then I see it darkly through Miss Zenobia, who is 
 coming to pay us a visit. I shan't dine at home then, 
 I promise you. How I hate that woman: can you 
 imagine any worse nightmare than her sunbursts and 
 her love string ? That is one of the beautiful memories 
 I have of Mrs. Eversley. Poor woman, she did under- 
 stand how to dress and carry off her hair. What pains 
 she took to keep herself a plausible blonde. When she 
 asked me what the colour of her hair ought to be, I said 
 ash. Yes, Nature meant her to be an ash-blonde, she 
 had an ash-blonde soul. And so she spent her time 
 ashing, only the raven was always rising, like a phoenix,
 
 326 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 from the ashes. She shouldn't have quarrelled with 
 me it was one of her mistakes. But she was always 
 committing them. I think I must have caught the 
 habit from her. But the tragedy is not making them, 
 but living with them. I wish Buttercup would go and 
 live with somebody else for a while. It would be a rest 
 for her and a rest for me, and for all the rest too. It is 
 what always happens if an artist marries. If an artist 
 marries at all it ought to be a woman who offers no 
 resistance who is only a blotter to her husband's copy. 
 And above all, she ought to know how to efface herself. 
 But women are like Solomon's slave in Prior. ' Abra 
 was ready when I called her name, and though I called 
 another, Abra came.' It is their genius for always 
 being about, that I most object to. That's why I'm 
 leaving Buttercup at home, and won't leaveChicot there 
 she'd have worried him into nervous prostration by 
 the time I got back." Sometimes Percy talked, as Hip- 
 pocleides danced, in a style pleasing to himself, but dis- 
 gusting to others. Well might Buttercup say that she 
 could hardly even quote Tennyson at him in claiming 
 to be " something better than his dog." But Harding 
 did not share his enthusiasm, and demurred over the 
 prospect of accepting such a tedious responsibility 
 during Colston's absence. 
 
 Harding paid one or two calls that afternoon, and 
 returned home to find Chicot curled up in his own arm- 
 chair. Monica informed him that Percy Colston had 
 called, bringing the dog, and saying Julian had pro- 
 mised to care for it. Harding protested that he had
 
 THE TEST 327 
 
 never said anything of the kind, and was shocked to 
 observe that Monica did not even pretend to believe it. 
 So this was the result of his equivocation over the 
 manuscript burning. Monica did not tell him what 
 had occurred during the call, but he could well imagine. 
 Percy had no doubt been as free in his statements 
 about his wife as about his dog. Harding taxed him- 
 self with not having spoken of those visits to Buttercup, 
 for he had no means of knowing how far Colston's 
 characteristic spiteful insinuations might have gone. 
 
 He was alarmed to feel that Colston's very liberty in 
 coming to the house had widened the breach between 
 Monica and him. It showed a hidden intimacy be- 
 tween her husband and the man who had attacked her 
 in so cowardly a way by suggesting that her life- 
 tragedy should be exploited commercially in book 
 form. It was a point of view which left Harding almost 
 powerless to defend himself. If she was not a woman 
 to forgive deception, she was still less one to forgive 
 unfaithfulness. Monica's eyes were hard as she inter- 
 rupted him. 
 
 " You are a free agent," was all she said. She had 
 used those identical words, in referring to the publica- 
 tion of the manuscript. Jealousy and principle, 
 therefore, awakened kindred sentiments in her. 
 
 Yes, she was more human than he thought, he re- 
 flected that night, as he faced her at dinner. There 
 was a bitter brooding look in her eyes the look that 
 more than once had belied her calm exterior. The 
 mask concealed that which made him oddly nervous
 
 328 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 as he speculated over it. There were mysteries about 
 Monica's character that it was hopeless to gauge. Her 
 strange eyes had once attracted him like her beautiful 
 hands, but he preferred now to avoid both. The meal 
 passed almost in silence, and that night Monica took 
 possession of the extra sleeping chamber of the apart- 
 ment. If he had doubted the meaning of her air 
 before, he could doubt it no longer. 
 
 Pride withheld him from attempting to soften her 
 apparent impressions as to Buttercup. As Nicolls 
 chanced to call onV Monica^ the following evening, 
 Harding pointedly left them alone together. He per- 
 suaded himself that he at all events was superior to 
 jealousy yet he knew that a rage of jealousy burned 
 his heart; and to preserve his role he left the house. It 
 was his sole way to contain himself. Only after he was 
 out did it occur to him what conclusions Monica might 
 draw; she knew Buttercup's husband was in London. 
 
 Harding lunched out the next day, and returned to 
 an empty apartment late in the afternoon. Monica 
 had probably gone to do some tardy marketing. Their 
 servant had left them that morning and Harding had 
 proposed they dine at a restaurant. But Monica 
 would have her own way. 
 
 For several days the weather had been so mild that 
 he had had no fire in his study ; it had fallen chilly again, 
 and he entered the small room expecting to find the 
 salamander unlighted. He was in the habit of resting
 
 THE TEST 329 
 
 on the couch there for a half -hour before dinner, to make 
 up for loss of sleep at night, for he still could not 
 conquer his habit of sleeplessness. But Monica had 
 made the fire in preparation for his return . . . she was 
 always mindful of his comfort. It touched him keenly 
 that she should have done such rough work. He could 
 not go on like this. Yes, she might well be excused for 
 repenting that she had married him! He stretched 
 himself on the couch, and yielding to fatigue, soon fell 
 asleep. His repose was fitful, however, and he was 
 pursued by disturbing dreams. 
 
 He was awakened, after a little, by Chicot's efforts to 
 attract his attention. The dog was whining, and its 
 evident distress aroused him in a dim, dazed way. 
 Then, as consciousness came more distinctly, he was 
 aware of suffocation, of a roaring like water in his ears. 
 Struggling into a sitting position, he put his hands to 
 his head to steady himself his temples were throbbing 
 violently. 
 
 An instant need of air caused him to stagger to the 
 window and raise it. Breathing in gasps, he leaned 
 there, until his mind grew clearer, his lungs free. Then 
 he remembered Chicot. The little animal lay now on 
 the floor, its body shaken by convulsions. Fearing for 
 its life, Harding carried it into the kitchen, where he 
 dashed water on its head, and after some moments it 
 revived. 
 
 On his return to the study he found that though the 
 pure outside air had freshened it, there still lingered the 
 sickening smell of oxide of carbon. The ponderosity
 
 330 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 of the gas, sinking to the floor, had affected Chicot 
 first. The dog's efforts to arouse him had saved both 
 their lives. 
 
 Cursing salamanders as wretched, dangerous things, 
 he tottered over to examine the stove. The workman 
 who had set it up had cautioned him to see that the 
 lid was always securely closed. There was a small 
 chink open, through which poison had permeated the 
 atmosphere of the small study. It had been careless 
 of Monica . . . and she was not often careless. But 
 she had probably been in haste to get her purchases 
 before nightfall. 
 
 He thought of what her feelings would be coming 
 home and finding him unconscious, dead perhaps from 
 asphyxiation. She would be stricken with horror, of 
 course, at the sight, and reproach herself for being the 
 cause. 
 
 Yet he mused a little bitterly might not there 
 be relief in the end? The relief of no longer being 
 bound to a man who offended her feelings about life, 
 who had not succeeded even in making a home for 
 her. Yes, he had a picture of her in her calm, dignfied 
 widowhood. Nicolls would come to offer sympathy 
 as she struggled on, alone, with her Art work. Then, 
 after a decent while, he would propose to her again. . . 
 and this time she would accept him. 
 
 It was rather a pity after all the accident hadn't 
 done its work rid her of him ! It might as well have 
 happened. He hadn't much hold of life. He never 
 had had. He was one of the Creator's mistakes.
 
 THE TEST 331 
 
 His marriage had been a mistake, as Percy Colston 
 said. The Labyrinth of Life had been another. What 
 a part it had played in his life. It had pursued him 
 like a Nemesis, weaving into all the issues of his 
 marriage. 
 
 The remembrance of the book, always ready to 
 come into his mind as the cause of his unhappiness, 
 started a train of thought. It was broken, a little con- 
 fused, for his head was still heavy and violently aching. 
 
 It occurred to him that the salamander would have 
 been a much more artistic way of killing the victim 
 in his story than the one he had devised. It would 
 have been as simple and as effective, and it could be 
 so easily attributed to unintentional causes, explained 
 as a " deplorable accident." Who would have 
 doubted? Yes, it was such an easy way to get rid 
 of some one he wondered criminals did not oftener 
 adopt it. 
 
 If Monica had meant to dispose of him in that way 
 who would have dreamed of suspecting her? As she 
 had once affirmed, she struggled to combat any evil 
 tendencies that might have been handed down to 
 her from her criminal grandmother. 
 
 He wondered if Monica knew that her hands were 
 in themselves a kind of provocation for moral struggle. 
 He supposed she didn't like her mother ever go to 
 consult Madame de Kansa, and consequently she had 
 never seen the cast of the Marquise de Brinvillier's 
 hands. He wondered in a dull way whether poisoners 
 had a definite type of hand. Whether Monica had
 
 332 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 inherited hers from her grandmother. It was absurd 
 that she should possess such an incongruity ... a 
 poisoner's hands. The refined, lady-like sort, of 
 course. The kind one naturally associated with a 
 Marquise de Brinvilliers ... or a Mrs. Perdoe. 
 
 Was there in Monica a kind of fear a fear lying 
 deep down in her consciousness that, granting she 
 knew about her hands, she might have strange tempta- 
 tions ? 
 
 How absurd to suppose that Monica ever had 
 such thoughts. Yet the idea of Monica in connection 
 with her ancestry continued to haunt him. He had 
 never really thought out what it all must have meant 
 to her. How little he really knew her. He remem- 
 bered the night he had stood, unseen, at the threshold 
 of her studio and watched her work. Her face had 
 been strange. He would not have believed it could 
 look so hard, as she bent over her scales, measuring in 
 that fine, delicate way the white powder she poured 
 out of the bottle. One could always take it for 
 granted that there were closets, dark rooms, secret 
 drawers. 
 
 Yet, as to Monica, the association with weakness 
 was ridiculous. He had only to remember her argu- 
 ments with him. The moral elevations she asserted, 
 her continual insistence on ideals, were almost super- 
 human. Yet who argued theology better than the 
 devil? 
 
 He had arrived, before he knew it, at suspicion.
 
 THE TEST 333 
 
 She might argue, she might try to live on a high 
 plane, but behind her was a criminal grandmother, 
 and nearer was a frivolous mother who, late in life, 
 had misappropriated a fortune, and had started out 
 in girlhood as a perjurer he was sure she had when 
 called as a witness to save Mrs. Perdoe. Now Monica's 
 turn to be tempted might have come passion urged 
 on by the demon of jealousy which Percy had raised. 
 And Harding had noted that jealousy had upon her 
 an effect akin to principle. 
 
 A piece of circumstantial evidence was added to 
 the theory about Monica which was forging itself in 
 his brain. The servant . . . why had she discharged 
 the servant that very morning ? She had said it was 
 because the girl was unsatisfactory. But it also left 
 her alone to carry out her designs. Monica had gone 
 away, presumably on a marketing expedition. But 
 marketing ought to be done in the morning. 
 
 He heard her enter, and he sat silent, waiting. 
 
 She went to the rear of the apartment, no doubt to 
 deposit her purchases. But now she came towards his 
 study. He could hear her step and how it paused 
 outside the door. 
 
 Why did she pause? Was she wondering if her 
 attempt on his life had been successful ? 
 
 He coughed, and she opened the door. 
 
 She presented herself to his observing eyes in the 
 rftle he might have expected. She was quietly dressed, 
 as one would dress in going shopping. Her veil was
 
 334 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 raised and one hand ungloved; she had discarded it 
 on entering the house. How innocent she looked in 
 her young maturity. She seemed surprised at finding 
 him sitting up and looking pale, disturbed. She 
 looked just surprised enough not too much so. 
 
 " Is that you? " he said. It was a banal question, 
 such as one utters often. 
 
 " Yes, I was wondering if you were asleep." 
 
 He smiled ironically. " I might have enjoyed 
 eternal sleep. Colston's dog awoke me in time. The 
 lid of the stove was not shut. I was almost asphyxi- 
 ated." 
 
 " But surely I closed it! " 
 
 " You left a nice little chink," he returned. 
 
 She looked shocked. " Julian ! Oh, how careless 
 of me! How do you feel now? " She came forward 
 and put out her hand. 
 
 " Don't ! " he exclaimed, thrusting her aside. " I 
 can't bear you to touch me . . . with those hands." 
 
 " My hands! " she echoed. 
 
 " Yes, your hands ! I hate them ! How did you 
 happen to have hands like that? They are like the 
 cast of the Marquise de Brinvilliers'. . ." 
 
 " The Marquise de Brinvilliers ? " From her air 
 one might have supposed she didn't know, but of 
 course she knew. 
 
 " She was a lady of the last century," he answered 
 grimly; " quite an interesting person; I wonder you 
 have never read her biography. She throws her
 
 THE TEST 335 
 
 modern imitators in the shade. Don't pretend you 
 never saw her hands at Madame de Kansa's." 
 
 Still she did not appear to understand, but she 
 drew enough from his air to say: " I have never been 
 to Madame de Kansa's; she was my mother's friend, 
 not mine." 
 
 " H m, you are right not to go," he sneered. 
 " She mayn't be an inspired prophet, but she draws 
 queer conclusions sometimes. Suppose she was to 
 say accidents with salamanders can be happy 
 solutions suppose she should describe you^as a 
 prosperous widow " 
 
 " A prosperous widow! " she repeated. 
 
 " Yes, a pleasantly re-married widow, and, what- 
 ever you might think, Nicolls couldn't be grateful 
 enough to that little dose of carbonic gas. So easy, 
 who would suspect ? I wonder that wives with worth- 
 less husbands don't think of it oftener." 
 
 It appeared that she knew he was not well, that it 
 was foolish to attach importance to his words. He 
 looked so pale, so overwrought, that her solicitude was 
 aroused to a degree that it dominated everything else. 
 But he was in the grip of his suspicions. He remem- 
 bered how well she had acted at the garden party 
 when, as he knew from Miss Fitzgerald, her smile in 
 crowning Percy Colston disguised her actual dislike. 
 He would make himself plainer, since it was necessary. 
 
 But he was spared this. It suddenly came to her. 
 
 " You mean you think that I did it on purpose ? "
 
 336 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 His look, his smile sufficed. She stood rigid a 
 moment; seemed to make an effort to speak, and not 
 succeed; another moment passed, during which he 
 could not make sure whether her attitude was hesita- 
 tion or powerlessness. Then she left the room. 
 
 He did not bother about her going. He felt the 
 emptiness of the room, and hugged the dog which 
 had saved him. He did not care much about any- 
 thing. Oh, yes, he did he wanted air.
 
 337 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 His instinct was blindly to escape the house, escape 
 Monica. He carried the dog along, because the little 
 animal had saved his life; besides, they were com- 
 panions in misery. 
 
 He made his way downstairs and drew in long, 
 reviving breaths as he reached the street. His head 
 still violently throbbed, but his mind was beginning 
 to clear, and he asked himself where he was going. 
 Anywhere would do. 
 
 He walked as far as the quays, still with uncertain 
 step; but, as he caught sight of the Seine, a strange, 
 sudden, reeling sensation took him, and he made his 
 way to a convenient corner tavern, where he called 
 for brandy. It revived him, and he moved on again. 
 But before long a recurrence of the after-effects of 
 poisoning seized him, and he was just able to get as 
 far as the next tavern and sink down on a seat. The 
 sensations were so alarming that he thought he was 
 going to die. He wondered what was the effect on 
 the dog. It was breathing in short gasps, with occa- 
 sional convulsive tremors, and, soothing it, he poured 
 a few drops of brandy and water down its throat. Then, 
 yielding to drowsy fatigue, he nodded, finally to start 
 awake with a sense of choking and a dream of Monica 
 over him with her horrible white hands; but he had 
 
 z
 
 338 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 nevertheless slept some time, and meanwhile night 
 had deepened. He looked at the clock: it was after 
 eight. He ought to get something to eat; and, stagger- 
 ing out of the wine shop where the proprietor viewed 
 him as an eccentric inebriate he found a cab and 
 drove to a restaurant on the other side of the river. 
 His wretchedness craved some brilliantly lighted 
 place where there were faces, music perhaps. He 
 feared to be alone in the night, with the strange reeling 
 sensations coming to him at intervals. But the 
 restoratives he had hastily gulped down had helped. 
 It sustained him for the moment, permitted him to 
 think a little, though it was confused thinking, and 
 his mind was still unable to grapple with any question 
 beyond immediate ways and means. He hugged the 
 dog to his breast, endeavouring to give the animal 
 comfort; it, too, was plainly suffering. Once or twice 
 he fancied it had gasped its last. 
 
 Only when seated in the restaurant after ordering 
 something to eat at hasty random, did the problem 
 what to do with Chicot present itself. Much as he 
 hated Colston at that moment, he was aware what 
 an accident to the dog would mean to him. The poet 
 was attached to it, as he knew. He did not want it 
 to die on his hands. He saw that his condition and 
 that of his companion were attracting a great deal of 
 attention round him. He regretted coming to such a 
 public place; but he had not the strength to leave. 
 And he sat on, eating with nausea, and drinking more 
 than he ate. The wine was beginning to check the
 
 THE TEST 339 
 
 violent pin- wheel spinning inside his brain. He con- 
 sidered the situation while he tempted Chicot with 
 morsels from his plate but the animal refused food 
 and had begun whining, as though not sharing the 
 other's satisfaction with their surroundings. It was 
 a delicate, aristocratic little dog, and manifested, 
 Harding fancied, the sentiment that if it was going 
 to die, it desired to do so on its own silken bed at home 
 in the Colstons' lordly mansion. 
 
 Harding finally decided that the best thing alto- 
 gether was to deliver it into Buttercup's care. The 
 lateness of the hour for he had dallied over his 
 neglected meal warned him that if he was to put 
 the resolve into effect that night, he must lose no time. 
 
 On the way to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne he 
 dosed again from the effect of the wine he had drunk, 
 and only started awake as the vehicle stopped. 
 
 Buttercup was fortunately at home she had just 
 returned from an evening entertainment, the servant 
 informed him, with a rather condemnatory air, as he 
 marked the visitor's dishevelled appearance. The 
 servants at the Colstons' were of a stately order, and 
 emanated a consciousness of being object-lessons in 
 deportment. No doubt the proprieties were more 
 respected below stairs than above. The man's man- 
 ner was, however, just the brace Harding needed at 
 the moment, and he entered the drawing-room with 
 self-possession. 
 
 It was a salon of great dimensions, a succession of 
 rooms in which a glare of gorgeousness melted into 
 
 Z2
 
 340 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 impressive perspective. Hiram Baxter had given 
 wholesale orders for the decoration of the house, in 
 which Percy's own taste raised a feeble cry, as a drown- 
 ing man on a spar signals to the bellied bulk of an 
 ocean steamer. The pieces of furniture that had 
 represented Percy's purchase of Mrs. Eversley's 
 refined pretensions scattered about ached with more 
 than antiquity's rheumatism in this oasis of splendour. 
 " Surpassing Ceylon " seemed stamped on everything, 
 as golden bees of Napoleon bloom on First Empire 
 furniture. 
 
 Harding advanced, bearing Chicot under his arm 
 like a burdened Pilgrim in the House Beautiful. 
 Buttercup was at a desk re-reading a note, and from 
 the absorption expressed in the act, her visitor felt 
 sure it was not written to Percy. Her gay, satin- 
 lined cloak, which she had cast on a chair, made a 
 vivid splash of colour. But the regality of the tegu- 
 ment she had discarded had only concealed the regality 
 of the costume under it. Buttercup was a duchess 
 to-night in all the imitated insignia of clothes. Harding 
 had not seen her in evening dress for several years, and 
 he was struck by the effect. She was certainly a 
 splendid animal. Her reddish hair shone beneath 
 the electric chandelier that blazed with the reckless- 
 ness of knowing it could be paid for and the amount 
 never missed. Buttercup's beauty was the kind that 
 could stand light. If anything, light reduced it to 
 that less barbarian glow which was its owner's aim 
 since she had mixed with more anaemic members of a
 
 THE TEST 341 
 
 semi-fashionable world. She was bending over the 
 desk; and, at a distance, ere she looked up, Harding's 
 glance caught sight of the strong black scrawl. Butter- 
 cup's hand was as dashing as the rest of her a few 
 sentences filled a page. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " she exclaimed, " why on earth 
 are you coming at this hour . . . and what is the matter 
 with you ? You look like a resurrected Lazarus ! " 
 
 " I am," he said grimly, " I have just been resusci- 
 tated . . . and haven't had time to change my grave 
 clothes. So please excuse their death damps. Your 
 man crossed himself when he saw me and called on 
 all the saints. But I am quite harmless, so don't be 
 alarmed." And he laughed rather foolishly. 
 
 " But I am," she said. " I never saw such a sight. 
 And why are you hugging Chicot ? " 
 
 " Oh, well, because Chicot is my mascot. If 
 it weren't for him, I should not be here. He deserves 
 a better fate than asphyxiation, so I am returning him 
 to a safer atmosphere steam heat. Please take him." 
 And he sat down suddenly on the chair near him. 
 " Give me a little brandy, won't you? " 
 
 " Of course, you can have some if you want," she 
 responded, still examining him in doubt. " But I 
 should say you have already had enough to drown a 
 Duke of Clarence." Buttercup's allusions were cer- 
 tainly getting literary. " Influence of Percy," Harding 
 murmured to himself as he returned aloud: 
 
 " Oh, don't butt me any Duke of Clarence butts, 
 Buttercup," admiring his own sorry wit and appre-
 
 342 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 dating the alliteration, " but get me some brandy, 
 and then I'll tell you all the secrets of my prison house." 
 His own humour was so outre to himself that he won- 
 dered at it. 
 
 " Oh, if you can be that bright," she returned sar- 
 castically. She touched the bell and bade the servant 
 bring brandy. Harding waited without speech, and 
 after he had swallowed a generous glassful, he sat 
 regarding her with bright eyes. The chandeliers had 
 multiplied, and he imagined they were shaking with 
 mirth at his sally. He felt like making sallies one 
 after another. " Yes, I'll out-dazzle the Colston 
 chandeliers," he said to himself. 
 
 " And now, perhaps, you'll tell me why I am 
 honoured with this absolutely inexcusable late call, 
 my dear Julian," he heard Buttercup's voice float to 
 him from immeasurable distances; " I am not in the 
 habit of receiving visitors at midnight, and it is not 
 considered comme il faut, you know, to enter a lady's 
 drawing-room asking for drinks, as though you were 
 at Maxim's." 
 
 He raised a protesting hand. " Now, Buttercup," 
 he said, " don't you use that ' familiar quotation ' 
 French of yours. If you want to be familiar, be it in 
 ordinary English. But we never have been familiar, 
 have we ? " His voice had an odd drawl. " I don't 
 care what Percy says ... we haven't. We haven't, 
 and Monica needn't say we have. He called at my 
 prison house and told things that nearly caused my 
 death. I declare to you he nearly caused my death.
 
 THE TEST 343 
 
 The trouble he has made has just bred like rabbits . . . 
 No, like salamanders. I suppose you know what a 
 salamander is? Francis the First adopted them . . . 
 to express what he thought of women. You remem- 
 ber what he wrote with a diamond ring on the window 
 pane at his chateau, what's the name of it ? ... Sham 
 something, down in Touraine? You must have seen 
 it when you took that motor trip of yours. Was it 
 a motor trip or was it a motive trip, Buttercup ? " 
 
 ' You're drunk or out of your head," she said. 
 " What do you mean by coming here in your cups ? " 
 
 " Yes," he sallied, " I am in my cups, my butter- 
 cups, and so I fly to my butterfly." 
 
 " I think the best thing for you would be to go 
 home," she said hastily, as she directed a glance 
 towards the hall. For once she was rather glad to 
 think the servant was hanging inquisitively about. 
 She preferred tea-drinkers to brandy-drinkers, and 
 Julian's grotesque state made her ill at ease. 
 
 " But I haven't any home," he asserted thickly, 
 " that's why I came to see you I haven't any home. 
 I never was good at making homes. No, nobody will 
 carve that on my tomb, that I was a good home- 
 maker. I don't know what I'm good for. You can 
 tell me. You used to think something of me, didn't 
 you, Tea-rose? " 
 
 " I don't know what I used to think of you," was 
 her answer, " but I know what I think of you now. If 
 you don't tell me why you are here, I shall really have 
 to excuse myself." And she made an impatient stir.
 
 344 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 "Oh, do you have to excuse yourself, too? " he 
 said, with an air of interest. " I thought that was my 
 vocation. I've been excusing myself ever since I was 
 born. I've been excusing myself ever since I was 
 married. I ought to have excused myself for not 
 getting out of the world this afternoon . . . me and 
 Chicot. It was my Creator's place to do the excus- 
 ing . . . but he shoved it on me. Wasn't right, but he 
 did." And his face gloomed. " I'm in the way, 
 Buttercup," he went on with sudden hoarseness. He 
 leaned towards her. " That's the secret of my prison- 
 house . . . I'm in the way. Give me your hand, Butter- 
 cup ... I want to look at your hand. See what kind 
 of a hand you've got." He tried to take it. 
 
 " My hand, as it happens, is already given." She 
 laughed a little harshly. " There's nothing the matter 
 with it ... there never was. If you've come here to 
 re-examine it, my dear Julian, you're wasting your 
 time." And instinctively her glance fell on the 
 unfinished note on the escritoire near her. 
 
 " Yes, it was a nice hand," he mused. ' You 
 oughtn't to have given it to Percy, you know. It's a 
 royal flush; your mistake was to bluff when you had 
 the jack-pot playing straight. So you lost. And if 
 I'd only held your hand for life I'd have won." 
 
 " I'm greatly flattered, I assure you," she replied 
 with a short laugh, the laugh that had come with her 
 marriage. " But you are rather late in reaching that 
 conclusion." She regarded him fixedly for a moment 
 before she went on: "I can guess you have had a
 
 THE TEST 345 
 
 falling out with that ideal wife of yours. And you 
 would like me to play the consolation prize. It was 
 what I always knew would happen. Do you imagine " 
 and her eyes were bright with the vehemence of 
 long-nurtured feelings" that I have ever forgiven you 
 for the way you treated me ? I hate you for it, I hate 
 you for what it drove me to. You have ruined my 
 life, and I hope you have ruined your own . . . you 
 have ruined it. If there ever was a ruin, you are one 
 to-night ... a ruin without even ivy or any other 
 picturesque feature of ruins about you. I saw you 
 were going down hill, that first day when I met you 
 in the Bois, when you talked about ' moving slow.' 
 Yes, you are slow, slow in everything but the way 
 you have crumbled to nothing . . . that was fast enough. 
 Now you can tell yourself I've been playing with you. 
 . . . Do you understand? Hiram Baxter, the tea 
 merchant's daughter, who wasn't good enough for 
 you to propose to, has been amusing herself with you. 
 And now I think you had better leave." She breathed 
 sharply. "I'll send you and your brandy home in 
 my motor." And she rang the bell. 
 
 Her words half sobered him. 
 
 " Once again, there's enough motive without your 
 motor," he said. " Here's Chicot I suppose it's he 
 brought me. He's got a right here, any way. I'll 
 leave him to shake his jester's bells. Life is a jest, 
 and some things show it ; I used to think so, but it was 
 left for you to make me know it. That's not how it 
 goes, but I guess it will do. As you are fond of quota-
 
 346 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 tions, my dear Primrose or, shall I say, Primcup 
 I needn't apologize." 
 
 Harding returned to his house in the early morning 
 light. He had a dimmed sense of wandering through 
 rain-soaked streets and having been wet and tired and 
 miserable. He neither knew nor cared about it now. 
 Daylight had cleared his brain just as the night air 
 had cleared his study of miasmas. He had gone to 
 a hotel to make himself presentable and get his early 
 coffee. And now he was prepared to face Monica, 
 ready to accept his responsibilities and to spare hers. 
 
 Strong physical and moral reactions had freed him 
 from such strains of weakness and morbidness as had 
 survived his theoretical speculations. The salamander 
 episode was a mere vague nightmare, he had gone back 
 beyond that. He realized that he had tried his wife: 
 he convinced himself that nerve-control and common- 
 sense could yet mend things. He had but to recognize 
 the vanity of trying to explain things of life on which 
 people tried to found principles: as a writer, he knew 
 how much people would innocently accept in daily life, 
 while denouncing it in their finest language. He told 
 himself: " She is my wife, she has made sacrifices for 
 me; she accepted all, so long as I did not force my 
 views on her; my attempts to make her understand 
 conditions have caused more trouble than the condi- 
 tions themselves; we got on while I was leading a 
 perfectly egotistical life; why should we not continue
 
 THE TEST 347 
 
 to get along in silence, provided I make the effort to 
 be tactful and generous in little ways, and conciliate 
 her without her knowing it." 
 
 He reached his house door; the janitress called to 
 him as he passed the lodge. 
 
 " Madame has gone out," the woman said with a leer. 
 
 " Did she say how long she would be? " Harding 
 asked carelessly, thinking of the usual morning errands. 
 
 " She said nothing. But she took her trunks."
 
 348 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MONICA, in leaving the apartment, had had no definite 
 idea beyond gaining the outside world, where she could 
 think and act in freedom. She gave Elsie Fitzgerald's 
 new address in the Avenue Victor Hugo to the cabman, 
 intending to leave her trunks there until she could 
 make plans for the future; and it seemed to her that 
 the horse walked at snail pace, so harassed was she 
 by the thought Harding might follow her, demand 
 pardon, bid her return. And she knew that all he 
 might say would fall on an unheeding ear, that she 
 would not be able to respond. Power of speech was 
 frozen in her, everything dead except mere mechanical 
 acts; the practised self-control of a lifetime had 
 deserted her, leaving her prey to a dull sense of des- 
 peration and outrage. Stabbed to the quick by the 
 implication of his words, she could never bear even to 
 see him again. He had released her from all obliga- 
 tion as a wife; the woman was all that was left; and 
 her womanhood was her own henceforth. 
 
 She yielded almost without resistance to Elsie 
 Fitzgerald's plea that she share her home; Monica 
 tasted new pleasures in such passiveness, and perhaps 
 Miss Fitzgerald did, too. 
 
 Monica rested for several days, during which Julian 
 wrote to her, and she answered with a firm brevity
 
 THE TEST 349 
 
 which she knew would be accepted as final. Then 
 she went out to visit various art dealers on whom she 
 would depend thenceforth for her means of livelihood. 
 But now that the weight of her pain began to lift a 
 little under the relief of occupation, now that she 
 could forget for an occasional instant that her husband 
 had even for a moment considered her a murderess, 
 the grounds for his suspicions appeared more clearly 
 before her. He reproached her not only with her 
 heredity, in the power of which she knew he believed, 
 but also with having hands like the Marquise de 
 Brinvilliers, whose history Monica now read up. She 
 had never been to Madame de Kansa's; she determined 
 to go and see at least the casts to which Harding had 
 alluded and, perhaps, see the prophet-psychologist, 
 too. 
 
 Madame de Kansa's waiting-room seemed, in its 
 peculiar furnishings, a reflection of the famous chiro- 
 mancer herself. It was as full of strange objects as 
 its owner's mind was stored with strange knowledge. 
 The seeress's position in Paris was unique. She 
 claimed to have elevated palm-reading to an exact 
 science which could be of practical benefit in directing 
 one's life. There was no cheap charlatanism in the 
 way she dealt with clients, none of the usual hocus 
 pocus practised by those who sound the future. Even 
 those who came to her holding the opinion about 
 palmists Voltaire entertained about priests that 
 human credulity made all their science went away 
 convinced of one thing at least, that Madame de Kansa
 
 350 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 was an astute psychologist. It was by reading the 
 heart as well as the hand, by her magnetism and art 
 of sympathy, and by strict conscientiousness about 
 the advice she gave, that this ardent follower of 
 Desbarolles had become a force in the Paris world. 
 
 Monica, her face covered by a heavy veil, looked 
 about her curiously as she waited. Opposite to her 
 on the wall was a full-length portrait of Madame de 
 Kansa, done by a celebrated French artist, a masterly 
 delineation of the original's pale, tragic face, with 
 its deep-red sybilline lips A cabinet near by held, 
 among other objects, a Cagliostro manuscript. There 
 were rare old astrological tomes, magic crystals, and 
 examples of Eastern mystic art. Scattered about the 
 room were numberless signed photographs of nota- 
 bilities, on which were inscribed nattering testi- 
 monials to the skill with which the seeress had de- 
 ciphered their fate. But Monica's glance rested on 
 these things impatiently. It sought the only object 
 in the room that interested her the plaster casts of 
 the Marquise de Brinvilliers' hands. 
 
 It was for that she had come. Julian had lied to 
 her once, which meant that he might lie again and 
 she wished to know the truth. The casts lay among 
 a variety of similar ornaments on a table; and, after 
 a moment, trusting to the absorption of the other 
 clients in their own affairs, she arose and took up the 
 object with an air of casual attraction. 
 
 Yes, it resembled her hand so much so that Julian 
 might well be impressed. Yet, after the first shock of
 
 THE TEST 351 
 
 the discovery, she examined the cast more closely, 
 comparing it with her own ungloved hand. They were 
 alike, it was true, in general conformation; but there 
 were differences, too, many small differences. She 
 drew a breath of half relief. But the resemblance was 
 sufficiently striking to decide her. She would see 
 Madame de Kansa, and trust to the disguise of the 
 thick veil. The palmist was almost a stranger they 
 had met only once, that time at the house, and it was 
 likely the other had forgotten her. 
 
 But among Madame de Kansa's other gifts was an 
 unusual memory; and the night she had dined at Mrs. 
 Eversley's she had chanced to remark Monica's hands 
 caressing the ivory paper-knife, with Harding near by. 
 Her trained powers of observation had, indeed, re- 
 marked far more. The daughter of her pretty butter- 
 fly friend had interested her as a type, especially in 
 view of what she knew of the family history Mrs. 
 Eversley had told her much in consulting her. When, 
 later, she had received the announcement of the 
 marriage of Miss Eversley to the young American 
 writer who had once interviewed her, she was not 
 surprised, she had anticipated the mutual attraction 
 and what might follow. Nor did she need to be told 
 why Monica had sought her the veil was in itself 
 a betrayal. But that she concealed, as she also con- 
 cealed the fact that she recognized the identity of 
 her client. 
 
 She had been fond of Mrs. Eversley, whose child- 
 like trust in her counsels had both touched her and
 
 352 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 been useful to her in Mrs. Eversley's set; and she 
 meant to deal gently with the daughter. Yet her 
 professional pride was aroused by Monica's haughty, 
 almost slighting manner. " I wish you to be frank," 
 her visitor had said with repressed antagonism, as 
 she took a seat in the little private office at a table, 
 with its shaded lamp. And the seeress had told 
 many truths. 
 
 " Self -suppression," she observed after a little, " is, 
 madame, your most dominant trait. You are an 
 exceptional instance of mental and moral reaction. 
 Your girlhood had a great shock, and it has left you 
 hard with yourself and others. It is one of the causes 
 of your present unhappiness." 
 
 " I am not unhappy," Monica returned rebelliously. 
 
 " If you say that," was the calm response, "it is 
 because you are unacquainted with happiness. Your 
 life has been grounded on the hypothesis that duty 
 and struggle are all. You have sacrificed your heart 
 to your head. You have reasoned out your way, 
 you have never been guided by a woman's best safe- 
 guard her instinct. A woman, before all else, is a 
 creature of feeling. You have not given your emotions 
 a chance, madame. It is a side of your nature that 
 you have deliberately starved. But it is less your 
 own fault than that of circumstance. You have 
 allowed yourself to be too much affected by some 
 ancestral handicap." 
 
 " Then my ancestry has been a handicap ? " And, 
 instinctively, Monica withdrew her hand, which the
 
 THE TEST 353 
 
 seeress had bade her place on the table where the 
 lamp cast its revealing light. Madame de Kansa 
 professed not to remark this she had seen all she 
 needed to see in the lines of the hand and Monica's 
 action, added to this and to Madame de Kansa's 
 general knowledge of her, had told all the rest. 
 
 " Yes, but not in the way you imagine. There is 
 no more latent, immoral impulse in your nature than 
 in that of any other healthy, normal individual. In 
 the majority of cases evil action is the result of strong 
 temptation and the passions of the moment. I see 
 nothing in your hand to warrant you in the assumption 
 of hampering inherited predispositions. No, madame, 
 the handicap I speak of consists in the way you have 
 taken yourself. Forget the shadows of the past, 
 cultivate tolerance, that sweeter side which comes 
 from letting the heart have its way, be what you 
 would naturally be had not you been warped by 
 the harshness imposed on your feelings and youth. 
 That is my counsel to you, madame." 
 
 Her voice was kind, and she put out her hand to her 
 visitor. Monica, who had risen, took it, but rather 
 quickly withdrew her own. She suspected Madame 
 de Kansa had recognized her. It offended her pride. 
 
 Yet Monica could not tear herself away. 
 
 " If you don't believe in heredity," she said, " then 
 you don't believe in fate. And what becomes of your 
 science? " 
 
 " The lines in our palm are the map given us by 
 God to gauge our characteristics and possibilities." 
 
 AA
 
 354 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 And Madame de Kansa smiled her confident profes- 
 sional smile. " When a country's geographical con- 
 formation changes, wise men change the map; when 
 our character changes, a wise God changes our map 
 for us. I tell you that there are in your life no evil 
 influences save those of surroundings and imagination. 
 I tell you what you are and can be. If you choose to 
 make yourself different, it is not my fault, any more 
 than that of your ancestors." 
 
 Convinced now that the seeress knew who she was, 
 Monica risked forcing an issue. 
 
 " Suppose I had an ancestor who committed a 
 crime? It could not affect me? " 
 
 " Do you assume yourself as born before or after 
 the crime? " Madame de Kansa demanded. 
 
 " Oh, long, long after." 
 
 " Ah, might it date back a generation or two ? In 
 that case, was your father or mother or whoever 
 it was born before or after the crime ? " 
 
 " Before," Monica answered impatiently, won- 
 dering why she lost time in such futile word-play. 
 
 " Why, then, are you talking of heredity ? " Madame 
 de Kansa asked, as if in pity for such ignorance. " The 
 lesion in a criminal's brain formed after he has com- 
 mitted the act might be transmitted to his offspring, 
 conceived subsequently. As to children born before 
 the act, they cannot be affected save by example 
 and propinquity, as adopted children or neighbours' 
 children might be by the force of suggestion,"
 
 THE TEST 355 
 
 "Suggestion? " 
 
 " Certainly. You remember the story of the haunted 
 sentry-box during the Franco-Prussian War ? Camille 
 Flammarion was the first to explain it logically. 
 There was no reason for all those suicides except that 
 one soldier happened to make away with himself for 
 reasons of his own, and his comrades were fascinated 
 by the morbid associations of the nail on which he had 
 hanged himself in the lonely silence of the wintry 
 night." 
 
 " But . . . what connection could there be between 
 suggestion and hands? " Monica asked after a pause. 
 
 " The susceptibility of the person would be marked; 
 and the effects produced by suggestion if indulged in. 
 Both of these markings would disappear if the ten- 
 dencies were courageously fought and conquered." 
 
 " Ah ! Even after after a crime was committed ? " 
 
 " Even then, yes, there would be a change notice- 
 able. As example of that, I keep in my waiting-room 
 two casts of the hand of a noted criminal who died 
 almost a saint the Marquise de Brinvilliers." Madame 
 de Kansa saw Monica's surprise, and she continued 
 smoothly: "You did not know that her repentance 
 and expiation are said to have been beautiful ? Why, 
 when she was publicly burned on the Place de Greve, 
 and her ashes were scattered to the winds, bits of bone 
 were picked up by the populace and kept as relics 
 because of her saintliness after her terrible crimes ! I 
 have her hands when she was arrested, and again just 
 
 AA2
 
 356 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 before her death. The differences might be evident 
 only to scientists; to us they are full of eloquence." 
 
 " Which did I see ? " Monica breathed almost in- 
 audibly. 
 
 " I hope you saw both if you saw either it is in their 
 contrast that they have their eloquence," Madame de 
 Kansa answered. " You surely did not think it part 
 of her criminal nature to be afflicted \\ith two right 
 hands, did you? Only a pupil of Lombroso would 
 think that ! " 
 
 " I I'm afraid I did not notice very closely," said 
 Monica. 
 
 " All the better for you. That is part of the intel- 
 lectual commonsense with which I see you are gifted. 
 Palmistry ought to be studied deeply as one of the 
 most important as well as most complicated of sciences, 
 or else left entirely alone. Its half-knowledge is a real 
 danger by leading to deductions often diametrically 
 opposed to the truth." 
 
 As Monica hesitated, Madame de Kansa opened the 
 door for her and closed it quickly behind her. She 
 knew that the seeds she had sown in her client's mind 
 would bear the most useful fruit if allowed to germinate 
 in the darkness of meditation. She rejoiced that 
 Monica had been sufficiently stirred to forget the pay- 
 ment of the fee: it would have galled her to take 
 money from the daughter of a friend and benefactress, 
 yet she knew that an argument would disturb the 
 psychic currents which she had exerted so much effort
 
 THE TEST 357 
 
 to create. She mused that if Monica forgot the fee, 
 all would go well. And Monica must have forgotten, 
 for she did not return. 
 
 Monica had not collected herself when she was roused 
 by seeing that she stood in the waiting-room and was 
 already succeeded by another client in Madame de 
 Kansa's study. There were further questions she 
 would have liked to ask; but since that was impos- 
 sible, she went once more to the table and looked at 
 the hands of the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Even 
 attentive examination showed but few differences, 
 only the fact that there should be differences, and that 
 both Julian and herself had, in their ignorance, pre- 
 sumed upon cursory glances, filled her with a sort of 
 scorn for him and for herself. Only it was the scorn 
 for him which predominated; after all, was it not he 
 who had "suggested" her? 
 
 She started to walk back to Elsie Fitzgerald's apart- 
 ment in the Avenue Victor Hugo. It was not far, but 
 she failed to count on physical reaction from her con- 
 sultation with Madame de Kansa. It had taken a good 
 deal of resolution to go, and she felt exhausted now. 
 As she passed in front of St. Honore d'Eylau she hesi- 
 tated, then went in. It was an hour when the church 
 would be deserted, and she wanted a place in which 
 not only to rest but to think. Seeking a quiet corner, 
 she took a seat and closed her eyes for a moment. It
 
 358 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 was not in prayer, for she was not given to praying. It 
 was merely to shut out objective things a moment for 
 the sheer physical relief of it. She had the strength to 
 face life, but she had faced it so long ! 
 
 She enjoyed her sense of refuge from external things. 
 There was something curiously grateful just then in the 
 calm surroundings, which gradually began to com- 
 municate its spirit and left her able to formulate her 
 thoughts. 
 
 First, came rebellion against Julian and all that their 
 married life had meant. She had never wanted to 
 marry him ; from the very start she had felt too keenly 
 his weakness in principles, whatever might be his 
 strength as a man. His facility in arranging with his 
 conscience the fact of opening that letter of hers when 
 she had telegraphed to him to destroy it, ought to have 
 given her sufficient warning; such conduct as the 
 equivocation over the manuscript was a mere logical 
 consequence. 
 
 Tragically strange, that coincidence between his 
 fiction in The Labyrinth of Life and the fate of her own 
 poor baby. The grimness of the coincidence had horri- 
 fied her before; it was only now that the prophetic 
 quality impressed her. How had Julian known that 
 it would be so? She hated him the more for know- 
 ing. Then that other coincidence between her hands 
 and those of the Marquise de Brinvilliers her hands 
 which Julian had once admired, and in which she her- 
 self had taken a certain pride, for they were always 
 spoken of as beautiful. Julian had noted that resem-
 
 THE TEST 359 
 
 blance before she had though details of saving dif- 
 ference had escaped him. And she had struggled so 
 hard, so hard, against all that heredity might mean 
 that such hands might mean only to be treated as a 
 would-be murderess ! 
 
 A fresh thrill of terror shot through her. She had 
 grown accustomed to the thought of her husband's 
 infamy in suspecting her ; a new perspective had opened 
 before her now. Why had she so struggled if she did 
 not believe in heredity why had she so feared the 
 extravagant tendencies which had driven Mrs. Perdoe 
 to crime, that she had renounced her fortune in order 
 to conquer her own vain tendencies? Was it indeed 
 " suggestion " or was it that she believed the Perdoe 
 blood in her veins would contaminate her? She re- 
 called her feelings of helpless fury as she read Harding' s 
 development of the subject in The Labyrinth of Life 
 the memory was still so hideous that she cowered before 
 it. She had said that it was for the sake of others she 
 wanted the manuscript destroyed. Suppose it had, 
 after all, been for herself? Then there, again, Julian 
 would have been right in accusing her of sophistry. 
 
 Resentment against him was now the dominant 
 chord in her nature. Instead of living, she had tried 
 to make him live, and he had only been playing with 
 her, mocking her, the while. For the first time, she 
 succeeded in conquering the pang caused her by the 
 thought of her baby. For the first time she really felt 
 what she had said in her burst of passion: it was best 
 little Julian had died. He would have grown up not
 
 360 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 only to read The Labyrinth of Life, but to know his 
 father. 
 
 For Monica herself, at least, there remained the 
 chance to live and grow, now she was delivered from 
 Harding. She would bury the past, with her poor 
 little babe, and leave aside her mourning for both, 
 since she now accepted the loss of the child and asked 
 but to forget the lost husband. She would listen to 
 Madame de Kansa, would experiment to see if she 
 could live normally, would give her woman's nature 
 a chance. She still had her art; and then there were 
 her charities, which she had neglected under the pre- 
 occupations of marriage and maternity. After all, the 
 philosophy of life by which she had sought to govern 
 herself, had been puzzled out by her while she was yet 
 a girl; there were other sides to study. Perhaps she 
 even began to suspect how many people talk of Pure 
 Reason but spell their Kant with a C. 
 
 As she passed out of the church, a wretched-looking 
 mendicant asked for a dole. She had always been very 
 tender to misery and suffering; she had dreamed of 
 doing something worth while with the little fortune 
 which was to have been hers. She now felt for her 
 purse. As she did so, the gleam of her wedding-ring 
 caught her eye. What worthier purpose could this 
 meaningless emblem serve than to buy bread? She 
 slipped it off and dropped it in the woman's palm.
 
 3 6i 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Miss VANDERHURST was crossing in the Dover-Calais 
 boat. She had not been in Paris for a long time, that 
 is, long for her, who was always everywhere in that con- 
 stant shift of environment which had become her mania. 
 Paris had, indeed, less attraction now that dear Lena 
 was dead; she missed her, regretted that at the news 
 of her sudden end she had been confined to bed with 
 an attack of grippe and had been unable to attend 
 the funeral. She had written to both Monica and 
 Harding at the time, and since corresponded at some- 
 what long intervals with the latter; but his letters had 
 not been satisfactory, and she sometimes speculated 
 on the outcome of his marriage with her friend's 
 daughter. Their removal from the Neuilly house, fol- 
 lowed by the Eversley sale at the Hotel Drouot, had 
 caused her some uneasy speculation as to the amount 
 of prudence Lena had shown in the management of her 
 affairs. Yes, she feared Lena had been extravagant, 
 and she was sorry, for she felt herself responsible in a 
 way for Monica's marriage and would like to feel that 
 the two had been left comfortably off. Lena's letters 
 during the latter's stay with her had somewhat relieved 
 her mind as to the compatibility of the pair . . . they 
 seemed so happy and devoted to each other, Lena had 
 constantly assured her. Yet the experienced spinster
 
 362 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 had some doubts of the entire accuracy of the state- 
 ment, and one of her reasons for going to Paris was to 
 find out the truth for herself. She had written of her 
 intended visit and had been a little wounded that her 
 letter had received no reply. 
 
 She was, therefore, not sorry to discover Percy 
 Colston among her fellow passengers. There were 
 many things she had to overlook in deciding to make 
 her presence known to him. But she had learned to 
 forgive a good deal in people, and in ignoring reasons 
 for not being quite gracious, she was moved to learn 
 from him something about the Hardings. The poet 
 seemed oblivious of everybody, as he leaned against 
 the rail. She fancied that perhaps he was a little sea- 
 sick, although it chanced that for once the Channel was 
 calm. Percy was far less calm than the Channel, as 
 she immediately learned on addressing him. He was 
 not sea-sick, but soul-sick. 
 
 " Chicot is dead ! " he said in a shrill voice of tragedy, 
 and Miss Vanderhurst concernedly offered him her 
 salts, as his tears threatened to end in hysterics. He 
 had received a cable from Buttercup informing him of 
 the loss, and he had wildly taken the first boat back to 
 Paris. He had only delayed long enough to change the 
 order to his tailor from clothes of the latest Bond 
 Street hues and checks to a complete set of mourning 
 attire. He informed the spinster that he meant to 
 mourn Chicot as he never would have mourned Butter- 
 cup, had a more accommodating Providence snatched 
 her from him instead. As she listened to this denun-
 
 THE TEST 363 
 
 ciation of Hiram Baxter's daughter, and remembered 
 her flamboyant attire and accent, she privately re- 
 joiced that it was Percy, for whom she did not care, 
 and not Julian Harding, for whom she had her little 
 sentiment, who had committed this marital identifica- 
 tion with the tea-trade. She was not one of those 
 spinsters who hail a teapot as though it were an angel 
 from heaven. She liked riches that came, as her own 
 income did, from real estate investment made a hun- 
 dred years before. She liked her bonds to have a 
 dignified background. But she was a little alarmed, 
 and quite forgot her meditations on Surpassing Ceylon, 
 as Percy, who was anything but reticent and who pre- 
 ferred picturesque fiction to uninteresting truth, 
 sketched a most melodramatic case of domestic scandal 
 in which Julian Harding out-Lotharioed any of Byron's 
 heroes. The light in which Harding figured in Percy's 
 eyes at the present juncture, as the boat bore the 
 agitated poet and the spinster towards the French 
 shore, did credit to his capacity for vengeance; and he 
 was not only avenging himself, he was avenging 
 Chicot. 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst duly received, like most of Paris 
 social and artistic who amounted to anything in the 
 poet's opinion, one of the huge black-bordered enve- 
 lopes issued from the Colstons' stately Avenue du Bois 
 de Boulogne mansion. The recipients, besides being 
 informed of Chicot's demise, were requested to pray for 
 his soul. Those who believed in canine souls may have 
 breathed a prayer or two. Miss Vanderhurst was not
 
 364 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 one of these, but like many others she sent a floral 
 offering. She did not, however, accept the invitation 
 to the funeral. Afterwards, she half wished she had. 
 It was described as a very beautiful affair, although it 
 had a rather disconcerting termination. The spinster 
 had her taste for unexpected dramas as long as she 
 was not concerned in them herself. 
 
 The floral tributes were really very numerous: 
 Chicot was as well known in Paris as his master, whom 
 he accompanied to teas, receptions and dinner parties, 
 and anywhere and everywhere his master went. It was 
 the modern version of Mary and her Lamb. Most 
 people were moved, under the circumstances, to forgive 
 the poet his quarrels with them and the little songs 
 they inspired and they were particularly unpleasant 
 little songs: roses that smelt sweet in a way, but had a 
 bee's sting between the petals. Fernet stammered 
 something appropriate when he met Percy, and 
 Circour, who had threatened to break the poet's head 
 as he in artist fury had broken his bust of Buttercup, 
 promised to reproduce Chicot in marble for the next 
 salon. Mademoiselle Dolores Lagrange, lately re- 
 turned from lifting the veil of Isis in the land of her 
 former incarnation, sent a bunch of blue lotus; Percy 
 had told her that he didn't wonder she slept in a 
 mummy case, that both should be in a museum; so it 
 was sweet of the Mystic Dolores to forget her grievance. 
 After all, time had only just begun to embalm her. 
 
 At the funeral, Percy in his black clothes looked very 
 poetical. He suggested to many gathered at the house
 
 THE TEST 365 
 
 the beau ideal of a Hamlet. He stood pointedly apart 
 from Buttercup, and what glances were not directed to 
 where, on a point-lace pillow, Chicot's inanimate body 
 lay, surrounded with flowers and lighted tapers, were 
 witheringly cast at that lady, who did not at all profess 
 to share her husband's grief. She was dressed, as usual, 
 in colours, and Buttercup's colours were never subdued 
 shades. Some thought that she showed extraordinary 
 hard-heartedness, but they were not aware of the 
 vituperations which had hardened her, more than she 
 was hardened already, since Percy's return. Grief had 
 not robbed the latter 's tongue of its talents, and But- 
 tercup's replies were not of the order that turn away 
 wrath. The only peace, in truth, that the house had 
 boasted dwelt in the great gilded salon where Chicot 
 was stretched on his bier. 
 
 It was in the midst of the funeral pomps. The 
 Armenian actor, who had once been a protege of Mrs. 
 Eversley's and had several times held her hand, was 
 reading a long elegiac poem he had composed in 
 Chicot's honour. Its description of his pet's touching 
 ways was causing Percy's tears to flow again, when a 
 loud voice particularly harsh in its competition with 
 the actor's mellifluence was heard outside. Both 
 Percy and Buttercup knew that voice, and their eyes 
 met. In Buttercup's was anxiety, in Percy's terror. 
 The servant at the door had probably his instinct, but 
 he was powerless, it appeared, to check the entry of 
 the new arrivals. There was a general stir as the pair 
 made their way into the circle. It was, of course, Miss
 
 366 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 Zenobia and Hiram. Everybody had met Miss Zenobia ; 
 she advanced with her sunbursts and her love string. 
 it was evident there was more love on that string, 
 which had grown like the lady's waist, than in the 
 glance she cast at the trembling Percy. And as for 
 her companion, who could doubt it was Hiram? His 
 sideburns, so oft described by the poet in appreciative 
 drawing-rooms, gave him away. 
 
 The pair were not looked for, that was clear. Their 
 appearance had all the unexpectedness of the Ancient 
 Mariner at the wedding feast. If Miss Zenobia's gems 
 glittered, so did Hiram's eyes. In that respect he 
 filled the role of the Ancient Mariner quite as well as 
 the Armenian actor would have done. He advanced 
 with a free step, taking in, in one contemptuous survey, 
 Chicot, the lighted candles, the heaping flowers. 
 
 Buttercup advanced to embrace her relatives. She 
 was proud of her father, and did not at all question his 
 sideburns, but she sometimes deprecated his abrupt 
 ways and would have greatly preferred if he had arrived 
 at a less inopportune moment. Funerals were after 
 all funerals, even if they were only canine obsequies, 
 and there were many fashionable mourners in the 
 salon. She understood what had brought Hiram; it 
 was her recent letters of complaint. But she made the 
 most of it all and preserved her best duchess manner of 
 greeting. 
 
 " Just wait until they leave the house," she whis- 
 pered into his large commercial ear. " The procession 
 will soon start up."
 
 THE TEST 367 
 
 " Yes, I reckon it will," he said grimly. " It's going 
 to start up right away now." 
 
 The Armenian actor had acquiesced already to that 
 decision. He had deposited his manuscript in his breast 
 pocket. It was a signal for the undertaker and his 
 mutes to lay hands on the coffin, which they bore forth- 
 with out of the salon and on to the waiting hearse. 
 The others followed perhaps a little more hastily than 
 was in keeping with such ceremonies. Buttercup still 
 smiled bravely, as she remained by her relative's side. 
 Miss Zenobia had indulged in one audible contemptuous 
 sniff at the sight of these unseemly mock-Christian 
 ceremonies. She considered that Hiram had shown a 
 magnificent command of his righteous indignation. 
 Percy was the last to fall into the procession. Only 
 the sight of his dog being borne away to the final 
 resting-place seemed to inspire his muscles with life. 
 
 As he passed Hiram, the latter laid a hand on his 
 coat collar. Percy shrank a little, but his dignity did 
 not wholly desert him. " Respect the sacredness of 
 grief if you can respect nothing else ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Hiram released his hold. 
 
 " Well, I guess the best thing you can do is to follow 
 your dog," he snarled. " If he hasn't a soul to be 
 damned to hell, you have, anyway." 
 
 Paris learned only much later of the dreadful inci- 
 dents which occurred when Percy returned to what 
 had been his gilded home. The truth came out in the 
 Baxter-Colston divorce suit and the quarrel over settle- 
 ments the greatest quarrel the poet had ever had
 
 368 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 among his myriads. But Percy was not inspired to 
 make a little song out of it, for he lost his case. The 
 French have some peculiar views in regard to women, 
 but they will not admit the principle of wife-beating, 
 and it being established that Percy knocked his wife 
 down and broke her arm, the plea of insane grief over 
 the death of his dog merely made the Court smile, and 
 Mr. Hiram Baxter was judged leniently for wiping up 
 the floors with Percy better than they had ever been 
 wiped by the highly-paid servants. Buttercup got her 
 divorce, and Hiram escaped the payment of alimony; 
 he had made wise inquiries, and had chosen for the case 
 a tribunal and a judge notorious for gallantry in never 
 refusing favourable verdicts to women providing they 
 were very wealthy Americans. 
 
 Sheer sentiment, and the longing for a sympathetic 
 artist-soul, led Percy to mend his breach with Circour, 
 whose " Sleeping Chicot " for the tomb at the Dog Ceme- 
 tery became one of the attractions of the place. But 
 what struck most was Percy's legend: 
 
 " The more I see of she-cats, 
 The more I love my he-dog." 
 
 Miss Vanderhurst, passing there, recognized the cor- 
 rected Pascal, and reflected that while Percy had been 
 worsted by Hiram he possessed a woman's talent for the 
 last word. " But, then," she added, " Percy always 
 had a woman's tongue."
 
 369 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 TOWARDS the end of August Nicolls was motoring 
 through Chartres to attend an international speed trial 
 on one of the magnificent roads in the neighbourhood. 
 He had timed his arrival in the old Cathedral town so 
 that his machine might cool off and be put in perfect trim 
 before the trial began, and meanwhile he had planned 
 to see once more certain details of the town's architec- 
 ture, outside of the Cathedral, which he already knew 
 thoroughly. Entering the Church of St. Pierre, he 
 came presently before the wonderful enamels of 
 Limousin, and was surprised to recognize Monica in a 
 lady he had noticed at work there. His surprise was, 
 indeed, twofold; first, because he had no reason what- 
 ever to expect her there, and then, because she, who had 
 formerly affected such sober hues, was now clad in a 
 dress whose glowing harmonies of colour vied with those 
 of the enamels. 
 
 " Mrs. Harding ! I had no idea you were at Char- 
 tres," he exclaimed. " I was thinking of you only 
 yesterday morning." 
 
 " If you thought of me here before the afternoon, you 
 were very much out," she returned with a lightness 
 which gave him a third cause for surprise, though 
 her dress ought to have prepared him. For the first 
 time since he had been told her story, he thought of 
 
 BB
 
 370 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 her not as Mrs. Perdoe's granddaughter, but as Mrs. 
 Eversley's daughter. 
 
 He did not know quite how to continue their talk, as 
 Monica paused. 
 
 "You are copying these?" he ventured. "In- 
 teresting work but it must be taxing. You look a 
 little tired." 
 
 " Tired from heat coming in the train, then," she 
 laughed. " I came from Paris yesterday to make 
 some fresh comparisons about the colours. I told you 
 of this order from the Arundel Society yes, it was long 
 ago, and it ought to have been done; but I wasn't 
 altogether pleased with some of the tones I got, and I 
 did two of the plates completely over." 
 
 " Though not an artist myself, I always admire 
 artistic conscientiousness," Nicolls remarked. He saw 
 her send him a startled look, and knew that she sus- 
 pected an allusion to Harding and the manuscripts. 
 He added hastily: " My motor's just round the corner. 
 A little air would do you good. I am sure you have 
 worked enough for to-day. Let me take your things." 
 
 " I should prefer walking to motoring, if you don't 
 mind. I have been sketching the cathedral from that 
 pretty point over there, as a relief from the two much 
 Apostles. I like being out-of-doors, and it isn't un- 
 pleasant to-day." She spoke a little hurriedly, and 
 with apparent desire to keep the conversation imper- 
 sonal. He understood that her refusal to enter the 
 motor was due to some delicacy of feeling. 
 
 He took her sketching kit, and walked by her side.
 
 THE TEST 371 
 
 " I went to see Miss Fitzgerald," he said, breaking 
 the silence, " after going to your apartment and finding 
 you had left. I knew she would probably have your 
 address, but she refused to give it to me. She said it 
 was your wish. Was that quite friendly ? " 
 
 " It did not seem so, I admit. But I did not mean 
 it for unkindness. I had my reasons." 
 
 " Yes, I understand that," he answered. " Your 
 husband has been with me this summer out at St. 
 Germain." 
 
 " He is with you ? " And her voice faltered a little. 
 
 ' Yes, he is much better in fact, almost himself 
 again. I am glad of this chance meeting," he went 
 on, " for it gives me the opportunity I have long wanted 
 to talk to you. It is about Julian, as I needn't say. 
 I know you will forgive me the liberty I take as an old 
 fiiend. Besides, we have always understood each 
 other so well, and that gives me confidence in touching 
 on a delicate matter. You will not be offended ? " 
 
 " You cannot offend me by speaking of Julian," she 
 answered. 
 
 " Naturally, he has suffered from what happened," 
 Nicolls resumed. " But his nature has revenged itself 
 in a consuming passion for work. I had trouble in 
 forcing him to rest, even for a few days, to recover his 
 balance after the shock of his adventure with the 
 salamander and then the grief of finding you had left 
 him. Of course, he wasn't responsible for anything 
 he said that night ; he looks back on it now as a sort of 
 blurred nightmare, and I know that you are too sensible 
 
 BB2
 
 372 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 to have taken him very seriously even if he was grossly 
 unjust. Circumstances had been leading up to a climax 
 between you, and when the moment came anything 
 sufficed. You forgive my frankness as a very old 
 friend, don't you? " 
 
 His casual tone made it comparatively easy for her 
 to answer: 
 
 " There was no other solution we had to part. You 
 see, the one mistake nothing would mend was our 
 marriage." She turned her eyes towards a sunny 
 stretch of landscape which appeared in a gap between 
 the wal's of two old houses. 
 
 He reverted quickly to the theme of Harding' s work. 
 
 " First of all, you must know that he sent The 
 Labyrinth of Life to another publisher and got it enthu- 
 siastically accepted. Now he's got enthusiastic himself, 
 has revised it carefully, has learned to know his charac- 
 ters better, has cut out some of his treatises to serve 
 later as pamphlets on medicine or metaphysics or he 
 isn't quite sure what, and he has discovered that the 
 circumstances seemed inevitably tragic only because 
 he as their unkind godfather wanted to make them so. 
 Disquisitions on heredity have fallen to insignificance 
 when actually forced down into the ring and made 
 to fight with human passions." 
 
 Slowly and deliberately, she pressed her under-lip 
 against the edge of her upper teeth and drew it down 
 again a characteristic action when she was displeased. 
 Nicolls went on : 
 
 " Then he has finished his new story, too the one
 
 THE TEST 373 
 
 he wrote for you. He sent that to Bentley, who now 
 threatens to sue either him or the publisher of The 
 Labyrinth of Life if the latter appears within six months 
 of the Bentley book. That incident has done Harding 
 a world of good to have publishers actually squab- 
 bling over him, as he calls it ; and he's so annoyed with 
 Bentley that he is delighted at the prospect of setting 
 the two firms by the ears." 
 
 She spoke at last, dryly : 
 
 "So you have been able to do for him what I never 
 could?" 
 
 " It was not I; it was events," Nicolls answered. 
 " I did nothing beyond persuading him to go out to the 
 country where he could work quietly." 
 
 " I asked him to rest, but he refused to listen to me." 
 
 " Yes, but you expected him to be dependent on you 
 the while." 
 
 " As though that made any difference ! " 
 
 " As if it could help making a difference ! " 
 
 Monica turned her face from him : 
 
 " It was I myself who made the difference. My very 
 presence seemed to irritate him ; so whatever I did was 
 bound to vex him. The more I tried, the worse it got, 
 until I seemed to be merciful to him in going. And 
 now you and everybody will think I deserted him in 
 his need." 
 
 " You need not regret that, or anything, Mrs. 
 Harding," Nicolls said intensely. " It was all for the 
 best, believe me." 
 
 "For the best? My leaving him?" She spoke
 
 374 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 
 
 with the quick resentment which showed Nicolls how 
 dangerous it was to take a woman for granted, even 
 when you have her own latest words as basis. 
 
 " I only mean that it did him no harm to help him- 
 self," he said. " Perhaps it was too much for him, at 
 one time, to try to help himself and you ; but it was not 
 enough for his energies to feel no responsibilities what- 
 ever." 
 
 " All he had to do was to continue being responsible 
 for himself alone, as he was when he insisted on my 
 marrying him," Monica breathed sombrely. " For he 
 did insist; I refused him; I did everything I could to 
 discourage him, even on the very night I was finally 
 weak enough to yield when he represented how badly 
 he needed my help. I liked to help people. I like 
 helping Elsie Fitzgerald now that she finds Paris is not 
 an artistic place since sheer merit cannot work its way 
 up to starring after one has accepted subordinate parts 
 at the Opera Comique. I have new views of life, from 
 the simple fact that I am useful to some one, though a 
 stranger, after failing with my mother and my husband 
 and perhaps with myself. Yes, I don't mind acknow- 
 ledging it, I've had some months to grow accustomed 
 to the changed order of things; I have given up strug- 
 gling over myself, I am content to live, to be. I realize 
 it's all for the best, so far as I am concerned, and if you 
 can say so too, then Julian must agree to it." 
 
 He understood now what had struck him super- 
 ficially in the beginning. Her dress was of brilliant 
 blue linen, with a red rose pinned to her breast ; a bunch
 
 THE TEST 375 
 
 of roses was in her white tulle hat ; a long grey coat with 
 large pearl buttons concealed her toilet only enough to 
 make it attractive. Anyone knowing her less well 
 would have been puzzled by this display; Nicolls saw 
 in it an almost pathetic effort to shake off the shadows 
 of her past life and thought to live, to be, as she 
 expressed it. Her irresponsible mother, her misunder- 
 standing husband, had been associated with sternness 
 in her dress and ways; and now for the first time she 
 was giving free wings to her soul perhaps believed at 
 last that she had a soul, careless as she had always been 
 about religious matters. Doubtless no other means had 
 come to her for forgetting her baby, and that was a pain 
 which only forgetfuhiess could assuage. But however 
 that might be, it was evident that she need not forget 
 Harding, to cease caring for him. Nicolls felt he had 
 done what he could for his friend; only the thought of 
 his own lost loves dwelt with him. Lost, of course, 
 eternally buried. But how delightful was this new, 
 quick, direct, resurrected Monica ! 
 
 " Don't forget how much you have helped me," 
 Nicolls said, dwelling on her allusion to Elsie Fitz- 
 gerald. " Remember you said you were sure I was 
 able to do without you. I wasn't at all sure; but I 
 tried, because you made me. And if I succeeded, it 
 was because I remembered your confidence in me. 
 Consciously or unconsciously, you had appealed to my 
 pride, and that's an important stepping-stone to suc- 
 cess. But I don't deny it was harddon't deny it may 
 even seem hard sometimes now."
 
 376 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 They had reached the open country. Broad flat 
 fields stretched away as far as the eye could see beneath 
 the shimmering sun; the silence was broken by the 
 hideous croak of distant automobile horns, but Nicolls 
 had forgotten all about his speed trials. 
 
 Her features had softened, and he noticed that she 
 walked with a grace which the olden Monica would have 
 feared to permit herself. 
 
 " Consciously or unconsciously, you are now flatter- 
 ing my pride, since I've told you I love to help," she 
 said, with an easy self-mastery which was a further 
 revelation to him. " These helpful people are awful 
 bores without knowing it, aren't they ? And they so 
 often do the exact contrary of what they mean to do. 
 The only thing, I've come to believe, is being careful 
 as one goes along, to do the best one can, and then let 
 consequences go; if the causes are all right, the chances 
 are the consequences will be fairly safe. There! I'm 
 at it! I'd vowed to myself that I'd stop preaching! 
 It's funny how we can't change our characters, isn't 
 it ? " And she laughed with a tinge of sadness, yet with 
 real spontaneity. 
 
 " Your character was never what you pretended it 
 to be," Nicolls said. He did not suspect that he put 
 passion in his tone, and perhaps she was not entirely 
 aware of it either, but her cheek flushed slightly. Nicolls 
 went on: " You grafted on ways and ideas which never 
 belonged to you, which never did justice to you, which 
 never allowed anybody to understand you except
 
 THE TEST 377 
 
 except well, I can't help saying it except myself. I 
 understand you, Monica." 
 
 " I believe you do," she returned, looking away from 
 him again. 
 
 The sun suddenly grew intensely hot. The fields 
 seemed to sway and rise up. Breath seemed to leave 
 him: night seemed to come after the dazzling light. 
 But Monica stood out clearly and magnificently amid 
 his bewilderment. 
 
 " Monica ! Monica ! " he cried. 
 
 The change that swept her face recalled him to his 
 senses. She thrilled at the sound of her name; then 
 she grew cold and stern as he had never known her in 
 her most forbidding moments. 
 
 " My walk is straight along that white road to the 
 right," she said. " The one we can't see the end of, 
 because it is so smooth and straight and open that it 
 sweeps on to the horizon. It's a long walk, and a tiring 
 one, but I know precisely where I am going, and I need 
 no guide. Yours lies through that lane with the 
 hedges, doesn't it ? And friends and motors and all 
 sorts of unexpected developments are ahead of you 
 where I should only be in the way. Don't argue the 
 point: these are the cross-roads."
 
 378 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE Chatelet Theatre was filled with music-lovers for 
 the first Colonne concert of the autumn season. A 
 number of no particular appeal had been played; 
 Richard Strauss's " Death and Transfiguration " now 
 came next on the programme, and the German com- 
 poser's orchestral work was still sufficiently new in 
 Paris to excite considerable curiosity. 
 
 On the silence of the theatre fell the opening bars 
 of " Tod und Verklarung." Harding, who had come 
 especially to hear this, abandoned himself to the extra- 
 ordinarily moving effects of the Strauss poem, with its 
 architectural, symbolic grandeurs, its bold, fresh 
 beauties of realistic description, its lofty human lesson. 
 He thought this the most soul-searching of all Strauss's 
 tone-pieces he had heard, some of which he knew in his 
 New York days. Under the influence of its panoramic 
 art he lived over his life, from childhood's prologue to 
 the complex drama of manhood. Anon, came the 
 strident " Halt ! " of discordant brasses, as they voiced 
 some fresh defeat of human striving. Yet, in answer 
 to the weariness of life, marched the triumphant chords 
 of spiritual vision, transforming defeat into victory. 
 And at last, the climax-music of divine, melting 
 sweetness: mortality transfigured, lifted beyond the 
 wound of failure, the jeer of death.
 
 THE TEST 379 
 
 Such music was, Harding felt, what he most needed 
 at the moment. It imposed, by its power of genius, 
 the larger idea of living which had taken form in him 
 since the mellowness of real success had come to 
 obliterate the harshness of early struggles and of prema- 
 ture success, and also since a real soul-tragedy had 
 come to him after the many which would doubtless 
 have appeared mere casual incidents but for his artistic 
 sensitiveness and conscientiousness. He could at least 
 now tell himself that he had worked and won ; it was in 
 living that he had to acknowledge he had lost. But in 
 his depression over the latter thought he noted that 
 the sustaining emotion of the piece might wane, just 
 as his spiritual prospects might cloud under stress of 
 stiuggle; yet the piece showed, and he began to feel 
 intensely that, after all, the struggle was worth while. 
 
 The last chord of the symphony ended in a wild 
 burst of applause. With a movement of relief from 
 the strain of the senses through which he had passed, 
 Harding threw back his head. His eyes chanced to fall 
 on the first balcony. There, with an arrested heart- 
 beat, he saw his wife. She sat on the front row, with 
 Elsie Fitzgerald; unaware of his presence, they leaned 
 forward, their attention directed to the stage where the 
 conductor was bowing acknowledgments to the tribute 
 paid him. 
 
 This unexpected sight of Monica, at such a moment, 
 was to Harding like the vision come to Dante, emerged 
 from Purgatory shadow, of Beatrice in bright celestial 
 vesture. It was almost like a miracle wrought by the
 
 3&> THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 music, to set a final seal of meaning on the courageous 
 counsels of its harmonies. Why accept the permanent 
 separation she had imposed upon him by a brief note 
 when he had written begging her forgiveness for the 
 terrible accusation he had brought against her? But, 
 graver than acts, their natures came between them. 
 As Monica appeared there above him, Harding reflected 
 that the physical difference between them symbolized 
 their spiritual separation. He was still so far below 
 her, with only the wish to rise ! He had scarcely left 
 hell, she had always dwelt in her heights ; and it seemed 
 to him, as he mused, that her very weaknesses, which 
 had at times bridged the distance, were borrowed only 
 for the purpose of meeting him. 
 
 He was tempted to go to her, but restrained the 
 impulse. What right had he to force an encounter 
 which could only be painful to her ? She had put him 
 out of her heart as a sealed past. It was he who could 
 not forget. The stinging sense of what he had lost had 
 rendered him incapable of joy. He had perhaps not 
 analysed before this feeling of incompleteness; not 
 analysed it correctly, at all events ; he had mistaken it 
 for weariness of life. He understood better, now that 
 his sole right consisted in viewing her from afar. 
 
 He continued to gaze at her, heedless of the " Spring " 
 by a Russian composer which the orchestra had started 
 to play. What were her thoughts? Had she, too 
 been moved by the Strauss piece, guessed its personal 
 significance? Had she compared this hero with the 
 man she had married, the man whom she had never
 
 THE TEST 381 
 
 known to struggle? He had not seen her for eight 
 months: her face bore the mark of a new and deeper 
 sadness. And yet, her dress was almost frivolous, com- 
 pared with what he had known her to wear. Monica 
 in a clinging dress of golden brown that really did justice 
 to her splendid form Monica ripe for life and for love ! 
 If a man had been with her Harding would have hated 
 him jealously; but she was only with poor Elsie Fitz- 
 gerald, who had lost her voice, and, unfitted by operatic 
 experience for other interests in life, was now dragging 
 her discouraged spirit from theatre to concert and from 
 concert to theatre, trying with Monica's help to get 
 interested in something. Did Monica regret the sacri- 
 fice she had made in marrying unhappily ? Or was it 
 some later personal preoccupation? Though there 
 might be no apparent grounds for jealousy, Harding 
 clasped his hands together in a despairing pressure as 
 he thought of the woman who had loved him and whose 
 love he had so wantonly killed. 
 
 The concert was over. He had heard nothing since 
 the first measures of the Spring piece. He got up, so 
 indifferent to time and effort that he was caught in the 
 crowd and took long to reach the street. At the door, 
 he found that chance had put him beside his wife. 
 Their eyes met. Her hand rose with an impulsive 
 movement : he knew that she had not seen him before, 
 and had been taken off her guard. And he knew, too, 
 that she cared. 
 
 He never could remember, afterwards, and never 
 dared ask her, what it was he said that overcame her
 
 382 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 quick reaction. He saw her draw back, as if fright- 
 ened more by herself than by him; then saw her yield 
 with an air of helplessness. Another moment passed 
 in silence; then they were walking across to the little 
 square of the Tour St. Jacques, in unexpressed need of 
 fleeing the crowd. 
 
 They took seats on a bench under the shadow of the 
 old Gothic ruin. Harding could not speak, now. He 
 felt that he must, yet feared that one wrong word might 
 be fatal. It was Monica who began, very slowly, but 
 with little of her old precision : 
 
 " I suppose you have seen Miss Vanderhurst ? " She 
 waited for him to nod, and then went on: " So have I. 
 She represented to me that I ought to see you at least 
 once more. She holds herself responsible for much 
 that happened, which is absurd; and said we owed 
 something to her in at least meeting once. I am not 
 sorry for this accident. I I believe I was cowardly 
 about seeing you." The admission came with the air 
 of having been made merely because it was so painful. 
 " I was afraid you might try to argue and prove me 
 wrong in wishing to live alone. Miss Vanderhurst told 
 me this showed I knew I was wrong. But I don't 
 believe you will say so. You must have understood, 
 since you were kind to me kind, I mean, by not 
 writing again, not trying to see me when you knew how 
 I felt. That is why I am glad we have met. I can 
 thank you for understanding. Our respective futures 
 will be happier so." 
 
 " Monica, why should we try to understand each
 
 THE TEST 383 
 
 other ? Does anybody ever understand anybody else ? " 
 He saw displeasure come to her eyes, and he hastened 
 to make his meaning clear: " We both tried so hard to 
 make each other understand. We knew too little of 
 life to realize that it was enough to love each other ! " 
 
 She stirred uneasily, as if about to rise. 
 
 " Let everything go, except the one fact that we 
 never loved as we might have loved, and that we do 
 now! " he pleaded passionately. " You were right to 
 leave me, because I was not fit for you; I trampled out 
 all that was sacred in you; I was to blame for all that 
 happened. But you are too just to refuse me the 
 chance to make atonement and without you I can't 
 atone." 
 
 " You never needed me; why should you need me 
 now ? " It was the echo of her old cry. 
 
 " I always needed you too much for our good. I 
 used your strength instead of my own. It is only now 
 that I find myself what I ought to have been before I 
 married you. And now you can help me by letting 
 me help you." 
 
 She bowed her head and kept silence. 
 
 " Monica, you know you need me ! " he said softly and 
 earnestly, drawing closer and taking her hand. She 
 did not resist; indeed, the throbbing of her pulse 
 showed him that he had spoken truer than he thought. 
 
 " You say this now, yet you could She broke 
 
 off, as if the idea were too bitter to be put in words. 
 
 He interrupted : 
 
 " Dearest, don't let's try to unravel the past ! Be
 
 384 THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE 
 
 sorry for me because I was shattered by overwork and 
 overstrain, and so failed in all my duties; let your pity 
 give me the chance I ask for! And in taking the 
 chance, I promise to put gently by anything which may 
 have puzzled me in you for I shall remember you 
 made yourself suffer in your girlhood because you 
 thought it right and noble to suffer. What's heredity, 
 what's philosophy, what's vague science or illusive art, 
 when a husband and wife are young and full of courage 
 and have learned to know each other at last ? You 
 tried to live before you knew what life was, and I tried 
 to write before I had anything to say. Without sus- 
 pecting it, we were both echoing other people's thoughts 
 and methods. So you carved out for yourself a life 
 that wasn't a life, and I gathered an easy literary 
 success that wasn't worth the plucking. Then, when 
 the moment came to readjust ourselves, we wanted 
 instead to readjust each other. We've found our 
 balance, now, in suffering silently and alone. But to 
 keep it, we must hold closely together." He paused 
 for an instant, and resumed: " Nicolls told you about 
 The Labyrinth of Life. The story seemed hopelessly 
 tragic to us both only because we were so hopelessly 
 tragic ourselves, without knowing it. By appealing 
 to the logic of human emotions instead of the logic of 
 scientific laws, I saved my hero and heroine. And then 
 I saw how simple it would have been to save ourselves. 
 That story has been bound up in our lives so strangely ; 
 it was a prophecy of all our misfortunes. And now its 
 tone has evolved to a better, healthier one, I can't help
 
 THE TEST 385 
 
 hoping against hope that it is a prophecy again but of 
 good augury, this time." 
 
 His pressure on her hand had tightened. She rose 
 abruptly, tearing her hand free. He thought he had 
 lost. 
 
 " Why talk more? " he pleaded. " You feel it is 
 true!" 
 
 She lingered. 
 
 " My road seemed so straight and clear ! " she sighed. 
 " Why do you try to turn me ? " 
 
 " Because there was no time to lose. Your road led 
 clear and straight to the maze of the labyrinth's centre; 
 my road is the safe and open one to Life ! " 
 
 He passed his arm around her waist; she did not 
 attempt resistance. Her breath quickened as she lay 
 there against him, passive and content; and after a 
 moment he kissed her, heedless of the idlers in the 
 square, who, however, like the old tower guarding 
 them, had witnessed too many lovers' partings and 
 meetings to heed this pair. 
 
 As Harding had said, their understanding was to 
 come in silence: where the abstractions of science had 
 failed, the voice of nature had convinced. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 cc
 
 Letchworth: At the Arden Press.
 
 A 000128908