5"
 
 (See p. 113 
 " ' THERE THEY STOOD IN THE DOOR ' "
 
 MINISTERS OF GRACE 
 
 B IRovelette 
 
 EVA WILDER McGLASSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 'DIANA'S I.IVBKY" "AN KAETHLY PARAGON" KTO. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1894
 
 Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 All rigfitt reiened
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "'THERE THEY STOOD IN THE DOOR'" . . Frmii>piee 
 "'CHEAP!' HE REPEATED, WITH PLAINTIVE 
 
 PERSISTENCE" Facing P . 2 
 
 " REV. THOMAS RULEY AND DAUGHTER, HIGH 
 
 RIPPLE, INDIANA " " 18 
 
 "A CHAIR DRAWN UP IN THE VERY SITUA- 
 TION HE HAD FIGURED" " 34 
 
 '"MR. GRAHAM IS ALREADY FAR OUT 1 ". . " 66 
 
 " THEN A SOFT STILLNESS SETTLED DOWN " . " 88 
 "GRAHAM WAS A MADDENING SIGHT IN HIS 
 
 BREEZY L1GHT-HEARTEDNESS " . . . . " 94 
 
 '"THIS IS BEEF-TEA FOR ///Jtf'" .... " 132
 
 MINISTERS OF GRACE 
 
 THE Syrian peddler wore a black skull-cap 
 heavily braided. About his spare waist was 
 buttoned a sort of cloth skirt, the wide flare of 
 which accented the slightness of his figure. 
 He had, indeed, so Wade decided, the lines 
 of an ancient Egyptian, as shown in the vi- 
 vacious mural sketches of Theban times. His 
 finely impressed features were of a rich bronze 
 tone, his mellow, appealing eyes very dark. 
 As he lifted from his linen pack and flung 
 before the women on the hotel steps a strip 
 of crimson silk, or a gold-wrought tissue of 
 white, a kind of alien grace and distinction 
 disclosed themselves in his motions. 
 
 " Cheap !" he repeated, with plaintive per- 
 sistence, gazing up from his kneeling posture
 
 into the faces of the little throng. These 
 faces, set off against the antique racial im- 
 plication of his own sharp, swart visage, 
 looked queerly commonplace in their blunt- 
 ness of feature, freshness of color, heaviness 
 of muscle. They were good-humored faces 
 enough such kind, broad, unspeculative faces 
 as are by no means unusual ; but as Wade re- 
 garded them from the east end of the porch, 
 where he sat by himself, he had a little sense 
 of amusement at the supremacy of his own 
 new and prosperous country, as expressed in 
 the portly condescension of these middle-aged 
 countenances. 
 
 Some of the women turned over the deli- 
 cate Eastern stuffs with disdaining hands. 
 They tried on the silk shawls and weighed 
 the fringes with calculating fingers. Gener- 
 ally they said, " Too dear, Marco," speaking 
 very loudly, as to a deaf man. And while 
 they haggled over his goods the vender of 
 silks knelt at their feet, with his slender 
 brown hands pathetically clasped, and his 
 picturesque profile imploringly raised. 
 
 "What you give?" he pleaded, servilely. 
 Behind him was a scenic background of
 
 flawless summer" sky and bright blue sea. 
 Faint garlands of smoke from an unseen ves- 
 sel rose beyond the reach of sun -flecked 
 water. A schooner, with every inch of can- 
 vas out, slipped along the offing. Arc-lamps, 
 poles, webs of wire, a pausing trolley-car, and 
 the fretted roofs of a group of bath - houses 
 rose dark and clear upon the blending reach 
 of sea and heaven. Flags curled blithely 
 from hotel tops ; peaks, turrets, airy porches 
 stretched away in a dazzling freshness of new 
 paint; a fountain flung crystal threads above 
 its cupid-clasped basin in the green ribbon 
 of park fronting the Dorsheimer Arms. 
 
 The veranda of this house, unpeopled ex- 
 cept for Wade and the group on the steps, 
 was set along its expanse with any number 
 of slim, pale -green pillars. Below a scroll- 
 sawed roof, scooped out in shallow arches, 
 heavy arm-chairs were sociably ranged, thick- 
 ening towards the west end, on which the 
 windows of the dance-hall gave. The other 
 end faced the ocean, which, like a gleaming 
 sword, flashed across the end of the street. 
 
 Wade, as he sat here, staring seaward, 
 found himself vaguely disturbed by the jab-
 
 ber of the bargainers. There was, indeed, a 
 mixture of noises this morning. A brass- 
 band sent fitful screams of waltz music up 
 from the beach, and somewhere nearer a cor- 
 net rasped inharmoniously. Children were 
 running about the upper porches, and the 
 gay laughter of some passing girls mingled 
 strangely with the solemn murmur of the 
 surf. It was noisy. And distinctly he had 
 less tolerance for Hildreth Beach than he had 
 found it easy in other days to command 
 had Wade. 
 
 He could plainly remember liking it im- 
 mensely when, at odd times in the past ten 
 years, the press of newspaper work permitted 
 him to run down for a sniff of salt air and a 
 day or so of such distractions as the big, 
 heavily frivolous summer city had to offer. 
 His nerves, he reminded himself, had perhaps 
 been steadier during these former visits, and 
 not, as at present, lax from an attack of fe- 
 ver. Perhaps when the salt sea should have 
 wrought upon him for a week or two the 
 old contentment would return ? Yet, notwith- 
 standing this possibility, Wade grew uncom- 
 fortably pensive over his sudden feeling of
 
 personal indifference. If he went on losing 
 interest in things at this rate, and finding only 
 annoyance in what had once given pleasure, 
 what would life be in another decade, when 
 he should face the windy side of forty ? It 
 was a very pretty question. Decidedly, since 
 Hildreth affected him after a new order, he 
 must have changed greatly. For Hildreth 
 itself was practically unchangeable, having as 
 patrons the sort of folk who maintain hu- 
 manity's averages a class too simple and 
 primitive ever to vary much. 
 
 This slip of the coast was everywhere recog- 
 nized as the junketing-ground of the masses. 
 The kindly determined people who swarmed 
 here in summer, to the number of tens of 
 thousands, represented the great conserva- 
 tive, solidly respectable middle classes of the 
 country so far, indeed, as a republic may 
 have such a class, or any class. They would 
 have referred to themselves with pride as 
 plain people. That they made little preten- 
 sion to fashion was rather a vaunt with them. 
 Of arts, letters, and philosophies they held 
 large general views. They stood sound in the 
 creeds of their respective churches, and had
 
 correct ideas concerning American greatness. 
 They were apt, like folk of a more analytic 
 turn, to rate each other according to the tab- 
 ulation of Bradstreet. In fine, they abided 
 in a broad, unspeculative optimism and the 
 traditions of their rearing, believing happi- 
 ness to be humanity's right, and mid-day the 
 best time for dinner. 
 
 And as they had a wholesome horror of the 
 silence and solitude that are dear to brain- 
 sick mystics, they adored Hildreth Beach, 
 which had short shrift for either that is, in 
 the season. It was quiet enough at Hildreth 
 during the greater part of the year. But 
 though the peerless beach, the strong, sweet 
 air, the fir-groves and little lakes and stray 
 brooks and other merely natural aspects were 
 probably quite as charming then as at the 
 season's height, there was, of course, upon 
 them all the inevitable dulness which a lack 
 of engaging pastimes produces. It was only 
 in midsummer that the steam-launch and ob- 
 servation-wheel and toboggan-slide operated 
 with an accompaniment of brass-bands and 
 nightly hops and blazing electricity and im- 
 penetrable crowds. So, naturally enough ev-
 
 cry one came at the same time, while these 
 attractions were in full swing every one 
 who cared for amusement. 
 
 Incidentally many came for the bathing. 
 The surf at Ilildreth was incomparable, and 
 a thought of the flat shelves of sand and 
 creaming breakers reinvigorated Wade's 
 mind, lie rose, and, pocketing his thumbs, 
 took in the powdery fling of the surge. He 
 was a slight young man, who looked as if he 
 might stand straighter if he had any object 
 in it. There was a lot of heavy hair parted 
 across the middle of his head and flattened 
 down above the ears. He seemed of a whim- 
 sical habit of mind ; there was a slow gleam 
 in his brown eyes ; his scrap of mustache 
 twisted, too, as if used to the drag of a hu- 
 morous lip muscle. 
 
 " The noise, the bustle, is just what I 
 need," he assured himself, with the hopeful 
 sense of one who has possessed, and perhaps 
 still at heart possesses, that vast relish for life 
 which is the gracious endowment of ordinary 
 folk. " I'm not here to think, but to avoid 
 thinking." And by a natural transition, at 
 which he smiled, he found himself adding,
 
 " I wonder, where Gracie is ? She's the card 
 when a fellow's threatened with a fit of med- 
 itation !" 
 
 Wherewith he strolled towards the door of 
 the office, on the sill of which the clerk, a 
 stately-appearing young man, stood screwing 
 the head on a fountain-pen. 
 
 " Miss Gayle about ?" asked Wade. 
 
 "Bathing," said the clerk, succinctly. 
 "Nice little lady, that. Awful fond of her 
 mother, isn't she ?" He glanced towards a 
 small elderly woman who stood near the ped- 
 dler, idly turning the large ruby ring on her 
 spare, toil-worn finger. 
 
 "Very," agreed Wade, also bestowing a 
 glance upon Miss Gayle's mother, who, with 
 her wrinkled face, her knobbed gray hair, and 
 honest, hard-working air, smiled back at the 
 young man. 
 
 "A nice little lady," repeated the clerk, 
 shaking the pen. " And popular ! She gets 
 everything that strikes the place. As her 
 mother would say, ' She's a witch, soir, so 
 she 'is, don't ye know ? Arrah, there's danger 
 in her eye ! But nobody has the betther 
 daughter, praise be to God !' " He broke oS.
 
 in a decent attempt at Irish, and said, " She's 
 coming up the street now three chaps with 
 her, too !" 
 
 It was round about the hour of noon, and 
 people were beginning to come up from the 
 beach. Some of them carried dripping gar- 
 ments knotted in bath towels. Now and then 
 a woman passed with unbound hair in wet 
 ropes about her shoulders. Men in summer 
 flannels joined infrequently in the throng. 
 The male element was less noticeably lack- 
 ing at Hildreth than at other watering-places ; 
 but even here it was in distinct minority, and 
 the sight of a girl attended by three young 
 men was remarkable enough to win the sec- 
 ond glance. 
 
 She was a little thing this Miss Gayle 
 with a straight, alert figure, the motions of 
 which, as she walked, bore out the pert au- 
 dacity of her small Hibernic face. Her short 
 hair, crisp with the persuasive touch of hot 
 irons, relieved the clear red and white of a 
 skin in which a sort of waxen opacity was 
 evident. There was shrewdness in the black- 
 lashed, pale-blue eyes, impudence in the tilt- 
 ed nose, genuine geniality of temperament in
 
 10 
 
 the girl's full lips. In a trim blue gown, with 
 conspicuous anchors of white on the wide 
 collar, in sailor hat, white gloves, and impos- 
 sible-looking canvas boots, she appeared the 
 apotheosis of a type common to the Irish 
 tenement-house quarter of the city. 
 
 "Your chariot -wheels clank loudly this 
 morning," said Wade, as the girl ran up the 
 steps. She shot back a glance at her depart- 
 ing escort and laughed. 
 
 " Those boys ?" she said. " The truth is, 
 I'm finding things slow." And she added, as 
 she dropped into a chair, " Very slow, in- 
 deed." 
 
 " With three adorers ? I say nothing of 
 myself, being no squire of dames. I realize 
 that I may never hope to impress that flex- 
 ible heart which " 
 
 " Oh, bother !" said the other, fanning her- 
 self with her hat. " Sometimes I don't rnind 
 your chaff ; but sometimes it don't strike me 
 just right. This is one of the times." 
 
 " When you are cooler, you'll regret this 
 harshness, Gracie." She made a little gest- 
 ure of impatience. 
 
 " I'm not harsh ; I'm only serious. It don't
 
 H 
 
 sit well on you, that flirtatious sort of way 
 you drop into once in a while. You know 
 what I think of you. No stop it ! I'm not 
 joking. You know I like you ; but not that 
 way any more than you do me. When it 
 comes to a real Simon-pure friendship, Selby 
 Wade, you'll find me right on time ; that's 
 straight goods sure. My heart may be 
 what was it? flexible. It may be flexible, 
 but I haven't forgot that write-up you gave 
 me two years ago. I hadn't caught on at all 
 up to that time. The public needed some 
 one to tell 'em I could dance just as well as 
 these Spanish senoritas they were raving 
 over and you told 'em. I tell you take 
 me up one side and down the other I'm 
 not the crying kind ; but when I read the 
 paper that day, and saw what a send-off 
 you'd given me, I keeled right over yes, 
 I did ; I wept like an infant ; and so did 
 mom." She caught her breath in excited re- 
 membrance. 
 
 " I appreciated it," she continued. " It 
 came straight, it did. I had no pull with 
 the paper ; I didn't even know who wrote 
 the storv till I went and asked. And I
 
 12 
 
 hadn't met so much kindness that I was 
 used to it I had not. I'm not ashamed to 
 say I've worked my way up. I've told you 
 how poor we were, mom and me. It wasn't 
 much worse after my father died. He was 
 a laboring man, and he drank, and we got 
 along about as well without him. Mom 
 worked out by the day and sent me to school, 
 and when I was fifteen I got a place in the 
 chorus. And I found I could sing a little, 
 and I learned to dance. I stopped being 
 Mamie Riley, and started out as Grace Gayle. 
 I worked like a slave ; and then all at once 
 I caught the public. I'm right in with luck 
 now can sing where I please. And in a 
 year or so I'm going across ; and I'll do an 
 American dance, with the colors wrapped 
 round me ; and they'll think it's national and 
 all that ; and when I come back to the land 
 of the free, I will own it see ? They don't 
 know a good thing here till some other coun- 
 try points it out." 
 
 "They've recognized you without trans- 
 atlantic aid." 
 
 " Oh, their patriotism was roused when 
 they had me described to 'em as a scrap of
 
 18 
 
 American grit bucking against foreign pow- 
 ers ! They're for protecting home industries 
 every time. But I know 'em ; and I don't 
 expect to take 'em by storm till I come back 
 with the foreign stamp on my label !" 
 
 The porch was now thronged. Girls in 
 outing apparel chattered in the wide door- 
 way of the office, paying court to a stripling 
 or so, whose cigarette smoke curled thinly 
 about the huddle of heads. Portly women 
 filled the arm-chairs, and a few elderly men, 
 with feet on the porch -rail, discussed the 
 temperature of the water. 
 
 In the office itself, a square room over- 
 looked by a spiral stairway, a compact group 
 of girls were studying the register. The 
 clerk was accepting a cigar from a pompous 
 gentleman whose face shone rubicund from 
 below his high silk hat. There was a little 
 movement about the door. People began 
 to rise from the arm-chairs, and Miss Gayle, 
 lazily following this example, said : " I see 
 it's dinner-time. Let's go in." She was 
 looking beyond Wade into the sunny street, 
 and her face presently assumed an expres- 
 sion of mild curiosity.
 
 14 
 
 "Do you know who those people are?" 
 she asked, nodding roadward. " Queer out- 
 fit, isn't it? They only came yesterday. I 
 noticed 'era at supper. The girl struck me 
 kind of odd like a frost-bitten flower, stiff 
 and cold." 
 
 Just below the porch a slight young per- 
 son in a straight black frock, and with her 
 face hid in the flap of a wide white hat, was 
 coming up the cement walk, pushing before 
 her a wheeled chair. Over the back of this 
 a faded shepherd's plaid trailed, against which 
 leaned the head of a feeble-looking old man. 
 His wasted shape was hung in ministerial 
 broadcloth, and over his breast flared two 
 points of rough, silvery beard, matching in 
 hue the straggling locks in his neck. He 
 clutched at the chair -arms in a strange in- 
 tensity of grasp, which had something in 
 common with the meditative fixity of his 
 deep -set eyes. Neither twinkling fountain 
 nor flowery park nor thronged porch ap- 
 peared to engage him. The whole specula- 
 tion of his face perpendicular of brow, 
 beaked of nose, fierce of eye seemed with- 
 drawn to inner sources of cheerless thought.
 
 15 
 
 As the chair was drawn up at the base of 
 the hotel steps he started. 
 
 " We are back, then, Elizabeth ?" he asked, 
 in a perfunctory way, as if he cared little 
 where he might be. 
 
 The young woman had come round to his 
 side. 
 
 " Yes, father," she said. He lifted him- 
 self, and thrust one spare leg over the chair's 
 edge. She was bending over him, and he 
 had laid his hand upon her arm, struggling 
 half erect. The effort seemed too much for 
 his strength. 
 
 " I'm spent indeed," he muttered, sinking 
 back "a land laid waste." 
 
 Wade had started forward, treading as he 
 went upon the Syrian's stuffs. He said, " Let 
 me help you ;" and so drew the shrunken fig- 
 ure up from the low seat. 
 
 " Sir," declared the old man, with austere 
 dignity, " your aid was most timely. I thank 
 you." 
 
 " We thank you," echoed the girl, in a re- 
 mote sort of voice. 
 
 "It was nothing," said Wade, bowing to 
 her and noticing that her face was pale and
 
 soft of feature, with almost colorless lips, 
 and dark, abstracted eyes. The young man 
 took in these details indefinitely, being the 
 more aware of the girl's expression of reserve, 
 which was so marked as to give him a feel- 
 ing of strangeness and curiosity.
 
 II 
 
 " SOME one told them we were quiet," said 
 the clerk, smiling somewhat " some one 
 who'd been here long ago when Maynor had 
 the place and put out the lights at ten and 
 had cold dinners on Sunday." He paused to 
 take a brass-hung key from a young woman. 
 Then he turned again to Wade, who was 
 leaning over the register, and added, " Things 
 are very different since Dorsheimer took the 
 house. Whatever else we are or are not, 
 we're lively." 
 
 "There's no doubt about that," echoed 
 Wade, feelingly. He had his eye on a feebly 
 scrawled entry which read : " Rev. Thomas 
 Ruley and daughter, High Ripple, Indiana," 
 and as he read it he wondered that a man at 
 once old and ill and a preacher should have 
 elected to come to such a place as the Dor- 
 sheimer Arms. 
 
 For the Dorsheimer Arms, as the clerk had 
 2
 
 18 
 
 said, was very lively indeed. It had dan- 
 cing by night and music at all times, and its 
 parlors, porches, and corridors were constantly 
 thronged with gay multitudes. It was only 
 in the reading-room, a somewhat barren de- 
 partment off the dance -hall, that quietude 
 and seclusion ever held sway. For the Hil- 
 dreth public was not given to wasting its 
 holiday time over fresh or musty folios, and 
 books were indeed so rare a sight iu the 
 hands of Hildreth sojourners that Wade, com- 
 ing into the unfrequented reading-room upon 
 a certain occasion not long after his chat 
 with the clerk, was something surprised to 
 see a burly black volume in the hand of a 
 man near the window. 
 
 This person, turning at Wade's step, peered 
 with poring eyes, and, recognizing the young 
 man, held out a knotted hand. 
 
 "You are looking better to-day," said 
 Wade, with resolute cheerfulness. The old 
 preacher's face gloomed over, and he dragged 
 his ragged beard together with bony fin- 
 gers. 
 
 " I notice little change," he demurred. 
 " The noise irritates me. In truth, I am un-
 
 ~( 
 
 ' REV. THOMAS RCLEY AND DAUGHTER, HIGH KIPI'LE, 
 INDIANA "
 
 19 
 
 fit for such sights and sounds as prevail 
 here, having long been possessed of a pining 
 sickness." His voice was slightly nasal, with 
 an accent that lingered in the style of the 
 country orator upon unimportant but regu- 
 larly recurring syllables. It had also a sin- 
 gular depth, a sort of passionate undertone. 
 And as he talked he flung his hands out in 
 sweeping gestures, over-fluent, almost melo- 
 dramatic. 
 
 " We little expected to find ourselves in a 
 house overrun with the godless hordes of fash- 
 ion." he went on. " It seems that the place 
 was very different some years since, when my 
 friend Amos Fitch, of High Ripple, spent 
 two days here. My daughter wishes to find 
 a quieter place, but I cannot see our way 
 clear. Our arrangements were for a certain 
 period, and I point out to her how ill a 
 break of contract would beseem us. Eliza- 
 beth is scrupulously conscientious. I have 
 rarely seen a more lovely nature. But in 
 matters of business I regret to say she is not 
 so I might say, so far-sighted as I would 
 wish." 
 
 He sighed deeply as he thumbed his big
 
 20 
 
 book. In a moment he added that his daugh- 
 ter had yielded to his views. " But she feels 
 it she feels it sorely that I should be dis- 
 turbed by anything, for she persuaded me 
 to come here against my better judgment. 
 The doctor advocated sea-air for me. But I 
 knew that ray infirmity was not to be reached, 
 or, I may say, ameliorated. And I realized 
 the folly of wasting our limited substance 
 in the pursuit of the health I should never 
 regain. Elizabeth, however I am weak, 
 very weak in those small hands of hers this 
 child of my old age, left motherless in her 
 babyhood. And I gave in I gave in ! But 
 in the presence of such folly and irreverence 
 as reign here in this mere place of pleasure 
 I am greatly cast down. I say little to Eliza- 
 beth, but I have continual heaviness of heart." 
 He shut his eyes, as one who sees his Nine- 
 veh given to the owls and bats. 
 
 When he opened them it was with a 
 start. The strains of a gavotte had begun to 
 crash out in the dance-hall, and at the first 
 note a lot of young folk came trooping down 
 the porch. One girl, glancing into the read- 
 ing-room, ^caught sight of Wade, and paused
 
 on the threshold of the long window to do 
 him a fine courtesy. 
 
 It was Miss Gayle who thus airily plucked 
 back her blue skirts, revealing the trimmest 
 of ankles, the highest of heels, the whitest of 
 lace petticoat-frills. Tossing her dark curls, 
 and blowing a coquettish stage-kiss from her 
 finger-tips, she wheeled round and away. 
 
 The eyes of the Rev. Mr. Ruley rested on 
 her with austere reprobation. 
 
 "A daughter of Heth," he said, deeply, 
 waving off the iniquitous vision with a stern 
 hand " such as walk with outstretched 
 necks, mincing as they go. I have observed 
 this misguided young woman before. She 
 represents, I am told, that most debasing of 
 modern institutions, the stage." 
 
 " She's an actress, but " 
 
 "So I understood. I can but trust that 
 my Elizabeth will not be forced by the de- 
 mands of courtesy into any knowledge of 
 her." 
 
 Wade's brow protested a little. 
 
 " Miss Gayle is a wonderfully self-respect- 
 ing little girl," he insisted. "Whatever 
 chance at life she's had she's made for herself.
 
 22 
 
 She's a flower of the slums the offshoot of 
 poverty and ignorance. She's worked hard 
 to make a career, has Oracle. And I can't 
 see that it could possibly debase any one to 
 witness the charming and modest dances she 
 is noted for." 
 
 " I will not further enunciate my views on 
 the particular profession to which this young 
 person belongs," formally declared the other, 
 " but I may say that I do not approve of 
 the reprehensible modern spirit which leads 
 women to desire careers of any sort." He 
 pointed a denunciative finger. " The distaff 
 is the symbol of the truest womanhood. To 
 mind the house, tend the sick, rear children 
 these are its blessed privileges. But," cried 
 Mr. Ruley, waxing hot, " when women for- 
 swear the hearth for the lancet, the law, the 
 pen when they even lift in the sanctuary 
 itself those voices that were given them 
 to soothe the suckling at their breasts 
 then, sir then ! as a stanch upholder of 
 pure and primitive doctrine, I declare against 
 them !" 
 
 " Well," smiled Wade, " why not let them 
 try their hand ? they're bound to, anyhow !
 
 38 
 
 And the success of the most illustrious won't 
 change the features of ordinary men's ideal 
 woman the white lily of seclusion, the soft- 
 eyed, home-keeping creature whose unam- 
 bitious brows are forever bent on a long 
 white seam." 
 
 " I agree with you entirely !" cried Mr. 
 Ruley, taking this seriously. " My Elizabeth, 
 now my own daughter is bread-winner for 
 both of us. But amid my desolation for I 
 bear, sir, the weight of a bitter disappoint- 
 ment it is much of a comfort to me that 
 her position is a sheltered one. She has 
 been, since she left school three or four 
 years since, companion to a former member 
 of my congregation, now a wealthy Chicago 
 woman. Of course it keeps us apart, for I 
 remain at High Ripple, the scene of my 
 labor and my great trial. But I am used 
 to llis rods, and I have the consolation of 
 knowing that Bessie is lovingly regarded and 
 protected. And her service permits her to 
 spend some weeks of the summer with me." 
 
 His strident tones rang loud, for the music 
 had stopped. Other voices sounded near by 
 as a party of girls gathered in the ball-room
 
 24 
 
 door. The old man rose stiffly ; he had de- 
 scried his daughter coining across the long 
 room, and as she approached, he said, " I 
 have missed you, Elizabeth." 
 
 " I was helping to move our things, father," 
 she said, giving Wade a small, sedate nod. 
 "They've found us quieter rooms." She 
 glanced curiously towards the buxom, berib- 
 boned girls in the doorway herself a strange 
 unit of contrast with them, in her sober gown, 
 her quaintly braided black hair, her white- 
 ness, slightness, and chill constraint. 
 
 " She looks as hard and as fragile as a 
 scrap of carved ivory this stand-offish 
 young person," thought Wade. But just 
 then, as she bent to speak to her father, the 
 shadow of a smile flickered over her face, so 
 softening it that the young man changed his 
 figure. 
 
 " Set off against those blooming creatures 
 yonder," he said to himself, "she is like a 
 sprig of mignonette in a bunch of cabbage- 
 roses." 
 
 The girls he thus massed in a metaphor 
 not altogether flattering seemed to be hold- 
 ing a whispered consultation. Then one of
 
 25 
 
 them stepped forward, and Wade, seeing that 
 it was Grace Gayle, held himself to witness 
 her intent. 
 
 " Mr. Wade," she said, " introduce me to 
 Mr. and Miss Ruley. You see I know your 
 names ! I hope you're getting better, Mr. Ru- 
 ley. You seemed pretty weak the other 
 day. I tell you it's awful that limber feel- 
 ing in the knees ! I've had it. Only mine 
 came from stage-fright." She turned gra- 
 ciously to Elizabeth and said, " You don't 
 seem to know any one here, so I just told 
 the girls I was going to come right up and 
 speak to you. I told 'em I wasn't going to 
 stand on ceremony ; I'm never stiff in a place 
 like this. I liked the looks of you, and I 
 told 'em I was going to see that you had a 
 rattling good time this summer. That's how 
 I am." 
 
 Miss Ruley regarded her with a little, 
 impassive smile. For all her severe at- 
 tire her face looked almost childlike beside 
 the shrewd alertness of Grace's small feat- 
 ures. 
 
 " You are very good," she said, in a guard- 
 ed sort of voice " very good indeed." And
 
 26 
 
 then she moved away she and her father 
 across the bare expanse of floor. 
 
 Grace's face twisted. 
 
 " I didn't seem to strike 'em just right," 
 she admitted. " But say, I know what was 
 wrong : they were a little afraid of me be- 
 cause I'm an actress, and successful, and all 
 that! The old man probably thinks I've a 
 silly prejudice against preachers. Now I 
 haven't not a bit. You tell him, won't 
 you, Mr. Wade, that I'm not at all stuck-up, 
 or bigoted, or anything. Tell him I haven't 
 a thing against religion. Because I want to 
 get on with the daughter. I'm sorry for the 
 poor little soul. I bet she never had a bit of 
 fun since the day she was born. She's a 
 little cool, and my spine kind of froze when 
 she turned her big, innocent eyes on me. 
 But she'll like me when she knows me," 
 added Grace, complacently. She smiled as 
 she turned away. And Wade smiled also, as 
 he remembered the impressive stateliness of 
 the small figure in the black frock which had 
 just swept through the doorway.
 
 Ill 
 
 A RUSSET-TONED dusk was settling thickly 
 on the ocean. From its farthest brown den- 
 sity breakers levelled themselves landward 
 fa hollow, granite-like plates. Stars, muffled 
 in mist, shone far and faint. Out on the flat 
 reach of water a lighted steamer moved slow- 
 ly through the fog, looking not unlike a great 
 phosphorescent fish with a dorsal fin of lu- 
 minous silver. The color of the pale young 
 moon in the southern sky seemed a wan re- 
 flex of a sunset still wrapping the west in 
 vague primrose. Lances of light moment- 
 ly darted from hotel windows and porches, 
 matching in hue the sky's low saffron, and 
 making the dark buildings lifted against it 
 look like mere walls, through crevices of 
 which the after-glow poured. 
 
 Above the foam-streaked sands the beach- 
 walk stretched long and narrow, jotted at in- 
 tervals with prim little benches and large and
 
 28 
 
 small pavilions. Being Saturday night, there 
 was more than the usual throng gathering 
 for the evening promenade, and sounds of 
 talk and laughter rang insistently above the 
 echo of the surf and the intermittent strains 
 of a band of music somewhere down the 
 beach. Men in unwonted numbers strolled 
 along the lifted planks at the sea's verge, 
 generally smoking as they loitered onward, 
 and having upon them a loose and easy air 
 as of briefly- dismissed business worries and 
 relaxed social conventions. 
 
 Everywhere in street and veranda were 
 noise and bustle and pressing crowds. The 
 office of the Dorsheimer Arms was thronged 
 to the doors. A large placard on the clerk's 
 desk announced a " Full-dress Hop," and the 
 notable absence from view of young women 
 seemed to indicate special toilet-making in 
 honor of the occasion. 
 
 Wade, leaning against a porch pillar, was 
 talking to a man with whom he had a casual 
 acquaintance a man whose presence at Hil- 
 dreth was directly owing to Miss Gayle. It 
 was not, however, as a suitor to the young 
 woman that Mr. Bailey had come to the
 
 29 
 
 beach, unless, incidentally, love, as a divert- 
 ing but inconsequent feature of life, should 
 develop from the purely business arrange- 
 ments he was seeking. 
 
 " He's going to take out ' The King's Jest- 
 ers,' " Grace had told Wade. " But I don't 
 think I'll sign with him. I'm a big feature 
 now, and I don't have to leave town. He's 
 made me good offers, Bailey has, and I like 
 him first-rate ; he's a rattling manager. Just 
 made Daisy Higby a pretty little dancer, 
 though not original at all. I guess he's been 
 everything from a district messenger-boy to 
 a government detective. He knows the ropes, 
 and he'd push me. But I'm not spoiling for 
 the circuit. New York's good enough for 
 me." 
 
 Mr. Bailey, perhaps with a sustaining be- 
 lief in his persuasive powers, had just stated 
 to Wade his design of " putting in " a couple 
 of weeks at Hildreth. 
 
 "I'd like to make terms with Gracie," he 
 owned. "She isn't as handsome as some, 
 and her voice is n. g. But she's got a trick 
 with a house magnetism, maybe. She's 
 dead sure of a call when the star hasn't
 
 caught on a little." Bailey had about him a 
 sort of' boyish candor which people usually 
 found rather winning. He was slim and un- 
 dersized, with a face whose mild ingenuous- 
 ness sheathed an expression as keen as a 
 blade. There was a dimple in his chin. He 
 had blue eyes, and a mustache as yellow as 
 the breast of a meadow-lark. But the frank- 
 ness of his glance held a furtive element; an 
 air of the hoodlum clung to him ; his men- 
 tal outlook seemed cunning rather than in- 
 telligent. The New York streets had been 
 Bailey's teachers in the game of life, and if 
 he knew how to load the dice it was perhaps 
 not altogether odd. 
 
 As the two men elbowed their way across 
 the porch and strolled seaward they reviewed 
 Miss Gayle's capabilities and discussed the 
 theatrical outlook generally. 
 
 "We've lost our best," said Wade, as 
 they came to the north end of the walk, al- 
 ways comparatively free of strollers because 
 distant from the band -stands, "and, so far 
 as I know, there is no sign of any superlative 
 talent among our younger players. Grace, fa- 
 cility, intelligence, and taste we have in abun-
 
 31 
 
 dance, but the mantle of Booth, Barrett, or 
 McCullough has fallen on no one's shoul- 
 ders. Well, perhaps the question of purely 
 original genius is less a matter of supply than 
 of demand ! It's the Gracie Gayle sort of 
 thing that people care for nowadays." 
 
 " It's the age of vaudeville.' 1 '' 
 
 " Yes ; of the pirouette. It's rose-wreaths, 
 not bay, that catch us. And, by gad ! if we 
 consent to take anything seriously it's got to 
 be uncommon, with a psychological twist in 
 the stuff : Ibsen, and those other fellows 
 Maeterlinck, Sudermann, Streiedberg." 
 
 " Oh, taste changes," debated the other, 
 leaning on one of the damp benches, and 
 watching the cliffy rise of the waxing break- 
 ers. " But I believe there's always a steady 
 interest in the old legitimate plays down 
 under the passing notion for farce and phi- 
 losophy, I mean. Let a man do Hamlet well, 
 and he'll find a public any time. By-the-bye, 
 speaking of Hamlet, have you ever seen young 
 Vercamp do the gloomy Dane ?" 
 
 " Vercamp ?" 
 
 " I guess he's never showed in the East ; 
 but he's got a future, that chap. Only twenty
 
 or so ; chock-full of talent. I've my eye on 
 him. He's a little raw yet, bat coming right 
 up. Oh, I tell you, we've got stuff in this 
 country ! There's the Averne girl, too. I 
 saw her play Juliet a year ago in a hole of a 
 Missouri town. Lank, unformed, scared-look- 
 ing thing ; but fire ? Jove ! She'll never 
 catch on, though, till she's pushed. I tell 
 you," cried Bailey, lashing the darkness with 
 the butt of a cigarette, " Rachel wouldn't draw 
 in these times without paper and pushing." 
 
 The peals of a three-piece band broke on 
 their ears while they were yet a long way 
 from the Dorsheimer Arms. Through the 
 long windows of the dance -hall the young 
 men could see a maze of moving figures. Peo- 
 ple sat thick about the walls and thronged 
 the thresholds. The windows facing the 
 court-yard were black with the visages of the 
 servants of the house looking in upon the 
 dancers. 
 
 Most of the women were in evening-gowns. 
 Among the men an occasional dress-suit re- 
 vealed itself, but for the greater part tweeds 
 and flannels prevailed. The girls seemed gen- 
 erally young and good-looking, with a predis-
 
 33 
 
 position to overreach their partners in weight 
 and robustness, for the men were notably pale 
 and thin. Their lack of brawn and buoyancy 
 suggested long hours in great furnace-heated 
 shops or close offices. 
 
 This same phenomenon of comparison pre- 
 sented itself in the older folk, complacently 
 observing their sons and daughters circle 
 round the waxed floor. Whether the women 
 had paid court to fashion in crimping their 
 gray locks and cramping their ample waists, 
 or whether they abided in the traditions of 
 a youth which had gone decent in smooth 
 hair and plain gowns, all had a ponderous 
 well-fed aspect, as set off against the leanness 
 of the elderly men. 
 
 " Fine figures of girls," commented Bailey. 
 
 " M yes. I shouldn't wonder if the wom- 
 an's question would eventually become a mere 
 matter of the survival of the fittest ; for, gad ! 
 it looks as if a few ages more would elimi- 
 nate men entirely from the social equation of 
 the masses." He broke off to address Gracie 
 Gayle, who floated towards them in an interval 
 of the music. 
 
 " Of course you want to dance with me ?" 
 
 3
 
 she signified, tilting forward on her scarlet 
 heels. 
 
 " I long, but forbear," said Wade, lazily. 
 " I bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face." 
 Yet Grace, frilled round in flimsy scarlet, 
 and with a red rose coquetting it behind one 
 ear, was not without a charm of her own. 
 She had the air and stature of a child, but in 
 her clear eyes was the piquancy of a deeper 
 knowledge than sheltered women have. It 
 gave Wade something like a twitch of the 
 heart, a sentiment both pitiful and admiring, 
 to think of the paths through which those 
 small feet had marched so securely. 
 
 He watched Bailey move away with her. 
 There was an initiatory rasp of a violin, and 
 Wade, with the idea of a solitary, pensive 
 cigar, made way through the packed chairs 
 and pushed towards the remote, unthronged 
 end of the gallery. 
 
 As he approached this quiet spot, however, 
 the violent flickering of the big arc-light over 
 the curb pointed the fact of a chair drawn up 
 in the very situation he had figured. He was 
 almost upon it before he saw that a woman 
 was sitting there with her chin in her hand
 
 "A CIIAIK DRAWN UP IN THE VERY SITUATION HE 
 HAD FIGURED"
 
 35 
 
 and with her eyes set on the fog trailing past 
 the high globe of the electric lamp. 
 
 At Wade's approach she turned with a de- 
 cided start, and, recognizing him, said, " Oh !" 
 and sank back as with a sort of relief. 
 
 "You are not dancing," said Wade, whose 
 acquaintance with Mr. Ruley's young daugh- 
 ter was still of a limited nature. 
 
 " I a preacher's child ?" 
 
 " Oh !" laughed Wade, encouraged by her 
 own smile. " But the dance may express 
 anything grief, triumph, joy, even religious 
 ecstasy." The ball-room music struck through 
 this idea, compacting itself with the young 
 man's sense of the salt air straying palpably 
 across his face. Whatever those strains 
 might mean to young blood, Wade reflected 
 that they had probably sent Mr. Ruley to 
 bed filled with an anguished consciousness of 
 desperate iniquity on the part of the " god- 
 less hordes of fashion " he figured as making 
 up the Hildreth throngs. 
 
 " Papa sees people as weak and sinful," 
 said Elizabeth Ruley, sighing a little. "And 
 he dislikes everything which identifies itself 
 with the folly of a fallen race. You see ?"
 
 " Er yes." 
 
 "It seems terrible to him that people on 
 the brink of well of perdition should dis- 
 port themselves with careless gayety. He has 
 always been like one crying in a wilderness of 
 apathy and unconcern. Poor papa!" She 
 broke off and fastened a questioning eye on 
 Wade. " He's told you, hasn't he, about his 
 trouble with the church at home ?" 
 
 " About their asking him " 
 
 " To resign yes. That was a terrible 
 time. He had preached there so long ! I 
 don't think he ever suspected that they were 
 tired of him and his ways. And indeed there 
 were those who stood by him. But a young- 
 er generation had come up a generation 
 demanding revised scriptures and changed 
 creeds and general good cheer from the sac- 
 ramental cup. They wanted a sparkling, en- 
 livening vintage instead of the drink my 
 father gave them. They didn't want to hear 
 about their shortcomings, or the insecuri- 
 ty and bitterness of life. They said that 
 papa preached over their heads and didn't 
 attract the young people, and they sent a 
 committee to ask him to give up the charge.
 
 Oh, it was terrible ! Their dissatisfaction was 
 like a thunder-bolt to papa. I cannot repeat 
 all he said to them in his last sermon. But 
 he denounced them without measure, and he 
 never entered the pulpit again, nor has he 
 ever been the same since. He shut himself 
 for three days in his study, and would not 
 speak even to me. And when he finally tot- 
 tered out he looked like a man who has got 
 his death-blow though that was four years 
 since." 
 
 She paused with a tremor in her soft voice. 
 The night wind chopped round the porch end 
 with a mournful cry. The fog, slipping past 
 the high globe, took the likeness of fleeting 
 figures. It seemed as if the darkness were 
 full of homeless sprites, which, as they sped 
 past the globe of flame, shivered closer to it 
 for the warmth and light. 
 
 Sitting in the hazy shadows Elizabeth 
 Ruley herself looked hardly real, so white 
 and slight she seemed in her black garments. 
 The weight which her father bore had crushed 
 her also. She seemed the merest shadow of 
 girlhood, a passive, cloistral sort of creature, 
 unused to the sun, and altogether too spirit-
 
 38 
 
 less to resent the unnatural gloom in which 
 she dwelt. 
 
 Two people were coming down the porch. 
 
 " Feel how damp my hair is !" cried one of 
 them, a girl, shaking her brine-touched curls. 
 " It'll he straight as a poker before I can turn 
 round." She peered down the veranda, and, 
 seeing Wade, tripped towards him, holding up 
 her scarlet ruffles. Seeing that he was not 
 alone she drew wide eyes and pointed a small 
 finger. 
 
 " So !" she said. " You are having it all to 
 yourself down there." 
 
 " I was just going in," the other woman 
 said, smiling a little as she rose. " If you 
 will excuse me," she added, to Wade. He 
 felt a vivid sense of resentment at Gracie for 
 disturbing a talk which had, at least, held a 
 certain element of sympathy. But Gracie her- 
 self seemed unaware of this. She perched on 
 the low porch-rail beside him, with her frills 
 drawn up, her red heels swinging, her hair 
 loosening in great waves as the dampness 
 brushed over it. The whole salt -smelling 
 darkness appeared as if disturbed by her 
 frivolous presence. Wade rose irritably, ob-
 
 39 
 
 serving the slight, dark -gowned figure of 
 Elizabeth Ruley pausing just then at the 
 turn of the circling stair. She had evidently 
 forgotten her room-key, and came down to get 
 it from the clerk. 
 
 " I think she likes me better than she did 
 at first," Gracie was saying. " I knew I'd win 
 if I played long enough on one color !" Her 
 tone rang complacently in Wade's ear as he 
 moved towards the office door. Elizabeth had 
 turned again to the stairway, but Wade was 
 withheld from noticing her further by a sud- 
 den recognition of the fact that Bailey, stand- 
 ing just in the embrasure of the door, had his 
 ingenuous eyes fixed intently on the ascend- 
 ing figure of Mr. Ruley's daughter. Wade 
 stepped over the threshold. As he did so 
 Bailey withdrew his gaze and turned rather 
 quickly. 
 
 " Wade," he said, shortly, " you were talk- 
 ing to her out there. Who is she? that 
 girl !"
 
 IV 
 
 WADE regarded his questioner with dis- 
 tinct coldness. 
 
 " That is Miss Ruley," he said, briefly. 
 
 " Miss Ruley 2" 
 
 "Miss Ruley. You'll find my statement 
 corroborated in the register." And remem- 
 bering the scrawling entry which had afford- 
 ed him the information which Bailey was 
 now seeking, he murmured, " ' The Rev. 
 Thomas Ruley and daughter, High Ripple, 
 Indiana.' " 
 
 " Thanks," said Bailey, staring a little. 
 
 His voice had lapsed to an accent of indif- 
 ference. Having lighted a cigarette he turned 
 away. Wade looked after him thoughtfully, 
 being somewhat amused at the briefly vivid 
 character of the young man's interest in Eliza- 
 beth Ruley. It seemed, as days went on, 
 that this interest had been, indeed, of a mo- 
 mentary nature, for Bailey made no effort
 
 at seeking any acquaintance with the young 
 woman in question, though the exigencies of 
 the hotel porch and the considerate offices of 
 Miss Gayle forced him into such social knowl- 
 edge of the preacher's daughter as an intro- 
 duction is supposed to effect. 
 
 These same days cast Wade considerably 
 with the Ruleys. Some latent fibre of the 
 old man's being responded to the other's 
 quiet whimsicality. Wade was wise enough 
 never to combat any of the preacher's pro- 
 nounced and contorted views, and as a con- 
 sequence the relations between them came to 
 be of a pleasant and friendly sort. 
 
 Everything at Hildreth wore a gentle as- 
 pect. The sea was a bland sheet of milky 
 green, whose shallow breakers wreathed the 
 sands in blossomy white ; the skies hung 
 placid ; the very multitudes seemed to im- 
 bibe a certain languid quietude from the mid- 
 summer serenity. 
 
 Of mornings every one went bathing, and 
 the pole-spiked surf resembled a great human 
 brew, bubbling up with heads and arms. At 
 a little distance the bathers lost all mortal 
 significance, seeming rather like the top twigs
 
 42 
 
 of a submerged forest, peaking rough and 
 black through the circling waves. On the 
 warm sand under the biggest pavilion peo- 
 ple squatted at ease, watching the antics of 
 the bathers. The number of these constantly 
 grew, as men and women in baggy blue flan- 
 nels strolled seaward from the bath-houses. 
 
 Children with wood spades cast up frail 
 fortifications against the surf. They shouted 
 as they worked, and a small dog, digging in 
 the sand just beyond the usual station of Mr. 
 Ruley's chair, barked furiously at some im- 
 aginary quarry. Mr. Ruley spoke to him 
 twice in a mildly reproachful way, for the 
 shrill staccato barks made his ears tingle. 
 But the terrier kept on honey-combing the 
 beach with his sharp paws. His flanks shook, 
 his eyes bulged in an ecstasy of pursuit, and 
 he appeared unconscious of the gaunt figure 
 hard by, bent together under its plaid shawl, 
 and holding on its knee a package of small 
 leaflets. 
 
 Whenever any one strolled near his chair 
 Mr. Ruley held out one of the pamphlets. 
 No one refused the offering of the shaking 
 hand, and the old man's purblind gaze failed
 
 to see, blowing airily along the sands, the 
 sheets so lately received of him with good- 
 natured indifference. Now and then one of 
 these printed squares, motionless in the wane 
 of the breeze, displayed a heading which ex- 
 horted, announced, or appealed. Oftener they 
 were trodden down by the feet of passers, or 
 were carried over the water, lifting and hurt- 
 ling along like callow gulls. 
 
 Wade, coming down the beach in bathing 
 apparel, paused beside the chair. Mr. Ruley 
 tremulously proffered a leaf bearing a pious 
 adjuration, but, recognizing the young man, 
 he laid the thing back and seemed to bright- 
 en up. 
 
 " I do not give these to you, a thinking 
 man," he explained. " They are for the care- 
 less. I doubt if one in a thousand reads or 
 heeds the admonition. But barren as my 
 ministry has been the habit of the sower 
 sticks with me, and, though I scatter seed 
 upon rock, I cannot withhold my hand." 
 
 A girl, screaming with laughter and spray- 
 ing the air with brine from her wet short 
 skirts, flew by, pursued by a brawny young 
 fellow. Children were wading in the low
 
 44 
 
 shore-surf. Lovers mooned together on the 
 sea verge. Portly women gossiped on the 
 benches above the sand. Against all this 
 Mr. Ruley looked singularly lonely, and Wade 
 glanced about, wondering if Elizabeth were 
 not somewhere near. 
 
 " Elizabeth is walking with a friend of 
 ours," said the other, catching at Wade's 
 intent "a friend from High Ripple, who 
 came rather unexpectedly this morning. A 
 young man " he amplified, taking his usual 
 oratorical style, which reduced the single hear- 
 er to an indefinite part of a visionary throng 
 " of much promise. A laborer like myself 
 in the Lord's vineyard, but blessed with fruit- 
 ful ingathering." He sighed and laid his 
 long arms over his breast. " You have heard 
 me speak of the Rev. Frederic Clinton Gra- 
 ham ?" 
 
 " Oh yes !" signified Wade, not altogether 
 charmed with this intelligence. He had 
 heard of the Rev. Mr. Graham, as he had 
 heard of many other features of High Rip- 
 ple of the old house in which the Ruleys 
 lived, the discovery of gas in the town's 
 outskirts, the worthy few who stood faithful
 
 4,3 
 
 to their old pastor, and the new congregation 
 which had ousted him. 
 
 Mr. Graham, as Wade remembered, did not 
 belong to the ante-gas epoch. The drowsy 
 village had become a bustling town before 
 Mr. Ruley's young friend came to shed a 
 genial influence upon it. For that Mr. Graham 
 had extremely pleasing traits Wade could 
 scarcely doubt, in view of the surprising fact 
 that the man commanded the warmest affec- 
 tion not only of Mr. Ruley's former congre- 
 gation, but also of Mr. Kuley himself. 
 
 Just in what sort he was regarded by Mr. 
 Ruley's daughter Wade could only surmise. 
 The mere circumstance of Graham's presence 
 in Hildreth was suggestive of possibilities 
 which Wade had not considered before, and 
 the young man drew a grim smile as it came 
 upon him that his own cordial intercourse with 
 the Ruleys was likely to be disturbed by 
 Graham's arrival. 
 
 At the consciousness that his face was tak- 
 ing on a sulky cast Wade straightened his 
 shoulders. What difference did it make that 
 a young woman whom he had known for sev- 
 eral weeks was perhaps the sweetheart of a
 
 46 
 
 worthy Indiana clergyman ? He, Wade, was 
 not in love ; and, now that he came to think 
 of it, he was glad that he was not. For, aside 
 from the chance of a prior suitor, Wade de- 
 clared to himself the connubial vista had no 
 charms worth setting off against the easy- 
 going privileges of bachelorhood that is, 
 for men of moderate finances. Domestic life 
 in New York apartment-houses did not win 
 upon Wade's fancy. These thousand-celled 
 hives of the city's millions were most unat- 
 tractive to him, and he cheerfully reconciled 
 himself to the perpetual loneliness which has 
 so placid and pleasant a face when examined 
 by the heart-free. 
 
 Reverting to these early principles, Wade 
 walked into the surf and dashed off, with a 
 handful of brine, a half-formulated vision of 
 Mr. Graham as a mild young man, whose 
 conciliating chin sheered meekly into a white 
 lawn tie. 
 
 "No doubt he's mighty at mothers' meet- 
 ing, and waxes tearful over the babies he 
 baptizes," thought Wade. "And Elizabeth 
 is cut out for a preacher's wife little, sweet, 
 serious thing she is !"
 
 47 
 
 That evening, as he came down to supper, 
 he encountered Grace Gayle in the office. 
 Grace wore a thoughtful air, and she drew 
 Wade aside with an imperative nod. 
 
 " Do you know," she observed, gravely, 
 " that you are not in it ? Have you seen the 
 new man ? He's been with Miss Ruley all day." 
 
 " Alas, yes !" sighed Wade, elaborately. 
 " I know that my goose is cooked. I've got 
 a life-long sorrow to cherish, Gracie. I've 
 always wanted something I could entirely 
 devote myself to." 
 
 " Laugh it off as much as you please," 
 scoffed Gracie, " but it won't take me in. I 
 know something about men. None of 'em 
 likes to take a back seat. It isn't human 
 nature. So come off." 
 
 " What would you have me do go about 
 with a pale, disordered look ?" 
 
 " I'd have you keep right to the front. 
 This Graham's good-looking splendid shoul- 
 ders looks like he might be a great centre- 
 rush but I believe you can beat his time. 
 Take your hands out of your vest-pockets, 
 and stop biting yoitr mustache ! Throw your 
 shoulders back " >
 
 48 
 
 " I stoop to conquer, Gracie." x 
 
 " and let him see that you're not going to 
 be overlooked in the shuffle. I'd stay right 
 with 'em all the time. That'll queer the 
 whole business. He can't make love with 
 you around." 
 
 She gave him a reassuring pat as she slipped 
 away. 
 
 As Wade stood in the porchway after sup- 
 per, and took critical stock of the man who 
 sat talking with the Ruleys, he was aware of 
 a surprised recognition of the justice of Miss 
 Gayle's opinions. He was no ascetic strip- 
 ling, this big fellow at Elizabeth's side. He 
 had a shaven face of a cordial turn, thick, 
 breezy hair, and a hearty laugh. Moreover, 
 he wore a business-like suit of rough wool, 
 and the hat on the floor near him was of 
 white straw. There was a red flower in his 
 button-hole. He was young and athletic, 
 with nothing whatever about him intimative 
 of stripes or fasting. 
 
 Mr. Ruley, catching Wade's eye, bent for- 
 ward and summoned him. There was noth- 
 ing then for the young man but to join the 
 little group and extend a genial hand to the
 
 49 
 
 person whom Mr. Ruley affectionately termed 
 Lis "own son in the faith." Presently he 
 was sitting with them as usual of evenings, 
 while the crowd surged by on its way to the 
 beach, and lights struck out of the twilight, 
 and music began to lilt up near and far. 
 
 " These thousands of human creatures, un- 
 deterred from their follies by the awful so- 
 lemnity of the great sea, afford an appalling 
 example of the blindness of such as are carnal 
 and sold unto sin," said Mr. Ruley. " You 
 must go down and observe the throng on the 
 beach, Frederic. The frivolity is, I may say, 
 more marked at evening than at other times. 
 For night brings thoughts of prayer and medi- 
 tation to our hearts, and here the darkening 
 hours are given to unhallowed revelry." 
 
 Graham assented. Easy acquiescence ap- 
 peared, indeed, to be his marked character- 
 istic. 
 
 " What's the use of setting yourself against 
 the big currents?" he inquired of Wade, 
 when their acquaintance had reached a stand- 
 ing of several days. "You don't accomplish 
 anything by it, except to get knocked ashore, 
 a mere bit of wreckage."
 
 50 
 
 " Queer doctrine for one of your profes- 
 sion," Wade threw in. But Graham laughed 
 his hearty, honest laugh. 
 
 " Bah !" he said. " There's no reason why 
 a preacher shouldn't talk sense. In fact, he's 
 got to talk it if he expects to reach people. 
 They've ceased to care for rambling meta- 
 physical dissertations. You've got to appeal 
 to men's business as well as to their bosoms. 
 These aren't visionary times." He added, 
 in a moment, " Such as prevailed when ideas 
 of special ordination were still active." 
 
 " Oh, then you don't hold for a chosen 
 generation, a royal priesthood ?" 
 
 " Me ? no. Personally I do not. I didn't 
 go into the Church because I saw visions or 
 heard the heathen clamoring for my aid. I 
 took up theology as perhaps others do just 
 as I would have taken up any profession. It's 
 a respectable calling, and I had my living to 
 make. I don't see that a fellow who accepts 
 it in a business-like way is any less honest 
 than one who is a bit exalted and yearns over 
 humanity." 
 
 " Maybe not. But preaching don't pay 
 very well, Graham. This is not the era when
 
 51 
 
 prelates ' riot in ease and cumbrous wealth.' 
 A man's generally disinterested when he 
 dons the beretta. He has a right to be thought 
 so, anyhow." 
 
 " It all depends on his objectives. I admit 
 that the pulpit isn't specially lavish in finan- 
 cial returns; but, like literature, it has its com- 
 pensations. A clergyman has position. He 
 has also what is highly exceptional in the rush 
 of modern life time to think, to plan, to live. 
 I took this into consideration. I wanted lei- 
 sure. I wanted a calling in which my knack 
 of speaking plainly and easily would count. 
 I had no pronounced convictions few peo- 
 ple have concerning religious dogma. But 
 I got my finger on the pulse of the times 
 and found what the masses felt on these sub- 
 jects. And then I established myself on this 
 base, reflecting that it's well 
 
 " ' When you censure the age 
 To be cautious and sage. 1 
 
 A preacher's function, as I see it, is merely 
 to direct the religious ceremonials of a 
 community. He's got to be tip to date and 
 know the moral taste of the people. He must
 
 52 
 
 feed them according to the demands of their 
 palate, and not, for their own good even, 
 force nauseous doctrine down their unwilling 
 throats. Otherwise he'll find himself a fail- 
 ure like our old friend yonder. He had 
 passion and patience, and he wrought like a 
 slave to cause his people to see the wisdom 
 of so fashioning their lives as to merit heaven 
 by making life a hell. They were not built 
 on that plan, however !" The Rev. Mr. Gra- 
 ham paused to laugh again. 
 
 " I haven't half his powers," he went on ; 
 "but while he preached to empty pews, my 
 church which was also his is jammed to 
 the walls. My piety is of a gladsome order. 
 I'm easy, colloquial, humane. By a contin- 
 ual rattling hail of sharp points anecdotes, 
 metaphors, allusions I riddle the veil of ap- 
 athy so apt to clog the Sabbath intelligence. 
 I mix with folks socially. And when they 
 have fairs and tableaux in the Sunday-school- 
 room I smile and applaud instead of stand- 
 ing afar off and bitterly denouncing them for 
 desecrating the sanctuary as was Ruley's 
 engaging habit." 
 
 "I can understand that you are popular,"
 
 53 
 
 intimated Wade, conscious of a certain half- 
 amused distaste. 
 
 " Oh, I'm popular !" smiled Graham. " I'm 
 a power with the young men the hardest 
 nuts a minister has to crack. I reach them 
 by carrying myself as one familiar in the past 
 with pleasant little vices, and not so far away 
 from those laxer times as to have forgotten 
 the taste of cakes and ale, or to have lost 
 sympathy with fellows whose business hasn't 
 forced them to a certain austerity of life. 
 I've a gentle scourge for the sinner's back. 
 What I can't uphold in way of social pas- 
 times I leave alone." His voice had a tone 
 of simple good-nature, and Wade found him- 
 self liking this Timothy of the decadence, 
 however the young man's views went cross to 
 his own traditions of the priestly office. 
 
 Graham had a kind of primitive human 
 quality, which, being temperamental and irre- 
 spective of moral traits, must have attracted 
 both puritan and pagan. He and Wade took 
 many walks together. Sometimes they rolled 
 before them old Mr. Ruley's chair. Some- 
 times Elizabeth joined them, and her bear- 
 ing, so far as Wade could see, put both
 
 54 
 
 young men upon an equal footing of passive 
 favor. 
 
 " To see her disturbed !" Wade sometimes 
 said to himself, in view of the girl's passion- 
 less calm. " Anger anything would be a 
 relief. She seems utterly without emotional 
 capacity, this agate-eyed young person. Yet 
 we're generally hanging round her, I notice, 
 Graham and I !" 
 
 One night as the three strolled towards the 
 beach just on the edge of dark, they saw a 
 great moon heaving its rosy shoulders above 
 the rippling dove-hue of the ocean. Moment- 
 ly the delicate pink of the rising sphere 
 changed to a clearer red. Then a hint of 
 orange dashed it, and suddenly the jagged sea 
 appeared as if smitten across with a blazing 
 sword the sharp reflex of the lifting light. 
 It was quiet, almost lonely, at the farthest 
 end of the walk. Only the murmuring of the 
 surf took the ear, as the rising tide nibbled 
 with white teeth at the crusted sands. Against 
 the faded western crimson sparks of white and 
 amber flickered. A narrow lake to the left 
 looked like a sprig of burnished coral under 
 the sinking redness of the sky.
 
 66 
 
 Graham, with his hat far back, and with a 
 cheery light in his good-looking face, talked 
 for the party. For Wade was in a pensive 
 mood, and beside him Elizabeth walked in si- 
 lence, looking far out at the water with eyes 
 which held now, as ever, a teasing mystery of 
 reticence. 
 
 Two men came in sight on the board prom- 
 enade. Their figures were outlined in solitary 
 distinction upon the tremulous ground of 
 shining sea. One seemed to be a common- 
 looking fellow in smart but cheap attire. The 
 other, sauntering nearer, caught Wade's at- 
 tention by reason of a certain Byronic affec- 
 tation of languid cynicism. He had a dissi- 
 pated pallor, a limp shirt-front, and longish 
 black coat, which, as he walked, whipped 
 about his knees. A general shabbiness hung 
 over him. His hat was rakishly tipped, his 
 oily hair worn rather long. 
 
 He came on with his companion, and threw 
 a glance upon the people in the path. Sud- 
 denly Wade saw his pale face light up. The 
 fellow paused as if startled, and then strode 
 forward with a hand outstretched. 
 
 "You here ?" he cried, in a tone of enthusi-
 
 56 
 
 astic incredulity "you here at the beach! 
 I never dreamed you " He broke off as if 
 the mere delight of coming thus unexpectedly 
 upon Elizabeth Ruley had quite robbed him 
 of the power of speech. 
 
 Wade, pausing with the others, turned a 
 surprised glance upon the girl beside him. It 
 was a mistake, no doubt, this apparent recog- 
 nition. But perhaps, after all, she knew the 
 man for she had stopped short in the way, 
 and stood rigid, as if her joints went stiff 
 with some most unwelcome sense. She 
 seemed as if holding her breath, and her eyes 
 were wide. Then something that was like a 
 shiver went over her, and a hot red shook in 
 her cheeks. 
 
 " How strange," she said, advancing a step 
 to meet the man's reaching hand "how 
 strange to meet you here !" And turning to 
 Wade and Graham, she added, " Mr. Wilmuth 
 is an old friend of mine. I should like to 
 speak to him about something in which we 
 are mutually interested if you will walk on 
 and let me catch up with you presently ?"
 
 THE two men thus admonished walked on- 
 ward. A certain sense of strangeness hung 
 in the moral atmosphere ; but neither of them 
 spoke of the matter. Graham's brow had, for 
 a moment, a drawn sort of expression. Then 
 as the refrain of a distant band wandered to 
 his ears he began to hum the melody. Some 
 girls with white scarfs on their heads passed 
 by, casting gay glances at the young men, 
 and Graham regarded them without clerical 
 severity. 
 
 " I used to like girls like that full of go 
 and gayety till I met Miss Ruley," he ob- 
 served. " In fact, I was interested in her be- 
 fore I ever saw her, from hearing her father 
 talk. As soon as I reached the town I heard 
 of his troubles, and I went to see him. He 
 rather took to me, strangely enough; and I 
 learned of his daughter. He used to read me 
 parts of her daily letters faithful girl, that !
 
 So I felt well acquainted with her when she 
 came home in March. The old man gave down 
 completely at that time, and she dropped ev- 
 erything and came to him. Of course, living 
 as she does with a friend of the family, it was 
 less difficult than it might have been in other 
 circumstances." 
 
 Graham stopped to yawn and look round. 
 Elizabeth was coming towards them. Her lit- 
 tle light figure swept along the walk with di- 
 minutive dignity, and she was quite alone. 
 Whatever had become of her friend Mr. Wil- 
 muth, it seemed as if his absence had only a 
 quieting effect upon Elizabeth ; for her face 
 was bright, and a kind of smile touched and 
 left her lips as she offered some word of ex- 
 cuse for delaying the two. 
 
 When they came to the hotel porch Mr. 
 Ruley murmured a little at being so long 
 left by himself. 
 
 " Miss Ruley met a friend " unadvisedly 
 began Graham, stopping short, however, with 
 a late instinct of discretion. 
 
 " Of ours from home ?" cut in the old 
 man. 
 
 " No, no, papa !" said Elizabeth a small
 
 69 
 
 laugh actually rippling from her throat as she 
 laid her hand on his white, rough hair " a 
 man I met since I've been away from In- 
 diana." 
 
 " Why did you not bring him back to the 
 hotel with you ?" asked Mr. Ruley. " Your 
 friends, my child, have I may say, my 
 warmest interest. I have often wished that 
 the seclusion of your life were less extreme. 
 You are but young." 
 
 " I'm but a lassie yet," smiled Elizabeth. 
 And she took up lightly the song, pointing 
 the words with pretty gestures, and leaning 
 as she sang against the old man's shoulder. 
 The fitful glaring of the curb-lamp, struggling 
 with a defective carbon, discovered a soft 
 dimple in her cheek, a clean-cut reft in her 
 chin, the darkness and warmth in her eyes of 
 the fruit of the wild blackthorn. 
 
 With this natural, girlish mood upon her, 
 she was so unlike her usual cold and silent 
 self that Wade had a visionary feeling in 
 observing her. Against the yellow, lace-fes- 
 tooned windows of the lighted parlor she ap- 
 peared quaint and fantastic, like a thing fash- 
 ioned in a dream, and subject to irrational
 
 60 
 
 impulses which might cause her, on the sud- 
 den, to vanish and be nothing. 
 
 A smell of brine and honeysuckles came 
 strong and sweet. When Elizabeth broke 
 into a note of appreciation, saying, " I wish I 
 had a great bunch of those fragrant yellow 
 things," Wade rose. 
 
 " I will steal you some," he said. " They 
 are hanging their honey temptingly near 
 on the next porch, in fact." 
 
 "You are, of course, merely jesting?" 
 hesitated Mr. Ruley, already rising to go to 
 his room for the night. 
 
 " Oh yes !" cried Wade. " I shall ask the 
 owners'." 
 
 When he came back presently with a lot 
 of the dewy bells springing lustily from a mat 
 of flaccid green leafage, he found Elizabeth 
 alone. Graham had evidently attended her 
 father up-stairs. She took the flowers eager- 
 ly, burying her face in their fresh amber. 
 
 " Are they stolen sweets ?" she asked. 
 
 " Will it be a bond between us if they 
 are ?" 
 
 "Of friendship? thieves do not have 
 friends, but only evil associates."
 
 (11 
 
 " Oh, well," murmured Wade, losing him- 
 self a little, "friendship has its limitations! 
 I'm not sure " He paused with a slight em- 
 barrassment. Was he talking sentiment to 
 the future wife of the Rev. Frederic Clin- 
 ton Graham ? He looked at Elizabeth. Over 
 the bunch of honeysuckles, her face, faint- 
 ly touched with smiles, with half - mocking 
 provocation, with the insidious glamour of 
 the moonlight, had a distracting, altogether 
 unusual witchery. The young man was 
 charmed, puzzled, disconcerted. Was this 
 Elizabeth ? 
 
 The noise of moving chairs and loitering 
 feet broke through his muse. People were 
 tramping back and forth in an interval of the 
 ball-room music, and Wade felt the annoy- 
 ance of a suddenly roused dreamer. He cast 
 round upon the laughing crew a chastising 
 eye. 
 
 "Do you mind the noises?" asked Eliza- 
 beth. "They are all so happy !" 
 
 " Maddeningly so," said Wade, with deep 
 feeling. 
 
 " I forgive them," cried Elizabeth, softly. 
 " I'm charitable to-night."
 
 62 
 
 " Being yourself happier than usual ?" 
 
 " Perhaps. I guess I've been quite con- 
 tented all along, only I didn't show it, be- 
 cause I didn't know it ! A person may not 
 realize one mental condition till brought face 
 to face with its opposite." 
 
 " Oh yes ! averted peril teaches the sweet- 
 ness of safety," said Wade. And then he 
 chilled with a sharp sense of what this inad- 
 vertent remark might convey to her. But if 
 she took it as an impertinence or a mere off- 
 shoot of self-evident philosophy, there was 
 nothing in her manner to indicate either. 
 Presently after she went away, and left him to 
 the multitudinous loneliness of the jammed 
 gallery. 
 
 As the days merged towards the end of 
 August, Hildreth was packed to the very 
 gates. The wiry yellow grasses along the 
 neat walks were trampled into powder. The 
 very sands, for all the effacing fingers of the 
 tides, seemed never free of footprints, and 
 by day and night the ocean promenade, the 
 interior of the town, lake-sides, hotels, and 
 the surf itself, were a press of holiday folk. 
 
 In these times Mr. Ruley seldom went
 
 63 
 
 forth in his rolling -chair, except early of 
 a morning, when the beach was yet way- 
 free, and the sands unfrequented save for a 
 few barelegged men, who, with long wooden 
 rakes, cleaned up the sea-verge for the day. 
 
 Sometimes Wade pushed the chair. But 
 since the night when he gave Elizabeth the 
 honeysuckles he had in some measure avoid- 
 ed the old preacher's small circle. There had 
 been, on that occasion, a newness of impulse 
 in his spirit which made him feel the ad- 
 visability of keeping himself out of harm's 
 way, however sweet that way might seem. 
 Graham was the favored suitor. He, Wade, 
 having no chance for the rose, could at least 
 withhold his flesh from the thorn. 
 
 " So," said Grace Gayle, " you're out of 
 the running ?" 
 
 " Ruled off," smiled Wade. 
 
 " Don't you make any mistakes," wisely 
 admonished Miss Gayle. " I've seen her look 
 at him, and I've seen her look at you.' 1 ' 1 
 
 " This is most surprising," indicated Wade, 
 with a feigned accent. " You will pardon 
 me, Gracie, if I scarcely credit your state- 
 ment."
 
 " Be sarcastic if you want to," said Gracie. 
 "If you knew anything at all, you'd know 
 that straws show which way the wind blows. 
 When a woman regards a man with a kind 
 of flat, frank sincerity, it's because her heart's 
 altogether out of his reach. When she looks 
 around him rather than at him, it's be- 
 cause " Gracie lifted her shoulders sug- 
 gestively. 
 
 "Grace," breathed Wade, gravely, "I am 
 hurt to the quick to see you* developing the 
 germs of what painfully resembles thought. 
 For Heaven's and your sex's sake, pause while 
 there is yet time ! Women who form the 
 pernicious habit of thinking lose in time 
 the magic key which unlocks the hearts of 
 men." 
 
 Grace sniffed. 
 
 " Men's hearts are never locked," she said, 
 sagaciously. " The heavier the padlock the 
 smoother the hinges." She shook her crisp 
 curls as she tripped away with her airy, min- 
 cing, soubrette tread. 
 
 Notwithstanding the inconsequent nature 
 of this talk, it set Wade to thinking. Per- 
 haps he had carried his principle of self-
 
 65 
 
 effacement too far. At all events, when he 
 next saw Miss Ruley, he went up to her and 
 stopped for a moment's conversation. 
 
 It chanced to be on the sands. Elizabeth 
 was sitting by herself under the arch of a 
 lace-hung sunshade, which cast shaking little 
 shadows on her face, sprigging it with such 
 delicate darknesses as lurk in the misty milk 
 of moss-agate. 
 
 " You are going in, then ?" she asked, 
 smiling up rather uncertainly, and noticing 
 his flannel attire. " Mr. Graham is already 
 very far out. That is he, I think, taking that 
 big breaker. What a stroke !" 
 
 Wade, focussing an indulgent eye, saw a 
 figure away beyond the other bathers, rising 
 to the lift of a great billow. The man swam 
 with a splendid motion. Whether he dived, 
 or floated, or circled his arms in that whirl- 
 ing stroke of his, he seemed in subtle sym- 
 pathy with the sea, possessed of a kinship 
 with it, and in an element altogether his own. 
 
 Wade expressed an appropriate sentiment 
 of admiration. 
 
 Just then Gracie Gayle came gambolling 
 along, a childish shape, kirtled to the knee 
 
 5
 
 66 
 
 in bright blue, and turbaned in vivid scarlet. 
 Among the loose-waisted figures on the sands 
 she was like a humming-bird scintillating in 
 a staid gathering of barn-yard fowls. Bailey 
 was with her, having returned after a fort- 
 night's absence. 
 
 The two paused beside Elizabeth, and 
 Wade went on, confused by the singular 
 way in which that small fair face, shadow- 
 streaked and faintly smiling, lingered in his 
 vision. He was still perplexed with a half- 
 pleasant, half -pained consciousness of it as 
 he plunged into the pushing surf and felt a 
 dizzy world of water heave round him. The 
 surge was strong to-day, and the splashing 
 and screaming of the shore bathers sent him 
 farther and still farther out. Gradually their 
 cries lessened in his ear, and there was with 
 him presently only the hollow thud of the 
 waves and the rushing hiss of the cresting 
 foam. 
 
 Once, as he rose to a sea-lift, it seemed to 
 him that he heard a sound that was not the 
 boom of the breakers nor the song of the 
 slipping froth. It came again, whatever it 
 was, and as he gave ear he took in a human
 
 " ' MK. GRAHAM IS ALREADY FAR OUT ' "
 
 67 
 
 intonation, sharp and agonized. It was a 
 cry for help. 
 
 Wade shook the brine from his hair, free- 
 ing his gaze for an outlook. In the glassy 
 mound of water to his right a face, lean and 
 white with alarm, gleamed and faded. That 
 the sinking man was Graham came instantly 
 to Wade's mind Graham, a victim to some 
 one of the mischances which the sea reserves 
 for those who adventure too confidently with 
 her. 
 
 Wade struck out instantly for the spot 
 where Graham's appalled features had brief- 
 ly glimpsed. Shoreward he could note an 
 increasing agitation among the multitudes. 
 Evidently the people had noticed the peril 
 of the remote swimmer whose exploits had so 
 lately won admiring comment. The beach- 
 guard no doubt was buckling to his belt the 
 life-rope coiled always on the sands for such 
 emergencies. Cries of men and women rang 
 stifled over the water exclamations of fear 
 and advice and excitement, mingled in a long 
 continuous wail. 
 
 Graham's head rose in sight, a mere speck 
 upon the dense green of the bulging water.
 
 Wade, fetching nearer in wide strokes, sud- 
 denly felt himself twisted violently out of his 
 course, and whirled round in a futile effort 
 with some mysterious current. He was al- 
 most near enough to lay hold of Graham 
 when this new sensation explained lucidly 
 the cause of Graham's danger. They were 
 both in the claws of an undertow, which, 
 as Wade realized its touch, appeared as if 
 wrenching him straight out to the purring 
 distance of the farther sea. 
 
 Even in the first consternation of this dis- 
 covery he felt himself thrust hard against a 
 leaden body, and in the same instant Gra- 
 ham's hands snatched at him in a desperate 
 reach for life. 
 
 " For God's sake don't hold me like this !" 
 Wade expostulated. " Let go. Trust me to 
 do what I can. You're strangling me, man !" 
 
 But Graham was past sanity. He only 
 clutched with the more frenzy at the thing 
 which seemed to keep him from the raven- 
 ous mouth of the snarling waters. 
 
 Wade, in a kind of composed despair, sent 
 a look towards the beach. They were put- 
 ting out a boat, a tiny shell which frisked
 
 in the surf, and seemed motionless in the 
 double action of the waves. Men laid hard 
 at the oars. The little craft took the first big 
 wave as a horse takes a hurdle. It dropped 
 from the glassy height, and Wade saw it sink 
 into a breach of the sea. Then, flashing with 
 crystal, it bore up again and outward. 
 
 The figures running and gesticulating on 
 the beach had a marvellous distinctness to 
 Wade's submerging eyes. He noticed the 
 blue sky, flawed with scratches of white, the 
 zigzag roof-lines of the great town, the twist- 
 ing flags and meshes of dark wire. Every- 
 thing oppressed him with a sort of deadly 
 clearness, as if a metal stamp should press in 
 melting wax. 
 
 He was momently sinking, drawn ever out- 
 ward by the undercurrent, and downward 
 by the weighty burden throttling him in its 
 senseless grasp. He looked once more through 
 a blinding veil of foam, and saw the boat 
 dipping far to the left. A phantasm of life 
 flickered before him. Unsuspected trivialities 
 shook out of their cells, and amazed him with 
 the pygmy thrift of memory. Then came a 
 sense of confusion, as if the spiritual and cor-
 
 TO 
 
 poral lost each its boundary and ranged wild, 
 and Wade felt the sea in his eyes, stroking 
 them down as gently as ever any watcher by 
 the dying.
 
 VI 
 
 GRACE GAYLE had flung herself in the hot 
 sand near Elizabeth. 
 
 " What made Mr. Wade go away the min- 
 ute I came ?" she asked. " Had you been say- 
 ing something unkind to him, or did I 
 simply queer a friendly talk by dropping 
 down on you ?" 
 
 She lay at length, listening to Elizabeth's 
 word of reply. 
 
 " Well," said Bailey, presently, " I guess 
 I'll travel, unless you're going in before 
 long ?" 
 
 Grace lifted herself on an elbow and com- 
 manded him to wait a minute. She was gaz- 
 ing thoughtfully out upon the waste of water, 
 and turning a little hollow in the sand with 
 one slim foot. 
 
 " I sha'n't stay in long to-day," she said. 
 " It looks pretty heavy, that surf. How hard 
 that man away out there is swimming ! It
 
 73 
 
 must be a bet." She stared with keener 
 interest, and as the others followed her gaze 
 she rose upon her knees for a better range. 
 
 A sudden commotion had arisen in the 
 throng under the pavilion. A man's voice 
 shouted excitedly, and a woman's scream 
 shrilled out. . 
 
 " An accident," decided Bailey. " Some 
 one's got beyond his depth." He scrutinized 
 the distance, and the remote figure swimming 
 vigorously across the reach of sea. Elizabeth 
 had risen also, and the three stood staring 
 out. 
 
 " He won't reach him !" cried a young fel- 
 low hard by ; " though he's a fine stroke 
 Wade is." 
 
 " Wade !" cried Gracie, wheeling " Wade ! 
 Is that" 
 
 " Selby Wade, the newspaper why, he 
 stops at your hotel, Miss Gayle. The fellow 
 that's sinking stops there too. I don't know 
 his name. Big man with a shaved face. I've 
 noticed him rolling some old man in a chair." 
 
 Elizabeth Kuley had uttered a little gasp- 
 ing kind of cry. She swayed forward, and 
 without seeming to see Bailey, caught at his
 
 73 
 
 arm to stay herself. Bailey himself was un- 
 aware of everything except that far-off strug- 
 gle, and the action of the beach-guards. 
 
 " They've got the boat out !" he cried, as 
 the pointed thing spun back and forth in the 
 counter -currents like a red shuttle. Grace 
 had hidden her face against one of the heavy 
 posts supporting the pavilion. 
 
 " O Blessed Mary !" she kept muttering 
 with dry lips. " O Holy Mother, save him 
 save them, 1 mean ! Oh, be merciful ! O 
 Lord, help him ! help him ! ' I make promise 
 of amendment' oh, what's the rest of it? 
 ' I make promise of amendment' ah, yes ! 
 ' amendment, moved to great love and tender 
 pity at sight of TLiy five precious wounds.' " 
 
 Her voice was lost in the outcries about 
 her. Men called loudly to each other and 
 to the oarsmen. Women sobbed and covered 
 their eyes. 
 
 " He's got hold of him !" rang out, as the 
 struggling swimmer seemed to snatch at the 
 shoulder of the drowning man. Then an ap- 
 palled murmur arose. 
 
 " It's an underpull !" 
 
 " They're going out !"
 
 74 
 
 " The boat ! The boat ! She won't make 
 it." 
 
 " Faster, you fellows ! They're sinking !" 
 
 The indefinite atom of humanity warring 
 out there with the piled -up power of the 
 ocean seemed indeed to give over the strug- 
 gle. An oily sweep of sea poured round 
 the spot where the men's heads had fitfully 
 lifted. There was an instant's silent waiting 
 for the reappearance of those dark flecks in 
 the farther sea. Then a cry rang wildly up 
 " Lost ! Lost !" 
 
 In this moment the hot grasp on Bailey's 
 bare arm relaxed so suddenly as to recall him 
 to a sense of the woman beside him. She 
 was wheeling dizzily, with the motion of one 
 about to fall, but still struggling with a wan- 
 ing consciousness. Her eyes were half shut ; 
 but the wonted fixity of her features was 
 broken into an expression of such impas- 
 sioned horror that, as Bailey, thrusting out a 
 hand to steady the circling figure, observed 
 the strange difference of her anguish-stricken 
 face, his own eyes started wide. 
 
 " Ah !" he said, " where have your wits 
 been, Bailey ? You were not mistaken."
 
 VII 
 
 IF there was anything at all coherent in 
 Wade's mind, as he felt the sea pulling over 
 him, it was a fierce sort of resentment that the 
 little tossing boat should be so futilely near. 
 A fraction of a moment meant life to him 
 now the merest fraction of a moment. And 
 all the while the boat hovered round him like 
 a hawk, and the weight on his shoulders 
 dragged more and more inertly. That weight ! 
 but for that weight of clinging, half-con- 
 scious manhood A sudden fierce impulse, 
 not in the least humane, but born of the des- 
 peration of stifling breath, darted through 
 AVade's gasping senses. He gathered him- 
 self and wrenched free one arm, and with it 
 struck blindly out and smote Graham be- 
 tween the shut eyes. 
 
 Instantly the man's grasp loosened. But 
 with the vivifying sense of buoyancy which 
 this relaxation gave to Wade rose an instinct
 
 76 
 
 of humanity only a degree less cogent than 
 had been the feeling which prompted the 
 blow. He laid lightly hold of the other's 
 shoulder, and held him somehow or other 
 afloat for the next second, till the hover- 
 ing little craft fetched near enough for 
 aid. 
 
 Even then it was hard enough to get Gra- 
 ham aboard. And after this was accom- 
 plished it seemed as if, after all, help had 
 come too late ; for the young preacher lay 
 like a log in the boat, only gasping once or 
 twice as they turned him. Before they made 
 the shore, however, he began to fetch gur- 
 gling breaths, and Wade, observing him, de- 
 cided that all would presently be well with 
 Miss Ruley's lover. 
 
 For the first time his mind recurred keenly 
 to Elizabeth. Sitting on the beach she had, 
 of course, seen the whole matter of Graham's 
 misadventure, and was, no doubt, still una- 
 ware that the rescuers had been in time to 
 save him. Wade experienced a strong senti- 
 ment of gratitude at the sickening heave of 
 Graham's broad chest. The young man was 
 going to be deadly ill, without doubt, but at
 
 77 
 
 least he, Wade, would not have to break to 
 Elizabeth the news of her lover's death. 
 
 When the boat nosed the sands and people 
 pressed about it with reaching hands and hot 
 words of enthusiastic congratulation, Wade 
 lapsed into rather a surly state, put about by 
 the free expressions of approval lavished on 
 what the beach multitudes elected to term 
 his heroic deed. Waiving all this with dis- 
 gusted embarrassment, the young man was 
 nevertheless obliged to smile at the tearful 
 incoherence with which Gracie Gayle rushed 
 upon him and clasped his hands. 
 
 " And Graham ?" she panted, as a sort of 
 after-thought; "is he alive?" 
 
 " I should say so ! He'll be all right pres- 
 ently. Does Miss Ruley know " He paused, 
 having just caught sight of her in a momen- 
 tary breach of the crowd, leaning upon Bai- 
 ley's arm and looking whiter than the foam 
 at her feet. He hurried towards her. 
 
 " lie's all right," he burst out, reassuringly 
 " Graham. He's a little sickish just now, 
 but"-- Again he broke off. Elizabeth Ruley, 
 lifting her face in a sudden, moved kind of 
 way, looked him mutely in the eyes.
 
 He had seen it variously sad, musing, anx- 
 ious, and apprehensive that still, chill glance 
 beneath her straight brows ; but he had 
 never dreamed that it or any other gaze could 
 quicken his very soul with such a sense as 
 burned there now, a sense making his own 
 eyes lift in a spasm of feeling which shut his 
 lips hard upon a sharp, short, rapturous breath. 
 
 A number of the hotel people closed about 
 her. Without a word Wade gave way to 
 them. There was no need to say anything 
 whatever. The profound consciousness which 
 had leaped upon him in that single instant 
 was not a thing to break easily at the lips. 
 
 With an illusory sense upon him, he went 
 up to the bath-houses, and, still feeling like 
 one meshed in the glittering woof of a deli- 
 cious dream, on to the Dorsheimer Arms. 
 How had he been able, during these past 
 weeks, to delude himself into believing he 
 should suffer little in resigning this woman 
 to a life in which he had no part ? Had it 
 been he, indeed, who had calmly figured her 
 as shining with serene sweetness in the home 
 and parish of the Rev. Frederic Clinton Gra- 
 ham ? Wade laughed out in scorn of the no-
 
 79 
 
 tion. lie set his lips and narrowed liis eyes 
 even to think of such a thing. 
 
 " Why," he murmured, amazedly, " I love 
 her more than life itself. I would die for her." 
 These assurances burst out with strength, if 
 lacking absolute originality of phrase. In a 
 moment he himself laughed to remember that 
 he had heard other men make such statements, 
 and had been faintly amused at the prodigal- 
 ity of love's vows and the curious sameness 
 of its figures of speech. 
 
 Sitting on the edge of his bed, he covered 
 his eyes and drifted into a beatific world, all 
 a riot of blue skies and scattered roses and 
 clasping cupids and pastoral pipes. Eliza- 
 beth glided through the ferny greenness 
 Elizabeth, in floating white, with a ribbon 
 of girlish blue in the shadowy depths of her 
 hair Elizabeth, with handfuls of honey- 
 suckles, no longer still and loath, but glad and 
 smiling, warm and heartening as the flowers 
 she bore. And then presently these Arca- 
 dian alleys lapsed to ways not less sweet, 
 though more familiar. A walled-up city street 
 stretched out before him, narrow and mo- 
 notonous, with its tall dwellings and meagre
 
 80 
 
 ribbon of sky. Was this one of the apart- 
 ments he had so hated this reach of rooms, 
 tunnelled with a long dark hall, with sunshine 
 only in snatches, and with strange cubby -holes 
 crouching about shafts which mouthed up a 
 dim, infernal light ? It seemed to have incon- 
 sequent features in common with his old de- 
 testation ; but it could not be the same, for 
 this range of rooms radiated delight being, 
 indeed, pervaded with a presence which, to 
 Wade's mind, would have shed a gentle home- 
 rapture upon a section of the Catacombs. 
 
 He could hear the ripple of Elizabeth's 
 gown, the soft fall of her foot as she moved 
 through those pictured spaces. Elizabeth ! 
 he had never known before that it was his 
 favorite name. He repeated it to himself till 
 it lost meaning and startled him with its 
 strangeness. He wished to see her at once, 
 yet dreaded to see her, as inevitably he must, 
 among others. 
 
 At this juncture there was a rap at his door, 
 and when he opened it he saw Mr. Ruley 
 standing in the hall. 
 
 " Frederic wants to see you," said the old 
 man, tremulous with emotion. " He is ad-
 
 81 
 
 vised by the doctor to lie by for the day, being 
 er somewhat " 
 
 " Salt-water has that effect generally. He'll 
 brace up after a bit." 
 
 " I trust so ! I trust so ! snatched thus by 
 the unspeakable goodness of God from the 
 fate of them that go down in ships. Ah, my 
 young friend, blessed indeed are those that 
 are ordained to be instruments of His grace. 
 I have come to fetch you to the bedside of 
 this dear soul that he may, in such sort as he 
 is directed, make acknowledgment to you 
 for your timely aid." He fondly laid hold 
 of Wade's arm. 
 
 " He'll feel more like falling on my neck 
 when his stomach settles !" laughed Wade. 
 "I'll wait till then." But Mr. Ruley drew 
 him down the corridor with that singularly 
 forceful strength which occasionally showed 
 itself in his lank-, leaning form. 
 Graham turned a qualmish face upon them. 
 
 " I can't say a word," he declared. " I've 
 a lot of pretty speeches laid up for emer- 
 gencies, but none for- one like 'this. I never 
 foresaw having my life saved. I guess you 
 know how I feel !"
 
 82 
 
 " Yes. I saw you were swallowing too 
 much brine," said Wade. He added, "Sor- 
 ry I had to punch your head !" The two 
 men smiled over their clasped hands. 
 
 " Ah !" cried Mr. Ruley, gazing with dis- 
 tended rheumy eyes upon this fraternal pict- 
 ure, " Frederic was saved to great works, be- 
 ing specially favored in his holy calling, and 
 specially gifted with rare persuasive qualities." 
 
 " Oh !" murmured Graham, deprecatingly. 
 
 " I speak the fact," protested the other. 
 "I myself have been very zealous for the 
 Lord of Hosts. I cried aloud, and showed 
 my people their transgressions. I depicted 
 to them hell enlarging herself and opening 
 her mouth without measure. Sabbath after 
 Sabbath I told them that their glory, their 
 pomp, and their multitude should descend 
 therein. But they were puffed up and given 
 to their idols. They would not hear. They 
 had no pleasure in the words of the servant 
 of the Most High." 
 
 Wade and Graham exchanged a glance 
 which expressed no surprise that Mr. Ruley's 
 congregation had failed to accept his views 
 with joyous alacrity.
 
 83 
 
 " I strove mightily with a perverse and 
 stiff-necked generation. I told them of their 
 loathsome iniquity, of their guile, their vanity, 
 their shame, their utterly lost condition. They 
 heard me," cried Mr. Ruley, in a bitterly so- 
 norous voice, " with the apathy of them that 
 are dead according to the law. Yet I saw 
 those stubborn hearts softened. Another than 
 I spoke to them, and, behold, the flint was 
 melted. To Him be the honor who hast or- 
 dained this miracle of victorious young priest- 
 hood Frederic, my son in the faith !" His 
 quavering accents broke and the fierceness left 
 his beaked face. 
 
 Graham looked at Wade and shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " I reap where you sowed," he said, con- 
 siderately. A flash leaped to the old man's 
 deep eyes. 
 
 " You speak with the voice of the comfort- 
 er," he sighed, shaking his rough white hair, 
 but visibly pleased. 
 
 During the entire day "Wade saw nothing 
 of Elizabeth. At supper, however, his heart 
 gave an unaccustomed twitch as he observed 
 her dark head in a distant end of the dining-
 
 84 
 
 room. He hung about the office till she came 
 out, carrying her father's shawl, and prepared 
 to fix him comfortably on the porch. 
 
 Her eyes avoided Wade, but as she passed 
 him a little breath of pink fluctuated in her 
 cheek, whereat the young man took exceed- 
 ing heart, being happily unaware that his 
 tender observance of Miss Ruley was winning 
 amused smiles from the people about. 
 
 Gracie Gayle brushed up to him. 
 
 " It's all right, then ? Will papa live with 
 you ? poor old dear ! He's a back number, 
 but he means well. Only this wicked world's 
 no place for men like him. Folks never 
 thank you for telling them they've got soot 
 on their noses. They'd rather be jollied 
 up a little, and made to think their faces 
 are pretty clean. Hum ? the Rev. Graham, 
 now. I'm willing to put up my European 
 successes that he'll be right in it for luck ! 
 He'll have a big city pulpit and his sermons 
 printed in the newspapers. You mark my 
 words. He's up to date ; and I'm proud of 
 you, Wade awful proud of you for beating 
 his time, for I saw the way you and Eliza- 
 beth acted just now when she passed, and I
 
 was right on. I knew it was all right." She 
 waved her hand back at him as she fluttered 
 up-stairs, all a maze of rosy muslin, with a 
 tinkling of silver bangles on her wrists. 
 
 Wade resolutely approached his friends in 
 the porch corner. 
 
 " Don't let me interfere with your usual 
 walk," said Mr. Ruley. " Go while it is yet 
 light, Elizabeth you and our good friend. 
 I shall presently seek Frederic's side. He 
 wishes to consult me upon a question which 
 my acquaintance with the early fathers justi- 
 fies me in discussing." Blessing him pro- 
 foundly, Wade moved his chair back and 
 looked questioningly at Elizabeth. 
 
 She rose with an air of reluctance, and they 
 went down the steps together and into the 
 thronged street, which queerly enough seemed 
 to Wade a cosmic wilderness whose sweet 
 solitude was peopled only by himself and the 
 girl at his side. 
 
 As he talked of common things he took 
 her silence comfortably to heart. No doubt 
 she felt this singular atmosphere, which had 
 so suddenly ensphered them in a new world. 
 That was it. She was moved by the strange-
 
 86 
 
 ness of it all, and felt, as indeed he himself 
 felt, a little stupefied, a little dazed by the 
 greatness of the difference. So Wade de- 
 cided as they came to the ocean side. 
 
 Dim, phantom sails reached into the fading 
 sky. One schooner lay at anchor off the bar. 
 A rich brownish chrome streaked its flat fore- 
 sail, and upon the mingling tones of sky and 
 sea its rigging trailed a delicate filigree of 
 black. Through the zigzag spaces of a dis- 
 tant pavilion shone, as through a dark trellis, 
 the shattered amber of the west. Against it 
 one white arc-lamp hung like a jewel. Other 
 lights spun out from the half-gloom of the 
 town. The crowd on the walk thickened. It 
 grew, with every instant, more and still more 
 noisy. Sound and movement ingulfed the 
 comparative quietude, and there was nothing 
 presently to tell of its briefly tranquil charm 
 except the motionless vessel lying out there 
 at sea and visibly melting into the dark bos- 
 om of the night. A low tide whined on the 
 sands. Off to the left the little lake, thrust- 
 ing out in the sunset glow from its wooded 
 belt, looked like a dagger of gold in a dark 
 girdle.
 
 87 
 
 " Let us walk round that way/' suggested 
 Wade. They turned towards the sliver of 
 burnished water, the color of which, as they 
 neared it, waned to a mere dull russet. About 
 the rim were tall lamps, which plunged blunt, 
 leaden shafts of light into the still depths. 
 A little bridge rose over the expanse, and as 
 they mounted its soft curve a boat shot be- 
 low them and the voices of the rowers rang 
 upward. 
 
 Then a soft stillness settled down. A gray 
 density of shadow crept stealthily from a 
 tiny wooded island just beyond the bridge, 
 and some bird in the dark leafage chirped a 
 long, lonely note. 
 
 Elizabeth, leaning on the slight rail, herself 
 half folded in shadow, stood watching the 
 lucid trail of the vanishing boat. Wade, 
 filled with the simple happiness of her pres- 
 ence, set his elbow on the balustrade and let 
 the sweetness of the moment encompass him. 
 All the fulness of complete knowledge might 
 never be so exquisite a thing as this " prodi- 
 gal inward joy," as yet unaverred except by 
 the forces of life which speak without lan- 
 guage.
 
 And as he leaned there, rapt in the en- 
 chantment which silence and assurance com- 
 bined to work upon him, another skiff 
 flashed into sight, daubing the water with 
 thin vermilion from the red light it bore. A 
 girl's voice, bold and clear, lilted up the bars 
 of a song made popular by some concert-hall 
 favorite a song none too reticent of illusion, 
 with a reckless swing of rhythm and a de- 
 mure suggestiveness of phrase. 
 
 Darting shafts of scarlet about it, the boat 
 struck under the bridge. In emerging it dis- 
 closed a boyish young fellow at the oars, and 
 opposite him, in a cloud of airy pink, the 
 small singer. Gracie's gold slippers cast off 
 a gay gleam, as if she were shod with sun- 
 shine. Her bangles flashed and clashed as 
 she idly shredded up the bunch of roses in 
 her lap and flung the petals in her com- 
 panion's face. He, bending his blonde head, 
 laughed at the soft pelting. Then, quickly 
 enough, he drew both oars into one hand, 
 and, reaching forward, caught the girl's teas- 
 ing fingers. 
 
 She paused in her song and laughed. Em- 
 boldened, he lifted the little hand. His lips
 
 IIIEN A SOFT STILLNESS SETTLK1) DOWN "
 
 89 
 
 had not touched it, however, when she 
 snatched it away. 
 
 " Mind your oars," she advised him, taking 
 up the rollicking measure again and casting 
 a wind of pink flowers over the skiff-side. 
 
 AVade straightened himself with a con- 
 sciousness of strong distaste. His conviction 
 of Gracie's ability to take care of herself 
 was, if anything, deepened by this episode. 
 But he had a moral qualm at the girl's suf- 
 ficiency, because it bore so emphatic a hint 
 of much experience. From the swift impres- 
 sion of her mirthful mockery, her acute 
 glance, her cheek, altogether unabashed at 
 man's approving, and her whole piquant, 
 theatric personality, Wade's vision returned 
 to the figure beside him, poised with a little 
 air of meditation and with gentle gaze bent 
 on the shaken redness of the lake. 
 
 " Elizabeth !" he said, suddenly put to 
 speech, " oh, what a rapture it is just to 
 stand here with you ! Dearest love, tell me 
 that I don't misunderstand your silence ! I 
 couldn't care like this, could 1, for a woman 
 who did not love me a little ?" Something 
 like a shiverinir coldness went over him. She
 
 90 
 
 Lad distinctly shrunk away from him, and 
 even in the shadows it seemed as if her face 
 assumed an austere fixity. 
 
 " I beg of you," she stammered, " do not 
 do not " 
 
 " But, Elizabeth !" besought Wade, shaken 
 with misgivings, " listen ! oh, be generous 
 with me! no one will ever love you as I do. 
 It's my life you have in your hands." lie 
 was beyond that half - humorous criticism 
 which he commonly brought to bear on him- 
 self no less than on others. If what he said 
 had been often said in precisely the tone in 
 which he now poured it hotly forth, he did 
 not think or care. " I know how unworthy 
 I am, dearest. But you can make me any- 
 thing you will anything. Oh, Elizabeth ! 
 just now when I saw that poor little girl 
 in her stagey finery, with her safe reckless- 
 ness and pertness and sharp wisdom, I thanked 
 God that my fate was, in loving you, my pure 
 little saint, to love upward to the highest 
 reach of my ideals. Oh, you can't know what 
 it is to me, that sweet cloistral air of yours, 
 that gentle reserve ! You have been shut 
 away from the world and its knowledges, and
 
 91 
 
 I ain more glad than I can say, my love, my 
 wife " 
 
 " I have asked you not to say any more," 
 Elizabeth broke in, speaking with haste, al- 
 most with sharpness. 
 
 " But" 
 
 " No more. It is impossible, impossible !" 
 As she said this, however, her voice broke 
 and her head fell on her breast. 
 
 " Oh," she murmured, " how impossible I 
 pray you may never know ! For I care yes, 
 I want you to know that I care greatly for 
 your regard and respect."
 
 VIII 
 
 IN dwelling upon Elizabeth's words and 
 manner, Wade felt like one in the thick of a 
 cloud, which, without assuming shape itself, 
 confuses and thwarts the view. Through it, 
 however, like a storm-blurred star, the radi- 
 ance of her own confession of regard shone 
 bright. 
 
 He had besought some explanation of her 
 meaning, but she had said only that if he 
 cared for her at all he would show it best by 
 asking nothing ; that if he was generous he 
 would take her attitude as final and neces- 
 sary. And while he was yet asking her to 
 show a little confidence in him, she had 
 passed hurriedly up the wide steps of the ho-* 
 tel and crossed the office and turned the bend 
 of the stairs. Since which time he had seen 
 her no more, though a day had dragged by. 
 
 He wandered round the place, tormented 
 by his own restlessness as well as by the
 
 93 
 
 sounds and sights which the outer world 
 forced on his irritated sensibilities. It was 
 as if these objective annoyances were gro- 
 tesquely magnified by the lens of pain through 
 which he saw them. Everything was an 
 offence, and affected him as the tiniest press- 
 ure affects a bruise. 
 
 Graham, striding down the long dining- 
 room, was a maddening sight in his breezy 
 light-heartedness. The fair locks of a young 
 widow at his own table, whose grief expressed 
 itself in a mixture of heavy crape and nu- 
 merous diamonds, impressed him with a hid- 
 eous falsity of hue. A child wailed out, and 
 was borne away by some one who rose and 
 pushed a chair about on the polished floor. 
 In a spasm of revolt Wade thrust back from 
 the table and left it all behind that clamor- 
 ous apartment filled with a long perspective of 
 ceaselessly gleaming knives and forks. Yet 
 even in these hours of utter dissatisfaction 
 it was almost amusing to him to reflect that 
 this babel of noise and movement repre- 
 sented to so many people an ideal state of 
 enjoyment. 
 
 " Elizabeth," said Mr. Ruley, after supper,
 
 " will not join us this evening. She is suffer- 
 ing with what seems to be a slight headache. 
 Truly affliction is the ordinary feature of 
 mortal destiny." 
 
 After a time Graham and Wade strolled 
 off together, taking their way through some 
 interior streets of the town, upon the com- 
 parative darkness of which the lights of cot- 
 tages broke in a peaceful, domestic fashion 
 wholly different from the way of the beach 
 precincts, all glaring with electricity. 
 
 Through open doors they caught sight 
 of family gatherings, of children playing, of 
 young folk talking, of an old woman bend- 
 ing soberly over a thick book. Graham, 
 looking up at the stars, gave a sigh. 
 
 " They're the things that really count, after 
 all," he asserted. " If a man misses it love, 
 you know, and home ties nothing else ever 
 perfectly makes it up to him. We are told 
 with high-handed scorn that love isn't much 
 of a power, anyway ; that it means little in 
 comparison with life's other forces. But 
 I believe it's a pretty big thing, myself. 
 There's a time in a fellow's career when it 
 counts for a devilish deal. It's a power."
 
 'GRAHAM WAS A MADDKNIXG SIGHT IN HIS BREEZY 
 LIGHT-HEARTKDNESS "
 
 95 
 
 Wade agreed with this view, and Graham 
 pushed on : " I've an idea that there's only 
 one pair of hands in the world that can kindle 
 the flame on a man's hearth. And if he 
 makes a mistake and gets the wrong pair, 
 he'll have a sickly warmth in his inglenook." 
 
 Wade lifted his brows, surmising what the 
 specialized nature of this figure portended. 
 
 u Yes," pursued Graham, " a man, in my 
 mind, does well to subordinate other things 
 to love. He'd better marry the woman who 
 pleases him even if *he has to sacrifice some- 
 thing in the way of ambition and that kind 
 of thing." 
 
 " If she will have him," added Wade. 
 
 " No trouble about that. Women marry 
 the men who ask them." He laughed, and 
 laid a confidential hand on Wade's arm. 
 
 " Of course you've seen what's in the wind ? 
 I'm pretty hard hit. That little witch has 
 turned my head with her shy, stately ways. 
 And a clergyman ought to marry. He owes 
 it to his people. Elizabeth is as retiring as 
 the traditional wood-violet, but in a different 
 atmosphere for I don't propose to stay for- 
 ever in Indiana I think she'll expand to the
 
 96 
 
 social necessities of her position as my wife. 
 I admired her from the first. There's some- 
 thing unaccountable about her that catches a 
 fellow's imagination. But I went slow. It's 
 a big decision for a man. And it wasn't an 
 advantageous alliance for me looking at it 
 in cold blood. But the more I see of her 
 the harder I'm nailed. I've made up my- 
 mind to settle everything before I leave here 
 I've got to go soon now. My time's 
 up." 
 
 He began to whistle " Annie Laurie " be- 
 tween his teeth. They had returned to the 
 threshold of the Dorsheimer Arms, and, see- 
 ing Grace Gayle sitting by herself in the 
 porchway, Wade stopped for a moment. 
 
 "I've been looking for you," she said. 
 " Something's out of gear. Your face gives 
 it away. And when I rapped at Elizabeth's 
 door just now to see how her headache was, 
 I noticed that her eyes were swelled up. She's 
 been crying. Yes, crying," she repeated im- 
 pressively, as Wade started. " It broke me 
 all up to see how bad she looked. I know 
 something's up. You'd better let me in on 
 the ground -floor, Wade. Neither you nor
 
 her has any better friend than me. I'd do a 
 good deal for you." 
 
 " Thanks, Titania," muttered Wade, gloom- 
 ily. " Your barley - sugar wand can't do 
 anything for me just now." He paused with 
 aweary air and added: "That poor young 
 fellow over there at the cooler hadn't you 
 better look after him a little ? He seems 
 desperate he's drinking altogether too much 
 iced water. Isn't he the chap who was row- 
 ing you last night? his joy was brief." 
 
 " I'm not worrying about him," snapped 
 Gracie, pettishly. " Indifference is good for 
 a man." 
 
 '"They fish with all nets 
 In the school of coquettes,' " 
 
 Wade quoted. " The wing of recompense 
 will darken your unfeeling brow some day, 
 my lady. You will then understand " 
 He paused, smiling, for Grace had flounced 
 angrily away. 
 
 Presently after this, Bailey, searching 
 round the thronged piazza for her, came upon 
 her in an isolated corner. 
 
 " By yourself ?" asked Bailey, pleasantly
 
 surprised at the absence of Grace's usual 
 court. " I'm in luck. I wanted a word 
 with you. I'm going up to town to-morrow. 
 And I thought I'd get your final " 
 
 " Oh, bother !" exclaimed Grace. " I'm in 
 no mood for talking business. But I may 
 as well tell you, once for all, that I've about 
 decided to stay with Vaughn. He did the 
 square thing by me last season. He'll feat- 
 ure me, and all that. I'd of liked the best 
 kind to join you," explained the girl more 
 kindly. " I know you're a hustler ; but mom 
 don't like to travel, and I'm fond of the city. 
 You'll get some one quite as good as I am." 
 
 "There's Daisy Higby," reflected Bailey. 
 " She's got a new dance that they say will 
 catch on immensely." Grace started. 
 
 "She's good style," she admitted, gener- 
 ously ; " not very original, but rather grace- 
 ful, and all that." 
 
 " She hasn't your go ; but she's popular. 
 I'd set my heart on having you, Gracie ; but 
 if I can't make it I'll have to do the next best. 
 We're old friends. I remember you when 
 you were a slip of a thing in the chorus of " 
 
 " Don't remind me of it !" gasped Gracie.
 
 99 
 
 " Miserable little thing I was ! The folks 
 that saw me dancing in pink tulle didn't 
 dream what a ragged frock I changed it for 
 after the curtain. I was saving every cent 
 to pay for dancing-lessons. I might have 
 been struggling to this day but for Wade's 
 write-up. I'll never forget what I owe him 
 though he treats me with scorn !" she add- 
 ed, in a burst of resentment. 
 
 " Scorn ! why " 
 
 " Oh, well, maybe not just scorn ; but 
 when I try to help him he's in a kind of a 
 hole at present he simply laughs at me, and 
 politely advises me to mind my own affairs. 
 It's rough ; that's what." 
 
 " Is Wade in a hole ? He seemed in high 
 feather yesterday afternoon." 
 
 " I can't explain," said Miss Gayle, with 
 dignity. " He wouldn't like to have his af- 
 fairs discussed. But it's a love " 
 
 Ah !" 
 
 " A love-affair," frowned Gracie. " You've 
 noticed him and Miss Ruley, I suppose ? I 
 thought everything was settled ; but some- 
 thing's gone wrong. I'd give a good deal to 
 find out just what."
 
 100 
 
 Bailey sat on the porch-rail staring at his 
 cigarette. 
 
 " Jove !" he said. " I guess I could give 
 you the cue to the situation. I guess it's 
 Miss Ruley that's made the difficulty. She's 
 got a well, a kind of a reason that might 
 make her act queer in a case like this. I 
 don't say it's a good reason, but it's the sort 
 of thing that would make matters a little 
 hard if she cared for a man and had to ex- 
 plain." 
 
 Grace's eyes flashed in the darkness of the 
 side-porch. 
 
 " Bailey !" she cried, " how glad I am I 
 spoke of this business ! Go on go on and 
 tell me !" 
 
 But Bailey suddenly stiffened. 
 
 " I'd like to," he signified, " but it wouldn't 
 be straight. What I didn't drop to myself a 
 fellow I've met since I was in the city this 
 last trip told me in dead confidence-^-man 
 named Wilmuth. Honest, Gracie, I can't 
 give it away. Don't ask me. I can't do it." 
 
 " Look here !" cried Gracie. " I'm dying 
 to know what you're onto. Tell me, Bailey ! 
 I'll do anything I'm not sure, after all, but
 
 101 
 
 I'll sign with you. Yes, Bailey ; you tell me. 
 I'm going to sign with you !" 
 
 The next instant she saw her mistake. 
 Bailey's boyish eyes hardened. 
 
 " I wish to God you hadn't said that," he 
 declared. " You must have a dead-low opin- 
 ion of me. I don't make any bluff about 
 honor and that rot. I'm no man in a story- 
 book to split hairs and beat his conscience 
 into a froth ; but you better believe I'm not 
 going to sell my soul for your signature." 
 
 He cast his cigarette away with an indig- 
 nant motion. His head was up, his jaws set. 
 He looked down upon the girl in the chair 
 with a glance of steady contempt. 
 
 Grace watched him with surprise. Was 
 this Bailey the mild, conciliating Bailey 
 always politic, always bent with gentle, and 
 often unscrupulous, determination on his 
 own ends this man with the squared chin 
 and scathing eyes ? 
 
 Something like admiration crept into Gra- 
 cie's shrewd gaze something stirred in her 
 heart. 
 
 " Bailey," she said, impulsively, " I admire 
 you more this minute than I ever did or ever
 
 102 
 
 expected to. You've always seemed to me 
 just a manager. You strike me now as a 
 man. I'm glad I tempted you or tried to 
 tempt you if only to find out what kind of 
 a man you really are. Here's my hand on it, 
 Bailey V' 
 
 Bailey's cast-iron mood dropped off. He 
 breathed a little uncertainly as he took her 
 warmly proffered fingers. He was even more 
 disturbed as he saw on Grade's face, upheld 
 in the half -gloom, an expression of honest 
 and simple sincerity. 
 
 "Gracie," he said, "I didn't think you'd 
 ever make a fool of me! I thought I was 
 proof against your little tricks. But, by 
 Jove! when you look like that like a dear 
 little kind-hearted woman instead of a " 
 
 "Goon." 
 
 " You know what I mean ! don't tell me 
 to go on unless you want to hear that 
 that" 
 
 " Well ?" 
 
 " Oh, the devil ! I might know you don't 
 care a rap ! Good-bye, Gracie." He turned 
 angrily on his heel, put about by the light 
 mockery of Grace's tone. But this accent
 
 103 
 
 had altogether vanished when she lifted her 
 voice and said, very softly, " Bailey !" 
 
 He turned. She was leaning forward, 
 smiling rather gravely. 
 
 " Grace," he said, still standing away and 
 speaking brusquely, " be plain. You're not 
 fooling with a boy. It's dead serious with 
 me. Are you in earnest ?" 
 
 " If I should be" 
 
 He flung himself beside her. 
 
 " If you care for me, G-racie. if you care " 
 She laughed softly. 
 
 " If I didn't," she said, presently, " you can 
 bet your arm wouldn't be where it is now !"
 
 IX 
 
 ON the next morning Wade had a passing 
 glimpse of Elizabeth, as he stood in the office 
 unfolding the heavy sheets of the Sunday 
 paper. 
 
 "Ah," said a deep utterance behind him, 
 " it grieves me, my friend, to see this ! It is 
 a reprobate nation that pollutes His day with 
 such like. They are ill-fitted for the Word 
 who first fill themselves with the contents of 
 a news-sheet." Wade smiled a little under 
 the long denunciative finger pointing at the 
 journal iu his hands. He was less aware of 
 it than of the figure coming along behind 
 Mr. Ruley's tall form. 
 
 The two were going to church apparently, 
 for Elizabeth carried a little black book, from 
 which a narrow purple ribbon hung. There 
 was a kind of sorrowful composure in her 
 soft features. 
 
 " ' Cold, cold, my girl !' " murmured Wade
 
 105 
 
 to himself, in a pained acceptance of her at- 
 titude, as she passed by, giving him a sense 
 of something chill and sweet and unearthly 
 as a breath from a flower-set altar. Upon 
 that vision of her he was obliged to nourish 
 his thoughts all day, for, after the morning 
 service, she went up-stairs and reappeared no 
 more. On the edge of dark he saw Graham 
 and Mr. Ruley setting forth as if to some 
 meeting which a distant church-bell was an- 
 nouncing. 
 
 At the head of the steps they paused, be- 
 ing accosted by Miss Gayle, who floated from 
 her mother's side and joined them. 
 
 " Where is Miss Ruley ?" she asked. " I 
 want to see her about something special." 
 The old preacher surveyed, with a certain 
 pious tolerance, the small white-clad shape at 
 his elbow. 
 
 " She is in her room," he said, " and feel- 
 ing less like herself than I could wish. I 
 think she would scarcely desire to be disturbed 
 just now, since she was I may say unable 
 to accompany us to divine service." 
 
 " She'll be down after a while," Graham 
 assured Gracie, with a glance appreciative of
 
 106 
 
 the rose-dashed lips and curled black hair of 
 the small person beyond him. " I think she 
 said, sir, that she would join us on the porch 
 upon our return ?" 
 
 " I believe so," owned the old man. " Come, 
 Frederic. Let us not offend the Most High, 
 as so many are wont, by appearing late in 
 His house." 
 
 Wade, not overhearing this brief talk, ob- 
 served the emptying piazza with growing 
 gloom. A " sacred concert " was forward in 
 one of the big beach-stands, and people were 
 moving down the street in waxing multitudes. 
 Joining these throngs, Wade, with his hat sulk- 
 ing over his eyes, found himself at first indif- 
 ferent to the extraordinary crush of the prom- 
 enade. In both directions a sweeping host 
 pushed, and as he took in, with perhaps a cer- 
 tain acerbity of criticism, the mass of people, 
 it seemed to Wade that only by the seldom- 
 est occasion any individual had the slightest 
 distinction of feature, bearing, or apparel. 
 
 Muslins and laces and flowers and per- 
 fumes and pink cheeks and dimples and curls 
 mixed in a definite aggregation of common- 
 place youthful prettiness. Matronly silks
 
 107 
 
 touched the scene with spots of purple and 
 black. Scarcely any men beyond middle age 
 were to be seen, and at this hour no children 
 whatever. A gratifying lack of pretension 
 marked the crowd. Only now and then a 
 rich toilet walked sublime among the home- 
 wrought frocks of the women-folk, a splendor 
 commonly fitting the lavish contours of some 
 middle-aged lady, whose heavily prosperous 
 air seemed a little new to her. 
 
 No one appeared to care much for the 
 chalky reach of sea dashing its lime -white 
 powder on the sands. The sky, all dappled 
 with bronze, hung low and bright. A soft 
 wind whirred in from the ocean, and as it 
 darkened beyond twilight a distant yacht dis- 
 closed itself as a mere blur of orange in the 
 gathering shadows. 
 
 Feeling out of harmony with the great 
 good cheer of the crowd, Wade started back 
 to the hotel. The town had a singular as- 
 pect of loneliness, having poured its thou- 
 sands out upon the verge of the sea. Streets 
 and porches looked deserted. Electric lights 
 burned with a waste luxuriance over the emp- 
 ty spaces, like candles set by the dead, The
 
 108 
 
 very stars glimmered far and pale, and sud- 
 denly, as Wade looked up, one of them shot 
 out of space, burning a long scar in the dark 
 face of the night. 
 
 That fading cleft of saffron gave the young 
 man an odd feeling of human littleness and 
 individual desolation, and this was not dissi- 
 pated by the absolutely forsaken aspect of 
 the Dorsheimer Arms. The piazza was a 
 long vista of empty chairs. The very office 
 had only one occupant a bell-boy sitting 
 asleep on the bench below the signal-board. 
 
 An enchantment of silence hung upon ev- 
 erything. But as Wade's foot rang loud on 
 the threshold, there vibrated through the 
 strange stillness of the place a sound which 
 drew him motionless. The sound of a voice, 
 it was, bitter and sharp, and echoing from 
 the bare expanse of the reading-room. 
 
 " Never," it swept out strong and stern 
 " never shall I overlook this abomination you 
 have worked. According to your treachery 
 another than I shall deal with you, yea, ac- 
 cording to the measure of your sin. I cannot 
 wonder that you weep. It would be past all 
 hardihood if you were not something eon-
 
 109 
 
 founded with your shame. Oh, that you had 
 died in the hour that gave you birth ! That 
 I had rendered you back to God, pure in 
 your infancy, than that you had lived to turn 
 and pollute my name now when my hands 
 are waxed feeble ! Yea, God ! Thou hast 
 scourged me with rods, Thou hast poured me 
 out like water, Thou hast smitten me in the 
 work of my hands, and I have been silent. 
 Now I am laid waste utterly. I am in the 
 dust. I am uprooted and dishonored !" 
 
 Wade had stepped forward. The single 
 gas-jet in the reading-room flickered low, and 
 in the centre of the dimly-lighted room the old 
 Indiana preacher stood tall and terrible, with 
 an outstretched, anathematizing hand. Three 
 others were in the apartment Graham, just 
 beyond the old man, touched an averted face 
 with a troubled finger; against the post of 
 the ball-room door Grace Gayle leaned, pale, 
 with scared eyes and breathless lips ; and 
 immediately before her father, shrinking, cow- 
 ering under his harsh outpour of words, Eliz- 
 abeth Ruley stood covering her white face 
 with two trembling hands. 
 
 " Don't oh, don't condemn me so utter-
 
 110 
 
 ly !" she moaned. " I don't try to to excuse 
 myself. I have sinned, father yes, yes ! But 
 we had nothing, nothing to live on ! I couldn't 
 see you take the the miserable pension the 
 church that turned you off would have flung 
 to you in charity ! Father, no ! Believe me 
 oh, believe me ! it wasn't for myself that I 
 wronged you that I sold myself that I 
 practised this shameful deceit ! It was for 
 you for " 
 
 " Do not dare," -broke in the old man, 
 with a fearful gleam in his wrathful face, " to 
 make me the apology of your iniquity. Bet- 
 ter I had starved than that this should have 
 come upon me. Have I loved life so as to 
 purchase it at such a price ? No ! Upon your 
 own head be the reward of your evil ! for I 
 stand henceforth aside from your deceits. 
 You are no issue of mine, who am left deso- 
 late, betrayed even by my own loins." He 
 swung on his heel, and brushed off, with an 
 imperious gesture, the hands of the woman 
 who had fallen down before him and would 
 have clasped his knees. 
 
 Graham, with a motion of helpless pain, 
 wheeled past Grace Gayle and into the dark-
 
 Ill 
 
 ness of the dance-hall. Grace hung against 
 the door, mute and motionless, as the old man 
 strode towards the office. In its hard impla- 
 cability his face looked like a mask of iron. 
 His gaze was fierce and fixed, and a vigor be- 
 yond the mere vigor of young blood stirred 
 in his long gait and swinging arms. And 
 where he had left her Elizabeth crouched, 
 with forlorn face bent upon him, and with 
 one miserably shaking hand even yet reach- 
 ing after him in piteous appeal. 
 
 Viewing this concentrated presentment of 
 human passion, altogether unintelligible to 
 him except in its effects, Wade's breath came 
 quick. A tumult of generous impulse surged 
 in him, and his heart lifted as if a great flood 
 bore it up. He jostled the old man's obdu- 
 rate form as he passed it in his haste. 
 
 " Elizabeth," he said, lifting her, and heed- 
 less of the girl in the doorway who stood 
 staring, or the old man who paused to cast 
 back a startled eye, " I don't know what is 
 wrong. I don't ask. I only tell you my be- 
 lief in you isn't changed. And as to my love 
 that is more yours than ever because you 
 are troubled and forsaken."
 
 ELIZABETH'S eyes turned with vague in- 
 credulity upon Wade. She seemed to take 
 in with a certain dimness of comprehen- 
 sion the details of his presence the loung- 
 ing shoulders, cropped mustache, kind eyes, 
 straight hair. 
 
 " You don't know," she half whispered 
 " you don't know about me ?" 
 
 " I know you are good, and that I love 
 you. That's enough." 
 
 " Oh," she murmured, cringing, " tell him, 
 Gracie tell him !" She broke away from 
 him, and in another instant he heard her 
 swift, light steps on the stair. 
 
 Wade's questioning face turned upon the 
 little dancer. 
 
 Grace drew a sobbing breath. "It was 
 me," she cried, faintly. " I did it. I 
 blurted the whole thing right out. You see 
 it was this way : Bailey told me all about it
 
 113 
 
 last night it was right for him to tell me, 
 because we've got things all fixed up, and 
 he's spoke to mom and everything and I 
 wanted to see Elizabeth and tell her I knew, 
 and that I liked her better than ever and was 
 proud to call her my friend. And I chased 
 around all evening looking for her, though 
 Bailey, when he went back to town on the 
 five train, told me I better not let her know 
 I was on. But I haven't the sense God 
 gives little ducks !" cut in Gracie, weeping ; 
 " and when I found her in this room read- 
 ing all by herself I rushed in and out with 
 the whole business. I told her I knew every- 
 thing. I went over it all, and was just beg- 
 ging her to tell me if you knew. And then 
 we heard something drop on the floor 
 a cane, I guess and we looked round and 
 there they stood in the door Graham and 
 old Ruley. They'd heard enough. I thought 
 the old man would die right there. He was 
 calm as an icicle. He made her give him 
 particulars. And then he blazed off like 
 something mad. He went on at her like 
 oh, well, you heard some of his remarks ! 
 Hateful, narrow-minded " 
 
 8
 
 114 
 
 "Grade ! what for ? that's what I'm try- 
 ing to find out. What does he accuse her 
 of ? the sweetest creature on this earth." 
 
 " Oh," moaned Grace, distractedly, " I for- 
 got you hadn't heard. She's Mary Averne, 
 Elizabeth is. They say her Juliet's some- 
 thing great. Bailey's seen her play. He 
 didn't recognize her at first, though he said 
 he was always haunted by a feeling that her 
 face was familiar. But he never actually 
 knew really who she was till that day on 
 the beach when you and Graham were strug- 
 gling out in the ocean. Then he said some- 
 thing like a mask seemed to drop from her 
 face. She lost hold of herself for a minute. 
 Pain is pain. Whether you're acting it or 
 feeling it, I guess it looks pretty much alike. 
 Anyhow, Bailey knew her that quick. He 
 remembered Mary Averne where she takes 
 the poison and says, ' This do I drink to 
 thee !' " 
 
 " Mary Averne ! " 
 
 " But Bailey never said a word to any one. 
 And a couple of weeks ago he met her lead- 
 ing man in town a Mr. Wilmuth. And 
 Wilmuth told him considerable about her
 
 115 
 
 how he'd met her down here on the beach 
 one night, and she begged him not to give 
 her away. She said her father mustn't know. 
 And Wilmuth promised. But seeing Bailey 
 was onto things why, they talked it over." 
 
 "But how but how" 
 
 " Did she keep the old man in the dark ? 
 As far as I can make out it was mostly the 
 Chicago lady's idea. She thought Elizabeth 
 clever. She'd heard her speak little pieces 
 at Sunday-school entertainments. And when 
 the old man lost his grip with the church she 
 sent for Elizabeth and got her in the way 
 of reading round at parlor entertainments. 
 And some manager offered to star her in a 
 Western circuit. lie made her good terms, 
 and the Chicago lady persuaded her into it. 
 So they fixed up that the old man wasn't to 
 find out what he owed his bread-and-butter 
 to it seems he don't think well of the stage. 
 And as he got Elizabeth's letters all from 
 Chicago, why, he never suspected a thing 
 till I gave it away " She sprang up sud- 
 denly from the arm of the leather couch on 
 which, during this narrative, she had support- 
 ed herself. People were coming back from
 
 116 
 
 the beach. Aware of her disordered looks, 
 Grace sped away and up the spiral staircase. 
 
 Presently after Wade came upon Graham, 
 who motioned him aside. The youngpreacher 
 looked terribly put about. 
 
 " A surprisingly unpleasant thing," he said. 
 " You've heard ? Heavens, what a blow !" 
 
 " To" 
 
 " Oh, to all of us ! the old man's done 
 for. He won't survive this bolt, mark me." 
 
 " Bolt ! you talk strangely. Is the mere 
 fact of having a daughter who is an ac- 
 tress " 
 
 " Oh, you take that view ! Her deceiving 
 him, I suppose, doesn't cut any figure in your 
 judgment of the girl ?" 
 
 " Asperity and dogmatism in a father ex- 
 cuse cowardice and stratagem in a child." 
 
 " That sounds like a sentiment in a copy- 
 book. I don't say her course was unpardon- 
 able, but I can feel for Ruley's side of it, 
 too. She knew how he regarded that sort of 
 thing" 
 
 " With the ferocious illiberality he applies 
 to everything." 
 
 " But she knew, too, how fond of her he
 
 117 
 
 is. She might, at least, have talked to him 
 on the subject of her ambitions. It would 
 have been honester." 
 
 " She knew better than to consult him. 
 That libellous creed of his, which accounts 
 human nature as mere dregs and dross, would 
 have damned her as surely for the idea as 
 for the act. And instead of considering the 
 poor child's ' ambitions,' you'd better remem- 
 ber her necessities." 
 
 " There were other means." 
 
 " This moral babble comes poorly from 
 you, Graham you who ' hunt the trail of 
 policy.' She was forced to the line she un- 
 dertook by every pressure of surrounding and 
 heredity. Every quality she has she derives 
 naturally from the man who repudiates her 
 with such noble fury. She is perhaps only 
 a little less dramatic than he himself, and 
 only a little less morbidly conscientious. I 
 don't doubt that she's been frightfully un- 
 happy in this life she's been leading, or that 
 she believes herself to be all that her father 
 declared her." 
 
 " You speak with heat," said Graham. 
 " What I'm principally engrossed with, how-
 
 118 
 
 ever, is my own share in the situation. It 
 goes hard with me to find out these facts con- 
 cerning Miss Ruley. It changes my plans ; 
 knocks the wind out of my sails. When I 
 spoke apparently against her just now, it was 
 to get your views. It did me good to hear 
 you take up for her. Personally I don't care 
 a rap that she's been on the stage. The thing 
 adds a glamour to my notions of her. There's 
 more in her than I dreamed of. I've heard 
 often in the West of Mary Averne and her 
 promise. I've heard her beauty and genius 
 discussed more than once. And to think 
 this little, still, dove-eyed girl should be the 
 same woman ! It's amazing, and it fasci- 
 nates my imagination. But it makes it out 
 of the question for me to marry her. The 
 stage and the pulpit can't mix quite so 
 intimately. This isn't the millennium. A 
 preacher's bound to respect established prej- 
 udices. If I walked after my desires I 
 should pay for the happiness with my ca- 
 reer. I haven't power enough to grasp the 
 nettle of public opinion in my hand and 
 crush the stings out of it. So I know better 
 than to touch the thing an exceeding tough
 
 119 
 
 business in any case. It's rough, though 
 by Heaven it is ! And philosophy is a cursed 
 poor substitute for my sweet Bessie's cleft 
 little chin and big childlike eyes !" 
 
 " Poor as it is," cut in Wade, with sudden 
 irascibility, " you'd have had to make it serve 
 even if Miss Ruley had remained what you 
 thought her an obscure young person, un- 
 stigmatized by any blemish of talent. For 
 she would not have married you, permit me 
 to say with certainty." 
 
 Graham stared. 
 
 " Upon what upon what grounds " 
 
 Wade regarded him quietly. And as they 
 faced each other in silence Graham suddenly 
 seemed to comprehend what the other's sug- 
 gestive stillness implied. He swallowed hard, 
 and drew his nether lip against his teeth. 
 
 " I should like," he said in a moment " I 
 should like to hurl you over that rail. It's 
 you, is it? ah!" Wade burst into a little 
 laugh. 
 
 " Don't do it, old chap !" he said. " Re- 
 member who you are, even if you forgot 
 whom you're addressing. The theological 
 verities ! you can't afford to overlook them !"
 
 120 
 
 Graham turned away, and then, after a mo- 
 ment, wheeled back and clapped Wade's arm 
 rather cordially, though his face was grayish. 
 
 " All right," he said. " You and I can't 
 quarrel. I remember that hideous hour out 
 in that stretch of sea, when no, Wade, no ! 
 I deserve this. I'm like a dastard in battle 
 slain with the spear he has dropped in fleeing 
 nasty sensation." In a moment he asked, 
 " Is it all settled between you two ?" 
 
 " It's settled with me," smiled Wade. 
 " The other may take time. But my life's 
 before me !" 
 
 " Oh, that's it ! She yes, she loves you. 
 A hundred circumstances of proof recur to 
 me. But if you've got to win her across this 
 breach alas ! you'll need your wit, my boy. 
 Sweet as she is, she is narrow, too a Calvin- 
 ist at heart. You should have heard her self- 
 accusations just now ! She'll refuse to blur 
 your purple." 
 
 " And you ?" suggested Wade. 
 
 " Oh, you press me home ! I shall make 
 my farewells to Ruley forthwith. And to- 
 morrow morning, when you come down, I 
 shall be gone. I'd go to-night," he interpo-
 
 121 
 
 lated ironical!} 7 , "only Sabbath travelling, 
 you know ah well !" He thrust out and 
 clasped Wade's hand, and, having wrung it 
 hard, turned about and left him.
 
 XI 
 
 THE morning broke gloomily, with a pee- 
 vish kind of drizzle fretting against the panes, 
 which, as Wade glanced through them, dis- 
 closed a distorted gray world without form 
 or fixity. The ocean looked like a great cyl- 
 inder of zinc. Its rising convexity was un- 
 marked of any object except the black shark- 
 shape of a barge driving to leeward. Even 
 the Lizzie B the little pleasure-yacht always 
 to be seen off the bar of mornings and nights 
 seemed to have scudded out of reach of a 
 threatening storm. The streets were drenched 
 to an ochreous hue, and every passing omni- 
 bus was loaded with people for whom the 
 end of the season had been hastened by re- 
 ports of a big rainfall. 
 
 Things in the lower part of the Dorsheimer 
 Arms were cheerless enough to account for 
 any number of rapid departures. Over it 
 hung the dreariness peculiar in time of foul
 
 133 
 
 weather to houses built for summer and sun- 
 shine ; and guests who were not paying bills 
 and otherwise preparing to take leave stood 
 about desolately, making little effort at occu- 
 pation. A party of elderly women in the 
 parlor were playing a sober game of cards. 
 A child, unoppressed by the general atmos- 
 phere, beat with a fist upon the keys of an 
 aged piano which lingered ingloriously be- 
 hind a door of the reading-room. The clerk, 
 busy and distracted, now and then threw as 
 polite a word as he seemed able to evoke to 
 the group of girls hanging about his desk. 
 For once mirth was notably absent from 
 the rooms and corridors of the Dorsheimer 
 Arms, and Wade, coming in from a walk on 
 the sodden porch, was conscious of leaving 
 better cheer behind him than the office af- 
 forded. 
 
 Presently his observance of the stairway 
 was rewarded by the appearance of two fig- 
 ures, at sight of which he rose at once. Eliza- 
 beth Ruley, with Miss Gayle at her elbow, 
 came towards him. At his look of interroga- 
 tion she said, hopelessly, " He will not see 
 me at all. I have sent to ask him. I have
 
 134 
 
 gone to his door." She drew a sharp breath, 
 adding, " He did not even speak to me." 
 Hurrying on, she touched Wade's sleeve with 
 a little impetuous motion of appeal. " He 
 likes you so much ! do you think, would you 
 be willing to to go to him ? Oh, if you 
 could persuade him just to see me ! Any- 
 thing would be better for him than this ! He 
 was just so when when his other trouble 
 came upon him the church trouble. He 
 shut himself up, and we could not tell how he 
 was taking it or what he might do." 
 
 " I will do anything you advise," said 
 Wade, feeling his throat ache at sight of her 
 drawn little face and shadowed eyes. " Sit 
 here while I go and see what can be done." 
 
 lie left her in the reading-room, and went 
 away and sent up to Mr. Ruley a formal re- 
 quest to speak with him ; but the bell - boy 
 who carried the message returned to say 
 that Mr. Ruley was unable to see any one. 
 Obliged to carry this information to the 
 young woman in the reading-room, Wade 
 had the further discomfort of seeing her 
 deeply cast down by the failure of her plan. 
 Her head dropped despairingly against the
 
 126 
 
 worn leather of the long couch -pillow, and 
 her hands twisted together in an extremity of 
 anguish. 
 
 " I deserve it," she breathed. " He is 
 just, only just, my father, in casting me off 
 like this. I did not want to ask his forgive- 
 ness. I cannot ever hope for that. But there 
 are many ways in which he needs me : I 
 must help him dress, I must fix the beef-tea 
 for him, and take his breakfast up. I only 
 want to beg him to let me serve him in the 
 old way. But I am not fit even for that !" 
 
 " Elizabeth !" cried Wade, " don't blame 
 yourself like this !" 
 
 "I can never blame myself enough. I 
 want to tell him that I haven't waited till 
 now for punishment. I've had it right along 
 daily, hourly. I never threw myself so com- 
 pletely into any character but that I was con- 
 scious of my own guilt and danger, and won- 
 dering if there might not be in the audience 
 that saw me some one who knew Elizabeth 
 Ruley. When I was home at odd times in 
 High Ripple, or anywhere with my father, I 
 tried to make my face absolutely blank, for 
 fear a vivid expression of any sort of thought
 
 126 
 
 or feeling might recall to a stranger's eye 
 the face of Mary Averne. I locked myself 
 in a kind of stony cell of control, and I stifled 
 there, longing sometimes to cry out, to mani- 
 fest in one way or other the poor self that 
 was thus barred in, walled up. I have suf- 
 fered yes, I have suffered, as it was right I 
 should ; for I have sinned against everything 
 rearing, conviction, a daughter's duty. Oh, 
 I realize the truth of what you want to say ! 
 that there is nothing essentially wrong 
 in the profession I have followed. For most 
 women, perhaps not. For me, with my breed- 
 ing and my beliefs yes, yes !" 
 
 " Bat, dearest ! the general truth can't be 
 the specific falsehood, nor the abstract right 
 the concrete wrong. Look at the thing 
 broadly, widely. Drop a standard that is 
 merely local and temporary. As to your fa- 
 ther's justice, he is just perhaps, but merely 
 according to the range of one who stands 
 upon a dark crag of moral vision and sees 
 only a desolated vallej below him. I don't 
 want to offend you by criticising him, Eliza- 
 beth ; but it seems to me that no man is fit 
 to judge his fellow -beings who cannot see
 
 127 
 
 something of the ineradicable good which 
 lies somewhere in the lowest of us." 
 
 " Lowest !" She caught at the word. 
 " Yes, yes ; we are all corrupt, debased " 
 
 " Oh no, we're not, Elizabeth ! How your 
 mind fastens to its traditions of a fallen 
 race ! But it is natural that you should see 
 only what you have been taught to see 
 a slavish and vicious humanity, a violent and 
 tyrannical God. These ideas belong to each 
 other. Change one and the other changes. 
 See something noble in the creature ' man, 
 whose name and nature God disdained not,' 
 and at once an implacable and contemptu- 
 ous creator becomes impossible. The work 
 of our hands is dear to us even in its imper- 
 fections." 
 
 " I think you misunderstand my father's 
 position. You are like the church people 
 who tired of his teachings, and, liko most folk 
 in this time of creedal change, you prefer 
 to the Jehovah of the Scriptures a smilingly 
 complacent Deity, who shall find it pleasanter 
 to be merciful than just. I have old -fash- 
 ioned ideas myself. I would rather never bow 
 the knee at all than worship a divine senti-
 
 138 
 
 mentalist, always readier to weep over the 
 sinner than to approve the righteous. The 
 God of my. faith holds a sword, and not a 
 censer. Vice cannot be perfumed away ; it 
 must be cut off." 
 
 " Your faith, then, my dearest, is Hebraic 
 rather than Christian. You hold by the law 
 rather than the sacrifice." 
 
 " I hold by my father's God." 
 
 " A hurler of thunder-bolts, merciless, vin- 
 dictive a being, indeed, singularly after your 
 father's own mortal plan. Have you ever no- 
 ticed that our gods are wonderfully like 
 ourselves ? The Chinese deity has oblique 
 eyes, the African thick lips, Zeus of the 
 Athenians a Greek profile. But why are 
 we talking of all this ? I only want to make 
 you believe that you ought not to judge your- 
 self so harshly. Your motives were good. 
 You sinned, perhaps, in deceiving him. But 
 sins vary ; some of them have a nobler sa- 
 vor than the catechism taste of what is 
 merely moral. An unscrupulous honesty 
 isn't the highest good. To be willing, for 
 another's happiness, to sin and bear the in- 
 evitable issue of sin, seems to me some-
 
 129 
 
 thing finer than the rough-shod virtue which 
 tramples heavenward upon the sensibilities 
 of other people." 
 
 " Oh," she murmured, " how gently you 
 deal with with " 
 
 " The woman I love ?" He laughed softly. 
 In her next words she took tacit account of 
 this murmured phrase. 
 
 " Your very generosity separates us in- 
 finitely," she said. 
 
 Wade frowned. 
 
 " My generosity ?" 
 
 " Don't you see how it is ? I am the more 
 unworthy." 
 
 " Oh, a jackstraw of a notion for me to 
 overthrow !" He laughed again, committing 
 the error of refusing to take her scruples se- 
 riously. " But can't you see, dear, that you are 
 encouraging vice when you use a man's virt- 
 ues against him ? When you are my wife " 
 
 " A woman whose father discards her isn't 
 fit to be your wife." 
 
 " I care nothing for " 
 
 " / care. From my father's hand or not 
 at all." She spoke steadily. He tried to de- 
 tain her that he might attack this decision 
 
 9
 
 130 
 
 from another point ; but she went away, 
 only looking back once over her shoulder, a 
 little shadowy creature enough with her sor- 
 rowful eyes, but with something in her lips 
 of her father's indomitable quality. 
 
 All day long the rain whimpered on the 
 panes. Towards night a high wind began to 
 whirl in from the swelling sea, whipping 
 round the house's frail walls in great blasts. 
 A constant thudding of shutters and an oc- 
 casional crashing of insecurely set glass ag- 
 gravated the clamor of the storm. When 
 the office door was opened never so little 
 a flawy sweep of rain lifted the papers to 
 the ceiling. People whose summery cottons 
 were supplemented with shawls and jackets 
 hung about stairs and halls talking ominously 
 of the various contingencies of a coast tem- 
 pest. Tidal waves were darkly mentioned. 
 If the roof of the Dorsheimer Arms stayed 
 over it every one would be surprised. An 
 air of foreboding pervaded the gloomy wastes 
 of rooms, deepening as the blast screamed 
 still more shrilly, and the electric lamps, sick- 
 ening to mere scarlet threads in their crystal 
 lobes, finally shuddered out, and left to the
 
 131 
 
 jaundiced rays of a few hastily-lighted gas- 
 jets the scared faces of the women grouped 
 anxiously about. 
 
 " Mom is like she was crazy," said Grace 
 Gayle to Wade, over the baluster. " She 
 hears banshees and things keening under the 
 window. Between her and Elizabeth I've got 
 my hands full." She looked, indeed, far less 
 smart than her wont. Her hair was uncurled, 
 and fell around her common little features in 
 masses much softer than usual. " This is 
 beef-tea," she pursued, indicating the covered 
 cup she carried, " for him.' 1 '' 
 
 " Mr. Ruley ?" 
 
 " Mm. Elizabeth's promised to go to bed 
 in case I can get this delivered into his own 
 hands. She says he's used to having it this 
 time every night. The bell-boys are mostly 
 busy just now holding down the roof any- 
 how, I don't see 'em about. So I'm going to 
 beard the lion myself." 
 
 " Can't I take it ?" 
 
 " I guess I'll try it myself," she decided. 
 " I oughtn't to shirk anything, for I feel awful 
 guilty about this whole business. Oh, if 
 Bailey was only here !"
 
 132 
 
 "Bailey! oh, I'd forgotten. The real 
 thing, is it, Gracie ?" 
 
 " You can put your last cent on it," said 
 Gracie, solemnly ; " I wouldn't be going to 
 marry him if it wasn't. Oh, I'm struck ! but 
 we're going slow very slow. This world- 
 without-end business ought not to be rushed. 
 If I haven't got the everlasting and eternal 
 kind of love you read about, I want to know 
 it before I get over my depth. That's what 
 I told Bailey that I have to have a long, 
 long time to think it over. We're both awful 
 serious no mad haste or other foolishness 
 about us. Of course, man-like, Bailey would 
 have liked it better if I'd demanded less 
 time, but he finally agreed with me that time 
 was the only thing to judge constancy by. 
 So we're going to wait six weeks." Smiling 
 gravely she went on up-stairs. 
 
 Laying her knuckles against Mr. Ruley's 
 door she held herself to listen. At the 
 second knock the slow and steady sound of 
 pacing feet within the room ceased, and a 
 voice said, " Well ?" 
 
 " Your beef-tea," replied Gracie, assuming 
 a boyish intonation.
 
 ffelf* 
 
 ; 'THIS is BEEF-TEA FOR ///.v'"
 
 133 
 
 " None to-night, thank you." 
 
 " Please, sir " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I got to obey orders. They told me to 
 leave it." There was a kind of murmur 
 from behind the dark panels. Then the key 
 clicked, and Mr. Ruley's face showed in a 
 narrow opening of the door. 
 
 It was so stern that stony -looking face 
 with its hollow, feverish eyes and tufts of 
 brows and frayed ends of rumpled hair that 
 Gracie uttered a little gasp of alarm. Mr. 
 Rulcy stared distantly at her and his long 
 nostrils dilated. He made a sudden move- 
 ment as if to shut the door again, but Grace 
 put herself in the way. 
 
 " Woman," began Mr. Ruley, sternly. 
 Grade's blood rose. 
 
 " Bear in mind that I'm not your daughter. 
 You can't call me names. I've never taken 
 abuse from any one, and I won't from you ! 
 Here's your beef-tea. I guess it ain't very 
 hot, but I had trouble enough to get it as it 
 is. But Elizabeth " 
 
 " I refuse to hear any more." 
 
 " Unless you're going to shut the door on
 
 134 
 
 my hand, you'll have to. I'm not afraid of 
 you I have been, but I'm not now. -I don't 
 respect you enough to be afraid. No, not if 
 you are a preacher ! a preacher !" she re- 
 peated in an accent of irony, " why, if you 
 were the One you preach about you couldn't 
 set yourself up any higher! For even He 
 isn't too holy to forgive folks that slip up 
 once and again, and you are. Your own 
 flesh and blood, too ! That makes it worse. 
 It isn't because Elizabeth has sinned against 
 God that you carry on like this, and won't 
 speak to her and starve yourself to death, 
 and have folks trailing across a wet court- 
 yard to make you beef-tea in a big empty 
 kitchen where there's mice running around 
 it's because she's sinned against you. It 
 isn't piety that's got you it's pride. That's 
 all I got to say. I didn't expect to open 
 my mouth. I didn't dream I'd dare to. And 
 I got a queer, shaky feeling in my hands this 
 minute. Take this cup, quick !" 
 
 Gasping a little with excitement, she thrust 
 the cup into his hand and turned away. Half- 
 way down the corridor she glanced back. The 
 door of Mr. Ruley's room was still open, and
 
 135 
 
 Mr. Ruley himself, drawn to some petrifac- 
 tion of anger or amazement, stood rooted in 
 the space. His eyes were fixed upon her 
 own retreating figure. The storm within 
 seemed to render him unaware of the clash 
 and roar of the storm without. 
 
 " Oh, he's awful !" sighed Grace, aghast to 
 rememher what she had said to the old man. 
 
 After midnight the wind seemed some- 
 what to abate. People timorously sought 
 their beds, and Wade presently went also 
 to his room. It was still very early in the 
 morning when he woke to find a dawn of 
 
 O 
 
 dazzling primrose unfolding in the storm- 
 free sky. But, though it was yet barely day, 
 a crowd appeared to be gathering on the 
 beach, and, observing the hurrying midge- 
 like figures to the left of the upper board 
 walk, Wade decided that perhaps the lif j- 
 saving station had been called to service by 
 some disabled ship off the bar. 
 
 He dashed into his clothes. The halls 
 looked dark. No one was stirring, but as the 
 young man turned the stair's first landing he 
 saw a figure laboriously coining along the 
 passage below.
 
 136 
 
 It took Wade another glance to determine 
 the shuffling form as that of Mr. Ruley. The 
 old preacher fingered the wall as he advanced, 
 and a ray of amber light striking through a 
 window at the end of the hall gave his face 
 an unearthly kind of glow. His very gar- 
 ments had that air of laxity and unfitness 
 which a dead man's attire sometimes shows 
 in accommodating itself to stiff limbs. But 
 it was his expression rather than any details 
 of his garb or gait which gave Wade a sense 
 of chill. 
 
 His gaze was very gentle, but its mildness 
 bore to the young man's mind no intima- 
 tion of benignity. It was hardly a spiritual 
 conformation at all, but more like a passive 
 fleshly mood, as if the spiritual had gone or 
 had utterly given over control of the body. 
 
 "Is it you?" he said to Wade. "I was 
 looking for some one " 
 
 " Your daughter ?" suggested Wade, as the 
 old man fastened upon his strength with a 
 kind of clinging satisfaction. 
 
 " My daughter ? yes. Yes, I believe so. 
 I wanted some one. It is not good for so 
 old a man to be left alone." He had turned,
 
 137 
 
 and was guiding Wade down the passage. On 
 the threshold of his room a few scraps of 
 broken china lay. 
 
 " I dropped it," he said. " The cup she 
 brought me the dancing-girl." 
 
 " Gracie ?" 
 
 " I believe so. She spoke to me of 
 many things. I cannot recall them ; of Eliz- 
 abeth the child of my old age a repent- 
 ant sinner. I should like to recall what she 
 said, but it's been so long now, I I can't. I 
 have suffered much. But it is God's great 
 tenderness, His unceasing unceasing love 
 that leaves my faculties clear and and 
 strong through all this stress. In green past- 
 ures and by still waters but I was speak- 
 ing of the dancing -girl not Salome this 
 other one. The mighty fall. And through 
 His loving-kindness the weak things of this 
 world the weak things prevail. He pre- 
 pareth a table for me He prepareth a ta- 
 ble " He rambled on through an incohe- 
 rency of scriptural allusion, referring often 
 to his daughter, and rubbing his hands cease- 
 lessly together as he sat on the bedside and 
 smiled vaguely, and sometimes left off srnil-
 
 138 
 
 ing to pluck soberly at a ray of sunshine 
 flickering over his knee. 
 
 Under the dim abstraction of those peace- 
 ful eyes Wade's heart faltered to an aghast 
 conviction of all that their roving glances 
 meant. He had taken his last hurt, had 
 Mr. Ruley. The tension had been too much 
 for the mental fabric. If it had not snapped 
 wholly asunder, at least its power had lost all 
 elasticity. It had not rebounded from this 
 final jerk of fate, but had settled to a sort of 
 senile flaccidity. 
 
 " In the fulness of my years a ripened 
 shock my dear one, my Bessie, is with me 
 to " The old man paused, with his mild 
 gaze on the door. The knob had seemed to 
 turn a little from the outside, as if in an ex- 
 periraentative hand. It clicked back as the 
 door sprung open, revealing Elizabeth herself 
 in the hall. Her eyes went wide at sight of 
 Wade. Something like joy leaped to her 
 face as she bent a swift gaze on her father 
 and saw his placidity of brow. It seemed to 
 flash upon her that this unexpected mildness 
 of feature was in some sort due to the young 
 man that he, perhaps, had mediated for her.
 
 139 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " youj you have done 
 this !" And, clasping her father, she sobbed, 
 " You forgive me, then ! and he has brought 
 it about ! Oh, I'm glad it was he !" Mr. Ru- 
 ley's countenance exhibited a struggling com- 
 prehension. 
 
 " Our young friend, Mr. Wade ?" he asked. 
 " Yes, I remember not long since when I 
 I you had done something to offend me 
 he upheld you I remember it all very 
 well." He stroked his daughter's hair as he 
 spoke, but something in his words or man- 
 ner startled her. She drew back. The vacant 
 amiability in the old man's regard of her ap- 
 peared to strike her to the soul. She turned 
 almost wildly to Wade. 
 
 " What is it ?" she breathed. " Doesn't lie 
 know me ? Oh " 
 
 " Know you ?" repeated Mr. Ruley, with 
 gentle reproach. " Certainly. Though you 
 grow so tall, Bessie ! and your long curls ? 
 cut off all cut off mm ! A pity !" She rose. 
 She seemed about to fall, and Wade, rising 
 also, drew her face upon his shoulder. In 
 that moment of utter weakness and desperate 
 realization she had no objections, no scru-
 
 140 
 
 pies, no provisions against the love she had 
 been able in lesser straits to renounce. She 
 merely clang to Wade, speechlessly, blindly. 
 
 "A good child," murmured the old man, 
 with an eye of remote approval. " ' Sweet is 
 thy voice and thy countenance is comely.' " 
 His face clouded a little. " You will be kind 
 to her?" he asked Wade, with a kind of 
 doubt. "If I remember well I have some- 
 times been severe, somewhat severe, with this 
 cherished daughter of mine. But I thought 
 I was right." 
 
 " Father, you were right !" 
 
 " I believe I was," quavered Mr. Ruley, 
 brightening up. " I executed justice. I was 
 right. But," he added, in a mildly queru- 
 lous fashion, " what difference does it make, 
 anyway ?" 
 
 The sun was shining now with blinding 
 radiance. White-caps danced along the sea, 
 which, still upheaved, flashed like a dolphin's 
 back scaled with silver. Among the loose 
 and shattered timber of the ocean walk 
 throngs were gathering, discussing the rav- 
 ages of tie storm, laughing, chattering as 
 gayly as ever. Everything wore a jocund as-
 
 141 
 
 pect, a cheerincss such as hangs upon the 
 subsidence of peril or disaster. The tem- 
 pest had passed, and it was well with the 
 blithe summer city. 
 
 But beached below the last pavilion a 
 wrecked vessel lay black and crushed, with a 
 shattered mast lunging across it into the 
 sand. It spoke a mute tale of stress and an- 
 guish and stifled prayers and futile effort. It 
 was tragic enough ; yet children clambered 
 over it, shouting joyously, incoming weaves 
 wreathed it with blossorny white, and here 
 and there wet patches of the battered hulk 
 mirrored what it had never rendered back 
 while it stoutly rode the seas little glimpses 
 of the blue sky that shines over all mortal 
 things. 
 
 THE END
 
 BY EVA WILDER McGLASSON. 
 
 AN EARTHLY PARAGON. A Novel. Il- 
 lustrated by F. V. Du MONO. Post Svo, 
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 3