A QUESTION 
 
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 G)QC) 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME 
 
 BY 
 
 GERTRUDE FRANKLIN ATHERTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "WHAT DREAMS MAY COME," "HERMIA SUYDAM," "LOS CERRITOS," 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 "O God, \ve know not yet, 
 If bliss itself is not young misery, 
 With fangs swift growing." GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 
 
 150 WORTH STREET, COR. MISSION PLACE 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1891, 
 
 BY 
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 
 
WITH APOLOGIES TO THE SHADE OF 
 
 OLIVER MADDOX-BROWN 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 I. 
 
 SHE was the youngest woman in the 
 room, and she was forty-six. Neither the 
 word passee, nor yet that one of subtler in- 
 sult, well-preserved, could be applied to her. 
 She was young, as many women of her age 
 are, because trouble had scarcely brushed 
 her in passing, nor the world scorched her 
 with its hot breath; because no illness had 
 come to rift her perfect health, nor ill-placed 
 passion to consume and wither. In a word, 
 she had never lived, and a certain coquetry, 
 too light for discontent, yet strong enough 
 to guard and enhance her beauty, made her 
 still look like a flower half bloomed, then 
 passed by and forgotten of Time. 
 
 She rarely failed to take part in the social 
 
6 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 gatherings of her neighbors, and was never 
 neglected for younger beauties. To-night 
 she was surrounded by several men, and al- 
 though she said little, and her fascination 
 was not of the Circean order, yet by an 
 unconscious art she was each man's second 
 self as she listened to him. She was not 
 brilliant, but she understood; that was her 
 undying charm. 
 
 Her loveliness had never shone with a 
 softer radiance. The silken hair of russet 
 browns and gold curled about her oval face 
 and lay in a shining coil at the base of her 
 head. Here and there a silveren hair cat its 
 stern way, but was worn with a grace which 
 made it appear a jewel wrung from Time's 
 unwilling hand. Her skin may not have 
 been as purely white as when she had spoken 
 her marriage vows, twenty -five years before, 
 but the delicate color made it look fresh and 
 fair. Her pink mouth was like a bursting 
 azalea, but there was firmness and decision 
 in the straight nose and finely moulded chin. 
 In her clear blue eyes were little yellow 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 7 
 
 specks : they were like lakes lying calmly 
 above golden sand and covered with a 
 thin layer of ice. Innocence looked out of 
 them, almost ignorance of all worldly knowl- 
 edge and of self; but a fine intelligence was 
 there also, and at times the dreaming half- 
 sad expression usually seen but in the eyes 
 of young girls. Only a small square of her 
 neck was visible, and her black gown was 
 plain and cut by a master-hand. 
 
 " There is Mark Saltonstall," said the 
 youngest of the men about her. " Consider- 
 ing that he is the guest of the evening he is 
 rather late. It is a pity that genius cannot 
 be at its best at an ' evening,' and that we 
 must be content to merely look at him." 
 
 " He is ugly," she said. But she looked 
 again. 
 
 " He is not beautiful ; certainly not. Even 
 his unique imagination will never delude 
 him that far." 
 
 " He has what Joaquin Miller would call 
 a warm tremendous mouth," said another. 
 
 She gave him a swift smile. " But who 
 
8 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 is this young man ? " she asked. " And why 
 do you call him a genius? Mrs. Hopkins 
 wrote asking me to meet Redfield's friend, 
 Mr. Mark Saltonstall ; but as I only re- 
 turned yesterday from a visit to my brother 
 I know nothing more." 
 
 " He is just out of college, has just grad- 
 uated," said the young man who had first 
 spoken. " He was in my class, or perhaps 
 I should say I was in his, as the rest of 
 us cut a second figure. His speeches, es- 
 says, poems, were extraordinary. You felt 
 blinded and dazzled worst of all, insignifi- 
 cant. Then he published a poem that set 
 all Boston talking. Surely you have read 
 his ' Restoration of Pindar's lost Di thy ram- 
 bics to Bacchus and Pseans to Apollo ? ' 
 
 "Yes," she said, slowly, "I have read it. 
 It did not occur to me at the moment to 
 connect it with this young man." 
 
 " It was fearfully crude, of course ; he 
 made all sorts of breaks. But such instinct- 
 ive knowledge of form; such vigor with- 
 out erotism ; such scholarship ! Above all, 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 9 
 
 such penetrative imagination and freedom 
 from the influence of other writers for 
 even Pindar's Remains, you know, give but a 
 pallid suggestion of his greater works. The 
 faculty sent for him personally and com- 
 plimented him, something they never did 
 before in the course of their didactic lives. 
 I heard afterward that there was a good 
 deal of dispute among them before they 
 did it. Some said that it was nothing but 
 a youthful fever of the imagination and 
 would come to nothing; but the majority 
 swore that he was a genius, and the major- 
 ity ruled." 
 
 " Was he a friend of yours ? " she asked. 
 Her curiosity was aroused and she looked 
 intently at the new-comer. 
 
 " Oh, no. I barely knew him. None of us 
 did, excepting perhaps Red Hopkins, who 
 adored him, and whom he tolerated occasion- 
 ally. He was not uppish, nor a prig, but he 
 seemed to prefer himself to any one else. 
 Perhaps he would have been disliked and 
 made somewhat uncomfortable, but he was 
 
10 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 one of the best athletes in the class. But 
 even on the base-ball ground, or when train- 
 ing for a boat race, he had little to say. He 
 had ten cats, a peacock, an owl, five white 
 rats, and a whole regiment of toads. They 
 seemed to give him all the society he want- 
 ed especially the cats." 
 
 " He looks," she said, slowly, " he looks 
 like the Sphinx." 
 
 Saltonstall was undergoing the ordeal of 
 introduction to half the people in the room. 
 If he had the shyness of youth he concealed 
 it under an almost frigid dignity. In spite 
 of his six feet, and lean strong limbs, he 
 would always give the impression of ugli- 
 ness at first glance. His mouth almost 
 covered the lower part of his face, but the 
 lips, in their grand firm curves, had the 
 repose of stone ; they belonged to the faces 
 that lie beneath the pyramids. His straight 
 hair was parted near the centre of a head 
 large above the ears, of great width across 
 the top, but, unlike many intellectual heads, 
 full at the back. The lids of his eyes were so 
 
A QUESTION OF TlMtf. 11 
 
 heavy that the lost secrets of Egypt seemed 
 encrypted beneath. The depth of those ex- 
 traordinary eyes was fathomless, baffling, 
 appalling. Even their color, dark though it 
 was, could not be determined. It gave one 
 the impression of night, when color is not. 
 
 But the strangest feature in that face, 
 with its strong, hard, bold square lines, was 
 the nose. Although large it was delicate as 
 a lancet, and so thin and flexible were the 
 nostrils that when they were not quivering 
 like the wings of a captured bird they lay 
 limply against the septum. It was a face of 
 remarkable contradictions, yet harmonized 
 by a great individuality the stern, inscrut- 
 able repose of a granite Pharaoh flaming 
 with the soul of the Present. 
 
 He managed to get away from his tormen- 
 tors at last, and stood apart with his hostess. 
 She babbled pleasantly, and his eyes moved 
 slowly about the room. They rested for a 
 moment upon a beautiful woman whose chair 
 was surrounded by men. 
 
 " Pretty," he thought, " but like a million 
 
12 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 other American women." Then he, too, 
 looked again. 
 
 He turned abruptly to his hostess. 
 
 "Who is that?" he asked. 
 
 The monologue ceased, and Mrs. Hopkins 
 looked up inquiringly. 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " That young lady over there ? " 
 
 Mrs. Hopkins smiled. " My dear Mr. 
 Saltonstall, that young lady is exactly forty- 
 six forty-six on the ninth of last February." 
 She was not spiteful, merely statistical. 
 
 " What ? " he stammered ; " what ? " 
 
 " It surprises you, does it not ? Yes, she 
 is remarkably young - looking, even in a 
 strong light. But she is two years older 
 than I am we went to school together. I, 
 however," with a sigh, "have had trouble, 
 and ten children, and many duties. She has 
 had an eventless life. Soon after she left 
 school she married a rich man, and he took 
 her to a beautiful home. He was twenty 
 years older than she, and very kind and in- 
 dulgent, almost like a father. She would 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 13 
 
 have liked to travel, but her husband was 
 absorbed in business, arid she has never been 
 away from Danforth except for an occasional 
 visit to Boston, and once she spent a winter 
 in New York, and has got her clothes from 
 there ever since. She is fond of dress and 
 is very good-natured, and lets the girls copy 
 her gowns. Four years ago her husband 
 died, and she could do as she pleases, but 
 she doesn't seem to care. She was al- 
 ways a little lazy and never very ambi- 
 tious." 
 
 " What is her name ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Trevor Boradil Trevor. She was 
 a Palmer, one of the oldest families in the 
 State. Ah ! she is going to sing. She has 
 a lovely voice, as young as her face." 
 
 Mark watched her cross the room to the 
 piano. Her movements had none of the 
 quick litheness of girlhood, but she carried 
 herself with dignity, and her round slender 
 figure was perfect. 
 
 She sang a ballad, in a pure sweet voice 
 with many delicate tones in it, and showed 
 
14 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 faithful study and much intelligent appre- 
 ciation of music. 
 
 "Yes," thought Mark, "a lovely voice, 
 but ice-bound like her eyes." 
 
 He watched her with growing interest. 
 The first shock over, the anomaly appealed 
 to his imagination. Moreover, he had a pro- 
 found contempt for girls ; when he gave 
 them any thought at all it was to wonder 
 why they were. He usually concluded that 
 they were made to be useful at a later 
 period when they should become wives 
 and mothers. In fact he knew very little 
 about women of any age. In spite of his 
 tremendous vitality, imagination had claimed 
 passion, and the beauty of women was faded 
 and cold beside the creations of his brain. 
 Of abstract love he had sung and dreamed, 
 deified it, worshipped it. With human pas- 
 sion he had never even experimented. 
 
 When the song and its encore were over 
 he turned to Mrs. Hopkins. 
 
 " I should like to know Mrs. Trevor," he 
 said. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 15 
 
 "Certainly," said his amiable hostess. 
 " Certainly ; I will introduce you." 
 
 She was detained for a moment, and Mark 
 looked at her meditatively. She was ma- 
 tronly and stout. All the lines of her fig- 
 ure were stiff, in spite of the flesh. Her 
 face was careworn and lined, she parted her 
 black and white hair and twisted it in a 
 tight knot at the back of her head. But her 
 expression was sweet and her manner indi- 
 cated a nature full of patient kindness. He 
 moved his eyes to Mrs. Trevor. Forty-six 
 years of nothingness ! Great God ! what a 
 tragedy. Then he looked again at his host- 
 ess. He hardly knew which to pity most. 
 But there were problems of life he did not 
 pretend to have grasped. Then he suddenly 
 felt his youth as he had never felt it before. 
 What if he had been endowed with genius ? 
 What if ideas and language rushed at his 
 command ? He was but a boy, inexperi- 
 enced, ignorant for of women and their 
 eternal mystery he knew nothing. 
 
 He was presented to Mrs. Trevor and sat 
 
16 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 by her in silence for a moment. It occurred 
 to him that he had never before given the 
 beauty of a woman's arm the credit it de- 
 served. Boradil's arm had been moulded 
 that a sculptor might be the wiser. At first 
 Mark looked at it with the rapt appreci- 
 ation of the artist, as it lay along her black 
 gown ; but in a moment he felt a paramount 
 desire to clasp it with his hand. He had no 
 wish to kiss it, merely to feel its cool human 
 roundness against the warmth of his palm. 
 He felt as old as a few moments before he 
 had felt young. He had squandered twenty- 
 two years of life. 
 
 Mrs. Hopkins had ordered the other men 
 to go and talk to a group of girls, and he 
 and Mrs. Trevor were alone. 
 
 U I cannot talk," he said, abruptly, "I 
 have no talent for small talk whatever." 
 
 She smiled sympathetically into his eyes. 
 Were they brooding over the secrets of the 
 ages, or had she the honor of being reflected 
 therein ? She changed her mind suddenly 
 regarding what she had intended to say. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 17 
 
 " I hope you do not think it necessary to 
 pose and be eccentric because you are a 
 poet," she remarked, coldly. 
 
 His dark face grew almost black. " I hope 
 I hope you will not think me such a fool," 
 he burst out, deprecatingly. "Indeed you 
 misjudge me. What I said is literally true. 
 I have not the slightest idea how to make 
 conversation. My mother died when I was 
 born. I never had any sisters. My father 
 brought me up, and until I went to college I 
 had a tutor. My father never went into so- 
 ciety, but he always had a lot of men at the 
 house awfully clever men; some of them 
 lawyers, like himself ; some writers ; some 
 artists and I used to listen to them talk. 
 They were very good to me, even when I 
 was a little chap ; and I could talk to them. 
 But they talked of things that interested me 
 and that I had read and thought about. 
 That is a very different thing from talking 
 to a woman the first time you meet her. Al- 
 most all the women I have known have lived 
 in books." 
 
18 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 He delivered his speech with a boyish 
 eagerness, unlike the frozen solemnity with 
 which he had favored the other people in 
 the room ; and it was in strange contrast to 
 the massive repose of his face. Boradil 
 looked at him with genuine sympathy, and 
 said what had been in her mind a few mo- 
 ments before : 
 
 " And I will confide to you that I cannot 
 talk cannot ' make conversation ' either. 
 I never do. I only listen. I turn perfectly 
 cold when a stranger is introduced to me and 
 expects me to say something. It is constitu- 
 tional. I shall never get over it if I live to 
 be a hundred." 
 
 " I am so glad," he said with a smile 
 which just touched his mouth and vanished. 
 " If I come to a dead stop I shall know that 
 you understand. Do you like society ? " 
 
 " I neither like it nor dislike it here. I 
 spent a winter in New York once, and was 
 very, very bored. Such a rush, and all for 
 nothing in the end. I like to meet my 
 friends and talk to them. Or perhaps it has 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 19 
 
 become sucli a habit that I think I like it- 
 just as we like our old furniture and think 
 we like our relatives." 
 
 He looked at her with some curiousness. 
 If she had not cared for society, with what 
 had she filled the long years of her life ? 
 He wanted to ask her, but dared not. But 
 he had not believed that a mere mortal could 
 so rouse his interest. He felt it necessary to 
 say something. 
 
 " You look extraordinarily young for 
 forty-six," he remarked, felicitously. 
 
 She blushed, but not with displeasure ; it 
 had never occurred to her to deny her age. 
 Then she laughed at his directness. 
 
 " One lives such a quiet life in a town like 
 Danforth. What brought you here ? " 
 
 " I have an aunt Mrs. Brewster who 
 asked me to spend the summer with her. 
 Do you know her ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed. I have known her for thirty 
 years at least. When is Elnora Brewster 
 coming home ? She is said to have made 
 quite a sensation abroad ; has been presented 
 
20 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 at a lot of German and Scandinavian courts, 
 and been travelling about with some very 
 fine people. Danforth," she smiled a little 
 satirically, " is very proud of her." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mark, indifferently, " so is 
 my aunt. She thinks a lot of those things." 
 His slow gaze roved about the room, then 
 rested fall on her once more. a I did not 
 want to come to-night," he went on, with 
 his startling frankness, " but I am glad now 
 that I did. I like you amazingly, and I 
 do not care for these other people at all. 
 Do you think I can see you again ? " 
 
 Boradil had exactly that amount and 
 quality of coquetry which makes a woman 
 charming instead of cruel. There were 
 times, however, when the exercise of this 
 dainty feminine gift had proved quite as 
 dangerous as the fiercer charms of the equa- 
 torial sisterhood. 
 
 " I will adopt you," she said, softly ; and 
 her voice was like the minor chord of a vio- 
 lin. " You are quite young enough to be 
 my son, and I shall like to spoil you." 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 21 
 
 " It seems ridiculous," he answered her ; 
 " you do look so awfully young. Yes ; 
 adopt me. I will be your son, and as filial 
 as I know how. Only let me go to see you 
 every day. When you get tired of me I 
 will go back to Boston. Here is a man 
 coining to talk to you. Please send him 
 away." 
 
 A tall, dignified man, of middle age, with 
 kindness in his brown eyes, sternness on a 
 mouth that trial had straightened, and intel- 
 ligence on his broad lined forehead, came up 
 to Mrs. Trevor and took a chair beside her. 
 She blushed as he approached, and intro- 
 duced him as " Mr. Irving." Mark stood 
 up at once, but bent to her ear. 
 
 " I am not looking for a father," he mut- 
 tered, and then left the room and the house. 
 
 A few hours later Boradil Trevor dis- 
 missed her handmaiden, after her hair had 
 received its customary brushing, and stood 
 long before the mirror. She raised the 
 lamp above her head and scrutinized herself 
 unflinchingly. 
 
22 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " There are a few lines about ray eyes," 
 she said aloud, " but no wrinkles not one. 
 There is a little hollow, no, a faint depres- 
 sion, in my cheek, but the flesh is firm. I 
 have not that loose look that many women 
 get at forty. My eyes do not look tired, 
 and my teeth are perfect, but my skin is no 
 longer very white, although, thank heaven, it 
 is not faded. My throat has just a tiny hol- 
 low, but is neither stringy nor soft, and I 
 have not a round back." 
 
 She looked at her hands. They were 
 shapely and smooth ; age had not touched 
 them. Her rich abundant hair hung to her 
 waist, her bust curved like pliant jade, the 
 skin on her neck was fresh and smooth. 
 Still she sighed. Her eyes looked far be- 
 yond the mirror. The future leaned for- 
 ward and cast its shadow over her. She 
 sighed again. 
 
 " I do not know why," she thought, " but 
 I feel old to-night." 
 
II. 
 
 DANFORTH-OJST-TIIE-SOUND had begun its un- 
 eventful existence as a fishing village, some 
 two hundred years before ; but of late years 
 a town of pretensions had grown along the 
 shore. In the natural course of things Soci- 
 
 o 
 
 ety had crystallized on the surface of Prog- 
 ress, and the town even boasted the doubt- 
 ful luxury of a summer hotel. But nei- 
 ther local society nor summer boarders be- 
 guiled the old families of Danforth from 
 the proud tenor of their way. Through the 
 town and beyond it, on the hills and by the 
 salt-marshes, were a dozen or more square 
 brick houses, each crowned with a single 
 tower ; in them lived the descendants of 
 the men who had routed the red-skins and 
 farmed their acres weaponed from breast 
 to boot. These simple yet haughty people 
 
24 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 visited and entertained one another gener- 
 ation after generation, and no comeling to 
 the town had ever entered their doors. 
 They clung to traditions, and were as conser- 
 vative as people ever are whose experience 
 has been narrow. 
 
 Trevor House was perched like an eagle 
 on a rocky hill behind the town, and com- 
 manded a broad sweep of water, and miles of 
 meadow, marsh, and wood. When Boradil 
 came to it a bride she spent many an hour 
 in the round tower watching the ships and 
 boats go by. She was somewhat inclined 
 to sentiment and romance in those days, 
 and, like a girl, she had dreamed of vague 
 futures, forgetting that she was already a 
 wife. Years ago she had stopped dreaming, 
 for the daily round of her pleasant, un- 
 eventful life had dulled the edge of imagi- 
 nation. The years slipped by so quickly ! 
 She had barely noticed them speed softly 
 past her, so peacefully monotonous were 
 their days. Her household duties occu- 
 pied her morning hours, and her after- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 25 
 
 noons were varied with music, painting, and 
 books. Every night, excepting when some 
 gathering demanded her, she went to bed at 
 nine o'clock, and slept ten hours. The latent 
 sadness in her eyes was not the child of her 
 intelligence, but of the unconscious tragedy 
 of her life. > / (r ^ 
 
 When Mark called, the day after Mrs. 
 Hopkins's little party, he was shown into 
 Mrs. Trevor's library, which adjoined the 
 great room holding the tomes of Mr. Trevor 
 and his forefathers. It was a bright room 
 facing a wood, but the oaken w r alls and floor 
 were black with age. The floor, however, 
 was half covered with Oriental rugs, and 
 the bindings of the books were fresh and 
 gay. A piano, covered with music, stood in 
 one corner, and an easel in another. On the 
 edge of the wood, facing the window, was a 
 magnificent clump of rose-bay laurel, the 
 tall heads crowned by great bunches of pink 
 blossoms, soft as dawn clouds. 
 
 Mark looked with some surprise at the 
 well-filled shelves that ran about two sides 
 
26 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 of the room, then eagerly scanned the titles 
 of the books. 
 
 " She has done some reading in her forty- 
 six years, at all events," he thought. " Per- 
 haps one may be able to tell something of a 
 woman by the silent company she keeps." 
 
 All the American and English novelists of 
 any note, past and present, were there ; a 
 good deal of poetry, and the essays and let- 
 ters to which Posterity that infallible fil- 
 ter, whose ways are past finding out had 
 affixed its seal. France was represented by 
 Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo and Gau- 
 tier's Travels. 
 
 Mrs. Trevor did not appear for twenty 
 minutes, and Mark had time to meditate. The 
 woman who had so roused his curiosity had 
 the face of a girl, and the face is supposed to 
 be the plastic medium of the soul. But a 
 woman could not have read all these books 
 and know nothing of life. Balzac alone 
 would remove any doubts she may have 
 entertained regarding the resemblance of 
 Danforth to the World. Were living knowl- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 27 
 
 edge and written knowledge so widely dif- 
 ferent that tlie latter glided from the surface 
 of a soul in which experience had cut no fur- 
 rows ? His insight guided him to the truth, 
 where a mere man of the world would have 
 arrived at a different and more cynical con- 
 clusion. Boradil read of the heights and 
 depths of human passion, of the world in 
 its glittering and sinful phases, but the arti- 
 ficially gathered lore dwelt in one wing of 
 her brain, and her ego in another. Some- 
 times the passions of those brain-children 
 touched her to responsive thrill, but its ef- 
 fect went with the moment. She had not a 
 brooding mind, and each book displaced its 
 predecessor. 
 
 Mark turned to the easel. A nearly fin- 
 ished water- color was on it ; an exquisite bit 
 of landscape, with a certain depth of color 
 and touch. He had a curious feeling that if 
 he had time to study one of her pictures he 
 would come to know the woman know her 
 better than she knew herself. A door be- 
 hind him opened, and he turned to greet Mrs. 
 
28 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 Trevor. As she came toward him he no- 
 ticed that her color deepened. 
 
 " You blushed like that for Mr. Irving 
 last night," he said, unceremoniously ; " do 
 you always blush ? " 
 
 She laughed amusedly ; " Almost always. 
 It means nothing with me." 
 
 " Are you going to marry Mr. Irving ? " 
 
 She laughed outright this time, and the 
 blush grew warmer. " No. Such an idea 
 never occurred to me. How abrupt you 
 are. Let us sit here by the window. It 
 is so warm, and the woods make one feel 
 cool." 
 
 He sat with her before the broad window 
 and the light shone full on her face. The 
 few retrogressions were carelessly, almost 
 defiantly revealed ; but she stood the test 
 better than many girls after their second, 
 season. And the light made her look like a 
 splendid bit of color advantageously hung. 
 She wore a white gown, with a band of heli- 
 otrope velvet clasping her throat, and an- 
 other her small round waist. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 29 
 
 " Do you know what I feel the greatest 
 desire to do with your mouth ? " demanded 
 Mark, abruptly. 
 
 For the first time Boradil was somewhat 
 taken aback, but he went on reflectively. 
 
 " I want to take the under lip between my 
 thumb and finger and pull it open. I feel 
 sure that more than half of it is on the in- 
 side. It looks like one of those laurel blos- 
 soms, half burst." 
 
 The laurel blossom looked full blown for 
 the moment. " You certainly say the most 
 unconventional things. I had thought of 
 correcting you as a mother should, but I 
 believe I will not. I never knew anyone 
 like you before, and your originality inter- 
 ests me. Why should I try to make you 
 like other people ? " 
 
 " Have all the people you have known 
 been alike ? " 
 
 "Mostly." 
 
 " God ! Forty-six years of the same people. 
 I am only twenty-two, and I have known 
 many well, a good many, varieties of men." 
 
30 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " Well, perhaps if I were to think about it 
 I might find that each most insignificant per- 
 son I have met had his individuality. And 
 perhaps the men you have known, have not 
 been so unlike after all. I do not imagine 
 there is so very much difference between peo- 
 ple ; the difference lies in their opportunities. 
 That is the reason why the people in novels 
 are so much more interesting than those in 
 real life. I do not find Mr. Irving particu- 
 larly interesting, but I have often thought 
 that a novelist could make him so." 
 
 "Yes, arbitrarily. That is Taiue's defini- 
 tion of Art to manufacture for a character 
 the opportunities of development he may 
 lack in real life." 
 
 " I have never read Taine. I often have 
 ideas that I come across later in literature. 
 I suppose it is often so. The writers say 
 it, and we do not. They become famous, 
 and we remain obscure." 
 
 " Yes ; it is a mere matter of ambition." 
 
 " With the merely clever writer, but sure- 
 ly not with genius." 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 31 
 
 " No, I believe that genius will create be- 
 cause it must even if it knew that the world 
 would never stop to listen. At the same 
 time the resemblance in this regard between 
 genius and the writing epidemic of the pres- 
 ent day is somewhat amusing. According to 
 the ' interviewers ' of the press every scrib- 
 bling woman in the land, with a thousand 
 words for each idea. ' writes because she 
 must,' i because she can't help herself.' The 
 average brain appears to be in the condition 
 of a dynamited pumpkin. But let us talk of 
 something else. I want to know how you 
 have used up your life. You said last night 
 that you had spent a winter in New York 
 once, and did not like it. Why did you 
 not like it?" 
 
 " I never cared for dancing, and the men 
 talked society nonsense. When I did not feel 
 dizzy T felt tired. There seemed nothing to it." 
 
 " No ; I suppose there is not. Once or 
 twice I was forcibly taken out in Boston, 
 and I thought I should go mad. The girls 
 looked like pink and white and blue toy 
 
32 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 balloons that were just beginning to col- 
 lapse, and the men looked like paper dolls." 
 
 " Exactly. After two months of it I came 
 home." 
 
 " But are you never lonely ? " 
 
 " Not very." 
 
 " But sometimes ? Tell me. You do not 
 know how much I want to know everything 
 about you." 
 
 " Well, sometimes a little. One cannot 
 paint and walk and read and sing and house- 
 keep all the time, and I know every soul in 
 this place by heart." 
 
 "Why do you not travel, now that you 
 can do as you please ? " 
 
 "Well there are several reasons. Busi- 
 ness matters detained me for a time. Then I 
 do not like the idea of travelling alone I am 
 afraid. I may as well own to the truth. 
 And I know of no one whom I should like 
 to travel with. Then then I am so used to 
 staying here. I have been so hap well, so 
 contented and comfortable in this old house. 
 I almost shrink from change. You see I 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 33 
 
 am forty-six, and habit by that time has be- 
 come a strong force " 
 
 "You are twenty, thirty years younger," 
 interrupted Mark. 
 
 She shook her head. " I look young, and 
 in many ways I feel young, but the fact re- 
 mains. The forty-six years have gone l>y ; 
 and, consciously or unconsciously to myself, 
 have left their mark. I have lived forty-six 
 years in this world, and to-day I am the re- 
 sult of those forty -six years. I am not blase 
 even of monotony, but I feel rather than 
 know that I am indifferent to many things 
 which would have given me keen satisfaction 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 " You talk as if you were three hundred," 
 he said, angrily, although her age, as apart 
 from herself, did seem great to his youthful 
 bout with Time. He went on with uncon- 
 scious and increasing eagerness. " What are 
 forty-six years in themselves? What are 
 they in comparison with Time ? What a 
 trivial figure does such a number of years cut 
 in the history of the world ! Why do they 
 
34 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 seem great to man and woman ? Because 
 man's allotted days are threescore years and 
 ten, and toward the middle of the third de- 
 cade the teeth begin to drop, the eyes to dim, 
 the vigor to fail. That is the whole secret 
 of what is known as old age. But I had a 
 friend in Boston, a newspaper man, who was 
 mad on the subject of physical culture, and 
 before I got rid of him I knew as much 
 about it as he did. Although the subject 
 bored me a good deal, I became convinced 
 that with proper training, diet, and observa- 
 tion of every law of health, youth could be 
 prolonged indefinitely ; the god of old age 
 would wither and die of disuse. Why," he 
 added, laughing, " I have not the faintest 
 doubt that a couple of centuries hence a 
 woman will not be thought old enough to 
 make her bow into society until she is fifty, 
 and will lead the german at two hundred." 
 
 She too laughed, but a flash of passionate 
 hope crossed her face. " Perhaps," she said ; 
 " but do you think the man will ever be born 
 who will want to live two hundred years ? " 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 35 
 
 " Certainly. Two centuries from now the 
 world will be so rich with interest that it 
 will take three hundred years to know and 
 enjoy it all. Think of the monuments of 
 their past added to ours. And their moral 
 code will have changed. Men and women 
 will live together, by law, a certain number 
 of years thirty, forty, sixty (or perhaps 
 only ten) and as the race will be two hun- 
 dred years nearer perfection of beauty, in- 
 tellect, and character, think of the tremen- 
 dous happiness and variety a man will get 
 out of his generous allotment of years. 
 Think of the many deep and rich experi- 
 ences. Why, he could be poet, artist, au- 
 thor, lover, scientist, discoverer, each in suc- 
 cession ; for the mind will unfold many 
 leaves in that long span, and a man could 
 no more remain one unalterable personality 
 than he to-day retains for more than seven 
 years the same physical structure." 
 
 " Is that your idea of Utopia ? " she asked ; 
 " you look like a prophet." 
 
 " Oh, I am a prophet of nothing," Jie said, 
 
36 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 gloom settling in his eyes. " Sometimes I 
 think that my ideas are the veriest rot that 
 was ever born in a man's brain. In the reac- 
 tion which follows the exaltation of conceiv- 
 ing a poem I feel like an enthusiastic gush- 
 ing fool, as if my brain were but full of the 
 rubbish of youth. It is only when I am 
 on the heights that I feel great. Between 
 whiles I often am so depressed and discour- 
 aged that I want to kill myself." 
 
 She put out her hand and touched his 
 kindly. " Remember only the moments of 
 exaltation," she said, in her sweet vibrating 
 voice, " when you are great. Remember 
 that poor common mortals never have such 
 moments at all. When you feel that you 
 have that power over all men that you can 
 make men's brains suddenly empty of all but 
 the song and the thoughts you are pouring 
 there, then you have the right to embalm 
 such a moment and keep it before your sight 
 forever." 
 
 She was leaning forward, her eyes soft 
 >vith the earnestness of her sympathy, and 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 37 
 
 he felt the subtle spell of her momentary 
 identification with himself. He was a creat- 
 ure of imagination, and a kind of rapture, a 
 completeness of being, stole over him. The 
 material world faded. He vaguely remem- 
 bered a tradition he had heard once of a race 
 which, existing before flesh had raised its 
 barriers, had possessed equal power of uni- 
 ty and duality : love had meant one shad- 
 owy blissful outline ; duality, a floating, hand 
 in hand. . . . He felt as if he had ab- 
 sorbed this woman. . . . Was her face 
 before the eyes of his body, or down in 
 his soul ? . . . 
 
 She leaned back in her chair, and he shiv- 
 ered a little as she withdrew her hand. 
 
 "I often paint here," she stammered 
 vaguely, but he stood up. 
 
 " Good-by," he said ; " I do not want to 
 stay any longer. Will you do something 
 for me ? " 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Will you meet me in the wood up there 
 at four o'clock to-morrow morning ? " 
 
38 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " At four o' " 
 
 ' Yes. Does it seem so very early ? 
 Have you never been up at four ? Then in- 
 deed you have wasted your life. Why it is 
 the sublimest hour of day or night. Come. 
 I will teach you something to-morrow morn- 
 ing that you have never known yet." 
 
 "Well," she said, "I will be there." 
 
III. 
 
 BOBADIL having set an alarm-clock to 
 awaken her at three, went to bed that night 
 at eight. She felt rather sleepy and con- 
 fused as the clatter lifted her bolt upright ; 
 but a cold bath and a cup of coffee, brewed 
 over a spirit-lamp, made her feel fresh, and 
 interested in her adventure ; she was learn- 
 ing the poignant sweetness of novelty. As 
 the small hours were cool, even in that mid- 
 summer season, she put on a dark woollen 
 gown, and crossed a white mull handker- 
 chief across her breast. On her head she 
 tied a large poke bonnet of white straw, and 
 smiled at her reflection in the glass. She 
 looked a veritable Priscilla, and as demure a 
 coquette as ever breathed. Then she gave a 
 little sigh and started for her tryst. 
 
 She wandered far into the wood before 
 
40 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 Mark Saltonstall appeared ; and then lie 
 came with a rush, like a wild animal flying 
 through the forest. She watched him as he 
 ran toward her, his nostrils quivering, his 
 lids lifting. He looked youth and life epit- 
 omized. He reached her side with a leap, 
 and catching her about the waist before she 
 could divine his purpose, whirled her up and 
 down the clearing. She made one desperate 
 effort to free herself, then let him have his 
 way. Round and round he swung her, in a 
 dance as free and wild as if they had been 
 faun and dryad flashed upward from forest 
 tombs ; then, suddenly, he swept her off 
 the ground and seated her on the limb of a 
 tree. 
 
 " Oh ! is it not good to be alive ? " he 
 cried to her. ."Is it not good good? Do 
 not you feel mad sometimes with the very 
 joy of life ? I should like to jump as high 
 as that tree and shout like an Indian. I feel 
 light as air. I could run ten miles. I feel 
 as if I could divide myself into twenty dif- 
 ferent parts and give nineteen away to nine- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 41 
 
 teen puny men and yet be stronger than any 
 man alive " 
 
 u Will you please take me down?" inter- 
 rupted Boradil. " I feel extremely undigni- 
 fied, and not having the strength of twenty 
 men, somewhat breathless." 
 
 He swung her down and placed her care- 
 fully on a large moss-covered stone, then 
 threw himself at her feet and said no more 
 for several minutes. 
 
 A great clock, far down in the valley 
 struck four, smiting the stillness like iron on 
 iron. Mark raised himself to his knees and 
 took her hand. 
 
 " Are you rested ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Have you forgotten that wild dance ? " 
 
 " No how could " 
 
 u I mean is the impression indistinct enough 
 to give way to another 3 " 
 
 "Possibly." 
 
 " Then I will tell you what I meant by 
 saying that this hour is the most sublime 
 of the twenty-four. Listen." 
 
42 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " I hear nothing." 
 
 " That is it only you do hear you hear 
 the silence." 
 
 His voice ceased again, and this time she 
 knew what he meant. In all the forty -six 
 years of her life she had never known a 
 silence like that. It was deep as space and 
 vast as time. It became personified it 
 spoke. Its voice was like the speechless 
 thunder of arrested waves crashing upon 
 phantom rock. She turned to him with 
 white face. 
 
 " Yes," she whispered, " I feel it." 
 
 " This is the moment," he said, in the same 
 awestruck tone, " when Nature holds her 
 breath and writes the doom of man and na- 
 tions, earth and sea. It is the hour of fate. 
 Look up." 
 
 She caught his mood and looked upward 
 with a faint shudder. The sky was a dome 
 of steel blue granite hard, cold, inflexible. 
 Pale lamps wavered here and there, as if the 
 oil of life were low, as if they were trimmed 
 for humanity's wake. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 43 
 
 She turned to him suddenly and they clung 
 together. Then his mood changed again and 
 he sprang to his feet, lifting her with him. 
 
 " Come," he said. 
 
 He hurried her to the edge of the wood. 
 Below them lay salt marshes and corn-fields 
 covered with creeping mist. A narrow val- 
 ley looked like a yawning chasm before 
 whose blackness even the sun would pause 
 affrighted. Far down slept the city, the 
 trees clinging about the houses like hair 
 about a drowned face. Afar, a little town 
 clutched a steep hillside like wild mountain 
 birds their gray, bare peaks. The streets 
 were perpendicular, as if steps hewn from 
 rock. The surface was broken here and 
 there by cave-like hollows wherein man had 
 crept and built his home : on high a spire 
 shot upward, as if to pierce the stars and 
 the golden ether of heaven's floor. The river 
 swept by marsh and town, the Sound lay 
 cold and still between its peaceful banks. 
 The same intense stillness was over all as 
 in the heart of the wood. Not a wreath of 
 
44: A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 smoke curled upward, not a note from the 
 throat of a bird disturbed a wave of air. 
 Then suddenly Mark shouted. 
 
 "Asleep! asleep! The world is asleep, 
 and we alone are awake. Does it not make 
 you feel omnipotent ? Do not you feel as if 
 the world lay in your hand ! That is the 
 way I feel in this hour. As if nothing 
 were impossible. As if the rest of human- 
 ity were dwarfed and I were almighty. Oh ! 
 what a sense of power; I awake, sentient, 
 bursting with life and intelligence they 
 stupid, senseless, sleeping. I feel like Caesar, 
 like Jove, like God ! " 
 
 He caught her hands. " I remember 
 writing a poem once in which I embodied 
 the idea that if ever I loved a woman 
 a flesh-and-blood woman I would take 
 her for my own at this hour out in the 
 forest when Nature had forgotten us, and 
 the great hateful commonplace world was 
 asleep. But come come I suppose you 
 think I am a fool or a lunatic. I assure you 
 that these moods do not occur often. I am 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 45 
 
 generally fairly sensible. Only it seems to 
 me that certain hours of solitude must carry 
 any man off his feet who has one seed of the 
 artist in him. Let us take a walk ! " 
 
 "You need not apologize," she said, "I 
 understand you." 
 
IV. 
 
 HE came home to breakfast with her, and 
 after he had gone she sat long in her library 
 thinking of the past few hours. For the first 
 time in her life she found herself vitally in- 
 terested in a fellow-being. It was a new 
 sensation, this being lifted out of herself into 
 the actual life and thoughts of another far 
 different from the momentary interest born 
 of a sympathetic nature. She felt as if her 
 whole mental vision had been refocused, and 
 that the object filling the camera was no 
 longer herself, but a man electric with genius, 
 ardent with hope, imperious with ambition 
 vital, magnificent, terrifying. She had never 
 been a selfish woman as people go ; many 
 a man and woman turned to her naturally 
 in hours of trouble; many a poor family 
 found life easier because she had entered 
 their little radius ; but, lonely in the world, 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 47 
 
 she had come to feel that she was the pivot 
 on which that world revolved. It was a 
 delightful sensation that unique absorbing 
 interest in the personating of another. It 
 gave a piquant zest to life, unknown before ; 
 the taste of variety had entered her mouth 
 and the flavor was delicious to the palate. 
 The past years seemed, all in a moment, 
 bald, pale, empty ; and she had thought them 
 so peaceful, so pleasant, herself so fortunate 
 in being shielded from the storms and ills 
 of life. She sighed to think that, sooner or 
 later, he must go; but nothing could annihi- 
 late her interest ; she could follow his career 
 as she had been wont to follow the develop- 
 ment of an engrossing record between the 
 covers of a book. 
 
 Another thing surprised and pleased 
 her. Until to-day she had never realized 
 how much she had read, how much she 
 knew. She had met men who possessed the 
 subtle power of quickening her own egoism, 
 but this boy was without art of any sort. 
 His mind had touched hers, and struck fire 
 
48 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 again and again. She had been able to tell 
 him of books he had not heard of, rare old 
 volumes in her husband's moulded library, 
 and he had nearly kissed her in his enthusi- 
 astic gratitude. It gave her a keen sense of 
 exultation to be of use to a mind like that, 
 to feel that so original and gifted a brain 
 could owe even a trifle to her. But perhaps 
 the subtlest pleasure of all lay in the new 
 sense of companionship. What a lonely life 
 had hers been ! Her companions had been 
 authors' marionettes. Life's interests, its in- 
 cidents, had been manufactured for her, as 
 for thousands of other solitary women ; and 
 she had been able to delude herself that 
 they were real enough to fill her nature ! 
 She believed that she should never care to 
 read a novel again. 
 
 She felt singularly young youthful. As 
 he whirled her back and forth in that mad 
 dance up in the woods, twenty-five years 
 slipped out of the century. Indifference 
 fled, dignity vanished; her thoughts, inter- 
 ests, capacity for pleasure were as vivid and 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 49 
 
 keen, as fresh and eager, as if long years ago 
 she had bound Time's eyes about with poppy 
 wreaths and charmed him to eternal sleep. 
 
 She went up to the little tower after a 
 time. For twenty years she had not climb- 
 ed those dusty old stairs, and as she sat 
 down on a tottering chair before the window 
 a rat darted across her foot and scuttled out 
 of danger. But she did not heed him. The 
 Sound was the same ; yachts might sail its 
 waters, but white beach and hoary rocks 
 were unaltered. Her eyes were as dreamy 
 as of old, her thoughts as vague and con- 
 fused. In mind and body was a certain lan- 
 guor the languor of youth before life has 
 set the nerves in action. She lifted the rot- 
 ting window and the sweet hot air lay 
 against her face. It had not been sweeter 
 and warmer, more whispering and caressful 
 twenty years ago. It was the same, the 
 same ; and in that hour she, too, was the 
 
 same. 
 
 4 
 
V. 
 
 WHEN she went down-stairs a servant told 
 her that Mr. Irving was in the library. Her 
 first impulse was to refuse to see him; he 
 was a component part of the old pointless 
 existence; but the kindness of her nature 
 triumphed and she went to the room where 
 he awaited her. Her father and mother 
 dying during her childhood she and her 
 brother had been left to the guardianship of 
 Mr. Irving's elder brother. She had seen 
 little of James Irving during her early 
 youth ; he had been away at college ; but 
 during her husband's lifetime she had found 
 him a devoted and valuable friend. Never 
 by word or deed had he betrayed the exist- 
 ence of deeper feeling until two years after 
 Mr. Trevor's death, Avhen he had asked her 
 to marry him. Ever since that day she had 
 nervously dreaded a repetition of the pro- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 51 
 
 posal. She had refused a number of men 
 with but passing regret at inflicting a 
 wound, but she had a certain respect for 
 Mr. Irving which made her somewhat diffi- 
 dent about disputing his wishes. 
 
 He was standing by the window when she 
 entered, his face in stern silhouette. A smile 
 transformed it as he saw her, flashing sweet- 
 ness into the calm eyes and softening the 
 determined mouth, 
 
 " You have not been to see me for a long 
 time, 7 ' she said, with a soft cordiality, natural 
 to her, deceptive as it was. " Did you walk 
 up the hill ? Are you warm ? Sit in that 
 easy-chair by the window. It is the coolest 
 spot in the house ? " Oh, tender hypocrisy ! 
 The wheels of life would rust and stop were 
 cold-hearted frankness to crowd you from 
 poor human nature's uneven garden. 
 
 Mr. Irving sank into the chair, and she 
 rang the bell and ordered a glass of lemon- 
 ade, then talked with him of the passing 
 events of their little world. She had changed 
 her thick gown hours before for one of white 
 
52 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 mull. It fell softly about her beautiful 
 figure, and in her belt she had thrust a 
 bunch of pink bay-laurel, which Mark had 
 handed her when she came down to break- 
 fast. The dust lay thick on the hem of her 
 gown, but she had not noticed it. The 
 dreaming light was still in her crystal eyes, 
 and although she had half drawn the cur- 
 tains to shut out the sun, a straggling ray 
 of light enriched the autumnal tints of her 
 hair. 
 
 Mr. Irving talked well; his facility of 
 speech had given him the first position at 
 the Danforth bar ; but suddenly he came to 
 an awkward pause, and after a moment he 
 rose and took a chair beside her. 
 
 " Two years ago," he began slowly, " I 
 asked you to marry ms and you refused. I 
 have no reason to think that you care any 
 more for me to-day, but I am compelled to 
 speak again because I love yon so deeply 
 that so long as you are free I must strive to 
 win you." 
 
 There was something print and old-fash- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 53 
 
 ioned in his wooing, but his voice vibrated, 
 and Boradil felt guilty and miserable. " You 
 know my life so well," he went on, " that it 
 is hardly worth while for me to tell you 
 what a lonely man I am. I have never mar- 
 ried because I have never loved any woman 
 but you. I loved you when I was a penni- 
 less boy, when I came home and found they 
 had married you to Mr. Trevor, and dur- 
 ing all the long years since then five and 
 twenty, Boradil. I should still have loved 
 you had the years left their stamp, as on so 
 many women ; but I am only a man, and 
 perhaps I love you a little better because of 
 your beauty. There are other things aside 
 from my daily life, however, which you 
 have never guessed. Shall I tell you I 
 have often wanted to the sympathy of 
 your nature is so exquisite but I fear 
 
 " Tell me, tell me," she said, leaning for- 
 ward eagerly. Her friendship for him was 
 very deep, and the moment he appealed to 
 her sympathies he existed in an unpeopled 
 universe. 
 
54: A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " It is not much," he said, looking into the 
 sweet, cold eyes, " only a little of one man's 
 inner life. I had great aspirations in my 
 youth, Boradil. I wanted to travel, to go 
 everywhere on the civilized globe ; above all 
 to know the world, to drink the cup and 
 bite the dregs. I had the ardent tempera- 
 ment of youth in those days, and I wanted 
 the varied, picturesque, romantic career of a 
 Childe Harold and a Don Juan. You would 
 never suspect that, would you, Boradil? 
 Well, no human being ever did, so little do 
 we know one another. Then I wished to 
 be great in my career. At college I took 
 high honors and I dreamed of being another 
 Webster. The power was not in me, I 
 know it now, but I could have had a wider 
 reputation could I have lived in some great 
 city where the pulse of the world throbbed 
 in my ears and the friction of other ambi- 
 tious minds forced mine to sharper edge. 
 But it could not be, and you know why ; 
 for years poverty held me here, then my 
 brother died and left my mother with no 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 55 
 
 companion but myself. To have taken her 
 from Danforth would have been like uproot- 
 ing a garden flower and planting its roots in 
 the crevice of a rock. I put the thought of 
 it from me. A year ago she died. Much 
 of my ambition is gone, much of my mind's 
 elasticity and power to conquer obstacles; 
 but with you I could make the effort." 
 
 She had listened with a pang for every 
 word. The tragedy of that starved, barren 
 life appalled her. Mark, with his conquer- 
 ing genius, his splendid future, rose before 
 her, and made the pathos of this man's por- 
 tion deeper and more pitiful. And his 
 story was the story of thousands and tens of 
 thousands. She could have wept for the mis- 
 ery of the world. For the moment her pity 
 for him was so profound that she wished 
 to put her hands about his neck and give 
 him the help and comfort his tired heart 
 implored. But even in that moment of tur- 
 bulent sympathy a warning finger wrote on 
 her brain that she would but make his 
 misery and her own. 
 
56 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 He watched her transfigured face with the 
 keenest thrill of happiness he had ever 
 known, and half raised his arms. Then a 
 chill touched him and vaguely he heard her 
 say: 
 
 " Remember, dear friend, you are not fifty 
 3 7 et ; do not talk of vigor and spirit having 
 left you. You are in the very prime of 
 man's years for enjoyment of life and vic- 
 tory of ambition. I cannot marry you. I 
 do not love you. Remember, I have known 
 one loveless marriage. Go from here and 
 love a younger woman. Think think how 
 many women there are in the world. It is 
 impossible it must be impossible that there 
 is but one person on this broad earth who 
 can give each of us happiness. My God ! no 
 tragedy could be greater than that. Love is 
 so much a matter of conditions, of propin- 
 quity I am sure that it is I am sure you 
 will love again and far better than you 
 have loved me." 
 
 "You speak from the standing-point of 
 one who has never loved," he said, bitterly. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 57 
 
 " With all your instinctive knowledge of 
 human kind, you do not realize that the 
 love of a lifetime can no more be uprooted 
 than the earth could be plucked from her 
 orbit and flung into space without annihila- 
 tion. If I had met you yesterday to leave 
 you to-morrow, doubtless I could forget you 
 in time, but I have loved you for thirty 
 years, and so long as I have my faculties, 
 here and elsewhere, I shall continue to love 
 you." 
 
 His words had chilled her, why, she did 
 not pause to define, and her sympathy had 
 ebbed a little. He stood up and took her 
 hand. 
 
 " Good-by," he said ; " I shall never give 
 you up remember that. Not until I see 
 you married to another man." 
 
 " That will never be," she said. 
 
VI. 
 
 WHEN Mark called the next afternoon 
 Boradil was sitting before a fresh canvas 
 nibbling the end of a brush. 
 
 " I am glad you have come ; you will give 
 me an inspiration perhaps," she exclaimed, 
 and then stopped suddenly ; Mark was at- 
 tended by no less than six cats. 
 
 They had trooped in at his heels and ar- 
 ranged themselves in a semicircle before 
 Boradil, regarding her suspiciously with 
 twelve green gleaming eyes. Their bodies 
 were black as a Plutonian council chamber, 
 and they w r ere superb specimens of their 
 kind. 
 
 "Are not they beautiful?" demanded 
 Mark, enthusiastically. " They are thorough- 
 breds, every one of them, and know more 
 than lots of men. There isn't anything they 
 can't do, except talk ; and for the matter of 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 59 
 
 that I can understand them when they jab- 
 ber among themselves. Talk about the in- 
 telligence of a dog ! He can't hold a candle 
 to a first-class cat. Mine have good disposi- 
 tions, too, all but that fellow over there. 
 He has a temper ! Well, his name is Hell. 
 But he is the one I love best." 
 
 The cats, with the exception of Hell, evi- 
 dently approved of Boradil, for they went 
 about establishing themselves on her train 
 and one jumped on to her lap. Hell, how- 
 ever, raised his back, gave a brief, contempt- 
 uous hiss, then walked over to the hearthrug 
 and worked himself a comfortable bed in its 
 fur. 
 
 " He hates women," said Mark, apologet- 
 ically, "but he holds his temper unless he is 
 teased, and he is invaluable for keeping the 
 other cats in order. When they fight he 
 wallops them all round, and they have more 
 respect for him than they have for me." 
 
 He sat down on a low chair beside her. 
 
 " Tell me all your life," he said, " every- 
 thing. I want to hear it." 
 
60 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " I have told you everything." 
 
 " Not everything. I want to know it all, 
 chapter by chapter. Have you never suf- 
 fered any ? Is that the reason you look so 
 young \ " 
 
 " Of course I was sorry to lose my baby ; 
 but I only saw it once, you see and that 
 was many many years ago. I was going to 
 say, before you were born ; but I had been 
 married five years before it came. A friend 
 of mine who has suffered everything told me 
 once that if no thinking woman married be- 
 fore she had known a touch of the anguish of 
 
 o 
 
 which the human heart is capable, that not 
 another child would ever be brought into 
 this world. I felt so strongly for her that I 
 realized the truth of what she said and never 
 wished for a child again. As for my par- 
 ents, they died when I was three. I don't 
 remember them." 
 
 " Now tell me all your mental life at 
 least." 
 
 Boradil began her unoriginal history to 
 humor him ; then the subtle sweetness of the 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 61 
 
 confessional possessed her and she revealed 
 herself more fully than she had ever done to 
 mortal ears ; hers had been the receptive not 
 the confiding mind. 
 
 As she laid bare the simple details of her 
 years and her half -unconscious mental evolu- 
 tion, Mark ceased to think her life a tragedy. 
 It seemed to him beautiful that a nature 
 could be at once so complete and so restful ; 
 so qualified for appreciating the broader 
 interests, yet so lacking in ambition ; so con- 
 tent with monotony, yet so far removed from 
 the commonplace. Young as he was he had 
 all the restlessness of the gifted mind, all the 
 craving for recognition of the artist's nature. 
 Behind his grand Sphinx-like face burned 
 dreams of greatness, a hot desire to see the 
 world at his feet. He felt as if he had 
 stumbled upon an oasis where all was rest 
 and peace. He found her unspeakably sooth- 
 ing. Although his brain was as big with 
 ideas and ambitions as when he had entered 
 her presence, they did not scorch so fiercely ; 
 it was as if she had laid a soft cool hand on 
 
62 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 a fevered spot. He looked at her with the 
 sort of adoration an artist feels for his 
 ideal. 
 
 " I have the greatest desire to work with 
 you over something," he said when she had 
 finished, " to feel my mind elbow with yours, 
 as it were. Let us do some work in com- 
 mon. I have an idea ! You paint a picture 
 
 and I will write a story to fit it 1 will 
 
 begin when you are half way through. Do 
 you catch the idea ? Nothing serious ; some- 
 thing altogether fanciful and romantic." 
 
 " Very well," she said, feeling that subtle 
 desire for communion as keenly as himself. 
 " I know just what to paint. When I was 
 in Boston last I saw a little water color 
 painted by an Englishman, Francis James, I 
 think; and although it was only an interior, 
 beautifully colored and exquisitely done, yet 
 it always seemed to me to suggest a story 
 what I never could tell. I leave that to 
 you." 
 
 He took the cat from her lap and she 
 began painting with the broad strokes of the 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 63 
 
 impressionist. At the end of an hour he 
 commenced to write. He drove his pen 
 along with the nervous rapidity of one whose 
 brain is filled with a sudden swarm of images, 
 and before the picture was finished flung the 
 result on her lap. She dropped her brush 
 and read eagerly the incoherent fragment he 
 had called 
 
 A VAGARY. 
 
 Armor in ante-room, against dull red wall. 
 SALVE in letters of gold sunk in broad tiles 
 of black onyx. Mutticolored, infinitesimal 
 slabs of light flung from rose- window to 
 drown in the pellucid floor. A spiral stair 
 winding past tapestries on the landings 7 
 arches. A great curtain of blood-red velvet 
 with a long rift of light. Beyond, a vast 
 room, yellow as sunset ; curtains like the 
 sky on a clear night when nature has swept 
 aside the lid of her jewel casket. 
 
 And yet something more. Diamonds, 
 powdered hair, and black patches .... Spray 
 of lace and billow of satin Hands 
 
64 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 of steel under ruffs of lace . . . weary 
 eyes closing in youth's magnetic atmos- 
 phere . . . music as of mermaids chant- 
 ing Te Deum of uprisen souls . . . mur- 
 mur of voices . . . voluptuous throb 
 of laughter, hushed in the throat. 
 
 Gethaught, sensuously touched with the 
 curtain's half-revealing mystery, sank upon 
 a brawny chair, looking upward with heavy 
 eyes to the light, waving behind the rose 
 window. A spirit beating against the pane 
 for admittance ? . . . A blue crescent, like 
 a curving sword cuts a thin dark face. Lo ! 
 he is a visitor whose earthly way had lain 
 through marble tombs. The light swings, a 
 red blade smites. He is brewing hell poison 
 in halls of flame. 
 
 A palpitating hush in the room beyond, a 
 mighty sound from brass and wood fainting 
 into a sea of fettered passion to toss aloft a 
 woman's voice. Vaguely the soul of Get- 
 haught leaped not to give memory her claim 
 the echoes pealed back from the future. 
 
 The music surged out in resonant tumultu- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 65 
 
 ous waves. Full, throbbing, it rolled about 
 him, an ocean of unrest. It rose in clanging 
 chords of triumphant joy, it died in a sob of 
 pain. Then, bursting forth in thunderous 
 harmonies it hurled defiance at Time and the 
 ravenous abyss of space. Gethaught breath- 
 ed with exquisite tremor. Beat upon by 
 that storm ocean, swept from its tottering 
 throne, his Soul shuddered from its body and 
 cast itself upon the mighty quiring waves. 
 The waves rose higher, higher, in eager swell, 
 in impatient bondage then out into the 
 night they rush to roll through space in eager 
 flight. High on a crest they carried the Soul 
 they had stolen, drowning his ears with rio- 
 tous glory of sound . . . lapping his swim- 
 ming senses with wavelets of melody . . . 
 breaking in a sigh. They boomed, those 
 hurrying waters, above vast choirs of mer- 
 maids, plaining for the loves of earth . . . 
 Over and above the long swell rose the 
 Soul, like a cloud wrapped peplum-wise 
 about the wind. Oh ! the supernal beauty 
 of that singing ocean out in shoreless night. 
 
66 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 The humming spheres held their breath. 
 Whirling night -clouds, black with blinded 
 sleep and big with storms, quivered to their 
 hearts then broke in harmless raindrops. 
 
 And now ! the waves grow longer, lower, 
 calmer ; their voices fainter, thinner, sweeter 
 yet ever with immortality in their farest 
 echo 
 
 And now ! at extremest marge those 
 waves curl roaringly up. They rise in their 
 might and sweep back to the Soul. Why do 
 they look like a tidal wave of light as had 
 the sun unpent its liquid fires 3 The great 
 wave nears him . . . hovers above . . . 
 in it are infinite currents . . . each cur- 
 rent fine as thread of flame. . . . 
 
 It rolls softly about him . . . back 
 whence it came ... as if ... far 
 away ... an imperious hand held the 
 spring of those golden threads. . . . 
 
 Music no longer ... a fragrance in- 
 effable streaming from the clinging meshes 
 of a woman's hair. ... In deeps . . . 
 on heights . . . roll the waves . . . 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 67 
 
 deeper sinks the Soul fainting in that won- 
 drous perfume . . . twist and twine 
 and sting the golden serpents . . . bit- 
 ing with life's sweet venom. . . . 
 
 A shock. That harmonious motion ceases. 
 Have the waves broken upon a rock ? The 
 Soul knows only sudden still. No ! no rock 
 has called to pause those perfumed waves. 
 He is pressed closer . . . closer . . . 
 arms strong, supple. . . . Where has he 
 felt that long, lithe touch before ? Where 
 has he not ? . . . Back through the ages 
 through the world's forgotten 
 pages. . . . 
 
 Down through the golden haze burn two 
 fires, their flames green and scorching. . . . 
 
 Shriek! Shriek! Shriek! The hideous 
 discord ! She has loosed her hold ! She 
 has flung him from her ! She has hurled 
 him down into an icy vortex ! In his ears 
 screech. . . 
 
 Gethaught, blindly stumbling, stood in the 
 great room beyond the curtain. The music 
 had crashed to silence. Powdered men and 
 
68 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 courtly dames surged, trembling, to and fro. 
 Sobs and cries smote the fading notes. 
 
 " She is dead ! " 
 
 " She has only swooned ! " 
 
 The music rolling through the halls of his 
 soul, sharp fire on his mouth, Gethaught 
 flung the crowd asunder and leaped to the 
 stage. A woman lay prone. Her ice- white 
 face was still as death. Through the gossa- 
 mer lids shone the green of her eyes. About 
 her fell billows of boiling gold. He caught 
 her in his arms close, hard ! He fled through 
 the startled throng, across the ante-cham- 
 ber, up the spiral stair. The tapestry swept 
 apart, a great key turned. High in the 
 stone wall was a window, against it lay the 
 moon. He placed the woman's feet to the 
 floor, holding her against him, crushing her 
 with cries of fear. He wound her hair 
 about him, pressing his lips to her pulsing 
 face. As she awakened the warmth of her 
 body filled the room. Angry hands beat 
 the stout old door. The echoes whispered 
 the Song of Songs. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE writing was nervously irregular, al- 
 most illegible in places, but Boradil deci- 
 phered it. As she laid down the pages she 
 looked up to find Mark standing in front of 
 her. 
 
 "That is nothing a chaotic trifle," he 
 said, rapidly. " But I want to write. For 
 months I have had an idea in my mind. 
 Will you let me write here ? I do not know 
 why, but I feel that I could write better if 
 you were near me." 
 
 She rose and opened the door leading into 
 the larger library. 
 
 " Go in there," she said. " No one will 
 disturb you." 
 
 " And you will not leave this room ? 
 Promise me." 
 
 " I promise,' 7 she said, and for a moment 
 she, too, felt a feverish exaltation. 
 
70 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 As the door closed behind him the six 
 cats made a wild dash at it, five of them 
 mewing piteously, Hell leaving the marks of 
 his claws on the dark oak panel. Boradil 
 gave the shepherd of the flock a wide berth, 
 but knelt among the others striving to coax 
 them into resignation. But they sat limp 
 and woe-begone, refusing to be comforted 
 until she sent for some milk, when they 
 gorged themselves, Hell included, and were 
 shortly oblivious of affection's bonds. 
 
 Boradil ordered her supper brought to her 
 and sat through the long evening with her 
 dreaming eyes on the library door. She had 
 never rebelled against her lot ; but to-night 
 she knew absolute contentment. The past 
 was annihilated, the future a blank. She 
 was touched with the exquisite sense of be- 
 ing necessary to another. She felt complete, 
 perfected. It was as if Nature had sudden- 
 ly lifted the curtain of her Holy of Holies 
 and shown her the heart of the world shak- 
 ing with all men's motives, passions, dreams, 
 and high endeavor. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 71 
 
 She moved her head from side to side. 
 She felt intoxicated with her new knowl- 
 edge, the new sphere into which she had 
 been lifted. But two people dwelt therein, 
 the air throbbed with their united purpose 
 and victory. 
 
 She rose once and listened at the door, but 
 the oak was thick and she heard no sound. 
 She shook her head impatiently, then re- 
 turned to her chair. 
 
 As the night wore on the cats awoke and 
 sprang upon her lap. She pressed them 
 closely, feeling the sudden necessity for liv- 
 ing warmth. There is something wonder- 
 fully satisfying about a cat when one is but 
 vaguely lonely, and uo cats were ever more 
 soft and yielding than these afflicted five. 
 After a time, however, a succession of short 
 emphatic hisses recalled them to the hearth- 
 rug, and they deserted her once more. 
 
 Midnight had come and gone when Mark 
 opened the library door and threw himself 
 on his knees before Boradil, burying his face 
 in her lap. 
 
73 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " I am tired," he murmured, " tired. Let 
 me stay here a moment." 
 
 She clasped her hands across his head and 
 bent over him, filled with a sort of maternal 
 ecstasy. It came to her for the first time in 
 her barren life. She had been too ill when 
 her child was born to feel anything beyond 
 the pangs of motherhood, but now the in- 
 stinct flowered to its full. As if her firm 
 warm fingers transmitted this new gift which 
 had come to him, he raised his head, regard- 
 ing her with adoration. His face was pale ; 
 all the light had gone out of it but what 
 she had awakened. 
 
 U I want to stay with you," he said, " to be 
 something to you I hardly know what. 
 But promise me that I need never leave you. 
 And I never wrote as I did to-night." 
 
 " Why should you go ? " she said. 
 
 She rose and led him to a table where sup- 
 per had been spread, and after he had fin- 
 ished she made him lie on a divan, and 
 watched him as he slept until the day was 
 near its prime. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 73 
 
 When he awoke she held disappeared, and 
 he left the house at once and struck across 
 the fields to his aunt's home, followed by his 
 devoted and hungry cats. His head felt 
 emptied of ideas, and ambition for the mo- 
 ment was felled by exhaustion, but he had a 
 light sense of exultation that a long torturing 
 conception had forced its way to paper and 
 left him free. For the time being his interest 
 in the poem was gone, but he knew that when 
 he began the revision, fire and energy would 
 return. For the present he was divided 
 between a profound sense of thankfulness, 
 almost of obligation, to Mrs. Trevor, and an 
 uneasy speculation regarding his aunt's view 
 of his prolonged absence. 
 
VIII. 
 
 MRS. BREWSTER was the acknowledged 
 leader of the exclusive set in Danforth, part- 
 ly because of her strong personality, partly 
 owing to the fact that she had spent every 
 winter of her life in Boston, and was the one 
 woman-of-the-world the little circle boasted. 
 She was a tall woman, matronly in appear- 
 ance, but possessing extreme elegance and 
 pride of carriage. Her iron gray hair was 
 drawn high over a pompadour roll, and her 
 low forehead was well -shaped. Ambition 
 and life's annoyances had drawn lines on her 
 face, and her mouth was little more than a 
 straight line, but her fair skin was still clear. 
 Her small gray eyes were cold and peculiar- 
 ly capable of a round, hard, embarrassing 
 stare. She was fifty and she looked her age, 
 but she was an interesting woman still, part- 
 ly owing to her indomitable will, partly to a 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 75 
 
 certain suggestion of passion beneath the 
 trained almost aggressive placidity of her 
 face. 
 
 She had borne seven daughters and married 
 six of them to men of family and wealth, 
 scheming and managing to that end until, as 
 a candid friend told her one day, each son- 
 in-law had presented her with a new wrinkle. 
 Power she worshipped, and to power and 
 ambition she had sacrificed the love of her 
 husband and children, and the springs of her 
 youth. Whatever noble and spontaneous 
 impulse had originally dwelt within her 
 nature had been warped out of it long ago, 
 and she ruled her family with a rod which 
 bent their heads and cauterized their hearts. 
 It was a cruel disappointment to her that she 
 had not a fortune large enough to make her 
 the same being of paramount importance in 
 Boston that she was in Danforth, and the 
 bitterest moment of her life had been when 
 a great New York woman failed to recognize 
 her the second time they met. 
 
 She had not been on cordial terms with 
 
76 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 her brother, John Saltonstall, for many years, 
 an unpleasantness having resulted from the 
 lady's desire to wave her rod over Mrs. Sal- 
 tonstalFs head. The young wife had re- 
 sented her interference with no little spirit, 
 and being upheld by a doting husband, a 
 family breach had ensued. After Mrs. Sal- 
 tonstall's death neither brother nor sister had 
 made any attempt to close the wound, until 
 the talk of Mark's genius had prompted Mrs. 
 Brewster to drive out to Harvard and make 
 much of her promising nephew. When she 
 troubled herself to be fascinating she suc- 
 ceeded, and when she invited Mark to spend 
 the summer with her, promising him an un- 
 used building for his brutes, he found the 
 prospect attractive. 
 
 Mark stood somewhat in awe of his im- 
 perious aunt, and as after housing his cats, he 
 mounted the verandah steps and faced the 
 cold white glare of her eyes, he felt the full 
 force of her famous personality. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " she demanded, 
 with an ominous sharpness in her voice. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 77 
 
 "The servants have been out all night look- 
 ing for you." 
 
 He had intended to make a clear statement 
 of facts, but unconventional as he was, it 
 suddenly occurred to him that the truth 
 would place Mrs. Trevor in an unpleasant 
 position ; he had spent the night in her 
 house. A sense of her unselfishness thrilled 
 him and brought with it the desire to protect 
 her. 
 
 In the meantime his aunt was awaiting his 
 answer. 
 
 He looked into her penetrating eyes from 
 the baffling depths of his own. 
 
 11 1 took a boat and rowed up the Sound," 
 he said. " I wished to think out a poem, 
 and the water always helps me." 
 
 And then he drew a long breath and raised 
 his head proudly, almost triumphantly. He 
 felt ten years older. He had lied for a 
 woman ! The blood rushed through his 
 veins faster for a moment, and he mentally 
 kissed the white small hands which had 
 clasped his head a few hours before. 
 
78 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " Your poem seems to have been a suc- 
 cess," remarked his aunt, dryly. 
 
 " Yes/' he said, looking calmly at her, " it 
 was. But I am more sorry than I can say 
 to have put you to so much worry and 
 trouble. I was a brute not to have sent you 
 word. Will will it prevent my having any 
 breakfast ? I could eat an ox." 
 
 " Go into the dining - room," said Mrs. 
 Brewster, severely, " breakfast is waiting for 
 you." 
 
IX. 
 
 "WELL, I never thought of it personally," 
 said Mark, " but knowing the strength and 
 solitariness of the artistic nature, I can safe- 
 ly assert that no artist worth the name could 
 love a mere human being better than his 
 art. He can love, of course, but it will oc- 
 cupy, say, one-third of his life." 
 
 Redfield Hopkins picked up a stone im- 
 patiently and threw it into the lake. 
 
 " A mere human being ? You speak as if 
 man were not the highest of God's achieve- 
 ments." 
 
 Mark lifted his shoulders. " God created 
 man, and man created literature." 
 
 Hopkins laughed outright. " I admire 
 your egoism, at least. It is sublime. Do 
 you mean to say that that is all God had in 
 view when He created man ? " 
 
 " Perhaps not. I merely mean that since 
 
80 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 He has allowed man to create something 
 better than himself. He has nothing to say 
 if an occasional man prefers it to his own 
 kind." 
 
 " You speak from the viewing-point of a 
 man of genius, which is a narrow one, genius 
 being rare. You are too young to have 
 lived much, especially as you have been too 
 absorbed with your imagination to dabble 
 in facts. I am no older, it is true, but I 
 have been in love several times, and have 
 seen a -fair share of the byways of life 
 wherein the ladies of the lower ten thousand 
 take their constitutionals. I can tell you 
 that when the human element gets hold of 
 you, you are no stronger than a beam in the 
 middle of a burning house, and you go into 
 love head foremost and remain with your 
 heels kicking in the air. Oh, I have seen it 
 a hundred times. My own' case is nothing. 
 Do you remember Ned Griswold ? He was 
 the brainiest man in his class. Talked like 
 a book and graduated at seventeen. Drank 
 himself to death because a woman wouldn't 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 81 
 
 have him. Then there was Jack Latimer. 
 We all predicted that Harvard would have 
 the honor of giving to America the first 
 artist of his day and generation. What did 
 he do but go and study medicine because 
 the girl he was in love with did not approve 
 of poor artists and Bohemia generally. He 
 is now flourishing in his father-in-law's prac- 
 tice, and is getting stout and has six brats 
 to feed. But he looks quite happy, and I 
 never heard him say that he regretted it." 
 
 " Probably he does not. He is not a case 
 in point, for he was not a man of genius. 
 He was a clever painter and tremendously 
 popular. The combination does not make 
 genius, although the world has pulled the 
 wool over its eyes several times in that re- 
 gard. Cleverness, the great American char- 
 acteristic, he possessed to an unusual degree, 
 but there was never anything in his work to 
 make you marvel, to lift you up ; in a word, 
 to suggest the unsuspected wonders revealed 
 by a microscope. As for Griswold, he was 
 stuffed full of other men's lore, and he re- 
 
82 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 delivered it in ponderous and impressive 
 sentences. He absorbed everything and 
 gave out nothing. Genius is the faculty of 
 creating something out of nothing, of seeing 
 what does not show itself to common eyes, 
 of giving the world a new figure clothed in 
 a new garment. And the man who can do 
 that can never be dominated by a weaker 
 passion beyond the moment. I may not 
 have gone through the actual throes of love, 
 but I understand it, respect it, and know my 
 own capacity, or rather the capacity of my 
 kind ; I have not spent much time in self- 
 analysis. I shall love, of course, with pas- 
 sion, affection, and friendship ; I feel capa- 
 ble of all three, as well as of tenacity. And 
 if I speak from my vie wing-point only, I at 
 least understand it quite as well as you do 
 yours. It is always a mistake to generalize. 
 Men are not all cut out with the same pair of 
 scissors, except in superficial traits, and the 
 unrecognition of this fact has been the stum- 
 bling block of many a would-be analyst. If 
 I loved a woman I would have her, if I stood 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 83 
 
 the Sound on end. Having her, I should 
 continue to love her, if she were in sympathy 
 with me ; but she could never control me 
 mentally nor sit on high with my work. As 
 for giving it up one year of this short life to 
 please her I should hate her if she pro- 
 posed such a thing. She must accept the 
 second place, for I should be incapable of 
 offering her the first. Art is as much a 
 master as a slave. You are dominated by 
 the spirit of it while you are pressing the 
 soft clay between your hands. And then, 
 when ambition grafts itself on success my 
 God ! the combination is appalling. Just 
 imagine a ' mere human being ' trying to 
 rival that. But there is no reason why a 
 man of genius should not be a married man 
 and happy, if his wife is sympathetic and 
 knows when to let him alone. Clear out. I 
 want to take a swim, and the lake is not big 
 enough for two." 
 
 Redfield obediently went home. The lake 
 lay in the midst of a thick chestnut wood on 
 the edge of the Brewster estate, and was re- 
 
84 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 served for swimming. To-day Mark lay in 
 the water longer than usual, floating idly. 
 In addition to the mental supineness due to 
 reaction, was a certain physical languor, 
 which he did not understand. His health 
 was too vigorous to resent a night's toil. 
 Moreover, it was pleasant ; so it could hard- 
 ly be allied with illness ; and he drifted con- 
 tentedly with his face upturned to the heat- 
 faded sky, his body moving gently in the 
 warm luxurious water. Finally, he floated 
 into a little wing of the lake where the 
 water was cold, so thick were the embracing 
 boughs above. Green were the low banks, 
 green the slender trees, green the thousand 
 leaves reflected in the pool. So quiet was 
 the surface that serpent-stemmed vines 
 seemed rising from the pebbled floor to 
 twine about the long body lying motionless 
 above them. So thick were the branches 
 the pool seemed but the floor of a cave, but 
 through a rift in the crowding trees, a patch 
 of sunlight quivered afErightedly in the 
 gloom. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 85 
 
 Mark found in this corner that absolute 
 quiet which said so much more to him than 
 the most magical of earth's sounds. Around 
 the outer lake the birds sang, but the dark- 
 ness repelled them here, and only the leaves 
 made silent music. The chill touched him 
 after a time and he shot out to the soft 
 waters of the lake, darting back and forth 
 until the blood in his veins was warm once 
 more. Then he lay looking at the dense 
 wood with the black shadows in its narrow 
 aisles. The thick trees closed the vista, and 
 the wood looked as if it might be infinite, 
 primeval. His imagination half opened its 
 eyes, and he saw a prehistoric self roaming 
 amidst the trees, on the edge of chaos, the 
 hills and forests, the valleys and plains of 
 the convulsing earth as yet untangled, his 
 echoless solitude unshared. Running up 
 and down the aisles of the green wood, 
 bounding in the air like a deer, leaping over 
 fallen trees, throwing himself on the soft, 
 green earth, and kissing it with the passion 
 of a lover; once leaping far out into the 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 lake, breaking the surface into swinging 
 
 waves 
 
 He came to himself with a gasp. His 
 mouth was full of water. 
 
X. 
 
 MARK SALTONSTALL, like all men of genius, 
 was, as he bad admitted, an egoist. Not 
 vain or conceited, bat born with a supreme 
 consciousness of power, and a habit of focus- 
 ing the world to his own large, but individ- 
 ual, vision. A natural phase of this self- 
 consciousness was his proneness to morbid 
 attacks of self-doubt, when he questioned 
 whether his genius were not youthful efflor- 
 escence ; his ambition, self-love ; his enthu- 
 siasms, gush. At such times the world be- 
 came a blank and he wanted to die. It was 
 in one of these moods that he sought Bora- 
 dil the next evening. 
 
 She was sitting on the verandah as he 
 walked up the path. A white shawl was 
 drawn about her head and bust, and she sat 
 a little side wise, leaning back. It was a 
 graceful attitude, full of repose, and she 
 
88 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 looked very young. Mark threw himself 
 heavily in a chair opposite ; his face was 
 sullen, and more like carven granite than 
 usual. Boradil divined at once that the 
 blues held him fast, and while talking of in- 
 different things, let him feel her sympathy 
 in every inflection of her voice. He slid 
 down at her feet after a time, and put his 
 head on her lap like an indulged child. 
 
 " What is the trouble? " she asked. She 
 did not put her hand to his head, but he was 
 not repulsed. 
 
 " I have been wondering I often do if 
 life as a whole is worth while as compared 
 to the little we are allowed to get out of it. 
 On Friday night I was mad with enthusiasm, 
 bursting with fervor. I felt the equal of 
 any man, living or dead. To-night I feel 
 commonplace, empty, cold." 
 
 " I think Aunt Anne has something to do 
 with it this time," he continued, after a mo- 
 ment ; " that woman has the most blighting 
 effect on me. I talked to her for two hours 
 last evening, and she obtained that peculiar 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 89 
 
 and strong, if temporary, control over me, 
 that commonplace people always do she 
 made me feel commonplace. It is the same 
 when I read a cleverly-trashy book ; I feel 
 for the moment that I do not know the dif- 
 ference between such stuff and high achieve- 
 ment. I never have this experience with a 
 man who is my superior in knowledge, 
 or when I read a great book. I am only 
 stimulated and encouraged then, never de- 
 pressed because someone else has splen- 
 did gifts. I do not mean that Aunt Anne 
 is a nonentity. On the contrary, she has 
 character and individuality of a strong, 
 if conventional, sort. I mean that her 
 4 thinker ' and all her aims and ambitious are 
 deadly commonplace, and, what is worse, that 
 she has a secret contempt for literature and 
 artistic ambition. I feel sure that she has 
 far more respect for the leader of a german 
 than for any author living or dead. She 
 never acknowledges this, but she conveys it ; 
 and as I hear her talk with lingering pride 
 of ' swells ' and ' position,' ' social honors ' 
 
90 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 and ' good form,' I feel as if my head were 
 slowly flattening, and I find myself wonder- 
 ing if I am not all wrong and she all right. 
 I have felt this often this tremendous 
 psychological power of atmosphere (I do not 
 know what other word to give it ; but it is 
 certainly foggy and nearly chokes me), but 
 never so strongly as with her ; probably be- 
 cause in her way she is such a clever woman, 
 and delivers her narrow views with such 
 calm belief in her infallibility. She ex- 
 claims with a burst of actual enthusiasm, 
 ' Margaret Hunt is the swellest woman in 
 America,' and I feel a snob myself and ex- 
 perience a contempt for literature. She di- 
 lates upon the polished elegance of her sons- 
 in-law, and I feel like an awkward giant and 
 aspire to be approved by my cousins, who 
 would probably bore me to death in half an 
 hour. Of course this is all of the moment, 
 but while it lasts it has a bad effect on a 
 sensitive nature. It gives one a listless dis- 
 gust of life that is worse than fierce despair. 
 What is the use of denying it I need to be 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 91 
 
 flattered, encouraged and continually. It 
 does not make me conceited. It merely 
 keeps me out of the slough. The higher the 
 pedestal I am put on, the better work I can 
 do. Abuse, even stinging criticism, stimu- 
 lates me, but the calm superiority of inferior 
 minds simply demoralizes me." 
 
 " Then you should get away from such 
 people as quickly as possible. You owe a 
 more peremptory duty to yourself than to 
 your kinspeople." 
 
 " I cannot go without leaving you, and I 
 never wish to do that. If I leave my aunt's 
 house I must leave Danforth, for I have no 
 excuse to go to an hotel." 
 
 "I wish I could ask you here," she said, 
 regretfully, " but it would never do. I am all 
 alone, you see, and young as you are, people 
 are always waiting for something to gossip 
 about, especially in a little place like this." 
 
 " Do you know," he exclaimed suddenly, 
 " it was awfully good of you to let me stay 
 here all night, and I was a brute to be so 
 thoughtless." 
 
92 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " Sometimes things cannot be helped. To 
 have interrupted you would have been an 
 unpardonable act of petty egotism, and la- 
 ter, immediate rest seemed to me impera- 
 tive." 
 
 " Your one instinct was to take care of 
 me," he said, triumphantly. 
 
 " Fortunately no one saw you," she an- 
 swered, evasively. 
 
 " You are an angel, all the same, or what 
 is better, a perfect woman. I do not wish 
 you were my mother 1 cannot ; it is too 
 ridiculous. But I do wish you were some- 
 thing to me, and that I could live with you 
 always. Your effect on me is the exact op- 
 posite of Aunt Anne Brewster's. My blues 
 have gone already. You make me feel that 
 I am equal to the achievement of my wildest 
 ambitions. You say little ; it is your mys- 
 terious power. It is because you understand 
 and sympathize, respect, and above all believe. 
 I feel sure you never doubt me, and that you 
 place me one or two planes higher than the 
 leader of a cotillion. With you I should 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 93 
 
 never be blue or discouraged ; or if moods 
 came from reaction you would flatter them 
 away, but so subtly that I should not recog- 
 nize the art until I analyzed you in the soli- 
 tude of my room as I do every night. I 
 understand you, but it only makes me like 
 you the better. Ah ! why cannot I live with 
 you ? Only commonplace people were made 
 for conditions. For the matter of that I 
 might get my father to come and live with 
 us; then it would be all right. Or you 
 might come and live with us in Boston." 
 
 A faint smile touched her mouth. " It is 
 a sad day for a woman's vanity when the 
 conventions no longer concern themselves 
 with her. Perhaps that consoles me for 
 being denied the pleasure of living with two 
 delightful men for I make sure your father 
 is delightful. No ; I must live here by my- 
 self and be content with flying visits from 
 you. Perhaps, however, I may go to Boston 
 next winter." 
 
 " Will you promise me that ? " he asked, 
 eagerly. 
 
94 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " Yes ; why not ? I should like to spend 
 a winter in Boston. I have not gone before 
 because I dreaded being lonesome in a great 
 city. I do not care for Anne Brews ter and 
 her family, and I know no one else there." 
 
 " I will show you every inch of Boston and 
 introduce some splendid men to you big 
 men, big, I mean, with talent and brains/' 
 
 " I like intellectual men. I never have 
 pretended to be clever myself, but for some 
 reason I can get along better with clever men 
 than with mediocrities. I suppose it is be- 
 cause I hate to talk and .like to listen." 
 
 " Clever men will always worship you, be- 
 cause you draw out the best that is in them 
 and spur their desire to win your admira- 
 tion. You have an air of being interested 
 only in their best, and of being equally sure 
 that it is there." 
 
 " Will you do something for me ! " he 
 added abruptly, after a moment. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Spend a whole night in the woods with 
 me?" 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 95 
 
 "What!" 
 
 " It is a romantic fancy, but I always 
 cherished a wish to walk about all night with 
 an absolutely companionable woman, even 
 before I believed that she existed outside of 
 my imagination. I have often spent whole 
 nights tramping about with my father. But 
 with you it would be like the painting of an 
 ideal" 
 
 She mused for a moment. The risk and 
 unconventionality appealed to her as they do 
 to all women who have spent a goodly num- 
 ber of years in strict observance of the pro- 
 prieties. No girl ever feels the subtle charm 
 of committing an act open to misinterpreta- 
 tion as does a woman whose face is turned to 
 the west. 
 
 And how often does an elderly woman 
 fairly revel in being accused of the sins of 
 youth, and bare her torso at a ball after a 
 fashion to make a girl blush and gasp. Of 
 this development Boradil was incapable, 
 having too exquisite and dainty a womanli- 
 ness ; but she was still a woman. 
 
96 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " I will go." 
 
 " Then I will be here to-morrow night at 
 ten." 
 
 And a little later he left her and whistled 
 gayly all the way home. He was but a boy, 
 after all. 
 
XL 
 
 THE next afternoon Elnora Brewster re- 
 turned home after six years abroad. Mark 
 had quite forgotten her intended arrival 
 when he made plans for her first night at 
 home, and in truth he took little interest in 
 her. He had privately made up his mind 
 that if he found her a bore he would ask his 
 aunt's permission to take up his quarters in 
 the old building with his cats and toads. 
 
 Reminded of his duty, he went to the sta- 
 tion to meet his cousin, and was impressed 
 only by the fact that she looked older than 
 Boradil, although she had not yet recorded 
 her twenty-third birthday. Tall, slender, 
 and perfectly poised, she had that air of ab- 
 solute repose which a woman rarely acquires 
 before thirty, and more rarely still before 
 marriage. She looked as if nothing could 
 startle her, nothing shake her still self-corn- 
 
98 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 raancl. Her face was one of remarkable 
 contradictions, almost incongruities. Will 
 held the full red curves of her mouth in 
 check. Beneath her turban was a great coil 
 of ashen hair. Her eyes resembled nothing 
 so much as the moon. They were a brilliant 
 icy-gray, polaric, chilling. The sweeping 
 brows and lashes were like the first shadow- 
 ing of an eclipse upon a white-faced sky. It 
 was a face both repellent and fascinating, 
 the face of a woman who either had had, or 
 would have, an unique history. 
 
 She turned her eyes, with their cold, frank 
 gaze, upon Mark several times during the 
 drive to the house, and found him the most 
 satisfactory man she had seen ; such a face 
 and head could only belong to a man of re- 
 markable mental endowment. 
 
 She did not attract Mark. He found her 
 cold, somewhat washed-out, thoroughly un- 
 sympathetic, and he addressed most of his 
 remarks to Mr. Brewster, who had been in 
 Boston during his nephew's visit, awaiting 
 the return of his daughter. Mark did not 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 99 
 
 find him more interesting. The hobby of 
 that amiable gentleman's life was gardening, 
 and he rarely accompanied his wife to her 
 native town. 
 
 Mrs. Brewster and her daughter greeted 
 one another as calmly as if they had parted 
 the day before, and Mark saw no more of 
 his cousin until supper. When, just as the 
 bell sounded, he went out to the verandah 
 and saw her clad from throat to foot in cac- 
 tus-red gauze, standing like a tongue of flame 
 against the gray sky, he confessed that she 
 was washed-out no longer, and looked the 
 reverse of commonplace. 
 
 During supper the conversation was ex- 
 clusively of the great people Elnora had met 
 abroad and the court balls she had attended. 
 Mark shut up like an oyster, but lacked the 
 bivalve's ear-fitting shell. Gloom sat upon 
 his face, and once more he floundered ab- 
 jectly in a shallow lake and forgot the exist- 
 ence of the ocean. 
 
 Elnora followed him to the verandah after 
 supper, and began talking at once about art. 
 
100 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 She had done the galleries and studios of 
 Europe with exactness and discrimination, 
 and told Mark a great deal that he was eager 
 to -hear. Then she spoke of poetry, convey- 
 ing much flattery with subtle art. She 
 began to interest Mark. With the keen per- 
 ception of the analyst he saw exactly how 
 artificial she was in manner and sympathies. 
 He found himself comparing every note of 
 her voice, every clever manifestation of in- 
 terest, every evidence of artistic tact with 
 the divinely natural qualities of the woman 
 whose personality seemed at times to lie in 
 his own. Boradil Trevor rarely talked of 
 herself. Elnora, more rarely still. But the 
 former forgot her individuality, the latter 
 suppressed hers. Only a man as close to 
 nature as Mark Saltonstall could feel the 
 difference. 
 
 She further interested him because there 
 was something indefinably mysterious about 
 her. Little as he knew of girls, he had his 
 desultory ideals, and Boradil with her forty- 
 six years was closer to them than Elnora 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 101 
 
 Brewster. He startled her with a sudden 
 question. 
 
 " Why are you as much a woman of the 
 world as Aunt Anne ? " he demanded. 
 "You are only twenty-two." 
 
 u Think of the experience I have had dur- 
 ing the last four years ; ever since I finished 
 school I have not been out of society for a 
 month at a time, and thanks to our minis- 
 ter's wife and one or two great people who 
 took a fancy to me, I have had a brilliant 
 and unusual experience." 
 
 " But you give one the impression that 
 life could teach you nothing more." 
 
 Miss Brewster glanced past him and down 
 the dark perspective of the avenue. 
 
 " Your imagination will weave a highly 
 romantic past for me yet, I have no doubt, 
 whereas my heart would need a sharp knife 
 to pry it open. I take naturally to the 
 world. My nature is one to fashion very 
 rapidly under the chisel of society, and be- 
 ing a fascinating woman I have had the ex- 
 perience of many men. That is all." 
 
102 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 This speech, which would have been some- 
 what conceited between the lips of most 
 women, was delivered with an air so matter- 
 of-fact that it but carried conviction of its 
 truth. Elnora had long ago learned that 
 the world takes its children at their own 
 valuation, and this fact mastered, she had 
 studied the art of presenting the valuation. 
 
 As the hall clock struck half-past nine 
 Mark rose. 
 
 " I am going to prowl about the country 
 to-night," he said. " I often do ; and proba- 
 bly will not be back until morning. Tell 
 my aunt not to sit up for me and not to be 
 alarmed." 
 
 " I see you know the value of a reputation 
 for eccentricity," said his cousin. 
 
 " That is a good idea," he replied, with a 
 laugh. " Good-night." 
 
XII. 
 
 BEFORE he had walked a quarter of a mile 
 he had forgotten Elnora Brewster ; he still 
 felt unpoised and longed for Boradil Trev- 
 or's unique power of adjustment. 
 
 She was walking up and down the veran- 
 dah, muffled in a white shawl, her full, soft 
 gown of violet mull floating about her. She 
 came down the steps as he appeared, and 
 they went toward the wood together. 
 
 " You are sure you will not be tired stay- 
 ing out all night ? " he asked, with sudden 
 compunction. 
 
 " Positive. I have a constitution of pure 
 steel. That is the reason," with a little 
 laugh, u why I look so young for an old 
 
 woman." 
 
 They were on the edge of a brook, swollen 
 and rocky. Mark put his hands about her 
 
104 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 waist and swung her across as if she were a 
 child of ten. 
 
 " What is your age to my strength ? " he 
 said. "The balance is in my favor." 
 
 " You could do as much for your grand- 
 mother if she were a slender woman," said 
 Boradil, dryly. 
 
 " My grandmother had she lived would, I 
 am convinced, have been a large and portly 
 dame like Aunt Anne Brewster. She would 
 have been too much for even my muscle, and 
 I should have regarded her with correspond- 
 
 ing awe." 
 
 They reached the wood, and Boradil asked 
 him if he had put any more work on his 
 poem. 
 
 " Not yet. I shall wait a week or two and 
 then go at it again in your delightful old 
 library, if you will let me. I simply could 
 not write a line in my aunt's house." 
 
 " When will you publish it ? " 
 
 " Oh, God knows," he said, impatiently. 
 " The moment I conceive an idea I am mad 
 to put it on the world and hear people talk- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 105 
 
 ing of it. It is the wisdom of the house-fly 
 which asserts that all high genius is above 
 ambition. Recognition and approbation are 
 the very breath of life to it except in iso- 
 lated cases. I want to be acknowledged not 
 only a master but the master, and yet I 
 know that I must wait years ; that no matter 
 what my gifts, only years of hard work will 
 perfect me as an artist without which raw 
 talent is worth nothing. One day I suppose 
 life will seem short. Now it seems terribly 
 long. I want to leap over the next ten years 
 and hear myself called the greatest poet of 
 modern times. Do you think that I am a 
 dreamer, mad with my own vanity ? " he de- 
 manded, savagely ; " but that is what I want, 
 nothing less ! I hate mediocrity as I hate 
 commonplace people. If I did not think 
 I could one day stand alone on the high- 
 est pinnacle, I would row out on the Sound 
 some stormy night and turn my boat upside 
 down." 
 
 " And when you are great will you be 
 content? when you have nothing more to 
 
106 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 strive for? When you have distanced your 
 rivals and silenced dispute, will not half the 
 flavor be gone ? " 
 
 " No ; for then I shall try to be as great 
 as those who are dead. There is no limit for 
 ambition. Oh, if you knew what a blessed 
 relief it is to say all this to you ! I have 
 never revealed one-tenth as much even to my 
 father. Most people do not suspect my am- 
 bition ; they think the delight of creating 
 occupies me alone. But I am willing to lay 
 bare my very soul to you. You not only 
 understand you have the power of flashing 
 before me rny dreams materialized." 
 
 A few moments later he burst out sudden- 
 ly : "A dreadful thought comes to me at 
 times. I have genius, but it is on the old 
 lines. That is to say, that in spite of my in- 
 dividuality and even originality, I am but a 
 poet as many others have been. Suppose 
 that posterity decides that the poets who 
 have gone before my generation are sufficient 
 for literature, that it is weary of repetition. 
 Suppose, maddening thought ! that the man 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 107 
 
 of my generation who will stand to posterity 
 as the great and representative man of this 
 age, will discover a new form of expression 
 a form that is neither poetry, novel, romance, 
 history, biography, essay. And that has not 
 fallen to my lot " 
 
 "Hush," said Boradil, "Why do you 
 torment yourself ? And why should you not 
 be the man ? You are but twenty-two, and 
 many men of genius have stumbled for years 
 before finding the mine which made them 
 discoverers. Wait until you are fifty before 
 you begin to concern yourself with posterity 
 or unborn rivals." 
 
 " Yes, you are right," he said, gratefully. 
 " You always are." 
 
 They strolled up and down the dim wood, 
 hearing the town-clock clang the hours, and 
 talking of many things. Mark, like all 
 imaginative minds, embodied the people of 
 history who had interested him, and he dis- 
 cussed them as eagerly with Boradil as his 
 aunt and cousin discussed the midgets of 
 their little world. They rambled through 
 
108 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 old Egypt and sat on the thrones of the 
 Pharaohs ; the stern barbaric beauty of the 
 time hid the woodland. They danced at 
 Versailles in ruffles and patches, and supped 
 with the young Bonapartes in their Corsican 
 home. Mark with his glittering power per- 
 sonified all, and Boradil thrilled with a sense 
 of having put her foot on the magnetic pole 
 of a new world. 
 
 They turned into a little clearing and 
 Boradil, leaning against a tree, looked up at 
 Mark as he stood with the moon shining on 
 his face. The white glare made him look 
 more like a creature of antique granite than 
 ever hewn with a lost art. But the grand 
 calm curves of his mouth were pulsing with 
 the red torrents of youth, and under his lids 
 the un measurable darkness of his eyes seemed 
 crossed with flame, as when a torch flares 
 suddenly in the gloom of a cave. 
 
 She raised her eyes to the gray-blue sky, 
 thick with marching gold. Her pure profile 
 lay like carven pearl against the dark leaves, 
 and the beautiful line of her throat rose 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 109 
 
 high above the fleecy shawl. Mark gazed at 
 her enraptured at first as he would stand 
 breathless before an exquisite work of art. 
 Then as he looked his artistic sense with- 
 drew and he made a sudden overwhelming 
 discovery. He realized that he was a man. 
 
 For a moment more he gazed in silence, 
 his muscles rigid, his nostrils expanded, his 
 eyelids flung upward as if scorched by the 
 fires beneath, his breath coming in short 
 gasps. So may the first man have looked 
 when he beheld woman. An extraordinary 
 languor seized him and he trembled violently, 
 then that left him and he stamped his foot 
 on the ground with a loud cry. It was the 
 cry of a savage who feels the boundless free- 
 dom of an unpeopled world, realizes that it 
 is his, that he is king, omnipotent. At that 
 moment he was the living, quivering incarna- 
 tion of elemental man, the personification of 
 the world's youth and vital riches, a creator. 
 
 The woman turned quickly at the cry and 
 looked for a moment into his blazing imperi- 
 ous eyes. Then she too gave a cry. She 
 
110 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 covered her face with her hands and cowered 
 against the tree. 
 
 He approached hesitatingly, yet with eager 
 step. She had suddenly become the repre- 
 sentative of a new idea, almost another being. 
 He hardly knew what he wished. He drew to 
 her as to a magnet, yet with rapturous fear. 
 
 She threw out her hands, motioning him 
 back, and they touched his. He clutched 
 them fast, and the veil was rent that hid 
 from him the great mystery of sex. He 
 flung them from him and caught the woman 
 in his embrace. He had no purpose nor 
 desire beyond the moment ; he was but a 
 creature actuated by primeval instinct. Bo- 
 radil lay passive in his arms. In her wide 
 eyes was an expression of horror fighting 
 with rapture ; the knowledge of age and the 
 knowledge of youth. 
 
 Then the first book of his life closed ; he 
 bent his head and kissed the woman. 
 
 His arms relaxed suddenly, and Boradil 
 slipped from his embrace and ran through the 
 wood. He made no attempt to follow her. 
 
XIII. 
 
 BOEADIL sped down the bill to her home, 
 keeping the road by instinct only, letting 
 herself in mechanically at the side door, 
 never pausing until locked in her room. 
 Then she dropped upon a chair and pressed 
 her hands to her face until the blood threat- 
 ened to start from the nails. 
 
 Oh, mysterious heart of woman, locked 
 and tepid for nearly two-score years and ten 
 of woman's allotted time ! What an awak- 
 ening ! What a travesty on the sentimental 
 ardors of youth ! What mockery in that 
 narrowing end of the future's perspective ! 
 What a tragedy of youthful passion and ret 
 lentless array of years ! Age brings with it 
 the more dignified affections of nature, oh, 
 Boraclil Trevor ! The wider range of inter- 
 ests, the calm and peace of the long shadows 
 on the hill-side. You are forty-six ! forty- 
 
112 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 six! forty-six! Boradil Trevor; the age of 
 many a grandmother ; yet here you are thrill- 
 ing and quivering under the kiss of a boy, 
 passionate as a girl in her first awakening. 
 What have you to do with passion, O Bo- 
 radil Trevor! Go to the daily drivel of 
 your household needs and social obligations. 
 Squeeze your heart into a tumbler and cast it 
 upon the great river of life, where it belongs. 
 What right have you to happiness, since the 
 world, that omnipotent, infallible monarch, 
 before whom even God hides his face abashed, 
 has decreed tha.t a woman of two-score years 
 and ten shall eat of autumn leaves and turn 
 from the scent of violets ? True, God made 
 you as you are. If you are shaken with pas- 
 sion at the dignified age of forty-six ; if your 
 heart is great with one grand unselfish single- 
 purposed love ; if you are possessed of every 
 qualification for happiness, yielding and re- 
 ceiving; if your nature is but the richer, 
 fuller, stronger for its unconscious sleep 
 why, what of that ? The World, O Bora- 
 dil Trevor ! says thou shalt not transgress its 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 113 
 
 holy commandments and mate your forty-six 
 perfect, beautiful years with twenty -two 
 groping revolutions of life's wheel and 
 complete the man. Why weep ? Why beat 
 your pretty little white hands against the 
 bronze grinning mask of Fate ? Surely you 
 had your day your youth. True, love did 
 not come then. He played you a shabby 
 trick, skulked in waiting for the serious dig- 
 nity of your two-score years and ten. But 
 what of that ? A mere accident. One cares 
 nothing for reasons in this world, O Bo- 
 radii Trevor ! Results alone concern us. 
 There is no excuse for failure. You lost 
 your youth without knowing its joys : that 
 is the beginning and the end. You have no 
 right to shame your sex and take them now. 
 
 Boradil's white rigid fingers curved up- 
 ward, spreading apart. She looked through 
 them as through the bars of a cage. Only 
 the moon lit the room, but it shone athwart 
 her haggard horrified eyes. 
 
 Every exquisite tumult of first love, every 
 imperious desire for surrender, every su- 
 
114: A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 preme longing for mate and union she had 
 felt to-night for the first time in her forty- 
 six years. And felt them for a boy who 
 might have been the youngest of many chil- 
 dren. She gave a hoarse, angry cry. The 
 sweet nature of the woman was gall and 
 wormwood, bitter, rebellious, against the 
 outrageous trick that fate had played her. 
 For the first time in her life she felt that 
 she had been cheated and defrauded ; she 
 felt the shameful waste of her best and rich- 
 est years. Above all, alas ! alas ! she felt 
 the weight of time, the meagreness of the 
 future. But if that blank past had to be, 
 and this strange intoxicating love-rose had 
 to blow in the gray level of her years, why 
 could not a man of her own age have 
 stooped and plucked it with her ? Why 
 could not she have loved Mr. Irving ? That 
 would be a calm and decorous union, and 
 the world would have pattered its approval. 
 Her eyes grew as rigid as the white bars 
 they stared through. What use to ring the 
 changes on the eternal unanswering Why ? 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 115 
 
 She loved Mark Saltonstall, and that was 
 the question to face. In spite of the passion 
 that had struck her own into life, she did not 
 believe that he really loved her. No dan- 
 ger that he would wish to marry her ! The 
 inthralment of the hour had given him that 
 sudden knowledge of his manhood which is 
 an episode in the lives of all men. She was 
 the one woman near that was all. 
 
 Her mouth had lost its pink. The lips 
 curled inward against the set teeth, She 
 was not a beautiful woman in that hour. 
 In her breast tolled forty-six knells, slowly, 
 loudly, with long vibration. Then again 
 and again. She wanted to scream, to shriek, 
 to curse. But the tragedy was too deep for 
 vocal expression. She sat stiff and speech- 
 less, feeling as if each passing moment were 
 another year, adding fresh silver to her hair, 
 etching lines, revolving her nearer the end, 
 already so close. 
 
 She was an old woman old woman old 
 woman. An owl hooting by the window 
 seemed to intone the words of her soul's 
 
116 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 monody. And she loved a man of twenty- 
 two. Oh ! the hideous irony of it. How 
 she would have ridiculed another woman 
 discovered guilty of such a folly. In spite 
 of the intense sympathy of her nature, this 
 was a phase of human weakness for which 
 she could have had only impatience and con- 
 tempt. Now and again she doubted it of 
 herself. To-morrow's sun must surely mock 
 at the vapors of the night. Then she shud- 
 dered. She knew that she had loved Mark 
 Saltonstall the night she had met him. On- 
 ly its preposterousness had kept the knowl- 
 edge from her until to-night. 
 
 Her hands suddenly dropped to her chest, 
 showing the livid imprints they had made 
 on her face. For a moment she clutched at 
 her gown, striving to tear it apart, then fell 
 gropingly to the floor. 
 
XIV. 
 
 AT three the next clay the maid brought 
 up word that Mark Saltonstall was below. 
 Boradil, who was lying on a lounge in her 
 darkened room, told the girl so crossly to 
 excuse her that the devoted servant stared 
 in amazement Boradil's nerves were taut. 
 Even her inactive felinity had reared its 
 graceful head and longed to scratch some- 
 one with its sharp thoroughbred claws. She 
 scarcely recognized herself. Truly, her pla- 
 cid existence had given her but an occasion- 
 al hint of the heights and depths of her 
 woman's nature. 
 
 The maid went down-stairs and returned 
 with a note. 
 
 " I must see you," it said. " I shall wait 
 until you are better if it is not until to-mor- 
 row." Boradil hesitated a few minutes, then 
 told the maid to say she would go down pres- 
 
118 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 ently. When she was alone she threw apart 
 the blinds and stood before the mirror. She 
 looked haggard, but her hair was still brown 
 and no wrinkles had come in the night. 
 Her mouth, however, had a hard look, un- 
 usual to it, and bitterness was in her eyes. 
 After some deliberation, vanity triumphed 
 over the indifference born of disgust, and she 
 covered the severe front of her black gown 
 with a kerchief of white mull and lace, and 
 twisted her hair into a softer knot, fluffing 
 it about her face. She was almost herself 
 again. Her toilet completed, she stood mo- 
 tionless for a few moments, her hands locked 
 together, her face stinging with a sudden 
 rush of blood. She turned sharply from the 
 ordeal of meeting this man, this boy who 
 must look upon her with wondering contempt 
 and who had doubtless come to apologize ! 
 Then an idea came to her aid. He must 
 know, that is, if he had any coherent remem- 
 brance of those moments, that she had been 
 helpless in his arms, that if she had made 
 any attempt to free herself, he in his greater 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 119 
 
 strength would not have noticed it. Still, 
 the position had been a ridiculous one, and 
 she twisted her hands in futile disgust ; then 
 summoned her pride and went below. 
 
 Mark was standing at the window with 
 his arms folded. He was as white as a dark 
 man can be, and his lids almost covered his 
 eyes. In some inscrutable way he looked 
 older. The semblance of boyishness, at least, 
 had left him for the time. 
 
 Boradil greeted him with a cold dignity 
 as unlike her usual manner as snow to the 
 flower it crushes, and he flushed darkly, his 
 lids lifting a little. It was a horribly awk- 
 ward moment a moment in which both 
 would gladly have seen the world flash back 
 to its original vapor. 
 
 She sat down in a high-backed chair, and 
 crossed her hands on her lap. She noticed 
 vaguely that they looked very white on the 
 black gown. Mark shook suddenly from 
 head to foot, as if his will were knouting 
 his nerves into subjection, then wheeled a 
 chair directly in front of her and sat down. 
 
120 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " You are angry with me," he said, rapidly. 
 " You look upon me as a ridiculous fool of a 
 boy who lost his head, and dared presumed 
 to touch you. Tell me tell me, is that 
 what you think ? " 
 
 Boradil looked hard at her hands. " I 
 think it was unfortunate," she said, coldly. 
 " Our friendship was a very pleasant one. 
 It was a pity to end it." 
 
 "Don't say that it is ended," he cried, 
 sharply. " Don't say that ! '' He covered 
 her hands suddenly with his and thrust his 
 face beneath her own. 
 
 " Do you not love me at all ? " he whis- 
 pered, hoarsely. "That that that could 
 not be." 
 
 " Hush ! " she said, trying to draw away 
 her hands from him. " What are you talk- 
 ing about ? " 
 
 " Boradil ! " he cried, loudly. He swept 
 his two hands about her face and forced her 
 head back against the chair, looking into 
 her eyes with terrified entreaty. " Bora- 
 dil ! " he cried, " you do love me. I felt it 
 
A QUESTION OF TIMS. 121 
 
 last night. Mad as I was, I felt that. But 
 say it. Say it ! '' 
 
 She let her face sink down into his hands, 
 turning it slowly from side to side as if grate- 
 ful for their warmth. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she whispered. 
 " It is not possible that you love me." 
 
 " Not possible ? What do you mean ? 
 Why, I idolize you ! I love you and love in 
 one. Do you know what that means ? Do 
 you think every man feels that if he lives 
 three lifetimes ? Look at me." 
 
 She raised her head. Her eyes seemed 
 swimming in their melted crystal. Her 
 mouth was pink again, and parted. But 
 only for a moment. She sprang suddenly 
 to her feet, thrusting Mark from her. She 
 tore the soft mull and lace from her neck, 
 and flung it to the floor. She thrust her 
 hands into her hair, parting it at the brow, 
 and dragging it in hard strands down each 
 side of her face. In that moment she 
 touched the supremest pinnacle of woman's 
 bitterness and despair. 
 
122 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " Look at me ! " she screamed. " Look at 
 me and see me for what I am an old wom- 
 an ! A woman who might have been the 
 mother of a family before you were born. 
 A woman nearly half a century old. God ! 
 do you understand now how old I am ? 
 And you love me, me, you a boy hardly out 
 of your teens, who will have barely begun to 
 live when I am tottering about with a cane, 
 trying to make people understand my tooth- 
 less words ! Lord ! Lord ! the irony of it ! 
 the horror ! the cruelty ! And I have been 
 happy in being alive ! Happy ! Why, I 
 would not have lived a moment without 
 cursing my birth if I could have foreseen 
 the end. I tell you there is no tragedy of 
 youth which can touch the horror of what I 
 feel to-day." She turned upon him with 
 blazing eyes, still holding the hair stiff and 
 straight about her face. "Go!" she cried. 
 " Go to some girl who can give you youth 
 for youth. Go to some woman who is be- 
 ginning life, not ending it. Go ! Go ! Go ! 
 and forget your grandmother." 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 123 
 
 Mark had watched her with a sort of rap- 
 ture ; passion was pushed aside for the mo- 
 ment by a new link in the evolution of his 
 manhood. He saw a woman who loved 
 him, but he saw also a terrible suffering and 
 despair, and pity and a great desire to com- 
 fort and protect awoke within him. 
 
 He went to her and took both hands in 
 one of his ; with the other he pushed her 
 hair back to its waves and curls. Then he 
 picked up the mull and put it awkwardly 
 about her. She made no resistance; vital- 
 ity seemed suddenly to have left her. He 
 put both arms about her and drew her down 
 upon a sofa. 
 
 " Listen to me," he said. " Love has noth- 
 ing to do with years. It is an instinct, not 
 a thing of law and line. If you happened 
 to be born first, that was an accident. Noth- 
 ing can alter the fact that you are the only 
 woman in this world for me. Our natures 
 fit and we make a complete whole. We will 
 never be able to remember where the one be- 
 gins and the other ends. You have eternal 
 
124 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 youth in your heart ; I was born at a mo- 
 ment when the divine rays of the ages were 
 at focus, and they pierced my brain. You 
 will never be old ; I will never be young. 
 You have never lived ; I can never live ex- 
 cept as part of you." 
 
 Boradil listened, half incredulously, but 
 feeling the force of his deliberated words. 
 When he had finished she put her head be- 
 tween her hands and burst into tears. With 
 the tears passed the bitterness, and the 
 sweetness of her nature resumed its sway. 
 
 Mark, with his sensitive nature, felt the 
 meaning of those tears, and he held her 
 close with a man's strong sympathy. In 
 that moment he was older than she. 
 
 She dried her eyes after a time, and draw- 
 ing down his face, kissed him gently, then 
 withdrew from his arms. 
 
 " I am willing to grant all that you say," 
 she said, " and I shall love you always and 
 with thankfulness that I have felt love at 
 last. But you must leave me, and at once. 
 There is no other " 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 125 
 
 " We will be married at once," he said. 
 
 " It is for me to decide that, and it can 
 never be. You will rebel now, but one day 
 you will understand. It would be well 
 enough for a few years then you would 
 hate me for having taken advantage of a 
 boyish infatuation. Such a marriage would 
 be preposterous. I should be little better 
 than criminal to permit it. Think, Mark 
 when you are thirty, I will be sixty. When 
 you are forty, I will be seventy 
 
 " I can do my own arithmetic, thank you. 
 When you are seventy you will be no older 
 than you are now. A woman like you re- 
 mains young forever. Go to history and 
 find out. As for the rest, I answered all 
 your arguments a few moments ago. Do 
 you want me to say it all over again ? " 
 
 " Mark, you must listen to reason " 
 
 " I listen most attentively to the voice of 
 reason. Otherwise I should go and be mis- 
 erable because it does not happen to be the 
 custom for men to marry women older 
 than themselves. My God ! because the 
 
126 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 world wags one way, does it follow in logi- 
 cal sequence that that is the right way ? 
 Has it not admitted again and again that it 
 was all wrong and faced to the right about ? 
 Once a woman would have been stoned from 
 the stage. Now, when an actor wishes to 
 make himself particularly ridiculous he 
 dresses up in woman's clothes. Once di- 
 vorce was criminal. To-day it is fashiona- 
 ble. Once the Catholic was burned at the 
 stake. Then the Catholic broiled the Prot- 
 estant. Then the Protestant wanted to lay 
 Science in ashes, and now Science has the 
 Protestant on a gridiron. You and I are 
 ahead of our times, that is all. The day 
 will come when a man and woman will 
 marry because their natures meet like the 
 arcs of a circle and fit, and for no other rea- 
 son whatever. Years will not be taken into 
 account. Surely you can rise above this 
 poor little world, which stumbles blindly in- 
 to its conventions and gets out of them at 
 the first decent opportunity." 
 
 " And suppose I listened to you and ac- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 127 
 
 knowledged that you were right? Have 
 you thought of the other consequences the 
 storms of ridicule, the fury of opposition ? 
 Our names would be town talk. Every 
 woman I know would cut me. Every man 
 you met would take care that you knew he 
 thought you a reckless, ridiculous boy. Do 
 you think you could stand that test ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I have thought of all 
 that. I have money of my own and we will 
 go abroad at once. I cannot say what my 
 father will think of it, but I believe and hope 
 that he will consent. If he does not I shall 
 be sorry, but it will make no difference. So 
 there is no question of my courage. Have 
 you enough ? That is the question.'' 
 
 " I can stand that," she said. "It is only 
 you I fear ten years from now." 
 
 " I absolutely refuse to argue that question 
 any further. Will you marry me ? " 
 
 " Let me think," she said. " Let me think." 
 
 She buried her face in her hands and the 
 struggle, although brief, was sharp. Temp- 
 tation never comes to the young with such 
 
128 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 * 
 
 force as to the woman whose most precious 
 years are behind her. Youth has an endless 
 vista of change and promise and mystery ; it 
 is easy to resist, picturesque to suffer. But 
 when the terrible realization of life's brevity 
 has awakened, when but a few pictures re- 
 main to drift across this mortal diorama, 
 when the past is tasteless and the last short 
 opportunity has come ah ! does the woman 
 live so wise, so foolish, so strong, so weak, so 
 mad, so passion] ess, as to press the fruit to 
 her nostrils and throw it down untasted ? 
 
 At least she could make him happy for 
 some years. A younger woman might make 
 him miserable in less. When the time came 
 wherein he looked at her with aversion, she 
 could go and leave him to his own full life. 
 She would have but few years left for suffer- 
 ing, and meanwhile she would know a happi- 
 ness which she would willingly compress in- 
 to a single year and know the bitterness of 
 death for fifty. And passion, long unfelt, is 
 a tremendous factor in deciding such ques- 
 tions as these. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 129 
 
 9 
 
 She raised her head, leaning it back. Her 
 eyes looked like blue ether flecked with 
 stars. 
 
 " Yes/' she said, " I will marry you." 
 
XV. 
 
 THAT evening after supper Mark was sit- 
 ting with his aunt and cousin on the ver- 
 andah. Elnora had been talking in her cold 
 brilliant fashion, but came after a time to a 
 pause. Mark took advantage of it and de- 
 liberately announced his engagement. 
 
 The silence of the ensuing moment rivalled 
 that of his favorite four in the morning. 
 The light from the hall shone on his aunt's 
 face and he saw it grow livid. Her cold 
 gray eyes seemed to vent white flames as she 
 clutched an arm of her chair with either 
 hand and bent herself slowly forward. 
 
 " What did you say ? " she demanded, in a 
 harsh, cracked voice. " What did you 
 say?" 
 
 "I am going to marry Boradil Trevor," 
 he replied, calmly, although his nerves felt 
 like a net-work of electric wires. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 131 
 
 Mrs. Brewster's straight mouth curved 
 downward with an expression of disgust and 
 contempt which made her nephew shudder. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said, with cutting empha- 
 sis, " perhaps it would be more becoming in 
 a boy' of your age to speak of Mrs. Trevor 
 with more respect. She is just about my 
 age, and is several years older than your 
 mother would have been had she lived." 
 
 " I expect that sort of thing, of course," 
 he said, but he would have given a great 
 deal at that moment to go behind the house 
 and knock a man down. "A philosopher, 
 however, has said that a woman is as old as 
 she looks, and Mrs. Trevor might pass for 
 my younger sister." 
 
 It was Mrs. Brewster's turn to flush with 
 anger. She hated many women, but none so 
 cordially as Boradil Trevor. She resented 
 her beauty, her popularity in Danforth, her 
 charm for men, above all her perennial 
 youth. Every human being selects one other 
 for a rival, with or without reason, and Mrs. 
 Brewster could not recall the time when the 
 
132 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 mention of Boradil Trevor's name or the 
 sight of her lovely face had not kindled 
 within her a dull jealous fire. 
 
 " If it is true that you contemplate such 
 an act of of adolescent idiocy," she re- 
 plied, savagely, " she will probably have the 
 pleasure of hearing strangers allude to you 
 as her son. But if she has actually con- 
 sented to link her old life with your feather- 
 headed youth, she is an unprincipled woman, 
 a bad woman, and deserves legal treatment." 
 
 Mark rose. " That will do," he said, furi- 
 ously ; " you will oblige me by never men- 
 tioning her name to me again. And if you 
 will excuse me, I will leave your house to- 
 night." 
 
 Mrs. Brewster, trembling, sprang to her 
 feet, nearly overturning her chair. It was 
 rarely that passion mastered her cold repose, 
 but when it did the devil that dwells in all 
 of us made her little better than a fish-wife. 
 
 " You dare to tell me that this thing is 
 true," she screamed, barring his way. " You 
 dare to tell nie that you will disgrace your 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 133 
 
 family and hold, us all up to shame and ridi- 
 cule ? I will have your father put you in a 
 mad-house. Do you think I will submit to 
 be the laughing-stock of Boston? What 
 man will marry Elnora ? They will all be 
 afraid that she is as big a fool as you are. 
 You shall not, I say. You shall not ! " 
 
 " I shall not dispute the matter further 
 with you. My father is the only one to 
 whom I am answerable, and we can settle 
 this between ourselves." 
 
 " But I tell you that you shall think of 
 me,' 7 cried the enraged woman, " you ridicu- 
 lous little fool ! " She could not spring, but 
 she hurled herself suddenly upon him and 
 caught him by the shoulder. When she 
 found that she could not shake him, she gave 
 a hoarse choking cry and slapped him vio- 
 lently on the face. 
 
 Mark took her hand, and holding it at 
 arm's length, dropped it gingerly. 
 
 " You have done honor to the blood of the 
 Saltonstalls," he said, with a coolness born 
 of her abandonment. " And it is interesting 
 
134 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 to learn that the vulgarian is in us all, and 
 that we have only progressed a step beyond 
 barbarism in our centuries. But " - with a 
 cutting emphasis equal to her best " you 
 make a favored few seem more charming, 
 more refined, more exquisitely feminine by 
 contrast." 
 
 He put her aside, and entering the house, 
 went quickly down the hall ; but before he 
 reached the stair a hand slipped through 
 his arm. 
 
 " Mark," said Elnora, softly, " I want to 
 speak to you. Will you come to my room a 
 moment ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, shortly, " I will go if you 
 wish it. But do not say too much ; I have 
 had enough for the present." 
 
 "I will not scold you. But there are 
 some things I wish greatly to say. I feel 
 that it is my duty to say them, Mark, for 
 they may prevent your hearing much 
 worse." 
 
 " All right. Fire away." 
 
 She opened the door of her room at the 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 135 
 
 head of the stair. It was a long apartment 
 with two windows facing the south. She 
 lit one of the lamps and drifted to and fro 
 for a moment, her gray gauze gown and twi- 
 light hair making her look like a wreath of 
 mist. Mark threw himself into an easy 
 chair and stared moodily at the floor. His 
 aunt's words were not agreeable to recall, 
 and had given him an unpleasant foretaste 
 of what would be said wherever the fame 
 of his marriage should reach. 
 
 Elnora sat opposite him and leaned for- 
 ward, laying her hand on his. 
 
 " Mark, dear," she said, " you will under- 
 stand that what I say is prompted by my 
 love for you, my interest in your great gifts, 
 and by my desire to do my duty." 
 
 " You are very good. I do not mind your 
 saying anything you like." 
 
 " Mark, have you really made up your 
 mind to take this step ? " 
 
 " Irrevocably." 
 
 "You have thought of all the conse- 
 quences ? " 
 
136 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 "There is no argument she has not used 
 to dissuade me. We have discussed every 
 point. It was not so easy a matter to get 
 her consent as you may imagine." 
 
 "Mark," said Elnora, turning upon him 
 the pale splendor of her ashen eyes, and 
 looking at him with solemn earnestness. " I 
 know just how much you love this woman, I 
 know what the full scorching power of first 
 love means, and I know what an exquisite 
 woman Boradil Trevor is. But, Mark, you 
 have a higher duty to yourself than the 
 gratification of love the duty to your gen- 
 ius and your future. Think of that future 
 the intoxication of its successes, the stimulus 
 of rivals and enemies, the most delicious pos- 
 sessions of all fame and power. I suppose 
 you would argue that so lovely a woman as 
 Boradil would but aid and inspire you, and 
 so she would if you could but have the 
 divine wisdom to foresee that she is the only 
 woman you could ever love, and that ten, 
 perhaps five, years from now, with ripening 
 character and experience, new ideals and 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 137 
 
 other wants would not come which the wo- 
 man you loved with your first boy's passion 
 could not satisfy. You have the gift of in- 
 sight, of prophecy, which goes with the crea- 
 tive mind ; cannot your imagination conceive 
 such a moment ? " 
 
 " No," he said, " it cannot. I shall never 
 love another woman. She satisfies every 
 want of my nature, and no woman does that 
 twice. She goes with me into my world of 
 ideals and is as much at home there as my- 
 self. In some mysterious way she possesses 
 what I lack, and conveys it to me without 
 word or look. I have gone to her despairing 
 because thoughts I searched for would not 
 come, and when with her found them ar- 
 ranging themselves in my mind. Do you 
 think that two women could possess that 
 power over me ? " 
 
 " But, Mark, that might be coincidence, you 
 know. And in your great love for her you 
 may have idealized her. You may be lov- 
 ing love with the first ardor of your man- 
 hood, not Boradil. And it is for both your 
 
138 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 sakes for you must know that she could 
 be even more miserable than you that I 
 ask you to listen to the plan I have to pro- 
 pose." 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 " Mark, I repeat that with a man or 
 woman of your years love is only passion. 
 That gratified, the love goes. Do not marry 
 this woman. Learn without taking the 
 world into your confidence whether you 
 love her lastingly or not. If at the end of a 
 year you still love her, you may believe in 
 yourself and it will be safe to marry her. 
 If you find that you have made a mistake, no 
 harm will have been done and everything be 
 gained." 
 
 He had flung her hand from him as if its 
 soft skin had turned to scales. 
 
 " How dare you insult such a woman ? " 
 he gasped, purple with rage. "How dare 
 you?" 
 
 She smiled. " My dear boy, if you were 
 ten years older you would speak of wisdom, 
 not of insult." 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 139 
 
 He put his face close to hers, his wrath 
 drowned in sudden curiosity. 
 
 " How is it that you know so much ? " he 
 demanded with his crude abruptness. 
 
 The pink color rose to her hair. Then she 
 crossed the room and unlocked a drawer in 
 a quaint old chest. She lifted out a large 
 portfolio like those used for photographs of 
 famous pictures and ]aid it on a table. 
 
 " Come here," she said. 
 
 Mark, much mystified, went to her side, 
 and she opened the portfolio, displaying 
 three large squares of cardboard. The sur- 
 face of but one was visible, and on it was 
 mounted a pen and ink drawing as fine and 
 skilful as an etching. 
 
 " What do you see ? " she asked. 
 
 " I see what I suppose is a court ball. 
 That looks like royalty over there, and there 
 are enough diplomats hanging about to boil 
 Europe alive. All these men and women 
 look like Germans or ah ! that is you !." 
 
 He lifted the picture, holding it nearer the 
 lamp. Elnora was evidently resting from 
 
140 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 the dance, and over her was bending a man 
 whose face Mark could not see. But al- 
 though his head was turned, the great star on 
 his breast and the white ribbon on his shoul- 
 der proclaimed his rank. 
 
 He put down the sketch and took up the 
 next. The bold outlines and battlements of 
 a mediaeval castle towered in the background. 
 A few stars lit a park, a wilderness in the 
 night, bleak and mysterious. Half-hidden 
 by the shadows were two figures clasped in 
 close embrace. Elnora's white profile was 
 cut against the dark like the new moon on 
 night, but again the face of the man was un- 
 seen, although his figure was unmistakably 
 that of the man whose devotion had been in- 
 dicated in the other picture. Passion was 
 in his straining arms, and in the sudden eager 
 downward sweep of his head. 
 
 Mark hastily sent the sketch after the first, 
 interested to the core of his romantic nature. 
 The third scene was a chapel, and again it 
 was night. The shadows thronged like the 
 buried dead in every part save by the altar. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 141 
 
 Behind the chancel rail stood a priest with 
 more fear than holiness on his face. Before 
 him stood a man and a woman. The 
 woman's back was also turned this time, but 
 there was no mistaking the proud repose of 
 head and the splendid poise of shoulders. 
 Near them stood two men in full uniform, 
 one of them glancing furtively about the 
 chapel. The carved beams, the stately altar, 
 the rich pictures, the pointed windows, all 
 were indicated with startling effect ; the very 
 shadows seemed to move. 
 
 Mark laid the picture down and looked at 
 Elnora. He was deeply interested in her 
 for the first time. She was no longer the 
 conventional young woman. 
 
 " This is a real live romance," he said, 
 " and you are a " 
 
 " You must ask me no questions. It is 
 enough to say that that episode in my life is 
 sealed and sepulchred. I have shown you 
 these pictures for an object in the hope 
 that my experience might be useful to you 
 now. I loved that man with all the passion, 
 
142 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 all the self-abnegation, all the reckless disre- 
 gard of consequences of first love. He was 
 intellectual, witty, fascinating. At the end 
 of a year I was so tired of him that I grew 
 to anticipate every inflection of his voice and 
 to speculate which would give me the pro- 
 foundest feeling of ennui. Now, have my 
 words any weight with you ? " 
 
 He had watched her with the keen delight 
 of the born analyst, his own affairs for the 
 moment forgotten. 
 
 "And what are you going to do with 
 yourself now ? " he asked, curiously. 
 
 " I wish to marry you ! " 
 
 Mark actually blushed, but he felt the 
 flattery of being the choice of a woman with 
 such beauty and such a history. 
 
 " I shall never love again," she continued, 
 calmly, "but I wish to marry you because 
 you are a man of genius, and through you I 
 can become famous myself. I wish to have 
 a salon, to have great men at my feet, to be 
 a second Madame Recamier. Men of genius 
 are apt to be low-born, but there is no better 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 143 
 
 blood in America than the Saltonstall's, and 
 you are one of the few men I could endure 
 as a husband." 
 
 " Upon my word, Elnora, if I did not love 
 another woman with every drop of blood in 
 my body and every cell in my brain, I 
 believe I would accept your proposal, for 
 you are a stunning woman. But if you 
 are so ambitious, why did you not cling to 
 your " 
 
 " I told you that you must ask no ques- 
 tions," interrupted his cousin. She came 
 close to him and laid her hand on his 
 arm. In the half-light she looked like a 
 dim cloud queen, as softly cold, as subtly en- 
 veloping. 
 
 " Have I not moved you ? " she murmured. 
 " You still persist in your mad determina- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " You have not moved me," he said, " be- 
 cause you have no argument. You were 
 dazzled by the romance, the adventure, the 
 danger. You loved the man for his rank, 
 his shallow attractions. You will not admit 
 
144: A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 it, but mentally he was your inferior. If he 
 had been the prince of a Boston drawing- 
 room you would have accepted him with no 
 illusions, and a public wedding. You would 
 probably have tired of him during the en- 
 gagement and foregone the honeymoon. I 
 know that man's mental capacity by the 
 shape of his head." 
 
 She had turned her face from the light. 
 " I give you up, 1 ' she replied, and her even 
 tones betrayed nothing. tl But perhaps some 
 day you will remember my advice, cold- 
 blooded though it may be. Well, gang your 
 own gait. I will stand by you." 
 
 He gave her hand a grateful pressure. 
 " Thank you for that," he said. " And now 
 good-night. I shall go down to one of the 
 hotels, for I do not care to meet Aunt Anne 
 again. To-morrow morning I shall see Red 
 Hopkins and ask him to circulate the story 
 of my engagement at once. I do this that 
 Mrs. Trevor shall have no chance to retract 
 through any mistaken idea of duty." 
 
 " Good-night," she said. " I await the 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 145 
 
 denouement. And remember " pointing to 
 the pictures tl no one in America knows of 
 this but you." 
 
 " And no one will," he said. 
 
 10 
 
XVI. 
 
 BOBADIL went about for a few days in an 
 atmosphere of half-tones. The step taken, 
 she gave no more regret to the past, shot no 
 more terrifying glances down the future. 
 Her youth had never left her, therefore the 
 first mental shock having passed, the love 
 she felt and received, the profound stirring 
 of .her emotions, seemed natural enough. If 
 possible, she looked younger than before. 
 Her face was more mobile, her eyes more 
 luminous, her mouth fuller. Mark spent 
 almost every hour of the day with her, and 
 the sense of fellowship deepened, although 
 they were a little shy about outward demon- 
 strations ; it was too new an experience to 
 both. 
 
 Mark had written at once to his father, 
 and three days later he went to the station 
 to meet him. Boradil was sitting alone 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 147 
 
 when Mrs. Hopkins's name was brought in. 
 She felt much like sending an excuse, know- 
 ing what her friend had come to say, but on 
 second thoughts concluded to have it over at 
 once. So Mrs. Hopkins was shown in. 
 
 She greeted Boradil a little stiffly, although 
 her hands were trembling. Then as she 
 seated herself, she blurted out : 
 
 "Tell me, Boradil Trevor, is this terrible 
 thing I hear about you true ? " 
 
 " That I am going to marry Mark Salton- 
 stall ? Yes." She spoke calmly, but blushed 
 a little. 
 
 Mrs. Hopkins put her handkerchief to her 
 face and burst into tears. " Oh, Boradil ! 
 Boradil!" she sobbed, "I never, never 
 would have believed it of you." 
 
 Mrs. Trevor made no reply, and in a mo- 
 ment the good lady put down her handker- 
 chief and resumed. 
 
 " We were at school together, dear, in the 
 same class, and you know that I love you, 
 and what I feel is only for you. Nothing 
 could ever make me love you less, but I 
 
14:8 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 cannot understand this or sympathize with 
 it. I feel so old, so matronly, that such 
 rashness, such youthful folly in a woman 
 my own age is incomprehensible to me. I 
 look at my grown daughters, at my grand- 
 children, and I marvel that a woman of my 
 age can act like a girl of sixteen. Do you 
 realize, Boradil, that you might be like me 
 stout, care-worn? that you might have 
 grandchildren ? That it is only an accident 
 that that you are not ? " 
 
 " If I were like you, Hetty," said Boradil, 
 gently, " with a husband I had loved from 
 youth, I should not love any other man, old 
 or young, at any age. But you must re- 
 member that I have lived an almost solitary 
 and loveless life ; and now that love has 
 come to me at the last moment I have not 
 the strength to resist it." 
 
 " But such a . young man such a boy, 
 Boradil. How can you love one who might 
 be your son ? If it were an older man Mr. 
 Irving, for instance I should not say a word. 
 Indeed, no one could blame you, so young- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 149 
 
 looking and pretty, for marrying again. 
 But that young boy. I cannot understand 
 it." 
 
 " Hetty, can you explain to me why you 
 love Mr. Hopkins ? " 
 
 u I suppose no ; how can we explain those 
 things?" 
 
 " Then I can no better explain why I love 
 Mark Saltonstall. I love him absolutely, 
 and if you did not make a mistake in your 
 inexperienced youth, is it likely that I shall 
 make one with my mature judgment ? " 
 
 " But, Boradil, you know it is an under- 
 stood fact everybody says so that these 
 marriages always turn out badly. Oh, you 
 don't know what people are saying ! Every- 
 body is perfectly wild. I hear that even 
 the town and the summer hotel talk of noth- 
 ing else. And when they are not ridiculing 
 you, dear, and making the most dreadful 
 jokes, they say that his life is ruined, that it 
 is always the case when a young man marries 
 an old a woman much older than himself. 
 And they say that you will be the most 
 
150 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 wretched woman in existence two years from 
 now. He will get tired of you and fall in 
 love with some girl. Then he will suffer 
 and make you suffer. Oh, Boradil ! I can- 
 not bear to think of it." 
 
 "Did not you tell me once, Hetty, that 
 the first two years of your married life be- 
 fore your children came and cares began 
 were ideally happy ? " 
 
 " They were, indeed, Boradil. They 
 were ! " 
 
 " And would you not willingly bear again 
 all the care and suffering, and petty and 
 heavy trials of the later years, for the sake 
 of having had those two ? " 
 
 " Gladly, Boradil." 
 
 " Then know that for two years of a like 
 happiness I would be willing to drag out 
 the rest of my life in such wretchedness as 
 you have never dreamed of. Such is the 
 imperious demand of my woman's nature for 
 its rights." 
 
 " Oh, Boradil, I sympathize with you, I 
 do, I do. And you have made me see just 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 151 
 
 how you feel and are impelled to act. But 
 dear, dear, think of the scandal. How can 
 you face it ? You cannot imagine how peo- 
 ple are talking. You will be in the papers. 
 I am sure you will." 
 
 " I shall not read them." 
 
 " And dearest I am afraid people will 
 cut you ! " 
 
 " If in the forty-six years of my life I have 
 not made friends strong enough to stand by 
 me now, they will be well exchanged for 
 what I have found. As I look back it does 
 not seem to me that these same old friends 
 have troubled themselves much about me. 
 They have been absorbed in their own full 
 domestic lives, and have not gone out of their 
 way to make my life less lonely. It does 
 not seem to me that they should weigh very 
 heavily against the dearest wish of my 
 life." 
 
 " I have loved you, Boradil ! w 
 
 Mrs. Trevor bent forward and laying her 
 two hands about Mrs. Hopkins's tear-stained 
 face, kissed her affectionately. 
 
152 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " I know you have, and you love rne still. 
 You will never desert me, no matter how 
 much you may scold." 
 
 It was impossible to resist Boradil when 
 she chose to be winning, and Mrs. Hopkins 
 straightway put both arms about her, and 
 vowed that she would love her until death, 
 and defend her while breath was in her own 
 body. 
 
 She drank the cup of peace and went away 
 soon after, much to Boradil's relief. She 
 had hardly gone, however, when Mr. Irving 
 was announced. Boradil groaned in spirit, 
 but told the maid to show him in. 
 
 He took a chair where he could command 
 a good view of her face, and what he saw in 
 it smote him sorely. It was an acuter pang 
 than he had felt when he heard of her en- 
 gagement. 
 
 " Is this true, Boradil ? " he asked, lamely. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And you love a boy, although you could 
 not love me ! " he burst out, bitterly. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
A QUESTION OF TIMS. 153 
 
 The monosyllables seemed cruel, but she 
 could think of nothing else to say. 
 
 "Do you do you love him very much, 
 Boradil?" 
 
 " Do you think anything else could give 
 me the courage to do such a thing ? " 
 
 " By heaven, you have got courage ! I 
 admire you for that if for nothing else. It 
 is an heroic act, mad and reprehensible as it 
 
 is." 
 
 "Are you conventional, like the rest of 
 the world \ " 
 
 " Such a thing is counter to the very laws 
 of nature, assuredly to those of society." 
 
 " I said you were conventional." 
 
 " If one lives in the world and avails him- 
 self of the enjoyments of civilization, it is 
 only just to conform to the laws laid down 
 in it. Conventionality is not as ugly a word 
 as many that will be applied to you." 
 
 " You have said that you love me. If 
 you met me now for the first time, and 
 I were but twenty-two, would you love 
 me ? " 
 
154: A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " You know that I could love no other 
 
 woman " 
 
 " Would not you wish to marry me ? '' 
 
 " Certainly. I see your drift. But I am 
 a man ; it would be an entirely different 
 matter." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because it is always fitting that a man 
 should be older than his wife." 
 
 " You mean it is the custom, an ancient 
 habit. It seems to me no more fitting that 
 a man should marry a woman thirty years 
 his junior, than that a woman should take a 
 husband as many years younger than herself. 
 The one is done every day, and hardly a 
 word is said ; the other is a signal for cen- 
 sure and abuse. The world hates to get out 
 of its rut ; it resents being taken by surprise. 
 When all women who happen to love men 
 younger than themselves have the courage to 
 marry them, the world will cease to be sur- 
 prised, and then it will cease to censure. 
 Custom is the only standard we have of 
 right and wrong." She half smiled as she 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 155 
 
 found herself using Mark's arguments to 
 herself. 
 
 " You have always had a clear head, 
 Boradil, in spite of the fact that you are the 
 most exquisitely feminine woman on earth. 
 But you surely know how disastrous such a 
 marriage must be in the end." 
 
 " Have you never heard of other marriages 
 where age was all that it should be and yet 
 which ended in disaster? Among the thou- 
 sands of divorces that are granted every year 
 does the rule show that the woman is older 
 than the man, or that they are of nearly 
 equal years ? Do you know of so many 
 people who are happy and well-mated ? 
 Has your experience taught you and you a 
 lawyer ! that the conventional difference of 
 years insures a happy union ? " 
 
 " There are as many happy as unhappy 
 marriages in the world." 
 
 " True ; and age has nothing to do with it, 
 else would they all be happy. Happiness 
 grows out of true sympathy and companion- 
 ship. Love averts the disasters which are 
 
156 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 born of the trials of matrimony, not a deco- 
 rous difference of years. I believe that my 
 chances of happiness are far greater than 
 those of a callow girl who marries the first 
 boy who flatters her." 
 
 " Perhaps, Boradil, perhaps." He was 
 not in the mood for arguing. The bitter 
 truth that she loved another man with all 
 the sweet strength of her nature was becom- 
 ing harder to endure with each word she 
 uttered. 
 
 " One thing does not seem to have occurr- 
 ed to you," continued Boradil. " Before I 
 was twenty they married me to a man double 
 my age, and no one seemed to think there 
 was anything incongruous in the match. In 
 fact 1 was considered very lucky, for he was 
 rich and I was poor. I made no protest, for 
 I was a child, and it seemed a charming thing 
 to have a big house of my own and to be a 
 married woman. I developed so slowly that 
 not until this past week has it ever occurred 
 to me that to be married for twenty-one 
 years to an unloved man was a horror the 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 157 
 
 greater that in my dreaming existence I 
 never suspected it. But no one else seemed 
 to think of it either, or of the wrong of 
 marrying a young girl to a dry and prosaic 
 man of business. And yet now when I wish 
 to be happy and to marry the man of my 
 choice, the world turns upon me and cries, 
 < Thou fool!'" 
 
 Her voice had grown passionate, almost 
 angry, and Mr. Irving stood up as she 
 finished. His face was very white. 
 
 "Good-by, Boradil," he said, "I would 
 rather not hear you say any more. Marry 
 this man if you will, and I hope and pray 
 that you may be happy. You have only my 
 good wishes. You deserve nothing but the 
 best that the world can give you." 
 
XVII. 
 
 HE drove over to Mrs. Brewster's because 
 he wished to get away from his own 
 thoughts, and because he had been bidden 
 there in common with the rest of his circle 
 to meet Elnora Brewster. 
 
 Many women and several men were seated 
 on the broad veranda, and it took but a 
 few moments to learn that Boradil Trevor 
 was the sole topic of conversation. Elnora, 
 non-committal, clad in diaphanous black, 
 looked like a placid moon resting on a storm- 
 cloud. Mrs. Brewster was sitting in a 
 straight-backed chair, her cold eyes aflame, 
 her mouth hard. All had appealed to her to 
 make up their minds for them. What would 
 she do ? How would she treat Boradil Tre- 
 vor? What did she think? What had she 
 said to her nephew ? 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 159 
 
 " This is what I will do," said Mrs. Brews- 
 ter, " I will never speak to either my nephew 
 or Boradil Trevor again. He is a young 
 fool and she is a bad woman." There were 
 several " Oh ! Oh's," but Mrs. Bre water 
 went on with the same cold heat. " She is a 
 bad woman because she is nearly fifty years 
 old, and she takes advantage of the foolish 
 passion of a boy of twenty. She deliberate- 
 ly ruins his life, and disgraces his family and 
 her own. I should never respect myself if 
 I spoke to her again. You, of course, can 
 do as you please." 
 
 It was evident that most of the company 
 would do as their leader pleased, but a few 
 looked rebellious and disposed to stand by 
 Boradil Trevor. The girls were tittering 
 and sneering ; they had all the contempt of 
 inexperience for the weaknesses of their sex ; 
 but an occasional woman of niaturer years 
 felt a vague sympathy, perhaps envy, for the 
 passion which impelled such reckless defi- 
 ance of the World and respected it. 
 
 " I wish to say," continued Mrs. Brewster, 
 
1GO A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 " that I should be glad to have those who in- 
 tend to continue their acquaintance with this 
 woman let me know of the fact, as I shall 
 not care to run the risk of meeting her at 
 their houses." 
 
 Manifest disturbance followed this decla- 
 ration of war. Disruption of Danforth's 
 exclusive forty was threatening. People 
 gave each other little apprehensive side- 
 glances ; no one seemed to yearn for the 
 honor of speaking first. Before the silence 
 could become awkward Elnora's voice, as 
 silveren as her eyes, made itself heard. 
 
 " I would not bother any more just now, 
 mamma," she said ; " I hear that Mrs. Trevor 
 intends leaving Danforth at once and for 
 good. . That will settle matters." 
 
 A sigh of relief swept softly down the ve- 
 randa, and Mrs. Brews ter's guests began 
 talking with unwonted animation for so warm 
 a day upon a variety of topics in which Bora- 
 dil Trevor had no place. Mr. Irviug made 
 his way over to Elnora. Her tact reminded 
 him of Boradil, and as he talked with her 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 161 
 
 the resemblance deepened. He had not 
 Mark's insight to teach him the spurious 
 from the real, and he paid all a man's trib- 
 ute to Elnora's manufactured charm. 
 11 
 
XVIII. 
 
 AT eight that evening, as Mrs. Brewster 
 and her daughter were sitting on the veran- 
 da, one of the town hacks drove up and 
 Mr. Saltonstall alighted. He was a tall 
 slender man, distinguished and intellectual 
 looking, and bore that fleeting resemblance 
 to his son which a photograph of the wrong 
 side of a face does to the subject. 
 
 Mrs. Brewster received him stiffly, but 
 curiosity made her less cold than if she had 
 been already acquainted with the result of 
 his visit. Elnora gave him a soft earnest 
 welcome, patting his hand sympathetically, 
 and he kissed her and told her that she 
 looked like his grandmother, who had been 
 the handsomest of the Saltonstalls. He sat 
 down by her, facing his sister. 
 
 " Well ? " demanded Mrs. Brewster. 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 163 
 
 "What do you think of this unfortunate 
 and ridiculous business ? " 
 
 " It is very interesting," said Mr. Salton- 
 stall with a slight, somewhat cynical, smile. 
 
 " Very what ? " 
 
 " Interesting. You know that I loved my 
 wife very deeply, and that since her death 
 I have taken little personal interest in 
 life. But, as I am compelled to live, I 
 find deep and constant amusement in the 
 ever-varying phenomena of human nature. 
 Its problems like the one which concerns 
 us are intensely fascinating to me. Think 
 of a woman of forty-six having the mental 
 youthfulness to love a man of twenty -two ! 
 What more interesting? And Mark, al- 
 though I have all a father's affection for 
 him, is far more interesting to me as the ge- 
 nius than as the man, and I have kept a sort 
 of mental diary of each of his successive 
 developments. This is the most significant 
 and entertaining of all." 
 
 "Oh, I know of old your cold-blooded 
 way of looking at things," interrupted his 
 
164: A QUESTION' OF TIME. 
 
 sister, impatiently, " and I cannot say that I 
 am at all interested in your peculiar method 
 of taking life. What I wish to know is 
 what steps are you going to take to prevent 
 your son disgracing himself and his whole 
 family ? " 
 
 " Oh, I shall let him marry Mrs. Trevor." 
 
 "John Saltonstall ! " 
 
 " Yes ; I will give you my reasons if you 
 care to hear them." 
 
 Mrs. firewater was shaking from head to 
 foot, but she wished to keep her self-control 
 before her brother. As she was speechless 
 Mr. Saltonstall continued. 
 
 " I spent an hour with Mrs. Trevor this 
 afternoon, and I am convinced that she is 
 the wife for my son, the woman who will 
 most further his advancement. It is my ma- 
 tured opinion that men of genius should 
 marry women older than themselves. For 
 this reason : when a man has genius his 
 character rarely develops beyond boyhood. 
 He is always more or less of a child, impul- 
 sive, irrational, irresponsible. He is like a 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 165 
 
 double flower, growing with a fair show of 
 equality for a while. Then one side begins 
 to draw to it all the sunshine and moisture, 
 leaving the other perfect as far as it go.es, 
 perhaps, but stunted for the rest of its time. 
 Therefore when a man of that order marries 
 an undisciplined girl it means the ruin of 
 both. It would not make so much differ- 
 ence about the girl if she were commonplace, 
 which she probably would be, but it would 
 leave him rudderless and incomplete to the 
 end of his days. Now, if he marries a wom- 
 an more than his age, a woman who pos- 
 sesses the self-control, the patience, the calm, 
 the deliberation, which years alone can 
 bring,, a woman who has absorbed expe- 
 rience and knowledge from time as it passes, 
 even if practically little has come to her, 
 such a woman will supply what the man of 
 intellectual endowment lacks, and together 
 they make the perfect whole. Of course she 
 should be intelligent without being intellect- 
 ual and ambitious ; she should have tact 
 and cleverness without genius or even talent. 
 
1G6 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 Intellectual women are mentally polyga- 
 mous " 
 
 At this point Mrs. Brews ter rose and 
 looked at her brother with white lips and 
 eyes. 
 
 " You are a fool," she said, and swept into 
 the house. 
 
 Elnora leaned forward and fixed her ice- 
 like magnetic eyes on her uncle's face. 
 
 " You make this strange affair very inter- 
 esting," she said, " and I want to hear all 
 you have to say about it. You have an ex- 
 traordinary faculty of putting things in a 
 new light of changing one's whole point of 
 view. But there is one thing surely you 
 do not mean to tell me that you are an advo- 
 cate of young men marrying women twice 
 their age ? " 
 
 " Not under all circumstances, no," he said, 
 warmed to new interest, and stroking her 
 hand as it lay white and cool as a moonbeam 
 on her black gown, " only when a man is 
 over-intellectual even when not a genius. 
 Then, always. I believe it to be the only 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 167 
 
 possible balance. There must be absolute 
 respect and fellowship in married life and no 
 woman of mature age will respect a young 
 fool or fail to be bored by him after a short 
 period, no matter how his youth and beauty 
 may have conquered her senses. He must 
 counterbalance her acquired wisdom by su- 
 perior intellect." 
 
 " But, uncle, men of genius are usually 
 passionate to sensuality, and after a time an 
 old woman must cease to have any charm for 
 them." 
 
 " I see that you have studied men and 
 done some thinking even if you are a girl ; 
 but being a young woman, your knowledge 
 of your sex is naturally limited. A woman 
 of fifty, whose health is perfect, is as young 
 as you are and likely to remain so. Physi- 
 cal youth is not a matter of years, but of 
 good constitution and careful life. Age 
 means loss of heart, and allowing the health, 
 the body to run to seed. Neglect one 
 rose-bush and water another of the same age 
 and you will see what I mean. Boradil 
 
168 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 Trevor, slender and dainty as she is, is 
 wrought of supple steel. The simplicity of 
 her character will preserve her youthful ex- 
 pression, and her woman's vanity and clever- 
 ness will look after her complexion and fig- 
 ure. I don't believe Mrs. Trevor ever lost a 
 night's sleep or felt a pang of dyspepsia in 
 her life/' 
 
 " Well, uncle, you convince me that Mrs. 
 Trevor is the wife for Mark, if he must have 
 one," assented this delectable young diplo- 
 mat ; " but I confess I do not agree with you 
 in thinking that it is necessary for him to 
 marry at all. If he has genius is not that 
 enough ? What does he want with personal 
 happiness ? " 
 
 " My dear Elnora, to say nothing of the 
 fact, already dwelt upon, that he needs bal- 
 last, sympathy, and encouragement, love 
 gratified will develop his genius and give 
 him deeper insight. Balked, he would 
 spend a half dozen years eating his heart out 
 and inflicting the public with the false and 
 morbid wails of a blighted life. It would 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 169 
 
 take him many to readjust himself and com- 
 prehend life broadly and impersonally. The 
 narrowing and contracting of the ego by ear- 
 ly disappointment has taken the best years 
 out of many an artist. Real genius intui- 
 tive wisdom, creative power can dispense 
 with worldly experience but cannot pass 
 through an unfortunate one of the heart un- 
 warped or unscathed. Human nature is at 
 once too strong and too weak." 
 
 He rose and walked up and down the 
 porch, then spoke again : 
 
 " I am minded to make you a confession, 
 my charming niece. It is this : Everything 
 that my son is I wished to be. I had the am- 
 bition without the gift ; I used to lie awake 
 at night, even when I was a college boy, 
 trying to string grandly sounding phrases 
 together and make them rhyme. I used to 
 construct air worlds which I shook like 
 Byron or wherein I preached upon a mount 
 like Shelley. By one of those mysterious 
 evolutions of soul and of mind my off- 
 spring combines the desire and the power, 
 
1TO A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 the ambition and the genius. Not to call 
 one of those planets up there my own would 
 I lay the slightest blight upon him, put a 
 stone in his path, warp a corner of his brain. 
 I should feel both a murderer and a suicide. 
 I should feel that I had entered his brain 
 like an assassin and maimed the god who sat 
 there enthroned. If I found this woman un- 
 worthy, my power over him is strong enough 
 to enable me to convince him of the fact, and 
 he would recover from a little heartburning 
 none the worse ; but as it is Well, here 
 comes the hack. I told the man to return in 
 an hour. Good-night. There is nothing 
 commonplace about you, by the way; you 
 are as charming a listener as Mrs. Trevor, 
 and you have a face for history. You ought 
 to marry a big man." 
 
 " I shall," she said. 
 
 Her uncle laughed, and bidding her good- 
 night drove away. 
 
IX. 
 
 BOKADIL sat alone again the next night. 
 Mr. Saltonstall had asked Mark to ride out 
 into the country with him to visit an old 
 friend, and, all things considered, his son 
 could hardly refuse. He had made Boradil 
 promise, however, to walk with him in the 
 wood at four, and not feeling sleepy she had 
 determined to sit up. 
 
 She had been surprised and elated at Mr. 
 Saltonstall's sanction of her marriage, but 
 to-night she was depressed. The late mail 
 had brought her a stinging letter from her 
 brother, who knew how to season his ink 
 with acid and gall. Some one also, had 
 kindly sent her a marked copy of a New 
 York paper containing a letter from a Dan- 
 forth correspondent. In this letter she was 
 placed in a ridiculous and humiliating light, 
 described by a person who had never seen 
 
172 A QUESTION OF TIME, 
 
 her, as passe*e and "made up." A cartoon 
 portrayed a large fleshy prancing woman 
 dragging along an unwilling-looking young- 
 ster by a hand soiled with mud pies. Being 
 unused to the sensational world, she was 
 disgusted and indignant that her private 
 life should be uninspected, her most sacred 
 feelings held up to comment and ridicule. 
 It made her feel trivial and vulgar ; her 
 delicate pride seemed slipping from her ; 
 she ceased for the moment to believe that 
 she was really a gentlewoman ; she felt, 
 rather, like a third-rate actress. Her wom- 
 an's vanity had also received an ugly 
 thrust. She cared nothing for the world, 
 but she did not find it pleasant to learn that 
 it believed her to be faded and common. 
 Of course she had anticipated some notoriety 
 and made a resolution not to look at the 
 papers ; but when the marked copy came 
 curiosity had triumphed. 
 
 She tore it suddenly into strips and flung 
 it on the hearth. Its vulgarizing influence 
 withdrew after a time, but left discourage- 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 173 
 
 merit in its wake, and fears began to assail 
 her once more. Mr. Saltonstall had told her 
 that her splendid health made her as young 
 as his son. What if that should give way ? 
 What had she left but that ? The sympathy 
 of an invalid wife soon ceases to be appre- 
 ciated by a husband full of impatient vi- 
 tality. And suppose the sneers of the world 
 should have their effect on Mark at last 
 after the enthusiasm of his love had begun 
 to temper? She had not thought of this 
 before and the idea filled her with terror. 
 The sensation caused by her marriage would 
 soon die, but never the contemptuous feeling 
 in regard to it? True, neither she nor 
 Mark cared for or intended to be of the 
 world, but they could not live like hermits 
 and they expected to travel. Could he 
 stand that ever-recurring smile ? She had 
 no fear for her own steadfastness, but she 
 knew the power of ridicule over men. She 
 put her hands to her face and burst into 
 tears. She was unanchored again. The 
 bliss of the past few days plunged into the 
 
174 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 fog-banks of memory. She wondered at her 
 content, the downfall of her reason, the girl- 
 like folly of merging the future into the 
 present. She remembered her doubts of the 
 night she had realized her love. They had 
 been swept aside by Mark Saltonstall's 
 dominant personality and her own passion, 
 but they returned now. What right had 
 she, a weak, insignificant woman, to set at 
 defiance the laws laid down by the world I 
 She felt wretched, forlorn, conventional. 
 What was she but a natural product of 
 these despised conventions? Her brother's 
 letter and that vulgar paper had flung her 
 out of her fool's paradise and made her feel 
 the everyday creature she was. She was not 
 a genius like Mark. There was nothing in 
 her to warrant the committing of such an ex- 
 traordinary act. What had blinded her to 
 her folly but a passion which was ridiculous 
 in a woman of her age ? It was true that 
 Mr. Saltonstall championed her, but might 
 not he be a dreamer, an illogical theorizer ? 
 Might not she really be ruining this young 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 175 
 
 man's life as people said ? preparing a hell 
 for his later years ? Might not such a 
 marriage affect his prospects ? If the world 
 was going to laugh at him would it consent 
 to take him seriously as a man of letters 2 
 Would not every mention of his name in 
 those loathsome newspapers be coupled with 
 a satire or a joke which would rob him of all 
 dignity, forbid all respect? She dropped 
 her hands with a faint cry. This thought, 
 most appalling of all, had not occurred to 
 her before. She sprang to her feet, hardly 
 knowing where she was bound, what her 
 purpose. She ran down the hall and up the 
 old stair to the tower. Her breath came in 
 little sobs, the hot tears blurred her sight. 
 She felt her way up to the door and 
 stumbled into the little room. The tears lay 
 like blisters on her eyes, but she brushed 
 them away and looked about her. She saw 
 the dirt to-night, the dilapidated chair, 
 stooping like an aged woman, the rotting 
 casement, the broken pane. The moon was 
 high and flooded the dusty cobwebbed 
 
176 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 room. It looked like the rickety skeleton of 
 a memory's ghost. 
 
 She sprang to the window and pushed it 
 up. She saw the populous town, the yachts 
 on the sound. Wild and waste had it all 
 been twenty-five years before ! Age had 
 come to it as to her, but age had brought it 
 strength, and peopled its churchyards. 
 
 She tugged the neck-band of her gown 
 apart, choking and reeling a little. For the 
 moment her reason left her, and she screamed 
 hoarsely again and again. Every nerve in 
 her body seemed an imp, stabbing and sting- 
 ing. Every year in her past seemed crowd- 
 ing into the little room with scorching 
 breath and derisive laughter. They rent 
 themselves asunder and became months, then 
 weeks, then days, hours ! minutes ! seconds ! 
 She gasped and struggled for breath. Again 
 she screamed, and again 
 
 At that moment Mark Saltonstall flung 
 open the door, and caught her in his arms. 
 
 " For God's sake what is the matter ? " he 
 said. " I heard you scream, and saw you 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. ITT 
 
 from the road. I thought it was your ghost. 
 What what is the matter ? " 
 
 Her brain swung back to its balance, but 
 she pushed him from her, fearing his touch. 
 
 " Go," she said, " go. I will never marry 
 you. I have seen the whole terrible truth 
 to-night. I could almost say that I am 
 grateful. So help me God, I will never see 
 you again. I am strong at last. I command 
 you to go from me." 
 
 She had retreated to the wall, holding her 
 hands before her. Her hair had escaped its 
 pins, and fell over her white gown. Her 
 face was flushed, her eyes blazing. 
 
 " I had expected this," said Mark. 
 " Come." 
 
 Before she could pass him, he had lifted 
 her in his arms. He went down the stairs 
 and out of the house, and up the hill to the 
 wood. When they neared the clearing, he 
 put her on her feet. 
 
 " Twist up your hair," he said. 
 
 She obeyed him. He led her to the clear- 
 ing. Three men awaited them, Mr. Salton- 
 12 
 
178 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 stall, Redfield Hopkins, and a clergyman of 
 the Church of England. 
 
 Far down in the valley the gong of the 
 great town clock smote the air four times. 
 
 A GLANCE AT THE QUESTION. 
 
 ONE of the first sentiments born to a 
 woman reciprocally loved by a man younger 
 than herself is gratitude. A young woman 
 accepts love carelessly, as her birthright ; 
 the violets blooming in the hedge, the petal- 
 ous beauty of roses damasking spring, expect 
 to be plucked ; for that they were made ; 
 but the autumn leaves fall softly, lie un- 
 touched until the rain comes to wash them 
 down into the earth, enriching it. The full- 
 blown rose is very beautiful, but the vigor of 
 youth has spent itself in the expanding 
 leaves; the scent of death is in the heavy 
 perfume. Even though a woman may have 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 179 
 
 filed a record of continuous conquest, the love 
 of a man inferior in years touches her first 
 with surprise, then doubt, then profoundest 
 gratitude. Of course the sentiment wears 
 away with possession, all sentiments do, but 
 in its fleeting existence does her most abiding 
 danger inhere. Man as a lover cannot sur- 
 
 o 
 
 vive gratitude. Pride puffeth him ; he floats 
 upward and reclines upon rarefied heights, 
 gazes abstractedly, indulgently, upon the 
 woman below and eventually his gaze doth 
 wander. It smites his self-respect to adore 
 that which admits itself unworthy. And a 
 woman in gratitude further endangers her 
 peace of heart because coquetry, feminine 
 caprice, and power, go with that loss of self- 
 confidence which follows the upward gaze, 
 enwrapt and fixt. She begs for small favors 
 instead of refusing greater, she scatters tears 
 upon a man's indifferent moods; she loses 
 her head instead of skilling herself in the 
 game of chess. As a man to be beloved of 
 women should be virile and in all things 
 protective and reliant, so should he ever be 
 
180 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 the one to sue. Deep in him abides the in- 
 stinct and the desire. Let a woman usurp 
 his prerogative and he rises from his knees 
 nor cares to kneel again. Every woman in 
 love should have still another man in love 
 with her. It feeds the hesitant flame of her 
 vanity, prevents her knees from giving way. 
 If the understudy is not to be had, let her 
 etch one in her brain. It answers almost as 
 well; if life does not yield us all we long 
 for, sometimes imagination gives us the 
 bright resemblance of it. 
 
 Conversely, the woman who loves without 
 a modicum of gratitude neither feels nor con- 
 veys such lasting and quietly satisfying 
 happiness, as does the woman upon whom 
 the sadness of years has fallen or who has 
 not been given the large gift of sexual fas- 
 cination. Let the woman in gratitude keep 
 her head, and she flowers to a high degree of 
 womanliness unattainable to one sated with 
 easy conquest. She sees and draws the 
 noblest in the man she has mated, she looks 
 to herself sharpl} r lest she deflower, be less 
 
A QUESTION OF TIME. 181 
 
 desirable to the man who has choseii her in 
 spite of time or unadornment. The fasci- 
 nating woman has somewhat of contempt 
 for passion, and not valuing love, does not 
 respect it, hence is more apt to see and draw 
 a man's worst than his best. She is more 
 bored by constancy than appreciative of it. 
 Love with her is either a caprice or an un- 
 conscious selection of the man who can give 
 her greatest pleasure. 
 
 I am prepared to hear the readers of this 
 book call Boradil Trevor a fool, and let her 
 go to her fate without sympathy. But here 
 and there a philosopher may commend her 
 wisdom. The heart is stabbed often along 
 the path of life ; the brain is pierced by 
 many doubts, allured by many ambitions, 
 stunned by many disappointments ; the pas- 
 sions are troubled, stung, quicked, finished 
 when only ashes remain to burn. Then 
 Death, standing at the end of the path, or 
 hovering obeisantly at our side, lifts the cur- 
 tain and all is over as we wonder why it was 
 and cross ourselves regretfully or triumph- 
 
1S2 A QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 antly to the religion of pleasure. Whether 
 we cast our eyes on earth or on heaven, suf- 
 fering is the common lot; but earth has its 
 pleasures, brief though they may be let us 
 take them. Nirvana at the end, grants the 
 one desire left in us. Let us eat, drink, and 
 be merry, for to-morrow we die. 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S 
 
 FOUR-IN-HAND 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 JESSICA, her hands clinched and teeth set, 
 stood looking with hard eyes at a small 
 heap of letters lying on the floor. The sun, 
 blazing through the open window, made her 
 blink unconsciously, and the ocean's deep 
 voice rising to the Newport sands seemed to 
 reiterate : 
 
 " Contempt ! Contempt ! " 
 
 Tall, slight, with the indescribable air and 
 style of the New York woman, she did not 
 suggest intimate knowledge of the word the 
 ocean hurled to her. In that moss-green 
 room, with her haughty face and white pure 
 skin, her severe faultless gown following 
 classic outlines, she rather suggested the 
 type to whom poets a century hence would 
 
186 MBS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 indite their sonnets when she and her kind 
 had been set in the frame of the past. And 
 if her dress was conventional she had let im- 
 agination play with her hair. The clear eva- 
 sive color of flame, it was brushed down to 
 her neck and parted, crossed and brought 
 tightly up each side of her head, just behind 
 her ears. Meeting above her bang, the curl- 
 ing ends allowed to fly loose, it vaguely re- 
 sembled Medusa's wreath. Her eyes were 
 gray, the color of mid-ocean, calm, beneath 
 a gray sky. Not twenty -four, she had the 
 repose of one whose cradle had been rocked 
 by Society's foot, and although at this mo- 
 ment her pride was in the dust, there was 
 more anger than shame in her face. 
 
 The door opened and her hostess entered. 
 As Mrs. Pendleton turned slowly and looked 
 at her, Miss Decker gave a little cry. 
 
 " Jessica ! " she said, " what is the mat- 
 ter ? " 
 
 " I have been insulted," said Mrs. Pendle- 
 ton, deliberately. She felt a savage pleas- 
 ure in further humiliating herself. 
 
MRS. PEXDLETON'S FOUR-IN-IIAND. 187 
 
 " Insulted ! You ! " Miss Decker's correct 
 voice and calm brown eyes could not have 
 expressed more surprise and horror if a for- 
 eign diplomatist had snapped his fingers in 
 the face of the President's wife. Even her 
 sleek brown hair almost quivered. 
 
 "Yes," Mrs. Pendleton went on in the 
 same measured tones, " four men have told 
 me how much they despise me." She 
 walked slowly up and down the room. 
 Miss Decker sank upon the divan, incredulity, 
 curiosity, expectation, feminine satisfaction 
 marching across her face in rapid procession. 
 
 " I have always maintained that a married 
 woman has a perfect right to flirt," contin- 
 ued Mrs. Pendleton. " The more especially 
 if she has married an old man and life is 
 somewhat of a bore in consequence. ' Why 
 do you marry an old man?* snaps the vir- 
 tuous world. 'What a contemptible creat- 
 ure you are to marry for anything but love,' 
 it cries, as it eats the dust at Mammon's feet. 
 I married an old man because, with the wis- 
 dom of twenty, I had made up my mind that 
 
1S8 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 I could never love and that position and 
 wealth alone made up the sum of existence. 
 I had more excuse than a girl who has been 
 always poor, for I had never known the 
 arithmetic of money until my father failed, 
 a year before I married. People who have 
 never known wealth do not realize the pure- 
 ly physical suffering of those inured to lux- 
 ury and suddenly bereft of it, it makes no 
 difference what one's will or strength of 
 character is. So I married Mr. Pendleton. 
 So I amused myself with other men, Mr. 
 Pendleton gave me my head, because I kept 
 clear of scandal ; he knew my pride. Now, 
 if I had spent my life demoralizing myself 
 and the society that received me, I could not 
 be more bitterly punished. I suppose I de- 
 serve it. I suppose that the married flirt is 
 just as poor and paltry and contemptible a 
 creature as the moralist and the minister de- 
 pict her. We measure morals by results. 
 Therefore I hold to-day that it is the busi- 
 ness of a lifetime to throw stones at the mar- 
 ried flirt." 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 189 
 
 For Heaven's sake," cried Miss Decker, in 
 a tone of exasperation, " stop moralizing and 
 tell me what lias happened ! " 
 
 "Do you remember Clarence Trent, Ed- 
 ward Dedham, John Severance, Norton Bos- 
 well ? " 
 
 " Do I ? Poor moths ! " 
 
 " They were apparently devoted to me." 
 
 Dryly: "Apparently." 
 
 " How long is it since Mr. Pendleton's 
 death ? " 
 
 " About he died on the sixteenth why, 
 yes, it was six months yesterday since he 
 died." 
 
 " Exactly. You see these four notes on 
 the floor? They are four proposals four 
 proposals" and she gave a short hard 
 laugh through lips whose red had sudden- 
 ly faded "from the four men I have just 
 mentioned." 
 
 Miss Decker gasped. " Four proposals ! 
 Then what on earth are you angry about ? " 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton's lip curled scornfully. 
 She did not condescend to answer at once. 
 
100 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 "You are clever enough at times," she said, 
 coldly, after a moment. "It is odd you can- 
 not grasp the very palpable fact that four 
 proposals received on the same day, by the 
 same mail, from four men who are each oth- 
 er's most intimate friends, can mean but one 
 thing a practical joke. Oh ! " she cried, 
 the jealously mastered passion springing into 
 her voice, " that is what infuriates me more 
 even than the insult that they should think 
 rne such a fool as to be so easily deceived. 
 Oh!" 
 
 " If I remember aright,' 7 ventured Miss 
 Decker, feebly, " the intimacy to which you 
 allude was a thing of the past some time be- 
 fore you disappeared from the world. In 
 fact, they were not on speaking terms." 
 
 " Oh, they have made it up long ago ! 
 Don't make any weak explanations, but tell 
 me how to turn the tables on them. I would 
 give my hair and wear a gray wig, my com- 
 plexion and paint to get even with them. 
 And I will. But how ? How ? " 
 
 The stateliness left her walk and she 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 191 
 
 paced up and down the room with nervous 
 steps, glancing for inspiration from the deli- 
 cate etchings on the walls to the divan that 
 was like a moss-bank, to the carpet that 
 might have been a patch of forest green, and 
 from thence to the sparkling ocean. Miss 
 Decker offered no suggestions. She had 
 perfect faith in the genius of her friend. 
 
 Suddenly Mrs. Pendleton paused and 
 turned to her hostess. The red had come 
 back to her thin curled sensuous mouth. 
 Her eyes were luminous, as when the sun 
 breaks through the gray sky and falls, daz- 
 zling, on the waters. 
 
 " I have it ! " she said. " And a week 
 from to-day I will keep them in suspense 
 that long New York will have no corner 
 small enough to hold them.'' 
 
II. 
 
 THE hot September day was ten hours old. 
 The office of the St. Christopher Club was 
 still deserted but for a clerk who ]ooked 
 warm and sleepy. The postman had just 
 left a heap of letters on his desk and he was 
 sorting them for their various pigeon-holes. 
 A young man entered and the clerk began 
 to turn over the letters more rapidly. The 
 newcomer, tall, thin, with sharp features 
 and shrewd American face, had an extremely 
 nervous manner. As he passed through the 
 vestibule a clerk at a table put a mark oppo- 
 site the name " Mr, Clarence Trent," to indi- 
 cate that he was in the club. 
 
 " Any letters ? " he demanded of the office 
 clerk. 
 
 The man handed him two and he darted 
 into the morning room and tore one open, 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 193 
 
 letting the other fall to the floor. He read 
 as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND : I have but this mo- 
 ment received your letter, which seems to 
 have been delayed. [" Of course ! Why 
 did I not think of that?"] I say nothing 
 here of the happiness which its contents 
 have given me. Come at once. 
 
 " JESSICA PENDLETON. 
 
 " Our engagement must be a profound se- 
 cret until the year of my mourning is over." 
 
 Trent's drab and scanty whiskers seemed 
 to curl into hard knots over the nervous fa- 
 cial contortion in which he indulged. Nat- 
 ure being out of material when at work 
 upon him had apparently constructed his 
 muscles from stout twine. An inch of it 
 joining his nose to the upper lip, the former's 
 pointed tip was wont to punctuate his con- 
 versation and emotions with the direct 
 downward movement of a machine needle 
 puncturing cloth. He crumpled the letter 
 in his bony nervous fingers, and his pale, 
 
 13 
 
194 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 sharp gray eyes opened and shut with sud- 
 den rapidity. 
 
 "I knew I could not be mistaken,' 7 he 
 thought, triumphantly. u She is mine ! " 
 
 In the vestibule another name was check- 
 ed off u Mr. Norton Boswell," and its own- 
 er made eagerly for the desk. His dark 
 intellectual face was flushed and his sensi- 
 tive mouth twitched suddenly as the clerk 
 handed him a roll of MSS. 
 
 " Never mind that," he said, hastily. " Give 
 me my letters." 
 
 The clerk handed him several, and w T hisk- 
 ing them from left to right through his 
 impatient hands he thrust all but one into 
 his pocket and walked rapidly to the morn- 
 ing room. Seating himself before a table he 
 looked at the envelope as if not daring to 
 solve its mystery, then hastily tore it apart. 
 
 "Mr DEAR FRIEND," it began, and Bos- 
 well, despite his ardor, threw a glance down 
 a certain corridor in his memory and thought, 
 with kindling eyes : " Oh ! with what divine 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 195 
 
 sweetness did she use to utter that word 
 ' friend.' ' Then he fixed his eyes greedily 
 on the page once more. " I have but this 
 moment received your letter, which seems to 
 have been delayed. [" Ah ! " rapturously, 
 the paper dancing before his eyes, " that 
 accounts for it. I knew she was the most 
 tender-hearted woman on earth."] I say 
 nothing here of the happiness which its con- 
 tents have given me. Come at once. 
 
 " JESSICA PENDLETON. 
 "Our engagement must be a profound se- 
 cret, until the year of my mourning is over." 
 
 Boswell plunged a pen into the ink-well 
 with quivering nostrils, and in that quiet 
 room two hearts thumped so loudly that 
 only passion and scratching pens averted 
 mutual and withering contempt. 
 
 As Boswell left the office a very young- 
 man entered it. He possessed that nonde- 
 script blond complexion which seems to be the 
 uniform of the New York youth of fashion. 
 It is said that Englishmen are the cleanest 
 
196 MRS. PtfNDLETON'S FOUR-IN-IIAND. 
 
 looking men on this planet Earth, whether 
 scaling the Matterhorn or taking a duchess 
 in to dinner ; but the ciphers of the Four 
 Hundred have achieved the well-scrubbed 
 appearance of the Anglo-Saxon more success- 
 fully than his accent. Mr. Dedham might 
 have been put through a clothes wringer. 
 Even his minute and recent mustache looked 
 as if each hair had its particular nurse, and 
 his pink and chubby face defied conscientious 
 dissipation. He sauntered up to the clerk's 
 desk with an elaborate affectation of indif- 
 ference, and drawled a demand for his mail. 
 
 The clerk handed him a dainty note sealed 
 with a crest. He accepted it with an absent 
 air, although a look of genuine boyish delight 
 thrust its way through the fishy inertness of 
 his average expression. 
 
 It took him just a minute and a half to 
 get into the morning room and read these 
 fateful lines : 
 
 a MY DEAK FRIEND : [" Enchanting phrase ! 
 I can hear her say it."] I have but this mo- 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 197 
 
 ment received your letter, which seems to 
 have been delayed. [" Ah ! this perfume ! 
 this perfume ! "] I say nothing here of the 
 happiness which its contents have given me. 
 Come at once. " JESSICA PENDLETON. 
 
 " Our engagement must be a profound se- 
 cret until the year of rny mourning is over." 
 
 A rosy tide wandered to the roots of Mr. 
 Dedhain's cendre locks and he made a wild, 
 uncertain dab at his upper lip. Again there 
 was no sound in the morning room of the St. 
 Christopher Club but the furious dashing of 
 pens, the rending of parchment paper, or the 
 sudden scraping of a nervous foot. 
 
 A tall broad-shouldered young man, with 
 much repose of face and manner, entered the 
 office from the avenue, glanced at the pigeon- 
 holes above the clerk's desk, then sauntered 
 deliberately into the morning room and 
 looked out of the window. A slight rigidity 
 of the nostrils alone betokened the impa- 
 tience within, and his uneasy thoughts ran 
 somewhat as follows : 
 
198 MRS. PENDLE TON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 " What a fool I have been ! After all my 
 experience with women to make such an ass 
 of myself over the veriest coquette that ever 
 breathed; but her preference for me last 
 winter was so pointed oh, damnation ! " 
 
 He stood gnawing his under lip at the 
 lumbering 'bus, but turned suddenly as a 
 man approached from behind and presented 
 several letters on a tray. The first and only 
 one he opened ran thus : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND : I have but this mo- 
 ment received your letter, which seems to 
 have been delayed. I say nothing here of 
 the happiness which its contents have given 
 me. Come at once. 
 
 " JESSICA PENDLETON. 
 
 " Our engagement must be a profound se- 
 cret until the year of my mourning is over.'' 
 
 Severance folded the note, his face paling 
 a little. 
 
 " Well, well, she is true after all. What 
 a brute I was to misjudge her." He strolled 
 back to the office. "I will go home and 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOU11-1N-IIAND. 199 
 
 write to her, and to-morrow I shall see her ! 
 Great heaven ! were six months ever so long 
 before ? " 
 
 As he turned from the coat-room Boswell 
 entered the office by the opposite door. 
 
 " The fellow looks as gay as a lark," he 
 thought. " He hasn't looked like that for 
 six months. I believe I'll make it up with 
 him particularly as I've come out ahead ! " 
 
 " Give me that package,'' demanded Bos- 
 well dreamily of the clerk. Then he caught 
 sight of Severance. " Why, Jack, old fel- 
 low ! " he cried, " how are you ? Haven't 
 seen you looking so well for an age. Don't 
 go out. It's too hot." 
 
 " Oh, hang it ! I've got to. I'm off for 
 Newport to morrow. It's so infernally dull 
 in town." 
 
 " Going to Newport to-morrow ! So am 
 I. My aunt is quite ill and has sent for me. 
 I'm her heir, you know." 
 
 " No ? Didn't know you had an aunt. I 
 congratulate you. Hope she'll go off, I'm 
 
 sure." 
 
200 MBS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 " Hope so. Here comes Teddy ; he looks 
 like an elongated rubber ball. It's some 
 time since I've seen him so buoyant. How 
 are you, Teddy ? " 
 
 " How are you, Norton, old boy ? " ex- 
 claimed Dedham, rapturously. " How glad 
 I am to hear the old name once more. 
 You've given me the cold shoulder of 
 late." 
 
 " Oh, well, my boy, you know men will be 
 fools occasionally. But give bygones the go- 
 by. I'm going to Newport to-morrow. Can 
 I take any messages to your numerous " 
 
 " Dear boy ! I'm going to Newport to- 
 morrow. Sea bathing ordered by iny phy- 
 
 sician." 
 
 " By Jove, I am in luck. Severance is 
 going over too. We'll have a jolly time of 
 it." 
 
 " I should say so ! " murmured Teddy. 
 " Heaven ! Hello. Sev, how are you ? Didn't 
 see you. For the matter of that you've been 
 trying to make me forget the shape of that 
 stern profile of yours of late. But as long 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 201 
 
 as we are all going the same way we might 
 as well bury our hatchet. What do you say, 
 dear boy \ " 
 
 " Only too happy," said Severance, heartily. 
 " And may we never unearth it again. Here 
 comes Trent. He looks as if he had just 
 been returned for the senate." 
 
 " How are you ? '' demanded Trent, per- 
 emptorily. " You have made it up ? Don't 
 leave me out in the cold." 
 
 Dedham made a final lunge for his desert- 
 ing dignity, then sent it on its way. " I 
 should think not," he cried with dancing 
 eyes. " Give me your fist." 
 
 In a moment they were all shaking each 
 other's hands off, and good-fellowship was 
 streaming from every eye. 
 
 " Come over to my rooms, all of you," 
 gurgled Teddy, " and have a drink." 
 
 " With pleasure, my boy," said Trent. 
 " But native rudeness will compel me to 
 drink und run. I am off for Newport " 
 
 " Newport ! " cried three voices. 
 
 " Yes ; anything strange in that ? I'm 
 
202 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 going on vital business connected with the 
 coming election." 
 
 " This is a coincidence,' 7 exclaimed Bos- 
 well, with the appreciation of the romanti- 
 cist. " Why, we are all going to Newport. 
 Dedham in search of health, Severance of 
 pleasure, and I of a fortune only the old 
 mummy is always making out her checks, 
 but never passes them in. Well, I hope we'll 
 see a lot of each other when we get there." 
 
 " Oh, of course," said Severance, hastily. 
 " We will have many another game of polo 
 together." 
 
 " Well," said Dedham, " come over to 
 my rooms now, and drink to the success of 
 our separate quests." 
 
III. 
 
 Miss DECKER paced restlessly up and down 
 the sea-room waiting for the mail. Mrs. 
 Pendleton, more composed but equally nerv- 
 ous, lay in a long chair with expectation in 
 her eyes and triumph on her lips. 
 
 " Will they answer or will they not ? " ex- 
 claimed Miss Decker. " If the mail would 
 only come ! Will Jhey be crushed ? furi- 
 ous ? or will they apologize ? " 
 
 " I care nothing what they do," said Mrs. 
 Pendleton, languidly. " All I wanted was 
 to see them when they received my notes, 
 and later, when they met to compare them. 
 I hold that my revenge is worthy of a page 
 in Machiavelli's Prince. To turn the joke 
 on them and to let them see that they could 
 not make a fool of me at the same time ! 
 Oh ! how dared they ? " 
 
 "Well, they'll never perpetrate another 
 
20 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN HAND. 
 
 practical joke, my dear. You have your re- 
 venge, Jessica ; you have blunted their sense 
 of humor for life. I doubt if they ever even 
 read the funny page of a newspaper again. 
 Here comes the postman. There ! the bell 
 has rung. Why doesn't Bell go ? I'll go 
 myself in a minute." 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton's nostrils dilated a little, 
 but she did not turn her head even when the 
 man-servant entered and held a silver tray 
 before her. 
 
 Four letters lay thereon. She placed them 
 on her lap, but did not speak until the man 
 had left the room. Then she looked at Miss 
 Decker and gave the letters a little sweep 
 with the tips of her fingers. 
 
 u They have answered," she said. 
 
 " Oh, Jessica, for Heaven's sake don't be 
 so iron-bound ! " cried her friend. " Read 
 them." 
 
 "You can read them if you choose. I 
 have no interest beyond knowing that they 
 received mine." 
 
 Miss Decker needed no second invitation. 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 205 
 
 She caught the letters from Mrs. Pendletou's 
 lap and tore one of them open. She read a 
 few lines, then dropped limply on a chair. 
 
 " Jessica ! " she whispered, with a little 
 agonized gasp, " listen to this." 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton turned her eyes inquir- 
 ingly, but would not stoop to curiosity. 
 " Well," she said, " I am listening." 
 
 " It is from Mr. Trent. And listen : 
 i Angel ! I think if you had kept me wait- 
 ing one day longer you would have met a 
 lunatic wandering on the Newport clifEs. 
 Last night I attended a primary and made 
 such an egregious idiot of myself (although 
 I was complimented later upon my speech) 
 that I shall never understand why I was not 
 hissed. But hereafter I shall be inspired. 
 And how you will shine in Washington ! 
 That is the place for our talents, not mer- 
 cantile New York. After reading your re- 
 served yet impassioned note, I do not feel 
 that I can talk more rationally upon politics 
 than while in suspense. What do you think 
 I did? I made it all up with Severance, 
 
206 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 Dedham, and Bos well, whom I met just after 
 receiving it. I could afford to forgive them ! 
 They, by the way, go to Newport to-morrow. 
 Farewell, most brilliant of women, destined 
 by Heaven to be the wife of a diplomatist 
 (for I will confide to you that that is rny ul 
 timate ambition). Until to-morrow, 
 
 " i CLARENCE TRENT.' 
 
 " Well ! What do you think of that ? " 
 
 A pink wave had risen to Mrs. Pendleton's 
 hair, then receded and broken upon the 
 haughty curve of her mouth. 
 
 " Read the others," she said, briefly. 
 
 " Oh ! how can you be so cool ? " and Miss 
 Decker opened another note with trembling 
 fingers. 
 
 " It is from Norton Boswell. i You once 
 chided me for looking at the world through 
 gray spectacles, and bade me always hope 
 for the best until the worst was decided. 
 When you were near to encourage me the 
 sky was often pink, but even the memory of 
 the last six months has faded before the ago- 
 nized suspense of the last seven days. Oh ! 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 207 
 
 I shall be an author now, if suffering is the 
 final lesson. But what incoherent stuff I am 
 writing. Loneliness and despair are alike 
 forgotten. I can write no more ! To-mor- 
 row ! To-morrow ! 
 
 " ' BOSWELL.' " 
 
 " Read Severance's," said Jessica, quickly. 
 
 "I believe you like that man," exclaimed 
 Miss Decker. " I think he's a brute. But 
 you're in a scrape ! This is from the lordly 
 Severance : 
 
 " i An Englishman once said of you with 
 a drawl which wound the words about my 
 memory " Y-a-a-s ; she flirts on ice, so to 
 speak." Coldest and most subtle of women, 
 why did you keep me in suspense for seven 
 long days ? Do you think I believe that fic- 
 tion of the delayed letter ? You forget that 
 we have met before. But why torment me ? 
 Did I not in common decency have to wait 
 six months before I dared put my fate to the 
 test ? How I counted those days. I had a 
 calendar and a pencil in short I made a 
 
208 MfiS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 fool of myself. Now the chessboard is be- 
 tween us once more ; we start on even 
 ground ; we will play a keen and close game 
 to the end of our natural lives. I love you ; 
 but I know you. I will kiss the rod until 
 we marry ; after that we shall play chess. 
 I shall see you to-morrow. 
 
 "<s; 
 
 "Well, that's what I call a beast of a 
 man," said Miss Decker. 
 
 " I hate him," said Jessica, between her 
 teeth. 
 
 She looked hard at the ocean. Under its 
 gray sky to-day it was the color of her eyes, 
 as cold and as unfathomable. The glitter- 
 ing Medusa-like ends of her hair seemed to 
 flame upward and writhe at each other. 
 
 " I should think you would hate him," 
 said Miss Decker, " he is the only living man 
 who ever got the best of you. But listen to 
 what your devoted infant has to say. Nice 
 little boy, Teddy. 
 
 " ' Dearest ! Sweetest ! Do you know that I 
 am almost dancing for joy at this moment ? 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 209 
 
 Indeed, my feet are going faster than my 
 pen. To think! To think! you really do 
 love me after all. But I always said you 
 were not a flirt. I knocked a man down 
 once and challenged him to a duel because 
 he said you were. He wouldn't fight, but I 
 had the satisfaction of letting him know 
 what I thought of him. And now I can 
 prove it to all the world ! But I can't write 
 any more. There are three blots on this 
 now, the pen is jumping so, and you know I 
 never was much at writing letters. But I 
 can talk, and to-morrow I will tell you all. 
 "'YouR OWN TEDDY. 
 "'P.S. Is it not queer quite a coinci- 
 dence Severance, Trent, and Bos well are go- 
 ing to Newport to-morrow too. How proud 
 I shall be but no, I take that back ; I only 
 pity them, poor devils, from the bottom of 
 my heart ; or I would if it wasn't filled up 
 with you. " ' T.' 
 
 " Well, madam coquette, diplomatist, in- 
 spiration and queen of veracity, you're in a 
 
 14 
 
210 MRS, PENDLETON'3 FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 scrape and I don't envy you. "What will 
 you do ? " 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton pressed her head against 
 the back of the chair, straining her chin up- 
 ward as if she wanted the salt breeze to rasp 
 her throat. 
 
 " I have been so bored for six months," 
 she said, slowly. " Let them come. I will 
 see each of them alone, and keep the farce 
 going for a week or so. It will be amusing 
 to be engaged to four men at once. You 
 will command the forces and see that they 
 do not meet. Of course it cannot be kept 
 up very long, and when all resources are fail- 
 ing I will let them meet and make them 
 madly jealous. It will do one of them good, 
 at least." 
 
 "Well, you have courage," ejaculated 
 Miss Decker. " You can't do it. But yes, 
 you can. If the woman lives who can play 
 jackstraws with firebrands, that woman is 
 you. And what fun ! We are so dull here 
 both in mourning. I'll help you. I'll 
 carry out your instructions like a major." 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 211 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton rose and walked up and 
 down the room once or twice. "There is 
 only one thing," she said, drawing her 
 straight black brows together, " if I am en- 
 gaged to them they will want to hm kiss 
 me, you know. It will be rather awkward. 
 I never was engaged to anyone but Mr. Pen- 
 dleton, and he used to kiss me on my fore- 
 head and say ' my dear child.' I am afraid 
 they won't be contented with that." 
 
 " I am afraid they won't ! But you have 
 tact enough to manage a regiment. Come, 
 say you will do it." 
 
 " Yes," said Jessica, " I will do it. In my 
 boarding-school days I used to dream of 
 being a tragedy queen ; I find myself thrust 
 by circumstances into comedy. But I have 
 no doubt it will suit my talents better." 
 
IV. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 SEVERANCE strode impatiently up and 
 down the room overlooking the ocean. 
 
 " i Will be down in a minute/ I suppose 
 that means the usual thirty for reflection 
 and contemplation of bric-^-brac. What a 
 pretty room. No bric-&-brac in it, by the 
 way. I wonder if this is the room my lady 
 Jessica is said to have furnished to suit her- 
 self. It looks like a woodland glade. She 
 must look stunning against those moss-green 
 curtains. I wonder how the madame liked 
 my letter. It was rather brutal, but to man- 
 age a witch you have got to be Jove astride 
 a high horse. Here she comes, I know that 
 perfume. She uses it to sweeten the venom 
 of those snakes of hers." 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton entered and gave him her 
 hand with frank welcome. Her " snakes " 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 213 
 
 seemed vibrant with life and defiance, and 
 her individuality pierced through her white 
 conventional gown like a solitary star in a 
 hueless sky. 
 
 (i How do you do ? " she said, shaking his 
 hand warmly ; then she sat down at once as 
 as a matter of course. 
 
 He understood the manoeuvre, and 
 
 "Let us play chess by all means," he said, 
 and took a chair opposite. " Your seclusion 
 has done you good," he added, smiling as 
 the crest of a wave appeared in her eyes, 
 "you have lost your fagged look and look 
 more like a girl than a widow. Dissipation 
 does not agree with you. Two more win- 
 ters, and you would be that most hopeless of 
 horrors, a faded blonde. You would try to 
 make up for it by your wit, and then your 
 nose would get sharp, and you would have a 
 line down the middle of your forehead and 
 another on each side of your mouth." 
 
 " You are as rude as ever," said Jessica 
 coldly, but the wave in her eyes threatened 
 to become tidal. " If you marry a blonde 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 and incarcerate her, however, you may find 
 the effect more bleaching than society." 
 
 u Was that a reflection upon my own so- 
 ciety ? You are becoming a real repartee 
 fiend. I do not incarcerate. I only warn." 
 
 "So do I," said Mrs. Pendleton, significant- 
 ly ; "I have occasionally gotten the best of 
 a bad bargain." 
 
 " And as you will find me the worst you 
 have ever had you are already on the defen- 
 sive," said Severance, with a laugh. " Come, 
 I have not seen you for six months and I am 
 really hard hit. I wrote you that I marked 
 off each day with a pencil a red one at 
 that; I bought it for the occasion. Don't 
 take a base advantage of the admission, but 
 give me one kind syllable. I ask for it as 
 humbly as a dog does for a bone." 
 
 " You do, indeed. I began by making dis- 
 agreeable remarks about your personal ap- 
 pearance, did I not ? If you will be a brute 
 I will be a cat." 
 
 " You will acquit yourself with credit. 
 But I will not quarrel with you to-day." 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 215 
 
 He rose suddenly and went over to her, but 
 she was already on her feet. She dropped 
 her eyes, then raised them appealingly, but 
 the sea was level. 
 
 " Do not kiss me," she said. 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " I would rather not yet. Do you know 
 that I have never kissed a man a lover, I 
 mean in my life ? And this is so sudden 
 I would rather wait." 
 
 He raised her hand chivalrously to his 
 lips. " I will wait," he said ; " but you will 
 wear my ring ? " And he took a circlet from 
 his pocket and slipped it on her finger. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, simply, and touched 
 it with a little caressing motion. 
 
 He dropped her hand and stepped back. 
 Miss Decker had pushed aside the portiere. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Severance ? " she 
 said, cordially ; "I did not interrupt even 
 to congratulate you, but to take Jessica 
 away for a moment. My dear, your dress- 
 maker came down on the train with Mr. 
 Severance and has but a minute. You had 
 
21 G MRS. PENDLETON'8 FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 better go at once, for you know her temper 
 is none of the sweetest." 
 
 " Provoking old thing," said Jessica, with 
 a pout. It was the fourth mood to which 
 she had treated Severance in this short inter- 
 view, and he looked at her with delight. 
 " But I will get rid of her as soon as possi- 
 ble. Will you excuse me for a few mo- 
 ments ? I will be back in ten, sure." 
 
 " A dressmaker is the only tyrant to 
 whom I bow, the only foe before whom Hay 
 down my arms. Go ; but come back soon/' 
 
 " In ten minutes." 
 
 " Which is it, and where is he ? " she whis- 
 pered, eagerly, as they crossed the hall. 
 
 " Mr. Trent. He is in the library." 
 
 SCENE n. 
 
 TKENT was standing before a bust of Dan- 
 iel Webster, speculating how his own profile 
 would look in bronze. 
 
 " You would have to shave off your side 
 whiskers," murmured a soft voice behind him. 
 
 He turned with a nervous start, and a sus- 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 217 
 
 picion of color appeared under his gray skin. 
 Mrs. Peridleton was standing with her hands 
 resting lightly on the table. She smiled with 
 saucy dignity, an art she had brought to per- 
 fection. 
 
 " I give you five years," she said. 
 
 " With you to help me," he cried, enthusi- 
 astically. " Ah ! I see you now, leaning on 
 the arm of a foreign ambassador, going in to 
 some grand diplomatic dinner." 
 
 " It is too bad I shall have to take the 
 arm of a small one ; you will be but the 
 American minister, you know. [Great heav- 
 en ! how determined he looks ; I know he 
 means to kiss me. If I can only keep his 
 ambition going.] " 
 
 " I will be senator first and pass a bill 
 placing this country on an equal diplomatic 
 footing with the proudest in Europe. You 
 will then go to your legation as the wife of 
 an ambassador." 
 
 " I know you will accomplish it. And let 
 it be Paris. I cannot endure to shop any- 
 where else." 
 
218 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 " It shall be Paris." 
 
 " Are you not tired ? " she asked, hur- 
 riedly. 
 
 " Tired ? I have not thought of fatigue." 
 
 " The day is so warm." 
 
 " I have not felt it. Jessica ! " 
 
 " O h h h ! " and catching her face 
 convulsively in her hand she sank into a 
 chair. 
 
 "What is it ? What is it ? " he cried, hop- 
 ping about her like an agitated spicier, the 
 tip of his nose punctuating his excitement. 
 " What can I do ? Are you ill 1 " 
 
 Faintly : " Neuralgia." 
 
 "What shall I ring for? Antipyrine? 
 Horseradish for your wrists ? Belladonna ? 
 What ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Sit down and talk to me and 
 perhaps it will go away. Tell me something 
 about yourself and I'll forget it. Sit down." 
 
 " There is but little to tell. I have been 
 busy making friends against the next elec- 
 tion. I have addressed several meetings with 
 great success. I have every chance for the 
 
MHS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 219 
 
 house this time for the senate next term. 
 How's your face ? " 
 
 " Misery ! You said that several of my 
 old friends came down with you. How 
 odd ! " 
 
 u Was it not ? " 
 
 " I suppose they will all come to see 
 me." 
 
 " Hm. I don't know. Doubt if they 
 know you are here. I shall not tell them. 
 They would only be coming to see you and 
 getting in my way. I'll wait until our wed- 
 ding-day approaches, and ask them to be 
 ushers. But now, Jessica, that you do not 
 seem to suffer so acutely " 
 
 "Oh! Oh! [Thank Heaven, I hear 
 Edith.] " 
 
 Trent sprang to his feet in genuine alarm. 
 " Dearest ! Let me go for the doctor. I 
 cannot stand this 
 
 Miss Decker entered with apparent haste, 
 spoke to Trent, then stopped abruptly. 
 
 " Jessica ! " she cried. " What is the 
 matter \ " 
 
220 MBS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 "My face. You know how I have suf- 
 fered. Worse than ever." 
 
 " Oh, you poor dear ! She is such a mar- 
 tyr, Mr. Trent, with that tooth " 
 
 " Neuralgia ! " 
 
 " T mean neuralgia. She was up all night. 
 But, my dear, don't think me ,a heartless 
 fiend, but you must see your lawyer. He is 
 here with those deeds for you to sign, and he 
 says that he must catch the train." 
 
 " That estate has given me so much trou- 
 ble," murmured Mrs. Pendleton, wretchedly, 
 " and how can I talk business when my head 
 is on the rack ? I do not wish to leave Mr. 
 Trent so soon, either." 
 
 " Leave Mr. Trent to me. I will entertain 
 him. I will talk to him about you.'' 
 
 " May I speak to you one moment before 
 you go ? '' asked Trent. 
 
 " Yes," pinching her lips with extremest 
 pain, " you need not mind Edith." 
 
 "Not in the least." He took a box from 
 his pocket with an air of resignation which 
 boded well for the trials of a diplomatic 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 221 
 
 career. " I cannot wait longer to fetter you. 
 You told me once that the emerald was your 
 favorite stone." 
 
 She relaxed her lips and swept her lashes 
 down and up rapturously. u So good of 
 you to remember," she murmured ; " it re- 
 minds me of mermaids and things, and I 
 love it." 
 
 " You were always so poetical ! But 
 where did you get that ring ? I thought 
 you never wore rings. On your engagement 
 finger, too ? " 
 
 " It was a present from grandma, and I 
 wear it to please her. I'll slip it in my 
 pocket now it is too large for any other 
 finger and you can put yours where it be- 
 longs." 
 
 " You will never take it off until you need 
 its place for your wedding ring ? " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 " Angel ! And your face is better ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but Editli is looking directly this 
 way." 
 
222 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 SCENE III. 
 
 MRS. PENDLETON entered the drawing 
 room on tiptoe, with hand upraised. 
 
 " Well ! the sky did not fall, and the 
 train did not ditch, and the lightning did 
 not strike, and we are neither of us dead. 
 And you you look as strapping as a West 
 Point cadet. Fie upon your principles." 
 
 " That is a charming tirade with which to 
 greet an impatient lover," cried Boswell, 
 with beaming face. " You are serious, of 
 course ? " 
 
 "You have heard the parable of a wo- 
 man's { No ' ? " She gave both his out- 
 stretched hands a little shake, then retreated 
 behind a chair, and rested both arms on its 
 back. 
 
 " My anger is appeased, but I think I am 
 entitled to some recompense." 
 
 " What can he mean ? Would you prefer 
 sherry or red wine ? " 
 
 " There is a draught brewed upon Olym- 
 pus, which the gods call nectar " 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 223 
 
 " So sorry. We are just out. I gave the 
 last thimbleful away an hour ago." 
 
 " Oh, you did ! May I enquire to whom 
 you gave it ? " 
 
 "You may, indeed. And I would tell 
 you could I only remember." 
 
 " Provoking goddess ! But perhaps you 
 will allow me to look for myself. Perchance 
 I might find a drop or two remaining. I am 
 willing to take what I can get and be thank- 
 ful." 
 
 " [Then you will never get much.] " The 
 dregs are always bitter." 
 
 " There can be no dregs to the nectar in 
 question." 
 
 " And the last drop always goes to the 
 head. I have heard it asserted upon au- 
 thority. Think of the scandal the butler 
 oh, Heaven ! " 
 
 " The intoxication would make me but 
 tread the air. I should walk right over the 
 butler's head. Where did you get that 
 ring?" 
 
 " Is it not lovely ? It was " heaving a 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR IN-HAND. 
 
 profound sigh " the last gift of poor dear 
 Mr. Pendleton." 
 
 " Indeed ! Well, under the circumstances, 
 perhaps you will not mind removing it and 
 wearing that of another unfortunate," and 
 he placed one knee on the chair over which 
 she leaned, and produced a ring. 
 
 " Not at all. What a beauty ! How did 
 you know that the ruby was my favorite 
 stone ? " And she bent her body backward, 
 under pretence of holding the stone up to 
 the light. 
 
 " But you have a number of rubies and 
 pearls in your possession of which I consider 
 myself the rightful owner. Shall I have to 
 call in the law to give me mine own ? " 
 
 " The pearls are sharp, and the rubies 
 may be paste. I have the best of the bar- 
 gain." 
 
 " I am a connoisseur on the subject of 
 precious stones of precious articles of all 
 sorts, in fact. What an outrageous coquette 
 you are ! What is the use of keeping a 
 man in misery ? " 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 225 
 
 " Why are men always in such a hurry ? 
 If I were a man now and an author I 
 would wait for moonlight, waves breaking 
 on rocks, and all the rest of it." 
 
 "All the old property business, in short, 
 I am both a man and an author, therefore I 
 know the folly of delay in this short life." 
 
 "But suppose the door should open sud- 
 denly?" 
 
 " I have been here ten minutes and it has 
 not opened yet." 
 
 " But it might, you know ; and the small 
 boys of this house are an exaggeration of all 
 that have gone before. Ah ! here conies 
 someone. Sit down on that chair in- 
 stantly." 
 
 Miss Decker 'entered and looked depre- 
 catingly at Boswell. 
 
 " You have come at last," she said. " We 
 were afraid something had happened to you. 
 I cannot help this interruption, Jessica. 
 Your grandmother is here and wants to see 
 you immediately. She has been telegraphed 
 for to go to Philadelphia ; Mrs. Armstrong 
 
 15 
 
22G MBS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 is very ill. I would not keep her wait- 
 ing." ' 
 
 "Poor grandma! To think of her being 
 obliged to go to Philadelphia in September. 
 Where is she ? " 
 
 " In the yellow reception-room. Mr. Bos- 
 well will excuse you for a few minutes." 
 
 Boswell bowed, his face stamped with 
 gloom. 
 
 " What have you done with the others ? " 
 asked Jessica, as she closed the door. 
 
 " Mr. Severance is storming up and down 
 the sea-room, Mr. Trent is like a caged lion 
 in the library ; I expect to hear a crash 
 every minute. But both know what law- 
 yers arid dressmakers mean. Boswell will 
 learn something of grandmothers. But they 
 are safe for a quarter of an hour longer. 
 Trust all to me." 
 
 SCENE IV. 
 
 DEDHAM was sitting on the edge of one of 
 the reception-room chairs, locking and un- 
 locking his fingers until his hands were as 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'8 FOUR-IN-HAND. 2'JT 
 
 red as those of a son of toil. He was nerv- 
 ous, happy, terrified, annoyed. 
 
 " That beastly porter to keep me waiting 
 so long for my portmanteau," he almost 
 cried aloud. " What must she think of me ? 
 And I forgot my slip. Severance will have 
 his on this afternoon, I know, and I might 
 have been the first to wear it in Newport. 
 She won't see him, though, thank Heaven ! " 
 He examined his unornamented vest in an 
 opposite mirror and shrugged his shoulders 
 with an air of resignation. He must be 
 content to look as if he had one waistcoat 
 on instead of two. " And that new cosme- 
 tique for my mustache. How could I have 
 been so stupid as to forget it ? She'll not 
 be able to see it. I can't be pulling at it 
 all the time, I've twisted it almost out, 
 already. But she won't mind, for she adores 
 ah!" 
 
 " You wicked boy," said Mrs. Pendleton, 
 with gentle reproach. " What made you so 
 late? I was just about to send and inquire 
 if anything had happened to you. But sit 
 
228 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-IIAND. 
 
 down. How tired you must be. Would 
 you like a glass of sherry and a biscuit ? " 
 
 " Nothing ! Nothing ! You know it's 
 not my fault that I'm late. My portman- 
 teau got mislaid and my travelling clothes 
 were so dusty. And you really are glad to 
 see me ? " 
 
 " What a question ! It makes me feel 
 young again to see you." 
 
 " Young again ! You ! " 
 
 " I am twenty-four, Teddy, and a widow," 
 and she shook her head sadly. " I feel 
 fearfully old like your mother. I have 
 had so much care and responsibility in my 
 life, and you are so careless and debonair." 
 
 "You'll make me cry in a minute," said 
 Teddy, u and I wish you wouldn't talk like 
 that. You seem to put a whole Adirondack 
 between us." 
 
 l( I can't help it ! Perhaps I'll get over 
 it after a time. It's so sad being mewed 
 up six whole months ! " 
 
 "Then marry me right off. That's just 
 the point. We'll go and travel and have a 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 229 
 
 jolly good time. "That'll brace you up and 
 make you feel as young as you look." 
 
 " I can't, Teddy. I must wait a year in 
 common decency. Think how people would 
 talk/ 7 
 
 " Let 'em. They'll soon find something 
 else and forget us. Marry me next month." 
 
 " Next month well- 
 
 " It would be rather fun to be the hero 
 and heroine of a sensation, anyhow. That's 
 what everybody's after. You're just a 
 nonentity until you've been blackguarded in 
 the papers. Whose ring is that ? " 
 
 " One of Edith's. I put it on to remem- 
 ber something by." 
 
 " Well, take it off and wear this instead. 
 It'll help your memory just as well." 
 
 " What, a solitaire ! " 
 
 " I knew you would prefer it. I know all 
 your tastes by instinct." 
 
 "You do, Teddy. Colored stones are so 
 tiresome." 
 
 " By the way, I think your old admirer, 
 Severance, must be about to put himself in 
 
230 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 silken fetters, as Bosweil would say. I 
 caught him buying an unusually fine sapphire 
 in Tiffany's yesterday. Said it was for his 
 sister. Hm hm." 
 
 " .Rather. I wonder who it can be ? " 
 
 "Don't know. Hasn't looked at a wom- 
 an since you left. But I have a strong sus- 
 picion that it is some one here in New- 
 port." 
 
 " Here I wonder if it can be Edith ? " 
 
 " Miss Decker ? Sure enough. Never 
 seemed to pay her much attention, though. 
 She's not my style too much like sixteen 
 dozen other New York girls." 
 
 He buttoned up his coat, braced himself 
 against it and gave his mustache a frantic 
 twist. 
 
 " Mrs. Jessica ! " he ejaculated desper- 
 ately, " you are engaged to me won't you 
 won't you " 
 
 She drew herself up and glanced down 
 upon him from her higher chair with a look 
 of sad disapproval. 
 
 " I did not think it of you, Teddy," she 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-IIAND. 231 
 
 said. " And it is one of the things of which 
 I have never approved." 
 
 " But why not ? " asked Teddy, feebly. 
 
 "I thought you knew me better than to 
 ask such a question." 
 
 " I know you are an angel oh, hang it ! 
 You do make me feel as if you were my 
 mother." 
 
 " Now, don't be unreasonable, or I shall 
 believe that you are a tyrant.'* 
 
 " A tyrant ? I ? Herri no, I wish I 
 was. What a model of propriety you are. 
 I never should have thought it I mean 
 darling ! you were always such a coquette, 
 you know. Not that I ever thought so. 
 You know I never did oh, hang it all but 
 if I let you have your own way in this un- 
 reasonable I mean your perfectly natural 
 whim -you might at least promise to marry 
 me in a month. And indeed I think that if 
 you are an angel I am a saint." 
 
 " Well, on one condition." 
 
 " Any ! Any ! " 
 
 " It must be an absolute secret until the 
 
232 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 wedding is over. I hate congratulations, 
 and if we are going to have a sensation we 
 might as well have a good concentrated one." 
 
 " I agree with you, and I'll never find fault 
 with you again. You " 
 
 Miss Decker almost ran into the room. 
 
 " Jessica," she cried. " Oh, dear Mr. Ded- 
 ham, how are you ? Jessica, mother has one 
 of her terrible attacks, and I must ask you to 
 stay with her while I go for the doctor my- 
 self. I cannot trust servants." 
 
 "Let me go ! let me go ! " cried Teddy. 
 " I'll bring him back in a quarter of an hour. 
 Who shall " 
 
 " Coleman. He lives 
 
 " I know. Au revoir," and the girls were 
 alone. 
 
 " There ! '' exclaimed Miss Decker, " we 
 have got rid of him. Now for the others. 
 You slip upstairs and I'll dispose of them one 
 by one. You are taken suddenly ill. Teddy 
 will not be back for an hour. Dr. Coleman 
 has moved." 
 
V. 
 
 A LAMP burned in the sea-room, and the 
 two girls were sitting in their evening gowns 
 before a bright log fire. Miss Decker was in 
 white this time an elaborate French concoc- 
 tion of embroidered muslin which made her 
 look like an expensive fashion plate. Jessica 
 wore a low-cut black crepe, above which she 
 rose like carven ivory and brass. The snakes 
 to-night were held in place by diamond hair- 
 pins that glittered like baleful eyes. In her 
 lap sparkled four rings. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " she exclaimed. " If 
 my life depended upon it I could not remem- 
 ber who gave me which." 
 
 "Let us think. What sort of a stone 
 would a politician be most likely to choose ? " 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton laughed. " A good idea. 
 If couleur de rose be synonymous with con- 
 
234 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 ceit, then I think the ruby must have come 
 from Mr. Trent." 
 
 " I am sure of it. And as your author is 
 always in the dumps, I am certain he takes 
 naturally to the sapphire." 
 
 " But the emerald " 
 
 "Is emblematical of your deluded Teddy. 
 The solitaire therefore falls naturally to Mr. 
 Severance. Well, now that you have got 
 through the first interviews in safety, what 
 are you going to do next? '' 
 
 " Edith, I do not know. They are all so 
 dreadfully in earnest that I believe I shall 
 finally take to my heels in downright terror. 
 But no, I won't, I'll come out of it with the 
 upper hand and save my reputation as an 
 actress. I will keep it up for two or three 
 days more, but after that it will be impos- 
 sible. They are bound to meet here sooner 
 or later. Thank Heaven, we are rid of them 
 for to-night, at least ! " 
 
 The man-servant threw back the portiere. 
 
 " Mr. Trent," 
 
 " Heavens ! '' cried Edith under her 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 235 
 
 breath, " I forgot to give orders that we 
 were not receiv how do you do, Mr. 
 Trent ? " 
 
 " And which is his ring ? " Jessica made 
 a frenzied dab at the jewels in her lap. She 
 slipped the sapphire on her finger, and hid 
 the others under a cushion. Trent, who had 
 been detained a moment by Miss Decker, 
 advanced to her. 
 
 " It is very soon to come again," he said, 
 " but I simply had to call and inquire if you 
 felt better. I am delighted to see that you 
 apparently do." 
 
 " I am better, thank you." Her voice was 
 rather weak. " It was good of you to come 
 again." 
 
 " Whose ring is that ! " 
 
 " Why a to sure 
 
 " Jessica ! " cried Miss Decker, " have you 
 gone off with my ring again ? You are so 
 absent-minded. I hunted for that ring high 
 and low." 
 
 "You should not be so good-natured, and 
 my memory would turn over a new leaf. 
 
236 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR IN-HAND. 
 
 Here take it." She tossed the ring to Miss 
 Decker, and raised her eyes guiltily to 
 Trent's. " Shall I go up and get the other ? " 
 
 " No. But I thought you promised never 
 to take it off." 
 
 "I forgot that water ruins stones." 
 
 " Well, it is a consolation to know that 
 water does not ruin a certain plain gold circ- 
 let." 
 
 "Mr. Boswell." 
 
 Jessica gasped and looked at the flames. 
 A crisis had come. Would she be clever 
 enough ? Then the situation stimulated her. 
 She held out her hand to Boswell. 
 
 "You have come to see me," she cried, 
 delightedly. " Mr. Trent has just been tell- 
 ing us that you came down with him, and I 
 hoped you would call soon." 
 
 " Yes, to be sure to be sure. You might 
 have known I would call soon." He bowed 
 stiffly to Trent, and seating himself close be- 
 side Jessica, murmured in her ear : " Cannot 
 you get rid of that fellow ? How did he find 
 you out so soon ? " 
 
MRS. PENDLETON' 8 FOUR-IN-HAND. 237 
 
 " Why, he came to see Edith, of course. 
 Do you not remember how devoted he al- 
 ways was to her ? " 
 
 " I do not " 
 
 "May I ask what you are whispering 
 about, Mr. Boswell?" demanded Trent, 
 breaking from Miss Decker. " Is he confid- 
 ing to you the astounding success of his last 
 novel, Mrs. Pendleton? or was it a history 
 of the United States ? I really forget." 
 
 " Not the last, certainly. I leave it to you 
 to make history an abridged edition. My 
 ambition is a more humble one." 
 
 " Oh, you will both need biographers," 
 said Mrs. Pendleton, who was beginning to 
 enjoy herself. " I will give you an idea. 
 Join the theosophists. Arrange for rein- 
 carnation. Come back in the next genera- 
 tion and write your own biographies. Then 
 your friends and families cannot complain 
 that you have not had justice done you." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " said Trent. 
 
 " You are as cruel as ever," said Boswell 
 with a sigh. (" Where is my ring ? ") 
 
238 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 " It was so large that I could not keep it 
 on. I must have a guard made." 
 
 "Dear little fingers " 
 
 " You may never have been taught when 
 you were a small boy, Mr. Boswell," ex- 
 claimed Trent, " that it is rude to whisper 
 in company. Therefore, to save your man- 
 ners in Mrs. Pendleton's eyes, I will do you 
 the kindness to prevent further lapse.' 7 And 
 he seated himself on the other side of Jes- 
 sica and glared defiantly at Bos well. 
 
 " Mr. Severance and Mr. Dedham." 
 
 Severance entered hurriedly. " I am so 
 glad to hear ah, Boswell ! Trent ! " 
 
 " How odd that you should all find your 
 way here the very first evening of your 
 arrival ! " And Jessica held out her hand 
 with a placid smile. Miss Decker was more 
 nervous, but the training of five seasons 
 stood her in good stead. " Ah ! " continued 
 Mrs. Pendleton, " and Mr. Dedham, too ! 
 This is a most charming reunion." 
 
 " Charming beyond expression ! " said 
 Severance. 
 
MRS. PENDLE TON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 239 
 
 Bo swell and Trent being obliged to rise 
 when Miss Decker went forward to meet 
 the newcomers, Severance took the former's 
 chair, Dedham that of the future statesman. 
 
 " You are better ? " whispered Severance. 
 " I have been anxious." 
 
 " Oh ! I have been worried to death," 
 murmured Teddy in her other ear. " That 
 wretched doctor had not only moved but 
 gone out of town ; and when I came back at 
 last, and found 
 
 " Mr. Severance," exclaimed Trent, " you 
 have my chair." 
 
 " Is this your chair ? You have good 
 taste. A remarkably comfortable chair." 
 
 " You would oblige me " 
 
 " By keeping it ? Certainly. You were 
 ever generous, but that I believe is a char- 
 acteristic of genius." 
 
 " Mrs. Pendleton," said Boswell, plaintive- 
 ly, " as Mr. Dedham has taken my chair, I 
 will take this stool at your feet." 
 
 Trent was obliged to lean his elbow on 
 the mantelpiece, for want of a better view 
 
240 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 of Mrs. Pendleton, and Miss Decker sat on 
 the other side of Dedham. 
 
 " How are you, Teddy ? " she said. 
 ' " Fine. You must let me congratulate 
 you." 
 
 " For what 3 " 
 
 "I see you wear Severance's ring. Ah, 
 Sev, did the ring suit your sister ? " 
 
 " To a T. Said it was her favorite stone." 
 He stopped abruptly. " What the dev " 
 this below his breath, and Jessica whispered 
 hurriedly : 
 
 " Edith was looking at it when Mr. Trent 
 came in, and forgot to return it." 
 
 " Ah ! Boswell, I am sure you are sitting 
 on Mrs. Pendleton's foot. By the way, 
 how's your aunt ? " 
 
 " Dead better." 
 
 " I wonder you could tear yourself away 
 so soon," said Trent, viciously. " You'd bet- 
 ter be careful. She might make a new 
 will." 
 
 " Don't worry. I spent the happiest fif- 
 teen minutes of my life with her this after- 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'8 FOUR-IN-HAND. 241 
 
 noon. She promised me all/' He turned to 
 Severance. u You have been breaking hearts 
 on the beach, I suppose." 
 
 " Which is better, at all events, than 
 breaking one's head against a stone wall." 
 
 " Politics brought you here, Mr. Trent, I 
 suppose," interrupted Miss Decker. " I hear 
 you made a stirring speech the other night." 
 
 " I did. It was on the question of Rad- 
 icalism in the Press versus Civil Service 
 Reform. Something must be done to revol- 
 utionize this hell I beg pardon this hot- 
 bed of iniquity, American politics. Such 
 principles need courage ; but when the hour 
 comes the man must not be wanting " 
 
 o 
 
 " That was all in the paper next morning," 
 drawled Boswell. " Mrs. Pendleton, did you 
 receive the copy of my new book I sent a 
 fortnight ago ? Unlike many of my others I 
 had no difficulty in- disposing of it. It was 
 lighter, brighter, less philosophy, less- 
 brains. The critics understood it, therefore 
 they were kind. They even said " 
 
 "Don't quote the critics for Heaven's 
 
 16 
 
242 MRS. PENDLETON' S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 sake ! " said Severance. " It is enough to 
 have read them." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Pendleton," exclaimed Teddy, 
 " if you could have been at the yacht race. 
 Such excitement ? Such 
 
 "To change the subject," said Trent, with 
 determination in his eye, " Mrs. Pendleton, 
 did. you receive all the marked papers I sent 
 you containing my speeches, especially the 
 one on Jesuitism in Politics ? " 
 
 " Don't bother Mrs. Pendleton with poli- 
 tics," exclaimed Boswell, whose own egotism 
 was kicking against its bars. " You did not 
 think my book too long, did you ? One pur- 
 blind critic said 
 
 " Good-night, Mrs. Pendleton," said Sev- 
 erance, rising abruptly. " Good-evening," 
 and he bowed to Miss Decker and to the 
 men. Jessica rose suddenly and went with 
 him to the door. 
 
 " I am going to walk on the cliffs ' Forty 
 Steps' at eleven to-morrow," she said, as 
 she gave him her hand. " This may be un- 
 conventional, but /choose to do it." 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 243 
 
 He bowed over her hand. " Mrs. Pendle- 
 ton will only have set one more fashion," he 
 said. " I shall be there." 
 
 As he left the room by one door, Jessica 
 crossed the room and opened another. 
 
 " Good-night," she said to the astounded 
 company, and withdrew. 
 
VI. 
 
 SEVERANCE sauntered up and down the 
 " Forty Steps," the repose of his bearing be- 
 lying the agitation within. 
 
 " Why on earth doesn't she come ? " he 
 thought, uneasily. " Can she be ill again ? 
 She is ten minutes behind time now. What 
 did it mean all those fellows there last 
 night ? She looked like an amused spectator 
 at a play, and Miss Decker was nervous, ac- 
 tually nervous. Damn it ! Here they all 
 come. What do they mean by keeping un- 
 der my heels like this ? " 
 
 Dedham, Trent, and Boswell strolled up 
 from various directions, and although each 
 had expectation in his eye, neither looked 
 overjoyed to see the other. There were four 
 cold nods, a dead pause, and then Teddy 
 gave a little cough. 
 
 "Beautiful after I mean morning." 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 245 
 
 " It is indeed," said Severance. " I won- 
 der you are not taking your salt-water con- 
 stitutional." 
 
 " I always take a walk in the morning," 
 and Teddy glanced nervously over his shoul- 
 der. 
 
 Bos well and Trent, each with a little mis- 
 sive burning his pocket, turned red, fidgeted, 
 glared at the ocean and made no remark. 
 Severance darted a glance at each of the 
 three in succession, and then looked at the 
 ground with a contemplative stare. At this 
 moment Mrs. Pendleton appeared. 
 
 Three of the men advanced to meet her 
 with an awkward attempt at surprise, but 
 she waved them back. 
 
 " I have something to say to you," she 
 said. 
 
 The cold languor of her face had given 
 place to an expression of haughty triumph. 
 A gleam of conscious power lay deep in her 
 calmly scornful eyes. The final act in the 
 drama had come and the denouement should 
 be worthy of her talents. She looked like a 
 
246 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 judge who had smiled encouragement to a 
 guilty defendant only to confer the sentence 
 of capital punishment at last. 
 
 " Gentlemen," she said, and even her voice 
 was judicatorial, "I have asked you all to 
 meet me here this morning" three angry 
 starts, but she went on unmoved " because 
 I came to the conclusion last night that it is 
 quite time this farce should end. I am some- 
 what bored myself, and I have no doubt you 
 are so, as well. Your joke was a clever one, 
 worthy of the idle days of autumn. When I 
 received your four proposals by the same 
 mail, I appreciated your wit I will say 
 more, your genius and felt glad to do any- 
 thing I could to contribute to your amuse- 
 ment, especially as all the world is away in 
 Europe, and I knew that you must be dull. 
 So I accepted each of you, as you know, had 
 four charming interviews and one memorable 
 one of a more composite nature ; and now 
 that we have all agreed that the spicy and 
 original little drama has run its length I 
 take pleasure in restoring your rings." 
 
MRS. PENDLETON 'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 247 
 
 She took from her handkerchief a beauti- 
 ful little casket of blue oynx, upon which 
 reposed the Pendleton crest in blazing dia- 
 monds, and touching a spring revealed four 
 rings sparkling about as many velvet cush- 
 ions. The four men stood speechless ; 
 neither dared protest his sincerity and see 
 ridicule in the eyes of his neighbor. 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton dropped her judicial air, 
 and taking the ruby between her fingers, 
 smiled like a teacher bestowing a prize. 
 
 " Mr. Boswell," she said, " I believe this 
 belongs to you/' and she handed the ring to 
 the stupefied author. He put it in his poc- 
 ket with never a word. 
 
 She raised the emerald. " Mr. Trent, this 
 is yours ? or is it the sapphire ? " 
 
 " The emerald," snorted Trent. 
 
 She dropped it in his nerveless palm with 
 a gracious bend of the head, and turned to 
 Teddy. 
 
 " You gave me a solitaire, I remember," 
 she said, sweetly. "A most appropriate 
 gift, for it is the ideal life." 
 
243 MRS. PENDLETON'8 FOUR-IN-IIAND. 
 
 Teddy looked as if about to burst into 
 tears, gave her one beseeching glance, then 
 took his ring and strode feebly over the 
 cliffs. Trent and Boswell hesitated a mo- 
 ment, then hurried after. 
 
 " Jessica held the casket to Severance, with 
 a little outward sweep of her wrist. He 
 took it, and folding his arms looked at her 
 steadily. A tide of angry color rose to her 
 hair, then she turned her back upon him arid, 
 looking out over the water, tapped her foot 
 on the rocks. 
 
 " Why do you not go ? " she asked. " I 
 hate you more than the other three put to- 
 gether." 
 
 " No. You love me." 
 
 " I hate you. You are a brute. The cool- 
 est, the rudest, the most exasperating man 
 on two continents." 
 
 " That is the reason you love me. My 
 dear Mrs. Pendleton," he continued, taking 
 the ring from the casket, and laying the lat- 
 ter on a rock, " a woman of brains and head- 
 strong will but unegoistic likes a brutal 
 
MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 249 
 
 and masterful man. An egoistical woman, 
 whether she be fool or brilliant, likes a slave. 
 The reason is that egoism, not being a femi-' 
 nine quality primarily, but borrowed from 
 man, places its fair possessor outside of her 
 sex's limitations and supplies her with the 
 satisfying simulacrum of those stronger char- 
 acteristics which she would otherwise look 
 for in man. You are not an egoist." 
 
 He took her hand and removed her glove 
 in spite of her resistance. 
 
 " Don't struggle. You would only look 
 ridiculous if anyone should pass. Besides, it 
 is useless. I am so much stronger. 
 
 " I do not know or care what really pos- 
 sessed you to indulge in such a freak as to 
 engage yourself to four men at once," he con- 
 tinued, slipping the ring on her finger. " You 
 had your joke, and I hope you enjoyed it. 
 The denouement was highly dramatic. As I 
 said : I desire no explanation, for I am never 
 concerned with anything but results. And 
 now you are going to marry me." 
 
 "I am not," sobbed Jessica, 
 
250 MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND. 
 
 " You are." He glanced about. No one 
 was in sight He put his arm about her 
 shoulders, forcing her own to her sides, then 
 bent back her head and kissed her on the 
 mouth. 
 
 " Checkmate ! " he said. 
 
 THE END. 
 
i untu fl i mu 
 
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