THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 *.
 
 BIRD OF TIME
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 BEING CONVERSATIONS WITH EGERIA 
 
 BY 
 MRS. WILSON WOODROW 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 
 MCMVII
 
 Copyright, 1907, by McClure, Phillips $ Co. 
 Published, March, 1907, N
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE WOMAN OF FIFTY . . . 3 
 
 II. THE QUALITY OF CHARM . . 27 
 
 III. THE PKIDE OF THE EYE . . 49 
 
 IV. THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT . 71 
 V. THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 89 
 
 VI. WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ . 117 
 
 VII. WORK vs. BEAUTY .... 139 
 
 VIII. A GAME OF BRIDGE . . .161 
 
 IX. Is LOVE ENOUGH? . . . .183 
 
 X. THE SUPREME INTEREST . . 207 
 
 XI. THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN . . 225 
 
 XII. THE ART OF GIVING . . . 247 
 
 XIII. CONCLUSION . 265
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY
 
 "Look, lady, where yon river winds its line 
 
 Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face 
 The splendor of fair life: to be divine, 
 
 'Tis nature bids you be to nature true, 
 Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace, 
 Reflecting heaven in clearness you." 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH.
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 IT was Egeria's birthday and she had been 
 having a garden party to celebrate the 
 event. Out upon the closely cropped green 
 lawn there were tents and marquees; there 
 were music and the hum of voices ; there were 
 women in charming frocks and plenty of 
 men; but now the groups were rapidly thin- 
 ning and only a few of Egeria's " friends of 
 the soul " had remained. 
 
 " Not an ice, thank you," she was saying 
 to the Commonplace Man from the depths of 
 a wicker chair, " a cup of tea. You know how 
 I like it, very hot and with three thick slices 
 of lemon." 
 
 Egeria, a painter of distinction, was a 
 slender woman with light hair of no par- 
 ticular tint and sea-green eyes. Her features 
 were anything but classic, and her pale face
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 was slightly tanned by much outdoor living, 
 for she was the possessor of a wonderful, old- 
 fashioned garden; a sweet, sedate, secluded 
 garden with the leisure and reserve of a by- 
 gone day. One felt sure that no stolid gar- 
 dener, hired temporarily for a month or a 
 year, had ever toiled in it unwillingly. No 
 indeed! For forty years the same bent, 
 hardy old fellow had spaded and hoed and 
 weeded the beds, and neither he nor his pred- 
 ecessors had lacked assistance; for every 
 bush and shrub had been tended by the deli- 
 cate hands of each succeeding mistress of the 
 place. For a hundred springs each plant 
 had pushed its way through the sod, had put 
 forth its leaves and bloomed with the con- 
 fidence of an eager welcome; and because 
 each succeeding mistress had loved the gar- 
 den well and had left it reluctantly, Egeria 
 always affirms that there are ghosts there. 
 She says that on Sunday mornings, when the 
 church bells ring, there is the soft rustle of 
 silk over the borders, and a lace veil falls 
 over the demure face of a lovely lady as she 
 stoops to gather a sprig of balsam and
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 places it between the leaves of her hymn 
 book. 
 
 Some illusion of light and shade the ef- 
 fect of sunlight through flickering leaves? 
 Nonsense. 
 
 And when the mignonette gives out its per- 
 fume in the twilight, a pale shape with dis- 
 creetly lowered eyelids glides down the paths ; 
 gauzes float about her, a scarf shields her 
 slender shoulders. 
 
 The mist of white clematis flowers? Never. 
 And Egeria says that if you rise very early 
 you may see a girlish shape flying through 
 the roses to meet the youth at the end of the 
 pink and crimson lane. The wind of dawn 
 blows from the east, the sun rises and the 
 rose petals fall as the two kiss and vanish. 
 The last sweet dream before waking? Absurd. 
 
 But it was early autumn now, and the 
 roses had long faded. Instead there was the 
 scarlet insolence of salvias, the sunshine of 
 golden glow, the imperial purple of asters ; 
 and the garden had thrown off its air of se- 
 rene reserve and gentle melancholy, and each 
 flower and each tendril of vine thrilled with 
 [5]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 a pagan rapture to the warmth of the sun 
 and the strength of the breeze. 
 
 " How marvelously fitting," said the Poet 
 dreamily, brushing one long lock from his 
 brow, " for you to be born in the autumn, 
 Madame Egeria. You yourself typify the 
 golden September." 
 
 " Speaking of birthdays," said the Editor 
 of a woman's magazine, with a professional 
 note in his voice and a professional gleam 
 in his eye, " what do you consider the most 
 perfect age for a woman ? " 
 
 " Fifty," replied Egeria without hesita- 
 tion. 
 
 There was a chorus of laughter. 
 
 " I'd as lief be a thousand as fifty," said 
 Castilia, who was twenty-five, dark as a 
 moonless midnight, with the bloom of a peach 
 on the south side of a sunny wall. 
 
 " The Bird of Time has but a little way 
 to flutter when one is fifty," murmured the 
 Poet. 
 
 " Fifty," repeated Egeria stoutly. " I said 
 fifty, and I meant it. It is the age of realiza- 
 tion. The woman of fifty should have lost 
 [6]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 nothing and have gained everything. The 
 flesh may no longer conceal the soul; char- 
 acter must reveal itself." 
 
 " In wrinkles and gray locks," scoffed 
 Castilia. 
 
 "Not at all," Egeria dissented. "It is 
 usually conceded by wrinkle specialists that 
 those banes come from the indulgence of 
 moods temper, discontent, and worry. But 
 think, Castilia, of the several women of fifty 
 we know. Think of Estelle, to whom you just 
 said good-by charming and beautiful, and 
 young in heart and appearance. Of course, 
 her face does not exhibit the unwritten page 
 of lovely sixteen; but it has none of the 
 wrinkles you so dread, only the sensitive, 
 beautiful lines of character, thought, expe- 
 rience, and sympathy." 
 
 " Indian Summer's Lady," murmured the 
 Poet. 
 
 Egeria smiled gratefully at him. " What 
 a charming phrase ! " 
 
 " Except that it reminds one that to wear 
 it, one must be in the Autumn of life," ob- 
 jected Castilia, "Indian Summer's Lady! 
 
 m
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 The last flash in Summer's pan then the 
 long cold winter." 
 
 Egeria lifted her head in radiant defiance. 
 " There need be no long, cold winter. There 
 is no longer, Thank Goodness! any definite 
 line marking the boundary between youth 
 and old age. Why, the woman who to-day 
 is celebrated for distinctive charm and 
 beauty, ripe views, disciplined intellect, cul- 
 tivated and manifold gifts, would, forty 
 years ago, have been relegated to the heavy 
 ranks of the dowagers and grandmothers; 
 forced by the stern conventions of prevailing 
 opinion to retire from the game just as she 
 had gained a mastery of the rules." 
 
 " Now that," said the Editor, " is a ques- 
 tion which might elicit considerable interest- 
 ing discussion in my magazine. Why are the 
 typical modern women of to-day twenty years 
 younger in manners, dress and appearance 
 than were their grandmothers at the same 
 age ? " He had his eyes fixed meditatively 
 upon Castilia as he spoke. 
 
 " I do not know, I'm sure," she replied, 
 shaking her dark head. " Ask Egeria. She is 
 
 [8]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 always ready to discuss any subject, no mat- 
 ter whether -she knows anything about it or 
 not." 
 
 " I do not think that is a very hard ques- 
 tion," returned Egeria. " You must remem- 
 ber that in those days forty was a very re- 
 spectable age, if viewed from the matronly 
 standpoint; but at fifty, one prepared for 
 death. The woman who had reached that 
 age must smooth back her locks under a 
 snowy cap, crush her heart's aspirations un- 
 der the juggernaut car of convention, adopt 
 garments suitable to her age; rich perhaps, 
 but dark and unbecoming; and keep ever 
 before her mind the fact that she was an old 
 woman until in very truth she was. Who 
 would not be, if all of one's interests were 
 supposed to center in the household, the poor, 
 needlework and the biographies of famous 
 divines and missionaries." 
 
 " Still, after all," argued the Judge, " is 
 that not better than that saddest of all spec- 
 tacles a woman of age, but no dignity, who 
 endeavors to conceal her gray hairs and 
 wrinkles under a garish mask of youth ? " 
 [9]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Infinitely better," agreed Egeria ; " but 
 on the other hand, why should middle life 
 appropriate the trappings of age? Does In- 
 dian Summer borrow Winter's ice and snow? 
 And a healthy woman of fifty with varied 
 interests should be typical of that mellow 
 season of sunshine and ripened stores," smil- 
 ing at the Poet, who sat hugging his knees 
 at her feet. 
 
 " Do you remember the favorite heroine of 
 the elder novelists? She was always beautiful 
 seventeen ; and her antithesis and foil was the 
 snubbed, spinster governess invariably de- 
 scribed as nine-and-twenty, with lines of age 
 and grief graven deep in her face. Well, 
 women looked upon that picture until they 
 grew tired of the sight of it, and then sud- 
 denly they decided not to grow old; and be- 
 lieve me or not, it is largely a question of 
 will." 
 
 " And of clothes," murmured Castilia. 
 
 " Yes and of clothes," Egeria admitted. 
 
 " There never was a woman of fascination 
 
 who did not have an instinctive knowledge 
 
 of the art of dress or make an especial study 
 
 [10]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 of it. She knows that much of her attraction 
 lies in this outward expression of her indiv- 
 iduality. Now the woman of fifty is long past 
 the restrictions of youth, and may wear ex- 
 actly what suits her best. She may even adopt 
 the white muslin, blue ribbons and rose- 
 wreathed hat of the young girl if she choose ; 
 but and now listen well Castilia, this dis- 
 sertation is entirely for your ears, it is an 
 unlearned tongue to these masculine crea- 
 tures but the muslin gown must be elabo- 
 rate. Sweet simplicity at fifty is absurd. A 
 middle-aged woman who has lived in the world 
 is a complex creature; therefore, the white 
 muslin must be lavishly adorned with lace or 
 embroidery, the blue ribbons be of the exact 
 shade to suit the complexion, and the rose- 
 wreathed hat should be the dream of an artist, 
 vivid and French, with all the distinction of 
 an indefinable style. 
 
 " A wide field of choice belongs to the mid- 
 dle-aged woman. She may strike vibrant 
 chords of strong color or soft, harmonious 
 moonlight shades. The splendor of jewels is 
 her privilege ; and she may deck herself bar- 
 
 [11]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 barically and yet be within the canons of 
 good taste. She may ' ransack the ages spoil 
 the climes ' for effects, for whatever makes 
 for form or color ; but these, Castilia, are not 
 her gods. If she has devoted all her powers 
 to the development of physical perfection or 
 a mastery of the art of dress ; she may be 
 a beautiful statue or an exquisite piece of 
 bric-a-brac ; but she is not a woman who could 
 either fascinate or enchain. The woman who 
 is really charming has given these details due 
 attention taken them as a matter of course, 
 as one takes one's breakfast, and has then 
 relegated them to the background of her 
 thoughts, for the woman of fifty who is beau- 
 tiful, lives in the world's life, and ideals, its 
 hopes and dreams. She stands for something 
 in her particular environment. Her opinions 
 are no longer tentative, or in the formative 
 period. She has had years wherein to observe 
 events, to study persons and conditions, and to 
 weigh and test the value of her beliefs. She is 
 careful, however, not to let them solidify. 
 She holds them flexible, ready to be extended 
 or contracted ; but they are definite. * They 
 [12]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 say is a phrase which has no especial weight 
 for her. Her * I say ' is perfectly satisfactory 
 for herself, although never imposed on others. 
 
 " And the delightful woman of middle life 
 is very tolerant, very chary of passing judg- 
 ment. In fact, she has a greater horror of 
 intolerance than the devil of holy water. Why 
 should the rose cavil at the catnip ? The world 
 is wide, and it would be extremely monotonous 
 if this earth were one vast flower garden. Nei- 
 ther is Indian Summer's lady sensitive. That 
 is a form of egotism which may be excused at 
 sweet eighteen but is impossible at fifty. She 
 has learned with patience and humility life's 
 most difficult lesson self-control; and she 
 seasons all the dishes at her banquet of exist- 
 ence with a sense of humor. Without it the 
 feast would be as flat as a vegetarian dinner. 
 Above all, she has not been afraid to live." 
 
 " That is such an obnoxious phrase," ob- 
 jected Castilia. " To say that a man or woman 
 looks as if he or she had lived usually means 
 that they are battered, dissipated wrecks." 
 
 " That's because our imaginations never 
 soar above the material plane, and there are 
 [13]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 so many planes, so many new worlds to dis- 
 cover." Egeria's eyes looked wistfully beyond 
 the reds and yellows of her garden to the far 
 horizon. 
 
 " * The splendid worlds that wait,' " quoted 
 the Poet softly. 
 
 " But the woman, in fact the human being 
 who lives on all the planes of consciousness 
 is rare," said the Judge thoughtfully. 
 " That is why we see so litfte variation in 
 type." 
 
 " What would you say were the predomi- 
 nating types of women? " asked the Editor. 
 
 " Two," answered Egeria promptly. " The 
 woman whose interests pertain exclusively to 
 material comforts and adornments, and she 
 who has thrown all the forces of her nature 
 into intellectual pursuits and who has neg- 
 lected or ignored the one splendid, glorious 
 gift of God her femininity." 
 
 " There are very few men who live entirely 
 without feminine companionship," said the 
 Editor, " and those who attempt it are 
 cranks." 
 
 " Man," remarked the Judge judicially, 
 [14]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 " is sufficiently primitive and sensible to 
 realize that his intellect is stimulated, enliv- 
 ened and inspired by the society of women; 
 but is it not true that there are thousands of 
 women who by a one-sided and abnormal de- 
 votion to what they are pleased to call ' cul- 
 ture ' or * my work ' deny themselves the rec- 
 reations of social life and consequently are 
 devoid of the ease and grace of manner ac- 
 quired in such an atmosphere; and at last 
 they find themselves in middle life with an 
 encyclopedic mass of information and an 
 atrophied heart." 
 
 " It all comes from that horrid way of 
 seeing in every man a possible lover," said 
 Castilia, although meeting the Poet's ardent 
 gaze she had the grace to blush. " They can- 
 not meet men frankly and spontaneously as 
 friends whose comradeship adds interest and 
 color to their lives ; but view them as a strange 
 race, either fiends or demigods." 
 
 " But the disciplined, mature woman of 
 middle age has lived past all that," main- 
 tained Egeria confidently. " She regards 
 men equally with women as her friends and 
 [15]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 companions. But," sitting up and clasping 
 together her long, slender hands covered with 
 quaint, green rings, " she has not been afraid 
 to love. She has not shut the vision and the 
 splendor out of her life; and she has given 
 her affection in no half-hearted way. Look- 
 ing back she can say, * I loved thee to the 
 depth and breadth and height my soul can 
 reach.' If for her love has meant unhappi- 
 ness, then she has suffered ; and yet through 
 suffering has come to realize that love is a 
 paradox. It is all of life and yet far from 
 all. So with the whole strength of her will she 
 has thrown herself into wider issues than her 
 heart's boundary and learned : 
 
 'For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close. 
 For glory to be lord of self; for pleasure 
 To live beyond the gods; for countless wealth 
 To lay up lasting treasure.' " 
 
 " You are carried away by your theme," 
 exclaimed Castilia. " You would not really 
 like to be fifty, Egeria? " 
 
 " I shall not repine when I get there," re- 
 plied Egeria. " Why, to-day the most in- 
 [16]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 fluential women in social life are women of 
 fifty and over. They are not always those 
 leaders of the great world who are most in 
 evidence; but it is their feats which count. 
 They give the cachet, the final fillip to any 
 entertainment." 
 
 " But since you claim beauty for the 
 woman of fifty, what do you think of the 
 man who said that no woman was worth look- 
 ing at after thirty, nor worth talking to be- 
 fore? " asked the Judge teasingly. 
 
 " He'd have no standing for sincerity now 
 in regard to his first clause, although he was 
 right in the main in his second. Many young 
 women desire to make social history for 
 themselves by being regarded as brilliant 
 conversationalists ; but the older and wiser 
 woman is able to exert a far more potent at- 
 traction. She understands that the true art 
 of conversation is the ability to draw out the 
 best in man or woman. The light of her sym- 
 pathy is so clear and perfect that all the dull 
 facets of their wit reflect it. In her presence 
 the diffident and reserved become confident; 
 and unerringly she draws to the surface the 
 [17]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 submerged tenth of their individuality ; their 
 deepest, most sincere thought. The woman of 
 fifty has realized what is at once the cruelest 
 and kindest fact of life the solitude of self 
 and has accepted its stern mandates." 
 
 " Yes, and what are its stern mandates ? " 
 asked the Judge, as she paused a moment. 
 
 " Efface your illnesses, your tears, your 
 moods and your tempers. These would limit 
 your power. These are the little foxes which 
 gnaw the branches of your empire. She who 
 would thoroughly poll her kingdoms must 
 con well that terrible noblesse oblige: For 
 the world's sake, not mine. 
 
 " But," she cried brightening, " Take one 
 of the professional women of fifty years who 
 was here this afternoon. She does not sit 
 down and rust; instead she looks well to her 
 talents that they may take on ever new luster. 
 She is at the very zenith of her powers and 
 stretching out eager hands to the future. She 
 can bring to her work a ripened knowledge 
 of life, and of the emotions and passions upon 
 the character, which could only have been 
 gained after years of observation and close 
 [18]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 study of men and women. She has had time 
 enough to have, in a sense, mastered tech- 
 nique; to handle the tools of her craft with 
 such complete ease, that she is, in a measure, 
 unconscious of them." 
 
 " In a word, she has found herself," said 
 the Poet. 
 
 " Yes, and if that is true in art, it is a 
 thousand times truer in life. At fifty one has 
 had time to smooth down all the rough edges, 
 to soften all the glaring high lights and to 
 touch up the low tones. 
 
 " What an opportunity ! What a task for a 
 woman of imagination to liberate or rather 
 evolve her potentialities ; to transform the 
 ordinary into the ideal ! " 
 
 " Her last achievement," said the Editor. 
 
 " No, the last and crowning charm of the 
 woman of fifty is repose. She does not fuss or 
 bustle. She has sown for many years and 
 now it is time for her to begin to reap some 
 of her harvests, to gather up her fruits and 
 tears. And she is content because, as Mr. 
 Howells expresses it in one of his stories, she 
 has ' glimpsed in certain luminous moments, 
 [19]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 an infinite compassion encompassing our 
 whole being like a sea, where every trouble of 
 our sins and sorrows must cease at last like a 
 circle in the water.' ' 
 
 " She is too perfect ! " said the Poet, throw- 
 ing up his hands. " She bores me." 
 
 " Wait," said Egeria impressively, " and 
 let me finish. I was about to say that Indian 
 Summer's lady shows her supreme cleverness 
 in allowing a few early faults to grow in 
 native, rank luxuriance; unpruned, unculti- 
 vated; remaining just plain, carelessly grow- 
 ing, wild faults rooted where Nature sowed 
 the seed." 
 
 " It was Coventry Patmore, I think," re- 
 marked the Poet, " who informed us that his 
 * love was not an angel in one or two small 
 things.' " 
 
 " The information is unnecessary," com- 
 mented Egeria dryly, " considering that he 
 was a man. If she had been an angel he would 
 not have cared for her. No man ever loved an 
 angel. They occasionally call us by that high- 
 flown title; but it is merely a term of affec- 
 tion, a figure of, speech. On the other hand, 
 [20]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 it was the masculine angelic host who saw 
 the daughters of men that they were fair." 
 
 " But I don't agree with the Poet," grum- 
 bled the Judge, " I liked the portrait of the 
 woman of fifty with all her disagreeable traits 
 outgrown." 
 
 Castilia cocked her head on one side and 
 gazed attentively at him as if she were gain- 
 ing some new insight into his character. 
 
 " Oh, console yourself," Egeria laughed. 
 " She would never allow disagreeable traits 
 to grow and flourish. No indeed. She fully 
 realizes that few things are forgiven to ma- 
 turity; but forgivable, characteristic faults 
 are sweet, little weeds enough. Why should 
 the virtues become arrogant and crowd them 
 out? Really, it is sometimes better to wrest 
 from the stubborn soil the self-conscious, 
 overgrown flower of spiritual pride and give 
 the poor, snubbed little faults room to 
 breathe. 
 
 " Look at my garden. It would certainly 
 be admirable if it contained only those flow- 
 ers which no lady's garden should be without ; 
 but it would never be dear and lovable unless
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 I gave space in it to some of the homely, old- 
 fashioned herbs, like sage and thyme and 
 sweet mar jorum. So in the garden of a 
 woman's soul there should flourish a few herbs 
 of wilfulness, heedlessness, extravagance, im- 
 pulse and some of their kindred just to add 
 savor to the monotonous sweetness of the lily 
 and the rose. 
 
 " Her continued pleasing would prove in- 
 finitely cloying if she did not occasionally 
 displease. There are few objects to which a 
 man becomes so indifferent as the woman who 
 breaks her neck to please him. The patient, 
 long-suffering Griselda received exactly what 
 she merited. Justice is a circle, and a woman 
 who is unjust to herself, as the abnormally 
 self-sacrificing person is, cannot expect any- 
 one else to mete her justice. A door-mat is an 
 excellent object to wipe one's feet on; but 
 there is no instance yet on record of its hav- 
 ing been inclosed in glass and treasured above 
 all other household gods, after the custom 
 for preserving the rare and beautiful East- 
 ern rugs. 
 
 " But how I run on ! I've talked so much 
 [22]
 
 THE WOMAN OF FIFTY 
 
 that my throat is really quite parched." 
 Egeria sank back again into the depths of 
 her chair. " Yet, I've only succeeded in con- 
 vincing myself that the most delightful age 
 for a woman is " 
 
 " Your age," said the Commonplace man 
 carefully dropping three thick slices of 
 lemon into her second cup of very hot tea. 
 
 " Banal ! " muttered the Poet. 
 
 "Tiresome platitude!" jeered Castilia 
 under her breath. 
 
 " One nice, banal, adorable platitude is 
 worth a dozen clever, disagreeable epigrams," 
 said Egeria sharply turning her shoulder on 
 them. 
 
 [23]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM
 
 "O friend, my bosom said, 
 
 Through thee alone the sky is arched, 
 Through thee the rose is red, 
 
 All things through thee take nobler form 
 And look beyond the earth, 
 
 The mill-round of our fate appears 
 A sun-path in thy worth." 
 
 EMEBSON.
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 ASTILIA had set her heart on her 
 paternal friend, the Financier, and 
 Egeria being friends appreciating each 
 other, as she called it; and she had taken 
 the most injudicious way in the world of 
 achieving this desired result. 
 
 In the first place, she had been rash 
 enough to disparage the Commonplace Man 
 by insisting that he was really commonplace. 
 
 " Commonplace ! " admonished Egeria, 
 with surprised and rather grieved eyes. 
 " Dear Castilia, I have permitted you that 
 jest because it is so untrue. He is one of the 
 most remarkable men I have ever known." 
 
 " Because he agrees with everything you 
 say," commented Castilia beneath her 
 breath. " But the Financier, Egeria " 
 
 " Please cease to hurl in my teeth that 
 elderly Lochinvar from the West," cried her 
 [27]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 friend petulantly. " My patience is worn to 
 a thin thread and I know from the way you 
 have harped on him to me, that you have 
 dinned my name into his ears until he is sick 
 of the sound of it." 
 
 Castilia flushed guiltily and recalled with 
 qualms some recent and impatient words of 
 the Financier's. 
 
 " I have been privileged to know some of 
 the most charming women in the world, my 
 child, and Madame Egeria's well-advertised 
 belleship smacks too much of the press agent 
 for my old-fashioned tastes." 
 
 " Pish tish ! " had Castilia rejoined 
 with bravado, " You wait until you two 
 meet. You will be cakes and ale, coffee and 
 cheese, walnuts and wine." 
 
 And now she smiled complacently in the 
 darkness, as she and Egeria were whirled 
 through the salt meadows, mysteriously pur- 
 ple by night, in the Financier's motor car. 
 They were on their way to the Rich Man's, 
 who was giving a ball in his tent a marble 
 palace by the sea. 
 
 Egeria's fair hair held the ripple of the 
 [28]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 waves and her sea-green eyes the sparkle of 
 the sea. She and the Financier conversed 
 amiably and fluently and Castilia rejoiced, 
 regarding this as the triumph of affinity 
 over prejudice. 
 
 Three or four hours later when she saw 
 the two for whom she so desired a mutual 
 friendship, slip into two recently vacated 
 chairs in the supper room, she felt an un- 
 justified admiration for her powers of fi- 
 nesse, and called upon the Poet, who was, 
 as usual, her shadow, for commendation." 
 
 " A moment ago," said the Financier, un- 
 folding his napkin, " we gazed at those who 
 slowly sipped their coffee, and wished that 
 our belief still held its lost Paradise Hell 
 that we might mentally consign them 
 thither. A moment since, we were the people, 
 hungry, clamorous, watching them ' spill the 
 bread and spoil the wine.' In the twinkling 
 of an eye, our attitude changed. We now 
 look with indifference upon the waiting 
 mob, and advise them if they have no bread, 
 to eat cake. What a range of experience 
 it gives us! We are one with the labor 
 [29]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 leader elevated to the presidency of a trust. 
 We are the men in the saddle after us the 
 deluge ! " 
 
 " We are the conquerors, at any rate," 
 observed Egeria. " Ours is this delicate 
 pate, this soft, smooth wine. Vive le Rich 
 Man ! May he entertain of tener ! It is unsur- 
 passed ! " 
 
 " Save by Nature," returned the Finan- 
 cier. " You have failed to notice that she too 
 entertains to-night. What a fete! The sea 
 dashing the froth of its night and its might 
 against the wall; that arch of honeysuckle, 
 sweeter than a bank of violets, and yonder 
 pale siren, the moon ! " 
 
 The Financier was never afraid to be fer- 
 vent and poetic. This was a birthright with 
 which his native Southwest had dowered 
 him. Europe and the East had given him 
 other things. 
 
 "After all," mused Egeria, "the high 
 gods bestowed on Nature a woman's privi- 
 lege the last word. Art may declaim, 
 Science explain, Religion dogmatize, but 
 Nature has the last word." 
 [30]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 " And the last word, the one word, the 
 eternal word is * beauty,' " he amended. 
 
 Egeria shrugged her shoulders. " A mat- 
 ter of surfaces," perversely. " The mask 
 Nature wears to hide the hideous processes 
 of decay. As the lovely heroine of a novel 
 that I have been reading says : ' the beauty 
 that rules the world is lodged in the epi- 
 dermis.' ' 
 
 " A superficial and essentially feminine 
 point of view," commented the Financier. 
 " Beauty " with a wave of the hand " is 
 a matter of soul. The skin-deep variety is 
 not worth considering." 
 
 " But most women would pay the price 
 of a pound of radium for that infinitesimal 
 depth," she returned flippantly, determined 
 to disagree. 
 
 " Your sex is hardly a judge of what con- 
 stitutes feminine beauty." There was con- 
 descension in the Financier's tone. " Here 
 I can prove the point for you. Grant me 
 your indulgence and I will tell you a little 
 story." He rather fancied himself as a ra- 
 conteur. 
 
 [31]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " There was once a woman who was re- 
 garded by all the men of her acquaintance 
 as ugly, stupid and tiresome, and by all the 
 women who knew her as beautiful, brilliant, 
 fascinating and altogether delightful. Their 
 different points of view led to so much dis- 
 cussion and bickering that they finally de- 
 cided to submit the matter to a referee, a 
 wise, old fellow, who, after a very thor- 
 ough acquaintance with the world and its 
 works, had elected to spend the remainder 
 of his days in seclusion. 
 
 " He kindly consented to decide the mat- 
 ter and consequently gave the lady in the 
 case due study. Ultimately he announced his 
 decision. 
 
 " ' Both sides are right,' he said. ' She is 
 the ugliest, stupidest, most aggressive crea- 
 ture on earth; but masculine indifference 
 and dislike have thrown such a halo about 
 her that all women see her as beautiful and 
 charming.' ' 
 
 During the recital of this tale, a flush 
 had risen on Egeria's cheek and she tapped 
 her foot with growing impatience upon the 
 [32]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 floor. As he finished, she bowed her head in 
 faint recognition, and said coldly: 
 
 " Amusing, no doubt ; but to me your 
 fable proves nothing but the ineffable con- 
 ceit of man." 
 
 " Ah," cried the Financier sadly, " some- 
 thing has gone wrong with you. Castilia 
 assures me that you are the most amiable 
 woman in the world and yet I cannot please 
 you. I agree with you and you contradict 
 me. I try to amuse you by inventing little 
 fairy stories, and you become angry. Soon 
 I shall be saying : ' Let us go hence, my 
 songs she will not hear.' But that," with 
 a sigh, " is what one must expect of you 
 charming women caprice." 
 
 " Financier, you are behind the times," 
 Egeria's tone was still glacial. " The dom- 
 inant note of femininism in the twentieth 
 century is the passing of the capricious 
 woman. She is gradually being transformed 
 by the unalterable law of evolution into the 
 reasonable woman." 
 
 " The reasonable woman ! " The Finan- 
 cier's tone expressed horror. " Why the very 
 [33]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 name reeks of the commonplace! The rea- 
 sonable woman ! " slowly. " Ah, I see her ! I 
 can visualize her perfectly. She smells of 
 bread and butter cut thick. She tramps 
 heavily and breathes hard, so hard that her 
 gowns creak. Her topics of conversation 
 are the prices of staples, her children, her 
 servants and her ailments. And into this type 
 must the capricious woman impelled by her 
 inconsistent and charming fancies eventu- 
 ally evolve ? " 
 
 " Is this really the fiat of the hour, as 
 you claim? Never. I refuse to believe it." 
 
 " I admit," said Egeria, " that at first 
 blush it does seem an unpractical proposi- 
 tion unpractical and impossible; for, ac- 
 cording to our preconceived opinions a 
 reasonable woman who would also be a 
 charming one would be as mythical as a 
 phoenix." 
 
 " Indeed yes." The Financier spoke em- 
 phatically. " The transformation would be 
 as a blue rose, an abortive attempt to im- 
 prove on Nature, abnormal and therefore 
 repulsive. Believe me, the idea of a reason- 
 [34]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 able woman is a chimera sprung full-fledged 
 from the brain of that embodied caprice 
 woman, and will ever be rejected of men, 
 for man is a creature of ideals, and his 
 mental picture galleries are hung with a 
 long line of fair, capricious ' daughters of 
 dreams and of stories that life is not wearied 
 of yet. 5 
 
 " The lady of his dreams may be a cool, 
 evasive, mocking Undine with her mist- 
 woven gauzes, her water lilies and her tink- 
 ling, soulless, rippling laughter; or a Car- 
 men with her scarlet dash of a mouth and 
 the scarlet dash of flowers in her blue-black 
 hair; the inky fling of her mantilla; her 
 twinkling fan and her undulations. Neither 
 one is a creature who would make a com- 
 fortable home for him, or would be an ad- 
 mirable wife and mother; but believe me, 
 he will not lightly displace them for a lady 
 whose sole claim to his interest is her com- 
 monsense." 
 
 " That is because a misconception of the 
 reasonable woman exists in the masculine 
 mind," rejoined Egeria, quite unmoved. 
 [35]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " This, Financier, is the whole core of the 
 matter that you men fail to comprehend 
 that the fascinating woman is rarely in- 
 herently unreasonable. She is merely suffi- 
 ciently and insolently secure enough in her 
 power of attraction to permit herself the 
 luxury of caprice. And you find her enthrall- 
 ing, not because of her whims, but in spite 
 of them. Ultimately you will learn your 
 painful lesson that the capricious woman 
 is a profound egotist. Her mind is eternally 
 absorbed in watching the whirlpool of her 
 emotions, and she is singularly unselfish in 
 sharing them with the world. Like the cat 
 in the fairy story that cried, ' How bril- 
 liant I am ! See me emit sparks ! ' she must 
 perforce draw all attention to herself." 
 
 " Excellent, if one admits the premises," 
 applauded the Financier. " But I do not. I 
 still maintain that woman is fundamentally 
 and delightfully unreasonable." 
 
 " She is not fundamentally unreasonable," 
 
 insisted Egeria. " It is her training and 
 
 education which have made her so. And 
 
 sooner or later, she must write it on her 
 
 [36]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 tombstone and cut it on her card, that, as 
 George Moore says, ' the world is full of 
 beautiful women all waiting to be loved and 
 amused,' and in nine cases out of ten, she 
 will find herself neglected for the woman, 
 perhaps neither young nor beautiful, who 
 possesses a broad tolerance and an envelop- 
 ing sympathy; who can laugh consumedly 
 at feeble jokes and listen with a vivid and 
 ever new interest to many twice-told tales. 
 No, the capricious woman is passing, un- 
 claimed and unrestrained by the Twentieth 
 century. Her hour was yesterday. She flut- 
 tered her butterfly wings in the sunshine of 
 yesteryear ; but the wheel of time broke her, 
 for the age of chivalry is past and the era 
 of companionship is begun. Man no longer 
 requires that his love shall be * like a high- 
 born maiden in a palace tower.' He desires 
 instead, that she share his amusements; be 
 genuinely and therefore intelligently inter- 
 ested in his occupations ; and woman, com- 
 plaisant chameleon that she is, must adopt 
 with the costumes suitable for the open-air 
 life of man, a new feminine code, and adjust 
 [37]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 her mentality and manners to changed con- 
 ditions. 
 
 " The creature of moods and caprices may 
 reign for an hour, but her season is brief. 
 The whole truth of the matter is this, that 
 in spite of the manners and customs of stage 
 heroines and ' the daughters of dreams and 
 stories,' it takes a woman of infinite beauty 
 and charm to be successfully capricious." 
 
 " But really, you do not possibly con- 
 sider women judges of what constitutes fem- 
 inine beauty? " The Financier was quizzical. 
 
 "The only judges. We are not dazzled, 
 not hypnotized by a mere matter of ex- 
 quisite coloring, the fugitive glance of too 
 expressive eyes. We are able to bring a calm, 
 unbiased scrutiny to bear upon it, fully to 
 analyze it. We do not confuse beauty with 
 charm." 
 
 "Are the two then distinct?" he pon- 
 dered. 
 
 " Are they distinct ? " repeated Egeria 
 
 scornfully. " Are they distinct ? Some one 
 
 a man of course has said that if Cleopatra 
 
 had been without a front tooth, the whole 
 
 [38]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 history of the world would have been 
 changed; and Heine, you remember, when 
 asked about Madame de Stael, remarked 
 that had Helen looked so, Troy would never 
 have known a siege. Absurd! The sirens of 
 this world who have swayed men's hearts 
 and imaginations have never been dependent 
 on their front teeth or their back hair. If 
 Cleopatra had lost a whole row, Antony, 
 and every other man who knew her, would 
 have held that women in the full possession 
 of their molars were repulsive. And who 
 knows ! Madame de Stael might have been 
 considered almost as lovely as Julie Reca- 
 mier if she had possessed the same admirable 
 instinct for keeping her mouth shut and the 
 same genius for adroit flattery." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried the Financier triumphantly, 
 "Your words justify me. Beauty is some 
 subtle essence of the soul, as I said." 
 
 A faint, malicious sparkle brightened 
 Egeria's eyes. " Really now, would you call 
 the sirens of this earth soulful creatures? 
 They were and are psychologists, intuitive 
 diviners of a man's moods, capable of meet- 
 [39]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 ing him on every side of his nature; 
 but " 
 
 " Do you mean," interrupted the Finan- 
 cier, his eyes reflecting the sparkle in hers, 
 " that their dominion over us is through an 
 intellectual comprehension of our moods ? " 
 
 " Good heavens, no ! " exclaimed Egeria 
 in shocked tones. " Who said anything about 
 the intellectual faculties of woman? I hear 
 enough of them at my club. What I am 
 trying to get at is that beauty without 
 charm has always received a very frigid ap- 
 preciation. Men prate of it, adore it, yawn 
 and leave it. Of the two, they infinitely 
 prefer charm without beauty. Now Finan- 
 cier, what is it that you really admire in 
 woman ? " 
 
 The Financier temporized. " I will tell 
 you if you tell me first what women really 
 admire in men." 
 
 " Ah ! " Egeria's tone was complacent. 
 " There we have the advantage of you. We 
 show twice the solid, substantial reasons for 
 the faith that is in us that you do. Woman 
 admires in man, courage, strength ; then 
 [40]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 brains, ability, distinction. She may loudly 
 profess her devotion to ' the carpet knight 
 so trim,' * such a dear, thoughtful fellow, so 
 sweet and sympathetic ! ' But her secret 
 preference is profoundly for the one who is 
 * in stern fight a warrior grim, in camp a 
 leader sage.' She has not altered since the 
 Stone Age, not in the least degree. When 
 she was dragged by the hair from her ac- 
 customed cave to make a happy home in a 
 new one, do you fancy that she gave a 
 thought to the recent companion of her 
 joys and sorrows who was lying some- 
 where with his head stove in? Not she, her 
 pity was swallowed up in admiration for the 
 victor, who, lightly ignoring the marks of 
 her nails and her teeth, haled her along to 
 his den. It is to the strong men of this 
 earth, that the heart of woman goes out. 
 
 " Printed articles on the home," she went 
 on with light derision, " are always urging 
 husbands to show the same loving cour- 
 tesies to their wives after marriage as be- 
 fore. In reality, nothing would so bore a 
 woman. Man, as you say, is an idealist.
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 Woman is intensely practical. She would in- 
 finitely prefer to have him out winning the 
 bread and butter and jam than sitting at 
 her feet, penning sonnets to her eyebrows. 
 
 " You see, she knows instinctively that 
 * man's love is of his life a thing apart,' 
 and that if he prefers showing her lover- 
 like attentions to ranging * the court, camp, 
 church, the vessel and the mart,' she is apt 
 to turn her gowns and trim her own bon- 
 nets to the end of the chapter. But how 
 I chatter ; and you haven't told me yet what 
 it is that men admire in women? " 
 
 " Beauty," still insisted the Financier 
 enthusiastically, " goodness, truth, con- 
 stancy, amiability." 
 
 Egeria looked at him with reproach. " Do 
 you really mean it ? " earnestly. 
 
 " Of course I do," surprised at her 
 tone. 
 
 " I dare say any man to whom I put the 
 question would answer in the same way." 
 Her eyebrows expressed resignation. " Stay, 
 I will phrase it differently. Why do you 
 love a particular woman ? " 
 [42]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 The Financier could not resist the oppor- 
 tunity, "Because she is you!" gallantly. 
 
 " Stop trifling." Egeria was becoming 
 petulant again. " This is a serious matter. 
 Now answer properly. Why do you think 
 you love a particular woman? " 
 
 " Because," emphatically, " I imagine 
 her rightly or wrongly to be the possessor 
 of those qualities I have enumerated." 
 
 Egeria sighed. " And you still stick to 
 it?" 
 
 " Of course I do," he responded with as- 
 surance. 
 
 She shook her head. " Nonsense ! Men are 
 less exacting than you think and more. 
 They ask neither beauty, nor grace, nor un- 
 selfishness of woman; they demand but one 
 thing. You must charm me. For me you 
 must possess that indefinable quality we call 
 magnetism. Emerson puts it in a nutshell, 
 voices the essentially masculine point of view : 
 
 'I hold it of little matter 
 Whether your jewel be of pure water; 
 A rose diamond or a white, 
 But whether it dazzle me with light.' " 
 
 [43]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " But," combated the Financier, " you 
 must admit that Solomon had ample oppor- 
 tunity to make a study of your sex, and 
 he reserved all his praise for the good 
 woman, averring that her price was far 
 above rubies." 
 
 Egeria's smile was faintly cynical. " That 
 was in his capacity of philosopher. As mere 
 man he gave the rubies and an immortal 
 song to a Shulamite girl who looked at him 
 with youth in her smile and laughter in her 
 eyes." 
 
 " A tribute to beauty," contested the Fi- 
 nancier. 
 
 " Not at all. Because she fascinated 
 him." 
 
 " And the secret of fascination is 
 beauty," he triumphed. 
 
 She refused to admit it. " The secret of 
 fascination lies with the woman who can 
 convince a man that under no circumstance 
 could she possibly bore him." 
 
 The Financier was still argumentative. 
 " I continue to maintain that beauty is some 
 subtle essence of the soul." 
 [44]
 
 THE QUALITY OF CHARM 
 
 * But the last word, the one word, the 
 eternal word,' " quoted Egeria rising, " is 
 that beauty is " 
 
 " What ? " he questioned eagerly. 
 
 " In the eye of the beholder." 
 
 [45]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE
 
 "Lawn as white as driven snow; 
 Cyprus black as ere was crow; 
 Gloves as sweet as damask roses; 
 Masks for faces and for noses; 
 Bugle bracelet, necklace amber, 
 Perfume for a lady's chamber: 
 Golden quoifs and stomachers, 
 For my lads to give their dears; 
 Pins and poking-sticks of steel, 
 What maids lack from head to heel 
 Come buy of me, come buy, come buy; 
 Buy lads, or else your lasses cry; 
 
 Come buy." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 
 IT had been raining all day, a steady down- 
 pour, and the lawn and the paths were 
 covered with fallen leaves, discolored and 
 pulpy. 
 
 Egeria had had a wood fire lighted in her 
 library and there she sat, late in the after- 
 noon, with those of her friends who had 
 braved the weather. 
 
 The conversation which had been brisk at 
 first had gradually languished and the Com- 
 monplace Man seeing that Egeria looked 
 paler than, usual had asked if she were quite 
 well. 
 
 " Oh, quite ! " she answered languidly, 
 " but I am tired." 
 
 " What were you doing that was exhaust- 
 ing? " asked the Commonplace Man with con- 
 cern in his voice. 
 
 " Oh, a lot of things. Castilia and I spent 
 [49]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 yesterday in town. We shopped all morning, 
 we took luncheon at a restaurant with some 
 people. We saw a play in the afternoon. We 
 dined at another restaurant with more peo- 
 ple, and finished up the day by going to the 
 Opera. 
 
 " It was delightful," cried Castilia hap- 
 pily, a reminiscent joy in her eyes. 
 
 " And ever since," continued Egeria, " I 
 have been pondering upon the hideous and 
 soul-devastating luxury of the modern 
 woman." 
 
 " She tired herself out, poor dear," said 
 Castilia explanatorily. " She only thinks she 
 didn't enjoy herself because her nerves are 
 jangled." 
 
 "And what jangled my nerves, pray?" 
 asked Egeria. 
 
 " Yes, what ? " asked the Commonplace 
 Man sympathetically. 
 
 " This," she answered. " First, the depart- 
 ment stores. One could, with a rather strenu- 
 ous effort of will, picture a sort of an ideal- 
 ized department store which should be a 
 delight and an education to the eye. One 
 [50]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 
 could fancy a vast emporium exhibiting rare 
 fabrics, delicate gauzes, glowing silks, and 
 brocades ; the plain useful stuffs forming a 
 pleasing contrast. But what is the reality? 
 It suggests to the mind a topsy-turvy palace 
 constructed by madmen for the pleasure of 
 madwomen. It is a temple of confusion, arti- 
 cles trivial, useless, unnecessary, and ugly ob- 
 trude themselves upon the eye at every hand. 
 It seems to me full of things which no one 
 should possibly want." 
 
 " The Judge shook his head dissentingly. 
 " It fulfils its ends," he said. " It supplies the 
 demand. It is exactly what women wish, or it 
 would not exist and flourish." 
 
 " In the great market places of the world," 
 remarked the Poet, " Paris, London, Vienna, 
 and New York, there is a continuous perform- 
 ance without admission fee, for all who have 
 eyes to see." He was writing a play in blank 
 verse, and invested everything with drama. 
 " It rivals the combined theatrical perform- 
 ances of two hemispheres, and casts in the 
 shade a composite operatic production ex- 
 hausting the entire resources of the stage. It 
 [51]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 is a splendid drama, typifying the pride of 
 the eye and the lust of the flesh. A great 
 spectacular presentation, the luxury of the 
 modern woman." 
 
 " Well, I took my drama quietly at home," 
 said Egeria, " studied it yesterday at close 
 range, from the curb, as it were, and now I 
 have only a kaleidoscopic and whirling mem- 
 ory of .sumptuously appointed carriages roll- 
 ing up and down the Avenue; of sleek, 
 prancing horses, of the furs and feathers and 
 overpowering perfumes of richly upholstered 
 women, of bric-a-brac, rugs, and pictures 
 behind the glitter of plate glass, of garish 
 theaters, and of gorgeous and over decorated 
 hotels." 
 
 " Nonsense," sniffed Castilia. " Egeria is 
 out of tune, and the rest of you are only too 
 glad to say unpleasant things about women. 
 The woman of the Twentieth century does not 
 begin to approximate the luxury of the 
 woman of the Roman decadence whose re- 
 ligion was the cult of personal beauty, deco- 
 ration, and ease. Wasn't it ? " appealing to 
 the Judge. 
 
 [52]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 
 " True," Egeria's tone was mild. " She is, 
 however, making an earnest effort in that 
 direction; and if she succeeded beautifully 
 and artistically, she should have my warm- 
 est praise; but that is just what she does 
 not do. 
 
 " Follow this flamboyant type of woman 
 to the theater, to church, to the hotels, where 
 she eats rich foods to a noisy musical accom- 
 paniment, to her home. Of course there are 
 exceptions and exceptions ; but in the great 
 majority of cases her presence is usually pro- 
 claimed by the loud rustle of silk, the j ingling 
 of many chains why, she rattles with chains 
 like the Prisoner of Chillon a display of 
 jewels reminiscent of a jeweller's window and 
 the most penetrating and powerful perfumes. 
 Ah," with a gesture as if waving them from 
 her, " what one suffers from those stifling 
 perfumes ! One never seems to escape them." 
 
 Castilia chuckled, " Egeria sat beside a 
 woman at the play whose gown had been 
 hung with heliotrope sachets; she had violet 
 perfume on her hair ; carnation-scented pow- 
 der on her face; jasmine on her gloves and 
 [53]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 American Beauty on her handkerchief. To 
 add to the discordant symphony of fra- 
 grances she wore a cluster of gardenias." 
 
 " Everyone laughed but her father, the 
 Bishop, who shook his head and sighed in 
 sympathy. " I know those prevailing and per- 
 vasive perfumes," he said sadly. " They waft 
 up to me in church, and the ladies who use 
 them do seem rather heavily gorgeous. Some- 
 times, when I ponder on the sight, I cannot 
 help but recall Julia Ward Howe's words on 
 the worship of wealth. Do you remember 
 them? " 
 
 No one did, and the Bishop repeated them 
 in his sonorous, sermon voice: 
 
 " ' It means the bringing of all human re- 
 sources, material and intellectual, to one dead 
 level of brilliant achievement, a second Field 
 of the Cloth of Gold, to show that the bar- 
 baric love of splendor still lives in man with 
 the thirst for blood and other quasi-animal 
 passions. It means in the future some such 
 sad downfall as Spain had when the gold 
 and silver of America had gorged her sol- 
 diers and her nobles. Something like what 
 [54]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 France experienced after Louis XIV or 
 XV.' " 
 
 " I think you are all horrid," pouted Cas- 
 tilia. " Yes, even you, father, predicting your 
 sad downfalls and ascribing them all to 
 women. Egeria, why don't you come to the 
 rescue? " 
 
 " All you women dislike criticism," began 
 the Judge didactically. " And that is because 
 you take it in a personal sense; but it is a 
 very poor picture or statue which cannot 
 stand the white light of the public square; 
 and simply because woman is used to a diet 
 of sugarplums she should have too much 
 sense to scorn the healthful if bitter tonic 
 of honest criticism, so much more stimulating 
 to her mental digestion." 
 
 Castilia shrugged her shoulders disdain- 
 fully, and then smiled cajolingly at him. 
 
 " But really," interposed Egeria, " when 
 one notes, and one can hardly fail to note, 
 all the ugly and abortive magnificence with 
 which some women of wealth surround them- 
 selves, and its cheap imitation by women of 
 small means, one finds one's self impelled to 
 [55]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 ask : ' Has woman, in the main, any real ap- 
 preciation of art or abstract beauty ? ' Must it 
 not be admitted that in spite of the tendency 
 toward an increasing and ever-widening cul- 
 ture, woman, save now and then, in the case 
 of the individual, has no true feeling for 
 the intrinsically beautiful. It is splendor that 
 she demands; and the love of splendor and 
 the love of beauty are two very distinct quali- 
 ties." 
 
 " Oh, you are splitting hairs," scoffed Cas- 
 tilia. 
 
 The Poet gazed approvingly at a great, 
 velvety, crimson dahlia he had just broken 
 from its stalk and placed in its coat, " The 
 lover of beauty finds his joy in a sunset," 
 he announced, " in a picture, a flower, or a 
 vase, whose harmony of form and color fills 
 him with an exquisite and undying delight. 
 The lover of splendor, on the other hand, de- 
 sires quantity and not quality. The flower 
 must be a hothouse blossom sufficiently out 
 of season to make it incredibly costly, the 
 interest of the picture lies in its famous signa- 
 ture ; the vase must be worth a king's ransom, 
 [56]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 and, as for the sunset why that is a 
 mere reminder that it is time to dress for 
 dinner." 
 
 " I wonder why woman seems to lack the 
 artistic impulse ? " asked Egeria, her mind 
 still occupied with the same question. " I hate 
 to admit it ; but I must. When man has crys- 
 tallized his dreams into facts there has arisen 
 the frozen music of architecture; there have 
 been cathedrals, palaces, and towers, ' imagi- 
 nation's very self in stone ' ; there have been 
 wonderful canvasses, marvelous symphonies, 
 poems, statues. The triumphant pa3an of man 
 has been: 
 
 'We are the music makers 
 And we are the dreamers of dreams. 
 World-losers and world-forsakers 
 On whom the pale moon gleams; 
 But we are the movers and shakers 
 Of the world forever, it seems.' " 
 
 But woman has not yet expressed herself. 
 Her idea of Art is to tie a bow on a flower- 
 pot or to put a frill of lace about a lamp 
 shade." 
 
 " She has no idea of Art," explained the 
 [57]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 Poet, " because she is still barbaric in her 
 tastes. She shows that in her love for and 
 desire of furs, jewels, feathers, and perfumes. 
 Her passion for decoration is only another 
 proof of it. It has not been so many years 
 ago that the kitchen utensils, rolling pins, 
 broilers, potato mashers, etc., were rudely 
 torn from their shelves and, gilded and be- 
 ribboned, placed upon the parlor walls in 
 thousands of our homes." 
 
 " But you are unfair," cried Castilia, 
 throwing a flower at him, which he caught 
 and held closely in his hand. " Woman has 
 never had a real opportunity to express her- 
 self, as you call it. Her enforced limita- 
 tions " 
 
 Egeria shook her head. " I'm sorry, Cas- 
 tilia, but it won't do. She has, from the earli- 
 est ages, had full liberty to express herself 
 in clothes. By this time we should have mas- 
 tered the art of dress. We should all appear 
 as poems and symphonies instead of monstros- 
 ities. Look at that heiress of the ages, that 
 exotic flower of careful, hothouse cultivation 
 the dame du monde. She too expresses her- 
 [58]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 self in clothes; but nothing appeals to her 
 fastidious and morbid fancy but the bizarre 
 and the enormously costly. In dress she aims 
 to achieve the novel, the startling, almost the 
 impossible velvet embossed on lace, wraps 
 of fur and chiffon everything must be 
 diverted from its original purpose, must be 
 fragile, perishable, and ephemeral. She trims 
 her cloth of gold with frieze, and adorns a 
 gingham frock with point d'Alen9on." 
 
 " If you consider that women have any 
 taste or artistic perception, you have only to 
 view their houses," said the Poet gloomily. 
 " I admit that the woman of wealth is usu- 
 ally wise enough to turn hers over to pro- 
 fessional decorators. This is a real relief, 
 for it generally means that they will be cor- 
 rect and inoffensive in style, even if they are 
 mere replicas of a few thousand others. They 
 serve as excellent examples of properly fur- 
 nished interiors ; but, of course, they are en- 
 tirely colorless and lacking in that expres- 
 sion of individuality which alone gives soul 
 to a home. According to the fashion of the 
 moment, the drawing-room may be old 
 [59]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 French, the library stately Florentine, the 
 dining room Flemish, and the rest of the 
 house polyglot and painful. If she adds 
 the so-called feminine touch, it is apt to be 
 a little of expensive trifles, not differing 
 widely in artistic value from the gilded roll- 
 ing pins and potato mashers." 
 
 Castilia's eyes flashed indignation. " I 
 never heard so much horrid cynicism in all 
 my life. I am going home. I am too disgusted 
 to remain." 
 
 " Wait, Castilia," said the Judge, who had 
 known her from childhood, a flash of amuse- 
 ment in his eyes. " We will leave the decision 
 to you.. You shall decide for us this mooted 
 question, where a woman's real interest lies. 
 Now take the case of the average woman 
 you do solemnly swear to answer truthfully, 
 remember the average woman, average in 
 appearance, average in intelligence, and the 
 possessor of limited means. Now let her awake 
 one morning and find herself the possessor 
 of riches. What would she do? What would 
 be her first and imperative impulse? " 
 
 " Why to buy clothes, of course ! " ex- 
 [60]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 
 claimed Castilia naively, as if astonished at 
 his stupidity. 
 
 " Certainly, to establish a wardrobe." The 
 Judge had assumed the tactful, deferential 
 manner, the gentle, reassuring voice he al- 
 ways used when assisting at the self -revela- 
 tions of a witness. " And what would she do 
 next?" 
 
 Castilia's eyes shone with vicarious rap- 
 ture. " Buy jewels," she said unctuously, 
 " Quarts of them." 
 
 " Yes," prompted the Judge, his voice 
 more dulcetly suave than ever, " quarts of 
 them. And what next? " 
 
 " Oh, she would begin to take an interest 
 in being well-groomed and perfectly turned 
 out." 
 
 The Judge leaned back in his chair and 
 wiped his eye-glasses with a satisfied smile, 
 but the Bishop sighed heavily. " And thus 
 we meet her," he said, " well-groomed, be- 
 jeweled, gorgeously attired, painted and per- 
 fumed, refusing to view life except in its 
 scenic and spectacular aspects. And observ- 
 ing all this insolent and ostentatious display 
 [61]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 of wealth, I sometimes wonder whence flows 
 the pactolian stream to supply all these femi- 
 nine whims and caprices." 
 
 " That's easy," said the poet flippantly. 
 
 "'But since our women must walk gay, 
 And money buys the gear, 
 The sailing vessels filch the way 
 At hazard year by year.' " 
 
 " That is the feminine creed, ' women 
 must walk gay,' ' ; remarked the Judge. 
 " Just so they get the gear, the fact that 
 * the sailing vessels filch this way ' does not 
 interest them in the least. The burden of the 
 responsibility rests on some one else's shoul- 
 ders. They merely shrug theirs and adjust 
 the gear." 
 
 " Oh, Egeria, Egeria, how can you sit 
 there calmly listening while they so traduce 
 our sex," wailed Castilia. " I've done the 
 best or the worst that I could ; but I'm only 
 a poor little fox torn to pieces by a pack of 
 wolves, while you are in full cry with the 
 beasts. I am losing my faith in you. Re- 
 member your Browning: 
 [62]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 
 'Male chivalry has perished off the earth, 
 But women are knight errants to the last.' 
 
 Are you not going to burnish your shield and 
 break just one lance for the honor of your 
 sex?" 
 
 The call to battle was ever an inspiration 
 to Egeria, and now she sat upright, her eyes 
 sparkling. " Indeed I am," she cried, " and 
 I am going to begin by admitting everything 
 they've said, and that I have agreed with 
 them in saying. It is all true, every word of 
 it ; but is not fixed and permanent fact ; it is 
 only a temporary manifestation in evolution. 
 In this age not only the thoughts of men, but 
 of women, are widening by * the process of 
 the suns,' and the time is surely coming when 
 woman will no longer regard personal adorn- 
 ment as her only avenue of expression. That 
 she has done so, and still does so is due to 
 the morally and mentally degrading fact of 
 her economic dependence through the long 
 ages. She has no proper estimation of labor ; 
 no real knowledge of what she consumes and 
 wastes. Why should it not be so? Her whole 
 chance of establishing herself well and hon- 
 [63]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 orably in life, of achieving social position, 
 and of securing a maintenance in her old age 
 has rested on her personal attractions. Think 
 of it ! Consequently she has only shown the 
 most rudimentary business sense when she has 
 striven in every possible way to enhance her 
 beauty and grace. This has resulted in an 
 enormous demand for every article conducive 
 to her personal adornment. She has created a 
 great market for the meretricious and the 
 trivial, and that, of course, has been a de- 
 terrent rather than a stimulant to the best 
 art, the truest industry. 
 
 " But the conditions under which woman 
 lives are daily, hourly changing, and with 
 the conditions, her viewpoint, her ideals, her 
 entire outlook upon life. 
 
 " What if personal embellishment has 
 been the only outlet for her mental energy? 
 Her very passion for luxury is a crude, 
 ineffective reaching out toward art and 
 beauty; and now she enters upon a new 
 era. 
 
 " Why woman is the most interesting study 
 in the world to-day ; far more interesting 
 [64]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 than man. She is a great psychological prob- 
 lem. She is slowly awakening to a new con- 
 sciousness, a new understanding of herself, 
 and she is torn by contending emotions, for 
 she is urged onward by the Zeitgeist, the 
 spirit of the times, to the utmost radicalism 
 in independence, and she is held back by the 
 iron thought-molds to a rigid conservatism 
 of action. 
 
 " Instinctively she knows that her hour 
 is at hand. She repudiates the horse-leech 
 and refuses longer to remain his daughter, 
 standing with outstretched hand and cry- 
 ing : ' Give, give.' Instead, she is learn- 
 ing slowly and with difficulty that hers is 
 the divine right to give freely, and that 
 there are no prizes for which she may 
 not compete. 
 
 " Even among rabbit-brained women who 
 must ' walk gay ' and ask nothing of life 
 but ease and amusement, a new ideal is grad- 
 ually superseding a former one. They would 
 openly scoff at the clinging, fainting, weep- 
 ing heroine of the eighteenth century, over 
 whose sentimental sorrows their grandmoth- 
 [65]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 ers shed many tears. Instead, they reserve 
 their admiration, and incidentally their em- 
 ulation, for such women as Whitman des- 
 cribes : 
 
 " ' They are tanned in the face by shining suns and 
 
 blowing winds. 
 Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and 
 
 strength. 
 
 They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, 
 run, strike.' 
 
 It is quite true that woman has contributed 
 practically nothing to art, science, invention, 
 and discovery. She has not even designed 
 her personal ornaments. But what of it? 
 It simply means that her day is not yet. Oh, 
 I know, Castilia, I see you open your mouth. 
 You are going to hurl George Eliot, Mary 
 Somerville, Madame Curie, Sonya Kovaleve- 
 sky, and a few more at me. They prove little. 
 Those isolated instances are but a promise 
 that woman will one day expand into a mar- 
 velous expression." 
 
 " How? " asked the Judge cynically. 
 
 " She will inaugurate and enjoy the real 
 luxury of comfort and convenience. She will 
 [66]
 
 THE PRIDE OF THE EYE 
 
 
 
 be clothed in beautiful fabrics and sur- 
 rounded by beautiful objects. The garish, 
 the ostentatious, the vulgar will disappear, 
 because she will be educated above them. Her 
 clothes and ornaments shall become the mere 
 fitting and gratifying expression of her in- 
 dividuality, nothing more. 
 
 " As her social consciousness widens, she 
 will not expend all her care and affection upon 
 the narrow family circle, but spare some of 
 it for her brothers and sisters all over the 
 earth. She will learn that luxury and civiliza- 
 tion are not synonymous, and that she is not 
 even civilized if she is content to remain the 
 possessor of hoarded wealth as long as there 
 is one hungry or ill-treated child in the world. 
 Her own children will be a thousand times 
 dearer when she realizes that all children are 
 equally hers." 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " exclaimed the Judge. 
 " What a burst of eloquence ! " But the 
 Bishop smiled upon her. 
 
 " Time to go home," remarked the Poet, 
 " the sun is setting behind the clouds." 
 
 " Yes," said Egeria, rising, " and as Cas- 
 [67]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 tilia and I are women, and therefore devoid 
 of the artistic impulse and incapable of ap- 
 preciating a sunset, we will take it as a re- 
 minder that it is time to dress for dinner." 
 
 [68]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT
 
 'For women will fret 
 About everything infinitesimal small; 
 Like the sage in our Plato, I'm anxious to get 
 ' On the side ' on the summer side ' of a wall ' 
 Let the wind of the world toss the nations Like 
 
 rooks 
 
 If only they'll leave me at peace with my books." 
 
 ANDREW LANG.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 
 EGERIA was sitting on the top of a 
 flight of steps leading up to the porch 
 of her old Colonial house. She leaned against 
 one of the tall pillars wreathed with purple 
 clematis, and she was intently reading an 
 open book on her knee, when the Bishop came 
 slowly down the path and stood before her. 
 
 " It is delightful to talk to a Bishop," she 
 smiled, after she had warmly greeted him and 
 insisted upon his taking a more comfortable 
 seat than the one she had deliberately chosen. 
 " It immediately becomes a serious duty to 
 be frivolous." 
 
 "And why, pray?" The Bishop looked 
 slightly bewildered. 
 
 " To afford you the pleasures of contrast. 
 To convince you from the start that one 
 woman does not seek priestly counsel, nor in- 
 [71]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 tend to bore you with the vagaries of her 
 soul." 
 
 The Bishop smiled benignly, deprecating- 
 ly, and yet comprehendingly. He even shook 
 his head in paternal and playful admonition. 
 
 " Oh, I know us," Egeria assured him. 
 " A woman if she is young is always either 
 occupied with her heart or her soul. When 
 the one absorbs her the other does not. When 
 she's in love, she forgets all about her soul. 
 When she is out of love she turns to it again. 
 Then she yearns for incense, altar lights, and 
 a pale, young priest, who is willing to devote 
 time and prayers to assuaging her spiritual 
 doubts. She calls them spiritual ; they are, of 
 course, purely emotional. She doesn't care in 
 the least to be spiritually directed by any 
 well-fed, commonplace parson, with a fat 
 wife and a pack of rosy children. No, no, a 
 wistful young ascetic, with hollows under his 
 eyes, wan and worn with fastings and vigils. 
 She is perfectly aware that he has ultimately 
 not the ghost of a show; but she is entirely 
 willing that he shall have a run for his 
 money. In fact, she hopes that the struggle 
 [72]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 may be keen and prolonged. To play a game 
 fish which is putting up the fight of its life is 
 infinitely more exciting than to languidly reel 
 in the line and secure a victim which has not 
 made the least resistance." 
 
 The Bishop smiled tolerantly, tapping his 
 finger tips together. " Doubtless correct, 
 doubtless correct. Your astuteness and intel- 
 lectual acumen have always elicited my ad- 
 miration." 
 
 A sparkle of annoyance brightened 
 Egeria's eyes. " Checkmate," she murmured, 
 with a little bow of deference. 
 
 The Bishop raised his brows innocently. 
 
 " Oh, you know," continued Egeria re- 
 sentfully, " that there is one compliment a 
 woman never forgives, and that is a tribute 
 to her intellect at the expense of her power 
 of attraction." 
 
 " You deserved it," laughed the Bishop. 
 " But, dear lady, have you ever paused to 
 consider what a debt of gratitude the world 
 owes us ? When I listen to the outpourings of 
 overcharged feminine hearts and read the 
 diaries, confessions, and novels of innumer- 
 [73]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 able women, I am forced to the conclusion 
 that the church thoroughly understood one 
 of the first needs of a woman's heart when it 
 established the confessional. Then man, with 
 his restless, protesting conscience, did his 
 best to estrange you from that consolation; 
 and in consequence, some eccentric, undisci- 
 plined creature now and again voices to the 
 world the disorganized, hysterical, feminine 
 emotions which should have been discreetly 
 sobbed into the ecclesiastical ear, decently en- 
 tombed in the silence of the confessional." 
 
 There was a faint wrinkle of displeasure 
 on Egeria's brow. " Admitted, admitted " 
 hastily " and thank you kindly, dear Bish- 
 op, for your little criticism of us. It makes 
 it quite possible for me to discuss the clergy 
 if I wish. Now, I can ask, without being im- 
 pertinent, a question which has long puzzled 
 me. Why is it that you prelates and princes 
 of the church are almost invariably tolerant, 
 delightfully broad-minded and free from 
 bias, while the rank and file are frequently so 
 strenuous and discomposing? For instance, 
 last summer I was thrown, through force of 
 [74]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 circumstances, with a sallow-faced, stoop- 
 shouldered preacher who always spoke of 
 himself as ' a minister of the gospel.' When- 
 ever his dyspepsia was especially severe, he 
 informed his parishioners that he had girded 
 on his armor and was prepared to rebuke 
 evil in high places, and that he would be recal- 
 citrant to his trust if he did not continually 
 lift up his voice to condemn civic rottenness 
 and social degeneracy. Now, Bishop, tell me, 
 please, what makes the difference between his 
 type and yours? " 
 
 A humorous twinkle shone in the Bishop's 
 eye, then he leaned forward and whispered 
 one word in Egeria's ear : " Money." 
 
 She laughed and was about to speak when 
 he again leaned forward and peered curi- 
 ously at the open book in her lap. " Dear 
 lady," with a smile of blended astonishment 
 and gratification, " you have been reading 
 the Bible." 
 
 " Indeed I have," laughing at his expres- 
 sion, " I was absorbed in it when you came. 
 When I was a child, I used to wonder how 
 my grandmother could sit and pore over 
 [75]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 those pages, when Life beckoned and all out- 
 doors wooed. That peaceful figure sitting in 
 an easy chair, and bending over that large- 
 print Bible haunted my youth as a terrify- 
 ing picture of old age. But now, I under- 
 stand it. I find here, dear Bishop," tapping 
 the volume, " poetry, drama ; marvelous 
 studies of human nature. It portrays as 
 nothing else, man's restless, passionate quest 
 for ' that unknown which is life to love, re- 
 ligion, poetry.' ' 
 
 The Bishop smiled benignly. " You re- 
 member what Disraeli said, ' It is the little 
 nations which do the greatest things. The 
 Jordan and the Illysus have civilized the 
 world.' " He mused a moment, " All the na- 
 tions which had arisen had put their force 
 into achievement, had followed man's eter- 
 nal will-o'-the-wisp, temporal power; but 
 Israel believed, Israel followed the vision, 
 and bent her ear to the voice of the spirit 
 but " breaking off, " What have you been 
 reading this morning ? " 
 
 " Beautiful stories," Egeria's tone was 
 enthusiastic. " Dramas of the soul. Old, old 
 [76]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 tales that have been made tiresome and banal 
 to us because they have been dinned into our 
 childish ears by stupid Sunday-school teach- 
 ers. I've been reading now do not laugh at 
 me, Bishop I have been reading that won- 
 derful allegory of genius-^the story of the 
 little lad whom his father loved more than 
 all his other sons, and who innocently re- 
 lated to his envious brothers the prophetic 
 dreams which visited his pillow, told them of 
 his vision of future dominion. 
 
 " Ingenuous revelations of a self-sufficing 
 spirit ! He dreamed as he told them that he 
 and they were binding sheaves together in 
 the field, * and lo ! my sheaf arose and also 
 stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves 
 stood round about and made obeisance to my 
 sheaf.' 
 
 " And again you remember, Bishop, the 
 inherent consciousness of his powers took 
 another form : ' Behold I have dreamed a 
 dream more; and behold, the sun, and the 
 moon, and the eleven stars made obeisance 
 to me.' But then, the ten brothers, his world, 
 like the world before them and the endless 
 [77]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 generations to follow, scoffed at his beliefs 
 and hated him for his words. 
 
 " And they went to feed their flocks wher- 
 ever they might find a favorable pasturage, 
 and Joseph was sent after them Can't you 
 see him toiling up that hill, can't you see 
 that faint, almost hueless expanse of Syrian 
 landscape, long reaches of palest blue, and 
 gray, and yellow; and the boy in his little 
 coat of many colors, seeking his brothers, 
 glad and ready to give them his thoughts 
 and his dreams? 
 
 " And they, seeing him, drew together and 
 mocked and plotted as their prototypes have 
 mocked and plotted from the beginning of 
 the world. 
 
 " * Behold, the dreamer cometh. Come 
 now and we shall slay him and we shall see 
 what will become of his dreams,' *' running 
 her fingers under the text, " That old, old 
 cry of the ineradicable and futile belief that 
 by slaying the thinker you slay the thought. 
 
 " Then they sold him into captivity and 
 supposed in their short-sighted ten minds 
 they were forever rid of him; but destiny 
 F78]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 was with the dreamer, then as always," 
 there was a note of exultation in Egeria's 
 voico, " destiny which has forever decreed 
 and insured the immortality of dreams." 
 
 " Yes, yes," nodded the Bishop, " Joseph 
 sold into captivity became a Prince of the 
 house of Pharaoh and rode in the king's 
 second chariot." 
 
 " Oh, yes," supplemented Egeria, " his 
 Egypt of captivity he made captive to his 
 intellect. The stars and the sheaves made 
 obeisance to him. He stands as the eternal 
 refutation of the doubts of the idealist, 
 
 'If the dream must die when the dreamer perish 
 If it be idle to dream at all.' 
 
 " And then, Bishop," went on Egeria, 
 without pause, her enthusiasm unabated, " I 
 have been reading about Elisha that stern, 
 indomitable, old prophet who could answer 
 haughtily to kings : ' What have I to do with 
 thee?'" 
 
 " Yes, yes," again murmured the Bishop. 
 " A great character. Preeminently, one of 
 those souls to whom, as Balzac says, the uni- 
 [70]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 verse belongs. What have you been reading 
 about him? " 
 
 " Oh, I like best of all the story of the 
 time when the King of Syria sent out his 
 legions to the hill of Dothan to take this 
 one feeble old man and his single attendant. 
 And the servant hearing the thunder of 
 their oncoming, and seeing the hopelessness 
 of the odds, crouched trembling beside the 
 old prophet. 
 
 " * Alas, my master ! ' came his cry of ter- 
 ror, * how shall we do ? * 
 
 " And Elisha lifted up his brooding gaze : 
 * Lord, I pray Thee open his eyes.' 
 
 " And as the Poets occasionally open our 
 dull eyes that see only the difficulties, the 
 obstacles, the sordid commonplaces of ex- 
 istence, so the young man saw for once what 
 Elisha saw always the splendor of the 
 vision, the encompassing hosts of heaven 
 drawn up to protect them, in chariots of 
 flame, with horses of fire. But " Egeria 
 paused shame-facedly and actually blushed. 
 " The idea of me sitting here telling you 
 Bible stories ; carefully carrying my little 
 [80]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 scuttle of coals to Newcastle. You observe, 
 I trust, that I have the grace to blush." 
 
 " But I assure you, if you will believe 
 me, that I enjoyed it," affirmed the Bishop, 
 " I always like you best when you are car- 
 ried away by your enthusiasms." 
 
 " Thank you ; but I still feel guilty. What 
 were we talking about before I began to 
 instruct you in Biblical lore? Oh! I remem- 
 ber, the feminine temperament. Now really, 
 Bishop, quite under the rose, do you not 
 become frightfully bored sometimes by its 
 various manifestations ? " 
 
 " It may be a trifle self-conscious, a little 
 inclined to regard itself pathologically," 
 admitted the Bishop with caution. 
 
 " It is frequently yellow," said Egeria, 
 decisively. " Why don't you novelists and 
 clergymen occasionally tell us the truth? " 
 
 " We must fill our churches and sell our 
 books, I suppose," returned the Bishop, half 
 whimsically, half regretfully. " What would 
 you say, Lady Egeria, if we put you in 
 orders, and disregarding St. Paul's advice, 
 let you occupy the pulpit? Would you 
 [81]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 thunder denunciations at poor, defenceless 
 women ? " 
 
 " I'd have a fine time," cried Egeria, her 
 eyes alight. " I would do what you ser- 
 monizers and novel writers haven't the cour- 
 age to do just tell them the truth about 
 themselves. Chide them for their frivolities 
 and extravagances and vanities? Not I. 
 They don't care a straw for that. No, no, 
 I should have a new evangel and a new text. 
 It should be : ' Play the game gamely and 
 don't whine if you lose.' Now, Bishop, con- 
 fess that you never meet a strange woman 
 that you do not observe a speculative gleam 
 in her eye which long experience has taught 
 you to interpret as : ' How soon can I tell 
 him my troubles ? ' 
 
 " Poor ladies ! You have so many," sighed 
 the Bishop sympathetically. 
 
 " Of course we have, we multiply them by 
 three. Sedulously to observe all tragic and 
 harrowing anniversaries is a part of our 
 religion. ' It is just five years ago to-day 
 since Edwin left me for another,' she says, 
 mournfully, and then, shrouding herself in 
 [82]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 gloom, lives over each poignant, past mo- 
 ment. If anyone asks the cause of her de- 
 jected demeanor, she murmurs in a sad, 
 sweet voice : * It is an anniversary. Would 
 you like to hear of my grief? ' 
 
 "But what does a man do? He says: 
 ' Jove ! It's just a year to-morrow since 
 Jemima was run down by a motor car. I 
 must keep myself well amused or it may be 
 a depressing occasion.' 
 
 " Seriously, Bishop, if I were you, I'd have 
 a phonograph in my study, and the moment 
 a woman set foot within the door it should 
 begin that good old hymn : ' Go bury thy 
 sorrow, the world hath its share.' ' 
 
 " But what can the poor things do," 
 asked the Bishop, " if they may not turn to 
 their clergyman for consolation and com- 
 fort?" 
 
 " Twang on Emerson's iron string : 
 ' Trust thyself.' Why always twine about 
 a pole, like a limp pea vine, and flop on the 
 ground the minute the upholding stick is 
 withdrawn? Imagine the emotions of the 
 pole, if it were sentient ! At first it would 
 [83]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 say : ' Delicate, dainty pea vine lean on me, 
 the clasp of your myriad tendrils fills me 
 with rapture. How sweet is your adorable 
 dependence ! ' But in time : ' Oh, stifling, 
 smothering pea vine, I am suffocated by your 
 deadening passivity. Would I could tear 
 myself free from your throbbing tendrils.' ' 
 
 " You evidently believe in the dead bury- 
 ing their dead," said the Bishop medita- 
 tively. 
 
 " No sounder philosophy was ever en- 
 joined on a living world. Let the dead dead 
 pasts, dead lives, dead loves, dead memories 
 bury their dead. Ah, Bishop, the great 
 art of life is the art of forgetting." 
 
 " You, Madame Egeria, are inclined to 
 philosophize." 
 
 " Sir, do not remind me of it ! When we 
 offer sacrifices at the altar of laughter, you 
 may look for gray hairs and crows' feet. 
 Tears and passion belong to youth: that 
 season of fleeting and exquisite joys, of 
 tragic and fugitive griefs, of tempestuous 
 and restless longings. Youth, with the pas- 
 sionate voice of Maurice de Guerin, cries 
 [84]
 
 THE FEMININE TEMPERAMENT 
 eternally : ' The road of the wayfarer is a 
 joyous one. Ah, who shall set me adrift 
 upon the waters of the Nile ? ' " 
 
 " And in maturity we learn to fold our 
 hands and stop our ears and take refuge 
 in the commonplace." The Bishop's tone 
 was tinged with bitterness. 
 
 " Ah, no, no ! " Egeria was vehement. 
 " We learn that the Nile, with its dream- 
 haunted shores, flows by our door; that 
 wherever a patch of sunlight falls is beauty, 
 wherever a morning-glory blows is art." 
 
 The Bishop fell in with her mood. " That 
 is it. Maturity is nothing if it is not ex- 
 pansion. 
 
 "'Tis life of which our nerves are scant. 
 'Tis life, not death for which we pant, 
 More life and fuller life." 
 
 He loved to quote. 
 
 " Yes," exclaimed Egeria, " * more life, 
 fuller life,' more work, more play, more ex- 
 perience, more of the dreams that scale the 
 stars, more of the splendid, inexorable life 
 of earth. But " looking at him doubtfully 
 " we are getting horribly didactic and 
 [85]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 prosy, and we are a thousand miles away 
 from the feminine temperament." 
 
 " Is there anything left of it ? " inquired 
 the Bishop mildly. 
 
 Egeria ignored him. " You have only ex- 
 pressed yourself guardedly, while I have 
 talked and talked," she complained. 
 
 "I shall be equally fluent." The twinkle 
 shone again in his eye. " But my opinion is 
 given in confidence. I throw myself on your 
 discretion." 
 
 " Assuredly," murmured Egeria. 
 
 " Very well, then," lowering his voice 
 " I am like the old Englishman who said : * I 
 have always found a most horrid, romantic 
 perverseness in your sex. To do and to love 
 what you should not is meat, drink and ves- 
 ture to you all.' And I also know that 
 
 "Every day her dainty hands make life's soiled 
 
 temple clean, 
 And there's a wake of glory where her spirit pure 
 
 hath been. 
 At midnight through the shadow-land her living 
 
 face doth gleam, 
 The dying kiss her shadow, and the dead smile in 
 
 their dream." 
 
 [86]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE
 
 " Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, 
 Or the gold weather round us mellow slow ; 
 We have fulfilled ourselves and we can dare, 
 And we can conquer." 
 
 HENLEY.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 
 THE Commonplace Man and Egeria 
 had started out early in the after- 
 noon on a nutting expedition. His part had 
 been to climb the trees and shake the 
 branches while Egeria stood beneath and, 
 with her hands encased in stout leather 
 gloves, broke the dull, prickly burrs and 
 gathered the gleaming, satiny, brown chest- 
 nuts. After an hour's diligent toil she had 
 professed herself content with the results 
 of this labor. So the Commonplace Man de- 
 scended from the tree and, seating himself 
 with considerable satisfaction on the great, 
 fallen log beside her, began searching in his 
 pocket for matches, preparatory to light- 
 ing a cigarette. 
 
 " How surprised and envious the rest will 
 be when they all come straggling in for tea 
 [89]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 and we show them the fruits of our toil ! " 
 Egeria gazed complacently at the large bas- 
 ket at their feet, filled to the brim with nuts 
 while the ground about them was strewn 
 with leaves and burrs. 
 
 The Commonplace Man nodded without 
 speaking and struck another match; and 
 she leaned back comfortably against a con- 
 venient tree, sure that he wouldn't interrupt 
 her reverie. That was, she paused to con- 
 sider, the crowning virtue of the Common- 
 place Man. He never showed that perverse 
 inclination to chatter, which most people 
 displayed when she wished to be quiet. 
 
 It was one of those soft, windless days 
 in late October, when the earth seems lapped 
 in a golden peace. The hills floated in pur- 
 ple hazes ; the wide meadows of seeded 
 grasses and dry, feathery weeds stretched 
 far away and finally broke against a line of 
 trees which glowed through every shade of 
 brown and russet and crimson and flame, 
 emphasized and defined by the permanent, 
 austere, intense green of the occasional 
 pines. Through it all flowed a lazy blue 
 [90]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 river, rippling a faint accompaniment to 
 some secret, harmonious dream, and nar- 
 rowing until it lost itself in the opalescent 
 mists of the pearl and violet distance. At 
 hand, where detail was clear, flutters of scar- 
 let vine swayed from an old gray fence with 
 its arabesques of green and orange lichens ; 
 a squirrel would now and again whisk tim- 
 orously out from behind a stone, advance 
 on Egeria's store of nuts, peer suspiciously 
 at her for a moment with his beady, black 
 eyes and scamper off, only to return after 
 an argument with himself and draw a few 
 paces nearer ; a fluff of milkweed seeds burst 
 from their rough pods and floated against 
 her cheek and she laughed aloud with joy 
 at the splendor of this day and dust, and 
 then sharply sighed with the heart-break- 
 ing evanescence of its glory. 
 
 But presently her golden moments were 
 interrupted by the chug-chug of a motor 
 car and it swung into sight, to come to an 
 abrupt stop in the roadway opposite the 
 nutting expedition. Then, after a variety 
 of surprised exclamations, Castilia, dark, 
 [91]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 glowing, radiant as the Autumn, through 
 her enfolding veils, sprang out, followed 
 by the Bishop, the Financier, the Judge 
 and the Poet. Blind to the beauty of the 
 scene but spurred on by the harvest Egeria 
 and the Commonplace Man had garnered, 
 they all fell to nutting, and so vigorously 
 did they pursue their labors that soon every 
 adjacent tree was stripped. 
 
 " Rest a bit," counseled Egeria, " I must 
 go home soon. I have a guest who arrived 
 rather unexpectedly this morning." 
 
 " Who is she ? " asked Castilia inter- 
 estedly and rather apprehensively. " Any- 
 one I know ? " 
 
 " No," replied Egeria, " you have never 
 met her." 
 
 It was sometimes the aggrieved com- 
 plaint of Egeria's more intimate friends 
 that she knew too many people. Truly, no 
 one could call her exclusive, her friends were 
 of every social grade and condition. " Limit 
 myself to one small circle ! " she would ex- 
 claim, " Never. If there is one word of 
 which I have a horror it is ' exclusive.' It 
 [92]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 means the exclusion of interests. I prefer 
 to be inclusive." 
 
 " No, it is no one you know," she con- 
 tinued after a moment's silence, her chin on 
 her hand, gazing somberly before her. " It 
 is a homeless woman, of middle life, with- 
 out an adequate income or occupation." 
 
 " Who is she ? " asked Castilia curiously. 
 
 " An old school friend. A woman who be- 
 gan life with everything and has been be- 
 reft of all." 
 
 " But why is she homeless ? " probed Cas- 
 tilia. 
 
 " Not from choice, I assure you," dryly. 
 " Every woman, my dear Castilia, no matter 
 how great a gypsy in disposition, desires 
 some haven to which she can ultimately re- 
 tire when she wearies of the open road. 
 Even if she has a veritable mania for travel, 
 she wishes some spot which she can call a 
 home if only as a matter of convenience. 
 But it is what Ada is and what she lacks 
 which makes her case so tragic." 
 
 " What is she and what does she lack? " 
 asked the Judge in his usual blunt fashion. 
 [93]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " She is about forty, charming in appear- 
 ance and manner. To these gifts she adds 
 experience and knowledge of the world and 
 of men and women. Emotionally and intel- 
 lectually she is mature. She has been a pu- 
 pil in the school of life long enough to 
 have learned many of its lessons, to have 
 felt the ripening frost-touch of discipline 
 and to have gained some insight into 
 the most difficult of arts the art of liv- 
 ing." 
 
 " Homeless and forty ! " murmured the 
 Bishop sympathetically, " the very phrase 
 is a symbol of desolation. How is she living, 
 Egeria? " 
 
 " Oh, she has a tiny and quite inadequate 
 income. She lives in a hall bedroom in a 
 boarding house and visits continually among 
 wealthy relatives, who do not begin to be- 
 stow upon her the consideration they show 
 their maids ; for maids, as we all know, are 
 apt to exhibit a haughty independence and 
 a tendency to throw up the situation when- 
 ever the mistress's manner becomes unpleas- 
 antly overbearing. But that daughter of 
 [94]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 misfortune the poor relation or dependent 
 friend has got to subdue her pride and 
 take the whirlwind if she would glean her 
 scanty harvests. Oh, I would not speak of 
 Ada's position ; but I need your advice, and 
 perhaps, your interest in the matter." 
 
 " What does a woman do under such cir- 
 cumstances? " asked the Poet. " I know what 
 a man does. He retires to a den, gives up 
 all the vanities of life, and studies the situ- 
 ation. He brings his entire faculties to bear 
 upon the best method of retrieving his 
 shattered fortunes." 
 
 Egeria smiled. " A woman adopts a to- 
 tally different course, she acts as if winged 
 wealth were still hers. She makes of poverty 
 a graceful masquerade. Carriages being no 
 longer within her beck, she walks, asserting 
 that she feels tremendously better for the 
 exercise ordered by her physician. Purple 
 and fine linen she professes to regard as a 
 superfluous ostentation of the vulgar. Once, 
 she, too, felt an interest; but no more. 
 There are too many other things of vaster 
 import." 
 
 [95]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " I have seen women," said the Judge, 
 " who have brought to bear upon the sup- 
 port of a fictitious position, such tact, diplo- 
 macy and reckless audacity that I have 
 pondered deeply upon misdirected powers." 
 Then, seeing that Castilia shivered, " Cas- 
 tilia," peremptorily, " don't sit with your 
 feet upon the damp ground. Here, put this 
 rug under them." 
 
 The Poet threw him a baleful glance. 
 
 " I was not shivering because I was cold," 
 said Castilia, " I was shivering at the posi- 
 tion of Egeria's friend, the awfulness of 
 adjusting one's self to changed condi- 
 tions." 
 
 " Yes, fancy yourself in her place, Cas- 
 tilia," said Egeria. " Think of the thousands 
 of women like her! She believed that her 
 bark was moored for life in some snug har- 
 bor, and began to pull down sail, when quite 
 suddenly upon her, just or unjust, capable 
 or incapable, deserving or undeserving, the 
 rains descended and the floods came, and she 
 awakens from peaceful slumber to find her- 
 self adrift on a wide and pitiless sea, con- 
 [96]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 fronted for the first time by the grim, 
 elemental facts of life, the necessity of 
 securing food, shelter and clothing. 
 
 " The unsolvable problems stare her in the 
 face, demanding a solution; but how? The 
 shipwrecked know nothing of seamanship 
 or navigation, and yet, shining, far away, 
 is land land which must in some way be 
 reached. Is it strange that a trembling ter- 
 ror overcomes her and that she sinks to the 
 bottom of her frail craft, crying, like the 
 monk of old : ' Oh Lord, my boat is so little 
 and Thy sea is so great ! ' 
 
 " But what becomes of her, this woman 
 with the tiny, inadequate income and the 
 hall bedroom? " asked the Judge. 
 
 Egeria threw out her hands with a ges- 
 ture of despair. 
 
 "What!" she cried. "Why ultimately, 
 as her horizons narrow, all the affections of 
 her nature center on a parrot or a plant. 
 Beyond altering her garments to suit the 
 prevailing mode, and making an unflagging 
 effort to present the best possible appear- 
 ance on the scantiest possible outlay, her 
 [97]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 intelligence and her natural ingenuity are 
 devoted to securing an invitation now and 
 again to dinner or to an afternoon tea." 
 
 " How does she bear it ? " wailed Castilia. 
 " Egeria, why do you use your vivid imag- 
 ination to draw such ghastly pictures ? " 
 
 " My dear Castilia, we can bear anything 
 if we have to," Egeria remarked. " But 
 sometimes the starving human nature with- 
 in her rises in revolt and demands a reckon- 
 ing. Then she is told by consoling friends 
 or finds the sentiment in one of the little 
 white-and-gold books on her table that mis- 
 fortune patiently endured is ennobling, and 
 that every difficult experience is rendered 
 glorious by the fortitude with which it is 
 borne. Ada began to voice some of those 
 platitudes to me to-day and I am afraid I 
 hurt her by my obvious impatience. 
 
 " ' True, very true,' I interrupted her, 
 * but why bear all these difficult experiences 
 and misfortunes? Why endure so much for 
 the little, little sake of appearances? Why 
 not exchange the patience and the forti- 
 tude for the zest of battle? Why not 
 [98]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 
 throw aside the weights and the clogs and 
 stand free, ready to run the race before 
 you? ' " 
 
 " Did you really attempt to console her 
 with the cold comfort of those cheering re- 
 marks?" asked the Judge cynically. 
 
 " I did," replied Egeria coolly, " but we 
 also went over the ground and tried to find 
 a remedy, you know. But our whole con- 
 versation served to turn my thoughts in this 
 direction: how difficult it is for women to 
 adapt themselves to new and changing con- 
 ditions." 
 
 " In other words, they lack initiative," 
 affirmed the Judge. 
 
 " Not at all," Egeria argued. " It is sim- 
 ply that their whole training, environment 
 and tradition are against it. To them the 
 unknown is fraught with vast terrors. They 
 cling with the tenacity of limpets to the 
 accustomed, the usual." 
 
 " You admit, then, that foreign to their 
 
 souls is the emotion that can feel * joyous 
 
 we launch out on trackless seas, fearless for 
 
 unknown shores ? ' ' The Poet paused in his 
 
 [99]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 occupation of weaving a wreath of bright- 
 leaved vines for Castilia's hair. 
 
 " Like Rachel they cannot go to a far 
 country unless they bear with them the 
 images of their father's house." The Bishop 
 spoke from the depths of his experience. 
 
 " Ah, there is an allegory for you ! " cried 
 Egeria, " Jacob was fearlessly facing new 
 conditions, a new realm of thought, eager 
 to explore, to penetrate it; but Rachel ac- 
 companying him must needs hamper him 
 with the conventional, the conservative the 
 gods of her father's house. Rachel belonged 
 to the safe and sane majority, the retarding 
 forces of society." 
 
 " Very necessary forces," the Judge re- 
 proved her. 
 
 " Very necessary, no doubt," Egeria 
 agreed sweetly, " but not of the class which 
 has ever given anything new to the world. 
 The novel, the foreign, to suit them, must 
 be pruned and planed until it presents the 
 appearance of the old, the familiar." 
 
 " If what you say is true," said the Poet, 
 adding the finishing touches to his wreath 
 [100]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 
 and gazing at it admiringly, " how do wom- 
 en ever get along? for in the pursuit of 
 any undertaking fame, fortune, or a mere 
 living, one must take risks. Every under- 
 taking is a hazard. To follow out your 
 metaphor, Madame Egeria, they must, if 
 they would ever succeed in beaching their 
 boats, strike out boldly for land." 
 
 Egeria shrugged her shoulders, " Ad- 
 vance that, and they would recoil in terror. 
 They are prone to argue in favor of cling- 
 ing to the sinking hulk, hoping against hope, 
 that the miracle of a rescue may yet befall 
 them." 
 
 " I sometimes wonder," mused the Bishop, 
 " if the whole of success does not lie in 
 realizing, actually realizing to the limit of 
 one's consciousness, to the very marrow of 
 one's bones, that there is nothing in life to 
 fear if we will throw the unnecessary bal- 
 last of pride overboard and strike out 
 boldly." 
 
 " ' Henceforth, I ask not good fortune. 
 I myself am good fortune. Henceforth, I 
 whimper no more, postpone no more, need 
 [101]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 nothing. Strong and content I travel the 
 open road,' " quoted the Poet, adding the 
 last touches to his wreath and placing it 
 carefully upon Castilia's head. 
 
 " When I said something of that kind 
 to Ada," a whimsical smile hovered about 
 Egeria's lips " she turned upon me and 
 demanded, ' Are you advising me to take 
 risks which might insure absolute failure? 
 What a position should I be in then! Why 
 I would be without a cent, facing old age, 
 illness, dependence, God knows what hor- 
 rors!'" 
 
 " What did you say ? " asked the Judge. 
 
 " What could I say ? There was no an- 
 swer to make her. If she feels that way, 
 she has not yet arrived at the point where 
 she knows, ' I myself am good for- 
 tune.' " 
 
 " Yes," the Bishop leaned forward and 
 spoke earnestly, " and dear, impetuous Ege- 
 ria, never urge anyone to take risks until 
 he does feel that way. Your friend's experi- 
 ence would probably be identical with that 
 of Job who remarked many centuries ago, 
 [102]
 
 THE' DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 * Behold, the thing I greatly feared has 
 come upon me ! ' 
 
 " Castilia, you had better take that 
 wreath off your head. It is probably a poi- 
 son vine." The Judge's tone was carefully 
 iced. He had viewed the ceremony of her 
 crowning with extreme disfavor. Castilia 
 screamed in dismay and snatched at her 
 Hebe-like decorations ; but withheld her 
 hand at the Poet's scornful and vehement 
 expostulations. 
 
 " To achieve success " began the Finan- 
 cier didactically. 
 
 " Wait a moment," Egeria interrupted. 
 " One never achieves success. Success, like 
 the kingdom of heaven, is within us, and 
 like the kingdom of heaven cometh not with 
 observation and crying ' lo here ! ' and * lo 
 there ! ' It lies in that one thing that we 
 can do just a little differently from any- 
 one else in the world. It may not come to 
 us through the accomplishment we have 
 spent time and money in cultivating. It 
 may come through some natural gift, ig- 
 nored and unsuspected until we discover the 
 [103]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 possession through the necessity of its 
 use." 
 
 " Wasn't there some famous French- 
 woman who said that she could earn her own 
 living in exactly twenty different ways ? " 
 asked Castilia. " At any rate, whether she 
 could or not, I am sure you can, Egeria." 
 
 " Most capable women in any line can 
 echo her sentiments," Egeria returned 
 thoughtfully. " In striving to perfect one's 
 self in any chosen occupation, one inevitably 
 acquires other accomplishments and becomes 
 conscious of other powers. Do you not think 
 so? " appealing to the Bishop. 
 
 He smiled acquiescence. 
 
 " Occasionally," continued Egeria, " when 
 a woman is deploring her circumstances to 
 me, bewailing her stunted life, and asking 
 me how she can bear it, I reply laconically 
 she thinks brutally ' Why bear it ? ' and 
 then she begins to justify herself by ex- 
 plaining that personally she does not wish 
 to bear it. She says, ' I am very anxious to 
 attempt such and such an undertaking; but 
 my friends do not think I could possibly 
 [104]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 
 succeed. My friends consider the , field so 
 overcrowded that they deem it best for me 
 to continue living just as I am doing for 
 the present.' 
 
 " Ah, Bishop," laughing up at him, " you 
 are 'apt to call me impetuous and impulsive, 
 you should see me then. I positively tower 
 in my righteous anger. 
 
 " * What in heaven's name have your 
 friends to do with the matter? ' I cry. 
 ' They are going their ways, following their 
 inclinations, building their own lives in 
 any style of architecture they prefer Why 
 should their opinion impede or hamper you 
 in any way? Are you meekly to abandon 
 your inalienable right to " travel the un- 
 charted " because of a few expressed views 
 to the contrary? One's own way may not be 
 much of a way ; but it is all one has to 
 go by.' " 
 
 " ' Your own way ' is always used to me 
 as a reproach and a term of reprobation," 
 sighed Castilia. 
 
 " Whose way is any better ? " remarked 
 Egeria. " We have all met persons who were 
 [105]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 living proof of that wise old saw, that he 
 who strives to please everyone succeeds in 
 pleasing no one. 
 
 " Do we not all know women, who, thrown 
 upon their own resources when no longer 
 young and having to face life afresh, have 
 succeeded? One example there are always 
 examples, you know a woman, cultivated 
 and highly educated, found upon the test 
 that her cherished accomplishments really 
 amounted to nothing from the commercial 
 standpoint. 'She couldn't find a market for 
 them. They were practically useless. You 
 know whom I mean, Castilia In the face 
 of an overwhelming disappointment, and 
 more to distract her mind than anything 
 else, she turned to her great solace, needle- 
 work; and having some material at hand, 
 made herself two or three of the most ex- 
 quisite and original blouses. They were so 
 much admired that she offered to dupli- 
 cate them for several of her friends, with 
 the result that she shortly had more 
 orders than she could fill ; and now, those 
 same friends are unable to purchase the 
 [106]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 costumes she designs, so inaccessible are 
 her prices." 
 
 " Yes," corroborated Castilia, " and her 
 talent for needlework she did not even re- 
 gard as an accomplishment." 
 
 " I know," continued Egeria, " because I 
 am in touch with them, that there are hun- 
 dreds of women who are making a bare liv- 
 ing by following the conventional methods 
 holding clerical positions, etc. who, in 
 confidences more or less pathetic, will tell 
 you of their longing to do other things. 
 
 " One of them has filled every space of 
 her narrow quarters with flower-pots. Since 
 childhood, flowers have been her passion, 
 and it would seem that she has only to 
 thrust a stick into the ground to make it 
 sprout. And she says, * I really am sure I 
 could make a success of flower-growing ; but 
 I dare not invest my all in the attempt.' " 
 
 " Yes," again chimed in Castilia, " and 
 we have a friend who makes the most beau- 
 tiful neckwear and lingerie you ever saw 
 dreams of things. And when Egeria told her 
 that she could command very high prices 
 [107]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 for them, she replied that she did not know 
 how to market them. * Why,' she exclaimed, 
 ' If I gave up my position and devoted my- 
 self to designing and making these things I 
 might fail.' " 
 
 The Judge and the Financier exchanged 
 dismayed glances. 
 
 " And do you mean to say," there was 
 robust indignation in the Judge's tones, 
 " that you have actually been advising a 
 lot of women to throw up their secure posi- 
 tions and take all kinds of risks in pursuit 
 of more congenial occupations which might 
 jeopardize their future and leave them pen- 
 niless and heartbroken." 
 
 " I assure you," Egeria was vehement, 
 " that I am doing nothing of the kind ; but 
 many women of enterprise, energy and real 
 ability are frequently dissuaded from happy 
 and successful achievement by the raven-like 
 croaking of friends, who invariably have at 
 hand any number of harrowing examples 
 wherewith to illustrate their tales of dis- 
 aster. I know, oh, no one better; that it 
 takes a brave woman to follow her dream 
 [108]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 and stand unswervingly by her purpose in 
 the face of such representations ; but she 
 has got to put her hand to the plow and 
 never look back; to hear the dreary croak- 
 ings of the ravens in her ears; to watch the 
 gathering of dense storm clouds, and walk 
 serenely on." 
 
 " You evidently believe the truth of 
 
 'Assert thyself, and by and by, 
 The world will come and lean on thee' " 
 
 said the Poet. 
 
 " You know me for a hopeless individual- 
 ist," smiled Egeria. 
 
 " But for argument's sake, admit the 
 worst," pleaded the Judge. " Suppose she 
 does stake everything on the chance she be- 
 lieves in and meets absolute failure? " 
 
 " Very well, suppose so then," Egeria met 
 him half - way. " There are other fields in 
 which success may be won, and if failure 
 follow her to the end, she can still say : ' I 
 at least, have played the game.' 
 
 " We are supposing impossibilities, how- 
 ever. I do not believe that a woman can make 
 [109]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 an earnest trial of any undertaking within 
 the scope of her powers, and not succeed." 
 
 " ' If hopes are dupes, fears may be 
 liars,' " the Poet was in a vein of quotation. 
 
 " Yes," nodded the Bishop benignly, " and 
 ' one sincere key will ope many of fortune's 
 doors.' " 
 
 " We groan over our mistakes and fail- 
 ures as if they were irrevocable and damn- 
 ing," there were two scarlet spots on 
 Egeria's cheeks " when they are usually 
 quite the best things that could happen to 
 us; excellent if bitter medicine. To-day 
 there is no reason why any woman should 
 sit and meekly endure and make the best of 
 things. If she has only one month of life 
 left, or if sixty years stretch before her, 
 there is still time to achieve, to accomplish. 
 What if she has sown her seeds on the rocks ; 
 and the wind has blown them away; or on 
 waste ground and weeds have sprung up 
 and choked them? There is no reason why 
 she should not undertake a fresh planting 
 in all hope and enthusiasm." 
 
 She gazed beyond them a moment with 
 [110]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 
 uplifted face, then noting that the sky had 
 grown gold and the river gray, she sprang 
 to her feet. 
 
 " But look ! The sun is sinking. No no 
 no, I will not let you drive me home, Finan- 
 cier. You shall vanish in a cloud of dust, 
 and the Commonplace Man and I will trudge 
 humbly along the roadside, bearing our 
 sheaves, or nuts, with us. Good-by. Good- 
 by." 
 
 " Did you notice," said Egeria, a few 
 moments later to the Commonplace Man 
 as they walked through the soft twilight, 
 " that there was the usual friction between 
 the Judge and the Poet this afternoon? It 
 is reaUy getting tiresome. It is so stupid 
 of the Judge to show his dislike for a mere 
 boy like the Poet ; and such a charming boy, 
 too!" 
 
 " Do you not know why ? " asked the 
 Commonplace Man curiously. 
 
 " No," with a surprised glance. " Do you? 
 
 It must be," thoughtfully " that he does 
 
 not approve of the very obvious attraction 
 
 which exists between those two young peo- 
 
 [111]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 pie. The Poet hasn't a cent, and with her 
 tastes, Castilia needs so many cents, that the 
 Judge probably thinks the whole affair very 
 foolish. Do you not think that is the ex- 
 planation of his disagreeable attitude? " 
 
 " Probably," an amused smile still hover- 
 ing about his lips. 
 
 " Why, what else could it be ? " asked 
 Egeria. " And Castilia is becoming so af- 
 fected that I could shake her. She plays with 
 the Poet with one eye on the Judge, and 
 assumes a shyness that is absurd. Really, 
 one might think she were trying to flirt with 
 him, the Judge, you know." 
 
 This time the Commonplace Man laughed 
 so loud and long that he startled a belated 
 rabbit lurking in the weeds by the wayside. 
 It dashed out and tore across their path, 
 a gray streak of panic. 
 
 " Oh," Egeria was distinctly huffy. " You 
 do nothing but laugh and look mysterious. 
 You are very stupid. Only you are not 
 really," with a smile, her brief anger van- 
 ishing. " Castilia asked me a day or two 
 ago why I was so fond of you, and I told 
 [112]
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF MISFORTUNE 
 her that you knew a secret about me, and 
 that I feared if I were not always extremely 
 nice to you, that you might tell it." 
 
 "A secret! What new jest " gazing at 
 her as if puzzled. " Ah ! " comprehendingly, 
 a smile creeping around the corners of his 
 mouth, " To be sure. I do not know what 
 I would do without that stick with which to 
 keep you in order." 
 
 " Do you ever feel any temptation to 
 tell? " she asked. 
 
 " Often." 
 
 "But will you?" 
 
 " I may at any time, unless I am shown 
 especial consideration," he warned her. 
 
 [113]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ
 
 "The wisest of the wise 
 Listen to pretty lies, 
 
 And love to hear them told. 
 Doubt not that Solomon 
 Listened to many a one, 
 
 Some in his youth and more when he grew old." 
 WALTEB SAVAGE LANDOR.
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 
 THE Editor of a Woman's Magazine 
 happened to be in Egeria's neighbor- 
 hood and stopped in to see her. It was a 
 raw and chilly afternoon with a biting wind 
 blowing out of a gray sky, and he rubbed 
 his hands in satisfaction when he found her 
 alone, reading by the leaping flame of a 
 wood fire. 
 
 She was, as she professed, delighted to see 
 him. " It has been one of those tiresome days 
 when one feels neither in the mood for work 
 or play and welcomes an unexpected visit 
 from a friend as a boon from heaven." 
 
 He hesitated on the threshold. " Perhaps, 
 you would not welcome me so kindly if you 
 knew my reasons for coming; two reasons. 
 One, to ask your advice; the other, to scold 
 you." 
 
 [117]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Scold me ! " Egeria was a picture of in- 
 jured innocence. " Then let me urge you 
 beforehand not to waste your breath. I do 
 not deserve a scolding. Tell me the news 
 instead." 
 
 He shook his head and adhered to his 
 original intention. " I've been hearing 
 things." There was accusation in his glance. 
 
 " Out with them then," her tone was re- 
 signed. " I see that you must unburden 
 yourself. But " solicitously " are you 
 quite comfortable? Let me make you a nice 
 hot cup of tea; and would you not like to 
 poke the fire? Oh, do now. I never knew 
 anyone whom it did not make perfectly hap- 
 py to be allowed to poke the fire." 
 
 The Editor laughed in spite of himself. 
 " You are only putting off the evil hour," 
 he admonished, " for I came prepared to 
 read you a lecture and I do not intend to be 
 balked of my purpose." 
 
 " Of course not," she agreed meekly. " It 
 will probably be good for me; but first, 
 take one of these little cakes ; see how pret- 
 tily they are iced, all in flower designs. 
 [118]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 Here is one with a violet on it ; or will you 
 have this yellow-hearted daisy? They are 
 very good. And truly that chair you are in 
 is not quite comfortable ; put this soft, little 
 pillow behind your head." 
 
 The Editor sat upright and looked at her 
 sternly. " No, I am not to be turned from 
 my purpose by any such methods. I see 
 through your subtle necromancy. There is 
 your ' soft, little pillow ' " casting it upon 
 the floor. " No, I do not care for them," 
 waving away the cakes, although his eye 
 was fastened longingly upon them. " Let me 
 also inform you that I do not wish to poke 
 the fire," with superb renunciation he laid 
 down the poker. " Retro me Delilah ! " 
 
 " Sampson unconquered ! I who am about 
 to die, salute thee," sweeping him a mock- 
 ing bow. 
 
 " Madame Egeria, your friends say " 
 
 " Oh, we all know what our friends say. 
 Can't you begin with something milder 
 the vituperation of mine enemy? " 
 
 " Your friends say," ignoring her, " that 
 either for sport or from affection for the 
 [119]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 Bishop you have constituted yourself a 
 malign Destiny and are laying impious 
 hands on a beautiful little romance." 
 
 Egeria looked honestly bewildered. " When 
 was this fairy tale invented? What are you 
 talking about, and what has the Bishop to 
 do with it?" 
 
 " The Bishop has a great deal to do with 
 it. It is said that an exquisite little idyll 
 is being lived here; youth and love, beauty 
 and genius, Castilia and the Poet. But be- 
 cause the Poet is poor and the Bishop none 
 too rich, you have decided that Castilia is 
 to wed the Judge, and, with diabolical clev- 
 erness, are moving them all about as pawns 
 upon the chessboard in order to accomplish 
 your mercenary desires." 
 
 Egeria's astonishment died in mirth and 
 she laughed until the echoes rang through 
 the room and the tears started to her eyes. 
 
 " What a comedy ! What a comedy ! " she 
 cried. " Oh, Editor," seizing his hands and 
 shaking them warmly, " I am so glad you 
 came, and gladder still that you persisted 
 in your determination to discipline me. You 
 [120]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 reminded me exactly of John Knox anathe- 
 matizing Mary Stuart." She wiped her eyes 
 with her handkerchief, " Oh, thank you 
 again ! Thank my friends for me, will you ? 
 Oh, what a blind mole I have been! But a 
 light breaks upon me." 
 
 " Madame Egeria," the Editor had seized 
 the poker again and was poking the fire so 
 vigorously that the sparks were flying in 
 all directions. " What are you talking 
 about?" 
 
 " I shall not enlighten you," brushing a 
 spark from her dress. " It is my turn now. 
 Oh, have a fresh cup of tea, and three pil- 
 lows behind your back, and a half dozen of 
 the delicious little cakes and I will send for 
 a poker for your other hand. I owe you 
 something, Editor man. Oh, where have my 
 eyes been ! " 
 
 " I confess," said the Editor coldly, " that 
 I do not see the reason for " 
 
 " my hysterics," concluded Egeria. 
 
 " No, nor do I intend that you shall." She 
 
 laughed again, " Come, Editor," seeing that 
 
 he was sulking visibly, " you said that you 
 
 [121]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 came for two reasons ; what was the other 
 one?" 
 
 He brightened a little. " I am thinking of 
 an article for my magazine on what women 
 like to read." 
 
 But it was Egeria's turn now and she 
 took advantage of it. " Suppose, I refuse 
 to enlighten you. Why, if I told you I might 
 be giving away the whole secret of our 
 mystery and therefore of our charm; and 
 perhaps I could not tell you if I would. 
 Woman is a capricious creature and apt to 
 contradict in one breath the likes and dis- 
 likes she has voiced in another. She loves 
 to veil her individuality as well as her com- 
 plexion, and the most rigidly observed rule 
 of one who knows how to play the game is, 
 that man shall lay his cards on the table 
 before she coyly draws the aces from her 
 sleeve. For several thousand years she has 
 been so consumedly amused by that carica- 
 ture of the gods man that other jests 
 fall flat upon her ears. Consequently, your 
 sex has assured the universe that she has 
 no sense of humor." 
 
 [122]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 
 The Editor drooped his eyelids slightly. 
 It was a trick of his when he meant to be 
 unpleasant. 
 
 " The soul of woman," he observed, " finds 
 its counterpart in a cat. Inscrutable, cruel, 
 forever unrevealed, it watches with unwaver- 
 ing eyes, the rude but honest gambolings 
 of the dog soul of man." 
 
 " How far more interesting is the cat," 
 cried Egeria, " you can starve or beat it ; 
 you can kill and dissect it to the last re- 
 maining thread of nerve tissue and what have 
 you gained? The spirit forever eludes you." 
 
 " The older religions," said the Editor 
 suavely, " did not concede to woman the pos- 
 session of that problematic blessing a soul. 
 She only claims it through the chivalry of 
 later theologians." 
 
 " We are getting curiously far from the 
 subject, are we not?" Egeria's tone was 
 languidly polite. " We were discussing what 
 women like to read, I believe. But you edi- 
 tors have apparently decided the question 
 and that is the reason we groan under the 
 heavy yoke of the * family story.' " 
 [ 123]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Well," asked the Editor, " what do you 
 want, the dissolute, degenerate, decadent 
 tale? " 
 
 " No ; but when we begin to prate of 
 * bright, fresh, clean literature,' advertise it 
 and clamor for it, then are our minds al- 
 ready contaminated." 
 
 " I am to infer then," argued the Editor 
 with some heat, " that you agree with John 
 Oliver Hobbes in her belief that the young 
 girl of to-day should read ' Tom Jones ' and 
 other like classics. Now I ask you if you 
 really consider ' Tom ' a suitable compan- 
 ion for girls ? " 
 
 " Well," mused Egeria, " you know what 
 Gibbon said about him that he would be 
 remembered when the Escurial was in 
 ruins." 
 
 " I do not care what Gibbon said about 
 him," replied the Editor testily. " He is ex- 
 tremely rough and coarse and sure to steal 
 any girl's illusions and destroy the bloom 
 of her innocence." 
 
 "Pish! Tish!" scoffed Egeria, "What 
 are illusions anyway ? " 
 
 [124]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 
 " Beautiful iridescent bubbles," cried the 
 Editor. " The stuff that dreams are made 
 of." 
 
 " But glass marked perishable, with a 
 protective tariff so high, that the duty paid 
 in heartaches, is apt to bankrupt the pos- 
 sessor. And the bloom of innocence is " 
 
 " The most divine thing in the world," 
 the Editor interrupted. 
 
 " Hm-mm-m," Egeria sniffed. " A com- 
 mercial commodity like rouge, lending the 
 same ephemeral attraction and causing fu- 
 ture suffering in proportion to the amount 
 of bloom. Now isn't it just as well to let 
 some of the children of great fiction filch 
 a few of the bubbles and flick off a bit of 
 the rose-flush, since life and man combined 
 are eventually going to smash all the illu- 
 sions, and rub off the bloom so ungently 
 that the young person may thank her stars 
 if she is not skinned in the process? Why 
 should she be guarded so tenderly from 
 great, truthful literature, written by the 
 masters who ' saw life steadily and saw it 
 whole ' ; only to be thrust into the arena 
 [125]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 to fight with the beasts at Ephesus, after 
 being carefully trained in the belief that 
 Ephesus has no beasts ? " 
 
 The Editor feinted. " I know you write. 
 Everyone does now. Then why, instead of 
 devoting yourself to criticism, do you not 
 give us the thing that women really like to 
 read? " 
 
 " I do not write," she said, " but do you 
 think I couldn't? " Smiling to herself, she 
 lifted a notebook from a table near her and 
 scribbled rapidly for a few moments. Then 
 she read: 
 
 " ' Wharnton acutely and somewhat con- 
 sciously, as it appeared to him later, suc- 
 ceeded in apprehending a situation which, 
 no matter how admirably he concealed, and, 
 in a measure, felt that his conscience abetted 
 and condoned his intimate and ultimate con- 
 clusion, yet by some strange exclusion of 
 other emotions, subtler and more com- 
 plex ' 
 
 " There ! " she exclaimed triumphantly, 
 " Do you not think that would go well in 
 certain periodicals? Now how is this for the 
 [126J
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 
 magazines that want * good, strong, vital 
 stuff ' ? 
 
 " Blue Janders sat upon the arid, baked 
 ground of the desert, removing the cactus 
 spines from his feet, * I 'low the whole lot of 
 blamed, low-down, pizen-pup kiotes'll be on 
 my trail 'fore the sun gits tired o' paintin' 
 them rocks yander an' throws down his 
 brush for the night.' ' 
 
 " Some more tea," cried the Editor, " the 
 sand gets in my throat." 
 
 " Something lighter ? " asked Egeria 
 mercilessly. " Here's a bit from still another 
 class of journals: 
 
 " * Jimmy Isinglass lounged into Mrs. 
 Bobby Crescendo's drawing-room. Jimmy 
 was admirably turned out by his man, Wil- 
 kins, as the scarlet and gold lackeys lining 
 Mrs. Bobby's marble halls were aware. Mrs. 
 Bobby was a picture herself. Not for noth- 
 ing had four French maids given her their 
 undivided attention that afternoon. " Hello, 
 Jim ! " she cried in her high, merry voice. 
 Jimmy Isinglass laughed at her audacious 
 wit. Then he went white. " My lady, my 
 [127]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 lady," he murmured, pressing her heavily 
 jeweled fingers to his burning lips.' ' 
 
 The Editor refused to laugh. 
 
 " You insist on fooling," he said re- 
 proachfully, " and I came to you in all faith 
 and hope. I asked you seriously, what wom- 
 en like to read." 
 
 Egeria abandoned her gayeties. 
 
 " What do women like to read ? " she re- 
 peated thoughtfully, and sat watching the 
 flames for a moment in silence. " I do not 
 believe that women crave any different meat 
 than that upon which our Caesars feed," she 
 advanced finally. " It is stupid and trivial 
 to try and please a class. Real literature 
 is universal and simple, and appeals to the 
 universal heart. It makes no difference 
 whether the heart beats beneath a coat or 
 bodice. But when, O Editor, shall we get 
 away from our lyrics, and our genre pic- 
 tures of life? When shall we cease to write 
 our vaporous, thin novels? When will we 
 cleanse our pages from the taint of puri- 
 tanism and refuse to allow our work to be 
 characterized by an attenuated daintiness 
 [128]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 and anaemic refinement? When, when shall 
 we realize that miniature painting is not the 
 all of art and that as a nation we are not 
 lyric but epic? 
 
 " Our national genius has been given to 
 the task of conquering nature first, and 
 then to the organization of great industries 
 and their subsequent formation into im- 
 mense and intricate combinations. As a peo- 
 ple we have been forced by our environment 
 to achieve, to conquer, and that spirit is 
 incorporated in us. It has become bone of 
 our bone and flesh of our flesh. The national 
 genius has then been typified in our finan- 
 ciers and they have risen to the stature of 
 the continent ; in consequence, we have a 
 purely material expression ; but the material 
 only symbolizes the real, and the artist will 
 yet come who will gather up all the rough, 
 tangled threads and weave them into a tap- 
 estry where we shall see pictured our na- 
 tional life. 
 
 " He must voice the message of the great, 
 cold, ice peaks of our mountains standing 
 austere and remote under the stars ; of our 
 [129]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 smiling, infinite fields of corn and wheat 
 stretching to unseen horizons ; of our cities 
 that spring up in a night; our deserts, our 
 forests, our varied and prodigal earth which 
 has demanded of man his painful and sus- 
 tained toil to wrest her treasures from 
 her. 
 
 " When the writer permits himself to re- 
 spond to but one phase of literature, ' A rose 
 in a moonlit garden, the shadow of trees 
 on the turf, almond bloom, scent of pine, 
 the wine cup and the guitar,' he has been 
 false to his American inheritance. The tre- 
 mendous landscape frightens him, and he 
 limits himself to the exquisite portrayal of 
 detail on two by four canvasses. He adores 
 the shadow and the hush of Literature's 
 haunted past, and thus he becomes academic, 
 of the schools and is dead. To be alive, he 
 must feel in every fiber of him, the spirit 
 expressed in those rolling sentences of 
 Fiske's : 
 
 " * It begins to dawn on us that in the 
 New- World events there is a rare and potent 
 fascination; not only is there the interest 
 [130]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 of their present importance, which nobody 
 would be likely to deny,' mark that Editor 
 ' but there is the charm of an historic 
 past as full of romance as any chapter what- 
 ever in the annals of mankind,' and 
 
 " ' Never has historian grappled with an- 
 other such epic theme, save when Herodotus 
 told the story of Greece and Persia, and 
 Gibbon's pages resounded with the solemn 
 tread of marshaled hosts through a thou- 
 sand years of change.' 
 
 " And it is felt," rising and pacing the 
 floor in her enthusiasm. " Believe me, Edi- 
 tor, ' the light of the future draws nigh 
 
 'And out of the infinite morning 
 Intrepid, you hear us cry.' " 
 
 The Editor meditatively poked the fire. 
 " Your views are interesting ; but not en- 
 lightening. You have kindly given me an 
 abstract dissertation on literature; but you 
 have not " there was some sharpness in his 
 voice " yet told me what women like to 
 read." 
 
 [131]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 Egeria laughed. " Once in a moment of 
 confidence, a hard-working miner's life, the 
 mother of seven children, drew aside a cur- 
 tain from a shelf in her kitchen, and exposed 
 to my naked and unashamed gaze transla- 
 tions of half a dozen of the most notorious 
 French classics, with a score of other works 
 of fiction less admirably written, but equally 
 instructive. ' And just why? ' I asked. ' Oh,' 
 she replied, * I get so tired of this ugly, 
 old dish- washing, calico-dress life that I like 
 to read about women who just raise the 
 devil.' 
 
 " Again I heard a sad, bad, nearly mad 
 woman exclaim : ' I want to read a sweet, 
 charming little idyll of the woods and fields ; 
 something with the atmosphere of apple 
 blossoms and youth and springtime.' 
 
 " The girl who works for her living has 
 an eternal curiosity concerning her sisters 
 who toil not, and she revels in the details 
 of opulence. Else that bar sinister of the 
 feminine intellect the woman's page 
 could not exist. She reads with bated breath 
 those printed, naively snobbish accounts of 
 [132]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LIKE TO READ 
 the outgoings and the incomings of our 
 millionairesses. She gloats over the number 
 of ' madame's ' personal attendants, her 
 wardrobe, her perfumes, her amusements. 
 
 " The wealthy young woman desires to 
 know more of the life of the daughters of 
 toil. To that end she studies sociology and 
 goes into settlement work, and attempts to 
 instruct, and uplift and meddle generally." 
 
 " However," broke in the Editor, with 
 an air of finality, " there is some common 
 ground. All women like to read of a new 
 recipe for custard pudding and the latest 
 way to make over a last year's basque." 
 
 " You mean," corrected Egeria, gently, 
 " that that is a man's view of what women 
 like. Personally, I never knew anyone who 
 enjoyed custard pudding, and a basque! A 
 basque ? " wrinkling her brow. " Oh, I be- 
 lieve I've heard my mother speak of them. 
 Since man first emerged from caves, he has 
 dogmatized about woman. He has frequently 
 averred that the lady novelist a pet and 
 early Victorian phrase has never succeeded 
 in portraying a man. Her attempts are 
 [133]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 either ' governesses in trousers ' or gorillas. 
 Then he points with pride to Brown or 
 Jones. ' Look at Brown,' he exclaims. ' He 
 has shown an intuitive knowledge of the 
 subtlest and most intimate feminine emo- 
 tions ; has literally taken apart and ex- 
 plained the mechanism of a woman's brain. 
 Why, he has impaled you women on the 
 pages of his books as an entomologist glues 
 butterflies to a card.' 
 
 " Or : ' Read Jones,' he says patroniz- 
 ingly. * He knows you women better than 
 you know yourselves. The critics all agree 
 that no one has ever so divined and depicted 
 the feminine heart.' 
 
 " And woman, complaisant woman, does 
 not even talk back. She merely lowers her 
 eyelids and smiles." 
 
 " And permits you to er dogmatize for 
 her," murmured the Editor. " But before I 
 go, what do women like to read? " 
 
 "What do men like to read? What does 
 anyone like to read? " Egeria was petulant. 
 " The answer is, whatever serves as a stimu- 
 lus to the imagination ; whatever pictures 
 [134]
 
 WHAT WOMEN LTKE TO READ 
 for each individual the phase of life which 
 most appeals to him. It may be the veriest 
 trash. It may be the sincerest art; but 
 the reason for liking it lies within one's 
 self." 
 
 " There should be some unanimity of 
 taste," remarked the Editor sulkily. " It 
 would simplify things for us. We've gone 
 on the principle that it exists in order to 
 supply ourselves with a working basis." 
 
 " True," sighed Egeria. " Hence the mag- 
 azines. Ah, going ! " She laughed mischiev- 
 ously as she shook hands warmly in fare- 
 well. " Do come soon again. There is no one 
 in the world with whom I so heartily enjoy 
 quarreling as yourself. And," calling after 
 him as he vanished through the hangings 
 before the door, " thank you again for your 
 scolding. I shan't forget the hint you gave 
 me." 
 
 He came back. " If I did not have to look 
 after the make-up of my magazine, I should 
 remain here until you told me what you 
 meant by our cryptic actions and remarks," 
 he spoke firmly. 
 
 [135]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 ** Oh, no, you would not/' returned Ege- 
 ria coolly, " I do not know what your make- 
 up may be; but " rubbing her hand over 
 her smooth cheek, " since I dine out to-night, 
 it is time I was looking after mine.*' 
 
 [136]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY
 
 " Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm 
 
 and the fly? 
 
 She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, 
 To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: 
 Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." 
 
 TENNYSON.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 ASTILIA, the Bishop, the Judge, the 
 Commonplace Man and the Poet had 
 all been having luncheon with Egeria, and al- 
 though it was getting on toward the middle 
 of the afternoon, they still sat about the 
 table. 
 
 Egeria lifted her chin to smile at the Bishop 
 across the great basket of bronze, serrated 
 oak-leaves, purple asters and plumy golden- 
 rod in the center of the board. The room was 
 full of a faint, delicious odor ; it combined the 
 musky fragrance of the white, bloomy grapes 
 with the bouquet of the smooth, crimson cor- 
 dial in the tiny glasses and the tang of the 
 black coffee steaming in little cups. The light 
 curtains blew back from the open windows 
 and the square sashes framed pictures of the 
 garden staid and luxuriant, dreaming under 
 [139]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 the noonday sun. A honey bee had flown in 
 and, after hovering over the fruit and flowers 
 in buzzing circles, had finally settled on the 
 Bishop's liqueur glass. 
 
 The Bishop smiled benignly. " Beautiful, 
 industrious little thing ! I am delighted to ex- 
 tend to you the hospitality of my wine cup." 
 
 " * Priggish example of the frugal vir- 
 tues,' you mean," jeered the Poet. " I detest 
 bees and ants. They are so self-sufficient, and 
 they take themselves so seriously, because of 
 their vaunted industry." 
 
 " I wish it had stayed out," said the Com- 
 monplace Man, his eyes fixed gloomily on the 
 bee which was apparently sipping a bead on 
 the edge of the glass with great enjoyment. 
 " It reminds me that I must go back to the 
 grind to-morrow." 
 
 " And you know that in your heart you are 
 glad," laughed Egeria. " You have en j oyed 
 your holiday perhaps " She glanced at 
 him from under her lashes. 
 
 He smiled for answer; but there was a 
 trace of bitterness in his smile. 
 
 " Perhaps," he answered laconically. 
 [140]
 
 WORK V8. BEAUTY 
 
 " Yes," she went on rapidly, " you have en- 
 joyed your holiday, but you know that in 
 your heart, you are longing to get back to 
 the grind, as you call it. You are used to the 
 harness, you know." 
 
 " Exactly." His eyes were fixed gravely 
 upon hers, but there was a hint of derision in 
 the bow with which he agreed to her words. 
 
 " Work ! Work ! I wonder if it isn't nicer 
 than idling? " mused Castilia. " I often envy 
 Egeria her studio, and her paints and brushes 
 and general absorption. I would love to work 
 if I only knew how, or at what, or for what 
 reason." 
 
 " I am glad to hear it," Egeria remarked. 
 " It delights me that you occasionally have 
 moments of divine discontent with your friv- 
 olities." 
 
 The Judge smiled at Castilia and opened 
 his mouth as if about to speak ; but the Poet 
 forestalled him. 
 
 " Do not listen to her," he begged Castilia, 
 
 " and quickly expel such morbid notions. It is 
 
 a horrid idea to get into your head. You 
 
 work!" there was positive horror in his ex- 
 
 [141]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 claraation. " You should ask nothing but to 
 grow and blow in that calm and infinite 
 leisure where beauty flowers." The Judge 
 stirred restlessly in his chair and rattled his 
 coffee cup ostentatiously in the saucer. The 
 Poet ignored the interruption. " The lilies, 
 types of perfection, toil not neither spin, and 
 what has remote and romantic beauty to do 
 with a mundane moil of this work-a-day 
 world! It should shine afar," he gazed at 
 Castilia in rapt admiration, his chin on his 
 hand, " in an environment of * rose-latticed 
 casements, lone in summer lands,' or on 
 4 magic seas in an enchanted barge, stranded 
 at sunset upon jeweled sands.' ' 
 
 " Egeria believes in work," said Castilia de- 
 fensively. 
 
 " Ah, indeed I do," affirmed that positive 
 lady. " It is at once a narcotic and a goad, 
 a solace and a stimulant ; life's sternest man- 
 date and its highest good. My poor Castilia, 
 you are missing much in not finding some 
 work for your hand to do." 
 
 The Poet looked shocked. " Missing 
 much ! " he repeated scornfully. " It is a
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 shame and a pity that through stress of ne- 
 cessity women should have to toil; but why, 
 Madame Egeria, when the necessity does not 
 exist, should you relinquish what through 
 many ages has been your most potent weapon, 
 your most cherished possession. Is it not the 
 fiat of toil that you should sacrifice your ra- 
 diance to her demands ? " 
 
 " But I do not believe that the radiance 
 must suffer," protested Egeria, " I think it is 
 improved by work." 
 
 " Hear ! Hear ! " cried the Judge with some 
 show of interest. " Here is food for an ar- 
 gument. The question now before the court 
 is, Can the lion work, lie down with the pro- 
 tean and elusive lamb beauty; or will the 
 lion inevitably and inexorably gobble up the 
 lamb?" 
 
 The Bishop fell into line. " The question," 
 he said with pursed mouth and frowning 
 brow, " is incapable of being answered by a 
 sharp and definite yes or no. It is a query that 
 compels casuistry and involves one in philo- 
 sophical subtleties." 
 
 Egeria threw up her hands in dismay. 
 [143]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " See what you have drawn me into," she 
 turned reproachfully to the Poet. 
 
 " It will not be for long," he consoled her. 
 " I shall soon finish with you. Take the women 
 who labor on the lowest scale, where life is one 
 monotonous round of toil. They are entirely 
 bereft of that rest and recreation which are 
 as necessary to the preservation of beauty as 
 material needs." 
 
 " I do not consider your illustration quite 
 a fair one. I think we must exclude unceasing 
 manual labor. The extremes of poverty and 
 wealth have an equally brutalizing effect. 
 But nevertheless Poet, beauty does occasion- 
 ally bloom in the soil you mention and not al- 
 ways so infrequently as you might imagine." 
 
 " Egeria is of course judging from the re- 
 sult of her observations," the Bishop care- 
 fully poured a thimbleful more cordial into 
 his glass. " Now my dear, have you found 
 beauty in any of its numerous shapes, either 
 of the flesh, or the spirit, or gloriously com- 
 pounded, most at a discount among the idlers 
 or the toilers ? " 
 
 Egeria pondered a second. Then " Cer- 
 [144]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 tainly among the drones," she replied de- 
 cisively. 
 
 "Drones! And just what class of women 
 do you call the drones ? " 
 
 " Oh, they are' in a class by themselves," 
 quickly. " They have chosen stagnation for 
 their portion." 
 
 " Drones, drones," repeated the Judge 
 tapping meditatively upon the table. " Be- 
 fore we go on, I want more light on the sub- 
 ject. Just what are the drones? " 
 
 " Yes," the Bishop nodded his head ap- 
 provingly, " I think that we require a more 
 complete definition." 
 
 " Drones ! " Egeria seemed surprised at 
 their lack of comprehension. " Oh Drones 
 are what might be called detached women. 
 They must not, however, be confounded with 
 women of leisure who put that gift of God 
 to beautiful uses. They may be married or 
 single; but their lives are spent in a perpet- 
 ual effort to rid themselves of as many re- 
 sponsibilities as possible. Life to them is an 
 unending search for bargains, material, men- 
 tal, spiritual." 
 
 [145]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Hm-m ! Yes," said the Judge. " I find it 
 rather vague, however. To be more exact, in 
 what manner do they occupy themselves? " 
 
 " I know," cried Castilia, " they sew a lit- 
 tle, they read a few of the new novels, they 
 gossip enormously, they grasp greedily at 
 whatever social pleasures come their way 
 do they not? " appealing to Egeria. 
 
 She nodded. " In plain speech, they are 
 parasites, demanding everything of the world 
 and giving nothing; and, as the years pass, 
 they reap what they have sown. They live 
 without definite aims and interests, absorbed 
 in the trivial, the banal, the frivolous and 
 fleeting; and Time, the satirist, molds each 
 according to his thought. 
 
 " Ah Poet ! The slow, sure years disclose 
 them fat, heavy of eye and scant of breath, 
 with the animated intelligence of pug dogs. 
 They ask no more than to lie in a warm bas- 
 ket and be fed with dainties ; or else they be- 
 come lean and sallow, absorbed in symptoms 
 and operations. 
 
 " And thus they perish, victims of the pam- 
 pered self, unheeding the plain handwriting 
 [146]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 on the wall, that life renews itself in our in- 
 terests and enthusiasms ; that it is the spirit 
 which quickens, the flesh profiteth nothing. 
 It is really and truly the part of wisdom to 
 cultivate an interest if we have it not." 
 
 " Does the interest have to be a very rare 
 and special one, or will any old thing do ? " 
 asked the Judge quizzically. 
 
 " Any old one will do," Egeria assured him 
 lightly. " It is the interest itself and the en- 
 thusiasm you put into it, which is necessary, 
 not the channel into which you pour it." 
 
 " Egeria believes," said the Bishop, " that 
 the law not your law, Judge that the law 
 is: 
 
 'Give thyself utterly away. Be lost. 
 Choose some one something; not thyself, thine 
 
 own: 
 
 Thou canst not perish; but, thrice greater grown, 
 Thy gain was greatest where thy loss was most.' " 
 
 " I never heard that the roses and lilies 
 pursued an interest in life as a means of pre- 
 serving their bloom." The Poet's tone was 
 scoffing. " Naure's methods seem more ma- 
 terial. I was talking to your gardener the 
 [147]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 other day about your roses, Madame Egeria, 
 praising their perfection and admiring their 
 luxuriance. ' Oh, anyone can have fine roses,' 
 he replied deprecatingly, ' if they feeds 'em 
 enough. Roses do be gross feeders, sir.' ' 
 
 '"Oh Science knows each flower that grows 
 And all its wicked habits ! 
 For aught you know, the lilies blow 
 By dining on Welsh rabbits.' " 
 
 chanted Castilia gayly. 
 
 Egeria laughed with the rest and then 
 grew serious. " Nevertheless, I maintain that 
 the stimulus of a new interest has a more 
 beautifying effect than either good food, or 
 fresh air ; although, understand me, I am not 
 belittling those two admirable aids. And I 
 can prove my case in one point at least. On 
 one occasion when I was investigating flori- 
 culture and the growing of small fruits as 
 an occupation for women, a successful flower 
 grower, who happened also to be a particu- 
 larly beautiful girl and the picture of health, 
 told me that she had always been extremely 
 delicate, and since childhood had been al- 
 [148]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 most constantly under the care of a physi- 
 cian. When she decided to become a practical 
 florist, her friends shook their heads and pre- 
 dicted immediate disaster to her venture and 
 sudden death for her. As if to verify their 
 predictions, the first season that her green- 
 houses were completed, an exceptionally cold 
 winter set in ; but she had become so pro- 
 foundly interested in the care of her plants, 
 and felt so earnestly the necessity of keeping 
 her houses at a proper temperature that she 
 not only gave the matter her personal super- 
 vision by day, but by night also, and slept 
 only in snatches. Then, too, her roses, of 
 which she had made a specialty, required her 
 most absorbing care. Every leaf had to be 
 sprayed daily in order to keep at bay the in- 
 sidious red spider, and she frequently exerted 
 her strength to the utmost in dragging about 
 coils of a heavy hose. More times than not, 
 she was drenched to the skin, and for her feet 
 to be wet an hour or two at a time was a com- 
 mon occurrence. She was constantly moving 
 from one extreme of temperature to another, 
 working first in the hot, moist atmosphere 
 [149]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 of the greenhouses, and then in the open 
 air. 
 
 " Herself was the last person to enter her 
 head. She had ventured her all in this project, 
 and it was imperative that she succeed. She 
 put her energy, her time, her constant 
 thought into her work and won, not only a 
 wider success than she had dreamed; but 
 listen well, Poet restored health and the 
 beauty which had been eclipsed when she 
 lacked the cosmetic of an absorbing interest 
 in life." 
 
 The Poet remained unconvinced. " I think 
 you lay entirely too much stress on that ab- 
 sorbing interest. I admit that when the ques- 
 tion of beauty is under discussion, one's pre- 
 conceived and properly directed ideas are 
 apt to become completely disorganized," 
 his eyes turned again to Castilia " But I 
 think there are far more potent agents than 
 your ' absorbing interest.' Surely, surely, the 
 mere breathing of pure, country air, the 
 wide, sweet freedom of Nature, must of them- 
 selves confer a harmonious and inestimable 
 symmetry and bloom. You recall that: 
 [150]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 " 'The Ladies of St. James's 
 Are painted to the eyes: 
 Their white it stays forever, 
 Their red it never dies. 
 But Phillida, my Phillida! 
 Her color comes and goes, 
 And wavers to a lily, 
 And trembles to a rose.' " 
 
 " Yes " ; but it often seems to be just the 
 reverse in fact. Wait a moment." Egeria 
 opened a bag at her side and drew forth 
 a heterogeneous collection of clippings. 
 " Here," she cried triumphantly, " is an ex- 
 tract from an article written by an English- 
 woman ; she says : * I am concerned to know 
 why the girls who live in the country, breath- 
 ing the best air, eating the best food, having 
 the best opportunities of exercise and sport 
 are not always the best girls. For that they 
 are not always the best girls, I am prepared 
 to prove. 
 
 " * I have two girls in mind," she continues. 
 
 ' From the first day that cub-hunting opens 
 
 to the day that your horse can't put his foot 
 
 down for primroses and slippery blue hya- 
 
 [151]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 cinths, one young woman lives for hunting, 
 and as she is always admirably mounted and 
 rides very straight, she gets all the fun out 
 of it that can be expected. Five days of the 
 week she spends in the free, open air on the 
 back of a horse ; deep breathing is practically 
 forced on her, her lungs are filled and washed 
 by the exquisite air of down and woodland. 
 Her muscles are in free play, for the negotia- 
 tion of a " trappy " country entails an im- 
 mense variety of positions in the saddle. She 
 ought to be a splendid-looking girl, you 
 would say. She is not at all. I would engage 
 to pick out in any large establishment where 
 the work is done standing for long hours in 
 an atmosphere necessarily less pure than that 
 of the open country twenty girls who are 
 better-looking, have better figures and carry 
 themselves better. 
 
 " ' The other girl I spoke of is a capital 
 tennis and hocky player, and she hunts all 
 winter in a crack county, but to see her walk 
 into a room is a revelation of ungraceful 
 movement.' 
 
 - "And she finishes by saying," continued 
 [152]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 Egeria, " that ' if we are to admit that shop 
 girls constantly display a better carriage, a 
 more graceful walk and poise generally than 
 country house girls, we must admit one of 
 two things either that fine air, deep breath- 
 ing, sound muscle play are not necessary to 
 beauty, or that, being necessary to it, there is 
 something else necessary as well which the 
 town girl with half the oxygen, and none of 
 the exercise manages to secure.' ' 
 
 " Now, there ! " said Egeria, folding up 
 her clipping, " are facts which everyone has 
 noted, and which would seem to affirm that 
 beauty is not altogether a thing of material 
 needs; but may draw its sustenance from 
 other avenues than the purely animal necessi- 
 ties. Really, Poet, it looks as if work, indus- 
 trial and professional, has not had that 
 blighting influence upon feminine loveliness 
 which has so long been predicted. 
 
 "The College girls of to-day; Castilia is 
 one of them, are putting forth a greater men- 
 tal effort than their sisters who have not 
 pined for what used to be called the higher 
 education, and they show no decline in 
 [ 153 ]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 beauty. They are as fresh and fair as those 
 who have no ambition to sip the waters of 
 the Pierian Spring. 
 
 " And certainly, beauty is not at a discount 
 among the professional classes. Look at an 
 actress. Her work is exacting and nerve-wear- 
 ing to a degree. She even has to forego 
 that cherished fetich of women her beauty 
 sleep." 
 
 " Whom do you include in the professional 
 classes ? " asked the Judge. 
 
 " Oh, actresses, musicians, artists, writers, 
 doctors and lawyers, and those women who 
 are commonly called * social leaders.' Their 
 duties, by the way, are manifold and exact- 
 ing and require very much the same quali- 
 ties that make men and women eminent in 
 any field; and you know, that among them 
 could be cited many extremely beautiful 
 women." 
 
 " Here is an interesting question," said 
 the Judge. " In a mixed gathering of women 
 of leisure and those representing the various 
 professions, could the ladies of leisure be 
 distinguished from the toilers?" He was 
 [154]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 looking at Castilia when he spoke. He usu- 
 ally was looking at Castilia. 
 
 " I do not know. I never took the trouble to 
 notice," shaking her head. " Ask Egeria." 
 
 " It would be impossible to distinguish 
 those of either class, save in one way," re- 
 marked Egeria thoughtfully. " There is un- 
 doubtedly a subtle something in the expres- 
 sion of the woman who works which is lacking 
 in the face of her sister who does not. It is 
 that look of thought and purpose which ef- 
 fort and aspiration bestows, an expression of 
 life's deeper experiences, of a breadth of view 
 which comes from keeping in touch with the 
 ' widening thoughts of men.' This may add 
 nothing to the beauty of youth, so lovely 
 and evanescent in itself; but it does add 
 vastly to middle life. It gives that touch of 
 interest, of imagination which captivates the 
 attention and arouses the curiosity." 
 
 " Why is it," asked the Poet, " that the 
 women who write are so much plainer in ap- 
 pearance, I will not be brutal and say uglier, 
 than the women of other professions? " 
 
 Egeria laughed. " But, seriously," she 
 [155]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 said, " I never thought of that before. I sup- 
 pose " slowly " it is due to the fact that 
 their personality is distinct from their work. 
 In any of the other professions we have men- 
 tioned, a woman's success depends primarily 
 upon her abilities, but not exclusively. The 
 impression she makes is of incalculable value. 
 Appearance, dress, manners all those fac- 
 tors are of distinct value to her, and prob- 
 ably count more for success than the solid 
 fact of fitness for her work which an unthink- 
 ing public does not always pause to consider. 
 " But the work of the writing woman is a 
 factor quite apart from herself. It must 
 stand or fall on its merits which, it is need- 
 less to say, are quite independent of her per- 
 sonal gifts and graces. She might be as fair 
 as Helen, as witty as De Stael, as convincing 
 as Madame Roland, it would profit her noth- 
 ing. Unless her work could stand the editorial 
 test, her desk would be piled high with re- 
 turned manuscripts accompanied by a few 
 courteous words. Therefore, since neither 
 beauty, grace nor charm count in her race 
 for the golden apples, she has probably taken 
 [156]
 
 WORK VS. BEAUTY 
 
 no pains to secure their possession or per- 
 manence." 
 
 " The theory is at least plausible," ad- 
 mitted the Judge. 
 
 " Still," began the Poet combatively, but 
 he was interrupted by the Bishop, who had 
 been furtively glancing at his watch 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " he exclaimed, " I had 
 no idea it was so late. The afternoon is more 
 than half gone. Come, Castilia, we must go." 
 
 " Poet ! Poet ! " mocked Egeria as she rose 
 from her chair. " I won in fair fight. You 
 hadn't the ghost of an argument." 
 
 He laughed. ." I was outtalked, I grant 
 you, Madame Egeria; but I am not con- 
 vinced." 
 
 [157]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE
 
 Mute as the figure in a dream, 
 Her cards she ponders o'er ; 
 
 The rubies in her lorgnon gleam 
 As she surveys the score ; 
 
 Her satins, rose and gold and cream, 
 Trail on the polished floor.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 EIGHT of us! Just enough for two 
 tables of bridge," said Egeria glanc- 
 ing smilingly over the group about the hall 
 fire with that gleam in her eye which pro- 
 claimed her of the true Sarah Battle breed, 
 one of the elect and select sisterhood who, 
 next to their devotions, love a good game 
 of whist. 
 
 The Judge, the Commonplace Man, the 
 Bishop, and Castilia, the Editor of a Wom- 
 an's Magazine and the Poet had all been 
 dining with her, and now sat drinking their 
 coffee and rehearsing " the sweet old farce 
 of mutual admiration over a pipe." 
 
 It was a cold, autumn evening with a 
 piercing East wind which sedulously drove 
 the white mists in from the sea, and inter- 
 mittently shrieked and wailed about the 
 [161]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 house. As it rose to a prolonged howl, the 
 great Persian cat which lay in Egeria's lap 
 opened wide her eyes and stared " with sea- 
 green gaze inscrutable " at the glowing 
 logs on the broad hearth. 
 
 The leaping flame illuminated the group 
 and threw a thousand warm and broken re- 
 flections over Egeria's cream-colored satins 
 with time-yellowed laces falling from her 
 arms and shoulders, and caused the topazes 
 at her throat and on her fingers to glow with 
 a brilliant if evanescent fire. It lent, too, the 
 delicate animation of color to the pale, 
 ethereal blue of Castilia's gown and the 
 cluster of deep purple violets on her 
 breast. 
 
 " Dear me ! What a delightful evening 
 we are going to have ! " Egeria listened lux- 
 uriously to the shriek of the wind. During 
 Spring and Summer, she resolutely abjured 
 cards ; but when the fire was once lighted 
 on her hearthstone, she turned to them with 
 renewed zest, her appetite whetted by ab- 
 stinence. Her love for the more intellectual 
 games was but another bond of sympathy 
 [162]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 between herself and her friends of the soul, 
 as they were, to a man, brilliant and enthu- 
 siastic bridge players. 
 
 " Egeria, why are you so fond of 
 bridge? " asked Castilia curiously. 
 
 " Why am I so fond of life? " Egeria re- 
 turned the question with a question. " The 
 games are much alike and excite the same 
 zest in the player. Look ! " She picked up 
 a deck of cards from a little patience table 
 at her elbow and dealt them rapidly about 
 so that they fell face upward at the feet 
 of the different members of the coterie. 
 " Who can tell why to the Judge have 
 fallen hearts ; to the Co.mmonplace Man 
 clubs, to the Financier, diamonds? But this 
 we do know, that much depends upon the 
 alertness and the skill of the player, his 
 ability to comprehend the fundamental rules 
 of the game. Give me a poor hand, Castilia, 
 and I will engage to take the tricks from 
 a careless and inattentive player who has 
 all the advantage of better cards. Ah, 
 * life is a game,' " she quoted softly and 
 archly : 
 
 [163]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " ' Life is a game in which from unseen sources, 
 The cards are shuffled and the hearts are dealt. 
 Vain are all efforts to control those forces 
 Which, though unseen, are no less strongly felt. 
 
 " ' I do not like the way the cards are shuffled, 
 But still, I like the game and want to play ; 
 So, through the long, long night will I unruffled, 
 Play what I get until the dawn of day.' 
 
 " And be sure, Castilia, that each man 
 will play the game of life and of bridge ac- 
 cording to his natural disposition. 
 
 " The Judge plays with the logic, the 
 dispassionate analysis, the calculation of 
 cause and effect which has enabled him to 
 wear the judicial ermine; the Commonplace 
 Man plays with a complete intuitive under- 
 standing of the game, and an overcaution 
 which has more than once lost him an almost 
 won field." There was something approach- 
 ing humorous resentment in the glance she 
 threw him. " The Bishop plays with the 
 lofty enthusiasm, the benign largeness of 
 vision, the tact and earnestness which have 
 made him a Prince of the Church. The Fi- 
 nancier shows concentration, the ability to 
 [164]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 calculate plays far ahead, the strategic 
 movements which have piled up his millions ; 
 the Editor exhibits the intellectual grasp, 
 the originality and selective quality which 
 have made him eminent in his calling; and 
 the Poet is an erratic, moody player a 
 wretched game to-day, an almost inspired 
 one to-morrow." 
 
 " And Egeria? " said Castilia, " How does 
 she play? " 
 
 " Like a diplomat. She is always smooth," 
 said the Editor. 
 
 " Like a General," smiled the Bishop, 
 " even if she is sometimes a bit daring and 
 impetuous." 
 
 " The one woman who can rank with the 
 best men players," affirmed the Judge. 
 
 Egeria bowed low, her hand upon her 
 heart. " My courtiers ! My counsellors ! My 
 comrades and my tutors ! I can never ex- 
 press how much of my knowledge of life 
 and of bridge I owe to you." 
 
 The Editor did not hear her. He was pon- 
 dering on the Judge's words. " The one 
 woman who can rank with the best men 
 [165]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 players," he repeated. " That might make 
 an article. Judge, since Madame Egeria 
 does not resent the fact that you differen- 
 tiate thus between men and women, it must 
 be that you are all agreed that women do 
 not rank with men in the kingdom of cards." 
 
 " They do not," affirmed the Judge de- 
 cisively. " There are, of course, many women 
 who play a thousand times better than the 
 average man; but, nevertheless, they are 
 outclassed by the star players among men." 
 
 " Egeria, don't let them begin to talk 
 that way," begged Castilia; but the lady 
 to whom she appealed only shrugged her 
 shoulders and smiled. 
 
 The Editor pursued the subject. " To 
 what do you attribute the fact that women 
 in the main seem to lack what is technically 
 known as * card sense.' ' 
 
 The Judge considered a moment. " They 
 are not so logical as men. They do not 
 analyze as carefully and keenly; and in very 
 few cases do they play for the intellectual 
 stimulus and interest of the game. They 
 play to win ; it is the hazard which fas- 
 [166]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 cinates them and they are very rarely 
 scrupulous about the methods by which they 
 achieve their ends. In those celebrated car- 
 icatures of the eighteenth century * The 
 Daughters of Faro ' Gillray accurately 
 pictured the eternal type of the feminine 
 card player. The lady of fashion, with her 
 tower of powdered hair and her brocades, 
 would sit all night at ombre and, if she were 
 a loser, would rise from her chair, with a 
 storm of oaths, cast her cards in her oppo- 
 nent's face, call for her link boy and sedan 
 chair, and home as the gray dawn broke 
 over the London streets." 
 
 " Egeria, Egeria, why do you let them 
 talk so ? " pleaded Castilia, throwing a 
 glance of pouting reproof at the Judge. 
 
 " Why not, if it amuses them ? And what 
 they say about women not playing as well 
 as men is true enough; but they do not, 
 however, take into account the reason for it. 
 Look at the difference in training. Since 
 boyhood, men have played euchre, seven-up, 
 poker, etc. Women, on the contrary, know 
 but two games, bridge and whist." 
 [167]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " But that does not explain why women 
 take so keenly to cards," insisted the Editor. 
 
 " ' Men some to business, some to pleasure take, 
 But every woman is at heart a rake.' " 
 
 jested Egeria. " So bridge offers them an 
 opportunity to indulge in their passion for 
 speculation. You see they have a natural 
 love for ' the sprightly infusion of chance, 
 the handsome excuses of good fortune.' The 
 woman card enthusiast, however, is sui gen- 
 eris and unmistakable. I can tell a trophy 
 winner the minute I see her. There is always 
 something martial in her bearing, an un- 
 concealed * pride in her port, defiance in her 
 eye.' She seems to say : * We are the real 
 aristocracy of the intellectual women. Upon 
 you culture-seekers, lecture-haunters, quaff- 
 ers of the Pierian spring limited, there has 
 always rested the stigma of pedant and bas 
 bleu; but we have maintained a prestige as 
 ancient as it is honorable.' They scorn the 
 average bridge-playing woman, and indeed 
 they have cause, for their ranks are re- 
 cruited from the great standing army of 
 [168]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 the idlers and faddists, who take feverishly 
 to embroidery, or to ' religion and little 
 dogs,' or to bridge, whatever is of the mode 
 for the moment." 
 
 " Are there distinct types of the bridge- 
 playing woman ? " The Editor was still bent 
 on acquiring knowledge. 
 
 " Their name is legion," returned Egeria 
 solemnly. " There is your partner, who, dur- 
 ing the game, is casting furtive glances 
 about the table to see if the other women's 
 rings are as handsome as hers; there is the 
 woman who is inordinately glib with terms 
 and has all the new rules and expressions 
 at her tongue's end who would cheerfully 
 undertake to instruct even an authority on 
 bridge like the Judge here, and who plays 
 with savoir faire an inconceivably bad 
 game. Then the woman who is in a nervous 
 fidget from the moment she begins to play 
 and has murder in her eyes and soul if she 
 loses ; and the soft babyish creature, who, 
 when the score warns you that England 
 expects every man to do his duty, will make 
 some outrageous blunder, and then cry, 
 [169]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 ' Oh, that was awful ! Please forgive me. My 
 husband has a bad cold and the baby is ill, 
 and I can't get my mind on the cards ! ' But 
 how we are wasting time. Come to the tables. 
 I have had them set in my sitting room," 
 indicating a small apartment off the hall. 
 
 " I think," said the Bishop, who had been 
 exchanging a word or two with the Poet 
 and the Financier, " that I will not play 
 to-night. I find that there are others of the 
 same mind, so I will remain here by the fire 
 where I can choose even better company 
 than you can offer me, Madame Egeria. 
 
 ' Montaigne with his sheepskin blistered, 
 And Howell the worse for wear ; 
 And the worm-drilled Jesuit's Horace, 
 And the little old cropped Moliere.' " 
 
 " I, too, would rather not play," said the 
 Poet hastily, " and Castilia, since you care 
 nothing about bridge, perhaps you will stay 
 here with your father and myself and run 
 over that thing of Grieg's again." 
 
 " / care nothing about bridge ! " exclaimed 
 Castilia indignantly. " You are quite mis- 
 [170]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 taken. I am perfectly wild about it and 
 really learning very fast. Am I not? " She 
 appealed to the Judge, fluttering her dark 
 lashes and smiling alluringly. 
 
 " Indeed you are," he approved. 
 
 Egeria could not repress a faint smile; 
 and lifting her eyes, she encountered those 
 of the Editor fixed satirically upon her. 
 
 " Bless me ! " cried the Bishop, rubbing 
 his hand over his white hair, " when did you 
 begin to take an interest in cards, Castilia? 
 I never " to the group at large " could 
 either coax or drive her into even playing a 
 game of cribbage with me. Surely this is 
 not Castilia." 
 
 " No," said the Poet bitterly, under his 
 breath, " this is not Castilia. It is a change- 
 ling." 
 
 " Come, come," Egeria broke the slight 
 embarrassed pause, " we will leave the hall 
 free here to any one who wants to smoke, or 
 read, or play the piano. Let me see; there 
 are six of us. We will have to cut for the 
 first rubber." 
 
 " Count me out," said the Financier, " I
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 think I shall stay here and play with the 
 cat ; and if he will let me, talk to the Bishop 
 * unreservedly and cheerfully and abundantly 
 upon anything or nothing.' ' 
 
 " And I would rather look on than play 
 this evening," announced the Editor. 
 
 " Just as you please," said Egeria, lead- 
 ing the way to her sitting room. 
 
 It was all pink and white, dull rose with 
 the frosted filagree of silver. The rose- 
 shaded lamps cast twinkling reflections on 
 the polished floor, the tables, and on Cas- 
 tilia's blue and violets and Egeria's creams 
 and gold. The black of the men's evening 
 dress added the necessary depth to a scene 
 otherwise too buoyantly light and unsub- 
 stantial. 
 
 "'Painted by Carlo Van Loo,'" mur- 
 mured the Financier from the doorway. 
 " * Loves in a riot of light, roses, and va- 
 porous blue.' ' 
 
 " Ah," replied Egeria, " every action 
 
 should have its fitting environment. We 
 
 should move from picture to picture. A 
 
 trysting, for instance, demands its lych- 
 
 [172]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 gate with lions ramping on stone or a rose- 
 wreathed pergola and moonlight. Did you 
 ever notice that in fiction all last farewells 
 occur in the pouring rain, the heavens ap- 
 propriately weeping? So, bridge demands 
 a shrieking north wind without, warmth and 
 peace, even soft luxury within. Why Lamb 
 put the whole of whist in one immortal 
 phrase ' a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the 
 rigor of the game.' ' 
 
 " Yes," murmured the Poet. He had fol- 
 lowed them in, " and do you not recall 
 
 ' My little love, do you remember, 
 Ere we were grown so sadly wise, 
 Those evenings in the bleak December, 
 Curtained warm from the snowy weather, 
 When you and I played chess together, 
 Checkmated by each other's eyes.' " 
 
 His gaze was fixed on Castilia, but she, 
 with downcast lashes, was busily fingering 
 the cards. 
 
 The draw for partners showed that Cas- 
 tilia and the Judge were to play against 
 Egeria and the Commonplace Man. Just 
 [173]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 before they sat down the latter took occa- 
 sion to whisper earnestly to his partner, 
 " Persuade Castilia to let the Editor take 
 her place. The whole evening is spoiled if 
 she persists in playing." 
 
 Mindful of this advice, Egeria drew Cas- 
 tilia hastily aside. " Don't you think, dear," 
 she asked, " you had better let the Editor 
 play in your stead? You are just beginning, 
 you know, and we are all so keen on our 
 game. The Judge," with meaning " is a 
 perfect martinet." 
 
 " But I have been playing beautifully," 
 averred Castilia with confidence, " and if I 
 do not play, the Poet will get me in a cor- 
 ner and rant and rave in poetry, and when 
 his voice gives out, he will storm at me on 
 the piano. I would rather a man would throw 
 things at me than call me names in music 
 and in Elizabethan verse. No I want to 
 play bridge." 
 
 Egeria sighed at the intrepidity of youth 
 
 and, taking her seat, dealt the cards. The 
 
 Editor drew his chair close beside her to 
 
 watch the game, the Financier returned to 
 
 [174]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 the fire and the Bishop, and the Poet, seat- 
 ing himself at the piano, began to play as 
 passionately and as stormily as Castilia had 
 predicted. 
 
 As if to make good her vainglorious 
 boastings, Castilia concentrated her mind 
 on her cards and succeeded in getting 
 through the first game quite admirably to 
 Egeria's intense relief. Only once did a 
 frown show upon the Judge's brow, and 
 that was when Castilia doubled hearts with 
 an extremely inadequate hand; but as she 
 and the Judge won the game, he forebore 
 mention of her indiscretion. 
 
 True, while the cards were being dealt, 
 he took occasion to caution the young wom- 
 an against certain errors ; but a moment 
 later, conversation died and they were all 
 intent on the game. The Poet had ceased 
 to storm and scold in warring chords and 
 was playing now to his heart's love, the Cas- 
 tilia of his dreams, an ideal maiden whom 
 he had never known ; exquisite, tender har- 
 monies flowed from his fingers and Castilia, 
 who loved music, found her ear caught and 
 [175]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 her attention irresistibly drawn away from 
 the gleaming pasteboards in her hand. 
 
 Still all went fairly well until the fifth 
 round, when the Judge, at the left of Ege- 
 ria, who had dealt, led a low spade the 
 dummy followed suit, and Castilia laid down 
 the eight of clubs. Egeria cast one quick 
 glance at the dummy, at her own hand, and 
 her heart sank. 
 
 The Editor's foot touched hers lightly 
 but significantly under the table. She threw 
 one despairing look at the Commonplace 
 Man. 
 
 " Partner," there was something terrible 
 in the icy suavity of the Judge's tones, 
 " have you no spades ? " 
 
 "Oh," gasped Castilia. "Oh, yes," gaz- 
 ing conscience-stricken into her hand, " I 
 have three." She sought to replace her eight 
 of clubs with one of them. 
 
 "You will have to leave that card upon 
 the table," he said coldly, tapping the pol- 
 ished wood sharply with his finger. " Why 
 did you revoke, Castilia? " 
 
 Castilia drooped like a flower, then lifted 
 [176]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 her lovely eyes to his and sighed. The vio- 
 lets trembled on her breast, " I'm so sorry," 
 she cajoled. " Indeed I will not do it again." 
 
 " It is not a particularly bad blunder," 
 the Judge cast a quick defiant glance at 
 Egeria and the Commonplace Man " a a 
 mistake that is a very frequently made 
 by the best players." 
 
 The Editor's foot was temptingly near 
 her own, and Egeria gave it one swift, small, 
 triumphant shove. 
 
 The final game of the rubber began pro- 
 pitiously. Castilia made every effort to re- 
 deem herself; and for a time played blame- 
 lessly, but the Poet had, after a brief silence, 
 struck the keys again ; and the music sobbed 
 and sighed through the rooms imperatively, 
 poignantly sweet. It was his last plea, and 
 he threw into it, all his love, all his poetry, 
 all the elusive, intangible visions of his ar- 
 tist's soul, and Castilia listened. 
 
 Her eyes were fixed upon her cards, but 
 
 though the pigeon - blood rubies of hearts 
 
 and diamonds gleamed, the black spades and 
 
 clubs glistened, though her cards numbered 
 
 [177]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 kings " in majesty revered with hoary whis- 
 kers and a forky beard," and " queens whose 
 hands sustained a flower, the expressive em- 
 blem of their softer power," she saw them 
 not. Ah, the Poet had loved her long and 
 well. She had never cared for him; but 
 she started suddenly, roused from her rev- 
 erie by the intense, waiting silence, and 
 looked up to find three pairs of indignant, 
 surprised, expectant eyes fixed upon her. 
 
 " Castilia," there was a world of reproof 
 in the Judge's tone, " we are waiting on 
 you." 
 
 " Forgive me," she cried contritely, " I 
 I Oh," peering nervously at her hand, 
 " What are trumps? " 
 
 There was a thrill of horror about the 
 table. Egeria, who was feeling the strain 
 of the evening, shuddered visibly. 
 
 " Lost, by Jove ! " whispered the Editor 
 in her ear. 
 
 No one expected the Judge to reply, and 
 
 after a moment's shocked silence, they 
 
 looked furtively and apprehensively at him. 
 
 But they, the game, the game on which he 
 
 [ 178 ]
 
 A GAME OF BRIDGE 
 
 was an authority, were all forgotten, and 
 had faded to some dim and commonplace 
 limbo. He and Castilia sat gazing into each 
 other's eyes, and it was not until she 
 dropped hers, the flush deepening on her 
 cheek, the violets rising and falling with her 
 hurried breathing, that he with some strug- 
 gling sense of his surroundings murmured 
 in a tone meant to be casual and matter-of- 
 fact, " Hearts." 
 
 " Diamonds," corrected the Commonplace 
 Man with cold incisiveness. 
 
 The remaining three rounds were played 
 in stricken silence, Egeria and the Common- 
 place Man winning the game and the rub- 
 ber, then the lady of the manor rose and 
 resolutely pushed back her chair. " We are 
 none of us in the proper bridge mood to- 
 night," she said lightly but with finality; 
 " we will join the others in the library and 
 tell fortunes, or * sad stories of the death 
 of kings.' " 
 
 " You played a hazardous game," said the 
 Editor with grudging admiration, as she 
 and he were left alone by the table, " but 
 [179]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 I suppose, as usual, you knew what you were 
 about." 
 
 " I've endured enough this evening," she 
 replied, " but without attempting to justify 
 myself, let me point out that only an ab- 
 sorbing devotion could have prevented the 
 Judge from annihilating her on the spot, 
 and that Castilia who loathes cards is striv- 
 ing to learn bridge to please him. I chal- 
 lenge you to show me a greater proof of 
 mutual affection." 
 
 " Hm-m," returned the Editor, " I see 
 no reason yet to change my opinion. The 
 Judge is rich, the Poet is poor." 
 
 Egeria threw the cards she was lightly 
 shuffling between her topaz-encircled fin- 
 gers on the table. He had never seen her 
 angry before. 
 
 " Bon Dieu! " she cried in desperation. 
 " Because Castilia has enough sense of 
 arithmetic to wish to marry a man with a 
 ' tolerable understanding and a thousand a 
 year,' is my life to be made miserable? 
 Allez-vous en, Editor. Vous m'ennuyez" 
 
 [180]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH?
 
 'If you go over desert and mountain, 
 Far into the country of Sorrow, 
 To-day and to-night and to-morrow, 
 And maybe for months and for years; 
 You shall come with a heart that is bursting 
 For trouble and toiling and thirsting, 
 You shall certainly come to the fountain 
 At length, to the Fountain of Tears." 
 
 ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 CASTILIA had been spending the morn- 
 ing with Egeria and now as the day 
 wore on to afternoon, they sat together in 
 the drawing-room, spacious and beautiful 
 and almost empty. Egeria loved long, un- 
 broken lines, sweeping and harmonious ef- 
 fects. There were no ornaments nor trifles 
 to fret the eye; but a scheme of decoration 
 where deep, rich browns melted into russets 
 and, through imperceptible shades, amber 
 paled to gold, until the whole room reflected 
 the mellow glow of shaded sunlight, and re- 
 stored and refreshed the spirit with the at- 
 mosphere of peace and order and beauty. 
 
 Castilia, who had been more or less dis- 
 trait all morning, had gradually, and she 
 fancied, adroitly drawn the subject around 
 to the Financier; and after both women had 
 [183]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 vied in saying pleasant and admiring things 
 about him, the younger one glanced at her 
 friend rather doubtfully, opened her mouth 
 once or twice as if about to speak, closed it, 
 and then taking her courage in both hands, 
 said abruptly : 
 
 " Do you not think you are leading him on 
 rather well rather ostentatiously, Egeria ? " 
 
 " Who ? " asked her hostess provokingly. 
 
 " We were just speaking of him," impa- 
 tiently. " The Financier, of course. And 
 everyone says that you are leading him on." 
 
 " Where ? " asked Egeria meekly, still all 
 placid innocence. 
 
 " Well, down the wrong road to put it 
 plainly." 
 
 " Ah, Castilia, Castilia ! How young you 
 are ! Who shall ever decide which is the right 
 road until we reach the journey's end. But " 
 becoming practical and yielding gracefully 
 " you may be right. You know," with 
 laughter in her voice, " how prone I am 
 to heed what * everyone ' says. No doubt 
 though," becoming serious, " I have made my 
 interest in him and admiration for him 
 [ 184 ]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 rather evident. Tell me," with a quick glance, 
 and lowering her voice confidentially, " have 
 either the Judge or the Poet spoken of it to 
 you? " 
 
 " The Judge or the Poet," repeated Cas- 
 tilia dazedly, with widely opened eyes. " No, 
 why on earth should they? " 
 
 Egeria leaned back in her chair with a re- 
 lieved though conscious smile. " Oh, no rea- 
 son, of course! Only I fancied they might 
 feel themselves rather neglected." 
 
 Castilia bit her lip and stared blankly at 
 her friend in this new role of the sentimen- 
 talist. " I never considered either of them 
 such particular friends of yours." Her voice 
 was chill and crisp. 
 
 " Didn't you, dear ? Why, where are your 
 eyes. I hope, and think I do not deceive my- 
 self in hoping, that they regard themselves 
 as among my best friends. The Poet, I have 
 always found charming; our tastes are so 
 congenial, and he is good enough to insist 
 that I have been a help to him in his work. 
 Do you not find that he relies on your criti- 
 cisms ? " 
 
 [185]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " I never criticise his work. It would 
 seem very presumptuous for me to do so," 
 stiffly. 
 
 " Oh, he needs it, helpful, stimulating crit- 
 icism ! He constantly tells me so. He is com- 
 ing this afternoon. I have been looking at the 
 proofs of his new poems, so soon to be pub- 
 lished, and I am going over them with him 
 very carefully. Going ! and so soon, dear ? " 
 in surprise. " I had hoped you were to be 
 with me all day. You were speaking of the 
 Judge," handing Castilia her muff. " What 
 a help he has been to me in my business af- 
 fairs ! I could not get along without him. 
 Daily, I find myself relying more and more 
 upon his advice and counsel." 
 
 Castilia drew her furs up around her 
 shoulders with a jerk, a flush rising on her 
 lovely, dusky, olive cheek. 
 
 " The Judge " she began quickly. 
 
 " Now do not say anything uncivil or un- 
 kind." Egeria raised a protesting hand. " I 
 will not have it. You two are always quarrel- 
 ing. The truth is, you are too young to ap- 
 preciate him." 
 
 [186]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 The sparkle in Castilia's eye was a danger 
 signal. " Good-by," she brushed her cheek 
 hastily against Egeria's. Then drawing back 
 and gazing critically at the latter's gown, 
 " Forgive me for speaking of it ; but do you 
 not think that rose color is very trying? You 
 look frightfully pale." 
 
 " Perhaps," smiled Egeria. " But I put it 
 on for the Poet. He adores rose color, you 
 know. He says it is * an inspiration.' ' 
 
 Castilia closed the door firmly behind her. 
 
 " Could it be said," laughed Egeria, left 
 alone, " that Castilia flounced from the room? 
 Ah, I met the reward of the missionary to- 
 day; but nevertheless, I have done a good 
 deed." 
 
 Half an hour later when the Poet arrived, 
 he glanced quickly about him, and then his 
 face fell. 
 
 " I rather fancied Castilia was to be here," 
 he said aggrievedly. " She said she would." 
 
 " She left quite suddenly," replied Egeria, 
 " because there was something in her ear." 
 
 " Something in her ear? " his voice was 
 concerned. 
 
 [187]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Yes, a flea." 
 
 " A flea ! " in horror. 
 
 Egeria nodded unmoved. " I put it there. 
 Have you never heard that vulgar old phrase, 
 ' a flea in your ear ' ? " 
 
 " Ah-h ! " resuming his seat and gazing at 
 her with reproachful eyes. " You have been 
 scolding Castilia ! How could you ? She is too 
 beautiful. You would not go out into your 
 garden and scold a flower. And Castilia is a 
 flower, a velvety, crimson rose, one of June's 
 crimson roses, flowers of the sun, full of 
 * splendid summer and perfume and pride.' 
 Ah, Madame Egeria, to know anything so 
 sweet is to love her ; and after all, what more 
 could one ask of life ? " 
 
 " Is that all you ask, Poet? " questioned 
 Egeria, rather sadly. " Just to love Cas- 
 tilia?" 
 
 " Isn't it enough ? " he asked lifting his 
 head, a sudden radiance on his face. " ' Love 
 is enough, though the world be waning,' ' : 
 touching caressingly with his finger tips the 
 gold and flame petals of the great, ragged 
 chrysanthemums in a vase by his side. He 
 [188]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 spoke reverently, almost as if repeating the 
 creed. 
 
 " Oh, love, love, love ! " cried Egeria, a 
 hint of impatience in her tone. One rebels at 
 the word. For centuries poets have made it 
 their theme, philosophers have dogmatized 
 over it, scientists have impaled Cupid on a 
 pin and studied him through a microscope, 
 and he has fluttered his bright wings and es- 
 caped you all. Therefore, Love is never 
 enough ; for he comes and goes like the wind, 
 which bloweth where it listeth. One must have 
 other solaces. Love is merely the jam on one's 
 bread. The bread is a necessity ; the jam sim- 
 ply a delightful accessory, lending piquancy 
 and flavor to a plain and somewhat stodgy 
 essential." 
 
 The Poet cast his eyes upward. " She calls 
 * the celestial rapture falling out of heaven ' 
 jam! She views Love's departure with phil- 
 osophical equanimity ; she even packs his 
 Gladstone for him, and says : * In this corner 
 is the star-dust with which to sprinkle your 
 purple wings, and in this is your wreath of 
 roses. Do not hurry back; I shall do nicely 
 [189]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 with my embroidery, the mothers' meetings 
 and the last novel until you return.' Woman ! 
 Woman ! Capable of a practical and positive 
 materialism that man can never know ! " 
 
 Egeria flushed. " Easily refuted," she re- 
 turned with some heat. " When Love seeks 
 his true haven, it is in our hearts. A great 
 poet in attempting to describe an endur- 
 ing friendship between men, could find no 
 stronger, more impressive simile than * pass- 
 ing the love of women.' That immortal phrase 
 would certainly suggest that a woman's 
 knowledge of love was intimate, perhaps ex- 
 clusive. Do you remember what Maeterlinck 
 said of Emily Bronte that she penetrated 
 the most impenetrable secrets of love to such 
 a degree that those who have loved the most 
 deeply must sometimes wonder what name 
 they should give to the passion they feel, 
 when she, in * Wuthering Heights,' pours 
 forth the exaltation and mystery of a love 
 beside which all else seems pallid and casual. 
 
 " And her sister, Charlotte, sounded depths 
 never reached by a masculine plummet, when 
 she made her impossible Rochester, adored by 
 [190]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 famous beauties, say to ' the governess in the 
 merino dress and with the soul of flame ' : 
 ' You, Jane Eyre, poor, plain, insignificant, 
 I love you ! " 
 
 " The Bronte sisters cracked like an egg- 
 shell the convention of the man-written fable, 
 that love is conditional upon externals; that 
 the beloved one must be a thing of roses and 
 snow, that her speech must be of silver, her 
 garments trail with light; that she must set 
 the ' jeweled print of her feet in violets blue 
 as her eyes.' ' 
 
 " That is because man is a poet at heart, 
 and not a mere observer of the mundane, like 
 woman," contended the Poet. " He takes for 
 granted what should be the fact, that the 
 beautiful soul must manifest itself beauti- 
 fully, that the outer radiance is but the sym- 
 bol of the inner loveliness." 
 
 " No doubt," agreed Egeria, sweetly ; 
 " but he is such a surly, discontented brute. 
 When he gets his Felise, or his Yolande, or 
 Juliette, is he satisfied? Not he. He immedi- 
 ately begins to pick flaws in the idol of his 
 thought. * One was fair,' he grumbles, * but 
 [191]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 beauty dies away; and one was wise, but 
 honeyed words betray; and one was true 
 ah, why not true to me? ' You see, nothing 
 suits him." 
 
 " And that is because man's ideal of woman 
 is so lofty, and she so inadequately realizes 
 it." He spoke advisedly very low. 
 
 " The kindest thing a woman can ever do 
 for a man " mused Egeria, 
 
 " Is to forgive him," the Poet interpolated, 
 seeing her pause. 
 
 " Not at all. * Forget him ' would be better. 
 But, really, the kindest thing a woman can 
 ever do for a man is not to love him; or if 
 she must return his affection, the sooner she 
 dies the better. All of the great love poems 
 have been written to commemorate one or the 
 other of these situations. Take an exception, 
 
 * Locksley Hall.' Do you think that if Amy 
 had passed away just after her cousin saw 
 
 * her spirit deeply dawning in the dark of 
 hazel eyes,' he would later have called her 
 4 shallow-hearted ' and * something better 
 than a dog,' or have accused her of being 
 ' puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a 
 
 [192]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 shrewish tongue ' ? No indeed. She made the 
 fatal mistake of sitting with him ' many an 
 evening by the waters, while we watched the 
 stately ships,' thus giving him ample oppor- 
 tunity to discover those faults and failings. 
 If she had only possessed the grace discreetly 
 to die after their first avowals, she might 
 have joined the immortal ranks of Laura, 
 Beatrice, Evelyn Hope, the lost Lenore, 
 Jeannie Morrison and Rose Aylmer." 
 
 "And every virtue, every grace, 
 Rose Aylmer, all were thine," 
 
 murmured the Poet. 
 
 " Quite so. She was dead," rejoined Egeria 
 dryly. " Do you remember another poet's 
 envious comment on the last parting between 
 George Sand and Alfred de Musset? " 
 
 The Poet momentarily ransacked his mem- 
 ory, ran his fingers through his hair. " Ah ! " 
 catching her allusion: 
 
 " 'There lived a singer in France of old, 
 By the tideless, dolorous, midland sea; 
 In a land of sand, and ruin, and gold, 
 There shone one woman, and none but she. 
 
 [193]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 And finding life for her love's sake fail, 
 Being fain to see her, he bade set sail, 
 Touched land and saw her as life grew cold, 
 And praised God, seeing; and so died he.' " 
 
 " What do you mean by the poet's envious 
 comment ? " he asked. 
 
 " There was a gleam of mischief in Ege- 
 ria's eyes. " ' Oh, brother, the gods were good 
 to you ! ' " she quoted triumphantly, the line 
 from the succeeding verse. 
 
 " Flippancy and intentional perversity of 
 meaning are not argument " his voice was 
 coldly reproving. " Have you no scruples ? " 
 
 " They are so much inconvenient luggage, 
 if one wishes to score," Egeria admitted with 
 candor. 
 
 " Madame Egeria," he asked wistfully, 
 " Do you think that women have much sense 
 of the poetry of love ; of its exquisite, fugi- 
 tive quality ? " 
 
 There was a gleam of laughter in her eyes. 
 " No, I think they object very strongly to 
 love's exquisite, fugitive quality. But " 
 becoming serious " quite in confidence, I 
 will grant that woman never seems able to 
 [194]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 obey or even comprehend that high command 
 of Emerson's : ' Leave this touching and claw- 
 ing. Let him be to me a spirit, a message, a 
 thought, a sincerity. A glance from him I 
 want, but not news and pottage.' You see, 
 she has that restless feminine desire to subdue 
 all things to herself the passion of the slave, 
 for it is only the free who can grant free- 
 dom. She resents * the spirit, the thought, the 
 sincerity.' They speak to her of unfettered 
 things and she is jealous of abstractions. She 
 insists upon ' touching and clawing,' and she 
 asks only * the news and the pottage.' 
 
 " With touching credulity, she exhibits a 
 belief in ropes of sand and chains of water. 
 She shuts her captive in the gilded cage of her 
 affections and imposes upon him the blasphe- 
 mous commandment of the eternal feminine: 
 * Thou shalt have no other gods before me ! ' : 
 
 " Hence these tears," said the Poet. " It is 
 a lesson man never can learn, never will learn, 
 never was intended to learn." 
 
 " There are two endings to that story," 
 continued Egeria. " He either breaks the 
 cage and escapes, or he becomes properly 
 [195]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 subdued and she is able to drag the poor, 
 spiritless beast about at her heels and call 
 the imposing spectacle : * The Triumph of 
 Love.' " 
 
 " Psyche forever denies to Love his re- 
 serves, forever lights her lamp to surprise his 
 secret slumbers," sighed the Poet. 
 
 " Well, why not? " cried Egeria with a 
 sudden change of front. " Through the long 
 centuries woman has had to have something 
 to occupy her thoughts, and curiosity is the 
 first tenant of an empty mind. Man has al- 
 ways lived in a world twice as big as a 
 woman's, and his vocabulary has naturally 
 been much larger. It has included ' war, fame, 
 toil, wine, woman, song and philosophy ' ; but 
 until recently, woman has had to lisp the one 
 word she learned far back in the caves 
 1 man.' " 
 
 " I do not see why it should be so," argued 
 the Poet. " Why does not her vocabulary in- 
 clude woman also? " 
 
 " Ah," admitted Egeria, " That is where 
 her good, hard, practical common sense comes 
 in. You men, the stronger physically, are re- 
 [196]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 sponsible for that in founding the institution 
 of marriage. Marriage has meant does still 
 mean for that matter woman's best chance 
 of establishing herself enviably and honor- 
 ably in life, of gaining an assured living and 
 securing a competence for her old age. Nat- 
 urally, as in most business pursuits, compe- 
 tition is keen. Consequently every woman has 
 for centuries regarded every other woman as 
 a possible foe. The exigencies of social life 
 demand intercourse between woman and 
 woman, but this is guarded and cautious. 
 The foils may be at rest ; but the buttons are 
 always off." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that there are no 
 friendships between women ? " exclaimed the 
 Poet. " Absurd ! I know a dozen of them. 
 Look at yourself and Castilia ! " 
 
 Egeria bit her lip a moment, and then bent 
 down apparently to pick up her handkerchief. 
 She seemed to strangle a cough. 
 
 " I have always thought of the friendship 
 between you two as a steel cable," went on the 
 Poet, " which neither want nor woe, time nor 
 calumny could break." 
 
 [197]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Of course," assented Egeria easily, al- 
 though she could hardly repress the ripple 
 of amusement in her voice ; " but suppose the 
 right man were to appear, is it not a possi- 
 bility that those steel cables might snap like 
 daisy chains ? " 
 
 He shook his head dissentingly. " How 
 about Ruth and Naomi ? " There was triumph 
 in his tone. 
 
 " One of the most beautiful pieces of fic- 
 tion ever written," she assured him. 
 
 His face hardened. " No wreaths for 
 either the altars of love or of friendship? 
 You are flippant to-day." 
 
 " To admit that love is * almost enough ' 
 is a pretty big wreath," she expostulated. 
 " And as for friendship," becoming earn- 
 est " friendship is a matter of destiny. One 
 may not force it, one may not evade it. 
 * Asleep, awake, by night by day, the friends 
 I seek are seeking me.' ' 
 
 " A boon you can never know," he as- 
 serted. 
 
 " And why, pray," Egeria sat stiffly up- 
 right, her eyes wide. 
 
 [198]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 " Because friendship is impossible between 
 a man and a woman. Imperceptibly, inevi- 
 tably, it merges into love." 
 
 " A commonplace of the centuries, a most 
 superficial estimate, a dogma of sophistry." 
 
 The Poet looked bewildered. " But you 
 have just informed me that women were in- 
 capable of friendship ? " 
 
 " What a typical example of the way one's 
 speeches are usually reported ! I said, largely 
 for the sake of argument, that for centuries, 
 women had found friendships with each other 
 impractical and inexpedient; but, be that as 
 it may, some of the truest, deepest, warmest 
 friendships that ever have existed were and 
 are between men and women. A woman will 
 keep a man's secrets when she can't keep her 
 own. She will leave no stone unturned to be of 
 assistance to him; she will sacrifice her time, 
 her conscience and her fellow beings to fur- 
 ther his advancement." 
 
 " And not love him? " questioned the Poet 
 incredulously. 
 
 " Not in the sense you mean. Certainly she 
 loves him; but maternally. You men never 
 [199]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 seem to understand that women love in two 
 ways, and that their friendship is often 
 largely an instinct to mother you." 
 
 " One of Cupid's strongest weapons is pro- 
 pinquity," he interposed. " Call the interest 
 which attracts a man or woman friendship 
 or what you will ; but throw them constantly 
 together and the result is love." 
 
 " In nine cases out of ten yes," she ac- 
 quiesced, " that is, if you choose to call it so. 
 But it is not love; it is merely an instance 
 of ' I must love some one and it might as well 
 be you.' That has nothing to do with either 
 the predestination of friendship or the inev- 
 itableness of love." 
 
 He refused to be comforted. " * But look, 
 you have cast out love,' * what gods are these, 
 you bid me please? ' 
 
 " I cast out love ! " Egeria's eyes dreamed. 
 " No, No ! I only cast out the counterfeits, 
 the base spurious imitations. 
 
 M 'All words that pass the lips of mortal men 
 With inner and with outer meaning shine; 
 An outer gleam that meets the common ken, 
 An inner light that but the few divine.' 
 [200]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 " Oh, Poet, there is 
 
 " ' The love celestial seeking still 
 
 The soul beneath the forms; the serene will, 
 The wisdom of whose deeps the sages dream; 
 The unseen beauty that doth faintly gleam 
 In stars and flowers and waters where they roll; 
 The unheard music whose faint echoes even 
 Make whosoever hears a homesick soul there- 
 after.' " 
 
 The Poet sat in silence a moment twirling 
 his hat in his hands, then he lifted his head 
 quickly ; his charming face white and hag- 
 gard. 
 
 " Egeria, Egeria, you have been my friend. 
 Tell me, is there any hope for me? Cas- 
 tilia " 
 
 Egeria's face saddened, a haze crept over 
 her eyes. This was a case for the knife and she 
 knew it. 
 
 " No, dear Poet." A 
 
 He winced sharply. " Why do you say it in 
 that final tone? Women often change their 
 minds." 
 
 " Ah, yes. But not in this case. Dear Poet, 
 I have sympathized with you, would have 
 [201]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 done anything to help you had there been any 
 hope from the first. But there never has. 
 And " after a little pause " I do not mean 
 it for comfort, because it is very cold com- 
 fort ; but I see now what you will realize some 
 day that it is better so." She had risen from 
 her chair and was standing beside him. 
 
 He shook his down-bent head impatiently, 
 murmuring some inarticulate words. 
 
 " I have been going over your poems," she 
 continued, touching the proof sheets lying on 
 the table, " and they have surprised and de- 
 lighted me." 
 
 He looked at them with a sick distaste, 
 a disdain that for the moment at least was 
 sincere. 
 
 " Poet, listen to me," Egeria's voice was 
 stern. " These new poems show a wonderful 
 cooperation of intellect and imagination, the 
 significance of which is very plain to me. A 
 genuine creative faculty has been stirred and 
 invigorated and is at work. It is no light 
 thing to awaken such a power, and the price 
 it demands of one in whose hands it places 
 its service is a high one. It asks all, all that 
 [202]
 
 IS LOVE ENOUGH? 
 
 you have to give. You will never belong to 
 yourself. Through your hours of joy and 
 grief, of work or play, no matter what their 
 claims, you will hear that call forever in your 
 ears, low, insistent, imperative, and inexor- 
 able ' follow me ' ; and you must forever 
 heed it, live for it, love it, starve and die 
 for it, if needs be. You, to regard yourself 
 as merely Castilia's lover ! Ah, Poet, you must 
 rise to your gift ! " 
 
 For a moment her words roused him. His 
 spirit sprang to her call. Then he fell into 
 listlessness again. 
 
 " My love for her inspired those verses you 
 like," he cried. ." Suppose I do get the ' gold 
 and the laurel ' you prophesy for me ? With- 
 out her, it would seem like dust and sand. 
 Oh, I can never write again. Egeria, Egeria ! 
 If she had only loved me I would not have 
 asked the laurel wreath ; her love would have 
 been to me a ' jeweled circlet flaming through 
 heaven.' " 
 
 Egeria smiled down at him, but there were 
 tears in her eyes. He seemed so boyish, so 
 young all at once. " Dear Poet," her hand 
 [203]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 fell gently on his hair, " we have all dreamed 
 of the jeweled circlet of a perfect love which 
 should flame through heaven, and we all end 
 by gratefully accepting instead, ' some leaves 
 of wild olive, cool to the tired brow through 
 a few years of peace.' ' 
 
 " But I cannot stay here, Egeria, I must 
 go, go at once." 
 
 " Yes, you must go, the sooner the better. 
 Go far, dear Poet, to the other side of the 
 world." 
 
 " Yes." He rose and looked dazedly about 
 him; then lifting her hands, laid his cheek 
 against them for a moment, smiled bravely 
 into her pitiful eyes, and was gone. 
 
 [204]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST
 
 "This casket India's glowing gems unlocks, 
 And all Arabia breathes from yonder box. 
 The tortoise here and elephant unite, 
 Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white. 
 Here files of pins extend their shining rows, 
 Puffs, powder, patches, bibles, billet-doux. 
 Now awful beauty puts on all its arms; 
 The fair each moment rises in her charms." 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE.
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 
 ASTILIA was walking restlessly about 
 Egeria's room, first pausing before 
 one mirror and then another in an effort to 
 get the complete effect of a new hat and 
 gown. They had been invited to drive over 
 to the Rich Man's to view his magnificent 
 chrysanthemums and remain to dinner, and 
 Egeria was adding the last touches to her 
 toilet before starting. 
 
 " I do not like this hat," Castilia's tone 
 was tragic. 
 
 " Why did you get it then ? " asked 
 Egeria with practical if aggravating com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 " It looked well enough in the shop," 
 
 grumbled Castilia. " Those women who sell 
 
 them have a knack of putting them on which 
 
 cannot be imitated. One can never again set 
 
 [207]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 them on one's head at exactly the same an- 
 gle, no matter how many hours may be 
 given to the attempt ; and there is a diaboli- 
 cal art in the saleswoman's way of twisting 
 a veil about one's head. She seems able to 
 give an indefinable distinction to the appear- 
 ance that my bungling efforts can never 
 secure." 
 
 " Yes," sighed her friend, " and after she 
 has adjusted the hat and fastened the veil 
 with deft touches, there follows the expres- 
 sion of her admiration, so infectious, so 
 spontaneous, so grateful and comforting 
 that one immediately feels a warm devotion 
 to the bonnet which inspired it. But when at 
 home before the mirror, we are apt to ex- 
 perience a change of heart." 
 
 " That is just it," assented Castilia, " and 
 why is it that one's own mirror seems so 
 brutally frank, even cynical and satirical 
 after the flattering pier glasses of milliners 
 and dressmakers? They are all probably 
 manufactured at the same places." 
 
 " Then," the remembrance of her past 
 and present sorrows rousing her to elo- 
 [208]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 quence, " we draw the hat from the boi 
 after it has been sent home and behold, in 
 some magic way it has suffered a change. 
 Is this unsightly object the confection which 
 so well became us in the shop? There it 
 rested on the head so lightly and firmly that 
 we believed the highest wind couldn't blow 
 it off; and here, at home, adjusted by Our 
 own unskilled fingers, it wobbles unsteadily 
 above one eye. Now why is it, Egeria? " 
 
 " Ah ! the milliner knows why." Egeria 
 leisurely drew on her gloves. " That is her 
 secret. That is where she scores. And by 
 the way, Castilia," earnestly, as became the 
 importance of the theme, " Did you happen 
 to ask your milliner what sort of a year it 
 is going to be, whether flowers, feathers, 
 fur, lace, fruit or vegetables ? " 
 
 " I did not," answered Castilia. " What is 
 the use," pessimistically " we will all 
 wear whatever it is, no matter whether we 
 like it or not." 
 
 " I trust it will be a vegetable year." 
 Egeria added a touch of powder to her nose, 
 turning right and left to view the effect. 
 
 t
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Potatoes and carrots come in good shades ; 
 but I am rather hoping cabbages will hold 
 first place in popular favor. I should like 
 nothing better than a scooped-out cabbage 
 on my head. Those delicate blue-greens are 
 so becoming to me." 
 
 " O Egeria, you are too absurd ! " 
 
 " I am not," averred Egeria. " Why are 
 vegetables any more absurd than fruit and 
 flowers and birds and beasts? I am sure that 
 without protest, we adorn ourselves with 
 dead birds, thus following a fashion that the 
 heathen would scorn to emulate; and, Cas- 
 tilia, truly it would be a matter of scientific 
 interest to discover the curious law which 
 impels women with large noses to wear par- 
 rots on their hats. It must be the instinct 
 of natural selection." 
 
 Castilia only laughed. 
 
 " Crowned with our barbaric spoils we 
 gravely attend lectures given under the 
 auspices of the Audubon Society," went on 
 Egeria, " and we listen with wooden and 
 unmoved countenances to the hideous tales 
 of slaughter. Equally wooden and unmoved 
 [210]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 are our souls. ' Birds are the fad of the 
 season. They are on all really good hats. 
 Everyone else is wearing them.' These ar- 
 guments suffice. Woman has never advanced 
 a step from barbarism in her ideals of or- 
 namentation, and she is cruel as the grave." 
 
 Castilia shrugged her shoulders and tried 
 the effect of another veil. 
 
 " Look at that hat you wore to church 
 yesterday, Castilia. It is composed of some 
 fur, a few scraps of lace, the head and claws 
 of an animal, a wreath of orchids, some rib- 
 bon and a bird." 
 
 " That hat ! " CastihVs tone was horri- 
 fied. " That hat is an artist's dream. Every 
 woman who has seen it has raved over it. 
 It is lovely. There is something wrong with 
 your eyes." 
 
 " I admit you look a picture in it ; but 
 then you would look a picture in a coal 
 scuttle." Egeria softened her condemnation 
 of the hat by this sop. " But it is not ar- 
 tistic. It is a melange of incongruous ar- 
 ticles, which put together, defy the eternal 
 principle of beauty harmony." 
 [211]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " O Egeria, you always have to go into 
 the ethics of a thing, as if ethics applied to 
 hats." 
 
 " They do," argued Egeria. " What could 
 more fitly embody the stringent morality 
 of the early Victorian era than the old- 
 fashioned, round, poke-bonnet? What could 
 be more demure, more uncompromising, 
 more suggestive of British matronism? It 
 frowned as sternly upon coquetry as Savon- 
 arola. It did its best to conceal certain win- 
 ning charms, such as the tip of a shell-like 
 ear, tendrils of hair, blushes on a delicate 
 cheek. Bright eyes might shine in its fun- 
 nel-shaped depths, but who had the time or 
 patience to discover the fact ? " 
 
 " As a preventive of earache, it may have 
 been excellent ; but as a thing of beauty it 
 was a failure. Women, gazing at its blank 
 ugliness endeavored to mitigate it somewhat 
 by twining it with flowers and twisting it 
 with ribbons ; but it never really assimilated 
 these gauds as a part of itself. It simply 
 suffered them and still remained remote and 
 isolated in its monumental hideousness."
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 
 " Egeria, you are preaching again. You 
 know you made me promise to stop you 
 whenever you began." 
 
 Egeria colored. " Well, let us get away 
 from ethics then. Probably the only impor- 
 tant ethical consideration about the whole 
 subject is that the hat should be becoming 
 and suit the woman." 
 
 " It rarely does," Castilia scowled at her 
 reflection. " Here's a picture for you : The 
 lady with the large, round face and the hat 
 too small for her." 
 
 " Yes, and in that same gallery of mourn- 
 ful mental pictures hangs another tearful 
 mockery, the stout motherly woman with 
 the good, kind, plain face crowned with the 
 disfiguring frivolity of a picture hat." 
 
 " Isn't a hat a sort of monstrosity any- 
 way? " Castilia, glass in hand, was attempt- 
 ing a side view. 
 
 " It need not be. The great artists have 
 never undervalued it as a picturesque ad- 
 junct to beauty, affording a most alluring 
 background, a soft shadow against which 
 the face may gleam. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 [213]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 Gainsborough and Romney understood to 
 the full what suggestions of character may 
 be introduced into a mere matter of crown 
 and brim. Who, on gazing merely at the 
 pictured face of the lovely Duchess of Dev- 
 onshire, could fancy her going forth to 
 purchase with kisses the votes Charles James 
 Fox so sorely needed. But in the sweep of 
 that great audacious hat, one reads the real 
 daring, the indifference to public opinion, 
 which formed a part of her character." 
 
 Egeria's dissertation was interrupted by 
 a knock at the door. A maid entered and 
 handed her a letter and a telegram. " Ah," 
 disappointedly, as she read the letter 
 " The Commonplace Man cannot join us 
 this afternoon. Business! The conventional 
 and convenient excuse. I wonder if he really 
 wanted to come." 
 
 " Really wanted to come ! " echoed Cas- 
 tilia in profound astonishment. " And every- 
 where Egeria went, the Commonplace Man 
 was sure to go. Some one asked the other 
 day if the Commonplace Man were not 
 your shadow, and some one else replied: 
 [214]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 * No, he is merely a part of her stage set- 
 ting, the background against which she 
 moves.' ' 
 
 Egeria flushed angrily, and Castilia, 
 realizing too late that she had wounded the 
 lady she truly loved, asked hastily, " Why 
 do you not open your letter? " 
 
 "Ah! I had forgotten it. Castilia!" 
 drawing it from the envelope and hastily 
 scanning it " It has been sent back by the 
 pilot. It is from the Poet!" 
 
 A slight blush rose on Castilia's cheek. 
 " Egeria," she began rather timidly, " when 
 he said good-by, he mentioned that he had 
 told you how he felt about me. Wasn't it 
 tiresome of him to get such ideas in his 
 head? " appealingly. " He was a nice boy 
 until he got so foolish. I never had a play- 
 mate I liked so weh 1 , and then," with un- 
 utterable disdain in her voice, " for him to 
 spoil it all ; and race across the world in that 
 melodramatic way ! " 
 
 Egeria's smile was amused but very ten- 
 der. " Castilia you are too young to appre- 
 ciate him. But come, we shall be late. I have 
 [215]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 heard the motor puffing and panting below 
 for a good fifteen minutes." 
 
 " The dear Poet ! " she murmured after a 
 few moments of silence, as they drove along 
 the country roads through the golden haze 
 of Indian Summer. " How sweet of him to 
 write me." 
 
 Castilia stirred restlessly. " I dare say 
 we shall see some really good frocks this 
 afternoon. That is a wonderful one you are 
 wearing. I once heard a woman say that 
 you were not even pretty ; but that you were 
 considered beautiful because you had dis- 
 covered the secret of the art of dress. What 
 is the secret anyway? " 
 
 Her companion laughed and then grew 
 thoughtful. " I wonder if it could not be 
 summed up in a phrase the accentuation 
 of type? Does it not lie in the ability to 
 bring out the individuality, to make a pic- 
 ture of one's self? Think how often one 
 hears expressions of this kind, * She dresses 
 very handsomely; but she does not under- 
 stand her style in the least.' After all, I 
 wonder if that isn't the very art and secret 
 [216]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 of a charming appearance the understand- 
 ing of one's style? " 
 
 " It is rather a vague phrase," contended 
 Castilia. 
 
 " Perhaps ; but does it not mean the in- 
 tuitive or acquired knowledge of the color 
 which will harmonize best with the complex- 
 ion ; the trick of arranging the hair to show 
 the features and the contour of the face to 
 the best advantage; a gown so cut as to 
 emphasize the best lines of the figure? 
 Women think so unceasingly about clothes 
 and discuss the subject so interminably, that 
 it is one of the eternal puzzles why the 
 majority of them are so destitute of ar- 
 tistic sense in the selection of a wardrobe." 
 
 " Well," remarked Castilia philosophi- 
 cally, " we shall see a number of our friends 
 this afternoon, who have failed to grasp 
 those subtle distinctions. There will be Brun- 
 hilda Black in pink. Why should a woman 
 with red hair wear pink? " 
 
 Egeria laughed. " They all do. Was there 
 ever a woman with any of the shades of 
 red hair, from Henner's beautiful, deep hue 
 [ 217 ]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 to those ever so lightly kissed by the sun 
 who did not exhibit a perfect passion for 
 wearing every gradation of that pink which 
 jars so frightfully with her auburn locks? " 
 
 " I do not think Brunhilda is as bad as 
 Blanche White," continued Castilia who was 
 in the mood for personalities. " You are al- 
 ways philosophizing and talking about the 
 ethics of things, then please explain why a 
 woman with hair like a faint cloud of dust, 
 and skin and eyes of the same dull monotone 
 should invariably array herself in faded 
 brownish-grays and pale mustard hues? 
 There is a certain mixed clay-colored mate- 
 rial which colorless women seem to regard 
 with peculiar favor." 
 
 " Yes," Egeria could not forbear smil- 
 ing, " and often when gazing at the mouse- 
 colored lady in the mustard clothes, I feel 
 a suspicious sympathy with those bold souls 
 who affirm that the greatest crime a woman 
 can commit is to add to the general sum 
 of ugliness and depression in a world meant 
 to be supremely glad and beautiful." 
 
 " But change the picture, Castilia, put 
 [218]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 one of those hueless madonnas into black 
 and white, not black or white, and she be- 
 comes a dainty pastel, elusive, wistful and 
 haunting, instead of a drab monotone." 
 
 " There is a sort of perversity in us which 
 makes us admire all the things we have no 
 business to, I suppose. You are asking very 
 perplexing conundrums by the way, Cas- 
 tilia." 
 
 " I can keep on asking that kind all day," 
 replied the Bishop's daughter cheerfully. 
 " Why does a splendid creature like Gri- 
 selda Gray, with the figure of a goddess, 
 cling to the frills and ruffles of immature 
 fifteen; and a thin little thing like Evadne 
 Green adopt gowns of the severest, plainest 
 lines? Why does the woman, whose hair 
 should be waved from her brow, wear a 
 mop reaching to her eyes; and why does 
 the lady, who needs a redeeming fringe, 
 uncompromisingly drag back every single 
 hair?" 
 
 Egeria clapped her hands over her ears. 
 " Stop, stop," she cried, " we have spent 
 this entire afternoon talking about clothes. 
 [219]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 Consider the lilies, Castilia. You are too 
 beautiful to bother over what you shall and 
 shall not wear. Anything will serve. The 
 Poet says you are a * red, red rose.' ' 
 
 Castilia looked scornful. " The Poet is so 
 tiresomely young." 
 
 " But you are young, too." 
 
 "Ill am twenty-five. That is not young 
 for a woman. It is quite old. And I never did 
 care for very young men. I like men of 
 middle age, over forty, you know. Distin- 
 guished, successful men, who have accom- 
 plished a lot and stand for something. The 
 kind of men who are sought and admired 
 by both men and women." 
 
 Egeria nodded comprehension. " Like the 
 Judge, for instance." 
 
 " Oh, no," with a quick start, " I was not 
 even thinking of him ; but now that you 
 mention him; he is rather remarkable, is he 
 not? Some women, I have heard, consider 
 him very fascinating." 
 
 " Indeed, yes." Egeria's tone was inno- 
 cently hearty. " I know of one at least who 
 does." 
 
 [220]
 
 THE SUPREME INTEREST 
 
 "Who," cajoled Castilia. "Ah, tell me? 
 Be a dear and tell me." 
 
 " Never. It is useless to ask." 
 
 " I often feel," sighed Castilia, " that he 
 must find me very uninteresting. Now 
 you " 
 
 " When you are as old as I am," laughed 
 her companion, " you will know that a man 
 like that cares very little about a woman 
 like me." 
 
 " But he is so poised, so mature. I must 
 seem very raw and young to him." 
 
 " Seem too young ! " Egeria's astonish- 
 ment was unfeigned. " Why, he is forty-five 
 if he is a day ! " 
 
 " I do not see what that has to do with 
 it." 
 
 "Do you not? I do." 
 
 " Well, dismissing the Judge and speak- 
 ing quite in the abstract, Egeria, do you 
 think twenty years is too much difference 
 in age between a man and a woman if they 
 happen to care for one another ? " 
 
 "I think," said Egeria, "that if you 
 would throw those twenty years and happi- 
 [221 ]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 ness on the balances, you would find the 
 years would not amount to a feather's 
 weight, so heavily would the scales tip on 
 the happiness side. But here we are! The 
 chrysanthemums have probably taken their 
 petals out of curl papers and are anxiously 
 awaiting our arrival."
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN
 
 'To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench 
 In mirth, that after no repenting draws; 
 Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause, 
 And what the Swede intend, and what the French. 
 To measure life learn thou betimes, and know 
 Toward solid good, what leads the nearest way." 
 
 JOHN MILTON.
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 
 IT was one of those mild November 
 evenings when the moon shines dimly 
 through flying clouds and the soft wind 
 sighs with some mysterious, untranslatable 
 music; and, after dinner Egeria stole back 
 to the chrysanthemum garden. With only a 
 light wrap about her shoulders she hastened 
 down the paths, and then paused overcome 
 by the beauty before her. Within the walled 
 garden the flowers, which she had seen, 
 earlier in one sunlit glow of color, were now 
 masses of snow and shadow. A tiny crescent 
 moon, half obscured by trailing clouds, 
 swung far up in the sky. Against its light 
 were outlined the bare, black branches of 
 the trees beyond the wall, and the delicate 
 intricate tracery of the myriad twigs. 
 " Ah-h," Egeria drew a deep breath as 
 [225]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 if drinking in the loveliness of the night ; 
 and then hearing footsteps behind her, 
 turned quickly to face the Judge. 
 
 " I am sure you do not want to be dis- 
 turbed," he began. " You are probably 
 studying color and effects and all that sort 
 of thing ; but " glancing furtively about 
 him " I am flying from an intellectual lady. 
 Please rescue me." 
 
 " Thank you," said Egeria. " Let me ex- 
 press my appreciation of your delicate skill 
 in handling a two-edged weapon." 
 
 The Judge ignored the retort courteous. 
 " A woman never seems able to take her in- 
 tellect sanely," he continued gloomily. " If 
 such gifts as great beauty and transcendent 
 virtue become obnoxious when they are 
 vaunted by their possessors, then how much 
 more objectionable is intellectual vainglory? 
 A woman affects to take her beauty meekly 
 ' a poor thing but mine own ' ; she is re- 
 garded with suspicion if she prates of her 
 virtue; but of her brain she makes a pa- 
 geant." 
 
 " Ah," remarked Egeria, with languor, 
 [226]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 " and I dare say you hold to those rococco 
 views so thoroughly incorporated in the 
 thirty-nine articles of man's creed, that a 
 woman's mentality is always in inverse ratio 
 to her powers of attraction." 
 
 The Judge refused to answer a direct 
 question. " I don't care how much intellect 
 she has," he insisted stoutly, " I only re- 
 quest that she doesn't flaunt it in my face, 
 and ask me to sit an admiring and applaud- 
 ing audience while she puts it through its 
 paces. It is not her possession of it that 
 I object to; it's her self-consciousness about 
 it. She never ignores it or allows it to go 
 and sit quietly in the corner. It is always 
 in evidence." 
 
 " In a way you are right," admitted 
 Egeria, reluctantly. " I wonder why it is. 
 I know quantities of clever men; but they 
 rarely seem to regard themselves as * We 
 are the people, knowledge shall die with us. 5 
 They are apt to prate enthusiastically and 
 endlessly of some new and rather boyish 
 hobby. For instance there is a man whose 
 achievements in a particular line have made 
 [227]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 him a great figure; now he finds his rest 
 and recreation in painting atrocious pic- 
 tures. Of his important and interesting 
 work he rarely speaks ; but he will descant 
 endlessly upon the merits of those abomin- 
 able pictures, and exhibit them with a naive 
 and childlike pride." 
 
 "But," asked the Judge quickly, "did 
 you ever know a woman lawyer, or actress, 
 or writer, or mathematician who would fore- 
 go all mention of her life work to discourse 
 joyously on the making of buttonholes? " 
 
 " It is so short a time that women have 
 been credited with an ability to think " 
 Egeria spoke dryly " that they naturally 
 like to air their accomplishments." 
 
 " There should be a book issued for 
 them," advised the Judge " ' How Not to 
 Be a Bore. 5 And why are they so plain? Is 
 nature so niggardly that she will not dower 
 a woman with brains and beauty at the same 
 time, or is there a fierce, devastating microbe 
 of the intelect which devours all the germs 
 of latent loveliness ? " 
 
 " We cannot all be as beautiful as Cas- 
 [228]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 
 tilia," she replied without apparent meaning. 
 " I admit " there was a deluding fairness in 
 her tones " that there are few things more 
 difficult to endure than the learned and com- 
 placent young person, didactic and anxious 
 to bestow information ; nor do I wonder in 
 the least that men prefer a soft, adorable, 
 fluffy little fool. But middle age stares every 
 woman in the face. Kittenhood is bewitch- 
 ing, but old-cathood is a very different mat- 
 ter, and I maintain that in middle life the 
 most tiresome and pedantic of intellectual 
 women is preferable to those fat, flabby, 
 bejeweled creatures one so frequently sees 
 dining or driving. They are the unprogres- 
 sire, overfed wives of rich men and they 
 take vast thought of what they shall eat 
 and what they shall drink, and wherewithal 
 they shall be clothed. They cannot talk, they 
 cannot think, there are only two things they 
 can do eat and drink, and spend money. 
 I am sure that one tiny thought which has 
 a premise and certain conclusions to be de- 
 duced from it would cause inflammation of 
 the brain. 
 
 [229]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " You men are so fond of catch phrases, 
 and attach so much importance to them " 
 Egeria was now in full cry " that when I 
 hear you talk of a man's ideal being * the 
 old sweet, womanly woman of the long 
 ago,' I pine to drag a heroine from the 
 pages of an eighteenth-century novel and 
 throw her on your hands for a season. She, 
 with her pleasing habits of bursting into 
 tears or fainting on every occasion ! She, 
 with her missish, mawkish sentimentality 
 and her everlasting ' sensibility ' ! How glad 
 you would be to exchange her for the twen- 
 tieth-century girl with her splendid health; 
 the girl who can play golf or tennis, or 
 ride or swim with him ; who can listen un- 
 derstandingly when he talks of the events 
 of the hour or of his business ! This is the 
 era of companionship ; for the first time men 
 and women are comrades." 
 
 "H'm-m!" sniffed the Judge. "I get 
 very tired of those bright, boyish young 
 women. TLe only difference, it sometimes 
 seems to me, between the young collegians 
 of both sexes, is that some wear trousers 
 [230]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 and some wear petticoats. When a man de- 
 sires mental stimulus he turns to his own 
 kind. The potent spell of the eternal fem- 
 inine, Madame Egeria, is to be eternally 
 feminine. Like does not attract like. The 
 pine, you remember, loved the palm the 
 graceful, sensuous Southern palm. The in- 
 structive woman, who, with serene compla- 
 cency, has taken all knowledge for her 
 province, should have a millstone tied about 
 her neck and be cast into the depths of the 
 sea. A woman's initial duty is to please." 
 
 " But not to try to please," averred 
 Egeria, sotto voce. 
 
 "What's the difference?" asked the 
 Judge obtusely. 
 
 " Great heavens ! Don't you know the dif- 
 ference between the woman who pleases you 
 without trying and the woman who tries 
 without pleasing you ? " 
 
 " I can stand any type of woman better 
 than the unnaturally sprightly ones the 
 artificially animated ones with the dull eyes, 
 you know, who ask you if you've read this 
 book or that all the books, in fact, that 
 [231 ]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 you've never heard of ; and tell funny stories 
 very badly indeed." 
 
 " Do you think they are quite as hard to 
 bear " a pensiveness had crept into Ege- 
 ria's tone " as the ones who murmur on 
 and on, ' And I was quite sure that Bobby 
 Bobby's my oldest boy, you know had 
 fallen downstairs and killed himself, so I 
 said to Mr. Smith, who was sitting by the 
 fire reading the evening paper no, it was 
 Browning's poems; and he wasn't by the 
 fire, either; he was sitting near the window 
 and I said to him, " Do you know, dear, 
 I believe Bobby has fallen down stairs and 
 killed himself." And he said, " Why, no 
 darling, I do not think so. I'm quite sure 
 I heard him whistling outside just a moment 
 ago." And I said, " No dear ; I think you are 
 mistaken." And he said, " No Mary, love, 
 I'm quite positive of what I'm saying." And 
 I said, " But husband, dearest, I'm as sure as 
 I can be." ' " 
 
 The Judge was grinding his teeth hor- 
 ribly. " Oh, please stop ! " he begged. " I 
 can't bear it. I've heard them purl on that 
 [232]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 way for hours. Do not recall those moments 
 in Hades." 
 
 " But that is the type of woman you par- 
 ticularly admire." Egeria spoke with soft 
 malice. " No one would accuse her of any 
 intellectual luggage, no matter how care- 
 fully concealed." 
 
 The Judge gazed abstractedly before him. 
 " I don't believe," he said at last, doggedly 
 and daringly, but still having the grace to 
 avert his eyes " I don't believe that you've 
 got anything worth being called an intellect, 
 and I think you're all intuitively and sub- 
 consciously aware of the fact, from the way 
 you parade any spurious imitations you may 
 possess." 
 
 Egeria sat bolt upright, with two scar- 
 let spots blazing on her cheeks. " Where 
 are Jove's lightnings?" she cried gazing 
 eagerly upward. " Why don't they fall and 
 frizzle you to a smoking cinder? " 
 
 " To possess an intellect presupposes the 
 logical faculty. Woman is never logical." 
 
 " She doesn't have to be," asserted Ege- 
 ria, triumphantly. " She knows a trick 
 [233]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 worth two of that. She watches man go 
 through all those elaborate mental contor- 
 tions of which he is so fond, and which he 
 calls ' logical methods of reasoning and de- 
 duction,' and then she exclaims, with Emer- 
 son, ' Why all these painful labors ? There 
 is a better way.' Let him amuse himself with 
 so cumbersome and old-fashioned a vehicle 
 if he wishes, but my swift intuitions supply 
 me with an infallible and instantaneous con- 
 clusion." 
 
 " Infallible ! " scoffed the Judge. He looked 
 unutterable things, but checked his rising 
 speech. " Your intellectual woman takes her- 
 self so seriously " harking back to his 
 original grievance. 
 
 " She does, rather," admitted Egeria, 
 with the generosity of one who feels that 
 he has scored. " She's always studying 
 things out of books, when Life stands at 
 the door of her tent and offers her an 
 interesting panorama. Love points to his 
 primrose way. Sorrow beckons, Joy woos 
 and she scowls at her : * Out of my path, 
 light one. I have no time to heed any of 
 [234]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 you, or to pay the price of admission to 
 your exhibits. I am cultivating my intel- 
 lect.' " 
 
 " You mean gathering grapes of thorns 
 and figs of thistles," muttered the Judge. 
 
 Egeria ignored him. " Really," she con- 
 tinued earnestly, " the woman who poses as 
 purely intellectual and prides herself upon 
 the fact is one of the most poverty-stricken 
 creatures upon the face of the earth. She 
 has absolutely nothing to offer and she 
 might as well accept the fact once for all. 
 Let her exult to the fullest in the magnifi- 
 cent and thrilling dash woman has made in 
 her race for the golden apples of a broader 
 mentality, for it has been a sprint worthy 
 of a goddess ; but nevertheless, she has the 
 shackling ages behind her, and in her pres- 
 ent stage of mental development there is no 
 field in which she is not equaled or distanced 
 by man. 
 
 " She virtually admits this fact when she 
 prates of woman's work and erects build- 
 ings wherein to exhibit it, thus differentiat- 
 ing between the sexes. The mere term ' wom- 
 [235]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 an's work,' when applied to domestic or 
 artistic production, is an insult, because it 
 embodies a shameless and whining plea. If 
 the work of woman's hand and brain cannot 
 stand on its own merits side by side with 
 the craft of ideas of man, then in the name 
 of justice let it fall. If it does not stand 
 the test of impartial criticism, then let 
 woman be brave enough to destroy it with 
 her own hands and on its ruins build again 
 with a confident and buoyant spirit, asking 
 no handicap for weights. 
 
 " To-day when the twentieth century 
 beckons, no woman can afford not to be in- 
 tellectual in the broadest and truest mean- 
 ing of that word. She must be eagerly alert 
 to the great thoughts and energies of the 
 hour and gladly feed her seeking brain with 
 life's great issues. The woman who limits 
 herself to trivialities and frivolities thus 
 fancying herself truly womanly and delight- 
 fully feminine, will find that she is behind 
 the times ; the spirit of the day is no longer 
 with her. 
 
 " Why confuse terms, and regard as in- 
 [236]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 tellectual the woman who has a capacity for 
 acquiring facts and has not sufficient mental 
 assimilation to transmute them into that 
 ' indefinable essence of acquirement which we 
 call culture ' ? You see, she forgets that ' no 
 perfect artist was created yet, of an imper- 
 fect woman.' ' 
 
 " Was a perfect artist ever created of any 
 kind of a woman? Is woman ever truly an 
 artist in the higher sense ? " The Judge had 
 the bit in his teeth now. " When she achieves 
 anything in art, she usually does so in a 
 way that appears in curious contradistinc- 
 tion to her sex. Her work when it exhibits 
 any power at all, is apt to be oddly virile 
 and unimaginative. However, I must except 
 one branch of art women are great ac- 
 tresses ; and the reason is that they are never 
 called upon to speak the universal voice. 
 They merely express themselves. There has 
 never been a woman musician of the highest 
 rank. Oh, I grant you there are a few 
 charming ones ; but none great. Rosa Bon- 
 heur was a great woman painter, a wonder- 
 ful observer, with no hint of that mystic 
 [237]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 vision which seems a part of the gift of su- 
 preme artists. 
 
 " As novelists, women have gone far. 
 George Eliot is perhaps the most notable ex- 
 ample. Fielding outclasses her." 
 
 " What would you say of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's ' Sonnets from the Portuguese ' ? " 
 asked Egeria, coldly. 
 
 " The final dictum will probably be that 
 they are the most artistic thing a woman 
 has ever accomplished," he replied. " But 
 stop to think of woman's perversity." The 
 Judge spoke as if personally injured. 
 " Women have chosen to excel in fields where 
 it would seem there was no possible show for 
 them. They have been mighty rulers, diplo- 
 mats and politicians. When did the tradi- 
 tional heart of woman ever interfere with 
 the crafty head of Elizabeth of England, 
 Catherine of Russia, the present Empress 
 of China? Of Catherine, it was said that she 
 combined all the resources of the implacable 
 ruler, the trained diplomat, the profound 
 psychologist and the woman of fascination. 
 Elizabeth was almost a like deadly combina- 
 [238]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 
 tion. She never made a mistake in a man, 
 and she surrounded herself with advisers 
 who could make herself and her kingdom 
 glorious. Her political coquetries still hold 
 lessons for diplomats. 
 
 " Women may be eminent in mathematics, 
 in science. They have shown, and do show, 
 signs of this in their past and their present 
 mental development; but if the signs of the 
 past and the present mean anything, men 
 will continue to hold the laurel in art against 
 all feminine comers. Your sex, Madame Ege- 
 ria, will give to the world echoes of the 
 * blue tide's low susurrus that comes up to 
 the Ivory Gate.' But will women ever pass 
 and repass through those shining gates, free 
 citizens of the world of dreams? I doubt it. 
 The feminine nature lacks something of the 
 requisite emotional depth and range. George 
 Sand could never have loved Chopin as 
 Chopin loved George Sand." 
 
 " Pouf ! " Egeria snapped her fingers in 
 airy scorn. " One of the prime amusements 
 of man, ever since he was a chattering mon- 
 key in a treetop, has been to harangue on 
 [239]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 the destiny of woman and set the limits to 
 her achievement. He constructs a neat cage 
 and puts her within it. Then he exclaims 
 admiringly : * Behold the caged tiger ! ' And 
 woman paces up and down the cage until 
 she gets tired of it; then she lifts her paw, 
 strikes out a few bars and walks free. Im- 
 mediately man sits down and prophesies 
 long and loud of the horrible things that 
 will happen to her and to the race if she 
 is not speedily captured and thrust back into 
 a stronger cage of his devising. You amuse 
 me " walking away a few paces " but you 
 fail to convince." 
 
 " You remember George Meredith's 
 words," said the Judge, " that ' woman is 
 the last creature man shall civilize.' ' 
 
 Egeria stopped short, turned squarely 
 and faced him. " Why are you in such a 
 horrid, argumentative mood to-night? You 
 ought to be in the most joyous spirits. Your 
 bete noir" a touch of acrimony in her 
 tones " our charming Poet has gone." 
 
 The Judge scornfully curled his lip. 
 " Our charming Poet ! " he muttered. " Of- 
 [240]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 
 f ensive young ass ! Posing about here, self- 
 sufficient, conceited, bumptious." 
 
 " Just stop." The words were stern ; but 
 there was a hint of laughter in Egeria's 
 tones. " You cannot talk to me thus about 
 the Poet." 
 
 " He bewitched you women," asserted the 
 Judge gloomily. " For for the Bishop's 
 sake, and for her own," generously " I 
 feared for Castilia. She is young and im- 
 pressionable, and he was always about with 
 his poems and his eyes and his airs and his 
 
 talk " The Judge struck a match to 
 
 light his cigar so vigorously that the end 
 flew off. 
 
 " But he's gone now," put in Egeria con- 
 solingly. " * On the other side the world he's 
 overdue.' ' 
 
 " Yes," still gloomily, " but I notice that 
 about fifty more have sprung up. I left 
 Castilia surrounded by more callow, cack- 
 ling youths than I cared to count." He 
 leaned on the low stone wall enclosing the 
 garden and blew rings of smoke at the moon. 
 
 " Castilia," remarked his companion, 
 [241 ]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " like any other pretty and high - spirited 
 girl is fond of admiration; but," a little 
 sadly, " the Poet's eyes and verses never 
 made the least impression on her, any more 
 than " with a wave of the hand " those 
 callow and cackling youths to whose mercies 
 you have abandoned her are making." 
 
 He looked closely at her. 
 
 " Castilia," she continued, " is intensely 
 practical. Castilia is ambitious. Castilia 
 loves pomp and circumstance and luxury and 
 beauty." 
 
 " I have never noticed any evidence of 
 those traits," he answered quickly with a 
 touch of ice in his tones. " You are making 
 her hard and cold and scheming." 
 
 " Not at all," quite unmoved. " I am 
 merely analyzing her type. Castilia can love 
 warmly and truly ; but only a man of dis- 
 tinction, of achievement, a man who has won 
 the world's prizes and whom the world re- 
 gards with envy, with admiration, with a 
 touch of awe." 
 
 " Egeria," he sent one smoke wreath after 
 another floating skyward, " Do you " 
 [242]
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN 
 
 There was real emotion in his strong voice, 
 
 " Do you " 
 
 " Yes," she laid one hand lightly on his 
 arm and raised her laughing eyes to his. 
 " Yes, I do. Go in and win, Judge. You 
 will find the citadel already conquered. It 
 only awaits the opportunity to capitulate 
 gracefully." 
 
 [243]
 
 THE ART OF GIVING
 
 "A gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that 
 hath it; whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth." 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 "Two things greater than all things are, 
 The first is Love and the second War. 
 And since we know not how war may prove, 
 Heart of my heart, let us talk of love." 
 
 KIPLING.
 
 CHAPTER TWELVE 
 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 THE world outside was white with 
 whirling snowflakes when the Finan- 
 cier sent his motor car spinning through 
 Egeria's gates ; but once in her library, he 
 assured her that she had succeeded in creat- 
 ing an excellent illusion of the vanished sum- 
 mer. 
 
 " Is it a mirage," he asked, halting on the 
 threshold, " or are we back in your garden ; 
 and is it June again ? " 
 
 " You are the magician, not I," she 
 laughed, casting aside her book and rising 
 slowly from her huge chair. " You waved 
 your magic wand, and presto, my home is 
 a rose garden ! " She laid her cheek lovingly 
 against a great cluster of pale yellow roses 
 in a tall vase. " Where did you find them, 
 Financier? Not in a florist's shop. They do 
 not belong there." 
 
 [247]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " They are where they belong now," he 
 informed her. 
 
 She smiled in appreciation. " I always 
 dream of them thus, 
 
 ' In a waste garden, 
 Through the night's noon, 
 Pale roses dreamily 
 Sway 'neath the moon.' 
 
 But I quote poetry, and you are freezing." 
 She motioned him to an easy chair drawn 
 close to the birch-log fire; the pale lambent 
 flame, once compared to young love, lighted 
 up the growing shadows of the library. 
 Without, the thick fine snow fell more 
 densely than ever and the December wind 
 wailed through the branches of the leafless 
 trees. 
 
 Egeria rang for tea. 
 
 " And this is the glad Christmas-tide," 
 said the Financier, in the interval before it 
 was brought, and Egeria detected a note of 
 dreariness in his voice " the season when 
 we are condemned to * the fashion of a smil- 
 ing face.' ' 
 
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 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 " Did you ever realize the power of a 
 phrase ? " asked Egeria with apparent ir- 
 relevance while she brewed the tea. " We put 
 our faith in shibboleths, we are mesmerized 
 by sounds." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ; * a rose ' " began 
 the Financier, tritely. 
 
 " It would not," Egeria interrupted, in 
 positive tones. " The very word ' rose ' sug- 
 gests * splendid summer.' It glorifies, invests 
 with sentiment, color and beauty, even the 
 most abortive and scrubby specimens." 
 
 The Financier shrugged his shoulders. 
 " You overwhelm me with words, if not with 
 the weight of your argument," he said 
 with extreme gentleness. Then hastily, as 
 Egeria opened her mouth to speak : " What 
 do you mean by the hypnotism of sounds? " 
 
 " It is not a theory ; it is a recognized 
 fact," she replied. " Have you never known 
 it? Therein lies the secret of oratory a 
 little idea borrowed from nature. Who can 
 listen to the musical plashing of fountains 
 and not become soothed and harmonized? 
 Why, no sound has ever enamored the ear 
 [249]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 of man like the cadence of ' calm waters 
 murmuring, murmuring to meet the mighty 
 sea.' It taught him music and poetry. It 
 trained his eye to lines of grace and sym- 
 metry. The flush of dawn upon the snow- 
 tipped mountains, roses that wreathe the 
 house of life, the living sparkle of leaping 
 waters these are the metaphors by which 
 he has striven to express his conception of 
 eternal, unseen beauty; but it is the foun- 
 tain which has made the strongest appeal to 
 his imagination. Through the songs and 
 traditions which have come down to us we 
 hear the music of its plashing spray. Then 
 who can listen to the drowsy hum of bees 
 and not feel a delicious languor stealing 
 over him? Whose spirit is not stirred and 
 quickened by the rousing, scarlet blare of 
 the trumpet? 
 
 " You, yourself as a * plain business man,' 
 are a rather commonplace person a little 
 below the salt, so to speak; but when men- 
 tioned as * a financier,' a * captain of indus- 
 try,' a * coal baron,' a railroad or an oil 
 * king,' you grow to the stature of the 
 [250]
 
 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 phrase, and are viewed as one of the * lords 
 of life.' " 
 
 The Financier's smile was faintly bitter. 
 " But," he argued, " all this has nothing to 
 do with Christmas and its attendant respon- 
 sibilities the giving of gifts and the neces- 
 sity of the smiling face." 
 
 " Why, Christmas was what we were talk- 
 ing about," contended Egeria. 
 
 The Financier ceased his abstracted pok- 
 ing of a log in order to make the sparks 
 fly upward. " We were," he said with pain- 
 ful distinctness, " discussing the hypnotism 
 of sounds." 
 
 " Oh, that was merely a slight divagation 
 about Robin Hood's barn," declared Egeria 
 unabashed. " Take that very word, * Christ- 
 mas ' ; what pictures does it suggest to the 
 mind? " 
 
 The Financier reflected a moment. 
 " Christmas card effects," he said at last. 
 " Dark, pointed firs ; rosy lights from 
 church windows streaming across the snow; 
 great halls full of holly and mistletoe and 
 glowing Yule logs ; everywhere feasting and 
 [251]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 laughter, giving and receiving, and a per- 
 meating atmosphere of glee, the spirit of 
 Christmas jollity." 
 
 " That is the picture ; how different is the 
 reality. You wonder why it is that everyone 
 seems happy, imbued with the spirit of the 
 season, while you are striving to conceal the 
 fact that you feel yourself an alien and an 
 intruder, rather forlorn and desolate under 
 your mask of merriment." 
 
 " That sounds very much as if you might 
 be the financier of fiction," said Egeria. " If 
 so, cheer up, for this year you will enjoy 
 Christmas as never before. At the eleventh 
 hour your miserlike heart will be unexpect- 
 edly softened, and you will give your poor 
 clerks to whom you should have paid higher 
 wages all year, a few extra dollars and their 
 surprise will be so overwhelming that they 
 will be exuberantly grateful. This will be the 
 beginning of your regeneration. Then you 
 will stroll about the streets, still feeling 
 somewhat sad and lonely, until presently you 
 will meet two wan, angel-faced children, a 
 boy and a girl, gazing wistfully in the win- 
 [252]
 
 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 dows of a toy shop. Attracted in spite of 
 yourself, you will draw near and learn from 
 their innocent prattle that they are the off- 
 spring of a tenderly loved and long-lost 
 sister. You will follow them to their tene- 
 ment home, where, in a freezing cold but 
 exquisitely clean room, you will find your 
 sister dying of pneumonia. The next day in 
 the same room, now transformed and beau- 
 tified with Christmas greens and handsome 
 presents, your sister restored to health and 
 the little ones dancing about in glee, you eat 
 your Christmas pudding." 
 
 " Alas, I shall not being a ' financier,' 
 as you are pleased to call me, of fact and 
 not of fiction. To-morrow, I shall, instead, 
 struggle through the crowded streets, cudge- 
 ling afresh my already sorely cudgeled 
 brains. Man is a stupid, blundering creature, 
 who looks with admiration at woman wom- 
 an who seems to possess a kind of sixth sense 
 in the selection of what is graceful, appro- 
 priate and charming at this time of remem- 
 brance and gifts." 
 
 Egeria laughed. " Shall I tell you what 
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 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 you will really do, O Financier of fact and 
 not of fiction? You will order a few bales 
 of flowers, a few tons of candy, some books, 
 some gloves, perhaps some lace and jewels; 
 and you will receive a gross or so of hand- 
 kerchief and necktie cases, all abominably 
 scented. Ah-h! The very thought of the 
 presents you will get from women makes 
 me sneeze, they will be so overpoweringly 
 redolent of sachet powder ! " 
 
 The Financier flushed. " It is a matter of 
 sentiment, not of barter," he said, stiffly. 
 
 " Assuredly," agreed Egeria equably, 
 " but it has nearly become commercialized. 
 It is our little human way of transmuting 
 the ideal into the real, the sentimental into 
 the practical. They are apt to become 
 sordid and common and unclean in the 
 process." 
 
 " I wonder," mused he, " if all this gift- 
 bestowing, this setting aside of an especial 
 season for it, is not a mere excuse for that 
 instinctive longing to give which lies in 
 every heart? " 
 
 " ' The sea gives her shells to the shingle, 
 [254]
 
 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 the earth gives her streams to the sea,' ' : 
 murmured Egeria. 
 
 " Apparently a feminine instinct." He 
 continued to follow his train of thought. 
 " The sea gives her shells, the earth gives 
 her streams. Nature, who is she, is a boun- 
 teous giver." 
 
 " Nature does not exhibit any particu- 
 larly feminine attributes," argued Egeria. 
 " She has no taste for bargains, and she 
 saves nothing for the future; lays nothing 
 aside for a rainy day. There is not a trace 
 of the prudent housewife about her. Look 
 how she wastes herself in the Spring! She 
 throws out banners of leaves and festoons 
 of vines, and spills myriads of flowers. Then, 
 her big tasks accomplished, she amuses her- 
 self with the most infinite and intricate de- 
 tail. Every bare spot of ground, every fallen 
 log, must be covered with lichens and moss 
 and the lace of ferns. You do not find her 
 saving anything over to help piece out her 
 autumn splendors. She merely evolves new 
 harmonies and subtleties of color, then scat- 
 ters her gold and scarlet upon the wind in- 
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 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 different that the frost strips her fields and 
 meadows. The cash and the credit may go 
 together. She gives ' her cloak also,' and 
 stands bare and shivering in the blast. 
 
 " Poor, reckless prodigal ! Splendid refu- 
 tation of the belief that another may filch 
 from us anything that is ours! And sud- 
 denly, in an unexpected hour, we see her 
 remote and dazzling, more royal than ever 
 in the ermine of snow, the jewels of ice! " 
 
 " Nevertheless, in spite of your somewhat 
 florid eloquence, I claim that the art of giv- 
 ing the most difficult and delicate art in 
 the world, we agreed lies with your sex." 
 The Financier could be obstinate. 
 
 " No " Egeria shook her head ; " you 
 are mistaken. Men are the givers of gifts, 
 the ' great, glorious spendthrifts ' of the 
 world. Oh ! " impatiently, as the Financier 
 laughed " I am not speaking of money 
 alone, but of ideas. It is naturally so. Wom- 
 an has sat for centuries in her walled cham- 
 ber, spinning and sighing, occasionally far- 
 ing out to barter some eggs and pats of 
 butter for sugar and tea at the corner gro- 
 [256]
 
 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 eery, or whatever the existing prototype of 
 the corner grocery has been, while man has 
 roamed the world, * killing much and rob- 
 bing more,' looting at his will the treasures 
 of a church, a city or an empire. He soon 
 discovered that the earth and the fullness 
 thereof were his for the taking; thus he 
 cultivated his taste for art. He also discov- 
 ered that, since pillaging was easy, giving 
 was delightful. History proves my conten- 
 tion. Look at the Medicis. The love of beau- 
 tiful things and the passion for their ac- 
 quisition were an inheritance of their blood, 
 but only along the male line. The Medici 
 women preferred the lighter diversions of 
 intrigue, poisoning and politics. 
 
 " Why, the voice of woman, the query of 
 the Eternal Feminine is : * What can I give 
 to thee, O liberal and princely giver ' ? And 
 she makes her own answer from the depths 
 of her own heart: 
 
 'Can it be right to give what I can give? 
 To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears 
 As salt as mine? ' 
 
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 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " A man may give to the woman he loves 
 anything from a * kingdom to rose leaves ' ; 
 but her choice of what to give to him is 
 more restricted. Emerson recognized that 
 when he urged the farmer to give his corn, 
 the shepherd to give his lamb, the poet his 
 poem, etc. But what is left for the woman 
 to give? ' The girl a handkerchief of her 
 own sewing ' or," added Egeria mischiev- 
 ously, " a mouchoir or necktie case, heavily 
 scented or herself." 
 
 An irritated frown gathered on the Fi- 
 nancier's brow. " If my friend has thought 
 of me, it is sufficient. It makes little dif- 
 ference what outward symbol the thought 
 takes," he said reprovingly. 
 
 " Oh, but it does ! " insisted Egeria. " The 
 symbol should show the right kind of a 
 thought. Suppose you send me a sheaf of 
 rare orchids of a fabulous price. There is 
 the expression of a thought ; but I view it 
 as a perfunctory recognition of a social ob- 
 ligation. You have forgotten my often- 
 expressed love for my golden-hearted, pale 
 roses. You have given me nothing; rather 
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 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 have you taken something from me. I am 
 chilled; I discover suddenly that we are 
 strangers. But look at the matter from an- 
 other point of view. You send me as a gift 
 some horror. What difference if it is hid- 
 eously ugly and strikingly inappropriate? 
 It is an expression of your goodwill and 
 your thought of me. Shall I banish it? Nev- 
 er, although it is a note of discord, disturb- 
 ing the harmony of my surroundings. It 
 becomes, instead, a cherished possession." 
 
 " After all," murmured the Financier, 
 " the best gifts I had almost said ' the only 
 gifts ' are those which come like love and 
 Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought. Into their 
 bestowal no questions of barter ever enter. 
 They cannot be purchased; they must be 
 given." 
 
 " It is a delightful thought, although it 
 must occasionally be a mournful one to you, 
 Financier, that there are things which no 
 money can buy." 
 
 " I wonder if you know what they are ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Some of them. Last night I went to a 
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 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 gorgeous dinner. The lights and the flowers 
 were beautiful, the food delicious, and the 
 faces of the people about the board were as 
 empty and vapid and unimaginative as their 
 lives or their conversation. Suddenly, above 
 the music of the stringed instruments, I 
 heard the wild, sweet notes of the * bird of 
 time.' Did you ever hear it, Financier? " 
 
 The Financier nodded his head. 
 
 " Well, he called me more and more in- 
 sistently, until at last I slipped away, un- 
 noticed, out into the garden. The soft, mys- 
 terious snow was changing the face of the 
 world, and the wind, not cold nor piercing, 
 but balmy and sweet with strange fra- 
 grances, wooed me on and on. At last I stood 
 in a great white waste, as remote as the 
 heart of a limitless desert, although it was 
 only a walled garden, and for a moment 
 or was it centuries? I seemed to stand face 
 to face with the soul of things. I felt as 
 if I had coma to the wilderness, come as must 
 everyone who lives, in the endeavor to dis- 
 cover the real things the things that all 
 your money cannot buy, Financier ! " 
 [260]
 
 THE ART OF GIVING 
 
 " What did you find they were? n he 
 asked and his voice was very low. 
 
 " Love and laughter, sacrifice and sym- 
 pathy, work and dreams ! " 
 
 " May I give you ' a kingdom and rose 
 leaves ' for a Christmas remembrance, Ege- 
 ria? You know you said, a man might give 
 those to the woman he loved." 
 
 He leaned eagerly forward. His face had 
 grown pale. There was a shadow in his eyes. 
 
 " I have tried so often to ask you and 
 you have always exerted all your tact, your 
 social skill, in gracefully, gently, kindly, 
 cruelly putting me off." 
 
 " The world says,'* she spoke involun- 
 tarily, " that I have exerted all my skill, 
 all my reputed powers of finesse in grace- 
 fully, gently leading you on." 
 
 He dismissed the world's judgment with a 
 scornful curl of the lip, a disdainful wave 
 of the hand. " Then you will take the poor 
 all that I offer," he pleaded. 
 
 " The kingdom and the rose leaves ? They 
 are great possessions and I do not under- 
 value them." gravely " But," with a des- 
 [261]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 perate attempt to retrieve the situation, 
 " you see I have taken the rose leaves. Ah, 
 be content with that, Financier." It was she 
 who appealed now. 
 
 " If you will take my heart also." 
 
 " Ah, Financier, the kingdom is too splen- 
 did for me, the estates too vast. Bestow in- 
 stead some little gift that I could accept and 
 for which I could make adequate return. ' O 
 liberal and princely giver,' let it be a book, 
 a flower, even a jewel for remembrance sake; 
 but not the kingdom." 
 
 " What is a beggarly kingdom beside 
 what you could give? " he cried impatiently. 
 " Ah, Egeria, have you nothing for me that 
 money cannot buy ? " 
 
 " Many things, dear Financier ; my ad- 
 miration, my real affection.' 
 
 " But not your love? " 
 
 " No," her voice was subdued, almost in- 
 audible. 
 
 For a few moments he gazed in silence 
 at the leaping flames of the birch logs, then 
 he gathered the petals from one of the heavy- 
 headed roses in a jar, and left her. 
 [262]
 
 EGERIA'S SECRET
 
 "Would you that spangle of Existence spend 
 About the secret quick about it, Friend." 
 
 OMAR.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IT was Castilia's wedding morning and al- 
 most the first day of Spring. The sky 
 was a soft, clear blue, the trees were all a 
 tender mist, the gray-green mist of young 
 Spring-tide, the wind blew from the South; 
 the peach orchards were great blurs of rose 
 across the brown fields. Motor cars and car- 
 riages lined the road before the church ; har- 
 ness glittered and horses pranced; motors 
 puffed and whirred, and mechanicians and 
 coachmen gossiped in groups. 
 
 Within the church, rainbow-hued women 
 and well-dressed men; joyous bursts of mu- 
 sic, the fragrance of hot-house lilacs and 
 daffodils and narcissi, and finally, Castilia 
 herself, radiant as the morning, stepping 
 across the sunlit threshold. 
 
 At the wedding breakfast the Judge and 
 the Bishop both surpassed themselves in ap- 
 [265]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 propriate speeches; and after the bride and 
 the bridegroom had departed, Egeria, who 
 had carried the success of the day upon her 
 shoulders, sought the conservatory for a 
 few moments of rest and quiet. 
 
 Delighted at finding it untenanted, she 
 sat down with a rather tired sigh and gazed 
 slowly about her, letting the peace, the 
 absolute quiet of the place steal like balm 
 into her consciousness. The subdued light 
 fell softly through shaded glass ; tall palms 
 concealed the encircling walls and gave 
 the effect of distance; about the edge of 
 the moveless pool grew the vividly green 
 pitcher plants, and from high-hung baskets 
 swayed the gorgeous, exotic blooms of many 
 orchids. The hot, moist air was permeated 
 with strange fragrances ; and Egeria, her 
 soul penetrated by this beauty, was awed 
 by the wonder of it. She had left behind her 
 the vibrant world of human activity, and 
 had entered into the still world of veg- 
 etation; another plane of being, the silent, 
 unfolding life of plants which eternally ex- 
 press their types within the canons of im- 
 [266]
 
 EGERIA'S SECRET 
 
 mutable law nor know the perplexing free- 
 dom of the sentient. 
 
 "Am I interrupting a reverie?" she 
 had not heard the Bishop enter " or may 
 I rest a bit beside you ? " 
 
 " Indeed you may," making room for him 
 on the rustic seat, the palm leaves spreading 
 above their heads. " It all went beautifully, 
 did it not?" 
 
 The Bishop smiled and sighed. " Dear 
 Egeria, I wonder how much of this happi- 
 ness we owe to you." 
 
 " All of it, so the world says. Don't you 
 know that everyone is whispering that I ar- 
 ranged this mercenary marriage ? " She 
 looked at him in humorous deprecation, and 
 after a moment, they both broke into peals 
 of laughter. 
 
 Then something like a tear blinked in the 
 Bishop's eye. " The Commonplace Man has 
 agreed to stay a few days with me ; but even 
 then it will be lonely without her, will it not, 
 Egeria?" 
 
 " Not a bit," she confidently assured him. 
 " Think how busy you will be ; how much 
 [267]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 work you have to do. Humph! The selfish- 
 ness of your complaining of being lonely to 
 anyone so absolutely bereft as myself ! " 
 
 " You ! " he turned to her with surprise 
 and a real concern in his glance. 
 
 " Yes, I ! * One after one they left me, the 
 sweet birds out of the nest.' First the Poet," 
 counting on the fingers of her uplifted hand. 
 
 The Bishop pursed his mouth, " I was 
 pained to have to alter my opinion of him. 
 I fear that he is a most forward and pre- 
 sumptuous young man." 
 
 " ' You too, Brutus ; J " reproachfully. 
 " Ah well, my poor Poet ! I appreciate you, 
 and some day the world will appreciate you 
 also! But to go on with my sorrows. Next," 
 still counting on her fingers, " The Judge. 
 You may happen to know how he escaped." 
 
 " I may have heard, although for the mo- 
 ment it eludes my memory." The Bishop was 
 delighted with his wit. 
 
 " Then," a third finger raised, " The Edi- 
 tor is sulking because he believes that I am 
 responsible for Castilia's heartless marriage. 
 Like most cynics, he is an egregious senti- 
 [268]
 
 EGERIA'S SECRET 
 
 mentalist. And then " holding up a fourth 
 finger She stopped suddenly. 
 
 " The Financier," concluded the Bishop 
 calmly. " I was grieved when he endeavored 
 to explain that he could not be with us to- 
 day. No doubt, I showed my regret and a 
 touch of offense, for," with a keen glance 
 at her, " he was somewhat frank in giving 
 his reasons for not wishing to come." 
 
 " That's the bother of him," impatiently 
 shaking some grains of rice from her white 
 lace gown, " why cannot he be the imper- 
 turbable, impassive, inhumanly silent Finan- 
 cier of fiction, instead of being fervid and 
 impassioned and expansive and telling peo- 
 ple things he should not. It is out of char- 
 acter." 
 
 " He is a fine fellow," said the Bishop with 
 enthusiasm. " A really big man, as the cur- 
 rent phrase goes. A man who, properly un- 
 derstood and appreciated and possessing 
 the sympathy and affection he craves, might 
 become a great force for good." 
 
 " Exactly," Egeria was all courteous in- 
 difference. 
 
 [269]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " Ah, Egeria," dropping the foils and 
 sighing a little, " You could have realized 
 your most soaring and opulent dreams." 
 
 " Bishop, Bishop, you cannot deceive me. 
 You have been building all kinds of air 
 castles with me as the architect hospitals, 
 schools, day nurseries, play-grounds " 
 
 " They are sorely needed and so hard to 
 get." His tone was a confession. 
 
 " Bishop, by the exercise of tremendous 
 craft, you have managed to get yourself re- 
 garded as a mild-mannered, foolishly charit- 
 able, easily imposed upon person; but you 
 can't fool all the people all the time, and I 
 know you for a wily old diplomat. Now 
 you are playing a very poor game indeed, 
 if you cannot induce him to give a few hos- 
 pitals and churches as as a thank offer- 
 ing." 
 
 " Egeria ! You deserve to be shaken." 
 
 " But Bishop," with a sudden appeal in 
 her voice, " don't you care more for my hap- 
 piness than even a cathedral? Am I not more 
 than many sparrows ? " 
 
 " Dear child, avaricious as I am for the 
 [270]
 
 EGERIA'S SECRET 
 
 hospitals, they wouldn't count beside your 
 happiness." 
 
 " My happiness ! " she echoed dreamily, 
 her eyes on the dim, green pool. " I was 
 happy once, for a year or two. I was twenty 
 and he was twenty-one. An apple-blossom 
 season. And after his death, you helped me 
 to hear the sorrow which has long been as 
 a dream to me. And for many years I have 
 been content. 
 
 ' Life is good and life is gay, 
 I have trod the primrose way.' " 
 
 " Because you would resolutely see it so," 
 he answered. 
 
 " Dear Bishop, you have helped me much." 
 " Dear Egeria, you have helped me more." 
 
 The Commonplace Man walked home with 
 Egeria, the Bishop standing in the door and 
 waving farewell to them. It was sunset, and 
 in the last rays the wheat fields looked 
 vividly green, the brown, freshly-plowed 
 earth stretching away in long furrows be- 
 side them. The river free from ice, rippled 
 and sparkled in the reflected glow from the 
 [271]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 sky. Three, dark, slender fir trees stood out 
 sharply against that background of pale 
 gold and an arrowy flight of birds wheeled 
 across it. 
 
 As usual, Egeria's exclamations of pleasure 
 were punctuated by the Commonplace Man's 
 sympathetic and understanding silence. 
 
 " Well," she finally remarked, returning 
 contentedly to the mundane, " it was grati- 
 fying to see the Judge, for once in his life, 
 take a back seat. Castilia carried off all the 
 honors. She was the supreme object of in- 
 terest." 
 
 He shook his head. " Hard as it would 
 have seemed to Castilia, if she had known 
 it, she divided the honors with you." 
 
 " With me ! Nonsense ! What on earth do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 " For one thing, you looked more beauti- 
 ful than you ever did in your life, and for 
 another, everyone was telling everyone else 
 that you really were not going to marry the 
 Financier." 
 
 She looked slightly embarrassed. 
 
 "Is it true, Egeria?" 
 [272]
 
 EGERIA'S SECRET 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 He took her hand as they passed through 
 the little gate into her garden and held it 
 firmly as they walked side by side up the 
 path. 
 
 " Come this way," she said, " I want to 
 show you my first flowers." She led him about 
 a corner, and there on a sun-warmed slope 
 of April bloomed blue hyacinths, and cro- 
 cuses, and tulips, and daffodils and jonquils. 
 
 " Are they not lovely ? " dropping on her 
 knees, forgetful of her fragile gown, and 
 bending her head to inhale their delicious, 
 Spring-time odors. Then she lifted her eyes 
 and looked abroad over the garden. Within a 
 month or two, the roses would be in bloom, 
 old-fashioned moss and cabbage roses, side 
 by side with all the smart new varieties with 
 their high-sounding names. Over there would 
 be splendid crimson " Jacks," and flushed 
 Gloire de Dijon and frail Microphyllas. The 
 tiny, purple-pink Eglantines would bloom 
 along the borders, and yonder would blow 
 the bright yellow roses of early June, 
 starring their full bushes of delicate green 
 [273]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 leaves. With the rose fragrance would be 
 mingled the strong sweet scent of the thick- 
 petalled, brown calacanthus, their rosettes 
 of bloom hidden away under the cottony 
 foliage. And there would be rows and rows 
 of the white Madonna lilies and beds of low- 
 growing mignonette. 
 
 She rose to her feet smiling. It had never 
 seemed so dear to her before. 
 
 " You never have looked so lovely as you 
 do to-day." There was earnest conviction in 
 the Commonplace Man's voice. 
 
 The corners of Egeria's mouth dented 
 with pleasure. 
 
 " People never call me pretty," she said 
 discontentedly. " It is always said that I 
 am brilliant, clever, tactful, a mistress of 
 finesse." 
 
 " I've known you ever since we were boy 
 and girl together, and you were always beau- 
 tiful, more now than ever." 
 
 Egeria drew a sigh of rapture. " You 
 don't think I I talk too much?" an- 
 xiously. 
 
 " As if you could ! " he murmured ten- 
 [274]
 
 EGERIA'S SECRET 
 
 derly with absolute sincerity in his eyes and 
 smile, " I am always wishing that you would 
 talk more." 
 
 One might have thought from the expres- 
 sion on Egeria's face that she was listening 
 to the harmonies of the spheres. 
 
 " People who do not like me have com- 
 pared me to a parrot," she dropped her 
 voice on the last word. 
 
 " Cats ! " with emphatic and contemptu- 
 ous scorn. 
 
 She slipped her hand into his. 
 
 " Egeria," pausing in the path, " I've 
 loved you more years than I can count; but 
 there have always been so many rich, and 
 famous and agreeable men about you, and 
 I hadn't anything to offer. I haven't now. 
 No fortune, no great place in the world, 
 and I'm as commonplace as Castilia thinks 
 me; but you're my first, last, and only love, 
 Egeria, and ' he stopped short. 
 
 She shook him by his shoulders. " Are you 
 never going to say it ? " she cried vexedly. 
 " For goodness' sake, go on now you have 
 at last begun." 
 
 [275]
 
 THE BIRD OF TIME 
 
 " It takes courage, Egeria, to ask you, 
 who have everything, to marry me." 
 
 " Dear," she lifted his hand and laid her 
 cheek against it, " if you are commonplace, 
 which you are not, it is probably offset by 
 the fact which you alone of all the world 
 know the one secret which you have held 
 as a stick over me all these years that I 
 am fifty." 
 
 THE END 
 
 [276]
 
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